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WoT Interview Search

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Your search for the tag 'Brandon on writing' yielded 1647 results

  • 1

    Interview: 2010

    Matt Hagerman (1 August 2010)

    Is it harder to write a novel with the amount of detailed notes Mr. Jordan left as opposed to creating the world yourself?

    Brandon Sanderson (2 August 2010)

    Some parts are harder, some parts are easier. The notes mean lots of research before I can write some scenes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That slows me down a lot. But Mr. Jordan was a master worldbuilder, so—in some ways—it is easier. Hard parts have been done.

    Austin Moore

    For WoT specifically, is it tougher to write the good guys or the bad and why?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In WoT, I'd say the bad guys. We've seen fewer viewpoints from them, so it's tougher to research them, figure them out.

    Brandon King

    If you could be from any nation in Randland, which one and why?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Malkier, I think. Though others ask me this question, and I think my answer changes. I just think the Malkieri are awesome.

    Footnote

    The last Q&A was found later and added here for date proximity.

    Tags

  • 2

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Diana Brewster (4 January 2011)

    Do you use Ideal Seek for your WoT research? http://dposey.no-ip.com/IdealSeek/

    Brandon Sanderson (4 January 2011)

    I have my own e-copy in word format of the entire series, to empower me to use searches. I've been to Ideal Seek before, though.

    Tags

  • 3

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    James Powell (4 January 2011)

    Does having written for the Wheel of Time change the way you engage with it as a reader now?

    Brandon Sanderson (4 January 2011)

    Yes, a great deal. Though I don't know if I can explain it in 140-character bursts. :)

    Tags

  • 4

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brandon Sanderson (5 January 2011)

    People (mostly my editor) complain about my capitalization of magic-related terms. (Push and Pull in Mistborn.) I learned from RJ.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'll admit, keeping track of which terms are upper case while writing these can be hard. Warder, for example, is capitalized.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Ha. I love @GrammarGirl. She says: "Refer your editor to the section on capitalizing Platonic ideals: http://j.mp/18T09Z

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    When younger, I thought Rand's first Channeling was lightning in Four Kings. It wasn't until later that I caught the Bela thing.

    TEREZ

    No, 'channeling' is NOT capitalized. :)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    That's the one I most think should be. We always have to search/replace it after I write a book.

    SHIVAM BHATT

    Why did you use the word 'magic' in Towers of Midnight? It never showed up in WoT before that.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    RJ used the word a couple of times in the series.

    SHIVAM BHATT

    Did he? Because I remember being jarred out of the narrative when I saw it mentioned in Towers of Midnight. Seemed really incongruous.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah, a couple of times. Mostly in earlier books. In Aviendha's vision, though, it was supposed to be incongruous.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    This is (presumably) many, many years in the future. Language and usage has changed.

    Footnote

    The word 'magic' was actually only used once (in The Eye of the World Chapter 33). Brandon used 'magics' in Towers of Midnight Chapter 48 in Aviendha's POV, but he also used 'magical' in Faile's POV in Towers of Midnight Chapter 16 (neither word appears anywhere else in the series).

    Tags

  • 5

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Austin Moore (6 January 2011)

    So what exactly is different about the outline you are making this time compared to for The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight? Besides...

    AUSTIN MOORE

    ...them being different books.

    Brandon Sanderson (6 January 2011)

    Afraid I can't answer that without giving too much away.

    Tags

  • 6

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brandon Sanderson (6 January 2011)

    First non-Rand viewpoint is Perrin, at about the 38% mark. RJ's juggling of viewpoints is something I didn't see until I was older.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Many a new fantasy writer, fresh off a WoT book, plans and plots a huge epic with twenty viewpoints. That can be overwhelming to start.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Both WoT and GRRM ease into it more than you realize. In most cases, it's better to build to complexity.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'd forgotten that Perrin nearly decides to drop his axe in the water as he swims. But he keeps it, almost against logic.

    VARGA TAMÁS

    Are there actually clues in WoT that you did not find so far? That's cool.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I always find new things when I reread.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Good suggestion: @Terez27 says if you have a WoT question, and want to see if it's been asked before, you can direct it to her first.

    AARON J

    Skipped your tweets when you warned against spoilers; are you on a #wotrr binge at the moment? Can I read without worry?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For the next four months, I'll be doing the reread. Spoilers will be present, but hopefully vague enough to not ruin things.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    But I'll be posting about the reread almost every day.

    Tags

  • 7

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Quartzlyn (7 January 2011)

    LOVING the way you write all of the WoT characters, especially Aviendha! Thank you :)

    Brandon Sanderson (7 January 2011)

    I've been waiting for some more Aviendha in the books, and was glad for a chance to slip her in some more.

    Tags

  • 8

    Interview: 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (17 August 2010)

    Q: When do you start A Memory of Light? (Asked with a smile, but with real curiosity too I'm sure.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    A: I start it January 1st. I'm taking four months to relax my brain and work on something else, to refresh myself and keep creative.

    Tags

  • 9

    Interview: 2010

    Shivam Bhatt (8 November 2010)

    Do you think you'll actually be able to wrap up the story in A Memory of Light? Seems like a lot of endgame threads still open.

    Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)

    I have no plans to split the book again. I am 2/3 through the outline. Anything can happen, but it looks like one.

    Tags

  • 10

    Interview: 2010

    Spencer Pranger (8 November 2010)

    Why is Hoid trying to restore the Pattern?

    Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)

    Lol. Hoid has no involvement in anything WoT. :)

    Tags

  • 11

    Interview: 2010

    Brian Cayen (8 November 2010)

    You've said in the past that Aviendha's voice was one the hardest for you to write....is this still the case?

    Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)

    It still takes the longest to prepare for, but it is no longer as difficult as it was.

    Tags

  • 12

    Interview: 2010

    Luke Piper (8 November 2010)

    Which character kept you up at night worrying the most?

    Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)

    Rand. In both books.

    Tags

  • 13

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brandon Sanderson (12 January 2011)

    It's interesting to see how much Loial adds to these scenes. His personality is a balancing factor; calm, knowledgeable, not arrogant.

    SHIVAM BHATT

    And yet, Loial disappears in the end game. Please bring him back for the finale!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills, and I do as I must.

    KYLE WEST

    Is it hard for you to still enjoy the series now that you are "behind the scenes"?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I think I enjoy it more, now, actually. Though I am a little sad not to be able to read new WoT books when everyone else does.

    Tags

  • 14

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brian LePoidevin (17 January 2011)

    Pardon me if this has been asked a million times but what did you find heartbreaking to write in Towers of Midnight? Noal? Aiel future?

    Brandon Sanderson (17 January 2011)

    Aiel future, all the way. And the death of a certain character related to Perrin.

    JEFF EDDE

    Possibly a RAFO, but will you find A Memory of Light to be even more heartbreaking to write?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    It WILL be heartbreaking, if only because it's the last. I can't say if it will be heartbreaking for similar reasons or not.

    Tags

  • 15

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Emil Schuffhausen (17 January 2011)

    I have six chapters left in The Eye of the World, should catch up by tonight. What scene are you most looking forward to in The Great Hunt?

    Brandon Sanderson (17 January 2011)

    I love the ending. Probably that.

    TJ

    While doing your #wotrr, notice the metaphors. Loved RJ's style there. Not noticed in new book. Great though. Halfway so far.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Every time I try to do a Jordan-esque metaphor, I fail, so I remove it. It's an aspect of his style I can't imitate, I'm afraid.

    TJ

    Aw man, I believe you're not giving yourself enough credit, but I'll respect it. Thanks again!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'll keep an eye on it. Maybe I'll figure it out. But often it's better to do things in my style rather than to poorly imitate RJ.

    JAN CARRICK

    Will you attempt to move closer to RJ's descriptive style in A Memory of Light? You were close in The Gathering Storm, but departed from that in Towers of Midnight.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'm afraid I knew from the beginning that I couldn't imitate RJ's style. I try in some ways, but I am not him.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I will write the book the best way I know how, but will not be trying to imitate RJ. I WILL strive for character voice accuracy.

    JAN CARRICK

    Well, the descriptive style is a central feature of WoT. I don't think being more descriptive would constitute imitation.

    JAN CARRICK

    I'm asking because your narrative style was much closer to RJ in The Gathering Storm. I was surprised to see you move away from that in Towers of Midnight.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Oh, I see. You don't mean "Describe in the way RJ did." You mean "Please describe more."

    CHRIS B.

    Do you take notes, besides twittering, during #wotrr?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Many.

    MATT H.

    Can you put all of your notes online somewhere? Come on, that's easy...right?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Lol. Those would have so many spoilers in them it would cause several people's heads to explode.

    Tags

  • 16

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    David Hager (20 January 2011)

    To write, "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass..." for the final time—any thoughts?

    Brandon Sanderson (20 January 2011)

    I'll try to do a post when I do it.

    Tags

  • 17

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    John Anderson (24 February 2011)

    Given how RJ went to great length in an attempt to synchronize his plotlines before the finale, don't you feel that you had...

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...an obligation not to destabilize the chronology the way you ended up doing? With all due respect, I think time has shown...

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...that it was a massive mistake structuring The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight the way you did. Which is a shame, since your WoT-writing is GOOD.

    Brandon Sanderson (25 February 2011)

    I'm afraid I don't follow you. The plotlines weren't synchronized in previous WoT books.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I realize there may be disagreement, and am not offended by it. But I maintain that the structure of The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight is the right one.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I only had two choices with The Gathering Storm. Have a book more like Crossroads of Twilight with lots of slices of all characters, but without complete arcs for any...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Or do what I did, and make a Rand/Egwene book and a Mat/Perrin book with some time jumping.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem if it would have been possible to do a single, 600k word volume.

    JOHN ANDERSON (26 FEBRUARY)

    No, but the books showed that RJ was trying to synchronize the plotlines for the finale—sometimes at the reader's expense.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    This, combined with RJ's statements that the finale would need to be one book, suggests to me that he had a very strong wish...

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...to tell the final part of the story in a more traditional chronological manner. Of course, this couldn't be published in...

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...one volume, but the story still could've been told the way RJ wanted it to be told. The story just loses so much due to...

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...this division. Take Rand and Perrin's scene at Dragonmount, for example. I feel these scenes were MEANT to be told in parallel.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...as opposed to one year and 500 pages apart.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    I believe that a slow The Gathering Storm and fast-paced Towers of Midnight would've been by far the best choice from a literary point of view.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    This would also lead to fewer continuity errors and better coherence in terms of both themes and action.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    The biggest mistake, for me, was the insistence on publishing before you had the full overview, i.e. before you had written...

    JOHN ANDERSON

    ...the whole part of the story that needed to be divided. The result is a structural mess far worse than Crossroads of Twilight. No offense.:)

    JOHN ANDERSON

    What annoys me is that you write WoT so well that this could've been a spectacular ending if told the way I feel RJ wanted.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    I would very much like to hear what you think about this. I'm disappointed at the way this was done, but mean no offense.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (28 FEBRUARY)

    No offense taken. You have some points. For the Hardcore breaking the book mid-story may have been better.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    However, the average WoT fan would have found those books a much less rewarding experience.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    In a perfect world, we could have delayed another year and just released them one after another, two months apart.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Then I could have cut the books as you suggest. That wasn't viable, however, because of the constraints placed upon me.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    One of those constraints is that The Gathering Storm HAD to be a homerun. It had to be extremely powerful, not slow.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    It had been years since a WoT book, and with a new writer working on it...well, we just couldn't have a slow half-book.

    COLIN WILSON (26 FEBRUARY)

    I agree with having complete arcs in The Gathering Storm but why interweave chapters in Towers of Midnight? Why not catch up first? (interested, not cross)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I tried to do so, but the book was feeling 'off' by sticking Perrin's narrative all at the front. Beyond that, chapter one had to be Rand.

    JAN CARRICK

    Why did Rand have to be in chapter one? To me, knowing he was alright pretty much killed the suspension of the other characters' threads.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (28 FEBRUARY)

    Hard to explain. It was simply the place that scene had to go.

    HBFFERREIRA (27 FEBRUARY)

    Both novels gave us closure for some plots, instead of The Gathering Storm giving us none. For what it's worth, I think you did great.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (28 FEBRUARY)

    Thanks. I didn't think it was that hard to follow. The only potential problem is Tam.

    Footnote

    Tam was the biggest problem for the more casual fans, but the hard core fans tended to have a bigger problem with the separation between Rand's and Perrin's points of view at Dragonmount. But you had something similar with several groups experiencing the cleansing of saidin, in one way or another, in Crossroads of Twilight.

    Tags

  • 18

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    James Powell (27 February 2011)

    Kaladin's situation in Bridge Four reminded me a lot of Egwene's in The Gathering Storm—did you think of this at all writing either?

    Brandon Sanderson (28 February 2011)

    Though the Bridge Four situation was written first many years ago, and the Egwene situation was RJ's and not mine, I DID notice.

    Tags

  • 19

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brandon Sanderson (11 March 2011)

    The scene of Perrin at the forge in Tear is one of my outright favorites. People often ask if killing characters is tough...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    ...Yes it is. But writing the Towers of Midnight scene with Perrin and the hammer he got here in Tear was more emotional for me than most deaths.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (12 MARCH)

    I have finished The Dragon Reborn (finally) on my re-read. Next up, my favorite of the books. The Shadow Rising.

    Tags

  • 20

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (11 April 2011)

    Working on a scene that RJ wrote part of. In some ways, those are the toughest ones. Most time consuming, at least.

    AUSTIN MOORE

    How much do you usually have to change of RJ's scenes? Just the first part and the last so it fits in well or what?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Depends on the scene. If I'm lucky, it's what you explained. But getting my parts to match can be a LOT of work.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    That's especially true if it's a new character, without a viewpoint narrative I can study except for the unfinished scene.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Some of the scenes need more, as they are first drafts RJ intended to revise. I try not to change too much, but some of the scenes were ones where he was careful to lay down important things—like motivation—first, but didn't work on setting very much. (I'm working on one of those now.)

    DAVEJUSTDAVE

    RE: reworking RJ's scenes. Ever get tired and goof? "As Rand reached for the Shardblade..er...Callandor"...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Ha. No, I haven't done that. Usually when writing WoT I make sure I'm very steeped in reading it at the time.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (12 APRIL)

    Scene I worked on yesterday is done. A Memory of Light is now at 2% done. (Assuming a 300k length, or about the length of The Gathering Storm.)

    DAVID WILSON

    How fast do you expect the % to increase? I'm not badgering, just curious :)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    My goal is 2-3% a week while doing the reread. Then to step it up a bit from there.

    FELIX

    On a more serious note, which book are up to your #wotrr project?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Book five. I've completed two scenes from A Memory of Light as well.

    Tags

  • 21

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brandon Sanderson (14 April 2011)

    Yes, Delta has free twitter again on this flight. I will try my best to get work done. Why is it so much more tempting while flying?

    LUCKERS

    Wanna have a detailed conversation about something? We already did sexuality in the Wheel.

    LUCKERS

    Seriously, its 4am here, I'm feeling loopy and sad not to be at JordanCon... I'm go for anything.

    LUCKERS

    Reverse the normal vibe. Ask me questions. :P

    JENNIFER LIANG

    Bad Luckers. Go to sleep, let him work.

    LUCKERS

    Hush.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Well, we could get into how timid a lot of us fantasy writers are about writing black viewpoint protagonists.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    It is noticeable to me. I don't think it's intentional bias, and if it is, it's worry about doing something wrong.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    But you see a lot of black side characters (in film too) but few black leading men.

    LUCKERS

    Interesting point actually... a form of reverse-racism. The fear that you are going to step wrong.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes. You can read up on something called "Racefail" in the sff community from a few years back, if you want.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Google it. You'll find some interesting points along these lines.

    LUCKERS

    I did so, and yeah I see what you mean.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I do wonder if it also has to do with not having racially integrated kingdoms (as makes sense) in fantasy.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    So, if you want to tell a story about one kingdom, it naturally follows that you end up with a lot of people of the same race.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Then, you add someone else to be racially diverse—but that person you add becomes, by nature, the outsider.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Which, of course, only reinforces the bias, despite attempts at being diverse. It's a tough nut to crack.

    LUCKERS

    That does make sense—though I like RJ's futuristic blending of races. Sharan, Tairen, Seanchan—the blend has no meaning.

    FOOTNOTE—TEREZ

    I'm not so sure this is completely true; it's probably quite significant that the Empress of Seanchan, an empire despised mostly because of slavery, is a black woman (not because it's significant in the WoT world, but because it isn't). It might also be significant that the only other known slavery of the WoT world is in Shara, which parallels Africa in many ways, including the dark-skinned natives. The dark-skinned Tairens are unique in Randland proper for their feudalistic serfdom.

    LUCKERS

    For myself, I write fantasy set in modern times—I touch on race heavily but have avoided aboriginal issues.

    LUCKERS

    Which wasn't intentional.

    JAMES POWELL

    Often, when reading a book, I don't know what colour a character's skin is—it's rarely described.

    JAMES POWELL

    I suspect this is to do with "white" = "default". The best exception I've seen is @neilhimself's Anansi Boys.

    LUCKERS

    I don't think it's white=default so much as caution about giving offense...at least on my part.

    JAMES POWELL

    I often wonder if having one black character (amid a load of white characters) is worse than having none.

    LUCKERS

    It's funny, I never realised but I have no black characters in my book, and thinking about it it's likely...

    LUCKERS

    ...because I've no idea how to write an aboriginal viewpoint. I lack the insight—though that's wrong in itself...

    LUCKERS

    ...because there will be many black and aboriginal people with an upbringing similar to mine.

    LUCKERS

    Tokenism, and the perception thereof, is an issue. Brandon's revelation of a gay character in Towers of Midnight received...

    LUCKERS

    ...some very... heated... attention based on this.

    JAMES POWELL

    Yeah, but the revelation of a gay anything causes heated attention somewhere ;)

    LUCKERS

    This is true. My high school graduation was no exception. :P

    JAMES POWELL

    Oh aye? Did you ask for a Gay Diploma? ;)

    LUCKERS

    Made out with a guy on the dance floor... it was rather dramatic, but easier than explaining.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes. Tokenism is a real danger. And it's tough to do these things without stepping into this trap.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    On one side, you have GLBT readers emailing me and asking sincerely to be better represented.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Then, you have RJ saying to fans "Yes, there are gay characters. It just hasn't been right to mention it yet."

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    However, when the time is right to mention one, how do you keep it from feeling just like a token nod?

    LUCKERS

    On the other hand, from the perspective of a minority that has only very recently received airtime...

    LUCKERS

    ...seeing anything is kind of... well, nice. I can remember being young and avidly watching Dawson's Creek...

    LUCKERS

    ...for the characters who, by today's standards, are very much tokens.

    LUCKERS

    Avoiding a token nod: by not making it the main point. But even so, if he's the only one, he'll be seen that way.

    LUCKERS

    For all that she's a bad guy, Galina's lesbianism was the perfect non-token introduction.

    LUCKERS

    Lord of Chaos Chapter 53, her attentions to Erian....

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'm curious. Did you ever read Rose of the Prophet? If so, what did you think of the gay character?

    LUCKERS

    Haha... you asked me this last time—but no. It's on my list now, but hard to find in Australia.

    LUCKERS

    She's also Mormon, no?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I liked them as a teenager, but haven't read them in years. If I remember right, however, the gay character...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    ...falls into the "safe gay friend" category that you see used so often in film, though he has a lot more depth.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The gay man is a major viewpoint protagonist, but his sexuality is very subtle. [Tracy] Hickman is LDS, but not Margaret [Weis].

    PETER AHLSTROM

    And Tracy Hickman is a guy.

    LUCKERS

    Really? *goes red in the face* I've been referring to him as a her for YEARS.

    LUCKERS

    Have you read R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I keep meaning to read it. I think I even bought a copy. But I haven't yet.

    LUCKERS

    It's awesome. I raised it because it has a very poignant depiction character confused about his sexuality.

    LUCKERS

    Here's a question based on 'subtlety'—like the depiction of the black character, can an overly camp character work?

    LUCKERS

    In one of my early drafts I had a camp gay man, and I was accused of homophobia... it's kind of the same point...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    As an aside, I really wish "homophobia" hadn't stuck as the term of choice in these matters.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I guess "homoinsensitivitia" didn't have the right ring to it.

    LUCKERS

    Fear of singularity in sexuality. Sounds like Star Trek jargon.

    FOOTNOTE—TEREZ

    This point came up in the flamewar that followed Brandon's revelation about the gay man on Dragonmount (referenced earlier by Luckers). I think that the connotations of the word are independent of the word itself, and would have likely stuck to whatever word we might have used instead of 'homophobia' (because 'phobia' itself doesn't always have connotations of hatred). In reality, there are many degrees of homophobia ranging from squick to hate, but those on the squick side tend to resent the word being applied to them as it implies a socially unacceptable prejudice.

    RI SCOTT

    On the gay character question, why do you think fantasy, in general, so badly underrepresents the LGBT community?

    RI SCOTT

    It's one thing that deeply bothers me about a genre I love so dearly.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    If I had to say, I'd guess it's not intentional. It has more to do with what I posted earlier—authors not wanting to do it wrong.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    That, mixed with the desire to create sympathetic characters—and the most simple way to do that is create someone like yourself.

    RI SCOTT

    I always wondered if there was any marketability concern—that books would sell less with major gay characters.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Maybe. But most writers/editors I know don't think that way. They write the book they want to, then figure out how to market it.

    LUCKERS

    I've had so much fun hanging out with you tonight, but its 5:30 in the morning and I need sleep.

    LUCKERS

    Have a blast a JordanCon. I'm really sorry I'm not there to meet you in person.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Ha. Good night, then. Sorry I've been a little distracted this time.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Remind me again. You're over in Australia, right? If so, what city?

    LUCKERS

    Sydney. Same as Linda.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'll be there next year, if I haven't mentioned. You, me, and Linda need to hang out when I come.

    LUCKERS

    We will do this. I'm definitely going to be at JordanCon 2012 as well. Still, sad... have fun on my behalf.

    FOOTNOTE—TEREZ

    It turned out that Brandon was planning on going to Australia during JordanCon 2012 (so of course Luckers changed his plans).

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  • 22

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (3 August 2011)

    I'm currently writing "Through Lines" on A Memory of Light, meaning I'm taking one character or group and going beginning to end.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'll end up writing the ending a number of times through different eyes, each separated by a short book's number of pages. Odd experience.

    CHRISTOPHER SKINNER

    How do you do that without diminishing the impact of the "big finish" (I mean there's denouement anyway, but the climax)?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Careful planning, followed by a lot of reads-through of the entire book to smooth and enhance.

    NEIL MCKINNON

    Did you do that with Rand/Egwene in The Gathering Storm and Mat/Perrin Towers of Midnight?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes, I did.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    At about 20 scenes and 50k words, the first "Through Line" of A Memory of Light is done. I can't tell you who it is, but I'm very pleased.

    ERIC PETERS

    Why wouldn't you be able to tell us who it is? Is it a real secret who all of the characters in the book are at this point?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Some people don't want any kind of spoiler. Knowing there are 50k words of someone means they don't die at the start.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    If you look back through my Twitter feed, you can figure out who it is. [It was Perrin.] I might do a blog post on it too, with a spoiler warning.

    SHARON VERNON

    Do you find it easier to write "through lines" and then tie it all up together later?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For a very big, complex book, it's basically the only way I can do it. Otherwise, I lose character voices.

    FRANK KWIATOWSKI

    Is this your style, or how RJ wanted it? Just curious.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (4 AUGUST)

    What specifically are you asking about? The writing of "Through Lines?"

    FRANK KWIATOWSKI

    You mentioned writing the same ending multiple times. I'm taking it as the same ending being reviewed from different POVs?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Different pieces of what, together, will be the ending sequences of the book.

    CONNOR EVERINGHAM

    I'm guessing that with one through line at 50k words, A Memory of Light will be a massive book?Will chunks be taken out during editing?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I always edit down, rather than up. I overwrite intentionally on first drafts. But the book will be big.

    PHIL

    I might just be ignorant here, but what's a "Through Line"?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Where you write one character's parts, all the way through the book.

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  • 23

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (24 August 2011)

    Update on that scene that wasn't working in A Memory of Light yesterday: tried it again today and it worked just fine.

    THOMAS LACHESIS

    Did you try a new way in to the scene? Or, was it simply stepping away from it?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Stepping away from it.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Moving A Memory of Light completion bar from 40% -> 43%. Assuming the rest of the week works as well as today did, it will move quickly for a while.

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  • 24

    Interview: 2012

    Jerron Spencer (31 August 2011)

    Is the long wait for A Memory of Light so it can make more sense than Towers of Midnight? I LOVE WoT, but Towers of Midnight was jumbled and super annoying.

    JERRON SPENCER

    I don't mean to sound the jerk, but character and time references felt disjointed and it was hard to follow.

    JERRON SPENCER

    The Gathering Storm worked well. I never felt confused or bothered. Some revelations came off as "too sudden", but it flowed nicely.

    JERRON SPENCER

    Towers of Midnight had none of the smoothness of the previous books, and stumbled from poor integration with The Gathering Storm.

    Brandon Sanderson (31 August 2011)

    What you're noticing has to do with two primary issues, I believe.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    First, the book getting split in half after I'd written much of it to go together. (I hadn't written any of the third then.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Second, RJ had been letting people get off timeline with one another for books and books. Bringing them back together was hard.

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  • 25

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Austin Moore (1 September 2011)

    Can you say without spoiling who the toughest character is for you to write in A Memory of Light to end the series?

    Brandon Sanderson (1 September 2011)

    Hm... Toughest to write because of their content, or toughest because of their voice?

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  • 26

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (7 September 2011)

    Sometimes, it feels like cheating to have Alan and Maria (Robert Jordan's assistants) to look things up for me on these books.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For example, Alan is a military history buff, and has been my personal "Great Captain" for A Memory of Light, giving valuable advice on tactics.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Finished a really awesome scene today, and started one that turned out meh. I'll have to rework that one come this evening.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Not counting that scene, but counting the awesome one, A Memory of Light is at 52% done now.

    JOHN UNDERWOOD

    52%? That's great! I'm wondering though how did you come up with that number?

    JOHN UNDERWOOD

    Do you have a specific number of pages in mind to finish the book?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've used 300k words as a rough estimate for each of these books for getting the % bar.

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  • 27

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (10 September 2011)

    Finished another "Through Line" of A Memory of Light. This one turned out really, really well. I'm kind of surprised, honestly.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    This is a character I think many readers are less excited about, but the story here is very powerful. I'm pleased.

    HARSH AGARWAL

    When can we expect the last book to be released?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Next year sometime. Spring at the earliest (I don't think it's likely) fall at the latest.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Nice big jump in the progress bar today as I pull a few things I'd already been working on and place them in the book. 52% -> 56%.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For those curious, I've been timing lately and looking at my historical wordcounts (I often keep lists of daily progress.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Writing a given amount of words on the Wheel of Time takes about twice as long as it does when working on non-WoT books.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I think this is due to: 1) The complexity of working in such a long series. 2) Making sure character voices match those in RJ's writing.

    TERRY SIMPSON

    Which character voice have you found it hardest to duplicate? And has that difficulty stayed consistent for each book?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Mat. Yes, he has always been the toughest.

    CAITLIN GRANT

    Love knowing progress but just remembered Tor will likely delay e-release. #frustration

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Not Tor, actually. Harriet. I'm working on her, though.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The delay last time was because The New York Times didn't count ebook sales for bestseller lists.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    A lot of people are asking about the release date for A Memory of Light, so I'll talk about it again. I just couldn't get it out for this November.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    My new rough-draft goal is November, with a revised book sent to Harriet January 1st. Book could be out any time between March (unlikely) and November.

    OSKAR KOIVUJUURI

    This November? I thought it was always supposed to be released March of next year? Oh well.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I was hoping March. It's theoretically possible...but Harriet thinks not. She wants more time to edit than she had for Towers of Midnight.

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  • 28

    Interview: 2010

    Tragoul (29 June 2010)

    Do you try to write straight through a book from start to finish or do you write random bits and then put them together?

    Brandon Sanderson (30 June 2010)

    I usually write straight through, sometimes by plot line. But some books—like Towers of Midnight—don't let me do that.

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  • 29

    Interview: 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (2 July 2010)

    Thank goodness for Maria and Alan. Every time I start to think I know the WoT world pretty well, they prove that I've got a long way to go.

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  • 30

    Interview: 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (13 August 2010)

    Back to work on Towers of Midnight. Canceled Writing Group tonight to get more time. Goal for today is to get to 66%.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Hm. This scene needs better description. Well, off to the Big White Book to do a little research on how the area should look...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For those following along, the scene that I cut from Towers of Midnight, then found a way to add back in, is now in chapter 30.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    At 53% so far today. Man, I need to step it up, eh? Not sure what is causing me to go so slowly today. Only 2% so far.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Okay, at 55%. Much better progress through this hour.

    BOB GIBSON

    How do you determine that a book needs another scene, especially so late in the process?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Just instincts. Something needed to be added to properly pace the narrative.

    BEL'SHAMHAROTH

    I don't suppose you'd be willing to give us a hint on what was so important that you needed to add a new scene this late?

    BRANDON SANDERSON (14 AUGUST)

    It's less that it was super important, and more I felt a new scene would smooth things.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Oh, and at 62%. Not sure if I'll hit that 66% mark or not.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Okay, 64% will have to be the end for tonight. 5am. Seems like a good time for bed.

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  • 31

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (28 October 2011)

    I find myself thinking "It's been forever since I wrote Perrin. I'll be glad to get back to him." Then I realize his sequence is done.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Note that this isn't because Perrin isn't in the book much. (He is.) It's because I wrote his chapters first.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    It is odd, knowing that some characters have had their stories told, that no more will be written about them. You'll feel this next year.

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  • 32

    Interview: Jul 2nd, 2011

    Marc Aplin

    So, Way of Kings. Absolutely huge book, standing at 1000 pages. Even then, the book is taller than your average kind of novel. So, the question I had for Brandon was, with people like Patrick Rothfuss kind of realizing their works were too long—The Kingkiller Chronicles for example was one big book that he split into three parts so that it was publishable—what was it about Way of Kings that meant even though it was so big, it still had to be just that one book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I couldn't do that same thing with this particular book because of the way the plot arcs work. It worked very well with Rothfuss' book—of course, I loved his books—but what he's got going on is sort of an episodic story where Kvothe does this and Kvothe does that and Kvothe does this. And you can kind of separate those as vignettes. With Way of Kings, what I was doing is...I've got three storylines for three separate characters who are each going through troubled times. And if we were to cut the book in half, for instance, you would get all of the set up, and all of the trouble, and none of the payoff. And so what'd happen is you'd have actually a really depressing first book, where nothing really good happens and people are in places that they...mentally, they haven't come to any decisions yet; they're struggling with problems. Essentially, you'd only get the first act; you'd get all of the setup and none of the payoff.

    Marc Aplin

    I see. The two books in front of you here, obviously being re-released... Which point is it that this cuts off at?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This cuts off... We decided we had a fairly good break point, because Shallan's storyline comes to...there's a resolution. And some decisions have been made, and it's kind of... We broke it right at the kind of middle point where people are deciding, you know, we've had these struggles, we've had these struggles; now we have some sort of promise of victory. But the victory or things haven't actually happened yet. And so I do strongly recommend that people read both books—have them both together to read together—because there is a certain poetry to the arcs that are built into this. The second half is lots of massive payoff for the first half. But we did find a decent break point. But conceptually it's one novel, even if you can break for a while and then pick up the second one. Conceptually, to me they are one.

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  • 33

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Bradinator1

    My question for Brandon would be:
    What kind of mental "retooling" does it take for him to work on an already established world/storyline like Wheel of Time since this is someone else's work?

    Also, were there there a lot of notes or material left by Mr. Jordan to work from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I thought about this quite a lot during the months when I was reading the Wheel of Time again straight through, trying to figure out how I would approach writing the final book. Obviously, this project wasn't going to be like anything I'd done before. I couldn't just approach it as I did one of my solo novels. And yet, it felt like trying to match Robert Jordan's style exactly would have made me lapse into parody.

    A lot of the mental 'retooling' I did focused on getting inside the characters' heads. I decided that if I could make the characters sound right, the book would FEEL right, even if some of the writing itself was different. I also decided that I would adapt my style to fit the project. I became more descriptive, for one, and wrote viewpoint with the more intimate, in-head narrative style that Mr. Jordan used. Neither of these were attempts to match how he wrote exactly, but more me trying to match my style to The Wheel of Time, if that makes any sense.

    In answer to the second question, he left LOTS of notes behind. He wrote complete scenes in places, dictated other scenes, left piles of notes and materials. The prologue was almost all completed by him (that will be split half in this book, half in the next.) The ending scenes were written by him as well. In the middle, there are a lot of scene outlines as well.

    That's not to say there wasn't A LOT of work to do. The actual number of completed scenes was low, and in some places, there was no direction at all what to do. But his fingerprints are all over this novel. My goal was not to write a Brandon Sanderson book, but a Wheel of Time book. I want this novel (well, these three novels, now) to be his, not mine.

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  • 34

    Interview: Dec 10th, 2007

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here's the news I promised you! I have been asked to finish the last book of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Press Release follows!

    We'd really like news of this to get out to the fans so that they know we're working on the book. Mr. Jordan left detailed notes, and readers need not fear. The Wheel of Time will continue to turn.

    There is an interview with me over at Dragonmount explaining things in more detail.

    Please visit my forums for a discussion of this event and places we're getting the word out.

    Also, know that my Livejournal has comments enabled, if you want to leave me a note.

    ——-Press Release——

    Tor Books announced today that novelist Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish writing the final novel in Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time fantasy series. Jordan—described by some as Tolkien's heir—died Sept. 16 from a rare blood disease. The new novel, A Memory of Light, will be the 12th and final book in the fantasy series which has sold more than 14 million copies in North America and more than 30 million copies worldwide. The last four books in the series were all #1 New York Times bestsellers.

    Harriet Popham Rigney, Jordan's widow and editor, chose Sanderson to complete A Memory of Light—which Jordan worked on almost daily for the last few months of his life—and will edit it. Rigney said some scenes from the book were completed by Jordan before his death, and some exist in draft form. "He left copious notes and hours of audio recordings," she said. He also revealed details about the end of the series to close members of his family.

    Sanderson, who acknowledged Jordan as an inspiration to him as a writer, has established a loyal fan base as the author of three fantasy novels: Elantris, Mistborn and The Well of Ascension (Tor), as well as a YA novel, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Scholastic Press). Sanderson said, "I'm both extremely excited and daunted by this opportunity. There is only one man who could have done this book the way it deserved to be written, and we lost him in September. However, I promise to do my very best to remain true to Mr. Jordan's vision and produce the book we have all been waiting to read."

    A Memory of Light is scheduled for publication in fall 2009.

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  • 35

    Interview: Dec 27th, 2007

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have been getting a lot of email—a LOT—these last few weeks. As I've said, I really appreciate it when people write me, and the overwhelming majority of it has been positive. I've been getting a number of questions over and over, however, and thought I'd better begin a FAQ to go in hand with the interview over at Dragonmount.

    I'll will probably expand this as the months pass. I've answered some of these already, and others are obvious. My goal is to make this comprehensive (eventually). Once I have time, I will try to put this in HTML with all the questions at the top linked to answers below.

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  • 36

    Interview: Dec 27th, 2007

    Question

    So is it going to be your book or Robert Jordan's book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is no question: It will be Robert Jordan's book. The notes he left behind are very detailed, particularly with regards to the most important scenes of the book. I will be following his outline with exactness, and including as much of his actual written prose as I can, changing as little as possible.

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  • 37

    Interview: Dec 27th, 2007

    Question

    Is the book going to be as good as it would have been if Mr. Jordan had written it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have to be honest. I'm not Mr. Jordan. He's the master, and I'm just a journeyman. He's one of the greatest fantasy authors the genre has ever known. I can't hope to write with his skill and power at this stage in my career—and I think there are very, very few writers who could.

    Fortunately, I don't have to do this on my own. I have seen the notes, as I mentioned above, and I find them very reassuring. Let me put forth a metaphor for you.

    Pretend you have purchased an expensive violin from a master craftsman. It probably wouldn't surprise you to discover that one of the craftsman's apprentices helped create that violin. The master may have had the apprentice sand, or apply varnish, or perhaps shape some of the less important pieces of wood. In fact, if you looked at the violin before master craftsman handed it off to his apprentice, it might just look like a pile of wood to you, and not an instrument at all.

    However, the master craftsman did the most important parts. He shaped the heart of the violin, crafting the pieces which would produce the beautiful sound. He came up with the design for the violin, as well as the procedures and processes used in creating his violins. It's not surprising that some other hands were involved in the busywork of following those procedures and designs, once the most important work was done. And so, even though the apprentice helped, the violin can proudly bear the master's signature and stamp.

    It's the same with this book. What I've been given may not look like a novel to you, but it excites me because I can see the book Mr. Jordan was creating. All of the important chunks are there in such detail that I feel like I've read the completed novel, and not just an outline. Yes, there is still quite a bit of work to be done. Many of the less important scenes are there only as a framework of a few sentences. However, Mr. Jordan left behind the design of this book. I am convinced that between myself, his wife (who was his editor), and his assistants, we can complete this book to be very, very close to the way he would have done.

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  • 38

    Interview: Dec 27th, 2007

    Question

    What other secrets are you going to reveal? Which plot points are you going to tie up?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is one of the reasons that reading the material made me feel so relieved. While there are huge chunks that I need to write, there is always an explanation of what needs to be revealed, and what needs to be left for the reader to decide on their own. I will not be making any of these decisions on my own, but will instead be following Mr. Jordan's wishes regarding the plotting.

    He ties up some very important plot points. Others, he leaves without explicit explanation. That was his way, and is one of the things that makes these books so wonderful. You don't need to worry, then, that I will try to explain too much or that I will leave out too much. I will do as the master instructed.

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  • 39

    Interview: Jan 14th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've long been an insomniac. I think.

    Insomnia is a hard one to pin down for me. I'm sure that there is an official definition somewhere in the psychologist's handbook. I just define it as "Those times when I want to sleep but I can't." However, it seems to me that a lot of those times happen when I'm trying to go to bed at what other people call a 'normal' time. I'll lie in bed for hours, just thinking or daydreaming. (Er, nightdreaming.)

    Most of my life, this hasn't been much of a problem. In fact, I think it's led to a lot of the habits that turned me into a writer. Plus, if I'm having A LOT of trouble sleeping, I get up and do something else until I'm tired. That can take hours, but since I don't have a day job, I can sleep in if I want. No big deal.

    The longer I've done this, the more I've realized that I rarely get insomnia if I'm consistently going to bed later at night, like around three or for am. Perhaps it's the regularity of the schedule.. Or, maybe the hour is important, and my body just likes to sleep from four to noon instead of normal hours.

    The problem with this all is that it can be very difficult to get things done if get onto a schedule where you're sleeping seven to three, particularly if you have a family (which I now do.) My sickness last week (which I'm over with; thanks for all your good wishes) immediately sent me into a sleep during the day, be up at night schedule. Didn't get back on a slightly normal one again until today, when I managed to get up at 12:30. I spent most of last week either feeling really sick or feeling like I hadn't gotten anything done in FOREVER. So it was that somehow I managed to do a full-blown rewrite of ALCATRAZ 3, which was on my plate still (note the percentage bars on the website.) I'm happy to have managed to clear that away, though I do have to admit that I haven't gotten as deep into the Wheel of Time yet as I'd like to.

    My worry is that, when I start A Memory of Light in the next month or two, I want to be DEEPLY entrenched in Mr. Jordan's world again. More and more lately, that's meant getting everything else taken care of completely. I want to be able to read WoT in a way that will bend my style toward Mr. Jordan's—but, with that as my goal, I don't want to be thinking about other books of mine during that time, lest I let them be influenced too much by Mr. Jordan's way of writing. (Not that it would be bad for me to learn a few things from Mr. Jordan. I just don't want to do it unintentionally. Writers have the danger of letting their styles imitate directly what they're reading at the time, and while I intend to do this on purpose with A Memory of Light, it would be wrong to do this to my other works.)

    So, the second point of this whole rant? I'm about fifteen percent through a 4.0 rewrite of Warbreaker, which is the very last thing on my 'to do' list alongside writing A Memory of Light. I'm really digging the changes to the text so far, though I don't know if they're big enough for most readers to notice. Anyway, I should have 4.0 ready for download by the end of the week. Then, I'll start doing updates on my thoughts of WoT as I read it through some of the books for what I believe is the eighth or ninth time.

    New Annotations tomorrow, I promise.

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  • 40

    Interview: Jan 16th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Finally, what's up with stuff? Well, I'm a little over a quarter of the way through the Warbreaker 4.0 rewrite. It's going smoothly, and I'm feeling much less stressed now that I know it will be off the plate completely and done. I will have everything in order when I start A Memory of Light. That's good, because as a writer, I tend to get very focused. I like to work on one project at a time and put my all into it. I really don't like worrying about other projects while focused like that, and this way, I won't have any other obligations to publishers until next fall. Doing Warbreaker now may push my work on A Memory of Light back a few weeks, but it will mean that I can devote myself better to that book when the time comes, and that will make working on it go much more smoothly.

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  • 41

    Interview: Jan 20th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    The latest Warbreaker revision is finished. I'm glad to have this one off my plate; I hadn't realized how anxious I was getting about this book until I sat down and worked on it. It's now been a year and a half since I finished it, and I worried that I was letting it dangle, pushing it off time and time again and not giving it the attention it deserves. This is partly due to the fact that I'm not sure if it will get a sequel anytime soon.

    In the past, I've said that I was planning to write the sequel. (Tentatively titled Nightblood, though I worry that's too horror-sounding.) The problem is, I now have A Memory of Light on my plate, and it is going to need a LOT of attention. The question is, do I want to have Warbreaker come out in the spring of 2009, A Memory of Light come out in the fall of 2009, then have a sequel to a two-book series be my follow-up to that?

    It seems to me that I'm in a unique position. A lot of fantasy authors dream of being able to launch something BIG. An epic series which will get a powerful marketing push and a lot of attention. It seems to make far more sense to me to launch a brand new series the year after A Memory of Light, rather than putting out an ambiguous sequel which ends a two-book series.

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  • 42

    Interview: Jan 22nd, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    As promised, here is the newest draft of Warbreaker; this is version 4.0. (Or, well, 4.2 since I tweaked a few things yesterday.)

    If you've been waiting to read Warbreaker, I would like to note that I will—indeed—begin posting HTML pages of the chapters, making for easier reading. This will happen at a rate of one a week for about a year. Also, I soon intend to have a PDF of the entire 4.0 up for download. (Right now, all I have is the word document.) If anyone feels like making a PDF and sending it to me—or feels like sticking it into any of the various ebook formats—I'd happily include those here for download as well. As always, you can find the current and previous Warbreaker drafts in the book's portal on my website.

    In this draft, I read through doing mostly medium-level fixes. Some character tweaks, some better world explanations, some pacing work. I've now sent this to my editor, who will print it off and make line-by-line notations on it as he reads through it. 5.0, then, will be the draft where I incorporate these changes. Somewhere around 6.0, I'll go through looking for smaller changes mentioned on my forums by readers. Right now, I've been making larger changes that have been suggested and that I agree with, but I haven't done many smaller, paragraph-by-paragraph edits.

    This marks the turning of my full attention to A Memory of Light, and I will be doing updates relating to my read-through of the series in the coming days.

    EDIT: Man, you people are fast. Here's a PDF of 4.2 provided by Speakerwiggin over on LJ. Thanks!

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  • 43

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2008

    I'm going to start posting my impressions of the Wheel of Time books as I read through them again. This will just be me blogging my reactions as a reader and my thoughts as I approach the humbling task of finishing the Wheel of Time Book Twelve. As a reminder, I've read these books before, but it has now been some six or seven years since I've read through the entire series from the beginning. It used to be my habit to read through them all when a new one came out, but life got too busy and the series too long for me to do that with the later books.

    There won't be any spoilers of Book Twelve in these, though there will be spoilers to the book I'm currently reading. So, if you're not familiar with the Wheel of Time but are planning to read the books, you might want to skip these posts.

    Doing this makes me just a little wary. I like connecting with readers and offering posts like this to give you an insight into an author's mind and into the process. I feel that you, as the fans, have a great deal of ownership and stake in this project, as it is because of you that the Wheel of Time was so successful.

    However, I don't want my posts to serve as a catalyst to panic regarding my handling of Book Twelve. For instance, if I write that certain character is kind of bugging me in a scene, I worry that people will think that I'm making a criticism of Mr. Jordan's writing or that I'm criticizing that character in specific. I'm not doing either. I think Mr. Jordan's writing is fantastic—even as I read through again, I'm struck by how well he was able to weave so many different ideas together. I really do have a sincere affection for all of these characters—I've grown up with them, as many of you have, and they feel like siblings to me. Just as a sibling can be annoying, I feel that a character can be annoying. It doesn't mean I intend to cut them from Book Twelve or give them any less screen time.

    I thought, then, that I would make this post as an introduction. None of my posts over the next few months are intended to give any foreshadowing of book twelve. Please don't panic if I seem to be interpreting a character's motivations differently from how you view them. The materials Mr. Jordan left are quite extensive, and the final book's plot and characterizations were set by him. My goal with that book will be to as invisible as possible, and certainly don't intend to insert any of my own themes, agendas, or philosophies into it.

    I will collect these blog posts in a list, and you'll be able to find them on the A Memory of Light section of my website, once we add it.

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  • 44

    Interview: Jan 26th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm hoping to be able to do more than one post per book, but I'd already started The Eye of the World when I finally got time to write this. I'll probably only do one post for the first book, then, which is a tragedy, since it has long been one of my favorites of the series. I also feel that it will be VERY important to writing Book Twelve. The Wheel turns; ages become new again and ideas return. I feel that the last book of the series should have numerous hearkenings back to this first book; that will give a sense of closure to this section of the Pattern and fit with the motif of the Wheel's turning.

    That's just my gut instinct, and I'm not promising anything specific or even referencing material from the Twelfth Book. I'm only speaking of my general feelings as a writer, but Mr. Jordan's notes are far more important than any of my instincts.

    As I read through this first book again, I was shocked by how well he had foreshadowed the later books in the series. This is the first time I'm reading WHEEL OF TIME all the way through as a professional novelist. I see things differently than I once did. I know how difficult it is to foreshadow across an entire series, and am frankly astounded by how well Mr. Jordan laid the groundwork for his future books. Min's prophesies are one great example, but equally potent is Mr. Jordan's use of mythology and story as a means of preparing the reader for events such as the Great Hunt, future interactions with the Aiel (and the People's relationship with them), and the coming of the Seanchan.

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  • 45

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2008

    Jeff VanderMeer

    Was it a hard decision to finish Jordan's series? Can you tell us where you were when the offer came, and what your first thoughts were?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The initial decision was easy. I made it in a flash, the first time Mr. Jordan's wife asked if I would be interested in this project. (That offer came over the phone via two conversations--first, a preliminary call to see if I was interested. Second, an official call about a month later to offer me the project.) Since I'm a fan of the series, my initial instincts were "OF COURSE I want to be involved in this!" It wasn't until after I hung up the phone that the doubts began to rise. Who am I to finish this, the greatest fantasy epic of my generation? I can't fill Robert Jordan's shoes. Fortunately, I've now seen the quality of the material he left behind. That has quieted most of my doubts. The story is all here. It is his book. My job is to fill in a few holes and smooth out the prose.

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  • 46

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2008

    Jeff VanderMeer

    Jordan's fans, obviously, are pretty hardcore about his work. Are you aware of any reaction from them about you taking up the reins?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They've been very encouraging. Some few are negative, but the overwhelming majority of them are thankful that they'll be able to read the book. They seem to support Mr. Jordan's wife in her decision, even if the fans don't know me or my work. We all understand that I'm not Mr. Jordan. Nobody is claiming that I am. He's the one who should have finished this book. Unfortunately, we lost him, and there is nothing to be done besides see that his last work is completed. The goal of everyone working on this project is to do him proud.

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  • 47

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2008

    Jeff VanderMeer

    How do you think working in Jordan's universe will impact your own work? And are you at all worried that it might come to define who you are as a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have had some small worries to this regard. I don't want my career to be that of the guy who rode Robert Jordan's success. I would prefer to make it on my own merit. But doing this project, for me, is not about my career or my book sales. (Though I think both will be influenced greatly.) This is about the unparalleled opportunity to have some small hand in an amazing series. There are some actors who, when they found out that Lucas was doing the new Star Wars movies, went out of their way to get bit parts in the films just for the sheer opportunity. They wanted to be part of something that has been so influential in their lives. While I didn't seek out this project, I feel much as those actors must. This is the defining cultural and literary phenomenon of my youth. I wasn't focused on movies, I was focused on the fantasy genre. I can think of no greater honor than to be able to help see Mr. Jordan's final vision for The Wheel of Time see publication. I don't care if this brands me in any way. This isn't the kind of opportunity you pass up.

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  • 48

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2008

    Jeff VanderMeer

    What are you currently working on, and what's your deadline for the Jordan book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As of very recently, I'm done with my next two books both for Tor and Scholastic. That leaves an entire year open to work on A Memory of Light. I don't know how long it will take me, but that's how long I have to write it. (My deadline is in December.) Right now, I'm focusing on re-reading the entire Wheel of Time series through again with an eye for how the characters think and speak. I should start working on the text itself sometime in February.

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  • 49

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've now completed my re-read of the first six WoT books. Perhaps it is my mind seeking organization where there is none, but I see these six books as having a rather interesting division. The first three each focus around a central event—the hunt for the horn, for instance, or the fall of the Stone. The second three change the direction of the series, moving to a much more complicated story. Each of these three middle books seem to contain a much larger number of plots, goals, and character motivations. These middle three, the second trilogy if you will, blend together far more than the first three did. It's like they all form one large book, with the lines between them far more blurred.

    I'm not sure if this is the way Mr. Jordan plotted them, or if it's simply the way the series evolved. Perhaps I'm just seeing something where there is none. However, as a writer, this division interests me. I find that as a reader, I am much more satisfied with reading these middle books, though I didn't by any means dislike the early ones. A series this long could not have lasted by telling stories only about one or two characters. Series that do such always feel like they have flat characterization to me. You can only focus so long on one character before you have to begin recycling motivations or pushing their character development into the realm of the ridiculous. By expanding the series beyond what it appeared at first—a simple hero's journey—Mr. Jordan created something more lasting.

    However, he also took a great risk in changing the series (either intentionally or by natural evolution) as he did. A great many writers do the easy thing, telling the same story over and over with different names on the front, having the same few characters go through the exact same stories over and over. That's comfortable for readers, but it does not challenge genre, and it is not the substance of greatness (in my opinion.) Instead of doing that, Mr. Jordan took a chance on expanding the plots of dozens of side characters, crafting a series that was about much more than it seemed at first. All three of these middle books blended together, but each one still felt distinct to me. The story is moving, progressing, growing—and the characters are much different people at the end than they were at the beginning.

    Perhaps I should focus more on what specifically happened in Lord of Chaos that I liked, but as the one who must—however insufficiently—continue Mr. Jordan's legacy, I find myself looking more at the whole than at the minutia. That, of courses, is important as well. But I think for me to be successful in completing this final book, I need to understand—really understand—what made this series great. I might not be able to write the exact words Mr. Jordan would have, but if I can get the SOUL of the book right, then that will not matter.

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  • 50

    Interview: Mar 3rd, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Other than that, my life has been rather serene lately. My job (so to speak) for these few weeks is to read books—and not just any books, but ones I have loved since I was a youth. That's rather remarkable to me still. It has been a very peaceful experience, though the stress of trying to finish a book that millions of people are waiting to read looms back there inside of me as well. Completing this work is going to be like no other project of which I've been a part. Always, writing and reading were similar—yet separated—activities for me. While writing, I am fully in "creation" mode. While reading, I'm in "experience" mode. Yet here, with the task of writing Book Twelve laid before me, creating and experiencing become muddled. For once, when I read a work and think "oh, I wish that this would happen" it is possible to MAKE it happen. However, I know that I must hold myself to the rigors of character and story, doing only what is functionally appropriate for the story. Still, there is hope. If I want a face-to-face meeting between certain characters, there is a chance that it will fit with the plot. If I wish for a certain world aspect to get a little more explanation, then there is opportunity for that.

    This project is not 'mine' for it is much larger than me. And yet, I've always said that the strength of novels as an entertainment medium—as opposed to movies or other forms of expression—is that a novel can better reflect the vision of a single person. That can be good or it can be bad. However, in no other popular entertainment form can one person reasonably be in charge of every aspect and piece to the degree that one finds in novels. This leads to a completeness of vision in the medium, I think. My job in this case isn't to create that vision, but to 'catch' the same vision that Mr. Jordan had, then shepherd the final project so that it best reflects what he would have wished of the book. I feel that it's very important for the integrity of the book that it not have a schizophrenic vision—mine voice must blend with Mr. Jordan's, so that different passages will not fight with one another or stand out. The story comes first, the experience that the reader has.

    So, I read and find myself saying "I wonder if I could make this particular thing happen?" That is followed with "is that what Mr. Jordan would do?" Finally, I come around to "What is best for the story?" And I think that last one stands the most tall.

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  • 51

    Interview: Mar 15th, 2008

    Question

    Will you be posting a progress update of sorts on your page? I understand there is a large refining and editing process to overcome and publishing and distribution, but I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that knowing it's finished would be a tremendous load off our shoulders. Any plans for a method to let us know about your progress?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's a good question. As many of you may know, I have progress bars on the front of my website showing how far I've gotten on whatever project I'm currently engaged in. I've got one now listing how far along I am in my re-read of the series. (Finished Crossroads of Twilight, by the way, and am now reading New Spring.)

    Will I do this for Book 12? I'm planning to, but with a few caveats. The thing is, it's hard for me to judge how long this project will take. It's unlike any book I've ever worked on. With my own novels, I've gotten to the point where I can sit down and plot them and know roughly how long they will be before I start. (I generally shoot for about 200k words in length for my epics, 50k for Middle Grade books, 80-90k for a YA novel.)

    I don't know how long A Memory of Light is going to be, though. That's going to present a problem for running a progress bar of how far along I am. (The current program we have is percentage based, and I won't know what percentage is done if I don't know how long the novel is going to end up being.)

    Right now, my goal for the book is 300k minimum. Looking at the material Mr. Jordan left behind and the story that needs to be told, that's a realistic size to start with. This wouldn't make the book the shortest in the series, though it wouldn't be the longest either. It would be right in the middle.

    I'm expecting it to go longer than that, to be honest. Mr. Jordan himself often said of this book that it would be as long as it had to be, even if Tor had to invent a new binding for it! From what I've seen of the material, I don't think that's going to be necessary—I think he was responding to worries of the fans that he wouldn't tie the novel up in one volume. From his outline, writings, and other work on the project it looks to me that he was planning it to be in the 300-400k range.

    So, I'll probably start the progress bar assuming the book will be 300k long, then update it later when I have a better idea of its length. I will be needing to go and touch up the sections that Mr. Jordan wrote. (They are in rough draft from. As I've mentioned, I intend to leave them as pristine as is possible for the novel, with as minor editing as is possible while still maintaining the integrity of the novel.) Therefore, I'll start the bar at 0%, and once a section of pages is touched up or written by me, I'll update accordingly.

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  • 52

    Interview: Mar 21st, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Whew. It's surprising how busy things are, considering that it's the slow season (my books generally come out in the falls) for me. Mixed with the fact that I'm not writing right now, just reading, one would think that I wouldn't feel so busy. The thing is, when writing, I can really only do a certain amount in a day. Like a lot of authors I know, I kind of have a cap (it's between 2k words and 4k words, depending on the day and the book.) Once I hit that, my writing reserve is low, and I have to stop for the day and let my subconscious work out how I'm going to write the next section. What that means is that I can generally get up, write for half of the day, and be done—and then have time to do email, blog posts, and other business items.

    When I'm reading, though, there's nothing to stop me from just reading straight through all hours of the day, as opposed to stopping and doing other work. That, mixed with the urgency I feel to get to work on actual pages of AMoL, has made me keep reading and pushing long after I would have stopped for the day if I were writing. Ah, well.

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  • 53

    Interview: Mar 25th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Anyway, I didn't intend this to be an extended defense of the book, but that's what it came out to be. It's now been over a week since I finished it, and while there is much more I could write, I think it's time to let the blog post end for now. The big news is that I'm done with my read through. In fact, I officially began writing on Book Twelve this afternoon.

    There was a powerful moment there for me when I got to write those words "The Wheel of Time turns. . . ." Mr. Jordan, despite his preparations for the book, didn't actually write those words that have started each book in the series. I guess he figured he didn't need to, since they've been the same since book one. He knew that his time might come soon, so he focused on more important scenes.

    That left me being able to write the opening paragraph to chapter one. (Though, of course, there will be a prologue. While those words won't start the book, I decided that they would be the way that I started work on it.)

    It has begun.

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  • 54

    Interview: Mar 27th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    People ask me if working on this book is surreal. Before, I always said yes, but I don't think it really hit me HOW strange this is until these last few days.

    Yesterday evening, I pulled out the electronic versions of the novels that Mr. Jordan's assistant sent with me when I left Charleston. I combined them all into a single word document to use in searching. (It clocks in at 9,300 pages and about 3 million words, if you're curious.) Using Microsoft Word's search features, I can call up all sorts of useful information from the entire series at the touch of a few keys. (By the way, thanks for sending those electronic files, Alan! You thought of this a full three months before I ended up needing them. I guess that's the sign of an excellent assistant.)

    In compiling this document and setting a few bookmarks at important points (mostly the beginning of each book) I hesitated at the copyright statement of A Crown of Swords. He's a book I read over ten years ago, a book by an author I idolized. A distant and unapproachable figure, a hero himself, the one spearheading the epic fantasy movement of my era. And now I have a copy of the original file he typed and I'm working on finishing his last book.

    That, my friends, seems to DEFINE the word surreal to me.

    I was shocked the first time the people at Tor called this a collaboration. By publishing terms, I guess that's indeed what it is—a collaboration, where two authors work on a single novel. But to me, the term just felt strange. Collaborating with Robert Jordan seemed to set me too high in the process. I'm finishing the Master's work for him, since he is unable to. I kind of feel like Sam, carrying Frodo the last few paces up the mountain. Robert Jordan did all the work; for most of these twenty years, I've only been an observer. I'm just glad I could be here to help for the last stretch when I was needed.

    For those of you who wondered, I HAVE read Knife of Dreams and New Spring, but I haven't yet posted blog reactions to them. I read faster than I could keep up on the blog. (I've often noted that I'm really not that great a blogger.) I'll post reactions to these books as I go. For now, I need to get back to Book Twelve.

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  • 55

    Interview: Mar 30th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    We've added a new A Memory of Light Book Page on bs.com—but . . . well, it's pretty much empty right now. I'm working on combining all of the different FAQ pages for the book and my involvement in The Wheel of Time and linking them here. Eventually, we should have a Portal for the Wheel of Time like we do my other books, where we'll have links going to the various information on my site about A Memory of Light.

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  • 56

    Interview: Apr 3rd, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Now, a response to New Spring.

    As I mentioned, I've finished reading through the entire WoT series again and have moved on to actually working on Book Twelve. (Two chapters writing are done as of right now, by the way. Neither were chapters that Mr. Jordan left any actual prose for, as I'm practicing with writing particular characters, and want to get a feel for writing them. I'm writing them and sending them to the experts in Charleston for feedback as I adapt my style to writing in the Wheel of Time world.) Anyway, I'm behind on these blog posts, and so while I read New Spring a few weeks back now, I'm only now doing a response for it.

    I've said before that I think Mr. Jordan's greatest strength as a writer was his ability to do viewpoint with such power. His second-greatest strength was probably his ability to plot on the large scale, planning for things that weren't going to happen for several books, leaving foreshadowing for novels that wouldn't be written for years. As part of that, he knew what happened in the past with his characters to a far greater extent than I think most writers do.

    New Spring seems to me an experiment in showing off these strengths. Here we have two characters from the main series shown many years before. I am impressed at how well Mr. Jordan was able to make these characters feel twenty years younger, yet at the same time show them being the same people. Both Moiraine and Siuan exemplified this, and it was interesting to read from a writer's viewpoint, as I was aware of how tough this must have been to pull off.

    What happens itself is less interesting only in that we already know most of it. (The classic problem with prequels, after all, is that you generally already know how it will end.) While I enjoy a good prequel, the feeling is different than it is for a main-line story. Reading a book like New Spring is more of a fan experience for me, as I get to see how Lan and Moiraine met, and we get a record of the infamous river dunking. Despite what the cover says, I wouldn't say this is the "New starting point" for the Wheel of Time. That's why I read it here, when it was written, rather than when it occurred in the series chronologically. Half of the fun of this book comes from having read the other books in the series first.

    It was strange to read a book from Robert Jordan that was only 120k long, though. I remember when I first saw it, years ago. I thought "Man, that's barely a short story!" 120k. Barely a short story. That would be a LONG book in many genres. Here, it's tiny. (Like many of you probably did, I can remember being annoyed at getting a prequel instead of the next novel in the series. Now I'm happy to have it, though, as it's one of our only glimpses into the world pre-Rand.)

    Anyway, it was great seeing Siuan being a punk. I think her character in this added the most to my understanding of the series as a whole. Lan was pretty much Lan, and while Moiraine was interesting, I found myself liking Siuan more. Perhaps because I really enjoy her storyline in the main series.

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  • 57

    Interview: Apr 9th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    As you might have noticed, things have been a tad dead here this week. That's because I've been out here in Charleston visiting Robert Jordan's house. Harriet, Alan, Maria, and I have been working on things for Book Twelve, and there was also a panel at The Citadel (where Mr. Jordan went to college) about Mr. Jordan and his effect on the fantasy genre. Harriet wanted me to be part of it, and I was very happy to do so. (David Drake also flew in to sit on the panel. I know it was video taped; I don't know if it will get posted anywhere. If it does, I'll try to get a link up here for you all.)

    Regardless, it's been a busy few days. I flew out on Monday and have to be back on Thursday to teach my class. However, we've put our time to very good use, working out the outline for Book Twelve. (There were some holes in the plot and questions about characters we needed to work through.) Maria put it best with some of these holes: It's like we're putting together a jigsaw. We need to sift through Mr. Jordan's notes and figure out what he wanted to have happen, then figure out the best way to make it happen.

    This, of course, is only for the sections that are more ambiguous. We're doing our best to make certain this book has as much of Mr. Jordan in it as possible.

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  • 58

    Interview: Apr 9th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Just a few notes on the way out the door here. 1) I blogged about The Name of the Wind last week, thinking I'd be able to get a copy of book two this week. Looks like my information was out-dated! I was going off of the DAW catalogue I picked up at a trade show last year, and that information was reinforced by the release date of Book Two as presented by the Amazon data aggregating website I use. (Titlez.) Both said book two was out this week. Only, I forgot to watch Pat's own blog, because he admitted a few months back that the book had to be pushed back because of family issues. It's a bummer, but it looks like Pat has been through the wringer lately, and my heart certainly goes out to him. Looks like Book Two will be out next April, but that's no reason not to go grab the brand spanking new paperback of book one.

    2) There's a new Writing Excuses podcast this week. It was posted on Monday, and we're continuing to do this every Monday. Just a little reminder!

    3) Those of you from forums where I am occasionally known to haunt may have noticed a lack of posts from me recently. I haven't simply turned to my lurking ways, unfortunately. I'm swamped with A Memory of Light, and have had to scale back on my forum visitations. I think this is going to be a busy year, and I need every spare moment I can to work on this book and to try (ha ha) to keep up on my email. So, I'm sorry to all you wonderful folks—no offense or anything like that. Just too busy to visit. I'll try to still make appearances on my own forums, though. (Note if you haven't seen the Allomancy conversations going on there, you're missing out. Also, you guys in those discussions are crazy. Fun, but crazy.)

    4) There is no number four.

    I think that's everything for now. Annotations and Warbreaker should get posted on Friday after I get back and recover from Thursday. (Six hours of travel followed by a three hour class. What fun . . . )

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  • 59

    Interview: Apr 13th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I'm back from my trip to Charleston. We got some really good work done and I'm excited to get back to writing. Expect that percentage bar to go up a couple more points this week. Just so that you know, I've decided to use 400k as the wordcount basis for the progress bar. I'm still not sure how long the book will be—it could be longer than that, it could be shorter—but that seemed an appropriate base line. I'll be able to tell you more as the process continues.

    Look for a Knife of Dreams blog post soon, as well as some regular updates. For now, a couple of links.

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  • 60

    Interview: May 2nd, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, after about a month of procrastination, I'm finally getting around to doing the final blog post in my series of "Wheel of Time read through" responses. Thanks to all of those who emailed me reminding me I'd never gotten around to writing a post about Book Eleven. Also, those of you at LJ, it looks like my blog-posting software skipped updating the post I did earlier in the week, so here's a link to it on my own website. You didn't miss much, just a little update explaining that I was done with the grading last week and had moved on to continuing A Memory of Light. (Also, forgive any typos in the following. I wrote it really fast, since I've still got a thousand words or so of A Memory of Light I need to get done tonight.)

    I find several things curious about Knife of Dreams. First, the pacing. This is the first book I remember feeling was moving directly toward an ending of the series. We resolve Elayne's plot to a large measure, Mat and Tuon get married, and Perrin rescues his wife. Those three things all complete major, multi-book arcs and set us up for Book Twelve. I've gotten some emails from somewhat snide readers who claim that they don't believe Mr. Jordan was planning to end the series with Book Twelve, but even if I hadn't seen the notes (which DO prove this book was to be the last) I would have believed in good faith that the ending was coming. Though I enjoy the more lethargic pacing of the previous couple books, Book Eleven's more breakneck resolution of concepts was also refreshing, if only as proof that an ending WAS coming.

    I'm not sure if Mr. Jordan is responding to comments on Book Ten by doing so much in Book Eleven. My instinct says that he wasn't. None of these plot resolutions felt rushed; they were simply all paced in such a way that book ten ended up being the 'middle' book in a lot of ways. It wasn't introducing new plots and it wasn't resolving them. It was, however, building for what happened in this book.

    It was strange reading Knife of Dreams this time as I felt a little like it is directed specifically at me. This book was, in a metaphorical sense, the 'pitch' toward me. It's the lead-in, and it was pitched quit well, directly on line. It's my job to hit that perfect pitch and send it flying.

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  • 61

    Interview: May 12th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    I posted that other email I got that was somewhat negative, but the overwhelming majority are very encouraging and thoughtful. I got one piece recently from a reader named Matt which got me thinking. It relates to A Memory of Light, and so I figured I'd answer it here.

    Brandon—My name is Matt, and I have been following your blog posts and website since you were announced as the writer for A Memory of Light. A question to ask occurred to me today that I don't think I ever saw in any of your interviews/posts about being selected to write the book. As a fan, is a part of you disappointed to read the ending of the story the way you did, that is through RJ's notes and not after reading an entire book?

    Excellent question! My answer follows:

    It was indeed a different experience to read through the outline and materials, with the holes and occasional vague sections, rather than reading a complete novel. A little bit of me is regretful. Of all the readers and fans out there, I'm one of the few who won't be able to experience this book for the first time in its complete form. Mr. Jordan's assistants and wife have probably been in that boat for years!

    And yet, I am a writer, and I don't look at an outline the same way that a regular reader might. The closest approximation I can make is to origami masters. If you go and look at their websites, they will often release 'patterns' that go with a new piece of origami they've developed. The pattern is just a sheet of paper with lines on it. I look at that, and all I see are lines. But to another origami master, that pattern reveals the exact method used to create the piece. They can look at the pattern and see the finished product.

    This outline was kind of like that for me, particularly since the ending was the most complete section. I could look at it, and my mind filled in the gaps, adding the foreshadowings and character climaxes that had come before, taking the hints and the outline chunks that Mr. Jordan wrote and putting them all together. It didn't feel like reading a complete book, but I felt like I could SEE that complete book as he would have written it, and that has become my guide in writing it myself.

    (I might also note at the end here that one thing I forgot to include in my email to him is that while I didn't get to read the final book like you all will, I DID get to find out what happened at the end of the series a good two years ahead of anyone else!)

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  • 62

    Interview: Jun 26th, 2008

    I got an email from a reader that I thought I'd share. (The email itself has been trimmed quite a bit.)

    I personally don't care if it takes you 10 years to finish A Memory of Light, time is not really important. Finishing the book as close to RJ's vision as possible is. You seem to be spreading yourself very thin while writing one of the most important pieces of literature in modern history (that might be an exaggeration, but not to me, or many others).

    I understand that this book isn't your life's work, and that you have many of your own creations that need attention, but please don't lose track of the importance of this project.

    Rick

    I was glad to get this email, as it gave me a chance to explain myself. I worried about June all the way back in January when I started this project—I knew that I was going to have to take several weeks off for the Writers for Young Readers and eventually do edits on Warbreaker and the Alcatraz books. (Though I was hoping to put them off a little longer.)

    My response (again, cut down) was:

    I just want to reassure you not to worry. I'm spread a whole lot less thin than it may seem. Actually, it's been refreshing how much time I've been able to spend writing these last few months.

    One of the things you learn quickly about being an author is the more successful you become, the less time you actually have to write. You just have to take all of these things—book tours, signings, publicity—in stride. Fortunately, since I am an author full time, I can do almost all of that and still put in fifty or sixty hour weeks working. If you'll notice the percentage bar on my website, I've completed 100k of writing since I started in March. That's over 30k a month, which is an incredible clip. Most books out there are under 100k long. Now, that's only a small dent in this particular book, true, but what that should tell you is that I've had a LOT of writing time these last few months.

    I've done WoT virtually exclusively for a good six months now, and it's not unexpected that I would have to take a few weeks to get some editing done on other projects. Don't worry, though, I'm treating this particular work with quite a bit of respect.

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  • 63

    Interview: Jun 26th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Expanding on that idea, I think it's interesting to point out just how much of a compulsive writer I am. It's what I love to do, and I spend quite a bit of my time doing it. Pretty much my whole life revolves around what I'm writing—any spare moments focus on planning, and when I take time off to relax, I generally just spend it writing. This actually worries some people who know me, who think I might need more balance in my life. I know they might have a point. (Hence my insistence to myself that I have a hobby, such as the Magic card game.)

    All of the other things—signings, conferences, writing groups—are also things I do to take time off from writing. Even if you love it as much as I do, breaks are important. Without them, you tend to rush plots and stories. Taking a week or two off after the completion of important plot sections like I just got done with in A Memory of Light actually helps the writing of the next section. Like the cracker between two tastes of cheese.

    Anyway, I just wanted to assure everyone. All of the 'other' things I do aren't taking much time away from this book that we all want to see done as soon as possible. (While still maintaining the writing quality, of course.) It's good that I have these things in life. Trust me on this one. ;)

    I do promise, however, that I've set aside REAL distractions. Namely, other books I want to write. (My readers know that I 'accidentally' write books that my editors aren't expecting. None of those for me this year.) Also, I haven't let myself play Halo 3 yet, since I know that will pretty much wipe out a week or two on its own. . . .

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  • 64

    Interview: Jul 8th, 2008

    Stephen

    I'm sure you've answered this question before and/or have discussed it on your website (which is awesome by the way), but I couldn't find the answer so I thought Id ask. I was wondering who you would have liked to see complete the Wheel of Time in lieu of Robert Jordan had you not been given the opportunity?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a great question, one I'd actually never been asked. So, here's my response:

    Who would I have had write it? Well, I'm torn. There are a lot of great authors out there.

    I think George R. R. Martin could have done it—he's probably the most skilled epic fantasy writer on the market right now. But I don't know that his style matches Mr. Jordan's very well. I'm sure he could adapt, but I think his fans would have been angry if he'd taken the project. After all, there's a long gap of time between his recent novels.

    David Farland is an excellent writer of fantasy. I think he could have done it. The same goes for L.E. Modesitt Jr. Other possibilities would be Robin Hobb or Patrick Rothfuss. (Of course, those are just a list of some of my favorite fantasy authors, so maybe I'm answering the question in the wrong way.)

    In the end, I'd probably have chosen Tad Williams. I think that he'd have been a great match for the series, and I'm a fan of his work.

    I think I'll add this part for the blog post. It's not the same question, but some have asked similar ones, so I figured I'd get to it here.

    Some think that Harriet should have just finished it herself, or perhaps published the notes as-is. I don't think either of these options would have been good ones. Harriet is one of the most well-respected editors in the business, but editing is a very different skill from writing. I think she'll have MORE of an influence on this book (making it feel like it should) by editing it, just as she edited the previous volumes.

    And publishing the notes . . . well, as an author, I don't know if I can explain exactly how uncomfortable this would make me. It would be like displaying compromising pictures of a person against their will. I show my unfinished books to people, but only in controlled circumstances. To display Robert Jordan's unfinished work like that instead of the final book would, I think, have been very unfulfilling to fans and against the master's own will.

    Perhaps once the finished product is out there, Harriet will decide to release the notes in some form. (Actually, I'm hoping that she will.) That will be different. People will already have been able to experience the end of the series, and Mr. Jordan's vision, in a complete way. Releasing them before—or instead of the book itself—would have been a very wrong move, I think.

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  • 65

    Interview: Jul 28th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Recently, I've been reading interviews that Mr. Jordan did before he died. (Thank you to those who have sent these to me.) I had already read some of the questions and answers, but others were fresh to me. I'm very interested in his comments as I want to make extra certain I don't miss-step and contradict anything he said in an interview, even if that information didn't appear in the books or the notes for the final volume.

    I've found a lot of his answers very interesting. Among the more tragic are the ones that came when people asked him what would happen to his series if he died before it was finished. It kind of twists my heart a little bit each time I read a question like that, knowing what eventually happened.

    In response to most of these situations, Mr. Jordan was joking and whimsical. Common responses were along the lines of "You'd better hope that doesn't happen, otherwise you'll never get to see that last ending I've been planning all these years!" He often indicated that he'd leave instructions to have all of his notes burned and his disc drives wiped, then reformatted six or seven times so that nobody would ever know how the story came out.

    Humorous tone set aside, I see something in these responses. Inside, I think the concept of anyone else working on the Wheel of Time was very painful for Mr. Jordan. I really think that early on, he was against the idea of anyone else finishing the last book, should he die.

    However, Harriet has talked to me of the last days before his death, and I also have transcripts of the final dictations he made. Transcripts that talk about what should happen, how people should end up, and how the ending should be written. The tone of these writings and of what Harriet talked about is very different from his earlier comments. It's humbling to see how he changed, instead becoming determined—insistent, even—that the last book be finished after he passed away. Harriet mentioned to me that he didn't want to select someone himself. That thought was too hard for him. I can understand why.

    In the end, I see this as his last gift to all of us. As an artist, I can completely understand why he wouldn't want someone else to work on his world and his books. And if he had actually decided to leave instructions for the final book not to be completed, I am sure—very sure—that Harriet would have seen to it that his will was followed. But that wasn't what he decided. He demanded that this book be written. Even though I know that the idea brought him pain.

    This was his final sacrifice and gift for you all—the decision to give us the last scenes and instructions for the book, rather than taking that knowledge to the grave with him. From what I've heard of the last months of his life, I know that he spent a surprising amount of time giving dictations, telling about places that nobody else knew existed, and explaining how the characters were to end up.

    There are a fair number of people who are against this project happening in any form. They don't make up the bulk of the fan community; in fact, they seem like a very, very small percentage. There are others who aren't opposed to the book being finished in general, but who are opposed to me specifically working on it—though this group is even smaller than the first. Either way, I can sincerely understand both complaints. It seems to me that the Robert Jordan of five years ago would have been in the first group himself!

    I have repeatedly acknowledged that I can't replace him. But he wanted this book done, and I'm increasingly confident that I'm the best choice for this project. There are plenty of fantasy authors out there who are better writers than I am—George Martin, Tad Williams, Neil Gaiman, and Robin Hobb all come to mind, among others—but I don't know of another author publishing in fantasy right now who has been as close to these books and these characters as I have been over the last eighteen years.

    Knowing that Mr. Jordan was distressed about the concept of anyone finishing the books makes me even more determined to write a book that he would have been—that he will be—proud of. He loved you all very much. Those who complained about the time he took to finish books, or the length of the series, did not know the man at all. He did not write this series to the length he did because of money; he did not 'artificially inflate' the Wheel of Time because of any external pressures. He wrote this series the way he did because he loved it, and because he knew that we loved it.

    And I think that's why he chose to have this novel completed. In the end, your good was more important to him than his own good. What grander summary could be made of a man's life than that?

    This book is going to be beautiful. I promise you that.

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  • 66

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2008

    Peter Ahlstrom

    The death of Robert Jordan wasn’t an opportunity. It was a tragedy.

    Elise Mattheson

    Elise talks about how she saw Brandon’s blog post eulogizing Jim, and it immediately struck her that she needed to print it out. She gave it to Harriet, saying, “You have to read this.” Later that day she saw Harriet reading the post out loud to others of Jim’s friends. [I spoke with Elise right after the panel, and she added lots of fascinating details. I looked around to see if she’s shared her telling of this story anywhere online, but didn’t find anything. I hope that she will share it sometime, because it’s a great story from a fascinating woman.]

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Brandon got a voicemail from Harriet that said, “Please call me back. I want to talk to you about something.” Brandon called back and couldn’t catch Harriet at home for several hours. He called Tor, and Moshe wasn’t in, but he got in touch with Patrick. Patrick said, “It’s what you probably think it is. I’ll make sure Harriet calls you back.”

    Harriet did call back, and she told Brandon that she was considering several writers to finish the last book of the Wheel of Time and wanted to know if he was interested in being considered. Brandon’s first reaction was to think, “Only Robert Jordan can write this book.” His second thought was, “If somebody else is going to write it, I want it to be me.” Up until this point, Brandon had been worried about who was going to finish the series—as a lot of fans were worrying. Brandon knew that as a fan of the series, he would write it with the needs of the series in mind and not try to take it his own direction.

    TOM DOHERTY

    Tom [at the panel] says that the pick of who to finish the series was Harriet’s pick and no one but her should make it. But in this case he agrees with her choice of Brandon. Harriet told him that Brandon was her first choice for the job.

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  • 67

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon explains that he is writing the book according to viewpoint cluster. There are several groups of characters who follow their own plotlines until toward the end of the book—at the three-quarter or 80% mark—all the groups meet up. Brandon’s writing the book one viewpoint cluster at a time. The first cluster he focused on was Rand’s, with Rand, Nynaeve, Min, etc. Brandon has finished writing this viewpoint cluster from the beginning of the book up until that meet-up point. Now he’s working on the Perrin, Faile, Galad cluster. After this he’ll move on to Egwene and the White Tower, then Mat and Thom, and then he’ll work on a more unconnected cluster of viewpoints that aren’t as closely connected to each other, such as Elayne’s story and what’s going on with the Black Tower, etc. Then when all the viewpoints are all gathered together at the same place, Brandon will write the last part of the story up to and including the part that Jim wrote. For each group of characters there are detailed notes on who’s there and what secrets can be revealed.

    Including what Brandon has been writing during this trip (he even wrote in the car while his wife drove), he’s written almost 200,000 words so far.

    TOM DOHERTY

    “200,000?” Tom breaks in. “You told me yesterday you were a third done!” Everyone in the room does the math.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Brandon says the goal is not to leave out anything that Jim has written. As much of what he has written will make it into print as physically possible. Any manuscript words that Jim has written will go in the book. If Jim said that something has to happen, it will happen.

    TOM DOHERTY

    Tom says, “It’s sounding more and more like two volumes.”

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    This was Jim Rigney’s dying request: “Take care of the fans. Find someone to finish the book.”

    If the book does end up needing to get split, Brandon would prefer for the first half to be released in October 2009 and the second in November 2009, with a leatherbound special edition of the complete book.

    TOM DOHERTY

    Tom says, “I do not believe it’s physically possible to bind in one book.” [I’m interpreting this as a reaction to the possibility of the book being 600,000 words, and also not ruling out a special edition.]

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Brandon says, “By the way, Jim was not artificially inflating the series. He was writing what he loved.”

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  • 68

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2008

    Question

    “What do you do to keep sane?”

    Brandon Sanderson

    He writes. It relaxes him. Brandon’s wife hadn’t read the series beyond The Eye of the World, which is something that needed to be corrected! Brandon says that the response from the fan community has been generally positive—with only two death threats so far! He gets two to three dozen e-mails per day wishing him luck. A common refrain from the series is: “You will do well.” Brandon is putting in long hours working on this book. He feels like he’s a medical student working on his residency. He and his wife often sit in the same room working on different things while he writes—they’re together, but they’re in different worlds.

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  • 69

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2008

    Question

    An audience member asks about Brandon’s style differences from Jim’s, and how writing this book will affect the style of his future books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon says he tends to use more blow-by-blow action scenes, while Jim was a little closer where viewpoint was concerned—his writing was a shade closer to first person in the narration. Brandon chose in the past to be tighter and less wordy, but writing this book he’s letting it all out and being more free with the description—and he’s finding it rather refreshing. Brandon reiterates, though, that he is not writing a Robert Jordan book; Jim Rigney was the only one who could write a Robert Jordan book. He is, however, doing what he can to write a Wheel of Time book that will deliver what the fans and he himself as a fan expect from a Wheel of Time book.

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  • 70

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2008

    Peter Ahlstrom

    Brandon never met Robert Jordan in life. I was at a convention with him and Dan Wells a few years back when Jim walked by, and someone turned to Brandon and said, “That’s Jim Rigney—Robert Jordan.” That was the closest Brandon ever came to meeting the master. So Robert Jordan is still very much a kind of mythical figure to him, like a hero who has gone before. Brandon can only strive to follow in his footsteps.

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  • 71

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Last week marked one year since Mr. Jordan's passing. I wrote out something to post, but I just didn't like it, so decided to scrap the idea. That was partially because I think I'd rather commemorate Mr. Jordan on a different day, such as his birthday next month or perhaps the publication date of The Eye of the World, rather than focusing too much on the day of his passing.

    However, after thinking about it over the weekend while at MountainCon, I decided that I really did need to post something, if only a link back to the essay I wrote back in July about his passing. It's probably the best I could do on this topic, and what follows below is just a tangential musing, more related to me than to him. It's related to thoughts that have been tickling my mind recently.

    A year ago, I assumed that Mr. Jordan had already exerted every bit of influence over my career that he was going to. During my youth, his books significantly shaped the writer I would become. Publishing with Tor became my personal holy grail, in a lot of ways, because of his presence there. His power for sales in the fantasy market (which pushed the genre with mainstream readers and also helped establish the fantasy hardcover as a viable publishing option even for midlist authors) changed how people buy books in our genre. Finally, his success at Tor allowed them to have the money to take chances on newer authors, such as myself.

    When you weigh all of those things, I think you'll find that my career—even before last year's events—was dominated rather heavily by the Wheel of Time and Mr. Jordan himself. But with his passing, I assumed that no more such influence would come.

    I guess you could say that I was wrong.

    From this point on, I doubt more than a passing mention will be made of me any my writing without Robert Jordan's name appearing as well. Any article, essay, or encyclopedia entry about me will list my work on the Wheel of Time as one of the most important events of my career. Twenty years from now, I will be doing conventions related to the Wheel of Time. It's entirely possible that my career as a whole could end up as a footnote to that of Robert Jordan.

    Does this bother me? To be honest, it doesn't. I knew all of this before I accepted the project, and if I'd worried about it, I'd just have done the book without official credit. But that wouldn't have been fair, either to myself or the fans. They deserve to know what they are getting, and deserve to understand that someone other than Mr. Jordan worked on this book. They deserve to know exactly who was involved.

    Beyond that, a man could do much worse than be known as that guy who was involved in the last Wheel of Time book. A series like this one doesn't come along but once a generation, and it's humbling to be part of it.

    Yes, I hope to be able to make my own mark on the genre. I hope that I can earn my own way onto the bestseller lists and into the hearts of readers. But in the end, if I'm like so many other good—but ephemeral—midlist authors, I'm not going to consider my career a failure. I'll have told the stories that I want, and I'll have worked in a job I love for my entire life. Who can really ask for more than that?

    But it's nice to know that, either way, I'll have been involved in something lasting, something people will still be reading a century from now. The Wheel of Time has changed a lot of people's lives. Mine most of all. And I'm very thankful for the chance to work on this novel, and for the willingness of the readers to accept me in as one of them. So, I guess my thoughts upon the one year mark turn toward you—I've found that Mr. Jordan's greatest legacy is in the quality of fan that he inspired. You do him proud.

    Annotations coming soon. Thank you all for reading.

    Brandon

    p.s. Plaid Ajah: Yes. (Inside joke.)

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  • 72

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2008

    Alex C. Telander

    So my first question here, what made you decide to become a writer? Who were your influences?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I decided to become a writer when I was fourteen. Before then I actually hadn't been a big reader. I was actually one of those boys—a lot of young boys stop reading about the fourth grade age. It's apparently a trouble time. I didn't know that, but I stopped reading about that age. Fourth, fifth, sixth grade, not a big reader. Seventh grade, not a big reader. Eighth grade, I had a really wonderful English teacher, who got a fantasy novel into my hands. And before then, I just thought books were boring. Someone had tried to give me Tolkien, but Tolkien was just too hard for me. She gave me Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane, which I loved. Fell in love with fantasy books, discovered David Eddings, Terry Brooks over the summer. This was before Wheel of Time was even out. Just fell in love with reading and decided this was what I wanted to do for a living. Didn't really look back since then. Started my first book when I was fifteen. It was dreadful, but just kept writing and writing and writing.

    A lot of my influences were the Wheel of Time books once they came out, absolutely loved. I would often study them, read them, and try and say, "What is Robert Jordan doing here?" I remember specifically looking at passages and saying, "Okay, what’s he doing, what's making this work?"

    A lot of my other influences were, I'd say, Melanie Rawn, and Barbara Hambly, and Annie McCaffrey would be some of my big influences. I liked the sort of hybrid fantasy/science fictions—not the ones where a fantasy world meets a science fiction world—don't enjoy those as much. What I'm talking about is a fantasy book that treats its magic like a science. I loved, for instance, Melanie Rawn's magic system—really, really worked for me. When I discovered David Farland, his magic system really worked for me. I loved the Rune Lords magic. Those things, really, sort of jump out at me and sing to me, and I knew when I got published, if I got published some day, that's what I wanted to do.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    Okay, great.

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  • 73

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2008

    Alex C. Telander

    How did you come up with the idea for the Mistborn series, and did you know it was going to be a series from the start?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did know it was going to be a series. When I was writing Mistborn, it came because—well, I had sold Elantris, and my editor came to me and said, "What do you want to do next? Do you want to do an Elantris sequel?" And I said, well, I really like Elantris being a stand-alone. But I had this unique opportunity where the next book didn't have to be in for about two years. Sold Elantris in 2003; it was coming out in 2005. That meant my next book had to be turned in in 2005. Two years' time, I thought if I write really hard, I can finish an entire trilogy before the first one has to be turned in, which would let me write a whole series, and have it all work together and be internally consistent and all of these things. And so I did know it was a series from the beginning.

    The ideas are varied, they came from all over the place. One of the ideas was the desire to tell a story about a world where the dark lord had won. I love the classic fantasy stories, but I think that it's been done really well, and doesn't need to be done any more. I think Robert Jordan nailed it. I think, even if you look—you've got Tad Williams, you've got Raymond Feist, you've got David Eddings, you've got Terry Brooks—all doing this hero's archetype journey. It's been done, it's been covered, what else can I do? And so, the story where the hero went on a quest, and then failed and the dark lord took over, that was a fascinating idea.

    Another idea was my love of the heist genre, where you get a gang of specialists who each have a different power. I had never seen a fantasy book do that in the way I wanted to. There are some that do it, and do it well. But you know, where everyone had a different magic system, every person a different magic power, got together and did something. One of my favorite movies is the movie Sneakers—something like that, but with magic.

    And those two ideas rammed together with an idea for a magic system that I'd been working on, and an idea for a character I'm working on, Vin's character. Those were all developed independently. All started to ram together. I explained, ideas are sometimes like atoms and when they ram into each other, you get a chemical reaction and they form molecules. Cool different things happen when ideas ram into each other, and that's where those came from.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    Do you think there's ever going to be any more stories or future books set in the Mistborn world?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I always know what happens in the futures of the worlds in my stories. I don't always write those books. I think there probably will be, but they would take place hundreds of years after this trilogy, or hundreds of years before. It would be great separation of time and space. It would be more books set in the world, not a continuation of the characters or sequels. I won't do that for a while. One of the authors who I really respect is Orson Scott Card. I like that he's able to do such different things, and new things, and he's not locked into. . . even though he keeps writing Ender's books, in between, you'll have all sorts of different, cool things. And I really respect that. I would rather do that than be someone who's writing in only one setting. And so, while you probably will see more Mistborn books, it's when I'm excited about them. I want to do something else for a while.

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  • 74

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2008

    Alex C. Telander

    It's a great honor to be chosen to complete Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it is.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    How were you chosen?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    How was I chosen? I got up one morning, and there was a voicemail on my phone from someone that said, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me. I have something I want to discuss with you."

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    Had you ever met her before or anything?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'd never met her before. I had seen Robert Jordan once at a convention, been too embarrassed to go up and talk to him. I had not applied, or asked my agent to apply, or anything like this. I was known at Tor as a big fan of the series. I had also written on my web site some thoughts about what Robert Jordan's books had meant in my life. But none of it was really an attempt. . . I assumed somebody had already been chosen.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    Right. Do you know if you were the only one on the list?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I know there were others on the list. I am not at liberty to say who they were. But, that first call was just a 'would you be willing?' And so I said, yes, of course. Well, what I actually said was, "aabbl, aabbbl, aabbbl. . ." I actually sent her an email the next day saying, "Dear Harriet, I'm not an idiot. I promise." I was just so surprised. And so, she then read Mistborn. She later told me, she said, "I got just 50 pages into it and I knew." But then she kept reading to make sure. She thought about it for about a month, she called me back. As I understand, she didn't ever look at any of the other people who were being considered, she just went with me. She really, really liked Mistborn.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    That's pretty great!

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  • 75

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2008

    Alex C. Telander

    And then, A Memory of Light is due out next fall. You said, was it November, I think?

    Brandon Sanderson

    November's the goal. November is the goal. Understand that there are a whole lot of different factors going into this. It will depend on how much editing it takes, how quickly I'm able to get the characters right. I'm going to work on it, I'm working on it more than full time. I'm pulling big long hours, I'm trying to get this done as soon as possible. But, it also has to be the best book.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    Right. So that's going to be back and forth with you and Harriet, right?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah, back and forth with me and Harriet. I will have the rough draft done probably by December. Right now it's October. But how long it takes to get the rough draft polished and perfected, that's the uncertain quality here. And so, the goal will be November.

    ALEX C. TELANDER

    Okay.

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  • 76

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2008

    Alex C. Telander

    Do you have any interest in writing possibly for TV?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hobbyist interest. They're such different skills. I would probably tackle a screenplay before I did—what do you call it for television?—a teleplay because I'm more used to the single form like a novel rather than the serial form. But, I could see myself doing some screenplays in the future, but I would have to do a lot of practice and a lot of research. I wouldn't expect them to be very good at the beginning.

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  • 77

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2008

    Alex C. Telander

    So what's your writing schedule like? And do you ever give yourself a day off?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Do I ever give myself a day off? Usually, if I give myself a day off, it's because I've been just killing myself going and doing book signings and things like that. I write to relax. That's what I do for fun. If I go on vacation, I usually want to go on vacation to get away from everyone and everything so I can write. It's just what I love to do. My writing schedule is usually. . . most writers write twenty-four hours a day. I write twenty-four hours a day. If I go to the gym, I'm thinking about what's happening with my next book. If I'm going to bed, I'm planning for the next day. When I get up, check my email, start writing. Most days, usually, formally I write from about noon until four. And then I'll hang out with my family and do other stuff until about ten, and I'll start writing from about ten to midnight—no, from about ten until 4am. And then I'll get up about noon. So yeah, sleep from about four until noon.

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  • 78

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    As the one year anniversary of my official involvement in the Wheel of Time series came and passed last week, I thought it might be interesting to do an update of the original interview I did with Dragonmount last December. Now that I've had a chance to re-read the series and write a good chunk of the last book, have my thoughts changed? I was as curious about this as anyone, so I decided to do a quick revisit to the interview, answering the questions again in order.

    Note that I wrote this rather quickly. I assume you would all rather have me working on Book Twelve, as opposed to spending hours on blog posts. So when I had a few moments in the evening, I ran through the questions again. There are bound to be typos; please forgive them. (I hope I didn't spell any character names wrong, but where my ability to spell is involved, you never can be too certain. I live and die by my spellchecker.)

    This is intended to be lighthearted and informal. As always when I wrote blog posts, I did it in a conversational style. That's part of what allows me to do posts as often as I do; they don't require the same 'piece' of my writing mind that crafting novels does. I can relax, so to speak, and not worry about the lyricism of my words. Or even if I spelled them correctly. . . . ;)

    Enjoy!

    Footnote

    The original Dragonmount interview from December 2007 has been eaten by a Trolloc and is no longer available online.

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  • 79

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    Congratulations on receiving this landmark opportunity. How are you feeling?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One year later, how am I feeling? Well, still a little stunned at times. It's odd. It's been a year. But even just earlier today, while at the gym, I had a moment where I stopped and thought. "Wait, how in the world did this happen? Out of all of the people who could have been chosen, did this really happen to me?"

    It's like winning the lottery, only better. First off, this isn't the kind of opportunity you can buy with money. I'd trade a winning lottery ticket for the chance to work on this book. (Sounds like hyperbole, but it's true.) Secondly, I didn't get chosen at random. I was chosen, in part, because of my skill. Not to say that there aren't others with a lot of skill in the field. But I wasn't just picked out of a hat, either. I was picked because of my work. That feels great.

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  • 80

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    The Big Question most fans probably have is: "Why Brandon Sanderson?" What are your thoughts on this?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've thought a lot about this over the last year. I've spoken to Harriet and considered. I've come to discover a little more about the process behind how I was chosen.

    Why me? I think foremost, because Harriet liked my work. But she'd also read the thoughts I'd written on Mr. Jordan's passing. She knew I had been heavily influenced by the series that is The Wheel of Time. These aren't just books. There's something about them, something endearing and enduring. Something that draws people into fan communities and makes friends talk with friends about them. There are a lot of bestselling series out there, but there isn't a single one in my knowledge that has prompted the level of passion from the readers that these have.

    The fans have been waiting for a long, long time to get this book. I've been waiting a long, long time. I was a fan from the get-go; I read The Eye of the World when it was first released. I think that in order to get this book done in a reasonable amount of time, they needed to pick someone who was already familiar with the series. Someone who knew their Aelfinn from their Eelfinn and who could explain Rand's family tree. (At least on a good day. It still makes my brain get in a knot when I think about who Slayer is and how he relates to the various characters. . . .)

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  • 81

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    How did you first get involved in this project? Were you approached by Tor and/or Harriet, or did you dust off your resume and send it to them for consideration?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't have much to add that I didn't answer last year. No resumes. I was caught completely off guard. I will say that when I first spoke to Harriet the day she called to ask me, I was so befuddled that I couldn't speak straight. I actually sent her an email the next day which said, essentially, "Dear Harriet. I'm not an idiot. I promise. Sorry I sounded like one. . . ."

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  • 82

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    What was your initial reaction when you read the outline Harriet put together for A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a good one to answer now, since I HAVE read the outline (obviously.) Actually, there's a good story here. When I first went to visit Harriet, I recall walking in the door and—even before eating—asking if I could have two things. The ending Jim wrote (he finished the last part of the book himself) and the answer to who killed Asmodean.

    I wish it were possible for me to express just how much I enjoyed reading those final written words that Mr. Jordan left behind. I was satisfied. I think that's the perfect word for it. Satisfied. It ends the way it should. Not, perhaps, the way I would have guessed—or even the way you have guessed. But it's the RIGHT ending. I was very pleased.

    And it made me sleep a lot more easily once I got to see that the ending was there, and that I wouldn't have to do that part myself. I'm a 'goal driven' writer. I develop an outline for myself that generally focuses on my ending, and then my writing pushes me toward that goal. Already having the ending makes this book possible.

    I guess the only other thing I'd like to note that I was feeling was this: Reverence. This is the last work of the master. It's like holding a play penned by Shakespeare himself—one that nobody else has read, and that you get to perform for the first time.

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  • 83

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    You've inherited a world that is on the verge of destruction, and a main character who is now crippled, partially insane, and probably now blind.

    Brandon Sanderson

    (Brandon's interjection: Yup indeed! Lots of conflict. Just the way I like it. This is the stuff that great epics are made of. It looks like Jason cut this part of the question when he did the original post. Probably for space issues.)

    Question Continued

    You've said before in other interviews that your fantasy novels (Elantris, and the Mistborn series) were born in part by the notion of taking a typical fantasy concept and turning it on its head. For example, you said that while The Wheel of Time is about "peasants becoming kings", your Elantris book is about "Kings who become peasants." And one of the fundamental ideas behind the Mistborn series is the question: "What if the Dark One won?" Having explored those interesting ideas, what's it like to suddenly find yourself writing the ending of a massive series which in large part defined the fantasy genre that many readers are familiar with?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think I covered this one last year as well as I could. I'll add to my response that I think, in our hearts, every one of us fantasy authors wants to write this classic story. There's a piece of us who wants to emulate our masters, to do as they did, because they brought us such delight and emotion at reading. That's why many authors, when they first begin, tend to write works that feel heavily derivative.

    Most of us never publish those novels. We move on, like a tottering child, searching for our own voice. Trying to find a way to bring those same emotions to people, but by telling our own stories. Our own way. It's the correct way of things. Telling the exact same story over and over again is an exercise in futility.

    But I get the chance to actually do that, to be part of this thing that nurtured me through those years when I was a quiet fantasy reader who spent more time in his room with his books than outside with living people. I get to write on this story, I get to be part of the master's work. That's very humbling.

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  • 84

    Interview: Nov 12th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Also, many of you have asked if I'd gotten a response from Harriet on the pages I turned in. I have, but it's not that exciting to hear about. You see, I wanted to remained focused on finishing the book, and I know that if I start getting revision notes, it will draw my focus back to the parts I've already written. I can't afford that distraction unless the parts I've written are so terrible that we need to rethink how I'm approaching this book. So, I have asked to not get any revision notes until I've at least hit the 400k mark. All I wanted to know was "Should I keep going, or are there big troubles?" The response was an enthusiastic keep going.

    This book is going to take a LOT of revision. I know ahead of time that there are going to be big swaths that will need to be rewritten. But as long as what I'm turning in is pleasing enough to be workable, it's important to keep moving forward. I'm like that in writing; I like to have a rough draft to work on, rather than turning my attention back to previous sections before finishing. I need to keep momentum up. So, honestly, you know as much as I do at this point. She's pleased, but undoubtedly has large revision requests.

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  • 85

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    In what ways do you think you'll have to shift your writing style to match Robert Jordan's? Will you be trying to write in his "voice", or will you approach the novel with your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Last year I explained the theory; now I can talk about what it's actually like. I think the blend I discussed is going very well. I'm writing through this draft as I would normally, with a focus on making the characters sound right. That's most important to me right now, followed closely by making certain the plot flows well.

    In revisions I'm being careful to enhance my descriptiveness and write the book in a way that feels correct for the Wheel of Time. This is going to take a lot of drafting—let me warn you readers, when you see that progress bar hit 100%, we're still nowhere close to being finished.

    However, I'm extremely pleased with how the book is going. I think the blend of my style with that of Mr. Jordan is proceeding very nicely. It's going to be a fantastic book.

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  • 86

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    We know that Robert Jordan left extensive notes, as well as some audio tapes and actual written parts for this novel. We know your intent is to tell his story. Having seen the outline, how much of the actual plot (the plot points, character arcs, intrigue, etc.) do you think you'll have to come up with on your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Another one I can answer now that I couldn't before, as I hadn't seen the notes.

    However, it's still a tough one to answer. How much do I have to make up? A lot in some places, very little in others. The interview mentioned an 'outline' above. That's a little bit of an understatement regarding what was left. The things mentioned in this question itself are more accurate.

    My goal is to retain as much of his own writing as possible, and then fill in the blanks myself. As I've promised Harriet not to talk about these things until the book is out, I feel I can't give specifics right now. Know that there are large swaths of writing to do on my own, and yet even then I feel his hand on my shoulder. Every hole has an entry point and an exit point. I know where the characters are, and I know where they have to go. Sometimes it's my choice on how to get them there. Sometimes there are notes, sometimes there are actual chunks of writing. Sometimes there isn't anything but a quick notation in that character's file explaining their final state at the end of the book.

    But this is Robert Jordan's book, not my own. I keep saying that, and I don't want the readers to think I'm approaching it any other way. It's his story, his writing, and his vision.

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  • 87

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    Which characters or plot threads are you most looking forward to writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I said Perrin last year. This year, I'm not sure I can claim that any more. Not that my affection for Perrin has waned. I've simply spent too much time writing through the characters' eyes.

    One of the spectacular things about the Wheel of Time was the depth of characterization. No matter who's eyes you were seeing through, they felt real and lively. To each character, they are the most important person in their own story.

    As a writer, you can't play favorites. At least not when you're actually writing. When I sit down to write Egwene, she's my favorite. When I sit down to write Rand, he's my favorite. And when I sit down to write Perrin, he's my favorite.

    Through different points in the books, different characters are my 'favorite' to read about. Rand dominates my interest in books one and two, but I find myself leaning toward Perrin and then Aviendha in the next few books. Nynaeve's story in the middle end, with the rescue by Lan, is a personal favorite. Mat takes center stage after that, and Egwene is my favorite to read in Knife of Dreams.

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  • 88

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    Are there any particular aspects of the book that you think will be especially challenging for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Last year I mentioned the depth of the worldbuilding, and this really has been a challenge. I know there are some of you out there who can name every single Aes Sedai, their Ajah and relative strength in the Power. But I've never been that kind of reader. I've loved these books, and I've been through them a number of times (currently, I've read The Eye of the World nine times.) I know these characters—I know how to write them and how to think as them. But the side characters are a challenge to keep track of. I don't have a trivia mind. I forget the names of my OWN side characters sometimes. I know who they are, but I can't name them.

    (Fortunately, I now know that Mr. Jordan himself had trouble sometimes keeping track of them all, which is why he had assistants to help him.)

    Other than that, there have been a few characters that have been more difficult to get 'right' than other characters. The Aiel, for instance, are a challenge to make sound right. They're such an interesting people, and they see the way in such a peculiar way. I've had to spend a lot of time working on making them sound right.

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  • 89

    Interview: Nov 26th, 2008

    Question

    Is writing on this book easier or harder than you expected?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I honestly didn't know what to expect, so I have trouble answering this question, though many people ask it of me at signings. Let me tell you this: Writing this book is difficult. It's the good kind of difficult, the kind that makes you stretch and improve in leaps and bounds, but it is TOUGH. Keeping track of all of the side character and sub-plots is a real challenge, and trying to stay true to the soul of the Wheel of Time while adapting my own style to something appropriate for this book has been even more of one.

    I'm loving working on it. There are many who think it might be easier to write this book than one of my own (since there is an outline and the worldbuilding is done.) However, I think that it's much, much more difficult. When it comes time to use a side character, I can't simply make up their personality and fit them into the plot—I have to research how they've thought, talked, and acted in the past, then incorporate that. I have to be careful what I add as I can't contradict the plotting from books past. And beyond that, there is a huge level of expectation and hope resting upon this novel. My own, that of Harriet, and that of all of you readers who have been waiting for almost twenty years to read.

    This all makes the book tough to write. But, as I said, it's the good kind of tough. I started writing fantasy in the first place because I think it's one of the most challenging genres to write in, and the prospect of working on this book still excites me.

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  • 90

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    I know you probably can't go too deeply into it, but are there any questions about the story you had as a fan that you will make sure get answered in this final novel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am still deeply interested in ascertaining the solution to the quandry regarding the character of Asmodean, most specifically the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his demise. ;)

    I also mentioned Moiraine's fate last year as being a big question I had. She's always been a favorite of mine, and each time I read through the series, I'm left wondering about her. (Well, not any more, since I've read the notes. But you know what I mean.)

    I've been surprised to discover that a lot of readers take her survival for granted, but I've never done so. The letter gives some good clues that she might still be around, but it could also be some kind of trap by the Aelfinn and Eelfinn. The answers and gifts they give are truthful, yet there's often a twisted logic to them as well, it seems.

    I can't say more here, I'm afraid, since I now know too much.

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  • 91

    Interview: Dec 3rd, 2008

    Brad Wilcox

    When word of Jordan's death hit news wires, Sanderson, like many of Jordan's fans, was devastated.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I'll be perfectly honest: When I heard the news, my first thought was of the big loss of someone extraordinary," recalled Sanderson. "My second thought was . . . he was working on the last book, would we ever get to see it?"

    BRAD WILCOX

    His sentiment was echoed by many on "Wheel of Time" fan sites across the Internet, and soon Sanderson found himself becoming a topic on those sites.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    "I'm relatively unknown as an author; I've only been published for a couple of years," Sanderson said. "I did not know I was being considered."

    BRAD WILCOX

    Indeed, the most prominent question on fan sites such as seemed to be: Who is Brandon Sanderson?

    That question was met head-on by Sanderson as he began interacting with "Wheel of Time" fans both live and on the Web, and taking the time to introduce himself to those who were still new to his work.

    JASON DENZEL

    "Overall, I'm absolutely thrilled that Brandon is the man for the job," exclaimed Jason Denzel, site founder of Dragonmount.com. "It's as if they picked the most talented fan they could find and handed him the series to finish."

    BRAD WILCOX

    As confident as Denzel and the rest of the fans on his website have become in Sanderson, they admit that there remains a trickle of skepticism.

    JASON DENZEL

    "The thing that we haven't seen yet, and whether or not it can be pulled off, is if this book is going to feel like someone else wrote it or as if Robert Jordan wrote it himself," said Denzel. "Our biggest worry is whether or not it's going to have the feel of the rest of the series."

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  • 92

    Interview: Dec 3rd, 2008

    Brad Wilcox

    Sanderson empathizes with the fans.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I can't do a better job than Robert Jordan. I can't even do as good a job as Robert Jordan, I don't think," remarked Sanderson. "He's the only one that could've done it the right way."

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  • 93

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2008

    Question

    Do you have a personal message for all the Wheel of Time fans?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you for your support. The response has been fantastic. I get emails each day cheering me on.

    Thank you for your understanding. I can't replace the man you lost. But I'm doing my best to give you the book you've been waiting for.

    And finally, thank you for your patience. I'm working hard, I promise. But this book is a HUGE undertaking, and will likely be three times the size of previous books I've written. Even considering the parts Mr. Jordan finished, there's just a lot to do, and I don't want to rush an imperfect product to production. We hope to have something for you in stores by November 2009. But if it takes longer, it takes longer.

    Question

    How should fans get in touch with you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Same as before. Through my website. As always, thanks for reading.

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  • 94

    Interview: Dec 3rd, 2008

    Brad Wilcox

    For Sanderson, this project is a labor of love—love for the series he grew up reading and love for the man who created the very world he now seeks to end.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I think I can do a really good job because I love the series so much," said Sanderson.

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  • 95

    Interview: Dec 10th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    One reader emailed me, noticing that the A Memory of Light progress bar has been zipping up quite quickly lately. They were wondering if I'd hit a section where Mr. Jordan had done more writing. (I can't find the actual email right now, it's buried in the inbox.) The answer, my astute reader, is yes. I've hit a section where Mr. Jordan did more work before he passed away than he did on other sections. Much of it here is in outline form or dictation form, and so I'm having to do a lot of the physical construction of the chapters, but having a detailed outline makes the process move much more quickly. That's part of why I felt I could leave 20% to be done in December and still feel I could meet my self-imposed deadline.

    We're getting much, much closer to my goal, by the way. Over 350k done so far, with less than 50k to go. Another reason it's going to well is that I was forced to spend much of the last two months doing other things. I still got some writing done, as you probably saw with the progress bar updates, but with all of the traveling I did, I had to work hard to simply get the 10k minimum goal I set for myself in a week. Now that I'm back, I'm eager to get back to work.

    This is how it often happens with me. I started writing books because . . . well, I like writing books. It's what I love to do, and those who know me will tell you that I'd probably spend sixteen hours a day working on my books if life would let me. October/November is always hard for me, since the touring keeps me from writing. It's great to tour and meet the readers, and I think it's an important part of the writing business. It helps keep me grounded and in touch with those who read my works. If I DID spend sixteen hours a day writing, with no contact with the world around me, I think my writing would become more and more insular and less relatable. (Pemberly and Limebaby's jobs, in part, are to constantly remind me that there are things to write ABOUT by making me get out of my basement and experience them.)

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  • 96

    Interview: Apr 4th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Now, how about some Reader Mail:

    I read your post about splitting A Memory of Light and thought your reasoning was very sound. It seems obvious that you care very much about putting out something of quality. I'm concerned though, that you won't end up changing what you write based on reader's reactions to the first book. How do you make sure the book/volumes you end up writing at 800k a year or so from now isn't different from the book you would have written if you had just done the whole thing in one big chunk?

    Excellent question. The answer is simple, yet may not be very satisfying. Honestly, I don't know if the book will turn out differently.

    It's rarely fruitful to second-guess decisions based on what might happen in the future. Every novel I read, every review that comes out, every day spent pondering . . . these things all influence my writing. Each day we make hundreds of decisions that nudge us in this direction or that. Scenes are influenced directly by events that occur in my life.

    Would Mistborn Three have been a different book if I hadn't stopped and written something else between it and Mistborn Two? Probably. Would it have been better or worse? I don't know. Will A Memory of Light Three be different because A Memory of Light One will be released before it comes out? Perhaps. Will it be better or worse? I don't know.

    I can say this. The second chunk should be done before the first comes out. And the third chunk saw a lot of work by Mr. Jordan before he passed away. So the structure isn't going to change, regardless. An author also has to learn not to let reviews or reader reactions influence him/her TOO much. Writing is a very solitary art, and the writer learns to trust their instincts. One of the early lessons to learn in writing is that feedback is good, but must be held at arm's length.

    If anything, knowing that there is one part out for readers to enjoy will take some of the pressure off of me and, hopefully, allow me to work more smoothly on the next two sections. Thanks for the question!

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  • 97

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2009

    Patrick

    How long does it take to write a book? (Just guestimate . . . )

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, it honestly depends on the book. It's not just a matter of length, it's also a matter of complexity. The more viewpoints I'm trying to balance, and the deeper the setting, the longer the book will take. Also, it depends on what you call 'writing' a book—do you include all drafts, or just the rough? What about the planning? Here are a few estimates based on some of my books, drafting and planning time included.

    Alcatraz Vs. The Evil Librarians (50k words, one viewpoint.) 2-3 months.
    Elantris (200k words, three main viewpoints.) 6-8 months.
    Mistborn: The Hero of Ages (250k words, 5 main viewpoints.) 8-10 months.
    The Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm (300k words. 21 viewpoints. Chunks outlined and written by Mr. Jordan already.) 16 months, pulling extra hours.

    So . . . imagine if I HADN'T had outlines and materials left by Mr. Jordan. It would probably have taken around 2 years to write a book that length. (Which, actually, was about how long it took Mr. Jordan to write a lot of his books.)

    Every author is different, however. Some write in bursts, some write slow and steady, a little each day. It's hard to judge exactly how long it will take you to write a book. There's no 'right' way to do it.

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  • 98

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2009

    Patrick

    Where do you work?—Like . . . do you have a studio? Office? Library? Do you use a laptop? Do you go out into a cave on a hill and "convene with nature"? How long do you work each day?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I write in my house, usually on the couch in the basement or in a comfy chair in the bedroom. Depends on the day. I use a laptop, and it's a MUST for me. I like to lean back when I type. My work day varies depending on the project, the deadline, and the things going on in my life. Like most self-employed people, I probably put in more hours on average than someone working for someone else—but, then, it's hard to complain about that because I'm the one who sets my hours.

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  • 99

    Interview: May 15th, 2009

    Dave Brendon

    Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Brandon, and welcome to the South African SFF scene! First off, will you please tell us a bit about yourself? Where you grew up, what started you reading, and why you started writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was a big reader as a child, then fell away for a while. In third and fourth grade, my favorite series was the Three Investigators books, a mystery series. As I grew older, the books that other people gave me to read were realistic fiction–books that bored me out of my skull, so my reading habits dribbled off. By junior high I wasn’t reading anything new, until I had a wonderful English teacher who told me I couldn’t keep doing book reports on novels that were four grades below my reading level. Instead, she gave me her copy of Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. I had no idea books like that existed–it engaged my imagination like no other book ever had. At that point I started reading every fantasy book I could get my hands on, including The Eye of the World when it came out in paperback. I was hooked, and there was no going back. I even started writing some myself–on my website in the library section there’s a short story I wrote in high school for a writing contest at a local SF convention. It’s really not very good, but it took first place in the student division, and at the awards ceremony was one of the first times I can remember thinking, “Wow, maybe I can do this.”

    My mother, however, thought I should study something more concrete and said I could keep writing on the side. I started college as a biochemistry major, but when I took two years off to serve a mission for my church I realized I didn’t miss chemistry at all and just wanted to write. On my off days I worked on what eventually became my first novel, and when I got back to school I changed my major to English and determined to become a professional author.

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  • 100

    Interview: May 15th, 2009

    Dave Brendon

    You’ve been using the Internet as an excellent tool for marketing your work and getting readers a behind-the-scenes seat on being an author; what led to you taking that path?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are some authors out there who are really good at sitting down and blogging about themselves or whatever’s on their mind and building a following of likeminded people, but I actually find that a bit of a struggle. Perhaps writing fiction kind of sucks away all of the “writing juices” from me, leaving me unmotivated to write anything promotional. Or perhaps it’s because I’m really a recluse at heart. I want people to read my fiction, but I don’t necessarily care if they know about the man behind the screen. He’s not important–only the story matters. So while I do manage to do some of the normal blogging things–talking about my life and the creative process–I also see my website and blog as an opportunity to give back to the fans. In the publishing world, a lot of time passes between one book’s release and the next’s, and I hope that giving my readers something to read regularly while they’re waiting is a good way to keep my books in their mind. If someone who reads a book by me puts my name into a search engine, I want something interesting to show up–I think of a lot of my website content in terms of the bonus content you get on a special edition DVD. The biggest example of this is the chapter-by-chapter annotations I post regularly–think of them as the director’s commentary track that you can listen to while you watch a movie, usually on the second or third watching of a movie you like. You can read a chapter or section of the book, then read my companion discussion of that particular section. The annotations alone add a lot of text to the reading experience–the annotations for Mistborn 3: The Hero of Ages that I’ll start posting soon total 40,000 words, which is long enough to be called a novel in its own right (though my novels themselves are quite a bit longer than that). Also like on a DVD, you can find deleted scenes and alternate endings on my website–earlier drafts that I had to discard but which the readers might find interesting. And I do like to let people know the status of the projects I’m currently working on, with handy progress bars in one corner of the page.

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  • 101

    Interview: May 15th, 2009

    Dave Brendon

    Moving on to the Wheel of Time, I’m sure you can remember exactly where and when you were when you first laid eyes on The Eye of the World; what, in your opinion, makes the Wheel of Time series so popular?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do remember exactly where and when I first laid eyes on The Eye of the World. It was right after the paperback came out, and I was at the local comic store where I bought all my fantasy books. While browsing the new paperback shelf, I saw this huge fantasy novel there. I can almost feel that moment, standing and holding the book in my hands, listening to someone play an antiquated upright of Cadash in the background. I think the cover of Eye is the best Darryl Sweet has ever done–one of the best in fantasy. I loved the cover. The feel of the troop marching along, Lan and Moiraine proud and face forward. . . . The cover screamed epic. I bought the book and loved it. I still think Eye is one of the greatest fantasy books ever written. It signifies an era, the culmination of the epic quest genre which had been brewing since Tolkien initiated it in the ’60s. The Wheel of Time dominated my reading during the ’90s, influencing heavily my first few attempts at my own fantasy novels. I think it did that to pretty much all of us; even many of the most literarily snobbish of fantasy readers were youths when I was, and read The Eye of the World when I did. Robert Jordan showed us what it was to have vision and scope in a fantasy series–he did a wonderful job giving his readers a sense of immensity to his story, while at the same time focusing on the specific lives of his characters. He did an excellent job of creating a large set of empathetic characters and keeping them straight in the reader’s mind. He’s a model writer for walking the line between familiarity (the “farmboy saves the world from an evil overlord” story) and originality (his use of magic, his political worldbuilding). The descriptiveness of his writing is great. And the prologue to The Eye of the World is hands-down one of the most interesting introductions to any series. All those factors have won readers over and cemented the Wheel of Time as one of the most popular fantasy series of all time. Nobody in the adult fantasy market today has left more of an impact on more people’s lives than Robert Jordan.

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  • 102

    Interview: May 15th, 2009

    Dave Brendon

    It must have been surreal when you found out you were going to finish a series you loved and work from the notes of an author you (and many others, myself included) admire so much; does it still feel as if you’re dreaming, sometimes? Is there still that little voice telling you you’re going to wake up soon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I still feel a little stunned at times. It’s odd. It’s been a year and a half, but from time to time I still stop and think, “Wait, how in the world did this happen? Out of all of the people who could have been chosen, did this really happen to me?” I kind of feel like Sam, carrying Frodo the last few paces up the mountain. I’m finishing the Master’s work for him, since he is unable to. I’m just glad I could be here to help for the last stretch when I was needed.

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  • 103

    Interview: May 15th, 2009

    Dave Brendon

    How has it been working so closely with Harriet? Granted, you are in different States, but you know what I mean. :-)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Harriet is a world class editor–she really is great at what she does. I’ve had several opportunities to meet with her in person–she, and Mr. Jordan’s staff, are awesome. His two assistants, Maria and Alan, are continuity experts and went through my completed manuscript pages fact checking and giving feedback on general issues as well. I had worried that having three editors on this project would make it more difficult to work on, but so far it’s simply been a big help. There is so much going on in this book and this world that having the extra sets of eyes is very helpful.

    I’ve really enjoyed the process. At the beginning, after I read all the notes and explained to the team my feelings on the various outlines for the different characters, Harriet pretty much let me call the shots when it came to the actual drafting of the novel. As an editor, she works best when I provide material to her, then she works her magic to turn it from good to excellent. When I turned manuscript pages in, and she came back to me with line edits—where she goes through and tweaks the language of the book—it quickly became obvious what a pro she is and how much she loves this series. It’s truly an honor to work with her.

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  • 104

    Interview: May 15th, 2009

    Dave Brendon

    Not only are you finishing A Memory of Light, you’re also writing your own work; how on earth to you balance and juggle everything? I s’pose it helps to be a full-time writer. :-) and what is your day like while working on A Memory of Light? Do you work according to a schedule? Are there enough hours in the day? :-)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let me combine the answers for these two questions. You may not be surprised to hear that I have many more ideas for books than I have time to work on them. There are several first drafts or partial drafts of novels that I’ve written that need serious revision before they ever see the light of day, but I have to prioritize according to the urgency of the project and the deadlines I’m working under. Part two of A Memory of Light (the working title is Shifting Winds, but this will ultimately change) will be getting the largest share of my attention during the next year. I also have to finish the fourth Alcatraz book in the next few months–Scholastic will probably start breathing down my neck around July or August, but my goal is to write it when I have a rough draft done for Shifting Winds. I often work on two books at once–writing new material for one book and editing another. Writing and editing take different types of attention, and I can usually only write new material for four to six hours a day, but I can revise all day long–maybe this is the difference between mental heavy lifting and mental long-distance running. I recently hired an assistant to handle a lot of the non-writing tasks associated with being self-employed; this should free up another couple hours each day during which I can work on revising The Way of Kings as I mentioned above. I generally put in an eight-hour workday, then call it quits if other things are happening. From 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. is family time, and then if nothing pressing is going on I head back to work after dinner and after my son is in bed. It works for me–most of the time, the fifty or sixty hours a week I spend writing are quite fun. As my wife says, writing is my job and my hobby. I’d generally rather be working on one of my books than sitting in front of the television.

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  • 105

    Interview: May 18th, 2009

    Clayton Neuman

    Were you ever reluctant to take on this project?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I spent a long time thinking, "Can anyone do this?" And my answer came out "No." But if someone else can try, I wanted it to be me. My goal has been to get the characters to feel like themselves when you read them. But it's like a different director directing the same actors and using the same script. You're going to end up with two different movies.

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  • 106

    Interview: May 18th, 2009

    Clayton Neuman

    Did you have to change the way you write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I didn't want to imitate Robert Jordan's style—I think that would turn into parody. But I needed to be more descriptive. The Wheel of Time books are lavish in their concrete sensory descriptions. And that's had a strong influence on my own writing: I just sent a couple of pages of something else to my editor, and he wrote back and said, "Wow, you've changed."

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  • 107

    Interview: May 18th, 2009

    Clayton Neuman

    Did you struggle with any aspects of the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The biggest struggle was the sheer weight of characters. I was working on Perrin's viewpoint at one point, and Jordan's editorial assistant sent me this file filled with dozens and dozens of names of side characters for him that had not even appeared in the book yet. It's like juggling boulders, because there's so much weight to each of them.

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  • 108

    Interview: May 18th, 2009

    Clayton Neuman

    What are the biggest questions you wanted answered by the end of the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was really curious about Moiraine and her plot line. Her disappearance was so open-ended. I wanted to see some meetings: Elayne and her mother, Tam and Rand, getting Perrin and Mat back together. I can't say whether or not that happens, but I was looking at them. In some cases there were opportunities and notes for it, and in other cases... I'm not going to force it. Jim did include in his notes what happened to Asmodean, and his widow made the call on where to put it in the book.

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  • 109

    Interview: Jun 1st, 2009

    Damon Cap

    How do you feel that writing this book changes what you would have done in your life? I know it was probably a very difficult decision, because it's such a great project. But how does this affect you as a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's actually a great question. It was a difficult decision—it was the easiest difficult decision I've ever made. How about that? Because I made it in a snap. There's no way I was going to pass this up. But at the same time, making that decision made me realize... I knew when I was making it, that this would change my life forever. And it would change... I mean, I had to set aside a number of book projects that I've wanted to write. That just got cast aside, and I just didn't have time for it anymore. And I don't know if I will write those books; if I'll be able to write those books. It completely changed tracks—you know, you talk about a train being derailed—well, you know, I completely was thrown off-track to something completely different. It did change my career drastically.

    DAMON CAP

    Do you feel like—and this is going to be a difficult question—but do you feel like that it's taken away a little bit of yourself? Do you feel like you're going to be typecast as that person that wrote Jordan's last book?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I don't know. I don't think so. Partially because I plan to do this and be done. I don't plan to make a career of finishing other people's books. In fact, I would have said no to pretty much anyone else. The Wheel of Time was the foundational and formative epic fantasy series of my childhood. These were the books I was reading—Rand, and Perrin, and Mat, they were my friends that I had growing up. This wasn't something that I could say no to. Just from a kind of... I consider Robert Jordan a mentor. My hero in a lot of ways. There was no way I was going to say no. But I wouldn't have said yes to pretty much anyone else, and I don't plan to do other sorts of tie-in books. I've put my soul into this book. There is a piece of me in this. It's hard to explain. It's not like... I didn't treat it like I was given a work-for-hire project. It's not like I'm writing a Star Wars book, as fun as that would be, or something like this. I was given these notes and then essentially told by Harriet, "I want to see what you're doing, after you've done with it, but you have full license. Do what you feel you need to do to write this book." I was given essentially complete control. Now, Harriet—Robert Jordan's wife—she has complete control.

    DAMON CAP

    The final say.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah, she has the final say. But she's an editor. And she didn't tell me how to write the book. She gave me the notes and said, "Go. Do what you need to do to make a great book." And so, this has become... It is a collaboration. It's a true collaboration, that's what they call it; I'm collaborating. And there were big holes that I had to fill in. Now, there are a lot of notes that he left behind and there's a lot—this is mostly his book—but there's a bit of me in it. And it's not just a work-for-hire. Which actually... It's good. I don't feel like I'm, I don't know, stepping in and just doing something. It's hard to explain. I don't know if that's making any sense at all.

    DAMON CAP

    No, that's definitely makes sense.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    But I'm putting as much or more into this as I would put into one of my own books. And I don't feel like this would typecast me any more than writing my own books typecasts me as a person who writes Brandon Sanderson books. If that makes sense. You get typecast as yourself; it's impossible to not be typecast as yourself. So...yeah.

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  • 110

    Interview: Jun 1st, 2009

    Damon Cap

    So from the standpoint of notes, because I know there were a lot of notes involved in this book, and it was funny because Ringo was talking today, you know, we were talking about e-books and things like that. If you had a say, would you have written more? I know there is some sort of, you know...We talk about the three books. And there is some sort of...From a publishing standpoint, could you have written a book that was seven books? Did he leave enough notes, and do you feel like that maybe sometimes in the standard of e-books, some would like to have seen your rough drafts of the Jordan work, would that be of interest because of that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think it's unlikely to see the rough drafts. Because I know that the team working on the Wheel of Time—Harriet and those—are somewhat more...skeptical is the wrong word. Robert Jordan didn't like to show his work to people until it was on the twelfth draft. Harriet didn't see it until it'd gone through twelve drafts. He was very...Didn't like to show unfinished work to people. That was just how he was. Different authors approach things different ways. With Warbreaker, my own book, I put the first draft on my web site. I do stuff like that. I work from a different kind of angle. I don't know what it is.

    But I'm going to probably push to get her to let me publish the notes, or to publish a book talking that includes part of the notes along with a discussion of how I translated the notes to book. Something like that. I would like to do something like that. The call will be Harriet's. And I probably won't even talk about it with her until the book is done. 'Till, you know, we've got the Wheel of Time done. Then I might approach her and say, "Hey, would you mind if I did something like this? Would you be interested?" Because I think the fans would really like to see it.

    DAMON CAP

    I think it would be definitely an interesting idea.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    You mentioned the three books. And, I mean...The Wheel of Time is huge. There's lots of different places we could go. They are not places that I think we're going to go. Because we don't want to see this turn into something...Not to say anything against the media properties, that's fine, but we don't want to see the Wheel of Time become that. Robert Jordan left notes on this book, which has become three, but it's become three that are collectively of the same length as the book he was going to write. That's the thing you have to remember with the split. He was writing an 800,000 word book, I'm writing an 800,000 word book—8 to 900,000 word book—Tor has decided to slice it up and release it in three segments. It's not like I've decided to write two extra books. I'm writing the one book and I'm allowing them to split it into three. I don't really have the call on it. But that's something different.

    He did leave notes on a few other things. One was called the Outriggers, which he had talked about with his fans writing. He actually had a contract with Tor. I don't know what happened with those, but that was a trilogy that he had planned to write that he had notes for. And then he also had notes for two additional prequels. He had done... He had told Tor he wanted to do three of those; he wrote one of them called New Spring. There was going to be one that was focusing on Tam's story—that's Rand's father—and he was going to do one that was essentially the sequel to New Spring, with Moiraine, how she arrived at the—how she and Lan arrived in the Two Rivers. That sort of thing. And those were planned. There's a chance you'll see those. A chance. My suggestion to Harriet has been to, you know, to be very careful. We don't want to exploit the Wheel of Time to make it go on and on and on. And so, while you may see those books—I know Tom Doherty is pushing for them a lot—we're not going to go back and do the prequel about Lews Therin. We're not going to do a prequel about Artur Hawkwing. We're not going to... You're not going to see this—

    DAMON CAP

    Shared world.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    —shared world sort of thing. And so, if Harriet asks me to do those, I probably will. Meaning the Outriggers or the prequels. Because I don't want anyone else to do them, if that makes any sense.

    DAMON CAP

    Since you've taken over, it's a little bit now your baby.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah. But if we do those, there'll be years between. If that makes any sense.

    DAMON CAP

    I think there has to be, yeah.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I mean, I got into this because I want to write books. My own stories. And that's what I'm excited about, that's what I do, and I'm really having a blast doing that. And so...the Wheel of Time is an exception. It's a special thing, that I am really honored to be part of. But I don't want to make my career doing other people's books.

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  • 111

    Interview: Jun 1st, 2009

    Damon Cap

    And as you touch on that, your books that you've written yourself focus—let's not say heavily on religion, but your character has a religious foundation per se, and Jordan on the other end of the spectrum; there's really not that formalized sort of religion.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, there's spirituality, but not religion.

    DAMON CAP

    And how did you, as a writer that usually writes in that, you know… How did that make a difference for you? How did you have to approach it; did you have to make changes in the way that you write because of that?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    You know, that's not one specific thing that I felt I had to change a lot about. The truth is, for any given fantasy work you're working on, there are certain things that draw a lot of your attention, that you focus on, and certain things you don't. When I wrote my kids' series, there's no religion in those. That just wasn't important for the world-building and the setting for those books. And I've written other books where religion is very important. Religion fascinates me. I'm a religious person. And because of that, I feel that the misuse of religion can be one of the greatest evils in the world. And so, you see me delving into that sort of thing and just the different approaches on religion. You know, I love to deal with different types of religion and all that sort of stuff. But I think Robert Jordan's approach is very interesting. And I've always liked his approach to it. Like I said, there's a spirituality without a religion. And...the Wheel of Time, that's not an area that's focused on a lot. And so, it was a very easy transition for me. Different books, you spend your efforts on in different places.

    On Elantris, I spent a long time on the languages. On Mistborn, I didn't. Because in Mistborn, it wasn't... The world just didn't revolve around the way that languages work. We had an all-oppressive dictator God King who had forced everyone to kind of adopt the same language. Beyond that, the books were taking place at the center capital of the world where everyone spoke the same language. So there weren't even... You know, there were little dialects here and there, but I didn't focus on language there. Whereas I did in Elantris. The same thing with different books, so...

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  • 112

    Interview: Jun 1st, 2009

    Damon Cap

    As you were doing the book, the Wheel of Time stuff, and you have all your notes and everything, was there any, like...funny stories? Was there anything when you go back and forth...like, obviously you have all these notes, you're dealing with a bunch of different people, and whenever you're doing any sort of artistic endeavor... Were there any sort of, like...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've got a good story for you. One time, I was trying to keep track of everyone who was with the character Perrin. You guys know Perrin. So Perrin's off doing this thing, and one of the biggest challenges of writing the Wheel of Time books was the sheer number of characters. Not the main characters—I know the main characters, they're my friends, I grew up with these people, I know them just like hanging out with my high school buddies—but keeping track of all the Aes Sedai, and the Wise Ones, and you know, the Asha'man, and all these various people that are all over the place and saying, "OK. Who is with Perrin and who is with Rand, and who is..."

    Anyway. I sent an email off to Team Jordan. You know, Harriet and Maria and Alan who are the... They were two editorial assistants that worked directly with Robert Jordan. Maria and Alan. I think it was Alan I sent an email to, and I said, "Do you have just like a list of everybody? I can go compile one of my own, I'm planning to do it, but if you have one already that says, 'These are the people who are with Perrin.' If you've got something like that." And he said, "I found this thing in the notes buried several files in." And things like this. "Here. I found this. Maybe this is what you want." And he sent me this, and it was called "with Perrin." I thought, "OK. Perfect." I open up this file and it's actually not what I wanted. Instead it is dozens of names of people who haven't appeared in the books yet. These are all the names of all the Two Rivers folk who are with Perrin. Like there are two hundred or so. Just names. Listed off. That have never appeared in the books. Sometimes with their profession, and a little about them, and things like that. And it just blew my mind that there was all of this detail that Robert Jordan had put into this world that nobody sees—and he wasn't planning for them to see. He's not going to have a big list of names in the final book; he wasn't planning that. He just needed to know their names so that he knew that he had them. And this is the level of detail and world-building that Robert Jordan did. I got a big chuckle out of that. Just, list of names. Then I started stealing them like a thief so I had good names that he had come up with, that I could use in the books.

    DAMON CAP

    Are you using them for other characters or using them for people...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'm mostly using them where he intended them to be. Because he had other lists of names for... As the book has progressed and I've discovered these little notes files... Because the notes, there are huge, massive amounts of notes. We say there are about two hundred manuscript pages of stuff done for Gathering...for A Memory of Light. The three books. But beyond that, there are hundreds of thousands of words worth of just background notes, of world-building notes, of things like that. When we say the notes for the book, we're talking about actual specifics to A Memory of Light. But there are hundreds of thousands of other notes; there's just too much for one person to even deal with. So I let the two assistants dig through that. And so once I found out that there were lists of names, I started getting those files so I could use his names in places where we had them. So that I would have to name fewer and fewer people. Because his naming conventions are very distinctive. And, you know, I don't think... I think if you were to read, you could probably tell which names are mine and which are his, because we name things differently. And I'm trying to use his wherever I can, just to give that right feel to the book.

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  • 113

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nadine

    You have created some fantastic, original and well thought out magical systems. Where did you get the inspiration for the metal-based system of the Mistborn series and the breath-based system of Warbreaker?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you! During the early days of my career—before I got published—I found myself naturally creating a new magic system for each book I wrote. I'm not sure why I did this. I just found the process too involving, too interesting, to stop.

    For Mistborn, I came to the book wanting several things. I wanted a great magic system that would enhance the graceful, martial-arts style fights. This was going to be a series of sneaking thieves, assassins, and night-time exploration. And so I developed the powers with a focus on that idea. What would make the thieving crew better at what they did? I based each power around an archetype of a thieving crew. The Thug, the Sneak, the Fast-talker, etc.

    At the same time, I wanted to enhance the 'industrial revolution' feel of the novels through the magic system. I wanted something that felt like an industrial-age science, something that was a good hybrid of science and magic. I found myself drawn to Alchemy and its use of metals, then extrapolated from that to a way to release power locked inside of metal. Metabolism grew out of that. It felt natural. We metabolize food for energy; letting Allomancers metabolize metal had just the right blend of science and magic.

    For Warbreaker, I was looking back a little further, shooting for a more Renaissance-era feel. And so, I extrapolated from the early beliefs that similarities created bonds. In other words, you could affect an object (in this case, bring an object to life) by creating a bond between it and yourself, letting it take on a semblance of your own life.

    Moving beyond that was the idea of color as life. When a person dies, their color drains from them. The same happens when plants die. Vibrant color is a sign of life itself, and so I worked with this metaphor and the concept of Breath as life to develop the magic. In this case, I wanted magical powers that would work better 'in' society, meaning things that would enhance regular daily lives. Magical servants and soldiers, animated through arcane powers, worked better for this world than something more strictly fighting-based, like in Mistborn.

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  • 114

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    carmen22

    How long did it take for you to complete the Mistborn trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wrote the entire trilogy, straight through, starting in the beginning of 2003 and ending in early 2006.

    carmen22

    How much research, if any, went into the making of the Mistborn trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did quite a bit, mostly reading about the era of the industrial revolution, alongside researching alchemy and eunuchs.

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  • 115

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    carmen22

    To further the above question by Nadine: How did you ever keep the unique power systems all straight and use them so well for your readers to understand?

    The powers, to me, were just so fascinating, well developed, and unique on so many levels! I think with a lesser artist than yourself the powers might have been too much to take in, but I found them quite easy to follow and understand. Just amazing! You seriously are one of my favorite authors. I'll be in line for all of your books!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thanks! It took a lot of practice. Keeping them straight for myself isn't so difficult—it's like keeping characters straight. The more I've written, the easier it's become.

    What is more difficult is keeping it all straight for the readers. This can be tough. One of the challenges with fantasy is what we call the Learning Curve. It can be very daunting to pick up a book and find not only new characters, but an entirely new world, new physics, and a lot of new words and names.

    I generally try to introduce this all at a gentle curve. In some books, like Warbreaker, starting with the magic system worked. But in Mistborn, I felt that it was complex enough—and the setting complex enough—that I needed to ease into the magic, and so I did it bit by bit, with Vin.

    In all things, practice makes perfect. I have a whole pile of unpublished novels where I didn't do nearly as good a job of this. Even still, I think I have much to learn. In the end of Mistborn One and Warbreaker both I think I leave a little too much confusion about the capabilities of the magic.

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  • 116

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    carmen22

    And last but definitely not least, you seem to have left the New World of Mistborn open for a book maybe featuring Spook in the future, any thoughts?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did leave it open. But that's partially because I feel that part of any good book is the indication that the characters continue to live, the world continues to turn. I want readers to be free to imagine futures for the characters and more stories in the world.

    For Mistborn, I'm not planning—right now—to do any Spook books. I do have plans to do another trilogy set in the world, though it would take place hundreds of years later, once technology has caught up to what it should be. Essentially, think guns, cars, skyscrapers—and Allomancers.

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  • 117

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nadine

    In a recent (May 2009) interview you stated the following:

    Q: What do you have planned after you finish Wheel of Time?
    A: My next series will be The Way of Kings, which is the start of a big epic for me. I've plotted it as ten books. Fantasy writers, we get into this business because we love the big epics. We grow up reading Brooks and Jordan, and we get to the point where we say, "I want to do this myself."

    This should tie you up for a good ten years after you finish The Wheel of Time. Does it mean that you are not going to write anymore one- or three-volume epic fantasy novels?

    Can you give us some hints as to what The Way of Kings will be about?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've told Tor that I want to release Kings on a schedule of two books, followed by one book in another setting, then two more Kings. The series of Kings has been named The Stormlight Archive. (The Way of Kings is the name of the first volume.)

    So I should be doing plenty of shorter series in between. We'll see how busy this all keeps me. I think I'd go crazy if I weren't allowed to do new worlds every now and again.

    But, then, Kings turned out very, very well. (The first book is complete as of yesterday.) What is it about? Well...I'm struggling to find words to explain it. I could easily give a one or two line pitch on my previous books, but the scope of what I'm trying with this novel is such that it defies my attempts to pin it down.

    It happens in a world where hurricane-like storms crash over the land every few days. All of plant life and animal life has had to evolve to deal with this. Plants, for instance, have shells they can withdraw into before a storm. Even trees pull in their leaves and branches. There is no soil, just endless fields of rock.

    According to the mythology of the world, mankind used to live in The Tranquiline Halls. Heaven. Well, a group of evil spirits known as the Voidbringers assaulted and captured heaven, casting out God and men. Men took root on Roshar, the world of storms, but the Voidbringers chased them there, trying to push them off of Roshar and into Damnation.

    The voidbringers came against man a hundred by a hundred times, trying to destroy them or push them away. To help them cope, the Almighty gave men powerful suits of armor and mystical weapons, known as Shardblades. Led by ten angelic Heralds and ten orders of knights known as Radiants, men resisted the Voidbringers ten thousand times, finally winning and finding peace.

    Or so the legends say. Today, the only remnants of those supposed battles are the Shardblades, the possession of which makes a man nearly invincible on the battlefield. The entire world, essentially, is at war with itself—and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.

    That's the backstory. Probably too much of it. (Sorry.) The book follows a young spearman forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn't understand and doesn't really want to fight. It will deal with the truth of what happened deep in mankind's past. Why did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?

    I've been working on this book for ten years now. Rather than making it easier to describe and explain, that has made it more daunting. I'm sure I'll get better at it as I revise and as people ask me more often. ;)

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  • 118

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Clippership14

    Also just some technical questions—did you get noticed from JABberwocky from a cold-query or did you have connections?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Originally, I queried. I got turned down. I then met Joshua at the Nebula awards and he told me to query again. That time, he liked the query and read sample chapters—then rejected those, but told me to submit to him what I wrote next. That happened a number of times, each book getting a rejection—but stronger encouragement that I was getting closer.

    Clippership14

    What was the journey like when you first sought publication?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Long, frustrating, and difficult. I wrote 13 novels before I sold Elantris, which was my sixth. The big change for me happened when I managed to figure out how to revise. I always had good ideas and got better and better at storytelling. But it was the power of revision that finally got me published.

    Clippership14

    How long did it take?

    Brandon Sanderson

    About eight years of dedicated writing and being rejected.

    Clippership14

    I'd wager not long, considering how well written Elantris is. =)

    Brandon Sanderson

    You're too kind. But remember that it was my sixth book. The first ones were dreadful.

    Clippership14

    Are you comfortable working with editors and marketing people by now?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, actually. I've always been very comfortable with that part of the job. I think that after working so long on my own, being ignored, I was just finally happy to HAVE editors and marketing people.

    Clippership14

    What is the best part about promoting your books? (in your opinion)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Easy. Meeting my readers and having the chance to thank them, in person, for supporting me in my writing addiction.

    Clippership14

    As a writer, what's your favorite part of the process?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The first few chapters of a new book. When the world is exciting and new, and I get to do something different and challenging.

    Clippership14

    Do you have a "drawer-full" of ideas waiting to be put to paper?

    Brandon Sanderson

    More like a brain-full, but yes. It's particularly bad now as I had to shelve a number of projects I was working on in order to do the WoT. I don't regret it at all, but those stories keep pounding on the inside of my skull, yelling and begging for me to let them out.

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  • 119

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Chubby_Monkey

    As The Gathering Storm draws near release, there are many WOT fans that have a large worry that you will not do RJ justice and ruin his series (especially after 4 years of waiting). How big of a worry is this for you, having to fill his shoes, and what are you doing to prepare yourself?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They are right to worry, and I don't blame them at all. They have no assurance whatsoever that I won't ruin their book—the past has proven, I think, that series get ruined more than they get saved when a new author steps in.

    I hope, very sincerely, to be in the second category, the one who saves a series rather than kills it. But only November will offer any proof other than my word, and I fully expect people to worry right up until they've read the novel.

    The only preparation a person could really have for something like this was to be a lifelong fan. I think this book is good. I think it is VERY good. I'm not worried any more myself, though I was quite worried when I began.

    What can I offer fans right now? Only the promise that the book has had Harriet and Mr. Jordan's assistants working from the beginning to make certain I didn't screw it up. Beyond that, I've made it my first priority to stay true to his wishes and notes, and not deviate unless there is a very, very good reason.

    (The only times I've 'deviated' was in to offer more explanation or depth to a scene. I haven't cut anything he wanted to be in the book, save for a few places where he contradicted himself. I.E. There were some scenes where he said "I'm thinking of doing this or this" or "I'm thinking of doing this, but I don't know." In those places, I've made the final call.)

    All I can ask is this. Give me a chance. Read the book. After that, we'll talk.

    (The most stressful part is probably the realization that no matter what I do, I won't be able to please everyone. Robert Jordan couldn't do that himself. So I will fail some of you. But I hope to please the vast majority of you.)

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  • 120

    Interview: Jul 23rd, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, now that The Way of Kings rewrite is finished, I've moved on to the next thing on my plate: Alcatraz Book Four. (And if you're wondering why the heck I'm working on this instead of on WoT 13, I did a blog post warning about all this earlier in the summer.)

    I was planning on putting off Alcatraz until September/October, but over the summer I realized that I needed to do it in July. It's time for a break. I've been working on the WoT straight since January 2008. Eighteen months is the longest I've ever spent on the same project, and I'm feeling that I need to step back from it for a short time and let my mind recharge. So I won't be doing any new WoT material for the next month or so. (Though I will be working on outlines and plans for the next sections.)

    You can track the progress on Alcatraz via the progress bars. My goal right now is to be done with Alcatraz by the time I'm back from Worldcon, and be through with the new outlines for WoT 13 by September 1st. The book is almost 2/3 done, so things still look good for getting it in by January.

    It's kind of interesting, sometimes, to step back and look at the process of how this writing thing all works for me. I think that my early years of writing have had a lot to do with how I now write. People talk about my productivity sometimes. I think a lot of it has to do with how I jump from project to project to stay fresh. The first Alcatraz book came from me needing to do something new between books two and three of Mistborn, and over the last few years, they've been wonderful opportunities to renew myself.

    Perhaps I've got writing ADD. (Of course, I don't know if you can call it that, since I generally stick to a project for six or eight months before hopping to a new one.) But I think this all goes back to the fact that I wrote thirteen different books (most of them in different worlds) during my unpublished days. I always hopped to something new every few months, and that kept me excited about writing.

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  • 121

    Interview: Aug 20th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Recently, I've found myself thinking a lot about the years when I was simply another Wheel of Time fan. This is likely due to the coming release of The Gathering Storm, which will be the first WoT book that I don't get to experience with the rest of the world as it is released. That puts me in a strange position.

    Actually, a lot of things about this project put me in a strange position. I've become the most direct face of the Wheel of Time, with my blogging and appearances. Because of that I find myself (by design) being an advocate for the series, rather than a commentator on the series. There's a distinction there. It's no longer my place, for instance, to offer criticism on the cover art. Perhaps some would call it two-faced of me to avoid discussion of things in the series that perhaps deserve criticism; I just feel that it is my job to stand in Mr. Jordan's place, as best I can, and be respectful of his memory and the responsibility I've been given.

    Still, despite this, I do find myself remembering the days when I was just a fan. I went through all of the typical WoT fandom emotions. There were times when I tore through the books, rereading them voraciously, loving every page. And yes—though I don't now talk about it often—there were times when I was annoyed with the WoT. The speed at which the series was released, the quirks of Mr. Jordan's language, the times he focused on a side character I didn't want to read about.

    There would be times when I would reread through all the books—taking months and months—in order to read a new volume that just came out. And then the next one would take just long enough to come out that I'd have forgotten the details of the books. I'd feel mentally fatigued and think, "What do I do? Do I spend all of that time reading again, or do I try to read the new one without a refresher on who is who, and perhaps lose some important threads?" During those times, I would think, "Why am I subjecting myself to this? This series is overhyped."

    And then I'd read the books and remember what I'd forgotten. Not just the names and plot threads; the love and the thrill of a purely majestic epic fantasy.

    The Wheel of Time is one of the few series I read a lot when I was younger that made the transition to adulthood with me. Other authors—good authors—weren't able to write for both the youthful Brandon and the adult Brandon. But Jordan could do it. There is something very special about these books. I think you'll find it again when you dig back into the Wheel of Time for what is happening in October, whether you decide to read the entire series (I suggest at least reading Knife of Dreams again) or just grab The Gathering Storm.

    Still, I guess I'm posting about this to say, "I understand. I don't feel it's right for me to agree with you most of the time when you complain. But I do understand. I've been there." I understand that some are annoyed at there being three books instead of one, I understand that some are excited about getting three books, and I understand that most of you probably feel both annoyed and excited at the same time. (This series does that to people.) I understand what it's like to defend the Wheel of Time vigorously to friends, but then find yourself saying, "I think I'll wait to read the rest of them until the thing is finally done" to other friends later in the week. I've been there. I have a friend who—each time Mr. Jordan's name was mentioned—used to raise his fist to the sky and curse. Partially in jest, partially to express his fascination and frustration at the same time. I empathized with him a lot.

    But I've read the ending now. It works. It fits. A journey like this one hinges a lot on the destination. And that destination turned out to be everything I wanted it to be.

    Some of you haven't ever felt these feelings; you've loved the WoT the entire time, and haven't felt a bit of frustration. Some of you have only recently discovered the series, and wonder what the fuss and frustration is about in those of us who have been reading for nearly twenty years now. To you who are like I was, I just say this. Give yourself a chance to discover the books again, and you'll remember what this is all about.

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  • 122

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    September first has come (well, and passed, by now) and I'm pleased to say that I met my goals. If you were reading the blog a few months back, you might remember when I explained that I needed to divert a lot of attention this summer achieving a couple of goals. The rewrite of The Way of Kings and the first draft of the fourth Alcatraz book. I not only had contracts to fulfill, but I needed a break.

    Well, Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens is finished as of August 31st. There's some revising to do, but that can happen on the back-burner as focus shifts back to The Wheel of Time. The break has been good for me; doing something different, as I've often said, refreshes me and helps me get work done. Just like the first Alcatraz book was something I needed to do to distract me between Mistborn books, work on this one has helped me take a breath and step back from the Wheel of Time (which had been dominating my life for fifteen or sixteen months.)

    It's time to move onward, however. I'm still waiting for a few bits of material from Charleston that I asked for, but that's all right since I think the thing I need to do now is re-read all of Knife of Dreams, and maybe spots of some previous books. I don't have the three months to dedicate to re-reading the entire series again, though I'm going to take the audiobooks on tour for plane rides.

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  • 123

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Anyway, I like to be very up-front with readers about what is going on. Waiting for novels can get frustrating because of how long the process takes, and because . . . well, it's an artistic endeavor that relies on the creative output of (usually) a single person. We artists can be flakey.

    Or, put more appropriately, the artistic and creative process can be erratic. I don't think George R. R. Martin is flakey, for instance. An artist has to know their process, and work within its bounds. It takes him years to write a book; that's just how it goes. That's pretty good, considering the genius of his prose. If he wants quality, he has to have the freedom to work as he needs to. Writing books is not like building widgets. Forcing it doesn't work.

    Coaxing it, however, can be effective. For me, taking a break to do something different—like the Alcatraz books—has proven essential. I don't think it slows down my other books; in fact, it speeds them up, as it keeps my creative process working. Other writers call me prolific. That's only because my diversions (Like Warbreaker or Alcatraz) have so far been successful as publishable projects, where taking four months off to go golfing wouldn't be. But, that's a tangent.

    Anyway, I don't think forcing the process can work. However, I think being open about what is happening with readers—giving them transparency and a concrete view on what I'm doing—can be very helpful. When I take a diversion, you'll know what I'm doing, and the progress bars (hopefully) will show you exactly what I'm doing and when.

    For now, A Memory of Light 2 (we'll see what it ends up being named; I've chosen what I like for the title, but the final decision isn't mine) stands at having about two hundred thousand words written. There is about 100k left to go. (A little over that.) My goal is to have that done by January 1st, to put us in the same place next year as we were this year for having a book ready by the fall.

    The caveat for all of this, however, is what I mentioned above. It can't be forced, only coaxed. I won't release a WoT book just to be releasing a WoT book. This is the end of the greatest epic fantasy series of my generation. It needs to be treated very carefully. If I have to take more time on it, I will—regardless of the screaming from publisher or readers. But I don't anticipate that happening. It looks good so far.

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  • 124

    Interview: Oct 1st, 2009

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    I had not heard of Brandon until. . . it was the week of my husband's death. A friend was visiting. She put in front of me a print-out, and it was the eulogy for Robert Jordan that Brandon had posted on his web site. Brandon's eulogy was really beautiful, and very loving. And I thought, gosh, this guy. . . he knows what the series is all about.

    And I got on the phone, called Tom Doherty and said, "Send me one of Sanderson's books." And he's a bit darker than Robert Jordan, but the series, as everyone knows, is heading towards Tarmon Gai'don, which is the battle with the Dark One that will decide the fate of the world. Tom said, "Okay, I'll go for that. We'll go for Brandon."

    You made it clear that you would love to do this. And that was wonderful. That's what I needed to hear.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The next thing was for me to fly to Charleston. Harriet drives me to her house. You know, I'm fanboying all of this. And you said, "Do you want some dinner?" And my response was, "No, I want the ending. I want the ending and I want to know who killed Asmodean."

    And you're like, "Oh, all right. Well, here it is." And you handed me that, and kind of waved me into the den, I guess it is, or the sitting room. "Head over there, go ahead, go for it."

    And so I was over there poring over the materials. And I flipped right to the ending and read because Robert Jordan had always said, "I have the ending in mind". And all the readers, all the fans had known this. And we’d listen to interviews and he'd been saying for years, "I know the ending. The last scene is in my head." And so I got to read that last scene before dinner.

    Then I retreated to my cave, and crawled in.

    HARRIET MCDOUGAL RIGNEY

    Yes, he did. And put up a 'do not disturb' sign.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    And wrote furiously for a number of months.

    HARRIET MCDOUGAL RIGNEY

    This book had taken shape, particularly for Brandon. And he said in the conference call, "Look. Here's what we're gonna do." And it made perfect sense.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The amount of material he left behind is what makes this book possible.

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  • 125

    Interview: Oct 8th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Finally, progress on Towers of Midnight is continuing at a fair pace. As always, there are sections that turn out beautifully and sections that don't. (The latter get thrown away and rewritten, the former get kept and rewritten. That's just how this goes.) I'm feeling very good about my deadlines on this one. It's going to be tight, but I think you'll get it next year as planned.

    One of the things I felt could be improved on from The Gathering Storm is my use of names. Robert Jordan had a distinctive way of using names, and I think that some of my names for the book didn't quite hit the right mark. We're talking about very minor things—people who are named and don't appear, or maybe who speak one line or another. Anyone more major than that generally had a name already (or if they didn't, I pulled a name from one of Mr. Jordan's unused names files).

    The thing is, a good epic fantasy like this uses dozens and dozens of new names in a book. I wanted to take a stab at approaching the naming in the way Mr. Jordan did. During my very first ride with Harriet, coming back from the airport two years ago to her home in Charleston, I remember her talking about some of Mr. Jordan's names. One came from a street we passed, another from a person he knew, and another from a word he saw on a sign. His goal was to hint at our world far in the future—or perhaps far in the past—by giving occasional hints to our world through legend, story, song, and name. Hence we get names like Thom or Artur, which are direct adaptations of names from our world.

    Therefore, for Towers of Midnight I've been using a list of names from our world as inspiration. I chose the list of donors for the charity event that TarValon.net did last spring, and I've been posting the names on Twitter and Facebook as I choose them. So if you're curious about this, you can watch and see who gets chosen. I'm certain someone out there is keeping a list of them all as well. (I've got one here, and may post it eventually.)

    I don't want to make it seem like I'm playing favorites or soliciting praise in order to get people into the Wheel of Time, and so for now I'm using this list ONLY. If we decide to do another charity event, I'll let you know. If you don't want to find out about the names, I won't post them here on the blog, but those who do wish to know can follow along. Remember, these are very small characters, often just mentioned by name but not seen. I'm adapting all the names, so the name I post is not what will appear in the book—it's just the inspiration for what will appear.

    Still, I think it will make some people very happy and will allow me to try a method that Robert Jordan used in making these books. Perhaps it wasn't so conscious for him as it is for me, but one of my duties in writing these novels is to try—to the best of my abilities—to maintain the proper feel of the Wheel of Time. I think this will help. We'll see; I've got Harriet and Team Jordan backing me up, and so if any of the names stand out to them, they'll vanish and get replaced with something more appropriate.

    (And, as I've said before, remember that the Wheel of Time turns, and people are constantly spun in and out of the Pattern. Those who are alive today could very well live again during the Third Age, and so it's not so odd at all for people who loved these books during our time to get pulled into Rand's ta'veren web and spun out again during the events of the Last Battle. . . .)

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  • 126

    Interview: 2011

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Okay. Let me just jump right in here with a question. How long was Way of Kings? I heard a rumor that the ARC I read was 400,000 words long. It didn't really feel like it...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let me see. I will open it right now and word count it, so you have an exact number. It's 386,470 words, though the version you read was an advance manuscript, before I did my final 10% tightening draft, which was 423,557 words.

    I didn't really want it to be that long. At that length we're running into problems with foreign publishers having to split it and all sorts of issues with making the paperback have enough space. I didn't set out to write a thousand-page, 400,000-word book. It's just what the novel demanded.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Wise Man's Fear ended up being 395,000 words. And that's despite the fact that I've been pruning it back at every opportunity for more than a year. I'd spend weeks trimming superfluous words and phrases, extra lines of dialogue, slightly redundant description until the book was 12,000 words shorter.

    Then a month later I'd realize I needed to add a scene to bring better resolution to a plot line. Then I'd add a couple paragraphs to clarify some some character interaction. Then I'd expand an action scene to improve tension. Suddenly the book's 8,000 words longer again.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that's exactly how it goes.

    It's very rare that I'm able to cut entire scenes. If I can cut entire scenes that means there's something fundamentally not working with the sequence and I usually end up tossing the whole thing and rewriting it. But trimming, or pruning as you described it, works very well with my fiction.

    I can usually cut fifteen percent off just by nurturing the text, pruning it, looking for the extraneous words and phrases. But I wonder if in doing that there's a tendency to compensate. There's a concept in dieting that if someone starts working out really hard, they start to say, "Well, that means I can now eat more," and you'll find people compensating for the extra calorie loss by eating more because they feel they can. I wonder if we do that with our fiction. I mean, I will get done with this big long trim and I'll say, "Great, now I have the space to do this extra thing that I really think the story needs," and then the story ends up going back to just as long.

    Though at least in my case I can blame my editor too. He's very good with helping me with line edits, but where we perhaps fuel each other in the wrong way is that he'll say, "Ooh, it'd be awesome if you add this," or "This scene needs this," or "Can you explain this?" And I say, "Yes! I can explain that. I'd love to!" And then of course the book gets longer and then we both have to go to Tom Doherty with our eyes downward saying, "Um, the book is really long again, Tom. Sorry."

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  • 127

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Jared_A

    Brandon, how do you feel your identity and upbringing as a Mormon has affected your work?

    Elantris, for instance, centers around a magic system that has essentially been broken because something in the world has changed—a "new revelation" if you will. And then Mistborn has at its core a set of holy writings that have been altered by an evil force.

    These things seem decidely Mormon to me, or at least informed from a Mormon perspective. Do you feel that is the case?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't set out to put anything specifically Mormon into my books, but who I am definitely influences what I write and how I write it. I'm always curious at the things people dig out of my writing—neither of the two points you mention above are things that I was conscious of, though they certainly do make interesting points now that you look at them.

    My goal in storytelling is first and foremost to be true to the characters—their passions, beliefs, and goals. No matter what those are. I'm not trying to make a point consciously ever in my writing—though I do think that good stories should raise questions and make readers think.

    Who I am as a person heavily influences what I write, and I draw from everything I can find—whether it be LDS, Buddhist, Islamic, or Atheist. It's all jumbled up there in that head of mine, and comes out in different characters who are seeking different things.

    In other words, I'm not setting out to be like C.S. Lewis and write parables of belief. I'm trying more what Tolkien did (not, of course, meaning to compare myself favorably with the master) in that I tell story and setting first, and let theme and meaning take care of itself.

    Fiction doesn't really exist—certainly doesn't have power—until it is read. You create the story in your head when you read it, and so your interpretations (and your pronunciations on the names) are completely valid in your telling of the story. The things you come up with may be things I noticed and did intentionally, they may be subconscious additions on my part, or they may simply be a result of your interaction with the text. But all three are valid.

    Jared_A

    On a different but related note, I really love that you honestly look at religious convictions in your books and that you don't portray such convictions in a shallow way.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Regardless of a person's beliefs, I think they would have to admit that religion and spirituality has played a large part in our development as a people. It's a very important thing to so many of us—and I also think that for most of us, our beliefs are nowhere near as simple as they seem when viewed from the outside. I appreciate your praise here, though I think I still have a lot to learn. There's a real line to walk in expressing a character's religious views without letting them sound preachy—the goal is to make the character real, but not bore the reader.

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  • 128

    Interview: 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have a question for you, then. Did you always intend the Kingkiller Chronicle to be three days split across three books? Or did you start writing it as one book and then split it? What's the real story behind that?

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Assuming I had any sort of plan at the beginning is a big mistake. I just started writing. I didn't have a plan. I didn't know what I was doing.

    For years and years I just thought of it as The Book in my head. I've always thought of it as one big story. Then, eventually I realized it would need to be broken up into volumes.

    I can't say why I picked three books except that three is a good number. It's sort of the classic number. And while the story is working well in this format, part of me wishes I'd broken it into smaller chunks. This second book has so many plotlines. If I'd written this trilogy as say, 10 books, each one would be much shorter and self contained. More like the Dresden Files.

    That's pointless musing though. I'm sure if I'd written smaller volumes right now I'd be thinking, "Oh! if only I'd written these as longer books I could play more with interwoven plot lines..."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it's interesting you should mention this, because what I keep getting told from a publishing side is that no one ever wants me to cut the story. I never get that. People ask that of me all the time, "Does your publisher want you to make the book shorter?" Well, the publisher would really like the books to be shorter, but they don't want any of the story to be cut. I do sometimes wonder what we're doing, what we're setting ourselves up for by writing books of this length. Jim Butcher is able to reliably release a book every year or so in his series, in part because he's able to split the story into manageable chunks. And you and I are not splitting our stories into very manageable chunks. This happens a lot in series.

    I look back at the Wheel of Time; Robert Jordan was able to release books one a year for a period of time until the books were long enough and he got through the backlog of writing he'd already done, and suddenly he was not able to release a book every year because the books were long and involved and took a lot of work. Well, when he stopped releasing them every year all his fans complained, "What's going on? Suddenly you're not releasing your books every year?" So he started releasing them faster and shorter and they all started complaining that the books were too short.

    And so, starting our series with such long books does kind of put us in this strange conundrum. And there are a lot of considerations people don't understand, like printing costs and the like. Has there been, on your side, any sort of attempt on the publisher's end to nudge you—saying, "They don't have to be this long. You can tell the story in shorter chunks; don't cut any story! But do it in shorter chunks"? Because I've gotten a bit of that. Granted they're always willing to let me do what I want to do, but it's kind of along the lines of, "We wouldn't mind, Brandon, if you did it in smaller chunks.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    No, I don't get any of that. My publisher, DAW, is really long-book friendly. Perhaps the most long-book friendly of all the publishers out there. They published Tad Williams back before Big Fat Fantasy was cool. They didn't bat an eye at The Name of the Wind being 250,000 words. That's a freedom that's rarely given to new authors for their very first book.

    That said, I was a little worried about the length of book two. The thing kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally I called Betsy and asked if the length was going to be a problem.

    At first she just laughed it off. But when I told her it was getting REALLY long, she said, "Let me do some research." Two days later she calls me back and tells me the longest paperback ever was about 420,000 words. So as long as I was under that, I would be fine.

    All I could think was, "Shorter than the longest book ever? Sure, I think I can manage that."

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  • 129

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Theodor

    Brandon, with you being a writer specialized in cool and unique magic systems, how was it to use and write with the magic system in Wheel of Time? Hard or easy? Did you have to come up with new weaves, or did Jordan already have unmentioned weaves written down somewhere? And how did it work for you to write channeling battles?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, the Wheel of Time magic system was one of those that inspired me to make magic systems the way I do. I've long loved the magic in Mr. Jordan's books, and think he does a very good job of walking the line between having it feel scientific and still feel wondrous. He does tend to go a little bit further toward wonder—as opposed to science—but that has a great number of advantages for his story.

    In answer, I've come up with just a few new weaves, but mostly I wanted to use his weaves in new ways. I think there's a lot of room to explore the use of weaves and how people interact with the magic. Don't expect a LOT of this though. The focus is on the characters and the Last Battle at this point, but there were a few places where (mostly in throw-away, background moments) I was able to explore the magic a tad. I actually found it one of the easier things in the book, though I DID have to keep looking up how specific weaves were created. It gets confusing, particularly since men and women often do the weaves differently.

    As for channeling battles...well, I can't really tell you if there are any of those in the book without giving anything away, now can I? So we'll have to RAFO that. ;)

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  • 130

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    BenFoley

    You have stated in your blog that Mistborn had three magic systems (Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemurology) and also that The Way of Kings will have upwards of 20. For comparison, how many magic systems would you say the Wheel of Time series has? Two (One Power and the True Power)? How do you classify other abilities (not necessarily related to the One Power or True Power) such as Dreamwalking, viewing the Pattern, Wolfbrother-hoodness, and changing 'luck' or chance? Would you classify these abilities as a magic system in and of themselves? Has your chance to see the background material Robert Jordan left changed how you view these abilities?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This kind of gets sticky, as it's all up to semantics. Really, you could say that Mistborn had a different magic system for each type of Misting. But at the same time, you could argue that something like X-Men—with huge numbers of powers—all falls under the same blanked 'magic system.' And take Hemalurgy in Mistborn 3—is it a new magic system, or just a reinterpretation of Allomancy and Feruchemy?

    So what do I mean by twenty or thirty magic systems in Kings? Hard to say, as I don't want to give spoilers. I have groupings of abilities that have to deal with a certain theme. Transformation, Travel, Pressure and Gravity, that sort of thing. By one way of counting, there are thirty of these—though by another way of grouping them together, there are closer to ten.

    Anyway, I'd say that the Wheel of Time has a fair number of Magic systems. The biggest one would be the One Power/True Power, which is more of a blanket "Large" magic system kind of like Allomancy being a blanket for sixteen powers—only the WoT magic system is far larger. I'd count what Perrin/Egwene do in Tel'aran'rhiod as a different magic system. What Mat does as something else, the Talents one can have with the Power something else. Though I'd group all of the Foretelling/Viewing powers into one.

    Sounds like a topic for a paper, actually. Any of you academics out there feel like writing one?

    Let's just say that The Wheel of Time has a smaller number of larger magic systems, and I tend to use a larger number of smaller magic systems. Confusing enough? ;)

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  • 131

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Melhay

    Your stories are so in-depth and unique in the magical systems and religions. I was wondering if you have always, even through childhood, been creative with stories? Have some of the ideas in these books been something you created when young and then evolved into a story now? Have you always been interested in writing stories as you grew up? Did you have that notebook in class scribbling full of stories and ideas while sitting in class supposedly taking notes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've spoken before on the fact I didn't discover fantasy, and reading, until I was fourteen. (The book, if I haven't mentioned it on this forum yet, was Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.)

    Before then, I was a daydreamer. I was always daydreaming—I was never in the room where I was supposed to be listening or studying. I was off somewhere else. Oddly, though, I didn't make the connection between this and writing until I was given that first fantasy novel.

    When I read that book (and moved on to McCaffrey, as it was next in the card catalogue) I discovered something that blew my mind. Here were people who were taking what I did, sitting around and imagining stories, and they were making a living out of it.

    I hit the ground running, so to speak. Started my first novel the next fall, began gobbling up fantasy books wherever I could find them, began writing notes and ideas in my notebooks instead of (as you guessed) the notes I was supposed to be taking.

    Even after all this, though, I was persuaded that people couldn't make a living as an author. So I went to school my freshman year as a bio-chemist, on track for becoming a doctor. That lasted about one year of frustrating homework and classes spent daydreaming before I made the decision to try becoming a writer.

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  • 132

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    MarlonRand

    Is there any information about Way of Kings that you can give us at this time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've wanted to do a long epic for a while. I guess that's what comes from reading Jordan and the others while growing up. And so, way back in the late 90's—when I was experimenting with my style—I started working on ideas for a longer form series. I knew the real trick for me would be to do it in a way that it didn't feel stale after just a few books; there needed to be enough to the world, the magic, and the plot arcs that I (and hopefully readers) would keep interested in the series for such a long time.

    What it gives me (the thing that I want in doing a longer epic) is the chance to grow characters across a larger number of books. Dig into their pasts, explore what makes them think the way they do, in ways that even a trilogy cannot. In Kings, I don't want to do a longer 'saga' style series, with each book having a new set of characters. I want this to be one overarching story.

    One of the things that has itched at me for long time in my fantasy reading is the sense of loss that so many fantasy series have. I'm not complaining, mind you—I love these books. But it seems like a theme in a large number of fantasy books is the disappearance of magic and wonder from the world. In Tolkien, the Elves are leaving. In Jordan, technology is growing and perhaps beginning an age where it will overshadow magic. It's very present in Brooks, where the fantasy world is becoming our world. Even Eddings seemed to have it, with a sense that sorcerers are less common, and with things like the only Dragons dying, the gods leaving.

    I've wanted to do a series, then, where the magic isn't going away—it's coming back. Where the world is becoming a more wondrous place. Where new races aren't vanishing, they're being discovered.

    Obviously, I'm not the first to approach a fantasy this way. Maybe I'm reading too much into the other books, seeing something that isn't there. But the return of magic is one of the main concepts that is driving me.

    Well, that and enormous swords and magical power armor.

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  • 133

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    MarlonRand

    Finally, do you have any advice for people that would like to write for a living?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First and foremost, don't give up. It can take a while. It takes time to master anything—whether it be writing, playing the piano, or brain surgery. People are willing to dedicate eight years or more to becoming a doctor. If you really want to be a writer, you need to be willing to dedicate the same amount of time and effort. Practice. Practice some more. Write a book, then write another, then write another. (I didn't sell my first, or my second, or my fifth. Elantris was my sixth book.)

    Secondly, write what you love. Don't try and guess the market. Read the type of books you want to write, pay attention to what they do, and decide what it is you want to say and how you will add to the discussion. What makes your additions to the conversation unique? Write it because you feel it inside of you, not because it's what seems to be hot right now.

    Finally, if I may make a plug, hop over to writingexcuses.com and listen to me and the others on our writing podcast talk about this sort of thing. ;)

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  • 134

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    carmen22

    When it comes to crazy plot twists, fascinating characters, magic systems, humor, religion, etc., what do you feel, for you, is the hardest part to get on paper or come up with?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say that the most difficult parts have to do with getting a character's internal conflicts (if they have them) right. Sometimes, this can take a lot of exploration. Sazed in Mistborn 3 took a LOT of work before I was satisfied.

    Second hardest is getting the humor right, particularly witty style humor like in the Lightsong sections of Warbreaker. There are frequently times when I spend hours on a single line in sections like that.

    carmen22

    By the way, all of your work is pure Awesomeness!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thanks! I try my best to avoid watered-down awesomeness, if only because of the aftertaste. ;)

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  • 135

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Dare2bu

    How difficult was it to come up with new magic systems considering the wealth of fantasy out there with already established magic systems(that seems to just get re-used in different formats by various other authors)? Do you have more systems to be used in future novels? If so how do you go about envisioning them and creating the rules in the first place?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've got a few very nifty ones reserved for the future. Don't worry; I'm not nearly out of ideas yet. And I'm constantly having new ones I don't have time to use.

    There IS a lot of fantasy out there. And yet, I think there's a great deal of room left for exploration in magic. The frontiers of imagination are still rough-and-tumble, unexplored places, particularly in this genre. It seems that a lot of fantasy sticks very close to the same kinds of magic systems.

    One of the things I've come to believe is that limitations are more important than powers in many cases. By not limiting themselves in what their characters can do, authors often don't have to really explore the extent of the powers they've created. If you are always handing your characters new powers, then they'll use the new and best—kind of like giving your teen a new car every year, rather than forcing them to test the limits of what that old junker will do. Often, those old cars will surprise you. Same thing for the magic. When you're constrained, as a writer, by the limits of the magic, it forces you to be more creative. And that can lead to better storytelling and a more fleshed out magic.

    Now, don't take this as a condemnation of other books. As writers, we all choose different things to focus on in our stories, and we all try different things. Jordan's ability to use viewpoint, Martin's use of character, Pratchett's use of wit—these are things that far outshine anything I've been able to manage in my works so far.

    But I do think that there is a great deal of unexplored ground still left to map out in some of these areas. (Specifically magic and setting.) A great magic system for me is one that has good limitations that force the characters to be creative, uses good visuals to make the scenes more engaging while written, and has ties to the culture of the world and the motivations of the viewpoint characters.

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  • 136

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nadine

    Brandon, you are noted for your fairly concise epic novels. But I am curious about how the final volume of The Wheel of Time, which was envisioned by Robert Jordan as a final and single book, got to be so long? Not just a little longer but incredibly longer (possibly over 900,000 words).

    1. Did Robert Jordan totally miscalculate the size his final book? Or didn't he get too far writing it and had no idea of how long it would be?
    2. Is it including every note Jordan had on the subject because no one is sure what he really wanted to use?
    3. Is it being turned into a self-contained trilogy because a lot of people (like me) haven't read the entire 11 book series (or by now have forgotten the story), and it has to include some back-story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've wondered this myself, actually, in some form. As a long time reader of the series, when he began saying it would be one book, I was very curious how he'd pull it off. And then I saw the notes, and I was left scratching my head a little bit.

    It's not option three—I was doing a little bit more of this, but Harriet requested that I scale it back. Her opinion (and it was Robert Jordan's opinion) is that the series is much too long to spend time recapping in every book. She was right, and I trimmed a lot of it.

    #2 might have some influence here. Robert Jordan could have chosen to cut out characters and leave out scenes he had in the notes; it doesn't feel right for me to do that.

    But I think, overall, it's something that you didn't mention at all. Robert Jordan knew this was going to be a BIG book. He began promising it would be the last, but also that it would be so big that readers would need a cart to get it out of the store. I think he was planning a single, massive book at 800k words or so.

    But he DID want it to be one book—partially, I suspect, because he knew his time was short. He wanted to get it done. If he hadn't been sick, however, I don't think he would have started calling this the last book.

    Harriet has told me on several occasions that she didn't think he would have done it in one book, if he'd been given the freedom to approach the writing how he wanted. In the end, there is SO much to do that it was going to end up like this no matter what. Unless I crammed it all in and forgot about a lot of the characters.

    Would Robert Jordan have been able to do it in one book? Really? I don't know. I think that, if he'd lived, he might have worked some magic and gotten it done in one 400 or 500k volume. But I feel the need to be very careful and not ruin this series by strangulation. It's not going to go on forever, but it does need a little room to breathe.

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  • 137

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    GypsyKylara

    My question is about writing, kind of.

    As an author, you have achieved moderate success. People like you and have heard of you within the genre and you have established a relationship with your publishing company that lets you get a lot of books published.

    This is the level of success I want as a writer and I am just wondering how financially viable this is. Like, can you write only or do you need a so-called day job? Are you able to support your family with your writing alone? That kind of thing.

    Sorry if that is kind of a personal question. I've just always wondered how much money a writer makes once they've "made it".

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had a lot of questions like this myself during my days trying to break in. Everyone told me it wasn't possible to make a living as a writer—that, like an actor or a musician, I'd spend my life poor and obscure.

    One of the big turning points came when I met and talked to a professional writer who had had modest success. Not a huge name, but a person who had done what you hope to do. Publish a book every year, never be a household name, but well-known enough in-genre that a large portion of the readers had seen his books on the shelves, though many still had no idea who he was. (The author was David Farland, by the way.)

    I wish I could give you that same experience, though it's going to be harder while not face to face. The main tone of the meeting and his encouragement was this: IT IS POSSIBLE and YOU CAN DO IT!

    Not everyone can make a living at writing. But it's very within reach, and for the dedicated author willing to practice and learn, it's not as difficult to make a living as many make it out to be.

    I do make a living full time at this, and have for several years now. In the early years, it wasn't what many would call a 'good' income, but it was enough for me. Now, it is an excellent income. Not "Fly to Europe every week" income, but certainly "Take your friends out to eat once in a while" income.

    A standard royalty for an author would be to 10-15% on a hardcover, and around 8% on a paperback. Usually, the percentage gets better the more copies you sell.

    Now, books don't sell the huge numbers that people usually think they do. If you sell 2k hardcover copies in your first week, you can get on the NYT list. (Though it's not certain—it depends on what week it is and what other books came out. 3k is a pretty sure bet, though.)

    Elantris—an obscure, but successful, book—sold about 10k copies in hardcover and around 14k copies its first year in paperback. I've actually sold increasing numbers each year in paperback, as I've become more well-known. But even if you pretend that I didn't, and this is what I'd earn on every book, you can see that for the dedicated writer, this could be viable as an income. About $3 per book hardcover and about $.60 paperback gets us around 39k income off the book. Minus agent fees and self-employment tax, that starts to look rather small. (Just under 30k). But you could live on that, if you had to. (Remember you can live anywhere you want as a writer, so you can pick someplace cheap.)

    I'd consider 30k a year to do what I love an extremely good trade-off. Yes, your friends in computers will be making far more. But you get to be a writer.

    The only caveat here is that I did indeed get very lucky with my placement at Tor. It's the successful hardcover release that makes the above scenario work. If you only had the paperback, and everyone who bought the hardcover bought that instead, you'd have to be selling around 60k copies to make it work. That's very possible, and I know a lot of midlist writers who do it.

    Anyway, numbers shouldn't be what gets you into this business. If you have to tell stories, tell them. To be a writer, I feel you need to have such a love of the process that you'd write those books even if you never sold one. It's not about the money, and really shouldn't be. (And sorry to go on so long. I just feel it important to give aspiring writers the same kinds of help that I got.)

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  • 138

    Interview: 2011

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Do you mind if I ask a question you've probably been asked a bunch of times before?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'll happily respond, but as I'm responding I'm going to try to think of the most boring question I can ask you. Something you've answered a billion times, to get payback.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Heh. Fair enough.

    When I first heard that someone was continuing Jordan's Wheel of Time, my first thought was, "Wow, that's a cool gig." Then my second thought was, "I would not want that responsibility for all the money in the world."

    How did you come to grips with that? Those are big shoes to fill...

    Brandon Sanderson

    My thoughts were all over the place. I do legitimately love the Wheel of Time and have been reading it since I was a young man. If you look at my early unpublished books, you'll find they were deeply influenced by the Wheel of Time. Amusingly so; looking back on it now, I see things I didn't even notice that I had done. So that love of the series was part of what was bouncing around in my head.

    I didn't become a writer because I wanted to write in other people's worlds. I wanted to tell my own stories, and I was making a comfortable living at my writing before this. For a lot of projects I would have said no regardless of what they offered, so it had to be about more than the money. Beyond that, there was this sense, as you expressed, of "Wow, if I screw this up, I'm in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore." I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned regarding this, or posted it somewhere, "This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him." I took all those things into consideration.

    But in the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, "Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?" And the answer was that I couldn't let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.

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  • 139

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    little_wilson

    What's the earliest that we'll be seeing more of Scribbler (I'd heard a bunch about it at TWG, and so I found the sample chapters on your site and now I'm REALLY wanting more of it, so I'd like to know when I should start looking again...)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sigh. I really want to do something with Scribbler, but I can't justify it right now. I'm doing the fourth Alcatraz because I can't put it off any longer because of contracts, and Kings because Tor really wants a solo Brandon book next year. But I can't justify working too much on a project that hasn't been sold and which—if published—would end up pulling me into another side trilogy. I have to leave the WoT with the space it needs and deserves. Until it is completed, I have to shelve side projects. That, unfortunately, includes Scribbler. For now.

    There are some things in the works with it, and I'm very excited about the possibilities. But there's nothing tangible I can give you now. It's coming. Maybe sooner than I've made it sound, but best to be careful as nothing is set yet.

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  • 140

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Question

    How do you and Robert Jordan’s widow feel while working on Robert Jordan’s legacy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say there is a healthy amount of reverence going on. It’s a solemn experience working with these notes. In her case it’s her husband’s legacy. In my case it is my hero’s legacy. And so, we’ve been very careful and very solemn. It has been an amazing experience for me, indescribable really. It’s like walking being the first one to walk into Davinci’s workshop after he had walked out of it and left everything there. That’s what I am. I am walking into the master’s workshop and I get to see everything before even the dust is settled. As a writer and someone who has loved these books that’s surreal and awe inspiring and daunting at the same time. And there are so many weird emotions going on connected to this that it is actually hard to explain, but yeah reverence. It’s a reverent sort of thing to work on this book.

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  • 141

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Question

    Robert Jordan uses a great deal of mythology and lore in his books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My answer is, I’m doing my darndest. One thing I love and always have loved about the Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan’s use of mythology. He doesn’t use mythology in kind of almost, how should I say, the bubble gum pop version of it that you see in some other fantasy works. There is a depth and a reality to his mythology that has always amazed me. One of the greatest concepts is what he says in that first paragraph: an Age long past, an Age yet to come. I didn’t get these things the first read through, I was a fifteen-year-old kid I didn’t know what’s going on. I didn’t notice the first time I was reading it that Buzz Aldren and the Cold War are referenced as mythological events in The Eye of the World. [...] I love how he’s used mythology as his history and just how Mat in particular but a lot of them are founding myths that become our mythology. I don’t know if you guys have read up on Odin and Locke. Go read up on the mythology of Odin and Locke. They were actually thought to be one person in all of the original myths. See the things attributed to them, including things like ravens and the spear of Odin and things like this. And then see what Mat is doing. The idea is that Mat is actually founding these myths and by the time our Age comes we remember Mat but we have all of this other mythology associated with him and we’ve forgotten that he was even known as Mat. That’s just genius So, I’m doing my best to continue that. It would be very easy to over do it in fan sort of a way. I have to be very careful to not put a reference to something like that in every chapter just because it’s fun. But if you search through The Gathering Storm you should be able to find a few things that are happening. Particularly, I don’t want to give any hints, but the things happening in Hinderstap were intended as things that through a lot of mythology later on become myths in our time. There are references to writers from our world being referenced in The Gathering Storm among books people are studying.

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  • 142

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Question

    Are you studying up on military tactics?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, Harriet has sent me multiple large volumes of military tactics which she said Robert Jordan had been using and that I should reference, even specific battles, historical battles that he had talked about as references for battles. The answer is yes, I have a lot of reading to do, specifically for the last battle.

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  • 143

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Question

    How do you think working on these books will influence your future books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That’s a good question...It has had a couple of effects. One thing, partially Harriet’s pushing me on concrete details has helped me a lot. Harriet is very good at that as an editor. She is one of the best editors in the field. I don’t know if you guys are familiar and aware of Harriet’s history. Editors don’t get a lot of fame, it all kind of goes to the authors but she was the first person Tom Doherty hired when he founded Tor, she was his Editorial Director which means she was in charge of all of the editorial side. She edited some of the greatest books in the field over the last thirty years. She edited Ender’s Game for instance. If you have ever read that book, that was brought to us through the efforts of Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan’s wife, before she even met him (rest of the answer cut off).

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  • 144

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Question

    Which characters did you find the easiest to write and which ones did you find were the hardest to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Easy and hard? I would say the most natural ones for me to write were Rand and Egwene. I’m not sure why. Perrin was very natural for me as well. The Two Rivers folk, the kids from Two Rivers that I’ve grown up with as my friends from high school that just feel like my buddies and think kind of...well Rand doesn’t think like I do anymore but you know what I mean. The hardest single person to write was Aviendha because Aiel are so odd and they think so strangely and getting her right I actually had to throw away two chapters. I wrote one from her perspective threw it away. Wrote another one, it wasn’t right, sent it to Charleston and said what am I doing wrong and they are like you are doing it wrong and I said I know, what am I doing wrong and Harriet gave me some pointers I tossed that one and wrote a third one and that is when it started to work. Tuon was not terribly easy either, but I had a little more practice by the time I wrote Tuon and so I got her on the first try but it was after a lot of research. So, there you go, Aviendha, hard to write, she’s crazy. She would say that she isn’t because she would say she acts the most normal of everyone.

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  • 145

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nightfire

    Hey Mr. Sanderson, I know that A Memory of Light should be finished in the next couple years (at the latest). I know that you tend to work on multiple projects. Unless you are planning to do another (totally) new project can we expect another Warbreaker, Elantris, or preferably Mistborn book as you release the ten Way of Kings books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do like to work on multiple projects. During those early unpublished years, I was always hopping from book to book, and it became habit for me. It really helps me keep fresh, allowing me to try new things and experiment with my style. One of the hardest thinks about working on the WoT has been the number of side projects I've had to set aside because of lack of time.

    And so, with The Way of Kings series (aka The Stormlight Archive) I plan to do the books on a 2-to-1 ration. Meaning two Stormlight books, followed by one random side book. Generally, you should expect three books every two years from me, as that's been my speed. So there should still be a Stormlight book every year, though we'll see.

    Some will be new things, others will be in current series. My current plans are to do an Elantris sequel in 2015, for instance, and I'd like to do the second (and final) Warbreaker book eventually.

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  • 146

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nightfire

    Also, is there a common reality/universe throughout all of you works (WoT excluded)? The gods and magic system of your books you have mentioned as pieces of a larger source. I know I am mistaking the language a bit; it was a while ago that I read this. But Preservation and Ruin were linked and you referenced possible deities in Elantris, not to mention Austre. I know your magic systems are all well thought out and the rules have practical founding. With this in mind, I assume your deities and beings of power would have universally applied links and rules as well. I figure they all exist in the same multi-verse.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am remaining mostly closed-lipped on this topic, as I don't want to spoil the story and discovery. There is a lot of discussion about it on my website. I can confirm what I've said earlier, that there is a common character appearing in the books, and that there is a single cosmology to all of the Shardworlds and their books (Elantris, Mistborn, Warbreaker, White Sand, Dragonsteel, The Silence Divine, etc. Those last three are unpublished, by the way.) There is also a connection between how the magic works in each book, as well as the fundamental metaphysics of the worlds.

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  • 147

    Interview: 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's interesting that you should mention rewriting and changing as an author. In some ways, these books that have been with us for so long are much harder to work on than books that just occur to us or that we start off brand new.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    I think you're absolutely right about that. Writing that 60,000 word subplot was easy. It was integrating it into the rest of the book that was hard.

    Brandon Sanderson

    In my history as a writer, The Way of Kings is a project I've been working on for years and years and years. But the Mistborn trilogy was an idea I had, executed, and finished. These two projects have been very different from one another to work on. With one, I had a great idea, I built the world, I built the story, and I wrote the three books straight through and released them. And with the other story, I have all the "killing your darlings" sort of things that are tough to deal with when you've been playing with a character since you're fifteen years old and now you're finally sitting down to write their story. It's hard to manage the baggage of that many years and weave out and cut out things that aren't needed for the story despite the fact that they're integral to the character's soul, to you having spent all this time on them.

    That's one of the reasons why I recommend to new writers not to initially work on those stories that have been so close to you for so long. I feel now that I'm practiced and established an author, I know how to tell the best story out of all of this stuff I've been working on since I was a kid. When I was a new author I don't think I could have done it. I think it would have turned into a fanboy session for my own world that nobody else knows, which would have been a disaster.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Yeah. It's relatively easy to take a pile of lumber and turn it into a house. But a lot of what I've been doing (And a lot of what it sounds like you had to do with Way of Kings) is like building a house out of a different house. A house that you built back before you knew what the hell you were really doing.

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  • 148

    Interview: 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    Pat, your life situation is really different now than when you wrote Name of the Wind. Has your changing life status made a difference in how you write?

    Patrick Rothfuss

    The most recent change for me has been coming to grips with the whole working dad thing. And I've been having trouble with it. With all the deadlines these last four months, there have been some days where I only see Oot and Sarah for a half an hour.

    Needless to say, when that happens three times in a week, it makes me feel like a total ass. Like that stereotypical neglectful work-obsessed absentee father. But the truth of the matter is, I'd already missed too many deadlines. I couldn't miss this one. So for about two and a half months I had to pick being a writer over being a dad. I'm trying to make up for that now, but I still regret it.

    For me though, the biggest change between writing book one and writing book two, is that I got a workspace that's outside the house I live in. That really helped to improve my writing output. I work best with quiet, distraction-free writing space. Making sure there was no internet in the office was pivotal, too.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Even when I'm on a tight deadline, I make sure I have an hour after I get up and an hour in the evening to play with my son. And I take Sundays off from writing. It's important for me to have some time to recharge, to keep some perspective. I love writing and my idea of a vacation from writing is to write something else, but any one book will come and go. I can't afford to miss being there for my family.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    I think I need to institute some sort of policy like that too.

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  • 149

    Interview: 2011

    Patrick Rothfuss

    What's your writing space like? Do you write at home, or do you have an office?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't do the office thing. How shall I say this? I became a writer so that I didn't have to deal with the whole office thing. I know some authors need an office and a writing space; that's great. But I just need my laptop and some music and I'm good pretty much anywhere.

    I tend to be a roving writer, meaning I pick a place and I stay there for a few months, and then I get tired of it and I pick another place. So I write all over the house. My favorite locations tend to be in front of a fireplace with my feet up. I've actually stolen my wife's easy chair and moved it over in front of the fireplace in my bedroom—it's a gas fireplace, so I just turn it on. I've set up a light and a little stand next to me, and I've been working here for a few months. But I move around. It's just basically laptop plus music. I don't work at a desk; I cannot do the desk thing. I'll work lying on my bed, on a couch, in an easy chair, in a beanbag chair, but not at a desk.

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  • 150

    Interview: 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    We are both in an odd situation—for different reasons and in different ways, but it's somewhat similar in that five years ago we were both unknowns, and right now our names tend to come up very frequently when people are talking about fantasy. Looking at Pat Rothfuss, you're as much of a fantasy superstar to most people as George R. R. Martin is. How does that feel?

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Heh. I think there's probably only a handful of people that think of me as being on the same level as Martin. But I know what you're talking about.

    Mostly it feels weird to me. Good but weird. Mostly weird.

    Brandon Sanderson

    For me, when I go to a forum where people are talking about fantasy, and they're talking about me, that's been a surreal experience because just a few years ago I could participate in forum discussions and no one knew who I was, but now the conversations are partially about me. Reconciling that has been an interesting experience for me, and I can only imagine it's been even more so for you because your career has skyrocketed faster than mine. The Wise Man's Fear is probably the second most highly anticipated fantasy novel of the near future, right after A Dance with Dragons. How does it make you feel?

    Patrick Rothfuss

    That's easy to answer: Terrified.

    That's another big piece of the reason that book two took so long. I was paralyzed with fear.

    It's like this, if people read your first book and don't like it very much, that's heartbreaking, but it provides some real motivation. You think to yourself, "I'll show them! My next book will be even better!" Then you knuckle down and work your ass off to produce something that will really dazzle them.

    But when someone e-mails you and says your book was the best they ever read. Or that they read it with their kid who was sick with leukemia and it brought them closer together. Or they tell you they're more excited about your upcoming book than their own birthday...

    I mean really. How the fuck and I supposed to deal with that? How am I supposed to write anything ever again when the bar gets set so high?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wondered if that was the case. It is strange for me because you know, we had a similar quick rise to success—I mean, you've been around for what? Three or four years? And I've been around for five and when I was reading fantasy, when I getting into this genre, it felt to me that most of the writers I've been reading have been around forever. Now that's not true because I was a young kid and what being around forever meant to me then is different from what it really means. But I was reading Anne McCaffrey, and in my perception Anne McCaffrey had been around forever. She'd been writing for twenty years. I'd been reading David Eddings and Terry Brooks and these are people who had been writing for twelve years before I picked up their books. And now my books are doing really well and I've only been around for a few years and it feels to me like I don't have the credibility that I think I should have before I reach this level of recognition, if that makes any sense.

    I'm more impressed with people's longevity in a field and having a long-lasting impact. Someone like George R. R. Martin is hugely impressive to me because he's been around for forty years in the business. He has slogged away hard and released book after book and edited anthologies and worked in TV, and finally after all of this work he gets this big best-selling series and it's like, yes! You finally get the recognition you deserve. You are a major inspiration and success story, and you just stuck in there and stuck in there forever. Then you get someone dopey like me and it's like, whoop-dee-do, you know, my third book hit the New York Times Bestseller List and suddenly I'm hitting number one on the list, and it's a weird experience because in a way I don't believe that I deserve it. Though I'm very proud of my writing, I don't feel I've put in the time to deserve the success. I don't know if that makes any sense or resonates at all.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Yeah. You're singing my song again. I hit the NYT Bestseller list with my first book. Everyone says, YAY! You're brilliant! And I have to remind them, No, I just wrote one book. You can't plot a graph with one point of data. I'm the flavor of the day. If I write two good books, then you can call me a professional writer. Until then, I'm a fluke.

    So yeah. I completely know where you're coming from when you say you feel like you haven't earned it the same way folks like Martin did. My first book was a success. But it was a success because I got very, very lucky. I got the right agent, then the right publisher. The audience was ready for my sort of book. I was in the right place at the right time.

    But that's not something you can repeat. You can't rely on luck. That's where a lot of my stress came from after the first book came out.

    Brandon Sanderson

    How do you deal with it?

    Patrick Rothfuss

    That's easy to answer too: Badly.

    For about a year I struggled to get any productive writing done.

    Then, slowly, I started to get used to it. It was kinda like the emotional and social equivalent of getting into a really hot bath. At first it felt scalding hot, but now I've acclimated to it, and it feels kinda nice. It's kinda relaxing, in fact.

    I also engage in a daily regimen of not taking myself too seriously. My friends help with this, of course.

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  • 151

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nelsmom

    Welcome and it is great to know that you live not too far from me. My question is this. I know that Orson Scott Card taught some Comparative Science Fiction class at BYU. Did you every take it and if so how much influence did it have on your wanting to write? I have enjoyed all of your books and at family gatherings they do get discussed.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I actually never got to take a class from Mr. Card, though I have enjoyed his books quite a bit. From what I hear, he has excellent advice for writers, but he wasn't teaching any classes at BYU when I was there. I did take a class from David Farland, which was extremely helpful. By then I was already a very dedicated writer (I had just finished Elantris) but didn't know much about the business at all. Mr. Farland's class taught me a lot about the nuts and bolts of getting published, and one could say that I owe my eventual publication—and a lot of my success—to what he taught and how helpful he was in how he taught it. Excellent person and writer.

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  • 152

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Joshua_Patrao

    About research: What, if any, research for your novels have you done, and how did you do it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The calling of a fiction writer, particularly a fantasy writer, is to know a little bit about a lot of things—just enough to be dangerous, so to speak. I tend to read survey books that talk about history—things that give overviews, such as the history of warfare, or the history of the sword, or navigation. That kind of thing. I would say I do a fair amount of research, but mostly it's an attempt to dump as much into my brain as possible for spawning stories and writing about things intelligently. For Mistborn, I researched canals, eunuchs, and London during the mid 1800's.

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  • 153

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Joshua_Patrao

    Is The Way of Kings your biggest work planned or do you have something on the shelf that's bigger?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well...depends. Dragonsteel is plotted at seven books. And I plan two more trilogies, eventually, in the Mistborn world. But Kings was always planned and plotted to be the big war epic, focusing on large numbers of characters across a large number of books. Mistborn will span hundreds and hundreds of years, though, so it could be 'bigger' by some definitions. Dragonsteel also is in the running, but for reasons I can't really explain without giving away things I don't want to.

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  • 154

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Dreamer129

    I'm feeling a little bewildered; I keep seeing references to "Hoid" throughout these boards and the twitter page, and I'm assuming this is a character who makes a short appearance in each book. If so, is there an actual story going on with him, or was he just someone put in as a sort of "Easter egg"?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think I've covered this in responses I gave before getting to your question. My forums have a lot more information. (And a lot of guesses.)

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  • 155

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    iwinUlose2

    If you were going to write a novel in a genre other than scifi/fantasy which genre do you think that you would write in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hmm... Perhaps a historical. Something I could really sink my teeth into. I could also see myself writing a mystery or a thriller.

    The thing is, unless I'm under some kind of restriction, I know that any of those three would probably end up having fantasy or sf elements. It's just how I think.

    iwinUlose2

    Have you ever considered writing a non-fiction book based of Writing Excuses?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have indeed considered it. We'll see. I guess it depends on how much interest there is.

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  • 156

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    His favorite chapters to write from The Gathering Storm were the concluding chapter and also chapter 22.

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  • 157

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't remember if he said this during dinner or during the signings or both, but he was considering doing the outrigger and prequel novels, but that the decision was ultimately Harriet's. Jordan left notes for that as well, especially the other prequels. If Brandon writes the other books, it will be after a pause at the end of the series. He definitely doesn't want it to become 'the McWheel of Time.'

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  • 158

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Katie

    Why did you choose to be so open with your writing process?

    Katie

    It's because when I was trying to break into this business and learn to be a writer, the whole process seemed opaque to me. And I think that's because I was doing it before the era of the Internet really hit and now that we have this opportunity I figure I'll throw it out there and maybe what I'm talking about will really help other writers who are aspiring. And also on the other end of it, it gets a little frustrating waiting for books to come out and you never know what's going to happen and you never know what's going on. I figure with the Internet we have such a great opportunity to keep people in the loop to let people know what's going on. We don't have to be so shadowed anymore, so I want to make as best use of it as I can.

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  • 159

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Question

    Do you have any books coming out between the next two Wheel of Time books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have been working very hard on a book called The Way of Kings for about ten years now. It is the beginning of a large epic and I've always wanted to write one. I think it's almost ready. If the revisions work it will come out next fall. I don't think I will have one the year after that because the Wheel of Time is first priority. So, either between this one and the next one or between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light.

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  • 160

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Other information that we gleaned from dinner included learning that Aviendha is the favorite out of the three in Rand’s “harem.” Hopefully we’ll get to see more of Pevara being awesome, but that could possibly appear in a novella on Brandon’s web page that will fill in some missing holes. But no promises! And one last interesting fact, in order to get the Illianer and Taraboner accents right, he wrote the book then went back and did a search for all the characters of those nations and then worked on their crazy accents.

    Footnote

    The Pevara novella was to be about the events at the Black Tower. Brandon later decided that the novella probably wasn't going to work. He got two chapters into Towers of Midnight, and the rest into A Memory of Light.

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  • 161

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Shannon Berndston

    After dinner we trekked over to the Harvard Coop for the signing. Brandon introduced the book. He talked a bit about what the Wheel of Time series means to him, and how he became a writer in the first place.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Did you know that he wrote 13 books before getting one of them published? Elantris was number six in that list, but he never gave up on his dream of being a writer. We also heard about how Harriet read Brandon’s eulogy for RJ and subsequent read of Mistborn. After two chapters, she was hooked and knew that he was the man to finish her husband’s series.

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  • 162

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Some other info that we learned during the Q&A included finding out that the most rewarding part of writing The Gathering Storm for Brandon was working with Harriet. It took 18 months of 14 hour days (although that includes a chunk of Towers of Midnight) to finish the book. The Two Rivers and Andoran characters were the easiest for him to write, while the Aiel and Seanchan were the hardest.

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  • 163

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    If you didn't hear the news, we got a call on Wednesday informing us that The Gathering Storm had hit the number one spot on the New York Times hardcover Best Seller list. This was accompanied by hitting number one on the independent bookseller's list and being the bestselling hardcover fiction book at Barnes & Noble and at Borders. (And at the last one, I believe, we were the overall #1 book regardless of genre, which is impressive.) We did, in fact, knock Dan Brown out of the #1 spot—by a wide margin.

    How do I feel? Relieved. When I first began this project, my largest fear by far was that I would disappoint the fans. As I have stated before, I consider this your book and not mine. That doesn't mean I'm writing it to please the fans specifically—I'm writing these novels to be the best blasted books that they can be, narratively, structurally, and characterizationally. (Is that a word?) My goal is not to produce fan moments, per se, but to produce the best story possible, if that distinction makes any sense.

    Either way, the last four Wheel of Time books had all hit #1, and I worried a lot that it would be on my watch where we failed to do so. It is a testament to the beloved nature of the series, mixed with the ardor of the readers, that we have weathered a change in authors without a dip. We actually outsold Knife of Dreams' first week, which is amazing.

    The thing is, I don't feel I can take much—if any—credit for this. The reason this book turned out as well as it did (and thank you all for your kind emails, posts, and reviews) was because of the work Robert Jordan did before he passed away. He literally lay on his deathbead dictating scenes for you, too weak to write. He loved his readers dearly, and those of you lucky enough to meet him know that he was a truly kind and generous man.

    Beyond that, the strength of this book is directly tied to the excellent storytelling that came before it. It doesn't take much experience with construction to realize that the foundation of a building is far more important—structurally—than the roof. Robert Jordan's skill with worldbuilding, characterization, and plotting was amazing. Working on these books has only increased my respect for his abilities.

    None of you ran out to get the book because of me. My job was, and continues to be, to stay out of the way and let you enjoy the story that Robert Jordan wanted you to have. I am honored and humbled that so many of you have enjoyed the book. Thank you for what you have done in giving me a chance to prove myself to you.

    Somewhere, Robert Jordan is smiling.

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  • 164

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Question

    Regarding the Mistborn books, do you think you will ever write a prequel trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon is hesitant to do so. He has considered it though. He [Brandon] "loves epic fantasy" and the "hero's journey, like Rand's journey at the beginning of the Wheel of Time". When writing the Mistborn books, he knew Robert Jordan had done epic fantasy the best it could be done, so thought to himself, 'what hasn’t been done?' The answer he came to was 'what if the hero [e.g.] Rand/Harry Potter/Frodo lost?' The idea was a good one, but that would make a "downer of a book".

    Meg Lurvey

    (The fans, myself included, chuckled slightly horrified at the idea of the Dark One winning, and one fan made a reference to the Star Wars prequels, which also amused the crowd, and Brandon alike.)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon went on to say that he wrote Mistborn as 1000 years after the heroes lost, and he is more strongly considering a sequel trilogy that would take place about 600 years after Mistborn.

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  • 165

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Question

    Are you ticked you know the ending? (The fans, Brandon, and all of us Storm Leaders laughed!)

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I'm excited." Brandon, in having Robert Jordan's notes on the whole series, has even seen the "handwritten note of who killed Asmodean" [I didn't know Robert Jordan knew my name!] A moment with a somewhat quizzical look on his face, Brandon went on to say that he does feel a "sense of loss that I didn't get to read a new Wheel of Time book last week."

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  • 166

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Question

    Which character's point of view is your favorite to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Whoever I'm writing at that moment", they're the most important. With some characters it was easier than others, as "Cadsuane already believes she's the most important." [I think I laughed the loudest at that remark.] He also said that the notes on Egwene were the most extensive and she was a pleasure to write. He also enjoys having more Aviendha viewpoints, as he missed her, and commented that writing Rand is both dramatic and draining.

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  • 167

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Question

    Do you have new stuff, or new ideas?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes—one is The Silence Divine, a world like ours where you gain magic by diseases; another is a world where the only superheroes are all evil super villains and a group of regular people called the Executioners gather to hunt them down and take them out.

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  • 168

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Question

    There's a lot of female influence in the Wheel of Time, was it hard to write from their perspective?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In my early years writing, it was hard. I finally got it right in Elantris. It was harder to write from other cultures, especially Aviendha and Tuon. It took three tries to get Aviendha right..."Aiel are weird."

    Brandon describes Mat dealing with Tuon leaving as Mat having his feet knocked out from under him and says that in Robert Jordan's notes it says specifically that "Mat refuses to become husbandly".

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  • 169

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Even Brandon had moments of "Aaaah! I knew it!" He also has had the "wait, really?" moments and often, while going through notes, has said, "Ah, that group is right!" [Referring to groups on the message boards.] He also confided that there is one thing that isn't being discussed on any of the forums yet that will blow our minds when we read it. Yay!

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  • 170

    Interview: Oct 28th, 2009

    Question

    How do you keep from being burnt out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said that he switches projects continually. He wrote 13 standalone books before he ever got one published, that being Elantris, his sixth novel. "I write compulsively." That's where Alcatraz came from: he needed a break from Mistborn, and so he stopped for a time and wrote a light Young Adult novel. He would often take a Saturday off in the middle of a project, and write something completely different, something he wasn't necessarily supposed to.

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  • 171

    Interview: Oct 28th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    "There are a surprising amount of deaths in the notes, so I get to play headsman."

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  • 172

    Interview: Oct 28th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    When asked about his favorite part of writing this series in specific: "The characters feel like old high school buddies."

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  • 173

    Interview: Oct 28th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    On going into Robert Jordan's study: "It felt like wandering into DaVinci's workshop, seeing his unfinished work and picking up RJ's notes."

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  • 174

    Interview: Oct 28th, 2009

    Question

    What's most difficult in the writing process?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Keeping track of everyone. I was confused about who was with Perrin, so I asked Charleston for a file with every one of the Two Rivers characters, who's with them. They sent over a file of a complete list of Two Rivers folk with Perrin, most of whom hadn't even been mentioned, and it had things like their names, relations, and for most of them, what they did in the army.

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  • 175

    Interview: Oct 28th, 2009

    Question

    How do you keep sane?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Writing compulsively. Actually, I'm not sane; I'm a writer."

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  • 176

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon apparently likes writing so much he would continue putting out a book a year even if they went unpublished. He never even submitted his first five books and jokingly referred to them as sub par.

    He avoids bad reviews like the plague, but when he does stumble across them he then proceeds to read one star reviews of great works of literature, like Shakespeare.

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  • 177

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    When asked if his religion played a part in his books, Brandon replied that it was a part of him, and that as a consequence it did.

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  • 178

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    So, you've now taken over the biggest fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings. No pressure, right?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Exactly, no pressure at all. You just described it perfectly: It's a monumental task, and a monumental amount of pressure, from millions of fans, of which I am one—the daunting task of not being "the one who screws up The Wheel of Time."

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  • 179

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    Are you just lending flesh to a largely complete skeleton, or do you also have to close plot points that were still unresolved in Jordan's notes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's actually not as simple as either of those options. The notes range in how detailed they are. In some places, he finished complete scenes, which is great. He finished several complete scenes, which will be scattered through the three books, including the ending itself.

    In a number of places he gave dictations. Over his last few months, he spent a lot of time dictating to the family things that should happen. These are very interesting scenes in that they read kind of like a screenplay, because they transcribe the dictations. It's a lot of the dialogue, but it's him saying what should happen instead of actually writing it out. "And then, Egwene says this, and then he says this, and then this happens." And so the description isn't there, but the dialogue and the blocking all are. As I said, like a screenplay.

    In other places, there are fragments of scenes, where he wrote a couple of paragraphs, and then another couple of paragraphs. And just like a shattered plate, there are pieces missing. In other places, there are sentences he's written, "and then this happens"—where "this" is a sequence of four chapters' worth of events. In other places, he left a paragraph or two, and in some places there’s just a big hole. There're characters here and there, and then there are a lot of really detailed notes for the ending, saying where everyone ends up, who lives and who dies—it's very detailed, and is where I think the bulk of the material is. But sometimes, we'll know where someone is at the end of Knife of Dreams, and then at the ending he says that person is doing something else, but the intervening space is a big hole.

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  • 180

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    So, actually, in The Gathering Storm you've had to do a fair amount of legwork to make sure that everything is prepared for the finale.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes! That's one of the reasons why we felt we needed to split the books. It was partially because the outline detailed so many things for us to do, and Robert Jordan had been saying for some time that it was going to be an enormous book. And part of the reason also was that I needed some legwork—time to set up all of these things that were going to happen. If you look at the end of Knife of Dreams, you've got characters scattered to the far reaches of the world, and we know—we've all known as fans for a while—that they're going to have to gather back together for the Last Battle. It's got to come, but they're still scattered all over the place. He started to draw them back together at the end of Knife of Dreams, but we really needed a staging book to bring some of these things back together, and to accomplish some of the goals he had set forth. That's really what The Gathering Storm is: it's focusing on several of the main characters who need to be in a certain place, both spiritually and physically. As characters they need to be in a certain place mentally, in who they are, and physically they need to arrive in certain destinations, and so I focus a lot on that.

    In many ways, it's a more personal book, in that it's more focused on several of the big main characters.

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  • 181

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    Anyone who knows the books at all knows that Rand al'Thor hears the voice of Lews Therin in his head—sometimes cackling like a madman, other times more helpfully. After wading through all of Robert Jordan's notes, and listening to those dictated comments, do you have a new sympathy for Rand?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Robert Jordan dropped a bomb at the end of Knife of Dreams, with what Semirhage was saying about or to Rand, talking about his level of stability. I remember as a reader, going through as a kid—I think Robert Jordan blindsided me with Lews Therin, because I'd been told that "Rand will go mad, Rand will go mad," but I didn't accept that voice as Rand going mad. I accepted that as another person, inside of Rand's head, and not a delusion or anything like that. Across the course of the books, Robert Jordan brought together this thing that he'd promised: "No, look, this guy is just going crazy. Yes, he's seeing part of his past life, but he's going insane. It's the immense pressure that's doing this." In looking through the notes, and seeing what Rand has to go through, it's hard not to sympathize with the poor guy.

    Robert Jordan once said in an interview, when someone tried to get him to boil down the series to its core—he first said, you can't boil down this series. I wrote it as long as I did because that's how long I needed to tell the story, and so boiling it down doesn't work. But he finally did say this: At its essence, this series is about what it's like to be told that you need to save the world, and that it's probably going to cost your life. Even all of the other characters, you could say that that is a theme for them, too. Egwene has had to give up the life that she'd assumed that she was going to live, and to adopt this other life in the name of the greater good. And that's happening to everybody. Kings and queens are being cast down, and people who thought that their lives were just going to be normal and stable, and that's all they really wanted, are being forced to take upon themselves these mantles of responsibility. And Rand is at the very heart of that. Rand is the center, the example for all of them of what they're having to go through, and it's the worst for him.

    GeekDad

    True—but I also meant for you as the writer finishing someone else's series: As you're writing, you surely have Robert Jordan's voice rattling around in your head.

    Brandon Sanderson

    (Laughs.) It does kind of feel like that at times, particularly after I've spent some time reading Robert Jordan's writing and then jumping into the book. It is like I have this voice saying, "Well, do it this way," or "This is how I would approach it." Juggling Brandon and Robert Jordan and trying to make sure that this isn't a Brandon book—but it's also not going to be a Robert Jordan book—and making sure that it's a Wheel of Time book. That's been a delicate balance.

    Footnote—Terez

    I commented on the Dragonmount forums when I found this interview that it seemed that Brandon had accidentally confirmed construct theory in this interview, and that I suspected someone on Team Jordan had said something to him about it, resulting in the vaguer answers that followed on the book tour. Luckers emailed Brandon and got this response:

    Brandon Sanderson

    James,

    Feel free to post this response from me.

    "I stand by everything I said in those interviews; I did not make any miss-steps. However, there is one big misinterpretation. Terez says that I was asked by Team Jordan to be more secretive. That's not the case. There was one time when Harriet asked me to be more secretive, but that was in regards to spoilers about Towers of Midnight when I was working on it, and she felt (rightly) that I was hinting about too many things that would come in the book.

    I have not settled, and do not intend to settle, this debate except in regard to the things placed specifically in the books. The Geekdad interview response is primarily talking about my own reactions as a reader the first time I read specific scenes, long before I saw what was in the notes. At that point, as a fan, my view of the books shifted.

    Those views may have shifted again while looking at the notes. I have not said, and will continue not to say, what was in them on this point. There are clues in the text. That is always the way it has been, and I think that is sufficient for this conversation. However, I can explicitly say there was no "Team Jordan order of silence" on this particular point. In fact, there have been few (or none) of those except in regards to spoiling surprises for the books not yet in print. I prefer to keep it that way, which is why I generally ask interviewers to run my interviews past Team Jordan for clarification, and so that they know what I'm saying and can steer me if I do happen to stray into areas best left quiet."

    Best,
    Brandon

    Footnote—Terez

    Of course, the bolded bits (emphasis mine) are still telling, and there must have been some reason why he decided to be less open about his feelings after this point.

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  • 182

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    And you're also working on your own books right now as well. Has there been any trouble there, or have you been able to firewall that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've been able to firewall it. What I've done is that I tend to separate things timewise. I took the summer off [from The Wheel of Time] to work on some of my own projects that I needed to get back to, and so I gave myself four months or so of time to do that. I got done what I needed to do, and could then just section that off and get back to The Wheel of Time. The way I stay sane as a writer is I work on different projects. I'll dedicate myself to something very big for a long time, and then I'll cut it off and do something else for a while. Maybe it's like taking a drink of water between trying different bites of food. I did that this summer. I went and did other things for a while to refresh myself. That's worked very well in the past in keeping me from getting burned out. That's where my kid's series came from: Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians came from me taking a break between Mistborn 2 and 3, and not wanting to write the climax to the Mistborn books, feeling burned out on the series, and doing something else for a month.

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  • 183

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    You've written on your blog that as you've re-read the books, you've noticed that your sympathies for different characters evolved.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, they have. When I was a kid, I found myself resisting the oppression of Moiraine and Nynaeve, and these older people who were trying to keep the younger guys locked in. I read the series now as an adult, and I feel like one of these people, saying, "Listen to Moiraine's advice, Rand! Don't do that—you're being stupid!" I find myself empathizing with the older characters. It's a testament to Robert Jordan's skill as a writer, the ability to write so many people from so many different walks of life. As you change and become a different person, as you grow, as we all do, you'll begin to see the perspective of other people in the book. It was quite shocking to me.

    GeekDad

    And now that you're much deeper into the writing, has that shift continued?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Partially. One of the great tricks of being a good writer is to be able to see as a lot of different people. When I actually sit down to write, whoever I'm writing becomes the most important character in the book. Because in their mind, they're the most important person in their story. When I'm writing even the minor characters, I need to be them, and I need to see the world as they do. It's a constant shifting, depending on what I'm writing and what their feelings and beliefs are. I regard the book in a different way every time I change characters.

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  • 184

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    One of the things I've always noticed about The Wheel of Time is how central family and parenting is to its narrative. As a writer, a parent, and someone who's grown up with these books, what do you make of their familial aspect?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really like it. There's a tendency in [genre] fiction to ignore the boundaries of family. Telling a story, often, especially young-adult stories, want to take everyone away from their families, and to pretend they don't have families, so they can go on this adventure and not be constrained by family ties. It's this idea of escapism. Part of the realism for me in The Wheel of Time is that that doesn't happen to the characters. You follow different characters' parents and siblings, and it stretches across so many different types of lives and different social statuses, different cultures and countries that it feels very real, and it also feels very personal. Rand has a father. Granted, he's an adopted father, but Rand has a father and his relationship with his father is extremely important to him throughout the entire series. Even though we haven't seen Tam for a while, he doesn't just vanish as a character. Robert Jordan is very good about weaving people back in, and Tam goes and hangs out with Perrin and is working with him. There's a sense that they are real people because of their family relationships.

    Having a son now myself, it makes me want to tell stories where you deal with family, because that's such a big part of all of our lives. It feels now awkward and strange to me that so many stories ignore this. It's become a cliché: the parents are either killed off at the end or at the beginning, or you go away and we don't bother about them or talk about them because they're boring, and the adventure is cool. That's not life.

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  • 185

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    One of the things I noticed in the book is how often, both at the beginning and again near the end, scenes and chapters are punctuated with laughter, of all different types—including the inability to laugh. What's interesting about laughter?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was a theme for the book. And, giving no spoilers, we have known for a while that Cadsuane and the Wise Ones have been saying that Rand needs to learn to laugh and cry again. That was their big concern. The idea of laughter as a theme was an interesting one to consider.

    I mean, there's never one main theme for a book, particularly one this long. And so when you sit down to look at it, you want to have a lot of different threads, kind of like the threads in the Pattern, weaving together to make the tapestry of a story. One of those was the idea of laughter and how different people found enjoyment and amusement. We have the twisted laughter of the Forsaken and we have the genuine laughter of some of the characters, and we have one character, Rand, who can no longer laugh—he is incapable of doing it, even of laughing in wryness. And so I could approach it from those three different directions. We've got the terrible laughter and the full, joyful laughter, and poor Rand's silence in the middle. I thought that highlighting it in other people would only make his excruciating inability to feel all the more obvious, all the more of a smack in the face.

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  • 186

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    The book opens with Rand's principled refusal to torture Semirhage, one of the Forsaken. You can't accuse a series that's twenty years in the making of direct political allegory—but surely there's a comment...

    Brandon Sanderson

    That was in my mind, certainly. The Wheel of Time has always actually had quite an interesting relationship with political allegory. There was an article in the New York Times [I think this one—JBJ] a number of years ago talking about the Wheel of Time as a manifestation of interesting things that were happening in the world, which I think is fascinating. One of the reasons we like fantasy as writers is because fantasy is, at its very core, inherently representative. It is metaphorical. It is fantastical. It's wonderful to be able to write something that is so fantastical and use the threads of true personality, of characterization, of people that you sympathize with, to anchor it in the real world at the same time. So that was running through my mind. I didn't sit down and say, "I'm going to write a political allegory." And yet these concepts were so big in our culture at the time that they did influence me. In these scenes—it's even more interesting because I was working with direct comments from Robert Jordan in his notes mixed with things that had been said about Rand previously and trying to show both sides of the situation.

    Robert Jordan had an interesting quote on this once. The interviewer asked him, "What are you trying to say with your stories? What are you trying to teach?" Robert Jordan took exception to that, and said: I am not trying specifically to teach anything. What he said, and the exact quote is something along these lines: "I love it when my books ask questions, but I don't want to give the answers. The answers are yours. My job is to ask the questions." And I see that. For many years I've thought that was a brilliant and poignant thing to say, and have used that as a guide in my own writing. I don't want to give you answers. I want to raise issues and have characters struggle with them, because that's what people do, and that's what we [as writers] do. But I'm not sitting down to say, I am going to tell you what is right and what is wrong. I'm going to show you that there are characters who have a belief in what is right and what is wrong, and you can agree or disagree with them. But, like real people, they have views on these issues. I'm not trying to say anything specific; I'm only reacting, I think, in part to what we're all saying, part of the cultural dialogue.

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  • 187

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009

    GeekDad

    I noticed that the hardcover's dust jacket specifically mentions the Wheel of Time fan community, calling out several of the most important ones by name. Why?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Partially because I am a part of the fan community myself. And because I'm part of the newer generation of writers who're very involved online. Robert Jordan did some of these things: he posted his blog on Dragonmount, and would post other things like that. But he was part of a different generation. The very first day I got onto the internet in 1994, I found my way to rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan. I found myself there—I was on Tolkien's, and I was on the Wheel of Time one, and that was the very first day that I was on the internet. You'll find that a lot of us in fandom were like that. The internet is our community for these books, and I felt it appropriate to involve them and mention them, because that's what they’re there for.

    GeekDad

    It's basically the air at this point.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right: It's like breathing. It's not like I sat down and said, "oh, I should mention the blogs." It's just what I do, because it's there—it's hard to say why or why not, because it's obvious that you should do it.

    It is true that Robert Jordan was of a different age. I've tried to respect that, particularly because Harriet is of that era, too, and she's very worried about spoilers on the internet and so forth—and I think rightly so. I might be a little too open, or a little too free with some of these things. I've tried to run more of a balance, and to give fewer spoilers. To talk about the process with people, but not tell people what's going to happen, or what specifically is going on with the plot.

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  • 188

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon, who is of the Latter Day Saints faith, was asked how he keeps his theology out of his books. He answers that a writer should not ram his ideology down the reader's throats. A good writer, he says, should present multiple perspectives and beliefs through his characters writing all arguments with equal strength, lest they carry less weight. He then says that Robert Jordan was once quoted saying, "I love when my books ask questions, I do not want to give answers." Another visitor also comments on Brandon's faith, praising that he's one of the only LDS authors he's read where you can't tell his faith through his writing.

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  • 189

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said he loves the process of writing and that he would write a book a year for his whole life, even if none were ever published. He has all his unpublished manuscripts and didn't realize how bad he was before. He was in his early 20's and able to learn and practice to better his craft. He wasn't confident enough to submit his first five books, but the sixth was published (Elantris) though it took a few years. He had an advantage over other new writers from all his practice. He compared "getting it right" for Elantris to getting a hole-in-one in golf—part skill, part accident. Mistborn was his 14th novel.

    He said he avoids reviews unless they are starred since a bad review can spoil his day and when he is feeling down he looks at bad reviews of works he enjoyed, like Pratchett's works, Watchmen, and Hamlet. He also avoided seeing the Watchmen movie, since it would be ruined if they changed it, or the same as the book if they didn't change it, and he didn't really want to see Dr. Manhattan in full IMAX glory.

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  • 190

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    He agrees with fans who criticize that he isn't Robert Jordan, but hopes they will get past their anger at that fact. Also feels that the series belongs to the fans. He is happy with how The Gathering Storm turned out.

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  • 191

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon spoke of his creative freedom in writing, and filling in blanks or making choices that Jim left for the story, but wanted to include everything that Jim wrote as completely as possible. Instead of giving a % of how much was Brandon's, he said it was 100% Brandon and 100% Jim since they both put their all into the book, and all that Brandon wrote was inspired by the previous books, and that Jim dictated, even from his deathbed, because of his passion for the story and the fans.

    Ted Herman

    That is just amazing to me, beyond what words can describe.

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  • 192

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2009

    Tiffany Franklin

    I can't tell you the question, but I think the answer was insightful, so I'm editing out the spoilers to give you this:

    Brandon Sanderson

    You'll notice that the prologues fulfill a purpose. Most of the prologues are written likean epilogue to the book before. [This Prologue] was more of an epilogue to the [end of] Knife of Dreams. Brandon believes that RJ liked giving his fans something to talk about and then answer it in the prologue of the next book. Brandon: "I can't speak for what Robert Jordan was thinking."

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    To which Harriet responded, "Even Robert Jordan couldn't speak for what Robert Jordan was thinking."

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  • 193

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2009

    Question

    How's Towers of Midnight coming?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Towers of Midnight is 70% done.

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    Harriet's answer: "If I can quote Robert Jordan, I can assure you without fear of contradiction, that Towers of Midnight will be on the shelves very shortly after Brandon finishes writing it."

    Brandon Sanderson

    "This is a very, very...there's a lot of work involved. People assume that when I was given the outline, I was given a point by point outline. RJ wasn't like that. He wouldn't show it to Harriet until he'd done twelve drafts. We got this in a state of incompleteness. The creative process isn't as neat and orderly. Things were in dozens of files."

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    Brandon would say "what order do you want it in?" and I would say "Brandon, you're the writer. It's foolish for the editor to take over the part of the writer. And vice versa."

    Brandon Sanderson

    He dictated some and the assistants transferred it into notes, scoured their memory for anything he'd said and put that in the notes. And then all the files... "this was all handed to me and told 'ok, let's write a book.'"

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  • 194

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2009

    Question

    Was it difficult for you to find any of the characters' voices?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Aviendha—the Aiel way of thinking is so different and I think like Two Rivers folk. It was easy to write the Two Rivers. And when I started writing Aviendha, I was writing like a Two Rivers-er.

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  • 195

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2009

    Question

    I am struck by how alike this is to Tolkien. Have you ever talked to Chris Tolkien (since he took over for his father using his notes)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, but I'd like to.

    We're in a little better shape. Jim actually finished scenes. We have a lot more to work with. He wrote the end himself! He left landmarks to follow from here to the end. Not specific details, just "strong stuff" to get us to the end.

    "There are no characters that we don't know how they end up."

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  • 196

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    He's planning another stand-alone story about a world where virus and germs have evolved and possess magic powers. So if you catch a cold you can fly, when you get over it, you can't any more.

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  • 197

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    For NaNoWriMo, he participated for four years, but couldn't "win" since he never wrote anything FOR NaNo. He just continued with what he was already writing. It usually came out to another 70 or 80 thousand words, though!

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  • 198

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2009

    Question

    What character is easiest for you to write? Which is most difficult?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Two Rivers folk were the easiest (Rand, Perrin, Mat, Egwene, and Nynaeve). Aviendha was the most difficult. She thinks more like an Aiel than most Aiel. But he was glad to bring her back to the forefront because he had always liked the way she thought. Tuon was not easy either.

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  • 199

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2009

    Question

    Was the passage about Cadsuane spanking Semirhage already written, or was there just information in the notes? How did you feel about writing that section?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He was given creative freedom to do what was needed. No author can ever stick 100% to an outline, things change as they are being written, and he was given that kind of control in order to make the books work. Regarding that passage in particular, it made Brandon Sanderson cringe, but Robert Jordan wanted it in the books so it stayed.

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  • 200

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2009

    Question

    What was the most difficult part of writing The Gathering Storm?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Keeping track of everyone, due to the exhaustive detail of the books. Brandon used Encyclopaedia WoT often. It was also difficult to make the character 'voices' correct. Aviendha and Tuon were the most difficult of these, because they are from different cultures.

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  • 201

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2009

    Question

    Why do you write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "If I didn't I would go crazy." He wrote 13 novels before he sold one (Elantris). He would write a book every year even if he didn't do this for a living.

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  • 202

    Interview: Nov 19th, 2009

    Samadai

    At 7:00 the Storm Leaders came out and Brandon followed about five minutes later. I know, that like me, many of you have followed his signings and what he talks about and probably have it memorized, but I'm telling this story. :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    He talked about his love of reading, and mentioned going into his local bookstore and seeing The Eye of the World for the first time. He had to come back and get it a week later because he was broke. He mentioned how RJ and the WoT is the reason he chose to become a writer.

    He then talked about perusing the internet one day and finding out about RJ dying, how it was like finding out all his childhood friends had died at one time. He talked about the eulogy he wrote for RJ. How he came down stairs one morning (noon) and got the message from Harriet asking to talk to him. He finally decided to write the books because he could not think of another person who was a huge fan who had studied the story as much as he has and was also a published writer. He talked about flying to meet Harriet at her house, she invited him in with an offer of food, and asked him what she could get him. He said "the ending of the book and who killed Asmodean". I too have read this many times before but the impact of hearing it was phenomenal.

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  • 203

    Interview: Nov 16th, 2009

    Question

    Please tell me all you can about the potential novella that fills in holes? What holes? Who? Where will it be published if written? Is this material that you really wanted to include in Towers of Midnight or The Gathering Storm but just couldn't fit in? How does this match up with your feeling about not writing other stuff in the WOT world?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are about 50,000 words of secondary plots that Sanderson wants to include in Towers of Midnight. He's just not sure all of it will get into the book. If something gets cut, he'd like to get to his fans on his website.

    This lead to quite a bit of discussion about Towers of Midnight. It will be a very different book from The Gathering Storm. The Gathering Storm was very intentionally focused. Brandon felt strongly that a 'hit' wasn't good enough, that The Gathering Storm needed to be a home run. (At the table, we all thought it was a home run.) Towers of Midnight will need to catch up many plot threads and will be much less focused. This will have its problems and it will be a big struggle to find the right balance—they aren't there yet in the writing process. Brandon mentioned a few plots as examples which strongly suggests they will be in Towers of Midnight—Loial, Lan, Fain, Taim, Logain, Elayne, if Mat does what fans think he will, etc.

    kcf

    My impression is that the novella, will actually be a series of prologue-like scenes that just don’t make it into the final book.

    Brandon Sanderson

    This also lead to lots of discussion on the Encyclopedia. It will include lots of spoilery stuff that doesn't make it into the books. But, there are several examples in the notes where RJ specifically says that certain plots will not be revealed. Someone asked about Merilille—the Aes Sedai in Caemlyn who ran away with a Sea Folk apprentice. It was implied that this may be a thread that goes unresolved.

    Footnote

    The novella was to be about Pevara and the events at the Black Tower. Brandon later decided that the novella probably wasn't going to work. He got two chapters into Towers of Midnight and the rest into A Memory of Light.

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  • 204

    Interview: Nov 16th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    His goal is 2000 words a day, but it doesn't work like that. Some days are much more, others much less.

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  • 205

    Interview: Mar 29th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm working on the final draft of The Way of Kings in order to meet its April 8th deadline, and over the past few days I've posted on Twitter and Facebook breakdowns of how many words I'm cutting from each chapter. This has confused some readers who have asked me not to cut anything out or to save them for an eventual "writer's cut" edition. Trust me on this one—the book you'll get on the shelf is the writer's cut, and you wouldn't like the writing as much if I didn't go through and do the trimming on this draft. Sort of like a director shoots a lot of film and then edits it into a coherent narrative later, I tend to overwrite on my first drafts—the language is more wordy than it needs to be, sometimes a character will come to the same realization multiple times as I'm working out where best to fit it in, that sort of thing. In my final draft I go in and trim out all the fat. We talked about this in an episode of Writing Excuses last year; if you're curious about the process, give it a listen.

    So the words I'm cutting in this draft aren't anything you're going to miss as a reader. Now, sometimes I will cut an entire scene or heavily rework a section, but that usually happens in earlier drafts than this. I do save the cut scenes in case they contain something I want to use somewhere else or just for posterity. In the Library section of the website I've included some deleted scenes from Elantris, Mistborn 1, and Mistborn 2—check those out if you want to understand why it's a good reason those scenes are gone. Long after The Way of Kings is out, some of its cut scenes or early draft sections may end up on that page. We'll see.

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  • 206

    Interview: Feb 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    My name is Brandon Sanderson. I began writing seriously about 15 years ago now, was unpublished at the time. Spent many years trying to break in and write that book that would hopefully sell and make me able to make a living as a writer. I went to BYU as an undergraduate. After I graduated, still hadn't published, but by that point I'd finished around seven or eight novels, so I was pretty sure this was something I wanted to do. I loved doing it, I loved writing. I've now published eight or nine novels, most of them epic fantasy. I do have a children's series, called Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, targeted at 11-, 12-, 13-year-olds who are too smart for their own good.

    In 2007, I was asked by Robert Jordan's widow to complete the Wheel of Time novels, which had long been favorites of mine. Robert Jordan passed away in 2007. And the first of three that will finish that series, called The Gathering Storm, came out last year and was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

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  • 207

    Interview: Feb 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    I see myself as part of a greater movement that is doing some new and interesting things. I'm certainly not the only one doing it, and I wouldn't even know if I'm at the forefront of it. I'm part of it. But. . . I can't help but be, I think, considering all I've read and what I've been part of. If you read the fantasy that's coming out right now, it feels different from what came before. And I think a lot of that is a reaction toward or against the epic journey, and we're saying, well what else can we explore? So, a lot of reaction against the classic, standard medieval setting.

    We're also kind of stepping forward into a more modern era for our fantasy, things taking place in a more 1900s level of technology or 1800s level of technology. I feel that a lot of us, a lot of the authors during the '80s and '90s spent a lot of time exploring what Tolkien had revealed, particularly in epic fantasy which is my sub-genre, and saying, well what else can we do with this? But at the same time, telling these stories that were very classical in an archetypal sense. That ground has been explored by masters of the genre, and so we have to take a few steps outwards. And I'm part of it, I'm certainly not the only one.

    We're the first generation of fantasy writers who really grew up reading a ton of fantasy because in the early days there wasn't as much. There were some great authors who were writing, Tolkien of course being one of them, but there were many others who were writing at that era. But, before the '60s and '70s there wasn't very much of it. There was the science fiction, and there was some fantasy mixed in there with the pulp and things, but our generation grew up reading the great epic fantasies of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. And because of that I've noticed my generation is. . . we're kind of these post-modern fantasy writers. We're building upon all these things that happened before, and now seeming like we want to explore different directions because of how well some of the authors like Robert Jordan covered the topics that they did.

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  • 208

    Interview: Feb 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Story, to me, is about character. And if you don't have those characters to latch onto, then your book is not just gonna hold me or grab me. There are plenty of people who enjoy just a solid plot. And a good plot is good, but it's the characters that are the heart and soul of it.

    Religion is fascinating to me. I'm a religious person. And the different ways that people approach religion, think about religion, are all very interesting to me. And I find myself dealing with these themes because what fascinates me is what I find interesting and write stories about. It's really no more complicated than that. People ask me, do I put religious themes in intentionally? No. I think that religion is very important to a lot of people, and so people end up thinking about it or talking about it. And so it becomes themes, therefore, in my books.

    Granted, what I find frightening or what I find interesting or what I find noble is influenced by who I am and by what my religion teaches. And on the flip side, the misuse of religion strikes me as a very frightening thing. And so I've made religions bad guys in my books before. That wasn't intentional, me saying religion's going to be the bad guy. It's me sitting down and saying, I want an antagonist who is legitimately frightening. What is legitimately frightening to me? Well, this is legitimately frightening: someone who misuses this, who takes things that I think are wonderful and turns them into something terrible. That's frightening. And I like to show all aspects of things if I can in my books.

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  • 209

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson says, "Like most fans of the series, I was just shocked and saddened that Jim Rigney wasn't going to be there to finish it himself." He adds, "About a month after his passing, I woke up one morning and found that I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it said, 'Hello, Brandon Sanderson, this is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me back. I've got something I want to talk to you about.'"

    Sanderson wasn't sure how to take it at first. The author was certain that someone was playing a joke on him. Then he started to shake nervously at the thought that it might not be a prank. "When I got hold of her, I found out that she was looking at me as one of the candidates to finish The Wheel of Time. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that."

    Even though Sanderson had never met Rigney, he considered him a mentor. "I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced. But I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call," recalls Sanderson. "I was absolutely stunned. I'm afraid I stammered a bit when I told her I would be honored to be considered; in fact, a while after I got off the phone I sent her an e-mail that started, 'Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot.'"

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  • 210

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time. Although he was a respected and prolific fantasy writer with a growing career, his name on a Wheel of Time book would introduce him to hordes of new readers and send him to the top of the best-seller lists for weeks. But he would have to take time off from his own ambitious epics, and he faced a huge challenge: To be true to Jordan's work while retaining his own distinctive style.

    Sanderson wrestled with the question for a long time before deciding that he would concentrate on keeping the character voices authentic and consistent. "We don't want these stories to become about Brandon," he says, "but in the same way, the original Wheel of Time books ... weren't about Jim. They were about the story and the characters. As long as I can make the characters feel right and do the story the right way, I think it will turn out all right."

    Sanderson made it his "prime directive" to make sure the characters sounded like their old selves. "My second rule was that if Jim said it, the default is to do it as he said, to put it in as he said. And then rule No. 3 is that I can contradict rule No. 2 if it's necessary for the storytelling."

    By considering these three rules, Sanderson ensured that Rigney's story was told consistently. "I'm continually going back and reading Jim's original notes and his previous books," says the author, "balancing that with looking at what I think he was trying to do, what he said he was trying to do, and what would make the best story. In some cases I trust my instincts as a writer, and in other cases I just say, 'This is what Jim said. We're doing it.' I can't really tell you where I draw the line, when I do one or the other. Oftentimes when the situation comes up, I'll write to Harriet and her assistants and say, 'What do you think?'"

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    McDougal's association had its own complications. As the book progressed, she would send her reactions to Sanderson. These didn't always equate with his own ideas or those of Simons and Romanczuk. "I've learned not to do that horrible thing to Brandon," she says. "Three different people were giving him different reactions. We weren't all on the same page."

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  • 211

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nevertheless, Sanderson pushed on, producing hundreds of thousands of words in a matter of months. He knew that if he succeeded, he would be set for life. If he dropped the ball, he'd disappoint a legion of fans. He felt that it was his job to please as many of them as possible, because this was as much their project as his. Without their intense desire to see the saga completed, there would be no sequel.

    The new novel, The Gathering Storm, follows central characters Rand al'Thor and Egwene al'Vere. Rand prepares for the Last Battle while Egwene attempts to reunite the inhabitants of the White Tower under her rule. An attack by Seanchan forces is inevitable. Both protagonists try to piece together the fragmented factions around them in preparation for the great conflict to come.

    One million copies of the book were printed for its launch on Oct. 27, 2009. It shot to the top of The New York Times best-seller list, with sales encouraged by a 25-city book tour. Sanderson thought he'd feel out of place and disoriented at the first signing. Rigney's printed "autograph" was included in the book because Sanderson "felt that it would seem really strange to be signing a Wheel of Time book without his signature also there." Sanderson didn't feel as overwhelmed as he expected. "I guess that's because I had just spent 18 months to two years living in this world and living in these books."

    He'd poured so much blood and sweat into The Gathering Storm that he'd earned the right to be a part of its promotion. "I still don't claim the book as my own," he says. "The book is Jim's. And yet there's a whole lot of me in there, and because of that, it felt right in a way. I didn't think that it ever would."

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  • 212

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Harriet's a trooper," says Sanderson. "I tried to be as respectful as was possible, letting her take the lead." At some of the signings, if McDougal was present, he would ask her to do the reading. "That was really fun," he says. "Harriet was in control, though there were some hard times for her. Most of them came during the process of working on the book. When it was time to go out and promote the book, I think she just put her best face forward, and I didn't really see any of the troubles that I'm sure she was feeling."

    Sanderson acknowledges what a terrible thing it is to lose someone close to you, "yet at the same time, Jim's writing was part of what drew them together in the first place. So I think I saw her finding a bit of solace in it."

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  • 213

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time fans are very vocal and some diehards were resistant to reading a new book with a different authorial voice. But the tone and characters were so consistent with the early novels that the response was generally positive.

    "I don't think you can find a fan reception about anything that is all positive," Sanderson reflects. "I've certainly never seen one. Not everyone liked the book, but not everyone liked Jim's books. Heck, not everyone likes Hamlet. That's just the way we are as people. There is no way to please everyone."

    The writer knows it's important to listen to the fans. "There are some one-star reviews out there, [but feedback] has been overwhelmingly positive. I very much appreciate hearing that I'm on the right course. I hope I can make the next two books turn out as well."

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  • 214

    Interview: Apr 22nd, 2009

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    Harriet in particular was very up front about a topic that I imagine they thought to be a bit sensitive, though obvious if you think about it. Which was the... hm, not sure what word to use here. Caution? Admonition? Caveat? Not sure. Let's go with "forewarning"—forewarning that Book 12 (and 13, and 14) are not "Robert Jordan" books. They are "Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson" books.

    As Brandon put it, if they had wanted someone to slavishly imitate Jordan's prose and style and try to make it seem like it was actually Jordan writing, they could have done that (or tried, as Brandon was of the opinion that not even a skilled ghostwriter would have been really successful at mimicking Jordan's voice), but that was not what Harriet and Tom wanted. They wanted (and I'm paraphrasing here a little) to finish the series in a way that honored Jordan's vision without insulting his memory by, essentially, pretending he hadn't passed on. Which is something that I personally can completely get behind; the "ghostwriter" option strikes me as nothing less than ghoulish, so good on Team Jordan for not going that route. Brandon's aim in writing, therefore, has been to capture the feel of the Wheel of Time (and keeping everything that Jordan actually wrote before he died intact) while still bringing his own experience and voice to the table. In other words, he's in there too.

    Which I imagine is going to anger some people, and I'm telling those people right now: deal. Of course ideally we would have preferred to have the finale of the Wheel of Time as written by Robert Jordan and Robert Jordan alone, but we can't have that, and that's no one's fault, least of all Harriet et al. I can't encapsulate everything they said at this panel about it without going on for a hundred years (and this is thing is already frighteningly long), but if you want my take on it, after hearing what they had to say (and having read Brandon's previously published novels) I am at the very least deeply curious to see the result. Take it for what it's worth, but I think it's going to be pretty damn cool. You can think I drank the Koolaid or whatever, and there's certainly the possibility that I am wrong, and that's fine, but if you insist on pissing and moaning about something that for all intents and purposes was unavoidable (not to mention the best solution available anyway), I really have no sympathy. Put up or shut up.

    (Well, come on, I couldn't have a whole blog post go by without saying something incendiary!)

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  • 215

    Interview: Apr 22nd, 2009

    Leigh Butler

    But first, I went to dinner, after a little bit of recovery time. I was with The Usual Suspects (Trisha and the Jasons), as well as Bob Kluttz and his lovely wife Joan (when I knocked over a glass of water: "Hey, we're supposed to be the Kluttzes here"), Maria Simons, and Brandon Sanderson, at this little Thai/Chinese/sushi place near the hotel. At our urging, Maria and Brandon explained the process of getting a book from manuscript to print, which I've heard in several iterations before but for various reasons is endlessly fascinating to me, especially from an "in the trenches" sort of perspective (which said perspective both Maria and Brandon possess in spades, as you well might imagine).

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  • 216

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    What would you say has been the most difficult part of working on the Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say keeping track of all the multitude of characters and subplots. I thought the hardest part might be writing the characters, and indeed that was kind of difficult. It was definitely the most important part: making sure they felt like themselves. But there's so many different Aes Sedai, so many different Wise Ones, so many different named characters, and so many different sub-characters with smaller plots, and they all have different ways of speaking and ways of thinking, and tracking it all is a real challenge.

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  • 217

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    That leads me to my next question. Robert Jordan's notes are, I'm guessing, all over the place—I heard three million words worth of notes. He also did extensive writing for the last book that we get the impression was also all over the place. Has it been difficult writing that way, and is it very different from your own normal writing style?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In some ways, and in some ways it has also been very nice. I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them. Well, in this case, a lot of those important focal scenes, Robert Jordan has outlined or written himself. So, I've actually been able to build an outline out of his notes that works very much the way that I work on outlines anyway.

    The notes themselves are very interesting to work with. They are so very varied, so to speak. There is just so much there. In some cases we have scenes that he wrote. In some cases we have scenes that he talks about and his assistants wrote down what he said about them. In some cases, we have interviews that he did with his assistants through the years when he was sick, where he was just talking about the last book and they were asking questions. He dictated some scenes on his death bed. In other cases, we have things that his assistants remember him saying that they just wrote down after he passed away, everything they could remember. Other cases we have outlines that he was working from for the book. And this is just all in a big jumble that was handed to me, not in really any order, and they just said, "put this in order, do what you need to do." They gave me the tools to write the book and left me to write it, working through all of these things.

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  • 218

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    And I know you are working on it very closely with Harriet, Alan, and Maria. What is it like getting the curb-side editing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Normally, I have a lot of alpha readers on my books. These are people that, once I finish a novel, I let them look at it and give me a reader response. In the case of the Wheel of Time books, most of those were not available to me. We have to keep it quite tightly under wraps and not show it to a lot of people. So, it is nice having multiple editors, both in the form of people who directly edit the book such as Harriet, Alan, and Maria, and also people like Tom Doherty, who has given me some good advice. My normal editor, Moshe Feder, did a read through on this book, and my agent did as well. All of them are giving advice.

    I am immediately juggling Alan, Maria, and Harriet's comments. I'd send a chapter in and then be working on the next one, and that chapter would come back three times with three different sets of revisions on it. That got really challenging to juggle. There was one time when I was flying on a plane to an event for Tor, and I had three separate paper sets of a chapter printed out along with electronic commentary by them on the chapters. So, I was juggling four files and three sets of paper on the same pages, trying to get this all inputted and changed. It got . . . well, it was a juggling act.

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  • 219

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    Speaking of juggling. You write quite a bit, both on the Wheel and your own projects, you manage to post blogs and keep us up to date on Twitter and Facebook, and do conventions and signings. When do you sleep?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha! I love to do what I do. So, I do work long hours. I work longer hours now than I used to. When the Wheel of Time was offered to us, Emily and I sat down and talked about it. We kind of came to the decision that this would be like my residency. A doctor goes through a period where you spend a few years working really hard to establish yourself. Same thing for an attorney. For me, that is what this is going to be. It is going to be several years of hard work at a fourteen hour day.

    In order to juggle that, I have made two decisions. Number one: I get a full night's sleep every night. I sleep as late as I need to get eight hours. Number two: I take two hours off for my family every day. And then I write fourteen hours.

    Now, it looks like a lot more books are getting published than I am writing, if that makes sense. I have written them all, but I used to work very far ahead. So, for instance, Warbreaker and Alcatraz Three were written years before they came out. In fact, they had already been written when I got the Wheel of Time contract. So, you are slowly seeing the books I wrote before this happened start to come out, but at the same time with the Wheel of Time books, when I turn them in, they get rushed into production so they can come out as soon as possible. So suddenly you see two books a year, maybe three books a year, but those are two books I wrote before and one book I wrote now. So, it looks like I'm more prolific than I really am.

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  • 220

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    You have been noted specifically for your creative magic systems, such as Allomancy and Biochroma. When in your creative process do you usually find yourself fleshing these out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on the book. Sometimes I have the magic system first; sometimes I have the characters first. I always start fleshing them out in my outline, when I sit down to pre-write the book. I do a lot of outlining. I like to outline. It helps me, as a writer, to create the works that I do. I will always be looking for a couple of things for the magic system. One is interesting limitations. And interesting limitations are better than an interesting power. Also, I will be looking for an interesting way to make it work visually or audibly, just for a sensory use to the magic.

    Some magic only happens in the characters' heads as they are facing off. You know, these two wizards just kind of staring at each other and one wins. That sort of thing is boring. I don't want it to be all abstract. I want it to have some relationship to the world. So I am always looking for that. And I am looking for ways to tie it to the setting and the plot so that it isn't just there in a vacuum. The magic needs to influence the plot and the setting. Frank Herbert did a great job with Dune and the spice. Yeah, it isn't magic—it's technology—but it's the same sort of thing. The spice is related to the economy which influences the government which influences the warfare of all the noble houses, and it is all interconnected, and that is what I am aiming for.

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  • 221

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    You have a knack for writing strong female protagonists, and I think that a lot of people agree, from Vin in Mistborn to the princesses in Warbreaker. I daresay even Egwene in The Gathering Storm to the extent that you got to write her. Care to comment on that? Did you have to take any special considerations when writing them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was very hard for me at first. I did it poorly. It really bothered me because I have two sisters that I studied a lot, and I would ask them, "read this and tell me what you think." I'd look for their opinions; that was part of it. Then there's my mother. She graduated valedictorian of her college class in accounting in a time when she was the only woman in the entire program. So, I have had good role models; that is one thing.

    But for another, I saw it as something I was weak at early on, before I got published, and it bothered me so much that it became something that I focused on and worked on really hard because I wanted it to become a strength. And the real change happened when I stopped treating characters like roles in a book and I started treating them like people. Each character sees themselves as the hero in the story in their own way, and so I started looking at that thought. The early women I'd put in a book, I'd put them in there only to be a romantic interest, and that was a bad way to do it. Instead, I make them their own character. Every character starts with their own desires and goals, and nobody just starts when the book starts. They are already in existence.

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  • 222

    Interview: Jun 7th, 2010

    Richard Fife

    Do you have any particular themes you like to write on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Robert Jordan once said, "My books raise questions, but I don't want my books to answer them. I want them to make you think, and wonder, and question, and come to your own conclusion." I have always thought that was one of the wisest things that I have ever heard anyone say. I have actually had characters quote it in books before, although I cannot remember if it was in one that has been published or not. But, I have always liked that, and I have used that as my guiding light. I want to deal with things, and I want to have characters struggle with things, and all of this important stuff.

    I don't want to give you answers, so I deal with this by having characters that approach things from different directions. And most of these themes grow out of the characters' desires. I don't go into a book saying, "I'm going to write a book about this." I go into a book saying, "Here are characters who care about this and this." So, themes develop as you write the book because the characters influence them and design them. And that is what becomes the heart of the book, what the characters care about.

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  • 223

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    Are you pleased with the way The Gathering Storm has been received thus far?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I'm very pleased. The fan reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. The sales on the book have been extremely good, and it seems like people are happy I did not screw it up.

    Patrick

    Understandably, it's no surprise that reactions are not 100% positive. How closely have you been following the fan reactions that are less than positive? How do you anticipate these reactions will affect your writing of the final two volumes? Is there any specific reaction you would care to address directly?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, it's not surprising that the fan response has not been 100% positive—in fact, if it were, that would be kind of suspicious. Sometime, look up Hamlet on Amazon and read the one-star reviews. If people can't agree on Hamlet, they're not going to agree on my books.

    As for the less-than-positive reactions, they range from completely useless to very helpful. But it's dangerous to look at reviews of any sort while I'm writing. As writers we tend to focus on the negative and ignore the positive. It's just human nature. Beyond that, a writer has to walk a very tight line between keeping an audience in mind and following their own artistic vision for a work.

    Now, these books are different in that—as I've mentioned before—I feel more beholden to the fan community than I otherwise might. These books belong to them more than they do to me. But I learned early on in my writing career that if I tried to do everything for everyone, the writing process would fail. So, it's more useful for me (on things like this book) to have people close to me watch the reviews/reactions and pass issues on to me when there seems to a consensus of opinions. Those are the types of things I find it important to keep in mind when writing.

    In the end, however, there is one opinion on these books that matters the most. That is Harriet's opinion. I look to her for guidance on characters, tone, and plotting. I will continue to do so. I think her hand on the book, mixed with Robert Jordan's notes, were the main reason the novel turned out so well.

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  • 224

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    How difficult was/is it to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how good the last three WoT volumes turn out to be, they can never be as good as if Robert Jordan had written them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That was a difficult thing to get over. Actually, the time when it hit me the strongest was when I was first offered this project. I was tempted to say no for that very reason, because I knew that no matter what I did, it would not be the same as what could have been. I've said this a number of times, and I hope it doesn't come across as false modesty or anything, but I still really don't believe the books can be as good written by me as they could have written by Robert Jordan.

    So that was my main consideration for potentially saying no. In the end, I decided if I did say no—and someone else got the book and screwed it up—it would be partially my fault. I honestly and sincerely believe that I am the person who can do these books the best now that Robert Jordan is gone. I would rather he be here to write them, but that isn't possible. Therefore, I want to do it myself. At least I know they're in the hands of someone who cares about the series.

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  • 225

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    Many writers seem to be perfectionists at heart. Looking back on the published form of The Gathering Storm, what do you wish you could do to fine-tune that novel now that readers have started to comment on its presumed weaknesses?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do wish I'd had was more time to polish the book. There was no more time; that book had to come out last year. The drafting process was so quick—I did 17 drafts of that book across the space of just a short number of months. Anytime you do a draft, artifacts show up. You say the wrong thing, or you're thinking about one scene while writing another, and shift the tone the wrong direction. Or you just delete a word here or insert the wrong word.

    If I have one feeling about weaknesses the book has, it's that there are a few little rough edges that I would like to have smoothed out. We're catching a lot of those for the paperback release.

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  • 226

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    How much did you struggle with the need to give the fans what they wanted (i.e. Mat, Perrin and other favorite characters) with the desire to keep to the relatively tight thematic narrative with Rand and Egwene?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've had to balance those things, for sure. I spoke a little of this above; it's a lesson I've had to learn as a writer across my career, not just with the Wheel of Time books.

    The best stories—stories the fans are going to like more in the end—are the ones where the author stays true to his or her vision. That's not always what the fans say they're going to want.

    This is particularly poignant with me, because I am a fan on this series. I had to balance letting the fan inside me say, "Ooh, ooh, I want to see this, I want to see this," with what was going to make the best story. I had to preserve Robert Jordan's original vision for the books, while adding what I could add to the narrative. I couldn't, therefore, dally too much with fan satisfaction moments.

    For instance, I intentionally kept cameos from minor characters to a minimum. The little voices inside my head screaming, "Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if?"—I had to be very careful about those. When the time came to divide the book, the balance of which characters got major viewpoints in this volume really came down to the narratives I felt would go well alongside one another.

    Note that if there are missing characters in The Gathering Storm, you will likely find them in Towers of Midnight. I didn't think who got cut and who didn't get cut was a really large-scale issue. It just came down to what made the best story.

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  • 227

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    The Gathering Storm appears to be the most thematically-oriented book in the WoT series, with several readers rhapsodizing about the parallels between Rand, Egwene, and others and how they deal with issues of pain and responsibility. Is the upcoming Towers of Midnight shaping up to have some interesting thematic parallels similar to The Gathering Storm and if so, would they be extensions of what we saw in The Gathering Storm or something completely different?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The reason I divided the book the way I did was because of the way that I felt the themes would play well with one another. Towers of Midnight certainly has its own themes, and you will be able to notice them. There will be some carryover. But it's going to be a different book. We need to expand and look wider about the world to catch up with other characters we haven't seen for a while. And there are quite a number of them.

    So, it's a yes and a no. The themes will be there, but there will be a lot more going on around them, so they'll be diluted in favor of scope. I've had to be careful not to make Towers of Midnight simply a "jump back in time and catch up" book. I don't want to do that. It does move forward.

    Rand and Egwene will be there. But the themes are going to be different because of the different mix. We are going to see a lot more of Perrin, and we are going to see a lot more of Mat. And what's going on in their plotlines will influence theme in a different way.

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  • 228

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    Between working on the final WoT installments and The Way of Kings, what changes have you noticed in your approach to writing after spending much of the past two years working with Team Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For one thing, I hired an assistant—because Maria and Alan were so wonderful to have and to work with, I realized I needed that myself. In fact, my assistant is recording these answers from me on his iPhone, and then will transcribe them, and that's what you're reading right now.

    What else has changed? I have gotten much better at dealing with epic scope, continuity, and large numbers of viewpoint characters. And, you know, I've had to be much more focused. In the past, I would often jump back and forth and do little side projects here and there. These past few years, I haven't had nearly as much time for that sort of thing. That's been both good and bad, because it has taught me to be more focused, but I also miss the days when I could jump over and do a random steampunk story, then jump back to whatever I was working on.

    I think I'm getting better at description and prose, which has always been the weakest part of my novels (I feel). And I've learned a lot about character voice and how to manipulate it.

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  • 229

    Interview: May 25th, 2010

    Patrick

    Anything else you wish to share with your fans?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, for this entire interview, I've tiptoed around one issue: the fan reaction to Mat in The Gathering Storm.

    You kindly didn't ask directly, though I did sense that you were trying to get at it. And your own comments about The Gathering Storm are among those I did read. I know what you've said about Mat.

    It's curious. I've gotten around 1500 emails about The Gathering Storm so far. (Of those, by the way, only one person didn't like the book. I'm not arrogant enough to assume that person is the only one—I'm guessing that most who didn't like the book didn't feel the need to email me and chew me out for it.)

    Of those 1500, only a handful mention Mat. However, he IS the one brought up the most often. Oddly, it's almost exactly divided between people saying, "I love how you did Mat, he's my favorite part of the book," and people saying, "I loved everything about the book, except Mat didn't feel right."

    That has been very interesting to me. One thing this does for me is that it actually relieves a big burden off my back, because it means that I did everybody else right. It also means that Mat is noticeably different to a small number of people. Was this done intentionally? No, it was not. I worked on Mat like I worked on all the rest of the characters, and I feel as close to Mat as I feel to the rest of the characters. I asked Harriet, and she said, "You did Mat perfectly. Don't change him."

    So...where does that leave us? I'm not sure. I do realize that my sense of humor is slightly different from Robert Jordan's sense of humor. And perhaps if I had to do it again, I wouldn't lead with the monologue from Mat that I used, because that's where the difference is most obvious. A person's sense of humor is like their thumbprint. And I'm not sure that I could ever replicate Robert Jordan's thumbprint when it comes to that, and it never has been my goal to replicate him exactly.

    I think that in the narrative, though—the places aside from the monologues—Mat is still Mat. Of course, Mat had some really big things happen to him in Knife of Dreams, things that have shaken him and the way he sees the world. But at his core, he's still the same person.

    However, if you were worried about him, it should help you to know that the large bulk of the Mat sequences Robert Jordan wrote are in Towers of Midnight. There is a lot more Robert Jordan Mat to come. So maybe it's not really an issue at all.

    Best,

    Brandon

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  • 230

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Beyond meeting the expectations of readers old and new, Sanderson has his own personal reasons to roll the Wheel of Time to its conclusion. "I love this series," says the author, now 34, "and I want to see the last book written as much as any other fan. For a writer like me, the next best thing to having Jim write the novel is being able to work on it myself."

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    Rigney's effect on Sanderson and countless others continues to amaze McDougal. "Robert was bigger than I really understood," she realizes. "He was a bigger person on the world stage than I knew. People came up to me and said, 'These books changed my life.'"

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  • 231

    Interview: Sep 9th, 2010

    Question

    Question: about Talmanes' character and sense of humor and how Brandon has written him.

    Brandon Sanderson

    But that's how I was reading him, and perhaps other people read him differently. And my particular biases on the character were manifest. Does that make sense? That's how I've always seen him.

    But, one thing that I have to warn Wheel of Time readers... In me you get some interesting things writing the Wheel of Time book. What you get, which I hope is an advantage is someone who has read the books through multiple times, who's read The Eye of the World nine times, who is a very deep, big fan of the series. But what you're also getting hand-in-hand with that is someone who starting reading the Wheel of Time when he was fourteen...and on occasion has used his line edit privileges not for good.

    Like, there are certain things that are embedded in my imagination that I have not realized until working on these books that I was wrong all along, one of which you may notice in The Gathering Storm was the length of the bridges into Tar Valon. Which, I had a conception of them, and I didn't look it up because I'm like, 'oh, I know what that looks like,' and so I started describing it and nobody called me on it, and then it comes out and fans are like, 'these are like a mile long, you can't really see the other side, you know, in the way you described it.' And I looked at it and then I read the Big White Book, I'm like, "Holy crap, these bridges are a mile long!" That's enormous! That's not how I imagined it at all. But that's how it is if you look at the maps.

    These are some of these things where if I even had an inkling that it would be wrong, I would have questioned it. And in other cases, you'll get things like Talmanes, where I have always been reading him a certain way. And in my head, I'm like, this guy is way...you know, Mat's just not noticing the smirk that this man has in his eyes. That's how I've always read him, and so when I write him that comes out. Is that how Robert Jordan intended it? Well, I'll leave you to decide whether he had the line, 'he actually has a smirk inside,' or if it's just all along me reading him this way that makes me write him that way.

    But does that give you some examples of understanding? This is one of the things, the issues we kind of slightly have to deal with me writing the Wheel of Time books is, you know, you can get some advantages. Mat, and Rand, and Perrin, and Egwene...these are my high school friends. I feel like I know these better than I know most of the friends I know in my life right now because I've known these people longer. Really, I mean, you know. You get that, and so hopefully their voices are very close to what Robert Jordan was writing them as, but you also get the preconceptions.

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  • 232

    Interview: Sep 4th, 2010

    Question

    Question about writing/reading as a kid and early influences...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, boy. It was less about what I wrote and more about what I read. Many of you have heard my story that I wasn't a reader until I was in 8th grade, and, you know, the teacher had me read a book. And the reason that book struck me so hard in part was because, you know, that middle school's a hard age, I think most of you will agree. It's an awkward age. And...I had, without really knowing it, been searching for a while for something that was me. Something that I could do, something that my talents would work for. I was always a daydreamer. And it wasn't till I read that fantasy novel that I said, "Wow, look at this. Here is somebody who does what I do, and they do it for a living. And they've turned it into a job. And here is something that is me." And right from the beginning I realized this is something I want to be doing. And so, it was about the books I was reading at the time that made me...I felt I'd found home, even though, you know...Just in those early books I read.

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  • 233

    Interview: Sep 4th, 2010

    Question

    As you finish this amazing saga, did you ever wrestle with the fact between your voice in the writing versus Robert Jordan's voice in the writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Did I ever wrestle between the voices? It was less of a wrestle and more of a process, but yes. I've spoken before about how I looked at the project and looked at the early notes, reread the series, and deciding if I was going to imitate Robert Jordan's voice or not. And I've talked about what I ended up doing, which I decided I would not try to imitate Robert Jordan's voice but I would adapt my voice to the Wheel of Time, which I felt would match better. And so, that worked almost universally. There are a few places that it didn't work as well as others that I then had to work on longer. It was not really a struggle. I mean, but because of what I decided to do, it was more of a "I am working to adapt my voice to make it appropriate to the Wheel of Time." And you will be able to notice words, it's going to be...it should be very easy if you actually sit down and break it down and say, "Oh here's a word that Brandon used that Robert Jordan never used." I try to actually remove as many of those as possible during the copy edit and editing stage. I don't worry about that at the beginning but then we'll say okay, if this is a word that's never appeared in the Wheel of Time before, then that's an appropriate word to just swap out and change. But at the same time you'll notice things. You'll notice things that I do that Jim didn't do. You'll notice my use of contractions is different from Jim's use of contractions. And that's just something that is going to be obvious if you look at it, but hopefully by matching the style of the Wheel of Time, not Robert Jordan, as soon as you're into it a few pages, the distinctions hopefully will fade. And that's what I was shooting for, because my goal was to make the characters sound like themselves. So I wouldn't say it was a struggle, though there were some places where it was harder than others.

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  • 234

    Interview: Sep 4th, 2010

    Question

    You may have been asked this before, I'm not sure, I'm just kind of curious. Dealing with the, when you were going through the process of when you decided to write this, and going through the notes and like learning the ending and everything... Working on somebody else's project, like, when you found things out as a fan who's followed it for so long, were there parts that were almost kind of hard for you to write? Like, maybe you didn't anticipate this happening? And it's like, you were like, "Holy crap!" I'm sure you wouldn't have... Were there parts that you were like, just wow, this is just really weird having to write this?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can talk on that for a sec here. Yes, in two different ways. There are some scenes that are very Robert Jordan scenes that are the type of scenes that I would never put...that I would just never write, just never naturally. I can only think of two scenes that were...one scene that way, and one scene that was just, I was completely not anticipating it, and so my brain had to... It wasn't hard to write when I actually got to the scene. But when I first read the notes, I'm like, "How am I going to do that?" Does that make sense?

    Audience

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The first one you've already read. It occurs in The Gathering Storm, and it involves someone's backside. Which is not, you know, it's very appropriate to the Wheel of Time, but I don't generally write spankings into my books. And so, I actually said, "I have to write a spanking scene?!?" All right, make it the best spanking scene ever!

    The other scene has not come up yet so I can't tell you what it is. It was just a "wow." It was kind of that, "How did I miss that?" in part, and also a "I really need to make this really work really well." And anyway, I can tell you about that next year.

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    Interview: Aug 23rd, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Now that it's done, it is time for me to take a break. I've been going full steam on the Wheel of Time and the Stormlight Archive now for about three years. These last eighteen months were particularly demanding, filled with seventy-hour weeks. I don't regret it, and I'm certainly not complaining. I agree to deadlines when I make contracts, and I love my job. I will gladly work twelve- and fourteen-hour days six days a week at something I love if it means I don't have to work eight hours a day five days a week at something I hate. (Which would be pretty much anything other than writing.)

    But I have to take care not to burn myself out either. And so, as I did last summer, I'm going to take some time off and work on side projects. These are very relaxing to me—books that have no deadline and that no editor is waiting for or expecting to see. I'll probably only have time to write one, and I'm not sure what it will be yet, but it won't be an epic fantasy. (They take far too long for the time I'm giving myself.) Probably a YA novel or maybe even something wild, such as an urban fantasy or the like. Perhaps some short stories.

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  • 236

    Interview: Sep 16th, 2010

    John Ottinger

    You have stated elsewhere that your story is about a world recovering, a world that has fallen from the height of its power. Why did you choose to set your story in such a setting, what about it makes it an appealing place to write about?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Several things. There's a real challenge in this book because I did not want to go the path of The Wheel of Time in which there had been an Age of Legends that had fallen and that the characters were recapturing. Partially because Robert Jordan did it so well, and partially because a lot of fantasy seems to approach that concept. But I did want the idea of a past golden age, and balancing those two concepts was somewhat difficult. I eventually decided I wanted a golden age like existed in our world, such as the golden of Greece and Rome, where we look back at some of the cultural developments etc. and say, "Wow, those were really cool." And yet technologically, if you look at the world back then, it was much less advanced than it is now, though it was a time of very interesting scientific and philosophical growth in some areas. What we have in Roshar is that the Knights Radiant did exist, and were in a way a high point of honor among mankind, but then for various reasons they fell. The mystery of why they did and what happened is part of what makes the book work.

    Why is this world appealing to write in? Well, I like writing my worlds like I write my characters, where at the beginning of the book you're not starting at the beginning or the end of the characters' lives; you're starting in the middle. Because when we meet people, their lives don't just start that day. Interesting things have happened before, and interesting things are to come. I want the world to be the same way. Interesting things have happened in the past, and interesting things are to come again. I want there to be a depth and a realism to the history. It's fascinating for me to write at this point because on the one hand, there are things to recapture in the past, but at the same time there are things that the people in the past never understood and could never do. The former heights of scientific reasoning didn't go at all as far as they could have gone. So there are new places to explore and there are things to recapture. In a lot of ways, this plays into my philosophy for storytelling. The greatest stories that I've loved are those that walk the balance between what we call the familiar and the strange. When a reader sits down and there are things that resonate with stories they've read before that they've loved, there's an experience of joy to that. At the same time, you want there to be things that are new to the story, that you're experiencing for the first time. In this world, that's what I'm looking for. There is that resonance from the past, but there's also a long way to go, a lot of interesting things to discover.

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    Interview: Sep 16th, 2010

    John Ottinger

    You avoided using the traditional races of epic fantasy (elves, orcs, dwarves, etc.) instead giving the reader variations on humanity. Why did you avoid using the standard tropes, but still create significant physical deviations in your races?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A couple of reasons. Those are really two questions. Why did I avoid the standard tropes? Because I felt they had become a crutch in some cases, and in other cases they had just been overplayed and overdone by people who were very good writers and knew what they were doing. I certainly don't want to point any fingers at people like Stephen Donaldson who wrote brilliant books making use of some of the familiar tropes from Tolkien, but one of the things to remember is that when he did that they weren't familiar tropes. They were still fresh and new. The same can be said for Terry Brooks. I feel that some of these authors who came before did a fantastic job of approaching those races, and I also feel that we as a fantasy community have allowed Tolkien's worldbuilding to become too much of a crutch—in particular, Tolkien's storytelling in epic fantasy. And really, if we want to approach the heights of great storytelling and take it a few more steps so that we don't just copy what Tolkien did, we do what Tolkien did, which is look to the lore ourselves and build our own extrapolations.

    But personally, why do I include the races that I include? I'm just looking for interesting things that complement the story that I'm telling. The races in The Way of Kings come directly into the story and the mystery of what's happened before. If you pay close attention to what the races are, it tells you something about what's going to happen in the future and what's happened in the past. It's very conscious. This is just me trying to explore. I feel that epic fantasy as a genre has not yet hit its golden age yet. If you look at science fiction as a genre, science fiction very quickly got into extrapolating very interesting and different sorts of things. Fantasy, particularly in the late '90s, feels like it hit a bit of a rut where the same old things were happening again and again. We saw the same stories being told, we saw the same races show up, we saw variations only in the names for those races. For me as a reader, it was a little bit frustrating because I read this and felt that fantasy should be the genre that should be able to do anything. It should be the most imaginative genre. It should not be the genre where you expect the same stories and the same creatures. This is playing into what I like as a reader and my own personal philosophies and hobby horses, but it really just comes down to what I think makes the best story.

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  • 238

    Interview: Sep 16th, 2010

    MadHatter

    The Way of Kings looks to be your largest book to date, but it also might be the longest in gestation with even having an old Amazon page from when it was first contracted where people have written all kinds of lovely things. Can you tell us a little bit about its history?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Way of Kings, like any of my books, is an amalgamation of ideas that work together and fascinate me, hopefully creating something larger than the pieces; the whole is greater than the parts. Ideas for it began back when I was in high school and starting my very first book. The Shattered Plains first appeared in a novel I wrote back in 2000. The Way of Kings as a novel was first written in 2003; I now call that book The Way of Kings Prime. I wrote that book because I was frustrated with my own writing process. That was during my unpublished days, and I had been writing books that I wasn't pleased with—I've got an entire essay on that on my website. Eventually I decided, "I'm tired of trying to write what other people tell me will sell. I'm going to write the coolest, biggest, baddest, nastiest, most awesome fantasy epic I can conceive, and pull out all the stops and grab all the cool ideas that I've been putting off for a while."

    So I wrote this massive book. And then, unexpectedly, I sold a different book—one that had been sitting on an editor's desk for eighteen months. That was Elantris—then Moshe Feder called me up and wanted to buy it, and that threw chaos into my whole worldview.

    Here I thought I would never get published, and I was just writing for myself, but now someone wants one of my old books that I thought would never sell. Then Moshe asked me what I was working on at the time, and I sent him The Way of Kings. Which he was very surprised to get, because it was twice as long as Elantris, and it was extremely big and sprawling and epic. It scared the daylights out of him. He wasn't sure what to do with it. He called me up and said, "I don't know what we can do with this. Can we split this into multiple books? I don't know if I can convince the publisher to publish this massive novel."

    At the same time—and I've said this numerous times before--I wasn't a hundred percent pleased with The Way of Kings because I didn't have the skill yet to write it. So we shelved it, and I wrote the Mistborn trilogy, which I pitched to him very soon afterward—it may have even been on the same phone call—which I was very excited about at the time. I'm very pleased with how that turned out, but it was a little bit smaller in scope. In some ways it was me practicing and learning how to write a series.

    And then the Wheel of Time dropped on me like a truckload of bricks out of nowhere, and I was forced to swim in the deep water and learn how to become a much better writer so I could finish such a wonderful series. During that process I learned a lot about writing.

    Tor started asking me what my next book was going to be and if there was any way I could get them something to put out between Wheel of Time books, so I pitched them The Way of Kings. Then I sat down and wrote it. I wrote it from scratch again; I didn't take anything from the 2003 version of the book other than my memories of what had worked and what hadn't. I reached back and grabbed the Shattered Plains out of that other book that I had written; I reached back and grabbed another few cool ideas that had been bounding around in my head since I'd been a kid. I poured everything into this book, everything that I had, all of my best ideas, to try to make the fantasy opus that I had always wanted to write. That's where it came from. That's the history. I don't know yet if I've been successful, and I won't know for many years, until we see whether it stands the test of time.

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    Interview: Sep 16th, 2010

    YetiStomper

    How are you applying lessons learned from your work closing Robert Jordan's epic series in beginning your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've already talked about it a little bit—one of the things is learning how to approach the middle books, specifically how to use the form to enhance the novel as a whole. One of the big things I've learned from Robert Jordan recently is foreshadowing.

    I used to think I was good at it until I really sat down and studied what he was doing. Another thing I think I've learned a ton about from him is viewpoint; excellent use of viewpoint is one of the ways to keep all your characters distinct. In addition, juggling so many plots, etc., all of these things have forced me to grow as a writer and have helped me quite a bit with writing The Way of Kings.

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    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    The folks at Tor Books appear to be keeping you on a very tight leash ever since you accepted to complete Robert Jordan's magnus opus. Working on The Wheel of Time and The Stormlight Archive (a ten-volume saga) certainly means that you are juggling countless balls simultaneously. Add to that the fact that you are a teacher and a family man, with all that it entails. Are you concerned that keeping such a harsh schedule might at some point prove to be too much and hinder the creative process altogether?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Which is why I've decided to slow down. This last year was a very hard year, and it's something I did to myself by deciding that I really wanted to do The Way of Kings right now. I felt this was the time that it needed to be released. But now I get to slow down, and I'm not going to be releasing two epic fantasies a year from now on. This is the end of that. I'm going to focus on finishing the Wheel of Time right now, and then I won't have to juggle all of those balls anymore.

    When you describe it like that it looks a lot more impressive than it really is; when I teach, I only teach one class one night a week, for one semester—four months out of the year. It's not like I'm a professor. And I don't have a commute, which means that I can still work fourteen-hour days some days (twelve hours has been more common), yet spend a significant amount of time with my family. But I don't have to do that anymore. It was a really hard year. It really pushed me. I think both books turned out fantastically well, but if I had kept up that schedule, my writing would have begun to suffer. From now on I'll be working at a much more modest pace.

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  • 241

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    The Way of Kings is a book that you have been planning for a very long time. Is the finished book close to your original vision or has it altered significantly in that time, with the influence of your other work, particularly on The Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say yes, it has altered significantly. Eventually I'll be able to release the previous version of The Way of Kings so people can see how. It's really kind of odd; I can now almost see it as a parallel world, with several important deviations that branch out and create spiraling different stories. In some ways it's very similar. Dalinar's character is essentially identical with who he has always been, yet Kaladin and his story have transformed extensively. Szeth is essentially the same person. Shallan didn't exist in the previous draft; she's new to this one. Some things are the same—the world, the history—and yet some things are different. The characters are more complex and have more depth now, and that certainly was influenced by the Wheel of Time. I think I'm better at foreshadowing, which something else the Wheel of Time influenced.

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  • 242

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    Do you think that the process of working on The Wheel of Time and The Stormlight Archive almost simultaneously has been beneficial to your writing of the two series, with influences from one creeping into the other?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. I never write new material on more than one book at a time. I will be revising one while I'm writing new material for another, which really helps me keep my brain divided, if that makes any sense. It's good to be influenced by Robert Jordan's genius; it's bad to let themes and tropes from one book creep into the other. So I've tried to keep those things separate. Yet at the same time, who I am as a writer influences what themes and tropes I put into books. I do think people will be able to notice similarities in some of what I'm doing, in the same way that you can notice similarities between others of my books. Hopefully there is a larger gap because the Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan's rather than mine. I would say that there is an influence, but not an unhealthy amount.

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    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    The settings of your novels often seem to be something quite different. It seems the majority of fantasy are basically earth with magic and maybe some cool animals to go along. The Way of Kings just feels different (and the Mistborn books for that matter)—harsher, darker, almost like what we would like call a wasteland. How and why did you create the world The Way of Kings in this way? The landscape of the Shattered Plains is especially unusual and evocative. Was it inspired by the landscape of the American Midwest?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Southwest, particularly. My visits to places like Arches National Park, relatively close to where I live right now, certainly influenced me. More than that—and I've said this in numerous interviews before—I'm a fantasy reader foremost. Before I was a writer I was a reader, and I'm still a reader. As a reader, I grew a little bit annoyed with the generic setting that seemed to recur a lot in fantasy. I won't speak poorly of writers who used it very well—there are certain writers who used it extremely well—and yet a lot of other writers seemed to just take for granted that that's what you did. Which is not the way that I feel it should be done. I think that the genre could go many places it hasn't been before.

    When I approached writing the Stormlight Archive—when I approached creating Roshar—I very consciously said, "I want to create something that feels new to me." I'm not the only one who does this, and I'm certainly not the one who does it best, but I wanted a world that was not medieval Europe. At all. I wanted a world that was its own thing. I started with the highstorms and went from there. To a person of our world, Roshar probably does look barren like a wasteland. But to the people living there, it's not a barren wasteland. This is a lush world full of life. It's just that what we equate with lush and full of life is not how that world defines it. In Roshar, a rock wall can be a lush, vibrant, and fertile place. It may look like a wasteland to us, but we're seeing through the eyes of someone who's used to Earth's flora and fauna. I've also said before in interviews that science fiction is very good at giving us new things. I don't see why fantasy shouldn't be as good at doing the same. Perhaps even better. So that's what was driving me to do what I did.

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  • 244

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    In Elantris and Mistborn it felt more like the world was there to support the story and characters, but outside the locales the characters were in little was revealed about them. The Way of Kings feels much more expansive, with a vast continent packed with different cultures, races, religions and so on. Was this simply a natural development of needing a world that could support ten long novels, or was there some other motive in making Roshar so much more detailed?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm going to reverse-engineer your question. When I wrote Elantris and Mistborn, I intentionally kept the world more sparse. The goal particularly of Mistborn was, "I'm going to take an epic fantasy story and condense it into three novels." The focus for me in those novels was plot. Of course I wanted to have great characters and great magic, but there was more of a plot focus, and I didn't want the world to distract. It was a conscious decision in Mistborn.

    When I sat down and wrote The Way of Kings, the plan from the start to do ten books influenced how I approached the world. But really, the world of Roshar is such a big part of the story, and of the history and the mysteries of the series, that I wanted it to be full and immersive. Immersion was one of my main driving forces. With Mistborn, one of my main driving forces was to keep it moving. I hope The Way of Kings still feels fast-paced, but it's a thousand pages long, twice as long as Mistborn. A lot of that extra space is dedicated to fleshing out the world and making it feel like a real place, because that's very important for the series. When I write a book, I look at what the book needs and what is required by the story I'm trying to achieve. Another valid element is that when I wrote Mistborn, I was a newer writer. Writing The Way of Kings, I'm more experienced. I think I'm better at making this sort of decision now, and I felt I could tackle in this book the sorts of things that I couldn't achieve in Mistborn.

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  • 245

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    On several fantasy forums, there have been discussions of "black and white" characters and your name sometimes is mentioned as being one who creates "black and white," good/evil characters. What I'm curious about, however, is how do you think of your characters' traits when you develop them. Are there characters that you think, "well, this 'evil' character has this motivation' for acting like a jerk," or is there something else behind these character creations?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would certainly say I do black and white more than someone like George R. R. Martin does. I would hope that I'm not doing directly black and white, but...this is a hard question for me to answer because I'm not sure that I look at it this way. I don't look at characters as evil or good; I just look at them as who they are and what their motivations are. I personally don't feel that I generally write all-evil characters, though if I look at it rationally from an armchair English major standpoint, I do tend to write very noble characters. Nobility is something that fascinates me, and something that I think we could use a little more of in our world. So I'm straying fairly often into the good, though I don't see any of my characters as entirely evil. Hrathen was not evil; the Lord Ruler was not wholly evil. I don't even look at Ruin as particularly evil; Ruin was a force of entropy, which is its own different thing. In this book, I would say there is a presence of evil that is on a higher level. Is Szeth evil? Well, I don't know. Is the person pulling Szeth's strings evil? Yes, by most definitions I think he would be called evil, but he certainly doesn't see himself that way. I could point at him and say, "You are doing the wrong thing," but he would not agree with me. I'm not trying to moralistically say here is black and here is white; I'm just telling stories about the characters I want to tell stories about.

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  • 246

    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Mad Hatter

    If you can tell us, what's the tentative title for Book 2? And estimated release date? I know you've plenty left to tackle with WoT 14 so we'll take anything you say with that in mind.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Good. The tentative title was originally Highprince of War. I’m not decided on that yet, because it might be Shallan’s book, not Dalinar’s book. It depends on whose flashbacks I decide to tell, and which ones will complement the events of the next book. Though I have an expansive outline for the series, I really have to sit down and get a more detailed outline for the second book before I decide which title I want. If it’s Dalinar’s book, it will be Highprince of War. If it’s Shallan’s book it will not be. Tentative release date? I’m going to start on A Memory of Light January first, and it will be published probably about three months after I finish it. (Knowing how Tor’s publishing my books these days.) It will just depend on how long that takes to write. Then I will start on The Stormlight Archive 2 after that. I don’t anticipate that book being as hard to write as A Memory of Light, which is going to take a lot of time and a lot of work. Best case is that I finish A Memory of Light in August of next year, it gets published in November, and I write the sequel to The Way of Kings starting immediately after that and finish it in the middle of the next year so it can be published November 2012. That’s the best-case scenario. But it’s what I hope to be able to do; we’ll see.

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    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Mad Hatter

    Will we ever get to visit The Origin of Storms? And has the ending for the series already come to you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I know exactly what the ending of the series is. I’ve been tempted to write it down a few times. Things Robert Jordan has said make me not want to write it down yet because he felt that writing the ending down before he got there was the wrong move, and I think he might be right. But I do have it worked out. In fact, I’m going to have a big powwow with Peter, Isaac, and Emily where I sit down and explain all these things so that they can point out holes before I start the second book, which is going to be a very interesting thing—we’ll probably record that and then twenty years from now post it on the internet. But yes, I do know the ending. I will not say whether we’ll go to the Origin of Storms.

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  • 248

    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Yeti Stomper

    All of your fantasy worlds exist in the same universe and share linked magic systems and at least one character. Can you speak to the overall vision of this shared Hoidverse? Why not create separate worlds?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I started doing this early in my career before I got published, when I felt that writing sequels was not a good use of my time. Just look at the hypothetical; if I’m trying to get published and I write three books in the same, if an editor rejects book one, he or she is not going to want to see book two. But if an editor rejects book one but is optimistic about my writing, I can send them a book from another series and they can look at that.

    During my unpublished days I wrote thirteen books, only one of which was a sequel. So I had twelve new worlds, or at least twelve new books—some of them were reexaminations of worlds. But I wanted to be writing big epics. This is what I always wanted to do; something like the Wheel of Time. So I began plotting a large, massive series where all these books were connected, so I could kind of “stealth” have a large series without the editors knowing I was sending them books from the same series. It was mostly just a thing for me, to help me do the writing I wanted to be doing. And then when publication came I continued to do that, and told the story behind the story.

    Why not do separate worlds? Because it was more interesting for me this way. This is the story I want to tell. The big, overarching story that I’ve planned out. I’ve been talking recently about how my inspiration for this is the idea that in science people have for a long time been looking for a unified theory of physics, some theory that will explain all interactions of physics in a concise way. I wanted to tell about a universe where there was a unified theory of magic, where magic worked according to a unifying principle. Despite the magic systems looking very different and doing lots of different and interesting things, hopefully original for each book, there is an underlying rationale that is keeping them all together. I write what I find interesting, and that was interesting to me.

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    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Mad Hatter

    Besides "Firstborn" have you tried your hand at Sci-Fi any other time? By the same token will you ever dive back into short fiction?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did write two science fiction novels during the era that I was unpublished. Neither are particularly good, but they were experiments, with me trying to figure out where my talents and interests lie. I was just experimenting a lot during those days, so I did write two science fiction novels—I believe they were my second and fifth novels. I will go back to short fiction. I’ve said before that I don’t feel I’m as good at it as I am at the longer form, but I like doing new things and trying new things. You will see more short fiction from me, but we’ll have to see when it happens. I’m thinking of writing a short story to post on my website, during my break between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. And there’s also “Defending Elysium,” another science fiction story, which appeared in Asimov’s and is already on my website.

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  • 250

    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Mad Hatter

    Glad to hear you'll be back in the short game. Can you take us through a normal writing day? Do you have a word count goal?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. It depends on the day and the book, but generally 2,000 words is my goal. 3,000 to 4,000, probably around 3,500 is a really solid day for me. A basic writing day: I get up at noon or 1:00, depending on when I went to bed. I play with my son for about an hour, giving my wife a break. Then I go downstairs for four or five hours, check my email, write for a while, go up and have dinner, play with my son some more, then go back down and go back to work until I’m done for the night. The last couple of years have been pretty much a lot of me with my laptop on my couch or in my beanbag chair writing books.

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  • 251

    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Mad Hatter

    Terry Brooks recently said he'll be doing more Shannara books and that he wishes he didn't use the title The Elfstones of Shannara already since his new arc is basically all about the Elfstones. Did your reticence to titling The Gathering Storm as such have anything to do with The Stormlight Archive? The Gathering Storm certainly seems like a perfect title for a book in the series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. I didn’t choose The Gathering Storm. If you know the story, it all happened while I was asleep, and they said this was the title they were going to use. There were a couple of reasons. Number one, I knew I was releasing a book soon afterward that was in a series called The Stormlight Archive. Perhaps I pay a little too much attention to making sure that I don’t feel like I’m repeating myself. Kaladin in The Way of Kings was originally named Merin, and one reason I changed his name was because it sounded too much like Perrin. He had been Merin for eight years or so, but when I was just a Wheel of Time fan, it was okay to have a name that sounded a little like a Wheel of Time character’s. But now I may be a little hypersensitive to that.

    Honestly, the greatest reason I might have preferred The Gathering Storm to have a different title is that I felt it was just a little bit generic, more so than recent titles in the series have been. Recent Wheel of Time titles have been beautiful; I love Crossroads of Twilight as a title, for example. But The Gathering Storm is a good title for a lot of other reasons, and it works very well for the first of that sequence. So I was satisfied with it even though it wasn’t the title I would have chosen.

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  • 252

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    Over your previous books you've developed a reputation as the 'magic system guy'. Was it therefore a deliberate move to hold back on the magic in The Way of Kings, at least compared to your earlier books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it was. That's a very astute question. I've written a blog post that I'm not satisfied with, but that I'll probably be revising and posting very soon, that is going to talk about this. When I finished the Mistborn trilogy and Warbreaker, I felt that there were a few things that were becoming Brandon clichés that I needed to deal with. I don't mind being known as the magic system guy. But when I become known ONLY as the magic system guy, that worries me. It isn't that I sat down with this series and said, well, I'm gonna show them, I'm not going to do a magic system. But when I planned this series, it was not appropriate for me to shoehorn in a lot of the magic system in book one. Though my agent suggested that I do just that. He said, look, this is what you're known for, this is what people read you for; if you don't have this it's going to be glaringly obvious. My response was that I would hope that story and character are what carries a book, not any sort of gimmick—well, gimmick is the wrong word.

    Something that I pondered and wrote about a lot—just to myself—is that Mistborn was postmodern fantasy. If you look at the trilogy, in each of those books I intentionally took one aspect of the hero's journey and played with it, turned it on its head, and tried very hard to look at it postmodernly, in which I as a writer was aware of the tropes of the genre while writing and expected readers to be aware of them, to be able to grasp the full fun of what I was doing. And that worried me—that was fun with Mistborn, but I didn't want to become known as the postmodern fantasy guy, because inherently you have to rely on the genre conventions in order to tell your story—even if you're not exploiting them in the same way, you're still exploiting them.

    For that reason, I didn't want to write The Way of Kings as a postmodern fantasy. Or in other words, I didn't want to change it into one. And I also didn't want to change it into a book that became only about the magic, or at least not to the extent that Warbreaker was. I like Warbreaker; I think it turned out wonderfully. But I wanted to use the magic in this book as an accent. Personally, I think it's still as full of magic as the others, but the magic is happening much more behind the scenes, such as with the spren I've talked about in other interviews, which are all about the magic. We haven't mentioned Shardplate and Shardblades, but those are a very powerful and important part of the magic system, and a more important part of the world. I did intentionally include Szeth's scenes doing what he does with the Lashings to show that there was this magic in the world, but it just wasn't right for this book for that to be the focus. I do wonder what people will say about that. I wonder if that will annoy people who read the book. But again, this is its own book, its own series, and in the end I decided that the book would be as the story demanded, not be what whatever a Brandon Sanderson book should be. As a writer, that's the sort of trap that I don't want to fall into.

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  • 253

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    The issue of faith, religious or otherwise, is often a theme in your writings. How has faith influenced your life and development as a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Another very astute question. I am a person of faith. It's been interesting for me, in my life, to be a person of faith and also a person of reason. I have a science background; I like to ask questions; I like to think about questions. I think everyone has to find their own balance in this area. Some people decide they're going to be reason only, and some people decide they're going to be faith only. But I think there can be a balance, and I try to find my own balance in my life. I feel it's one of the most engaging and interesting aspects of life. It leads to a lot of pondering, a lot of thinking, and a lot of personal development. It's mostly just me finding out where I'm going to let faith reign and where I'm going to let reason reign, and whether I have to let one be suborned to the other.

    Faith is very important to my life. It's very important to my worldview and my philosophy. I believe that throughout the history of mankind, for the vast majority of people faith—or reacting against faith—has been important. I'm fascinated by the different ways people deal with it. I had in the Mistborn series a notable agnostic character, and I really wanted to have an atheist character in the Stormlight Archive. Whenever I approach something like that I try very hard to give that character the arguments that a person with their worldview would give that character if they were writing the book. I don't want to write books that exist simply to prove certain characters wrong. I include such characters because they fascinate me. You end up, hopefully, with a range of people in my books who approach faith in different ways—because that's interesting to me, and I hope it will be interesting to readers.

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  • 254

    Interview: Sep 17th, 2010

    Peter Ahlstrom

    Peter here again. Brandon is back from his tour, but he's been very active online everywhere except his own website, it seems! First up, last weekend John Scalzi's Whatever blog featured a guest post essay by Brandon entitled Postmodernism in Fantasy. For people confused about what that might cover, let me say it involves a Jewel music video. (Okay, I know that doesn't help. Just go read it.)

    To follow that up, Brandon is joined by hit fantasy writer Brent Weeks over on the Babel Clash blog for this week (and I think next week too), posting back and forth at each other. Brent played off Brandon's Whatever essay and they went from there, talking about foreshadowing, deus ex machina, and other writing concepts. Go read them.

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  • 255

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    SFF authors such as Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, and Steven Erikson have all had problems keeping an adequate momentum over the course of long series. Looking forward and knowing that there are pitfalls associated with writing fantasy sagas of epic proportions, how do you plan to avoid this as you progress with The Stormlight Archive?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is a wonderful question. The people you mention are brilliant writers whose skill and mastery of the genre I'm not sure I can ever get close to matching. I'll just put that out there. I do think, having read their work and seeing what they've had to do—I mean, if you look at something like the Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire, these authors have had to do this without a lot of guidance. When Robert Jordan wrote The Wheel of Time, there were no fantasy epics of that length out. There were trilogies; we had David Eddings' five-booker, but those were all much shorter than what The Wheel of Time became. There was just nothing like what Robert Jordan was doing. George R. R. Martin was kind of in the same boat. They've had to do this without examples to follow. What I have going for me is that I've been able to watch them do it—and as you said, watch them hit those pitfalls (and admirably do great jobs of crossing them)—and hopefully learn from their example. The main thing that I feel I need to do with this series is keep the viewpoints manageable. What Martin and Jordan both ran into is that the more viewpoints you add, the more trouble you get in, because when you get to the middle books you've got so many characters that either you have a book that doesn't include half of them, whereupon you have the latest George R. R. Martin book, or you do what Robert Jordan did famously in book 10 of the Wheel of Time, which is to give a little bit from each viewpoint and progress none of them very far. Which was also very problematic. Both of those solutions were very wonderful things to try, and I'm glad they did them, but what this says to me is, "Keep your viewpoints manageable." So that I won't run into that problem as much.

    Another big thing I'm doing is that I'm trying to make sure each book has its own beginning, middle, and end so that it is a complete story when you read it. When I would read the Wheel of Time as just a fan, and get only a small sliver of the story, it would be very frustrating. When I reread the Wheel of Time knowing and having read the ending, it was a very different experience. I didn't feel a lot of the slowing and the frustration, because I knew the ending, and I knew how long the book series was. So if I can give a full story in each book, I think it will help with that.

    The last thing I'm doing is this idea of the flashbacks for each character. I think that each character getting a book will fundamentally change the form of the epic fantasy, which will allow each book to have its own story without having to do something like Anne McCaffrey did, in which main characters in one book wouldn't have viewpoints in later stories. I think that made for a wonderful series, but for me it detracted a bit from the series' epic scope. I knew that if I read about a character, I wasn't going to get that character again, ever, and there was something sad about that. I don't want this series to be like that. Kaladin will be very important to the rest of the series—in fact, he's probably going to get another book, so he has two.

    Hopefully the books will remain epic without having that drag. We'll see if standing upon the shoulders of giants as I am will help me to approach this in a different way.

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  • 256

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    Okay, you knew they were coming! Did you really think you could get away with not answering at least one WoT question!?! And no, you can't RAFO us! The Gathering Storm impressed through its tight thematic focus on Rand and Egwene's tribulations and what they went through to resolve them. You've said that Towers of Midnight has been a tougher book to write due to its more expansive nature and larger cast. For you (and avoiding spoilers!), what was the biggest difference in the writing process for the two books, and the biggest challenge?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The biggest difference is that in The Gathering Storm I took two tight narratives and built them both to an enormous crescendo. In Towers of Midnight I had to make each chapter have more of an impact. In Towers of Midnight there are these amazing scenes, chapter after chapter—BAM BAM BAM, this incredible scene you've been waiting for, this other incredible scene you've been waiting for, this majestic scene you've been waiting for—but at the same time we're showing the scope around the world. Now, the book has one of those tight narratives that builds to an enormous crescendo that I'm very pleased with. But a lot of the rest of the book is this sequence and that sequence and this sequence and that sequence, so it's a very different book. Book twelve felt more like books one, two, and three to me. Book thirteen feels like books four, five, and six. This expands the vision and goes back to places we've been before.

    It was a wonderful process. I actually think that Towers of Midnight is a better Wheel of Time book than The Gathering Storm was. But it made for a much more difficult write, because tying all of these elements together was a big challenge. Tying two narratives together is challenging, but then suddenly when you have eight narratives and have to make sure that they thematically work together, and all of that, is that much more of a challenge.

    We'll see what readers think. In these books I am particularly beholden to the Wheel of Time fans. I feel these books are for them. So I won't really know if I've been successful until they read it. But I feel very pleased with the book.

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  • 257

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    As the overall story arc is nearing its conclusion and a panoply of plotlines are approaching their culmination in Towers of Midnight, is there added pressure for you as A Memory of Light draws nearer and you need to close the show with a bang?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. You phrased that very well. I don't know if I can add anything more to that; you've got it. Now, the nice thing to keep in mind is that I don't have to write the ending. The BANG has already been written by Robert Jordan, and as a reader I found it extremely satisfying when I reached it. And so I feel very confident that the ending of the next book is going to be what everyone has been hoping for and wanting—without being exactly what they expect. I think the ending that Robert Jordan is just wonderful. So at least I don't have to worry about that. But I do have to make this the best book that I can possibly write, and it's going to be a challenge. It's part of why I've decided that I have to slow down, as I said earlier, and just take my time on this one.

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  • 258

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Patrick

    Setting out to complete The Wheel of Time following Robert Jordan's death had to be a daunting endeavor for you. Which facet of this undertaking did you believe would be quite difficult and in the end turned out to be easier than you had envisioned? By the same token, which aspect of finishing the series turned out to be a lot harder than you ever believed it would be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I thought it would be much harder to get the characters' voices down. That was the part I worried about, and if you read my early interviews, I talk a lot about that. And surprisingly, it was not nearly as difficult as I thought. There are certainly a few characters I struggled with more than others. But in this book, Towers of Midnight, I think our character voices are spot-on. That actually comes from Jason from Dragonmount's interpretation of it—he said that he believes it's really just on. And that makes me feel good.

    What has been harder has been keeping track of everyone. I thought I was steeped in Wheel of Time lore before I started these books. No, I wasn't. When people on tour asked me questions I realized how ignorant I am, despite having written and studied as much as I have. I know a lot—it's like I've got a Master's degree in the Wheel of Time, but there are people out there with postdoc experience who are completely showing me up at every step of the way. Keeping track of everything is a real challenge. I've described before the way I approach this. Essentially, when I get ready to write a scene from a character's viewpoint, I dump everything into my head that I need, and I try to write all of those scenes in the book for that character while maintaining all of that knowledge. Then I dump it out and get everything ready for another character. That's the only way I can do it, because there's just so much to hold on to.

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  • 259

    Interview: Oct 19th, 2010

    John Ottinger

    After releasing The Gathering Storm and getting reader responses, did you change anything about your approach to writing Towers of Midnight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mat was the main thing that I spent a lot of extra time on post-reviews. With most everything else, I kept doing what I had already been doing. The tricky part with Towers of Midnight is that it was already going to feel like a very different book from The Gathering Storm. So taking what people said about The Gathering Storm and applying it to Towers of Midnight could be dangerous because of the different tone and feel to the plot cycles of the books. So I had to write it as the best book I felt it could be, though the one main area that I took a second look at was Mat.

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  • 260

    Interview: Oct 19th, 2010

    John Ottinger

    You were simultaneously writing/polishing Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings, putting in 14 hour days. How were you able to keep Towers of Midnight distinct and faithful to Jordan without blending in your original work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have gotten very good at this over the years. For instance, during many years I would be working on something like one of the Mistborn books alongside one of the Alcatraz books. If you read those two, the tones are extremely different. One of the ways I keep things separate is that I generally only write new material for one project at a time. I can edit and revise one project, by taking what it needs to be and making it better, at the same time as I write new material for another project. One of the things you should keep in mind is that when I'm writing Wheel of Time books, the struggle is always—even if I'm not working on something else at the same time—to make sure that I'm remaining true to Robert Jordan's vision of the characters rather than interpreting them myself. Which means that when it comes time to write a scene from a character's viewpoint, before I write anything that day I generally read a chapter of Robert Jordan's work from that character's viewpoint, and I try to ingrain that in my head and get a resonance going, so that when I sit down to write I can keep the character's voice straight.

    Your question is a little bit like asking an artist, "How can you paint an impressionist painting one day, and then switch to realism the next day?" Well, they're slightly different arts. Each expresses a painting in its own unique way, and it's just what you do as an artist. It's the same difficulty a writer has jumping between characters in a single book. How do I write Shallan in The Way of Kings and then jump and write Kaladin, and keep them from sounding like one another? It's something you have to learn to do as a writer. Otherwise, your character voices will all blend together.

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  • 261

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Last year I was an instructor at the first Superstars Writing Seminar with David Farland, Kevin J. Anderson, Eric Flint, and Rebecca Moesta. Well, it's happening again this January in Salt Lake City, with additional special guest instructor Sherrilyn Kenyon. I mention it now because the tuition rates go up at the end of October. This conference focuses on the business of writing, and I had a blast at last year's event in Pasadena. Here's how I described it last year:

    So many people ask me for writing advice and help with their work that I decided to say yes to this invitation because it will give people the chance they've been asking for. I realize the seminar is expensive—which means it's not for everyone—but as busy as I'm getting nowadays, something like this seems the only way.

    The other writers participating could all still teach even me a thing or two. In fact, Dave specifically did teach me a lot about the writing business—it was while taking a writing class from him close to ten years ago that I finally began to understand what it takes to make it in publishing. And Kevin gave me invaluable advice that has made my life as a writer much easier over the past year. If you read the testimonials in the sidebar on the site you'll see names of pro writers whose work I've mentioned before or who we've had as guests on Writing Excuses, including Eric James Stone, Brandon Mull, John Brown, and Bob Defendi—all of them have benefited extremely from classes taught by Dave and/or Kevin & Rebecca. The instructor talent lineup for this seminar is daunting even to me, and I'm one of them!

    This year's conference will cover topics such as:

    * Economics of Commercial Publishing

    * How Editors Look at Manuscripts, Novels, and Short Fiction

    * Dissecting a Book Contract

    * How to Read and Understand a Royalty Statement

    * Dirty Secrets: What You Need to Know About Being a Professional Author

    * How to Leverage Your Intellectual Property

    * Balancing Acts: Writing World and Real World

    * Agents

    * Networking and Self-Promotion for Authors

    * Understanding E-Books

    * Pitching the Big Proposal

    * Two Heads Are Better than One: Collaborations

    * How to Get an Edge with New Media

    * Movies, TV, and Authors

    * How to Increase Your Writing Productivity

    * and more, including open Q&A sessions, a special limited-seating VIP banquet to get to know the instructors, and plenty of networking opportunities among the teachers, other writers, and fellow students.

    If this is the sort of thing you're interested in, now's the best time to register.

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  • 262

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    With The Way of Kings out, I think it’s safe to say your other works are more than holding their own, but were you concerned in the early days about the Wheel overshadowing your other stories? Are you happy with the Wheel Fandom’s response to your other writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, to the last question. I am happy with the response. Though I do want to make the caveat that in my mind, the Wheel of Time fandom is not my fandom. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I mean that I don’t have any assumption that people who read the Wheel of Time books are going to like or even read my own work. I’m flattered when they give my books a chance, but people have asked me this question a lot and I do think that over the long haul there’s a pretty good chance that I’m going to stay overshadowed by the Wheel of Time. And that’s not a bad thing. In the case of something like this series—which has been a monumental influence, has sold so many copies, and is just such a dominant factor in the genre—I don’t think you can help but be overshadowed by it a bit. But I knew that when I took the project on in the first place. Being a footnote to the Wheel of Time is still a position of great honor. It’s been an honor to be involved.

    I write my own books. I enjoy writing them. It’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life, and I’m flattered that they’ve had the success that they have, and that people enjoy them. I don’t sit up nights thinking, “Am I only going to be known as the guy who finished the Wheel of Time?” People are reading my stories, and beyond that I get to be a writer for a living. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. In all of those regards I’m insanely lucky. You’ve got to remember that I spent years and years and years writing books without anyone reading them other than my close friends. I wrote thirteen novels that way, and was completely satisfied. Sure, I wanted to get published, but it was telling the stories that was the most satisfying part. And if I had continued to do only that, then I still would have been completely satisfied. So anything beyond that is icing on the cake.

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  • 263

    Interview: Oct 19th, 2010

    John Ottinger

    Since you are now one book removed from Jordan's original composition, are you finding yourself having to be more original, since it is likely that you have less Jordan prepared material to work with?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Actually, the balance is rather similar, because of the way I developed the books. Half of the prologue scenes that Robert Jordan worked on ended up in The Gathering Storm; half ended up in Towers of Midnight. I'd say a third of the other material he worked on ended up in The Gathering Storm, and a third ended up in Towers of Midnight. In both cases I've had one character's plotline at the core of the book that was very well plotted out and worked on by Robert Jordan, and one plotline that to a greater extent I've had to add to of myself. That's been the same in both books.

    Working on A Memory of Light is going to be a different experience, because the greater amount of what Robert Jordan worked on is weighted toward the end of the book rather than all along one character viewpoint. But there will still be a lot of it there, and in that case I'm writing toward it. You have to remember that the way I write these books often is to take a viewpoint cluster, a group of characters, and write them through from the beginning of the book to the end of the book. Which means that I've already, even in The Gathering Storm, had to work on viewpoint lines for which there was less from Robert Jordan to use. So it's been the same experience—it's really divided by plotlines.

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  • 264

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    How difficult has weaving Towers of Midnight around The Gathering Storm been? Is there a large amount of inter-connectivity? Do we cross back on any events in The Gathering Storm?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, we do cross back on events in The Gathering Storm. The trickiest part was timeline. Robert Jordan had this innate ability to juggle timelines. This is not something he relied on Maria, Alan, or Harriet for; it was something he did on his own, just part of the genius of his brain. All of us are pretty new at this. I mean, I wrote Mistborn chronologically. There wasn’t any time juggling. There was time juggling to do in Elantris, but it was across the course of a single novel. It didn’t get as extensive. For the Wheel of Time, timeline things that Robert Jordan kept in his head are quite incredible, and I have to admit that I’m not as good at it as he was. Perhaps someday I will be able to get to that level, but for now I’m simply not. So working with the timeline has taken a lot of effort. I think we’ve got it so it all worked out. It took a lot of help. Maria, Alan, and others all worked together with me to get things arranged—some of our beta readers were extremely helpful in this—but there is a lot of juggling back and forth. You will see some events from different perspectives. It is not a complete jump back like book ten was. I would say that the book is mostly new material with a few glances at other things that are happening, but we’re moving forward; I’d say 60% of the book is taking place past what happened in The Gathering Storm. And then there’s one timeline in particular where we jump back and catch up—that’s Perrin’s timeline. But it was really challenging.

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  • 265

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    I found "Veins of Gold" and "A Fount of Power" to be two of the most epic and intense climaxes in the series. In your opinion are the two climaxes of Towers of Midnight similarly epic?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The climaxes in the book are epic. One thing you have to remember in Towers of Midnight is that there is not as narrow a focus as there was in The Gathering Storm. So we’re dealing with more characters in many different places, which means that instead of as in the previous book where we could dedicate a good third of the pages directly to Rand—maybe even more—and build to one majestic, powerful climax, I’m not doing that as much in this book. Instead of twenty chapters from one character, you’ll get ten, and building to each climax will narratively depend on your love for the characters and your experience from the previous books. I think there are some wonderful climaxes that are a long time in coming. Are they on the level of The Gathering Storm? I’m really going to have to let people decide that for themselves.

    Defining what makes something epic is so hard even for an epic fantasy writer. One definition of epic can be what we just talked about—a big, massive build across a huge number of chapters to something enormously earth-shattering. But you can also look at epic as a dozen different characters seen across a dozen different plots building toward one event—each of their pieces is smaller, yet builds to something larger. Those are both good definitions. Towers of Midnight is more like the latter definition. The Gathering Storm is more like the former definition.

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  • 266

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    I thought Rand’s arc in The Gathering Storm was brilliant—starting to get better then—bang! Cuendillar Rand, and finally "Veins of Gold". Was it difficult to write? Can you give us some insight into how you stayed in the mind of a madman?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was difficult to write. I’ve said before that I view a lot of these characters as my high school friends, people I grew up with. Facilitating Rand going through these extremely painful and sometimes revelatory moments was not easy emotionally, and yet there’s an excitement and a power to writing emotional scenes where things are coming together. So I would say it’s actually more difficult to write a character like Gawyn, who’s frustrated and struggling with not knowing what he’s doing, than someone like Rand who always has a direction—even if that direction is straight down, as it was in places. He’s always moving. So because of that, Rand was in many ways easier to write than other characters were. Yet at the same time it was painful to write. That doesn’t really answer your question, but maybe it does give some insight, as you asked.

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  • 267

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    Following that is probably a good time to ask: Were you scared by the rabid nature of the fans? We do be crazy.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was very scared. Heh heh. For one thing, I was really scared that I would pronounce things wrong and get raked over the coals for that. I also knew how passionate people are about this—and they have a right to be—so I feared I would be vilified for my faults. Because I do have faults. I’ve been very up-front with people that I don’t consider myself as good a writer as Robert Jordan, particularly at the height of his writing abilities working on these books. And so that was a real concern for me. I talked about that last year on tour quite a bit, which anyone who saw my presentation about the books would remember. Screwing this up would mean hatred on huge levels from a large number of people. So I just took that as extra motivation to not screw it up. Or at least to screw it up less than any other person could have, since Robert Jordan was no longer here to do it right.

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  • 268

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    Will Verin face punishment from the Dark One for what she did? (Also, wow for that scene. Just plain flat out wow!)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I can’t claim very much credit for that scene.

    Will Verin face punishment from the Dark One? It will all depend on whether he can get his mitts on her or not.

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  • 269

    Interview: Oct 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    PART ONE: WHEEL OF TIME BOOKS PUBLICATION TIMELINE

    I posted earlier that Towers of Midnight is done, turned in, and ready for a November Second release. I'm feeling pretty good (though a little frazzled) at managing to get it in on deadline, by the promised date I gave you all in the blog post I made regarding splitting the novels. I stand by what I said there. I'm not expanding the outline left to me; I'm telling the same story I would have, even if the book hadn't been split. The order of chapters will be different in some cases, but nothing will be deleted or added.

    Current projections are for the final book, A Memory of Light, to be about the length of the other two. (Around three hundred thousand words, or eight hundred pages in hardcover.) There are some who are hoping for it to be huge, the biggest in the series, but I will write it at the length it needs to be. I've finished two books, and have done two-thirds of the outline. So that gives a good indication that the final chunk will be the same length as the other two.

    However, I do have to acknowledge that this is going to be the hardest chunk, for several reasons. The number of plots to be dealt with, the number of characters that need to be balanced, the sheer tactics and logistics of the Last Battle . . . there is a lot going on in this book, and it will be orders of magnitude more difficult than the previous two novels.

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  • 270

    Interview: Oct 26th, 2010

    Luckers

    Got any fun anecdotes from behind the scenes of Team Jordan for us?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Other than Butt Trollocs?

    Here's a typo from Towers of Midnight for you. I wrote: "Butt Trollocs are cowards at heart." Beta reader highlights and asks: A new tribe of Trollocs? :)

    I don’t know. They’re fun people. Alan makes really really bad puns a lot of the time, which is quite amusing. Watching their commentary on the drafts as we’re passing them back and forth (and they’re writing out their thoughts and responding to each other’s thoughts) can be a hoot and can be frustrating at the same time.

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  • 271

    Interview: Oct 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    PART TWO: BUFFERS AND MY WRITING SPEED

    Because of this, and because of my writing style, I need a little bit of a break before I tackle it. I pushed myself very hard to get both Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings ready for publication this year. Even then, it was only possible because I had written a sizable chunk of Towers of Midnight while working on The Gathering Storm AND because I'd already finished an early version of The Way of Kings.

    People have mentioned before that I am somewhat prolific. Some of this is an illusion. For a while now, I've been warning people that we've been chewing through my buffer at a frightening rate. Once upon a time, I would turn in a book three years before it was scheduled to come out. This gave me a lot of wiggle room. If a book wasn't working, I could shelve it and think about it, then get back to it. Working that far ahead prevents most big crunches.

    However, the books I've been working on lately were a little more high profile than previous ones—and high-profile books get released when they get turned in, not three years later. So, though I took eighteen months finishing The Gathering Storm, it looked like I finished it very quickly. (I turned it in during the summer of 2009, and it came out in the fall of 2009. Warbreaker came out that same year, though I'd turned it in back in 2006.) The very long write of that book was invisible to a lot of readers because books I'd written years before continued to come out while I was working on it.

    The buffer is gone now. I'll talk more about that later. However, I want to mention something else that helps me be productive—and that's allowing myself deviations to keep myself interested. I've told people before that I wrote the Alcatraz books to give me a break between Mistborn novels. If I'm able to refresh myself on other projects, I don't get burned out on the big epics. (Which are my true love, but can be very demanding on me mentally.)

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  • 272

    Interview: Oct 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    PART THREE: WARNINGS

    And so, we're entering the "refresh and work on side projects" stage of the writing process. I did this after The Gathering Storm, and I really need it now. I am therefore taking time off between now and January first. I get to write anything I want. It will probably be bizarre and unexpected; things that keep me fresh, things I haven't tried before.

    I ask your forbearance. I do believe that as a writer who has begun series, it is my responsibility to see that the other pieces of the story are written in a timely manner. However—and it may seem odd—I need to work on these other things to keep my next Wheel of Time and Stormlight installments good. It's how my process works.

    So, that's the first warning. I'm taking a break for three months. The second warning is that I can't promise I'll hit the final deadline on the Wheel of Time series. (The last one was supposed to be out in November 2011.) The problem is this: starting January, it will have been three years since I read the Wheel of Time series start to finish. That's too long. I'm starting to forget things. I won't feel comfortable starting the final book until I've done another re-read, and this is going to slow me down by three or four months. It's an unexpected delay I didn't fit into my original projections of how long it would take me to write the books.

    If I miss the deadline (which is more likely than not) it won't be by much. A few months, likely the same amount of time it takes me to do the re-read. But it is what must be done. So, I'd suggest that we set MARCH 2012 as the expected date of A Memory of Light. I suspect there will be some grumbling about this, but I feel I should let you know now, rather than later. It won't be an enormous delay, however. If my previous track record earns me anything, I hope it is the benefit of the doubt when it comes to me promising the release dates of books. I won't leave you hanging too long.

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  • 273

    Interview: Oct 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, here's my official future status, as I sometimes post.

    BOOKS YOU WILL SEE SOON

    * Towers of Midnight (November 2.)
    * Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens (December 2010.)
    —A note on Alcatraz. This is the fourth and final of the Alcatraz books in my contract. I do plan there to be more in this series, but I don't have time for them right now. And so, for now, this is going to stand as the ending of the series. I'll do Alcatraz Five eventually, I promise.
    * Scribbler (Early 2012.)
    —A note on Scribbler. This is a shorter steampunk book I wrote in 2007, just before I got the call about The Wheel of Time. It's quite good, and Tor has decided to purchase it. It involves chalk-based magic and a boy who is the son of the cleaning lady at a school for people who learn the chalk magic. I haven't had time to give it a revision, but will likely use some of the time in my free months between now and January to do a draft of it. If I turn it in January or February, you won't see it until a year after that, due to scheduling.

    BOOKS YOU WILL SEE SOMEWHAT SOON

    * A Memory of Light (March 2012.)
    * Stormlight Archive Book Two (Late 2012 or early 2013.)
    * Stormlight Archive Book Three (One year after Book Two.)

    ANTICIPATED SEQUELS

    * Alcatraz Five (Indefinite hiatus.)
    * Elantris Two (Planned to be written after Stormlight Three.)
    * Second Mistborn trilogy (It's coming someday, I promise.)
    * Nightblood: Book two of Warbreaker (Coming someday.)
    —Some notes here. Elantris has three books in the series, but they are loose sequels of each other. This means that side characters in one become main characters in the next. So while you'll see Raoden and Sarene in the second book, they won't be main characters. (Kiin's children will be.) Warbreaker is two books. Mistborn is a trilogy of trilogies, with the second trilogy in an urban (20th-century-level technology) setting. For Stormlight, I'm planning a pattern of two every three years, with a different epic—a standalone, or one of the sequels mentioned above—in between. Thus the Elantris sequel is next in line after Stormlight Three, which would be followed by Stormlight Four and Five.

    MAYBE COMING SOMEDAY BUT ONLY PARTIALLY WRITTEN

    * Dark One (YA dark fantasy.)
    * Steelheart (Superhero apocalypse.)
    * The King's Necromancer
    * The Silence Divine (Shardworld novel, standalone.)
    * White Sand (Shardworld trilogy.)
    * The Liar of Partinel (Shardworld novel, one of two.)
    * Dragonsteel (Major Shardworld epic. Won't be written until Stormlight is done.)

    POSSIBLE PROJECTS FOR MY TIME OFF

    * Mistborn short story (Looking likely.)
    * Unnamed urban fantasy (This is what I'm working on right now. Watch Twitter/Facebook for updates on this story. It involves a necromancer pizza deliveryman as a protagonist.)
    * Scribbler revisions (Will almost certainly be done.)
    * Finishing one of the unfinished novels mentioned above (Not likely, but you never know.)

    Who knows when/if anything written during my side-project time will get published. Sometimes, these stories are too unformed (as I like to be very free and loose when I write them) to make it. On other occasions, there isn't time to do revisions on them. (I write initial books very quickly, but spend many months in revision.) For instance, Alcatraz books were my deviations for 2005 and 2006, and the first of those came out very quickly. Scribbler was the one for 2007, and it won't be published for a year or so yet. I didn't have time for much in the way of deviations in 2008 or 2009, just the unfinished projects I mentioned above.

    We shall see. As always, thank you for reading and supporting me in this compulsive writing addiction of mine.

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  • 274

    Interview: Sep 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's a particular music video I saw quite often when working the graveyard shift at the local hotel. I worked that job primarily because it allowed me to write at work (I wrote some eight or so novels while sitting at that front desk, including both Elantris and the original draft of The Way of Kings). However, part of my job there was the do the night audit of the cash drawer and occupancy, that sort of thing. As I worked, VH1/MTV would often become my radio for an hour or so, playing on the little television hidden behind the front desk.

    The video was by Jewel, and was for the song "Intuition." We'll pretend, for the sake of defending my masculinity, that I paid special attention for the literary nature of the video, and not because I have a fondness for Jewel's music. And there was something very curious about this video. In it, Jewel transitions back and forth between washed-out "normal world" shots of her walking on a street or interacting with people, and color-saturated "music video"-style shots of her engaging in product promotion while wearing revealing clothing.

    The tone of the video is a little heavy-handed in its message. Among other things, it is meant to parody rock star/music video culture. It shows Jewel in oversexualized situations, having sold herself out in an over-the-top way. It points a critical finger at sexual exploitation of the female form in advertising, and juxtaposes Jewel in a normal, everyday walk with a surreal, Hollywood version of herself promoting various products.

    Now, what is absolutely fascinating to me about this video is how perfectly it launches into an discussion of the literary concept of deconstructionism. You see, Jewel is able to come off looking self-aware—even down-to-earth—in this video, because of the focus she puts on how ridiculous and silly modern advertising is. The entire video is a condemnation of selling out, and a condemnation of using sexual exploitation in advertising.

    And yet, while making this condemnation, Jewel gets to reap the benefits of the very things she is denouncing. In the video, her "Hollywood self" wears a tight corset, gets soaked in water, and prances in a shimmering, low-cut gown while wind blows her hair in an alluring fashion. She points a critical finger at these things through hyperbole, and therefore gains the moral high ground—but the video depends on these very images to be successful. They're going to draw every eye in the room, gaining her publicity in the same way the video implies is problematic.

    Deconstructionism is a cornerstone of postmodern literary criticism. Now, as I'm always careful to note, I'm not an expert in these concepts. A great deal of what I present here is an oversimplification, both of Jewel's video and of postmodernism itself. But for the purposes of this essay, we don't have time for pages of literary theory. The title itself is already pretentious enough. So, I'll present to you the best explanation of deconstructionism I was given when working on my master's degree: "It's when you point out that a story is relyin' on the same thing it's denyin'."

    That will work for now.

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  • 275

    Interview: Sep 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    THIS APPLIES TO FANTASY

    Before postmodern literature can start appearing in a genre (and therefore, before deconstructionists can start pointing out the irony inherent in that postmodern literature) you need to have a body of work with dominant themes and concepts. You need an audience familiar enough with those themes to recognize when they are being molded, changed, and built upon.

    Fantasy (and the epic in particular) hit a postmodern stage with remarkable speed. Tolkien was so remarkably dominant, so genre-changing, that reactions to him began immediately. And, since so much of the audience was familiar with his tropes (to the point that they quickly became expected parts of the genre), it was easy to build upon his work and change it. You could also argue that the Campbellian monomyth (awareness of which was injected into the veins of pop culture by George Lucas) was so strong in sf/f that we were well prepared for our postmodern era to hit. Indeed, by the late '70s, the first major postmodern Tolkienesque fantasy epic had already begun. (In the form of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.)

    During my early years writing, I mixed a lot with other aspiring fantasy novelists. A great number of us had grown up reading the Tolkien-reaction books. Brooks, Eddings, Williams, Jordan. You might call us of the rising generation Tolkien's grandchildren. (Some of you may have heard me call him, affectionately, "Grandpa Tolkien" when I talk about him, which is an affectation I think I got from a David Eddings interview I once read.) A lot of my generation of writers, then, were ready for the next stage of fantasy epics. The "new wave," so to speak.

    During those years, I read and heard a lot of talk about "taking the next step" in fantasy. Or, "making the genre our own." It seems that everyone I talked to had their own spin on how they were going to revolutionize the genre with their brilliant twist on the fantasy epic. Unfortunately, a lot of us were a little unambitious in our twists. ("My elves are short, rather than tall!" or "I'm going to make orcs a noble warrior culture, not just a group of evil, thoughtless monsters!") Our hearts were good; our methods were problematic. I remember growing dissatisfied with this (specifically with my own writing, which was going through some of the same not-so-original originality problems), though I couldn't ever define quite why.

    I think I have a better read on it now. It has to do with a particular explanation one writer gave when talking about his story. It went something like this: "Well, it starts out like every other 'farmboy saves the world' fantasy novel. You know, the plucky sidekick rogue, the gang of unlikely woodsmen who go on a quest to find the magic sword. But it's not going to end like that. I'm going to twist it about, make it my own! At the three-quarter mark, the book becomes something else entirely, and I'll play off all those expectations! The reader will realize it's not just another Tolkienesque fantasy. It's something new and original."

    There's a problem in there. Can you spot it?

    Here's the way I see it. That book is going to disappoint almost everyone. The crowd who is searching for something more innovative will pick up the book, read the beginning, and grow bored because of how familiar the book seems. They'll never get to the part where you're new and original because of how strongly the book is relying upon the thing it is (supposedly) denying. And yet, the people who pick up your book and like it for its resonant, classical feel have a strong probability of growing upset with the novel when it breaks so solidly out of its mold at the end. In a way, that breaks the promise of the first three-quarters of the book.

    In short, you're either going to bore people with the bulk of the book or you're going to make them hate your ending.

    That's a tough pill to swallow. I could be completely wrong about it; I frequently am. After all, I've often said that good writing defies expectations. (Or, more accurately, breaks your expectations while fulfilling them in ways you didn't know you wanted. You have to replace what they thought they wanted with something so much more awesome that they are surprised and thrilled at the same time.) But I think that the above scenario exposes one of the big problems with postmodern literature. Just as Jewel's music video is likely to turn off—because of the sexual imagery—people who might have agreed with its message, the above story seems likely to turn away the very people who would have appreciated it most.

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  • 276

    Interview: Sep 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    MY OWN WRITING

    I ran into this problem full-on when I first conceived the idea for Mistborn. For those who haven't read the series, one of the main premises is this: A young man followed the hero's cycle from a fantasy novel, but failed at the end. The thing that made me want to write it, originally, was the thought, "What if Rand lost the Last Battle? What if Frodo had failed to destroy the ring? What if the Dark Lord won?"

    A very intriguing thought. And yet, I realized early on that if I wrote the book as I was planning, I would fail. That story undermines itself. Perhaps there is someone out there who can write it in a way that engages the reader without betraying them at the end, but that person was not me. By the point I started that book, I was in the camp of those who (despite having a great love for the fantasy epics of the past) wanted to explore where fantasy could go, not where it had already been. I wasn't interested in writing a standard hero's journey. Jordan had done that already, and had done it well.

    And so, I set Mistborn a thousand years after the hero's failure. I made my original concept into the backstory. People have asked (a surprisingly large number of them) when I'll write the prequel story, the story of Rashek and Alendi. My answer is to smile, shake my head, and say, "I don't think it's likely." To explain why would require a lecture divided into three lengthy parts, and you know how boring that kind of thing can be.

    Now, some of you may be thinking the obvious thought: "But Brandon, Mistborn is a postmodern fantasy epic."

    Indeed it is. I was intrigued by the concept of writing a postmodern fantasy, and that's what Mistborn is. In each book, I consciously took aspects of the fantasy epic and twisted them about. My story above wasn't to discourage that type of writing; it was to explain one major way that it could go bad, if you're not careful.

    I tried to walk a line in Mistborn. Enough archetype that I could resonate with the themes from fantasy that I wanted to play with, but enough originality to keep the readers from expecting a standard ending. It's the type of balance that I can never walk perfectly because there is just too much variety to be had in the world. Some people are going to read the books and feel betrayed because of the things I pull; others are going to find that they're not original enough for their taste.

    The success of the books was in hitting the right balance for the right people; those like myself who love the old epics, and like some resonance with them—but who also want something new in their storytelling. That careful blend of the familiar and the strange, mixed up and served to people who have tastes like my own. That's basically one of the only measures we authors can use. (And note, I'm not the only one—by a long shot—doing postmodern fantasy. Look to Jacqueline Carey's series The Sundering for another example of someone doing the right blend, I feel, in a postmodern fantasy epic.)

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  • 277

    Interview: Sep 12th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    THE WAY OF KINGS

    The Mistborn books were successful. Many readers liked the idea of a world where the Dark Lord won, where prophecy and the hero were not what we expected them to be.

    Because of how well it worked, however, I fell into something of a trap. When it came time to rewrite The Way of Kings, I floundered. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but I felt I needed to insert a major twist on the fantasy genre, along the lines of what I'd done in Mistborn. What would be my twist? What would be the postmodern aspect of this book? It literally kept me up nights. (Not hard to do, since I'm an insomniac, but still.)

    Over time, I wrestled with this because a larger piece of me resisted doing the postmodern thing in Mistborn again. That piece of me began to ask some difficult questions. Did I want to be known as "The guy who writes postmodern fantasies"? There would be worse monikers to have. However, one of the major purposes of deconstructionism, is to point out the problem with self-referential material. There was a gimmick to the Mistborn books. It was a very useful one, since it allowed me to pitch the book in one sentence. "The hero failed; this is a thousand years later."

    There are a lot of very good postmodern stories out there, and I love the Mistborn books. But my heart wasn't in doing that again. In order to write Mistborn the way I did, I also had to rely on the archetypes. My characters, for example, were very archetypal: The street urchin. The clever rogue who robs to do good. The idealistic young nobleman who wants to change the world. My plots were very archetypal as well: a heist story for the first book, a siege narrative for the second. I believe that a good book can use archetypes in new ways without being clichéd. (The Name of the Wind is an excellent example.)

    In fact, it's probably impossible not to reflect archetypes in storytelling. I'm sure they're there in The Way of Kings. But I found in working on it that I didn't want to intentionally build a story where I relied upon reader expectations. Instead, I wanted to look for themes and character concepts that I haven't approached before, and that I haven't seen approached as often in the genre.

    There's a distinction to be found. It's much like the difference in humor between parody and satire. (As I define them.) In the first, you are funny only if your audience understands what you are parodying. In the second, you are funny because you are innately funny. Early Pratchett is parody. Mid and late Pratchett is satire. (Not to mention brilliant.)

    And this is why, in the end, I decided that I would not write The Way of Kings as a postmodern epic. (Not intentionally, at least.) Mistborn felt, in part, like a reflection. There were many original parts, but at its core it was a study of the genre, and—to succeed at its fullest—it needed an audience who understood the tropes I was twisting about. Instead of making its own lasting impression and improvement on the genre, it rested upon the work done by others.

    In short, I feel that using that same process again would make it a crutch to me. There is nothing at all wrong with what Mistborn did. I'm very proud of it, and I think it took some important steps. But it's not what I want to be known for, not solely. I don't just want to reflect and study; I want to create. I want to write something that says, "Here is my addition, my tiny step forward, in the genre that I love."

    To couch it in the terms of the Jewel video that started the essay, instead of creating a piece of art that screams, "Hey, look at those other pieces of art and hear my take on them," I wanted to create something that says, "Look at this piece of art. This is what I think art should be in this genre now." Part of me thinks that a video that was beautiful for its own sake, that didn't rely upon the follies of others, would do more toward undermining those follies than would a video that pointed them all out.

    And so, I tossed aside my desire to confine The Way of Kings into a single, pithy sentence explaining the slant I was taking on the fantasy genre. I just wrote it as what it was.

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  • 278

    Interview: Oct 29th, 2010

    James Rundle

    You're midway through your concluding trilogy in Robert Jordan's The Wheel Of Time. Can you tell us a little bit about the latest novel, Towers Of Midnight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is the second of the three books. What happened was, about two years back I'd planned to write the last book as just one book. And it was getting rather large, and the publisher was getting rather scared, so he talked to Harriet—Robert Jordan's widow—and they discussed it, talked to me and said 'Would there be natural break points if we were to publish this as three volumes?' We weren't expanding it at all, I was to write it in the same length, but they'd do it as three. There were actually natural break points; the first volume that we published, The Gathering Storm, was a very focused narrative—I'd written several plotlines for several of the main characters. They're very tense narratives taking them to some very important moments in their lives. It worked very well to break the book after that. What the second one does—it's actually a little more true to form for the Wheel Of Time series because we expand vision and scope in this novel. This is the novel where we reach out, and instead of having that very focused, narrow visual edge to the last book, which worked very well. But there are hundreds of characters in this series, and some of them had to—for the last book to work—the focus had to be shifted away from them. In this book, we're opening the world back up, looking at what’s going on around the world in all of these different narratives instead of having primarily two main focuses, we're looking at everybody again. This is the penultimate book. We're ramping up for the ending, essentially of the world in these books; this has everybody turning their eyes towards that and it all coming together. It's very large, it's very, I guess, epic is the word that you'd use for what's going on.

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  • 279

    Interview: Oct 29th, 2010

    James Rundle

    As you say, there are hundreds of characters; it's an intricately detailed fantasy world. How hard was it to immerse yourself in that when you came to write them, to get a handle on these characters and what's going on around them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that was probably the most difficult part of this. I've read the Wheel Of Time since I was a kid, I started reading when I was 15, so I was very familiar with a lot of things in the book—I thought I was extremely familiar—but then I started working on it and realized that there's a depth to this that, in just reading it, I hadn't seen. I've read the book multiple times, I was a fan, but there are literally thousands of characters in these books. I think there are over 2,000 named characters. As a reader, you grab hold of the ones that you like, and if some come on stage that you're not so interested in, they pass and it's okay, you don't have to fixate on them very much. As the writer I have to learn all of these different voices. All the different interactions and passions and narratives, and goals and motives of all these different characters. There are a great number that I didn't have to do that with because they're small, they're named but don't influence the plot. But there are dozens of them that do influence the plot, that I had to learn. The difficult part is when I sit down to write a scene, when I write my own books I can just simply write it and do no wrong. But for these I have to do a lot of research for every scene, going back in the books and saying okay, this minor character, how do they talk? What is the voice? What do they want? All these things, it can be very demanding.

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  • 280

    Interview: Oct 29th, 2010

    James Rundle

    So how much do you have to work off from what Robert Jordan left behind?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's a lot of notes. It really depends on the scene. In some scenes he actually dictated or wrote complete scenes. In other places he left very detailed instructions. And in other places, he brings one character into play and then doesn't mention them for hundreds and hundreds of pages and then they're in another place having done something that he hasn't mentioned. It's because he wasn't a linear writer, he was one of these very creative types that just seized upon moments and wrote those moments. I ended up getting this massive pile of notes where certain scenes were done, and they were all over the place time-wise, whatever he'd been passionate about what he'd been working on, and other things that he just hadn't gotten to yet. But there are these huge lists of questions and answers between him and his assistants, which is really what makes this possible, because they ask him a lot of questions—what happens to this character? Okay, what's this character doing? Those sort of things that I have a lot of one-line and two-line answers to that can help me draw these things together.

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  • 281

    Interview: Oct 29th, 2010

    James Rundle

    As you said, you're a fan of the series, and there are thousands more around the world. Is there an added pressure when writing them, or do you just have to blank it out and do the best that you can?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Certainly, I do the best that I can. There is added pressure. Again, when I write my own books, I'm not beholden to anybody. I write it, and if it doesn't work out, or if it's not my best book, that's actually okay because I like to try lots of different things. I like to be bouncing around and experimenting with things. But with the Wheel Of Time books, that's not appropriate, I am beholden to people, I am beholden to all of these fans that you've mentioned. It's not appropriate to just take this series and go wherever I feel. I have to take this series and be true to Robert Jordan's vision, while being true to myself as a writer, while also making sure that I'm being very respectful to the fans, to the all of the people who have been following the series for 20 years. They rightfully have a stake and a passion in the series, and it's a lot different from writing a standalone novel. I do feel a lot of pressure—the series belongs to the fans much more than it belongs to me.

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  • 282

    Interview: Oct 29th, 2010

    James Rundle

    Sure, but how have you found writing in the series? Being a fan, it must be quite a remarkable experience to be able to do this.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it's been wonderful. It's been amazing, and surreal. Surreal is a really good word for it because I grew up reading these books—these characters are like my high school friends. Being asked to write these books—and I didn't apply for this, I was just asked totally unexpectedly. She just called me on the phone, I hadn't met Robert Jordan and I didn't know that I was being considered. I was considered because I was both a writer in my own right, and a somewhat loudly professed fan of the series. But I hadn't ever considered it, you know? It's so weird—Robert Jordan is still this mythical figure to me. He's this magnificent, almost non-human person, a hero, a Greek god sort of figure—when I was growing up I'd say, "That is what I want to be someday". I would love to be one tenth of what Robert Jordan is, and it was a driving force for me becoming a writer, my love and respect for this amazing writer. And now I'm working on the series. Part of my brain just slips out every day, running around in circles saying, "I can't believe we're doing this! I can't believe we're doing this!" And that's partially out of fear, partially out of pure excitement. I don't know many people who get an opportunity like this, it doesn't happen. It's like Lucas asking you to direct a Star Wars movie, and the closest thing that I can think of, coming back to Tolkien, is the people who were asked to finish The Silmarillion—Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay working on that, that's the closest thing that I can think of to what I've been asked to do. It's just an amazing honor.

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  • 283

    Interview: Oct 29th, 2010

    James Rundle

    And have you had to put your own series on hold while working on The Wheel Of Time, or are you working on both?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I put mostly everything on hold. Certainly, a lot of stuff I write as a writer is in between books—I like to switch things up to keep myself from being burned out. I'm a compulsive writer, I love to do this. I write a lot because it's my passion but I do have to switch it up. So after the first one, after The Gathering Storm, I took a break and I wrote something else. It's a book that I've been working on for some 15 years by that point, it's called The Way Of Kings. It was something that I needed to do at that time. And now that I've finished Towers Of Midnight, I'm taking a short break and I'm writing something else. It's going to be much smaller, not an epic. It's just something to refresh myself for a couple of months before I go into A Memory Of Light. So yes and no. I have put a lot of things on hold, and that was kind of difficult, but at the same time the way that I am as a writer, I couldn't just work on one thing for three or four years straight. I had to stop and do side projects to keep me fresh. So you will occasionally see things, for instance The Way Of Kings, which is the start of a new series, my own massive epic so to speak. But you won't see the sequel for that until after A Memory Of Light is done, because I can't justify stopping long enough when this needs to be done.

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  • 284

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    He spoke a bit about writing methods, and mentioned one: "In late, out early."

    He mentioned that he doesn't like editing.

    He wrote a few practice books, and a lot of back story for The Way of Kings, about 200k words.

    He wanted to do a short series first alone with some stand-alone novels before writing an epic series.

    He usually writes from 12AM to 4AM.

    He learned about being chosen to finish WOT from a voicemail from Harriet, who picked him after reading Mistborn. Finishing A Memory of Light is now his focus.

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  • 285

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Question

    Someone asked about corrupt religions in Elantris & Mistborn.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He mentioned that he teaches one class/year at BYU on sci-fi writing. He fears the misuse of religion, but that he presents "fair and balanced" viewpoints in his books. He also stated that "fiction helps you see through other people's eyes" and quoted Robert Jordan: "I really like when my books raise questions, I just don't like giving the answers."

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  • 286

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    He spoke about magic system creation and that he had a science background that inspired him in creating Allomancy which has a scientific basis, and elements of chemistry, biology and physics. He also mentioned a podcast he is a part of, Writing Excuses, and that one episode was about creating magic systems.

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  • 287

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon stated he is not trying to imitate Robert Jordan's voice, but rather adapt his own voice to the Wheel of Time to write descriptions, "untrustworthy" character viewpoints, etc., to feel right for WOT. Tor did not want a ghost writer/imitator to write the last book (at the time it was still one volume). He wants to release a companion volume showing what RJ wrote and what Brandon wrote or changed.

    He mentioned that RJ wrote the ending first, then the prologue, then middle parts of A Memory of Light.

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  • 288

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Question

    Did the ending of WOT bum you out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, it didn't, but it helped since that is how Brandon generally writes, which is to write the ending and use an outline. However, Brandon doesn't get to read A Memory of Light like a regular fan, which was a little disappointing since he is writing it (counter-balanced by the fact that he knows the ending before anyone else).

    He did say that when he first went to Charleston that before eating dinner, he insisted on finding out who killed Asmodean, and how WOT ended!

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  • 289

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Question

    How much pre-writing do you do for each book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He wrote 50k words backstory for Mistborn, and 200k words backstory for The Way of Kings. It takes about 8 months to write a novel. Though it only took a month to write Alcatraz, which was a parody of conspiracies, and included bad super-powers, an anti-epic fantasy (and that a possible movie from Dreamworks was in the works at the time).

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  • 290

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Ted Herman

    Are there release dates for the two Memory of Light volumes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No dates available yet, but A Memory of Light won't fit in one volume due to the binding not being able to hold the anticipated 800k words.

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  • 291

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2008

    Question

    Will there be prequels or books about the Age of Legends?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon stated he didn't want WOT to be like Star Wars with books telling scattered stories, but would like to do the prequels that RJ planned about Tam and Moiraine, and possibly the outriggers about Mat and Tuon as well (but not the other planned series, Infinity of Heaven).

    He did mention the forthcoming WOT encyclopedia, and how extensive RJ's notes were—when he asked for a file on Perrin, he got notes that included 50 people from the Two Rivers who never even appeared in the books.

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  • 292

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    We learned that what Brandon liked about the magic system, and magic systems in general, is what the magic can't do. Think of the limitations on Traveling, and you'll understand.

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  • 293

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most interesting, in my opinion, we learned more about Brandon's thoughts on writing the series in general. He told us that most important was staying true to Jordan's notes and his vision. He wanted the characters to stay the same, so that if you liked Perrin (the girls all sighed at this point) or hated Cadsuane, you would continue to do so for the same reasons, until such time as the story might bring about any changes. Some things would change as he wrote, but Brandon's conscience would not let him deviate from Jordan's true vision of the story.

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  • 294

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Question

    Do you write the scenes in order?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For very large epic fantasies, such as Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings, I actually approach it by viewpoint grouping, meaning I take all the characters who are together in the same location, or who are kind of together emotionally or things like that, and I will write them straight through until they run into people from other sequences. At that point, I'll usually stop and do the next one straight through, or I'll just skip those chapters and go on, depending on what's going on. I do it by group, and the reason for that is: juggling all of these characters in your head, and making sure I'm keeping every character true to themselves, it's kind of like I have to upload a bunch of stuff into my brain, and then wipe it clean and upload a bunch of other stuff for another sequence. So for instance, for this book, Perrin and Faile and everyone around them would have been written straight through, and then I jumped back and would've done Mat, and so forth.

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  • 295

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Question

    How are decisions made about breaking up the chapters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Usually, that's Harriet. I break the scenes, she decides what gets grouped together into a chapter, and she will often move the chapters around. She does quite a bit of that, tweaking it to try and figure out where the best balance is. I don't generally give her an initial (order) with a bunch of them. Well, she'll get them in viewpoint chunks first, and she'll be doing edits on those while I'm writing other viewpoint chunks, and then I'll stick them together in an initial, and she'll through and say, "No, this one needs to be here, and this one needs to be here, these three need to be one chapter." That sort of thing.

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    And if Brandon says, "No, I just can't get behind this one," he wins! (Laughter from the crowd)

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were a couple that I really like. There's a really, really great cliffhanger at the end of the first Mat chapter and I'm like, "Oh, that's such a great place to break a chapter; it'll make everyone turn to the next page!"

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  • 296

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Question

    Have you finished the Mistborn novella?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Mistborn short story, that became a novella that became a short novel is 60,000 words long and is really looking like 70,000 words, which is about a third the length of one of my other novels. It's slow going while I'm on tour, but it will be done fairly soon.

    Chris Treco

    He had a few other details about this, but I'll let you watch the recording for the specifics. Also, read Mistborn if you haven't yet!

    Brandon Sanderson

    If you weren't aware, between books, I generally take a few months off and just write something random, whatever strikes me. I can't have a contract for it. It has to be something completely unexpected to keep instincts sharp and my writing ability sharp. I'm starting on A Memory of Light on January 1, but I've got these three months to do whatever occurs to me. Two months ago, I wrote a story about a pizza delivery man who turns into a necromancer. It was called "Death by Pizza". (lots of laughter; although I hope he publishes this!) He was a good pizza delivery man, with good pizza, he was just a necromancer.

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  • 297

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Question

    Are there any characters in particular you find hard to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are several that I've had more trouble with than others, and in that case, I generally work on them quite a long time. Aviendha, when I first started writing her, was probably the most difficult to get the voice right. There are characters that I write that are more difficult to write than others for different reasons. For instance, Gawyn is kind of...frustrated with himself, and when you step into a character's viewpoint, you start to feel and think like them; that's the goal. And so, him being frustrated with himself and his purpose in life makes it hard to write his scenes, because you feel frustrated and things like that, and Harriet has a great story about that.

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    One of the things that happens with a writer, which certainly happened with Jim (Jordan's real name, FYI), was he was often asked "what was his favorite character?" and he said, "whoever I'm writing today." Because he understood that villains don't think they're villains. They are doing what the world or the devil or something outside has forced them to do. So they think of themselves as gallant victims, generally, while they're slitting somebody's throat. But I could tell when he'd been writing somebody awful. He'd come in the kitchen door at supper time and he'd slink around the walls! I said, "You've been writing Padan Fain today, haven't you?" "How did you know?!"

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  • 298

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2010

    David Larsen

    You know that feeling when you finish a good book and you wish it wasn't over? "I wish that book had been 100 pages longer," you think. Well no, you probably don't, because that would have meant 100 pages of padding. A good book defines its own proper length. But wouldn't it be nice to find a good book whose proper length was really, really long? Let me introduce you to Brandon Sanderson.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "You know, I trimmed it a lot. It's the right length. It's the length it needs to be. It's fair to say it is not a small book." Sanderson is talking about The Way of Kings, his latest novel. It is, and let's just fixate on this for a moment, very long, indeed.

    David Larsen

    One of my favourite New Zealand novels, Nigel Cox's The Cowboy Dog, is about 60,000 words long. If you put six copies of The Cowboy Dog between one set of covers, The Way of Kings would still be longer. The first time Sanderson showed it to a publisher, the response was a shaky, "Do you know what getting this thing printed and bound would cost us?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson laughed, and offered the publisher three smaller books instead. Those three books made his name, attracted a very scary phone call, and made The Way of Kings a viable publishing proposition. But let's back up a little.

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  • 299

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    While majoring in English at college, Sanderson took a job as a hotel receptionist, working the graveyard shift.

    The managers didn't mind if he wrote on the job. "In fact, they were happy if I did, because that meant I wasn't falling asleep like the previous person they'd hired. So I wrote—oh gosh, it must have been nine or 10 novels over the course of five years."

    Sanderson was living one of the standard writer-learns-the-ropes stories—turning out book after book after book, finding his voice, finding the stories that mattered to him, and finding the self-belief to swallow the rejection letters. There were a lot of rejection letters. He made his way through the forest of fantasy and science fiction sub-genres, one at a time. "I did a post-apocalyptic book, I did an epic fantasy, I did a comic fantasy, I did some cerebral science fiction, I did a short action adventure fantasy..."

    No one wanted any of them. In frustration he tried to figure out what kind of books publishers were looking for, so he could write one.

    "We call this chasing the market and it's a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea and I did it anyway. The next two books I wrote were the two worst I'd done. I mean, I'd learned something from all those unsold novels and technically they were okay, but they didn't have any soul, they were just dreadful books. I didn't even send them out."

    Instead he sat down and deliberately wrote something profligately, ridiculously unpublishable. "I had to say okay, I'm a writer, I love it, this is what I do. Getting published is not the aim. Writing is the aim. So okay. I'm going to ignore what everybody's been telling me in these rejection letters. I'm going to write the biggest, coolest, baddest, most awesome fantasy epic I can. All these ideas that I've told myself are too big, that I'm going to have to put off using, I'm not going to put off any more. And I sat down and I wrote The Way of Kings. I sank everything into it. I created this awesome beast of a novel, and to be perfectly honest, my skill wasn't up to doing it justice at that point, but I gave it everything I had."

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  • 300

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2010

    David Larsen

    Jordan had been the big fantasy sensation of the 90s. His mega-series The Wheel Of Time began as a five-book cycle, then was expanded to a projected 12 books on the back of massive sales and critical acclaim. Each individual book was vast. The gaps between books slowly got longer and longer as Jordan struggled with gargantuan plot machinery, a cast of thousands and failing health.

    He died in 2007, still working on the final volume, and McDougal, having been impressed by the Mistborn books, phoned Sanderson and asked whether he would be interested in finishing off the series from Jordan's notes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "She called me out of the blue and, dumbfounded, I said yes. I mean I was a huge fan of Robert Jordan, how could I not say yes? But I was terrified. And I rightly should have been."

    David Larsen

    Sanderson has spent much of the last three years on the Jordan project, which has involved splitting an unworkably huge manuscript—Jordan made extremely detailed notes, fortunately for worried fans of the series—into three parts, each of which will become a 300,000-word novel. The second of these is due out in New Zealand this month.

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  • 301

    Interview: Nov 13th, 2010

    David Larsen

    Meanwhile, Sanderson has also found time to go back and rewrite The Way of Kings and sell it to his publishers, who by this time were very glad to take it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's worth mentioning here—"though my publisher would rather I stopped talking about this, they think it's off-putting"—that he had always intended it to be volume one of a 10-book series, The Stormlight Archive, each book of which will be about the size of the first.

    "The thing about fantasy novels is that they start off with a very steep learning curve. They're like historical novels, except that the world is entirely invented. You have to learn new names, you have to learn new laws of physics, new geography, new history, all of these things."

    "This is what fantasy readers love, but when you're making the effort to master all this information it's nice to maximise the payoff. That's what a big series has that a shorter series doesn't, it can be far more richly immersive. You get to spend serious time in this new world."

    David Larsen

    In other words, even before he was tapped to complete Jordan's magnum opus, Sanderson was setting out to be his generation's answer to Robert Jordan. Is he not worried, with nearly four million words of projected storytelling ahead of him on this series alone, that he may meet a similar fate?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I'm still pretty young. Plus, I live in perpetual fear of this distant cubicle far behind me. Some day I worry it will catch me and I'll have to become an insurance salesman or something. So I tend to work pretty hard. My hope is that I'll be releasing two of these books every three years. There'll probably be a third book in there as well, something smaller to keep me fresh. We'll see."

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  • 302

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2010

    Question

    How is it writing from someone else's outline as opposed to your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's easier than I thought. I base my outlines off focal points and build backward to what would make that scene happen. RJ would work on scenes he found important and write them first. And so the notes that I was handed were list of important scenes without any connecting material. But in a lot of cases, the very important scenes were either indicated to me or written completely or left with a line or a paragraph or a dictation telling me what to do. And when I built this it fell very naturally into my type of outline. I have complete creative control, so long as I can convince the rest of Team Jordan.

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  • 303

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2010

    Question

    Do you intentionally put a character that everyone seems to hate in every book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. Sometimes your friends annoy you and sometimes you get along. Different characters appeal to different people, and sometimes at different times.

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  • 304

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2010

    Question

    RJ was able to write the fighting and military scenes so well because of his military background. How do you deal with those scenes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I rely a lot on Alan, and I read a lot of military history.

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  • 305

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2010

    Question

    Who is your favorite character to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Aviendha, but she's also the hardest. I've just always liked her. Egwene was fun to write, particularly in The Gathering Storm.

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  • 306

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2010

    Question

    How can you keep all the details in mind?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Part of it is how my brain works, but I also read some scenes that RJ wrote in a certain character's viewpoint before I write in their point of view.

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  • 307

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2010

    Question

    I was scared of someone else writing this, but you did a great job!

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was scared myself! Thank you.

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  • 308

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    Mistborn got the Elbakin.net award for the best 2010 foreign novel. What does this trilogy represent for you in your career?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It represents several things. It is my attempt to expand the fantasy genre a little bit. I grew up reading fantasy and loving it; I love the great fantasy novels of my youth. Some of my favorite authors were Anne McCaffrey, Robert Jordan and Melanie Rawn, who I think is very underappreciated. I absolutely love their work—Tad Williams, David Eddings—and yet as a reader and a fan of fantasy, it seemed like during the late nineties and early 2000s, we hit kind of a slump in adult fantasy, particularly epic fantasy, which I write. And there were really exciting things happening in young adult fantasy—if you go look at some of the authors like Garth Nix or J.K. Rowling, who were doing really amazing work—but epic fantasy kind of slumped a little bit. I'm sure there were great things being published, it's just that they didn't get a lot of mainstream attention. It seemed like a lot of the authors who got mainstream attention were all trying to do the same story that had already been done, a lot. The young boy from an unknown village finds out he has an amazing noble heritage and has to defeat the dark lord...

    I mean, there's nothing wrong with that story; that's a good story, but it's not the only story. And for a lot of time, fantasy seemed to be having trouble growing out of its youth and growing up. As a reader I was very frustrated with this. I really wanted fantasy to step up and go beyond that. So when I started writing my own works and working on them, I was really looking for places to explore, that could expand upon this lore and take different directions. Mistborn represents several concepts of me, just as a reader and as a writer, trying to explore these new directions to go. I'm certainly not the only one doing it.

    The first book is about: what happens if evil has won? And in a lot of ways the second book is part of what started me in the trilogy. One of the big foundations or concepts was: what next? We always hear about the easy part. I always say that overthrowing something, tearing something down, actually seems easier to me than building it up. Then what next, after you've caused this great revolution, after you've blown up the Death Star and taken down the Empire? I think then you're going to realize that, whoa, administering something that large is enormously difficult, far more difficult than tearing it down.

    So it just represents my attempts and struggles as a writer and as a fan to wonder beyond fantasy's older lessons and try to figure out what we're going to be as an adult genre, as we grow up.

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  • 309

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    You are a very prolific writer. Your agenda seems to be full for the next 10 years! It might be a silly question, but how do you manage to find the time to write so much?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For me, it's generally a question of: how do I make sure in my life I'm doing other things? Writing is what I am and what I do. I don't generally go seek entertainment; I don't do these things because writing is so fulfulling for me it's hard for other things to compete.

    And so, I have a lot of ideas that I feel very compelled to get down on the page, and I relax by writing. I generally relax by writing things I'm not supposed to be writing. So when you see what I publish, generally what's happening is you'll see a major main novel that I'm working on, that I feel is important; it's part of what I'm trying to do, kind of as my name: this is who I am, this is what I'm trying to say. And then you'll see side projects that are random and insane, and sometimes very spontaneous and fun and different. And those are done as ways to relax from the main series. If you look at my French publications, you'll see that I have the Alcatraz series for young adults, and that grew out of me reacting and responding to myself, wanting to have something to relax doing. So that was my recreation.

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  • 310

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    By the way, Towers of Midnight has just been released in the US. Was it easier to write this one than to write The Gathering Storm?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In some ways it was easier, and in some ways it was harder. It was easier because I was more familiar in the world, and I was more confident, because The Gathering Storm had received quite a bit of accolade.

    At the same time, Towers of Midnight is in many ways a more difficult story to write, because for The Gathering Storm, I picked several important characters and I focused on them and kept the narrative very tight and focused. For Towers of Midnight I couldn't do that; I had to get back to everyone else, I had to widen my focus. And in this case I had to juggle far more characters, which made it a much more challenging book to write, technically.

    I do a lot of notes and plans; I'm what we call an outliner. George R. R. Martin talks about writers and says that you tend to be either what he calls an architect or a gardener. And an architect is one who plans out everything ahead of time for their book, whereas a gardener is one who nurtures a novel and sees where it goes. Stephen King is known as very much a gardener. I'm an architect in most ways, and I like to have a nice outline; I like to know where I'm going. Though of course as a writer, you can never stick to your outline one hundred percent. You have to have the freedom to change as the story develops, and as the characters grow, if they become people who wouldn't do what's in the outline, you have to be able to throw the outline away and build a story that follows the characters.

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  • 311

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    How did you welcome the reviews? Were there different from the reviews you got for a novel which is your own a 100%?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. With my own novels, it was very different in that. First of all, with the Wheel of Time, I really do feel that I'm in debt to the fans; I'm writing these books for the fans. But the series belongs to them, and the series doesn’t belong to me. With my own books, I really don't look toward what the fans are going to say; I follow my own artistic integrity and say: "I'm going to write the book that, as an artist, I feel needs to be written."

    But with the Wheel of Time I felt that I needed to consider the fans more, if that makes any sense. And in a lot of ways, the reviews on The Gathering Storm are more important to me, because if I wrote something the fans didn't like, then I was failing. Whereas if I write something artistically that I know people may not like as much, that won't be as popular, but that I feel artistically for myself important to release, I can be okay with bad reviews. So, I paid a lot more attention to them, and I wanted to see what the fans thought I was doing well and what they thought I was doing poorly. And I wanted to be able to respond to that.

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  • 312

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    In a general way, does your religion have an influence on your work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think that it does, and yet it's not a direct influence; it's more of an indirect influence. I'm practicing LDS, Mormon, for those who don't know. It shapes who I am, and who I am helps shape my fiction. There's been a long-running sort of argument, so to speak—a nice argument—in fantasy, about how much of it is allegorical and how much of it isn't. If you look back to Grandpa Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, you can see from C.S. Lewis' work he was very allegorical, whereas Tolkien was not. Tolkien was doing story and letting theme grow, and I actually prefer his way of writing. I feel that as wonderful as C.S. Lewis was, when you specifically embed messages, then the story becomes about a message, and not about the characters.

    And so I don't go into my work saying: "I want to prove X, Y or Z", I actually go into my work with the opposite opinion. I really believe that one of the great things fiction can do is that it can explore ideas from lots of different viewpoints. And I think because I'm a religious person, religious ideas and conflicts are fascinating to me. But I like to explore these things from different sides, and people who believe in different ways, and I like to make all of their arguments equally sound and equally powerful, because that way when you read the book, you get to see an exploration of a topic, rather than someone taking an answer and shoving it at you, over and over again. It offends me when I read fiction and someone expresses my viewpoint, but they do it poorly. I'd rather they just not have my viewpoint at all than do it poorly.

    So I think my religion affects me to be fascinated in these concepts, so religious concepts are in my books. I like to hope that I'm approaching them from lots of different and interesting aspects, but the nature of faith, the nature of hope, the nature of rational thought versus faithful thought: these different things are very fascinating to me, and so they tend to be fascinating to my characters.

    Question

    It makes me think about your character Sazed in Mistborn, who's fascinated by religions...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh yes, there's definitely connection between him and my own kind of feelings about religion and explorations of religion and things like this. He was a character very much out of my heart; people ask who I'm most like and it might be him. I don't know, it's hard to say. I'm not much like Kelsier: he is too gregarious, he is not me, but there's a little bit of me in all of them I suppose.

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  • 313

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    You seem to want to write your own Wheel of Time with The Way of Kings, first book of The Stormlight Archive—a series which should consist of ten books. Could you tell us more about it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can. You don't grow up reading Robert Jordan and Melanie Rawn and all of these people who've done large epic series without wanting to do one yourself. I started planning a large epic of my own many years ago, and finding a publisher and convincing them to take a chance on me is very difficult: the longer your book is, the more ambitious, the more hesitant they are—and rightly so, because that can fail. You know, the high opportunity for success also generally means great opportunity for failure. And so this was a book I actually sent to Tor, and they said: "This isn't the right time for this, it's not the right time in your career for this", which was okay. So it's been brewing for a long time; it's dealing with a lot of themes and concepts that I wanted to deal with for a long time.

    And again it comes back to me trying to look at where fantasy can go, not where it's been. A lot of fantasy seems to be very static: the technology doesn't change, the world doesn't change. It's been thousands of years in these fantasy worlds, and there's been no evolution of culture, or technology or anything like this: it's always been that way, and it will always remain that way—which bothers me a lot. It's not realistic, but it also does not give a lot of opportunity for conflict and change and the exploration of that sort of thing.

    The Way of Kings is many things: it's about the dawning of essentially an era of Renaissance, a magical Renaissance, exploration of what magic can do, and the conflicts of magic and technology. But that is actually kind of the background of the series, and in the first book it's much more personal. It's about a young man who was trained as a surgeon by his father, who gets recruited against his will, essentially, into a terrible war. And it's about the conflict between having been taught to heal and then being trained to kill. And what does that do to a person? How do you protect, who can you protect, and who can you heal, when your entire life is about fighting for your life or killing other people? And that really drives him. It's also a story about a young woman who is based a little bit on a mix between Darwin and Pliny the Elder, a natural historian who's kind of at the advent of this Renaissance, this beginning of a magical technology revolution, and her life and experience. It's both of those characters: it's about the characters.

    It's so hard to explain a book this large, because if I start talking about the large-scale concepts, those don't even appear in the first book; they're just hinted at.

    But one of the other things about The Way of Kings that I like to talk about is that I want to see, again, where the genre can go, and I've been pushing for a lot more art. Scott Westerfeld did a very interesting book that included a lot of art recently; it's kind of a half-graphic novel. I wanted, with Way of Kings, to do something like that. If you read Tolkien: Tolkien had a map, and this map had a purpose. If you looked in the book it was a map that the characters actually carried; it was part of the world. And the map has actually, for a fantasy novel, become something of a cliché: you open it up, there's a map, okay. But I don't like that because it's just there: where did this map come from, what does it represent? I want everything to be a piece of the story.

    So I wanted to include a lot of art that was pieces of the story: sketchbooks from one of the characters' notebooks, illuminated manuscript pages from a manuscript they're reading—these sorts of things, so when you read you can see their culture in the art. I've been very excited about it.

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  • 314

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    You've been very active on Facebook or on your blog, and this for a long time. How important are these new technologies for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I feel they're extremely important for me. We're entering an interesting age for art, because there are impressive levels of communications between artist and patron. And I really do look at my readers as my patrons. If you go back to the 19th century, for an artist to create great art, they would usually have to have a wealthy nobleman who was funding them to be able to do it. And these days, it actually works the same way in my mind, except the wealthy lord who's funding me is actually all the crowd, the fandom.

    We, in science fiction and fantasy, are a very tight-knit community, and I find that fans of science fiction and fantasy tend to be very different from like movie star fans who go crazy or things like that. Science fiction and fantasy fans are part of the conversation: they come up to you, and they can converse; it's like they're colleagues. And out of this entire group, they say to me: "Okay, you go create art for our entire community. We'll support you in it, as part of our community." And I really feel a debt to my readers, for allowing me the opportunity to do what I do for a living. And so my best way to respond to that, I feel, is to be very open and to have a lot of communication. A lot of fans get frustrated because they don't know when the books are coming out, and I like to have updates and let people know—daily updates. I belong to them in a lot of ways, so they deserve to see what I'm doing, with the opportunity they've given me.

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  • 315

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    Do you have the feeling that you're among, let's say, the top three of the fantasy authors who are the most talked about these days? Do you feel some kind of pressure for being so often in the headlines?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, I don't know. I would say that I do feel pressure. An example of this is: before The Wheel of Time, I spent a decent amount of time on web forums, I would visit these forums and talk, and nobody really knew who I was; some of them would see I'm a writer but you know, there are lots of writers. So suddenly this happened, and everyone knew who I was, and every forum had a big long thread about me—I showed up on Slashdot, and all of these things. Suddenly, I'm very much in the focus and I found that I couldn't spend as much time on these forums, because if I did, all I wanted to do was argue with people, or sometimes just discuss and have good discussions, but I found that suddenly since it's about me it was so much more personal that it was very hard to let go of the web forums. So I just had to cut off ties to them, because otherwise I could spend all day just talking with the people who are posting on these threads.

    And so that level of awareness, it is kind of surreal. I've actually been recognized on the street, in a city. I went to San Diego, randomly, and someone recognized me and said: "Are you Brandon Sanderson?" That's bizarre! They weren't there for my signings, they didn't know I was in town; they just passed me on the street!

    So it is a little bit bizarre—now of course, as writers, we don't ever get really famous. Maybe once every couple of years someone will recognize me in the street, so it's not like I'm really a celebrity or anything, but it's still weird, and odd, to be able to post on a forum and people know who I am.

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  • 316

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2010

    Question

    You recently created a discussion about postmodernist fantasy. Is this will to intellectualize fantasy a component of your ambitions, of your approach to writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. I do have a master's degree in English with a creative writing emphasis, so I do wear the hat of an academic. When I'm sitting down to write, I'm actually not wearing my academic hat. Now, after I get done, my academic side does like analyze what I've written and look at it and think about it.

    But when I'm writing I really let the artist take over, and I find that if I let the academic take over, it loses a bit of its life, because it becomes something that's contrived rather than something that's created. So I don't let the academic have too much power, but I do like to talk about these things. I wrote that essay on postmodern fantasy, which is really more accurately an essay about self-aware fantasy. I talked about it a little bit earlier: the next stage in fantasy that kind of looks at itself and is self-introspective. And I see myself doing that, not because the intellectual side of me says: "Oh, you need to do this", but because the artist has been tired of some things and wants to create a response to them.

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  • 317

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    Question

    Someone asked if Brandon writes the books in a jumping-around fashion or if he writes one character's story at a time, and then they get spliced together in editing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon says he does write one character at a time, because you have to try to think like that character and feel like the character. He says to be able to write someone, it's like uploading all the information about the character, and then using it until you're done. Then you wipe your hard drive and download the next character. He goes on to say that the editing and splicing is almost entirely Harriet, but when Brandon feels strongly about something, he insists. (Brandon said one such point was at the beginning of Towers of Midnight, a cliffhanger ending to a chapter about Mat...) Harriet took the mic at this point and said that if Brandon puts his foot down, then that's it, and he gets his way. They laugh.

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  • 318

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    Tigre_azul

    Since this is Robert Jordan's, how much of this does Brandon get to "play" with, to add him in it? It Appears that Brandon does a good job of reading his critics and answers questions that have been left undone. I read a lot of complaints about Mat after the last book. I don't think that will happen as much this time. The "surprises" seem to have a lot of Brandon in them. Last note. Why did it seem there were more editorial mistakes in this book than I would have expected?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In reverse order: The editorial mistakes were basically because of the fast turnaround time between when I finished the book and when it was put out. We're working to get those fixed for the ebook and paperback editions, but really, deadlines are to blame there, which is one reason we're slowing down for the next book.

    What you're seeing with the surprises, as you described them, is that not all of those are mine; I'm writing some of them that Robert Jordan left instructions on how to write, and the way I plot and reveal is going to be manifest in the way that I approach it.

    In response to your first question, I'm given complete creative freedom in these books. Partially because Harriet trusts me, and partially because that's what a writer needs in order to be able to write a book like this. That said, I've mentioned before that I feel a strong compulsion to try to do the books as close to the way Robert Jordan would have as I can, taking into account my own writing style. I'm not trying to make these Brandon Sanderson books; I'm trying to make them Wheel of Time/Robert Jordan books, but I'm also not trying to imitate him since that would turn out as a bad parody. In the end, I'm allowed to do whatever I feel needs to be done to achieve the storytelling the story demands. I do have to convince Harriet, Maria, and Alan that it's the right thing to do. And in some cases that's an easy thing to do, and in some cases it's a harder thing to do. But in all cases I get to write it first and then let them read it. And if I don't manage to pull it off, then I say, "Well, let's try something different."

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  • 319

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    Machavelli

    Hi Brandon. I was really looking forward to reading about Rand after the end of The Gathering Storm, where he changes. I want to know how much he has changed since he and Lews Therin became one. He is the main character but he is barely in this book. Why is that? and will we get to read from his point of view in A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You will get to read from his point of view in the last book. This was done intentionally, and it's something the Wheel of Time books have done all across the history of the series. Sometimes certain characters have to take a back seat while others' stories are being told. In this case, that happened to Rand. It was very important to me for narrative reasons that you see him externally before you see him internally.

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  • 320

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    Jonathan Levy ()

    I know it's premature to discuss this, but I am entertaining fond hopes that after you finish A Memory of Light, you will publish a WoT companion, which will include things like:



    —All the notes and details and backstory which never got put into the novels.

    —Deleted chapters, or longer draft versions of scenes which had to be edited down.
    
—An account of the writing process as you experienced it, with perhaps an outline of the books showing how much of each part was yours and how much RJ's, and the difficult decisions you had to make at each point.

    —Alternative chapters or scenes which were discarded.

    —Answers to any issues which are still disputed by fandom after the last book.

    I know this is premature, but I was hoping you could at least tell us if
 1) Is this something you, personally, would be willing to do?
 2) Is there any chance of it actually happening?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Excellent question. I've spoken on this a little bit before. It is something I'd be willing to do; in fact, it's something I want to do.

    I don't want to say that the chances of it happening are poor, but one thing you have to understand is that Harriet is very careful and cautious with Robert Jordan's legacy, and rightly so. You may have heard, for instance, that at the first JordanCon she allowed us to play the tape of him dictating a scene from the prologue of The Gathering Storm, but she asked for it not to be recorded, and she doesn't really want it to be played again. It was just that one time for that special event. People asked her why, and her response was that she didn't want people to remember Robert Jordan in his weakest hours. I think that is a very valid point.

    So the decision will be Harriet's. I haven't even approached her about this yet, because I don't think it's the appropriate time. But once the series is done and we've had some time away from it, I will ask her if it's all right if I do something like this.

    It would include a lot of the things you mention. Specifically what I want to do is talk about the writing process and the difficult decisions that you mention, some of the scenes that didn't end up in the books, some of the things that Robert Jordan had written as potential scenes. I've mentioned before that in his notes he would often have comments where he says, "I will either do this, or this," and sometimes the options are very contradictory. He had not yet decided between them, and I ended up being the one who decided which one we were going to do. So I would include those and some of the actual notes.

    The reason Harriet may not want this to happen is that if his final publication is unfinished notes, that might make her uncomfortable. I certainly intend to make a plea for the importance of this from a scholarly standpoint, that people might be able to have access to this, and also so that the notes are there for people who don't like my interpretation of things, so they can see exactly what Robert Jordan had to say. I'm really hoping we can do it, but let's wait until the series is done and then I'll approach Harriet about it.


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  • 321

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    Dr. T ()

    
In plotting an epic like The Way of Kings, to what extent do you outline the whole story? How does that compare with the outline and notes provided by Robert Jordan for the remaining volumes of WoT?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Robert Jordan and I plot differently. In the notes he tends to talk about scenes that he's working on at the time, whereas I tend to plot out everything, kind of in reverse order. His outlines do end up looking like my outlines in some ways, in that he talks about important moments and I tend to plot backwards, starting from those important moments and moving backward from them. He seemed to be much more of a "I work on this scene because I'm passionate about it" writer, where I am a "I build a framework for the entire book and then start writing" writer.

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  • 322

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    Mike Potts ()

    What's the general time line on Stormlight Archive releases? Do you plan any major gaps in the series, or will books 2-10 likely be your main projects for the next few years?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    I wrote a blog post on this back in October.

    After I finish A Memory of Light, my major novel publishing schedule will be Stormlight Archive books two years in a row, followed by something else the next year. This pattern should continue until the series is finished. That doesn't count shorter exploratory side projects like Alcatraz or The Rithmatist (formerly called Scribbler), which comes out in 2012. I'll do one or two of those every year when I take a break after finishing a major novel, and not all of them will get polished to publication standards. Those deviations are largely to keep me from burning out.

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  • 323

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    Daedos ()

    When did you develop your idea to have multiple series playing out on different planets? How many separate stories do you plan to tell in said universe, and will your Dragonsteel books be the last?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    I started doing this early in my career before I got published, when I felt that writing sequels was not a good use of my time. Just look at the hypothetical; if I'm trying to get published and I write three books in the same, if an editor rejects book one, he or she is not going to want to see book two. But if an editor rejects book one but is optimistic about my writing, I can send them a book from another series and they can look at that.

    During my unpublished days I wrote thirteen books, only one of which was a sequel. So I had twelve new worlds, or at least twelve new books—some of them were reexaminations of worlds. But I wanted to be writing big epics. This is what I always wanted to do; something like the Wheel of Time. So I began plotting a large, massive series where all these books were connected, so I could kind of "stealth" have a large series without the editors knowing I was sending them books from the same series. It was mostly just a thing for me, to help me do the writing I wanted to be doing. And then when publication came I continued to do that, and told the story behind the story.

    I originally plotted an arc of around 36 books. The total has varied between 32 and 36; 32 would work better for the nature of the universe, but the question is whether I can fit everything into 32 books. I won't say whether Dragonsteel will be the last or not.

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  • 324

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    The Not So Dark One ()

    With your penchant for developing very different types of world and types of magic as you go from series to series are you ever tempted to allow other writers to expand your universes in the way George R. R. Martin does with the Wild Cards series? Open but controlled?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    I have never been tempted by this, basically because I have so many things balanced in the Cosmere to not interfere with one another, to make the story come out the way I want. I would be worried about things breaking continuity. And if there are stories in these worlds worth telling, they're stories I want to tell. That doesn't mean I won't eventually do something like that; I would consider it someday, but I haven't considered it yet.

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  • 325

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    Kasair74 ()

    What is your process for pre-writing work? (Worldbuilding etc). When you write something and "get stuck" or it doesn't turn out quite as you envisioned, how do you know whether to take it and add something different to make it better, or just move to another project and let the "stuck" project be? (I was thinking of how Mistborn was a combination of two projects that didn't turn out quite as you thought, but combined they increased in awesomeness).

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Trial and error. Though for me, setting aside a project is almost always a bad thing for that project. That doesn't mean I don't have to do that sometimes, but if I set aside a project rather than continue to work on it until I've fixed the problem, I've found that my personal makeup means that restarting that project is very difficult. It happens, and I've made it work, and there are great books that I have released where I did it, but usually it can take weeks of effort to get back into that project. Because I'm a linear writer—I start at the beginning and write to the end—if I haven't been writing from the beginning when I pick something up, it can be extremely difficult.

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  • 326

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    W. Heus ()

    How do you feel about the lack of prominent gay characters within the epic fantasy as a genre and do you ever include (or will ever include) gay or lesbian characters in your own work?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    That's an issue that I feel I should speak about delicately, because it's one of those charged issues that can create a lot of division. But my basic feeling is that a character should not be any more or less sympathetic, or more or less evil, or anything like that, because of sexual orientation or because of basic beliefs or philosophy on things like religion. So there are gay characters in my books, though so far they have been side characters. I don't make a big deal of it, because I tend not to make a big deal of the sexuality of side characters in general. For instance, in The Way of Kings, Drehy, a member of Bridge Four, is gay. He's based on a good friend of mine who is gay. There is a lesbian character in Alloy of Law; again I don't make a big deal of it though it's a little more obvious.

    Basically, I just try to write characters and try to have different makeups of characters. I feel gay characters should be included, and I'm annoyed that sometimes there seems to be an association between including gay characters and using that as a means of making them seem like a reprehensible character. You may know what I'm talking about; I've seen it in books before and it bugs me. Just like it bugs me if an author makes a character religious and the tone of the book implies, "Well, obviously, religious people are all idiots, so I'm not going to make this character actively an idiot, I'm just going to represent them as being religious," which by the tone of the book indicates that they're an idiot. That's not to say that there can't be social structures like religions that will push people toward doing things that are questionable or morally reprehensible—there can, of course, and it will happen—but I'm talking about the individuals. I don't know that I have strong feelings on the subject other than that I think people should be represented as people.

    I wrote a bit more about the subject in my essay on Dumbledore.

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  • 327

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2011

    Maru Nui ()

    What's the next non-sequel book you're wanting to write or rewrite?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    
I really would like to get Steelheart done. That would probably be the next one I'd want to do; that or Dark One. But I don't know when I will have time for them.

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  • 328

    Interview: Dec 25th, 2010

    Question

    In the blog exchange [this link shows the posts in chronological reverse order] you recently did with Brent Weeks on Bordersblog.com, the two of you talked for a few posts about how Chekhov's Gun applies to epic fantasy. In your words, "Is it okay, in an epic fantasy, to hang a gun on the mantle, then not fire it until book ten of the series written fifteen years later. Will people wait that long? Will it even be meaningful? My general instincts as a writer so far have been to make sure those guns are there, but to obscure them &mdsah; or at least downplay them." Your novels are followed very closely by groups like TWG, and now 17th Shard and Stormblessed, and you're familiar with the obsessiveness of Wheel of Time fans. There are more and more people out there who spend time between book releases poking at the metaphorical walls of your work, on a hunt for those guns you've obscured. Does this kind of scrutiny change anything for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. I don't generally change the guns that I'm hanging, but I have begun to hang more subtle guns for those who like to dig. I like to have a variety of secrets in my books, with a variety of difficulty levels in figuring them out. If you read one of the books I've written, like The Way of Kings, I would hope that it will meet everyone's needs when it comes to discovering things. For those who really want to dig, there will be some really deep secrets that you can unearth, talk about, and theorize about and eventually be proven right. There will be things that the casual reader will figure out three pages before the answer is revealed, that you will have figured out ten chapters ahead of time. I like that variety because of the old adage—it's hard to fool everybody all the time, but hopefully I can have enough different secrets that they will each fool a few people.

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  • 329

    Interview: Dec 25th, 2010

    Question

    The art featured in The Way of Kings is very striking and has been well-received by readers. Do you have any plans to include more art in your future books—other books as well as The Stormlight Archive? Or maybe as bonus content on your website?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There will be more art in future Stormlight Archive books. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and I think adding a visual aspect to novels helps create a more complete and immersive experience. You'll notice that art has been important to one extent or another in all of my books. Elantris had its map and the Aons; Mistborn had its maps and the Steel Alphabet. The Rithmatist, when it comes out in 2012, will have extensive magic system diagrams with every chapter.

    Including a map in a fantasy book has become a bit of a cliché ever since Tolkien did it. But if you go back and look at what Tolkien actually did, the map that was in the book was an in-world artifact—it was something the characters carried around with them and used. So I've approached the art in my books in a similar manner. Each piece represents something that is made and used by the people in the world of the books. I think that helps give a richer feel to the world I'm creating.

    One thing you probably won't see me doing in future novels is including character art. I want to leave exactly how characters look up to the imagination of the reader. But I'm a big fan of the sequential art storytelling form as well, so you'll likely see me do some completely graphic novels in the future.

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  • 330

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    Professor_Layton ()

    Mr Sanderson, When you tell an epic story, such as The Way of Kings, do you outline the entire series prior to starting? Or do you have a general idea how the series should flow and adjust accordingly? If you do adjust, do outside influences (such as world events) factor into adjustments or do you keep everything contained within the book?

    I'm very curious to how rough the story is at the beginning compared to the ending and the path it takes. Fantastic book by the way, but I'm sure you hear that quite often :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you.

    I do outline quite extensively. Remember, however, that authors each tend to do things their own ways. There's no one perfect way to do this. George R. R. Martin described some of the extremes in terms of "Gardeners" and "Architects." Gardeners grow a story, without a firm idea of where they are going. Architects tend to build an outline as a frame and work from it.

    I'm (usually) an architect. I've found that the best way to get the kinds of endings I like. I have to know where I'm going before I start.

    That said, an outline has to be a living thing of its own. I need the flexibility to knock out entire sections of it and rebuild them; I do that frequently. I have to be able to respond to what I'm passionate about in the world, as you mention. In this book, the interludes were more reactionary, and I built them into the story to allow myself more freedom to explore the world in a "Gardener" sort of way, while the plot itself was quite well set out.

    The other books in the series are not currently as fleshed out as the first was, but I have outlines for each of them.

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  • 331

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    ArchAuthor ()

    Seeing as this is a planned ten book series, do you ever fear that your writing will deteriorate along with the length of the series like Robert Jordan's (arguably) did?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First question first, as it is an excellent one.

    Long series run into some problems, particularly if they're a single, ongoing story rather than a sequence of episodes. Robert Jordan ran into some of these problems, as has George R. R. Martin. I think much of it can be mitigated by releasing books regularly. The Wheel of Time reads much differently to me now that I know the ending, and am not waiting years between books, only to get one that doesn't feel like it progresses the story as far as I want.

    I feel the other big danger with the long series is the explosion of side characters. Sometimes, it seems that their narratives—and their plots—take the bulk of books, causing some bloat to the series.

    I can't promise my writing won't deteriorate. I haven't ever tried something of this length before. However, I have attempted to do some things specifically in the construction of my outline to try to forestall it. Specifically, I've outlined quite a lot. (See my other reply.) I know where I'm going.

    Tangents will be kept to a minimum; I've given myself the interludes, as I've mentioned before, to let me explore some tangents. I think this will keep me from feeling I need to tell entire books about side characters; I can give them an interlude, and hint at a greater story for them. Then I can leave them be.

    The other thing I'm doing has to do with the flashbacks. Each book will have a single focus character, and I will delve into their backstory. I'm hoping this will give each volume it's own cohesion; rather than just a tiny slice of a story, I hope this will help make each one feel like it is its own story.

    Time will tell if I succeed or not. Until then, I don't fault you for being wary.

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  • 332

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    ArchAuthor ()

    How long does it take to make a universe, how deep do you go?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on the book, honestly. For a thick, multi-volume epic fantasy, I take years working on the world. Such was the case with The Way of Kings, and a few of the other massive Epics I'm planning. Mistborn had about a year of planning ahead of time.

    Some books, however, I write more freely. I almost always spend a few months working on the world before writing; it's the thing I feel I need best fleshed out. However, it is dangerous as well. Some writers spend all of their time worldbuilding and none of their time writing.

    I try to focus my energies on areas of worldbuilding important to the conflict and the characters. In Mistborn, the languages weren't important—I was going to have everyone speaking one language. In Kings, language was more important, so I developed the linguistics. (Though that won't be manifest for a few more books.)

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  • 333

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    Aksen ()

    How long is the gestation period for one of your stories? What I am wondering is if The Way of Kings or Mistborn, for example, were stories you had in mind for a long period of time before sitting down to do the outline, or if they were fresh ideas you began to generate when beginning work on them.

    Absolutely amazing work, by the way. When a new Sanderson novel comes out, I get excited. When I finish it, I get panicky.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are two different ways I write books.

    One is the long gestation book, the book built off of themes I've been thinking of for years. I first wrote Dalinar (by a different name back then) in a story when I was a teenager. Same for Hoid. I wasn't ready to write the story yet, as I wasn't good enough, so I backed off.

    Other books are almost more like performance art—you take a few ideas, you juggle them about a bit, and you then stand up on stage and do your best with them. In the hands of a skilled writer, this comes out like a solo from an improvisation expert. Flawed in places, yes, but also full of a kind of majestic life.

    Some things work better in the first form. (Foreshadowing being one, carrying a story across multiple books is another.) Other things work better in the second. (Humor, for example.) Mostly, they just have a different feel.

    The Way of Kings and Mistborn were like the first. Warbreaker and Alcatraz were like the second.

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  • 334

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    cthulhu_zuul ()

    More a technical question,

    What is your day-to-day writing process like? I've heard from a variety of authors who go by words per day or by time or something similar. What processes do you use to write such long pieces in reasonable times?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I write every day, and I give myself wordcount goals. (Usually, it's 2k min, or a certain page goal if revising.) I try to keep distractions to a minimum.

    ...Reddit doesn't exactly help with that last part. :)

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  • 335

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    ISw3arItWasntM3 ()

    Before I ask my questions I just wanted to say I loved Mistborn and found The Gathering Storm to be my favorite WoT book after The Great Hunt.

    For my question I was wondering, how do you go about worldbuilding? Do you come up with a premise for a book before creating a world for it or do you like to create a world first and then come up with a story to take place in it? Got a favorite part of worldbuilding?

    Also, where do you feel you've improved most as a writer since your beginning? And if you'd like to go one further, what do you think are some common flaws which tend to be found an author's earlier works?

    Thanks for taking the time to do this!

    Brandon Sanderson

    First Question:

    I jump around a lot when outlining, and so things kind of grow in one place (maybe character backgrounds) and that sparks me thinking about something in the culture, so I jump over there and work on it for a while. Then over to plot, then back to world.

    However, Kings is a little different in that I specifically spent months and months doing dedicated worldbuilding for the novel. In this case, I started with the most important setting elements and explored them in a kind of encyclopedia form, then moved on from there.

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  • 336

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    Blackrabite ()

    My friend and I read Mistborn when we first heard you were going to take over on The Wheel of Time. We've been hooked ever since and you are definitely one of our top authors now.

    The friend I spoke of grew up in a Mormon household, as did my wife, and both of them say that a lot of your work seems to borrow or at least use ideas from the Mormon idea of an afterlife as building blocks. Are those just similarities or is your world building influenced heavily by those ideas?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most of what people are noticing isn't so much intentional as inevitable. Just like people see WWII influences in Tolkien (though he denied that there were such parallels) there are going to be LDS parallels in my books.

    I don't seek to expunge them; they are part of who I am. If I'm reaching into mythology and history for my foundations, I'm going to dip into LDS sources more often than others. So tell your friend and wife that they're seeing real things, most likely—though it's not intentional allegory.

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  • 337

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    digitalpicaso ()

    I always get the feeling that you don't particularly enjoy the process of cutting your books down or chopping them up once they go 'over-budget' in word length.

    What are the most annoying issues you have to deal with when publishing a book?

    Also, since I am kind of thinking of writing a short story in my free time, what order should I write my story so it's the least aggravating to put together when I'm done? Should I try and focus on a linear story line and write it start to finish, or just write down whatever parts I can think of and then work on connecting them together in some way?

    These questions don't specifically relate to The Way of Kings, (which I liked too much for my own good), but I can't pass up an opportunity to milk information from someone I idolize.

    Brandon Sanderson

    First Question: I'm not, naturally, a reviser. I like to plan a book, I like to write the book, but revision is something I drag my feet on. I'm usually okay once I get going, though the line edits are particularly tough on me.

    Other annoying issues: The number of things that distract me from actually doing my writing. (Things like business aspects, or travel. I like doing signings and conventions, but the travel to get there is a big hassle.) Also, I don't like negotiating contracts.

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  • 338

    Interview: Feb 28th, 2011

    nowonmai666 ()

    Hi! Two sort-of related questions here, about the writing process:

    What would you do differently if you were writing the books to be released all at pretty much the same time (like Lord of The Rings) rather than as episodic updates? Would you still go into the same level of detail in describing relatively trivial events such as the affixing of contraband from the Chasms to the underside of permanent bridges?

    I'll probably finish up the book later today, and if/when I write the review it will be a mixture of fulsome praise and F7U12-level frustration. The latter is largely because you set up so many questions—hints about characters' backgrounds, secrets about the world, its people and its magic, riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas. After 1007 pages I feel I deserve more answers! I imagine you planting the seeds of mysteries and thinking "haha, I'll make 'em suffer 8 years before they get the answer to that one!". The question here is how do you balance (1) providing enough information to make the world and characters seem consistent, real and immersive with (2) withholding information for revelation later in the series? Do you consciously think about building up trust in the reader that the questions they have will one day be answered, or worry that the reader might think everything is so mysterious it will probably end up in a nonsensical betrayal like so many scifi films and tv series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a very interesting question.

    I actually wrote the Mistborn trilogy straight through before releasing the first, so I have some experience doing it both ways now. With Kings, I'm much more careful with my foreshadowing. Maybe to the point of teasing. That's a contrast to Mistborn, where I may have been too blunt with my foreshadowing. (Or just not put it in.)

    The trilogy there was one book in my mind, so things that happened at the end of the first book that should have been better foreshadowed didn't get the foreshadowing they deserve—because I was looking at them as elements I was introducing 1/3 the way through the story, and thinking of them as being on a proper curve of information.

    The balance of what to provide and what to withhold has more to do with not bogging down this story with details for a future story than it does with trying to tease. In my mind, this book is three things: Kaladin's experiences as a bridgeman 2) Dalinar's decision to do what he does at the end of the book 3) Shallan's first apprenticeship. I wanted to keep the narrative focused on those things, and provide climaxes dealing with those three concepts. Other secrets and teases are more intended to begin setting up future stories.

    However, the "Lost" effect (making the mysteries so cool that no reveal can live up to them) is in the forefront of my mind. My feeling is that instead of dragging them eight books, I should be quick to give answers in future volumes. The things that span eight books as secrets shouldn't be the ones that you're wondering at in the first book; they should be the things that, after you begin wondering about them in the seventh book, you can look back to the first book and see the hints. Then you get your answers in the eighth.

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  • 339

    Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010

    Scott Wilson

    Thank you so much taking the time to chat with us here at The Fringe magazine. Like Stephen King's Dark Tower series, you worlds exist in the same universe and are linked somehow. Is there any particular reason to have this link rather than create a fresh and new world, with new systems and characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I started doing this early in my career before I got published, when I felt that writing sequels was not a good use of my time. Just look at the hypothetical; if I'm trying to get published and I write three books in the same, if an editor rejects book one, he or she is not going to want to see book two. But if an editor rejects book one but is optimistic about my writing, I can send them a book from another series and they can look at that.

    During my unpublished days I wrote thirteen books, only one of which was a sequel. So I had twelve new worlds, or at least twelve new books—some of them were reexaminations of worlds. But I wanted to be writing big epics. This is what I always wanted to do; something like the Wheel of Time. So I began plotting a large, massive series where all these books were connected, so I could kind of "stealth" have a large series without the editors knowing I was sending them books from the same series. It was mostly just a thing for me, to help me do the writing I wanted to be doing. And then when publication came I continued to do that, and told the story behind the story.

    Why not do separate worlds? Because it was more interesting for me this way. This is the story I want to tell. The big, overarching story that I've planned out. I've been talking recently about how my inspiration for this is the idea that in science people have for a long time been looking for a unified theory of physics, some theory that will explain all interactions of physics in a concise way. I wanted to tell about a universe where there was a unified theory of magic, where magic worked according to a unifying principle. Despite the magic systems looking very different and doing lots of different and interesting things, hopefully original for each book, there is an underlying rationale that is keeping them all together. I write what I find interesting, and that was interesting to me.

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  • 340

    Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010

    Scott Wilson

    How hard was it to write the last 3 books in the Robert Jordan series? Inevitably, there would be those that criticized your work no matter how good it was just because it wasn't written by Jordan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've said myself that I could never replace him—Robert Jordan should have been the one to finish the series. My main goal in writing the books has been not to imitate him, but to stay true to the souls of the characters. I think of it as taking over as director for a few scenes of a movie while maintaining the same actors and script. I can be proud of my role as director, but ultimately the end result still belongs to Robert Jordan—and to his fans. Part of me is sad that now I can't just be one of them; I didn't get to rush out and buy and read a new Robert Jordan book this past November like they did.

    When I was first offered the project, the fact that I could never write these books as well as Robert Jordan would have written them tempted me to decline. I knew that no matter what I did, it would not be the same as what could have been. I don't believe the books could be as good written by anyone else as they could have written by Robert Jordan. And so that was the main consideration for potentially saying no. But in the end, I decided if I did say no, and someone else got the book and screwed it up, that it would be partially my fault.

    I honestly and sincerely believe that I am the person who can do these books the best now that Robert Jordan is gone. I would rather he be here to write them, but if he can't be here to write them, I want to do it myself because at least I know they're in the hands of someone who has been reading them for decades and who sincerely cares about the series.

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  • 341

    Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010

    Scott Wilson

    How much time would you spend writing on a typical day, (if a typical day exists for a writer that is)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A basic writing day for me: I get up at noon or 1:00, depending on when I went to bed. I play with my son for about an hour, giving my wife a break. Then I go downstairs for four or five hours, check my email, write for a while, go up and have dinner, play with my son some more, then go back down and go back to work until I'm done for the night. The last couple of years have been pretty much a lot of me with my laptop on my couch or in my beanbag chair writing books.

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  • 342

    Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010

    Scott Wilson

    Your battle systems are both complex and innovative. In writing these scenes, was a significant amount of research necessary, and did you encounter any difficulties when writing the sequences?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on what I was trying for in the various different books. For instance, in Mistborn, I wanted the battle sequences to be very personal. One-on-one, allomantic fights, or one-on-small group.

    As a novelist, feel that I need to approach action sequences differently from how movies approach them. In a film you can watch Jackie Chan going through this marvelous fifteen-minute blow-by-blow fight, but I think that in fiction the same thing written out descriptively would get very boring. I can't compete with movies in that regard. So I try to make my action sequences character-driven and problem-solving-driven, as well as how the magic system works. I look at what resources the character has, what they are trying to achieve, who they are and how that influences their actions.

    For The Way of Kings it was a little bit different in that I was trying to do large-scale warfare, and in that case I needed to look to historical accounts and research and read up on how actual battles played out. Something that gave me a bit of leeway was setting the battles in scenery like the Shattered Plains. One of the reasons I did that is because it's fantastical scenery that couldn't exist in our world, at least not in the same way, and it therefore allows me to exercise my fantasy worldbuilder muscles as well as my historical warfare muscles, such as they are. Putting all of that together let me create scenes that are hopefully unlike anything others have written or that my readers have read.

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  • 343

    Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010

    Scott Wilson

    You have really broken the mold and steered away from the usual races of the fantasy genre, is there any major reason why you avoided the standard tropes, such as elves and orcs?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A couple of reasons. Those are really two questions. Why did I avoid the standard tropes? For a long time I've felt that epic fantasy has relied too much on Tolkien, who did a wonderful job, but I feel that rather than doing what he did by creating races and mythologies and worlds of our own we've in some ways allowed ourselves to be strongly influenced by him and relied on some of the work he did. In other cases those tropes have just been overplayed and overdone by people who were very good writers and knew what they were doing. I certainly don't want to point any fingers at people like Stephen Donaldson who wrote brilliant books making use of some of the familiar tropes from Tolkien, but one of the things to remember is that when he did that they weren't familiar tropes. They were still fresh and new. The same can be said for Terry Brooks. I'm sure if I were writing back then that's what I would have done too, because we were still exploring the genre and trying to decide where it was going to go and what epic fantasy was and meant. But I feel that I belong to the generation after that. There was the generation who relied a lot on Tolkien and the generation who grew up reading those authors' books, and a lot of us in my generation of writers seem like we are reacting against the previous generations by saying, "Okay, that's been done, and you did a good job. Where else can we take this?" I have no interest in writing about elves or dwarves or any of these things that have been explored for the last four decades in intricate detail. I want to go my own directions.

    But personally, why do I include the races that I include? I'm just looking for interesting things that complement the story that I'm telling. The races in The Way of Kings come directly into the story and the mystery of what's happened before. If you pay close attention to what the races are, it tells you something about what's going to happen in the future and what's happened in the past. It's very conscious. This is just me trying to explore.

    I feel that epic fantasy as a genre has not yet hit its golden age yet. If you look at science fiction as a genre, science fiction very quickly got into extrapolating very interesting and different sorts of things. Fantasy, particularly in the late '90s, feels like it hit a bit of a rut where the same old things were happening again and again. We saw the same stories being told, we saw the same races show up, we saw variations only in the names for those races. For me as a reader, it was a little bit frustrating because I read this and felt that fantasy should be the genre that should be able to do anything. It should be the most imaginative genre. It should not be the genre where you expect the same stories and the same creatures. If we want to approach the heights of great storytelling and take it a few more steps so that we don't just copy what Tolkien did, we do what Tolkien did, which is look to the lore ourselves and build our own extrapolations. This is playing into what I like as a reader and my own personal philosophies and hobby horses, but it really just comes down to what I think makes the best story.

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  • 344

    Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010

    Scott Wilson

    Do you have a passion for short stories and have you had many published, and if so, what market did you send them to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've had two science fiction short stories published, Defending Elysium in Asimov's Science Fiction and Firstborn on Tor.com. Both of my short stories are quite long, a bit shy of 15,000 words, and are technically novelettes. I can't compress my thoughts any farther. I guess I'm just a novelist at heart. That's the form I've practiced, and writing short stories is a very different art. I'm constantly in awe of what great short story writers (like my friend Eric James Stone) can do with just a few pages.

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  • 345

    Interview: Apr 16th, 2011

    Richard Fife

    (More about preparation for A Memory of Light.)

    Alan Romanczuk

    Let's see. Well, probably the most significant thing that's happened is we are all working on the same version of Word right now. We had some difficulties in the past.

    Maria Simons

    Last year we had three.

    Alan Romanczuk

    Three different versions.

    Maria Simons

    And it caused some really interesting things.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. What we would do, you can see how much of a pseudo-nightmare this is. So, in order to speed things up last year, and it actually did speed things up despite the chaos, was we went all digital for edits.

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the tricks of working with this is, I basically have five editors, with Harriet at the top, and then there's Maria and Alan right below. And then Moshe my editor is giving us reads...because we can't use my normal alpha readers for this, which are my writing group, because they'd all have to be part of the NDA and that's just too many people. And so instead we brought on Moshe to just give me an alpha read, a dry alpha read. And then my agent also gives me dry alpha reads, because they all are interested professionals and part of the NDA and things like that.

    But basically, even looking only at Harriet, Maria, and Alan, what would happen is on The Gathering Storm, I would send in some scenes, and then I would start working on the next ones. And I would get deep into the next ones, and then some papers would come. I'm like, oh revisions. So I'd go back and start doing revision. And then another group of papers would come from another one of them that had revisions that were different. And then another group of papers would come that were a third group of revisions. And in some cases, they've all caught the same typo, but then I have to end up searching for it three times because I can't remember if I've changed that typo or not. And then I can't find it. I'm like, oh I guess that's one I caught, but really sometimes I didn't catch it, I'm just on the wrong page or something. Anyway, I have three sets of paper all from different people making different revisions, and sometimes they disagree with one another on what should be changed, and they're not seeing each other's revisions.

    Meanwhile, I'm on tour trying to fly around and carry all of these. You should have seen me on the airplane one of these days where revisions were needed the next day, and I'm flying on a six-hour flight in coach. And I'm cuddled like this between two people in the middle seat, with six hundred pages around me, trying to find all three pages that are editing the same section, and realizing that one's in my suitcase. This was absolutely a nightmare to do.

    And so this time, I'm like, let's go all digital, I'll have them all on my computer, it will be so much easier. But Harriet had never done digital revisions before. None of you had, I don't think. And so the idea was we would have one person do a revision, and then they would hand the file off, and that person could go through and a revision and add their comments, and then the next person would be able to do it. And that would have been wonderful in a perfect world. Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that because we were so crunched for time. And so what would happen is they all would be working on their own machine because they all needed to be reading at the same time, they couldn't wait for the other person. And so then they would all three send me documents digitally, which is easier to work with than trying to dig out all fifty pages of each. But at the same time, then I have four documents: my document, and three documents with revisions in it, from different versions of Word or Wordperfect or Open Office or whatever it is. I basically would just send them all to Peter (Peter Ahlstrom, Brandon's assistant) and say, "Peter, meld these somehow."

    Maria Simons

    Peter was a real hero.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Peter was the unsung hero in that one because he really went through, he would work for hours and then send me a document back. But this would introduce lots of typos and errors, because the different revisions were different programs and would not stack up. And so we ended up with many more—you may have noticed—many more typos in Towers of Midnight, and it's due directly to this process, where one person would change something, another person would change it slightly differently, and the computer program would get confused. And what you would end up was like a word with an extra letter on it or something like this. And we caught most of them, but it added a lot of extra editing errors for this. We didn't cut corners on the really important stuff in Towers of Midnight, but when push came to shove, getting the extra proofreads, there wasn't time for, which is why there are more errors in Towers of Midnight. It's because we took the time we needed for revision, but we didn't then have any time for proofreads. Peter, you proofread—did you even get the whole book done? You were up till 6 AM several nights proofreading.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    After I told you I was done, I realized that I had skipped three chapters.

    Richard Fife

    Peter, why don't you stand up and just wave, so everyone can see you?

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    Peter deserves kudos.

    I would like to say, at the beginning of the editing process on the last book, Brandon was 7 feet, 3 inches tall.

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  • 346

    Interview: Apr 16th, 2011

    Question

    Can you describe at this point—I hope this doesn't jump too much into spoiler territory—can you describe how you're approaching the tone of this book? I know The Gathering Storm, from the first page of The Gathering Storm, I thought, wow, this is grim. And as it goes and it goes, and as Rand goes and goes, this book goes to a dark place. And then, in Towers, from almost the first chapter, you're like, oh wow, this is a very different experience we've got, with Rand coming back down. But even the whole book just felt different. Can you describe at a top level how the tone of this next book is going to feel? Is it going to be grim? Is it going to be one of happy victory? (laughter) That's not really where I'm going. What I'm really going for, is just from the notion of as the book is going, how does the tone go?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is much like the other question I wasn't sure I wanted to get into, just because it's too early to be talking about that. And so I really think I'll just leave this one alone. It's a good question to ask and be thinking of, and I do do these things consciously, but I don't think it's time to talk about it yet.

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  • 347

    Interview: Apr 16th, 2011

    Question

    This is for Brandon. You're one of the most ambitious authors I've read. You're working on finishing up the Wheel of Time series and your own ten-book epic, not to mention another Mistborn trilogy. How do you deal with writing that much book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a good question. Every writer has their own process, and understanding my process may help you understand how I work. I kind of have different levels of projects in my head. I have the big epics, the big super epics that I work on for a long time and take a lot of brain space, but also take a lot of digestion. They don't just pop out. They take years to get right. Gathering Storm took about 18 months to do. It didn't seem that way because I was ahead on some of my other projects, but that's what it took. And Way of Kings, you know, I finished the first draft in 2002. You got something like the 15th or 16th draft in 2010. And so these books take a lot of brain space, but just take time. It's hard to work on multiples of that at the same time. Doing the first Stormlight book was possible because I had finished the first draft in 2002. It is not possible for me to do the second one while working on another big epic. I can only really do one book of that scope at a time, which is why you aren't going to be seeing Stormlight 2 until Wheel of Time is done, just because I can't physically and mentally do that.

    But I have different projects that work on different sort of brain space levels. I need to take breaks from the big epics some time, to just do something different and refresh myself. And I've talked about this on my blog; it's how I work. And usually these are quick projects that I give myself a few weeks or a month to work on in between big epics. My children's books, the Alcatraz books, were these during the Mistborn triology stage. I would stop and I would write one of these to really just cleanse the palate, to do something different. And I usually don't do a lot of outlining for these books. I write them off the cuff. I've talked about the difference between architect writers and gardener writers. Gardeners kind of just start with something and see where it goes. Neil Gaiman describes it as jumping out of an airplane with a ball of yarn and trying to knit a parachute by the time you hit. Robert Jordan was more of a gardener writer in all of his books, from what I've been able to determine. I usually architect, which means I plan extensively, but I do gardener books in between. Then I just see where it goes, and some of the times these books turn out horrible, and so I don't do anything with them, and sometimes they turn out great. But it doesn't really matter to me if they turn out great or horrible, because the purpose of them is to refresh myself so that I can then get back to the big epic.

    And so when you see these side projects coming out, it's when one of these turns out really well and I decide to publish it. For instance, the new Mistborn book. The new Mistborn book is not part of the Mistborn epic. The new Mistborn book is a side project where I said, well you know, I'm not going to be able to return to this world for the next . . . I'm doing three trilogies of Mistborn books eventually. I've done one, I'll do a second, this book that's coming out is not one of those. This is a side project, kind of a short tale. It's more of a New Spring type thing, something where I'm like this is a cool story I want to tell. And I wrote it, and I still hope it's fun and exciting and people love it. But the purpose of this book, it's really a single narrative, one plot line. It has a couple viewpoint characters, but they're all together doing the same thing. And it's kind of a mystery set in an industrial age in Mistborn, the Mistborn world during the industrial age. This is the sort of thing that I can take one month off and write. I can't take one month off and write another Stormlight book. So, what you're looking at, how do I balance all these things? Well, what you're seeing is, you're seeing my vacation time. When I take a vacation for a few months, I work on something completely different to change, just to shake it up. And sometimes those turn out well and those get published, and so it looks like I'm producing differently than I am. Really, all these books are my babies, I love them, I hope that you all like them, but some are the big epics and some are the side projects. The Mistborn 4 book is a side project.

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  • 348

    Interview: Apr 16th, 2011

    Jason Denzel

    For Brandon, you've had the opportunity now to write two books completely and then some. And at first, initially I know that a lot of the emphasis was on you trying to get the voices right, mimic the voice of Mat and Nynaeve and everyone else. Now that you've had some time with these characters and progressed them through a lot of their major turning points, do you see yourself suddenly having to direct their new motives and direct their new voices? In other words, how much of the Nynaeve and the Mat and the Rand in A Memory of Light is coming from you rather than what we had left off at the end of Knife of Dreams?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a very writerly question. This is from a writer himself. [Brandon asks if question needs repeating.] Jason's just wondering, since the characters have now changed through Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, when I'm now writing them, how much do I rely on who they were in the previous books and how much do I rely on who they are now? This is actually a very good question, probably a better question than most of you know. It comes at it from a writer's perspective, because this is something I consciously have had to think about. Because as I was writing Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, characters need a character progression. And I actually had to make the decision early on, if I'm actually going to progress these characters, they're going to have to evolve from being what they were. And that was scary to me, because who they were are who Robert Jordan meant them to be, and yet he would have evolved them. And if we didn't evolve them and they remained static, then it would've felt wrong. It would have been safer, but it would have felt wrong. The books would not have been slam dunks because Robert Jordan had them on arcs and they would have suddenly flatlined. And as a writer when I was working, I realized that this was going to have to happen.

    And I'm not even sure if I can answer how I'm approaching it because it's such a complex swirl of things in my head. Part of it is, a person will change but their voice doesn't change dramatically. Their voice remains the same but their maturity and their experiences change, and so maybe how they react to something may change, but who they are at their core doesn't. I can still read the previous Wheel of Times and get their voice in mind, but I now have to incorporate for some of them major changes and moments that have happened in their lives. Fortunately, I have a large base of material to work from, and these characters have been in different emotional states at different times. It's like you can build . . . they're on a gradual swing of an arc, but everybody's more like this because that's how characters are. You're up one moment, down the next, up, down, and hopefully you're going on this nice character arc where you've got basic overarching growth. But, at the same time, you're going to be dipping sometimes, and regressing sometimes, and sometimes you're going to be on highs. And so I can look at the characters at their highs to see what has now become the baseline, so to speak, and I can look at them as sometimes who they were for the troughs. Everybody is in a lot of different places a lot of different times. That's part of it. But part of it is I really feel that I know the soul of these characters now. Growing up reading them, then working on them as a writer. . . I've said this before, I am much more of a gardener when it comes to character. I don't plan my characters nearly as much because I don't know who a character is till I write through their eyes, till I write through their viewpoint and see through their eyes and see who they are, and at that point I can't describe to people, I just know them. It's an instinctive thing. For me with a plot, I can construct a plot and tell you exactly how I'm constructing a plot, and how I'm building in climaxes, and how I'm building in foreshadowing, and all of this stuff. I can talk about worldbuilding. But when it comes to characters, it's that glimmer, that glowing piece that is their soul, that I can't describe but I just know when I see it. And that's what I rely upon.

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  • 349

    Interview: Apr 16th, 2011

    Richard Fife

    General question, all of you can chime in on, but it's probably most impactful to Brandon here. To harp on my own themes—the Wheel changes lives. I think a lot of us have had our lives changed. How has writing it changed yours?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I can give you a show versus a tell. If you read Warbreaker and then Way of Kings, you can see directly the impact it's had on me as a writer, and that's more something that you as reader response and critics can pick out probably better than I can. That's one way to say it. I mean, it's also had a lot of philosophical effects on me. What I just talked about, I've had to grow as a writer. I've talked about this. I had to grow a whole lot in that time I was working on Gathering Storm, and it was a very difficult process. But like lifting weights, a difficult process, hopefully, you either break beneath it or you grow. I think that it has forced me to grow a lot. But then there's the philosophical sorts of things. I picked up the first book when I was fourteen. And now working on it, I learned to write by reading the Wheel of Time books, and I've talked about that before. And, you know, there is something deeply humbling about being able to give something back to Robert Jordan, that I get to do that no one else does. Does that make sense? I get to return something. These books are me saying, wow, the wise master has grown a little frail, and I get to help him across the road. Or that sort of thing, listening to the master's wisdom as he leans on my shoulder a little bit in the last years. And there's no greater honor that someone can have than that honor right there. It's changed my life like it will probably never change anyone else's life. But everyone's individual, everyone's had their lives changed in a different way, but I've got something very special and I'm very very grateful for that, and it's been a humbling experience.

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  • 350

    Interview: May 30th, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    About writing, he said he writes linearly per character or character group and it later gets decided how it all gets woven together in the book.

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  • 351

    Interview: May 30th, 2011

    jarno87

    In the train to the airport we talked about the writing process.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said that for him writing the Perrin POV's was relatively easy because he understands Perrin, and more importantly Perrin understands himself. Mat on the other hand is much harder, as he doesn't understand himself. Furthermore Mat thinks one thing, says a second and does a third. This makes it all really confusing and hard for Brandon to write. However BS said that especially in the later books by RJ, he finds Mat the best written character.

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  • 352

    Interview: May 30th, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    He talked about the link between his magic systems. One of the core principles is 'investing'. In a lot of his systems people are through some mechanism invested with magic powers. In Elantris through the Shaod, In Mistborn it's genetic, in The Way of Kings it depends on what someone has done.

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  • 353

    Interview: May 30th, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    Objects with almost sentient behavior like Nightblood in Warbreaker share important links with the spren from The Way of Kings. If you understand the spren you will understand a lot about the connection between the books.

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  • 354

    Interview: Jun 4th, 2011

    Thomas C.

    At this stage, I must point out that I am extremely impressed in the way that Sanderson juggles so many different series at the same time. And this leads nicely to the answer to question eight, which wanted to know how Sanderson kept track of all his series!

    Brandon Sanderson

    He admitted he has a scatterbrain approach at times, which meant he constantly lost things, for example, keys. However, he never forgot stories, and has some stored in his brain from over a decade ago. He also pointed out that he works to the policy of having one book being revision, one being written and one at the planning stage.

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  • 355

    Interview: Jun 4th, 2011

    Question

    The sixth question was a good one. The questioner wanted to know Sanderson's view on working to deadlines and meeting publisher's demands. Basically, the question looked at quality versus timing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson made it clear that he never compromised on the writing. If there were to be any shortcuts, it was more likely to be in the proofreading stage.

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  • 356

    Interview: Jun 4th, 2011

    Question

    As pointed out earlier, I hadn’t read any of Sanderson's work outside of the Wheel of Time. But question nine got me really interested. They wanted to know if there was a connection between all of Sanderson's books (excluding the Wheel of Time).

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson confirmed there was a link between the different universes, and that there was a character that appeared in them all. So basically, he suggested his readers keep an eye out for this and more details will be revealed...

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  • 357

    Interview: Jun 4th, 2011

    Question

    One fan asked what Sanderson felt was the main difference in the writing style between himself and Jordan.

    Sanderson felt Jordan was a better prose craftsman, which I agree with. The other difference was in the action scenes. Jordan had lived through battles as he was a Vietnam veteran, whereas Sanderson went more for a cinematic approach. I will look out for this on my next re-read!

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  • 358

    Interview: Jun 4th, 2011

    Question

    Several fans wanted to know how Sanderson felt about picking up the baton and continuing the Wheel of Time series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He felt daunted to begin with, mainly over the fear of not doing a good enough job. He knows it isn't perfect (like how Jordan would have written it), but he has loved the challenge—and I am sure us fans do like what he has done. He was initially surprised at the hardcore nature of Wheel of Time fans. He jokingly viewed himself as a stepfather to the fans! I got the impression that Sanderson was blown away by the level of detail and research Jordan undertook for the mythologies etc behind the books. He said there were shelves and shelves of textbooks on the mythology, and Harriet was able to pick the necessary books should he need to do some background or further reading.

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  • 359

    Interview: Jun 4th, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson admitted that there were landscapes/settings that he moved around his universes until he was sure that they fitted properly.

    Thomas C.

    There were definitely a lot of questions relating to detailed parts of Sanderson's non-Wheel of Time work. While I did make notes, my lack of knowledge of these works would mean I would probably make mistakes. So apologies for not covering that in greater detail.

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  • 360

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2011

    SciFi Bulgaria

    What inspired you to become an author and what is your muse?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In the eighth grade, I had an English teacher who pointed me toward Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. That book changed my life. When I first read it, I was amazed—I had no idea books like that existed. It engaged my imagination like no other book ever had, and it even helped me understand my own mother better, because the main character's conflicts gave me a perspective on what my mother went through when she chose to focus on her family rather than her career. The book was creative, it was fun, yet it helped me understand life. At that point I started reading every fantasy book I could get my hands on, including Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time book, The Eye of the World, when it came out in paperback. I was hooked, and as I read more and more books, my grades went up in school—I went from a low-end average student to someone who got top grades.

    It didn't take reading many fantasy books before I decided writing them was what I wanted to do with my life. I started my first book when I was fifteen. It was horrible, but I just kept writing and writing until I actually got any good.

    My ideas come from many different places, and all of my books combine ideas I came up with at different times. For example, I once ran into a fog bank while driving, and thought how it would be interesting to have a book set in a world of constant mist. But Mistborn didn't come together until at a different time I thought about a metal-based magic system, and another time was considering how I'd like to see a heist movie like Ocean's Eleven done as a fantasy novel. I also picture cinematic images like a Mistborn flying through the mist with mistcloak tassels fluttering in the air. Eventually these ideas bouncing around in my head coalesce into interesting combinations, and I start writing.

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  • 361

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2011

    SciFi Bulgaria

    Can you relate to a character from your books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    To some extent, there are many characters from my books who can do things I think would be very cool to be able to do. But most of their personalities aren't very much like my own. What I like to do all the time is write, and someone who sits in their house writing all day doesn't make a very interesting character. In that respect, the narrator in the Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians books may be most like me, since he often talks about what it's like to be a writer. But our experiences don't match up at all. I see my characters as distinct individuals with their own experiences, hopes, and ways of thinking, all of which are often very different from my own.

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  • 362

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Your first novel Elantris formed the foundation for your later success. Why do you think the novel was this successful? Did the way your career as a writer took off after that take you by surprise? Did someone predict your success early on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's so hard to determine why one thing becomes really popular when something that's equally good does not. And I know many authors whose books I've read who are writing fantastic things that don't end up enjoying the same level of success as I have. So it's really hard for me to determine the whys. In publishing, we would all be a lot happier if we could figure out the whys.

    But why do people like my works? I would like to think that a lot of readers when Elantris came out were like myself, waiting for epic fantasy to pull in some new directions. When I was reading in the late '90s and early 2000s I was disappointed that a lot of the books that were coming out seemed to be more of the same old story. When I got into writing, I didn't intend to revolutionize the genre or anything like that, but I did have goals to try some new things. I hoped to create some fantasy that still felt like great fantasy, that had the same wonderful feel to it of the books that I had enjoyed reading when I was younger, but which also would try some new things. And I think Elantris does that. In the end, I think writing comes down to great characters and an engaging story, and hopefully these are things that I've somewhat figured out how to achieve. I don't know if anyone guessed that I would do as well as I have. I certainly owe a great deal of my success to the attention that working on the Wheel of Time brought to me. But other than that I can't really say who could have predicted it or how we could have known that it would go as well as it has.

    Tags

  • 363

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    You started writing Elantris while still at college. How many months of work went into the creation of that first novel? Was it an easy thing to do or was it a massive effort?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Believe it or not, Elantris was the sixth novel I wrote. I took a creative writing class at university from David Farland where he said that when you start writing, your first million words will be crap and not to worry about that. The experience and practice you get from writing a novel is the important part; your first novel doesn't have to be any good.

    So with that in mind, I sat down to write a novel were I wasn't worried about how good it was. And when that one was finished, I didn't revise it—I just opened a new document and started writing a new novel. I ended up writing thirteen novels this way over a three-year period. Elantris was the sixth, and when I finally got an offer from Moshe Feder at Tor to buy Elantris, I was working on the first version of The Way of Kings. You may wonder how I had so much time to write; I was working as a night auditor at a local hotel, and they let me write while I was on duty as long as I fulfilled my responsibilities. That way I paid my way through college and also got a lot of practice writing.

    Tags

  • 364

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    The focus of the Mistborn trilogy and of Warbreaker is on lived faith and various deities. What do these topics mean to you and why did you choose to deal with them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm very interested in the concepts of religion and the ideas that surround it, and I often find myself writing books that deal with things I'm interested in myself. I allow the themes of books like these to grow naturally out of the world I've built and out of the stories that I want to tell. Specifically, I kind of let the characters decide what the themes of a book are going to be. I don't go into it saying, "I'm going to write about this," but the worlds that I create betray my own interests very strongly. What is it about faith and deity? This is something that is unique about us as human beings, something very interesting to me, and it felt like this area was an open space to explore in fantasy in ways that hadn't been done before. I always find myself gravitating toward things that I feel haven't been explored as much as they could have been. That interests me and fascinates me.

    Tags

  • 365

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Your stories are often promoted as being unique and unprecedented. What do you think about propositions like that? Have you ever been afraid of being unable to meet the market's expectations concerning your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In my writing I try to combine the unfamiliar with the familiar. If something is too unique and unprecedented, then readers won't have anything to relate to and will just be lost.

    But if something is too familiar, it will feel stale and cliche. I like to look for twists on familiar tropes that haven't been extensively covered before. This often comes when I read other books in the field and think of a different way something could go. That's not to say other authors aren't doing the same thing, but I like to tackle takes that I haven't seen before. Trying to do what the market expects of you is a bit of a trap in the publishing field. You want your books to be things that people want to write, but if you try to write to the market you usually end up with something too familiar and boring. Back when I was writing those thirteen books I was sending the good examples out to editors and agents and getting a lot of rejection letters. (Elantris was the first book I wrote that I felt was good enough to send out, and I also sent out a couple I wrote after it.) After being told time and time again that my books were too long (Elantris in manuscript form was 250,000 words), I decided to try to do what I thought the market wanted and write books that were a lot shorter. But I discovered that the books I turned out in that format just weren't any good; they contained some very interesting ideas but were lacking in many areas.

    When Moshe bought Elantris and wanted to follow it up with another novel, I first offered him The Way of Kings but we realized that it was too ambitious a project at that point in time. So instead I took concepts from three of those failed novels and rewrote them into the first Mistborn book, writing it at the length my natural style seemed to work best at. And Mistborn was a huge success.

    You shouldn't assume that when you've read one Brandon Sanderson novel, you know what the next one is going to be like. From one series to the next I like to try different things. I know that some readers who really liked Mistborn are not going to like The Way of Kings; Mistborn had a narrower scope and faster pace than a huge epic like The Way of Kings has, and if a reader prefers that sort of book that is perfectly okay with me. I am going to write some books that are fast-paced and others that are huge epics. I like to change things up.

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  • 366

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Your Mistborn trilogy is over 2800 pages total. Where did the idea for such a complex story come from? Did something specifically inspire you? How did you manage to hang in there for so long? Were there times when you thought, "I'm exhausted, I just can't go on"?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There was no one specific inspiration; it was a combination of different ideas bouncing around in my head for years and other ideas that I tried in earlier books that didn't work out. One idea does not make a book or a series, but ideas in interesting combinations makes a book. With Mistborn, one idea came while I was driving one day and entered a heavy fog bank: this started me thinking about a world shrouded in mist. Later I started thinking that a heist plot such as in movies like Ocean's Eleven would make a good fantasy story. I started thinking about different kinds of metal being used as magical batteries for different types of power. And I had a cinematic image of someone leaping through the air in a mistcloak. All these things combined to make a book.

    I wrote all three Mistborn books before the first one was released, so I was able to go back and alter things in the first book to keep everything consistent with the last book. And it was indeed exhausting. I've found that from time to time in order to recharge my mental batteries, I need to take a break and write something else instead. So after writing The Well of Ascension and before starting to write The Hero of Ages, I took some time off from the series and wrote a fun experimental project instead. I didn't really know where it was going or what I would ever do with it, but it turned into the first Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians book, which was completely different from the Mistborn books that had been occupying my life for months. I found that when I was finished writing that side project, my mind was refreshed and I was ready to tackle the Mistborn world again. So ever since then I've made it a habit to take breaks to write experimental short projects that don't necessarily have to go anywhere. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don't and I shelve them. But it keeps me fresh.

    Tags

  • 367

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Tell us some of your first thoughts when asked to finish The Wheel of Time. Did it feel great to be doing this right from start or was it a bit scary at first to be continuing such a renowned series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My thoughts were all over the place. I do legitimately love the Wheel of Time and have been reading it since I was a young man. If you look at my early unpublished books, you'll find they were deeply influenced by the Wheel of Time. Amusingly so; looking back on it now, I see things I didn't even notice that I had done. So that love of the series was part of what was bouncing around in my head.

    I didn't become a writer because I wanted to write in other people's worlds. I wanted to tell my own stories, and I was making a comfortable living at my writing before this. For a lot of projects I would have said no regardless of what they offered, so it had to be about more than the money. Beyond that, there was this sense of "Wow, if I screw this up, I'm in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore." I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned regarding this, or posted it somewhere, "This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him." I took all those things into consideration.

    But in the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, "Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?" And the answer was that I couldn't let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.

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  • 368

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Is there a character whose development in the course of the series was surprising to you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most surprising, honestly—and this is a minor character—was probably Gawyn. I remember as a kid reading the books and expecting, "Oh, Gawyn, he's obviously going to be this super cool main character." I felt all sorts of things about him, and then they just never materialized. Which is not unexpected if you look at the literary roots that Robert Jordan was using for Gawyn's character, but it was surprising to me as a young kid because you read certain tropes in fiction and you expect them to be used always the same way. You know, the young, handsome, charming prince doesn't usually turn into what Gawyn turned into.

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  • 369

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    What makes the series about the Dragon Reborn so special in your eyes? Are there some strengths and also weaknesses you want to highlight? What kind of readership would you recommend it to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One thing that seems to set the Wheel of Time apart from many other fantasy series is how it appeals to people across so many demographics. It has adventure to appeal to teenagers, but when you grow up you appreciate the series for different reasons. The subtlety of the character interactions and the foreshadowing, the intricacy of the plot, the strong women who don't judge themselves by their relationships to men—this series has it in spades.

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  • 370

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    When and how did you start writing? Did you just sit down one day and decide to try it or was it a slow development? How come you write fantasy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In elementary school, I wasn't much of a reader. In the third grade I fell in love with the Three Investigators books created by Robert Arthur, and I enjoyed them much more than the "meaningful" (boring) books people tried to get me to read for the next five years. So after that I hardly read anything until the eighth grade, when I had an English teacher who told me I couldn't do a report on a Three Investigators book and instead pointed me toward Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.

    That book changed my life. When I first read it, I was amazed—I had no idea books like that existed. It engaged my imagination like no other book ever had, and it even helped me understand my own mother better, because the main character's conflicts gave me a perspective on what my mother went through when she chose to focus on her family rather than her career. The book was creative, it was fun, yet it helped me understand life. At that point I started reading every fantasy book I could get my hands on, including Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time book, The Eye of the World, when it came out in paperback. I was hooked, and as I read more and more books, my grades went up in school—I went from a low-end average student to someone who got top grades.

    It didn't take reading many fantasy books before I decided writing them was what I wanted to do with my life. I started my first book when I was fifteen. It was horrible, but I just kept writing and writing until I actually got any good. I've been a writer full-time since 2004, but it would never have happened if not for Mrs. Reader handing me Dragonsbane.

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  • 371

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Talent or craftsmanship—how do you think about writing? In your opinion, what is it authors need to especially excel in to captivate their audience?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I talk about things like this a lot in the podcast I do with Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. I think talent makes some contribution, but it's overshadowed by practice. If you go back and look at the first unpublished novels that I wrote, they're terrible and derivative. I didn't have any practice then, but I had just as much talent as I have now. Writing well is something I have learned, and it's something I'm still learning. I think having characters who readers can care about is what will make a novel stand or fall.

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  • 372

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    How do you go about writing a new novel? Do you use memos, character profiles and plot outlines or do you just sit down and let the story unfold as you go?

    Brandon Sanderson

    George R. R. Martin has talked about how writers are often "gardeners" or "architects." Gardeners guide a story's growth as they write, and architects plan everything out ahead of time. Now, most writers are really some combination of the two. I am an architect in many aspects of my writing, but with my characters I'm more of a gardener. I extensively design the world and outline the plot before I start writing, but when it comes to character motivations and histories, I often discover those while I am writing.

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  • 373

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Where and when do you usually like to write? Do you need a certain atmosphere to get it going or could the house fall down and you wouldn't notice once you sit down to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't do the office thing. How shall I say this? I became a writer so that I didn't have to deal with the whole office thing. I know some authors need an office and a writing space; that's great. But I just need my laptop and some music and I'm good pretty much anywhere. I tend to be a roving writer, meaning I pick a place and I stay there for a few months, and then I get tired of it and I pick another place. So I write all over the house. My favorite locations tend to be in front of a fireplace with my feet up. I've actually stolen my wife's easy chair and moved it over in front of the fireplace in my bedroom—it's a gas fireplace, so I just turn it on. I've set up a light and a little stand next to me, and I've been working here for a few months. But I move around. It's just basically laptop plus music. I don't work at a desk; I cannot do the desk thing. I'll work lying on my bed, on a couch, in an easy chair, in a beanbag chair, but not at a desk.

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  • 374

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    What can we expect from you in the near (and far) future? Do you have any specific plans or are you still waiting to be inspired for further work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've always got things in the works, but to announce them this is probably not the forum or the time to announce them. People can watch my website. I'm very excited that the new Mistborn book, The Alloy of Law, is coming out in November. And of course I'm working on the last book of the Wheel of Time, which will be released sometime in 2012. Beyond that? I'm pretty busy with the things that I've put on my plate, so perhaps I will stay away from teasing people with things that are years and years off.

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  • 375

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Reader's Question

    People like to measure any fantasy literature against The Lord of the Rings. Do you see this as motivation or pressure within the genre? Do you think it's still possible to write really good High Fantasy without it being called a bad rip-off or it being criticized for breaking with too many of the conventions?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh boy. This is something I have talked about quite a bit from time to time. I wrote a whole essay on it here: http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/22/

    Recently, the New York Times had a review of Martin's A Dance with Dragons which declared that it was far better than the Lord of the Rings and that Tolkien was dead. Tolkien is the measuring stick that everyone uses. In some ways he shouldn't be, because the fantasy genre has so much potential beyond just being like what Tolkien did. And in other ways, fantasy as we know it today would not exist without Tolkien. He is a giant, and we all stand on his shoulders. In that respect, comparing everyone to Tolkien is not really fair.

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  • 376

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Reader's Question

    Warbreaker features a wonderful system of magic. How did you come up with it? And will you tell us your favorite color?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Maroon.

    In The Well of Ascension I had to come up with a bunch of different religions for Sazed to study. One he mentions in chapter fifty revolves around color. It was such a fascinating idea that I decided to weave it into Warbreaker. The Awakening system uses color as both a cost and a benefit; using Breath drains color, and holding Breath increases perception of color. Awakening itself grew out of a common concept in tribal and shamanistic magic.

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  • 377

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Reader's Question

    Do the political relationships between Idris and Hallandren have a model in the real world? Do you think authors of fantasy are free to deal with current political issues in their work or is that something of a no-go for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In fantasy, we can often approach things like this in a way that is non-threatening. We can change things a little bit and focus in a little bit more on the issue that is interesting to us. I won't say that I never do this, though again character and story are most important, but what I write about grows out of what I'm interested in.

    With Idris and Hallendren, I noticed in my own work that I'd been painting religion in a somewhat less than favorable light in recent books; this is partially because I as a religious person think that the misuse of religion is one of the most purely evil things that can happen in the world. So I thought I wanted to play off of some of those sensibilities, and I built what I did in Warbreaker in part to actively show a different side of things. And when I was writing that book, the politics of the United States' invasion of certain countries and other things going on were not something that anyone could really ignore. So I would say that there are themes that grew out of that.

    I didn't write the book to make a political statement. Yet at the same time the potential political statements of "Think twice about what you're doing" and of the nature of war and what it can do is something that I'm sure grew out of my own thoughts on the issues.

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  • 378

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Reader's Question

    Which character in The Wheel of Time was the easiest to comprehend, which one proved to be hardest to conceive? How did it feel like to be one of the first people to know how the Wheel of Time series will end? Can/will you tell us the closing sentence of The Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin was the easiest, for the same reasons as I called him my favorite above. Mat was the hardest for me to write, because his humor is so different from my own.

    The ending has already been written by Robert Jordan, and as a reader I found it extremely satisfying when I reached it. And so I feel very confident that the ending of the next book is going to be what everyone has been hoping for and wanting—without being exactly what they expect. I think the ending that Robert Jordan wrote is just wonderful. But in another respect I'm a bit sad, because I won't get to experience the ending for the first time when a new Wheel of Time book comes out in the bookstores like everyone else will.

    If you do a search online you can find a few words that Robert Jordan said about the closing sentence of the Wheel of Time before he passed away. It's out there in an interview. I won't say whether it's going to stay that way or not, because essentially what he says is "This is what it would be if I wrote it right now, but it often changes" and things like that. He wrote it, not me, so I don't feel right giving a spoiler on that. But if you look around, the interview is out there where he said some words on it.

    Footnote

    RJ did say in a 2002 interview that if he had written the last scene in 1984, the last word of the series would have been "world". In 2002, he said it might have been "turns".

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  • 379

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2011

    Linda Taglieri

    Post #1 of WorldCon 2011 at Reno: Brandon Sanderson's Reading

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon read part of a new novella exploring superpowers. I liked it a lot. There are no super heroes, only super villains, and they take over world. The chapter he read describes two such and how a boy is the only surviving witness to the wounding of one of these supposedly invincible super-powered human. Ten years after the events Sanderson narrated, the protagonist tries to find a group of humans who research the individual weaknesses of the “Epics” and assassinate them.

    Sanderson's idea is of normal people trying to take down someone with superpowers, a reversal of the powerful guy protecting the humble.

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  • 380

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson wants fantasy, particularly epic fantasy, to feel more alien. He is trying to achieve this while still using human characters because he doesn't think he writes aliens well.

    He also thinks that technology in fantasy series is too static and his series is a reaction against that. Magic should change the world. There will be a sci-fi series set in the Mistborn world.

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  • 381

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    He worries about repeating himself in writing and tries to vary his writing.

    As research for his writing he has variously: bungee jumped to feel what like to fall off a building; gone to self-defense class; watched sword-fighting at Cons and of course read broadly.

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  • 382

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    To keep the voice straight, he writes new material in one book at a time, but will revise another series alongside it. He does a lot of re-drafts and revision, especially adding description and writes every day for at least 8 hours. Being a full-time writer is a great opportunity, he believes, and he doesn't want to waste it.

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  • 383

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    What Sanderson likes most about The Wheel of Time is Jordan's ability to use third person POV viewpoints. He was wonderful at it. Jordan also had an ability to be subtle (which Matt Hatch and I were discussing the previous afternoon).

    Tags

  • 384

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    Tell me a little bit about the new Mistborn book, Alloy of Law [coming out in November 2011]. It seems like the story arc of the original Mistborn trilogy (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages) was well resolved by the end of the third book. So in what direction does this new one go, if you can say without spoilers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, one of the things that bothers me about a lot of fantasy is that the worlds are strangely static, like we invent all sorts of contrived circumstances to keep them from progressing naturally, because we want stories of a certain type. What we do in fantasy, this kind of idealized time period, in literary terms we call it uchronia. Which in some ways is fun, but it's not very realistic.

    I envisioned a series in which there was real progress. There are books that have done it; the Wheel of Time did it, for example, with the introduction of steam power [into a medieval/Renaissance setting], but I wanted to do a story where I wrote a trilogy which explored a fantasy world, and then do other books years later where that fantasy world has now progressed, and its technology has progressed, so that it's now almost more of an urban fantasy world. You know, write urban fantasies in a setting where the mythology and history are things you saw take place in the first part of the series.

    Leigh Butler

    So you see not just the life of the characters, but the life of their entire world?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This really interested me, because I'd just never seen it done quite the way I wanted to do it. And that's often where my books come from—I find a place where the genre maybe hasn't been explored fully, and I get really excited. And so I pitched my editor a series where the first trilogy is an epic fantasy series, and then years later an urban fantasy series, and then years after that a science fiction series, all set in the same world. And the magic exists all through, and it is treated differently in each of these time periods. And that's what Alloy of Law is: looking at the Mistborn world, hundreds of years later, where society has been rebuilt following the events of the third book.

    The analogous time period in our world [for Alloy of Law's setting] would be about 1910, but that's not really very accurate, because in the Mistborn world there are certain things they're much better at—metallurgy, for one, obviously—but they're very poor with communication, because everyone's very concentrated in one area, so long-distance communication is just not one of the things that's very important to them. So it's not a one-to-one correlation. But electricity is starting to be installed in homes, and steam power is used quite extensively.

    Leigh Butler

    It sounds to me like it almost might be described as steampunk.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It has one toe dabbling in steampunk, but I don't call it that because while there is magic and technology, it's not quite the same. The steampunk genre has a certain Victorian feel to it; there's an air that makes something steampunk, and this isn't quite that.

    So anyway, it's the story of a man who lives in the frontier lands, and comes back to the big city because he's inherited lands and a title. And he has certain things in his past that make him feel it's time to leave his old life and come to a new one. And the goal here was not epic scope; with The Way of Kings on one side I didn't want that. This is more a mystery/adventure, and I think it's really fun.

    Leigh Butler

    So the plan is for this to be another trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do have another epic trilogy planned for this world in a more modern era, but this is not that. This is actually a sort of side story I decided to start telling. I don't want to be doing multiple big epics at once, and between The Stormlight Archive and The Wheel of Time, I've already got two I'm working on, and that's enough. With this one I decided to do something a little more action/adventure and a little more self-contained. So Alloy of Law is not the start of a trilogy, though I may do a little more with the characters, but in general the story I wanted to tell is told. So it's a standalone much the same way Elantris is.

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  • 385

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    And what is The Rithmatist? Can you tell me a little about it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Rithmatist is a YA novel I wrote in 2007, right before the Wheel of Time deal hit me like a freight train. And because I was so busy with that, I didn't have time to get back to The Rithmatist and play with it, and I'm only now getting to the point where I'll be able to do some revisions and things, because I've been breakneck these last few years and we're only now slowing down a little. Tor's going to publish it, but the release is probably a few years off because of the workload involved with the Wheel of Time.

    But it's a really fun book. I wrote it when I was supposed to be working on other things back in 2007, and it's actually gearpunk—which is not steampunk, but more Da Vinci-era technology, extrapolated hundreds of years into the future. It's very whimsical; it's about a boy who goes to magic school, which you've seen before, except that he doesn't have any magical powers, and it's not something you can learn in this world. He only gets in because his mother is a cleaning lady who works at the school, so he gets free tuition.

    So he goes to get a world-class education, but he doesn't go to the magic classes, just all the other classes. It's like a private school that also happens to train wizards. I don't want to get too much into it, but the magic is chalkboard-based; you draw these very elaborate designs that do certain things, and you kind of duel with it. It's kind of like playing magical chalkboard Starcraft, in a gearpunk world, told through the eyes of the unmagical son of the cleaning lady. It's very fun.

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  • 386

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    Tell me about your series The Stormlight Archive, of which the first book, The Way of Kings, was published last August. What's the motivation behind writing this story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Stormlight Archive—you don't grow up reading the books I read, such as the Wheel of Time, without wanting to tell a big epic, and this is kind of what I always wanted to do, to have my own big epic. It's what I love to read and so it's what I want to write. So I've always planned for The Stormlight Archive to be very big, and hopefully meaty and weighty. I started writing about the characters as long as two decades ago, and I finished the first draft of The Way of Kings in 2002, so almost ten years ago now. So it's a series I've been working on for a long time.

    I think you'll find that most authors have series like this; for Robert Jordan it was The Wheel of Time. And people have asked me if I want this to be my Wheel of Time, but that's a very difficult comparison for someone to make. What I want is for this to be a great story, hopefully told really well; it's a story I've been wanting to tell for years and years. And time will tell how that turns out.

    Leigh Butler

    What are your plans for the series as a whole?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It will be multi-volume; I pitched it to Tom Doherty [of Tor Books] as ten books, and I envision it as being a project I work on for a very long time, and try to do these audacious things I've wanted to do forever.

    It's very art-intensive, and very different from the other books I've done; it incorporates some of the other things I've liked to do from other books, but at the same time it's its own thing. So I view as something awesome that I want to be working on for a long time.

    Leigh Butler

    When is the next book in the series coming out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm planning the second book to be done following my finishing the Wheel of Time, so it will come, but it will probably be a little while.

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  • 387

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    ShutUpElayneTrakand ()

    Most people know how awesome you are and will now proceed to tell you that and beg you to give them answers to questions that they’ll eventually RAFO. I’ll leave it to the others to gush and tell you those things (because they’re true). My question is about the Wheel of Time and is pretty menial but stands solely on a personal gripe with the word—why on earth is the word “loobie” used so much to describe Rand by his ladies—especially Min? Did Mr. Jordan leave a quota for that word that must be used a certain number of times? I just...especially for a character like Min that was, in particular, stronger and much less...sheepish than Rand’s other women, to have that as her affectionate word of choice makes me cringe. I would love to see a return of strong Min vs. sheepish doe-eyed Min, but if there’s any possibility of changing her word choice...I would find some way to repay you for you will have done me a great service.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. I can't see into Mr. Jordan's mind, though I can say that he was fond of using the writer's device of character-identifying traits. You'll find that if you hang out with certain people, and listen to their linguistic patterns, often they will repeat individual words and phrases all the time. (I know one guy who uses the word "Brilliant!" every other sentence.)

    This may be the case where life is more annoying than fiction should be, however. I'll keep the comment in mind. You can pay me in heaps of Magic cards, preferably from the alpha/beta era.

    ShutupElayneTrakand

    That's a done deal. I have a ridiculous amount of cards remaining from the alpha/beta era that have been sitting and collecting dust since I ran out of money in the 8th grade. I know that they would absolutely love a new home.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. I was really joking. Please. Don't give me any really expensive cards. I'd feel too guilty. If you do have some, I'd at least insist on giving you fair-market value in trades for books.

    natron6

    Ya I also feel like the the word adroit/maladroit were used a shit ton in the Mistborn series. Maybe I just noticed it so much because I had never heard those words before reading those books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nah. I overused them. Didn't notice it until they were in print, and I added them (and some other words) to my "Be careful; you overuse these."

    Every author does this, but some are better at keeping an eye on it than I am. Hence my 'kill list.'

    Tags

  • 388

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    keebler980 ()

    How much of the ending are you creating, not just filling in the blanks per se?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm not just filling in holes. At the same time, I'm trying hard to keep anything RJ said in mind, and trying to make the book fit his vision.

    It's a tough balance. There is a lot of work to be done, depending on the character in question. For example, for The Gathering Storm, he left a lot on Egwene, but less on Rand. In Towers of Midnight, a lot on Mat, less on Perrin. He left a lot of notes on how everyone should end up after the Last Battle, but often didn't say how they'd get there.

    One of the things I've been impressed by is this: Harriet and Tor could have hired a ghost writer and pretended that RJ finished the book before he died. People would have believed them. However, while a ghost writer could have imitated RJ's voice, Harriet felt she wanted a fantasy novelist to do it. First, to be honest to the fans. Second, because there was enough work to be done that the person couldn't just connect dots, but would actually have to build parts of the story.

    She gave me complete creative freedom to do what needed to be done, with the understanding that she would edit. (If you don't know, Harriet is one of the 'greats' in sf/f editing. She edited Ender's Game, for example, and may of the big fantasy and sf authors during the 70s and 80s. She discovered RJ, edited him, then married him.)

    So, when I go wrong, she is there to push me the right direction. It's hard to answer a question of how much is me, and how much is RJ. His fingers are on every scene, as I'm trying to match the character voices (but not his writing style exactly) and get them right. Most scenes come from at least a comment in the notes here or there, and for some, he left a paragraph or two explanation. For others, he wrote the entire thing.

    For some, I'm building it from the ground up, taking where the character was at the end of Knife of Dreams and giving them a story that earns them the ending RJ mentioned for them.

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  • 389

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    sparhawk1985 ()

    How did finding out the ending(s) to The Wheel of Time affect you personally? I feel like I have known these characters for so many years, and to not have something else to look forward to is going to be so weird for me.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I felt, reading it, that Robert Jordan's ending was deeply satisfying. I liked it a lot. It is also weird to know that, to one extent, it's all over.

    rahvin37

    I realize this is an older thread, but I just wanted to say how pleased I am to see this comment. Before I found WoT I never thought I'd enjoy reading. I grew up with this series, and I'm so happy to hear the ending is a good one.

    I am a huge fan of your work; especially Mistborn and The Way of Kings. Thanks for doing the AMA :D.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    My pleasure. Thank you for reading.

    Tags

  • 390

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Axelkappa ()

    You previously mentioned on twitter a GRRM-esque moment in A Memory of Light. Any more on that? In the end are you going to apologize or feel awesome?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When the book is out, ask me about this. I'll tell you which one it was. It's something I was struggling with, trying different takes on. Finally, some things came together. I'll say more, but I'll put it in spoiler text. (It's not very spoilery, but some people don't want to know anything.) [highlight to read] It is a moment of awesomeness, but also is somewhat cruel. There is a death involved. It could be from the side of the Light, it could be from the side of the Shadow.

    Tags

  • 391

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Angry Caveman Lawyer ()

    I am not gonna lie, before you were chosen to finish up tWoT, I had no idea who you were. After reading your first addition to that series, I now have every book you've put out. I doubt I'm the only one out there like this, do you feel like your own sales have doubled/tripled/petered-off/declined/diminished/are no more primarily due to tWOT and Jordan's untimely passing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's hard to separate these days. However, I got to huge boosts. When the announcement was made, all of my books jumped up to having 'first week' sales again. Most entertainment mediums follow the same slope. Huge first week sales, then a tapering off on a steady curve. (Sleeper hits and new books by first time authors don't follow this.)

    When The Gathering Storm came out, I got another big boost, which was again a kind of 'First week' sales thing—though in that case, the bigger boost came around Christmas. It seemed that people bought The Gathering Storm, read it, thought about it, then asked for one of my books for Christmas.

    In the long run, it's going to be very hard—as I said—to separate how many readers tried me out because of the Wheel of Time. As books take on lives of their own (as Mistborn did) they gain a readership through word of mouth. However, how much of that 'taking on a life of its own' happened because of the initial WoT boosts?

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  • 392

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    rosered3791 ()

    What is the hardest part of finishing someone else's work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Getting all of the character voices right. That, and keeping track of all of the side characters. The WoT is a big project. There's also the sense that in these books—as opposed to others I've written—that I "owe" more to the fans, if that makes any sense. With my own works, I don't think "What will the fan reaction be?" I write the best book I can. With these books, I have in the back of my mind that they don't belong to me, they belong to the readers—and I need to be aware of that.

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  • 393

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    rand althor ()

    I know Robert Jordan always answered this by saying, whichever character he was writing at the moment, but, as you were fan of WoT to start with...who are some of your favorite characters, as a fan of the series, from Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Now: Whoever I'm writing.

    Before I started: Perrin, Aviendha, Tuon, Mat, Rand, Tam.

    Tags

  • 394

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    simenasak ()

    Will Gaidal Cain be spun out as a hero of the horn of Valere should the horn be sounded again? Can a hero show up there if alive? Will a hero become a "copy" that rests within the horn until called to arms?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As I understand, if you are 'spun out' you do not respond to the call of the Horn. So no Cain showing up if it is sounded again, as he's been spun out.

    Astrogat

    As you understand it? Isn't your understanding more or less canon at this point?

    ilikedirigibles

    No, it's not his world or book series. He can misunderstand something just as well as the next guy.

    Not saying he did here, but just 'cuz he's finishing the series doesn't mean, for example, he can retcon or change anything or do "whatever he wants or thinks".

    Astrogat

    No of course not. But if there are two ways to understand something (that RJ has written) wouldn't it be up to Sanderson to decide which of those he believes to be right?

    So if he thinks that when he's spun out he wont respond to the Horn, no one can ever prove him wrong (there are nothing in the books to contradict this), so wouldn't his understanding be the "right" one?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here's the thing. There are three million+ words of notes, and RJ changed his mind about a lot of things as he wrote, explored, and made decisions. (He talked about this being his process. He saw the Wheel of Time as an organic thing.) So any time I speak on an issue like this, there's the chance that Maria (his assistant) will come to me and say "Actually, Brandon, he changed his mind on that. Look here for the revision." Half the time, it's something he mentioned in passing to her, Harriet, or Alan and isn't even written down.

    So...on things I think I know, but haven't confirmed with Team Jordan yet, I usually add some wiggle room. My knowledge is far from absolute. Fortunately, everything in the books I write gets fact-checked a half dozen times. (Even then, some of my mistakes slip through.)

    Tags

  • 395

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    So let's talk about the other major epic you’re involved in, which of course is the Wheel of Time. How do you feel in general about the way the series is going? Are you pleased with the reception of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight (the twelfth and thirteenth books in the series, respectively)? Are you confident that it’s going the way you want it to go?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Of course I'm very pleased at the reception of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, because when I first started working on this, I had visions of Wheel of Time fans burning down my house.

    (Laughs.) Well, Wheel of Time fans are very hardcore! I actually received a number of very politely phrased threats, with a little smiley at the end. You know, you're just not sure how to take the "I'm very glad someone's finishing this. By the way, if you screw it up I'll burn your house down. Smile smile, wink wink, we're all behind you!" So the fans can be really daunting, and working on this was really daunting for me, since I've been reading these books since I was a kid. But I'm very pleased to not have had my house burned down.

    I'm still very aware of the mistakes I make, and I'm also very aware that this is not my series; this is not me, it doesn't belong to me. And every time I make one of these mistakes, it reinforces the idea that these are Robert Jordan's books, and I'm a last-minute pinch hitter. I'm not someone who sauntered in to take it over and make it his own.

    So am I pleased? Yes I am, but at the same time there's still that sense that I'm doing something that I wish didn't need to be done, which leaves it as a very weird situation still. I'm very happy that, in general, people have liked the books, and I am sad to have failed those who felt that they don't work, because there are those who my efforts are not going to be enough for. But overall, the reception has been very positive.

    But I wouldn't say I'm confident; I don't think this is the sort of thing I can be confident about. Though I suppose I can be; I'm confident that I was the right choice, that if someone was going to have to do this, that I was the right one to pick. And I'm confident in the storytelling choices I made, yet at the same time I know that I don’t 100% belong here.

    So it's a very hard question for me to answer for those reasons, but I hope that what I'm doing and what I'm striving to do with this last book will get the story to the closest way that Robert Jordan would have done if he were here. And I just hope we can all get the ending we want to read.

    Tags

  • 396

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    In one of the essays on your website, you discuss what you called Sanderson's First Law of Magics, which is "an author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." And from there you used that to define "soft" magic systems as opposed to "hard" systems, and the ways in which each kind uses its magic to resolve story conflict.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right, though one thing I should mention is that I've since added the word "satisfactorily" to the law: The ability of the author to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional, etc. I think that's an important distinction to make.

    Leigh Butler

    So given that, can you discuss the magic system of the Wheel of Time in terms of your law? Robert Jordan's "channeling" seems like a pretty hard magic system to me.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Robert Jordan's magic system is both hard and soft. It's similar to, for instance, the Harry Potter magic system, which I personally think is quite well done. Of course, I do think Jordan's system is overall more consistent and a much better magic system. This is partially because of the strength of its limitations; for instance, that male channelers go mad, and the chance of burning yourself out with channeling, make it for a much more interesting magic system narratively. The "going mad" thing is basically the best limitation that I've ever heard of in a book series.

    People like Tolkien, for instance, didn't explain a lot of the magic, and so what the magic could and couldn't do leaves you with a lot of that sense of wonder, so there's something to be gained on that side from not explaining. Jordan, I would say, is about on the seventy-five percent mark toward a more hard, rigid magic system, and it actually tends to work really well, but you'll notice that he liked to introduce new elements to the magic quite haphazardly—you know, suddenly someone is able to do this. It happens actually pretty frequently in the series as new things are being rediscovered.

    Balefire, for example, is manifested quite spontaneously by the characters to solve little problems, and then it becomes a tool to solve bigger problems later on. Just like in a lot of storytelling, in the first third of the story, you will often have a dynamic rescue by a character the reader or audience didn't know existed, and this is not a terribly satisfying resolution, but that's okay because in the first third of a story, you're not looking for satisfying resolutions, you're looking for satisfying introductions. That's kind of what the nature of storytelling is. So when the new character rides on screen and saves the heroes in the beginning of a story, and it's the old friend of the hero who they didn't know was in town, it becomes a very nice introduction for that character; we like that character, we're interested in him, and it can work very well.

    In the same way, a character manifesting a power in the beginning of the story that kind of comes out of nowhere to solve a minor problem, is a satisfying introduction, but not a satisfying resolution. And then later on when a major character gets brought back to life by balefire, because it's used in a way that the audience could anticipate, suddenly we have a very satisfying resolution of a conflict, using a magic that we're familiar with.

    It's the difference between Han Solo saving Luke by getting him off Tattooine by just kind of haphazardly being there in the right place at the right time, and then Solo coming back at the end of the movie to save him. In the first case, he just kind of drops into [Luke's and Obi Wan's] laps, but that's okay because we're introducing him. And then he comes back at the end to save them after great foreshadowing of all the changing he's done as a character, and we love it.

    Leigh Butler

    It's a Chekhov's gun kind of thing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. One of the big complaints about fantasy as a genre is that "oh, that's the genre where just anything can happen, and so there's no tension." People complain that it doesn't matter what the characters do because they can always be saved by some magical whatnot. And that's actually a very poor way of looking at it, because if you think about it, regardless of what kind of fiction you're writing, you can always save your characters with a handwave.

    Even if you're writing in "the real world," a character can win the lottery, and suddenly all their poverty problems are taken care of, or someone can suddenly dramatically change their mind and fall in love with the heroine when they weren't expecting to. Whatever it is, you can always just handwave to fix a problem. It's not a thing that can be relegated only to fantasy. The challenge in fiction is to make all of these things feel satisfying, even though in some ways they are a wave of the hand. And that's how I look at magic systems.

    Leigh Butler

    So it seems like it's less of a magic law and more of a plot law.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Exactly. And all of the laws I've come up with, which really aren't laws—they're quite arrogantly named, I realize—have more to do with just good storytelling than they have to do with magic, but I framed them in terms of magic because people always ask me how I invent these magic systems. Well, I do that by trying to make them good storytelling devices.

    Sanderson's Second Law is that limitations are more interesting than powers. And this extends more deeply than in just magic, but if you look at magic, what magic can't do is going to be more interesting to your readers, and more useful to you as a writer, than what the magic can do. This is why channeling [in the Wheel of Time] tends to be such a great magic system, because the limitations are very well-executed; it's the part of the magic that shines the most.

    But this is ultimately all a plot issue, because what a character can't achieve, whatever is holding them back, is generally more interesting than what they can achieve. This is just kind of a general storytelling principle across the board.

    Tags

  • 397

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    Are you still teaching creative writing at Brigham Young University?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I am. I teach an upper division class on how to write fantasy and science fiction one night a week, one class a year. It's an evening class, and I do it partially for fun and partially to give something back to the community. I took this class when I was at BYU, and it was very helpful to me in getting published and coming to understand the industry. And so when it looked like the class might end up getting canceled, I said I would teach it.

    I think there's a lot of useful stuff you can learn in a class taught by someone who does the work professionally. You can't learn strictly from academics. Academics teach a lot of great things, I learned a lot of things in my creative writing classes, but someone who's in the real world as a writer can tell you things that an academic can't, so I think it's very useful for new writers to get both perspectives.

    Tags

  • 398

    Interview: Sep, 2011

    Leigh Butler

    Obviously you intend to continue with The Stormlight Archive once you've finished The Wheel of Time series. Are there any other new things on the horizon that you're thinking about or looking forward to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've always got dozens of things that I want to do. The ones that end up getting done really kind of depend on the spur of the moment, what I'm feeling, what's exciting to me right when I actually have the time to work on it. I think I've got my plate pretty full right now, so any other projects would be pretty far off. So this probably isn't the time to talk about them. I mean, I've got a couple of fun little things in the works, that I write here and there on the break points, but I don't really want to talk about things until I know when or if they may actually get published. (Laughs) I'm busy enough with the official projects.

    Tags

  • 399

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson had to write a spanking scene in The Gathering Storm—the one where Cadsuane spanks Semirhage. RJ's instructions on this scene were specific.

    Linda Taglieri

    I think Brandon would have rather it were Semirhage punishing Cadsuane.

    Tags

  • 400

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    The first question is cut off. Mi'chelle believes the question is: How epic is the Last Battle?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I guess it depends on your definition of 'epic'. I mean, it feels pretty epic to me. There's a lot of stuff going on in this book. I hope people don't get lost, is what I'm worried about. I mean, everything is kind of coming to a head. I can't say much, but it's pretty epic.

    Question

    For the Last Battle how many points of view are you doing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm using a lot of them. There's going to be all the mainstays. Rand will get viewpoints again. Perrin, Mat, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne. And there will be some Tuon, and then there will be some little shots from all over the place. The Great Captains will all be involved, so you'll be seeing from them. You'll be seeing from pretty much everybody. I'm trying to give at least one little scene from them if we've had a major perspective [from them], we'll try to do some from them. But, you know, the core is going to be the main characters. So: the Two Rivers guys and the Wonder Girls, basically, if you follow the parlance from the websites.

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  • 401

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    For Warbreaker you did awesome annotations, and I was wondering, are you going to do that with any of your other books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Warbreaker has, Mistborn has all the annotations. Yeah, if you go look them up. [To Peter:] We have annotations for Alloy of Law, right? (laughter) I did those? Did I send them to you? I'm pretty sure I wrote them. I don't have annotations for Way of Kings. The project was just too big to do that for at that point. I may eventually do them, but at this stage, there are not annotations for Way of Kings. But, there should be ones for Alloy of Law. And there are ones for all of the Mistborns.

    Tags

  • 402

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    Do you think writing Robert Jordan's books affected your writing style in any way?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It did. It affected me, you know, It definitely affected me. Robert Jordan was very good at some very important things. He was great with viewpoint, he was very good at foreshadowing and subtlety. In fact, I think he was way more subtle than I've been, and I think those are things I've learned by working on this project. And also, just being able to balance so many different characters and viewpoints. That's something I think I learned. Though you know, I consciously when I wrote Alloy of Law, which is next, I consciously said, you know, I think I'm going to use a different style. There are some people who love the Wheel of Time, there are some people who don't like the Wheel of Time, and I don't want to become, you know, my style to become the Wheel of Time style. It's my own style. The Way of Kings is certainly more like Wheel of Time, you know, but also more like all the classic epics and fantasy that I read. Alloy of Law is intentionally not like that. Alloy of Law is more of a fast-paced thriller plotting style than it is epic fantasy.

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  • 403

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    Which main character is the most difficult for you to write or create?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In the Wheel of Time or my own?

    Question

    In the Wheel of Time.

    Brandon Sanderson

    In the Wheel of Time, I would say getting Mat's voice right was the hardest. Because, Mat is so distinctive, and so... yeah. It's like he's funny in a specific way, though. Getting him right was probably the hardest. Second would be Aviendha.

    Tags

  • 404

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    Do any of you guys have plans, after your current works, to do graphic novels?

    Peter Orullian

    Graphic novels? I have actually been contacted by a couple of graphics guys as a result of that webisode series I was talking about earlier. Through work I actually know some of the companies that do that so the answer is yes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is always talk about doing Mistborn as a graphic novel and we never quite get it off the ground because every time, it would require enough work from me to make it happen that I could write another book and so I might as well write another book, if that makes sense. We keep kicking it around. We'll see.

    Peter Orullian

    I should add, though, real quick: what I wouldn't do is a retelling of another novel. I would go into the world to expand the world and so your experience with the novel is resonant, but not the same.

    Brandon Sanderson

    See, that's the problem with graphic novels. Do you just retell the book? If you do that, then people who've already read the book, they may be interested in a graphic novel, that would be fun, but it's not that compelling because you already know what's going to happen. That's the easy road. The hard road is write a completely new story but in that case, I would be the one wanting to write a completely new story, which would mean doing as much work as writing another book. And so that's the problem we've run into every time with graphic novels.

    Tags

  • 405

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    Do you have any plans to write any type of science fiction...?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've got lots of ideas but I have no plans in the near future. I have done one military science fiction coauthored with my buddy Ethan Skarstedt, my buddy in the military. We'll see if that ever coalesces into a book that we can ever publish. We did write a cool military SF together. Nothing big, epic science fiction. I've got enough on my plate right now.

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  • 406

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    This is a question for both of you. I was just wondering how you organize and plan such huge worlds and how you get about planning and writing your books.

    Peter Orullian

    Do you want to start?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, you go ahead!

    Peter Orullian

    Actually, you and I talked about this when we did that interview. I learned about this from Brandon, I haven't gotten this first hand from George Martin, who talks about Gardeners and Architects who kind of are free writers, and just start and have their story come out of their writing session, and those who do just an amazing amount of worldbuilding before they even start to put the fiction down. I'm a blend of this. I do a lot of worldbuilding beforehand. But the analogy I use is kind of like coloring. Once I get the framework, then it gives me kind of a latitude to color outside the lines, and I'll find lots of discovery and worldbuilding occurs inside the writing. So I don't ever find myself pigeonholed by an outline, but I definitely have a bit of a roadmap before I start. And then for the series itself, I have the first three books pretty clearly mapped out, and I know the end with a great deal of clarity, and then, Tor's got to buy more books so I can finish it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do an outline and a lot of worldbuilding. I use, most recently I've found a wiki software most useful. It's called wikidpad. I use that to keep my setting in because there are hundreds of thousands of words of worldbuilding that I do. So, it's between those two things. Organizationally, I work from an outline, a bullet-point outline meaning: here's a list of things I want to have happen, and they don't always have to happen in this order, and that's how I approach it.

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  • 407

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    I have a question for both of you: with your writing, what is the most difficult thing and has it evolved as you've grown?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most difficult for me was to learn how to revise. I was not a natural reviser, and my books didn't start getting to publishable level until I learned actually how to do that. I didn't know how to take something good and make it better.

    Peter Orullian

    You know, I would say a lot the same. The other thing for me, early on was realizing that it's like any other thing that you do, that you have to practice. If you're a musician, you don't just sit down and play a concerto, and it's okay to do things badly. I like to tell people that you need to dare to fail spectacularly. I was told early on: don't try and write great big epic stuff. Don't try to write best— because bestsellers, when you get into the depths of publishing, 'bestseller' exists as its own genre. There are elements of what make a bestseller. And I've been told: don't try and write that kind of a book. And I ignored all of that. And what it meant was, I wrote a lot of stuff that I threw away. And that was the other thing that I learned: it's okay. You can write stuff and put it away. I think it's Heinlen that said, "The first million words don't count." It's all practice.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He just gave you very, very good advice.

    Peter Orullian

    So write a million words and then it's okay to feel like you should be publishing something. Till you hit a million words, it's okay.

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  • 408

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    Your class that you teach at BYU, can you tell us more about it, like writing, when do you teach it...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I teach it Thursday nights, one night a week, for three hours. It is half-lecture, half-workshop, so, an hour and a half (supposedly) of lecture (it goes long sometimes) and an hour and a half of workshopping. It... you can get most everything I lecture by listening to Writing Excuses, which if you haven't listened to, is my podcast. I cover a lot of it on there, but it's just, you know. I do a lecture on magic systems. I do a lecture on sympathetic characters. I do a lecture on plotting and my goal is just to give you a bunch of tools that a bunch of different writers use, and to just say, "here is how they do it, you can try these different tools and see what works for you" because not every tool is going to work for every writer. In fact, a lot of writers have opposite processes from one another for accomplishing the same goals.

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  • 409

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    I'm just getting back into reading in general, and I'm compiling a list of books I want to read after the Wheel of Time, and going through them, there's a lot of sex in them. You know, you and I as members of the Church, how do you deal with that when you come across that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't know. It depends on the book and how it's treated. I personally couldn't read Game of Thrones, I tried it once and put it down, and tried again because he's such a good writer, and I finished the first one and decided "I can't read more of these." they were too graphic for me, despite him being a brilliant writer. Other writers... [loudspeaker obnoxiously covers sound]... has very tastefully done. So it just depends on the book. I've never been pushed to put anything in my books. I think it's a myth that publishers do that. People always worry, but, well, they just want you to write great books and they're looking for greatness. They don't say "this will sell more, this will sell less". In fact, they actually like it when there's less of that because it has a broader audience. Publishers do, at least. Same reason PG-13 movies sell more than R movies. I just write what I want to write and people seem to like it.

    Wuestion

    But books, something to read, you know?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I've put down books before and I think that's just a personal choice. You know, everyone's line is going to be in a different place. There are certain books I won't read, and so, yeah.

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  • 410

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2011

    Question

    Are there any author's skills that you envy, besides Robert Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah! (laughter) No, there are. There are things that Pat Rothfuss does that I think are wonderful. Mostly, his poetry of language, that, I envy his ability to do that. Jim Butcher's ability to pace is just fantastic, and so, I look at him and say, wow, I want to have the ability to pace like that. You know, there are a lot of authors that write really good books that I look at and say, wow, I want to learn from that. And then you do, because that's what you do as a writer. You're like, I learned from this.

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  • 411

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Jonathan Entwisie ()

    I was wondering whether you volunteered to finish the Wheel of Time or if you were approached and asked to finish it. Also do you find it difficult to set aside your own projects in order to complete it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was approached. I didn't know I was being considered until Harriet called me on the phone. The hardest part was putting aside all of the quirky little side projects I was working on. I decided I could still go forward with some of my main projects (The Way of Kings as an example) but would set aside the smaller things. It was tough. It was worth it, but tough.

    I'll still get to them someday.

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  • 412

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    heliosbird ()

    Do you find it very difficult taking over Robert Jordan's work? Harder than your own novels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Much harder than my own novels. I have to be very careful to keep the character voices done his way, and keeping track of all of the side characters...wow. I write about about half speed on the wot as on my own books. Part of this is the great amount of reading/research I must do before writing a scene.

    heliosbird

    If asked to do the same for another author, would you do it again?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't think I'd do it for anyone else. I said yes to RJ because I'd been reading the books since childhood, and was up to date on the series. I was also a good match. For example, I love Pratchett, but I'm a horrible match for his style. GRRM is a genius, but I'd be a bad match there too. Hopefully, neither author needs anyone to finish for them.

    I once would have said yes to a Star Wars book. Now, I've been too displeased by (and critical of) Lucas's treatment of the prequels to ever do that.

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  • 413

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (14 September 2010)

    Foreshadowing

    People have been asking me to expand on that essay, though it was written (originally) to be part of a series I did on writing The Way of Kings. I never had the time, however, and that was the only one that was fleshed out, so my assistant suggested it might be a good fit for a Scalzi guest blog. However, I do worry that some of the ideas are unformed, as it was written to come after several other essays I was planning.

    The short answer to your first comment is a yes, you are right. The realization I came to while working on The Way of Kings was that I was so accustomed to writing self-aware fantasy in the Mistborn books that I was searching to do the same with Kings. While anyone can enjoy Mistborn (I hope) it works best as a series for those who are familiar with (and expecting) tropes of epic fantasy to come their direction. That allows me to play with conventions and use reader expectations in a delightful way. But it also means that if you don't know those conventions, the story loses a little of its impact.

    But this is an interesting discussion as to the larger form of a novel. Is it okay, in an epic fantasy, to hang a gun on the mantle, then not fire it until book ten of the series written fifteen years later? Will people wait that long? Will it even be meaningful? My general instincts as a writer so far have been to make sure those guns are there, but to obscure them—or at least downplay them. People say this is so that I can be more surprising. But it's partially so that those weapons are there when I need them.

    It often seems to me that so much in a book is about effective foreshadowing. This deserves more attention than we give it credit. When readers have problems with characters being inconsistent, you could say this is a foreshadowing problem—the changes, or potential for change, within the character has not been presented in the right way. When you have a deus ex machina ending, you could argue that the problem was not in the ending, but the lack of proper framework at the start. Some of the biggest problems in books that are otherwise technically sound come from the lack of proper groundwork.

    In the case you mentioned, however, I think I would have cut the creature. Because you said it was slowing things down. There's an old rule of thumb in screenwriting that I've heard expressed in several ways, and think it works well applied to fiction. Don't save your best storytelling for the sequel. If your best storytelling isn't up front, you won't get a sequel. Of course, once you're done, you do need to come up with something as good or better for the sequel, otherwise it might not be worth writing.

    For The Way of Kings, I've had to walk a very careful balance. I do have ten books planned, but I had to make sure I was putting my best foot forward for the first book. I had to hang guns for the later novels, but not make this story about them—otherwise readers would be unsatisfied to only get part of a story.

    Question for you, then, Brent. Have you ever planned out a story to be a certain length, then ended up deciding there just wasn't enough there to justify it? I had trouble learning this balance as a younger writer, and some of my readers know that I wrote two failed books (one called Mistborn, the other called The Final Empire) in which neither one had enough material to form a novel. It wasn't until I combined the ideas and story together and wrote Mistborn: The Final Empire that everything worked.

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  • 414

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    Milk Man

    How much flack have you gotten for the deadline changes for WOT?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, a medium amount. Most were mad at the start, but my post about why we split calmed many. Reading The Gathering Storm calmed many more.

    Milk Man

    Glad to hear they understood!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I think, reading The Gathering Storm, people could see just how much still has to be done in these books. So they understood I couldn't fit it all in one volume.

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  • 415

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    beckster45

    What has been the most difficult part of finishing the WOT?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'd say it's split between a couple of things. First: Keeping track of all of the characters. (Like remembering which Aes Sedai are with which main character, and which members of the Black Tower are which rank.) Got one of those wrong in the book, by the way. Second: Making sure everyone's voice (the characters) is correct. That's the most important thing, and I spent a lot of time on it.

    MAGICKALMAN

    Brandon, is the hardest part of writing the WoT keeping up with the 12,000 and some odd major and minor characters?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    You got it exactly. That is TOUGH. Obviously, I can keep track of the mains. But those minor characters...It takes a LOT of work to make sure I'm getting them all.

    MAGICKALMAN

    It shows, I guess the best compliment I can give is that half way through The Gathering Storm I forgot that Jordan hadn't written it.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I take it as a great compliment when people say that, while reading The Gathering Storm, they forgot Mr. Jordan hadn't written it.

    EAST COAST GIRL

    I find it EXTREMELY humorous that there are at LEAST two separate charaters (maybe three I think) that have my given name or a variant thereof. :P

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    What is it?

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  • 416

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    Golffuul

    I was interested in knowing what it is that you research for your books and how you go about doing it. Thanks.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do a lot of broad-based reading in historical works. Things like the History of Warfare and the like. From there, I decide what I need to know for a specific book. For Mistborn, I read a lot on Canal Culture, Alchemy, Eunics, and early 1800's London. Mostly survey works.

    GOLFFUUL

    I was interested in your insights as to what kind of subject matter you research for your books?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I kind of answered this above, but I will say that MOST of it is along the lines of "How did this piece of technology work" or "how did this battle play out." Historical things.

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  • 417

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    toaster J

    What original magic system are you the most proud of?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, boy. That's like asking someone's favorite child. I really like what I've got in The Way of Kings, but Mistborn's trio of magic systems have a tightness to them that is hard to match.

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  • 418

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    Hamm

    While I'm sure you have greatly enjoyed finishing the WoT series, do you look forward to being finished with writing them and being able to return to a more normal writing schedule?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. It is a LOT of work. These books are the hardest I've ever written. So I will feel good to have them done, and to have the closure out there. But at the same time...the WoT Has been part of my life in one way or another since I was 14. It will be very sad to see it end.

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  • 419

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    Luke Chant

    Will Hoid be making an appearance in any of the remaining WoT books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, he will not. I feel that putting a character from one of my own books into the WoT world would be an act of arrogance. The WoT world is not mine, and I don't want to imply that my characters have any connection to it, or that it's part of 'my' cosmology. (Sorry.) There are other Easter eggs, though. The type Mr. Jordan liked to put in.

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  • 420

    Interview: Jul 11th, 2010

    Erik Holmes

    GRRM is getting old. If he dies Brandon will have to finish his series too.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lol. I think I'd be the WRONG choice for those books, and would tell them that if they asked me. WoT was one of the few I'd have said yes to, seeing as to how Robert Jordan taught me to write. (Pretty much.)

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  • 421

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Perene ()

    I find it interesting that you as an up-and-comer in the F/SF genre have been thrust into this situation where you have taken the reins of one of the biggest and best series to date. It seems to echo one of the biggest themes of the WOT where simple people like Rand, Perrin, and Egwene wind up in places of power and influence. Have you thought of this parallel between yourself and the series before, or am I just reading too deep?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think about this one a lot. Actually, if you'll look, you'll see one of the characters voicing my feelings on this burden as it's often best to write from experience.

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  • 422

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    galenblade ()

    I know that Jordan left a lot of material behind, but have you ever run across something in that material that you've really wanted to change? Something you felt that thematically or otherwise didn't really fit?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Because of the nature of RJ's notes and writing process, there are a lot of things I can (and was told I should) change. Harriet didn't say specifically "Change this." She told me "Jim (RJ) would not have done it exactly like this. You do what you think is best for the story first—that is your primary charge. Don't feel completely beholden to his notes, but respect his story."

    That's kind of how I've done it. If the notes say something that I feel needs to change, I change it, but try to be respectful. An example is Egwene's dinner with Elaida. RJ had this planned as a single event. I split it into two chapters, separated by further discovery by Egwene and growth to earn the second half of the dinner.

    There are many things like that. Places where RJ said "I'm going to do this, or maybe I'll do this, or maybe neither." I choose what fits for the story. It's usually one of the two, sometimes neither one works. I can be more specific once the last book is out.

    That said, I wasn't particularly hip on writing Cadsuane spanking Semirhage. There was no good reason to change it, though. Jim had outlined the scene, and it was in line with the characters.

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  • 423

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Wlraider70 ()

    Have you ever considered writing a book (or something) about the writing of the WoT?

    I'd like to hear more about the process of compiling Jordan's notes and filling in the gaps. I'd also be really interested in seeing the manuscripts you started with from him and the final product.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'd really like to do this. I have considered it, and am interested. I don't think it would work like without being able to publish the notes, however. I'd want at least part of them. So I'd only do this if Harriet agreed.

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  • 424

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Jezrien ()

    Do you ever feel a real desire to just start on the Stormlight Archive 2? A Memory of Light must have its perks to write but do you ever just want to get stuck in to book two?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I do feel that desire to get on to Stormlight 2. However, this is not a new feeling. In every book—at about the 50% mark or so—I want to be moving on to the next book. By then, I've already done a lot of the exciting things in worldbuilding and discovering characters, but I'm not yet to the exciting ending.

    This is a challenge for a lot of writers. I know Neil Gaiman has spoken on it before. I have trained myself to remain focused on the project at hand.

    Jezrien

    Do you ever take breaks away from A Memory of Light and go over notes and ideas for the next installment of the Stormlight Archive?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes, I do take breaks and outline other projects (specifically Stormlight.) But not for long.

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  • 425

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    VardaNienna ()

    On your Twitter you said that the bar for A Memory of Light is around 48%; I just want to thank you for putting the effort the book deserves into it, and I was just wondering how long approximately it will take to finish writing? I just don't like guesstimating because I'm usually way off. Absolutely love your work!

    Brandon Sanderson

    For a lot of books, I go faster and faster as I approach the ending.

    My goal for this one is to be done November 8th, when I go on tour. That means doing about 5% a week, or 15k words. At six days a week, that's very doable. Assuming I don't do any more day-long reddit AMAs...

    Fast speed for me is 4k a day. Slow is about 1.5k.

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  • 426

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    staircasewit ()

    In your unpublished career (or published too, I suppose), what did you do when you got a bit discouraged? Writing has a lot of ups and downs for me. Some days, the writing goes well and the sun seems to shine just a little brighter. But sometimes it can be disheartening, lonely, frustrating—yet still, somehow, an activity without equal. How did you get through those moments when the going got tough?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I feel this too, to an extent. Every writer does. A few things really helped me. The first, and most important, was to decide once and for all that I was writing for ME. Not for a market, not for my friends, and not even to get published. For ME. I decided that even if I never sold a single book, I'd keep doing this until I died.

    After that, I could focus only on the work. Now, that doesn't remove all of the feelings of depression, because it's still easy to feel that your writing quality is not what it should be. (Or that a story is broken, or that you just can't get past this certain point in a book.) The trick there was often to tell myself that I didn't have to put what I wrote on a certain day in the book. I just had to write. If it turned out terrible, that was okay. I could toss that scene and try another.

    Coming to the realization that it was okay to fail was a big help to my writing.

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  • 427

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Brandon, thank you very much for being with us. Well, we've got plenty to talk about, so let's start with The Gathering Storm. This is brand new, I think it was released last week. Can you tell us how The Gathering Storm came to be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, The Gathering Storm is the first, as you said, in the sequence of novels completing the Wheel of Time. Wheel of Time is a huge long-running wonderful fantasy series that I began reading when I was 15 years old, written by an author named Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan passed away in 2007, and at that point I was just a fan. I was devastated, like many of us. He had fought a long battle with a rare blood disease, amyloidosis. And I, like most of the fans, just worried about what would happen to the series.

    I didn't apply to finish it or to work on it or anything. I simply got a phone call one morning from his widow, who was also his editor. And she was wondering if I would be interested in working on the series. She had read a eulogy I'd written for Robert Jordan, and I'd come recommended to her as an author who was a big fan of the series, but also an author in his own right. And she read my book Mistborn and wanted me to finish the series. And so, it's really been a very surreal experience, spending many years reading these books and loving these books, and becoming an author myself in part because of how much I love these books. And then, being asked to finish them, it's been very strange, but also a very reverent process, because, you know, in a lot of ways, this is my hero's legacy I'm working on. So yeah, it's been great, and it's been daunting all at the same time.

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  • 428

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Brandon, thank you. Can you tell us a bit more about the Wheel of Time series? The Gathering Storm is number twelve?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. The Wheel of Time is epic fantasy. If you're not familiar with epic fantasy, in that genre what we really try to do is, we try to tell historical novels that take place. . . we try to write historical novels that take place in worlds that don't exist, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Lord of the Rings is of course the classic example of a great epic fantasy. These are stories about the beginnings and endings of eras and ages. They're stories about people put through extreme pressures and into extreme situations. In fantasy, what we're really trying to do is, we're trying to explore the human experience by going places that regular fiction can't go because we have the freedom in this genre to ask the 'what ifs': what if this?, what if that?

    And the Wheel of Time's big 'what if' is: what if you were told that you were the person who had to save the world? What if you were told that you would probably end up dying, but if you succeeded the world would continue to exist, and if you failed everything would end? And it follows one character, and then splits off from there. The first book, about the first half, is about a man named Rand, who's this person who's been told this. But it really becomes a sweeping epic that follows the lives of dozens of different characters as they're living through these experiences and dealing with them. And it's about their lives and their relationships, and really just digging down into the core of the types of emotions that people display during the most stressful moments that could possibly exist.

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  • 429

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Wow. Wow, it sounds great. Now, I know that there are 30 million copies of the Wheel of Time that have been sold worldwide, so the series itself is a massive phenomenon. What's it like to come on board? You're a well-known author in your own right. What's it like to come on board and write a sequel in a series like this?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, it's really like becoming stepfather to 30 million people at the same time. The fans, number one, have been great. And they know that before Robert Jordan passed away, he asked his wife to find somebody because he wanted the series completed. And so, everyone knows that this is according to his wishes, which I think helps a whole lot. But at the same time, I feel a deep responsibility to not make these books about me, but to make them about Robert Jordan and about the Wheel of Time. I mean, I was handed a lot of very fascinating notes. In some cases, Robert Jordan had completed scenes for the books. In other cases, he had dictated on his deathbed some scenes that were to happen. He had millions of words of notes about the world and the characters and the setting, and I've been given access to all of that and asked to put together these last concluding volumes.

    He'd been promising people for years and years and years that he knew the last scene of the very last book. And he actually wrote that before he passed away, and I have that in my possession. And so my goal is really to get us there without screwing it up. To step out of the way, to let the characters be themselves, and to let the world continue and the story continue as people have loved for so many years. And make sure that. . . I don't want them to see Brandon, I want them to see the Wheel of Time. And so, that's been a real challenge, to get out of the way, so to speak.

    David Lenberg

    Right, so it can be a seamless experience for the reader.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's my hope. I mean, I haven't been trying to mimic Robert Jordan's voice. I worried that if I tried to do that, it would come across as parody. You imagine a stand-up comedian getting up and doing their Jimmy Carter or whatever, and I worried that would be me doing my Robert Jordan. And so instead I've tried to adapt my style to the Wheel of Time. Having read it for so many years, I know how the Wheel of Time should feel. And so I don't sit and ask myself every sentence, what would Robert Jordan write? Because I can't do that, I can't replace him. Instead, I sit down and say, okay, how would I approach making this feel like the Wheel of Time? And so far, the response I've generally gotten from readers is, you know, if they pick up and they really study and they watch the first few pages they read, they'll say, you know, I can tell the difference. But once they get a little bit into it and start to feel the characters and the setting, and the plot takes a hold of them, they're able to just let that go and they don't notice it any more, and the rest of the book just feels right. And that's the best compliment I think I can get on this book.

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  • 430

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Yep, Brandon, thank you. Is it correct that there are two more books to come and complete the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, Robert Jordan left. . . he'd been promising people a dramatic conclusion of around 2500 pages, which is unbindably large as one volume. And so, what we have in The Gathering Storm is me covering about a third of the notes that he left behind. It is a complete story in itself, it doesn't just stop in the middle. But I chose certain plot arcs and certain things that needed to be cleared up or needed to be dealt with before we could move on toward the ending. And I'm doing that and a volume that will hopefully come out by the end of next year called Towers of Midnight. And then there will be one concluding volume.

    David Lenberg

    Wow. Sounds great. Now what happens to a reader and fan like myself who hasn't read any of the Wheel of Time? Can I just pick up The Gathering Storm and jump right in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, you know it's going to be a really challenging read for you if you do. I have known people who've done it. They say that the first half of the book is incredibly confusing, but by the second half they start to pick it up. I would recommend that people go to The Eye of the World, which is the first book in the series. I can wholeheartedly endorse these books, I've loved them for so long. But I think that if you're going to read mine, you probably want to start with The Eye of the World.

    David Lenberg

    Sure, sure. So that's the first book in the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is the first book in the series, yes.

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  • 431

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    David: Well, in fact that book is sitting on my shelf and I'm going to take it down over the weekend. So, let's talk about Warbreaker. Was Warbreaker released earlier this year?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was. It was released in June, so I've really been on tour for both that and the Wheel of Time at the same time. Warbreaker is a book I wrote back in 2006. It is a stand-alone single volume epic fantasy. I wrote this before I was even aware that I would be asked to work on the Wheel of Time, and so it's kind of coincidental they've ended up coming out the same year. But that's because the Wheel of Time book which I wrote in 2008 got fast-tracked and came out as soon as they could get it through production, where the other one had been waiting in the queue for a little while.

    And so Warbreaker is my solo work. It's about a number of things. Any good book, it's about more than one idea coming together. People always ask me, where do I get my ideas? Well, I find that it's hard to explain because you have to track down so many different ones to talk about where a book comes from. A lot of new or aspiring writers try to write a book with just one idea, and that never works for me. I've got to have a good dozen or so.

    But what is Warbreaker about? It's about me reacting against other things I've written, in a lot of ways. The Mistborn trilogy, which you mentioned, is what I was best known for before the Wheel of Time. And it is a series about a group of thieves struggling in a world where evil has won. A lot of epic fantasy deals with the same concept: you know, a young unknown protagonist discovers he has a talent for magic or a destiny and goes on this quest to defeat the dark evil. It happened in Harry Potter, it happened in Lord of the Rings, it happened in The Eye of the World, some of my favorite books. And when it came time to write my own books and break in, I was wondering. . .you know, these stories have been done so well, I want to go other directions. And so Mistborn became the story of what happens if good loses. What happens if the dark lord wins? What happens if Harry Potter would have gotten to the end of that story and Voldemort would have killed him and taken over the world? Or what if Sauron had gotten that Ring? And so that became the history of this book series, and the stories then are about a group of so-called rejects who aren't the prophesied heroes, who aren't following what's supposed to happen, who are working in this world to try and overthrow this empire. So it is a very. . .it's kind of a dark, oppressive series. I think it's very good. People find it very exciting and enjoyable. But there are certain themes: the darkness certainly is one, and the instigating a rebellion against an oppressive force, and these sort of things.

    And when it came time to write Warbreaker, I wanted to try something different. I felt that I'd spent so long dealing with darkness, I wanted to use color instead as a focus. And so one of the themes became color and how color represents life, and the magic in the world is based around the concept of color. Beyond that, I'd been thinking for a long time that anarchy and setting up a rebellion and these sorts of things could actually be a lot easier than the concept of stopping a war. Starting one, in many ways, could be easier. And I wanted to tell a story about someone who's working against a ticking time bomb to try and stop two kingdoms which are just bent on going to war with one another because of different factions, and seeing if he could dig out what's really going on and get to the root of it, and stop it.

    And that's part of the theme, but there are so many other things. In part, it's about an agnostic god who doesn't believe in the religion that worships him. It's about two sisters who have to exchange roles in life. It's about a sarcastic talking sword who really likes to kill people. I mean, there are a lot of things going on in this book.

    David Lenberg

    I heard you say 'an agnostic god'.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Yes, in this world, one of the things that happens is that a certain group of people with a certain magical powers. . . What will happen is, if someone dies in a way that's very heroic, according to the religion, they will be brought back to life and will have visions of the future. And these people are worshipped by one of the cultures, someone who has been brought back to life, and then asked to give them divinations and things like this. And one of these people, he has no memory of his past life. All he knows is that he woke up and everyone told that he had died in a very heroic way and that he was now a divine figure. And they asked him for interpretations and prophecies, and he doesn't believe in any of it. So while they're worshipping him, he's actually pretty agnostic himself. So it's kind of an interesting situation for someone to be in.

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  • 432

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Uh-huh, uh-huh. . . it's a big idea. Brandon, thank you. You began writing when you were in college or high school?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I began writing when I was in high school. I started my first book when I was fifteen. I never finished it. I began writing in college very seriously. Ended up writing thirteen novels before I sold one. I sold number six, which was Elantris that you had mentioned. And that was after eight or nine years of work writing, working the graveyard shift at a local hotel so that I could write full time while I was going to school full time and working full time. And that was a wonderful experience. You know, the job, when they interviewed me, they said, 'all we really want is someone to stay awake; can you stay awake?' And I said, yeah, as long as I can write books. And so from about midnight to 5 AM every night, I was there at the front desk writing books, just in case the building started on fire or some really late last minute check-in needed to come in, or something like that. And I wrote. . . I wrote probably ten books at that desk.

    David Lenberg

    Wow. Wow, and then you'd sleep for two hours and then go to class.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I'd actually get off and go right to class around 8 AM and then get home and sleep, and then get up and go back to work. It was not very good for my social life. But I did get to meet lots of interesting people. Lots of fodder for books, working on a graveyard shift like that.

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  • 433

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Uh-huh, uh-huh. Brandon, how do you find the wherewithal, the impetus within yourself, to keep writing when you're not selling?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, that's a great question. Part of it was that I found that I really and truly enjoyed the creative process. People don't always play music because they want to make a living at it. You do it because it's inside of you. And the writing, it was inside of me. These stories had to come out. And the more I did it, the more it consumed me, the more it became just part of who I was. And so, I decided in the midst of it, yeah, I really wanted to be published. Yeah, I would love to do this for a living. And I still feel very, very blessed that I get to. At the same time, I felt that even if I would never get published, I would continue to do this for the rest of my life because it was simply something that was part of me. And I find that happens with a lot of writers.

    David Lenberg

    This makes me think of Michelangelo. They said, you know, how do you do what you do? And he says, well I look at the block of stone, marble, and I can see what's in there.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. That's really how it is. I mean, these things are bounced around in my head, and really if I didn't get them on the page, I might just go mad from them. I mean, I've gotta get them out.

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  • 434

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    Yeah, yeah, I got it. Brandon, thank you. So if someone is in high school or college, a person in their teens or twenties, and they think they might want to be a writer but they don't know how to begin or are concerned about the effort, you know, any of the concerns people have, what is your guidance?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Number one, and most important, is just to keep doing it. Make good habits. Set aside a time, at least once a week, where you can spend some time writing and working on your craft. And don't worry about publishing. In fact, don't be afraid of being bad at it. A lot of people who begin writing, they assume because they've been taught writing, how to write, the actual physical mechanics of it, that storytelling will come to them naturally. And it will over time, but it's as hard to learn as maybe learning to play the piano or something like this. And most people don't expect to sit down and play the piano beautifully their first try. And in the same way, most people who sit down to write books aren't great their first try. So just remember to learn to fall in love with the process. I do have a podcast about writing. It's called Writing Excuses. You can go there and listen in, I've got some advice there. You can find that also linked through my website, brandonsanderson.com.

    And Warbreaker, which we talked about, actually I released into the creative commons. When I published the hardcover, I released an electronic copy for free. So you can go to my website and actually download the PDF of Warbreaker completely for free to give a try if you want to try out my work and see what kind of writing I do.

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  • 435

    Interview: Nov 30th, 2009

    David Lenberg

    That's great. That's a brilliant marketing strategy. And we've got just a minute or two left, Brandon. I'm wondering if you could say a bit more about being an author with books that are sold in stores and at the same time interfacing with new media.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, you know, I think that a lot of industries are not approaching this in the right way. I think that, for instance, the music industry seems too scared of something that could build them a lot of fan base. And particularly in publishing, I feel that my readers are my patrons. And they could get the books for free if they wanted to, they could borrow them from friends, they could go get them from the library, these sorts of things. They support me, they choose to buy my books.

    And so, I don't feel afraid of giving out a free copy. I think it can only help. For instance, I don't want someone to buy one of my books, read it, and then hate it. I would much rather give them the free book, let them try me out, see what they think of it. And then, if they like my books, I feel that they will want to own them and will want to buy the new ones when they come out. And so, I think it could only help.

    And I love new media. I love using things like Facebook and Twitter to connect with my readers. Because as I said, my readers are my patrons. It's much like if you were living in the 19th century, you would have a wealthy patron often as an artist who would pay for your upkeep while you were creating art, just because they were a lover of the arts. Well, I feel that my readers are much the same thing. They love science fiction and fantasy, they love supporting artists, and it's because of them that I get to do this. And so I try to do whatever I can to connect with them.

    For instance, I release on my web site annotations of my books, where I go chapter by chapter and I do a discussion, sort of like a DVD director's commentary, on each chapter. Elantris has those up, and the Mistborn books have those up, where you could read a chapter in the book and then go find out why I wrote what I did, what was going through my mind when I wrote it, these sorts of things. And this is all to try and give as much of a bang for the buck, so to speak, on the books as possible, and to get as much of a connection between me and my readers as possible.

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  • 436

    Interview: 2011

    Patrick Rothfuss

    How about you? How do you deal with the stress of the sudden fame?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The writing group is very helpful. It's nice to have a writing group, who have been reading my book since the beginning and to whom I'm nothing special so to speak. It is very good keeping one down to earth.

    Honestly, having a three-year-old and a one-year-old, being a daddy and having a real life—a normal life—is also really helpful. It keeps you down-to-earth. I mean, it's hard to think of yourself as Number One New York Times Bestseller when you're elbow-deep in stinky diaper. Beyond that I do also try to keep a perspective on this. Some people like to pretend that authors are celebrities, but in my mind we're not really celebrities because if you walk up to the average person on the street and say "Who is Brandon Sanderson?" or "Who is Pat Rothfuss?" or even "Who is George R. R. Martin?" most of them are going to have no idea at all. Such a small percentage of the population actually reads. And beyond that, there's so many books out there that if they are a reader the chance of them having read your book is small. Everyone knows who Tom Cruise is, but nobody's going to know who I am. And that's good for keeping perspective.

    The other thing I do to keep perspective is to keep in mind that science fiction and fantasy in particular as a fandom is very much a community. In a lot of ways writers generally grow out of the fan community. Even if they aren't active in the fan community, they were fans first. Something about that changes the way this all works. A lot of fans rightly seem to act more like colleagues, which is a good way to see it. It's like the writers are the ones the rest of community supports to produce material for the community. It's less an idolization of superstars and more of a, "Yeah, we'll support you, and you create this fiction for the good of the community." It's a patron-and-artist sort of relationship. At least that's how I view it.

    Patrick Rothfuss

    I think that's healthy. From some of your answers, I think you knew a lot about the community before you were published. That probably helped ease your transition a bit. I never knew much about that stuff until I was in the middle of it.

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  • 437

    Interview: 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    We've been talking a lot about our big projects, Wise Man's Fear and Way of Kings, and do you have any other side projects? Because I loved your children's book—in fact, for a fun story for those reading this: We got in a big argument in my writing group about the meaning of Pat's children's book and what was really happening behind the scenes. So I used a little bit of colleague privilege and called him on the phone to ask him his interpretation. And he was very much an author in that he said, well, it could mean this, it could mean that—he gave a very good answer where he gave us some of what the writer was thinking but left it open to personal interpretation.

    Do you have any other projects like the children's book? Are we going to be seeing anything small between Wise Man's Fear and the third book?

    Patrick Rothfuss

    Yeah. I'm absolutely going to doing some other smaller projects while I'm working on the third book. I loved writing The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle. It was fun. It didn't steal time away from working on my novel, it reminded me why I write in the first place.

    I already have plans for the sequel to that book. I've got plans for a few short stories, too.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I also take time off after I finish a huge book to work on experimental side projects and recharge my creative energy. Sometimes these projects go somewhere, and sometimes they don't. Last year after finishing Towers of Midnight I took some time to work on an urban fantasy, and though I got over halfway through it there was just something that wasn't working, so I set it aside.

    Then I started what was going to be a Mistborn short story, and once I was a few scenes in, it was really clicking. It ended up turning into a short (for me) novel that I’m very happy with. Tor was also pleased to hear about it since they weren't going to have a book to release from me in 2011, but now Mistborn: The Alloy of Law will come out in November. And now my writing battery is all charged up to start working on the Wheel of Time again.

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  • 438

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nadine

    Melissa, I think we have members from another forum joining us and they have information that we don't have. Maybe even advanced book information, like we know nothing about The Way of Kings and only heard about the book recently and know nothing of its content.

    Could some of you newcomers introduce yourselves (maybe on our "Introduce Yourself" thread and not clutter up this one) and tell us where you are from? We love the information you are bringing and introducing on this thread but we are confused.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I posted on my website that I'd be doing this, and I don't often have time to interact on forums. (They are a delightful way to interact with readers, but have proven a HUGE time-sink for me in the past. As you might have noticed, I tend to write—and respond—in depth when people ask questions of me.) So I only appear on forums occasionally. Hence the involvement of those from my forums looking for some answers to questions.

    Some backstory might help you all. I began writing in earnest in 1997. During those years, I shared the books I wrote with a group of friends. This group worked with me on The Leading Edge, a science fiction fanzine/semiprozine at BYU. Eventually, once we graduated, we founded the Timewaster's Guide, partially as a forum where we could hang out. (Tage and Ookla from the TWG forums—aka Ben and Peter—are among them, and are still very good friends of mine. Another easter egg is to watch how Ben Olsen and Peter Ahlstrom are treated in the acknowledgements of many of my books.)

    The overarching story and theme of my books, what I wanted to accomplish as a writer, and how I approached the fantasy genre, all took shape during this time. These readers read many of my most important, and influential (on me as a writer) novels while in draft form. The biggest three of these during this era were White Sand, Dragonsteel, and Elantris. (On the tail end, I wrote—but never finished—the foundations of what years later became Warbreaker.)

    The next era of my unpublished writing was when I worked on the worlds, stories, and themes that eventually became Mistborn, The Way of Kings, and a book called the Aether of Night. Many of my writing group friends have read these books, including the first draft of Kings (which is very, very different from the current draft.)

    Anyway, these unpublished books are NOT canon yet. I don't canonize a novel until I publish it. But some of the hidden themes (including Hoid and Adonalsium) of my books are present in these novels. (Dragonsteel and Aether of Night are particularly connected—though of the unpublished Shardworld books, White Sand is probably the best written.) Again, none of this is canon yet. (For instance, I've taken chunks out of Dragonsteel to use in the revision of The Way of Kings.) However, these old books do contain clues that aren't available to the average reader.

    Dragonsteel can be ordered through inter-library loan through the university library system. There are only four or five copies in existence. The BYU library has one (the book was my honor's thesis.) I believe the honors department has one. My thesis chair has one. (And maybe the committee has one, I can't remember.) I've got one in my basement. And I believe Ben's sister may have sneaked a copy out of the trash when I was cleaning out old manuscripts. (That might be White Sand.)

    I do have intentions of rewriting these books and publishing them eventually. They each have pieces of the story. (Though I may decide to shift certain themes from one series to another as I eventually write and publish them.) I've been known to email White Sand or Aether of Night to readers who email and ask. (Though it does make me cringe a little to do so. In many of these books, I was experimenting with magic, theme, and narrative style—some experiments were a success, some were failures.)

    Dragonsteel is frozen; I don't send it out any longer, as to not spoil the parts of The Way of Kings that I decided fit better in that world. So the only way to get it now is to borrow it from BYU. I've been told that Dragonsteel is the only undergraduate BYU honor's thesis ever to have been be read so often that it needed to be rebound. (A dubious honor, I'm not sure how I feel about so many people reading a book of mine that is that mediocre.)

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  • 439

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    paulgoatallen

    Brandon: I'd like to ask your opinion of the current state of the fantasy genre....

    Fantasy has always been a "series-powered" genre but it seems that lately several authors (or publishers) just don't know when to suitably end a long-running saga... Drawing out a series for the sake of more installments, it seems.

    And there seems to be fewer and fewer standalone novels like Warbreaker and Elantris. (I love standalone novels, by the way, and am hoping that that "format" makes a return!)

    Any comments on this from your perspective? Thanks!

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's a good question, Paul. One I've been considering, actually, for a long time. Certainly, there's an economic piece to it.

    When a stand-alone comes out, it tends to gather praise from both readers and reviewers. Then proceeds to sell far fewer copies than a series book does. The Wheel of Time didn't hit #1 on the New York Times list until book eight or nine, I believe, and I don't think Sword of Truth hit #1 until book ten. Series tend to sell better. Even as readers complain about them. And so I think publishers do push for them.

    But why do they sell better? Well, I think this is partially the learning curve factor. We like fantasy for the same reason that fantasy is hard to read: the learning curve. Starting a fantasy book can be tough because of how many new names, concepts, societies, religions, and laws of physics you have to learn and get used to. Epics, with their dozens upon dozens of characters, are even tougher in this regard. And so, after investing so much energy into becoming an expert in the world, we want to get a good payoff and be able to USE that expertise.

    Beyond that, I think that fantasy is character driven—and when we fall in love with characters, we want to read more about them. Fantasy, particularly the epic series, allows us to follow characters across sweeping, life changing events. Fantasy (like historicals) give us lots of pages and time to know these characters. So we want more from them.

    But the very thing that we love about fantasy in this regard also tends to present problems. We want lots of characters, but eventually this large cast gets overwhelms us and makes the books seem to drag. Personally, I think these complaints will be much lessened when some of these great series are done, and you don't have to wait years and years between volumes.

    Anyway, Terry Brooks talks a lot about this in his biographical work Sometimes the Magic Works. (Bet you can find it here on BN.com, and I highly suggest the book as a quick, interesting, engaging read.) He mentions how, when he left Shannara to write other things, the fans begged and begged him for more. Until finally he broke down and gave them more books in the world.

    A lot of authors I know tend to live in this state of perpetual wonder and amazement that, finally, people are actually enjoying and reading their works. (After all the years of failure trying to break in, I know that I feel this way a lot.) When someone comes to you and talks about how much they love one of your works, asking you to write more...well, we're storytellers. If people want a story, we want to give it to them. It's hard to say no. (Though so far I have.)

    I intend to keep writing stand-alone novels. But I do so knowing that 1) they will not sell as well as series books and 2) readers will ask me for more, and so each stand alone will only increase the number of requests for future books that I can't write. I'm in the fortunate place that I can write, and publish, what I want—whether it be series or stand alone—and no longer have to worry about the money.

    But, in my heart, I've got a strong desire to write a big epic. I grew up reading them. I want to see if I can do one, my way, and add something new to the genre. So maybe that's the reason. Looking through Robert Jordan's notes, reading interviews, I don't think he ever artificially inflated the length of his series because of publisher desire or money reasons. I think he loved the long-form epic, and wanted to tell the story his way, no matter how long it took. And as he added more characters, it took longer and longer.

    In a way, being free from the worry of finances gives creators a chance to really explore their vision the way they want to. And...well, we’re fantasy writers, so we can get a little long winded.

    Kind of like this response, eh? ;) Thanks for the question.

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  • 440

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    TaurusRW

    Will the material written for A Memory of Light by Jordan remain intact in the published novel or will you rewrite it to match your on style of writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am leaving it as intact as possible. In some places, a paragraph at the beginning or end of a section has to be changed to streamline it into the rest of the narrative. In others, line edits have to be done (mostly by Harriet) to fix the language. (Nothing we have from him is in more than a rough draft form.)

    But where I can, I'm not changing anything. Because of this, readers who look very closely might be able to tell where I wrote and where he wrote. But I don't think it is noticeable without detailed scrutiny.

    I suggest to readers that they read the book straight through the first time without trying to pick out which piece was written by which author. I'm hoping to get permission to speak more specifically about how it was all divided once the three books are all out. Then, you can know for certain. But for now, I would prefer (and I'm certain Mr. Jordan would prefer) that you see through the prose and enjoy the story.

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  • 441

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Rachykaych

    Also I wondered whether you will ever publish an encyclopedia of your interlocking worlds and their relationship to each other within their cosmos?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I plan to do something like this, as things progress. It won't happen until the future, however, and will likely happen only on-line. There will eventually be short stories showing some of what is going on behind the main stories of the novels. I do have some novels planned which would deal with all of this in a more direct way, but they are decades away from being written.

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  • 442

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nikleas

    Since you established that all the worlds you created in your books are linked, any chance to see in the (very) distant future a book/series that delves into this overarching story/universe/rules more directly? Possibly with a crossover of characters from your different stories, specifically characters that became "immortal" or at least achieve a "different" state: Sazed, Kelsier, Raoden. Is that something you would even be interested in doing?

    Or will you stick to placing subtle hints in your different books/series about the overall system?

    Brandon Sanderson

    VERY distant future is correct. I will confirm that I do have stories planned that delve into what is going on behind the scenes. There will be short stories dealing with Hoid, most likely posted to my website.

    Some of these stories are novel length, and I can't say what I'll do with them. Perhaps I'll write them out in novel form and release them in bookstores, but I have a feeling that most of my readers would be completely confused by them. So perhaps these will all just be on my website only. (If they are released that way, they'll most likely be free for download and reading.)

    The subtle hints will continue until then. Mostly, I want the stories to be enjoyable and self-contained. I don't want anyone to HAVE to know any of the behind the scenes, regarding Hoid, Adonalsium, and the rest. (Yes, there is more.) Those are there for the readers who want to dig, and who want to see the greater story. But I don't want them to overshadow the stories of the books themselves. At least not yet.

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  • 443

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Nikleas

    WOT question: Did you go through ALL the notes from RJ on the Wheel of Time (if that is even humanly possible) or just those related to A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mr. Jordan left behind notes for the series which, word-length wise, is in EXCESS of the length of the written novels. That was just too much for me to handle. I've used Mr. Jordan's assistants for fetching information from these reserves, and have focused most of my efforts on the notes specifically left for A Memory of Light. The Guide has been very helpful. But mostly, if I need to know something from the notes, I send Maria and Alan searching while I work on the actual prose.

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  • 444

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    izyk

    You mentioned in an earlier answer that learning to revise was one of the biggest factors in making your work publishable.

    Would you give us an idea of the process you go through when you revise?

    Thanks!

    --Isaac

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thanks for the question, Isaac! (Isaac, by the way, is the person who introduced me to my wife and set us up on our first blind date.)

    I view working on a book in the same way a sculptor might view working on a block of wood. The first draft is generally focused on getting things in place so I can work on them. In essence, I cut out the crude features of the sculpture—but when it's done, there is still a lot of work to be done. Readers who see the book in this stage can tell what the basic arcs and characters will be, but the emotional impact is lessened by the crude edges and unfinished lines.

    Here's my process in a nutshell:

    Draft one: Write the book in draft form.

    Draft two: Read through the entire book, fixing the major problems. Often, I'll change character personalities halfway through the first draft as I search to figure out how I want the character to sound. I don't go back then and revise, as I need to try out this personality for a while before I decide to actually use it. Similarly, often I'll drop in new characters out of the blue, pretending that they've been there all along. In the second draft, I settle on how I want things to really look, feel, and work.

    Draft three: Language draft. Here I'm seeking to cut the book down by 10%. I write with a lot of extra words, knowing I'll need a trim. This will make the prose more vibrant, and will make the pacing work better.

    In a perfect world, this is where I writing group the piece and/or send it to my editor. (For lack of time, my writing group is getting Draft Two of The Way of Kings. Hopefully, I'll be able to do draft three by the end of the year.)

    I let readers read the book, and I take some time off of it. I begin collecting things I want to change in the book in a separate file, called "Revision notes for ***", listing the name of the book. I organize these by character and by importance and/or pervasiveness. For instance, a need to rewrite a character's motivations will be at the top. Fixing one specific scene so that it has proper foreshadowing will be near the bottom.

    Once this is all done, and I've gotten feedback and had time to think, I read through the book again with my revision notes file open beside the book file itself. I actively look for places to change, kind of like a sculptor looking over the statue and seeking places to knock off jagged chunks and smooth out the sculpture’s features.

    I'll do this process several times, usually. In-between, I'll often do line-edit drafts, like the language draft above, where I'm focused on getting rid of the passive voice and adding more concrete details.

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  • 445

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    ErrantKnave

    WOT questions: Will all three A Memory of Light books feature Rand, Mat, and Perrin?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Short answer: Yes.

    Longer answer: They will all three appear in all three books, but it will not be equally balanced. Some characters will be more of a focus in some of the books, and other will be more of a focus in others. This is particularly true of the first two volumes, where I had to juggle which characters would be a focus in one, and which will be a focus in the other.

    ErrantKnave

    I ask because you said the prologue Robert Jordan wrote would probably be split over two books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it will be. I don't know yet if the third volume will have a prologue or not. The material Mr. Jordan wrote for the prologue is split, half in the prologue of The Gathering Storm, half in the prologue of the second volume.

    ErrantKnave

    Does this mean story arcs are getting split as well?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I tried to keep story arcs contained in a single book. We'll get glimpses from some of the characters in the first book, with a more complete story arc in the second book. And we'll get story arcs in the first book from some characters, followed by glimpses in the second.

    The split actually turned out really well. I think I managed to get a balance working where characters don't vanish for entire volumes, but we still get to have complete character arcs.

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  • 446

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    ErrantKnave

    Also, who was your favorite character to write? And don't say Bela.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's really, really hard for me to answer this, since when I'm in a character's head, that character is the most important in the book. They're all my favorite when I'm writing them—that's just the way it has to be as a writer.

    It is also hard to answer without giving spoilers that I'm not certain I want to give. For instance, some characters were interesting to write for different reasons. In some places, I was expanding on things Mr. Jordan left behind, in other places I was trying to piece together what I think he would have done based on the momentum of the books. In some places, I was writing based mostly on my instincts as a writer. I was doing a lot of different things with a lot of different characters, getting a balance of action, drama, and fun. Which is my favorite among all of that? It depends on what I'm feeling like that day.

    If really pressed on it, I'll probably say that going into this, my favorite thing that I anticipated would be finally (after all of this time) writing Rand's character through the end of the series. Like many, I was initially hooked into this all by his story, and—regardless of other favorites at different points in the series—who he is as a person is vitally important for driving these last books.

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  • 447

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    malpighien

    I'm not English and I hope you won't mind too much the grammar and spelling errors left here and there.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I do speak English as my native language—and I'm certain I've got my fair share of errors here and there in my posts. So if you'll forgive me, I'll of course forgive you. ;)

    malpighien

    As many, I'm a huge fan of the Wheel of Time series, I can't say why it appeals to me so much but it just feels so epic, so detailed, so grand, I wonder how can anyone not love it.

    I'm also really eager to read the end of the saga, and I must say that I'm really happy with your decision to split the book in three and cover all that is left to be answered.

    Knowing you will finish Robert Jordan's book I was curious to read your previous works and see if I will like or love them as I do with WoT.

    I must say that I found them quite enjoying and yet, and I beg you not to be offended by my impressions, I could not find the epic feeling I love so much in WoT.

    I find your characters to be very practical which is great in a way but for me it takes away the epic feeling, the unknown, the maybe, the what if.

    So finally reaching my question, if it's not too silly, do you plan to make the characters react, speak and think, as they do in your books or will you follow a more Jordan's way of doing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think the thing you’re talking about is something very intentional on my part, related to the fact that I wanted my books (particularly the ones I did at the beginning of my career) to be more self contained. Elantris, Warbreaker, and even Mistborn exist (in my mind) as a kind of 'calling card' to readers. Something that says "I want to show you that I can tell a story, so that you'll trust me—eventually—when I do something much larger in scope, something where the pay-offs aren't as immediate."

    I love the self-contained fantasy epic form. However, one of the things I felt that those books needed was cohesion. I had to make my magic very, very tight.

    Unknowns are great, and they DO lend to the epic feel of a story. One of the things that the WoT has over my books (beyond Mr. Jordan's fantastic storytelling ability) is the sheer power of scope. The magic is far from being understood, and it's larger—and vaster—than the characters can understand. There's a vast wealth of history and world—not to mention numerous machinations by dozens of different groups and secret cabals—making the characters (particularly at the beginning) feel very small compared to it all.

    I think that's the sense of what you're talking about. It has to do with the characters, and it has to do with the magic. But it also has to do with the scope. You don't always get an immediate pay-off in the WoT books. Some threads hang through books, finally getting revealed or resolved long after they were introduced.

    I'm not trying to imitate Mr. Jordan. Instead, I'm trying to adapt myself to the Wheel of Time. (If that makes any sense at all.) In other words, I want to maintain this feel, and write these books appropriate to the Wheel of Time. I don't want these volumes to feel like Brandon Sanderson books; I want them to feel like Wheel of Time books.

    But artists in any medium learn to work with different styles and forms. Many of the things that seem like natural voice in a novel are conscious choices we make, as we work to create a certain feel for a novel. If you read and compare my Alcatraz books to my Epics, you'll see what I mean. Even the Mistborn novels have a different feel from the stand-alones. (And Mistborn 2 and 3 have a different feel from number one.)

    So, the end answer is this. Yes, I'm trying very hard to maintain what it is you love about the Wheel of Time, rather than trying to force the Wheel of Time into a different box or style.

    Tags

  • 448

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    MarlonRand

    Additionally, how much time would you say that you spend researching on any given work, and what are some of the things that you research?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That one's really too hard to judge.

    Research for me is on-going for any given work, and I don't track how much time I spend on it. Generally, I dig into specific topics when the need arises, then do more 'cast out the net' general reading for ideas the rest of the time. Generally, I'll only dig in deeply if a topic is important to a specific story. (Such as—for Mistborn—researching canals or the effects of being made a eunuch at various ages.)

    Tags

  • 449

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2010

    Alex C. Telander

    It's been two years since our last interview. At that time, you'd just released Hero of Ages and The Way of Kings and Wheel of Time books were in their early stages. What would you say has changed most in your life in the last two years?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What has changed most in my life? Professionally? Because in the last two years I've had a child, which change has been quite a bit. I would say I'm more comfortable and relaxed with how things are now. 2007 and 2008 were pretty nerve-wracking years, and 2009 in particular, when I wasn't sure how people were going to respond to my work. And so I think I'm more comfortable now. The last two years have also been extremely busy, and so they kind of passed in a blur. Yeah, Harriet's smiling, because she was in that blur, too.

    Harriet McDougal Rigney

    [laughs in background]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it kind of turns when I hand it off to her and then she has to work furiously, and then she hands it back and then I have to work furiously.

    Alex C. Telander

    And then, two years have passed.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, then two years have passed.

    Tags

  • 450

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2010

    Alex C. Telander

    The Way of Kings is over a thousand pages and Towers of Midnight is over 850. The books were published within three months of each other. What's your key to getting this much writing done?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's in part, cheating. The Way of Kings I already had a first draft of done before the Wheel of Time project was offered to me. There would have been no way to do them both in the same year if that hadn't been the case.

    People don't quite understand a couple of things. Number one: that was a gift; I already had a first draft done. And I wrote it from scratch again, but it went very quickly because I had already done a first draft.

    The other thing they don't understand is when you're a mid-lister like I was several years ago, when you turn in a book it takes several years for it to come out, because they're giving everyone slots and they're arranging it. And I would even usually work a year ahead, and then I'd turn it in, so it would often be three years until a book was published. An example of this is Warbreaker. It was released last year. I wrote it in 2006, that's when the first draft was written, and it came out almost exactly three years later.

    When you're working on high profile books, they don't sit on them for three years. And so what happens is I wrote these books that I did beforehand, and then I started working on the Wheel of Time in 2007 and 2008, and I finished the book and then it came out immediately. And so it looks like I'm releasing twice as many books as I am, because books I wrote in 2006 and 2007 come out the same year as books I wrote in 2008 and 2009, which is what's happening here. Which is why there's not going to be any of my books next year because we've now caught up, no solo books.

    I've been telling people I doubt we're going to have a Wheel of Time book next year, either. They've been spoiled, because if it takes us eighteen months to write a book, but we have a six-month buffer, we can get a book out and it looks like it's only been worked on for a year.

    Tags

  • 451

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2010

    Alex C. Telander

    So when you were kind of working on both books, did you kind of a have a set day for each book? Or how did you work through that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had deadlines and I had goals. I mean, I'm very goal driven. I say I want to have this done by this date. Which, you know, I give myself plenty of time, but I spend months working on them. Generally, I can only write on one book at a time. Keeping these things in your head is such that even a given book you break into small chunks. And people say, 'how do you juggle all these things?' Well, juggling all the viewpoints in a Wheel of Time book is monumental. And at that point, I pick one viewpoint group, generally. I say, okay we're going to do all the scenes with Perrin and Faile and those who are around them. And in that case, I will go and re-read a bunch of Robert Jordan's work with those characters, and I will do a few test runs to try and get myself in the characters, and then I'll write those characters. And then I'm done with those characters for that moment, and I'll go do it with someone else. And I'll do that with my own books, too. I'll get very into the mindsets of these characters, I'll write them. And then I drop it. It's like I download it all into my brain and it's gone. And then I wipe it and download something else. Does that make sense?

    Tags

  • 452

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2010

    Alex C. Telander

    And you don't have any other projects you're working on, right?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have lots of other projects, but that's because I'm an artist. And you know, most artistic types I know like this—we always have lots of things buzzing in our brains. One of the ways I stay fresh is in between books I usually take a break and I work on side projects. I don't always release them; in fact, I usually don't. These are things that I do just to experiment with my style, to try and learn things and teach myself things. And so I do. If people follow me on my Twitter feed, last month I worked on a bizarre book about a pizza delivery man who finds out he's a necromancer. This month I worked on a Mistborn novella that I'm wrapping up now. That was October. November I'll do a Nanovel, I'll do something. And then I do have—in December I will be revising a book called Scribbler, which was the last book I finished before Harriet's phone call, which is a young adult very fun alternate history steam punk novel. And Tor is interested in releasing that, and so I'm going to take a month and revise that for December. And so all of those things are buzzing around, but none of them are in a state where they could be released next year. They're all too far off for that.

    Tags

  • 453

    Interview: Nov 15th, 2010

    Alex C. Telander

    I recently did an interview with Dan Wells, and he confessed that you write your own RPG campaigns.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do write my own RPG campaigns.

    Alex C. Telander

    Do you ever think you'll get publishing those at all?

    Brandon Sanderson

    If I did it would be just a labor of love because they're so scatter-brained. Like, my notes for them are so scattered-brained that the amount of work it would take to get one actually in a shape where I could publish it would be so astronomical. I won't say no, but I'll say it's highly unlikely because this is something I do just to relax and have fun. It's mainly something I do every other week so that I have something scheduled that I spend time with my friends and my brother. You know, I sit down and have to schedule these things in my life these days. And it allows me to just be bizarre. Some of these things are pretty bizarre. You don't even want to hear what is happening in these campaigns.

    Alex C. Telander

    [laughs] I'm sure.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, maybe. For years I've wanted to do something that I don't see a lot in gaming, which is really self contained, one volume, kind of like we have one volume epic fantasies. One volume campaign, rules, story that only the DM has, or the GM has, and make learning the rules part of the fun of the exploring the world. Instead of having everyone read all these rule books ahead of time, and then sit down and play.

    Alex C. Telander

    Right. You kind of discover as you go.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You discover as you go, and you learn the rules as you go, and build an RPG that does it that way. Like, I usually start my campaigns with the characters with having no memory, they're blank slates. They all wake up and they discover a world, and even the mechanics of the world, as their players do, which is a very fun way to do it.

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  • 454

    Interview: Nov 16th, 2011

    Open The Fridge

    Let’s start with an Alloy of Law question, since that’s why we’re both here. You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into the evolution of the world of Scadrial, specifically in how you’ve integrated the world’s technological advances. Was there anything in particular that drew you to the old west setting, and did you do anything to research it, like going to a shooting range or a ranch?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Good question. I actually wrote the prologue LAST. I wrote it to be the prologue to another book about Wax and Wayne if I did one. I always knew what happened, but I didn’t want to start the book with the old west, because most of it didn’t happen in the old west, it happened in the city. What is now chapter one used to be the prologue. And after writing the whole book I realized that we didn’t see into Wax’s heart, we didn’t know what he was always referencing with Lessie… we actually needed to see it. And so I actually took that chapter and moved it to the front. I worry a bit that it will old-west-ify it a bit too much, because I did see this as a city book. All of the Mistborn books have taken place in cities.

    Open The Fridge

    And will that hold true for the second trilogy, as well?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. It might not hold for the final one in the same way. But as for the research I did... I actually got my gun nut friend. Gun nuts are very particular. He’s a big Wheel of Time fan, and a very big gun nut. I got him to read the book and give me all the “this is how a gun nut says you’re doing it wrong” notes. That’s how I usually do something that specific. I like to write the book, and then go find an expert. For instance, in The Way of Kings, Kaladin’s surgery and first aid things. I wrote the book, I did do some reading on it, but then I sent it to an author that my editor knows. He’s a medical doctor, and I had him read those things and tell me what I was doing wrong. I prefer to do it that way and then fix it, because I can do enough, but there’s a certain understanding curve. I can pick up 75% of what I need to sound authentic with a little bit of research, and that last 25% requires a Ph.D. (laughs) And so rather than getting a Ph.D., I just give it to someone who has a PhD, and they can crosscheck it for me.

    Tags

  • 455

    Interview: Nov 16th, 2011

    Open The Fridge

    You’re very talented at taking seemingly mundane or unusual things and creating magic systems around them, like color in Warbreaker, metals in Mistborn, and light in The Way of Kings. Can you explain how you decide what to use for a magical system in a book, and your process for building a coherent system once the initial concept has been decided?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First of all, I’m looking for something that fits the book that I’m writing. So for instance, in Mistborn, I was looking for powers that would enhance what thieves could do. I was also looking for something that had one foot in alchemy, in that kind of “coming-of-age magic into science” way. Alchemy is a great example because it’s a blend of science and magic… well, really, a blend of science and superstition, because the magic part doesn’t work. So something resonates there.

    I’m also looking for interesting ways to ground [the magic] in our world, and using something mundane is a great way to do that. Magic is naturally fantastical, and so if I can instead use something normal, and then make it fantastical, it immediately creates a sort of… ease of understanding. Burning metals sounds so weird, but it was chosen for that same reason, because we gain a lot of our energy through metabolism. We eat something, we turn the sugars into energy, boom. So that’s actually a very natural feeling. When I started writing out some sample things, it felt surprisingly natural, that people eat metal and gain powers, even though it sounds so weird. It’s because of this kind of natural biology. So I’m looking for that.

    Once I have a magic system, I look for really great limitations. Limitations really make a magic system work better. Wheel of Time is a great example. Having a magic system where you can weave all these threads is awesome. Having a magic system where you do that, and then it drives you mad, is even better. It creates plot hooks, it creates drama, it creates challenge. [That limitation] is brilliant, I think it is one of the most brilliant ever made, especially because it also changes your characters. It has a deep influence on your character arcs, so you can tie it into character.

    Beyond that (and this is kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit), there is no specific defined place where someone goes mad, so you can actually stretch it out and use it when you need it. It doesn’t constrain you too much. Like if your magic system’s limitation is, “When you use this magic, you have to use the head of one of your grandparents.” (laughs) You can use that magic four times! It’s limited, but also very constrained. Going mad is not as constrained. There’s a spectrum there - you can use it when you need it. So I’m looking for cool limitations that will work that way, in ways that I can use to force the characters to be creative. A good limitation will force you to be creative, and your characters to be creative. Pushing and pulling metals is basically telekinesis, right? But by making it center of mass, you can only pull directly towards yourself or push directly away from yourself... Number one: it’s vector science. It has one foot in sciences. Number two: it feels very natural to us because this is how we manipulate force ourselves. Number three: it limits things so much that it forces creativity upon the characters. There’s that sweet spot, where they can be creative and do cool things, where it doesn’t become too limited, but it also keeps you from having too much power in the hands of the characters, so they are still being challenged. I’m looking for all that, and on top of that I want to have good sensory ways to use magic.

    I don’t want to have two wizards staring at each other, and then be like “and they stared at each other very deeply! And then they stared harder!” I don’t want it all to be internal, which is where the lines for the metals came from. You see something, you push it forward. The pulses that some of the allomancers use, they’ll hear. I wanted sensory applications.

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  • 456

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2011

    Neth

    Wax is quite the archetype, complete with a side-kick and (potential) love interest. Where did he come from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't generally sit down and say I'm going to write someone who's this archetype or that archetype. What I wanted for this book, honestly, was just to have fun. I love writing epic, awesome stories; I love stories that are full of deep character conflict and broad world-spanning conflict—but sometimes I just want to back away from that and have fun.

    The Wax archetype with the sidekick—the two of them were built from the ground up to be characters who played off one another well to facilitate good banter. Because I like to write good banter. I like to read it, I like to enjoy it. Whether it's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or Holmes and Watson or whatever—I get a kick out of these types of stories. So when I was writing this book, I was really just saying let's step back for a little while from the kind of stories I was writing with The Way of Kings and the Wheel of Time—which are both (I hope) very awesome, and deep, and complex—and let's do something that's just fun.

    Tags

  • 457

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2011

    Neth

    How has religion and mythology changed in the 300 years since the events of the Mistborn trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had a bit of a challenge in this book because—and you may want to put a spoiler warning on this interview—at the end of the first Mistborn trilogy, one of the characters became the god of this world. He became a god figure, an almost omnipotent figure. I had planned this from the beginning, but it also offers a challenge, because in this world you have a real deity that is interacting, that is a character—not to say that in our world God doesn't interact with us, because as you know I am a faithful, religious person. However, I think there is a different interaction going here where the reader has spent time with this person as a character, and now he is a deity figure. So how to deal with this is one of the big challenges in worldbuilding this next several hundred years.

    I wanted Sazed to be involved—I didn't want to just have him vanish and not be part of things. I wanted to acknowledge what happened with him and make it part of the mythology of the story. But at the same time, having one of your characters turn into God runs you right into the trouble of literal deus ex machina, once one of your characters has all of this power. So walking that line was both exciting and also very challenging.

    I like to deal with religion in my books. I like to look at all aspects of it, and in this book I wanted to look at what it would be like if someone like Sazed had been put in this position and people started worshiping him—what do you do with that?

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  • 458

    Interview: Nov 7th, 2011

    Neth

    Since pretty much all fantasy fans are eagerly anticipating one story or another from you, let's do the obligatory update on your on-going projects. How is A Memory of Light coming? Stormlight Archive 2? The Rithmatist? Alcatraz? Are any other side projects about to unexpectedly see the light of day?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As of doing this interview, the last book of the Wheel of Time is nearly done, but boy, that's a big "nearly." There's so much work to do with the last chunk of this book that it's feeling pretty overwhelming right now. My goal is to have a revised manuscript in to Harriet by January 1st. When it comes out will depend on how long it takes to edit it.

    The second Stormlight Archive book is in the planning stages; I should go right into writing that starting January 1st, with it coming out hopefully around a year after that, maybe March 2013. That's a long wait since The Way of Kings was released, and I hate to make people wait that much, but I plan to write the third book fairly soon thereafter.

    Alcatraz is on hold until I decide what to do with the series. I will write one more book in that eventually. The Rithmatist is exciting; it's fun; but I also don't want to have too many balls up in the air that people are reading and having to keep track of. So I keep delaying it with Tor, saying we shouldn't release it until I'm sure I can commit to getting the trilogy done in a reasonable amount of time.

    Other than that, I have a few random side projects in the works that should be coming your direction. I always have random side projects in the works, but none of those are ready for announcement yet.

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  • 459

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Steve Williams (14 November 2011)

    Just how many Aes Sedai are there and how the heck do you keep track with all the similar sounding names?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I use the Encyclopaedia WoT and Tar Valon's wiki for some help, but I rely mostly on the notes and Team Jordan.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    As for how many there are...well, there are a lot. Hundreds.

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  • 460

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Dennis (14 November 2011)

    Has writing WoT affected the way you write your other books?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    Some of them. I look at detail differently, foreshadowing differently, and large casts differently now.

    Tags

  • 461

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Eric Pearson (14 November 2011)

    Since the series is almost complete, if RJ could read it how would he react to your contribution to his legacy?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I honestly don't know. I hope he'd be pleased, but I also feel he'd be sad that he didn't get to do it himself.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Harriet has said she thinks, from above, he's looking down and this is his reaction:

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    First, a "Who does that kid think he is?" followed soon by a proud "That's my book, more or less."

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  • 462

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Patrick Lynch (14 November 2011)

    Did the ending of A Memory of Light surprise you? As a reader and lover of the series and world, was it fully satisfying?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I will say I found it more satisfying than surprising. There are shocking elements, but I'd read so many theories... (more)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    That it was hard to be completely surprised by anything. (Even if some elements, like Verin, did surprise me.)

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  • 463

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Justin (14 November 2011)

    When writing WoT have you ever read RJ's notes and think that you would have written the plot differently?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I wasn't totally hip on the spanking scene in The Gathering Storm. There is one other part that was tough. (Can't say now.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For the most part, though, I didn't look at it that way. If it needed to be changed, I changed it—but only if the plot demanded.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I don't look at this as "how would Brandon do it." I look at it as "How should this work in the Wheel of Time?"

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Certainly, I would have written a different series, as I'm a different person. I don't want to impose that here, though.

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  • 464

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Andrew Cyr (14 November 2011)

    Any chance of there being a biography written about RJ and the writing of tWoT?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I think there is a good chance, though if it is done, I probably am not the right one to do it.

    Tags

  • 465

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Samantha (14 November 2011)

    You're known for your inventive magic systems—how was it using RJ's in WoT, which is a more traditional system?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    RJ's system was very rule-based and innovative for its time. It is part of what inspired me to do the systems I do.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've enjoyed it, though you will see me 'brandonizing' a few little things, like the usage of gateways.

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  • 466

    Interview: 2011

    Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Jordan Husband (14 November 2011)

    Do you struggle to write Cadsuane from an unbiased perspective, since she's not a favorite of yours?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I thought I would, but she has such a strong personality, she's actually easy.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The ease of writing a character has more to do with how proactive they are and how easy it is to get into their head.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've learned a lot about her, and about writing, from the series.

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  • 467

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    LordJuss

    The evening began with the amusing sight of Brandon Sanderson piling various items of furniture on top of one another to create a home-made lectern for his laptop. Following a brief aside on the difference between a lectern and a podium (and how this plays into the editorial process), Brandon read from a novella he’s recently written. [Legion] Apparently, he started it on the flight back to the US the last time he came to the UK. He couldn’t work on the Wheel of Time since he was awaiting the outcome of some research on the notes. He went on to explain that Robert Jordan left a pile of notes roughly half Brandon’s height that his two researchers dip into when Brandon needs an answer to one of his questions. This is normally quick, but it can take several months to come up with a fully researched answer. The reading lasted about eight minutes and seemed to be from the beginning of the novella. I won’t spoil the concept, but it’s clever and deeply silly.

    The evening then moved to a Q&A. Questions and answers are paraphrased from my notes and memory, so they won’t be absolutely word-for-word, but they shouldn’t be much different from the original conversation. I’ve included all the questions, not just the Wheel-related ones.

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  • 468

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Question

    Having worked on Robert Jordan’s world, is there any other world you would like to write for?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I was 18, I would have said David Eddings, but that’s not true now. He’s wonderful at the right age, but I no longer want to write in his world. I would have said Star Wars but the prequels left a bit of a sour taste. If George Lucas said to me, "Do you want to re-write those prequels for me?" I’d definitely say yes, but that’s not going to happen!

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  • 469

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Question

    Is there anything earlier in the Wheel of Time that you would want to change?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. There are things I would have done differently if it were mine, but that’s not the same thing. I don’t approach the Wheel of Time as wanting to fix it. Instead, I think about how I can do it justice. There are clear differences in some areas and I have to deal with that. For example, Robert Jordan's and my action sequences are very different. That’s because he had been in Vietnam and had actually been shot at, whereas all my experience comes from action movies. Also, I treat magic a little differently, so sometimes that carries over into the text.

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  • 470

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Question

    Your writing style in the Wheel of Time is very close to Robert Jordan's but is much less so in your other books. Are you frustrated by having to write in Jordan's style?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not at all. But I have to change some things as I go to make it work my way. I have complete creative freedom, so I don’t find it constraining. I write what I need and then Harriet checks it. If I can get it past her then I know it’s right. Besides, constraint can be really useful for a writer as it fuels creativity. If you have a dry patch (as all writers do) then a really odd writing task, like having to write about sentient vegetables taking over the world, can push you in new directions. So, I have been creative in the Wheel of Time and I have put some audacious things in there. But Robert Jordan was already an audacious author. For example, cleansing the taint before the end of the series was an audacious piece of writing. So, I have freedom, but if something is in the notes, we always try to include it. The only time we don’t is if he wrote about something that happens to a character in one part of the notes, then contradicted it elsewhere. In that case, we have to make a decision. Also, sometimes the notes say a character will do something, but I can find no way to get them where they are supposed to be to do it. In that case, we sometimes have another character do it instead, but I can talk more about that when A Memory of Light is out.

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  • 471

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Question

    A lot of your work deals with stereotypes. Can you tell us more about that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s true, but I always make sure that it isn’t just about the stereotype. It’s a fun thing to challenge some of the classic fantasy models, but that shouldn’t take over the writing as that can really undermine a writer. Piers Anthony was an example where the puns were fun but eventually came to undermine the series. I like having non-stereotypical professions and I enjoyed challenging age perceptions in Way of Kings. Having a romance between a man in his 50s and a woman in her late 40s is unusual in fantasy, where it’s all about the young man falling in love.

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  • 472

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Question

    Do you miss characters when you “write them out”?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nice euphemism. I miss writing for them but it doesn’t shock me because I generally planned it that way, so I have time to prepare. I don’t see myself as killing them. Instead, I allow them to take risks and pay the price for those risks. Mostly, I know well in advance what will happen to a character. Just occasionally, though, the plot will suddenly take me to the point when something has to happen, then I have to go back and re-write the outline. I don’t sit there and think, “Now who won’t they expect me to kill," although I suspect some other authors might do that. (General laughter ensued at that point.)

    Tags

  • 473

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    LordJuss

    You’ve said previously that when you were a young man you identified with Rand over the other boys, but now you’re older, you identify more with the older characters. Do you think when you are 80 you will identify with Cadsuane?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Maybe with Thom Merrilin. I think I would need to be the full 300 to completely identify with Cadsuane.

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  • 474

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Manmark ()

    Where did your idea for the Cosmere originate?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I started this whole business wanting to write a big epic. However, I recognized that starting some huge series right out as a new author might not be the best decision. While it worked for some authors, I wanted to give people a few stand-alone novels and a trilogy or two to try me out before they got into something deeper. (i.e., Stormlight.)

    I also felt that it was easier to market myself to publishers with standalone novels. (This proved to be very true, by the way.) But I still wanted to do a big epic. So, for my self and my own love of the concept, I started linking all of my books together into a 'secret' epic.

    One other thing having to do with this was seeing some authors do it in a retcon kind of way, and always being slightly disappointed it hadn't been planned from the start. (See Asimov.) I felt that if I were ever going to do something similar, I wanted to lay the groundwork.

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  • 475

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Manmark ()

    Do you feel any sort of writer's block while writing, and what do you do to rekindle your inspiration?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This post answers some of it. Basically, the best way for me to rekindle inspiration is to write a scene poorly and throw it away. That gets my mind working on how to actually fix the problem. Writer's block almost always goes away after I've tried a scene in a couple of different ways, sometimes from different perspectives, sometimes with wildly different 'takes' on the scene. I try to shake things up in a few of the takes.

    If that doesn't work, then I look back and see if there's a fundamental problem with one of the characters. That's often how it is, as I 'grow' my characters. (I plan in detail plots and worlds, but let my characters develop in a more natural way.)

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  • 476

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    supahamir ()

    How are you able to write so consistently?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I see this phantom cubical chasing me, over my shoulder. If I slow down, it catches me, and I have to go get a regular job and become an insurance salesman or something.

    IDontWorkForRailroad

    Hey now, I sell insurance, it's not that bad!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. I knew someone would say this.

    Let me put it this way—you're probably good at it. I'd be terrible. I'd be sitting and thinking of all the books I wanted to be writing all day. It would be miserable. Not because selling insurance is miserable, but because—for me—NOT writing would be.

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  • 477

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    supahamir ()

    What do you do to prevent yourself from being distracted, and what do you do when you hit a block on something in a book you're writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, sometimes I have to just close the browser (and the like fifty tabs worth of material I've found on reddit) and turn off the internet for a little while... Sometimes it's done by setting daily goals for myself (wordcount wise) and not letting myself go do fun things—video games, etc.—until I've hit my wordcount.

    Motivation isn't a huge problem for me. I keep coming back to the idea that writing, and telling stories, is what I like to do most in the world. Yes, it can be tough at times. It is work. But unless I'm writing each day and creating something, I feel like I just haven't accomplished anything.

    As for writer's block, I did a couple of post on that already. Here and here.

    Wlraider70

    What games do you play, xbox or PS3?

    Brandon

    Both, but usually not online. I do it to unwind, and so getting yelled at by team-mates is not really high on my list, nor is the stress of being forced to compete against other players who have a LOT more time for such things.

    Right now, playing the new Magic The Gathering game on Xbox and really liking it. Big improvement over the last one, which was okay.

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  • 478

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    bjh13 ()

    Any plans to write in another genre such as mystery or historical fiction?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not currently. Anything I think of that is in another genre usually transforms into sf/f by the end. So, there will probably always be at least SLIGHT sf/f elements. I could see myself doing a Jurassic Park style thriller, though.

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  • 479

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Volrik ()

    Is there an element of fantasy writing that you particularly enjoy or dislike? For example, do you like worldbuilding more or less than individual character development, or are they "different but equal"?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Different but equal depending on the stage. I love planning worlds, but I prefer to discovery write characters. (See here for more info.)

    During the writing of a book, the character moments are the best. During the planning, the worldbuilding parts are the best.

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  • 480

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Volrik ()

    Is there anything you want a reader to notice when they pick up one of your books for the first time? Like, do you want people to take note of how you address social themes, or appreciate your particularly clever uses of language, or just enjoy the damn book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't look to inject specific social agendas into my books. If anything, I try very hard to approach concepts like that from multiple angles, as I believe it is through discussion and thought that progress is made. So, I don't mind if people see the issues, but I hope that it's the characters (who feel differently about those issues) that take the stage. let the character passions decide what the themes of a book will be.

    In the end, I really want people to enjoy the ride and perhaps think about some questions as viewed by people who are different from themselves. My grand aspiration is not about changing the world, so much as learning to tell stories about characters who feel real.

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  • 481

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    insertcleverphrase ()

    I know from reading your blog and various other comments that many of your books are in the same cosmos/universe, specifically Mistborn, Elantris, Warbreaker, and Way of Kings. I also am pretty sure that one day you'd like to do a series that ties all the different series/books together into one super-series. So my question is, would the various magic systems work on different worlds? For example, would a Mistborn be able to use his/her abilities in the world Way of Kings is located on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on the magic system. They are all related to a kind of "Spiritual DNA" that one gets from their heritage on a specific planet. However, there are ways around that. (Hemalurgy, for example, 'staples' a piece of someone else's soul to your own, and creates a work around to give you access to magic you shouldn't have.) Some of the magics are more regionally tied than others. (In Elantris, you have to access the Dor, which is very regionally influenced.)

    The end answer is this: With in-depth knowledge of how the magics work, and their connection, one could probably get them all to work on other planets. It may take effort for some of them.

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  • 482

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Angry Caveman Lawyer ()

    How do you shape your heroes? To the plot or do you shape the plot to them? (I guess this is a which came first question...)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually design my plot in some detail before I begin. (Though not in as much detail as the world, which I spend a LOT of time on.) I build it using the idea of focus scenes—powerful, game-changing scenes that I imagine cinematically and then try to 'earn' though building my plot.

    Once that is done, I start my book with the characters. Characters, I grow organically. In writing terms, we speak of what we call "outline" writers and what we call "discovery" writers. (GRRM calls them "Architects" and "Gardeners.") I outline write my settings and to a lesser extent my plots, but I discovery write my characters.

    In doing so, once I start the book, the character takes center stage. They have, at any point, the right to change the plot in any way to fit what they would actually do. I will often try a few different 'characters' in a lead role when starting a book. For example, there were three different Vins I tried out for Mistborn. The first one (which was a boy) did not work. The second one (a female) did not work either. It was the third time that I got her right.

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  • 483

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    douchebag karren ()

    How much do you plot out before writing, and how much simply comes while writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I plot a medium amount, focused on goals. I usually build my outline backward. I decide what I want to happen, I write that event down, then I write bullet points beneath it to lay the groundwork of what would have to happen for it to occur. This is a fluid thing, and often changes as I write the book. However, I keep the outline current.

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  • 484

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    douchebag karren ()

    Do you edit as you go, or write a whole draft, then go back and change things?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do very little self-editing as I go. I feel it's important for me to lay down a draft to work with before I start tweaking. The exception is if a character just isn't working. (See my other answer on discovery writing.) In that case, I will sometimes go back, tear the character out and replace them.

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  • 485

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    slyth ()

    You've been publishing at an amazing rate for several years, though I understand you've largely exhausted your "buffer"—the books you had written before becoming a published author.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wrote 13 before I got published. Warbreaker, The Way of Kings, and Mistborn all took pieces of already written works. (Though I started from scratch in all three cases, stealing out the 'best' of their respective unpublished versions.) I still have two of these (White Sand and Aether of Night) that have good enough magic systems or concepts that they will see publication (in one form or another) eventually.

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  • 486

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    slyth ()

    Can you keep your current pace? Is it too exhausting?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I cannot keep the current pace, as proven by 2011 having only one book release and 2012 likely only having one as well.

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  • 487

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    slyth ()

    How many books do you think you'll be able to publish in the next 10 years?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would like to get back to one long book (in a series, probably) and one short book (an experimental work) a year, as I did during the early years.

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  • 488

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    slyth ()

    Will you please continue to write until they nail your coffin shut, just like RJ?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I want, when I die, them to find me sitting in my chair with my face having fallen on the keyboard and having just typed seven thousand pages worth of the letter 'Z.' In this way, I'll have written even after I die.

    demishade

    If you do happen to croak before your time, take care on which letter(s) your face ends up on. The fandom will be overanalyzing your choice for years to come.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah. My kids will probably try to publish it as my final novel...

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  • 489

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Thomas Dare ()

    As an aspiring writer I love picking the brain of published authors. My question to you is, how much do you outline before you begin writing? I've read some interviews where some authors, (Stephen King for example) does it all in his head and then writes from what he remembers, then others seem to outline almost every detail and then fill in the dialogue as they go. Do you lean one way or the other, or are you completely different in how you approach the pre-writing preparation? Thanks so much.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've answered this several places. Here is one of them. If you search for "outline" and "discovery" you'll find some other things I've said. However, on a scale of Outline to No Outline my worlds are on the far left, my plots in the middle, and my characters on the right.

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  • 490

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    RattusRattus ()

    It seems if you're not lurking on Reddit, you're either giving advice to someone on r/writing, or offering someone a book on r/books. Does interacting with readers and writers help motivate you? How important do you think community is when it comes to relatively solitary activities like reading and writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a great observation, one that I don't think a lot of people see. Writing is very solitary. Having some interaction, even faceless, is good for me. Beyond that, when trying to break in, I got a lot of good advice from established writers. I feel that in writing—sf/f particularly—there's a feeling that we're all in it together. There's a great tradition of the pros helping the newer writers, and I want to continue it.

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  • 491

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    wishanem ()

    How would you say that your religious beliefs influence your writing? Have you received any criticism from your coreligionists for the content of your novels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Being a person who is, myself, religious, I am fascinated by religion and all of its different effects and mindsets. This is why you see me exploring religious characters, and those who are not religious, in my books. The different ways people look at these things are fascinating to me.

    One of my core ideas when it comes to writing is that I feel I should express all sides of an issue, and try to do so well. I can't do every side in every book, but I try to be aware of my own biases. I think this actually has to do with my core religious nature—as one of my fundamental beliefs is that if something is right, it should be able to stand up to STRONG arguments opposing it, not just weak ones. Without strong opposition, there cannot be a discovery of truth.

    I have received all kinds of criticism, from all sides. I have gotten emails from people who will not read my books because I am LDS, and from others who feel I am far too liberal in my writing, and should be advocating a certain view.

    Usually, I don't pay much heed. The exception is with the Wheel of Time, where I try to be extra careful, as I don't want my own bias to take control of Mr. Jordan's series.

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  • 492

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    aspectual ()

    Do you ever plan to re-write or release White Sand? I loved it when you sent it to me and am dying to know, also White Sand sequel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will write that book again, I promise. However, I cannot embark on too many series at once. So perhaps I will do it after Stormlight, but before digging into the next main Mistborn sequence.

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  • 493

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    stormingthecastle ()

    As readers, we hear a lot about your writing process. But could you talk a little bit about your revision process?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am a goal-based revisionist. I come up with a list of things I want to fix, I rank them in order of import, then I go through the book and read it page one until the end, fixing as I go. Every revision also has the goal of cleaning up the language and fixing the line-by-line.

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  • 494

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    biorcit ()

    I've seen in your answers to previous questions that you are always open to changing aspects of your story so long as it's not already written in another book, or more importantly so that it doesn't contradict what the reader already knows.

    That being said, how much of the Cosmere and its story would you say you already have a plan for? For example, do you more or less already know how each world and story ties into one another, or is that something that changes as you write? Given that there seem to be some constants in this universe (the number of shards, etc.), is there an end to these stories as a whole, or is it an ever-expanding universe?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Things do change as I evolve as a writer. There is an end to this story. Dragonsteel-Kings-Mistbornare all fairly well planned out, but I must allow myself flexibility.

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  • 495

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Koryu Obihiro ()

    What were your most major influences for writing? Writers, personal experiences, values, beliefs, concepts...these are the things that I'm curious about when I read your novels.

    Brandon Sanderson

    1) Being annoyed at the same story being told again and again in fantasy. 2) Loving books that did rule-based magic systems with an almost scientific feel. (Melanie Rawn is a good example here.) 3) Wanting to have cinematic fight sequences. (Film influence there. See Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and its ilk.) 4) Loving the deep third person viewpoint as done by people like Robert Jordan, where everything you see is filtered though the eyes of a distinctive character.

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  • 496

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Mongolor ()

    Your take on "Fantasy" is very unique, and honestly I want to know your inspiration for the "magic" of your worlds.

    Mistborn Allomancy has the feel of good old Newtonian Physics, push pull and equal and opposite reactions.
    Stormlight brings more laws of Physics into the realm of magic.

    Do you have a background in Physics? Or is it just a source of inspiration for your worldbuilding?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do have a science background (biochemstry, actually. Wish I'd picked physics.) I did move to English after a couple of semesters, as I decided I wanted to be a writer. But I've always been an armchair scientist.

    My inspirations are a mix of authors (mentioned in other posts if you look) and my love of the era in human history when science was a wonder. If you look back at the early discoveries in science, there's this feel that it's a boundless frontier with a magic all its own. That fascinates me, and I love writing about similar things happening in worlds with physics that deviate from our own.

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  • 497

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    PoleMixX2 ()

    My question is about the creation of chapters. How do you organize a chapter itself and its place in the overall continuum of the story?

    Just began listening to your writing excuses podcast, btw. I learned about it thanks to Reddit. Great stuff!

    Brandon Sanderson

    I organize a chapter by having a goal in mind. Usually, I have couple of goals. "In this chapter, I want to accomplish X, Y, Z." Usually, they are small things. "Introduce this character" or "Show these two people not getting along" or "reveal this little tiny secret about what is happening."

    I get three or four of those together, think about which viewpoint is going to be most interesting (usually, but not always, the person who is doing the most and discovering the most,) and try to pick a setting that—if it's not set already—will be different from nearby scenes. Then I go, trying to build a rise to a climax (however small) within that scene.

    That's how it is for most middle chapters. End chapters are different, where the pace grows more frantic, and I split scenes into smaller bits, jumping about to keep the pace feeling exciting.

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  • 498

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    deuce mcgee ()

    When did you originally decided that you were going to link up all your worlds in this overarching Cosmere? It's seems like a pretty epic feat to have so much stuff related between all your seemingly different novels, only to tie them together bit by bit. I've never heard of an author doing this on a scale quite like yours before. What gave you this idea / inspiration?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Covered here I think. Let me know if that answers it.

    (And yes, it's a big feat. But, in part, I'd never seen it done before except in an after-the-fact retcon, as King and Asimov both did. Those were cool, but I wanted to try it from the get-go.)

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  • 499

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    bec 82 ()

    What are your thoughts on Neil Gaiman's blog post about an author taking as much time as they want to finish a series, no matter the readers feelings? Do you feel beholden to your fans at all? You've actually been churning out solid books at a fantastic rate. Is it motivated by a love of writing, or is there any element of "I'm doing it for the fans", or is it a rock solid respect for deadlines... ?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I appreciate Neil standing up for authors like GRRM, as I feel an author has a right to do as they wish and have the perspective they wish on this.

    I, however, feel differently. I feel indebted, and feel that I should finish what I start. However, I've also never done something to the length GRRM has. (Not yet.) So we'll see if I can keep it up.

    For me, it's a mix of all three things you mention. Being beholden, loving writing, and having a good work ethic. I'm also fortunate in that I've got a very solid way of dealing with writer's block that works almost every time for me. (Answered elsewhere in this AMA.)

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  • 500

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Qurtys Lyn ()

    With all these complex magic systems in your books, do you have all the rules for them written down somewhere? Also, as the worlds are all in the same universe, are the magic systems related in any way to each other, or completely independent from each other?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have them all written down. Currently, I use a wiki—find it [here](http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/—to keep track of all of it.

    The magic systems in cosmere books all conform to a few underlying rules. This came from my interest in physics, and its search for a 'unifying' theory. (Fascinating reading, if you haven't studied this.)

    In my books, there is a unifying theory of magic, so to speak.

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  • 501

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    grumbaut ()

    You've mentioned how you spent years honing your craft, essentially writing dozens of books before getting published. During this time, did you ever feel like giving up and doing something else? If so, how did you overcome your self-doubt?

    I'm an aspiring writer, and one of my biggest struggles is silencing my internal editor (who tends to be very loud).

    Brandon Sanderson

    My biggest crisis came when I felt that none of my books were ever going to sell because of several things.

    1) Editors were telling me I was too long. 2) Editors were telling me epic fantasy by new authors no longer sold well. (Early 2000's, after Newcomb failed.) 3) Editors were telling me to be more gritty and low magic, like GRRM.

    I tried a few books in an attempt to 'conform to the market' whatever that means. (For me, it was shorter books, without an epic feel, with dark, gritty, 'realistic' characters that were anti-heroes.) I failed big time. The books were very bad.

    That's when I almost gave up. Nobody wanted what I wrote, and I couldn't write what I wanted. That was when I decided, one night, that I was going to just stop caring. I decided to disobey everything editors were telling me and write the biggest, most epic, most awesome book after my own 'style' that I could.

    That turned out to be The Way of Kings. (Twice as long as the books editors were telling me were 'too long.') Right after finishing it, before sending it anywhere, I got a call from an editor wanting to buy Elantris (one of the books I'd written before trying to conform.)

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  • 502

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2011

    Question

    How does it feel to write the final piece to the Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Umm, well, on one hand I can’t answer that because Robert Jordan did write the final piece himself (audience laughter), the last chapter he wrote before he passed away. On the other hand I can’t answer that because I haven’t finished my part yet (more audience laughter). I’m like so close, but there’s so much still left to do, but in it’s more general sense, I assume you’re asking, “How does it feel to be part of this thing that I’m writing the end of?” And it’s really be, kind of a bittersweet experience. Like, if you follow my tweets, on Twitter I posted a little while back that “Oh I was looking forward to being back to a certain character”, you know because I’d been away from them for a while, and then I stopped and realized, I wrote that character first for A Memory of Light, all the way through, beginning to end, and so they’re done. I will never be going back to that character, because that character’s story is told, and I’ve done that for almost everybody now in the book. There’s only a few characters who haven’t had their story told, so for a lot of the characters, it’s done. Which is really a weird experience for something you’ve been reading since, you know I picked up the first one in 1990, so 21 years of reading, and since 2007, so now four years of it kind of dominating my life, to have it actually being done, it’s really really kind of surreal and weird to have this being finished. But it’s a great honor also and it's awesome, but it’s also weird.

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  • 503

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2011

    Question

    How much time do you spend per day writing and doing other writing-related activities, because you put out more than any other author that I ever… [applause]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you for clapping at that, rather than thinking I'm a hack. [laughter] I do this very compulsively. I basically spend—how many hours do I spend?—I basically spend all of them, and when I'm not doing something else. So basically, I usually take two or three hours off with my family, um...so I get up at around noon [laugher], I work until five—yes, I get up at noon. Don't knock it; it's the author's way; I'm an artist—and then, I hang out with my family from about five to eight, and then I go back to work and I work generally to about four. Um...and, if there are other things going on in the evening—you know, going out to dinner or things like that—I'll do them, but my default is to working on my books. And that's been pretty steady for the last few years because the Wheel of Time has been so dominating. I'll probably ease up a little once it's done and, you know, maybe play a few more video games and read a few more Pratchett novels. Yeah, it was really, that joker back there that I pointed out works at Blizzard, Blizzard brought me in today and gave me a whole bunch of games [laughter], “yeah here Diablo 3, you can go play that...”, “agh, don’t do this to me guys”. [laughter]

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  • 504

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    alanthiana ()

    If you could only have the collected works of one author with you on a deserted island... who would it be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm probably expected to say Wheel of Time, but I've practically got those memorized by this point. I'd say Pratchett, because I've only finished about half of his works, and have yet to re-read one of his books. (I discovered him pretty late.) Either that, or I'd say the collected works of Mead (meaning the paper products company) to have a near-endless supply of empty notebooks to fill with my own stories.

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  • 505

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    davebrk ()

    What's your stance about sex in books? Compared to some other authors (Martin, Bakker) your books are almost sex-free. Is that because you're religious? Or you just don't feel that sex has a place in your type of fantasy book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm not one to say what has a 'place' in my type of fiction. There shouldn't be one person who has such a say—variety is exceptionally important.

    People do have sex in my books, but you're right—I don't depict it happening. Part of this is the tone I want to have in my novels. Martin and Bakker write their type of story, and do it well. It is not the type of story I want to tel. My religion plays a part in this.

    Another part is my feeling that I'd like to learn to tell stories like those in the past, who—through being reserved—were often more powerful in composition than they could have been by being graphic. I appreciated it when authors I read—like Anne McCaffrey and Robert Jordan—were not graphic in their depictions. It allowed me to play the story at the rating level I wanted to in my head, and allowed others to play the story at the rating level they wanted.

    I want to write books that I don't feel uncomfortable giving to my young teenage nieces and nephews, but which also hold power and depth of storytelling enough to be engaging to the adult readers looking for something new in fantasy. This is the balance I've come up with. It's not the only way to handle things.

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  • 506

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    davebrk ()

    What setup do you use to write your books (OS, Word Processor)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    MS Word, wikidpad, Windows with Firefox and Thunderbird.

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  • 507

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    luxgladius ()

    I'm working my way through Mistborn and have read The Way of Kings and Warbreaker. It seems to me that one of your signatures as an author is a highly developed and often novel world mythology and magic system. I'm curious, do you develop the system in full before writing, and then introduce elements as the series progresses, or do you deliberately leave some wriggle room for later creative insights? For example, did you think of the duralumin when you first came up with aluminum among the other metals, or was that something you came up with in your brainstorming for The Well of Ascension? Do you already have a fully fleshed-out idea of all 10 orders of the Knights Radiant, or are you still coming up with them and their Ideals?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's actually a mix of both. I generally flesh everything out at the beginning—then, as I write (particularly the first book) knock huge holes in the worldbuilding and replace them with new and better things.

    I work everything out, then leave notes to myself as to what is cannon so I can throw out bad ideas and replace them with better ideas as I write.

    So, all ten orders are finished and worldbuilt. (I feel pretty good about them.) However, I could decide to move some things around as I write.

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  • 508

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    phrakture ()

    You seem to be adept at creating interesting magic systems for your worlds—what is your creative process for creating something of this sort? Any hints as to what the next one might involve?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have tried to boil it down to three 'rules' or 'laws' I follow when writing magic systems.

    1) The author's ability to resolve conflicts in a satisfying way with magic is directly proportional to how the reader understands said magic. 2) Weaknesses are more interesting than powers. 3) If you change one thing, you change the world.

    Basically, the first one says "Don't pull things out of the air. If you want the magic to work, make it REAL and reliable. If you would rather have an air of mystery, which is fine, don't explain the magic—but don't make it do heavy lifting in the plot, either."

    The second one says that what the magic CAN'T do is where your story and your character conflict comes from. Allomancy is interesting in part because it relies on metals that can run out. Steelpushing is interesting because you can only Push directly away from yourself.

    This forces the characters to work harder, and makes the story more interesting. The most interesting things about Superman or Batman are their flaws—the things they can't do, the things that weaken them, their limitations.

    3) Magic in a world should be interconnected with the politics, economy, science, religion, and everything else. The author must think through the ramifications of changing small things.

    Next two magic systems you might see: 1) Disease magic. Bacteria have evolved to the point that they try to keep their hosts alive by granting them magical powers while you have the disease. So, you catch a cold, and can fly until you get over it.

    2) I've got a a very cool 'throwing spheres of light' magic that I'm working on...which, when you break it down, was inspired by seeing how accurate baseball pitchers were and thinking about how that could be weaponized in a fantasy world.

    3) That guy with his ice soap has me thinking about "freezing stuff in water" magic. Like, potions that do things only after they thaw...

    Tags

  • 509

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    douchebag karren ()

    Do you work on one story until it's done, or do you work on one, then move to another, then come back to the first?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually write new material for one book at a time, but will often jump off of that for a while and do edits on another, then come back. With A Memory of Light, for example, I'll probably finish it in November, write something very short to clear my mind, then come back and do edits while I start working on the second Stormlight book.

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  • 510

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    johnnyomega ()

    How does your faith affect what you include or don't include in your writings?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've kind of answered this other places. Here and here.

    It makes me interested in religion, shapes who I am and what i find interesting, and drives me to look at aspects of religion and atheism from the perspectives of different characters with different thoughts on the matters. I keep the graphic sex and swearing down because of who I am as a person, and what I like to read in my own books. I worry about the violence, but feel that showing ramifications is at least one way of dealing with it.

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  • 511

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    halfmast ()

    Have you had to eliminate any interests or hobbies in order to devote more time to reading and writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Most of the time, it comes down to giving up things like television and video games. I've allowed myself to keep Magic (even encouraged my interest) because it is something social, where the other two really aren't for me.

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  • 512

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    halfmast ()

    How do you keep from getting tired of the fantasy genre?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I made a big change in my 20s. I started allowing myself to stop reading a book if I don't like it. I couldn't do that before; it was too hard. I had to keep going, even if the book wasn't working for me. Making that swap—only reading things that make me learn, grow, and keep me interested—helped more than anything else.

    When I read an author, and blog or tweet about liking them, it's generally because I feel they're doing something in their writing better than I am, and they have taught me to be a better writer.

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  • 513

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    Khobra ()

    I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your creative process for designing magic systems. Do you have an idea for a story and then make the magic based around that? Do you have an idea for a system and then try and build stories that work around the system? How does designing the story world play into the process? When you're designing the system itself do you start off by figuring out what you want the end result to be and then work towards it, or is it the other way around?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've done it all of these ways.

    Most commonly, I develop the magic, plot, characters, and some setting ideas separately. I combine them in my head, looking for good synergy. (Allomancy and Feruchemy were designed separately, then put into the same book.) Sometimes, I design to fit a story. (Hemalurgy was designed to fit a hole in the three-fold magic system I wanted to tell.) Other times, the magic comes first, then I build everything out of that. (This happened for my YA book Scribbler—also known as The Rithmatist—which isn't out yet.)

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  • 514

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    nomoreink ()

    What software or tool do you use to write and organize your books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Microsoft Word (with the Document Map on) and wikidpad.

    Tags

  • 515

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2011

    Question

    I don’t know if this question will come out right...is there a difference between being an author that works for Tor and an author that Tor works for?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Most authors, you'll find, are actually independent businesspeople who license their books to a publisher for various languages, and so I don't actually work for Tor. Now, Tor and I get along really well, and they've done very well by me, but I've also done very well by them, and so we have a very good working relationship. But actually I, as a businessperson, license them the books, and that means that I control all the characters, they can't insert or change anything without my approval—they can't even change commas without my approval—and that's the way it goes for most people. Now, everything outside the cover I have is theirs, their packaging, so that's why authors don't get a lot of say in cover and things, because the marketing copy on the cover, the picture and stuff, that's the publisher's. They license the works. So, there is a difference. There are some authors who will do a work-for-hire sort of thing, like I did with the Wheel of Time. I work for Harriet on the Wheel of Time. I am employed by her. It's a very good contract—I mean, she was very awesome to me—but at the end of the day, I am an employee working for her, a contractor working for her, and in that case, it's a different sort of business relationship.

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  • 516

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2011

    Question

    I really appreciate all the work you've done on the Wheel of Time, and everything else. Now that you're starting your own really epic fantasy series, you know, I've noticed an issue that Robert Jordan had and that George R.R. Martin has is that the series kind of bloats on them over time. So, how would you approach that with your series, and how are you dealing with the possibility of that happening?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a really good question, actually. A lot of the great series that we love did get a little bit...they feel like they may have gotten away from their authors a little bit, and I have a big advantage that Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin didn't have, which is that I got to read Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin. [laughter] And I say that—we laugh at it—but if you really think about it, a lot of these big epic fantasy series, these people are treading new ground, and they didn't have—you know, the best they have is Tolkien, three books. What do you do with that? I mean, maybe you have Zelazny with Amber, and a lot of books, but they're really thin, and I mean nobody had really done what Robert Jordan did, before he did it. What I'm trying to do, is I kind of have a mantra for myself on these books, is that they must be...each one must be individual. Meaning, it's gotta have its own conflicts, its own feel, it's gotta have its own art. I can't let them just blend together, and I think that will help a lot. And so, for doing that, that's why I assign each book in the series a character, and I do the flashbacks in that book for that character in that book, and tell what I want to be a complete arc for that character in that book. Doesn't mean the other characters won't be in the books; Kaladin will be in all the books; Dalinar will be in all the books—assuming they survive. [laughter] But each book will have a character as being kind of the soul of that book, which I think will make them all feel self-contained, and be their own thing. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm trying to avoid secondary character bloat. One of the reasons secondary characters show up is you want to show off this little piece of the world, and so you write this thing about this character, and then you're like, "Wow, that's an awesome character; I wanna write more!" And then...BOOM. And so, in The Way of Kings, I actually gave myself these Interludes, which are in-between parts of the book; I let myself do basically two short stories set in the world, or maybe three, and the purpose of that is to show the scope of the world, but to use characters that you don't really need to come back to, for most of them. And so it kind of gets it out of my system, but I have kind of written down as my mantra: "These characters cannot become main viewpoint characters." That's the purpose of doing them in that, and so by doing that and giving myself a sort of pressure valve in one way, and a kind of constraint in the other, that each book must be about a specific character, I'm hoping it will keep this series more focused.

    Footnote

    Brandon had, at this point, only read Game of Thrones by GRRM, but the phenomenon of bloat in GRRM's series is something that is talked about a lot in the internet circles Brandon has frequented, so he is familiar with it, and the comparison to WoT.

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  • 517

    Interview: Dec 5th, 2011

    Helen Lowe

    Brandon, to leap right in, you've written a considerable body of Fantasy, with standalones such as Elantris and Warbreaker, the Mistborn trilogy, The Way of Kings (Book One of The Stormlight Archive) and most recently The Alloy of Law—as well as being asked to complete Robert Jordan's long-running Wheel of Time series. Although almost all these works are in the epic/high quadrant of the fantasy compass, there is also considerable diversity in the stories—and all are well regarded. So what, for you, is the "core" to writing compelling fantasy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is a really hard question to answer. Do you emphasize with the fantasy, or not? A really great story is going to be about awesome characters that you fall in love with. Beyond that, it's going to need a really great plot. You can't separate these things from writing a great fantasy, because while I think the worldbuilding needs to be really cool, if you have terrible characters and plot, it doesn't matter how good your worldbuilding is—you're not going to have a good story.

    That said, the core of writing great fantasy as opposed to other fiction, assuming that you're already doing the plot and the character right, is to get down to that idea of the sense of wonder. What is wonderful about this place that would make people want to live there, or be fascinated by it? What's going to draw the imagination?

    Fantasy is writing books that could not take place in our universe. For me, that's the dividing line. In science fiction there's the speculation: "This could take place here," or "This may be extrapolating science beyond what we know, but it could work." In fantasy we say, "No, this couldn't work in our ruleset, our laws of the universe." Really focusing on it is what makes the genre tick. So you have to do that well.

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  • 518

    Interview: Dec 5th, 2011

    Helen Lowe

    What drew you to write Fantasy as opposed to any other style of fiction? What about the genre "rocks your world?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    I became a fantasy writer because of the great fantasy books I read. Other books didn't do it for me. As a young reader (I didn't really like to read), the first powerful fantasy book I read—Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly—drew me in, captivated me, and took me to this place that could not be but that I wished could be. Nothing else excited me on that level, so that's why I write fantasy.

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  • 519

    Interview: Dec 5th, 2011

    Helen Lowe

    Dragonsbane is a longstanding favourite of mine as well. And I recall first reading The Eye of the World, the opening novel in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, at about the same time. Being asked to complete such a famous series following Robert Jordan's death was a great honour and compliment to your own writing. But did it also feel like a tremendous responsibility?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's been a very humbling experience and a great honor. But it's certainly a tremendous responsibility. When I was considering taking on the project, I thought, "Wow, if I screw this up, I'm in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore." I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned, or posted somewhere, regarding this: "This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him."

    In the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, "Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?" And the answer was that I couldn't let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.

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  • 520

    Interview: Dec 5th, 2011

    Helen Lowe

    Elantris and Warbreaker are both standalone novels, but the greater body of your work comprises series. Should this be interpreted as a preference for the series form or do you enjoy both equally?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You can indeed interpret that as a bit of a preference. I grew up reading the big classic fantasy series like the Wheel of Time, and I don't think you can do that as a writer like myself without developing a deep fondness and a desire to write your own. So I would say a slight preference, but some of my favorite books are standalones, like Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. I do think that the form of the standalone epic fantasy is a really cool one, and one that I want to experiment with more, and one that I like a lot. So while there's a slight preference, I wouldn't say that it's a deep overriding preference. I do what feels right for me for any given story.

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  • 521

    Interview: Dec 5th, 2011

    Helen Lowe

    Well, in terms of doing what feels right, your creative output since Elantris was published in 2005 has been very high, including not only seven novels in your own right but also completing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, with a two further books published in that series. So I have to ask: how do you do it? (And can I bottle the formula?!)

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the things that you have to remember is that I wrote Elantris back in 2000, so I have a much bigger head start than it looks like. I sold Elantris in 2003, and had all of 2003 up through a big part of 2006 to write the Mistborn trilogy before the first book of that came out. So what you're seeing is my big head start that I had by having that book already done, then launching right into the trilogy.

    I don't think I write faster than any other fantasy writers, but I do write a lot. I love to do it; I spend a lot of time doing it, and it's one of my favorite things to do, to tell these stories. So if you want to bottle it, all you really do is spend ten hours a day writing, and boom, you've got it.

    But it does look more impressive than it really is, because I have those extra years. A lot of the years where I had two books come out, I had written one much earlier and the other I wrote the year before. My popularity has made my publishers start increasing the publication schedule of some of my books, so you get overlap—a book I wrote long before and then a book I've recently turned in come out at the same time, because when I turn in the new book they want to publish it as soon as I can. So that's why this year, for instance, we only have one book—The Alloy of Law—and it's a very short book. That's because the publication schedule finally caught up to me.

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  • 522

    Interview: Jun, 2011

    Marie Curie

    And....here's the second snippet, posted a few days ago (12 December 2011). I hope that Brandon eventually agreed to have some of Harriet's bean soup...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I got to read the ending–what?–four years ago now. I don't know if you've heard that story, but I went to visit Charleston for the first time in December of 2007, so almost exactly four years ago now. I met Harriet at the airport, she picked me up. And it had been a long flight, I'd been without food for a while. And she drove me back to her house, this wonderful home in Charleston–it was built in the 1700s–just gorgeous town home. And she said, "Do you want dinner?" as we pulled up. And she said, "I have some bean soup that I made, it's quite good." I said, "Actually, I want the ending." And she laughed and she went and fetched that for me, and I got to read. Sit down and find out who killed Asmodean, find out the fates of all the characters. And read all of this, in mostly note form. So I did get that. But I don't get to read the ending.

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  • 523

    Interview: Jun, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    It feels very comforting at least that fans have liked these last ones as much as they had, and that the reception has been good. I can only hope that you all will enjoy the ending as much as you've enjoyed the last books. I will tell you this: I found the ending incredibly satisfying. When I got there, and I sat and I read that alone quietly, and actually in Robert Jordan's chair, in his room, just a few feet from the computer he'd written a lot of the books on. I felt immensely and deeply satisfied with this conclusion that he wrote himself. It feels right to me. And so, I hope that you will have a similar experience.

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  • 524

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    I was reading on Facebook that you had Bela, that you were writing her recently. Was that your idea or was it Robert Jordan's?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually save questions like this. Wait until the book is out, wait till it's been out for a little while, and then I can talk specifically about what was me and what was Jim. I don't want to predispose people so that they're thinking "Is this Jim's scene? Is this Brandon's scene? Well he said something about this, and whatnot." So the only thing I'm telling people, regarding his writing, is that I do have a thing from the prologue, each of the three have one of the scenes that he wrote for the prologue put in it, and of course the ending. And other than this, I'm not saying a ton about what is his and what is mine. Just wait until people have read the book, and then I'll start answering a few more of those questions.

    Like I've down with Towers of Midnight and The Gathering Storm. I've been a little more free in recent times about what was me and what was him, and I'm still not very specific for you, I don't want that focus, but I will start answering more of those questions.

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  • 525

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    My story's a little bit different than a lot of people. I wasn't a reader when I was very young. In eighth grade, I had a teacher, Miss Reeder coincidentally, and she assigned me to do a book report. And I thought I was very smart because I went and I grabbed this book that I'd read when I was in second grade, one of the Three Investigators novels. They're like the Hardy Boys, but they're better. And I got that and I took it to her, and I said, "I'm going to read this book." And she said, "No you're not. You're in eighth grade, you've got to read a book for your age." And I said, "Well the books for my age are all boring." And she said, "Well you've been trying the wrong books."

    She took me to the back of the room. . . you know, all these teachers have these old carts full of ratty paperbacks kids have spilled meatballs on and stuff and they're loaning out and sometimes getting back. And in this cart I dug out a copy of Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane. It does what fantasy can really really do, which is get you into the head of a character who's very different from yourself. So I read this book, it was wonderful–adventure, action, wonderful characters. And I got done with this book, and I felt like I understood my mother better. That's kind of weird, I mean, a fantasy novel about a dragonslayer. And yet, my mother who had been top of her class in accounting, graduated number one, had been offered a very prestigious scholarship and had chosen to have me instead. And she had always done some accounting and some raising of her children. And I got done with this book and I kind of thought, 'this character's like my mother'. And that was really strange to me: that I could read a novel that was so fun and adventurous, and yet feel like I understood the world better.

    And that was the beginning of the end for me. Within one year's time from when I had read Dragonsbane then, I decided I wanted to be a writer, I started my first book, and I started writing it.

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  • 526

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    During the era when I was trying to find my voice and find out what I was going to do as a writer, I felt that Robert Jordan had really captured the story of the hero's journey, the monomyth type epic fantasy, and done it about as well as it could be done. And so I started to look for things that I could add. This was very good for me to be doing, to be spending this time thinking about, not just retreading what had gone before, but really doing what some of the greats in the past had done.

    One of the reasons I love the Wheel of Time is because I felt that when it came out, it best blended what was familiar about fantasy with a lot of new concepts. A lot of the books that were coming out were using the old familiar tropes: elves, even if they called them a different name, and dwarves, and even dragons, and these sorts of things. And then you came along to the Wheel of Time, which didn't use any of those things, or if it did, it twisted them completely on their head. No one knew what a dragon was, and a dragon was a person. And you know, the magic system having a logical approach to it rather than just being something that happened. And he really took the genre in a different direction. And I said, I have to do something like this. Not that I ever wanted to, or intend to, or think that I could be revolutionary in the genre in the way he was, but I wanted to add something. I wanted to take a step forward rather than taking the same steps that people had taken.

    And so I began to ask myself what hadn't been done. And so you end up with me, Brandon, who...sometimes I look at myself as a postmodern fantasy writer. If you read the Mistborn trilogy, it's very much a postmodern fantasy epic. It's the fantasy epic for someone who's read all these great fantasy epics. And the story's kind of aware of all of those. It's the story of what happens if the dark lord wins? What happens if the prophecies are lies? What happens if all the things we assume about the standard fantasy epic all go horribly wrong?

    I don't want to simply be someone. . . to be postmodern, you have to be a little bit deconstructionalist, which means you're relying on the very things that you're tearing apart. I think there's a level beyond that, which is actually adding something new, not just giving commentary on what's come before. But I do love the whole postmodern aspect. I love delving into that. It's something that I think can be unique to my generation because we've grown up reading all these epics, where the generation before us didn't.

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  • 527

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Like many of you, I was shocked when he passed away. I'd been following the blog, and he'd been very optimistic on his blog. He had this force of will, force of optimism. You know, even though he had a terrible disease, I was sure he would make it. And then he was gone. And it was a very strange moment for me to realize that because when he died, it was like my high school friends had all died at once. And I wondered and felt that that might be the end of it all. Um, yeah. . . little did I know.

    About three weeks later, I got up in the morning at the bright hour of noon. I picked up my cell phone to check my voice mail, which is usually the first thing I do in the mornings. And I was just groggily. . . I turned it on and there's a voice mail from a number I don't recognize, and the voice comes on and says, and this is an exact quote:

    "Hello, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet McDougal Rigney. I'm Robert Jordan's widow. I would like you to call me back. There's something I want to talk to you about."

    I just about fell out of the couch, which is kind of hard to do, because. . . you know. . . yeah. I mean, I listened to that voice message three times in a row, and then nervously dialed the number back, and it rang, and it rang, and she didn't answer. So I nervously called my editor, and he didn't answer. And I nervously called my agent, who always answers, and he didn't answer. I eventually got smart and called up Tor, and got a hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who said, with kind of a smug tone, "Oh, that. Yeah, it's probably what you think it is. I'll have her call you back." And I'm sitting here thinking, "What do I think it is, Patrick? Tell me something!" And he wouldn't. And so, eventually Harriet called me and said, "Well, I'm putting together a short list of people. And I was wondering if you would be interested in completing the Wheel of Time."

    That night after I'd said yes, I laid in bed that night unable to sleep because I was terrified by what I had just done in saying yes to this. Particularly because that night I came to realize something. Something very, very frightening. And what I realized was that I could not write as good a book as Robert Jordan would have written for the ending. I realized that nobody could. I couldn't replace him, and no one could. We should have had him to finish this series. And by saying yes, I had agreed to in small part to something at which I would fail, at least in part, because no one can replace Robert Jordan. As a fan and as a professional writer, I realized that the next best thing for me in having Robert Jordan complete the book was to do it myself because then I could know that it would not get screwed up. I realized that if I said no, and then someone else did it and did a poor job, it would be partially my fault. And that in taking up this project, I could bring them back. Robert Jordan had passed away, but that didn't mean that Rand and Egwene and Mat and Perrin and Avi and Cadsuane and everybody had to be gone. I could at least bring them back for everyone else. And I realized with a really powerful emotion that I needed to do this book. I had to do this book, because of all the people in the world, I would screw it up the least.

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  • 528

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    A really great book of the length we're writing, of epic fantasy, isn't necessarily going to be bam, bam, bam, bam. What it's going to be is that it's going to go like this. . . (Brandon waves hands up and down). . . and give us the highs and lows and lulls and speedy fast past, and that's what really will pull you through.

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  • 529

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    I plot backward. I start with a goal, and then I build an outline that gets me to that goal. And then I write forward. With the Wheel of Time books, I'm in a unique position because often I have that goal already stated in the notes, or it's a scene that Robert Jordan has written that I need to get to. The outline for the first two was very detailed, because Robert Jordan had all of these materials which I needed to weave into an outline. We say there was an outline. Really there was a list of scenes in no particular order, and I had to turn them into an outline. And I wanted to go over that with Maria and Harriet and make sure I wasn't screwing anything up.

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  • 530

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    I go into books trying to present characters who are real. That said, some things in the real world that have influenced me are these questions of, what are you willing to sacrifice in the way of freedom in order to have security? I think that's a big theme recently in the Wheel of Time that Robert Jordan was dealing with, and that The Gathering Storm deals with a lot.

    I was most fascinated with Egwene's progress as a leader through the entire series. And the things I was allowed to do because of what Jordan had done in Knife of Dreams and the set up in previous books, and then what was in the notes, was really exciting to me because she was able to come to encapsulate what a leader really is, I think. There are some great scenes in Gathering Storm that I got to be part of, where, you know, we've had Aes Sedai acting kind of as bullies, some of them. And we've had various people through various factions acting as bullies. And there has been this sense in the Wheel of Time that people believe that might makes right. And yet it doesn't, and the books imply that it doesn't. And Egwene is the first chance we've really got to see of someone with no might making an even better right.

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  • 531

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Writing Rand and Mat and Perrin and Egwene in particular was very natural to me. Aviendha was hard. I tried her early on in the process, which might have been a mistake because she thinks so differently. But I actually had to throw away two chapters of Aviendha that no one will ever see because she thinks like a Two Rivers folk, which is not the way Aviendha should think. I was disappointed in them, the first one I wrote. And anyway, I kept working on it till I got it right.

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  • 532

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Interviewer

    How does it feel when you have to write a scene for a character that you've really come to love where bad things happen to them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, it can be excruciating. There are some excruciating Rand scenes in this book. Though, you know, the harder scenes to write are the ones where characters, not necessarily terrible things are happening to, but where they're depressed or muddled, or you know. In a lot of ways, the Rand scenes were painful to write, Gawyn's scenes were harder to write, because Gawyn is lost. And he doesn't know. . . he's struggling through things, and at least Rand is pointed in a direction. Maybe it's the wrong direction, but he's pointed in a direction and he's doing things. Gawyn doesn't know what he's doing, and that can be really tough.

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  • 533

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Interviewer at Vroman's

    Who's your favorite character?

    Fan

    Perrin. He's very very very self sacrificing to a fault. And I love the crap out of him for that one. So I'd have to say Perrin, for sure.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin is, of all the main characters, the furthest back in his arc, if that makes sense. Like, through the most recent books, he was growing and he was getting there, he was almost there. And then, he let himself be diverted from achieving these things that he needed to achieve. And I won't say whether he achieves them or not. Sometimes the arc is. . . at the end of the arc, they make the wrong decisions.

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  • 534

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really felt I needed to knock this book out of the park. I couldn't just get a base run, I needed to nail it. And to do that, I put some of the most dynamic powerful scenes that I had access to together into the book. The next book is going to be very different in feel and tone because while this book was very focused, the next book we are going to be able to get back to a lot of the characters we haven't heard from. And I won't mention specifically who's going to be in the book, but some that could be. I mean, we haven't heard from Loial in a while, we haven't heard from Padan Fain, we haven't heard from Lan, we haven't heard from the Black Tower. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. . . I mean, Pevara, and Logain. . . so much going on that I intentionally didn't do because I wanted this book to be very focused. Next book, we're going to get to all that.

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  • 535

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Interviewer

    What was your first reaction when you actually saw the hardcover book with your name and Robert Jordan's together, and it was a reality?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, it was a reverent moment. I just sat there and kind of stared at it for a while. It was awesome, it really was. I mean, what else can you say? It was awesome. A lot of people have asked about the signature of Robert Jordan on the title page. That was there because I actually asked Harriet if they would place it, because I knew I would feel weird signing the book without Robert Jordan's signature there. And so, if people get confused about that, I apologize. I didn't realize how realistic they would make it, but I wanted his signature there so it wasn't about me, so it could be about both of us. And him first, and then a little bit of Brandon Sanderson.

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  • 536

    Interview: Nov, 2009

    Interviewer

    Do you have any advice for any young writers out there who are trying to follow in your footsteps?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. The reason I wrote so many books before I got published was not because I was a terrible writer, though at the beginning I was. It was because I loved writing, and I didn't want to stop writing to go do all this marketing stuff. And I think that actually helped me, because I got to spend a lot of time playing with my style and deciding what my impact on the genre would be. And it also taught me that even if I never got published, I would keep doing this for the rest of my life. I'd be writing a book every year. No matter what job I ended up in, that was just what I was going to do.

    And so, if you don't love writing to that extent, it's going to be much harder for you to break in. And so I say, build good habits, write what you love. And make sure that you enjoy the process. Enjoy the busy work parts of it. I went to school freshman year as a chemist. I only changed to English when my sophomore year began. And one of the reasons I made the change is that the busy work part of chemistry, I didn't enjoy. While the busy work part of writing, I loved. So, love it. And then keep at it. Don't give up, just keep going.

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  • 537

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (15 December 2011)

    Scene I'm working on needs to be trashed and rewritten from a different viewpoint. Ah, well.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Okay, the scene is working much better now. Basically, a half-day lost, but it is worth backing up if something isn't working.

    JOE LAVOIE

    When you say a scene isn't "working" what does that mean? Bad mojo, doesn't feel right, or its there a technical reason?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    All three, actually. Mostly, it just feels wrong.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    And it is fixed now. Hard to judge my wordcount today, since I spent time fixing, but I'm opening a pack of Magic cards as a reward.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Current length of A Memory of Light: 335,000 words, same size as Towers of Midnight. And I haven't finished yet, nor have I added in RJ's ending.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Even with edits, this will be the longest of the three WoT books I've done. Don't worry about it being split, though. That won't happen.

    DANIEL ANDERSON

    Is RJ's ending ready for primetime? Or do you have an outline of how it is supposed to go?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I should be able to put it in without changing anything other than a quick smoothing of the language.

    SISTER INFANT

    Will there be any indication in the book as to when RJ's ending starts? Like a footnote from you or Harriet or something?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    No, but I will tell you once the book is out, after you've read it.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    Hello! Just wondering, was the Borderland Tower sequence in Towers of Midnight (with Malenarin Rai) originally part of RJ's prologue?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    He wrote most of that scene himself, actually.

    JOHN ANDERSON

    Cool! Are you allowed to say whether it was part of his prologue (which I gather you split and distributed over The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight)?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes, it was.

    JOE KOGELMANN

    What was the logest of all the WoT books? How many words?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Longest ones have been around 390k words. Books Four and Six. I forget which was the longer.

    STEPHEN HART

    Any chance of reading these alternate scenes once A Memory of Light is released; on your website maybe? Kinda like DVD deleted scenes...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Maybe.

    GREG LINDSEY

    Why do you suppose Wikipedia is inaccurate, saying Towers of Midnight [is] 325,998? Should it be edited? Are those word counts reliable?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Likely, theirs is without the glossary, which I just noticed mine has in it.

    BRYAN

    but but but...Wikipedia says Towers of Midnight is 325,998 words! Who to trust, Wikipedia or the author!? *brain explodes*

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Just noticed my edocument has the glossary attached. Maybe that's the reason for the difference. Mine is pre-copyedit too.

    DASUGO

    You usually go through a vicious edit phase right?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes. I tend to cut 10%, but Harriet's suggestions have usually added about that much, and we've balanced at the end.

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  • 538

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Jeanne (Goodreads)

    Guess I will get things started. Thanks for visiting Brandon! You write such wonderful, believable female heroines, who are your role models and influences?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    Apologies for my late arrival, folks. I'll try to answer a couple questions per day, and I'll answer everything that gets asked up through the end of the month, though it may take me a while!

    Jeanne@2, Sandi@9, Justin@19: Your questions were similar, so I'll combine the answers.

    Writing believable female heroines — I should probably back up and point out that I wasn't always good at this. In fact, in the first few books I wrote before Elantris I was terrible at it. That disconcerted me because it was something I wanted to make a strength in my writing. This is partially due to the fact that so many of my favorite fantasy novels growing up, when I first discovered fantasy, were from female writers with really strong female protagonists. So there was a piece of my mind that said having strong female protagonists is a big part of fantasy. I don't know how common that viewpoint is, but because those were the people whose books I read—writers like Anne McCaffrey, Melanie Rawn, and Barbara Hambly—I wanted to be able to do that in my own fiction. Even beyond that you want every character you write to be believable, and it's been a habitual problem of men writing women and women writing men that we just can't quite get it right, so I knew it was going to be something I'd have to work hard at.

    I took inspiration from women I know, starting with my mother, who graduated top of her class in accounting in an era where she was the only woman in her accounting program. She has always been a strong influence on me. I also have two younger sisters who were a lot of help, but there were several friends in particular who gave me direct assistance. Annie Gorringe (who was a good friend when I was an undergraduate — and still is) and Janci Patterson were people I sat down to interview and talk to in my quest to be able to write female characters who didn't suck. I would say specifically that Sarene from Elantris has a lot of Annie in her, and Vin from Mistborn has a lot of Janci in her. In Warbreaker, Siri and Vivenna don't really have specific influences but are the result of so much time working at writing female characters that it's something I'm now comfortable with. (Their personalities arose out of what I wanted to do with their story, which was my take on the classic tale of sisters whose roles get reversed.) It's very gratifying to hear that readers like my female characters and that the time I spent learning to write them has paid off.

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  • 539

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Laurel (Goodreads)

    Hello Mr. Sanderson, thank you so much for visiting our group!

    You seem to purposefully invent a system of magic for each book/series you create. I think that Warbreaker was one of the most unique I've ever read. Do you have a reason or story behind this habit?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    Yes—both. Back when I was trying to break in, I spent many years writing books and not getting published. I was under the impression (it's just one of my beliefs) that it would be easier for me to break in doing a lot of different standalone novels, or first books in a series, as opposed to writing all in one series and putting all my eggs in one basket. For that reason, I got a lot of practice finishing one book and starting a new one that was in a new setting in a new world.

    For me, a new setting/world means a new magic system. Magic is part of what draws me to fantasy, being able to play with the ideas behind it. It's what engages me; it's what excites me. And so part of the real fun of starting a news series is developing a new magic system. In a way that's kind of like the little twinkie or whatever that I'd hang in front of myself in order to get me excited about a new series. I'd be just coming down off a writing high at the end of a book, and I'd still be excited about the old series, its characters and world. Creating a new world is a lot of work, but there's an excitement to it as well. I'd focus on that and say, "Look, I get to create a new magic system, let's see what I can play around with for this book." So because I got used to doing that, that became my modus operandi, my method of working. That still excites me. Oftentimes it's the opportunity to create a new magic system that gets me excited about writing a new book.

    Laurel, thank YOU for reading my books and giving me a reason to stop by!

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  • 540

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Ashley

    What made you decide to release Warbreaker on your website? Was Tor at all irked by this plan? What about your agent or those who purchased international rights?

    I must say that I've purchased the Mistborn trilogy and Elantris, but that I read Warbreaker on your website.

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    That's all right. I knew that people would do that. I would hope that those who really enjoyed the book will pick up copies, but you know, I don't mind if they just read it and don't pick up a copy—I mean, it's there for free!

    I like the idea of a free sample, and for a writer I feel that a free sample needs to be an entire novel so that you can get a real feel for how that author writes and tells a story. When I listen to music, I would like to be able to listen to an entire album and say, "Okay, is this an artist that I like?" Before I pay money for it. I want people to be able to do that with my writing. And what that means is if Warbreaker doesn't sell any copies, but it has tens of thousands of people read it who are then willing to buy and read my next books because they know they like my writing, then Warbreaker is incredibly successful.

    Was Tor irked? I wouldn't say that; I mean, I got approval from them first. I don't think it's what they would prefer for me to do, but they were certainly willing to let me do it. My agent didn't like the concept at all, and I listened to his counsel, but I'm very interested in the way the internet is acting as a medium for entertainment distribution, and I wanted to experiment with that.

    I think it's been a successful experiment. I think that a lot of people who were interested in me because of The Gathering Storm and the Wheel of Time announcement were able to try out my books and read one of them for free and therefore somewhat know who I am as a writer. For good or for ill. If they don't end up liking my writing, I'd rather they not have paid for it—I'd rather they not have to pay for something they don't enjoy. I think I'll end up better off—at the very least they'll think, "Well, I didn't really like his book, but he gave it to me for free," and still have a good impression of me. If they do end up liking my book, I would hope that they go and read other copies of my books. And that would increase demand on the libraries or the bookstores. Either way I think I come out ahead.

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  • 541

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Ashley

    Do you spend the most time on your magic systems, or do you find yourself spending equal amounts of time on other aspects of worldbuilding/plot such as religion/culture/language/geography/etc?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    It really depends on the novel. With some I spend a lot of time on areas that in others I don't spend much time on at all. With every book I spend a serious amount of time on the magic system. That's consistent—it's just something I like to do.

    For a given book or series I may spend more time on a given aspect. I'd say the other big aspect that takes a lot of time is characterizing the characters the right way. That takes a lot of work, but I tend to do that during my actual writing period, whereas I spend the planning period focusing on worldbuilding and plot. It's when I actually sit down to write a chapter that I explore who a character is, and so it's really hard to pin down timewise which one I spend more time on. And that varies based on the book.

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  • 542

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Logan

    I really enjoyed Warbreaker, especially the history of the Scholars and their relationships. Have you considered writing a prequel novel that would take place when Vasher, et al were much younger?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    People ask me for prequels all the time. They've asked for Mistborn prequels, Elantris prequels, and now Warbreaker prequels. My general answer to this is probably not—just because I as a reader don't like prequels. I'm one of those readers that if the ending is spoiled for me, in many ways that can ruin the book. Because of that it's hard for me to decide to write a prequel.

    When I plan my books I design them to have a beginning, a middle, an end, and a past and a future. I know what happened in the past. I know what will happen in the future. I could always write that, and I won't rule it out 100% completely. But telling the story of the Five Scholars is not something I sat down to do with Warbreaker. I had that all worked out; I knew what they did. The exciting story I wanted to tell is the one that happened in the book. There is a good chance of a sequel, but a prequel is unlikely. If I did do a prequel it would probably be in short story form posted for free on my website.

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  • 543

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Sandi

    A common thread in both Warbreaker and the Mistborn Trilogy is religion. I really liked how you handled religion in both these books. Mistborn deals with religious searching and Warbreaker is more about religious tolerance. I've heard that you are a Mormon. How much does your faith influence your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    This is a surprisingly common question for people to ask me, and I'm always happy to answer it because my religion makes up a big part of who I am. Because I am religious myself, I am fascinated by religion. And so I think that the misuse of religion is a great evil, and the use of religion for good reasons is a great good. In fact, being a religious person, I think that the misuse of religion becomes a much more frightening thing than it might otherwise be, which is why you sometimes see religions as villains in my books. My religion shapes who I am, and it makes me interested in certain things; it makes me fascinated by certain things; it shapes my sense of right and wrong.

    But I don't actually sit down and write books wanting to advocate any particular concept. I feel that when I write books I need to advocate whatever the character believes at the time. Now, what I feel is heroic may shape the characters I create as protagonists, but I don't think that the purpose of the fiction that I write is to preach directly to the reader. I think that the purpose of the fiction I write is to explore different concepts and different types of characters and see how they react to the world around them. And that's a very different thing than sitting down and saying I'm going to preach to people. So I don't think my religion causes me to do that, but I do think it causes me to be interested in these kinds of concepts.

    I'm not even sure how to define myself. In some circles I come across as very conservative; in other circles I come across as very liberal. One of my core beliefs religiously is that I honestly don't mind you believing whatever you want to believe. What I mind is how you treat people who don't believe as you believe. That's what will get me going. So I don't judge someone based on their belief; I do judge them based on how they treat people who believe differently than they do. (That's a concept, by the way, that you may see pop up in a book later on, because I'm actually quoting one of my characters in this case.)

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  • 544

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Chris

    I've seen in reviews of Mistborn that a criticsm that pops up from time to time is that you tend to repeat the basic principles of the magic system. I've seen that some feel hit over the head with it. Personally, I liked that fact since the magic system was new and it helped me to remember and understand.

    I'm also seeing criticsm now with Warbreaker that the magic system isn't explained enough to thoroughly understand it. I've pointed out in discussions that not even Vasher understands it all.

    But here's my question: Did criticsm of the magic system's explanations in Mistborn have anything to do with Warbreaker having considerably less explanation in its magic system?"

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    Wow, that's a very detailed and interesting question. The answer is no.

    ...Okay, there's more to that answer. I accepted the criticisms of the Mistborn books with the knowledge that there was really no other way around it—the way I was writing those books and the complexity of the magic system made me feel like I needed to give those hints. It's not like I'm trying to write down to the lowest denominator, but at the same time I want to make sure that the complicated magic system is a force driving the book—and is something interesting rather than something confusing. Across a three-book epic like that I wanted to make sure that I was not leaving people behind. That's always a balance in a book series. And I don't know where to set that balance. In fact, I think the balance is going to be different for every person. Any given book that you read, some people are going to find it overexplained and some people are going to find it underexplained. I'm always trying to strike the right balance, particularly for the tone of a given book, to make that work for the novel.

    With Warbreaker, as you've pointed out, the magic system is much less understood by the poeple taking part in it. In the Mistborn books the magic system is very well understood. Even though there are little pieces of it that people don't know yet, those peices are easy to grasp and understand and use once people figure out what they are. In the Mistborn books the world is in a state where people have spend 1000 years using this magic system and perfecting it and understanding it. In Warbreaker, they haven't. They still don't know much about what's going on. It's very mysticized. People haven't sat down and spent enough time pursuing scholarly research about it, figuring it out. Beyond that there's no immortal Lord Ruler figure explaining it all to them—or if there is, it's Vasher and he's not telling anyone. And so the magic in Warbreaker has a very different feel to it. I wanted it to be a little confusing, because it is confusing for the main characters.

    I wouldn't say that the criticism of the Mistborn books is what drove me; the needs of the various plots is what drove me.

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  • 545

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Colin

    Can you explain the process that you go through to come up with your magic systems. So many fantasy books today have a "black box" type of magic system — in that you don't know how things happen but the caster just suddenly shoots a fireball out of his arse. Yours are in—depth and set out a very distinct give and take that the reader can understand.

    All of your systems are unique, so again, how do you get to the point where you have a complete magic system that you feel is ready to put into a book. Since this is a discussion about Warbreaker, how specifically did you come up with biochroma?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    I don't know if I can answer that question in the short space afforded by a discussion forum. But in general with my magic systems I'm looking for a variety of components. Most of them start with just an "Aha, there's something there!" moment in my head — either it's a plot hook or a conflict hook or a visual hook or something like that. I'm usually looking for something that does what I find exciting about magic, which is straddling the line between mysticism and science. And I'm looking for new ways to explore that. So when an interesting scientific concept occurs to me, and I can take it in the direction of "what if," that's something that I find fascinating.

    For Mistborn, for instance, telekinesis mixed with vector science was interesting to me. In Warbreaker it was the concept of sympathetic magic — the idea that you can create something that's like something else and it will have power over that. I wanted to try and take it in a direction I hadn't seen before and blend that with the concept of animation, bringing inanimate objects to life. Those were intersting concepts because at one point people believed in both of these things as real forms of magic. They believed they could make it work. The myth of the golem goes way back, and the idea of sympathetic magic was around not too long ago — in fact there are still plenty who believe in it, in various forms of superstition.

    So I look for a blend of concepts. I usually look for an interesting visual paradigm — something that will work in a way that helps the reader visualize the magic. I don't want it to all happen nebulously in the back of someone's head. (And speaking of rear—end fireballs, I do believe I read a webcomic where someone did that. It was Thog Infinitron...I guess it wasn't a fireball.) But anyway, I'm looking for something that you can see and follow the process of what the character's doing in a way that makes sense.

    I find that if there's one thing to take away from this, limitations on magic are more interesting than the powers themselves. And so I'm always looking for interesting limitations, because that forces me to be creative and forces my characters to be creative with what they have.

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  • 546

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Jhwolfstar

    I was wondering if you had any certain inspiration for Adonalsium, Hoid, and the Cosmere other than the concept of a Creation story itself. To clarify, I guess I'm asking if you had any other author you read as an aspiring author that did anything similar.

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    There are certainly authors who have done this sort of thing before. I generally tend to react against what inspires me instead of toward it. I've talked about this before — if I think someone does a very good job with something, I'll try to approach it from a different direction because I figure they've covered that concept. At other times, if an author does something that I thought could have been way cooler, then I will react I guess in that direction...I don't know if that's a reaction for or against.

    Asimov eventually had an overarching plot/universe. Stephen King did it. Other authors have done it, but they have not planned it from the beginning. As well as Asimov did with some of the concepts, I was always disappointed in his attempts to bring all of his stories together into one world because it just wasn't meant to be that way, and it felt like that. It felt clunky — I've always preferred the early robot stories and the early Foundation books to the later ones.

    So I felt that if I was going to have a supermyth, so to speak — an overarching paradigm for these books — it would have to have a number of things. One, it would have to be limited in scope, meaning I wasn't going to try to cram everything into it. That's why Alcatraz is not involved in any of this. Number two, I would have to plan it from the beginning, and number three, I would want it to be subtle. In other words, I don't want it to come to dominate any of the stories because I want the books, the series, to stand on their own. I want this to be something that you can find if you're searching, but that will never pull the characters of a given book away from the focus on what is important to them.

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  • 547

    Interview: Jan 18th, 2010

    Justin

    This question delves into religion greatly since I spent a good portion of my free time studying theology. Besides that, being a Christian, I sighted many interesting pieces in "Warbreaker," about the pitfalls of blind faith.

    I'm wondering if you are criticizing some religious sects who elevate themselves as God though use God or some other deity as a method of control. With more relevance to the Christian faith, are we seeing the consequences of humans who rely on human reasoning for their understanding of God, an often superficial explanation?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    Religious themes are interesting to me. I rarely go into a book saying, "I am going to expose this foible of religion" or "I am going to highlight this wonderful part of religion." I go into a book telling stories about characters, and the ways that they believe and the things that they believe have an effect on them. I try to present those as realistically as possible.

    I do think that there is a dangerous line between faith and what goes beyond that. You call it blind faith, yet at the same time there is something to be said for trusting those who have gone before and for not having to fall in a pit yourself because other people already fell in that pit. Where that line comes is a subject of great debate between religious people and non-religious people. I do think that questions should always be allowed and should always be asked. It is important to be asking questions.

    I don't really mind how people believe, or what faiths people have. I think it's a fascinating part of us, that we all have different faiths. Where we stray into danger is in how we treat people who don't agree with our faiths. That, I think, is a very dangerous and frightening thing — the ways that various people treat others who disagree with them. No matter what side you're on, whether they belittle them, discard them, or destroy them, these various things are one of the great pitfalls of any type of belief or faith. So I deal with that. But again it's not because I sit down and say, "I am now going to write a book about this, or tell a story about this." It's because that's what's important to the characters I'm writing.

    That said, when I was approaching Warbreaker, I did think distinctly to myself, "You know, religion's been the bad guy in the past two stories you've told. You probably ought to do something different." That's why the—Spoiler alert!—the religion in Warbreaker is vindicated in the end. I think there are some very good things about their religion, and though Siri is convinced that they are the bad guys, it turns out that indeed they are not. In fact, they are quite good...though there are certain things they're doing that I wouldn't necessarily agree with.

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  • 548

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (20 December 2011)

    Still hard at work on A Memory of Light. Today's scenes involve lots of loud noises.

    MARK HOWARD

    Just curious, have you read the end scenes that RJ wrote? Or are you waiting till you get there?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I read them as soon as I got them. I needed to use them as a target 'goal' for the book.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Now, on to a scene that finally, at long last, fulfills something Min saw long ago...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've finished all characters except Rand and Mat. (Note, I'm not writing in order; other characters have already-written scenes after this.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Now, I have to finish Mat's climax, write a few more Rand scenes, then add in RJ's ending material. Then we're done. Very close now.

    PATRICK

    What are your thoughts on ending the WoT series that Robert Jordan started so long ago? :)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Solemnity.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    After a few hours with the family, am back at work on A Memory of Light. It's slightly possible that I'll finish it sometime during the night.

    JENNIFER LIANG

    Would that make tonight A Memory of Light Eve?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Ha. Yes, I guess it would.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    You can follow along, if you wish. I have twenty small points on my outline left to hit. Maybe 10k words or so. I'll tweet as I pass them.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    First scene out of twenty finished. (Note that I'm using 'scene' here liberally to mean a point on the plot outline.)

    FRANK KWIATKOWSKI

    Can you tell us who has the last chapter?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Afraid that would spoil too much.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Note that as I approach an ending, my writing speed goes up, as I get momentum. 10k tonight is not impossible. (Though most days I do 2-3.)

    BRENT WEEKS

    Good luck!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Thanks!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Two out of twenty scenes done. Eighteen left, and A Memory of Light will be finished.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Three out of Twenty of the remaining scenes in A Memory of Light have been finished. (If you're just now seeing this, check back to my last few posts.)

    MARCUS ENGSTROM

    How long was it after the first two books were finished until they were published?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For the first one, about a year. For the next, about six months. This will probably be closer to the first than the second.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene four was slightly shorter than the others. 4 out of 20 finished so far tonight.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene #5 finished. 25% through the ending of A Memory of Light. Feeling good about these scenes. All is going very well.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Some of you have asked if I got the Magic cards you sent me off of my Amazon wishlist. I did! I'm waiting to open them until I'm done with A Memory of Light.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    A few of these scenes are pretty emotional ones for me. It's been a long, long road. I started reading the WoT twenty-one years ago.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Just finished scene #6 out of the 20 remaining in A Memory of Light.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene seven is done. Thirteen more to go. This one...this one was tough to write.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've apparently inspired a drinking game with this on both Twitter and Facebook. I'd join in, but: 1) Mormon. 2) BUSY WRITING END OF WOT. :)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene #8 is a tricky one. I know how it has to go, I just need to do it carefully. Getting close to having it right.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene #8 is finished. This is going well. I often build momentum like this during a powerful book ending, and this one is very powerful.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    We shall see. We've still got three or four hours before I'd normally turn in for bed. If I start to get sleepy, I'll call it for the night.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    No sense in pushing on if the quality starts to flag. Knowing myself, though, I'll be too excited to be tired for a while yet. Onward!

    LOCALPCGUY

    Glad to hear things are ending well! I can't wait to read it. Think I have time for a full re-read before A Memory of Light?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Depends on how quickly you read. :)

    DAVID MACKAY

    Cannot wait, but I agree. Is it really going to take a year to edit and publish?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've done a dozen drafts each of the previous two books. That kind of thing takes a little bit of time...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I just did something to Mat that I've been gleefully waiting to do for three years.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Don't stress the thing I did to Mat too much. It's a little (and fun) thing I've wanted to see him do for a long time.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I have finished scene #9 out of 20 I need to write before A Memory of Light is done.

    AVI DOBKIN

    Best of luck to @BrandSanderson as I turn in for the night. I'm giddy for A Memory of Light.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Hopefully, you will wake to find the book finished.

    CHRISTINA BOULARD

    It's almost 3:30am here and I SHOULD be in bed, but I feel like I need 2 stay up and cheer you on and also to witness THE END!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Ha. Well, there are still hours left to go, I suspect. I started at...what, 9:00 here? I'm to 1/2 and it's almost 2:00?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For those asking, it's almost 2:00 am here. The night is still young.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Just finished Scene #10. Halfway there!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I don't expect it to go longer than those. After editing, I'm pretty sure we'll settle at 350-360k words. (About 10% longer than Towers of Midnight.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Brace yourselves. I just finished the last Mat Cauthon scene that, in all likelihood, will ever be written.

    FRANK KWIATKOWSKI

    General writing question: after The editor edits, is it typical for an author to add/rewrite, or only the editor?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Only the author rewrites or adds. Never the editor. (in most cases.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The fourteenth scene was Mat's, and now I've finished the fifteenth scene. Five more to go, and A Memory of Light is done.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Just finished scene #16. Four more to go. Guess I'm not stopping tonight, eh?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene #17 is finished. I was a tad on the longer side for the ones I'm doing here, as are the last three. 5:00 am here.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I keep flashing back to times I've read the WoT books through my life. Looking back, you could call Rand/Mat/Perrin my oldest friends.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene #18 is done. Two more to go.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Scene #19 is done. Deep breath. I'm beginning the last scene I will write in the Wheel of Time, then will add RJ's ending.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I've been listening to Pandora as I do this, but am wondering if I should pick a specific song to listen to as I finish. Suggestions?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    My choice for a song to play as I write the last few paragraphs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-0G_FI61a8

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Ladies and gentlemen, A Memory of Light—the final book in The Wheel of Time—has been finished.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Now I'll open a metric gigaton of Magic cards that have been sent to me by fans, sleep for a day, and rest until next week.Then: revisions!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    As for when the book will come out, Tor should do an announcement soon. Revisions will take a good six months. So fall, I expect.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Another common question: How many revisions will I do? The last two took about a dozen. (On non-WoT books, I do about seven or eight.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Also, it's going to be tough to give direct replies to questions right now, what with like 1000 people tweeting/facebooking at me. :)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    But lots of people are asking about outriggers/prequels. The answer is still the same. We'd rather not risk exploiting RJ's legacy.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    It is a step I don't think we want to take. Better to stop while we're ahead. I'm sorry, but they probably won't ever happen.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    And now, yes, I will go to sleep. 7am here. That's 10 hours of solid writing after a full day of solid writing, so I'm beat.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Thank you all for the good wishes. May you find water and shade.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (AFTER A NAP)

    Ah. Good morning, all. (Yes, it's five in the afternoon here.) Checking email, and...INBOX EXPLOSION. I guess I was expecting it. :)

    Tags

  • 549

    Interview: Jul 22nd, 2011

    Shawn Speakman

    Earlier you mentioned that you have to get back home to get back to the Wheel of Time. How long have you been working on it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, you know, I started working in 2007 on finishing the series. The last one I started working on January 1st. It's due in November. On my website we have a little... I have a little counter saying how much I've got done. I'm at one quarter right now. That's a little bit deceptive, because I've been jumping around and outlining and building sections later on; and so when I hit them, they'll go really fast. So it's probably more like half done—maybe a smidge more. But it doesn't look like that on the website. You know, I have to turn it in November, so I’m plugging along.

    Shawn Speakman

    How do you feel about it so far?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I feel good. I feel really good. You know, Robert Jordan wrote the ending himself before he passed away. I just have to get there without screwing it up. And so, that's what I'm doing.

    Shawn Speakman

    Awesome. Great. I know people have loved the first two volumes that you've had to work on. And so...that's fantastic.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The fan response has been fantastic. I felt really anxious; I feel really anxious every time. And so I guess it won't stop with this last one, but at least with the fan response being so good, it takes a bit of the anxiety off.

    Shawn Speakman

    Right.

    Tags

  • 550

    Interview: Jul 22nd, 2011

    Shawn Speakman

    One of the questions that came into the website deals with the work on Wheel of Time. Obviously that's a big undertaking of your time and definitely takes you away from your own creations. How do you feel about that, as an artist?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, when I agreed to do this, I did it with eyes open, knowing that what it was going to do was going to mean I could get to fewer of my side projects. I'm a guy that likes to jump around—lots of wacky little side projects and things—and this time, I wasn't going to get to do that. But I was OK with that. Because I realized this was something important; this was something awesome I wanted to be part of. And there are some opportunities it cost—there are two big ones. One is that I can't do some of these side projects. But there is another one: that is, I don't get to read the Wheel of Time books when they come out, like everyone else does. And that's also a sad opportunity it cost. I'm the only one that didn't get a new Wheel of Time book last year, because I wrote the thing. So I didn't get to, you know... Always before, I would wait, I would get the Wheel of Time book and I would go read it. And I don't get to do that, not in the same way. But being a part of it the way I am more than pays for all these things. It's just, there are some little things I think about and say...little tiny...I wouldn't call them regrets, but certainly costs.

    Shawn Speakman

    Right.

    Tags

  • 551

    Interview: Jul 22nd, 2011

    Shawn Speakman

    Those side projects that you mentioned... Obviously The Way of Kings came out last year, was a phenomenal success...

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's not a side project.

    Shawn Speakman

    Yeah, that's not a side project.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did this knowing that I would still try to keep my main...you know, I would still try to keep Mistborn and Way of Kings—Stormlight Archive—with support. You know, I have to work a lot of sixteen hour days to make sure it does, but I didn't want my readers to get short-changed for the Wheel of Time readers, even though Wheel of Time is my main focus right now. And so I've made sure I'm still doing that; I just can't do the other wacky things I've done. My kids' books—I couldn't finish that series until the Wheel of Time is done. You know, the contract ran out, but I still want to do another one, but I could not sign another contract, couldn't write that book because—

    Shawn Speakman

    You're under contract already.

    Brandon Sanderson

    —I'm under contract. I have to do the Wheel of Time, I have to make sure it's got all of my attention and that it comes out and is really good. So those side projects just had to fall by the wayside.

    Tags

  • 552

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    You've established a reputation as a writer of genre fiction (fantasy). Many LDS writers (Orson Scott Card; Glen Larson) have used the genre of speculative fiction, broadly speaking. Is there something uniquely LDS about speculative fiction (or perhaps something uniquely speculative about the LDS mindset)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is, actually, a common question—one I get from LDS people as well as from New York, where they see an unusual number of fantasy authors coming from Utah. Utah readers also tend to buy more fantasy and sf books than a lot of other states. My guess is that there are many things coming together to cause these trends.

    First off, I think LDS culture emphasizes learning and reading in general. We grow up reading from the scriptures, and our prophet speaks often about the importance of education. Because of this, I think that there are just a lot of very literate people in our culture—and that translates to more writers and more readers.

    Beyond that, fantasy has a tradition of having strong values (two of the most foundational authors in the genre are C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, who both dealt a lot with good against evil and used Christian themes in their writing.) Because of this, fantasy attracts religious people, I think. Even something as generally un-religious as Harry Potter deals with the tradition of the good and the pure struggling against the corrupt and the evil.

    Finally, I think that the LDS religion—despite what some detractors may say—is far more open and accepting of new thoughts and ideas than other religious cultures. To an LDS reader, the concept of other populated worlds isn't threatening.

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  • 553

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    Certain speculative fiction authors (e.g., Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Ursula LeGuin) are routinely described as having transcended the trappings of the genre. What might make a book transcend its genre? What does that label mean?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a very astute question. Before we dig completely into what that means, I find myself wondering if it's even something I would like to be known for doing. Do I want to transcend my genre? I love fantasy. I love the things that made it what it is—the dragons, the quests, the stories of Hobbits and rings and all of that. Those stories are what made me into what I am.

    Do I want to transcend those excellent authors? Could I even hope to? I don't think so. And yet, if I simply do the same things that they have done, I'm likely to do a poor job of it. Others have already covered a lot of those themes quite well.

    And so, that presents a challenge for a new author. I want to add something new to the discussion, but I still want my novels to FEEL like fantasy. For me, I've done this by trying to expand the genre in new directions when it comes to the types of magic I put in my book, as well as develop some different kinds of plots.

    I do want to do something new. However, I'm no LeGuin. I don't have the literary chops, honestly, to be about transcendence. I just want to tell the best darn story I can and have people love reading it.

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  • 554

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    You've confessed on your blog that you can write scores of pages in a day when you're on a roll. Is this plotting plus writing? How do you work, in a nuts-and-bolts fashion? Do you sit and plot for weeks on end and then suddenly hammer out a bunch of text?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Writing is a funny thing. In the last month, I've probably written only fifty or sixty pages. The month before that, I wrote five hundred. For me, I do spend a lot of time planning, thinking, and working things out.

    However, it's not always a rushing river of words for me. Most of the time, it's ten pages a day, day after day. There are periods of two or three pages a day. There are periods of forty or fifty pages a day. It all depends on the project. Right now, I'm working on the first of what will be a lengthy series, and so it's slow going for me because of the weight of thought that has to go into foreshadowing and worldbuilding.

    Tags

  • 555

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    How has your experience been, trying to Make A Living as a writer? Are you officially a Full-Time Author at this point? Is that in the future? What are the realities of trying to write for a living?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's been interesting! Officially, I'm a full time writer as of last year. For several years now, actually, I've been writing "full time," though I also teach at BYU occasionally. Last year was the first year, however, that my writing managed to provide what one might call a livable income. Obviously, I consider it the future!

    The realities are that it's hard. Paying self-employment tax, mixed with having no insurance or retirement benefits, plus paying 15% off the top to an agent really changes things. Beyond that, you have to deal with the fact that you DON'T have a steady paycheck, and don't know how much money you'll make in a given year. One year, you can make 50k—the next, 15k.

    However, I'll bet that anyone doing any job can come up with a list of grievances like that. The truth is that I love what I'm doing, and feel very, very fortunate to be able to make money at it. Hopefully, that will continue!

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  • 556

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    Where do the unexplored countries lie, as far as LDS writing? What could we be doing better, as a people?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Whew! That's a can of worms waiting to be opened. My biggest complaint with LDS fiction is when a moral is forced into a story simply because it's being published by an LDS publisher. They can't simply publish good works about LDS people struggling and living life, it seems—they have to learn a Sunday school lesson as well. That's changing, I think, and is one of the trends that I've liked about the market.

    However, a larger problem isn't with the writing at all, but with the way the publishing industry works in Utah. I think it's a huge conflict of interest to have the retailer ALSO be the publisher of most of the fiction, and beyond that to have the Church directing both. I don't think that method serves the authors or the public very well. The monopoly doesn't thrill me either. (Though, to give a thumbs up the same direction, I think the Shadow Mountain imprint of Deseret Book has been handled wonderfully.)

    But, that's all business. You asked more about the writing. So, in that case, I'd come back to forced morals trumping good writing. However, I hesitate to point fingers. The truth is, I don't write in this genre—so what business do I have trying to tell LDS fiction writers what to do? Plus, you can point at ANY genre and find works that don't seem to focus on good storytelling. (At least in a given person's perspective.)

    So, I'll leave it at that, and say that I'm curious to see where both LDS fiction and cinema go in the next few decades.

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  • 557

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    You've got some pretty dark characters—evil priests of a fanatical hierarchical religion; nobles who engage in human sacrifice to draw on dark powers; callous nobles in another book who rape and kill without a second thought; a repressive regime enforced by torture. Even your heroes aren't all sunshine and butterflies. Do you ever get negative reactions on this from members? How do you navigate that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Heh. Now THAT one I can answer. The biggest complaint I've had from readers is not about the aforementioned sacrifice scene (don't worry, it's not that graphic); it's not the noble society in Mistborn, nor is the dark edge Kelsier has. It's the fact that my characters occasionally curse. This has really bothered some readers, which I'll admit, kind of dumbfounds me. I use only the most tame of curses (the Biblical swear words, you might call them.) The other things you've mentioned above are far more worrisome to me. It bothers me that people email me with outcries when a character says "damn," yet don't bat an eye at the fact that that same character just murdered someone in cold blood.

    I've never had any comments on any of the things you mention, though that doesn't mean that people haven't noticed them. I'm honestly not sure what people's perspective is. And, I don't want to give the impression here that my books are incredibly dark. They are, however, sometimes a little violent. I've thought a lot about this issue. What do I want to do, how much do I want to show? Can I have a brutal oppressive empire without acknowledging the kinds of things that empire would do?

    My books are about hope, in my opinion. Hope, struggle, and victory. I've tried very hard to keep graphic descriptions out of my books where I can, but I can't always do so without undermining the story. And, the story comes first, for me.

    A wise friend (an LDS writer) once explained that in his opinion, glorifying violence or sexuality comes when consequences are removed. The scriptures themselves don't shy away from graphic content or descriptions (scalps on swords, anyone?) The important issue, however, is that the scriptures show the destructive effect that these things can have, even on the good people who are forced to engage in them.

    So, I consider that my charge. I don't sugar-coat my stories. However, I show cause and effect. A person cannot kill, in my opinion, even for good reasons without it leave them scarred.

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  • 558

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    What are the limits of LDS fiction? Is there anything LDS fiction never do? Is this a good thing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Limits of LDS fiction, or limits of LDS fiction, as published by the church? The church does and should have limits on what it will publish. (Which is why I think it's a conflict of interest for them to own the retail stores as well.) A book published by a Deseret Book imprint should maintain a certain standard of content. I don't think the church should have published Mistborn (though Elantris would have been just fine.) That doesn't mean I don't think LDS people should read it; it just means that I don't think it's right for that publisher.

    I think other, smaller publishers can and are exploring other aspects of what it's like to live life as an LDS person. They will continue to do so. They may never hit the mainstream, but maybe—with time—we'll see mainstream LDS fiction expand beyond preaching. As I said above, I'm curious to see what happens.

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  • 559

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    Recently, there seems to have been a resurgence in the fantasy genre. The Lord of the Rings movies were quite successful; more recently, Eragon was in theaters. Are we going to see Elantris, the movie, any time soon? Who would you cast as Raoden? How about Sarene? Hrathen? (And is it too early to start looking around for actors for Vin, Kelsier, Vasher, Vivena . . . ?)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha! As for casting choices, I would direct curious parties to the threads on my forums about this topic. I can't really say who I'd pick, since it takes so long to make a movie. And, to be honest, I have trouble imagining ANY actor in my character roles. They are who they are in my head! An actor wouldn't be them to me.

    Not that I wouldn't sell movie rights. Actually, we've had a few nibbles from various producers. As you've said, fantasy is hot. However, it's also very expensive to make a fantasy movie, so producers are wary about the projects they pick up. My kids' series, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, which starts this October with Scholastic, is probably the most likely to be made in the near future.

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  • 560

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Kaimi Wenger

    And, to end with a short one:

    Two words: Hardcover books. Why? (Okay, technically that's three words.)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hummm. I'm going to assume you did your homework VERY well, and are referring to an essay I wrote on this topic on my website. I believe I mentioned it above.

    A little more background for the rest of you. In a short period of time, I got a lot of emails asking me why hardback books were so expensive. So, I decided to try and tackle this concept in an essay on my website. I tried very hard to explain that I don't mind if people buy my books in paperback, or check them out from the library. That's great! However you read them is fine with me. I feel honored that you're even doing so.

    However, my HOPE is that in reading them, you end up hooked, and therefore buy the hardback of my next book. (Once again, I'm not offended if you don't! I had a LOT of trouble getting this concept across in the essay, judging by forum responses. It's very easy to misinterpret me on this fact, particularly since I wrote the essay very early in the morning, and I'm not sure how coherent it was.)

    However, since you asked—as others have—hardbacks are very important to my genre. We don't sell in supermarkets very often, and even less often do we get into places like Sam's or Costco. That means we depend on the main bookstores, and the science fiction section sells a LOT less than other sections. (The romance section is 60% or so of the fiction market. Sf is around 6 or 7%.)

    So, we depend on smaller sales of more expensive books to provide our income. That's our business model. (At least, or the big thick fantasy books like mine. There are people who do sf/f paperbacks with larger print runs and are very successful.) For me, though, hardbacks are essentially the only way I make money.

    So, why we publish hardbacks is simple. Now, as to why you should buy hardbacks—or not—that's completely up to you. Some people simply prefer paperbacks because they are lighter and easier to read. That's fine! Don't feel guilty at all.

    And, I'll leave it at that.

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  • 561

    Interview: Jun 11th, 2007

    Andris Parshall

    I'm intrigued by the description of online interactions with fans. Readers have to accept the premises of a particular novel's fantasy world in order to get inside the story. Yet it seems that some are just as willing to attach themselves to that world from the outside, judging by Brandon's investment in drafts and annotations and showing readers how it's done. I've attended a few conferences with publishing authors (fiction and nonfiction), and a standard audience question is "How do I get started?" For anyone who is genuinely, seriously interested in writing, not in merely being a writer, this online interaction must be a motherlode of insight.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I hope it's all useful, though I worry that people trying to break in can find TOO MUCH information and help. The thing is, there are lots of ways of doing things, and we writers have a habit of talking about our way as if it were the only way. I was allowed to discover what worked for me working mostly in seclusion for my first decade or so of writing (counting from Jr. High age.) I've met writers who think they have to do things one way, but who have never tried other methods that might have worked far better for them.

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  • 562

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2011

    Question

    Someone in Brandon's Writing Class said that they had talked to the copyright people at BYU, and they said that Brandon's class is legally is his property, so he could do whatever he wants with it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said that that was really interesting, and that he would have to make sure that he checked that with the English Department (to make sure that there aren't any toes that are stepped on), but that if it works out he would like to post videos of it online or on the iTunes University.

    Footnote

    He's said before that his class that he teaches Winter Semester at BYU is pretty similar to Writing Excuses.

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  • 563

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2011

    Question

    Another person came and said that he often would write bits and pieces of writing, but then find that he can't write any more.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said that it probably came from one of three causes. One, That the story just doesn't have enough ideas in it. He suggested making three characters who are complex who all follow the same storyline. When you get tired of writing one, than switch POVs. Two, that he's just stopping when it gets hard, which is most common. He suggests that the cure for this is just writing. Three, (and he said this is usually the problem for older writers) they know that they are writing crappy stuff. Brandon said, that's just fine. He says that he wrote 13 books before he was published. It takes time to get good.

    He compared the last one to a pianist. Just like there are many levels of pianists, there are many levels of writers. He asked the writer-to-be how long it takes to tell how good a pianist is. The writer-to-be said usually withing a few seconds. Brandon then said that a publisher can tell almost as quickly. When they reject books while only reading the first few pages, they aren't saying no to the book, they're saying that the writer isn't good enough yet.

    The secret, he said, to publishing is practice. When you spend your time drilling, writing every day, just like doing piano exercices, you become better and better. Lots of books are being rejected every day. But once you become a master writer, your odds skyrocket.

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  • 564

    Interview: Dec 17th, 2011

    Question

    The next question that was asked was "How do you come up with your magic systems?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    He said that it starts with sparks of ideas. It depends on what he's researching at the time, what he's been curious about. He likes to have his magic systems with one foot in Science and one foot in Wonder. The magic must also compliment the story. In Warbreaker, he wanted to show how Breath gives you life symbollically.

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  • 565

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    Do you ever feel stifled? Now that you’ve got a couple of different lines going in different worlds that have your next 40 years planned out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. I do start to feel a little stifled, and so you’ll see me do random side projects. It’s my steam valve to blow that pressure off, and then I get back to what I’m working on. That basically why you have Alloy of Law, because as much as I would’ve liked to have jumped right into the next Wheel of Time Book, I couldn’t. After writing Towers of Midnight, I was feeling too creatively stifled, and so I had to go take a break, and let myself for three months do whatever I wanted. And Alloy of Law came out of that.

    So that is how I do it. That’s where Rithmatist came from, that’s where Steelheart came from, that’s kind of where Alcatraz came from, these non-mainland books, that’s where they are going to come from. You can anticipate me doing that more often in the future. It is a different life for me now that when I was unpublished, and could just write whatever I wanted, and things like that, but at the same time, I have long loved the big epic series, and I’ve always wanted to do one. That’s why I built what I built. I didn’t do it because “Oh, this is what sells, I have to do this.” I did this because I wanted to have this big grand epic. That’s why I built the Cosmere books as I did.

    So I don’t feel stifled in that at all, even though I’ll finish one book than be like “Man, I can’t go into the next one of these” and go and do something different, because it’s my grand plan. You know, it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do. So I hope that people will stick with me for all these books, because I’ll do a lot of them. But they will fit together in some really cool ways once they are all done. I think you’ll be very very impressed, but that’s a while off.

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  • 566

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    By the way, allomancers fighting on a train? Very cool.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh thank you. I almost didn’t put that scene in, because it’s kind of a cliché, but then I’m like “I’ve gotta have a train fight.” And I’ll say this, Alloy of Law is intended to be slightly more of a pulp novel than Mistborn, and though even though it’s sort of a detective pulp novel, it’s got fun characters and a fun world, because that’s the way I do it. If I let myself do these sort of things, they are done for the pure fun of it, where they may not have fit in another book.

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  • 567

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    How many Stormlight Archive books are you planning? And how long is the next one going to be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Two series of five. So one ten book series, but you can view it as two sequences of five. My goal actually right now is to do the first five, take a little break, and maybe do the second Mistborn trilogy, or maybe do the White Sand trilogy. These are chunks of the Cosmere that are a part of the greater arc, but the next [Stormlight Archive] book will probably not be as long. This is because I actually felt Way of Kings was too long, but it was what it needed to be, for what I was establishing. There was no sooner place to cut this, so I had to do it in this place. When I first turned it in to my editor in 2002, it scared him to death because of how big it was. I do plan the others to be more around the size of Gathering Storm and things, which are still big books, but I’m hoping that they will be a little bit shorter, because those chunks are more manageable when the books are a little bit shorter. I can actually make the book tighter more easily.

    I think Way of Kings turned out very tight, but it was so hard, because the longer you go with a sequence like that, the harder it is to make sure that everything, everyone is keeping track of everything. And the longer you go, the more of an instinct the reader will have to start following certain characters instead of reading it first as mixed, which makes for a better book. They’ll be like “Ah, I don’t remember this as well; I’ll just keep reading Kaladin,” or something like that. That’s actually a reason for me to keep them shorter, so you don’t have as much of an impetus to do that.

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  • 568

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    In the Way of Kings, you have all of these different characters, how do you keep your characters’ personalities straight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Good question. Keeping characters straight—the thing I do that deviates from most of the way I normally write. I normally plan quite a bit. I normally—my worlds are very intricately planned out, with their histories, and usually the plot of what’s going to happen are pretty intricately planned out before I start the book. The characters are not. And this is why a book fails, like the original Way of Kings did in 2002, it’s because one of the characters is not who they need to be, and they are failing.

    This is something I do by instinct more than by planning. I grow my characters, so I often describe it as I “cast” my characters, I’ll put different people in the role, I’ll sit down and say “okay, here is a character to play this role.” I’ll start writing them, and seeing their personality, and seeing the world through their eyes, and I’ll see if that works. If it doesn't, I’ll actually drop that and rewrite that scene with a different personality, a different character, have someone else walk in and try the role. I’ll do that a couple of times till they click. When they click, I basically know who they are. From that point on, I don’t have any problems keeping then right. When I write a book when a character doesn’t click, then that book often fails. Sometimes they click halfway through, and I have to go back and fix them. Sometimes they’re just 90% there, and I just need to keep writing and figure it out as I go. But sometimes, that never quite works, and this is the reason sometimes—there is this book named Liar of Partinel, which I never released, because the character never clicked. And people will say “Let me read it, let me read it!” but it will predispose you to that character, and that character, that personality is the wrong person. So I don’t know how I keep them all straight. It just works with characters.

    But that’s just with characters. With plot and things, I’ve got to write it down, for setting I've got to write it down, I actually have a big wiki that I build that I reference to keep everything straight. Characters I never have to be that way. They just work.

    So I can’t give you good advice on that, because it’s simply how I do it. And they just grow into their own person.

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  • 569

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    A related question. When you add to the wiki, do you soften the writing to add more information to the wiki?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Occasionally I do. Usually it’s at the end of a scene; I’ll go and add things. Or now that I have a Peter, I will say “Peter, go put this chapter ino the wiki, and fix whatever problems that don’t fit. That’s what he’s doing right now with his time is he’s going through the whole Way of Kings and making sure that the wiki matches, because the wiki actually contains like 5 or 6 iterations as I was building the world of “No, let’s rewrite the creation myth”, “No, let’s rewrite where this came from”, “No let’s rewrite this.” And it has all the old versions there as well as the newest version, and as I’m writing, I’ll change things because I’ll say “You know, this doesn’t work. I’m going to alter this.” Then I’ve got to stop and make sure that the continuity gets kept.

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  • 570

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Brandon Sanderson

    The video game is coming along very nicely. In fact, earlier just this week I built the whole plot sequence for that. It’s going to have some really good twists and turns and theoretically, if it works well, I will be writing all the dialogue and all the story.

    Member of Audience

    Which is more on your plate.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Which is more on my plate. But that can be fun, because the main character is a really sarcastic kind of a little bit of a jerk. And so I can actually write his dialogue on napkins while I’m sitting, waiting and be like “Alright, here’s a good line,” and things like that. That’s because most of it is gameplay. I have to just come up with lots of good wisecracks and then of course, I have to write the cutscenes. But those really aren’t that much in a game like this. It’s maybe a week’s worth of work to get all of that written.

    Zas

    How long before is the game going to be? I remember you saying it was going to be before Final Empire, but I was wondering how long before?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We are shooting for second century after The Lord Ruler's Ascension.

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  • 571

    Interview: Dec 15th, 2011

    Question

    One thing I really liked on your books is that you’ve reinvented a lot of fantasy tropes in a lot of good ways. But you also are inspired by some literary works, you’ve mentioned Les Miserables, which is a fantastic novel. So I was just wondering if what advice would you have for people in terms of speculative fiction and literary works?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, advice for drawing. We did a writing excuses podcast on this, so you can go look up those, “How to be influenced consciously.” But boy. Read good stuff, and start to think about why it’s good. It’s going to help you. I don’t know if I can specifically tell you anything other than that, but read it, decide what ‘s working for you, and try to use that, try to feel. But remember to feel what they did, not what they did. Meaning, here’s a good example. You read Tolkein. You say “Wow”. What Tolkein did wasn’t creating Elves and Dwarves. What Tolkein did was create an interesting mythology that was well interconnected. And a lot of people will say well, I want to learn from Tolkein, so I will use what he did, and they don’t dig that level deeper. They say “Well, I’m going to use the elves and dwarves.” They don’t say “What is it that he did the level down that really made this work?” And that’s what you should be emulating. So when you read the classics, say “What’s making it work?” Try to dig the level deeper if that makes sense.

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  • 572

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    kqrpnb

    Brandon, how do you think WoT will read as a complete set with your voice in the last books? Did you plan ahead for that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I tried very hard. The characters should read right, the plot should read right. I think it will read cohesive. These books will not go off on random tangents. In fact, I’m hoping that the narrative will feel like a shift back toward 4/5/6, which are my favorite WoT books.

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  • 573

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Banvard

    Was there any character you disliked writing within the Wheel of Time universe?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As an author, you get very good at being inside someone’s head. And so it’s hard to dislike writing anyone. That said, there’s a certain Cadsuane scene that—when I read the notes—I didn’t look forward to.

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  • 574

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Graendal

    Did you ever notice how similar Graendal and Blushweaver are in personality?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I didn’t until I started work on the WoT book. I wrote Warbreaker years before I was offered the WoT. I noticed and laughed. RJ’s books are dug pretty deeply into my subconscious. I think they’re very different as characters, but Graendal was obviously an influence on Blushweaver.

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  • 575

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    How do you get the different personalities for all your characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    With the characterization for me is a very organic thing. I acutally plot my plot in detail, do my worldbuilding in detail, before I start on my characters though, if I plan them out too much, they don’t have enough life to them. It’s a very weird thing to explain, but for me, what I have to do is I have to try writing through this character’s eyes, and if it doesn’t work, than I actually have to toss that chapter and try again, and often times you’ll see me start a book try a character a couple of times to get them right. And then they just grow into what they are as the plot goes along. And in fact, the characters have veto power over the plot, and so if I get to a point that I feel like a character would not do this, I have to either go back and cast a different person in this role, or —interruption—

    If you are very interested in how I write, I do a podcast called Writing Excuses. And what it is is it’s through your browser, so you don’t do anything special, you just go there and press play, and it’s me and Mary Robinette Kowal who writes these books, they’re like Jane Austen with magic. (laughter) Yeah, she’s good. And it’s Dan Wells, who writes these really scary creepy books, but they’re really good, and it’s Howard Tayler. So anyways, Writing Excuses, all you aspiring writers, it’s Hugo-nominated, it's very well received, I think you’ll really enjoy it. You can look by topic, and find where I talk about writing characters, and we’ll give you a ton of advice. There’s two hours of advice on characters you can listen to.

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  • 576

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    What’s your schedule like as a writer with so many projects?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, what I do is I get up really early in the morning—noon. I get up at noon. This is hard sometimes! Maybe I’ll get up at 11. Usually I write until 5, and that writing is interspersed with a lot of email, and things like that and kind of distractions. Then I go hang with my family, and then I go back to work, depending on the day, at around 8 or 9, and then I work until about 4, and then I go to bed.

    Usually I’m only writing one book at a time, while outlining another, and I’m often revising a third. I can’t do new material usually on two projects at once, I can only do new material on one thing at a time. But I can be doing some revising on one, and some planning on another, but the truth is I’m very much a segmented writer, and work on segments on things. Right now, with the Wheel of Time, I’m usually not working on anything else or planning, I’m all gung ho on this one thing, and then I’ll shift modes and do something else eventually.

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  • 577

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    I know that Tolkein hated allegory in his story. What is your belief?

    Brandon Sandrson

    Tolkein hated allegory. He thought that his stories should just be stories, and I actually feel similar to him. I do have themes in my books, but I let the theme come as an outgrowth of what the characters are passionate about. And certainly, there are certain things, you’ll read Way of Kings and Dalinar’s very interested, a very big theme spiritually in the book (I know, that sentence doesn’t make any sense). But, it’s not me going in and intentionally writing an allegory. I like the story to stand as a story, I like telling stories. I’m not big into writing metaphors.

    Certain people are very good at that. C.S. Lewis did a great job of that, it’s not what I try to do.

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  • 578

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    Have you ever done NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month], and would you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did it several times before I got published [But he never actually did it; see the link at the bottom for more info]. Way of Kings, I wrote during NaNoWriMo, a big portion of it. I actually wrote the NaNoWriMo pep talk this year, they asked me to, and so you’ll get an email from me in your inbox.

    Usually, I can’t do NaNoWriMo officially because I’m in the middle of a book, and I can’t stop a book and write another one, I will eventually be able to do that, but the Wheel of Time, and other things have been so busy lately that my schedule doesn’t allow me to in November stop writing. And I’m usually touring in November, almost always. And that’s really tough for getting 50,000 words. If you haven’t done NaNoWriMo, it’s awesome.

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  • 579

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    How many magic systems have you gotten rid of, and how do you decide which ones to keep?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s an ever growing process. I mean I’ve started tons of magic systems, dozens, maybe hundreds, and I keep them based on how viral they all are, against the other magic systems I’m thinking of, how well this one appeals to me. Sometimes it depends if I have a book that will fit that magic or not.

    For instance, some books are very action-oriented, and some magic systems are not very action-oriented, so the magic needs to fit the book, so they just keep on kind of spinning there till they work.

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  • 580

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    Do you have particular Inspirations from classics that you brought in your books? I felt like Dalinar was heavily influenced by Constantine.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I did have a degree in English, and so I read lots of stuff, but my favorite classics are Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and depending on the day one of the Jane Austen books, it changes. And so those are definite influences. You can probably see some Les Mis influence, a lot of it, in the Mistborn books. There were several places where I kind of consciously let myself be influenced there. I wouldn’t say that Dalinar though. The thing is, I started writing Dalinar when I was 15. He was my first character. In fact, I posted at Tor.com when Way of Kings came out a page from my very first novel that I tried to write when I was 14, and it was really really bad, and it has Dalinar in it. He is one of the few characters that survived through all these years from maturing, growing, and things like this. The story of the brother of the king who dies, and the brother must decide: does he take control, or does he let his nephew take control. So a lot of things have influenced Dalinar, but I can’t point to one specific thing.

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  • 581

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    How did you come up with the Mistborn idea?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Boy, there’s so many different places this came from. The plot came from me wanting to tell a story about a world where the hero failed. You know, the Hero’s Journey a thousand years later, the sort of “What if Frodo had kept the ring?” or “What if Voldemort had killed Harry Potter?” That was one of my big concepts for it. Another big foundational concept was the desire to do a heist story, because I really love those, and I want to do one in the fantasy world.

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  • 582

    Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

    Question

    With all the books you have planned, how many years of your life do you have planned out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I’m intending to live till my 90’s probably, and I’ve got enough books for two books a year until then. (laughter) But I also write quickly, so you’ll get books consistently and hopefully they’ll be funny and interesting. I really do try to work hard to make sure that they are each a self-contained story. The place where I stop doing that is in the last chapter and epilogue, where I really like to punch you, and I’m sorry, it’s just some sort of instinct that I have. It’s like “Oh, everything’s wrapped up—NO IT’S NOT!” (laughter) So I’m sorry about that.

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  • 583

    Interview: Sep 7th, 2009

    Christian Lindke

    Well, I think that I'd like to start at the beginning and then come to more recent projects that you've been working on and that's to look a little bit at how you came to be a published science fiction/fantasy author. I did not mention this in your introduction, but you did initially study writing in college and worked long and hard to become a writer. If you could describe that process for us, the process of getting your first novel, Elantris, published.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Alright. It's funny because Elantris...it's my first published novel; it's not actually my first novel. The story starts quite a long time before that, and the longer I've been in this business, the more I've found that this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. A lot of writers spend years and years writing books before they get published. Elantris was my sixth novel, and my story starts like a lot of stories, with an ignorant kid who enjoyed telling stories and writing books and having no idea really what he was really doing.

    I went to college my freshman year as a biochemistry major, actually, partially at my parent's encouraging, because 'authors don't make money' was the conventional wisdom, which a lot of us hear, and so I was going to be a doctor, which was, you know, the wrong place for me. But, I was under the impression—I had no idea how to do this writing thing, and even taking a few creative writing classes...they don't really talk about the business side of things, the actual 'how do you do this; how do you break in'—and so I was completely ignorant.

    My sophomore year, I realized after one year of trying hard at the biochemistry that I loved the concepts and I was terrible at the busywork; in fact I dreaded the busywork, and if you dread the busywork—the day-to-day work that you are going to have to do in a career—that's probably not the right career for you, whereas with writing, I loved the busywork, the busywork of just working on new stories and plugging away at them, and so I changed to English cause I thought that's what you had to do. I didn't actually know what you had to do—I had no clue—but I figured that was a good place to start. So I changed my major to English and just started going.

    One of the things I did—which I think was actually the smartest thing I did at the time—was get a job where I could write while I was at work; it was a desk job at a hotel minding the desk overnight, with the boss telling me during the interview, "Yeah, as long as you stay awake we don't mind...we don't care what you do. Between about midnight and five all we really want is to have someone there in case the building burns down, or in case someone calls and wants towels." It was actually required by the Best Western rules that they have someone on desk, so it was actually perfect for me, and I spent five years working that job, going to school during day, then sleeping in the evenings, and then going to work overnight, and writing all night. It was a wonderful experience. It was kinda was like my own little writers' enclave where I was able to practice my art and try different things, and ignorantly I had the advantage of not knowing how bad I was when I began. This is something I've noticed with authors: When you get going when you're younger, you are don't how terrible you are as a writer, and that's a good thing. Older writers a lot of times will be very critical of themselves, because they've read so much and they have so much more experience with writing that when they start working on their works, it's sometimes very hard for them. They aren't willing to...or it's too hard for them to suck at it long enough to become good at it, so to speak. I didn't have that problem because I had no clue how bad I was.

    And I am...like I said, I did that for five years: writing books and slowly, very slowly, learning about the business, realizing how you have to submit manuscripts, realizing where to...how to go about creating a query letter, and these sorts of things. And the real breakthrough, it came my senior year—I took quite a number of years to get through college; I think it was five at the end—so I guess it would be after four years, during my fourth year of writing books at the graveyard shift, I took a class from a published author who had come in to just teach couple of classes for the fun of it—it was actually David Farland, who is a fantasy writer who is local to my area—and what he talked about was the business aspect of it, the real nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of this industry, which nobody tells you about. You never find out about, in most of your creative writing classes—which, you know, they're great classes; they'll talk to you a lot about the craft of writing, and maybe the art of writing, but they won't tell you about the business—and it was because of him that I realized, "Wow," you know, "if I want to get published, one of the things I'm gonna have to do is network," and I never realized that networking would be important for an author. But who you know, the editors you know, that sort of thing, can help you out a lot. And so I started attending the conventions—[?] the literary conventions. And so, WorldCon, World Fantasy Convention, NASFIC...some of these things that you can go to, and editors will attend, and you can hear advice from them, you can meet them, and that sort of thing.

    So I started doing that. It's not a silver bullet; it won't get everyone published, but what it does is it partially trained me to think like a professional, and partially allowed me to get advice from people who really knew what they were doing. I spent...oh, three years, four years doing that, eventually graduated with my bachelor's degree, having no idea what to do with it, because I wasn't really prepared for anything by it except for writing books, so I applied to a bunch of MFA programs, got turned down from all of them—they didn't really appreciate [?] fantasy novels—and the next year I applied to a whole bunch more, got into a master's degree—not an MFA—at BYU where I had attended my undergraduate, and got rejected from everywhere else, and so happily went to get that master's degree, partially as a stalling tactic, to be perfectly honest. My dad was dreadfully afraid that, you know, that their poor son was going to be a hobo, and "Oh, why didn't he go into being a doctor like we told him", and so I went back to school to appease them and to stall my life and, you know, to stall myself, give me a few more years to work on it.

    And about a year into it, Elantris—which had been my sixth book, as I said—I finally got a call back from an editor that I'd met at World Fantasy Convention, I think in 2003, that I got the call back. It was eighteen months after I'd submitted it. Actually, I had given up on the submission. It was the Tor, whom I love; it's a publisher I wanted to be with. I was a big fan of the Wheel of Time books; I wanted to be with that same publisher, but Tor is also notorious for having an enormous slush pile, and things get lost into that void fairly frequently. They are one of the few publishers out there who will take manuscripts from unknowns, which opens the floodgates to tons of manuscripts coming in, and they do their best with it, but they get easily overwhelmed. I had sent to them before, and I never heard back, and so this time I assumed I would never hear back, [?] in person. And then I got a voicemail one morning; got up, and checked my voicemail, and lo and behold, there was an editor in New York, Moshe Feder, who left me a voicemail that said something along these lines: "Hello; I hope this is the right Brandon Sanderson, because you submitted me a book eighteen months ago, and now it's been so long that your email address is bouncing, your snail-mail address isn't good any more, and your phone number's changed, so we're not sure how to get ahold of you, but we googled you, we got a grad student page at BYU. We assume this is the right person; if it is, call us back, because we want to buy your book." And that's how it happened. I guess the moral of this story is: leave a forwarding address, if you are sending manuscripts off to publishers in New York.

    But, it just happened from there, and the years that I spent as an unpublished writer really—just practicing my craft and not worrying about publishing—served me really well. Elantris is by no means the greatest fantasy book ever written, but I do think that I was able to hit the ground running, so to speak, because it wasn't my first novel. It doesn't, I hope, in many respects read like a first novel; I had five other books under my belt by that time, and I got a lot of my terrible ideas and terrible storytelling out of the way, and so I was very aware of what I wanted to do as an author, and where I wanted to make my statement and how I wanted to add to the genre. All of these things, I had...right then, I knew what I was doing as soon as I sold, so I was able to be focused a little more, I think.

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  • 584

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    jamesgubera

    Where do you get your inspiration to create new worlds & characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Inspiration comes from all over. Often things I see. Color magic in Warbreaker came from watching b/w movies. The mist in Mistborn came from driving through a foggy night at 70mph. Sazed came from a Buddhist monk I met in Korea. Sarene came from a friend, Annie, who complained that she was too tall and too smart for men to want to date. If you want more, send me an email and ask for my “Ideas” essay. @PeterAhlstrom will send it to you.

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  • 585

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    mossjon

    Loving Warbreaker! How do you write women characters so well?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A mixture of helpful women friends and a lot of early failures. I’ve found the biggest problem with writing the opposite gender comes when you add them simply be a love interest. Nobody is just a love interest in their own minds. Make them a character first, a plot device second.

    MOSSJON

    Even Elantris had a great woman character. So you must be hiding the early failures. And that is why/how you succeed so well. Kudos!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Early failures were in the books that didn’t get published. (White Sand’s female lead was cringe-worthy.)

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  • 586

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    goldeneyes05

    Do you ever take a break? Seems like you're always doing something.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Went out to dinner with my wife for our anniversary last night. Does that count? The truth is, I love what I do. So if I have time when I’m not doing something else, I work on books.

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  • 587

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    starrylites

    When working with new characters, how do you keep their voices straight in the early writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It can be hard. I often have to rewrite my first chapters after the book is finished. Practice by having four very different character ride through the same town, but see very different things.

    starrylites

    Thanks, Brandon! I think I"m going to have to do just that on my currently project; having character meshing problems.

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  • 588

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    ren833

    What is the most important part of writing that you have learned to be a successful author?

    Brandon Sanderson

    1) Persistence. 2) Revision. 3) Characters with distinct viewpoints. 4) Use of concrete detail.

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  • 589

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    JasonMichelsen

    What is your typical daily wordcount as far as new material goes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It varies. 10 pages is still my goal. I usually hit it, and sometimes do much more. I write faster at the end of a book than the beginning. Also, some days I write four or five hours—some days I write fourteen or sixteen. Pretty consistently, I’ve done around 300k words a year for the last few years. Last year I pushed very hard and got around 400k.

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  • 590

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Danbarbour

    Out of everything that you have written, what would you say is your favorite and/or most proud of?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Gathering Storm is, by far, the best—and most difficult—thing I’ve written. It’s what I’m most proud of. For what is published, though, Warbreaker has the best writing of anything I’ve done.

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  • 591

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    mnehring

    How many new story ideas do you get in a year? How many do you act on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    About one or two of those end up as books. But each book is a combination of a dozen or more ideas.

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  • 592

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    greywanderer

    Has your Mormon upbringing consciously affected the recurring religious themes of your work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I’d say it is more subconscious. I’m fascinated by religion, all types, because of my upbringing. That’s why you see religion as an antagonist in my books. Also, my religion has shaped how I see morality—and therefore, how many of my characters do.

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  • 593

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    ScottTRogers

    How do you set up your workday for writing and getting all of your other "work" done?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I try to break it up and do things in several hour chunks. Writing during some, email others. The honest truth is, I usually end up ignoring other stuff and just writing. This is why I need an assistant.

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  • 594

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Ethan1072

    What do you do to relax?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Also, the funny thing is, writing IS relaxing for me. (Which makes me just about the luckiest guy ever.)

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  • 595

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    yagiz

    Which one comes first? The story or the setting (world, races, magic sys, etc) or do they emerge together?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on the book. For Mistborn, setting was first. For Warbreaker, characters. It’s very hard to pinpoint, though, since I don’t start writing until I’ve developed all three.

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  • 596

    Interview: Jul, 2009

    Ryshon

    What kind of average pagecount were you able to put out daily when working as a part time writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was a special case, as I intentionally picked a job where I could write at work. I shot for 2000 words a day. I suggest to new writers that 2k a week be a minimum. That gives you a book in about a year.

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  • 597

    Interview: Sep 7th, 2009

    Christian Lindke

    You've talked about how your experience at a job that gave you time to write on company time aided you and that you were able to write a good number of fantasy novels—writing, kind of, the 'bad' out of you, if you will—but I also wanted to know that, you know, for a period of time you volunteered and were editor-in-chief at the sci-fi and fantasy magazine at BYU, The Leading Edge, and obviously, as a magazine, the primary story being published in that is the short story, and I wanted to ask, how a) you thought that writing short stories and reading short stories helped you hone your craft, and b) what you think about kind of the dying outlet for burgeoning writers to have their short stories published.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Those are both excellent questions. Some interesting things are happening in the short fiction market, and it's in a very big position of transition right now. I've heard a lot of publishers talk about it, and there are people who are very optimistic, who they say, you know, "The short story form is not going to die. People like reading it. We just haven't yet found the new transmission method that is going to get them to people." But some things happened to the science fiction and fantasy market during the 70s and 80s that I think really changed the way fiction—particularly in our genre—reached its audience. I think the mainstreaming of science fiction and fantasy to an extent—I mean, this is Geekerati Radio; we're talking mostly to geeks and geek topics—but you'll notice that since the 70s, progressively geek culture has invaded mainstream culture. Nowadays, if a fantasy or science fiction film comes out, the general public goes to see it and doesn't even think twice about it. That wasn't the case before Star Wars; it wasn't like that. And I think this mainstreaming that, this building on the whole gaming aspect, with RPGs and all this, where there was a larger...even those who weren't mainstream, who were the kind of the geek culture, like I was when I was growing up in the 80s, we had enclaves, because we had things we could do, and it was easier for us to create our little enclaves. The big science fiction conventions started because getting people who are interested in science fiction together to chat about science fiction was hard to do without the internet, without, some of...you know, podcasts, and things like this—it was very hard to find people with like interests, and so when you did, you all got together with these conventions. And for us, I think that there were more people that we could find, there were more activities...it was just...it was easier to be a geek in the 80s than it was in previous eras, and mixed on top of that, the paperback novel, in science fiction and fantasy, kind of came into its own, with the publishing houses like Del Rey and Tor and Ace in the 70s and 80s suddenly producing lines of science fiction and fantasy targeted an adult audience. What you saw is, really, the science fiction novel overtaking the short story. My generation didn't grow up reading short stories, in general; my fantasy grew up reading, in fantasy, you know: David Eddings, and Tad Williams, and Anne McCaffrey, and Barbary Hambly and these people who were writing the novels. And so, if you look at me, I didn't get into short stories until I had already long been a fan of the novel, which I think is backwards from the previous generation.

    I got into short stories when I was in college, and it was partially because of the magazine. And the magazine did a lot of things for me. One of the things was that it was a nice—again—place where a lot of people with similar interests in me were congregating, and we were talking about fiction, and about science fiction and fantasy, and about what made good science fiction and fantasy, and we were able to read slush from around the world because it was a paying market, and writers, we are all desperate to get published, and so as long as something pays, we'll probably submit to it. So, The Leading Edge, though, being a BYU magazine, didn't actually publish BYU student stories. It existed more as a place to practice being an editor, so to speak; it exists as one of these things that is kind of like, not really a class, but an economist [?] club that is funded by the university to give people experience with editing and managing and learning [?] express and [?] programs, and so it's not actually student work that's getting published. You read a ton of terrible stories by authors, and boy, reading a ton of terrible stories teaches you a lot about what not to do. You start to see firsthand the clichés that show up over and over again. And, when you're that age—particularly older high school, younger college student—you're thinking that a lot of your ideas are new and original, until you read and discover that no, half of these stories are all wanting to tell these same ideas. If I had a dollar for every time we got a story that ended with "And, they turned out to be Adam and Eve"—that's a great cliché in the genre now. I had no clue, but I learned it firsthand by reading, you know, a dozen or two stories—so I guess if it were a dollar for each one, I would have enough money for pizza—but still, it was fairly common that we got stories like that. So, I really enjoyed that aspect of it, and it helped me as a writer, and it also taught me to love the short story genre, as we occasionally would come across these gems, and I had to feel like what an editor felt like, sifting through all of this, reading, you know, yet another story poorly written where Adam and Even turn out to...you know, the end of the story is that they're Adam and Eve and they found the Earth. Or, reading yet another poorly-done time travel story where someone kills his own father on accident, um, and that's...or, you know, ends up becoming Hitler, or one of these stereotypical things, reading one of these, and then sifting through that, and then a gem pops out—a beautifully-written story that says something meaningful, has engaging characters, really pulls you into a world and makes you feel like you're there—it like glows on the page after reading all of these things, and I understood, "Hey, this is what it's like to be an editor; this is what the editor is feeling when they're reading through the slush pile, and this is what I want them to feel when they hit my stories. So how can I do that? What do I really need to do in order to achieve it?"

    What is going to happen to short fiction? I don't know. There are people who are much more expert than I at this sort of thing. I have been very curious at these free-distribution-on-the-web models that we've seen. The first big one was called Sci-Fiction; it was run by the Science Fiction Channel. And, it went..they actually eventually canceled it; they did it for a couple of years. I was hoping that an ad-supported model that was bringing renown to the Science Fiction Channel would be enough to pay for a short story, which really doesn't take—if you're cranking it on the internet—doesn't take a whole ton of resources. You pay the author, you pay someone to edit it, and you maybe get a little bit of art. This is what Tor.com is trying right now in order to draw people in, and I think it works wonderfully, but I don't see the numbers on it. Several pay subscription e-zines have come around too; Intergalactic Medicine Show by Orson Scott Card; Baen's Universe which just, actually, closed its doors unfortunately, and I was hoping that those would go along, but I think one of the problems with the internet is people...it's been established that, if it's on the internet, that it should be free, which...we haven't been able to get beyond that, and some things, the operating costs are just too high for it to be for free. So I don't think that the webcomic model—where you can, you know, print a webcomic and then have people come every day, read it, and then draw ad money and things like that—is going to work for short fiction, because short fiction is too long, and the costs are too big. I was hoping it would work. Maybe if there...but you would have to, like, print a page every day of a 70-page story, and I don't know if that would be enough to keep people coming back. So, I'll be very curious to see what happens. I enjoy reading it, but you know, I generally read my short fiction when it's recommended to me and I go pick up a specific issue, because a story I know in Asimov's happens to be really good, or an author I know happens to publish an Asimov—I see him on the front—or I pick up the Year's Best by Garner Dozois or David Hartwell, and just read what they have collected as the best science fiction and fantasy of the year.

    So, I'm not an expert. I do hope that the genre—the medium—stays around, because it is a nice way as an author to practice, and to kind of do an apprenticeship. Once upon a time, if you wanted to break in, it was 'the main way' to break in, was to do short fiction for a while, get published in the good short fiction market, and then eventually, you know, an editor would come knocking and you would give them your novel idea. It doesn't actually work that way any more. It's still a potential way you can do it, but that's not the norm any more, I don't think; I think more people are getting published just off of their novels—straight submissions to agents or editors—than are getting published through a long apprenticeship in short story magazines, and that's certainly how it was for me. I didn't practice short stories until I was much older; I was much more practiced...even still I feel I'm a better novelist than I am a short story writer. I'm not terribly confident in my short story, though I do have one that you can read just on Tor.com for free—maybe you guys can throw that up in the liner notes, that people can click on and read—which has had a good response, but I think I'm primarily a novelist.

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  • 598

    Interview: Sep 7th, 2009

    Christian Lindke

    You've spoken a lot about, I think, something that's really...kind of...beloved—a beloved topic of one of our panelists—and he's online and hasn't had a chance to talk yet this evening. Bill, I know you're very excited about internet promotion and the use of the internet as a distribution device, and kind of DIY publishing and promotion. Do you have a question for Brandon about how he went about it with Warbreaker, or just what his thoughts are on the industry in, kind of, extension of what he already mentioned?

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    Right. Hi Brandon, how're you doing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Pretty good; thanks, Bill.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    I just...I'm sorry I'm kind of late to the show today; I have been having a computer nervous breakdown, so...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Oh boy, I hate those. I've had a couple myself.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    Yeah. I have been backing up some files and doing other things before I go into the major surgery. But I guess that leads me to my point, and I'm trying to back up your earlier point, [which] was, the genre community—fantasy, science fiction, horror, and so forth—we do have this collector mentality gene within our pool there. I know that if I see a book that's cheap, I will want to get the collector's edition.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Right.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    You know, so the whole online thing is part of that revolution—it is part of that evolution, I guess—and I think that one aspect that Tor has been able to harness is the idea that they are, you know, putting out books online for free for people to get that 'taste', to get, you know, the free one and then go, "Oh yeah, I gotta have that for my collection." Now, do you see yourself ever doing something on your own—you know, you do have your book on your website as you said earlier, for free—but do you feel that for...you know, yourself, is there a print-on-demand book from you coming out in the future?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I could see a reason to do that. You know, I've kicked around concepts. It would never be one of my main books. What I might do is, you know, if people were interested in one of those early novels of mine, just to see how I've evolved as an author, and maybe print on demand my first or second book that if you just want the collector's copy, for the collectibility, say, "Hey, let's see what Brandon was like when he was a terrible writer," and I would have to make sure that they knew, "This is a terrible book. It's a terrible book by someone who eventually became a good writer, and so maybe you can see the evolution." That...I thought about collecting...one of the things I do for my books is I release annotations. This works like a director's commentary on a DVD; every chapter in my books—during the copy-edit phase, when I read through the book for the last time—I stop after each chapter and I write a few paragraphs about it—where it came from, maybe some history for the world and the characters, or what was going on in my life when I wrote that chapter, what inspired me to write that chapter, these sort of things—and then I post them at about [?] space of about two a week after the book comes out. And so, I think that's a really fun thing that you can only do with the internet, that ties into all this. I've considered collecting all of those and adding a little bit more bonus material, and then selling that as a print-on-demand book that people can just buy a copy for, you know, ten bucks through Lulu or something, that they can set on their shelf that then they can have all the annotations printed, that they can have their own annotated version of one of my books, that sort of thing, which I think would be a really fun thing to do.

    So I see the potential for that. I see the potential for using this viral marketing—I don't know; there's a whole lot of exciting things going on with this. This all excites me; it doesn't scare me. And I think part of what's happening, um...Orson Scott Card, in one of the magazines he writes for just a couple of months ago, said that he believes fantasy is entering its Golden Age, which excites me because fantasy has lagged behind science fiction a little bit—quite a bit. For a while, science fiction was the big genre in our little spec-fic, underneath our spec-fic umbrella, which includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all of these other things. Science Fiction was dominant for a while; it really had some time to grow and to explore some ground, and I don't know that fantasy has done that yet. I think that, fantasy, the best is yet to come, so to speak. I think that, certainly we've had some fantastic writers—I'm a big proponent, obviously, of Robert Jordan; I think that he did some wonderful things with the genre—but I do think that there's a lot of space left in the genre, a lot of places to go, new things to be explored. The genre has only barely been explored. It seems like for a long time we were telling the same types of stories, essentially over and over, as we were trying it right, trying to figure it out, and I think readers got a little bit tired of those same stories. And this ties back into the whole marketing and internet thing, because the internet's going to give us an opportunity for some of those really explorational things to get out there and get some attention where they might not otherwise have done so, and I think this is going to spur the writers who, you know, the entire community, to have to stretch a little further, to be a little bit better.

    I think it's the same thing that happened to the community, honestly, in the late 90s with the YA explosion. Young adults, and middle-grade, with Harry Potter becoming so high-profile, a lot of really great authors released some really powerful fantasy during that era. Phillip Pullman, Garth Nix, and J.K. Rowling herself—I love her books; I think she's a genius—and I think 'epic'—which we, I use that instead of 'adult fantasy' cause the term 'adult fantasy' just doesn't sound right when I tell people I write 'adult fantasy'; anyway, they get the wrong impression—so, I think during that era, 'epic' was forced to say, "Whoa, what are we doing? All this exciting stuff is happening in children's, and all of our readers are going to children's, because they're doing the exciting stuff where we're the same old stuff," and I think that forced a revolution in the epic fantasy genre, that we're still feeling it shaped because of that.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    Yeah, nobody wants to keep on rereading Tolkien done over and over again.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah. Right.

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  • 599

    Interview: Sep 7th, 2009

    Bill Cunningham

    So, in that regard, you know, thinking about the tools of the internet, the possibilities of harnessing so many different voices via a social network, or so on, how do you feel about the concept of shared worlds and collaborative writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um, it's interesting. I think you can do some very different things with the internet that you couldn't have done before. Everyone I've talked to who's collaborated on a book has told me that collaborating is twice the work for half the money. And some people's minds work pretty well that way; they work as a team. I mean, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven obviously work very well as a team; some of their greatest fiction came when they worked together, and the internet can allow for some of that, but I'm also skeptical at the same time because I've seen...I don't know. One of the things that's great about novels, that you don't get in other story-telling mediums—particularly you don't get in television or movies, which is our dominant story-telling medium right now—is a single person's vision, and that has its own foibles, and it has its own benefits, but when you read one of my books, you are reading my vision for a story. I may have gotten feedback on it, I may have had an editor tell me, "Hey, you should do this; you should do that," but every word that gets changed is changed by me. Everything that happens is done by me. And reading about the movie industry, there's some great movies that come out, but they're hugely collaborative works, and it seems that sometimes that so many people getting their fingers in the pie makes a movie end up losing some of its magic and vision.

    Of course not always—there are fantastic films—but some time if you want to have an interesting time, read the essay "Building the Bomb" by Terry Rossio. Terry Rossio is a famous screenwriter—he did the Pirates of the Caribbean movies; he did the Aladdin screenplay with his writing partner together—and he wrote a series of essays talking about the process, and this one is now like ten years old, but it talks about the creation of the Puppet Masters movie, the classic Heinlein novel turned into a movie—I think it's The Puppet Masters; it's one of the Heinlein scripts—but he loved the book, and he adapted it, and it goes through, step-by-step, how the life got torn out of that script because of the different people who wanted to be part of the project, not for artistic reasons, but because they wanted their names attached to it, or they wanted this person involved, or they wanted that, and it can kinda scare you sometimes what happens. I'm shocked that the artists in Hollywood—the screenwriters and the visionary directors and cinematographers, and people—are actually able to get anything artistic created, considering how much they have to go through.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    We aren't. We don't. I'm in Hollywood, so...

    CHRISTIAN LINDKE

    That's one of the things that makes, I think, television, right now, a little bit better when it comes to writing than film is, it goes through fewer collaborative bubbles.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Television's gotten great lately, comparing what we had in the 90s to what you have right now...Wow. It's night and day.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    Yeah.

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  • 600

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2010

    17th Shard

    Ok, the first question is, why did you change the main character's name to "Kaladin" in the final draft?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question. I see you're stealing all of my annotation questions that I would ask myself. For those of you who don't know, the character's original name was Merin. The change was a very hard decision because the history of Way of Kings goes back so far. You know, I started writing about and working on Merin as a character in the year 2000, so he'd been around for almost a decade in my head as who he was.

    A couple of things sparked the change. Number one, I'd never really been pleased with the name. I had been doggedly attached to it, despite the fact that all of my alpha readers on the original Way of KingsWay of Kings Prime we'll call it now—said, "This sounds like a girl's name." I'm like, "Well...you know, sometimes in different cultures names sound like girls' names. I've recently discovered that Bilbo and Frodo's actual names are "Bilba" and "Froda". Those are their actual names; that's what they say in-world and in the appendices. Tolkien in one of his appendices said, "I English-ized them to make them sound more more masculine for the 'translation' of the Lord of the Rings books, but they would actually call themselves Bilba and Froda." So, anyway, Merin sounded a little bit feminine, but still I dug in my heels.

    One of the concepts for the new Way of Kings is Kaladin's arc as a character. In Way of Kings Prime he makes a decision very early in the book, and in The Way of Kings I wanted to have him make the opposite decision. There's a big decision that comes to him and it's almost like these two books are branching paths from that moment in a lot of ways. And so it's going to be a very interesting process when I eventually let people read Way of Kings Prime, which I won't right now because it has spoilers for the rest of the series, but you can see how all the characters go in different directions from that moment and they also change slightly. It's like an alternate world version of the book you're reading.

    So, point number two was that I started to feel he's changed so much as a person I can no longer think of him as the same character. Point number three was that, as I am now working on The Wheel of Time, having a character whose name sounded a lot like Perrin started to be problem to me. Particularly since in Way of Kings Prime Merin was not the main character but in this Way of Kings he is. Way of Kings Prime was much more evenly divided between the characters, but in the published book he gets essentially double the space, and so he becomes the main character. I felt I wanted the main character of this book to have a much stronger, perhaps a little more mythic name. I tried lots and lots of names before I eventually settled on "Kaladin".

    17TH SHARD

    Kaladin does sound like a much more powerful a name.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah, it's a much better name. I'm very happy we did it, but we changed it on like the last draft, so it was very surprising to my editor and to my writing group when all of a sudden he changed to a different name.

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  • 601

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2010

    17th Shard

    What's it feel like to finally have your baby released to the public? It's probably a very different feeling from any of your other book launches.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.

    17TH SHARD

    Are you more nervous than usual or have the positive ARC compliments made you feel fairly confident?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I'm more nervous than normal. It has been my baby for a long time, and I got Tor to invest so much into it, what with the cover, the interior art, the end pages, the really nice printing, and the sheer length of it. Tor would really rather not publish books of this length. The rest of the series will be shorter; I promised that to them. I do want to warn readers that the 400,000 word length is not going to be the standard for the series. They're probably going to be more like 300,000 words, which is what this one should have been, but I just couldn't get it down. It was right for the book for it to be this length.

    I'm worried about it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it is a departure for me in a couple of ways. I've been planning a big massive epic for a long time but I only wanted to have one or two big massive epics. My Adonalsium mythos couldn't support multiples of something this long and so a lot of my other books are much more fast-paced and I do wonder what readers are going to think of a much larger more epic story, because it is going to have a different feel.

    It's happened every time I've released a book though; Warbreaker felt very different from Mistborn, which felt very different from Elantris. Way of Kings feels very different from all of those as well so I'm worried that there are a lot of readers who are not going to like it as much. I hope that there are a lot of readers who are going to like it more, but we'll have to just see what people think of it.

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  • 602

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael R. Mennenga

    Well, first off, we've got to talk about the Wheel of Time, because that's like really, really, really cool.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is really, really, really cool. I'm still a little bit in awe, a little bit surprised every day when I get up and I start working on the Wheel of Time books. I've mentioned this before on interviews, but I started reading the books when I was fifteen, been following them all along. And so, I'm thirty-five this year. And so twenty years of my life, I've been reading these books, and now I'm actually writing on them. It's a really surreal experience.

    Michael R. Mennenga

    It's like the ultimate fanfic wet dream, you know. (laughs)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. I mean, it totally is. There's really no way to describe this. It would be like a science fiction fan getting called by J. J. Abrams and asked, "Hey would you be interested in working on the next Star Trek movie?" Or you know, something like that. It's unreal.

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  • 603

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael R. Mennenga

    So now, this thing is coming out in December? Or, when is this out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    November is what we're looking at. What happened is, the final notes that Robert Jordan left behind, at his widow's direction. . . His widow, Harriet, was actually his editor. She discovered him as a writer first, and then she married him. She's still very heavily involved, and she's my editor on the project. She decided to take the notes and split them into three novels. So the first one came out last November, and the next one comes out this November, and then there will be a final volume, either next year or the year after that.

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  • 604

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael Stackpole

    Wow. Now, I know when I was doing Star Wars stuff, I really tried to be cool and everything like that. There were only a couple of moments where I totally freaked out and kind of geeked out, in thinking about that. How have you been handling that? And when you've had that geek-out moment, what was it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's a bunch of different things that I've geeked out about. It happened to me the other day when something that I was reading in research for the book—one of the novels, I was looking through a passage—for me, reading a story can take me back in the way that a lot people's sense will take them back to a place, you know how it is. Reading this scene, I suddenly saw myself in my bedroom as a sixteen-year-old boy reading the book for the first time, and I remembered it distinctly. And I remembered sitting and reading this scene and thinking, 'oh, I wonder what will happen?' And I not only know what happens now, I get to be involved in it. Those sorts of geek-out moments are what happened to me when suddenly my brain runs face-first into memories of being the little fantasy nerd reading books in his bedroom. And it's actually been kind of a hard process in some ways because—and I'm sure you know about this, Mike—you can't always just do the fanboy thing. If you do, then the story is not going to come off as genuine. You can't have every other page be a cameo by this character or that character. In fact, you have to be very, very sparing with that sort of thing, because otherwise the story—it's just not going to feel right, it's going to feel like a parody of itself. And that's been an interesting process, splitting my mind and saying, okay what does the fan want, and what can I give him, and what am I not allowed to give him?

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  • 605

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael Stackpole

    You know, that's a very interesting point. And I think it's one of those things...I remember when I first started working on some Star Wars comics, and I'll just use this as a preface to get you to comment. I was talking with Ryder Windham who was editor at Dark Horse at the time, and we were talking about a variety of projects. And one of the things that he said is that he really didn't like hiring fans to write projects. He would rather take a writer and turn them into a fan to work on the project than it was to take a fan and try and train him to be a writer. Do you think the fact that you've got your writing chops, the fact that you've got your own books that are very well received and beloved, gives you the confidence to be able to sit there and say, okay now I get to play with this stuff that without which I wouldn't have gotten where I was?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Confidence, I don't know. I'm still sometimes—you know how it is—I mean, you worry. This sort of story is more beholden to the fans than it is to me. I don't own it. It's really theirs now, they've been following it for so long. But yeah, it certainly did have something to do with it.

    I talk of it this way when I speak to Wheel of Time readers. I say, imagine a Venn diagram, all right. You've got this one circle that are just super huge Wheel of Time fans. And there are a lot of them out there, and I'll tell you, though I'm in that circle, I am not the biggest fan that exists. I have not dedicated hours and hours of my life to creating web sites dedicated to the Wheel of Time. I make heavy use of those web sites when I'm doing research and working on the books. But I haven't done that. There are people...if you would have found me before this happened, yes, I'd read all the books, in fact, I'd read most of them numerous times. But if you started firing trivia questions at me, you would have found very quickly that I would have hummed and hawed quite a bit. There are certainly larger fans.

    And if you make another circle to the side of really great writers, I hope that I would be in that circle, but I'm not going to be the best writer you'll find by far. I mean, I'm in awe of some of the other writers in the fantasy community. George R. R. Martin, people like Terry Pratchett, are just pure geniuses and certainly are fantastic writers.

    But if you put those two circles together, sitting right smack dab in the middle of pretty big Wheel of Time fans and pretty decent writers, is me. And I think that's what they were looking for, what Harriet was looking for, when choosing someone to work on this project. The Wheel of Time—eleven books plus prequel—there's a lot of material there and they needed a book out fairly quickly, and so they needed somebody who was familiar with it already. But at the same time, if you just had a fan—like you said, learning to write is a process that can take decades, it certainly takes years and years to write well—and they didn't have that time to train somebody to write that well. And so I kind of look at myself, and say well, in some ways it's amazing and somewhat strange to me that I got chosen. But in other ways, it's like I am the only person sitting there in the middle between those two circles, and so I was in some ways the only choice.

    Michael R. Mennenga

    Very well said, actually.

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  • 606

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael Stackpole

    Oh yeah, and I had similar feelings when I got the X-Wing books. What I'd like you to talk about if you can is, what was the experience like having gone through the books as a fan and then having to go back through as a writer, now using this as core material? What were the changes that went on and the things that went on in your head as you were suddenly approaching this not as fun and games any more, but as actual work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. Yeah, I did a read through of the entire series right after I was offered the project. The first thing I did was sit down with my notebook to re-read everything. And those were some of the strangest months of my life. It took me three months to re-read, taking notes, because I was making that reconciliation. I was looking at it now as a writer. And in one way, I was trying to make the decision at that point how much I was going to try to imitate Robert Jordan's style. You know, I had looked at Robert Jordan through the eyes of a writer before. I'd looked at his work because I was a big fan, and I was wanting to write myself, and so I spent time analyzing his work. But now, as a professional writer, I looked at it very differently. And looking at this, I had to decide: am I going to try to imitate his voice? How can I make a book that I write feel like a Wheel of Time book, while at the same time not sounding like a parody of Robert Jordan? How can I do this? That was a big aspect of it. But another aspect of it was kind of what you mentioned there, where I was reading through, and I was having to approach it in a completely different tack. To give an example of this, there were many times when I was reading along, and that fan inside me would say, 'oh I wish this would happen.' And then I would stop, and I would say, 'well, I can make that happen if I want it to.'

    Michael Stackpole

    (laughter) Exactly.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. But then the question becomes, is it appropriate in the story? Is it gonna make a better story? Just because the fan wants it, is it right to do? And so, working on this book, I have to say, it's been one of the hardest experiences in my life, working on this trilogy, and one of the most rewarding. And it's taught me so much. I mean, there are two thousand named characters in the Wheel of Time with whom I have to be intimately familiar. I have to keep track of all of this stuff, and all of these plot lines. There are several dozen different plot lines. And these are not small books—400,000 word novels, several of them are. And so, keeping all of this in the air and becoming essentially an expert on all of it has taught me a great deal about plotting as an epic fantasy writer. It's, I think, just made me a better writer overall.

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  • 607

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael R. Mennenga

    Yeah, I can see that, because it is a huge undertaking. I mean, the series is just gigantic. You said that you're using online sources and fan sites, and so forth, just kind of research. I guess you'd absolutely have to. There'd be no way to do this otherwise. Have you got any shout-outs to some of the better ones? Or do they know that you're reading?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh yeah. There are several very good ones. The one I use most extensively is a place called Encyclopaedia WoT. The 'encyclopaedia' is spelled kind of the ancient way, with an extra 'a' in there somewhere. But anyway, Encyclopaedia WoT, what it's done is it's simply an index. It is an index of every character's appearance and which chapters they're in, with a short summary of that chapter. And that has been invaluable, because you'll have these moments, where you're like, okay I remember these two characters met, what did they say to each other? You can go to those characters' index, find where they are, and then I can go read those scenes from Robert Jordan's books. And so, it's very useful.

    Tarvalon.net also has some very extensive sort of wiki-style articles about the Wheel of Time world that I've used for reference in various instances to help me along. So, those two in particular, but there's a lot of very good Wheel of Time web sites out there. For those looking for a good community, Dragonmount is a great place to go to just be part of a community. There's some more recent ones, like Thirteenth Depository, which have some very interesting things going on. The really psycho one is a place called Theoryland, in which people get around and argue their weird and wacky theories about what's going to happen in the books. And that can be very interesting from my standpoint, knowing what's going to happen in the books, going there and seeing what people are thinking, and hoping for, and wondering about.

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  • 608

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Michael R. Mennenga

    Right, right. That's awesome. That was actually going to be one of my next questions is: what do you think the fans are really wanting out of this trilogy, and have you been addressing some of that, or are you just going your own route?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, as a fan myself, I've been...how shall I say? It's important to listen fan response, but it's important not to be driven by it. And that's a very fine line to walk because, as we said, what the fan wants isn't necessarily what will make the best story. Sometimes you have to do things that, you know, they're going to be angry about, but in the long run will like more. And fortunately, I have very extensive notes from Robert Jordan, outlines and these sorts of things to use. I'm not just coming up with it all myself. There are big holes, things that I have a lot more freedom on, and there are other places where he wrote down what needs to happen, and I'm following that because it's what's appropriate to do. So, I am looking at fan expectations, but more it's to help guide how I present things and less about making me decide what to present, if that makes any sense.

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  • 609

    Interview: May 24th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson

    The other thing that I would mention is I do have another book coming up this year other than the Wheel of Time book, which is called The Way of Kings. Which is very interesting in that...working on the Wheel of Time has taught me a whole lot about writing, and there is a book I had been working on of my own for about ten years now that hadn't ever worked. I hadn't been able to get it right. And after writing The Gathering Storm, the first of the Wheel of Time books, the changes it required in me as a writer started to make things click. And so last summer, I went and I took several months off from the Wheel of Time and I did a revision—actually, a complete rewrite, a start from scratch—on this book, which is the start of a large epic of my own. And it finally worked, it all came together. And so Tor is publishing that novel in August—August 17th—The Way of Kings, which, you know, I'm very excited about. It's something that's been part of my life for a very long time, and it's now working, and everything is coming together. So I'm quite excited about it.

    Michael Stackpole

    Excellent, excellent.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Did I say I'm excited about it?

    Michael R. Mennenga

    Yes, you sound excited. You definitely sound excited. So, did you ever expect your career to get to this point, or by this route, when you were first starting out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not at all, not at all. I mean, these are the sorts of things you can't anticipate. When you're first starting out, at least for me...I actually wrote thirteen novels before I got published. Coincidentally, the thirteenth of those novels was The Way of Kings, the first version of it. I sold book number six, which was Elantris. Which actually...you guys had me on about a month after Elantris came out. I think it was one of my very first interviews. I sold my sixth book. And you know, during that time, publishing alone becomes this mythological thing that you're not sure if it will ever even happen. The fact that that happened, and now I've had this incredible success and been able to be part of a fantasy series that's been dear to me for so many years, I mean, this is the sort of stuff that if I were to write this sort of thing happening to a character in a book, no one would believe it even in a fantasy novel.

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  • 610

    Interview: May, 2009

    Question

    I know fans of the series have a lot of questions about how you ended up being the writer for this.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, yeah. A lot of people are curious about how I ended up writing these books. It's actually...I'm a little bit curious myself, to be perfectly honest. The first I heard that I was being considered for it was when I received a phone call. I got up in the morning, I went downstairs and checked my voice mail. Out of the blue, there was a voice mail from someone who said, "Hi, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I want you to call me back. There's something I want to talk to you about." Which...I mean, I assumed had to be a joke from my friends, right? I mean, I'd been reading the Wheel of Time books since I was a kid. I picked up the first one when I was fifteen. First week of its publication I had a copy of that and had been reading them ever since.

    And when Robert Jordan passed away, I was grief stricken like everyone else. We thought he was doing fine. His most recent blog post which I'd read was...you know, he was very optimistic he was going to pull through. And then when we found out that he'd passed away, we weren't sure how to react. And now here was his wife calling me. I hadn't applied for this or anything. I later found out that she had read some words I'd posted on my web site about what Robert Jordan had meant to me. And she had really been touched by those, and had asked for a copy of one my books, Mistborn, from Tom Doherty, the publisher at Tor. And he'd sent her one and she'd read that. And based off of that, that's why she wanted to talk to me.

    So I called her back and actually, she didn't answer—she was out getting a massage. So, I'm kind of at my wit's end going crazy, what's going on. I called my agent, who also didn't answer, which is very rare for him, so it was quite the odd coincidence. So I called my editor, and he didn't answer—not so rare for him, but... So nobody—my wife wasn't there, I didn't know what was going on. Finally, I got a hold of someone at Tor, who then got a hold of Tom, who got a hold a Harriet, who called me back. And indeed, it was just her asking if I was interested in finishing the Wheel of Time, taking the materials that Robert Jordan left behind and making the last book out of it.

    I was dumbfounded, honestly, when I was talking to her. I was unable to even pronounce words because I was so shocked. I actually...I wrote her a letter the next day, sent it via Tor, an email which said, "Dear Harriet, I'm not an idiot, I promise," because I really just stuttered and slurred. But of course, I really was excited. I wanted to do this. I mean, for an author...I got into writing partially because of Robert Jordan, by reading his books when I was young. I actually studied his novels to learn how to write a book. I considered him a mentor in many ways, even though I'd never met him. I mean, I'd seen him. I'd gone to events where he'd been, but I never even talked to him. And so, the next best thing to having him be able to finish this, in my mind, was for me to be able to work on it because I knew and loved the series.

    And the characters from these books are like old friends. You know, I was one of these kind of quiet reading kids when I was in high school. I did have some friends, but my closest friends were the friends that I had in my books that I read. And Mat and Perrin and Nynaeve, Egwene, these people, these are my friends from childhood that I grew up. These are my high school buddies in many ways. Being able to go back to this as the writer...I couldn't even express how daunting, yet exciting, that felt to me. And so afterward, I did write Harriet a letter. She took about a month making a decision, thinking about me and thinking about other authors. And then, she called me back—this would be November of 2007—she called me back and said, "I really want you to do it." And by December, we had a contract, and I was in Charleston picking up the notes and materials. And that's what I've been doing ever since, is working on this.

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  • 611

    Interview: May, 2009

    Question

    And when you started to work on the book, did you have to really go back and study the Wheel of Time books? Even though you knew them so well.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. I had read Wheel of Time—I'd read the first book eight times, as I recall. And you know, I would re-read the series when a new one would come out often. And so, I had a good reading knowledge of the series, but that's very different from writing it. And so, January to March of 2008, I re-read the entire series, taking notes as the writer. A very strange process, I'll be honest, because half of me was reading this as a reader and a fan of the series. And as a reader and a fan—at least this is what I do—you have to extrapolate: "Oh, what if this happens? Oh, will this happen? Oh, could this happen?" There was the other half of my brain that was saying, "Wait a minute. You're the writer now, Brandon. What if this happens? Well, you know what will happen, and if it wasn't in the notes, you can decide if it's appropriate for it to happen." And so the two pieces of my brain were having a very interesting dialog, where the author side was saying, "That's not appropriate to the story even though you really want it." Or saying, "Oh yeah, we could do this." And the fan and the author coming together and saying, "Yay, we can do this," and then to allow for it, or there's a scene where we could do this, or even sometimes, he actually said do this scene, so I could anticipate knowing it was coming when no one else could. A very, very odd experience, but a very wonderful experience at the same time.

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  • 612

    Interview: May, 2009

    Question

    And I know this is actually going to be not one final book, but three. And why is that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, three. The split was decided by Tom, the publisher, and Harriet, who's not only Robert Jordan's wife but his editor for many years. They met before...you know, they got married because of the books, so she's been editing him for many many, years. Robert Jordan had been saying that this book would be big. He'd been saying it would be huge. In fact, he jokingly said they're going to have to sell carts to carry it on when you walk out of the store—it was going to be that big. We're looking at a book that was probably planned at eight hundred, nine hundred thousand words. Which, to give you relevance, a lot of books are around a hundred thousand words. That's a good normal size for many genres. Wheel of Time books, average is about three hundred thousand words. And we're talking about an outline for a nine hundred thousand word novel.

    And I tried to write it as one. In fact, my goal was: I approached this as one novel, that's what he wanted, and I sat down and started writing. But the shear scope of that nine hundred thousand words—three times as long as a regular Wheel of Time book—was so large. And Tom Doherty started warning me pretty early, "Look, I know Jim said that this was going to be one book, but I'm telling you what I would have told him, that it's just not feasible to be publishing it as one book." Tom seriously believes that even Robert Jordan—even if he'd been around, it would have been three books.

    Tom tells the story...he loves to talk about these things. Robert Jordan came in and pitched a trilogy to him. The Wheel of Time was supposed to be three books. Well, it's now been eleven books and a prequel, and a lot of times the scope of this thing, it takes a lot of work. And I don't want to cut any corners. I don't want to just slap together an ending. I want to give it the time it deserves, and the characters are all over the place, and they're slowly working back together for this conclusion, but it just wasn't right to try and just ram it together like that.

    So I was going to write it the length that he was planning to write it. I'm still writing it the length that he was planning to write it. I'm not expanding it. I'm not contracting it. I'm writing it that length. And the realities of the publishing industry are that it needs to be three books at that length. I'm still hoping to convince people to publish it as a one-volume nice hardcover omnibus at the end, but that may be unfeasible. Tom keeps saying, "Boy, I just don't know if that's possible, Brandon." So, we'll wait and see. I'm going to keep pushing for it. But for right now, it is one book in my head, but it is going to be released in three volumes, hopefully fairly quickly.

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  • 613

    Interview: May, 2009

    Question

    How did it affect your other...? You write your own books, obviously, separate from this. How did continuing his series—did it have any effect on your own writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it did, actually. Completing his series had a dramatic effect on my own writing. For one thing, I had to shelve a lot of projects I was working on, because this took precedence. But at the same time, I've had to go back to the master's work and really look at how he constructed stories. I think I've learned a lot. Writing this first third of A Memory of Light has been the most challenging thing I've ever done in my entire life. There's nothing to compare with it. It's like, you know, I was a runner used to going and doing the 500-meter dash and now I had to do a marathon. And it's forced me to stretch in a lot of different ways. And because of that, I think I've grown a lot as a writer, and I don't look at my own writing quite the same way any more.

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  • 614

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2010

    17th Shard

    The Way of Kings has a very interesting format. Why did you decide to go with that format and what prompted you to include the interludes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's another excellent question. You guys are really on the ball. Uh...so, what went through my head is one worry that we have in epic fantasy. The longer the series goes, and the more characters you add, the less time you can spend with each character. This gets really frustrating. You either have the George R. R. Martin problem where he writes a book and doesn't include half of them, or you get the middle Wheel of Time problem where he will jump to each character for a brief short time and no one's plot seems to get advanced.

    If you look back at Elantris, I did a lot of interesting things with form in that novel, and I wanted to try something interesting with form for this series that would in some way enhance what epic fantasy does well and de-emphasize the problems. And I thought that I could do some new things with the form of the novel that would allow me to approach that, and so I started to view the book as one main character's novel and then short novellas from other characters' viewpoints. Then I started adding these interludes because I really like when, for instance, George Martin or Tad Williams or some other authors do this. You'd jump some place and see a little character for a brief time in a cool little location, but the thing is, when most epic fantasy writers do that, that character becomes a main character and you're just adding to your list. I wanted to actually do something where I indicated to the reader that most of these are not main characters. We're showing the scope of the world without being forced to add a new plot line. And I did that is because I wanted to keep the focus on the main characters and yet I also wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I wanted to show off the interesting aspects of the world.

    When you read Way of Kings Prime someday you'll see that there are six major viewpoint characters, all in different places, with all different plots, because I wanted to show off what was happening in different parts of the world. That spiraled out of control even in that one book. Keeping track of who they were because there were such large gaps between their plot lines was really problematic. Instead I condensed and made, for instance, Kaladin's and Dalinar's plots take place in the same area as Adolin's. And so, even though you have three viewpoints there the plot lines are very similar. Or, at least they're interacting with one another.

    And so the interludes were a means to jump around the world. They're essentially short stories set in the world, during the book, so when you get this book, maybe you can think of it this way: Kaladin's novel with Shallan and Dalinar each having shorter novels or novelettes or novellas, with occasional, periodic jumps to short stories around the world. And then of course Kaladin's flashbacks. As we've mentioned, every book will have flashbacks from its main character to enhance the main plotline.

    I'm hoping that form will do a couple things. It'll show the scope of the world without us getting too overwhelmed by characters we have to keep track of. You know when you hit interludes that you aren't going to have to pay attention to most of them. You can read and enjoy them, but you aren't going to have to remember them. How about that? You can want to pay attention but you don't have to remember them. By the end of the book, the main characters' arcs and flashbacks should have been resolved and you should have a feel of a completer story from that main character. And then we have other characters that are doing things that are essentially just starting plotlines.

    In the next book, you'll get another character with a big arc and flashbacks. The major characters from previous books will still have parts and viewpoints; Kaladin will still be important in the next book but it won't be "his book". He'll get a novella-length part instead.

    (Of course, they're not really novella-length because it's a 400,000 word book. Those "novellas" are actually like 70,000- or 80,000-word novels)

    17TH SHARD

    Will the next Stormlight Archive books have interludes as well?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes, all of them will have interludes.

    17TH SHARD

    Ok.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    And you will, very occasionally, revisit people in the interludes. I'll let myself have one interlude that's same between each part like we did with Szeth in this book.

    Ah...Szeth's a little bit more of a main, major character, so you'll get, like, one four-parter and then you'll get what, eight just random [characters/viewpoints] around the world. And you may occasionally see those characters again, but you don't have to remember them; they're not integral to understanding the plot. They should add depth and they should be showing you some interesting things that are happening in the world while we're focused [on a few important plot lines]. I don't to travelogs in my books; my characters are not going to be sweeping across the countryside and showing you all the interesting parts of the world. I tend to set my books in a certain place and if we travel someplace, we skip the travel.

    17TH SHARD

    (laughter)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    But that means the chances of us ever visiting Gavland, um...or Bavland I think I ended up naming it...

    17TH SHARD

    Was that the place with the grass?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Shinovar is where Szeth's from. Bavland is where Szeth is owned by the miner and things like that. I can't remember what I renamed that. Originally I called it Gavland, and then we had a Gavilar and so my editor insisted that it be changed. I think it's Bavland now.

    And so the chances of us ever visiting there with a major character and a long plot are very low. But, you know, being able to show just a glimpse of Szeth there allows me to give some scope and feel to the world.

    17TH SHARD

    Makes it epic.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Hopefully, yes.

    Footnote

    Brandon has recently said that Stormlight Archive 2 is going to be from Shallan's viewpoint.

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  • 615

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    meleah

    The inside cover is beautiful. Do you plan to do something similar with every book?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    We asked for colored endpages. At first Tor was hesitant; they're very expensive. We kind of begged a bit, then showed them these cool pages and talked about how great the book would be with them, and eventually Tor decided that they would go with it. One of the aspects of doing colored endpages like that is that generally you have to use the same endpages for the entire series, to offset the printing cost. So those same endpages will be in every hardcover of the series. There will be different interior art, however.

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  • 616

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    SeekingPlumb

    Question. When writing TWoK, did you write the story lines individually & then weave them together (e.g. Place the chapters as desired.), after the fact? Or did you write the book generally in the order that we see the end result?

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    I wrote the parts by viewpoint. Meaning that for Part One, I wrote Kaladin straight through and then Shallan straight through. And then I switched for Part Two and wrote Dalinar and Kaladin, and then I switched back. So I did write the storylines individually by viewpoint, but in sections by part.

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  • 617

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    Bahador

    I really like the dialogs between Jasnah and Shallon, convering sometimes atheism, god, blind faith, etc.

    Are you going to expand on these philosophical topics? Will it play a larger part in the plot?

    I really enjoyed these moments and hope to see more of them

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    I'm glad you liked them. These questions are very important to Shallan and Jasnah and to an extent other characters such as Dalinar, so you will indeed see much more of this. I wouldn't include it if it weren't very important to the characters. And what's important to the characters has a strong influence on what's important to the plot.

    If what happens at the end of Part Five with Dalinar is to be believed, then there is a very interesting theological conundrum to this world. Something claiming to be God claims also that it has been killed. Which then in some ways leaves someone who is atheist right, and yet at the same time wrong. When Jasnah and Dalinar meet, you can expect some discussion of what it means to be atheist if there was a God and God is now dead. Or will she say that obviously wasn't God? Those circles of thought are very fascinating to me and to the characters.

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  • 618

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    Dustin

    Your sidekick characters (Nightblood, TenSoon in WoA and Syl) are always interesting, sometimes more so than side characters. Is this planned out or does it just happen? Do you control their lines more than other characters? (I really liked Syl's personality if that wasn't clear.)

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    Thank you. That is partially intentional. One of the aspects of writing characters like them is that if we're not going to get viewpoints from them, their personality has to be strong enough to manifest externally. Which tends to have an effect, if it's not done well--or sometimes even if it is done well--of making them feel one-sided. In some ways I play this up; for instance Nightblood really is one-sided because of the way his personality works, the way he was crafted. He's a construct, and he has a main focus.

    So with someone like Syl, I really wanted to bring out a lot of personality in her dialogue so that we could characterize her without having any of the internal thoughts and monologue and emotions that I sometimes instill in other characters. But Syl also was meant to be a vibrant splash of color in Kaladin's sometimes dreary viewpoints. Because of that, I really needed her to just pop off the page. So it was done intentionally.

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  • 619

    Interview: Dec, 2010

    Flip

    You have quite the world you have created. I look at the map and see a lot of different locations. How many of the named locations are actually going to be used? ... Anyway, I am always curious as to how much of one's world that has been built actually gets used.

    Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads)

    You'll have to read and see what happens. I will say this: When I build a map, I don't consider it to be a to-do list. In fact, it makes a world feel unrealistic to me when every single place on the map ends up getting visited. So it's not a to-do list, but many of those locations are very important.

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  • 620

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    gmreynoldsjr (14 November 2011)

    What are keys to balance family, writing career?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    Good question. I had to make certain hours of the day "off limits" for writing, so that I didn't feel I was missing out on writing time. I could ALWAYS be working, but that's not good emotionally or for the family.

    Otherwise, I try to make my writing time as effective as possible, so I don't feel that sense of "I didn't get anything done."

    That one makes me unbalanced, as I feel anxious if I haven't gotten some good work done in a day.

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  • 621

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    justinkjeppesen (14 November 2011)

    Any suggestions for finding time to write for a full time dad with a full time non-writing job?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    It depends on whether or not your day job is creatively draining. If it is writing/programming, etc (more)

    You'll have a much harder time, as those jobs flex the same muscles as novel writing.

    The people I've known who do it tend to get up an hour early, before their brain is worn out, and write then.

    Basically, you'll have to give something up. Television, video games, golf, something. (But not family time.)

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  • 622

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    CorbyCampbell (14 November 2011)

    Your side characters often have physical infirmities. Can you explain why?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I feel that often, fiction tends to gloss over or ignore people like Clubs. So I find myself sticking them in.

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  • 623

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    seaksstamp (14 November 2011)

    What is your favorite book you've written?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    Favorite is hard to pin down. I'm most proud of either The Gathering Storm or The Way of Kings, as they were among the hardest and most satisfying.

    Tags

  • 624

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    Imriyalde (14 November 2011)

    Do you have a trick for plowing through writer's block?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    Yes. I just write anyway, telling myself I don't have to use what I write. I write it poorly, then try again.

    For me, that gets my brain working. You can't be afraid to 'throw away' what you've done for a day and try again.

    With that in mind, you can have the most random of things happen, knowing you won't keep them. Just to get jump-started.

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  • 625

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    pchobbit (14 November 2011)

    Did you ever study a martial art yourself? Did studying a foreign language change the way you write?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    My only martial arts study comes from reading and watching, with the occasional 'one shot' go learn some basics.

    Studying a foreign language was extremely helpful in opening my eyes to other cultures, and my own language.

    Footnote

    Brandon kearned Korean for his LDS mission when he was in college.

    Brandon's Biography

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  • 626

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    tritlo (14 November 2011)

    how is it that you've become so skilled? Lots of study and practice?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    You've got it. Practice and study. I wrote 13 novels before publishing one (my sixth.) Practice, practice, practice.

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  • 627

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    GabrielRumbaut (14 November 2011)

    How "bad" are your first drafts? Many authors say their first draft of a novel is always terrible.

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    They're pretty bad. In a first draft, I focus on character arcs and laying down dialogue.

    So the descriptions are sparse, and often they're overly wordy to a huge fault. Drafts streamline.

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  • 628

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    Shadowsofink (14 November 2011)

    Complex "magic" system in Mistborn, and the complex one in Elantris; what base ideas do you build from for this?

    Brandon Sanderson (Mon Nov 14)

    For Mistborn, Alchemy and biological metabolism. For Elantris, Chinese linguistics and geometry mixed.

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  • 629

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    BenjaminSRawlin (14 November 2011)

    how old were you when you first started writing? any advice for young writers, given economy at the moment?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    I started at age 15 or 16, but didn't finish a novel until in my 20s. As for new writers, don't worry about the money.

    It will probably take a few years to get published, or to be making money, so focus on the craft first.

    Think of becoming a writer like becoming a doctor. It can take 6-8 yrs. Who knows what the economy will be like?

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  • 630

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    RachelxRussell (14 November 2011)

    How does your approach differ in writing science fiction and then fantasy? Both stylistically and conceptually.

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    For SF I take many more things for granted, meaning I focus more on story and less on worldbuilding.

    In SF, I will also generally focus on a handful of ideas instead of a whole ton of them.

    This usually makes my sf shorter than my fantasy.

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  • 631

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2011

    GabrielRumbaut (14 November 2011)

    I know you plan your plot beforehand, but do you ever find yourself changing parts of your plot in rewrites?

    Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)

    Frequently. Even a heavy outliner can't be afraid to change the story at any point in the process.

    Tags

  • 632

    Interview: Jan, 2012

    Ace_of_Faith (Reddit.com)

    Not really a question, but the one thing that disappointed me was that you didn't come up with new slang names for Allomancers! After three hundred years, do you really think they would still be calling steel mistings "coinshots"?

    Anyway, thanks for doing this and keep up the good work.

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit.com)

    I toyed with this one, but decided that I would keep them the same for a few reasons. First off, I felt that certain things in-world would hamper some linquistic diversity. (Having the books Sazed left behind as a guide to Allomancy and history, everyone living in a small geographic area, the semi-religious nature of Allomancy making people look at it in traditional ways.) So, while I advanced the slang of the world, some of the terms I decided to leave the same.

    Another reason for this came when I was writing the book. At first, I experimented with greater linguistic diversity—I even tried a vowel shift, as I figured three hundred years might be enough for that. In the end, I pulled back. I was already worried that this book not feel "Mistborn" enough, and so I wanted some direct ties back to the original series. Fiddling too much with the language while changing the setting and characters so drastically felt like a mistake to me.

    Tags

  • 633

    Interview: Jul 2nd, 2011

    Marc Aplin

    Okay, so Way of Kings...the people who don't know the background, I'll just give you a little bit. The book was written actually before pretty much anything else of Brandon's was published. I think it was 2002, 2003 he finished it. Obviously he went on to publish Elantris, Warbreaker...Mistborn as well, of course. And the Wheel of Time books. Has his experiences with these other books changed the way that he sees the Stormlight series continuing from this point?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I finished Way of Kings the first time in 2002, it wasn't ready yet. And I knew...when I finished it, I knew something was wrong. My skill wasn't up to writing a book of this length yet. I was very proud of it, but proud in the way that, you know, someone who finished their first marathon but with a horrible time would be proud of having run that marathon; and I knew I needed to get better as a writer before I could actually do it justice. And so, yes, it's evolved. There were flaws in the original book. The character of Kaladin was just boring, in the first write of it. Dalinar stayed about the same. Dalinar's plot changed the least, and who he was changed the least. But both Shallan and Kaladin had deep flaws in how I had written them, and I just wasn't...I wasn't creating characters deep enough yet. And so I set it aside, partially because I knew I needed to get better as writer. When I wrote it again in 2008—actually it was 2009, I think—I started over from scratch. I threw away everything and did it again. And my skill had increased by that point to the point that I could do it justice, I think.

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  • 634

    Interview: Jul 2nd, 2011

    Marc Aplin

    Something I found interesting between Brandon Sanderson and other writers. Peter Brett, for example, when he finished his Painted Man/Warded Man book—depending on which country you're in—his agent did like it, but he said that there was some things in it that didn't quite fit the market. So Peter went away, he read this book—Writing to Sell, I believe it was called—and he came back and gave his book back to the agent after having kind of revised it from this book. And the agent loved it, and you know what happened with that one. It's one of the most popular fantasy series going on at the moment. Something similar happened to Brandon. When he sent his work out to publishers, they thought it was good, but they weren't really sure how it met with the market's expectations. Brandon went away, he started writing stories that he thought the market would like, and in his own words, he thought it killed his writing. So, what I wanted to know from Brandon is, what is it about his work that means he can't write towards the market successfully; instead he has to, in his own words again, write from the heart to make his story successful.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's an excellent question, and there are different viewpoints on this. For instance, I remember talking to John Scalzi, and he said, "You know, when I wanted to publish, I went and looked and saw what was cool, what was selling. And I went and I wrote my own take on some of that." And that worked fantastically well for him. And I think for me part of the problem was—now, one thing I'll add as a caveat to this: yes, write from the heart, but make sure you are reading widely. Read widely what you want to write, but also read a lot of things from varying different genres and whatnot.

    I just found that if I tried to anticipate what people wanted, rather than writing what I wanted, I wrote terrible books. And when I gave no care to what people wanted and only gave care to what I thought made a fantastic book, I did a good job. And this might have to do with the fact that I was just bad at judging what people wanted. That could be it. But probably it has more to do with the fact that I naturally write... A lot of my books added a big, long epic length. And what people kept telling me is, you need to write shorter books. You need to write books like so-and-so. Or like so-and-so. And that was wrong advice for me. I didn't need to write books like so-and-so, or like so-and-so. I didn't need to write books like George R. R. Martin, as fantastic a writer as he is. I didn't need to write books like him; I needed to write books like me. And that's what worked for me.

    Different writers will have different things that work for them. And certainly I can write...I can write things that...like for instance, I write on the Wheel of Time. And in those cases, I'm taking very...I'm taking a lot of pain to make sure that what I'm writing fits with the genre, with the stories that have come before, and what the readers expect these stories to be like. And so I can do it. But I love doing it on the Wheel of Time. And I don't know what the difference is between doing it there on the Wheel of Time and those early days that I spent trying to write toward the market and having a horrible experience.

    For me, I need complete creative freedom; otherwise my books have no life to them. And even with the Wheel of Time, Harriet is giving me complete creative freedom to do whatever I think needs to be done to tell great stories. And I think I thrive in that situation. If I instead had come into the Wheel of Time and they would have said, "You have to do this exactly, this exactly, this exactly, this exactly," I think I would have done a poor job. I would have been the wrong author. But that's not what they wanted; they wanted someone they could turn it over to, who would really take ownership of it. In a small part; of course it doesn't belong to me, but you know what I mean. I take real pride and say, "I'm going to do this the best way that I know how." And not just write a book and be done with it, but say, "No, this is..." I can't even explain the difference. This is me now. The Wheel of Time, I am inexorably linked to it, and my soul is linked to it. And those aren't those books I wrote for these people. Those are books that I am deeply, deeply, emotionally involved in. And I can only, I think, do that because I've reading them for so long since I was a kid.

    Marc Aplin

    Thank you.

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  • 635

    Interview: Jul 2nd, 2011

    Marc Aplin

    Okay. So Brandon writes very fast, something people always point out. Something we wanted to know though from Brandon was, what in his mind is it he looks for in order for a book to be ready for release?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's an excellent question that's going to be very difficult to answer. I will say on my speed that I'm not a really fast writer; I'm a persistent writer. I don't take time off. I just write, and I write every day. And that piles up. I think I'm just very fortunate—I have an advantage over a lot of authors in that I don't get writer's block. I don't necessarily write any faster than those authors, but I don't stop; I just keep going. And if you write ten pages a day—which is about what I do, which is not a ton—a lot of authors produce ten pages a day when they're writing, then they hit hang ups, they hit writer's block and things; and that doesn't happen to me, certainly not very often. And so I just write consistently, and I just love to do this, and so... But that's not an indication of quality really, in either way. One of the things I found becoming a writer is some books go fast, some books go slowly. And the reader can't usually tell because a lot of good quality books happen really fast and a lot of good quality books happen very slowly. If you look at Pat Rothfuss' books, Wise Man's Fear took us years to get and is a fantastic book worth every moment of the wait. But some of the great classics like... A Christmas Carol is a famous one—took only a few days to write. And that's happened with various books and classics through history, so we don't really...yeah. Speed is one thing.

    What makes a book ready? For me, a lot of whether a book is going to be ready or not comes in, 'Can I fix the problems?' 'Cause every book has problems when I write them. I do write very... I write my drafts beginning to end, pretty quick drafts. And then I need to spend a great deal of time tweaking them, fixing them, going over them again. I write my books much like a sculptor might create a sculpture. And we start...you know, the first pass over doesn't make it look much like a fix; you're just chopping off chunks. And then you refine, and then you refine, and then finally you're sanding. Get these little tiny imperfections out. And that's how I write. My first pass through is...I'm laying down character, dialogue, and plot. I'm not doing description. And in a lot of cases, I'm not doing—for instance, I'm doing a lot of telling rather than showing, because I'm getting on the page what needs to happen. And then I need to go back and take out huge chunks of, you know, people standing up and monologuing. Instead make this actually interesting. If that makes sense. So you get the whole story in the first draft, but it would be boring. And the first draft also often introduces lots of big problems. And when I do my revisions, I need to fix those problems. Primarily, can I get the characters right? Almost every time I write a book, one of the characters, there's something wrong with them. And I need to finish the book before I can figure out what it is that's wrong with them. And the book is ready when I've got them right. At that point, it's a matter of polishing, and the polishing, though it takes time, is easy. No, it's not easy... That's the wrong term. The polishing is expected; it can be done. If I take the right amount of time, I will polish it correctly. But...it's those pieces right before that need to be fixed.

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  • 636

    Interview: Jul 2nd, 2011

    Marc Aplin

    So this question I think was quite difficult for Brandon. I hope I didn't cause any kind of offense when I asked it, but I think it's a question that... It's a good question, because it shows a lot about Brandon, not only as a writer, and as the kind and respectful guy we know he is, but also it shows the feelings and kind of commitment he has to you fans as well, which I think was really great. I'll start by reading a quote which I'll read to you now. "I think the concept of anyone else working on the Wheel of Time series was very painful for Robert Jordan." Just to put it in context: he did go on to say that he was eventually happy that someone was continuing his series, so there's no issue with that. The question I wanted to ask Brandon was, for any reason if he couldn't write tomorrow, how would he feel if someone else was to continue his Stormlight series? Is it something he would allow, is it something he would be happy someone else is doing? And what are his thoughts?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. I certainly would. If I were far enough along in it. If happened tomorrow, it were only one book in. At that point, I'd say, "You know what? Scrap the project. Don't make people... You know, don't..." I don't have enough notoriety for it to happen. But let's say I got seven books in and there were three books left. At that point I would say, "Definitely, it needs to be finished." I do keep very good notes. And so, basically, I would trust my editor to find somebody, and I would want them to work very closely with my assistant Peter who has known me for many years and is very... He's the one that knows the most about my books and my worlds, aside from myself. And there are lots of very talented authors. There are plenty of authors who are even more talented, you know...more talented than I am, certainly. Plenty of authors. And so, finding the right one, I would leave that up to editors and people like that. I mean, most people that I would want, that I would pick, are too popular in their own right to want to go write this dopey guy's books. I think Brent Weeks and I write very similarly, and I think he would be a fantastic choice, but there are plenty of authors out there that I think could do the job if I left the right notes.

    Marc Aplin

    Thank you. Again, a great answer there by Brandon.

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  • 637

    Interview: Sep 7th, 2009

    Bill Cunningham

    Let's flip the conceptual pancake a little bit in terms of collaboration, and let's think about the idea of you coming up with the concept, you creating the world, and then turning that over to other people to write short stories about.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. Yeah, I've considered that. I know that Eric Flint has had a lot of success with that, and created an entire community based around—what's it, the...1632? Is that the name? It's a number, so [?]—it's his big alternate history line where the community has essentially created a short story magazine based in this world almost without his involvement—he's of course been involved, but it's [?], and it's fascinating how the fans have jumped into this world and really created something where it's essentially sanctioned fanfic by Eric, which becomes canon because they all work together and create this story together. It's very interesting. I've considered doing that with novel ideas—and you see this happening sometimes with writers—I've got, now with the Wheel of Time that takes so much of my dedication and time—and, you know, rightly so; I want these books to be fantasticvI can't work on all the side projects I used to, which is a little bit sad to me, so I've considered getting some authors that I know and respect who are wanting to break in, writing out a 20,000-word outline and saying, "Okay, take this and make it 90,000 words; let's see what it turns into. I've considered doing that; I don't know if I'll ever actually do it, but I've considered seeing what that would do.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    Well, it does have its roots in the old pulp publishing model, where the editor would assign a story concept or a character to a writer, and also, in the 60s there was a gentleman by the name of—and he's somebody I've been researching lately, so he's on my mind as I say this—his name was Lyle Kenyon Engel, and he was a gentleman who gave John Jakes one of his major breaks, and James Reasoner, who was a huge Western author—some of their breaks, and several other very well-known authors of mysteries and genre fiction—their breaks—but he was, in essence, a "book packager". He would come up with the concept; he would pitch the publisher, and say "We're going to create a series of books based around this central character. I will have my writers write it, but this is basically what you're going to get." You know, "Can we put you down for," you know, "this series of eight books, and then we'll go from there." You know, and then he would hire the writers to write for that. Being as you're, you know, in the Wheel of Time now, you know...tremendous opportunity...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Mmhmm.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    The drawbacks are that you're working in somebody else's wheelhouse.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yep.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    But is that really a drawback?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Well, for this particular project, no. But it's very specific. There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, I read Eye of the World in 1990 in paperback when it first came out and have been reading these books as they came out ever since. I read them through numerous times. One of my favorite authors of all time, if not my favorite author, is Robert Jordan. And so, the chance on the fanboy side...heh. To be perfectly honest, to work on this, to take this master who's inspired me, and then be part of it, is incredible.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    I can hear the glee from here.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah. It's amazing. I don't know that I would have said yes to anyone else, because of some of the limitations. Now, another limitation that I don't have to deal with in this that you do have to in other shared worlds is...Harriet, the editor and wife of Robert Jordan, handed me the project and essentially gave me carte blanche, said "Okay, this is your project now. You write this project as you feel you need to write it. Here are the notes." You know, "Don't throw out anything from the notes unless you've got a really good reason, but you're in charge." I'm not just the writer; I'm the project manager and the story developer and all these things wrapped up in one, which is what you're not if you're writing for something like Star Wars. You are one of many; you have to be micro-managed quite a bit, as I understand, when you're writing for one of these type of properties.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    [Something about Wikipedia]

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yeah. I don't have to do that. Now I do have to make sure I'm being consistent with the world and things, but I've got lots of continuity experts in-house who can help me to make sure that that happens, but really, I've got creative control. The final say is with Harriet, but I've got a lot of creative power. And I'm using that to actually not use it very often. Whenever Robert Jordan has something in the notes, I'm using what he said—I'm not taking this and trying to make it my own—but it is incredibly liberating to work on a project like this and also have, at the same time, this creative control. So that's another aspect of it.

    Now, the big limitation is, it doesn't belong to me—which is fine, for this project—but that's the thing you have to get into. Like, when that "book packager" is pitching a series of books, he's gonna own that story from the copyright, which makes me very wary as a writer. The other great thing about being an author as opposed to being in film, or being in television, or even being in music a lot of times is that you, as the writer, own the whole thing. You generally don't sign away characters, worlds, setting, or anything—it's all yours. You have complete control over your story. A publisher like Tor buys the rights generally to publish it in English in North America. That's what they do. They get to package it how they want, they have control over the art and things like that, but the words are mine, and I retain control. The copyright is mine, which is fantastically different than if you're working in the video game industry, for instance. If you're working for a company and you come up with this brilliant, wonderful story, and you've developed it, and you work on it, and you have this amazing video game come out, the company then owns rights to all that, and can do whatever they want with it. The same thing generally with comic books—not always, but a lot of the time—and, you know, what you get instead is a regular paycheck, which for an artist is a pretty nice thing, but you trade off on that creative control, and creative ownership. And in novels you still have that creative ownership. It's the only major entertainment medium where the creator retains ownership so wholly.

    And so, that's the biggest thing that worries me about collaborations and things like that is, you know, who has ownership? This is the last, so-to-speak, line of defense in that. Some other industry executives' minds when they find out... If something gets really big like Harry Potter, Scholastic or Bloomsbury doesn't own that; J. K. Rowling does. And by the corporate-think, that's really ridiculous; they shouldn't be allowing that to happen. But for the artist, it's what's best for the series, I think, and the story, and it allows the artist to be in control. So, yeah. That's the big line of defense, and we are very, very wary in science fiction and fantasy in particular, about letting any sort of contract language slip in which would infringe on that.

    CHRISTIAN LINDKE

    One of the challenges of the translation of Terry Goodkind's novels to the television is the fact that, here you have of these long epic novels that advance, in Terry's case, a particular philosophic position, and you end up with a pretty good [?]—I'm not disparaging the show; I actually really like Legend of the Seeker—but it's very different to watch that kind of slapsticky, samurai-y moment in the middle of Terry Goodkind's story. So I know exactly what you're saying; I think it's a perfect example.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    And just think if they'd been able to do Wizard's First Rule as a complete, one-season epic arc, rather than having to worry about slapstick and things like this.

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  • 638

    Interview: Jan, 2012

    midwestredditor (Reddit.com)

    How did you channel that much snark and oddball humor for Wayne without going a little crazy?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit.com)

    Characters like him actually provide a snark outlet for me, so that it can be very cathartic to write them.

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  • 639

    Interview: 2012

    MIKEYSIMMONS2 (Wed Jan 18)

    What advice would you give to writers for expanding description and vocabulary

    Brandon Sanderson (Thu Jan 19)

    For the first, learn to be brief and concrete. We have done writing excuses on the topic.

    For the second, look for the best (most precise) word, not some random term from the thesaurus. (Sp?)

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  • 640

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (Web Feb 01)

    Subterranean Press has announced preorder availability of my new novella "Legion," coming sometime in the summer/fall. (link)

    WHURSMABELLY

    Did you know there's a Marvel Comics character called Legion who has abilities very similair to those found in your novella?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Someone mentioned it to me yesterday. I'm afraid, though, it's impossible not to do things that Marve/DC haven't covered.

    Magneto vs Allomancy, for example, or about a billion gravity manipulation superheroes vs Szeth.

    When I write something, I can't ask "Has anyone done this before?" because the answer will ALWAYS be yes.

    :) That said, it's amusing (but perhaps not surprising) that we both used the same idea with the name.

    WHURSMABELLY

    Have you ever felt the need to change anything in your writing that was TOO close to something already out there?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Yes, I have—but only in the pre-publication stage. If I'd known about the Marvel character, for example

    I probably would have used another name. Still, knowing now means I can change it if I do a full novel.

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  • 641

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (Wed Feb 08)

    Oh, bureaucracy, you are my bane. It always takes me like five minutes to figure out how to spell that word . . .

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  • 642

    Interview: 2012

    Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brian Condon (25 January 2012)

    Just wondering if there will be any sort of way RJ's ending will stand out, or if it just flows with your work.

    Brandon Sanderson (25 January 2012)

    I think those who know our different writing styles will be able to pick out the differences.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    It depends on how closely one watches the prose.

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  • 643

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (25 January 2012)

    Saw an ad for a LAN party today, and (I kid you not) my first thought was: "What's Lan doing away from the battlefield?"

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  • 644

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (8 February 2012)

    Oh, bureaucracy, you are my bane. It always takes me like five minutes to figure out how to spell that word...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Other fun things from Brandon's spelling mind: I always want to write Darlin Sisnera's name "Darlin Sinestro." Crossover time!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Don't even get me started on algai'd'siswai and siswai'aman, by the way.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Just updated the % for A Memory of Light draft two to 70%. Should have the whole book done and off to Harriet in a week or so.

    KIERAN KERR

    Hi Brandon. What's the official release date for the final Wheel of Time novel? Can't wait!!!!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I don't think there is one yet. Fall, sometime, probably. But Harriet is the one who will decide.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    A lot of people ask after the release date. Fall/Winter this year is still likely. However, I would like to note that Harriet is in charge.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    She hasn't yet read the entire book; she gets to decide when it will be released. She can delay it or push it up, whatever she wants.

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  • 645

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    Congratulations on receiving this landmark opportunity. How are you feeling?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Honestly? I'm feeling daunted. And still a little sad. There was only one person who could have written this book the way it was supposed to be written, and he is gone now. I think I'll do a good job (to be honest, I think I'll do a great job) but I can't do the job he would have done. Nobody can.

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  • 646

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    The Big Question most fans probably have is: "Why Brandon Sanderson?" What are your thoughts on this?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well. . . there are a lot of ways to answer that. First, I'll note that I'm still reeling about this news myself. I stop occasionally and think "Wait, am I REALLY doing this?" It seems incredible to me, so I can understand why fans might think "Brandon Sanderson, why him?"

    The first way I could answer that question is by giving a list of my writing credentials. I know how to write fantasy books. I understand how to plot over a long epic book, and my novels have been very well received by both reviewers and fantasy fans. I write epics after the flair of the Wheel of Time, yet my books (I hope) aren't just a copies of what Robert Jordan and others have written. I think that's important. I've read fantasy since I was a kid, and I understand what made these books great.

    However, I'm not sure if credentials are main reason I was chosen for this project.

    A second answer to that question might be this: "Why Brandon Sanderson? Because he's as much a fan of the series as you are." I've been with The Wheel of Time since the paperback release of The Eye of the World back when I was fifteen years old. I've read the early books of the series through six or seven times now. I'm the guy who was in the right position to help out on this project: I have both the skill to accomplish the task and a deep love of the series.

    Again, though, I'm not sure if that's the right answer.

    The right answer, then, is probably this third one: "Why Brandon Sanderson? Because he's the one Harriet chose."

    Harriet was given full authority over this matter. It was her decision. While others gave her some suggestions, she's now the ultimate authority over anything relating to The Wheel of Time. She read my book Mistborn, and from doing so picked me to write A Memory of Light. (And I think that leads right into the next question.)

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  • 647

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    How did you first get involved in this project? Were you approached by Tor and/or Harriet, or did you dust off your resume and send it to them for consideration?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I heard that Mr. Jordan had passed away, I was deeply saddened. Like everyone else, I was waiting for the final book—and last I had heard, he was doing better and was confident that he'd be able to pull through.

    After I got over the shock of his death, I did think "Wow. I wish I could help out on this project somehow." I loved the books, and if someone was going to be involved in finishing the series, I wanted to be there. However, I didn't feel it was appropriate to solicit work on it. There are a couple of reasons why.

    1) I figured that Harriet, Tom, and the people at Tor would be busy grieving as I was, and it just didn't feel right to me to respond to Mr. Jordan's death with a play for the series. As I noted in the essay I wrote about his passing, with Mr. Jordan's death, the fantasy community suddenly changed. There would be time for thinking about the final book later. For now, it was time to think about what this man had meant to the genre and its readers.
    2) I assumed that there was a good chance someone had already been chosen to work on the project. I trusted that Harriet and Tom Doherty knew what they were doing, and would see that the book got written in good time.

    So, I didn't send in a request—or even a question—about the future of The Wheel of Time. I was dumbfounded and honored when—a month or so after the death—Harriet called me on the phone to inquire if I was interested. I got the impression that she was calling several authors (I don't know how many) and making sure that they were willing before she invested the time in reading their work.

    About a month later (this would be around mid November) she called me again and said that she had been touched by the writing of Mistborn, and had decided she wanted me for the project immediately. However, she'd made certain to take time and think about the decision before offering it to me officially. At that time, she made the offer—and I accepted. (With great excitement.)

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  • 648

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    What was your initial reaction when you read the outline Harriet put together for A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I actually haven't seen it yet. All I know is that there IS an outline, as well as some other material that Mr. Jordan gave via dictation. I'm flying out to sort through it and speak with Harriet, and will probably be there when this interview goes public on Monday the 10th.

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  • 649

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    You've said before in other interviews that your fantasy novels (Elantris, and the Mistborn series) were born in part by the notion of taking a typical fantasy concept and turning it on its head. For example, you said that while The Wheel of Time is about "peasants becoming kings", your Elantris book is about "Kings who become peasants." And one of the fundamental ideas behind the Mistborn series is the question: "What if the Dark One won?" Having explored those interesting ideas, what's it like to suddenly find yourself writing the ending of a massive series which in large part defined the fantasy genre that many readers are familiar with?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's exciting, to be honest. The characters and setting to this world are so deep, so complex, so FASCINATING that it's going to be a worldbuilder's pleasure to look through the notes and begin work on the project. It will be hard, and it is certainly daunting, but it's also an amazing opportunity.

    As you said, a lot of my work is a direct reaction to the fantasy I read when I was young. Not against it, really, but an attempt to build upon it and take the epic fantasy in new directions. Yet, I've always wanted my books to still FEEL like fantasy, and the Wheel of Time is part of what defines what feels like fantasy in our era.

    A part of me has always wanted to deal with the classic fantasy themes, which is why Mistborn was about turning them on their heads. The chance to get right to the source and work with a series that defined those themes. . .it's just plain amazing.

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  • 650

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    How would you describe your writing style?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Three things make a fantasy epic work for me. 1) A complex plot with plenty of twists and turns that comes to an explosive climax. 2) An imaginative magic system and setting that feels both real and wondrous at the same time. 3) Deeply personal characters dealing with issues that transcend genre. (This is the most important one.)

    I approach my writing from that above philosophy. I am probably best known for my magic and my settings, where I try very hard to give the reader a unique and different experience, one they haven't gotten from other fantasy books. I am also known for my endings, where I try very hard for well-foreshadowed—yet still surprising—twists and climaxes.

    However, magic is only as interesting as the characters who use it. A plot is only gripping for me if I care about the characters. Danger and action sequences mean nothing if we don't CARE about the people who might be hurt or killed.

    Robert Jordan, through his writing, taught me that. Characters first, everything else second.

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  • 651

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    In what ways do you think you'll have to shift your writing style to match Robert Jordan's? Will you be trying to write in his "voice", or will you approach the novel with your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    To attempt an exact copy of his style would, I think, be the wrong move. If I did it poorly, it would feel like an awkward parody. Yet, at the same time, there are some very important reasons people love these books. Depth of setting, detailed descriptions, and complex and lengthy characterizations are all hallmarks of Mr. Jordan's style.

    So, I think it will need to be a balance. I intend to be more detailed in my descriptions and linger a little bit longer on side characters than I do in my own work. However, I am not Robert Jordan, and the fans know that. Every author is different, and I think that my style will indeed influence how the text and ideas are presented.

    Tor could have hired a ghost writer to do this book, and then could have released it under Mr. Jordan's name only, pretending that the book was nearly finished by the time of Mr. Jordan's death. I think it is to their credit that they didn't. Readers deserve to know what they are getting. My goal will be to stay true to the themes, characters, concepts, and general stylistic choices that made these books so successful without trying to mimic the smaller details of his style.

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  • 652

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    We know that Robert Jordan left extensive notes, as well as some audio tapes and actual written parts for this novel. We know your intent is to tell his story. Having seen the outline, how much of the actual plot (the plot points, character arcs, intrigue, etc) do you think you'll have to come up with on your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I honestly don't know yet. (As mentioned above.) I think we should probably do another interview about this in the coming months, as I will have a better idea.

    However, know that I intend to use EVERY BIT of actual written text from Mr. Jordan, and in intend to follow those outlines as exactly as possible. I've been told that there is a substantial amount that I will have to come up with, but I will always have a guide—if only a few lines or dictated explanations.

    And, as I understand it, the notes about the ending are very detailed—I think the last chapter may even have been written in full. If that's the case, then I'll be very happy. I would much rather be the guy who writes the middle fifty chapters of this book than have to be the one who writes the last five.

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  • 653

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    Which characters or plot threads are you most looking forward to writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time turns. The most exciting thing for me will be to tie the events of this last book back to those of the first book, as I think that is what this story is all about. On a more personal note, Perrin has always been a favorite of mine. I think his story is the one I'm most looking forward to resolving.

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  • 654

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    Are there any particular aspects of the book that you think will be especially challenging for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The first is the depth of the setting. Though I've read these books several times, there is just SO MUCH to wrap your head around. Sitting here and thinking, I'm getting names mixed up and trying to remember just who is alive and who is dead. Obviously, I'm going to have to read the series through a few more times to get it all down, and I'm certainly glad for the Internet and the resources fans have created. I suspect you'll find me on Dragonmount occasionally asking for someone to look up an obscure fact or name for me!

    The other item of particular challenge is the worry that I'll disappoint the fans. I am confident in my writing, but. . .wow. This is like being the final man at bat in the last inning of the World Series—I'm the guy who has to step up and either strike out get a hit to win. All of my training, practice, and studies are coming to a head.

    I don't want to be the guy who ruined The Wheel of Time. I'll work very hard to make sure that doesn't happen.

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  • 655

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    What are some of your favorite scenes in The Wheel of Time series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's probably a cliché to say so, but my favorite is still that opening scene of The Eye of the World—that's what grabbed me as a fifteen year old boy and said "You NEED to read this book!" Lews Therin standing over the body of his wife while he calls for her, after being driven insane. . . wow.

    Though, that one's probably too obvious. There are a lot of others to choose from. The fight between Rand and Be'lal at the end of The Dragon Reborn was just plain cool. Another of my favorites is the scene where Lan rescues Nynaeve after that whole Moghedien-balefire incident. (I can't even remember which book that is right now.) Oh, and pretty much anything with Perrin in the later books. Not to mention the cleansing of saidin.

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  • 656

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    I know you probably can't go too deeply into it, but are there any questions about the story you had as a fan that you will make sure get answered in this final novel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Who the flip killed Asmodean? And, beyond that, what's up with Moiraine? Is she alive or not?

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  • 657

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    Robert Jordan has talked many times about how he knew the last chapter of the last book very well. Are you able to tell us whether or not he wrote that chapter before he died, or will that be something you'll be putting to paper? If so, does that chapter in particular hold any particular challenge or significance for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I spoke of this above, actually. I don't know for absolute certain, and I'm not sure how much I could say if I did know. However, what I've heard indicates that of all the parts of the book, the ending is the one that is the nearest to completed, if not done itself.

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  • 658

    Interview: Dec 8th, 2007

    Jason Denzel

    Do you have a personal message for all the Wheel of Time fans?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This will not be my book. This book belongs to you, to Harriet, and to Mr. Jordan. It is an honor to be able to help, and I will dedicate all that I have to making the book one that Mr. Jordan himself would be pleased with.

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  • 659

    Interview: 2012

    HyperCalcium (January 2012)

    Does he have an AMA? I want to ask him if he accidentally writes a whole novel when he trips over furniture. Does he have a typewriter glued to each hand? How can anyone type that much? I should go do the math on average word written per minute to fire out that many books.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    It looks a little more impressive than it is. A few things to consider:

    I sold Elantris in 2003, but it wasn't scheduled to come out until 2005. Therefore, I had a three year period until Mistborn was scheduled (in 2006). I wrote the trilogy 2003-4-5, then wrote Warbreaker in 2006. In 2007, I wrote a book that I didn't believe was good enough, so scrapped it.

    In 2007, the Wheel of Time was offered to me. I wrote book 12 in 2008, for a 2009 release. However, Warbreaker was still in the pipeline, and also scheduled for 2009.

    2009 was the hard year, the one that makes me look super prolific. I wrote both WoT 13 and The Way of Kings. And really, the two were done over an 18 month period, stretching well into 2010.

    2010 was, then, a recovery year. That's why Alloy of Law is my only full-length release this year, as it was written last year. This year I've written the final WoT book (and I'm not done yet...)

    So, what you're seeing IS the result of a lot of hard work, but it looks far more impressive than it really is. The big reason for that is that I had a long running start, with several books in the pipeline.

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  • 660

    Interview: Sep 7th, 2009

    Christian Lindke

    You've talked a bit about your involvement in the Wheel of Time, and I really didn't want this show to focus overly much on that, because I was certain that you, as a writer, have been overly inundated about your involvement in that because so many fantasy fans are excited about that. I really didn't get to ask as many questions as I wanted to—and I'm not going to take you this way—about your system for developing the kind of intricate magic systems in your two series that I've read, or the one series and the one standalone—Elantris and the Mistborn trilogy—cause I'm kind of geeking out about those almost in the way that you are with Robert Jordan—maybe not quite to that extent, but maybe to someone that you've read more recently—but I'm very excited about the novels, and I highly recommend them to those of you out there listening. Brandon's got a very good voice, and it's really nice to find a new fantasy author who isn't telling you the same story you've read fifty times, but is very much within the milieu. But I did want to ask about Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians, your midgrade series. I have not read them, but I have to say—the only thing I've read is the opening sentence which you posted on your website, and I already want to purchase all the books that are available. Your next one comes out in October. Can you tell us briefly what the inspiration was to do them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. One of the functions of getting published like I did—taking as long as I did, and working how I did—when I was trying to break in—and even in those early years when I didn't know about breaking in—one of the things I did was pop frequently from project to project. I didn't write sequels. In fact, I haven't brought this up before, but when I sold Elantris, I was actually on my thirteenth novel. That's how far along I was in the process. Mistborn is my fourteenth, so you can read my sixth and my fourteenth. I felt that if I just sat and wrote sequels in the same world unpublished, number one it would be bad for me professionally because I can't really send book two to a bunch of editors, and say "Hey, look at this!" I can only send book one, so if I wrote six books and only had the first one as something that I could try and entice editors with, then I think it would have been to my detriment. Instead I wanted to have six different books—standalones, and beginnings of series—that I could be sending out, and if[?] I could immediately send them something else, and say "Hey, if there's something you liked in that one, maybe you'll look at this one and see that I'm getting better," or "Maybe you'll like this one better," things like that. That was my philosophy. So I got used to always writing a new setting, a new world, and a new magic each time I wrote a book.

    Partially, also, though, as a writer, this wasn't just market-field, it was because I wanted to develop something that was my own. I mentioned it before—I think that writers should add to the genre, and I myself was a little bit annoyed with the genre in the late '90s and early 2000s. Maybe I've overstated some of the impact that the children's book had because of that, but I don't know. I was one of those that was like, "Really? Do I really need to read yet another book that is about a guy who lives out in the rural woods and discovers that he is the lost king and needs to go find this magical artifact so that he can save the world. Do I really need to read that again?" I mean, Tolkien did a great job of that, and you know what, Robert Jordan did a really good job of that, and you've got Terry Goodkind with...I mean, with so many people telling this story, do we really need another one? And I think the late 90s, at least for me, is when I finally got tired of it, and I'd read Robert Jordan, and I said, "Look, I don't think this can be done better. How can you tell me you can do it better than he's doing it? Why am I going to read your book?" And that influenced me a lot as a writer. When I was trying to break in, I actually tried writing a story like that, cause I felt like that's what everyone wrote, that's what got published, and I got a little ways into it and said, "I just...I can't feel it. What am I doing that's new? What am I adding?"

    And so I was trying a lot of different things. I was trying to explore. Those first six novels of mine, in fact, were—well, the first five in particular—were very different. I wrote several science-fiction novels. I tried a cyberpunk, I tried a social science-fiction, I tried a comedy—I tried lots of different things, trying to find my voice, and at the end, when the dust settled, after doing that, I realized what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was kind of the postmodern epic, so to speak. The child of the 80s and 90s who is aware of what happened with the monomyth and all this stuff in science fiction and fantasy, and say "Yeah, what's next? What happens next? And how can I do something different? How can I do something new? Where can we take this genre?" New magic systems, different styles of plot. That's partially where Mistborn came from. Mistborn is the [?] which really doesn't work for books like it does for movies, so realize this isn't the only thing the book's about, but one of the big influences in me writing the book was the idea of me telling the story where the monomyth had happened. The monomyth meaning Joseph Campbell is here with the thousand vases, you know—young hero goes on a quest to defeat the great evil, and what if he failed? What if the Dark Lord won? What if Voldemort at the end of Harry Potter had said, "You're just a stupid kid!" and killed him, and taken over the world? What if Frodo had kept the ring, or Aragorn had kept the ring, or even Sauron had just gotten it back? What happens next? And that's where that trilogy came from.

    Alcatraz is an interesting story because...Mistborn is the first book that I wrote knowing that it was going to get published. It was my fourteenth novel. Always before then, I'd always written just whatever I had felt like next, and it was the first time I had to consider, "Wow. Elantris is getting published. How do I follow it up? What do I do next?" Originally I'd planned to release next a book called The Way of Kings, which was number thirteen—the book I wrote right before Mistborn—and as I was revising Way of Kings, I had this deep-seated feeling that I wasn't ready for Way of Kings. I'd written the first book, and it didn't do yet what I wanted it to do. It was a massive war epic, and was very intricate, enormous world, and thirty magic systems...I mean, it was actually beyond my skill level at the time. And I said, "I need practice writing sequels before I start a massive epic like this." I'd never written a sequel before.

    And that's when I sat down and outlined the Mistborn trilogy, wanting to write an entire trilogy straight through so that I could have beginning, middle and end done by the time the first one came out. And I actually was able to achieve that, as a side note; I had written Hero of Ages by the time The Final Empire, the first book, needed to be in for its final draft, and so I was able to—I think it comes through in the trilogy—I was able to make it completely internally consistent. You don't have the problems in that where you have...in some series where you get a little ways into it and then realize the author's just making stuff up, and trying to...and being self-contradictory, and things like that; I didn't want that to happen, and I think I needed to practice doing that with the training wheels, so to speak, of having them all done before the first one came out—before I tried launching into something where I would just have to trust my outline in order to do that, if that makes any sense at all.

    So, I sat down and wrote the first two Mistborn books back-to-back. First draft done of Mistborn 1, sent off; started the first draft of Mistborn 2, and was revising Mistborn 1 as I was finishing Mistborn 2. I got done with Mistborn 2, and it was the hardest book I've ever written, partially because of the grueling hours I set for myself—I wanted to get these all done—but mostly because I'd never written a sequel before, and I was so used to doing something new with every book that I wrote, and so I had to train myself into writing sequels. And after I got done with Mistborn 2, and was trying to write Mistborn 3, I realized I need, just for my own creative process—the way I've trained myself—I have to do something completely different now. I have to take a break for a little while and just do something off-the-wall in order to reset all of those tumblers in my head, get back, and write the third Mistborn book, because otherwise I felt that I wouldn't be approaching it fresh enough. I wouldn't be approaching it having enough passion for it. I felt I would started it burned out, or at least burn out to the middle of it.

    And so because of that, I sat down with that writing prompt: a one-sentence line that had come to me one time, just when I was hanging out with some friends, and I hurriedly typed into my phone, and said, "Huh, I should write that story one day." And the line was: "So, there I was, tied to an altar made from out-dated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians." And I wanted to do what—I sat down with this—I wanted to do something very different from the Mistborn books. Number one, I wanted to do something humorous. Number two, I wanted to play off of the very things that were in danger of becoming clichés to myself, if that makes sense, to keep myself fresh, to say "I need to go completely different directions so that I don't just become a cliché of myself". And so I wanted to do something very wacky with the magic system that I could never do in an epic fantasy book, because I want those to all feel consistent and scientific. And I wanted to do a first-person narrative instead of a third-person narrative, to do something different again, and I wanted to write for a younger audience. Mostly though, I just wanted to write something off-the-cuff, which was more like a stand-up routine version, or...not a stand-up routine. More like an improv. You know, it's not just joke after joke, but it's an improv story, starting with a kid who discovers that librarians secretly rule the world.

    Partially, at this time, I'd also been reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, which has some fascinating aspects and some very annoying ones, the annoying aspects being, I don't like a lot of the cheap tricks he uses narratively to just pull you through the story, cause they get a little old, but beyond that, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that the Catholic Church, or anyone, has these secret cabals. I mean, they make for great stories, but I don't think that it's there, and so I wanted to tell a silly conspiracy theory book, and so I picked librarians ruling the world. And so what Alcatraz became was a short—for me; 50,000 words—novel that talks about fiction in general. There's a lot of Alcatraz, the narrator, addressing the audience and talking about what literature does, and what authors do. There's a point where he goes off about how authors are sadists—because we want to put you through all these terrible emotions—and explains and talks about it in what is hopefully a humorous way, but kind of digs at the roots of what makes someone want to tell stories.

    And there is a goofy magic system. Everyone in the books who belongs to the Smedry family—he's Alcatraz Smedry; it's a—anyway, they're the Freedom Fighters who resist the Librarians. They all have really dumb magic powers. It's kind of like a Mystery Man sort of thing, if you've seen that movie. Alcatraz's grandfather, who introduces himself near the beginning of the book, has the super-power...um, his super-magical power is that he can arrive late to appointments. Alcatraz in the book meets someone in the book who is really magically good—his power is that he's magically good at tripping. Another guy who is magically good at speaking gibberish. Alcatraz himself has the super-power of breaking things—he's really good at breaking stuff—and I just based these magic powers on silly, goofy things that me or my family do—being late to something is what my Mom always said—and then trying to twist them on their heads. You know, later in the book, Grandpa Smedry will arrive late to a bullet when someone shoots it at him, so it just barely misses him. You know...fun stuff like this, where I take preconceptions and turn them on their heads.

    And that's where Alcatraz came from. I didn't write it saying "I'm going to publish this." I wrote it saying "I need [to write] this." I finished it; I sent it off to my agent, and said, "Surprise, I wrote a different book than you were expecting me to." And he wrote back, and said, "Wow, this is actually pretty good! You wrote it really fast—I can tell; it needs a lot of revision—but I think I could sell this, if you want to put the time into revising it." So over the next year or so, I did some revisions and some drafts and some work on it, and we sent it out, and lo and behold, it had nine publishers want it. Four of them got in a bidding war, and it went sky-high and turned out to be this wonderful thing that Dreamworks Animation actually optioned it before it even came out. And so, yeah. It took on this entire life of its own.

    I sold to Scholastic four novels in a series. I have just finished the fourth one. There may be subsequent volumes, depending on things—particularly depending on if...um, when things calm down for me; the amount of work I have to do right now prohibitive for me entering into another Alcatraz contract; my attention really needs to be on the Wheel of Time at the moment—but, the third one is coming out in October; sometimes they appear on shelves a little bit early. They're a little bit tougher to find in hardcover than my other books because—I've been told, and maybe...I dunno—it seems that children's books...Scholastic likes to market directly to the schools and libraries, and that's their main method of doing it, at least with my books. They've sold as many that way as they have in bookstores, and the bookstores are kind of hit-or-miss on having a copy. Only about half of them get copies in, and so Amazon might be your best bet, or going to your local independent and asking them to order you a copy, and the paperbacks are generally easy to find, but the hardcovers are a little bit tough to find, but the first few chapters are on my website. If you're looking for something that's lighthearted—that's not ridiculous, but it's lighthearted—has some comedy to it, but really has me looking at the novels in the fantasy genre, in specific, from a postmodern view, just trying to break it down and see what it does, and telling a story with it, then you might enjoy the Alcatraz books.

    BILL CUNNINGHAM

    Cool.

    CHRISTIAN LINDKE

    Well, thank you for that answer.

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  • 661

    Interview: 2012

    n3xus1 (January 2012)

    I have been reading the wot for more that half my life. I love it. I just finished my nth read through and let me say that Sanderson does an amazing job. I loved all of his books, if you have not read mistborn you are missing out. Ok that said I am fairly certain that the curse is "Blood and ashes" or in cases of extreme stress and/or Uno, "Blood and bloody ashes". Maybe even "blood and bloody flaming ashes". But NEVER was it simply "bloody ashes". Thank you, that is all. Sorry for typos wrote this on my phone, while riding a raken.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's okay.

    I've done this intentionally. It's a personal quirk of mine from my linguistic background. I feel that many constructions like this, over time, will simplify. As the world of the WoT has been modernizing, I feel that slowly "Bloody and bloody ashes" would shorten. I've used the longer version in the books, but have begun pushing the oaths toward their more clipped versions as part of a subtle linguistic shift to accompany the birth of things like gunpowder and steam power.

    Our world's own oaths have done this quite aggressively.

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  • 662

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    It's been one year since The Gathering Storm was first published. How much did feedback from fans and critics affect you while writing Towers of Midnight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The relationship between artist and critic/fan is a curious one in this regard. On one hand, I do think feedback is important, particularly on a project like this (where, as I've stated, I feel that the project rightly belongs more to the fans than it does to me.) However, a writer must keep their artistic integrity. Allowing yourself to get pulled in too many directions by fan requests can be a disaster for an artist. Basically, you can't try to please everyone—if you do, you risk ending up with either a completely schizophrenic project, or one that is so bland it lacks emotional depth or power.

    So, like I said, fine line. I looked at fan responses on The Gathering Storm very cautiously and carefully, trying to keep in the same mindset that I use when getting feedback from my critique group. Basically, that mindset is this: "I will do what I feel is best for the story, regardless of what other people think. Even if I'm the only one who feels that way. But if someone raises a complaint that either strikes a cord within me, or which gains a lot of support from others, I WILL look into it and try to approach it objectively."

    That's a mouthful. Basically, what it means is keeping an open mind for ideas that will make the story a better version of what I want it to be. On The Gathering Storm, there were two basic areas I felt fans were right about that I could and should fix. The first had to do with some voice issues in Mat's narrative. (I've spoken of that elsewhere.) The second had to do with continuity errors. I am not nearly as good at dealing with those as Robert Jordan was—I know he made mistakes, but I felt I made more. So for this project, I enlisted the help of some very detail-oriented members of the fan community as beta readers in an attempt to keep myself honest and catch mistakes before they went to press.

    There are things in this book, like in any book I've written, that I fully suspect will draw complaints. In some cases, I know exactly what they are—and I did them that way because I felt it was best for the story and the best way to remain true to Robert Jordan's vision. It's the ones that I DON'T expect, but which ring true, that I want to find and correct.

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  • 663

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    What did writing The Gathering Storm teach you that made Towers of Midnight a better book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Two things: First, how to juggle a large number of plotlines and viewpoints. (Something I'd failed at in drafts of unpublished books during my earlier years as a writer.) I couldn't afford not to do this well.

    Second, I believe I learned a lot about character viewpoint and narrative. (Most of this came from reading Mr. Jordan's books with a much more detailed eye than I'd done in recent years.)

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  • 664

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    Towers of Midnight is reputedly a very Mat Cauthon-heavy book. One of the criticisms leveled at The Gathering Storm was that you had trouble capturing Mat's very distinct voice and personality. Do you feel like you have a better handle on Mat now that you're a volume into your tenure with The Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. See above.

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  • 665

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    You're known for creating very intricate and logical magic systems in your novel; what was it like jumping into a magic system already established and created by another author?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, considering that the Wheel of Time's magic system was a foundational inspiration for the way I do magic systems, I'd say this wasn't actually as big a problem as one might assume. Yes, Mr. Jordan does some things with magic very differently than I do. But his use of an underlying logic, mixed with excellent visual imagery and a science to the magic, is part of what I've long loved about the series.

    The biggest trouble for me has been remembering which specific combinations of which specific powers create which specific weaves.

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  • 666

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    One of the perks associated with finishing The Wheel of Time is that you've read all of Robert Jordan's notes. Now that you know all the secrets (including stuff that won't even appear in the novels), how has your appreciation for the series changed?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's been an interesting experience. So far as I know, I'm the only person in the world to have ever read through—beginning to end—the Wheel of Time, starting with Book One and continuing through until I reached the final scenes Robert Jordan wrote before he passed away. (Maria might have done it, but I don't think so—she pretty much has the books memorized by now, and seems to spot-read more than she reads straight through.)

    This is an experience others will start having in the coming years, and perhaps they'll agree with me that it DOES change the series. First off, you gain a better appreciation for Robert Jordan's ability to foreshadow. Second, the slow parts don't seem so slow any longer, particularly as you see books seven through fourteen as being one large novel.

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  • 667

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    Is there anything that Jordan wrote into the earlier novels that causes you to grind your teeth? If you could change one small thing from earlier in the series, what would it be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, wow. You know, I've never thought about that before. I believe Robert Jordan himself said he'd have done Book Ten differently, if he had to do it over again. (Though I've never been a large book ten hater.) Honestly...I'd probably cut a spanking scene or two. :)

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  • 668

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    You've spoken in the past about your commitment to your religion. Oftentimes, there's a misconception that religion and Fantasy don't get along very well. How have you religious beliefs informed you as a writer? Has there ever been an issue balancing the two aspects of your life?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think fantasy and religion can get along fine—and do in the works of many writers. Just like fantasy and atheism can get along fine, and fantasy and anything in between. It depends on the writer, their goals, and their relationship to their work.

    I've said before that my religion is part of what has shaped who I am, and that in turn shapes my works. But that can mean very different things to different writers. Tolkien and Lewis were both deeply religious, and yet their spiritual sides manifest themselves very differently in their works.

    I don't really balance my LDS faith and my writing, since neither are things that I DO. They are both things that I AM. And because of that, they are inexorably connected to my books, my self, and pretty much everything about me. That's not to say that I see books as a means of preaching my faith, or even my beliefs. I feel that kind of writing leads to an insincere story, regardless of how sincere the preaching (whether it be religious, political, or academic) itself is. One thing a great story can do is examine issues from many sides, as seen from the eyes of many different characters who believe different things. Those sides must all be strong, or the story fails for me.

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  • 669

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    Recently, you detailed all the different series and novels you have in the pipeline, including White Sand, The Liar of Partinel, The King's Necromancer, at least nine more volumes in The Stormlight Archive and Nightblood, a sequel to Warbreaker, just to name a few. How do you keep them all straight in your head? And, when one project is finished, how do you choose which one to work on next?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Choosing the next project is a balance between the promises I've made to readers and the best way to channel my creativity. I stay fresh by jumping between projects; it's the way I've (for better or worse) trained myself. And so I always have a lot of ideas, and there are a lot of things I've worked on.

    One thing to keep in mind with me is that, because of the way I work, some of these things just don't end up turning out. They aren't good enough for publication, at least in their current state, so I shelve them. Imagine it like the B-sides of an album. The band may do a lot of playing, jamming, and recording—and then they pick the very best to present to their listeners.

    In the case of the books mentioned above, Liar turned out poorly enough on the first go-around that it's shelved indefinitely. I'm not sure how I stand on The King's Necromancer yet, and White Sand is unlikely to be in good shape for many years. Scribbler (one you didn't mention) turned out great, and you'll probably see it in the near future.

    As for sequels to books that are half-promised, we'll see. Something like Nightblood (where there is a potential sequel, but the story of the book was wrapped up and told strongly, I feel) is less urgent than something like the rest of the Stormlight Archive (which is a single story, told across many books.) In the case of Stormlight, I've made a stronger promise to readers, one I feel the need to fulfill.

    Of course, the question you asked is how I keep them all straight. Lots of notes mixed with quirks of the way my brain works.

    Footnote

    Scribbler has since been renamed, "The Rithmatist".

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  • 670

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    You're known for writing big, juicy Fantasy trilogies and, now, 10-volume series. Even Elantris, originally released as a standalone, has a couple of planned sequels. What is it about these intricate, multi-volume stories that appeals to you so much as a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wish I could answer that directly. It's just how I work. Those are the types of stories I love to read, so those are the types of stories I love to write. I believe it's something that the novel form can do that is more difficult in other forms of entertainment. Even television, with its more long-form storytelling methods, can't generally approach the kind of large-scale epicness that a long series can.

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  • 671

    Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010

    Aidan Moher

    Your life has changed drastically over the last five years. Do you ever look back fondly on those days of being an aspiring writer, fighting to be heard above the white noise of the industry but with complete creative freedom?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I do remember them with fondness. I don't remember fondly the struggles to pay bills, the long hours working a graveyard shift, or the sometimes dizzying level of uncertainty in my life. But I do sometimes wish I had the freedom I had then. I still pretty much get to write what I want when I want, but there are limits to that. And I have a LOT more interruptions now. The realities of having a career, not a hobby.

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  • 672

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    Stand-alone novels are a rare occurrence is the Fantasy genre, an area of literature that is typically filled with epic, multi-book series. What prompted you to begin your writing career with a stand-alone, Elantris and why the change to a trilogy with Mistborn?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Two things influenced my decision to write Elantris as a stand-alone novel. The first is the aspect that as a new author, I didn't have a proven track record. I'd grown a little frustrated with new authors releasing first books in a trilogy when I didn't know their writing well enough to trust whether or not I wanted to get bogged down in a huge series. So, I decided that I wanted my first book to be a stand-alone—a self-contained epic fantasy story that could show off what I could do without expecting people to wait years and years to see if I could finish a story or not.

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  • 673

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    Your web site mentions that Elantris was the sixth novel that you had written, yet the first to be published. What do you think it was about Elantris and the Mistborn novels that managed to capture the attention of a publisher in a way that the precluding novels did not?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My first five books were very experimental. I wrote a comedy, a science fiction, a bunch of different types of things trying to figure out what I was good at and what I wanted to do. When I wrote Elantris I knew I wanted it to be an epic fantasy, and I'd had some practice writing in that style. Also, my big hang-up with my earlier works was editing. I'd finish a project and be so excited about going on to the next project that I wouldn't take the time necessary to make changes. By the time I wrote Elantris I'd learned how to revise, so when I sent it out it was a much more polished product. These two reasons, and the fact that it was a standalone, were what I think made Elantris sell when my earlier stuff did not. Mistborn was actually part of the two-book deal in the contract I got for Elantris, so the publisher bought it sight-unseen. Luckily, they liked it!

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  • 674

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    Breaking into the field as a writer is a tough task, can you give a little rundown on how your relationship with TOR developed?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the best things you can do as an aspiring writer is learn about editors who publish writing similar to yours, then attend conventions to meet people and make contacts. I met Moshe Feder, a consulting editor at Tor, at World Fantasy Convention in 2001. He agreed to take a look at my work, so I sent him the manuscript for Elantris, my 6th novel. I didn't hear anything from Moshe, so I continued writing and submitting. Elantris sat on Moshe's desk for eighteen months, but eventually he read it, and liked it! I'd moved, so my contact information was no longer correct, but with a little persistence, Moshe managed to track me down and make me an offer for Elantris.

    AIDAN MOHER

    Eighteen months! That's a long time to wait patiently, what can you recommend to aspiring novelists to help them avoid such a fate...but still get their book published!

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I think a writer who has several works to send out, and is actively seeking multiple sources to which to send them, is more likely to get published. Be aware, though, that it is against industry protocol to send a complete manuscript to more than one editor or agent. You can send query letters or partial manuscripts to several sources, but if someone asks for a full manuscript, that person must accept or reject it before you send it to anyone else. It is important to know and follow the submission guidelines for the places to which you send manuscripts.

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  • 675

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    Readers of Fantasy generally seem to like to lump authors into one of two fields: World Builders and Character writers. This is obviously a very black-and-white definition of the genre, but that being said, which into which side would you place yourself and what are your thoughts on the two in regards to writing a novel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think most people would put my writing in the field of the World Builders because many of the comments I receive center on the uniqueness of my magic systems. Honestly, I would rather not be lumped with either side! I try very hard in all of my books to create both interesting worlds and believable characters. If I had to choose just one, however, I would rather be on the side of the character writers because I think characters make better stories than worlds do. In my opinion a good book is a balance between character, setting, and plot with character being the most important of the three. You can have the coolest magic system in the world, but if readers don't care about the characters who are using that magic system, the book won't be very fun to read.

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  • 676

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    As you mentioned, the systems of magic you create for your novels are particularly strong and well thought out. How much time do you spend fleshing these ideas out before you sit down and start writing the novel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's hard to say because I am always thinking about ideas for books. Concepts for magic systems, characters, settings and such come to me all the time, so I try to write them down and keep them for future use. When I am actually ready to sit down and write a book, I spend a couple of weeks or so pre-writing. Some of this time is spent outlining the plot. Some is spent fleshing out the ideas for the magic system, and some thinking about character arcs. Then, of course, more details come as I write.

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  • 677

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    Just taking a look at the names of your characters, it's obvious that you put a lot of thought into the cultures that inhabit your world and the naming structures that they would have in place (no randomly pulling from the "Big Ol' List o' Fantasy Names"). What is it about this aspect of world building that appeals to you so much?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A fantasy world can seem so much more full and interesting when it has many diverse cultures, just like the real world does. I try to produce the feeling of a wide range of cultures in my fantasy settings by creating groups of names that sound culturally consistent.

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  • 678

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    How did your experiences differ when writing Elantris as compared to writing Mistborn?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Elantris was my 6th novel. By the time I wrote Mistborn, my 13th, I'd figured out some things about writing and my own style that made me more effective. At least I'd like to think so! I wrote Elantris as a standalone, and I knew I wanted to make Mistborn the first of a trilogy. Even though I borrowed some ideas from my own earlier works, Mistborn was a more complex story and took more planning. I'd never written a trilogy before, so it was a little difficult to figure out how to wrap up the story in the first book, while still setting things up for the other two.

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  • 679

    Interview: Sep 26th, 2007

    Aidan Moher

    What of the things that most appeals to me about you as an author is that you're also about to publish your children's novel, Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. What compelled you to write a children's novel and how does it differ from writing a novel for adults?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Alcatraz actually started out as a freewrite. I'd been deep into the Mistborn books, and needed a break from their complexity and darkness. I decided to come up with something completely silly, so I wrote down a sentence that I'd thought of recently, and just started adding to it. When I finished I sent it to my agent, even though it was very different than what I'd written before. He suggested marketing it for kids, which we did, and it worked! In writing a children's novel I have to keep things simpler and shorter than I do when writing for adults—fewer viewpoint characters, simpler plot construction, more straightforward language. I actually really enjoy the variety of doing both types of novels.

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  • 680

    Interview: Oct, 2008

    lostknight (16 October 2008)

    I am curious if any changes were made to the story after you got A Memory of Light or after the Name of the Wind was published? The style hasn't changed, but the story seemed to flow much better this time around.

    Brandon Sanderson (16 October 2008)

    Actually, no. This one was finished off back before I knew anything of A Memory of Light or before I'd read Name of the Wind. Hopefully, the smoothing is a result of me trying to work out kinks in my storytelling ability. I'm learning to distance out my climax chapters, for instance. (I think I've I'd have written this book years ago, I'd have tried to overlay Spook's climactic sequence with the ending ones, for instance, which would have been a mistake.)

    Also, of the three books, I worked the hardest on this one. Choosing that ending—even though I'd planned it for some time—was very difficult. I knew that it would anger some readers. I also knew that it was the right ending for the series.

    I'm glad it worked for you.

    FLINN

    I have to admit, I am one of those angered. I will be so glad when this cliché of killing off the heroes will finally pass. I escape to fantasy for the happy ending. If I wanted to be depressed I'd grab a 3-dollar bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and drink it all and contemplate my mundane life. I can't spend much time reflecting on the book because of the mental picture of Vin and Elend dead in a field keeps popping up instead. They didn't even get a chance to reproduce.

    Now outside of the horrible ending (which wasn't surprising in the least because it is so common to kill the heroes) I enjoyed them. I absolutely cannot wait to read your books written 10 years from now. You can definitely pick up the improvement in transitions and character development in each book I've read from you. I'm quite often reminded of David Eddings although I'm sure plenty would disagree. And while Eddings isn't one of my favorite writers to be at his level (to me) so early in your career leads me to believe great things will be coming.

    I would like to ask you one thing to consider when writing endings. Fantasy is an escape, please don't ruin it with such depressing endings. When you have had the opportunity to look upon your dead wife in her coffin, reading about others dying isn't fun at all. It is absolutely terrible. Happily ever after.

    BRANDON SANDERSON (17 OCTOBER)

    I understand your anger. I wrote the ending that felt most appropriate to me for this book and series. I didn't find it depressing at all, personally. But people have reacted this way about every ending I've written.

    I won't always do it, I promise. But I have to trust my instincts and write the stories the way they feel right to me. I didn't 'kill off' Vin and Elend in my mind. I simply let them take risks and make the sacrifices they needed to. It wasn't done to avoid cliché or to be part of a cliché, or to be shocking or surprising, or to be interesting or poetic—it was done because that was the story as I saw it.

    I will keep this in mind, though. I know it's not what a lot of people want to read. Know that I didn't do it to try to shock you or prove anything. And because of that, if a more traditionally happy ending is something that a story requires, I'll do that—even if it means the people on the other side of the fence from you will point fingers at me for being clichéd in that regard as well.

    If it helps, realize that one of the reasons I added the lines in Sazed's note was to let the characters live on for those who wanted them to live on. I ALMOST didn't have Spook even discover the bodies, leaving it more ambiguous.

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  • 681

    Interview: Oct, 2008

    GreedyAlgorithm (17 October 2008)

    Brandon, I'd like to see a timeline of when you fleshed out the parts of the cosmology we know about. I'd imagine Allomancy came before you fit it into the bigger picture, right? What was your method, come up with a cool image of hammering spikes through a living being, figure out how to integrate that into a larger picture, and then think about the implications of your new cosmology? Or what?

    Brandon Sanderson (17 October 2008)

    Boy, this is a hard one to ask because it's been such a LONG process. There were bits of all of this popping around in my head almost twenty years ago, so it's going to be hard to define where what fit into place when.

    Allomancy and Feruchemy were originally planned separately. I linked them together into this book when I realized that the 'focus' items that could store attributes could be metal, and therefore work wonderfully with the Mistborn book I was planning.

    Hemalurgy came from the image of Inquisitors first, then developed as a need to integrate it in with the other two in a way that evoked the power of "Ruin" rather than the power of Preservation. I figured that Ruin would steal, and it was a great way to add a third magic without having to overload people with a whole new set of powers. The process of writing this series, since I did all three books together, was an interesting one, and I made a lot of connections as I went. Some of the latest things on the timeline were figuring out how to fit atium and the Preservation nuggets into the already built framework. But I don't know if I can give you an exact list. Partially because there would just be too many spoilers in it.

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  • 682

    Interview: Oct, 2008

    Brandon Sanderson (20 October 2008)

    Folks,

    This essay I just posted:

    http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/55/EUOLogy-My-History-as-a-Writer

    Started as a blog post for this thread, talking about the old books I wrote to give context to my previous post. It outgrew the length of a proper forum post, so I put it on the site instead. But this might help you understand some of my history as a writer, not to mention explain the origin of all these old books Ookla that references all the time.

    LIGHTNING EATER

    I remembered a thread from ages ago in which Brandon posted a list of the books he'd written, I looked it up when I realised it wasn't in the article, and I figured you guys might be interested too, so here it is.

    1) White Sand Prime (My first Fantasy Novel)
    2) Star's End (Short, alien-relations sf novel.)
    3) Lord Mastrell (Sequel to White Sand Prime)
    4) Knight Life (Fantasy comedy.)
    5) The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora (Far future sf involving immortal warriors)
    6) Elantris (You have to buy this one!)
    7) Dragonsteel (My most standard epic fantasy
    8) White Sand (Complete rewrite of the first attempt)
    9) Mythwalker (Unfinished at about 600 pages. Another more standard epic fantasy.)
    10) Aether of Night (Stand-Alone fantasy. A little like Elantris.)
    11) Mistborn Prime (Eventually stole this world.)
    12) Final Empire Prime (Cannibalized for book 14 as well.)
    13) The Way of Kings (Fantasy War epic. Coming in 2008 or 2009)
    14) Mistborn: The Final Empire (Coming June 2006)
    15) Mistborn: The Well of Ascension (Early 2007)
    16) Alcatraz Initiated (YA Fantasy. Being shopped to publishers)
    17) Mistborn: Hero of Ages (Unfinished. Coming late 2007)
    18) Dark One (Unfinished. YA fantasy)
    19) Untitled Aether Project (Two sample chapters only.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Thanks for posting that. Note that I can never quite remember which was first, Aether or Mistborn Prime. I always feel that Aether should be first, since it wasn't as bad as the two primes, but thinking back I think that the essay is more accurate and I wrote it between them.

    This would be the new list:

    1) White Sand Prime (My first Fantasy Novel)
    2) Star's End (Short, alien-relations sf novel.)
    3) Lord Mastrell (Sequel to White Sand Prime)
    4) Knight Life (Fantasy comedy.)
    5) The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora (Far future sf involving immortal warriors)
    6) Elantris (First Published)
    7) Dragonsteel (My most standard epic, other than the not-very-good Final Empire prime.)
    8 ) White Sand (Complete rewrite of the first attempt, turned out much better.)
    9) Mythwalker (Unfinished at about 600 pages. Another more standard epic fantasy.)
    10) Aether of Night (Stand-Alone fantasy. A little like Elantris.)
    11) Mistborn Prime (Shorter fantasy, didn't turn out so well.)
    12) Final Empire Prime (Shorter fantasy, didn't turn out so well.)
    13) The Way of Kings Prime (Fantasy War epic.)
    14) Mistborn: The Final Empire (Came out 2006)
    15) Mistborn: The Well of Ascension (Came out 2007)
    16) Alcatraz Verus the Evil Librarians (Came out 2007)
    17) Mistborn: Hero of Ages (Came out 2008)
    18) Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones (Came out 2008)
    19) Warbreaker (Comes out June 2009)
    20) Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia (November 2009ish)
    21) A Memory of Light (November 2009ish. Working on it now. Might be split into two.)
    22) The Way of Kings Book One (2010ish. Not started yet.)
    23) Alcatraz Four (2010. Not started yet)

    PETER AHLSTROM

    Will elements of your untitled Aether project be worked into the Dragonsteel series?

    The Silence Divine (Working title. Stand alone Epic Fantasy. Unwritten.)
    Steelheart (YA Science Fiction. Unwritten)
    I Hate Dragons (Middle Grade fantasy. Maybe an Alcatraz follow up. Unwritten.)
    Zek Harbringer, Destroyer of Worlds (Middle Grade Sf. Maybe an Alcatraz follow up. Unwritten.)
    These titles are news to me. You described two potential YA or middle-grade books to me and Karen when you came out to Book Expo, plus Dark One, but now I can't remember the plots except they were cool (and that one of them involved superheroes). Are they among this list? Also, is that really Harbringer or is it supposed to be Harbinger?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Bah! That's what I get for typing so quickly. Yes, Harbinger. It should be "Zeek" too. Short for Ezekiel.

    Steelheart would be the superhero one, though that's a working title, since I'm not sure if it's trademarked or not. Haven't had much time for thinking about any of these books lately.

    PETER AHLSTROM (OCTOBER 20)

    Brandon, here you said Alcatraz 4 is called Alcatraz vs. The Dark Talent; is that still the working title? Also, you mentioned Dragonsteel: The Lightweaver of Rens, but now you say The Liar of Partinel is a standalone. Change of plans? (I know you can't get back to Dragonsteel for a while.)

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    The Alcatraz titles are in flux because I need to know if Scholastic wants the fifth one or not. (They only bought four.) Dark Talent will be one of them for certain.

    The Liar of Partinel was part of a two-part story told hundreds of years before the Dragonsteel epic. However, since I've dropped plans to go with Liar anytime soon—A Memory of Light has priority, followed by Way of Kings—I don't know what I'll end up doing with the second book, or if I'll ever even write it. I was planning on not calling either of these "Dragonsteel" in print, actually, and just letting people connect the two series on their own. It wouldn't be hard to do, but I didn't want the first actual book in the main storyline to be launched by Tor as "Book Three" since there would be such a large gap of time.

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  • 683

    Interview: Oct, 2008

    lexluthorxiv (19 October 2008)

    So I have a couple of questions....

    I loved the book, it was all great UNTIL Vin and especially ELEND died. I can see why you did it, but I was crying so hard when Vin confirmed Elend was dead. I actually had an urge to burn the books right then and there and pretend it had never happened. Either way, I continued reading and then found some sliver of hope when Sazed said he hadn't figured out how to restore the souls YET, he said he would get better at it.

    1)Does that mean that he might someday, maybe, hopefully (pretty please) bring them back to life? I suspect that you might not answer, but can I at least hope? Cause if anyone deserved to live a full NORMAL life it was Vin and Elend. Besides, it would ROCK if Elend and Kelsier ever got to meet each other......

    Aw man.....I'm still crying over Elend....Is it wrong I get so attatched to characters? Its just that Elend and Vin got so little time together. It's so sad. Which reminds me: You mentioned, when someone asked about Sazed meeting Twindyl again, that he hadn't because he hadn't reached that space where souls were and the ones that were trapped in the in between were the ones that had a connection with either the physical or the concious world. Those weren't the exact words but it was something like that that IMPLIED that Vin, Elend and Kelsier were somehow still connected with the earth because unlike Twindyl the hadn't progressed past that in between place.

    2) Am I right and maybe going somewhere, or am I talking total nonsense and simply trying to cope with the loss of Elend?

    Brandon Sanderson (20 October 2008)

    One of the reasons for that line at the end is to give you, the reader, the power and authority to bring to the characters the ending you wish. I may do more in this series, but until then, please take the future of the characters wherever you want in your own mind. (Also, you mention that they had such little time together—which is true, but also remember that there was a year between books one and two, then another year between books two and three. They spent most of this time together.)

    The door is open for a return of Elend and Vin. Will I write it? It isn't likely to be soon, if I ever even do. Does that mean it won't happen? No. Not at all. If I write more Mistborn books, they will be hundreds of years in the future. During that time, Sazed could have learned to get souls into bodies, given Vin and Elend a life together somewhere away from the others, where they wouldn't have to struggle quite so much like they did through their lives, then ushered their souls on to the beyond. Or they could hang around with him, working with him as he takes his next steps to shepherd humankind on Scadrial. Or neither of the above. Imagine it how you wish, for I'm not going to set this one in stone for quite some time, if ever.

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  • 684

    Interview: Oct, 2008

    Death Magnetic (19 October 2008)

    I'd first like to say that this series was fantastic. I was exceptionally pleased with how you tied everything together in this final book of the trilogy.

    (1) This series has the best world-building, magic system, and over-arching plot of any epic fantasy I have ever read. I think George R.R. Martin is still the master of creating memorable characters, developing them, and having them interact with each other. Other authors, like Hobb and Rothfuss, are better at evincing emotion. You are an amazing writer yourself.

    That being said, I have a couple suggestions for you.

    (2) The first contradicts itself, so take it for what it is. I would suggest that you write how you feel the story should be written. Getting inspiration from someone is one thing, but changing your work because some people want a happy ending or dark ending takes away from the purity of writing. The part you added in at the end where Sazed let Spook know Vin and Elend were happy in the afterlife really stuck me like a thorn. I think it was apparent how happy they were together in life and how necessary their sacrifices were. That would have been enough for me.

    (3) My other suggestion is more of a plea really. Please don't extend this series just to capitalize on it. If you really feel there is more story to be told, then tell it. I, for one, thought the ending would have been perfect if allomancy, hemalurgy, and feruchemy would have faded from existence as their corresponding gods did. It would have been rather romantic to have people start over with a new "normal" world.

    Congratulations again on completing a masterful work!

    Brandon Sanderson (20 October 2008)

    1. You humble me. I don't think I've NEARLY the skill for characters that Mr. Martin does, and that's not just an attempt at modesty. I hope to be there some day, however.

    2. This is a tricky one. I didn't change the worldbuilding or the cosmology of the story in order to fit what people wanted, but I feel strongly about using writing groups and test readers to see if my intention in a book has been achieved. I show things to alpha readers to see what is confusing or bothersome to them, then decide if that's really something I want to be confusing or bothersome.

    In my mind, the presence of a powerful being such as Sazed, mixed with some direct reaching from beyond the grave by a certain crew leader, indicated that there WAS an afterlife. However, test readers didn't get it, so I tweaked the story to make it more obvious. Perhaps I should have left it as is, but I liked both ways, and decided upon the one I liked the most in the context of reader responses.

    I do plan to always tell the stories from my heart, and not change them because of how I think the reactions will be. But I do think it's important to know what those reactions are ahead of time and decide if they are what I want or not.

    3. We are on the same page on this one. You can read other posts on the thread to see what kind of thoughts I might have for more Mistborn books, but I don't know if/when I will write them. It depends on the story and how excited I am to tell it.

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  • 685

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2010

    17th Shard

    Ok, fair enough. Do you have a scene you enjoyed more than the rest, and on the flip side, was their something that you did not enjoy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will say that I really loved doing all the interludes because they gave me a sense, when I was writing this book, of jumping to something new, which is part of what kept me going in all of this. Are they my favorite scenes in the book? No, but they were probably my favorite to write because it's like I get to take a break and write something whacky and looney, so to speak.

    Hmm…is there anything that was harder? You know, revisions are always hard. In the next to last draft I changed Dalinar's arc very substantially, and that was a hard write. And, you know, Adolin was not originally a viewpoint character, so there was a lot of hard writing there. So, poor Adolin probably gets the badge for hardest to write. Not because he as a character was hard to write but because I was having to repurpose scenes and toss out scenes and rewrite them with Adolin as the viewpoint character and so on to add just a little more dimension to Dalinar's plot arc.

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  • 686

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2010

    17th Shard

    You said it was because of your work on The Wheel of Time that you were able to do this story justice. What did you mean?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Wheel of Time forced me to stretch as an author and it forced me to learn to juggle multiple viewpoints. I hadn't had a lot of practice writing sequels or planning sequels, and then I had to write the twelfth book in a fourteen book series. This taught me a lot about working with sequels. Also, seeing what Robert Jordan did for foreshadowing really taught me a lot about how to foreshadow across a big long epic. But I would say mostly it's just juggling the viewpoints, learning how to make sure all the characters are making appearances and we're enjoying them all and everything is balanced all without losing track.

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  • 687

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    PRK (5 APRIL 2012)

    "I wanted to tell tales about things that broke the laws of physics. Consistently."—@BrandSanderson #Swancon

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  • 688

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    tututitlookslikerain ()

    For the love of good things, tell me who kills Asmodean?

    Real question: Mistborn surprised me with its intensity. I didn't think that it would have as big of an impact on me that it did, and for writing it, thank you.

    How long do things cook in your mind before you put them on paper?

    Spoiler

    When you write something as beautiful as "I am hope." Does it give you the chills? Where does something like that come from? I am just so fucking amazed that, even though I knew of his past with his wife and the mines, that you could make me think he was just doing it for greed reasons... then you bust out with this and I was floored. It cemented the entire trilogy for me. With that one line, I will forever buy anything you write.

    /heroworship

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Asmodean killer is revealed in Towers of Midnight. (Look in the glossary.)

    How long things cook depends on the project. Some, like The Way of Kings, cook for decades. Mistborn was a period of about 2-3 years. Others, like my children's series, are exercises in free writing with very little 'incubation' time give.

    As for the last question...sometimes, it's hard to pinpoint how things come together, even for a planner like myself. I often compare writing to playing music. Often, a musician gets to the point where they don't know why their fingers move as they do—through a great deal of training, they learn to just make it happen. Writers develop similar instincts, but for plot, character, and prose.

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  • 689

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2011

    Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

    thesnowflake ()

    Sorry, another WOT question:

    How much brainstorming did you do to simplify the plot? What was the process like? Robert Jordan wrote himself into a hole...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Once I got the project, I spent about six months building an outline. Mr. Jordan didn't outline extensively. Like GRRM and Stephen King, Robert Jordan was much a 'discover it as I go' type writer. He did have the endings for many of the characters in the notes, however, so you'd be surprised. He wasn't in as much a hole as you might have thought; mostly, it was the side characters who needed direction and a few of the mains needed bridging sequences to where he wanted them to be at the end.

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  • 690

    Interview: Apr 11th, 2012

    Satima Flavell

    When Robert Jordan, one of his favourite authors, died in 2007, Sanderson wrote a eulogy on his blog. (You can read it here.) It came to the notice of Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow. She had promised her late husband that she would ensure the series was finished, and as an editor of note herself, she was in a good position to choose a worthy successor. After being moved by Sanderson's eulogy, she hunted for his work, discovered The Final Empire and knew she'd found a writer worthy of bearing her husband's sceptre.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "The call came out of the blue," says Sanderson. "I felt excited, humbled and honoured all once." It was decided that the projected final volume, A Memory of Light, would be split in three. The first, The Gathering Storm was published in 2009, followed in 2010 by Towers of Midnight. Fans eagerly await the release of A Memory of Light in January 2013.

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  • 691

    Interview: Apr 11th, 2012

    Satima Flavell

    I remark that Sanderson's style had changed between Mistborn and his latest series, The Stormlight Archive.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Well," says Sanderson, "I try to use a different style for each series. But I've also learnt a lot from working on The Wheel of Time. Jordan's writing is so detailed, so subtle, so layered, that I can't help being influenced by it."

    Satima Flavell

    He has, by the way, now used up all his backlist: The Way of Kings is the last of those early books and after this year he expects his output to slow down.

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  • 692

    Interview: Apr 11th, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson works best at night. "I get up about noon," he says, "write until five, and then spend a few hours with the family before starting work again about eight o'clock and then I write until the early morning hours. I often don't get to bed before three am." He did try getting up at what most people would consider to be a more normal hour, but after a few weeks his wife capitulated, saying, "This routine is making you miserable. Go back to being a night owl!"

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  • 693

    Interview: Feb 16th, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tor and Harriet have set the release date for A Memory of Light. Again. While I've been working on the book, this has happened a half dozen times, with varying levels of publicity surrounding the date.

    This time we're saying January 8th. How likely is this one? Well, honestly, I don't know. Seems like it's the most firm of the lot. However, you've got to understand a couple of things.

    First off, I don't set release dates, particularly not on these books. I pick my deadlines, then work to meet them. Tor and Harriet decide when the book is going to come out, judging by editing requirements, market factors, and the workings of the publishing machine. I didn't find out this one had been set as this day until long after the fact. So please, complaining to me . . . well, it's just not going to do anything but distract me from working on the book.

    Secondly, Harriet is very, VERY worried about getting this book right. It's the last book in the series. There are no chances to change things after this, and revising a book like this takes time. Harriet would probably prefer even more space than this publication date gives us. She also isn't capable of pulling the long hours she might once have pulled. (And she shouldn't be expected to.)

    It's not all on Harriet, though, not by a mile. I turned in a 360,000-word book. That's 20% longer than what they wanted, and that means each step of editing and production will require 20% more time than they had set aside. In addition, while I've set my own deadlines, I've come right up against them and (in a few cases) tiptoed across. For example, instead of sending a revised book at the end of December, I only had a first draft. That's the length pushing me back and making me revise expectations.

    I realize that all you care about is getting your book, and this sounds like a lot of excuses. But here's the thing. You'll get the book when Harriet is ready to give it to you. Not before. If this were just me, I could work a big pile of 16-hour days and get it to you in the fall. But it's not just me, and beyond that, the last time I did that (on Towers of Midnight, which went through eleven drafts) we ended up with a pile of typos and wore Harriet out so much she said she didn't recover for well over six months.

    I sincerely thought that we'd be releasing the book this fall. January 8th was a surprise to me when they told me. However, Harriet picked the last possible week the book could reasonably come out, because she wants as much time as possible to edit it.

    I still think it's very possible that all will go smoothly and Harriet will push the book up. It happened with The Gathering Storm, I believe, though that was only pushed up by a week. However, for now, we just have to assume January 8th is when it's coming out.

    Best,

    Brandon

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  • 694

    Interview: Mar, 2012

    Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

    Last time we spoke, we were talking about the 45-hour audiobook for The Way of Kings. Each of the Mistborn books came in at 25-30 hours, but The Alloy of Law comes in at a tidy 9 discs. Did you set out to write a shorter book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I knew I wanted to do more in the Mistborn world, and for a long time I played with writing a short story. The short story that I tried to write didn't work; I tossed it aside after maybe a thousand words, and began working on a different story. I can usually judge what the length of a story will be, and I knew this one would be longer, but I wasn't sure how long I would want it to be, or whether I should make it a full-blown novel. So I wrote what turned out to be three or four chapters' worth, and at that point I decided, it was a big enough story to can make a novel of it. I knew it wasn't going to be the same length as the original Mistborn books, but I felt okay with that, because for a long time I've been wanting to start writing some—I don't want to say shorter, but quicker, faster-paced stories; thrilleresque, maybe a little more pulpish. I just think of it as a fun book, that doesn't require quite as much of an investment of time and energy for the reader as something like The Way of Kings—which I love, but I want to be doing a variety of things. So writing a shorter book was intentional, but I kind of slipped into it.

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  • 695

    Interview: Mar, 2012

    Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

    A lot happens before this book opens—how did you pick an opening for Wax's story, leaving so much of the backstory with Wayne (and others) to be picked up and absorbed on the fly?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually like to start my books in medias res to an extent. It brings across the sense that I want to portray, which is that the characters all existed before the book started, and the characters continue—those who survive—to exist after the book ends. That helps with the sense of immersion. Granted, each book tells about a very important chapter of the characters' lives, and there's a distinct beginning, middle, and end to that chapter, but if the beginning or end are too hard and fast, it feels contrived to me. So I do this with all of my books.

    It's usually harder to figure out a starting point than you might think. I often have to revise my beginnings very heavily. This is no different from my other works; in the Mistborn books I've had to do this often. The prologue for [The Alloy of Law] was actually written to be the prologue to a sequel, and after I wrote it, I thought, "No, that needs to go in this book." We did a lot of shuffling around at the beginning of this book to find the right starting point.

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  • 696

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Louie Free

    Oh, tell me about that call. What do you remember about the call? You gotta tell...oh, wow. What a story...tell me...sorry.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it was a really surreal experience. I actually got it as a voice mail. When I woke up in the morning, you know, you're groggy eyed. I'm two hours behind New York, the East Coast. Harriet, his wife, had called me. I was listening to my voice mails, you know, normal stuff, and there's just one there that says, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet McDougal, the widow of Robert Jordan. I would like you to call me back. There's something I want to talk to you about."

    Louie Free

    And what are you thinking it is at the time, did you know?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had no idea what to think. I mean, I had posted a eulogy to Robert Jordan on my web site, one of many who did that just because he meant so much to so many of us.

    Louie Free

    And...I'm sorry, brandonsanderson.com. We've got links up at Louie Free Show to brandonsanderson.com. Go ahead, I'm sorry.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, yeah. You can read that original eulogy. I'm going to post a new link to it because a lot of people are coming by looking for it. Anyway, I posted that, and she had read that. A friend had given it to her because it had touched them. Harriet, his wife, is also his editor. There's a wonderful story there. I mean, she discovered Robert Jordan as a writer first, and then while working on the books together they fell in love and got married. And so, she'd been involved in his books from the beginning. But anyway, she had called me up to find out if I was interested in completing the Wheel of Time. I just assumed she'd read my eulogy and she wanted to call me to talk to me about that...I don't know what I'm thinking. I tried to call her back, but she didn't answer because she was actually out. It had been several hours since her call.

    Louie Free

    Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute...Brandon, were you freaking out, not being able to reach her?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was freaking out. My wife says...she says I was more nervous that day than on our wedding day.

    Louie Free

    (cackles loudly)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah...she's just a little bit bitter about that. But you know, I replied I had six months to get ready for the wedding. This just came out of nowhere, dropped on me like a ton of bricks. So I'm sitting there kind of running around in circles. I call my editor and he doesn't respond, he's not in. I call my agent and he's not in. And so I go up and talk to my wife and I'm just talking a mile a minute. You know, I'm a fast talker, anyway, so you can imagine me that excited. It was just crazy. I eventually got a hold of her by calling up the publisher and saying, "Uh...I just got a call from Robert Jordan's widow." So they're like, "Oh yeah. We've been trying to get a hold of you all day. Okay, we'll get her to call you back." She said she just wanted to see if I was interested. She thought I was a potential prospect. She wanted to read my books first, but before even doing that she wanted to make sure I was interested. And I wasn't sure how to respond, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I didn't think, and I still don't think, anyone could replace Robert Jordan. He was an author like we don't get very often.

    Louie Free

    Okay, but hold on, hold on. I'm sorry, hold on a sec...let me ask. Here you are, here you are. It's kind of like...you grew up on his nourishment for your brain—your brain food, if you don't mind. You grow up on this, you love this guy, I mean, you're freaked out he passes away, so there's not going to be more. You get a call from his wife slash life partner slash editor and she says, "Brandon, we want you to carry on the legacy of this guy that has been a 'small g' god to you." Correct? Is that a fair assessment?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, oh yeah. That's a very fair assessment. That's the situation I'm in. I was so tongue-tied, Louie, that I don't think I was able to even speak two words together. I wrote her an email the next day that said, "Dear Harriet. I promise I'm not an idiot, even though I sounded like one." I took that whole night thinking about it. And eventually what I came up with was that I didn't think anyone could replace him, I didn't think I could replace him. I did not think that I could write as good a book as Robert Jordan could have, and I still don't think anyone could have written as good a book, because he should be here to write this book.

    But I came to a decision that night. I realized if someone was going to write this book, I wanted it to be me. If it couldn't be Robert Jordan, I wanted it to be in the hands of somebody who loved and revered the series. I'd read some of the books eight times at that point. I'd reread most of the series all the way through often when a new book would come out. I knew that at least then it would be in the hands of someone who wouldn't take it and run off with it and make it their own, but would have tried to make it see his vision and be his story. And I'd made that decision, I realized, yes, I do want to do this. It's a tragedy that we lost him, but if I'm doing it, then I know it won't be screwed up. And so that's when I wrote her the email and said, "Harriet, I'm sorry I sounded like an idiot. I do want to do this, and these are the reasons."

    Louie Free

    She had to know that you were going to be...I mean, she had to know that whoever she called and obviously called the right person. Again, the results...the book, now available everywhere. If you camped out, you've already got yours. If you don't, you can have it. Please buy it at your local independent bookseller when you are able to. The Gathering Storm. It is The Gathering Storm. And it's Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan's name obviously prominent on the book. Gathering Storm...available everywhere. It is available at your independent bookseller. It is available in your neighborhood. Please, before you buy—I hope you don't mind this, Brandon—before you go to buy it online, buy it from a store where your neighbors and the people in your community are going to benefit.

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  • 697

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Can I give a shout-out to an independent bookstore in your market?

    Louie Free

    Yeah please, go ahead. Yes, you can.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think you cover Pittsburgh, right?

    Louie Free

    Well, we're in northeast Ohio, western Pennsylvania. Absolutely, go ahead.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay. Because there's a store in Pittsburgh that I love, the Joseph-Beth Booksellers there.

    Louie Free

    Oh yeah. Well, there's also one in the Cleveland area. Yeah, there's a few of them around. Go ahead.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I love the Jo-Beth Booksellers. They are amazing people, and they've been supporters of my books from the beginning. You know, the thing you get at an indy bookstore like that is you get people who love the books, who aren't just working a job, who are working a job they love. They go there on purpose. And they read the books. The manager in the Pittsburgh Jo-Beth contacted me just out of the blue based on my own books, my Mistborn series, just saying, "I love these books. We want to do a big display on them. And would you just tell us some of the books that you've loved in your life so that we can put up the display with it?" And she took a picture of it and sent it to me. Wonderful store.

    Louie Free

    Oh god, that's great. And again, when you buy, you keep those stores alive, folks. Think of how many stores that you always loved, wherever you are, that are gone now. And then you thought, afterwards, you know what, I should have gone there more, maybe I shouldn't have ordered online, and I always knew that was important in my community, and now they're gone. And the way to keep them is to patronize them. And as I say, even if you don't have a real independent bookstore, if it's a Barnes and Noble or a Borders that's in your community, you still want to hold onto those.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. Yeah, you do. I mean, I bought all my books growing up at a little independent science fiction and fantasy bookseller. I actually bought Eye of the World, the Robert Jordan book, at this bookstore.

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  • 698

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Louie Free

    Folks, we're able to keep Brandon Sanderson for another segment and I'm delighted, Brandon. I want to thank you for accommodating us with some extra time.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh no, thank you, Louie. This has been a really great interview, so I wanted to stay.

    Louie Free

    Thank you, thank you. Thank you for what you were saying off-air, too. It really means the world to me. The Gathering Storm is the name of the book. You know, I'm looking at some of the early emails, and you've got obviously a ton of fans around the world. Tell me what's it like when you know that you've got people that are literally camping out to get an early copy of The Gathering Storm. I mean, that has just got to be incredible. What's that like for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is. It's an honor, honestly. But, you know, the thing to keep in mind: they're not camping out for me. This isn't about me. This is about the Wheel of Time. This is about Robert Jordan's books. And really, what I'm doing on this book is I'm trying to be as invisible as possible. I don't want them to see Brandon Sanderson. If they see too much Brandon Sanderson, then I've failed. I want them to see the story and see the characters.

    You know, I can't replace Robert Jordan. I've said that from the beginning. I'm not trying to imitate his voice. I don't think it would be right. I mean, I have flashes in my mind of stand-up comedians doing parodies, when I've thought about trying to imitate him. And it would come off as hokey, I think. But instead what I'm trying to do is to stay true to the series and the characters, and adapt my style to fit it. And so, the best emails I've gotten from people are people who've emailed me and say, 'You know what? When I started reading, I could tell. I could tell just slightly that it was different. But by the end of the first chapter, I was sucked in, and it didn't matter. I couldn't see it any more because you did the story right and you did the characters right.' And that's what I'm looking to see.

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  • 699

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Louie Free

    Well, when you say that, you've obviously done an incredible job of keeping your ego out of it. I think it would be hard, honestly, when you've got people that adore you, yet you push away from that. That's very interesting about you. Tell me about growing up. What was it like growing up Brandon Sanderson?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, growing up Brandon Sanderson...I've later discovered that my story isn't unique. I'm not one of those people who's been writing books since the womb. You know, you'll talk to writers sometimes, and they'll say, 'Yeah, I was two years old and I composed my first epic.' And those people amaze me. But I wasn't one of them, I wasn't a reader. And this happens to a lot of boys, I've found, doing research about it now after the fact. When they hit about fourth or fifth grade, something happens and they stop reading. And that's what happened to me—stopped reading.

    I didn't like books. People kept trying to give me books. And it seemed like they all tried to give me the same book. Which, you know, I think that there are different books for different people, and every book affects somebody. And the fact that I didn't like them doesn't mean they weren't perfect for someone else. But they were trying to give me books about boys who live in the wilderness with their pet dog, and then the dog dies, and it's traumatic and that's the end of the book. I read two or three of those and I'm like, 'Reading is boring. They're all about boys with dogs who die. And if their dog doesn't die, then their mother dies. And why are people giving me this stuff?'

    And then I got to eighth grade, and in eighth grade I had a teacher—Mrs. Reader, coincidentally. I've since sent her several books as a thank you. But anyway, she's the first who kind of grabbed a hold of me and said, 'This kid can do more than he's doing.' And she wouldn't let me wiggle out of my book reports and things like I'd done in previous classes. She took me back to her little cart. You know how teachers have these carts of old ratty books that kids have been reading, and they've spilled spaghetti sauce on, and all these things. They all have these. She took me back and she pulled out one, and it was actually called Dragonsbane—it was an epic fantasy novel. She handed it to me and she said, 'Read this one. I think you'll like it.' And I hadn't really tried fantasy except for Tolkien, which as I said earlier, I tried too young for me. When you're a reluctant reader, Tolkien is really challenging, and it wasn't right for me. It had been several years since that, though.

    And Dragonsbane, what it was is it was a story about a woman who was a witch. And she had been told when she was younger that she could be the greatest witch who'd ever lived. She was a natural prodigy. She could be amazing if she'd dedicate herself to her art. And yet at the same time, she was in love with a man and had had children with him, and was a mother. The story is actually about the last living dragonslayer, who is her husband, who's called on to kill a dragon when he's in his fifties—he's old, he's not the young man he used to be. And it's actually her story, and it's about her kind of trying to juggle her life between the magic, which is like her passion and her career, and her children.

    And at the same time, my mother graduated first in her class in accounting, in an age when women didn't really go into accounting. She was the only one in her class. She had been offered numerous prestigious scholarships. And she had actually turned those down because she was pregnant with me, and she felt it important for a few years to just focus on me. And I read this epic fantasy novel and it had adventure, it had swords, it had dragons. And I got done with this book, and I felt like I understood my mother more.

    Louie:
    Wow!
    Brandon:

    And it blew my mind. It was so weird. I'd had this wonderful adventure. And yet, I understood my mother. I understood, because she had always walked that line. She had always been a mother, and she had worked very hard at her career. She was a very great accountant, and yet she had never quite dedicated herself fully to that because she felt that her family was important. And this woman was struggling with the same thing. It didn't give you answers. It didn't say, 'oh she should have done this, she should have done that.' It just showed her life. And that’s what I think really great fiction does, is it shows someone’s life, and it gives you a perspective on it.

    And that's really what launched me into fantasy, was reading this and realizing I can have fun and adventure and magic and wonder. And the really good books can show me characters, too, characters who aren't like me. I mean, Tolkien did that. In a way, when you're reading Tolkien, in part you're reading about an elf and a dwarf who come from extremely different worlds, from you and from each other, who end up becoming friends. And it says something about racism and about prejudice, about how those characters come together that could only really be done in a fantasy book in that way. And this is what our genre does. It's metaphorical, and yet it's personal. And that's why I fell in love with it, and why I was poised, at age fifteen, to read Robert Jordan.

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  • 700

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Louie Free

    Let me ask you this, Brandon Sanderson, if we can. The blog post, the one that you wrote after Robert Jordan passed away: "You showed me what it was to have vision and scope." Tell me a little bit about that post.

    Brandon Sanderson

    When he passed away, I didn't know how to respond. My very first impression was I knew that he and Harriet, his editor, were married and I felt just terrible for her. And then I felt terrible—and this is selfish—but I felt terrible that I hadn't gone and met him. I'd seen him at that one convention and the fact that I hadn't walked up and shaken his hand and said how much he meant to me. And I, at the same time, sat there thinking, 'Man, everyone in fantasy who's an author is probably going to start chasing this project,' and that made me feel sick. And so, it actually took me three or four days to get my feelings down on paper, or on screen at least. I composed a number of things and I tossed them, and I kind of struggled with it. And I eventually came up with this short, little eulogy. It's not really that long. You can find it on my web site just by clicking on my Wheel of Time link.

    Louie Free

    Okay now, I want to know. I'm getting people that are saying specifically. I want to put it up if you don't mind. Is it at the blog? Is it at...? I'm looking at the Wheel of Time link...I mean, I'm looking at the...Wheel of Time portal?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, click on the portal. And then just on the left, there's a little link that says 'Robert Jordan Eulogy'.

    Louie Free

    Oh, I see it. I see it. Okay, okay. And I will put a direct link up to that. And again, it's brandonsanderson.com. I'm sorry, Brandon. Go ahead.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, a direct link to that would be great. If people wonder why I spelled 'eulogy' wrong, it was a long running thing on my web site, so I know that it's spelled wrong. It had to do with essays that I was writing.

    But anyway, so I wrote this, and I talked just about picking up Eye of the World for the first time, and why I had chosen TOR when they had come to me and I'd finally had a book offer. After writing thirteen novels, I sold my sixth one. And after having them finally come to me and say, 'Yes, we'll publish you.' Actually, my agent said, 'You know we could probably, now that we have an offer, go somewhere else and try and bid it up,' and things like this. And I said no. I said no, this is TOR This is Robert Jordan's publisher. No, we're not going to do that. I was where I wanted to be. And I kind of wrote about that. I just wrote about what he'd meant in my life. It was just something from the heart. I never expected it to be seen by that many people.

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  • 701

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Louie Free

    I've got to ask you. I'm going to ask you again. I guess it may be a little different, it may be the same. But what does it mean, then, to know—you're talking about being a little alone, lonely, disconnected, whatever as a child, or as a young person—now knowing that you're writing and you're giving a similar gift to others and that connection. You know what it meant to you, Brandon Sanderson, when you were young. What does it mean to now be the giver of that, or the connector of those? How would you respond?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I tell people if they really want to get to know me, read my fiction because I'm there in every character. And people say they read my books and they feel like they know me, and they kind of joke, 'Oh no, I don't really.' And I say, no, you do. It's there. If you're reading it, you're seeing me. And I remember when the first time I realized that I was doing what you just said—that I was doing for people what people had done for me—was when I started getting my first emails. And I had gotten one from someone who said to me, it was a young man, 'Your books are what made me start reading.' And it stomped me, it throws me, and it floored me, because I have trouble believing I belong on the shelf with all those writers that I grew up reading, because they're the masters and I'm just the journeyman. I got into this because of them. And that was the first moment where I froze, and I said, 'Oh, wow! It's happening. I mean, I'm part of this. It's a cycle. It's a circle. I'm giving back to what people gave to me.' It really was a strange and surreal moment, and I just sat and stared at the screen for a little while.

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  • 702

    Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009

    Louie Free

    I've got to ask you, and I know you've got to go to do another one. Where do you see this going? What would your best dream be for this to go, what you're doing now, your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know what? I just want to be telling these stories until the day I die. I want them to have to pry my forehead off the keyboard where, you know, I've typed a thousand pages of the space bar because I've just died and keeled over and head hit the keyboard. You know, I didn't get into this because I want fame. You shouldn't become a writer because of any of that. I became this because I wanted to be part of this community and I wanted to say something.

    I've found that readers...it's a wonderful place to be because, really, your readers are like your colleagues. In a lot of other, sort of celebrity sort of things, an actor or something becomes this big flashy celebrity. That's not what happens with authors. When I meet my readers, they are my colleagues and we have a connection. They're supporting me in this. They're actually my patrons. It's kind of like the old days when you'd have a wealthy individual that supported an artist. Well, that's what they're doing for me, and they're part of this. I just want to be giving them stories that live up to their expectations.

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  • 703

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Luckers

    What does amahn'rukane mean?

    Brandon Sanderson

    *stares at me blankly for a long moment* What... um... what has been said on it before?

    LUCKERS

    Just that it’s a sword sticking out of the earth. Cadsuane names it...

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Oh right, umm. I don’t know. *he laughs* You can probably tell something about it from that.

    LUCKERS

    That it’s not important.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    *laughs again*.

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  • 704

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon again spoke of Aviendha and the Aiel, due to the way they think, mentioning how he went through several drafts and back and forths with Harriet, whilst doing multiple re-reads of Aviendha’s POVs.

    Then he spoke of Mat, saying that Mat is such a complicated character, though you might not think he is at first glance. He is an unreliable narrator, with vast differences between how he thinks and how he acts, and that Jim’s Mat POV’s are some of the best in the series. He then spoke of his own writing and that because of these elements it’s easy to miss things with Mat, and that that is why his early scenes in The Gathering Storm are not as good as his scenes in Towers of Midnight, where Brandon began to ‘get him’. Brandon finished by saying he’s best in A Memory of Light.

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  • 705

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Question

    [Who is your most hated character?]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Luckers is going to roll his eyes at me, but back before I started writing—before writing her POV’s showed me how awesome she is—it was definitely Cadsuane.

    LUCKERS

    I rolled my eyes at him. Heh.

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  • 706

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon spoke of how sometimes the characters he liked did get more air time, and that this was a side effect of having a fan write the books. He spoke of his love of Perrin, and how he wanted Towers of Midnight to be a 'big, awesome, Perrin book', and that that is what he hoped he delivered.

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  • 707

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon was talking about the differences between his writing and Jim’s, and choosing not to try and match styles because it couldn’t be done. He describe it as 'I do serviceable prose, where Jim wrote beautiful prose', and that there have been scenes he’s come to where he’s simply had to say 'I just have to do this my way, there’s nothing for it'.

    He spoke then of Jim’s ability to layer subtle foreshadowing, which is something he’s never had to do outside of his story behind the story [he’s referring to the greater cosmos of his own works, the whole, Shards of Adonalsium and Hoid storylines that go on in the background]. He said it has been a real challenge to catch all the balls that Jordan left in the air, and that sometimes you can see that. ‘Some he caught smoothly, others he snatched from the air and slammed on the table. Some he even just said 'this happened'.

    Finally he spoke of plotting, and how sometimes Jordan’s notes have said two contradictory things ‘maybe I’ll do this, or maybe I’ll do this other completely opposite thing’. Brandon said he then often had to choose between them, or sometimes choose a third thing entirely.

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  • 708

    Interview: Nov 14th, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mat going into Hinderstap with an empty cart, and leaving with a fully laden one was a nod to Stone Soup. Plato was referenced as the author of one of the philosophy books listed in the glossary. He said it was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy....etc.

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  • 709

    Interview: Apr 18th, 2012

    Luckers

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hey went to the signing in Sydney tonight. Nothing really new, except that both times he spoke of the climax of the series (that Jordan had written) he spoke of it as one chapter (he spoke much the same in Melbourne too, but I didn't really note it then).

    The second thing is that someone asked whether he had freaked Harriet out with how well he channeled Jordan, and he replied that he had freaked Harriet out, though not so much for that as for some of his crazy ideas. He said he thought Jordan would have been innovating and creating as the process of writing unfolded, and that he did much the same, throwing thoughts at Harriet, some of which made it into the book. An example of one which didn't end up in the books, and which apparently Harriet 'freaked' out about was that he suggested Perrin might take up the Way of the Leaf.

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  • 710

    Interview: Apr 18th, 2012

    dicetosser

    Brandon Sanderson

    Also the idea of putting Asmodean's killer's identity in the glossary was his...kinda. RJ left a print-out of a reader's theory with a sticky note on it saying "this is right". That's it; nothing else. They tried figuring out how to get it in the story, then Brandon being a bit of a smartypants suggested the glossary. Apparently Harriet LOVED the idea so much that later when he tried to write it into the story she crossed it out and wrote "IT'S IN THE GLOSSARY!"

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  • 711

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Eleanor

    Did you write the Mat/Hinderstap sections first?

    Brandon Sanderson

    (This is not verbatim.) Yes, I did, and I know there is a flow issue there. They were amongst the first chapters I wrote and at that stage I had not realized that most of Mat's humor is in how he reacts to his surroundings.

    ELEANOR

    There was a bit more to this; I wish I could recall more, but a lot of cues I need are missing from these notes, although what I have has been brilliant so far. Many thanks to my faithful Gaidin.

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  • 712

    Interview: Apr, 2012

    Eleanor

    Here's something you can't RAFO! This has probably been asked elsewhere, but how do you think your experience writing these books has influenced your own style?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh! RAFO! Ok...just kidding.

    ELEANOR

    This was a long response, but I have managed to capture the gist of it in this summary, I think. It boiled down to it made him more aware of the littler things, and how aware he became of RJ's extreme subtlety and his skill in very delicate foreshadowing. I really, really wish I had a dictaphone or some such at this point, as it was absolutely fascinating. If this question could be asked again once A Memory of Light and one more of his own books is published, it'd be absolutely fascinating to see his answers then and compare them. He may even (he said nothing of this; this is just me pondering) write a blog post once it is out and done.

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  • 713

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Google Moderator

    Maybe you could talk just to get us started, a little bit about your Mistborn series for example, which I know have seen lots and lots of posts. When are you going back to Mistborn?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will be doing some more Mistborn stories, coming in the near future, right now most everything I have is dedicated to finishing the Wheel of Time, the last book of the wheel of time, we are in revisions right now and it is a lot of work and we are trying to get this last book ready for release next January, once I am done with that I can turn my attention back to my other projects like the Stormlight archive and Mistborn both of which I hope to do, very quickly some more books for.

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  • 714

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Curt

    First off, I'm a former googler, I worked there for like five and a half years so hi guys. So I’m wondering which mistakes you made as a beginning novelist that stand out the most as ones you've corrected as you've learned the craft better.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's an excellent question, I would say that my biggest mistake as a new writer was not being willing to revise. I'm a classic, what we call a one-drafter this is a type of author who likes to just imagine it, get it ready, plan a lot and then get in on the page and be done with it and that was a mistake, I do I've become a big believer in learning to take a book that's a good book and make it an excellent book and doing a lot of strong revisions and early on I wasn't willing to do that and that held me back quite a bit.

    CURT

    Do you think that maybe not having a writing group to back you up contributed to your lack of revisions?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Maybe... I actually did have a writing group, what I would do is I would get the feedback from my writing group and my opinion was "Oh, I made all these mistakes." Instead of fixing them, early on I would say "Oh well, I won't make those mistakes again for my next book," cause I was always so excited an eager to write the next book and I -I didn't slow down enough and really focus in on making books great.

    And that was a mistake that was very particular to me, I don't think- as a writer there are so many different ways to do this and so many different types of writers part of learning to be a writer is about learning what things hold you back and what mistakes you make and they can be very different. Depending on who you are and what type of problem you have.

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  • 715

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Gabriel

    Yeah actually, a lot of your characters seem to crises of faith, particularly Sazed in the Hero of Ages where he essentially questions all his- everything he's come to believe. Have you ever experienced any conflicts with your own religious faith about including such characters in your books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's also a good question I would- Conflicts is perhaps the wrong way to put it in that I believe strongly in the precepts of people like Socrates in that the unexamined life is not worth living and I find that if I'm interested in something I should question it, I should examine it from as many directions as I can.

    I tend to do that in my fiction it's the way I express myself Rather than writing a journal, I write stories that explore what I'm working on, myself, what I'm interested in and I find it vital that I attack them from lots of different directions not just the way I am, but the way I see other people exploring the same problems, the same questions.

    It's just - it's valuable to me as a writer and as a person that I explore these things in depth, so I've never seen conflict but I certainly have expressed my own questions and examinations through characters as they have reached similar moments in their lives.

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  • 716

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    John

    Hey Brandon, Although like stories and you know, plot characters, twists are all very important, for me a great story is made up of great moments and the question I wrote in the post there was about when Dalinar swaps his sword for the bridge men and asks the question 'how much is a life worth?' and for me that was a moment where I had to put the book down because it was just so great, it brought the characters together and all these reasonings all these visions it all came to a head and I was thinking how many moments like these do you think a great book needs for example I mean other things I'd seen in that book was when Kaladin, he tells his men to come out after the storm and see him alive again or in the gathering storms when Rand is on Dragonmount and everything you know, he destroys the Choedan Kal, so how many moments like that do you think they need an can you give me an example of a great book that you love from another Authors book where you think there is a great moment like those ones?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, excellent, I'll start with the last one, one of my favorite books of all time is Les Miserables and it's full of moments like that and I'm going to have to pick the moment where Jean Valjean goes for Marius and brings him back through the sewers and things like that, moments like that are what makes books work for me.

    What you're noticing is part of the way I design my plots, when I'm going to write a story I feel like I have to have moments like that prepared and planned that I can write towards. I will often go and turn on epic music of the right type, (whatever I'm feeling is epic at the time ) and go and walk or go on the treadmill or do something active and while doing that I will try to imagine what moments like that will be for this given book; what will be the really powerful character or plot moment that just make you, want to put the book down and sit back for a minute and say "Whoa!"

    I have to be able to imagine some of those for every book I write, otherwise I can't start the book, I write my books kind of... the points on the map philosophy, meaning I have to have something to write toward for me to get there. I -It's like having a map where you say, Ok I'm going to drive from one place to another and here are the places along the way I'm going to stop. I need to know where those places are and these places are usually these powerful moments and it's how I build stories.

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  • 717

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Luke

    I was wondering if you could only write in one universe from now on, what would you pick?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well you gave me an out, because so many of my books are in the same universe.

    *laughter*

    LUKE

    You know, I thought you might say that.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    So that, I could cheat and just say the cosmere, but I think the soul of the question is which series would I write on.

    I would probably have to -boy- it would probably be a toss up between Mistborn and the Stormlight archive, Mistborn because I've invested so much into it already. If I can only pick one I would probably pick Stormlight because there is so much left to tell there and I've got a lot of places to explore, but I would cheat and say they're all in the same universe.

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  • 718

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Tristan

    So my question is, you're planning the Stormlight Archives as this big long ten book series and I think that obviously look at your work with the Wheel of Time the other big long epic series one of the issues that at least some fans perceive is that these series are at least perceived to sag or at least slow down at some point in the middle, people start to get very bogged down and it takes years for the next one to come out, is that something you're considering for your structuring of the Stormlight archives and what are you trying to do to address that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question, it is actually something that I've very consciously thought about when designing this story. One of the reasons that I didn't release the Way of Kings when I wrote it back in 2002 is that I hadn't figured out this problem yet, and it's one of the reasons that I shelved the book and re-wrote it from scratch back a couple of years ago.

    I really was conscious of it because I have an advantage over authors like George Martin and Robert Jordan, who have had these kinds of accusations levelled at them, in that I've read them! I've read Robert Jordan, and I can see he's kind of pushed his way in the snow for some of us to fall behind and see some of the things that he did even after he said "Boy, I think I might have done that differently." We can learn from that.

    What I'm trying to do is -first off the Stormlight archive is divided in my head into 2 five book series, it is a 10 booker but it is divided into two big five book sequences. I do think that will give me more of a vision of a beginning, middle, and end for each of the sequences.

    The other thing I'm doing is I consciously did some little thing in the books. One of the reasons we end up with sprawl in epic fantasy series is I think writers start writing side characters and getting really interested in them. The side characters are awesome, they let you see the breadth of the world and dabble in different places, so what I did is I let myself have the interludes in the Way of Kings (I will continue to do those in the future books) and I told myself I can write those interludes but those characters can't become main characters, those characters have to be just glimpses.

    The other main thing that I'm doing is that each book in the Stormlight Archives is focused on a character that character gets flashbacks and we get into the back-story and that gives me a beginning middle and end and a thematic way to tie that story together, specifically to that character, which i hope will make each chara- each book feel more individual.

    That's another part of the problem with the big long series; they start to blend. If the author starts to view some of them as blending then you stop having big climaxes at the ends of some of them and view them too blended together. This isn't a problem when the series is finished, I think that when the Wheel of Time can be read beginning to end straight through, a lot of this worry about middle-meandering is going to go away because you can see it as a whole. But certainly while you're releasing it, you get just these little glimpses that feel so short.

    I feel that if I can take each book and apply it to one character give a deep flashback for each one and thematically tie it to them, each book will have its own identity and hopefully will avoid some of that. That's my goal, who knows if I'll be able to pull it off but it is my intention.

    GOOGLE MODERATOR

    You seem to be pulling it off so far Brandon

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    Well I only have one book yet! I mean none of these, none of these series- they all started with great first books, in fact I feel that a lot of them are great all the way through but the sprawl issue doesn't usually start to hit til around book four is really where the, where the problems show up.

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  • 719

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Will

    After Memory of Light would you finish the 2 Wheel of Time prequels that Robert Jordan was planning?

    Brandon Sanderson

    : Oh boy, okay so serious question. Harriet and I have both given this much thought and we feel that there is a danger in continuing to write in the Wheel of Time. The metaphor I like to use is that we've been handed the One Ring and we are marching toward Mordor and we have to let go of that ring. The longer we keep a hold of it, the more dangerous it is for us, the more we will want to keep hold of it, and the more we just risk exploiting Robert Jordan's name and legacy, rather than just doing what he envisioned being the appropriate thing to do with his world and his series.

    We have both decided that we don't feel comfortable doing the prequels, perhaps that will change. I don't think it will, but for right now the answer is no. We are not going to do the prequels or the outriggers, which is another sequel series he had planned. Simply because there's nothing wrong with those, he said he was going to do them, but the longer we keep going the more dangerous and risky it becomes and we'd rather just stop while we're ahead.

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  • 720

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    John

    Going back to the Way of Kings, as you said you wrote that, 2002 then you shelved it. So that's, like you give it an introduction you say it's over ten years of planning and through that, a lot of the planning on a series like that is also world building and so on, but the next book you said you want to get through as quickly as possible, do you think it'll have an impact on the -not on the quality of the book, but on the type of book? In the sense, the Way of Kings took ten years and the new one, less. What do you think?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm hoping it won't. I will have to see when I write it, I'm certainly hoping that I don't have to write it and then shelve it for ten years; I think people would be very angry with me. If it's the right move, I'll do it but I think I would have major outcries. My instincts - over the years I've developed pretty good instincts for when a book is going to work and when it is going to be a rougher write and I will know very quickly once I start if it's working or not. I'll be upfront with people as I write it about that. My instincts right now are very good for it, I'm kind of chomping at the bit. There are many parts of the original Way of Kings that that I didn't end up getting to in the new one, because it wasn't time for them yet. So there's still stuff floating from that book that is still going to be part of the future books.

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  • 721

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Gabriel

    In a lot of your books the internal struggle is just as important as the external conflict. How do you keep that internal struggle from devolving into just, into whining essentially.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right, no that's a real danger. We call it "navel gazing" a lot in writing where if you delve too much into that, you can have just characters sitting and pondering and nothing happens. I have to walk that line, and in fact some of mine probably turns into navel-gazing because I err on that side a little too much. I would say that the way I try to work on this is to mirror internal conflict with external conflict, meaning what the character is working on inside is, is enhanced, is conflicted, is in some ways changed by what's happening externally which then allows some very powerful ways of showing them working through their problems in the real world, not just sitting and thinking about them.

    That has worked with me so far, it is certainly a danger that I'm aware of and something that I think writers need to be aware of. At the same time, you know, what fiction can do is show internal conflict, emotions, thoughts, feelings in a way that other mediums can't. It's one of our specialties and I think that avoiding it completely is the wrong move because, Yes, any time you delve into that you risk just getting boring, but when you don't delve into that you're basically just imitating what a film can do, do everything external and a film can do that much better. I like taking what we can do as writers and just playing to our strengths and explore what the medium is capable of and that's why I do it.

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  • 722

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Alex

    "I loved the character reversal that took place with Vivian and Siri..." and actually I'm enjoying that at the moment "...did you come up with that idea- was that an early idea in your planning or did it emerge as a result of the story writing itself?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a good question, for most of those they were early ideas, my- I had two main themes for myself when writing Warbreaker, one was character reversals I wanted to play with the idea of reversed roles, you see it from the very beginning when the two sisters are forced to reverse roles and also the role reversal between Vasher and Denth.

    The other big thing was I wanted to work on my humor and try and approach new ways of being, of having humor in a book and seeing what different types of character humor I could use. It was really me delving into a lot of Shakespeare at the time and seeing the way he pulled reversals and the way he used multiple levels of humor and I wanted to play with that concept in fantasy novels, so a lot of those were planned. Some of them were not, some of them came spontaneously, as you're writing the book, you always come up with great ideas for books while you're working on them so you kind of see the evolution of a few of them.

    Warbreaker is posted for free on my website, the complete draft of it and I actually posted the first draft all the way through to the last draft and so you can actually take and compare the first draft to the very last draft and even the chapters as I wrote them you can see how some things were evolving and coming to be and I was realizing certain things while I was doing it and other things were, were very well foreshadowed from the beginning.

    Footnote

    Many early ideas from Warbreaker came from Mythwalker, an unfinished novel Brandon wrote a few years earlier. The "switched roles" theme was one of them.

    Mythwalker

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  • 723

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)

    Luke

    Brandon you do a lot of interesting stuff with publishing formats like Warbreaker being free, I know you talked recently about bundling the last, the last book with an ebook and a hardcover. So what kind of stuff do you see happening as far as future and what do you like as far as formats?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think a lot of exciting things are happening, one thing I think is happening is, is the digital revolution is changing things a lot and I think this is gonna let people like me get away with more things. For one thing, digitally our lengths don't matter as much. Theoretically, I doubt we'd be able to pull this off but theoretically, we could do something like re-release Gathering Storms, Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light reordered with their chapters in the original order as before they were split ,which i think would be awesome. You could release that as one book which in print you never could do, so length shenanigans are sort of things we can do.

    I also like the idea of bundling. I think eventually I'm going to be able to convince people to do this. I would love to do something like what we've seen in movies and in records, where we release a really nice special edition of a book with a hardcover and an included ebook copy, with included audio book copy and like something like a book-end or a medallion or like an art book something that we release just for- and you know make it expensive like a two hundred and fifty dollar product that comes signed and numbered and all this stuff. We can do that, and at the same time release a very cheap ebook for those who just don't have the cash for that, or don't have the interest. I think that by doing that we can allow the people who want a really nice collectors thing to pay what they want, and people who want a dollar ebook to pay that and we actually end up at the same amount of money that we're making, except everybody’s happier.

    So I don't see why we wouldn't be choosing these sorts of things, there are just so many questions and the big one is we don't want to disenfranchise retailers. A lot of particularly independent bookstores stuck with us over the years and you know a lot of these stores are wonderful in that they will grab new authors like me when I was brand new and really promote them and get behind them and do these wonderful things for them, and we don't want to do anything where we are cutting them out of the loop. I really want there to be strong independent bookstores in the coming years because I think it's really important for the genre, so we have to find a way to work all of this with them at the same time.

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  • 724

    Interview: Sep 21st, 2010

    Boomtron Interview (Verbatim)

    Lexie

    In reading the Way of Kings a very Ben Hur vibe can be felt from Kaladin., was this intentional and what other genres were your inspiration?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wouldn’t say that I was specifically shooting for that vibe, certainly I am influenced by all the things around me, I was just looking to tell a really great story, and this is the story that came out. It was Kaladin's story in specific, it was - the genesis of the story was actually the Shattered Plains themselves, the area. I write fantasy and one of the reasons that I write fantasy is I want to tell stories about places that don’t exist, that maybe couldn’t exist in our world and so the geography of the shattered plains is sort of what appealed to me. I’d actually been planning this for many years and extrapolated from there, how would warfare be like in this place and then I extrapolated from there, what are they going to need, what types of troops. And Kaladin as a person was growing separately, and I just wanted the best place to put in- the place of most conflict and it ended up being that.

    Plot-wise to be perfectly honest I was looking more at- when I was building this plot- underdog sports narratives. To be perfectly honest, I like to, when I look for inspiration in plotting sequences I like to look far afield to try and take things and pull them into my books so that we aren’t getting some of the same repeated dealings over and over again. But certainly historical works like the ones you mentioned are a big part of my make up as well.

    Footnote

    Shattered Plains came from the original Dragonsteel book.

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  • 725

    Interview: Sep 21st, 2010

    Boomtron Interview (Verbatim)

    Lexie

    How many magic systems did you go through before deciding on the one in the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Building the magic for a world is not something I’ve simply been able to drop in, usually. I generally am working on lots of different themes and ideas in my head *laughter* When I’m planning a novel and the magic will fit a certain story and influence how it goes and I will do a lot of building and practice to see if that’s working and do a lot of, I’ll do a lot of pre-writing and see how the magic influences the plot, influences the setting. If these things are also intertwined then it’s not a drag and drop so to speak and usually even if I pull out a magic, I’ll really be pulling out parts of it and replacing it with other parts.

    For instance with the Mistborn books Allomancy was in one form there from the beginning and yet what the powers that Allomancy could do often I was ripping out and adding new ones in, in order to better fit the novel and the narrative I’m shooting for. So for Way of Kings I’ve kind of taken a—the series I’ve been working on for quite a while, people have read the online interviews and things like that. I generally took a ‘more is awesome' approach to the magic systems and yet because of that I didn’t want the first book to be overrun by them, it would be very easy for my books to simply become interesting gimmicks about a magic rather than a story about characters and the story that happens to them, and so I was actually very careful to not overwhelm with the magic in this book. Which is actually somewhat ironic because this book, I built into it somewhere around thirty magic systems and yet I didn’t want to overwhelm and so the first book, there are only hints of any of them but generally when I was world building this I came up with a great idea, I worked it into the magic system rather than saying "Oh, let’s do this instead."

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  • 726

    Interview: Oct 20th, 2008

    Tor Forge

    Tell me about Mistborn

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Mistborn trilogy was the series I released following Elantris. I knew I wanted to follow up with something a little bit longer. Elantris was a standalone, and I wanted to try my hand at a series. I had made a name for myself, with Elantris, for being someone who does something different with fantasy: doesn’t do the same sort of things. Still, I want my books to feel like fantasy, I want them to give you that same feeling of epic wonder that you get in a good fantasy series. I just don’t want to do the same stories that have been done a lot.

    And so with this, the inspiration really came from two places. I love the fantasy genre, I read a lot of fantasy books, I love the classics—Tolkien—I love the Harry Potter and the Robert Jordan books. These books all kind of share one similar plot element, which is kind of about the young hero, who goes on a quest to defeat the Dark Lord, which a lot of my classic favorites in fantasy deal with. I thought “Is there something different I can add to this?” I was actually watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies, watching Frodo go on his quest to fight Sauron and defeat the Dark Lord, and I thought about Harry Potter with Voldemort and all of these and I thought “You know, these Dark Lords always get taken down by these peasant kids. What happens if the Dark Lord wins? What happens if the peasant hero loses?”

    That idea kicked around in my head for a long time, and I began to think of this story where there had been this young hero, who’d gathered an unlikely band of followers, and they’d gone traipsing off on a quest to defeat the great evil, and they lost: the Dark Lord took over the world, and began to rule. That’s kind of a depressing story: I didn’t to start, I didn’t want that to be the whole story, but that was a beginning.

    The other seed for this story was my love for the Heist genre. I love the old Mission Impossible TV show, where you’ve got a gang of specialists who can each do something really unique, and they get together and try and pull off something impossible. I have often wondered: why don’t I see more of this in fantasy? It would be a great way to apply the genre—each person in our team could have a different magical power.

    These two ideas rammed together, and I began to conceive this story of a world where the hero had lost, and now, a thousand years later, we’ve got this gang of thieves who say “okay the Peasant Hero, he didn't save us. the Prophecies, they were all bunk. We're now ruled by this terrible dark emperor—let’s do this our way. Let's rob the guy silly, bribe his armies away from him, and overthrow the empire. “And so it’s kind of a different take on the same story, and that’s what I did, and it turned out to be kind of a mix between Lord of the Rings and Ocean’s Eleven and a kung-fu epic and a little bit of My Fair Lady thrown in there for good measure. It’s kind of its own unique thing.

    Well Mistborn, the series is a trilogy, and the progression from Book 1 to Book 2 is interesting in that, when I was originally conceiving this trilogy, this series, one of the things I wanted to do is tell the story of what happens once the heroes have already won. I wanted to start where the story usually ends because one of the things I like to do is try and turn the genre on its head, do new things with the genre. When I was planning the series, I decided that the story of the heroes winning is a great story, and that’s one that I wanted to tell. So I actually backed up by a book and started with Book 1, telling the story of the fight against the evil empire by a gang of thieves, trying to rip off the Dark Lord himself. But Book 2 then starts where my original concept had been. What now? I won’t tell you how Book 1 ends, but we’ve got the heroes having done something pretty spectacular, it’s where most books usually end, most series usually end. Book 2 takes up there and says “What now? What do you do now that you’ve pulled off this great accomplishment?" It leads me to some really interesting places, I think, in the series, because I get to tackle things that most people haven’t covered. Most series are done by now. It lets me forge some new ground in the fantasy genre.

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  • 727

    Interview: Oct 20th, 2008

    Tor Forge

    How did Vin and Elend change during the course of the story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This story, the series is about them, it’s about progression. I talk about the plot for books, for instance, the Mistborn series is about a group of thieves taking out a Dark Lord, but books, for me, are about character. Action is only as interesting as it happens to people you care about, in my opinion, and a setting is only as fascinating as characters’ ability to interact with it. The progression, who characters become, is really where I think fiction can shine. In a different medium, you just don’t have the time to do what we do, and we can show across a span of years how someone starts as a street urchin and ends up as a queen. You can show this and you can show the internal changes, and the struggles inside of them that leads to this.

    The story, about, for Vin and Elend is the story of them coming to accept each other’s different worlds. Vin starts as a street urchin, and she understands that life. Elend starts off as a nobleman, and he understands that life. As they start to interact and begin to have romantic interest in one another, their two worlds sort of collide and start sucking each other into each other’s worlds. Vin’s progress is learning that there is a part of her that can survive in this world of nobility, and of balls, and of political intrigue. But Elend, just as much, needs to understand that there’s a need to be able to survive “on the street,” a need to be able to take care of yourself rather than being pampered. It’s a role-reversal for the two of them, how it works as the series progresses.

    Hero of Ages is the third and final book of the Mistborn Trilogy. One of the things I love about this book is that it is the ending. I like to end things. I don’t want to leave people hanging. I like my stories to come to a conclusion. I promised people at the beginning, when I was writing this series, that it would be three books: and I would give them a dramatic, powerful ending. Endings are my favorite part, honestly, of novels. In a given novel, I love telling you the ending, and Book 3 is kind of a book that is an ending itself. The entire book is an ending. It’s a big climax: it’s exciting, and it’s powerful, and it fulfills things that have been building in the series for three books now. I was able to write the trilogy straight through when I was preparing, and so I had Book 3 drafted before Book 1 even went to press, which allowed me to really make these three novels cohesive. I have seeds in the very first few paragraphs of Book 1 to things that become climactic powerful moments in the end of book 3. Book 3 is just an overload of action and excitement and character climaxes and just an amazing, just, romp through this series. I’m really excited about people being able to finally read it because I’ve been waiting for quite a while to make good on the promises I made at the beginning.

    The great thing about Book 3 is that I'm introducing a completely new magic system. Each book has had its own. We'll start talking about Hemalurgy, and Steel Inquisitors, and where they come from. A lot of the origins of things that people have been wondering about since Book 1. The last 200 pages are just some of my favorite writing that I’ve ever been able to write because I was able to bring things to a head and to a close. I hope you enjoy it.

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  • 728

    Interview: Oct 20th, 2008

    Tor Forge

    What was it like to get the nod for The Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, in 2007, one of my favorite authors of all time, Robert Jordan, sadly passed away, long before his time was due. We were all, the whole community was struck by the tragedy. I've been reading his books since I was 15. The first one came out in paperback, I can remember when I walked into a store and saw this new book on the shelf, and thought it's amazing, and it's big and it's thick, and I was just getting into fantasy books, and I said "Wow, there's something about that book." I picked up a copy and read it, and just was hooked forever; it was, Eye of the World was the name of it. Over the next 18 years, I read this series, of 11 books and the prequels, as they came out. Right when they came out, I’d get the new one and read back through the whole series and read them again. It’s the great fantasy epic of my era. People before me read Tolkien, I read Robert Jordan. I eventually got into Tolkien, but Robert Jordan is what, part of what propelled me into being a fantasy novelist myself. I absolutely loved these books, and I was waiting, with everyone else for Book 12 because it was going to be the last one. And then Mr. Jordan passed away.

    Robert Jordan was one of my great inspirations; I looked at him as “my master,” in a way when it came to teaching me how to write. I would study his books when I was just a teenager, thinking about, someday, I would like to write fantasy novels myself. I would get them out and I would read them, and I would look at them and I would see how he would plot, and how it would do character and how he did viewpoint, and all these things, even though I never met him, I kind of look at him as something of a father-figure, I think the whole fantasy genre did. When he passed away, we all felt a little bit orphaned.

    I assumed that Tor would have someone picked to work on it: I figured that it would someday come out. I never thought that it would be me. I got up one morning, and there was a voicemail on my phone. This was actually the second time this had happened to me because when I first sold my very first book, I found out via voicemail. I’m glad I have a cellphone with voicemail on it because I answered this voicemail and it was Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's wife, longtime editor of his books. She called and said she had something she wanted to talk to me about. I had no clue that anyone was even considering me, so I called her back and lo and behold, she wanted me to complete the twelfth book of the Wheel of Time.

    This is the sort of thing that you don’t even dream about working on because you can’t even conceive it. It’s the series you’ve been reading since you were 15, and now you’ve been called and asked to work with the master, take his notes, the things that he has written, and put them together and write the last book. So my next project, after Well of Ascension*, we actually have another standalone of mine called Warbreaker coming out in the spring, and then that fall will be Book 12 of the Wheel of Time. Which I am now working on quite extensively, spending quite a bit of time on, it's going to be a big, great book, and he actually wrote most of the last portion himself, but I'm working on putting together all the notes, and writing the holes and following what’s left, what’s in the outline, and just making this book. That’s what’s going to come out, should be, we hope, fall or winter of 2009: I’m not exactly sure yet because I haven’t finished the novel. But that’s what’s next, and so exciting to consider, so exciting to work on it. This is just the most amazing project I’ve ever been a part of.

    The soul of the whole book is there, but the whole writing isn’t there. He left an outline, and there are whole in the outline, there are things that I need to put together, but at the same time he left 12 books worth of material, 11 books and 1 prequel's worth of material, pushing towards this last one, and all that weight is kind of like a mountain, pushing for what's going to happen. He was so good at foreshadowing, so good at plotting, that it's all there, even in the things that aren't there specifically in the outline. So people ask me, "How much of this book is yours, how much of it is Robert Jordan's?" My answer is, well it’s all Robert Jordan’s, it’s all his.

    In a way, I look at myself as the journeyman craftsman. If the master has trained you, if the master has come up with the patterns for whatever it is that you are working on, and the apprentice comes along and finishes a chair the master has worked on, it’s the master’s work, even if the apprentice helped out. I’m really the apprentice, or the journeyman in this case. Even though there’s a lot I get to do, a lot of work I have to do, there are a lot of scenes I get to come up with and write on my own, it’s his book. My goal in writing is so that no one can tell where my work begins and his ends and vice versa. I want it to just be a joy and a delight to read and I don’t want people to be sitting there thinking “How much did Brandon write? How much did Robert Jordan write?” Just read the book and enjoy it because it’s all his book, even the parts that I may have to come up with on my own. I don’t think that anyone could actually fill Robert Jordan’s shoes. He’s the greatest writer of my time, I believe, he’s the greatest writer of epic fantasy that we’ve had since Tolkien, and I can’t be him: I can’t fill his shoes. Without the outline material he’d left behind, without his assistance and his wife, who was his editor for so long, there’s no way I could do this.

    But, at the same time, it’s just amazing to be able to look at what he had left behind and see into his mind in a way that, I think, no one else gets to. I get to see a work that is unfinished, yet he’s left enough that I can imagine the book as it would have been when it was finished, and I can see the process. It’s really an unrivaled opportunity. I can’t think of anything that’s quite like it. The chance to just work and look through the notes and the materials, to gather them and say “What was he doing with this? Where did he really want this to go? How can I take this character who he’s been building to a climax for eleven books and say ‘how am I going to take this character and fulfill their character arc?’ How do I apply the notes? How do I take the chunks that he actually wrote and weave them in so that my own writing and his writing meld together and produce a Wheel of Time book that everyone is going to be excited about?”

    Beyond that, I think he’s watching and saying “Okay, what are you gonna’ do Brandon? What’s gonna’ happen?” And I want to do something that he’d be proud of. I think it’s both the greatest and most frightening opportunity anyone could ever be given in this business, but it sure is a lot of fun to work on. It’s been probably the most fun I’ve had working ever, to just be able to do this.

    He was a very positive, upbeat man. Extremely good natured. Everyone who talks about him talks about just how kindly and upbeat and positive he always was. Right up to the end, he was on his official blog, to people, saying “I’m going to beat this.” He had a degenerative blood disease—very rare—and he said “I’m going to beat this. I’m going to be around for another twenty years writing books” I think that positive mindset really helped him, but, near the end, he began to make provisions for the last book.

    I spoke with his wife and with his cousin about those days, just trying to get into his mindset. Really what impressed me most was that he wanted to make sure that the fans were taken care of. He knew how many people were waiting for this book, and his fans were so dear to him, that near the end he wanted to make sure that we knew everything that we needed to in order to finish the book. He wanted to make sure that his wife had the materials and the tools she needed so that she could find somebody. Near the end, he wanted her to go and find someone to finish the last book so that it would come out, so that the fans could finally read all of this. I think he knew that he wouldn’t be able to finish it himself. It was very hard for him to face, but he made sure he had what we needed to so that we could all read the book.

    His wife Harriet is just the most amazing person. Before I even met her, I had three independent sources, that I really trust, contact me and say “Brandon, she is the best editor in this business. There is nobody quite like Harriet.” Just having worked with her for the past six months, I agree with that. She is amazing. She knows this series and these books like nobody else. I’m convinced she knows them as well as Robert Jordan himself knew them. She and he, she’s been working on them since the beginning. Since the first pitch to Tor, she’s been involved. She knows these characters like we know our best friends and our family members, and she has been a shepherd of this project ever since the beginning.

    Working with her has been amazing: the next best thing to having Mr. Jordan himself here to write this book is having Harriet to be able to guide and take care of the project, and say “No, this character’s not quite right”, or “You’ve got this one dead on”, or “Let’s make sure that it feels right.” There are things that Harriet knows that no one else knows, at least I hope I know most of it now—she’s written down a lot of things—but even still, I’ll be working on a section and she’ll say “Oh, you need to know this” or “This character needs to do this.” She really does have a wealth of information just inside of that head of hers that’s been working on this for twenty years. She really is close to this project, and she understands it.

    Footnote

    *We assume he means Hero of Ages here, since that's what this interview is about.

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  • 729

    Interview: Oct 20th, 2008

    Tor Forge

    How have things changed since you submitted Elantris to Tor?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For one thing, I’m a full-time writer, which is just wonderful. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of doing, and now I actually, I have time to work on projects and on side-projects: I get to do this full-time. Beyond that, I get to be part of the community. The science fiction and fantasy community is amazing. Everyone is so helpful, all the other writers: I’m just amazed at how kind they are, how willing to help out the newbie.

    My life has changed drastically. There are people who know me that I’ve never met; there are a lot of them. I get dozens of emails from them every week. I feel a strange sense of responsibility, honestly, to the community now because the relationship between writer and reader is an interesting one. It’s a participatory art. Whatever I write on the page, it doesn’t come alive until the reader reads it and imagines it. The book becomes theirs at that point; the characters become who they imagine them to be.

    I feel a responsibility to the people who are reading the books and supporting me. Maybe in the same way that, in the olden days, you would have the performer who would be on the streets getting paid just by the kindness of those passing along the way, in fact you still see that quite a bit. I feel like I’m the same way. I’m employed, I make a living, and I get to do these wonderful things, come up with these stories and work on them because of the readers’ willingness to support me. That means that I feel that I need to produce the best stories that I can for them, not just dust off an old book that I wrote ten years ago, but always be giving them my best work. It’s a strange sense of just weight of responsibility to make sure that I am producing things that people are enjoying.

    I’m always doing my best work. That’s different. I used to just write for myself, now I write for everyone who enjoys my books.

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  • 730

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (21 May 2012)

    WoT update: Today, I added a new Rand scene to the book. One of many I've been working on, but this one came together first.

    Jason Palmer

    ? Is it a complete NEW scene? If so is it because the editors thought it would fit into the book more, is this the second draft?

    Brandon Sanderson

    New scene. We often add new scenes in the second, third, or even last drafts of a book.

    Greg Lindsey

    Feel free to add as much as the binding will allow!! Thanks for everything! By the way do you have an updated word count estimate?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No updated count yet. We'll see how much more I add this time around—I'm cutting it too.

    Daniel Shepard

    Can/Will you tell us anything about it? Please? :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm afraid I can't say much. I try to be extra-careful with WoT scenes out of respect for Harriet.

    Simon Draper

    When is the last book being published? I can't believe it's the end of the series already.

    Brandon Sanderson

    January.

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  • 731

    Interview: 2012

    Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Caleb Flanagan (21 May 2012)

    Do you see the speed your books get published at changing with the end of WoT? Seeing as how editing WoT takes so much longer?

    Brandon Sanderson (21 May 2012)

    Yes, I do. Getting WoT right takes about double the time it takes to do my own works, so we shouldn't have any more no-book years.

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  • 732

    Interview: Aug 8th, 2009

    WorldCon 2009 - Dom (Paraphrased)

    Dom

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon drew a graph of A Memory of Light's structure and explained in some details how he ended up re structuring it as three books. Not much that isn't already known in there, book 12 will have two main story lines (we know it's Rand and Egwene, but as I said Brandon didn't say so explicitly at the Q&A) and teasers for three more (Mat—and seemingly Perrin and Elayne). By 'teasers', Brandon precised he means 3 or 4 chapters per story line, the rest of the chapters being divided between the two main story lines (by recent books, this could means Egwene/Rand have about 10-12 chapters each, or a few more). Some developments happen in the teasers but it's not huge stuff, more like set ups chapters for what happens in book 13.

    Book 13 will have the opposite, with 3-4 chapters each for Egwene and Rand, "toward the end". Brandon kept those for book 13 to avoid spoiling in The Gathering Storm the climax of book 13, which will mark the reunion of all the main story lines at some location, and launch Tarmon Gai'don. So in book 13 we will have the residual Rand/Egwene chapters that specifically build up to the reunion.

    Brandon explained the decision to split the books this way came about between Harriet and him, in part to avoid the "Crossroads of Twilight trap". Apparently, RJ went that way in Winter's Heart/Crossroads of Twilight mostly because he had been affected by all the grief he got for keeping Mat out of The Path of Daggers. He decided to try to put all the main characters in the next books, even if it meant all the story lines would advance more slowly if they were all told in parallel like this. He very much regretted this after Crossroads of Twilight, for which he got even more grief than for The Path of Daggers, and decided to return to his more organic/uneven approach for Knife of Dreams and A Memory of Light. The original plan for The Gathering Storm was to develop all the story lines in parallel again, but Brandon and Harriet had qualms about this and Brandon came up with an alternative to focus on two story lines in one and three in the other.

    There is one of the 'POV clusters' Brandon had written that it mostly unused for The Gathering Storm and will go in book 13.

    Brandon of course wouldn't tell who is the character not in The Gathering Storm at all, though he gave a few clues. Piecing all his bits of answers together, the character isn't Aviendha, Cadsuane or Nynaeve, nor Mat (the only character he confirmed is in the two first books, but we already knew this). He basically destroyed the speculation it could be Perrin by hesitating on the words 'major character' and then adding the bit that the vast majority of fans would actually place this character at the very bottom of the list of characters to be considered 'major'. The way he put Elayne over and over among the five really major ones during the Q&A suggests it's not her either after all. He also said while explaining his graph that there were chunks (his "teasers" for three story lines in The Gathering Storm and the core of the story for two—and his 'five' clusters he explicitly said were Rand, Egwene, Perrin, Mat and Elayne.

    So perhaps we've read too much in his 'major POV character' comment (Jason's review may also allude to this, when he commented that one major character is missing but it's pretty much up to each reader to decide who is major and not in WOT). At some point, he said a major POV character in A Memory of Light will be missing in The Gathering Storm, which is not exactly the same as saying a major POV character from the earlier books isn't in The Gathering Storm—which is the way his previous comment was interpreted by many.

    Dom

    Lan isn't a major POV character in the earlier books, but now he's on his own he may very well become one in A Memory of Light.

    In any case, I'm more and more thinking it's Lan (or possibly Moiraine), not Elayne or Perrin which I doubt many would place 'at the very bottom' of the list of characters to be considered major. Most people would place Elayne not near the bottom at all but among the top 7 or 8 most important characters. Above Moiraine and Lan, Thom, Loial and probably even Min and Aviendha.

    Footnote

    The POV character missing in The Gathering Storm was Elayne, and they didn't quite make it to the reunion of all plotlines at the end of Towers of Midnight as they had originally planned.

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  • 733

    Interview: Aug 8th, 2009

    WorldCon 2009 - Dom (Paraphrased)

    Dom

    Brandon Sanderson

    He also got into his own approach to magic systems, which lead to questions about how much of a challenge he found the One Power and how he prepared himself to handle it (and yeah, he admits being a One Power fan). Brandon explained researching and analyzing the One Power was one of his main focuses during his pre-writing re-read of the series (the other was analyzing the characters' "voices". He also said RJ left a massive amount of notes about the One Power, some of it he's read (he couldn't read everything, he rather relied on Maria to find him the exact information he needed when he needed it). I think he's said that before—or RJ did—but RJ's notes for WOT are longer than the series itself and he always kept adding to them, from back story and history elements to world building tidbits to creating hundreds of characters he could use to sketches for possible scenes. It was Maria's job to index all of this so if he was writing a scene he wanted to use backstory elements or a new weave in, he could have her look first if this already existed in the notes and what of it had appeared in the series already—or if he didn't already have it and needed to create something from scratch.

    Sanderson said he resisted creating new weaves (beside introducing those Jordan planned to introduce) for the most part. His contribution will rather be to have the characters figure out they can use weaves they know in new ways—turn them into weapon etc., and for this he looked for details in the previous books. He mentioned one specific example: after Knife of Dreams, he thought characters figured out gateways and deathgates can also be used to slice non-Shadowspawn up in battle.

    We also discussed a bit the 21 levels list, which Brandon used a lot. Jordan did start it just the way he described it long ago, that is as a way to keep track of who defers to whom among minor players etc. However, as of now, this document's scope goes beyond this (and it's quite big). The document assigns a rank number to each Aes Sedai referring to the twenty-one levels system, and it lists their personal weaves if they have any, and who knows and have the skills to use which weave and to what extent, their strength in flows if details in the series have blocked this up etc. Brandon confirmed Jordan developed a similar ranking system for the Asha'man as well, but couldn't recall out of hand how many levels there were for them.

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  • 734

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Title Page)

    You'd be surprised how much can be said about the title of this book. Naming books is one of the most frustrating, and most fulfilling, elements of writing. I'm more fortunate than some authors I know—for most of my books, the names came easily. Sometimes, I even came up with the title before I wrote the book. (This has actually only happened once, when thought up the phrase 'The Way of Kings,' and thought 'Man! That would be a great title for a book!.)

    ELANTRIS has had several titles. During the rough draft phase, I simply called it 'SPIRIT.' I knew that the main character's name would be based on the character for Spirit, and that would also be the name he took for himself when he was in exile. I never intended this to be the final title for the manuscript, but it was what I named all the files when I was typing the work.

    Those of you who've read the book realize the special significance of 'Spirit' (or Aon Rao as it eventually became known) to the climax of the story. I'll talk more about this in a bit.

    Sometimes, when you're coming up with a lot of fantastical names, you create words that have a certain, unforeseen connotations or connections. In this case, I wasn't even thinking of the Greek myth. 'Ado' was simply the Aon I chose to base the city's name around, and 'Adonis' (Pronounced with a long 'A' and a long 'O') was the word that came out of that Aon.

    So, I named the book THE SPIRIT OF ADONIS, hoping to play off of Raoden's name.

    It was, however, actually a three-fold pun. I included this line—'The Spirit of Adonis' at the climax, when Raoden realizes that the city itself formed an enormous Aon Rao.

    I didn't realize what I'd done until my writing group met for the first time, and they said 'I like the beginning of the book. I'm having trouble figuring out what this has to do with the Greeks. Is it because the god-like people were so arrogant?'

    Then it hit me. Adonis, from Greek mythology, was a beautiful man loved by Aphrodite. The word has become a kind of paradigm for a beautiful—almost perfect—specimen of the male species. And I had unwittingly named my book after him.

    Let's just say I changed that pretty quickly. However, I needed a new name for the city. I played with a number of different combinations of Ado, but somehow ended up trying up different sounds and combinations. Thankfully, I came up with the word 'Elantris.' As soon as I wrote it down, I knew this was my city. It sounded grand without being overbearing, and it had a mythological feel to it (harkening slightly to 'Atlantis'.) I renamed the book 'THE SPIRIT OF ELANTRIS,' and proceeded.

    Then came time to send out the manuscript. I had had some comments on the book—people liked 'Elantris,' but the 'spirit of' was less popular. I tried several iterations, and even sent out some query letters calling the book 'THE LORDS OF ELANTRIS.' That just felt too cliché fantasy for me, however, and I eventually returned to 'THE SPIRIT OF ELANTRIS.'

    Finally, the book got sold. At this point, my editor (Moshe Feder) suggested that we shorten the title to simply ELANTRIS. Remembering how other people had been unimpressed with the 'spirit of,' I agreed. Now that I've seen the cover lettering and worked with it as 'ELANTRIS' for some time, I'm very pleased with the change. The new title has more zip, and makes the book sound more majestic. I still get to have a reference to my old title, as Part Three of the book is called 'The Spirit of Elantris.'

    Of course, even this title isn't without its problems. People have trouble spelling it when I say the title, and some think of the car named the 'Elantra.' At one panel, I even had one person miss-hear me, thinking the name of the book was 'The Laundress.' That would certainly be a different book. . . .

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  • 735

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Acknowledgements page)

    I've had a few complaints about this page—but not the complaints I expected. When I was writing the acknowledgments, I was worried that I'd leave someone out who gave me good comments on the book. It took me a lot of searching through old records, but I think I finally found pretty much everyone. However, I assumed that if I DID leave anyone out, they would complain. (It's been five years since I wrote ELANTRIS, and a lot of people have read it during that time.)

    However, most of the complaints I got weren't from people I forgot to put on the acknowledgements page. The complaints were from people who were on the page, but didn't think they deserved to be there!

    You see, I added a few names to this list. These were people who hadn't read ELANTRIS as an alpha reader, but who had been part of one of my writing groups or who had otherwise given me support during the days when I was trying to get published. These people read other books of mine, even if I wasn't working on ELANTRIS when I met them. So, on this acknowledgements page, I wanted to give a general thanks to all the people who have helped me over the years. That means if you're on the list and don't think you belong there, tough!

    You get my acknowledgement whether you want it or not!

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  • 736

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Anyway, you can see that there are a lot of names on this list. These are a great bunch of people—good critics, great fans, and many of them pretty good writers in their own right. Though at this point, only one of them has a professional novel publication (Rob Wells,) I'm sure that others will eventually join him. When they do, buy their books!

    The top list of people includes my closest and most helpful writing groups. The first group, named 'Here there be dragons' actually started when I was writing ELANTRIS, and that was the first book the group dealt with. Though we didn't spend much time on ELANTRIS, I remember meeting in Ben's office in the BYU alumni house and chatting about the book's terrible title (see the title page annotation,) among other things. The founding members were Dan, Ben, me, and Nate. We added Peter a bit later on, and he went on to become an editor at Tokyopop. A couple of other people—Krista Olson, Alan Layton, and a few others—did short stints as dragons, but I ended up acknowledging them in other places on the list.

    Of those three writing groups, only one is still going. The one with Alan Layton and Kaylynn ZoBell. We meet in Salt Lake every Friday night (yes, I know. That's the best thing we writers often have to do on Friday nights. . . .) Anyway, they're a great support and help to me.

    Another interesting note is regarding my professors. I intend to dedicate a book some day to the teachers that have helped me over the years. It was a school teacher—the appropriately named Ms. Reader—who gave me my first fantasy book . I can think of few professions as noble as that of teacher, and I am deeply thankful to all of those who have helped me—not just the few names I had room to mention on this page.

    Footnote

    I believe that Brandon doesn't do his writing group anymore, and Peter now is his assitant.

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  • 737

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Prologue)

    I'm a very sequential writer. When I write a book, I usually start with the prologue and write straight through until I hit the epilogue. Though I can't remember for certain, I'm pretty sure that this prologue was the first thing I ever wrote for Elantris.

    Back in those days, I didn't outline as much as I do now. When I first put fingers to keyboard, I really didn't know where this book was going to go. I had some vague idea of what I wanted it to be, but I didn't know how I was going to get there. However, this prologue really helped solidify things for me.

    I love how it works in the story. It's quick, descriptive, and gives a marvelous outline of the magical setting of the book. It's also one of the most heavily-edited sections of the book. Moshe didn't like my original draft of it because he thought it was over-written. The original first line of the book was 'Whispered are the days when Elantris was beautiful.' I kind of still like this line better, but it may just be nostalgia. The line kind of has a faint. . .flowing quality to it. An etherealness.

    Regardless, 'Elantris was beautiful, once' made for a nice compromise. I'll probably post the entire, first-draft version of the prologue in the 'deleted scenes' section of the website, if you want to compare.

    Despite my preference for the old first line, I like the other changes we made to the prologue. Over all, it became more descriptive and easier to understand. It's a nice springboard to the story, and we've used it several places as a kind of quick teaser to get people to read the book.

    Footnote

    You can read the Old Prologue here.

    Old Prologue

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  • 738

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 1)

    There are a couple of interesting things about this chapter. First off, it didn't originally start with Raoden waking up. When I first wrote the book, I threw Raoden directly into the city, line one. That original line was: "It wasn't until Raoden heard the gate swing closed behind him, booming with a shocking sound of finality, that he realized he had been damned."

    While this line worked pretty well, I found I had to do an extended flashback showing him waking up and frightening the maid, etc. In the end, I realized that this was a bulky construction that didn't really speed the novel up—but rather slowed it down. So, I rewrote the first scene to have Raoden waking up, seeing Elantris, and then realizing he'd been taken by the Shaod.

    My books tend to have what are called 'steep learning curves.' In other words, they take a little getting used to. Fantasy in general has a steep learning curve, and I don't tend to write very standard fantasies—I like to push the genre a little bit, introducing strange settings and irregular magic systems. Because of this, I have to be very careful at the beginnings of my books not to overwhelm the reader. This book was a good example—taking it a little easier, giving the reader a more cautious ease into Elantris, proved the better route.

    Happily, I eventually managed to preserve the original line with its catchy feel. I don't usually do things like this—I don't believe in the standard 'hook' idea. However, when I was thinking about this book, the first lines of the first three chapters were some of the first things that occurred to me. These three lines became the foundation for how I characterized the separate viewpoints, and they were part of what drew me to writing the book in the first place. If you go through and read them, I think they each have a little bit of zip, and hopefully invoke a sense of curiosity. These three lines introduce each character and one of their primary conflicts, and do it in a simple, clear way.

    Maintaining this feel with the new first scene was important to me, even though it could be argued that the first line of chapter one is a bit of POV error. I'm revealing information that the viewpoint character doesn't yet know. I avoid these, but in this case, I felt that cohesion was more important than strict POV, right here.

    I also did a second massive cut just after Raoden was thrown into the city. If you read the earlier draft, you'll see that he struggles with what has happened to him a bit more. There's even a brief section where he thinks about Ien and some of the Seon's words of wisdom. I cut these sections because they just slowed the book too much. I figured Raoden's shorter soul-searching at the beginning, where he quickly comes to the decision to 'look damnation in the face,' helped the story move along. Again, I worry about my beginnings—perhaps too much—because they have a history of dragging just a bit. By pushing Raoden into walking through the city, I kept the pacing up.

    Everything else in this chapter pretty much stayed the same. In the original draft, Galladon was actually named Galerion. I made the change because the name 'Galerion' just didn't fit the eventual linguistic style I devised for Duladel. Again, I didn't do as much planning for this book as I now for books I write now, and I just kind of let the names and cultures develop as I wrote. In the end, Galerion's culture out-developed his name. I figured that the main Dula in the book needed to have a Dula-sounding name. Interestingly, Moshe—my editor—independently decided that he really didn't like Galerion's name. When I made the suggested change, he was very pleased. Originally, he didn't like Raoden's name either—but this came, mostly, because he had trouble pronouncing it. I actually really like the name, but understand that it can be difficult if you don't understand the Aonic language. Remember—two hard vowel sounds formed by the Aon, every other vowel is soft. RAY-OH-den. (Read the pronunciation guide for more.)

    Galladon/Galerion originally spoke with a much stronger dialect in this chapter. However, these dribbled off after the first few chapters, and I decided I didn't want him to be quite as difficult to understand. So, I went back and cut them. You'll notice, however, that Galladon still hits the dialect pretty hard in this first chapter.

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  • 739

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 5)

    This chapter includes two very important events. The first is the establishment of Hrathen and Sarene's relationship. The 'dramatic eye-lock' is, admittedly, over-used in fiction. However, I found it appropriate here, since I later have Hrathen remark on Sarene. I wanted to establish that the two had an understanding, and I needed to introduce an overplot for Sarene. Hrathen got his thirty-day timebomb in chapter three, and Raoden not only has his exile, but the problems with the gangs established in the last chapter. So far, Sarene only had her suspicion regarding Raoden's death, which really isn't enough to carry her sections of the novel.

    One of the plotting elements I had to establish in this book was the fact that a single man—in this case, Hrathen—can have a serious and profound effect on the future of an entire people. If I didn't establish this, then Sarene's sections would lack a sense of drama, since Hrathen himself wouldn't seem like much of a threat. You'll have to judge for yourself if I actually manage to do this or not.

    The second important part of this chapter, obviously, is the introduction of Kiin's family. Sarene's personality makes her less independent than Raoden or Hrathen. It isn't that she lacks determination, or even stubbornness. However, her plots, plans, and personality all require other people—she needs politics, allies, and enemies. Ashe provides a wonderful way for her to talk through her problems. However, I felt that she needed someone within the court of Arelon with which to work and plan. As the book progresses, you'll notice that Sarene's chapters include far more side characters than Hrathen or Raoden's chapters. In fact, I'll bet she has more than the other two combined. This is just another manifestation of her communal personality—she excels in situations where she can coordinate groups, and she needs a lot of different people to interact with to make her personality really come out.

    I have gotten a little grief from readers regarding Kiin's family. Some think that the family as a whole feels too 'modern.' It is an anachronism that, to an extent, I'll admit. One of the quirks about the fantasy genre is how it generally prefers to deal with ancient governments, technologies, and societies without actually making its characters conform to more ancient personality patterns. In other words, most fantasy main characters are people who, if dusted off a bit and given a short history lesson, could fit-in quite well in the modern world.

    I'll be honest. I prefer the genre this way. I don't read fantasy because I want a history lesson, though learning things is always nice. I read for characters—and I want to like the characters I get to know. I like putting characters in situations and exploring how they would deal with extreme circumstances. I just don't think this kind of plotting would be as strong, or as interesting, if the characters weren't innately identifiable to a modern readership.

    My in-world explanation for this is simple. Just because our world placed a certain kind of cultural development alongside a certain level of technological development doesn't mean that it always has to be that way. In many of my worlds, culture has out-stripped technology. This does have some rational basis; I write worlds that involve very distinct—and often very prevalent—magic systems. Because of the benefit of these magics, many of my societies haven't been forced to rely as much on technology. There is more leisure time, more time for scholarship, and—as a result—the societies are more developed.

    That said, Kiin's family is a bit extreme, even for me. However, the honest truth is that I wrote them the way I like them. They work, for some reason, to me. They stand out just a little bit, but I'd like to think that it's their brilliance and forward-thinking—rather than a mistake in narrative—that makes them seem so much like a modern family.

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  • 740

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 7)

    It's interesting that this book would be the first one I publish. Many of you know that when I finally sold ELANTRIS, I was working on my thirteenth novel. By the time ELANTRIS was released, I'd written fifteen separate novels. Very few of these are sequels, and of the fifteen, ELANTRIS is actually number six.

    One of the things I pride myself on as a writer are my magic systems. I spend a lot of effort and prewriting on them, and I strive very hard to make them feel like nothing a reader has ever experienced before. MISTBORN, the book that will come out a year after ELANTRIS, is a very good example of this.

    ELANTRIS, however, is very interesting in that I don't actually get to spend much time with the magic. Or, at least, I don't get to spend much time showing it—the magic of this book is broken, and so while we find out a lot about it (and I think it's distinctive in its arrangement) we don't get to see it.

    In the end, when the magic finally gets restored, I think it actually loses just a bit of charm. I developed this magic system to be an interesting and original puzzle—and so, when you finally see it working, I think there's a fulfilling payoff. However, in its actual form, it isn't generally as distinctive as some of my other magic systems.

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  • 741

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    The scene where the children talk about art is one I nearly cut from the book on a couple of different occasions. I worry that this is one of the scenes that contributes overly-much to the 'Kiin's family is out of place' feeling that people occasionally get. In addition, I worry that I made Kaise TOO intelligent here. Three things make me retain the scene. First, I think it's kind of amusing. The second is a spoiler, so I won't say much on it—just let it suffice that I wanted to give Kaise and Daorn some good characterization. -

    For you spolier readers, those two would be the main characters of any sequel I wrote to ELANTRIS. I'd set the book about ten years after the ending of this one.

    The third reason for retaining the scene is because I put it in, in the first place, quite intentionally. Kaise, and to a lesser extent Daorn, are a small reaction against ENDER'S GAME. When I read that book, and some of Scott's other works (which, by the way, I think are all brilliant) I got to wondering if children who were as smart as his really would act the way they do in his books. Not to disagree with one of the greatest sf minds of our time, but I wanted to take a different spin on the 'clever child' idea. So, I presented these children as being extremely intelligent, but also extremely immature with that intelligence. I'm not convinced that IQ brings maturity with it, and think there's only so much 'adult' you can have in a kid. So, I put in Kaise and Daorn to let me play with this idea a little bit in ELANTRIS.

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  • 742

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 12)

    The language metaphor I use in this chapter is one of my favorites in the book. Hrathen's attitude can be quickly summed up in the way that he decides it is all right to preach to the people in their own language. He admits that he probably shouldn't do such a thing, but the logical justification is just too strong for him to deny.

    I've spoken earlier about how fantasy books tend to place modern-like characters in more archaic settings. The Seons in this book are one of my rationalizations for the way that people act. I believe that a lot of our civility and maturity as a global culture comes from our ability to communicate quickly and effectively with one another.

    Instantaneous communication changes the world. It makes countries seem less distant, and it allows for faster resolution of problems. Often times, when I'm creating a magic system, this idea is one of the first that I consider. Can this magic provide for instant communication or travel? If it can, I can use that to shrink the world, allowing me to place characters in more distant settings and still have them tied to the plot. (This isn't something I have to do often in this particular book. However, the ability to communicate with Wyrn and Sarene's father does have the effect of shrinking the world, making it easier to plot such drastic events in such a short period of time.)

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  • 743

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 15)

    When I teach writing, one of my major educational philosophies is that an author must understand his or her strengths. If you do something well, play to that strength. Write books that show off what you can do. This isn't a reason to ignore, or to not work on, your weaknesses. However, like the opportunity cost laws of economics, the more time you spend on your strengths, the greater rewards you're going to receive. That translates to better books, a better chance of publication, and better sales.

    Every writer is different. We can't all do everything perfectly. As a writer, one of the things that I don't do is beautiful prose. I don't think my prose is bad, but it is somewhat utilitarian. Some authors, like Orson Scott Card, can turn this minimalism into a strength itself. I'm not there yet—I still write with a more flamboyant style, I'm just not a brilliant prose craftsman like Gene Wolfe or Ursula LeGuin. I think I do other things, however, that are better than those two can manage.

    Anyway, despite that acknowledgement, I occasionally write a paragraph that I just think is beautiful. The first paragraph of chapter fifteen is probably my favorite descriptive paragraph in the book. I love the imagery and language of it. Perhaps others will see it as trite—I had to end up changing the first line of the prologue, after all, which I also thought was beautiful. However, one of the nice thing about being published is that I can look at this paragraph in a bound hardcover and say, 'I did that.'

    Footnote

    Brandon has mentioned that Pat Rothfuss also writes beautiful prose.

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  • 744

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Fantasy is a slow-starting genre. Readers expect this, and hopefully they'll invest enough in the story to keep them reading this long. I love the first half of ELANTRIS—it does what I want a book to do. It presents fun characters in interesting situations, then laces their actions with just enough of a thought-provoking air and an edge of excitement that the reader feels fulfilled. Writing is truth, and it should deal with important topics. However, before that truth must come enjoyment, I believe. If a book isn't, first and foremost, fun to read, then I think the storyteller has failed. After that, he or she hopefully manages to deal with some real issues and questions—this is, in my opinion, what makes characters real.

    Anyway, on to section two!

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  • 745

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 29)

    So, here we get the payoff for several hundred pages worth of hinting at Iadon's insecurity and paranoia. Plotting is all about payoffs, in my estimation. You have to earn your plot. You do that by putting the pieces together in the right places, so when you finally get to a climax (even a smaller one) your readers accept what is happening.

    The build-up doesn't have to always be subtle—and it doesn't even have to be done through traditional foreshadowing. For instance, if you want a character to be able to defeat a small group of bandits, you have to have earned the payoff that says that he/she is competent with a weapon. It's like an chemical equation—you balance all of your pieces on the one side, and they should equal what comes out on the other end.

    In order for Sarene's speech in this chapter to work, I needed to do several things. I needed to build up that she'd be both capable enough to make it and brash enough to go through with it. I also needed to build up that Iadon would crack beneath this kind of external pressure, which I hope I did.

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  • 746

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Some notes about the party. First off, I had a lot of fun sticking the sickening young couples into this book. I'm not sure why I like to make fun of them like I do, but I certainly have a bit of fun in the Sarene chapters. Ah, poor Shuden. He didn't hold on as well as he thought he might. Anyway, the contrast here is very nice for Sarene, and I like how she and Roial move through the party, mingling. There's just a. . .natural feel about some of the scenes in this book that I haven't quite been able to capture in my other works.

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  • 747

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    One interesting note about this book is how small the armies are. Often in books, I'll deal with armies in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Those, however, tend to be war epics—it makes sense to me that in ELANTRIS, they're talking about hundreds of men, rather than thousands. This may seem like a ridiculous number for a defense force, but I imagine Arelon being a small country, quite isolated and—as noted in the text—rather innocent. They really only need policing forces.

    My copy editor was worried about my use of the word 'legion,' actually, for Eondel's personal force. She said that a legion, dictionary wise, was usually much larger. While this may be true, I think the fact that they call it "Eondel's Legion" makes it a proper noun, and is usable. This is a kind of honorary title, rather than a descriptive name. Besides, in Arelon, a couple hundred men really is quite big.

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  • 748

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Boy, I have a lot to say on this chapter. Let's talk about Sarene's engagement to Roial.

    Some moments, when you're writing, things just click together. The moment when I came up with this plotting element was one such moment. I hadn't actually planned this into my outline. Suddenly, as I was writing, I realized just how much sense it made, and how wonderful it would be to force the characters to have to go through this. Even still, this is one of my very favorite twists in the book.

    The scene in the carriage has been there from the beginning, but I did change it slightly in the last draft, adding the section where Roial talks to Sarene about herself. His line "You're an excellent judge of character, except for your own" is something I think needed to be said to Sarene at some point in the book. The actual suggestion that it happen came from my Master's Thesis committee. They—correctly—saw Sarene as someone who had an unrealistic image of herself.

    She really isn't as unmarriagble, or as unwantable, as she thinks she is. Even back in Teod, she wasn't regarded quite as harshly as she assumes. However, she's very hard on herself. Someone needed to sit her down and tell her—at the same time acknowledging to the reader—that she isn't half as bad as she seems to think.

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  • 749

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Another big nod of thanks goes out to my thesis committee for their suggestion regarding this chapter. I'm not sure how I missed it, but in the original drafts, Raoden and company never acknowledge the fact that Hrathen had been healed. They never even mentioned it, and they certainly didn't give their thoughts on why it happened.

    The fix was an easy one—you can read it in a few paragraphs in this chapter. However, the fact that it hadn't been there before was indeed a problem. Moshe was dumbfounded when I mentioned the oversight to him.

    So, thanks Sally, Dennis, and John. You saved me from some embarrassment.

    I like the explanation that Raoden gives here for Hrathen's healing. It seems like it would make sense to the Elantrians, and it saves me from having them suspect what was really going on.

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  • 750

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 42)

    Hum. I forgot how short many of these chapters got. Usually, I don't let my chapters get this short in a book. I like longer chapters, and tend to be pretty stable in my chapter lengths. ELANTRIS, however, is an aberration. It has a good twenty chapters more than my average book, despite being shorter than many of them.

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  • 751

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Hama," Galladon's word for grandmother, is actually another theft from the real world. One of my cousins has a little son who calls his grandmother 'Hama,' and I always thought it was a cute nickname. The really funny one, however, is when he refers to my grandmother—his great-grandmother. She's Big Hama. (In keeping with this tradition, Sarene's childhood nickname for Kiin is 'Hunkey Kay,' a child's version of 'Uncle Kiin.' This is a spin off of what that same little kid in the real world calls my mother. She's 'Hunky BaBa,' or 'Aunt Barbara.')

    What did I warn you about we writers and filching things?

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  • 752

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, now, I know you're going to laugh at me here. However, I suppose you deserve to know the whole story of this book. After all, I told you about the whole 'Adonis' thing.

    Well, the thing is, the first version of the book included about two pages of poetry from WYRN THE KING. I think every prose writer goes through a stage where we think, for some reason, that we have a talent for poetry. It's doubly bad in fantasy, where we've all read Tolkien, and fell like adding poems, songs, and the like to our stories.

    The thing is, most of us aren't very good at it. WYRN THE KING was a narrative alliterative poem patterned after BEOWULF, and it was TERRIBLE. I might be masochistic enough to post it in the 'deleted scenes' section of the website. I'm honestly not sure yet. (Actually, I wrote the poem as a college assignment. I wiggled out of doing something research-oriented by somehow convincing my teacher that I deserved to do a creative project instead. When I finished, I felt a little bit obliged to stick it in my current book, as I'd told my teacher I would. Sorry, Dr. Thursby, but. . .uh. . .it didn't make the final cut.)

    Anyway, there was a point behind sticking the poem in the text, even if I completely overshadowed it by including so many lines of poetry. This section is really all we get in the book itself about Fjorden's past. As I've explained in the annotations, Fjorden switched to Shu-Dereth to do its conquering, relying on religion rather than armies. When they did so, they went back and rewrote many of their great classics. (Orwell would be proud of them.)

    This is actually based on some events in our world. Some scholars think that BEOWULF underwent similar revision, the monks who copied and translated it adding Christian symbolism to the text. After all, no great artist could possibly have been a true pagan. Everyone knows that Aristotle was a Christian—and he died before Christ was even born!

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  • 753

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 46 Part 1)

    Raoden's reaction to Iadon's death is just a little bit cliché, but I think that cliché exists for a reason, so I wrote the scene this way.

    Sometimes, I have difficulty in my writing because I try to be TOO original. I react pretty strongly against anything I've seen before, and don't want to include it in my books. This has served me well in some ways—Moshe bought ELANTRIS partially because he found it refreshingly different from other fantasies on the market. I generally have a strong element of originality to my worlds, my magic systems, and my plot structures. This is part of what draws people to my work.

    However, sometimes I go too far. If I see something written one way—even if that way is good—then I react against it, trying to find another way. I've stayed away from 'Eternal Apprentice' plots (Thank you Craig Shaw Gardner for the name) even though they are extremely popular in fantasy—indeed, they are what got me into fantasy when I was younger. But, because of some things like this, my books can be more difficult to get into. The extremely steep learning curve of my works, the focus on strange settings and odd magic systems, might be off-putting for some readers. (ELANTRIS, by the way, is only a hint at these kinds of things. MISTBORN is a much better example.)

    I try to walk a fine balance in my works. The trick is to write something that is original and new, breaking convention and tradition—yet at the same time have it FEEL like a fantasy. People read in the genre because they like the things it can do. I have to add the new, Sanderson, spin to things without tossing out all that is wonderful and resonant within the genre.

    That's why you'll see some old archetypes showing up in my works occasionally. In a way, MISTBORN is an old-fashioned 'overthrow the evil empire' fantasy. When choosing my next project, I decided that I had enough sufficiently new material—both in setting and in plot—to tell the story in a way that would be fresh. I think it adds something to the genre, rather than just recycling what is there. So, I went ahead with it, hoping that the familiar and the original would work together.

    ELANTRIS is similar. I threw in odd (for fantasy) plotting structures, but I let the air of 'standard medieval culture' remain in the book. (In fact, as I've noted, this is probably my most like-Earth book in that way.)

    The balance between the new and the familiar. That's what it's all about.

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  • 754

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 47)

    I love this exchange at the beginning of the chapter. We actually don't get many scenes in the book where Hrathen gets to interact with Sarene, let alone her friends. The dialogue in this section is rather spiffy, if I do say so myself. The exchanges feel quick, poignant, and telling of character.

    One part of that is probably due to the pair of extremely good metaphors Hrathen makes during the scene. The crushing mountain, the bird banging its head against a stone—these are didactic metaphors, exactly the kind of thing you'd expect a priest to say. He places them quite keenly, and his oration has an effect on Sarene and the others. I'd call this scene the final cap of Hrathen's victories during the last few chapters.

    By the way, I'm still fond of the fact that Hrathen is more skilled a warrior than Eondel. Eondel's good, but he's not in the same league as a warrior-priest. Besides, Eondel is a leader, trainer, and general—his skill set is different than Hrathen's. If the two were to spar, Hrathen would win nearly every time.

    Interestingly, this is one of the first real action sequences we've gotten in the book. So far, all we've really had are: the fencing match between Sarene and Eondel, the place where Hrathen fights off Shaor's men, and a couple of short battles between Raoden's men and Shaor's wildmen. Really not very much. I'm quite proud, actually, of how well I managed to keep up the tension and pacing in a book without much physical action.

    Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm not a sucker for some good action. Go read MISTBORN if you want to see what I mean.

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  • 755

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Speaking of that, I haven't really talked much about viewpoint in these annotations. You may or may not have noticed that I'm a big fan of strictly-limited third-person viewpoints. Third person past tense has pretty much become the industry standard during the last fifteen years (before that time, you saw a lot more omniscient—look at DUNE, and to a lesser extent, ENDER'S GAME.) You almost never see it these days, though, and I personally think that's a good thing. Omniscient is a little better for plotting in some places, but limited is far better for characterization.

    Any time you read one of my books, you should remember that I'm almost always in strict limited. Whatever you read in the text, it is something that a character feels or has observed.

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  • 756

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 50)

    Joshua absolutely hates it when I use plots like this.

    I don't know why I insist on putting things like this (mistaken identities, people pretended to be someone else, that kind of plot) into my books. I think, deep down, I've got a weakness for old-school Shakespearean farces. Storytelling is just more fun when people can do a bit of pretending.

    Anyway, I'd been wanting to show a real Dula ever since I started writing the book. Galladon is such a 'bad' Dula that I was very pleased when I found an opportunity to work Kaloo into the plot. You've been hearing, through various asides, about Dulas for most of the book. Now you actually get to meet one. Or, at least, someone pretending to be one. (Uh. . .I hope I'm not giving anything away by letting you know that Kaloo is really Raoden. It wasn't supposed to be a surprise.)

    Anyway, we'll get an explanation from Raoden later about why he didn't come clean immediately. If he were truthful, however, he'd have to admit something: Though he sometimes teases Sarene for being too fond of political games, he likes them just as much as she does. The opportunity for him to meet her for the third time for the first time was just too tempting to pass up.

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  • 757

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    The saddest part about Kaloo, I think, is that he's not a real character. I had a lot of fun writing him, and when I was done, I wished that I had a full character to play with. Even in these few chapters, I got across a complexity for him that I thought was most interesting. (His line about acting the fool on purpose, as well as the one "The revolution rolled over us while we were still discussing what to have for dinner" are some of my personal favorites.)

    Unfortunately, all of this characterization is undermined by the fact that Kaloo is really just Raoden playing a part. I often develop characters in my mind based solely on their dialect—and everyone has a dialect, despite what you may think. Galladon's might be the most obvious, but—in my mind, at least—everyone in the book speaks a little differently. Roial is dignified mischievous, Ahan favors flamboyant words, Kaloo favors frivolousness words, and Ashe likes words that make him sound solemn. Karata is curt, Lukel likes to quip, and Raoden firm.

    That's probably why I grew so attached to Kaloo—he had a lot of dialogue, and through that I created who he was in my mind. This tendency of mine to characterize through dialogue is why I had so much trouble cutting Galladon's frequent use of 'kolo', which always bothered Moshe. Galladon's dialect is so much a part of who he is that each cut made me cringe.

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  • 758

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Speaking of Raoden's honor and truth, I'd like to note something about assassination and killing in this book. As I've stated in earlier annotations, I wanted this book's conflict to be non-violence focused. I think that the characters in this book, therefore, represent a more mature philosophy regarding social problems—a philosophy that could only exist among a people who have spent so much of their lives not having to deal with death and war. A people who have a valid reason for seeing things more like people in a contemporary culture.

    As my friend Alan likes to say, however, "Violence may not always be the best answer—but it's usually AN answer." Conflict and social commentary should be based on the characters and their beliefs, rather than forced expressions of the author's message. That doesn't mean that I don't let my personal views shade my writing—I think that level of self-removal would be impossible. However, I do think that the themes expressed in a book need to be reflective of the characters.

    I like that I was able to write a novel where the characters came to the conclusion that they'd rather find a way to stop their opponents without resorting to hiring assassins. This, I think, is a noble way of viewing the world. However, the realist in me says that most people—and most situations—won't be so open to this kind of decision. It says something that after working so long on ELANTRIS, I promptly went and made my next heroine (the one from MISTBORN) an assassin herself. In her world, life is far more brutal—and these sorts of philosophical problems aren't as difficult to deal with. There, there is too much riding on the protagonists for them to worry about their methods. I think they're still good people. They just have a slightly different philosophy.

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  • 759

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Question

    What gave you the confidence to write? What kept you sticking with it after being turned down all those times?

    Brandon Sanderson

    “I fell in love with the process of writing. I would write even if I couldn’t sell any of it. Of course it makes it easier that it does sell.” (Laughter)

    He then went on to describe that Elantris was the first thing he had ever sold, the thirteenth piece that he had submitted and the sixth novel. He went on to say that he doesn’t read any bad reviews of his work. “If it has a low star count I pass it by.” He said that there could be thousands of rave reviews and only one negative one but he would focus on the negative and ignore all the raves, so he has learned to only read the “good” reviews. He also said that when he needs encouragement he will find a book he really likes and thinks is absolutely stellar and he will then read a one star review of it. “You can always find a one star review, no matter what it is. Even Hamlet has gotten one star reviews.” (laughter)

    He went on to talk about how the fans comment on that “you are not RJ.” He agrees with them. “I’m not RJ and they have every right to be angry that I’m not.” He then said that they need to finish their grieving process and get over with it. He agrees that the book isn’t as good as what RJ would have done but he is happy with it.

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  • 760

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Question

    How much leeway were you given when writing the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He was given complete freedom to write, but that he was in constant contact with Maria and Alan about details. He compared it to a broken vase, much of it could be glued together but there were places where there were holes that needed to be filled in.

    Maria Simons

    Maria interjected with the fact that there are well over 1200 files that are at least several sentences long and many many more that are shorter than that.

    Harriet McDougal

    There was some back and forth with Harriet and Brandon about the writing/editing process. Harriet said a good editor never tells an author how to write. Brandon said that he actually writes the book for Harriet and it’s Harriet’s job to perfect it.

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  • 761

    Interview: Nov 9th, 2009

    Question

    How much of The Gathering Storm is yours and how much is RJ’s?

    Brandon Sanderson

    “I’m not going to break it down at this time. Maybe after all three books are finished I’ll go into that. For now I can say that 100% of the book is RJ’s and 100% of the book is mine.” (He later repeated this at the signing with the added comment that if that didn’t add up correctly he didn’t care because he was an English major…to much laughter.)

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  • 762

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2010

    aurik

    What was the most jaw-dropping scene (or scenes) to you when you read the material for Towers of Midnight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Verin.

    aurik

    That's what you answered for Book 12. I'm asking about Book 13, which I've already read.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Everyone in line close your ears. The whole Tower of Ghenjei sequence. That was all written by Jim. Also, the surprise proposal at the end.

    Tags

  • 763

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ah, and Hrathen's three month timebomb. It's always nice when you can have a timebomb go off early. Hrathen thinks in this very chapter about how he's got a month left on his deadline. However, I suspect that readers will look at the book and realize that there's less than a hundred pages left. Hopefully, with these chapters—Raoden crowned king, Hrathen apparently beaten—I invoke a sense of confusion in the reader. They'll be expecting something big, something they weren't looking for.

    The arrival of the Dakhor monks is it. You'll get some more explanation of this later, of course. Anyway, now you know why I kept mentioning the Arelene market and how unprofitable it seemed. The merchants there weren't even really merchants.

    In the first draft, I had the monks hiding on the merchants' ships. In a later rewrite, however, I realized that this wasn't as powerful as if I had them actually playing the part of the merchants. If I had them on the ships, I had to have Hrathen follow Dilaf all the way to the docks. In addition, those monks would have had to spend weeks cooped up in the holds of a bunch of merchant ships. So, I changed it so that the monks were impersonating the merchants themselves—a better plan, I think, on their part. This lets them infiltrate the city, move around and scout the area, and essentially hide in plain sight.

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  • 764

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, this is where the book turns a little violent. You can read some of my earlier annotations on the topic. I was a little bit worried about putting any strong violence in this book, since it was generally focused around politics and other, more subtle methods of building tension. However, I decided to go with contrast instead. So far, nearly everything in the book has been surprisingly peaceful. We didn't even see Shaor's men kill many people.

    Now things are going very wrong. An evil that nobody was expecting has come against the city, and it's controlled by a demented, hateful creature. I don't see how we could get around having these scenes be particularly dark. I think there is an element of realism here too, however. This is what happens with all of the politics and the maneuvering breaks down.

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  • 765

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    TORENA

    So. . .in the original draft, Torena is Eventeo's new spy in Arelon. Do you remember the conversation that Sarene and Eventeo had a little ways back? The one where he told her he had a new spy in Arelon, and refused to tell Sarene who it is? Well, yes. Torena.

    When I was writing this book, I went a little bit too far with the hidden pasts and amazing discoveries. I had Torena being the one who came to rescue Sarene from the Dakhor. (She arrived in a second carriage, I think.) However, the Dakhor caught up to them again, and suddenly Kiin appeared to save them.

    This scene was terrible. It's not that any of the pieces were bad. It's just that it was too repetitive. First you find out Torena has a secret past, and that she's come to rescue Sarene. Then we find out that Kiin has a secret past and he's come to rescue Sarene. It just didn't work—and the Torena surprise, which was only mildly foreshadowed, ruined the much better Kiin surprise.

    So, I cut the Torena parts—and I'm very glad that I did. My early alpha readers said that the worst part about the book was how all of the surprises at the end interfered with each other. Looking back, some of the things I did are embarrassing. I was adding surprises just for the sake of surprises. This is always a bad idea—surprises should be integral to plot and character, just like everything else. We want to find out about Kiin because we like him and are interested in him. We don't really care about Torena.

    (In my defense, I originally intended Torena to be a female friend for Sarene, kind of a second sidekick. However, there were already too many people hanging out with Sarene, and I just couldn't work Torena in without complicating things even further.)

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  • 766

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 58-4)

    I don't know if you've noticed this, but this chapter forms a mini-triad of its own. It shows all three characters in their traditional rotation. It's something fun I decided to, playing with my own format. The idea was to give an unconscious sense of urgency to the reader by giving them a whole triad compacted into one chapter. I don't expect anyone to pick up on it—actually, I don't want them to. For it to work right, the reader will be paying so much attention to the text that they don't consciously notice the speed up. However, I hope that it will make them read faster and faster as the book progresses.

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  • 767

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 59-1)

    I think I've noted that my viewpoints tend to speed up as I approach the endings of books. Well, ELANTRIS is a perfect example. We're hopping viewpoints like a crazed body-snatcher. At the risk of sounding redundant, I did this to increase pacing and tension. Quick-rotating viewpoints give a cinematic feel to the story, in my opinion—kind of like cameras changing angles. This keeps things quick and snappy, and keeps the reader reading.

    It should be noted that writing and filmmaking are two completely different arts. What works in one doesn't work in the other—action sequences, for instance, have to be written completely differently in a novel than they would be displayed on screen. However, both storytelling forms try to evoke similar feelings in their audiences. So, you can't do the same things in writing as you can in filmmaking—but you can get a similar effect by using different tools. Here, I use viewpoint shifts, which is something a filmmaker can't really access without first-person voice-overs. Viewpoint is, in my opinion, one of the prime unique tools that we have as writers. That's why I think it's important to understand, and to manipulate.

    If you're paying attention to such things, we actually get two complete—and well-rotated—viewpoint triads in this chapter. Again, this is to increase the sense of urgency and pacing.

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  • 768

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 60-1)

    FORM

    From here on out, the chapters get longer. It's interesting to try and work with pacing. I think the shifting viewpoints achieve the sense of drama I want, and coupling that with lots of new chapters would be repetitive, I think. So, I waited for the most dramatic moments possible to end chapters. I think this ending counts.

    The triad system breaks down completely here. Everything is falling apart, and we're getting wild viewpoints from all over the place. (Well, not exactly—we only add Galladon and Lukel. However, I think that after fifty-nine chapters with only three viewpoints, suddenly adding two more will be disorienting enough to have the effect I want.)

    Part of the reason I add the viewpoints is so that I can show the breakdown of the form of the book. However, another—perhaps more important—reason is so that I can show what is happening in places that don't involve one of the three viewpoints. Raoden is off in his own little world of pain, and Sarene and Hrathen have gone to Teod. If I want to show what's happening in Arelon, I need some new viewpoints.

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  • 769

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    EDITS

    I keep promising that I'll tell you about some of the other silly character revelations I had pop up in the book. This one is particularly embarrassing. To be honest, I have NO idea what I was thinking.

    In the original draft of the book, Hrathen turns out to have been from Duladel the entire time. It's revealed in this scene, when he and Sarene are running from the Dakhor. He was of Dula blood, having grown up there, then moved to Fjorden as a teenager.

    Yes, I know. I must have been tired when I wrote that chapter. Anyway, at one point it must have seemed like a good idea. It didn't make even the first cut, however—my first readers rose up in open rebellion, and I joined them.

    I figure I must have decided that it was more dramatic to discover that Hrathen had betrayed his own people by destroying Duladel. (Note, in the early draft of the book, I made more of a habit of pointing out that the Duladen republicans weren't generally dark-skinned.) In the first draft, I always had Hrathen wear black die in his hair and pretended to be from Fjorden.

    Yes, again, I know. It was stupid. We writers do stupid things sometimes. I didn't even pause to think that the drama of Hrathen betraying his own people and religion in the present is far more powerful than a betrayal that happened before the book even started. I denied his entire character by trying to rely on some whim that seemed like a clever, unexpected twist. Don't let yourselves do things like this, writers. Let the twists help develop the character, not exist simply to surprise.

    Anyway, I'll post this scene in the deleted scenes section. It'll keep me humble to know people can read it.

    Footnote

    I am quite glad that Hrathen wasn't from Duladel. That would've been weird.

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  • 770

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    LUKEL

    And, here we have Lukel joking again. Just like a the end of last chapter, where he faints. Comic relief shouldn't be underestimated, I think. Especially comic relief like this—jests and levity given in-character by people who are trying to lighten the mood of a stressful time. Lukel isn't there simply to entertain the reader, he's there to show a different side of human reaction. I think that if I were in his situation, I'd be trying to find a way to laugh about what happened too.

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  • 771

    Interview: Oct 18th, 2004

    Brandon Sanderson

    LOOSE THREADS

    You'll notice, therefore, that I pile on the lose threads here. The most important one, of course, is the concept that Fjorden has gained access to the Dor (presumably recently.) The Dakhor are a newer development—Wyrn was just getting ready to use them against Elantris when the city fell on its own. (Dilaf wasn't the only Dakhor plant inside Arelon. But, those are stories for another time.) Anyway, I think I gave myself plenty of sequel room here. There are the questions about the Dor, about Fjorden, and about the Seons.

    That said, I can't honestly promise that I'll do an ELANTRIS sequel. When I was writing during this period of my life (some seven years ago now), I was trying to create as many first books as possible. I was sending them all off to publishers, trying to get someone to bite on one of them so I could start a series. However, since I was a nobody, I had to write each book as a stand-alone as well. Publishers, I was told, like to get books from new authors that could stand alone or launch into a series. That way, they're not committing to anything drastic, but can monopolize on popularity if it comes.

    ELANTRIS turned out to be one of the best stand-alones I did. I kind of like how it doesn't really need anything more to make it feel complete. And, I've got so many stories that I want to tell, I don't know that I'll be able to get back to this one. I guess it will depend upon how well ELANTRIS sells, and whether or not Tor pushes me toward writing more books in this world.

    Anyway, I've got plenty of things I could talk about if I do come back.

    Footnote

    He currently plans on releasing Elantris 2 near the 10th anniversary of Elantris (appx. 2015).

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  • 772

    Interview: Apr 30th, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    My former student Scott Ashton posted another of my class lectures. This one is about characterization. There's also an email group for people who want to recreate the entire class experience online.

    Tags

  • 773

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (9 June 2012)

    Working on a new Rand scene today too. Still a few more I want to add. This is probably the last draft where I will add new scenes, though.

    Brandon Sanderson

    New Rand scene turned out great. Now, to revamp the next five to be just as awesome.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's funny how time passes when I'm working on writing. It's been four hours since I started on the scene, and I barely noticed.

    Brenda Waldrop

    That I understand. I get in a writing groove and the next thing I know it's tomorrow!

    Shaunna Willoughby

    Focus is like an alternate plane of existence.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's funny. I make a post, like the one a while back, and then think "I'll get back and answer people in a bit." Then, four hours later, I think "Okay, scene is done. Let's see what people are saying." That timestamp glares back at me, and there are like fifty posts I haven't ever replied to.

    Sam Noble

    Do you know the Game of Thrones guy? He could learn something from your work ethic.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. Well, perhaps. But I could learn something from his writing skill, I suspect. We'll see how prolific I am when I'm his age.

    Vegas Surreal

    We need @BrandSanderson to stay healthy; you're supposed to get up and stretch every 20 minutes!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Don't worry. I have a treadmill desk I work at.

    Marcus McQuarter

    How long is the book going to be at minimum?

    Brandon Sanderson

    350k words, I'd guess. First draft was 360. Next draft trimmed about 30k. I'm slowly increasing it back up.

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  • 774

    Interview: 2012

    Brandon Sanderson (18 June 2012)

    A Memory of Light teaser: The book contains a new verse to a beloved WoT song. (Just posting to let you all know the revision goes well.)

    Jeff Gray

    Do you revise sections that Mr Jordan wrote, or just your own? No implication, just curious. :-)

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's a good question. I initially tried to leave them all alone and let Harriet revise them.

    Brandon Sanderson

    She told me to be more aggressive in smoothing out scenes to blend them together. I still do try to touch his as little as I can.

    Ian Thomson

    First tweet to you, but I wanted to say I'm so very excited for A Memory of Light! Can we change the release to January 7th? That's my birthday!

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'll see what I can do... ;)

    Footnote

    The song is probably "Jak o' the Shadows".

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  • 775

    Interview: Jul 13th, 2012

    Questioner

    Talk about your process of writing; and also about how you creatively approach it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Every writer has a different process. There’s as many ways to do this as there are writers in the world. For me, my creative process is that I’m always searching for the ideas that I can connect into a larger story. I feel that a book is more than just one idea. A good book is a collection of ideas; usually a good idea for each character—something that forms the core of their conflict—several good ideas for the setting: something that’s going to drive the economy, something that’s going to drive (for me the magic) the setting—that sort of thing—and then several good plot ideas. These all bounce around in my head—I’ll grab them randomly.

    An example of one of these was for Mistborn: For Mistborn, one of the original seeds was, I was watching the Harry Potter movies that had come out, and I was thinking about Lord of the Rings, which I had just reread, and I was thinking, you know, I like the hero’s journey: young, plucky protagonist goes, collects a band of unlikely followers, face the Dark Lord… and I thought “yeah, but those Dark Lords always get, just like, a terrible, raw end of the deal. They’re always beat by some dufusy kid or thing like that,” and I thought “I want to write a book where the Dark Lord wins.”

    But that was kind of a downer of a book, as I considered it, a little bit, you know, “you read this book, and then at the end the hero loses,” that’s kind of a downer. So I stuck that in the back of my mind saying “I want to do something with that idea, but it’s going to take me a little while to figure out exactly what I want to do with that idea.” And then I was watching one of my favorite movies from a long time ago—both of these ideas come from movies, many of them don’t but these two did—Sneakers, if any of you have seen it, just a, like an amazingly awesome heist story, and I thought “ya’ know, I haven’t seen a heist story done in fantasy in forever,” little did I know that Scott Lynch was going to release one, like, one year later [The Lies of Locke Lamora].

    But nobody had done one, and so I said “I want to do a fantasy heist story.” The two ideas combined together in my head. Alright: world where the Dark Lord won, a hero failed; thousands of years later, a gang of thieves decided to rip the Dark Lord off and kind of try to over thrown him their way, you know, making themselves-- by making themselves rich.

    And those ideas combined together. And so a story grows in my mind like little atoms bouncing together and forming a molecule: they’ll stick to each other and make something different. Those two ideas combine to make a better idea, in my opinion, together. And then character ideas I’d been working on stuck to that, and then magic systems I’d actually been working on separately. Allomancy and Feruchemy, two of the magic systems in Mistborn, were actually designed for different worlds, and then I combined them together and they worked really well together, with the metals being a common theme.

    I did all of that, and when it comes down to write a book I sit down and I put this all on a page, and then I start filling in holes by brainstorming. “What would go well here, what would go well here, I need more here” [accompanying gestures indicate different “here’s”]. And I fill out my outline that way, and I fill out my “World Guide,” as I call it. I actually just got—the wonderful folks of Camtasia (it’s a software that records screens) sent me a copy of their software so that I can record a short story, and I’ll go—I’ll do the outline, and then I’ll do the story, and then I’ll post it on my website and you can see exactly, you know, step-by-step what happens. Just don’t make too much fun of me when I spell things wrong.

    It’s really weird when you’ve got, like, that screen capture going on, you know people are gonna’ be watching this, and you can’t spell a word, and it’s like “I don’t want to go look it up, I can get this right,” it’s like, the writerly version of the guy who refuses to go get directions. So I like try a word like seventeen different ways, and like “Gehhhh okay,” and then Google tells me in like ten seconds. Anyway, that’s your answer and I hope that works for you. Thanks for asking.

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  • 776

    Interview: Jul 13th, 2012

    Questioner

    Okay, first of all I’d like to say I love reading the annotations, and kind of finding out what was going on in your mind, kind of behind the scenes, like the Director’s Commentary

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, thank you

    QUESTIONER

    So thank you for doing those. And my question is: I’ve noticed in a lot of the books—Mistborn, Warbreaker, even Elantris—that the characters are working so hard towards a goal, and then once they did it or when they get close, all the sudden they realize that it’s doing the complete opposite of what they were expecting, or just was kind of a distraction for them or whatever, and so my question is:

    Is that just a good way to kind of throw in a plot twist that’s unexpected, or is that a reflection of kind of how you see our lives and what we’re doing, or something else?

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    I would say it’s both of those things, certainly. I was going to say as you were saying that “that’s just how life is,” but, plot wise, plot twists are tough, because—okay, how should I say it—bad plot twists are easy, right, you can just do anything, you can be like “alright, and then ninja’s attack.” (Aside: this is a regency romance, I don’t know where those ninjas came from…(That’s actually a story, if you’ve read that)).

    Bad plot twists are easy. Good plot twists, I use a phrase that they use in Hollywood, which is “surprising, yet inevitable.” This is an age-old term in Hollywood where you want it, when it happens everyone to be surprised, and yet, as it happens, then they say “oooh, I should have seen that coming.” Those are the best plot twists. You can’t always pull those off—they’re really hard—but when you can they’re great, and that’s what I’m shooting for. I don’t necessarily twist my plot just to twist my plot; I try to find a story that is engaging and interesting and then the further we go along in it, the more you learn about the characters and the world and what’s actually going on and hopefully that reveals a hidden depth.

    It’s like life. Everyone that you meet, you’re going to make a snap judgment on them. The longer you know them, the more depth you will see to this person. I want you to have that feeling about a book. You’ll make a snap judgment, “okay, this is an action-adventure story.” You’ll read it more and hopefully you’ll see those levels, of world-building, the hidden depth of the characters, the things you can’t get across in one page; that’s why I like writing big epic fantasies because it gives me a lot of time to explore all that depth. And I do the same thing with the plot. Everything is about more than one thing, and I think that that just makes for interesting stories that I like to read.

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  • 777

    Interview: 2012

    Necrosxiaoban (March 2012)

    I read the article expecting Sanderson to share some special insight but that article could have been written by anyone :(

    Brandon Sanderson

    Heh. I can give special insight into the books I worked on, but as for the early ones, I'm really just another fan. (Well, okay, that's not true—but special things I know about the early books are not mine to share, by the NDA I signed with Harriet.) I also have to squeeze writing these into five minutes or so between drafts of A Memory of Light chapters.

    So, unfortunately, with these posts you'll only get Brandon the fan talking for a little bit about why he likes each book. (Sorry.)

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  • 778

    Interview: 2012

    exteras (April 2012)

    Of course, the comic industry isn't quite the same as the publishing industry, as Marvel and DC both have their own apps on the iPad/Android. No middle-man. But I can't believe that the publishing industry hasn't considered a solution like this to keep paper books relevant. In fact, I feel like Barnes and Noble would jump all over something like this: Buy a book in their store, and get a free (or even a $1) digital copy on the Nook.

    Brandon Sanderson (April 2012)

    It's an issue that I've busted my mind trying to figure out. There are several ways to do this, all somewhat problematic.

    1) Work directly with someone like B&N. This requires them to sell the digital copy alongside the print edition, probably at the register. Kind of a "Oh, you bought the hardcover. Would you like the digital add-on for a buck?" Then they give you a slip of paper with your digital code on it. There are huge logistical issues here. Not insurmountable, but still tough. How many books do you do this with? All new books? How do you keep all of those slips separate? Do you have a machine that prints one with a code? Who pays for the infrastructure? What happens to all of those slips once a book rotates out of being new? We already have trouble with advance copies being snatched by booksellers (or other) and offering them up for sale on ebay when they were intended to be review copies. (Printed at a high cost and given for booksellers to read.) I could see this, without careful management, going the same way.

    Also, what about all of your independent booksellers who are already up in arms about B&N and Amazon getting all of the preferential treatment? What do you do about them? Let them give away an ebook too? It would have to be multi-format, and that means printing and shipping them all the slips on your end.

    2) Print a code in the book itself. Easiest answer, I think, but it offers a huge problem. Books are not usually a sealed product. People like to flip through them on the shelves. So how do you hide the code? Make it inactive until it is scanned at the register, like some gift cards? I don't know how much work is required for this. It seems like less than the one above, but still requires and infrastructure change.

    This is much, MUCH easier to do with a sealed product like DVDs or CDs.

    If anyone has suggestions on how to make this all work, I'd love to hear them. I've proposed giving away digital copies of my books with the hardcovers before, and Tor as scratched its head trying to figure out how to make it all work.

    Edits: Logical flow, typo fixes.

    EDIT TWO: It has been mentioned on twitter that maybe, a code could be printed on the receipt. Much easier than a method I mentioned above—but the problem remains that it's not something that I can do alone. I MIGHT be able to get a code in my books, if we can secure them somehow. I alone can't get retailers to change so they print something out and give it to a customer. I'm mostly curious about something I can take to Tor, as a suggestion, that we could maybe get to work for the last Wheel of Time book or my future hardcover releases.

    warriormuse

    What about the system Baen uses? They include a CD with the book in multiple formats already.

    Granted, that increases the overhead for the publisher. And the ISO is able to be spread online.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm intending to try this again. When I asked last time, they were hesitant because of the cost. (About a buck.) However, that was for one of my books before I hit the level of popularity I have now. The Wheel of Time is something else entirely. Something that might be prohibitive for another book because of small print runs could be much more cost effective here.

    However, perhaps a code/CD plus shrink wrapping for certain books might be a good way to go. If we released most copies like normal, but did a certain percentage of them packaged like this with a code for a digital download, maybe it would work.

    dceighty8

    On this note does anyone know if the ebook release of A Memory of Light will be at the same time as the paper copy? I would prefer to buy it on my kindle over purchasing the physical copy.

    Brandon Sanderson

    <>This is basically what I'm working on. I don't know yet if Harriet will want to delay the ebook launch or not. She did last time, but things have moved quickly in the ebook world since then. Her main reason for delaying was worries over how the New York Times bestseller list accounted ebooks.

    She might not delay the launch this time. If she wants to, I might have a better chance of getting her to agree on a special edition with ebook included in the hardcover than I will persuading her to push the ebook launch up. It's one of the reasons I'm exploring this concept now.

    demooo

    Okay Mr. Sanderson, here are my two ideas, but I don't know if they are actually feasible.

    Disclaimer: if it turns out I'm fantastic with these ideas, please forward me a copy of A Memory of Light in the next week.

    1. Can you know just have two copies released at most stores? One copy would be the non-shrink-wrapped regular book. The other copy would be the 1-3$ more expensive shrink-wrapped copy with the digital code. Or keep the hardback copy+digital behind the counter.

    2. Include a scratch-off-code in all the books, but sell the copy at the normal price. The code will require a 3$ activation fee when you activate it online. I realize that the possibility for theft is still there, but I would assume if someone is going to illegally scratch the code and pay 3$, torrenting the book would be the first choice.

    Release A Memory of Light early. I know it will help.

    kaladin_stormblessed

    1 is a fantastic idea. I've got Avenging Spider-man in my pull (which comes with the digital copy), and this is pretty much how they run it. Comic is in a sealed baggie. They don't offer a version without a digital copy (that I know of anyway) however.

    I think your idea is the most feasible on here.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think this is one of the main options I'm going to try.

    precisionesports

    Hello people of the internet. I`d like to introduce you to.... email.

    Most retailers have them anyways. You buy a book, give your email.

    Receive email with direct download link or (heaven forbid) a torrent to relieve stresses on sites selling fast selling books. Harry Potter comes to mind.

    Done and done.

    Edit: Most B&N stores, among others already use a web based sales format. They just need a small code entry to create a drop box. Containing the Distributor code, and book name.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think Tor is more likely to want to use Tor.com as a method for this, as getting people to sign up for that (which is free, but includes an optional newsletter) could be valuable for them. When they gave out Mistborn for free, this was how the approached it. Sign up for our website, and we'll send you a book via email.

    jasonlotito

    Scrap number 1. Independent booksellers are awesome. I bought your last book through one.

    Print a code in the book itself. Good solution. Proper solution.

    Your problem is that it's supposedly easy to "steal the code". This makes a massive assumption, and ignores existing evidence.

    First, you aren't the first one to think of this. People already include codes for ebooks in their books. I know this is done fairly often in the tech industry (programming books often allow you to get access to an ebook. Granted, the market is much smaller than what you are probably used to by now, but the target market is also more tech savvy. They know how to pirate the book, even without the code.

    And that brings us to the second point: pirating. People who would copy the code can easily obtain your manuscript online already. In fact, getting the code would be far more trouble then it's worth. They have to go to a store, find a copy, write the code down, go all the way back home... or they could simply go one of a few places and have a copy in minutes.

    So, this brings us to the third point: who would go to a book store with the expressed desire of picking up your book? Your fans! People who already buy and pay for your books. People who want you to write more. People who want to see you finish your multiple series. And I'd be hard pressed to believe that your fans would open up a copy of the book, copy the code, and use that at home. They know what that costs them.

    And even if they did, would they have really purchased your book? Really? What your suggesting is that someone who loves your work, who has followed it, goes to the bookstore with the expressed intention of copying the code and leaving. That's pretty far fetched. Even the MPAA and RIAA can't come up with numbers that support these sentiments (industries that, despite all the doomsayers, continue to grow and earn massive profits).

    Yes, a few people might steal the code. And frankly, any system that accepts these codes will need to be lenient in the codes usage. But the reality is this:

    1.People will violate your copyright, code or no code.

    2.Having a code won't make it any easier.

    3.Having a code will only provide additional value to your paying readers.

    In the end, the only people who would abuse this are people that weren't going to buy the book at first anyways. You should try this out. You might be surprised.

    K.I.S.S. =)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't disagree with anything you've said here. However, you've got to understand that I need to deal with the realities of a large business with investors and corporate overseers.

    Tor is not afraid of piracy, as I've said elsewhere. They give away DRM-free books, and have done so with mine. They let me give away on my website one of my books DRM-free in its entirety two years before it was released in stores. However, accepting that people will pirate and hosting the method they will use to pirate are different things entirely.

    The Wheel of Time is not something that the publisher wants to experiment with. It is a known quantity, the biggest bestseller for the company by a mile. Things we could get away with for a new author that the company views as being 'built' are not going to work for the Wheel of Time simply because this will have a 'why rock the boat?' kind of attitude.

    That's why I'm looking for something for this book that won't rock the boat quite so much. We can rock the boat on my own books, which are still growing, rather than the company's baby.

    Footnote

    This topic started about Marvel now offering free eComic with physical purchase, and how it should be that way in the publishing idustry. A Memory of Light will not have a free ebook with the hardback.

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  • 779

    Interview: 2012

    DBSTEVENS (April 2012)

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    One thing I've found is that writers really like to talk about writing, and I'm no exception. The problem is, the longer we write, the more most of us seem to move by instinct rather than intention. Perhaps that is a result of becoming increasingly comfortable with our own process.

    Regardless, it can sometimes become difficult to describe what we do and why. I sometimes feel like I act more like an expert than I truly am. I'm mostly trying to describe my process after-the-fact, and my analysis may or may not have any validity.

    For what it's worth, however, here is a video of me talking about some of these same concepts at JordanCon a few years back.

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  • 780

    Interview: 2012

    Carpenterdon (June 2012)

    Myself and many others love the universe of the Wheel of Time. I know the possibility of future books has been discussed between yourself, Mr. Jordan's wife, and the publishers. And it's been said none of you wish to "cash-in" on Mr. Jordan's work.

    I for one think you are all looking at this backwards, for you to continue writing books about the world and characters we've all come to know and love over the past two decades would do nothing but keep Mr. Jordan's legacy alive! It would not be "cashing-in" to make all his (and your) fans happy by providing them many more stories that we will all enjoy. I don't believe any of us want to just give up this universe after following it for this many years.

    I for one do not want this story to end with A Memory of Light. I would love to be able to continue reading about all our friends for another 20 years. None of us want Mr. Jordan's world to simply end, he created a vast and wonderful world that is filled with endless stories. Please continue to write them!

    If you truly believe it would be bad for Mr Jordan's memory or that it would appear you're writing more to make money off him then by all means donate the proceeds of any future books to a worthy charity.

    Please don't deny us the future stories.

    Signed, A dedicated fan

    Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)

    A thoughtful letter. Thank you for writing it.

    Let me make a few points. The first is that Robert Jordan was very uncomfortable about people writing in his world. He said several times that if he died before the series was finished, he intended to have the notes destroyed and the series left undone. (He later changed his mind about this, or may have been mostly joking in the first place.)

    The Guide to the Wheel of Time (known as the big white book) was originally going to have fiction in it written by other authors in the Wheel of Time world. Robert Jordan eventually decided he was uncomfortable with this idea, and they pulled the stories.

    To be honest, there probably wouldn't be anything wrong with doing a few more books—the ones RJ said he was planning to write, like the two other prequels or the Outriggers. However, I worry that the further we go, the more we will invariably stray from RJ's original vision for the series. (Because we'll have less and less direction left by him.) Therefore, I will have to step in to fill the gaps, and the series will more and more become about me and less about him.

    I don't want that to happen. I never want to reach a point, for example, where I've written more WoT books than RJ did. Is it not much better to quit while we're ahead? I'd rather be Bill Watterson than George Lucas. I'd rather stop on a high note and not drive the series into the ground.

    Perhaps I will change my mind eventually. (Though, I should point out it's not even my call, but Harriet's.) However, the price of stopping now is leaving a few stories untold that might have been great to tell. The price of continuing on is to risk undermining the Wheel of Time's integrity and Robert Jordan's legacy. I don't know that I want to roll those dice.

    bouncl

    If I could do one absolutely terribly immoral thing, and get away scott-free, it would be to steal the notes after A Memory of Light is done. I want to read them very badly.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's not impossible that Harriet will let me post them once this is through. I've asked before, and she's undecided.

    bouncl

    If it really matters either way, what I'm after is not super-spoilerific, but things that are either interesting but ultimately unimportant easter-eggs (the allusions to modern events at the beginning of The Eye of the World for example) and things like character notes and place notes (if those exist.) Above all else, I want to see what Jordan was thinking when he wrote the world.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think these are completely reasonable questions that should either be answered in the Encyclopedia or (hopefully) when we're allowed to release the notes. I'll say what I can once the book is out.

    brucey7191

    Are the notes for the prequels quite extensive like for the final three you have written, or are they just general theme and plot?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The notes are not great for most of the outriggers or prequels. We'd be relying mostly on things Team Jordan remembers of what he said about them.

    One conversation we've had is potentially doing these other stories as video games. That way, the fans can experience the stories—but if we flub them, they won't detract from the main sequence of books.

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  • 781

    Interview: 2012

    TellAllThePeople (June 2012)

    Wow I am amazed that you actively Reddit, how in the name of the dark one didn't I know this? If you have the time I just have one question! Is WoT really going to end this next book? there seem to be SO many loose end that, if the series is tried too be ended in one book, will be rushed or left unacknowledged/uncompleted! Anyway thanks for yor amazing work I loved the latest books!

    Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)

    Well, I guess "active" is a relative phrase, as I only now saw this.

    Yes, this is the ending. No, not every loose thread will be tied up. Robert Jordan left instructions for some to be left open.

    It doesn't feel rushed to me, but we'll have to see what the fans think.

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  • 782

    Interview: 2012

    Ashan_Darei (June 2012)

    I debated writing this because you seem like a genuinely nice guy who cares about his fans, and I don't want to hurt your feelings. If you find it difficult to read criticism, please don't read any further.

    To be honest, I am hoping that you won't write the outriggers/prequels because it seems to me like your heart's just not in it anymore. In 2011 you announced that you needed time off to reread the entire series before starting work on A Memory of Light since you'd forgotten too much and this had led to continuity issues in Towers of Midnight. But according to your own website, you only reread a third of the series, then went on to work on Alloy of Law, Legion, The Emperor's Soul, The Rithmatist... As someone who enjoyed Way of Kings a great deal, I'm glad that you've continued to work on your own books, but the fact that you abandoned the reread does make me worry about the quality of A Memory of Light. If you cannot give WoT as much time and attention as it needs, it's better to let it go.

    Another big issue for me is the characterization. You're great at writing Perrin and also did a good job with Rand and the girls for the most part. Others felt off, and that unfortunately includes the main characters the outriggers and prequels would focus on. I'll leave out Mat since that's been discussed to death already, but Lan and Moiraine's scenes in Towers of Midnight were a huge disappointment for me. Lan has always been a favorite of mine, but here he came off as a whiny combination of Gawyn and Perrin. He's a grown man in his late 40s, not a sulky teenager.

    Then there's Moiraine, now ready to give up all her power if only Thom tells her to. Yes, her captivity undoubtedly changed her, but at her core, she is someone who was ready to sacrifice everyone and everything to win the Last Battle, including herself. So it didn't seem right for Moiraine to offer to give up an important tool like the angreal.

    ""Egwene, I know what you feel for Rand, but you must realize by now that nothing can come of it. He belongs to the Pattern, and to history."—Moiraine, The Shadow Rising

    For an instant she regretted sending Thom away. She did not like having to waste her time with these petty affairs. But he had too much influence with Rand; the boy had to depend on her counsel. Hers, and hers alone.—Moiraine, The Shadow Rising

    That had been one of Moiraine's more succinct bits of advice. Never let them see you weaken.—Rand, Lord of Chaos

    I happen to like Moiraine a lot, but there's no denying she was partly responsible for Rand thinking he needed to be hard. Yet in Towers of Midnight you have Rand speak of how caring she was; even Mat and Nynaeve sing her praises. You seem to be trying to retcon Moiraine into a saintly figure she never was. All WoT characters have major flaws; Moiraine's was that she treated people as chess pieces that sometimes needed to be sacrificed for the greater good. In The Shadow Rising she intentionally tried to separate Rand from his friends so she could be the only person influencing him. It wasn't until Rhuidean that she discovered firsthand what it felt like to be the person forced to make the ultimate sacrifice, and she finally became the advisor Rand needed. But even then she was still manipulating him and encouraging him to be hard, so obviously she hadn't changed completely. To ignore her flaws and mistakes is to do the character a disservice and hides her growth in The Fires of Heaven.

    This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up here. I hope this made sense and that I didn't hurt your feelings. I still think you're a very talented writer and look forward to reading both A Memory of Light and the next Stormlight book.

    Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)

    Well, thanks for the thoughts. I will take the comments for what they are worth, and appreciate your sincerity.

    By way of correction, I do want to point out that Alloy of Law, Legion, and The Rithmatist were all written BEFORE I started work on A Memory of Light. The only thing I've written during A Memory of Light was The Emperor's Soul, which is a short work I wrote on the flight home from Taiwan earlier in the year. I have always stopped my main projects for side ones. It is part of what keeps me fresh. Alcatraz was in the middle of Mistborn, Rithmatist in the middle of Liar of Partinel (which I decided not to publish; it was the last book I wrote before the WoT came my way.) Legion was during Towers of Midnight. Emperor's Soul during A Memory of Light.

    My heart is completely in it—that I can assure you. I stopped the re-read because I was just too eager to be working on the book, and I'd already re-read (the last year) books 9-11 in working to get Perrin and Mat down for Towers of Midnight. But your complaint is valid. I did not re-read 6-8, except for spot reading. I kept telling myself I needed to get to them, but I was too deeply into the writing by that point.

    As for where I misfired on characterization, I apologize. In some cases, I don't see them the same way as you do. In other cases, I am doing a worse job than RJ would have, and the failings are mine. I don't want to diminish your opinion, as it is valid. I certainly have struggled with some characters more than others.

    Though, for the scene with Moiraine and Thom you quote above...I, uh, didn't write that scene, my friend. That one was RJ in its entirety, and was one of the most complete scenes he left behind.

    ashan_darei

    Brandon, thank you for the thoughtful response. I understand that it's very difficult for most authors to read criticism (let alone reply to it), so I appreciate that you took the time to read and reply.

    I'd like to stress that I wholeheartedly agree with Neil Gaiman's "GRRM is not your bitch" post and hope it didn't come across like I thought you shouldn't be working on anything besides WoT. Side projects are very much a good thing (happy and creative authors→better books), and I am personally excited about your upcoming books. It was mainly the fact that you seemed to have given up on the reread that felt like a reason for concern since you had previously said you needed to refresh your memory to avoid a repeat of Towers of Midnight's continuity errors. It also made me worry that you had gotten weary of working on A Memory of Light, which would have been understandable given that it's a very time-consuming and demanding project that you've already spent 4-5 years on. I'm glad to hear this is not the case.

    "In some cases, I don't see them the same way as you do."

    That's not something I object to since we all have different perceptions of the characters. In most cases I understand where you are coming from even if your interpretation differs somewhat from mine. Unlike me, you also have access to all sorts of character notes and spoilers about their futures.

    However, in some cases it felt like your personal love or dislike of certain characters also played a strong role. To put it bluntly, it's easy to tell that Perrin, Egwene and Moiraine are your favorites since they've received a disproportionate amount of PoVs or praise from other characters, Egwene in particular (how many scenes do we need where people talk about how brilliant, clever and talented Egwene is?). I don't know how much you follow other WoT boards, but there's been a lot of debate in fandom as to whether Egwene has become too much of a Mary Sue-type character who easily defeats supposedly shrewd political opponents and is constantly praised by other characters, often at the expense of people like Siuan. It's impossible for a writer to remain completely objective, and your background as a fan is on the whole one of your biggest strengths, but sometimes things like that can feel jarring. I would not want to see the same happen to a complex, flawed and interesting character like Moiraine.

    "Though, for the scene with Moiraine and Thom you quote above...I, uh, didn't write that scene, my friend. That one was RJ in its entirety, and was one of the most complete scenes he left behind."

    I have to admit, this comes as a surprise to me, partly because of Moiraine's seemingly uncharacteristic offer to surrender almost all her power for Thom's sake and partly because she used contractions in this scene (in the New Spring graphic novel, there's a note from Jordan informing the comic writers that Moiraine never uses contractions). She and Thom seemed to have a mutual respect and attraction in the early books, but spent very little time together, so I would not have expected any full-blown love or a marriage proposal at this point. It just seemed very strange for Moiraine to be willing to sacrifice her only chance at regaining her strength when she's barely even thought about Thom in her PoVs before. But since Jordan wrote that scene, there's nothing to do but accept that it's where he wanted to take the characters.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Re: Contractions Interesting story here. Harriet and Team Jordan worried about my use of contractions in places that RJ did not. It seemed very striking to them. Their first instinct was to go through and change it, after the fact, in order to match RJ's style.

    Harriet didn't like how that looked. She felt that my style needed to be blended with RJ's, rather than taking my style and forcing it to fit into something else. So it was decided that one of her tasks, as editor, would be to blend the writing after it was put together. She'd go through and make scenes feel right together, and would blend the two styles like a painter blending paint.

    So, she takes away contractions from me where she feels they need to go and she actually adds them to RJ's writing where she thinks it needs to be blended. I was curious if that was the case here, so I went back to the original notes.

    And it turns out RJ wrote the scene with contractions. Most likely, he was planning to trim them out with editing. Remember, even the most complete scenes we have from him are first drafts. In fact, in some of them, the tense is wrong. (Much of this Moiraine/Thom/Mat scene is in present tense. )

    An example from the notes is:

    He puts the angreal on her wrist, and says 'I'll marry you now.'

    In revision, this line turned into:

    He put the bracelet back on her wrist. "I'll marry you now, if you wish it."

    Anyway, I don't want to spend too much time defending myself, because that's not the point of your post. Really, the most important thing for me to say is that I understand. I'll do my best, and criticism like this is important to me. (Particularly on the Wheel of Time books, where I feel that listening to fan direction is important for gauging how well I'm doing on the characters.) It was fan criticism that brought me around to finally seeing what I was doing wrong with Mat, and (hopefully) making some strides toward writing him more accurate to himself.

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  • 783

    Interview: 2012

    jdiddyesquire (June 2012)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thanks, all, for the good wishes on this.

    I first started talking about Steelheart a number of years ago. (Five, maybe six?) It was one of the projects I'd been planning to do in 2007 when the Wheel of Time came along and kind of distracted me.

    Unable to work on it for years, I instead did up a proposal and started shopping it in Hollywood. I got interest, but everyone said "We'd be more comfortable if the book were done." So, over the years, I slowly pieced together an outline in my spare time and did chapters when I could. (I think a reading I did of the prologue of this last year is floating around on-line somewhere.)

    One of the problems with working on the Wheel of Time is that it's so time-consuming, I basically can't work on any other big project while writing it. I stay creative by changing to new ideas and new concepts whenever I start feeling burned out—I work on them for a short time, then get my groove back and turn to the larger project.

    That's why you see all kinds of little projects popping out here and there from me. I can't do Stormlight 2 at the same time as WoT. Two big series are just too much to do at once; one would suffer. Yet, I still need artistic liberation now and then to try something new and refresh myself.

    The two novellas I'm releasing this year (Legion, The Emperor's Soul) and the short Mistborn novel last year (Alloy of Law) are things that came out of these side deviations. Steelheart is another. Shouldn't affect Stormlight 2 very much. I always like to have one large project and a handful of smaller ones running at the same time.

    It may seem like a lot to have on my plate, but if you add Alloy of Law, Steelheart, and the two novellas together they are combined around half the length of The Way of Kings. (And took about 1/10 the brain space...)

    I don't want to make excuses for not doing Stormlight 2, but this might give a little insight as to why you keep seeing all of these other projects popping up.

    corwin01

    Are any of these stories within the cosmere?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Emperor's Soul, a novella, is in the cosmere.

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  • 784

    Interview: 2012

    Halo6819 (June 2012)

    Not that it matters to you, but that is a serious chunk of downvotes...

    Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)

    Interesting. I hadn't noticed that.

    I wonder if I picked up some downvote bots at some point along the way. It would explain why even my simplest comments, agreeing or offering clarification, are each getting a handful of downvotes.

    Either that, or they are coming from displeased readers who are downvoting my every post, regardless of content. There are those who feel I have ruined the Wheel of Time.

    (And, to an extent, they are right—as anyone who would write these books who is not RJ would ruin them to an extent. There is a valid argument to be made that the books should not have been written, and that the notes should have simply been released as-is to provide closure. I don't agree with the argument, but I do see its validity.)

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  • 785

    Interview: 2012

    WhlskeyDrunk (July 2012)

    With all the kerfluffle over Sanderson lately, I decided to start reading Deadhouse Gates. Hadn't been reading more than 10 minutes and came across this great quote.

    People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche—effete and sensitive were the brands of finer breeding. It was easy for them, safe, and that was the whole point, after all: a statement of coddled opulence that burned the throats of the poor more than any ostentatious show of wealth.

    So the reason that Erickson is so amazing is because he is an excellent writer. That is all.

    Ps If any r/fantasy Sanderson fans can find anything close to this excellent prose, I will donate 20 dollars to Doctors Without Borders. And ten if they can't just so I don't feel like a dick.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was confused about this post. Usually, when I start a kerfuffle, I'm aware of it... (I guess, from below, it's about giving away books?)

    In other news, Steven Erickson is quite awesome. I'm confused as to why there needs to be a post like this, however. I have never claimed my prose is like his. What I do is different from what he does.

    Your challenge is like sauntering up to an archer, slapping $20 on the table, and daring him to hit the same target with a pistol instead of the bow. You are assuming that my writing is trying to do what Steven's does. I happen to belong to a different school of thought. (Google Orwell's windowpane prose, if you're curious.)

    That said, I very much enjoy Steven's writing. Just as I play the trumpet, but quite enjoy listening to the violin. If you prefer one far over the other, then by all means, please read what you enjoy! But why draw a line in the sand like this and insist that for your preferred writer to be considered excellent, you must denigrate another?

    WhlskeyDrunk

    Not denigrating Brandon, just pointing out that there is a difference. I honestly enjoy your writing and hope you don't take this personally. That thread was one of the most vapid and stupid threads that I have seen on r/fantasy. This place is starting to feel like Enews instead of honest, inspired fantasy discussion and I felt like making a thread to circlejerk actual writing instead of another celebrity sighting.

    EDIT: But seeing that you are here, how bout giving us what you consider your most inspired prose. I will not judge and will ask r/fantasy to do the same. I will then donate the money by tomorrow night.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ah, I got it. Looking at it again, I was probably too touchy. I can read your post for what it is, now.

    Erickson deserves more attention. The guy is amazing. And, truth be told, I find myself envious of what he can accomplish sometimes with both prose and characterization. Beyond that, the guy has guts. Starting books as he does—stories that feel like a punch to the face—takes some real dedication.

    I do sometimes worry about getting over-saturated on reddit. I post here, and so people tend to be somewhat kind to me—but if I get talked up too much, a point comes where raised expectations can work against me.

    Thanks for taking the time to reply.

    spencerkami

    Well thanks to reddit, your books are my holiday reads. I hope you live up to the hype. =p I'll also have the first Malazan which I've started and, well, one doesn't expect writing quite like that in most books. I'm mostly intrigued by yours as I hear there's some pretty neat stuff and magic and all.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I hope you enjoy them. But, for goodness sake, don't believe ALL of the hype. My goal has always been just this: to write nifty stories. I'm far from the best writer in fantasy right now. (In my opinion, that award would either go to Guy Kay or Terry Pratchett.) Like all writers, I do some things well, and other things not so well. I'm proud of the Mistborn Trilogy, however. I think I was able to do some things with the genre that I (at least) hadn't seen before.

    p0x0rz

    Not sure if you're still reading this thread, but your post got me thinking.

    Not sure why, but it certainly seems like it's the way of the internet to list, rank, compare, and nerd out to the point of hyperbolic insult when it comes to your particular favorite thing. I agree with you when you say that you and Erikson are trying to accomplish different things, and comparing the two shouldn't happen. You're both fantasy authors, and are big parts of the new surge of fantasy popularity of the last 15-20 years, so I assume some of that just comes from being peers in the same field along with Martin, Abercrombie, etc. Add that in to the zeitgeist of the internet, which as I said above seems to be to compare everything, and I guess that's what it stems from. (Seriously, who cares if XBox 360 or PS3 is more powerful? They both have great games, play them both!)

    Sadly, I've even succumbed to this nasty tendency before. You get caught up in the discussions and arguments on places like reddit and before you know it you're slinging mud with the rest of them. I'm a self confessed Malazan fanboy, but I've also read everything you've ever written, but in some comparison threads I've felt the need to weigh in unnecessarily. For that, I sincerely apologize. I've loved everything you've written, and I guarantee you that I'm a "first day purchase" person of yours for the rest of your career.

    I'm not trying to confuse honest critiques with internet fanboyism, either. I've criticisms of everything I've ever read, and that's okay. When weighing in on your books, I might discuss my dissatisfaction with your female characterizations in many cases, and that's not meant to be an insult, just honest opinion. There are plenty of things about Erikson's works that drive me nuts, but I love him, too...As there are about all authors. The problem is that, once again, when it comes to the internet, everything changes. Criticisms are taken to the nth degree, and instead of "I have a problem with this, it becomes "x author is the worst thing that's ever happened to fantasy and I hope he dies in a fire." It is, sadly, the anonymity of the internet combined with the usual member-waving that takes places in threads like this.

    Critiques should be honest and free of aggrandizing, and you should be able to like one author and not denigrate another. Though I haven't done this with you, I've been guilty of it in other places, and you're right...It's unnecessary. So, I apologize.

    Thanks for reading, and keep up the great work. Looking forward to many, many more stories. :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Just noting that I did see this, and appreciate the thoughtful reply. You have a nifty new tag in my RES... :)

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  • 786

    Interview: 2012

    LeisureSuiteLarry (July 2012)

    180 days until A Memory of Light.

    Just six months until this 20+ year journey is finished.

    Brandon Sanderson (July 2012)

    Gah! Don't remind me. (Gets back to editing.)

    QENOPS

    Are you working on it in San Diego? That's dedication!

    PeterAhlstrom

    Yes, he is. Brandon is not a party animal; his idea of relaxing after a hard afternoon at the con is to go back to his hotel room and write for 8 hours.

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  • 787

    Interview: 2012

    STIGMATA07 ()

    Correct me if I am wrong. But has Brandon not been planning sequels for Elantris and Warbreaker?

    ERICMM76

    BUt writing a sequel after the fact does not mean the first book is not Stand-Alone.

    The question will be whether the 2nd book is as stand-alone as Warbreaker was, for instance.

    SENAE

    Totally true! That's why Fellowship of the Ring, Eye of the World, A Game of Thrones, A New Hope, and The Final Empire were all standalones!

    (In less snarky terms, Elantris and Warbreaker may both be less obviously part of a series, but there's pretty obviously a ton of story hooks for potential sequels. Hell, Warbreaker ended with two characters going off on adventures! Brandon has said he's always planned on them being part of series.)

    Peter Ahlstrom ()

    Brandon also adds story hooks even if he never plans on writing more. That's because books with no story hooks feel artificial to him. He wants to give a sense that the characters lived before the book started and will continue to live on (at least, those who don't get killed) after the book ends.

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  • 788

    Interview: Jul 10th, 2012

    Sabrina Fish

    What inspired you to take your Mistborn world into the realm of steampunk fantasy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I was originally working on the Mistborn trilogy, one of the things that interested me was taking this world and progressing it. Allomancy screamed to be used in a more advanced society where metal was a larger part of people’s lives. By ignoring that and setting it only in an epic fantasy world, I would miss out on the possibility for some really cool interactions. So as I was working on the first three books, I called my editor and said, "Hey, I’d really like to take this world after the trilogy and go forward with it."

    I wasn’t planning to do anything steampunkish per se, but to move into a more modern world. But then I was between books of the Wheel of Time, and between books I often take a break and do something small. I started writing a short story set between the first two trilogies I planned in the Mistborn world, and that story expanded to become The Alloy of Law. I really enjoyed the concept and the characters in the story, so I kept going and it became a novel.

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  • 789

    Interview: Jul 10th, 2012

    Sabrina Fish

    What was the hardest to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The most challenging part of that book was to keep a strong enough focus on the characters while writing a faster, shorter plot. That’s a balance I haven’t practiced nearly as much as I have with the epic fantasies, where I have basically as much time as I want with any given character. So that was a challenge.

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  • 790

    Interview: Jul 10th, 2012

    Sabrina Fish

    Within the Mistborn novels, is there a message you wish your readers to grasp?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not in particular. I don’t go into a book wanting to teach anyone a message. I go in wanting to tell a good story, and I let the characters develop their messages as they see fit. Each book grew to have its own theme dependent on the characters of the given book, their passions and things like that. I do think that the whole concept of Kelsier, “the Survivor,” and pushing forward is an overarching theme of the entire series, but it’s not necessarily a message that I want people to get.

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  • 791

    Interview: Jul 10th, 2012

    Sabrina Fish

    Did you learn anything from writing The Alloy of Law and what was it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I learned that I can write a shorter novel. I'm certainly not as practiced at it, and there are things I need to get better at, but I've proved to myself that it's within my capacity to do.

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  • 792

    Interview: Jul 10th, 2012

    Sabrina Fish

    Have you ever hated something you wrote?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes—well, I’m not a person who hates much, but there are certainly pieces I was disappointed in, some of the early ones before I was published, when I hadn’t quite figured out how to do this yet. There were a couple of books that I felt turned out very poorly, and I was annoyed and frustrated by how poorly they turned out. That’s just part of the process of learning to be a writer.

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  • 793

    Interview: Jul 10th, 2012

    Sabrina Fish

    How do you react to a bad review of one of your books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on the type of bad review. There are, on Amazon, one-star reviews of my favorite books. Legitimate one-star reviews—people who just didn’t like the book. There’s a lot of variety to people out there, and my books are not right for everyone. No book is. How do I react to negative reviews? I just keep on going.

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  • 794

    Interview: Jun 29th, 2012

    Joshua Essoe

    Is there a pressure that has developed from traditional publishers for their authors to be pushed towards more production? When should an author consider self-publishing instead of trying to land a book deal in NY? Should one self-publish while trying to land that book deal and use potential sales numbers as part of the pitch?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don’t feel that there has been any push from New York to publish books at any different speed at all. In fact, one of the main reasons to publish with New York as opposed to self-publishing is if you are an author who doesn’t write at least one book a year. If we’re to take The Way of Kings as an example, there’s no way that I’m going to be producing 400,000-word epic fantasies as fast as a lot of the self-published writers can put out books. There’s no way that anyone could have made that book at that speed. It’s a book that takes a year, maybe eighteen months to write. So for long epic fantasies, New York certainly has some things going for it.

    One of the reasons that it’s really good to publish fast and short when you’re doing self-publishing is that you don’t have any sort of marketing push behind you. You don’t have bookstore shelf presence, which is one of the major forms of marketing—people seeing your book there on the shelves. Word of mouth is always the most important thing, but it becomes even more important for the self-published writer. Publishing quickly and getting a lot of books out helps to get your name in more places in the market and helps to push some of that momentum through. That seems to be the key way to make it as a self-published writer.

    When would I self-publish versus New York-publish? I would not abandon either model. Self-publishing has proved itself so viable recently that if I were a new writer, I would be looking at doing both at the same time. Maybe taking the longer, more epic-style books to New York and doing the faster-paced, more thriller-style books online, and seeing what works best.

    So the expansion of the e-book market gives you more places to go. That said, if you’re not a particularly fast writer, self-publishing is going to be a very hard route for you because everything I’ve seen—granted, I’m not an expert on this; there are places to go other than me for expertise—shows that being able to produce quickly is a key factor in being a successful self-published author in this market.

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  • 795

    Interview: Jun 29th, 2012

    Joshua Essoe

    How long does it take to be forgotten in this fickle book market, and what should an author be doing to prevent it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on your method. What you’re getting at here is the balance between promotion and just writing the next book. That’s a balance authors have had to work with for decades, if not centuries—the idea being that promoting your book keeps it in people’s minds. Right now you can do that through engaging blog posts, being on Twitter, going to conventions, doing book signings, and all of these things. They take time. If they take so much time that you’re not writing your next book, then the question becomes are they worth it?

    Do you want all your eggs in one basket? Do you want to write one book and then spend the whole year promoting it, trying to get it to take off, or do you want to, in that time, write three books and try to get one of the three to take off? I don’t think there’s any right answer; they’re both valid ways to go. You could end up writing that one book and, with your promotion, turn it into a big success that builds a name for you. Or you could be in hindsight wasting your time promoting it when it never ends up taking off.

    So you have to find the right balance for yourself. Part of the question that I would ask myself is, are you an engaging blogger? Can you write interesting things on a topic and build a platform that is not just about “Buy my book!”? Would it be something interesting and fun for people to read, and can you leverage that to make people interested in your writing? If you can, then blogging would certainly be helpful to you.

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  • 796

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    I am curious if professional writers ever get psyched out by their own works. When you are working on an epic series, such as 'The Stormlight Archive', do you ever have moments of doubt in your ability to see it through to completion? Does it ever feel overwhelming that you have so many volumes ahead of you to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's not the part that psychs me out. Length doesn't do that to me, particularly when I have a series well planned and I have a feel for how each book is going to be distinctive. This really helped me with the Mistborn series, for instance-when I planned it out, I planned each book to have its own identity. That kept me interested in them.

    No, what psychs me out is that sometimes something just turns out really well, like The Way of Kings, and then I immediately start thinking, "I have to do that again, and I don't know how I did it in the first place." Writing becomes a very instinctive thing.

    Most of the time when I talk about the process of writing, I'm analyzing what I've done after the fact. The truth of it is that right in the moment, right when you're sitting there working on a book, a lot of that stuff isn't going through your head. You're just running on instinct at that point. So it's easy to get psyched out when you're not sure if you can ever do it again.

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  • 797

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    Do you feel that each new book you release should be better than the last? Is that something you think about while writing, or do you just do the best job that you can and hope that your works improve naturally over time with your skill?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It really depends on the project. Yes, I want every book to improve, but that's a bit of a platitude. It's an easy thing to say. It gets a bit different when you sit down to think about it.

    I followed The Way of Kings with The Alloy of Law. Is The Alloy of Law a better book than The Way of Kings? No, it is not. The Way of Kings I spent somewhere around ten years working on; with The Alloy of Law I had a couple of months. In the case of a book like that, I sit down and say, okay, there are things I want to learn in this process. Different books are going to have a different feel. Now, there are people out there who like The Alloy of Law better than The Way of Kings—it's not a better book, but there are people who will enjoy it more.

    When I sat down to write Warbreaker, I said I wanted to get better at a certain type of humor. And I think I did get much better at that, in that book. Is the book itself better than The Hero of Ages that came before it? I do some things better, but it's hard to compare a standalone volume to the third book in an epic trilogy. They're going to do very different things.

    So it's hard to say "better book"/"not better book." I think "always learning and growing" is a better way to put it than getting better with each book.

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  • 798

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    Writing an epic series over many years will surely gather you many fans and many haters. In the case of Robert Jordan, it seems like bad reviews and fan backlash mounted up with each new volume as the series went on. Is that something you are concerned about? Do you try to figure out why people responded that way to that series and work to avoid a similar situation with your own, or do you just disregard the naysayers in general?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Of these things that you've asked me questions on, this is the one that I've spent the most time thinking about. It is an interesting phenomenon. Each Wheel of Time book sold more copies than the one before it, yet each one up through book ten got more and more negative reviews. They start out strong, then a few of the books have balanced numbers of reviews, and then they start to take a nosedive—even as the sales of the books go up and up.

    The same thing has happened with my own books—as they have grown more popular, they've gotten worse and worse reviews. It's very interesting. You can watch a book like Elantris, which when it came out had more or less universal acclaim, partially I think based on expectations. People read it thinking, hey, there's this brand new author, it probably isn't that good—hey, this book isn't half bad! And then they go and write reviews on Amazon. There are a number of early reviews there that say, wow, this wasn't half bad! This new guy is someone to watch!

    As you gain a reputation, more and more people pick you up by reputation—simply hearing "This is a great book" and picking it up, rather than looking into the book and deciding it's a book they will like. That's going to lead to more people picking up the book who it's just not a good match for. I think that certainly is part of it.

    I do also think that there is epic series sprawl; there's a legitimate complaint against these series like the Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire. I think the fans still like the books, but they have complaints about how they're happening. George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan are really doing some new and unique things. Robert Jordan didn't get to read any ten-book epic fantasy series of that nature; he had to do it on his own without a model to follow. I think that as we go forward in the genre, hopefully we're picking up on things—we're standing on the shoulders of giants, and hopefully we will figure out how we can do this without necessarily sprawling quite so much, which I think is part of the problem. There's this push and pull in epic fantasy where we read epic fantasy because we love the depth of characterization and world building, and yet if the author does too much of that in every book, then we lose the ability to move forward in a central plot. That can be very frustrating.

    I will say that when I was able to read the Wheel of Time from start to finish, having the complete story, that feeling that it wasn't going anywhere in places just wasn't there. That feeling came because you would wait two years for a book, and then when you finished it you'd have to wait two more years for the next book, and because of the nature of the epic series you're just getting a little tiny sliver of the story. So that part of it is just the nature of the beast, but I think we can do things to mitigate that, and I will certainly try.

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  • 799

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Inivisible Vanguard

    Lastly, what advice can you give to new and unknown authors with limitless ambition who want to write epic fantasy and/or sci-fi books? From my own personal research, it appears that agents and publishers do not want long word counts from new authors. Is it best to start simple with shorter stories and work your way up to your true love: the epic, or should you just go for it and write as much as you deem necessary and pitch your grand masterwork as a whole?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are so many questions in there that are going to be very situationally dependent. If you have not already written a few novels, I would say absolutely do not write your grand epic yet. You won't have the skill to do it, and it will disappoint you. I've run across a lot of new writers who this has happened to. They want to do their own Wheel of Time, but they don't yet have the skill to achieve it. I tried this myself and learned this the hard way.

    That's not to say that it's impossible to do, but I strongly recommend to most writers to try a few other books first. Standalones or something, to really get your head around the idea of characterization and plotting and narrative arcs before you say, okay, I'm going to tell a story across ten books instead.

    If you are confident of your skill, and find that you are just incapable of writing anything else? Writing is the most important thing. If something makes you not write, then it's usually going to be bad advice no matter who it comes from. So then I suggest just writing and loving what you're writing. If you can somehow style your book as "a standalone with sequel potential," then that's probably a better way to go.

    This is not just for publishers and agents. New readers have a built-in skepticism toward a new author who is trying something that massive. I've found that a lot of readers like to try the standalone to find out what kind of writer you are, before they then read your big series. Having a couple of standalones has been very useful for me for that reason.

    At the end of the day, just write what you love. Yes, editors and agents say they want shorter books. This is because historically it has been proven to them that authors trying to write books that are too long for them bite off more than they can chew and the book spirals out of control. But the draft of Elantris that was the first thing I sold was 250,000 words. That's a full 100,000 words longer than what everyone was telling me agents won't even look at. So by empirical proof: They will look at a longer book if it works for them. So write what you love—if you can get into your head that you're going to do this professionally, and that you have years to learn how to do this, then that's going to help you. Taking the time to practice with shorter works will help you get ready to write your epic. But if you just can't do that, then go for it.

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  • 800

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    You’ve been nominated for and have won several awards, but what kept you going before this kind of affirmation?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The hardest point for me was when I was trying to break in. I wrote thirteen novels before I sold one.

    Nalini Haynes

    Wow. Congratulations for persevering.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I say that to people and sometimes my editors shake their heads and say, ‘Don’t tell people that; they’ll think that you’re awful.’

    I was not very good at this when I started. I think a lot of authors do that. I’ve come to realise that the thing holding me back for a lot of years was the unwillingness to revise. I was one of those authors who like to write a book, be done with it and move on. Then I would say, ‘Oh, I’ll write the next one really well.’ I liked writing. I really enjoyed that process, but there were some tough years in there, particularly after I started feeling that I was writing things that were really good, that were publishable, that were quite solid and I still kept getting rejections. People kept telling me the books I was writing were too long, I kept sending in these big massive epic fantasies.

    [Nalini pulls her copy of Way of Kings forward.]

    Yes. They kept saying these were too big and people aren’t really buying epic fantasy now...this is what the editors were saying.

    Nalini Haynes

    So that’s a fashion thing in the industry.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Mm-hm. I don’t know if they were right or not, but that’s what they were saying. So I decided to try writing what I felt the market was doing, and started chasing the market a little bit. I failed at that: I wrote a couple of books that were just awful. That’s the point when I really had my moment of ‘why am I doing this? What am I doing here?’ This was in 2001, maybe early 2002.

    I kind of had to make the decision that I was doing this for me. I was writing books because I loved books; I was doing it because I loved writing. I was going to write the type of book that I wanted to write. I had to decide I didn’t care if I didn’t get published. I decided I would keep writing books until I died, even if I ended up with seventy-five novels unpublished. I actually made that decision.

    The next book I wrote was The Way of Kings, throwing away all the stuff that people said to me. They tell me my books are too long, and I wrote a book that was twice as long as any book I had written before. They were telling me my books were too expensive, so I wrote one with thirty interior illustrations.

    While I was working on Way of Kings I actually sold my sixth book, which was Elantris, one of the ones I had written in the era when I really felt I was doing good work, before I decided to try chasing the market. At that point it was like: ‘Oh, I just sold one of those!’ It actually worked out for me, but it was about eighteen months after I made that decision, that I eventually sold a book in 2003. Since then I’ve had the conviction that I do this because I love it. I haven’t had to have the affirmation to push me along, but it’s great that people do enjoy my books. I certainly wouldn’t be making a living at it if people didn’t enjoy it, but I’d still be writing.

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  • 801

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Because you just love writing so much.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s what I do. It’s who I am. During the years before, I worked the graveyard shift at a hotel so I could write while I was at work. I don’t know if I’d have been able to keep doing that at minimum wage, but maybe, I don’t know. I probably would have had to find a job where I could do some writing at work or that left me with writing brain space. I don’t know what I would have ended up doing. I do have a Masters, so maybe I would have gone on and taught English, I don’t know. I’m glad it worked out. I’m not really trained for anything else.

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  • 802

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Does the Masters of English help these days with revision now that you have got to the point where you are revising?

    Brandon Sanderson

    To be perfectly honest, I love my Masters degree—I’m glad I did it—but it’s like 2% help where practice is 98%. You don’t need schooling to become a writer; you need practice. Practice and good feedback. Granted, in the Masters degree I met a couple of people who gave me good feedback, but I met many outside who gave me good feedback as well. For those writers out there: really, practice, practice, practice.

    You can learn as much from a good book about writing—like Stephen King’s On Writing or something—as you can learn in a college course. Most college courses are ‘write a book and workshop it.’ You can do that on your own. I did enjoy my Masters degree. It was fun to get help learning about the philosophy of writing, but you don’t need to know the philosophy of writing in order to write. You need to know the philosophy of writing to write about writing.

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  • 803

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Do you feel any added pressure after winning all of those awards?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. I feel more indebted to the readers. The awards are nice but it is more that I don’t want to disappoint the readers. Awards are a reflection of that, so it really is more of the same thing. With the Wheel of Time books, I have a readership to whom I owe a lot. Those books don’t belong to me; they belong to the fans. I want those books to be as good as they can be, so the fans get what they’ve been waiting for all these years. With my own books I feel very excited about being able to do this for a living. There are a lot of writers who want to do this for a living; it’s like I owe the community to make good on this chance that I’ve been given, and do the best work I can, and to keep at it, because there are so many who would like to be doing what I’m doing.

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  • 804

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    How does it feel to finish a series of which you are such a fan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Bittersweet. Definitely bittersweet. I followed this for so many years that it’s been a big part of my life for many, many years, so ending it is really, really weird. I can remember picking up that first Wheel of Time book when it came out in 1990: this is after I’d spent a summer discovering fantasy novels. The first paperback of the Wheel of Time was that Fall I believe, and it’s been with me ever since.

    It’s really the only series I’ve followed all the way along, so it’s really weird. On the one hand I’m like stepfather to millions of people. On the other hand it’s just me the fan trying to make sure that this thing is as wonderful as I want it to be as a fan. All those things together are a huge amount of pressure.

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  • 805

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    I heard you were supposed to write one book but it turned into three.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. The length of what of I was writing hasn’t changed. Robert Jordan was saying that the last book would be so big that they’d need a wheelbarrow to get it out of bookstores. I just wrote it at that length. The publisher and Robert Jordan’s widow decided that it should be three books and so we did split it. But the whole time I’ve just been riding along on the outline as I developed it and as I was given it. There is really not much of a story there, it’s just that they decided to slice it and I said go ahead.

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  • 806

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    I heard a few years back that the new author was supposed to have actually met Robert Jordan while he was in hospital?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, I did not. I saw him once at a convention, just as a fan and that’s it. I never met him for real. I didn’t know him. I was chosen because his wife was his editor; before he passed away he asked her to find somebody to finish his series. Since she was an editor, he felt she could handle this. She chose me based on my works. I didn’t know I was being considered; I didn’t apply for it. She read Mistborn and called me.

    Nalini Haynes

    Wow.

    Brandon Sanderson

    As an aside to that, I was known as a fan of his work, which is why she went to read mine. She was looking for somebody who had, vocally, said they liked the Wheel of Time who was also a writer.

    Nalini Haynes

    I read your eulogy on the website. It was very much ‘wow and I hope it gets finished’.

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  • 807

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    A reader asked what it was like reading the Wheel of Time drafts and not being able to discuss the story with your fellow fans.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, I’m usually pretty open, as a writer. If you look at my blog I talk about what I’m working on, but I can’t do that with the Wheel of Time. That has been a little bit hard for me, to be more closed mouthed. It is a project that requires some closed-mouthedness; the fans are really dedicated. If you say one word, they’ll parse that word, figure out what you meant by it, and spend hours discussing it, so you’ve really got to be on your toes. Fortunately I’ve been able to discuss it with my wife who was included in the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and with Robert Jordan’s two assistants. I do have people to talk to about it. It hasn’t been as hard as having to be on my toes, making sure I haven’t said the wrong thing lest I give a clue as to what is going to happen.

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  • 808

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    A reader also asked how does it feel knowing that a generation of readers are literally holding their collective breath and waiting?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It makes pressure, but it certainly feels daunting to think of things like that, because there’s a lot riding on this book. It had better be good; I’m working my best to make sure that it is.

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  • 809

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    That leads beautifully into the next reader question: are you worried that fans will want to throw you into Shayol Ghul for the Dark One to feast upon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    [laughter] Yes and no. The ending of the actual book Robert Jordan wrote himself, so I can at least depend on that, being, you know—

    Nalini Haynes

    True to the original.

    Brandon Sanderson

    True to the original. Years ago now, when I first read the end, I felt very satisfied by it as a fan. I think that ending is good. My job is to get us there without screwing up in between. Hopefully they won’t want to throw me in. I mean, this is the last battle and there are some casualties...Even so I’m hoping that doesn’t cause them to want to throw me into the pit. I do the best I can, and hope.

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  • 810

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Have you felt torn between writing your own original work and finishing Robert Jordan’s legacy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, because when I agreed to this, in my mind was the knowledge that I was going to have to set aside some projects in order to work on this. That was part of the decision process for me. It’s not to say that there hasn’t been a sacrifice, because there has been, but it was one I went into knowing that I was going to make one, and that I was going to be dedicated. So there wasn’t as much feeling being torn because, originally starting off, I had to say, ‘Okay, this book, this book and this book, I’m setting aside. I will try to find time for The Way of Kings,’ and I did find time for that, but I had to set aside a bunch of other projects. There’s one book I wrote in 2007 that I haven’t had time to revise yet, some little things like that I did set aside.

    I knew the Wheel of Time was going to be a majorly large project. I didn’t know it was going to take quite as long as it has. I’m getting a little bit antsy to get back to a few of the things I set aside, but that’s only because now I’ve got the last book done and I’m in revisions, and I’m always antsy during revisions to move on. That’s just how I am: I talked about that earlier. The revision process is my least favourite process of the whole thing. I am eager to move on now that I actually have the whole book done, but it can’t be done yet. I have to do more drafts—we’re at draft number five right now. I do twelve drafts on Wheel of Time books.

    Nalini

    Wow, that’s a lot, especially with the size of those books.

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  • 811

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    What would you like to share with readers about your works?

    Brandon Sanderson

    To the fans: I’m just delighted that you guys enjoy what I’m doing, and thank you all for supporting me. The response to my books in Australia has just been amazing. Deep thanks for reading and for sticking with me. I do a lot of weird things and I do that intentionally because I feel the fantasy genre has a lot of room left to grow and explore. I love what has come before, but it seems like during the 80s and 90s, fantasy really narrowed in on one major type of fantasy, at least the very popular fantasies.

    I think we have a big explosion of possibility coming. George R.R. Martin has started that: he’s taken fantasy in a different direction, really blending some historical with some gritty realism and some epic fantasy all together; he does some really fascinating things. I think that is only one of the ways of approaching fantasy that lots of people are now doing in their books. I’m really excited about the fantasy genre.

    Recently I was happy to write Mistborn, which is kind of a modernist take on fantasy where it was kind of a little bit self-aware. Now jumping ahead with Alloy of Law and doing fantasy: this is a fantasy book where the epic fantasy trilogy became the foundation for a more urban fantasy trilogy set with a more modern technology. I love doing that: I love seeing where I can take the genre, and people are sticking with me.

    I appreciate that there was a time back in the 80s where if you put guns in your fantasy nobody read it. There was kind of a rule: no guns. It’s dangerous to do something different...Not dangerous, but it’s a little bit worrisome when you do this as an author. Will people follow you along rather than sticking to one series and doing it as one big massive epic? They have stuck with me, so I appreciate it.

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  • 812

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Each of these books has a strong theme of religious tolerance and acceptance of others: how does that relate to your personal faith?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am a religious person. I am LDS, Mormon. I am fascinated by religion in all its different aspects. My religious nature meshes with my storyteller’s nature. The storyteller in me seeks to explore as many different ways of thinking as possible in my fiction.

    One of the ways that I explore the world is by saying: let’s take this person who believes like me and this person who believes very differently from me, and let them have a conversation and see what grows out of it. In a lot of ways fiction is about trying to see through as many different eyes as possible, at least for me, so you find these explorations.

    Mixed with that is, being a religious person, I think the misuse of religion for the wrong purposes is one of the most purely evil things that can exist in the world. Actually I think the atheists and I would agree on that. I also find myself exploring that; what happens when you misuse religion for the wrong purposes. Like I said, I am a philosopher at heart, and so being able to look at these different philosophies of life is very interesting to me. Religion, religious tolerance, religious intolerance in characters is what I’m trying to show: how the world works through their eyes.

    Nalini Haynes

    You're showing all the colors of the rainbow.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I try. I try very hard. As a writer you have to try to make an argument for someone—whether it’s an argument where you believe their view personally or you don’t—your characters have to be true to themselves. You have to be able to make the argument strong enough that someone who holds that view dearly, reading the book says, ‘Yes, that’s my argument, that’s how I would make it.’ That’s tough but I think it’s vital. Nothing ruins a book for me more than someone who expresses my viewpoint in a book and I find them making a weak argument, not making the argument the way I would, just so that they can be taught a lesson. That ruins the story for me. It is no longer a story; it’s preaching. If you’re going to have characters who are strong, they need to espouse strong beliefs and express them strongly in a way that is not lukewarm. I believe that, so I try hard.

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  • 813

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    I am currently reading Warbreaker and I am loving what Vivenna is going through, questioning herself and her motivations.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you, I appreciate that. That book, in my mind, the English professor version, is a book about reversals. Different people have to fulfill roles that they didn’t expect they would have to fulfill. Characters that you don’t expect doing things—the twists and turns are about reversing people’s roles in the plot. Hopefully that theme works for you as you finish the book.

    Nalini Haynes

    Yes, I’m very close. [Shows Brandon the bookmark in Warbreaker.]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, wow, so you’ve hit most of them already.

    Nalini Haynes

    I was trying to get it finished before the interview, but I’m getting there.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s all right. Yeah.

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  • 814

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    You were a missionary in Seoul.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was.

    Nalini Haynes

    Has this cross-cultural experience influenced your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it has, quite a bit. One of the things you notice is that once you go live in a different culture, it opens your eyes to the different ways people can think, and how varied it is. Learning a new language and being immersed in it really opens your eyes to how language can affect thought and thought process.

    Beyond that, growing up as a white male American, I never had to be the outsider. Living in a culture where suddenly you are, even though I was a privileged minority, not an underprivileged minority—I don’t know if there is a place you can go in the world where a white male American is an underprivileged minority—but just being a minority changes things. I think my writing grew much stronger.

    I would suggest to every American, particularly, that this is an experience that would be very good for them. We Americans do tend to be a little bit turned inward. In Europe you have to experience dual cultures and things like that. I don’t know how it is in Australia, but in the States it’s pretty easy to forget the rest of the world. That’s a criticism that is levelled against the States quite reasonably. Going among another culture, serving the people there and forgetting yourself for a while, is just a wonderful experience. Absolutely wonderful.

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  • 815

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    You released Warbreaker by installments on the Internet.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I did.

    Nalini Haynes

    The 21st century equivalent of Charles Dickens’ serial publications, except yours were free. Later you edited these chapters, releasing documents comparing the drafts so people can see the changes. What was this process like?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It did send my agent and editor into a bit of a panic. Fortunately I wasn’t very popular as a writer back then; well, not unpopular, but I didn’t have my current notoriety. I was doing all right; my books were selling fine; but I had not hit top gear as a fantasy writer yet. So me doing this did not send them into as much of a panic as it would have if I did that now. I still intend to do it again, but don’t tell them that. It was cool because it was something I hadn’t seen done before. The Web offers us the opportunity to do things like this. I thought I’d give it a try, and so I released it. They use the term crowdsourcing now; I was crowdsourcing my feedback.

    Instead of using a writing group, which I normally do, I released it to the fans to see what their reaction was. That’s dangerous because, as a writer, you have to learn to read between the lines when people are giving feedback rather than doing everything everyone suggests you. If you do everything everyone suggests to you, your book will be schizophrenic; it’s going to go all over the place. Some people will want one thing from it; some people will want another. You just can’t write to fan demands, otherwise you won’t have a cohesive story. But it was fun to see the responses and, as a writer, if you can pick between the lines and see the legitimate problems and fix those in drafts, it can be a very big help and it can be fun. I think it did help, and it gave the fan base something.

    One thing they don’t talk a lot about in New York but one thing that is absolutely true is that fantasy and science fiction readers are very tech savvy. Every person who buys one of my books could get that book for free if they wanted to. They know how to find it, even if it is not just the library: finding it online. Every one of them can pirate the books. There is nothing we can do to stop that; in fact we should stop jumping up and down about it as much we do. Anytime I want to check, it takes me thirty seconds online to find a free copy of one of my books. Every person who is buying one of my books is doing it because they want to support me as a writer. So I want to do things to give back to those readers, to say: ‘I acknowledge that you are doing this, you are supporting me. You’re not just reading, you’re supporting me as a writer.’

    In a lot of ways it takes us back to this interesting image of Dickens, because during that era a lot of writers, in order to be an artist, would have a patron. That was how you became an artist in an earlier era. Now we are kind of moving back toward that model: the readers are our patrons; they choose to give us money. They don’t just read us, they choose to support us. So I try to do things like Warbreaker. The annotations of my books are another way I try to do this. I try to go chapter by chapter and write an annotation, an extra like a behind-the-scenes DVD commentary, if you will, on my books. And for anyone reading this interview, Warbreaker is still available for free on my website: the actual published version. DRM-free, just download it. And once you read it you can compare it to the first draft. I do this as a thank you to all the readers who support me in this.

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  • 816

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Some characters are there for you to hate, do you find that fans want you to change that character?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Reader feedback is an interesting thing. I’ll use the Wheel of Time as a model. When I took the Wheel of Time, I was a fan and reader. There were certain things that the super fan in me wanted to see happen and I had to say, ‘No, wait a minute. That would take the book into the ridiculous.’ If I put in all the cameos and brought back the characters with just the lines all the fans would love, I would risk turning the book into a comedy. With all the callouts and sendups, it turns into Shrek, which is just one huge pop culture extravaganza. That’s not what we want to do, not what we want to write. When fans are often asking for these things, they are not really asking for them.

    I think there are certain things, as a fan, that you do want: great moments, huge payoffs that were a long time coming; after waiting so many many years there are things you want to have come together, a climax you want to read—these are important. So walking that line is difficult, and working on the Wheel of Time has taught me how to do it better. Characters the fans love to hate—you get a sense of when you want to make sure they are in the fans’ face plenty, and when you want to back off.

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  • 817

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    When are the sequels for Way of Kings and Alloy of Law coming out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am working on revisions for the last Wheel of Time novel, and I have a number of revisions to do; I’m planning to be done with that around July. At that point I will write the sequel to Way of Kings. I feel very bad that people have to wait so long for the second book, but I plan to be much quicker in the future. And I plan to alternate a Way of Kings book and a Mistborn book after that.

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  • 818

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Are you planning to revise these books that haven’t been published and to reinvent them, so to speak?

    Brandon Sanderson

    If I do, I will write them from scratch. That’s what I did with Way of Kings when it came time to actually publish it—I sat down and wrote from page one to the end again, and threw away what I’d done just because my skills as a writer have gotten better. There is one book in that era—I guess there are two—that I will do for sure. But I will write them over from scratch. I always want to be releasing new stuff; I don’t want to—as my agent puts it—pull a novel out of the trunk and say, ‘Here, read this.’ But they are part of this grand story that I’m telling, so we will get to them.

    The thing about it to remember is that I want each of my stories, series and books to stand on their own. Even though there is this behind-the-scenes story, that won’t come to the forefront unless I do a story dedicated entirely to it. I don’t want you to have to have read Mistborn to read Way of Kings. They’re the Easter eggs; they’re all going to be Easter eggs unless I write a series all about them. In which case you’ll be brought up to speed very quickly, because the series will be out about them: you won’t have to read everything to understand that series.

    Nalini Haynes

    That sounds great.

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  • 819

    Interview: May, 2012

    Nalini Haynes

    Where are you planning to take us with your writing next?

    Brandon Sanderson

    [musingly] Next, where am I planning to take you? Certainly I want to try and do the Stormlight Archive, the Way of Kings series, in a way that I hope is just awesome. I have an advantage over people like Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin in that I’ve read Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin. The big epic fantasy series is a real challenge: to do a longer series and have it work. Have it not sag during the middle, in places. To have all the characters and the narrative remain tight. Having learnt the lessons of the great writers who have come before me, I think I can try this in a new way. So I’m really eager to give it a shot. Recently a writer did it in a way that it looks like the best it’s ever been done, which was Steven Erickson. I haven’t finished his series yet but, from the fan reaction and from what I’ve read of it, he seemed to get around that. I think there are great things we can still do with the epic fantasy genre. I want to try and explore them, I want to find what the great things we can do with the genre are and try to take us there.

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  • 820

    Interview: Jul 22nd, 2012

    emozilla

    Here's a video I took at LibertyCon of Brandon reading the A Memory of Light opening again. No new text (he actually stops a few paragraphs short) but he does talk about about why he structured the scene as he did. Sorry for the shakiness, it was taken on my iPhone (my arms were pretty sore near the end!).

    (Transcript)

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, the last wind scene. I spent a long time thinking about this one, and what I would do with this, because Jim had intended one book, so from the notes you can guess that there was only one wind scene indicated, and I had three to do, because of three books, and it felt very appropriate for me, as I was going over it, to have the wind come out of the Two Rivers. It felt appropriate to me; it felt thematic with the first book—if you go back and look at the wind scene from the first book—and I actually had it blow across the course of book one, basically. We don't get all the way up where book one is, but we head out to Caemlyn, and then they kind of veer off. The point of this scene is kind of...again, it set everything that's been happening—where we are, and what's going on—but I also felt that this is a book of contrasts. This is a book of stark, stark whites and deep, deep blacks. It's named A Memory of Light for that reason, and so I wanted to end the scene at Rand laughing, with warm light spilling out of his tent, and that's kind of what we've got going on there—the contrast that's going on in this land—and there is this pool of light right there, represented in him, and that's our metaphor for this whole book: death, destruction, and the Dragon Reborn.

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  • 821

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You have written extensive essays about the usefulness to fantasy authors of having rules that govern their system of magic. Do you these inscribed on a stone tablet above your computer or are they closer to guidelines?

    Brandon Sanderson

    [Laughs.] They're definitely closer to guidelines. The thing about them is, when I write out these rules, I'm really getting at things that I'm figuring out as I go along. A lot of these things I did more instinctively earlier in my career, but as I realized what was making better stories for me, I came up with these methodologies for ways to approach fantasy. That means that in some of my books, I don't follow them 100 percent because I'm still figuring them out. It's really just a way of looking at writing for myself that helps me create better stories.

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  • 822

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You have written essays about two of "Sanderson's Laws" thus far. Are there other laws?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, there are, but I haven't managed to get them pithy enough, which is why there are no essays about them. [Laughs.] Once they solidified in my mind and I can explain them in a way that's entertaining, I'll put them up. The essays are trying to explain my process in an interesting and entertaining way.

    There is another one I'm trying to work on about how everything should be interconnected in a fantasy world. Let's go historical: Say everyone can change lead into gold. It doesn't just change making a few people wealthy. It changes the entire dynamic of the economy; it's going to change power balance for kingdoms and governments; the people who can do this will become resources and powerhouses. It changes everything.

    In fantasy, one of the big things we need to do is explain the ramifications of making small changes. Figuring out how to reduce that to a pithy law is something I haven't figured out yet, but that will be Sanderson's Third Law, at length. We'll figure out how to do that eventually.

    Footnote

    The essays referred to are: Sanderson's First Law; Sanderson's Second Law.

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  • 823

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You teach creative writing at Brigham Young University, right?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I got my master's degree there in English with a creative writing emphasis. While I was doing it, the teacher who was teaching the genre fiction-focused creative writing course wanted to retire. They came to me—I had a book deal at that point—and asked me if I wanted to take over the class. I've taught it these 10 years or so. It's the only class I teach. I wouldn't call myself a real professor, but I do have this one class I get to play with and have fun teaching as an adjunct every year.

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  • 824

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You could argue your essays on writing are aimed at prospective writers. Do you see those posts as a forum similar to a classroom?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, when I do my podcast, I target it that direction. We actually put the lectures from my most recent class online for free. Why do I do this? Well, when I was breaking into this and figuring out writing, writing is a hard thing to figure out because it's so individual. Lots of people offer advice, but yet, for any person offering advice, myself included, a lot of the advice won't work for every writer. What really helped me was the fact that there were a number of authors talking about how their process works and talking about their process and demystifying it, to the point that I was able to get help from a lot of different places. I think it made my writing a lot better. My goal is to do some of the same and let people know how it worked for me. Hopefully, it will help them figure out how it works for them.

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  • 825

    Interview: Jul 17th, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    About The Wheel of Time:

    Brandon delivered a little preamble/update on the progress of the book before reading the portion of Chapter One. "We are on time. Well, okay, we're late but we're on time enough that we're going to hit the January 8th [release date]."

    He went on to explain, "We know you were hoping we could push it up to a November release, but we need the extra time to make sure we get this right. [Unlike The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight] we don't get another chance at this. This is the last book."

    Further, Brandon mentioned that he had been up until 5 AM revising the novel, but added that he kind of likes to do that impulsively anyhow.

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  • 826

    Interview: Jul 17th, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    On the origins of the Mistborn series and his writing process:

    "I'm always searching for ideas that I can connect into a larger story. I feel that a book is more than just one idea. A good book is a collection of ideas, a good idea for each character, something that forms the core of their conflict. Some ideas come from the setting, or something that's going to drive the economy, something that's going to, for me, drive the magic [system]."

    Brandon continued to explain his process by demonstrating how the Mistborn series came together. "I was watching the Harry Potter movies and I was thinking about The Lord of the Rings and while I like the idea of the hero's journey, I began thinking about how the dark lord in these stories gets the raw end of the deal. So I wanted to write a book where the dark lord wins. Although that's kind of a downer."

    Brandon explained that he shelved that idea until he could figure out how to make a story where the villain wins not be so bleak. "It took me a little while to figure out what to with that idea. Then I was watching one of my favorite movies, Sneakers, and started thinking about how I hadn't seen an amazing heist story in fantasy ever. Little did I know Scott Lynch was going to release a great one only a year later!"

    The two ideas combined, Brandon continued, "like atoms that combine to create a molecule that's something different." The magic system in Mistborn was the same way, according to the author. Allomancy and Feruchemy were magic that had been designed for different worlds but worked really well together with the story of Mistborn.

    So Brandon set to work, filling out the gaps in the story by brainstorming along the way.

    One audience member noted that Brandon has a pattern of having his characters working towards a goal only to have that goal turn out to be the incorrect one, which prompted the author to discuss how he thinks of plot twists. "To figure out a good plot twist you want the reader or viewer to be surprised that it happened and then, as it's happening, realize they should have seen it coming. You can't always pull that off but when you can they're really great and that's what I'm shooting for."

    "I don't twist my plot just to twist it. My hope is that the more that is revealed, the more that you experience a hidden depth to the characters and their journeys. It's like life. Everyone you meet you make a snap judgment but then the more you get to know them the more depth they reveal. I want readers to experience that with my books. Part of why I like writing epic fantasies is because the story gives you the room to develop and explore that depth. Everything is about more than one thing."

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  • 827

    Interview: Jul 17th, 2012

    Question

    When asked if all his books occur in one universe:

    Brandon Sanderson

    While he was selling his initial works to publishers, Brandon was encouraged to write books set in different worlds as opposed to huge epic fantasy series. That way if a publisher didn't like one book he could pitch them a different one, which you can't do with a huge fantasy series. But as a way of still having a huge fantasy series, Brandon made all of these independent stories a "hidden epic." That is, he seeded continuing characters and elements into all of these different worlds, now dubbed the "cosmere".

    Elantris, the first book he sold, was one of the novels embedded with these elements so Brandon just kept putting them in subsequent novels. So far there is one character who appears in all of the worlds that he has created (i.e. not The Wheel of Time), sometimes by his name, Hoid, and sometimes only by appearance. He is connected to the grander story going on involving this cosmere.

    Right now Brandon wants this to remain a fun easter egg so no one feels obligated to read his books in the order they were published. He will eventually tell the story of the cosmere, though, and you will be able to see what this character is doing.

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  • 828

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    Do you think there is a "Brandon Sanderson's Guide to Fantasy Literature" in your future?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Umm...maybe. Honestly, if I were to do that, it would be a long way off. I still think there's a lot I need to learn about this whole process before I can put it down in words. There many people who have done a great job at that in the past. Stephen King's book is great. Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy is great. There are a lot of wonderful resources out there already, and it's one thing for me to get up and talk about my process, but I feel like it's different to write a "this is how you do it" book. I'd like to have a decade or two under my belt before I do that.

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  • 829

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    In one of your essays, you write that you like "mystery more than...mysticism" in your novels. Elaborate on that.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I, as a reader, like the tension that comes from "Can I figure it out?" That's one of the things that keeps me reading, "What's going on here? Can I figure it out?" The difference is that mysticism is something you can't figure out. That's alright for the stories that do it that way, but I prefer to be able to look at it and go, "OK, something is going wrong."

    It goes back to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Many of his early stories about robots are about, "OK, these three laws are interacting in an interesting way." It's really a mystery—"Can you figure out what's going on here?" There's this wonderful pay off in reading where you go, "Wow, that just works so beautifully." That's one of the aspects of writing that I enjoy.

    We're talking a lot about magic systems, but any time this topic comes up, I like to point out that any good story is about characters. Magic is what fantasy does uniquely. Certainly it's a hallmark of our genre, and we need to approach the setting in a cool way for our stories, but if you don't have cool characters, the story is going to fail, no matter how great the magic is.

    My goal is to create a story that is an enjoyable read because the characters are enjoyable. Then, after that, I like to go with my magic system and try and make something you've never seen before. But no amount of world building is going to succeed if the characters are bland.

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  • 830

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You refer, somewhat illusively, to your "dreadful" first attempts at writing. How old were you when you wrote your first story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was, oh, 15, but I don't count that. When I'm talking about my dreadful stuff, I'm talking about my first serious attempt when I started when I was 19. Those were still bad, but that's when I first considered myself a writer. I think anyone you go to is going to have a story they wrote when they were 15 in creative writing class. The point is, I was still bad when I decided, "I'm going to be a writer."

    It takes time to learn to do this right. I spent 10 years figuring it out before I sold anything. That's consistently true across the board. Writers spend a decade figuring this out before they really start to get good. Whether they do it like J.K. Rowling did where they pick one story and slave over it for 10 years, or if they do what I did and write book after book trying to improve with each one. You find people divided along that line doing different things. It's not something you figure out immediately, for most of us.

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  • 831

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    What changed about you or your approach to writing that helped you cross the threshold from "dreadful" to "passable?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, I would say that there are hundreds of little eureka moments all along the way. Figuring out how to make characters work and not have them be just caricatures. Figuring out how to make a plot twist pop off the page at the end. Figuring out how to make the magic system work. Each of those is a little Eureka moment for me.

    Putting it all together over time and learning how to revise takes effort. Learning to write a book is a lot closer to learning to hit a baseball than people realize. I talk about the process a lot, but that's me analyzing it after the fact. When a batter gets up there to swing at a ball, they've practiced tons and tons and tons. They've gone over fundamentals and learned what those fundamentals need to be. They might think about that for a minute, but when they swing, it all just clicks and they swing at the ball.

    That's actually what writers do a lot of times when they're writing a story. Yes, they've practiced the fundamentals, and they've written a lot before, but when they sit down to write a story, they just let it flow and the muscle memory takes over. After the fact, you go back and look at it and revise it and try to figure out what you're doing wrong, but there's more instinct to this—instinct born of practice—than people assume.

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  • 832

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    How many attempts did you make to publish before you wrote Elantris?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Elantris was my sixth novel. I was working on my 13th when I sold Elantris. It was not publishable when I first wrote it; it took several revisions and drafts. It was probably somewhere around book nine that I was really figuring things out, I feel. I like to write and jump projects. Instead of finishing one and slaving over it to make it much better, which may have been better for me in the long run, I would always jump to something new.

    For new writers, I always advise balancing those two. When you finish a book, write another one, but then go back to your first one and work it over to see if you can make it better. Then, go write a third one and go back to the second one and see if you can make it better.

    Do that instead of doing what I did, where you finish a book and go, "Hmm...that one was good, but I can do better?" and then writing another book and ignoring the first one. Elantris was the first one that I really dug into revisions on, and it ended up paying off.

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  • 833

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    Under what circumstances did you met Robert Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I never met him. I saw him once at a convention, and that was it. I was chosen, unbeknownst to me, by his wife Harriet when she was looking for someone. Mistborn ended up in her hand, she read it, and she called me. I didn't know what was happening, but she asked me if I was interested [in writing the last novel].

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  • 834

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    What, in your mind, makes the Wheel of Time series so popular? Why has it retained an audience that is willing to wait so long for it to conclude?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think it's depth of characterization. That's something that Robert Jordan was phenomenal at. His use of third-person viewpoint gets you really close and intense with these characters, and you fall in love with them.

    He was also very subtle with foreshadowing, which I appreciate. He did a great job with that. And his world building is quite spectacular. He has a magic system that straddles that line between hard and soft, and I really love a lot of the things he did with it.

    Those things all came together, but first and foremost, it was characters people love. He did that viewpoint so well. When you're in someone's head, you feel like you know them. These characters became my friends growing up; they're like my high school buddies. I can only assume that that happened with a lot of readers.

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  • 835

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    What sense of responsibility did you feel when Jordan's widow approached you to take over The Wheel of Time with 10 novels have so firmly established the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was just hoping I wouldn't screw it up. I've said this a number of times that anyone approaching it was going to screw it up, to an extent. This is Robert Jordan's work, not mine, and there's no way I can do the job he would have done. My goal is just to screw it up the least of anyone who would have been given this job. I wanted the characters to remain themselves. I felt like if I could do that, everything else would fall in line.

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  • 836

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You've mentioned baseball a number of times, so what's your batting on screwing it up as little as possible, at this point?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So far, it's pretty good. There are a few things I got wrong, particularly in The Gathering Storm that I feel I did much better in Towers of Midnight and hope to do even better in A Memory of Light.

    Comparing it to batting averages, I would say I'm doing a decent job. What is that? A .28? [Laughs.] Percentage wise, I'm doing better than that—maybe 85 to 90 percent of the things I needed to be doing I've been able to hit.

    There's still that 10 percent that fans have to be lenient with me on, to some extent, because no one is going to get it to 100. I can hope to push it higher than I have, but there are certain things I've done that I've done a worse job on than I would have liked. There were some characters I didn’t quite get right in the first book.

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  • 837

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    How definitive was Robert Jordan's outline for the final Wheel of Time novels? Was there any room left for you to find your own path?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There was a lot of room, and it's been a true collaboration. Wherever he left information, I tried to follow what he directed, but there were huge gaps that he didn't explain, and I got to do what I thought the story needed at those points.

    Casey Phillips

    So it was more a series of landmarks to hit than a point-by-point road map.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, certainly. That's a really good way to explain it. He wrote the last scene himself, for instance, and big chunks of the prologue and, interspersed through that, viewpoints from different characters. There were notes that his assistants gathered for me when during his last months they asked him a lot of questions.

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  • 838

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    What was your reaction to reading Jordan's notes for the series' conclusion?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was very satisfied. I was very satisfied with the ending.

    Casey Phillips

    How would you characterize the ending?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really don't want to give any spoilers, and I'm worried that anything I say here the Wheel of Time fans will read to much into. I would characterize it as the right ending for the series, and that's basically all I can say.

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  • 839

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    What was the impetus for splitting the last novel into three novels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was writing it to the length he instructed it was to be written. He wanted it to be so long, he said, that “it would take a wheelbarrow to get it out the doors.” The publisher and Harriet decided that was too long. I was supposed to split it into three novels because of the length I was writing it at. It came down to binding issues and things like that.

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  • 840

    Interview: Jul 20th, 2012

    Casey Phillips

    You're close to finishing the last draft of A Memory of Light, which will publish in January. How does it feel knowing the series is almost done?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, ask me in January, because I still see a huge mound of work ahead of me getting the last revision done and the copy edits and things like that. Ask me in January.

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  • 841

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    I finished the final revision on A Memory of Light early in the morning Saturday, then sent it off to Team Jordan. And I was done. Team Jordan will handle the copyedits and proofreads; I might have a chime-in now and then on how a passage should be tweaked or how a continuity issue should be addressed, but essentially, my involvement as a writer in the Wheel of Time has come to an end.

    Now, that doesn't mean my involvement with Wheel of Time fandom is over. I'll have my appearance at Dragon*Con this year, as well as the tour in January for A Memory of Light. Beyond that, I intend to frequently attend JordanCon and be available to WoT fans for years, even decades, to come. I intend to talk a great deal about the experience of writing these books, perhaps even post some blog entries about the subject.

    But the writing is done. I'm still a little in shock about that.

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  • 842

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Just about five years ago, I got that fateful call from Harriet. Since that time, I have always had a Wheel of Time book that I needed to be working on. Occasionally I would take breaks, as I did to write The Alloy of Law a couple years ago. However, the knowledge that I soon needed to be back to work on the Wheel of Time was always there.

    That work has been my constant companion. For reference, when I got that call, I had only released a couple of books: the second Mistborn novel had come out the month before. I had written others that were awaiting publication—including several Alcatraz books, the last Mistborn book, and Warbreaker. I also had a draft done of The Way of Kings, another done of The Rithmatist, and some preliminary work done on a book called Steelheart.

    Yes, I'd written a lot. I still had only a handful of books out in stores. It had been two years since Elantris was released. I was brand new at this.

    I still feel brand new. Yet, oddly, I also feel weathered. Finishing the Wheel of Time has been a wonderful experience, but it has also been grueling. I have always respected Robert Jordan, but now I respect him even more—and for a multitude of reasons. One of those is the fact that during most of his career, he was able to release a Wheel of Time book every year or two. That's an awesome amount of work. Doing three books has worn me out.

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  • 843

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    For five years, whatever I've been doing—whether it be going out to dinner, sitting down to write, or checking my email—I've known that there was more to do on the Wheel of Time. I've known that I gave my word to Harriet and to the fans that I would work hard to get those books out quickly, and I carried a weight of responsibility for the book being split and people being forced to wait years beyond when they expected to get the ending. For five years, I have worked long hours because of those reasons. All the time I could find, I dedicated to the Wheel of Time in one way or another.

    And then, today, I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on.

    I've reached the end of the journey and set down my burdens. It's wonderful, relaxing, and solemn all at once. I love the Wheel of Time. It's also great to be done.

    And so, today, I officially take a step toward a line. I step away from being pilot of this series, and toward once again being just a fan. I will never cross back over that line—whatever else happens, I will have written three books in this series. I will continue to support and engage with Wheel of Time fandom. However, an ending has arrived for me, and it is time for my attention to be turned elsewhere.

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  • 844

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    It has been an incredible experience finishing the Wheel of Time. I hope that some of you who were with me on that journey will join me for the Stormlight books, but I want to note that I don't automatically assume that if someone reads the Wheel of Time they will read my other work. I occasionally have someone come through one of my signing lines who feels guilty for "only" having a Wheel of Time book. There is no need to feel guilty for this; I love the Wheel of Time as you do, and we share that. I'm glad you've enjoyed some of my writing, and I feel as close to those books as I do to any I've written. Yes, the Wheel of Time is not mine. But those three books are mine. I love them just as much as any I've worked on.

    I look forward to continuing to meet many of you at conventions and signings as the years move forward. Thank you, Wheel of Time fandom, for accepting me in and putting up with my mistakes. (There have been many.) Thank you, Brandon Sanderson fandom, for putting up with my deviations in the Wheel of Time universe. I know it has slowed down you getting your books, but this was something very important for me to do.

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  • 845

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Robert Jordan was a great man, and was the single greatest influence on my development as a writer. What I have done these last five years has been an attempt—a sometimes flawed but always earnest attempt—to show my appreciation. This entire genre owes him an enormous debt. My debt to him, and to Harriet, is greatest of all.

    Mr. Jordan, may you rest in the Light. Everyone else, take a breath and get ready for the end. May you find his final words as satisfying to read as I did when I first picked them up five years ago. The very last scene is his, touched very little by me, as are significant chunks of the ending at large. I have achieved my goal in writing the books so that they pointed toward this ending he wrote, allowing us to include his words with as little alteration as possible.

    Once again, thank you. May you always find water and shade.

    Brandon Sanderson
    Written July 30th, 2012
    Posted August 1st, 2012

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  • 846

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Jennifer Liang

    So, for people who don't stalk you on the Twitter, how about you tell us how far you are right now in the revision process.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My progress bar is not updated because I'm lazy—I need to tell Peter to update that when I post. I'm 50% through—maybe more like 55% of the way through the final revision of the last book. So, the final revision, here's how the process goes for those who are curious: I turned in the book like January 1st. At that point, that was first draft. Usually, I don't do revisions from editorial revisions on the first draft. I actually go through it a second time and do a second draft, and that's what I turn in. If I can get the time, I turn in a third draft. This time I turned in a second draft, so I did first draft and I said, "Okay, wait two weeks and let me get ahead of you in the second draft," and I was just sending them chunks as I finished the second draft. There's not time on this book to do the whole thing straight through and then send it, and things, and so they then start sending back things, and I start the third draft immediately, and we keep doing that until we get to this one which is seventh draft, I think is where we are right now—somewhere in there—like I've been, some of them I would do two drafts while I was waiting for things back on theirs.

    Anyway, and they just kept feeding me sixth draft sort of stuff that [had] been sitting on my computer, and they finally got the last of that to me last week which means that Maria and Alan and Harriet are all done, and it's all on me just to finish the last tweaks that they've requested in the book, and that's what this draft is, is the last tweaks. Things that they say, "Hey, we need this little thing fixed; we need to add this thing to this scene," or all that little stuff. Nothing major is happening in this one. I did add one new scene in this draft that I felt we needed but it's kind of a short one—it's only like five pages—um, but yeah, so that's where we are. My hope is, and goal is, to be able to turn it in next week some time. I dunno how viable that is. I'm probably way past 55% as I think about it, because I've been working each night. I was at 50% on like Wednesday, so I'm probably around the two-thirds mark, or something, right now, and then that will be it; it'll go to copy-edit and proofreads, all of which are handled by Team Jordan, of which I don't do anything unless they come up with a major continuity error or something like that. Somewhere in there, it will hopefully go to our lovely beta readers to make sure that I didn't put people in two places, so...that Sulin doesn't end up in two places at once. They missed that one though, so you can blame all of us on that one.

    Jennifer Liang

    I was like, "Whoa, a Wheel of Time book, I'm gonna just read this; I can't talk to anybody about it."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. So, anyway, it'll go to copyedit and proofreads, and hopefully some beta reads for three months or so, and then it'll go to the printers, and that takes about...it's about a three month process, and they'll ship 'em here, and we ship 'em out to bookstores, and then that's when it comes out.

    Footnote

    The Sulin error was in The Gathering Storm, which had fewer beta readers than Towers of Midnight (Jenn was one of them), but the latter was on a tighter schedule which led to more typos, etc.

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  • 847

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Question

    So you were saying how you just added another scene recently, but do you think that'll be the actual last writing you do?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It probably will end up being the last actual writing, will be that scene.

    Question

    Is it sort of like, you know, cathartic to you, or is it...you're so close to the end...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm so close to the end...ask me after the end. It's really weird, adding these new scenes. It's kinda like the shawarma scene from The Avengers...you know, they added that way after the fact, and that becomes their last touch—of course they'll probably do a sequel and things—but it's weird to add these scenes that are just right in the middle of the book, and that's actually the last writing you do, and that's the last writing you'll do on the Wheel of Time, if I don't add any more scenes, it will be this random little scene that's really just there to patch a hole, where I'm like "Oh, I haven't...you know, never mentioned this; I didn't foreshadow this correctly; I need an extra little scene here." It's by no means the most powerful scene in the book—it's a set-up scene, and it might end up being the last scene that I did—so if you ask me after the book's out, I'll tell you what it is.

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  • 848

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Question

    [something about the prequels and fanfiction]

    Jennifer Liang

    Fan fiction has never really taken off in the Wheel of Time fandom. Partly the reason for that is because Robert Jordan did not like fanfic—he didn't like other people playing in his sandbox—and so when me and Jason became aware that he didn't like fanfic, we pretty much killed it on Dragonmount, and because we killed it on Dragonmount, that meant everybody else killed it too, because people pretty much follow our lead, so there's never really been a lot of fanfic in the Wheel of Time. There is some out there—if you look around you can find some like on fanfic.net—but it's never really taken off for whatever reason. And I think it's partly because we killed it very quickly, but I think it's also partly because a lot of what is special about the Wheel of Time is the unique voice of Robert Jordan, and for the most part other people writing in that universe, it's crap. Even if they're a really good writer, it's...[Brandon] is really the only person I like writing in the Wheel of Time universe other than Jim, so...I think that's another reason why it doesn't take off, because it's pretty obvious it's not Robert Jordan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right, the Wheel of Time is about Robert Jordan's voice in a lot of ways, and the reason we're all still reading this is because we like that voice. And there are books that are slower than other books, and those of us who just love his voice, love those books.

    Jennifer Liang

    It doesn't matter, I really like Crossroads of Twilight. I'm sorry!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, because that's what we're reading the books for. I mean, of course it's the characters also, but time with Jim and the characters is what these books are about, and as much as we like the epic battles and things, at their core it's Jim and the characters.

    Jennifer Liang

    Yeah, and it's his prose, and it's his writing style, and just the way he presents everything. And so, fanfic can't capture that.

    Joe O'Hara

    I think there's a real loyalty to him as an author as well when you find out, as a fan, that he doesn't like that kind of fanfiction, then you don't even feel inclined to do it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He was very—I mean, if you guys read the interviews—it was only like the last minutes that he changed his mind on even having the series finished by someone else. For years, he was gonna...what was it, burn his hard drives, and things like that...

    Jennifer Liang

    ...and salt the earth, yeah...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. There was going to be no ending. It was only like the last month or two that he said, "No, go ahead and find somebody and have it finished." So, yeah.

    Joe O'Hara

    We're all really glad that he said that.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, you almost didn't have this.

    Audience

    [something about hunting the guy down and taking his kneecaps]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.

    Jennifer Liang

    So, watch out for those kneecaps.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay. If my kneecaps float off mysteriously...

    Joe O'Hara

    That is mysterious.

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...and you see a shadow with the hat and a cane, and maybe a pipe... (laughter)

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  • 849

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Question

    When you were at DragonCon a few years ago, and that's the first time I saw you, and you were just starting on the endeavor at the time; I think you had just been selected...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Right. I could barely say the names right back then, and half the time I didn't say them right...

    Jennifer Liang

    You were so cute. (laughter)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. I was very, very scared of the Wheel of Time fandom...

    Jennifer Liang

    We were very scared of you; we didn't know what was gonna happen.

    Question

    ...so, the interesting thing is at the time, I think you said the first thing you did was you wanted to find out who killed Asmodean, and that got the whole room laughing at the time, and you talked about how you briefed yourself on all the material that was left, and [?] and everything, and you said Jim wanted one final novel, but you didn't see any way. You made an estimate of the number of words, hundreds of thousands of words...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. 800,000 was my initial estimate.

    Question

    And what did it end up being? I'm just curious.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It ended up being around, let's see...around nine, maybe ten...so, a hundred—or a million words, right around.

    Question

    It grew!

    Brandon Sanderson

    It grew a bit, yeah. And part of that is the fact of cutting it gave me a little more space to do that, and part of it was, you know, little touches here and there. You never can guess really exactly. It didn't grow by enormous amounts—it grew by maybe ten or twenty percent, which is within a reasonable threshold when I guesstimate a book length—but yeah, it did grow a bit, and after the books are all out, I'll tell you some of the things that grew, some of the things that got added. There were things that weren't in the initial outline that I decided needed to be in the books as I was writing them, and that happens with every book that you're going to be doing.

    The process for writing this book, for those who haven't heard: When I walked in there and I was given this, I was given a stack of about two hundred pages. I don't know how much I've talked about this at this con so far; I talked about this recently somewhere. Oh, it was on the interview I did, first day. It's gonna go up on the air somewhere. So, about two hundred pages. I can release that number because Tom Doherty released it at DragonCon, I believe it was. [It was at WorldCon 2008.] He got up and said, "This is how much we had." And, Robert Jordan was what we call a 'discovery writer'; George R. R. Martin calls it a 'gardener'. He would not write chronologically; he would write on whatever occurred to him at the moment. He would 'discover' his way through a book. He usually had an ending in mind, and things like that, and important scenes he was gonna write, but he would very much just feel it out as he went. This is very common among writers; it’s one of the main archetypes of writers there are out there. Stephen King does it this way too. Neil Gaiman says he does it a lot this way too. You kind of feel your way through.

    But what it means is that what was handed to me, they had been arranged by Alan, one of the members of Team Jordan, into an order that he kind of thought they might go in, but there was really no indication from Jim [as to] the order of these scenes. They were just a list of scenes. And where those had come from are scenes that he had worked on, which a large number of them were half-complete, because he would just write on what he felt like at the time, get a few pages in, then set it aside and then think about it some more while he’d work on something else. So there were a lot of fragmentary scenes. There are a lot of scenes you’ll be reading in these three books where it’s like three pages of Robert Jordan and like three pages of me making up a scene, or a page or Robert Jordan, two pages of me and then another page of Robert Jordan, or things like that. A lot of those, there are places here and there where I’ve grabbed a paragraph of his, because the rest wasn’t finished, it was just a paragraph where he said, “It’s going to do this, and then here’s this paragraph of this great sequence.” And so a lot of it was like that.

    A lot of it was interviews. During the last months, his cousin Wilson and members of Team Jordan would be talking to him and Jim would start talking about scenes. There’s a famous one, “There’s a ______ in the Blight,” which is a quote from Wilson. That was a time when Jim told him—you’ll have to have him tell that story some time, it’s awesome—but Jim just started going off—Jim is Robert Jordan, for those who didn’t know—Jim would go off on...he just talked through this entire scene. And that’s one of the ones that we had the most understanding of, in a lot of ways, some of these scenes where he would talk about them.

    For instance, the first scene in The Gathering Storm, there’s a prologue with an old farmer sitting on his front porch. This scene was dictated by Jim, and we actually had the recording of that, it got played at JordanCon I. And the interesting thing, if you were to have listened to that or if I can just describe it to you. It’s all in present tense. It’s like, “There’s this farmer, and he’s sitting on the porch and he looks up and he sees the clouds. These are black and silver clouds, and he’s never seen black and silver clouds before; they’re very striking.” And Jim goes through this whole narrative like that. Well, that’s very complete as a scene, he does the whole thing. And yet it’s in present tense, without a lot of the language turned into written language; it’s talked through.

    Jennifer Liang

    Right, there’s one point where he describes a sound as sounding like a freight train. Well, you can’t say it sounds like a freight train in the Wheel of Time, that doesn’t make any sense.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Exactly. There’s that scene, so I had several of those scenes, where basically I can keep Jim’s voice intact and just tweak the words a little bit to make them fit and add in a few sentences of description here and there, and we had several of those scenes. Then there were the Q&A scenes, which were Maria saying “So what happens to this character?” “Well, let me tell you what happens to this character.” And then Jim would talk. And so because of those Q&As, we knew a lot about the ending—a whole ton—and he did write the last scene himself and he talked through where everyone ends up and things, and so the bulk, and I’ve said all along, the weight of what we had from him was about that ending, where he would go and say “Here’s what happens to this character,” and it’s really talking about here’s what happens to this character in the Last Battle and then after the Last Battle, assuming there is an after the Last Battle, this is where this character would go. And so we have that basically for everybody.

    Jennifer Liang

    You and Harriet had a great way of describing it at one of the book signings for The Gathering Storm. You said that you had a map of the United States and you knew that at the end of the book that Perrin ends up in Chicago, but he starts off in like Orlando, and you know that he has to go to Los Angeles before he can get to Chicago, but you don’t know all the other steps in between and why he’s going to Los Angeles, so they had to figure out all the in-between parts.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, there are great things where there’s just like a line from his notes. “And then Perrin is here doing this.” And you’re like “What? Perrin’s in Malden, how is he gonna get there? And he’s going to do what? And then he’s got to be up here to do what?” And then we know the ending, what he’s doing there. So, there was a lot of that. So, this all became the book, where I built an outline out of this, I took the scenes that he had said. The thing about the notes is that a lot of the notes were to him, and so he would say things like “I’m going to do this or this” and they’re polar opposites. And so there are sequences like that, where I decide what we’re going to do, and stuff like that. And this all is what became the trilogy that you’re now reading.

    Tags

  • 850

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Jeffrey Daniel

    So what do you think the most challenging part of writing A Memory of Light was? Was it those logistics, or was it writing battle scenes, or...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, the battle scenes were the toughest part of A Memory of Light, definitely. At least the toughest for me, because it's not necessarily something I naturally excel at. I think I'm okay at it. I've read a lot of books...but I've read a lot of books. I haven't done it. Fortunately, Alan Romanczuk has done it. He was a soldier and Jim was a soldier, so I'm really relying a lot on him for getting it to feel right. You know, my book learning only gets me so far in the way that tactics are done and the way a battlefield plays out. So, that's been one of the big slow-downs for this. The other big slow-down for this has been just making sure we get everything in there. There are a lot of things that need to go in the book and there are some things that aren't going to make it. Jim said that certain things don't get resolved, and there are certain things we just didn't have time for and we said, "Okay, this just doesn't get resolved." And I'm sorry about that. He warned you, I will warn you: there are some non-resolutions.

    Joe O'Hara

    I don't know how other people would feel about that, but I kind of enjoy that. To me, that's where a fandom would go. We can continue to speculate and wonder and think about.

    Jennifer Liang

    Yeah, it gives us something to talk about. We can ride that or like ten years at least. (laughter)

    Jeffrey Daniel

    JordanCon will be good for a while. We'll have a lot of talking panels on that one.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will try to keep them quiet. There are two deleted scenes from the book that actually covered very interesting things. And after the books are out I will give you guys some hints and then you can spend the next ten years deciding what was in them.

    Jennifer Liang

    Yeah, we'll ask you some really weird questions over the next ten years. We used to do that to Robert Jordan. We'd ask him very oblique questions, hinting at the thing we really wanted to know, because we were like doing process of elimination, and logic trees and...yeah, he caught on.

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  • 851

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Phillip

    For Brandon, you have a career on your own as an author....

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes.

    Phillip

    Since you've had this other career—which has helped, I'm sure, in a lot of ways—what impact has this been on your original writing career, I mean I know you had to have slowed down your progress and your series, but you've still been writing those. What are the biggest impacts you've seen on your writing career because of taking on the Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's definitely done some...it's made me have to put down projects. In fact, next year, I have coming out the projects I was working on in 2007 when this came my way; The Rithmatist and Steelheart are both books that I did way back then that I didn't feel that I was able to release in the middle of the Wheel of Time books, even though I had them done, because I wouldn't have been able to do the revisions on them, and because I wouldn't be able to support them; I wouldn't be able to do sequels and things like that. They're both YA books. And that's, you know...when I accepted this, I said "Okay, I'm shelving these things." I did get to do a couple of books, I got to do The Way of Kings, which, granted, I already had a draft of that done. So really, the only book in these last years, the last five years that I've been doing this, that I've written from scratch and released was Alloy of Law. And so it's going to...it did kind of slow me down. The only reason it didn't slow me down as much as it could have was because I had all of this stuff done already. I had a great big backlog of books, because I enjoy writing, and I've been writing for years, and back then I wasn't as popular as I am now, so Tor would put things in slots later on, like...while I've been working on these, Warbreaker and Mistborn 3 came out, both of which were done years before I was offered the Wheel of Time. And so...yeah, all of this stuff that I had been working on long ago got delayed, and that was just fine—I went into this eyes open—but it is going to be nice to be able to go back to these things and give them some of the support that I've wanted all along.

    You know, this project took more time than all of us expected it to. I had to say yes sight unseen to knowing how big it was. I knew what Jim had said, but I didn't know how much of it was done. I didn't know that we had two hundred pages out of two thousand. There was no way for me to know how much would need to be done. So yeah, it's been a big long deviation, but not a distraction, because I think my writing has grown by leaps and bounds. It's kind of like I had to go pump iron, because writing in the Wheel of Time has been much harder than writing on anything else I've done, and I have been forced to grow, and you can see my being forced to grow between the books in the Wheel of Time books. I think my writing is way better in Towers of Midnight than it was in The Gathering Storm, particularly in some of the ways that that Jim was strong. And so, I think that's helped me. It's certainly not an experience that I would trade for anything. I got to read the ending in 2007, so there's that. (laughter) But yeah, it's been a wonderful experience, but boy, it's been a big, big, big deviation. It's not where I thought my career would go at all.

    Joe O'Hara

    Was it daunting seeing just that small amount of work that was taken care of before you stepped on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, it's daunting in two ways: First, I got that. It was really nice to have the ending. Like, having the prologue and the ending basically done—those were the two things that he did the most work on—meant that I had the bookends, which is how I build an outline anyway. I know where I start, I know my ending, and I build an outline out of that. But at the same time, there's three million words of notes about the series, which is daunting in another way. Yes, there's two hundred pages of work done on the book, and then there's this stack over here of all these other notes that include all of these things that are just mind-boggling, the stuff that's in there. We released a few of them last year for you guys. Was it last year that we released the notes?

    Jennifer Liang

    Yeah, we got the page on Cadsuane and...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, the page on Cadsuane and stuff like that. You just see all of weird things that he had in his notes. I have all the same sort of weird stuff in my notes about like Stormlight and stuff, but it's just fun to see. You go pore through these notes...he has the most random stuff. Lists of trees, lists of people, lists of this, and just millions and millions and words of this stuff, more than I can keep track of at all. It requires Maria and Alan to keep track of all this stuff. So it was also daunting in that, yes there are two hundred pages written, which actually nice, because as I've said before, if the book had been 80% of the way done, they wouldn't have needed to hire me, they wouldn't have needed to bring me in. When a book is 80% of the way done, that's when you get a ghostwriter, or Harriet just does it herself. She really could have done it in-house herself and finished that and said "Look, here we're going to do a few patches and stuff, but the book is mostly done."

    And so, getting there and saying "Hey, I actually get to do something with this, I have an opportunity to add the scenes that I've been wanting as a fan for years and years, so I get a chance to actually write these characters, rather than coming in and just patching some holes," was very thrilling for me at the same time. You know, I worried that I would get there and it would just be patching holes—"Write these five scenes," or something like that—and that would have meant I wouldn't have really had a part in it. Granted, that would have been better, because it would have meant there was more Jim in it, and it would have made a better book, but at the same time, when I got to see those two hundred pages, I was saddened but excited at the same time.

    Tags

  • 852

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Question

    When you're...you know, speaking with regards to all three books that you wrote, if there's an issue where you think a character or a plot should go one way, and Harriet or any of the others thinks it should go another way, how does that work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Harriet wins. Harriet always wins. Usually what happens is that there'll be...if Harriet says something, we just do it. The only time when there's questioning is when I disagree with Maria or Alan, and we both kind of make our arguments. We do these in-line edits with track changes in Microsoft Word; we'll have whole conversations there, where I'll say "This is why I think this character would do what they're doing," and Maria would come in and say, "This is why I think you're wrong and they wouldn't do this," and we'll have big discussions, and Harriet'll make the call, and then I'll do it as Harriet says, 'cause Harriet knows the characters better than anyone.

    And so there are times when I've been overruled—it happens on every book—and there are times where Harriet said, "No, I think Brandon's right," and Maria and Alan—her superfans—disagree, but the way that fandom works, we all disagree on things. You'll find this, and I disagree with some people on how character interpretations will happen, and things like that. Some people, for instance, don't think my Talmanes is true to Jim's Talmanes. Things like that. That's the sort of thing we're arguing over. It's very rarely over main characters, but it's like, "Is Talmanes acting like Talmanes would?" And I read the character one way, and some people read the character another way, and I just have to go with my interpretation, and if Harriet says, "No, this isn't right," I revise it. If Harriet says, "No, this feels right to me," then we just go with it.

    Question

    Was there ever a case where you and Maria and Alan had a difference of opinion and Harriet had a completely different take?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That all four of us had a different take? Yeah, that's happened; that's very rare but it has happened. We're trying to piece together something that's...there's always this consideration of "What would Jim do?" But there's also a consideration of Brandon as author, not knowing what Jim would do, what does Brandon think needs to happen narratively? And there are some things where I, reading the books as an author, say "This is where he was going." "No, he didn't say it in the notes." "No, it's nowhere in there; he doesn't make mention of it." "This is where he was going; my understanding of story structure, plotting and things, and I can say, you know, as sure as I can say anything, that this is what he was going to do." And, you know, sometimes Maria and Alan, they look at the notes and say, "No, that's not at all what he was going to do; look what the notes say." And I say, "No, that's not what they're saying," and we have arguments about that too.

    There's lots of discussing going on. We're all very passionate about the Wheel of Time. It'd be like getting Jenn and Jason from Dragonmount and Matt from Theoryland together and hashing out what they think about where Demandred is, or something like that. There are gonna be lots of passionate discussions. I think, at the end of the day, that makes the book better, and the fact that we have kind of...Harriet tends to just...if she has a feeling, she lets us argue about it, and then she says, like...you know, 'cause she's the one that would sit at dinner and discuss the characters with Jim. None of us did that, and she did that for twenty years, so...yeah.

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  • 853

    Interview: Jul 21st, 2012

    Phillip

    One of the things that...okay, blasphemy: I've only read through the series once.

    Jennifer Liang

    At least you've read through it once...Jimmy.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, Jimmy!

    Phillip

    Anyway, in some of these later books, one of the biggest issues that I had was when the timeline got fractured, and there was a period of time when I was fully convinced that there was a Darkfriend impersonating Tam. It just had me really confused. What lessons did you learn from that experience as you're gonna carry forward into your future writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The timeline fracture in Towers of Midnight came because of the book split, and what needed to go in one book, had to go in...you know, and things like that, and after the fact of releasing The Gathering Storm, we had Towers of Midnight sitting there, and I hadn't finished Towers of Midnight completely, I'd written like...I'd basically, when we split it, I'd written one...like, Perrin almost all the way through, but not other sequences all the way through and things, and we released The Gathering Storm, and we had to like fix things in The Gathering Storm, when we were getting in that, we realized, "Oh no..." I mean, the timeline is fine, but it means that Tam has to jump back in time. And this was going to be a bit of a challenge even if the book were whole, because Robert Jordan had them off of time with one another at the start of The Gathering Storm; Perrin was several months behind everyone else. And so, once you start bringing people back together, you either had to...we either had to do some things like walls fall on them, which was famously how Jim got Mat back in sync with everybody else, when he'd been behind, is a wall fell on him, and then he left him for several months for him to heal, and then we come back, and Mat's like, "Man, I hated having that wall fall on me!" (laughter)

    Jennifer Liang

    "Good thing that was three months ago; I'm better now!"

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. And that was the way that Robert Jordan, since people get off track from each other...some of the things you kind of have to do. I had to get Perrin stuck in the mud for a while. (laughter) Yeah. And this is just to get everyone synced up, and the Tam sync-up, as a writer, I think what I learned is, I think of timelines a little differently. Like I, being deep in the series and working on it, I knew where everyone was, and I'm like, "Everyone will know that we're flashing back to Perrin here." But of course not everyone knows that; they're not all following the timeline; they don't know that we're starting this book two months before The Gathering Storm ended, so to bring them back on track, that's why Tam ended up in two places at once, because he wasn't in two places at once; they were off track from one another, time-wise. And I guess I would just take more consideration of the fact that not everyone is steeped in the timelines like I am, and knowing where everyone is, and things like that, and I would have tried to find a better cue for the fact that we've jumped backward in time.

    Jennifer Liang

    "Three months earlier..."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. "Three months ago..."

    Jennifer Liang

    "...back when dinosaurs ruled the earth..."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mmhmm.

    Footnote

    Jimmy is Jenn's husband; he helps her run cons.

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  • 854

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Title Page One)

    All right, first annotation! About the title page.

    I'm generally just going to call this book MISTBORN, though the entire series is the "Mistborn Trilogy." Technically, this book is MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE. The second book is MISTBORN: THE WELL OF ASCENSION, and the third book is MISTBORN: THE HERO OF AGES.

    There's an interesting story behind this title. As some of you may know, I spent a number of years trying to get published, writing books all the while. My first five books are what I call the "throwaway books." Those were ones I did mostly as practice, figuring out how to do the whole novel-writing thing. Book six was ELANTRIS, which was published in May of 2005; it was the first book I managed to sell.

    However, while I was trying to get ELANTRIS published, I wrote a number of other books. The three after ELANTRIS were big epic fantasy books, much like it in style. After that, I decided that I was writing things that were too big—that no publisher was going to take a huge epic fantasy book from an unknown author. (Though that's eventually what happened. . . .)

    Anyway, I decided to try writing some shorter (i.e. only about 125,000 words instead of 250,000 words) fantasy novels. The first of these was what I now call MISTBORN PRIME. It was the story of a man who was a 'Mistborn' (a kind of super-powerful assassin) who gets trapped in a small village with people hunting him, and has to try and blend in with the population there.

    MISTBORN was a different book for me in many ways. It was shorter, for one thing, and it was also about a kind of anti-hero. It only had one viewpoint character, and the plot was much smaller in scope than my other books. It was successful in some ways, but a failure in others. The magic system I developed for it—Allomancy—was quite spectacular, as were the action sequences. The character, however, didn't appeal to many readers. And, the plot was just a little. . .uninspiring. I'm really better when I have more to deal with.

    As you can probably tell, this book—which was unpublishable—became the inspiration for the book I eventually wrote named MISTBORN:THE FINAL EMPIRE. We'll cover that second part in the next annotation.

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  • 855

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Second Title Page)

    Okay, so here we see the words FINAL EMPIRE for the first time. Continuing the discussion I had in the last annotation, one of the books that I wrote after MISTBORN PRIME was called THE FINAL EMPIRE. (I now call it FINAL EMPIRE PRIME.) It was the story of a young boy (yes, boy) named Vin who lived in an oppressive imperial dictatorship that he was destined to overthrow. It was my attempt at writing a shorter book that still had epic scope.

    This book turned out to be okay, but it had some fairly big problems problems. While people reacted rather well to the characters, the setting was a little weak for one of my books. Also, once again, I wasn't that enthusiastic about the way the plot turned out.

    After that, I gave up on the short books. I proved no good at it. I decided to do THE WAY OF KINGS next, a massive war epic. It turned out to be 350,000+ words—I kind of see it as me reacting in frustration against the short books I'd forced myself to write. About this time, I sold ELANTRIS, and Moshe (my editor) wanted to see what else I was working on. I sent him KINGS. He liked it, and put it in the contract.

    I, however, wasn't certain if KINGS was the book I wanted to use as a follow up for ELANTRIS. They were very different novels, and I was worried that those who liked ELANTRIS would be confused by such a sharp turn in the direction of my career. So, I decided to write a different book to be my 'second' novel.

    I had always liked Allomancy as a magic system, and I liked several of the character concepts FINAL EMPIRE. I also liked a lot of the ideas from both books, as well as some ideas I'd had for a great plot. I put three all of these things together, and conceived the book you are now reading.

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  • 856

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    By the way, Joshua—my agent—pushed until the end to get me to put the Kelsier action sequence in-scene, rather than having it happen off-screen. I resisted. Allomancy is a very complicated magic system, and my writing relies on the reader understanding how Allomancy works in order to provide action. I didn't want to slow the story down right here by giving an extended explanation of the magic. Instead, I just wanted to show the effects of what Kelsier can do. Later (chapter six, I think) we'll actually see how he does them.

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  • 857

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Part 1)

    Unlike ELANTRIS, where I decided to divide the book into 'parts' after the fact, I always planned this book to be told in several sections. Naming the parts actually came quiet easily to me. Part One is the section where Kelsier gets most of his viewpoint time, and I decided that naming it after him would be appropriate.

    In addition, I just like the way that "The Survivor of Hathsin" sounds. A piece of me was sad that I never came up with a good full name for Kelsier. Something like Kelsier Mistshadow or something like that. I tried several, but none of them ended up sounding quite right, and I had to rely on calling him "Kelsier, the Survivor" in those places. That ended up working just fine.

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  • 858

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    This introductory scene, where Dox and Kell meet on the city wall, has just the right feel for me. I wanted this book—particularly at the beginning—to have the feel of a heist movie. Something like Ocean's Eleven, Sneakers, or Mission: Impossible. I thought a couple of senior thieves getting together on the wall and talking about the team they are gathering would fit in just perfectly.

    That was, by the way, one of the major inspirations for this book. I've mentioned that I stole the concepts for Allomancy and Vin's character from other books I wrote. The plot came from a desire to write something that had the feel of a heist movie. I haven't ever seen that done in a fantasy novel—a plot where a team of specialists get together and then try to pull off a very difficult task.

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  • 859

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    Joshua, by the way, also pushed for an action scene here—where Kelsier grabs the Inquisitor's attention and runs. I do take most of Joshua's suggestions. In fact, his desire to have an action scene earlier in this book is the biggest bit of advice by him I can think of that I haven't taken. I just really felt that I needed more time to ease into Allomancy before I could do justice to an action scene. Actually, I think a fast scene like that would actually slow the book down, since I'd have to spend so much time explaining. Better to let the next few scenes play out, where we get some good explanations in dialogue.

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  • 860

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, and by the way. People often ask me how far ahead I plan my novels. Well, I've noted already in this annotation that some things—such as the Kelsier-Marsh-Mare relationship—come to me as I write. They appear when I need something to fill a particular hole in the story. Other things, however, are quite well planned. Want an example?

    Kelsier's warning about not flaring metals too much is a foreshadowing for book three of the trilogy. You'll see what I mean in a couple of years. Also, there's something very important about Vin's brother that will be hard to pick out, but has been foreshadowed since the first book...

    Footnote

    He's talking about Spook, and Ruin's whisperings disguising as Reen's whisperings.

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  • 861

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 9)

    One odd thing I've heard—and noticed—about new writers as opposed to more experienced writers is that the more experienced ones tend to make their books last longer. Many first books take place in a matter of days, or perhaps weeks. Yet, books by more accomplished writers tend to span months or years.

    It might just be coincidence relating to books I've read. I mean, there doesn't seem to be any reason it would be true. Yet, it certainly holds for myself. My first books happened very quickly—even ELANTRIS, which was my sixth, happened in only the space of two months. Yet, in MISTBORN, I let more time pass between sections and chapters.

    I think, perhaps, newer authors are intimidated by plotting over such a longer stretch of time. Or, perhaps, it's just something unconscious.

    Either way, we've jumped in time—something necessary for this book, considering the amount that needs to be done in order for the job to get pulled off. This was one of my first clues that I couldn't do a straight-up heist novel with MISTBORN. The book covers too much time, and too much has to happen before the ending can occur. I just didn't feel that most of what the crew would be doing would be interesting to a reader, and I wanted to focus too much on Vin's character growth to let me focus on the 'heist' of stealing the atium.

    Footnote

    Something to keep in mind is that Brandon wrote like 7 books in between Elantris and Mistborn.

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  • 862

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    The fight in this chapter is what I consider the first true Allomantic battle of the series. This is what it's supposed to feel like—there's a reason I started with the concept of Vin feeling free. Allomantic battle is graceful, yet sharp. It is leaps through the mist and clever uses of Pushes and Pulls. This is what attracted me most to the magic system—not the logic of metals and the like, though I enjoy that. I loved the idea of mist, plus flying forms in fluttering mistcloaks.

    I realize that it's obvious, by the way, that Kelsier is her opponent. I didn't write the chapter calling him 'her opponent' to be surprising. I just thought that by de-emphasizing Kelsier, I could better create an illusion of tension. The idea is that Vin herself isn't thinking of him as Kelsier. Just as an opponent.

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  • 863

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Question

    [How many books have you written?]

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've written about 25 books. I'm not sure if that's correct or not. I'd have to go back and check. It's in the early 20s.

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  • 864

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Question

    So how old were you when you wrote your first book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, my first book came out in 2005, so I would've been.... 30? But I was writing from age 21. That's when I really started seriously writing. I dabbled a little bit on my mission on my P-days, with permission from my mission president, and then really started seriously when I got back sophomore year of college, and wrote my first book that year I got back. And that one didn't get published. But it wasn't any good, so it's good it didn't get published. And then I just wrote over the next 9 years, wrote and wrote and wrote till I finally sold one.

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  • 865

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Question

    So is there a third law of magic?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes there is. I don't have a pithy way to say it yet.

    Question

    Do you want to try to describe it anyways?

    Brandon

    Yeah, the best magic systems are interconnected with the world, with society, with culture, and the development of the setting of a book. The next level you want to think about is how does your magic affect your gender roles, how does it affect your government, your religions, all these things.

    Question

    They all have to be interconnected.

    Brandon

    Yes. But I don't have a pithy way to say it, so once I come up with a good pithy way to say it, then I can actually write it.

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  • 866

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Question

    So you said that you recently threw away a sequence from Way of Kings 2. How do you know when to throw it out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Practice. Lots of practice. It was much harder to do that early on, but I've had lots of practice, and so I know that when it's not working, I know why it's not working. Sometimes when it's not working it's because I'm just having a bad day. I need to try it the next day. Sometimes when it's not working, Something fundamental is wrong with the book. Sometimes, it's just the scene is in the wrong place or isn't active enough. And this one wasn't active enough. I set it in a way that people were just sitting around too much, and I had to scrap all that rework it so that there would be conflict and motion.

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  • 867

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Question

    Any spoilers for A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let's see here. Harriet killed a character in the book that I did not intend to kill. So I wrote the entire book with a character living and she killed this character.

    Question

    Did she tell you right before you finished, or what?

    Brandon Sanderson

    She sent back the draft and said "This person dies."

    Question

    So did you have to change a lot?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So they succumb to their wounds. I intended them to live, so there is a character who died unexpectedly. So that's a slight spoiler. There is like a chapter that's over a hundred pages. It's a Super Chapter.

    Question

    Did you have to invent any of it yourself, or did Jordan leave a lot of it for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He left some of it for me, and then I had to make the rest. As you're reading through the books, probably about half and half. Half will be stuff that he wrote notes on, half will be stuff that I wrote.

    Question

    Do you feel like it comes pretty easy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Some of it does. I mean I've been reading since I was a kid. So some of the characters like Perrin is very natural for me. And Rand's super natural for me. Others are a little less natural for me.

    Question

    Like Mat.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, like Mat. Mat's harder for me to write.

    Question

    Why is that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Because Mat is very complex. Not to say that Perrin's not, but Perrin's straightforward. You know what I mean? Perrin says what he means, and does what he means. Mat says the opposite of what he means, and does the opposite of what he says. Making that tone correct for that is very hard. He's one part rapscallion, the other part Awesomeness. And balancing when he's playing the fool, and when he's just being awesome is very hard to get that balance down, because you don't want it to be silly, you know he can play the fool a bit but he shouldn't be silly. Otherwise it won't match from when he's being Awesome as well, if that makes sense.

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  • 868

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Andre

    You're friends with Patrick Rothfuss, right?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I am.

    Andre

    Can you give him any tips to write faster?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, Pat is, he's very into beautiful prose, this is his thing. And it shows. And you can't do that fast. My prose is not as beautiful, my prose is translucent is what I try to do. I try to write prose so you don't see it, and you see the story. And that prose can go faster. And it's just a matter of writing style. I actually envy his prose sometimes, and he envies my speed.

    Andre

    I imagine.

    Brandon Sanderson

    But, I think the third one will be faster. After the first one came out he ended up with this huge performance anxiety problem because the first one took off so much; that he couldn't even write for a year because he was so stressed about how well the book had done. He got over that. And he doesn't have that anymore. So theoretically the next book should be faster. He did sign for three more books, right?

    Andre

    He signed for a new trilogy...

    Josh

    Which one would hope means he's getting close to done with the one he's in the middle of. We can all hope.

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  • 869

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Zas

    What effect does the world have on the magic system?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It always has an effect.

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  • 870

    Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012

    Zas

    What about Aon Rii? Talk about Aon Rii. What are the random dots? Are they valuable metals?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Honestly, I don't remember. [laughter] I'll be straight up honest with you, I designed the Aons—When I designed the Aons, they all had things like that. Like "Oh, that's what this will be," but I was not as good about taking notes of things then. I didn't have the wiki that I now have.

    Josh

    What I would give for one hour with that wiki.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I didn't have all of that stuff, so I can say "Yeah, that's going to be valuable metals", and canonize it that way, but I don't remember what I was actually thinking when I designed it. It was my first time doing anything like that, like [?] sort of thing. I hadn't ever done anything like that before, so I was just flying by the seat of my pants.

    In fact, there's a fun story about that, a story I don't think I told during the annotations, I might have. Originally, I wrote it, and used all the Aons as like little things about characters' personalities.

    Zas

    Really?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Like Rao is spirit, and Ene (eenee) is wit. Well, all the other ones were things like that, to the point that the traitor character, his Aon's the one that meant Betrayal. Like this, all the characters have little things like that. And then my editor saw it and said "Ah. Do you really want to give away everyone's personality? And who's going to name their kid Betrayal? And I was like "That was really stupid Brandon, why did you do that?" But at the time, I didn't know if I was going to have a dictionary in the back or anything, and so I had to go back and rename almost all of them. I left Rao and Ene, but I renamed almost all the—renamed the wrong word. I shifted all the meanings and things like this so that everyone would have a name that would make sense that you would name a person. And none of them meant anything more than what they actually mean.

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  • 871

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Question

    We have the Asha'man who can only do Traveling and only open very small holes. Are we gonna see him open those holes in front of cannons, and then open it in front of Trolloc armies, A, and B, are we going to see the [kites?] that were developed in Rand's college used by the Seanchan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    RAFO. But I do have a slightly longer answer. One of the things I was excited to do when I was given the project was, I didn't want to invent a whole lot of new weaves—I felt it wasn't [my] place to do so, and Robert Jordan already had a very long list; there are a few that I invented by necessity—but mostly I wanted to take weaves that he had already invented and extrapolate. This is kind of what I do with magic systems, if you can't tell, and gateways were ones of the ones where I was like, "I can do stuff with these." And then Portal came out, and I'm like, "Ah, you're stealing my ideas!" (laughter) But yes, gateways...I do gateways a little more extensively than I think Jim had planned, and sometimes Maria is like nudging me and like, "Let's back off on the gateway stuff, Brandon." I just get really excited about them because I think they can do so many cool things. So, I won't say yes or no, but you will see me playing with gateways for sure.

    Footnote

    Presumably the questioner is referring to Androl, but Androl can open big gateways despite being perhaps the weakest Asha'man; that's his Talent.

    Tags

  • 872

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Question

    As sort of a non-plot-related question: You've had a lot of opportunity to compare your writing to Robert Jordan's after three books. What are some things that you felt that Robert Jordan did that you just can't match, and what are some things that you feel that you do in a stronger way than Robert Jordan did?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The primary thing that I think Robert Jordan was really good at that I'm just mediocre at is prose. I've always tried to create very utilitarian prose, prose that gets across my idea and my story. I use what we call Orwellian prose: I try to make my prose a clear pane of glass that you see the story through. Robert Jordan was on a completely different level. He could create very engaging, beautiful prose while not distracting from the story. There are very few writers who are capable of that. Tolkien was another one, and actually, in our current era Pat Rothfuss is one of those. I envy their prose, and I think that they are just really, really good with prose, and Robert Jordan was as well.

    Something that he does very well that I think I've learned better by working this...there are two things. I think he was very good at being subtle with his foreshadowing in a way that I think is really brilliant, and I've tried to learn from, and that's something that I like to do, and so seeing how he did it has been very helpful for me. And, the juggling of lots of viewpoints is something else he did really, really well that is something that I want to be doing in my books, and that I think I've taken steps toward, but working on these books and seeing what he has done has improved me.

    As for the other question, I'm not sure honestly if there is a right answer for this, because the primary thing that we do differently is more of a 'different' as opposed to a 'better/worse', and one of the big ones is action sequences. Robert Jordan wrote action sequences in a very specific way: he was a soldier;—he was in combat; he had been in combat before—and he wrote battle scenes...like that. I write very cinematic battle scenes. My battle sequences, I write to have a certain feel and energy, and it's different from the complete chaos and sense of terror that are in a lot of his battle scenes where you never know what's going on, because that's how real war is. And I haven't been in real war; I could try to imitate that, but instead I use my methodology for battle scenes.

    If there is one strength that I have in my writing it is endings, and so coming out of this project at the end has allowed me to apply some of my skill set toward tying things up and focusing, and trying to make sure that we have really powerful endings to each of the sequences that are happening in the books.

    Tags

  • 873

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Question

    How much of your own writing has been influenced through your reading of Robert Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, when I decided I wanted to be a writer—this was in my teens—I had no idea how to go about doing this. And one of the things I actually did is I broke out my Wheel of Time books and I did a reread, and I took notes on things Robert Jordan was doing, specifically with regards to viewpoints and whatnot, and I did actually make a classic mistake in doing that, in that after I finished the reread, at one point—this is kind of later and after I'd written a few books—I'm like, "Oh, I see; you juggle lots of viewpoints..." and I started with a lot of viewpoints in a book, and it just crashed and burned. I hadn't realized that if you go back to the beginning of the Wheel of Time, it's really only Rand for half of the first book, and then I think you get, what, Perrin? And then you really don't have any other viewpoints, and even when you do, people are mostly together—they split off like into just two little groups, and then come back together—so, that was one thing that, you know, it actually, I'm like, "Ooh, I'm gonna do all these viewpoints like Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin!" And yeah, that's a really hard thing to do—to do right—and you usually have to have a lot of infrastructure, but I learned—through reading Robert Jordan—I learned about viewpoint, is basically the main thing that during my early years I learned, and that's where, you know I [later] read books that talked about it, but I didn't know anything about this. I learned the third person limited. Like, when you jump into Aviendha's head in the books, you see the world so differently from when you are inside Perrin's head, and when you jump into Mat's head, you see the world so different than when you're in, you know, someone else's head, like Nynaeve's. And this ability to change the perspective based on who you're writing is really key to having a large cast, and is actually really key to kind of the whole epic fantasy...thing—getting it right—I've called it in my class the 'grand skill' to learn if you're writing epic fantasy, is how to tell your character's personalities just by the way they describe a room, and I studied that from Robert Jordan in the early years.

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  • 874

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Question

    I was wondering if it's possible for scholarship in future generations if we at some point could get a copy that's annotated so that we can tell which passages came directly from Robert Jordan—like color-coded or something—because as you've been intermingling them I think it would be interesting to be able to go back and say, "This is what he originally wrote."

    Brandon Sanderson

    It will be very hard to do simply because, you know, you would have a lot of sentences that would four colors in them (laughter), because, here are three words from Brandon; here are a couple of words from Robert Jordan; the rest are from Harriet, that she has edited, and then here's the insertion by Maria as she's doing the copy-edit, that something needed to be [put] in. It would be very difficult to get right.

    The other thing is, Harriet has several times expressed a reluctance to let people see the notes because she doesn't want people focusing when reading the books on what was me and what is Jim. I do still kinda tend to work on her and see if I can get her to let us do something with the notes. I'm not too expectant—if it doesn't happen I'm gonna be fine—but I tend to ask on behalf of the fans, people like yourself, and if I can do that I can then bring them out and I will talk a little bit more about that.

    One thing that I've said to people a number of times, that in each of the three books there is a prologue [scene] that Robert Jordan wrote almost completely, or completely, for the prologue of the book, then since we split it in three, I took one scene from each completely that is Robert Jordan's—and there are a few fragments in each prologue as well that were also his—but there's one complete scene in the prologue. In the first book, it was the farmer sitting on the doorsteps watching the storm; that was one of the scenes he dictated, and we actually at JordanConI got to listen to that dictation. In the second book it was the Borderlander tower with the soldier and his son; that was one of the more complete scenes we had from Robert Jordan which had some minimal revision and editing during the process but was basically a complete scene that he gave us. And there's one like that in the third book as well.

    In The Gathering Storm, I've said before that, as the notes went, Rand was a little more me; there were fewer notes on Rand. There were more notes on Egwene. We're both involved in all the viewpoints, but Rand from that is a little more me, and Egwene's a little more Robert Jordan, and then in Towers of Midnight, Perrin's a little bit more me, and Mat is a little more Robert Jordan. And maybe we'll be able to release more than that, but so far that's about all I've said. There are certain scenes that he did write, by the way—I'll give you everything; this is what I've told people; I haven't told people much—but there's a certain scene in The Gathering Storm where Egwene has an unexpected meeting with an old friend in the Tower. That one was done by Robert Jordan. And in Towers of Midnight, there is...most of the Mat stuff including the ending where a certain engagement happens was Robert Jordan.

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  • 875

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Question

    I was actually talking to some other fans outside who are fans of your other works obviously as well as the Wheel of Time, and something that kind of occurred to me when we were speaking was you have a recurring character named Hoid. Is he going to sneak his way into A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um, Hoid will not make an appearance in A Memory of Light. (laughter) I chose this very consciously. It felt like enormous hubris of me to sneak my recurring character into the Wheel of Time. There was a little bit of temptation there since the Wheel of Time is—we've got this kind of indication that it is the kind of almost Amber-like in that it is the true world, and there are all these Mirror Worlds where people are living—so it's possible to conceive that even our world is a Mirror World happening, and that...or, you know, we don't know if our world is the real world in a different Age, or if our world is a Mirror World, or...what do you call them, Shadow Worlds? There's all sorts of different...yeah—but it's plausible that there could be a connection, but at the end of the day I really just decided, no, this was not something I wanted to do.

    I did write in a cameo for myself—Robert Jordan wrote one for himself into the books. In Knife of Dreams there is an appearance by Robert Jordan; the fans know where it is if you ask them. I also have an appearance in a different way—we are both objects actually—and when I visited Charleston, I think it was the second time, they were getting ready to auction and give away Robert Jordan's spear collection. And, Wilson, his cousin and very dear friend, invited me to go in and said, "Pick one, any one, and it's yours." And so, I was like blown away. I went in there and like, it's like a kid in a candy store, there's like swords everywhere and spears and ashanderei, and just everything, and in the middle of them I found a katana with red and gold dragons painted on the hilt, and I had to choose that one. And so I took the katana—they're twirling around the hilt, just kind of like you know I always imagined them on Rand's arms—and I took that one, and I framed it actually in a sword box and put at the bottom, "Let the Dragon ride again on the Winds of Time," and then "Robert Jordan," and his date of birth and date of death underneath and it hangs in my room in kind of our gallery down below, and I wrote that into the books. I haven't officially said that before, but yes, I wrote that into the book. That's my kind of cameo. And so, when you see that sword, you know why that sword is in the books. That's my equivalent of his cameo.

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  • 876

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Question

    Okay, first of all, I'd like to say I was a little scared with a new writer coming into the series...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Justifiably so... [laughter]

    Question

    I'd like to say, when I read the first book, it was like he didn't pass.

    Brandon

    Well, thank you.

    Question

    How did it feel to be the chosen one?

    Brandon

    I've told this story, some of you have heard it before. When I got the phone call, I...it came out of the blue, like I really had no idea. Everybody knew before me. Paul knew before me, I'm pretty sure—yeah, he's nodding; he's an editor for Tor; he's like "Yeah, I knew"—everyone knew before me, and I was foolish enough to be asleep when Harriet called me, so I just got it as a voicemail message. "Please will you call me back; there's something I want to talk to you about." And so I had to spend hours trying to get ahold of Harriet, being like "Robert Jordan's wife just called me," and I was so nervous I couldn't speak. And I eventually called up Tor because nobody was answering—my editor and my agent—nobody. And I got hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden and and it really is, what he said is "Oh yeah, you...it's probably what you think it is, I'll have her call you back." And I'm like, [makes a distressed face, audience laughs], "What do I think it is!?" He didn't even tell me, he wouldn't even tell me, he just said that.

    And so, I eventually....Harriet calls me back and says, "Well, I was just wondering...we're putting together a small list of authors that we'd like to consider for this—finishing my husband's series—and I was wondering if you would be interested." She later mentioned that the short list included one name, which was mine. [laughter] But she didn't want to be backed into the corner until she made her final decision. And so in that one she asked, and I said yes. And for those of you who have heard this story, I'm sorry, but I'll repeat it. That night, I was scared out of my wits. I laid in bed—is that the right term?—I lay in bed just completely terrified of what I'd just done. And I really, seriously considered backing out because I realized that nobody could write the books that Robert Jordan was going to write. And so, in taking this project, I was going to fail. And I believe I have failed in a slight amount, in that nobody can replace him, right? As good of a job as I can do, I cannot do the job he was going to do, and by definition, the job he was going to do is the right book.

    And because of that I almost said no, and then in considering that, I had this like even deeper fear that I would say no, and that they would get someone else and those people would screw it up way more than I would screw it up. [laughter] And the phrase I frequently use—and I do believe this—laying there that night, I said, "How many authors out there have read the books as many times as I have? There probably aren't many, if any. I'm not the best author out there, but I'm a pretty good one. I'm not the biggest Wheel of Time fan out there, but I'm a pretty big one. And if you do the intersection of pretty decent authors and pretty decent Wheel of Time fans, there's not a lot of people in that. And I really feel that if Robert Jordan can't write the book, that kind of writer in me said, "Well, I wanna do it, because I feel like then at least somebody who cares has ahold of it. And I feel that I will screw it up the least."

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  • 877

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Chris Lough

    A good amount of the questions weren’t concerned with the plot of the final book but with Brandon’s writing style, his struggles in adapting the material, and how it was melded to the work that Robert Jordan left behind. The audience wondered whether we might see future annotated versions of the final three books, with Robert Jordan’s work and Brandon Sanderson’s work marked out.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon responded that it’s highly unlikely, due to it being against Harriet McDougal’s wishes and to the fact that annotations would have to be down to the sentence level, as it was often the case that one sentence would have been written by Robert Jordan, then altered by Brandon, then edited for content and style by Harriet, then copy edited by Harriet’s assistant Maria L. Simons.

    Brandon did reveal several doozies in regards to what Jordan left behind, however. Each prologue to the final three books contains a scene written by Robert Jordan. One already known is the scene with the farmer in The Gathering Storm, for Towers of Midnight, Jordan wrote the prologue scene involving the soldiers in the Borderlander tower. And for A Memory of Light? We’ll see.

    Perhaps the biggest admission, and one that brought a hush over the crowd, was the reveal that Jordan wrote the chapter in The Gathering Storm where Verin reveals she is Black Ajah to Egwene and the sequence in Towers of Midnight where Moiraine is rescued by Mat. Two of the most important elements in these final books came directly from Jordan’s hand.

    Additionally, Sanderson pointed out that the Rand and Perrin viewpoints in The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight are more of his work, while Egwene and Mat’s viewpoints in those books are more Robert Jordan’s work.

    Brandon also revealed that he makes a cameo in the books, in much the same way that Robert Jordan makes a cameo as an item in Knife of Dreams. (He appears as a ter'angreal of a fat man holding a book in the chapter “A Different Skill.”) A few years ago Sanderson was gifted one of Robert Jordan’s swords, choosing a katana with red and gold dragons twining around the hilt and handle. This gift from Robert Jordan’s family is now present in the series, and represents Brandon’s own cameo, for those who wish to look.

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  • 878

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Chris Lough

    The audience was also curious as to what characters he had the hardest time grasping.

    Brandon Sanderson

    “Aviendha and Tuon are the ones I worked the hardest on, but I expected them to be hard. I wasn’t expecting Mat to be hard. That blindsided me.” Brandon explained that in general the Andoran characters are the easiest for him to write as, “They feel like friends from high school.” So it surprised Brandon when he sat down to write Mat and discovered that he didn’t have an immediate grasp on him. Brandon eventually realized it was because, unlike the other characters, “Mat is an untrustworthy narrator. He doesn’t always believe what he says and he doesn’t even always believe the thoughts in his own head. He’s a character I’ve struggled to write but I think I’ve gotten as close to him as it’s possible for me to get.” (The positive reaction to the Mat chapter he read certainly put weight to this statement.)

    He also, tongue-in-cheek, admitted that before he wrote Cadsuane she was his least favorite character. “She was just too mean!”

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  • 879

    Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012

    Chris Lough

    Brandon also spoke about the aspects of his writing that have improved due to his work on The Wheel of Time.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sanderson praised Jordan’s abilities with prose, considering it unmatchable in regards to his own writing style, but noted that Jordan was responsible for Brandon’s growing skills in dealing with multiple character viewpoints, and for Jordan’s remarkable subtlety in regards to foreshadowing in the Wheel of Time series. Brandon also noted how differently he and Jordan approach battles in regards to their personal histories. Jordan, having experienced warfare firsthand, wrote battle scenes with a sense of dread while Brandon’s battles have a cinematic design to them.

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  • 880

    Interview: Oct 10th, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hi all, this is Brandon Sanderson, fresh off of finishing the last book of The Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light, and I'm here to introduce the story collection Unfettered to you. Shawn Speakman is putting together—actually asked all of us to do something like this, to talk about how we got involved in the project—he first approached me when I was on tour—it was probably I guess for Alloy of Law—and he explained that he was having...he had a lot of medical bills—Shawn has had some health troubles lately—and he's a good friend of a lot of us in the community, and he was looking to put together an anthology to maybe help to defray some of these costs, at the suggestion of Terry Brooks. And he just asked if I'd be interested; he said, "Really, it could be anything." That's why he's calling it "Unfettered", is because he didn't want to put any restrictions; in fact, he said it could be deleted scenes, it could be any sort of material relating to anything we wanted to do. He sounded most interested in something relating to one of my worlds that I've already written in, but he really said it could be anything.

    Well, I wasn't sure I'd be able to be involved, because A Memory of Light has taken...it was taking quite a bit of my time. It's quite the big project, and finding any time at all to work on anything else was really difficult. At the same time, however, there's a sequence of viewpoints in A Memory of Light—and I'm not at liberty yet to say who it is, but it's a character that you will know—that I was working on that were somewhat more daring than some of the viewpoints I've done. I wanted to try and give some deeper backstory to someone, and at the end of the day, showing the scenes to Harriet, we all liked them, but they didn't fit in the book. Harriet felt that they were too distracting, because of the new, sort of...new things I was adding, the things I was fleshing out. This is something that sometimes you want to avoid in storytelling, where you're near the end of the climax, introducing new concepts to kind of distract and derail.

    She felt that these scenes were doing that, and so after some discussion, we decided that they should be cut. And I always kind of felt sad, because while I agree that they were distracting, I really felt that they were strong and that they added a lot to the character, and give a lot of extra motivation—a lot of extra poignancy to some of the things going on in A Memory of Light—and so I began to think maybe this would be the place for them. I approached Harriet, and she said she thought that was a good idea.

    So what we'll be doing, it's a story called "River of Souls" but it's actually a sequence of deleted scenes. They are a complete arc for a certain character; they are meant to be read companionly to A Memory of Light. It's not going to make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read at least the rest of the Wheel of Time, but I find them very exciting; I think you'll really like them, and I think this is a good place for them because they won't be distracting from the rest of the story.

    So, "River of Souls" is going to be part of the Unfettered anthology which has lots of wonderful other people in it—in fact I'm honored to have a story in there, to be alongside some of the names that are in this anthology—and I really wish Shawn the best. He's been a wonderful help to me in my career, and to a lot of the writers out there, so I hope you guys enjoy reading Unfettered, and look forward to reading "River of Souls", and once A Memory of Light is out, I'll be able to talk a little bit more about this character, why these scenes were important, and what's going on there.

    Footnote

    Peter added a clarification to this on Dragonmount.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    It was actually Harriet's suggestion that this go in the anthology. When we talked to her about Unfettered around the time of JordanCon, we asked her about including a completely different and much shorter deleted scene. She said no to that but suggested this sequence instead.

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  • 881

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    Now, you're a successful writer in your own right. Why did you want to finish someone else's work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I started reading Robert Jordan when I was fifteen, right at the beginning, when his books started coming out in the Wheel of Time. And, life-long fan. I mean, they inspired me, they're part of what made me want to be a writer, and I've always loved them. And so when this chance came at me, it wasn't something I could pass up. It wasn't something I was expecting. It wasn't something I had applied for. But when the phone call came, I just couldn't say no. Just imagine some little kid that I was when I was reading these books, and the imagination of them, and what they inspired me to become. And then, later on, kind of being able to help out in the last books, it's just...it's amazing.

    Michael Cathcart

    I totally get this. You know, I feel that about working on this radio station. This radio station I've worked for all my life, suddenly I have the fun of being on it. I can never quite get over it. Every day the red light goes on, I think, "Oh, this is great!"

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, yeah, that happens to me. I think, "What am I doing? I'm working on the Wheel of Time?" You know, these characters I grew up with, that in many ways were my high school buddies? Now I'm telling their story. It's mind-blowing.

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  • 882

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    So when that phone call came, Brandon, how did that happen? Who called you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was Robert Jordan's widow. And there's an interesting story there, because she actually was his editor. She discovered him, and then she married him. I guess that's a way to make sure that your editorial advice gets taken. (laughs) And before he passed away, he had asked her to find someone. She said to me that finding someone himself felt like facing his mortality too much. So, as soon as the funeral, actually, she started hunting, and a bunch of names were bandied about, and just through kind of a freak series of coincidences. . . I had written a eulogy for him on my website—many authors had who really enjoyed his work. It was very short; it was only a couple of paragraphs, but just from the heart, what he'd meant to me. I was a published author at that point, and I mentioned how he'd inspired me. Someone printed that off, and put it on Harriet's—that's his wife's name—on her desk. And she glanced at that, and she read it. She called up my published and said, "Hey, send me this kid's books." And she read them, unbeknownst to me, and called me one day, and just said, "I was wondering if you would be interested?" She'd liked my books; she felt something in them—perhaps she felt the way I'd been inspired by Robert Jordan—but whatever it was, she called and asked me to do it.

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  • 883

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    Can you see a similarity between [RJ's] style and your own?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Certainly, certainly. I mean, as an artist when you start working on your early works, you usually are very heavily influenced. And certainly my early works, my unpublished works—I wrote thirteen novels before I sold one, so it took me a little while to figure this all out—but my early works were very heavily influenced. I go back and look at my first novel I started as a teenager, and I'm basically kind of word-for-word copying him. And of course, later on you explore. And you take from what you've learned, and you try other styles, and you find your own style. Much of my style is deeply, heavily influenced by Robert Jordan, and in many ways I was reacting against some of the things I'd learned from Robert Jordan, trying new things. And what I eventually settled in as my style has pieces of that, pieces of other authors that I read during those foundational years, things that I felt were lacking in the genre that I wanted to explore and try out—all of this stuff mixed together in an amalgamation. But I would say Robert Jordan was probably the single greatest influence on my writing.

    Michael

    Yeah. I mean when we talk about style—style usually implies the idea of the tone and rhythm of the prose. I think what you're talking about the kind of elements that you bring into play as you create a fantasy. Because the actual styles of fantasy writers are not that different. I mean, there is a kind of clarity, a kind of unfussiness about prose—just getting the story down, saying it clearly without a lot of fancy footwork, if you know what I mean.

    Brandon

    Yeah, there is that. Yeah, in a lot of what we're doing we try to write what's called Orwellian prose. George Orwell talked about this, where we try to make the prose a windowpane that you can look through and see the story on the other side, because really what we are is we're storytellers. You know, I don't think that's necessarily different from fantasy from other forms of popular fiction, but certainly fantasy does have its style. Though within it, it can be quite be quite varied. For instance, Robert Jordan was much more eloquent and beautiful at description than I personally am. And I tend to be much more direct and focused in my descriptions—a little minimalist—give a few little concrete details and then let the mind fill in the rest. And so, there are differences, but yes, compared to something like a more literary fiction, we certainly are far more Orwellian.

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  • 884

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    So when you came to write [RJ's] work, essentially, did you try to enter into his style in those respects, or did you maintain your own convictions, I guess?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's an excellent question, and it's one that I wrestled with for a long time. I worried. . . Eventually, I did actually try a few things, that I was just trying to imitate him, and I worried I would just come off as parody, honestly. And that was a big worry for me. At the end of the day I decided that what I needed to do was to get the voices right for the characters. Robert Jordan writes a very intense third person limited, where each line is colored by the vision of the character he's writing for at the moment.

    And I felt that if I could get the souls of the characters right, even if I were coming in and doing it stylistically a little bit differently, the books would still feel right, if that makes any sense. And that became my goal and my quest: get the characters' souls to feel right. I often use the metaphor, I say it's like you're watching a television series, and the director changes—the actors are still the same, but the director changes—and that's what I was going for.

    Michael Cathcart

    It's a hard core, though, isn't it? I mean, Wheel of Time fans are very, very hard-core...

    Brandon Sanderson

    They are.

    Michael Cathcart

    ...and (laughs) I wondered whether any of them had misgivings about you stepping in this way.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, I got a great deal of email. My inbox flooded as soon as I was announced. And there was really no justification I could give. All I could say is, "Well, wait until the book comes out. Let's see what I can do. If it stands up on its own, then that's the best proof I can give, and nothing I can say earlier will do a better job of that. If it falls down, then no justification I give now will mean anything anyway." And so I just focused on the writing and trying to get the book out and, you know, trying to....a real challenge was making sure that it fulfilled his vision for the series, and not mine, because I was a fan, and sometimes you can let that inner fan take over, and that can be a bad thing for a story. You want the story to have power and emotion; you don't want it to be a big list of inside jokes.

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  • 885

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    Brandon, was there a moment when you were working at your desk, and you thought, "Yep, I'm gonna be able to pull this off"?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I wrote some of the climactic moments for the various books, because as you mentioned, it did get split into three. I didn't expand his outline; I just wrote it as-is, and the decision to split was the publisher's, but it was a good decision. There was a moment in writing that first one that I did where one of the characters has just a moment of complete clarity and transformation where I said "Wow, I think this is gonna work. I really think that people are gonna accept this. I think I hit it."

    Michael Cathcart

    Yeah, that must have been a great moment, that break-through moment. Did you know you'd had it then, or was it looking back that you realized, that's the moment when you had the vibe?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I felt I had it then, but I'm an artist, and you work with a lot of artists; you know that when the moment is done, when we're done writing, we take our hands off the keyboard, our immediate thoughts are of panic and, everyone's going to hate this, and my career is over, and we fight those emotions back and forth in our heads. When we're actually in the moment creating the art, everything comes together and we know, deep down, we know it's working. Later on, it all kind of falls apart, and so then we just wait for the book to come out, for the story to be seen, and wait and see what people say about it, and just hope that we were right.

    Michael Cathcart

    That's fantastic, Brandon. You sound like one of your own heroes, you know, wrestling with the mighty forces. [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, well it sometimes feels a little bit like that way, you know, the underdog who comes in with this monumental task to do, I felt like I'm carrying that ring toward Mordor several times.

    Tags

  • 886

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    So what did he leave for you? What guidance did you have?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had a lot of guidance. Robert Jordan and I actually wrote, at our core, in very different methods. I am an outliner; I work from an outline, I feel like I need to have a goal in mind when I'm writing, and he was more what we call a gardener or a writer—that's George R.R. Martin's term. He nurtured stories and he grew them, so he would hop around and write on different sections as he was feeling them, and I always generally start at the beginning and go to the end, and so what was given to me was a big pile of notes that had some completely finished scenes, polished and ready to go, some that were stopped in the middle, and some that were just lines that said, "I'm thinking of doing this." A big pile of interview questions that his assistants had asked him on his deathbed, two or three dictations he'd done in the last weeks of his life that I could listen to, and just everything that you could imagine was in there. All of his notes for himself during the course of twenty years working on this series, some three million words of notes, and two assistants, and one editor who helped me dig through all of these notes to find the answers to questions that I needed to know.

    Tags

  • 887

    Interview: Apr 17th, 2012

    Michael Cathcart

    Now, I realize as we're talking that there'll be listeners who aren't actually familiar with the Wheel of Time series. I know this is a ridiculous question, really, but could you briefly tell us what it's about?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, you know, fortunately I have listened to radio interviews that Robert Jordan did, and someone asked him that. And so I can just give his answer. His answer for the Wheel of Time: the Wheel of Time is about what it's like to be told when you're just an ordinary person that you have to save the world, and it's about the journey that an ordinary person makes, becoming the person who has to ultimately probably sacrifice himself, his life, in order to save the word. And I think that's an eloquent way to put it.

    In a more general term, I can talk about fantasy for those who haven't read it, what it is and what it means to me. Because I came to fantasy kind of late; I discovered it as a teen. I wasn't reading it when I was very young, and it is the genre of imagination. And I worry that sometimes, in our modern-day lives we get so hung up on what is that we forget that, as human beings, part of our job is to, you know...part of our souls is to imagine what cannot be, and fantasy books in my vision are kind of like push-ups for your imagination. We tell stories about what maybe could be, what we wish could be, what could not be but we imagine could be, and that's what the Wheel of Time is really about. It's about that imagination, about creating a place that feels real while you read it, completely real with its own history and its own culture, its own everything, and for those brief moments, making that place is impossible become something real.

    Michael Cathcart

    And it's got strong elements of mythology that feel as though they're drawn on European models, Asian models...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes.

    Michael Cathcart

    There's a lot about....well, the Wheel of Time is to do with the cyclical nature of time that I guess we associate with Asian, mystical religions, I suppose. There's a creation story in there that sounds a little bit like the Christian story.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yep. He was very much a mythologist; Robert Jordan studied myths and legends, and the Wheel of Time is fascinating in that what he tried to go about is, the characters in these books he implied are founding myths that will eventually become stories and legends during our time, as the Wheel turns back to our time, and yet, things they reference in their lives were myths started by our time. It's cyclical, and so they'll talk about ancient legends that you pick out are them talking about the Cold War, America and Russia, except they become giants that threw spears of light at each other, and things like this, and yet we have people who are fulfilling things like the Odin mythology and the Loki mythology, kind of on the sly. You don't even figure it out unless you know mythology, and you're like, "Wait a minute. These people then found myths that, during our day, are our stories and legends, and yet we are their stories and legends." It can be kind of mind-breaking to try and parse it all together and figure it out.

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  • 888

    Interview: Jul 9th, 2012

    Phillip Carroll

    But here are the questions that I asked my buddies to send in here. My daughter actually—I'll ask her question first in case we run out of time—Waxillian? Why Waxillian?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, that's a great question. The thing about Waxillian's name is, a lot of people don't like it. I actually love it, but that happens a lot in my books; I'll do something I love that I kind of know other people are going to be annoyed by. The Wax books came, actually....as I was designing the books, I was figuring the characters, and the pun Wax and Wayne struck me, and I thought, "I can't do that; that's too lame a pun." But the characters adopted those name before I could even do anything about it, and I actually tried changing the names, and it didn't work. You know how sometimes, organically, it just happens, and you're like, "I gotta go with this." And so I didn't want to actually just named them Wax and Wayne; I wanted Wax to be short for something, and it fits very well into the Mistborn universe, because all the characters tend to have nicknames that—you know, there was Clubs and Ham and Breeze in the last series—and I wanted a name that fit with that, and so Wax worked really well, but I wanted it to be short for something, and so I started looking at period names, things like William that worked and I actually ended up picking Waxillian because it also has a metallurgic sound and I figured names in this culture in the Mistborn world where metals are so important to the magic, you might have people named after metals; you might have names that sound like metals intentionally because of that resonance. At the end of the day I just really ended up liking it. It is a bizarre name.

    Phillip Carroll

    Thank you.

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  • 889

    Interview: Jul 9th, 2012

    Phillip Carroll

    [Zach Ricks] says, he mentions that you teach a class at BYU...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do; I teach a class.

    Phillip Carroll

    ...and, what are some of the typical mistakes you find writers in that class make?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, there's a whole host of things we can talk about in this realm. I teach the class because I actually took the class when I was an undergraduate, and they were looking for a teacher—the teacher who was teaching it moved on—and I took it on because I didn't want them to cancel it. It's how to write science fiction and fantasy. And I would say that one of the big early issues with fantasy and science fiction writers is the infodump. They don't know how to balance those early pages, those early chapters, in making it interesting and exciting without dumping a whole bunch of worldbuilding on us, which is a real challenge because...we just had a panel on this here at the con; worldbuilding is what we read science fiction and fantasy for; it's the cool stuff; it's the cream that drives us to read this; it's what we love, and yet, throwing too much on us at the beginning can really stifle a book, and I would say that's a big rookie mistake.

    Another big rookie mistake is assuming that all it takes is writing one book. Most authors, you know, you learn to write by writing. I like to use the metaphor lately of learning to hit a baseball with a baseball bat. You only learn to do that by practicing; you can't read about hitting a baseball and then go out and know how to do it. Certainly reading about it is going to help you with some things, and as you're swinging that baseball bat, the pros are not thinking about which muscles they're moving. They're not thinking about necessarily even their stance at that point; they've just done it so much and done it so well that they get to the point that they can do it, second nature. And that's what a writer wants to learn to do. And you do that by, at the beginning, you do think about your stance. You do think about your grip. You do work on these...you target certain things and you learn to extend the metaphor. You work on your prose or you work on your characters, or you specifically hone in on this, but at the end of the day, writing a lot and practicing is what's going to teach you to fix problems in your writing by instinct. And I wrote thirteen novels before I sold one. I don't think everyone has to do that, but I certainly think that your first job to do is to finish one novel, and then you need to start writing a second one.

    Phillip Carroll

    Alright, thank you. The science fiction magazine at BYU: do you recommend your students participate in that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do. I actually offer extra credit for anyone who goes to the magazine and reads slush. I feel for a new writer, reading slush on a magazine can be really helpful because you see what some of the rookie mistakes are, being made by other people kind of in your same mode, your same skill set, and sometimes, when I did it as an aspiring writer, it taught me so much about what newer writers were doing, and things that I could avoid. It also helps to spend a little time around editors and see what's going through the minds of editors. Certainly a magazine is different from a book publication, but they share a lot of things, and it can be very helpful in teaching, so I suggest if there's a local fanzine—or a local semi-prozine, which is what the BYU magazine is, kind of, what the terminology is for it—go be a part; read some slush, and be part of the community, and see what other writers are doing.

    Phillip Carroll

    Thank you. I think that's what Zach pictured in mind when he started Flying Island Press and Flagship was that very same...I think he was actually on that staff at BYU.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, good! Good.

    Phillip Carroll

    And I understand what you mean by reading a lot of slush, because we read a lot of slush.

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  • 890

    Interview: Jul 9th, 2012

    Phillip Carroll

    I think Zach designed Flagship around his beliefs. Our goal is to have stories that are uplifting, that are a positive nature. You know, there's a dark side to everything, but we want it coming out as a positive experience, or outlook on mankind. He mentions that Dave Farland says you need to make moral choices about what you write, and what you advocate in your books. Do you feel like you have that opinion as well? Do you feel like your religion flows over into your writing at all at any point?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. I don't go into books with a message. At the same time, I like to read about heroism, and I like to read about moral choices. I like to read about all spectra of moral choice, honestly. I like to approach an issue and say, you know there's going to be five or six valid points on this same issue, and everyone is going to think that their side is the moral side, and I want, in my books, each one to have a legitimate ground to stand on. I don't want to be picking a side necessarily; I want to be offering the item up for discussion. I think that true morality is making you think and consider your actions as opposed to just doing them, and I think there's a real strong morality to forcing you to see other perspectives and other sides. So I would say that I like my fiction to be moral but from that definition of moral. I don't look at my fiction as necessarily teaching people which way to act, though I do think about it a lot. I think about what my role is as someone who is writing fiction that people are reading and experiencing, and what influence I have over them, and what responsibility that affects upon me. These are all very important things that I think about quite a bit. At the end of the day I want to tell a great story about characters you care about, who sometimes think differently than you do.

    Phillip Carroll

    Okay.

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  • 891

    Interview: Jul 9th, 2012

    Phillip Carroll

    Stephen King in his book On Writing says that there are some greats—and honestly when I started Alloy of Law, I thought, "This is great."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you!

    Phillip Carroll

    You know, I was in the story immediately, it was there, I pictured it—and then he says there are some that are good, that by working hard you can get better, and then there are some that just will be able to write no matter what they do. You have a master's degree in Creative Writing which is, I think, outside the norm of science fiction...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, there are certainly others. Honestly, my master's degree was a stalling tactic. I wanted to become a writer; I was writing very vigorously, and I wanted to get the degree. It certainly helped me, but more it was a, I did not want to face having to say, "I'm not going to be doing this" if that makes sense. And I felt a few extra years of school to spend more time....you know, schooling was wonderful for me, because it was a time during which I could just be a writer, and I could focus on my writing, and the classes I would take really helped me with my writing. I would try to focus on ones that would give me things to write about, and I wanted to extend that experience.

    I also wanted to, initially, approach the idea of getting teaching jobs. I soon learned once I got my master's degree there's actually the economy there. If you want teaching jobs, you really have to focus on the things that will lead to teaching jobs, and sometimes that actually is not the writing. You have to part of, you know, the Graduate Student Associations, you have to be publishing in the right journals, and writing science fiction and fantasy was not going to get me there, and I had to make that choice very very early on where I said, well, I'm going to let my master's teach me to be a better writer, but I am not going to pursue teaching any more, because I just don't have the drive to do that. There are people that have as much passion for that as I have passion for writing my stories, and those are the people that should be teaching.

    Now, I'll teach this one class—I really do enjoy it—but I don't want to do it full time. By the time I'm done with this one class every year, I'm like exhausted of teaching and done reading student work, and want to be done, and it takes me a whole year to recharge to do it again. And that says to me, you know, I have an interest in it but not a passion, a super passion for it. So yeah, I made that call. The master's degree was useful, mostly to keep me around other writers, to be involved with them, and a lot of my writing classes were actually just workshops, and they were workshops with other people who were writing very good stuff.

    Phillip Carroll

    I have to say that, in listening to you on panels, I believe that that master's experience shows through. When other people are talking, I don't believe they are nearly as articulate in the things that they're saying.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right, a lot of writers write by instinct, like I said before, and actually talking about writing is different from knowing how to do it. You know, there are a lot of writers who are really great writers—better writers than I am—that can't really vocalize why they do what they do, and I think that the study of it required me to look at it through those eyes, so that I can, which is very nice. It does make it more helpful when I'm trying to explain to people what I do, and hopefully that will help them.

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  • 892

    Interview: Jul 9th, 2012

    Phillip Carroll

    Okay. One of the—probably the last question that was brought was, how has your own...have you placed your own footprint, or fingerprint, on the Wheel of Time? And I think you brought it up here, in this last panel about worldbuilding, with the cannons.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My goal in the Wheel of Time was not to put my own fingerprint on it. I wanted to finish Robert Jordan's series as close to the soul of the series as he would do, and yet I realized as part of the process quickly that I couldn't imitate him, and that I would have to make it a little bit my own—it would have to be a collaboration—and that's a necessary evil. I really do wish that Robert Jordan were here to finish the books the way that they should have been finished, but there are certain things that he does that I can't do. For instance, he was in Vietnam. He was a soldier. He understood battle in a way that I never will. I instead have watched a whole lot of Hong Kong action films, you know, things like that, and so the way I approach an action sequence is very different from him, and the way I look at magic is a little bit different from the way he looked at magic. That's one thing that is different [between] us. So, the action sequences, things like that. My goal has been to make the characters still feel like themselves, but you will see my fingerprint on things: the way I treat some of the worldbuilding and the action sequences are the two big ones.

    Phillip Carroll

    Okay, great.

    Footnote

    The link for cannons is from DragonCon a few months later, but it's probably safe to assume Phillip was talking about something along the same lines.

    Tags

  • 893

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2012

    Question

    Hello. This question is in relation to Wheel of Time. How did you find taking over from another author and keep it consistent? Obviously there'd probably be some force of having to conform to a previous author's writing style, so that it keeps some sort of consistency, but how do you still own that work and keep it true to yourself?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. You're asking the hardest question that I think I had to ask myself when I took on this project. How do I make sure....I didn't want the Wheel of Time to become about Brandon. At the same time I had to trust my storyteller instincts, which is the only way I knew how to tell the story, and it was a really difficult process to work out, and I kind of turned it into a give and take. There are certain things that I learned from Robert Jordan that I do very similar to him that I could then do in his style very well. There are other things that were unique to him that I just couldn't in any way mimic.

    For instance, his action sequences come from a life spent partially as a soldier, and serving in Vietnam, actually being in firefights; that lends a certain type of narrative to a fight sequence. I haven't done any of that. I've just watched a bunch of kung fu films. If you read my action sequences, you're not going to feel like Robert Jordan's because there was no way to imitate him, and I felt that if I tried, I would just be parodying him, and so it was really a give and take. In some places I really tried hard to emulate what he would have done in his style, and in other places I have to say, there's just no way for me to do that; I have to approach it my way, and I took that on a case-by-case basis.

    All in all, my main goal, which I've succeeded at in some places, and failed at in others, but my main goal was to make the characters feel like themselves, and that was my focus. Can I do this? I've said it before: no one can replace Robert Jordan. No one can get it a hundred percent right but him. I think I've been doing a fairly good job, but there are certainly mistakes I've made in trying to get those characters' souls to be the right souls, and that was my main goal, is to try and get that right.

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  • 894

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2012

    Question

    I was just wondering how overwhelming it was when you first took on the job of taking up the reins of the Wheel of Time. How much was it overwhelming—the amount of detail and layering that Jordan had set up in order to continue on with finishing off the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are a couple of things that Robert Jordan did, like...there are many things he did better than I do, but there are two things that he did amazingly better than I do that have been really hard to try and approach. The first one is his mastery of description. I...prose is not....you know, I do serviceable prose. I don't do beautiful prose in most cases. I occasionally can turn a phrase, but he could do beautiful prose in every paragraph, and that's just not one of my strengths. Pat Rothfuss is another one who can do that, if you're read Name of the Wind; it's just beautiful, every line. Robert Jordan I felt was like that, just absolute beauty.

    The other thing that he was really good at was subtle foreshadowing across lots and lots of books. And it's not something I'd ever had to do before, unless you count my hidden epic, and I had never had to try and approach that level of subtlety, and it was a real challenge to try and catch all of those balls that he'd tossed in the air and he'd been keeping juggling. In fact, I would say, one of the most challenging parts, if not the most challenging part of this, was to keep track of all those subplots and make sure that I was not dropping too many of those balls. And you'll be able to see when you read the books which of those subplots were really important to me as a fan and which ones I was not as interested in, because some of those, I catch less deftly than others, and some of them I just snatch from the air and slam into this awesome sequence, and some of them I say, "Yeah, that's there."

    And that's the danger of having a fan that does this. There were so many of those things. Fortunately, he left some good notes on a lot of them, and in some of them I was able to just slide in his scenes, and in others I had to decide how to catch that, and what to best do with it. But there's just so much. So much undercurrent going on through the whole books, through all of them, and so many little details in the notes that it's easy to get overwhelmed by it. Fortunately I have Team Jordan, Maria and Alan, to catch a lot of those things that I miss, but even with them there are things he was doing, that we don't even know what he was planning to do, that we just have to leave as is, and let it lie rather than trying to wrap it up poorly, because we don't know how he was doing to do it.

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  • 895

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2012

    Question

    Hi, good afternoon. You mentioned before that you really like the big epics, big fantasy epics, and I actually can sort of feel that in the way you tell your stories. I was just wondering, did that help or hinder when you were taking on somebody else's epic, as in Wheel of Time.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would hope that it helped. I assume that it helped, having loved big epics all along. You know, there's this thing that happens to you when you fall in love with a series like the Wheel of Time. I think a lot of George R.R. Martin fans are going through it right now, which is where you have to make this decision....it happened for me actually right between books five and six on the Wheel of Time, where you make the decision, well, I have to be along with this for the long haul, and stop being frustrated about when books come out and things like that—because, you know, we all kind of go through that—and finally decide, I'm just going to read this wherever it takes me, because I love it so much. I love he's doing; I'm going to stop being frustrated, and I think that switchover in my head really helped me with the Wheel of Time books, because I stopped being, you know...people complained at like book ten, and things like that, and I wasn't there; I was just enjoying what I got, because I'd already made that switchover; I wasn't waiting so much for the ending as just enjoying the ride, and I think that helped me to kind of appreciate it for what it is, and falling in love with the big epic like that.

    The other thing that's helping me loving things like the Wheel of Time is I think that those of us of my generation who got to read things like the Wheel of Time, and got to read Game of Thrones while it's coming out—A Song of Ice and Fire—are able to see what the masters of the genre are doing with the grand epics, and hopefully build upon what they have done, learn from them. I know Robert Jordan said several times that he feels there are mistakes he made in writing the Wheel of Time in the way he did; I think he actually, after the fact—um, James [Luckman], you can tell me if I'm wrong on this. Didn't he say he would have done book ten differently if he'd had to do it over again? [Luckers nods.] There are things to learn from what Robert Jordan has done. They have paved the way. Robert Jordan was really the first one to tell a grand epic on this scale, ever, in fantasy, and so being able to read that really I think helps you as a writer yourself to say, "Wow," you know, "someone has plowed through the snow, and so I can follow along behind and hopefully not make some of the wrong turns."

    Footnote

    Technically, RJ said that the structure of Crossroads of Twilight is the only thing he would change in the way he wrote WoT.

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  • 896

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2012

    Question

    With regards to the end of the Wheel of Time, when you started to receive all of the notes and information around what actually happened, did you look at that information and see where the story and say, "Yes! Absolutely this is the best possible ending for the Wheel of Time"? Or, as a fan, did you see possible alternate endings or ways you would have liked things to proceed differently, and if so, did that influence how you've written?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question. I read the ending—Robert Jordan wrote it himself, the last chapter, and I have put that into the last book unchanged—I read it and I was deeply satisfied with it. That is the word I always use: satisfying. It was a satisfying ending. And I didn't read that and ever think, "No, we're going to change this." I don't think it ever needed it. What I did is I said, "That's my goal. That's my target. I have to get us there in a satisfying way to match this ending." And my goal all along is to live up to that ending. The nice thing is, being a creative person, there were certain holes. There were things that he, you know....I know where that last chapter is, but there are big gaps along the way, some places where I got to say...I get to do some things I've been looking forward to doing, looking forward to having happen in the Wheel of Time, and that was really a treat to be able to sit down with that outline and say, wow, there's a place here for the thing I've been waiting as a long time as a fan, he doesn't say either way. I can make it happen.

    And so I got to do a lot of those sequences, and then there are a lot of ones he left instructions on as well, and so my goal has been to...always my default is, if Robert Jordan said it, don't change it. However, that said, you can't do a book like this without being willing to be flexible in your outline. I never wanted...never changed that ending and I never have, but there are things along the way, particularly when he would say, I'm thinking of doing this, or maybe this other thing that's opposite, and sometimes I'll choose between one of those two, and sometimes it's neither one and it has to be a third thing. In a creative process, you really have to be willing to do that; you always have to be willing to toss aside what you were planning to do when something better works for what you're building, so and that has been that process. And after the books are out, I hope to be able to be much more forthcoming about what those things were and show some of the notes, if Harriet will let me, and show how they were adapted. I'm not sure if she will let me. It's really her call. Her argument has been that she doesn't want people's last memory of Robert Jordan to be his unfinished things, which is a really solid argument, and so hopefully she'll let us see some of it, but I can talk more freely about this after the last book's out.

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  • 897

    Interview: Apr 14th, 2012

    Question

    G'day, how's it going?

    Brandon Sanderson

    G'day! I dunno....I'm not supposed to really say that am I? It sounds really horrible from an American.

    Question

    [laughs] It's perfect.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I've been taught...cr...crikey. It's got an "oi" in it, apparently. Croikey?

    Question

    Crikey, mate. Just out of curiosity, which do you enjoy more, writing your own creations, or somehow writing somebody else's creations like the Wheel of Time and then working within those parameters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say, my own books with a caveat, and that caveat is the Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time is not something I...I did not say yes to this because, for any other reason than a love for this series since I was a kid. And there are very few things I would have said yes to along these lines. I became a writer to tell my stories, but I studied Robert Jordan's works when learning how to be a writer. Rand, Perrin and Mat feel like my old high school buddies; they're the people I grew up with. I was one of these bookworms who sat in my room and read book, and those were my friends. And so, having the chance to help with this is a lot like, I dunno...it's a lot like completing my master's last masterpiece, if that makes sense. It's a special thing. It's not a matter of enjoyment or not; it's a special honor, and boy has it been hard. It's way hard. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. It has been the hardest thing I've ever done career-wise, and it's been amazing for me as a writer. That said, I wouldn't say yes to this for anyone else. I wouldn't even say yes if, for some reason, Lucas were to come to me and want something like that. There's nothing really I would ever say yes to doing this same thing. That isn't to say I might not...you know, I'll probably do other little novellas and things where I poke around and whatnot, but this project has meant a lot to me all my life, and so it was a thing I did because of what it was, and I don't know how to explain it other than that.

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  • 898

    Interview: Jun, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson (11 June 2009)

    Letting Magic be Magical

    Some who have followed my website probably know how the concept of using magic in fantasy novels intrigues me. It's probably my favorite aspect of writing in this genre, and is what keeps me firmly fixed here. I'm not likely to wander to other types of books because I find the freedom and challenge of writing fantasy—of worldbuilding and designing new laws of physics—to be too compelling.

    A while back, I started toying with a theory about how magic works in fantasy novels. It went something like this: The more you explain how a magic works, the less wonder there is to that magic—but the more chances you have to use the magic in solving problems. (I once summarized this as the humbly titled "Sanderson's First Law of Magic: Your ability to solve problems with the magic system in a book is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.")

    I'm still toying with this theory. There are holes in it. For instance, it really should read something like "Your ability to solve problems with magic and NOT ANNOY YOUR READER is directly proportional to..." After all, you can do anything you want in a novel you're writing. You just risk alienating or annoying readers if you do certain things.

    I've actually struggled with this concept in my own books. I want there to be a sense of wonder to the stories. Magic has to be magical. And yet, I love playing with science and physics, and writing blended science fiction fantasies where the magic feels in many ways like a classical-era science. In this way, every single book I've written has been a tiny bit steampunk, though the trappings of that are very hard to see. (I work very hard to give my books the FEEL of an epic fantasy, no matter what I'm borrowing or mixing from other genres.)

    This is all harder than it looks. Sometimes, I feel I've erred a little too much on leaving a sense of wonder. (Questions about how the magic works for the characters and readers to explore.) When you do this the wrong way, you end up with Deus Ex Machina at times. And yet, explain too much, and the beautiful, magical feel of the fantasy world is gone.

    I'm still playing with this balance. But I'm curious to know what you all think. What is your preference? Straight-up science based magic, or something more wondrous like Tolkien used? Do both work for you, if done right? Who approaches the different avenues the right way?

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  • 899

    Interview: Jun, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson (12 June 2009)

    The Fantasy Series

    I'm in the middle of an experiment. My newest book, Warbreaker, is a stand-alone epic fantasy, much as my first book Elantris was. Obviously, I'm not the only one to release stand-alones in this genre. There's a grand tradition of it, and some of my personal favorite books are stand-alones. I'm curious to see how readers react to me jumping away from a series and doing another stand-alone, as it's something I want to do fairly frequently.

    And yet, though I don't let the sales choose what I write or publish, I do let them worry me. Really, releasing this book should be like releasing any other. I'm excited about it, I put my soul into it, and I think it represents some of the best writing I've ever done. And yet, at the same time, I know there's going to be less excitement about it from the readership than there was for the final Mistborn book. Stand alones tend to get reviewed more and better, they tend to make fans happy, and yet they just don't tend to sell as well. (I don't know for certain—I won't see numbers on the release week until next Wednesday.)

    Ever since Tolkien had to split Lord of the Rings, there has been a strong tradition of the fantasy epic coming in installments. We fantasy readers like lots of worldbuiling, lots of depth of character, and lots of viewpoints. And yet, at the same time, it seems that we like to complain about the length of the series. We want them to be long—but we don't want them to be TOO long. The problem is, we all seem to have a different definition of what makes a series "too" long.

    If you look at the figures, the Wheel of Time didn't start hitting #1 on the New York Times list until its eighth or ninth book. It took Goodkind longer, with Sword of Truth. I believe the eleventh book was the first to hit #1. Even while people were complaining about these series, they were buying more and more copies of them. Perhaps that's what was making them complain—they really wanted an ending, and were willing to read until they got to it. They just wished they could get the ending sooner.

    Or maybe the ones complaining are just a vocal minority. Still, the genre's love of the huge series does worry me a little. The length of a story shouldn't be dependent upon what the market wants, but what the story itself demands. If I write a story that I feel takes one book, I want to (and will) release it as one book. If it takes three, I'll do three. If it takes ten, I'll do ten. I hope to have the flexibility to be doing a little from each of those piles during my career.

    Yet even as it worries me, there's a piece of me—that fantasy novel lover who grew up as a teenager reading Eddings, Williams, and Jordan—that pushes me to do something BIG. Something grand in scope, something massive, long, intricate, and...well, epic.

    So what are your thoughts? Short series? Stand alone? Big epics? Why do the long series sell so much better when people are vocally claiming they wish there were more stand alones and trilogies out there?

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  • 900

    Interview: Jun, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson (14 June 2009)

    The Journey in Fantasy

    I think it's easy to understand why the concept of the journey is so intriguing in fantasy novels. There are few things which separate our modern world from previous eras more than that of distance and travel. To us, all things are close. The other side of the world is less than a single day's plane trip away, and the other side of the country can be reached in a handful of hours. The oceans are no longer an ominous, month-long barrier to us, but instead a minor inconvenience. Telephones, the internet, and video conferencing have served to 'shrink' the world even more.

    But in an era without machines, electricity, and powered flight, travel is far more daunting. It is dangerous and filled with mystery. An arduous journey makes for a visceral reminder that the world the characters live in is a very different place. It also allows for a lot of that world to be shown off, as different exotic locations are revealed. Plot wise, the journey is an excellent device because—assuming the reader is told the destination—one can follow along with the characters and feel a sense of completion and excitement as the destination approaches. (This is one reason why maps in fantasy novels are so useful.)

    In the early days of the genre, the journey/quest was such parts of the story that it was assumed that every good fantasy book would have one. The works of David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Tad Williams, and many more (going back to Grandpa Tolkien himself) relied on the journey as a major device for their stories. One commenter in a previous post mentioned that they thought it difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine a fantasy story without a journey.

    Well, I've actually written four of them without a journey (Mistborn Three had a small one at the start.) Oddly, when I first tried to write fantasy books, during my unpublished days, I found myself bored by the concept of yet another book that took place mostly in the wilderness or on a roadway visiting little towns along the way toward a destination. I wanted to write stories that took place AT the destination. That was what excited me. Some of my favorite books (like many of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books) involve no real 'journey' in the classical sense.

    I think it's very possible to have a fantasy novel without a journey or quest. However, I must acknowledge the power of that storytelling mechanism. The early Robert Jordan books were essentially journey/quest stories. I know we touched on this a little bit during my first post, but I wanted to do one more specifically focused on this concept. (And I apologize for the lack of a post yesterday; I was asked to do one post during the weekends, and intended to do them Saturdays to give the whole weekend for discussion, but release week signings for Warbreaker kept me away longer than I expected.)

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  • 901

    Interview: Jun, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson (15 June 2009)

    Guns and Words

    I can still remember the first fantasy novel I read that used gunpowder. It was one of the Robin McKinley books, the Blue Sword or The Hero and the Crown. I've mentioned before in one of these posts just how wrong that felt to me. And then, the fact that I felt it was wrong ALSO felt wrong to me. Shouldn't a fantasy author be allowed to play with any kind of technology and magic mix that they want? Shouldn't any time period be valid for creating the fantastic? And still, it felt wrong.

    Interestingly, many fantasy characters are anachronistic themselves. At least as much so as guns. One standard aspect of fantasy fiction is the idea of the 'socially progressive yet technologically slowed' society. Some fantasy authors tiptoe around it. I don't. I admit it straight out—I'm writing about societies where people, for one reason or another, are more like people in our world socially, even if much of their technology hasn't caught up to ours yet. Perhaps I can get away with this a tad more than most as I have yet to write a fantasy that takes place in what I envision as a medieval society. Elantris and Warbreaker are Renaissance, Mistborn is 19th century. Only in all three cases, there is no gunpowder.

    Perhaps this is my old bias influencing me. In the Mistborn novels, it's a world element and there's a very good reason why there's no gunpowder. In the other two, no explanation is given. I think it's reasonable to say that just because technology grew in a certain way in our world, it doesn't mean each and every world is going to follow the same path. And yet, at the same time, I doubt that adding gunpowder to either Elantris or Warbreaker would have changed the books in any great measure.

    What are your thoughts on these topics? Does gunpowder ruin a fantasy immediately, or is it just another element of technology and world an author can play with? Does it bother you that fantasy characters sometimes talk and act like more modern people, or do you prefer it? (I happen to like this last one both ways. I enjoy reading a book—like Doomsday Book—where the author tries to accurately portray the way people thought in previous eras. But I have trouble relating to those characters, and that inhibits my ability to get into the characters' heads. And so I generally gravitate toward books where the characters are much easier to relate to, and feel more like people from our era.)

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  • 902

    Interview: Jun, 2009

    Brandon Sanderson (17 June 2009)

    The YA invasion

    When I was in high school, I spent some time doing service at a local library. For the most part, this meant re-shelving books or looking through the stacks to make certain everything was in order. I remember being asked to shelve a copy of Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey. I couldn't find the place in the computer where it was supposed to go, so asked the librarian. She told me I'd been looking in the wrong place—Dragonflight was shelved in Children's, not adult.

    That's right. This award winning story, one of the best spec-fic books of all time, was shelved in Children's. That bothered me for reasons I couldn't quite define. It made me feel childish and annoyed at myself for feeling childish. What I was experiencing was something that a lot of literacy professionals have talked about recently—that teens HATE the idea of being thought of as children. (Who knew?)

    There's nothing wrong with the children's section, and there's nothing wrong with shelving McCaffrey there. If her books are of interest to teens, then putting them where teens will find them is a good thing. (As a culture, though, I think we still have a tendency to look down on teen/middle grade/children's authors and books. To shelf something in children's still strikes many of us as something of an insult. I wonder why that is.)

    Anyway, as the 90's passed, more and more 'teen' or 'YA' sections started appearing in bookstores and libraries in order to provide a place for teens to go find books without having to enter the dreaded children's section. About the same time, interestingly, fantasy fiction was invaded by a plethora of fantastic YA and middle grade fantasy novels. His Dark Materials has been brought up, so has Harry Potter. I'm partial to Garth Nix's work as well, and they're just the tip of a mound of very good, excellently worldbuilt fantasy novels that appeared in the late 90's and early 2000's.

    As someone working in this genre, all of this leaves me to wonder and speculate. Did the increasing prominence of YA sections add to this explosion? Was it all the Harry Potter bubble? Or were people jumping ship from traditional epic to YA because epic was beginning to feel stale? Perhaps it was all of this.

    I think it made the genre better. I think we've had to look at our sluggish beginnings in epic, and realize that two hundred pages of wandering around a castle before conflict appears may not be the best way to begin a story. We've had to become more creative in our worldbuilding, partially (I think) to compete with the elegance of YA competition. Probably, most epic authors don't even think about this, though I bet many of them have read Potter and the others. You can't help but react to, incorporate, and learn from what you read.

    What do you all think? What are your favorite YA fantasy novels, and how do they compare to your favorite epic fantasy novels? Am I just searching for correlation where there is none, or is my speculation on to something?

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  • 903

    Interview: Jun, 2009

    Morgan (19 June 2009)

    Warbreaker

    Brandon, thank you for sharing your time and thoughts with us here at Babel Clash. Would you like to take your last post or two and share with us why Warbreaker is an essential summer read and a perfect addition to any book lover's collection?

    All, attached is a YouTube interview with Brandon. Please check it out, and then, if you haven't done so already, track down your copy of Warbreaker: YouTube Video.

    Brandon Sanderson (20 June 2009)

    Warbreaker

    This is the part where I pitch my book, apparently. Only, I'll admit, I've never been that great at this part of the whole process. I once heard a wise man (Robert Jordan) say something along the lines of "Well, I wrote the series as long as I did because that was how long it took me to tell the story. If I could tell the story in a one-page summary, that's what I'd have written in the first place." I always had trouble writing a query letter or synopsis for one of my books. (Note how I cleverly worded that sentence in such a way as to keep from having to figure out how to spell the plural of synopsis.)

    But if you'd like a summary, here's a page where I posted some things my editor wrote about the novel:

    Blog Post: It's Out!

    That page also includes a nice long list of reviews from top tier media sources, including some glowing words from:

    Publisher's Weekly (They call the book Powerful, extraordinary, and highly entertaining.)
    The Library Journal (They call the book "essential reading for fantasy fans.")
    Booklist (They call the book superior.)
    And Michael Moorcock, who says: "Anyone looking for a different and refreshing fantasy novel will be delighted by this exceptional tale of magic, mystery and the politics of divinity."


    Are the words of those nice people why you should read my book? Well, I guess it depends. What and what are your personal tastes? Warbreaker is a stand-alone epic fantasy, self-contained in one book with an original magic system. The story focuses on reversals and witty dialogue, along with some (hopefully) deep and interesting characters. Is that why you should read the book? Perhaps.

    If you've liked what I've had to say on the blog, if you enjoy epic fantasy that tries to take a few steps away from the cliché, if you like to support people who post their books on-line for free alongside the store product, or if you're simply curious who this guy is that is finishing the Wheel of Time, maybe that is why you should read the book.

    But it's hard for me to explain to people what they 'should' do. You make that call yourselves. It's been a pleasure visiting with you all for these two weeks, and I hope to do it again some time. If you're curious about my work, check out the link above. If not, then you're fine by me. Not every book is going to appeal to every reader, and we can like different things and still get along.

    Thanks for listening to my random rants!

    Brandon

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  • 904

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (16 September 2010)

    More on Foreshadowing

    Brent, I think you're absolutely right several places in there. (Though I feel like I should object on principle, so there's more conflict to our narrative. Good storytelling, and all that.)

    Yes, there are things I can get away with now that I couldn't before—or ones I didn't try to get away with before. One big one is flashbacks. In my early years as a writer, published and unpublished, I stayed far away from flashbacks. Partially because I'd been told to do so, and partially because I'd seen them done poorly from a large number of other new writers. There are good reasons to stay away from them, and the advice is good. If you do flashbacks the wrong way, you'll break the flow of your narrative, risk undermining the tension of your story, confuse the reader, and basically make a big old mess.

    Then Pat Rothfuss comes along and does a narrative-within-a-narrative where the entire book is basically flashback, and it works really well. I do know, however, that Pat had a lot of trouble selling that book of his to start. (Though admittedly, I'm not sure if that was the flashbacks or not. I seem to remember he added the frame story later in the process, and that the huge length of the book was what was scaring people away at first.)

    I guess this brings us back to the first rule of writing: you can do whatever you want, if you do it well. Regardless, I decided—after some deliberation—that I'd use flashbacks as an extensive device in The Way of Kings and the rest of the series. None of these were in earlier drafts of the novel, however, because I knew that many readers (and editors) have a knee-jerk reaction against flashbacks because of how likely they are to screw things up. Now that I'm established, however, I feel that people will trust me when they see them.

    (One thing I'm leaving out is that I think I'm a better writer now than I was before, and if I'd tried these flashbacks during earlier days, I'd likely have flubbed them.)

    You talk about foreshadowing, and make some great points. One thing I think that I want to bring up is the idea of nesting reveals. I always try to have a nice spectrum of types of plot twists and revelations in the book. Some are easier to figure out, others more difficult. My experience has been that some readers want to try to guess what is going to happen, and others do not, but both appreciate a legitimate twist in the story. (One that was clearly foreshadowed, but not made obvious.) As so yes, there are going to be different types of readers, and some will see the foreshadowing that others will not. Some won't care at all if the story just twists unexpectedly (and without explanation) while others will consider it a put-downable offense.

    In the spirit of tossing questions back and forth, then, let me ask you this: I just mentioned above that you can do anything in your writing if you do it well. Yet I've also talked a lot about the importance of foreshadowing. What do you think? Is it ever justified to have a total Deus Ex Machina? (For those who don't know, this refers to a major plot twist—usually involving the heroes/protagonists being rescued from danger unexpectedly—that is not explained or foreshadowed.) How might one do this well? Or is it an exception to my rule? Is my rule even really a good rule?

    (Also, all, please forgive typos in this post. Just back from book tour after a long day traveling, and wanted to make sure I got this posted. But I'm kind of drooping here.)

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  • 905

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (17 September 2010)

    Chapter Breaks and Pacing

    I thought I'd do a post on pacing, chapter length, and pulling readers through a story. This is something I've been thinking about. Specifically, I’ve noticed at many authors in fantasy seem to be adopting a more thriller-style (genre, not the music video) of pacing. Shorter chapters, with cliffhanger endings that make for a quick turn to the next page.

    Perhaps it's always been this way, and I'm just more sensitive to writing methodology now, as I'm a writer myself. But it does seem to be happening more. A good example are the Codex Alera books by Jim Butcher. But I've noticed some of it in your own books, Brent. It makes me wonder if this is a reaction, on our part as a genre, but the huge teen-fantasy bubble that happened surrounding Harry Potter. YA and middle grade also tend to be more quickly paced, more tight in this regard.

    Oddly, I've found myself reacting against it. Not that I don't like this style of storytelling—in fact, I think it works very well. Jim's novel that I mentioned above was a real pleasure to read. Terry Pratchett does this in his books, and they're excellent. But I don't know if it matches every project and every story.

    Conventional wisdom in writing is that you don't want the reader to stop and take a break, otherwise they might not return to the book. You always want to leave them hanging. And yet, I don't know if this kind of pacing works very well in the very long form novels. When I write my books these days, I WANT to give the reader some breathing room. Some time to step away from the book, if they want, and digest what has happened. I feel that if I pace them absolutely break-neck, the experience will be exhausting and draining across the long haul, and the book will end up unfulfilling.

    Is this something you've ever thought about? Do you merely let pacing and chapter breaks happen? Readers, do you notice this? What do you think of it?

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  • 906

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (19 September 2010)

    I'm Overstating this, but...

    Ah, good. Something we can disagree on. (Though only a little, since we're both mostly arguing against bad usage of form—which by that definition, is bad. So neither of us would want to use it anyway. But there does seem to be some room to talk here.)

    I think short chapters do some good, and accomplish a lot. Martin is a master, and he uses them well. (At least, in some places.) Pratchett does an equally good job at it in a different type of sub-genre. But used poorly (or, well, unfairly) they do some terrible things to me as a reader.

    An example here for me is Dan Brown. I don't want to pick on him, as big targets are often too easy to pick on. He's obviously been very successful, and has some very interesting things about his writing. However, one thing I noticed reading the Da Vinci Code was that he seemed to be using the same tricks over and over and over to simply get me to turn the page. Someone would open a door and... We don't find out what was on the other side. The chapter ends. We go to the next chapter, and we either find out that nothing really that important was on the other side of the door, or we get told "I'll tell you what was on the other side of that door eventually...if you keep reading."

    This actually works, quite well, for a little while. (For me in the Da Vinci Code it worked for about half the book.) And then, it just gets wearying to me. The gimmicks start to show through, and I get tired of never finding anything out. There doesn't feel like development, just one big long stall. Yes, it's possible for a book to be "too exciting." Because if excitement is all there is, we lose character, setting, and a whole lot of depth. We go from trouble, to trouble, to trouble. High tension moment to high tension moment.

    Now, this is an extreme example, but I think that it's something for writers to think about. You suggest that self-indulgence is a danger. Yes, perhaps it is. At the same time, I'm not writing thrillers. I'm writing epic fantasy. I'm writing 300,000 word plus books. There should be ups, there should be downs, there should be moments of frantic pace, and there should be scenes of (yes) dinner. Sometimes, the most telling scenes in a story can be a simple dinner sequence. The scene with Faramir riding to charge while his father eats from the LoTR movies comes to mind.

    But this isn't exactly what I was trying to get to. I write long chapters not to (hopefully) indulge. I do it to make each chapter (or sequence of them) to have its own rising action, its own climactic moments, its own falling action. I want to open the door and, instead of cutting away, show something on the other side that really does upset the scene. Then continue through the scene to show the ramifications. I want to have each chapter be a story unto itself, rather than a movie trailer for the next chapter. (Which, in turn, is a movie trailer for the next one...and so on.)

    Again, I do think there are great ways to use the short chapters. But I worry that the conventional wisdom of "Don't ever let them put the book down!" is bad advice for some authors. Les Miserables has a whole lot of parts that are not very exciting. There are plenty of parts where, once I'm done with the scene, I can put the book down and walk away. It pulls me back to read not because it uses a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, but because the deep, rich characters draw me back to read further about them.

    I do agree that the larger casts are a problem that doesn't seem to have a good solution. Either you ignore half your characters for a book—as GRRM did—or you give them only brief appearances—as Robert Jordan often did. I don't think I'm in a position to criticize either author as, unlike Dan Brown, I think they both do/did fantastic jobs with their works. But I am consciously keeping the cast of the Stormlight Archive down.

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  • 907

    Interview: Sep 13th, 2010

    Brandon Sanderson (22 September 2010)

    The Series as Form

    Brent,

    The end-of-book introduction to the next novel is an interesting beast. I'm glad you brought it up. I actually feel about them the same way you do, it appears.

    One of the challenges of writing a series is to make certain the reader is satisfied with the book they buy, even though it's part of a larger story. Readers seem to have a love/hate relationship with the series, at least in our genre. Stand alone books, as a rule of thumb, do not sell as well as series books. Mistborn outsold Elantris and Warbreaker, as an example, and the Wheel of Time books did not start reaching the top of the bestseller charts until the series was at its eighth or ninth volume.

    And yet, the longer a series goes, the less pleased readers seem to be with it. If one looks at most series and compare reader reviews on something like Goodreads, the longer the series goes, the worse the reviews tend to get. It has happened for nearly every major fantasy series. (Pratchett is a shining exception.)

    Is this because the writing is getting worse? That might be the cynical response. There are a number of complaints leveled against the longer series. That the author is getting lazy, or that they're so popular now they no longer get the editing they once did. Some critics think that series degradation happens because the author starts milking them—writing more in the series simply because they sell well.

    I wonder if it's something else, however. Not a failing on the author's part, but a natural evolution based on the form of the series. Readers seem to want continuing characters and plotlines, but along with those come the need to juggle various sub-plots/storylines, and keep track of them across books. The cliffhanger endings that are really more "Hey, here's what we'll be dealing with in the next book" are another aspect of the series. I agree, true cliffhangers stink. But it feels very natural to have a section at the end of a book introducing some of the elements from the next book. This ties the series together.

    But it's also something that could make readers gripe. (Especially if they have to wait another year or more to read what you're teasing them with.) Anyway, I love series. I love writing them and reading them. But I also like a nice stand alone for flavor now and then. (Which is why I'll continue to do them, regardless of sales comparisons.) However, it is interesting to me that the nature of the beast is such that the more you write in a world, the more people will simultaneously praise you and complain about that fact.

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  • 908

    Interview: 2012

    Sneegro-damus (August 2012)

    Does anybody else think it would be a cool thing to get Brandon Sanderson to do an AMA? I'm really curious about how he went about writing the last few novels of the series. How would we go about getting him to do an AMA?

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    What do you want to know about the process? I sometimes have to be vague about what I did and what RJ did, as Harriet prefers people to read the books and enjoy them without spending a lot of time trying to pick out the differences between our styles. I can try to answer a few questions if you pitch them at me, though.

    EternityOfDeath

    I don't have any questions, I just wanted to thank you for all of your hard work and dedication that you have put into finishing this series.

    I picked up this series about 10 or 12 years ago, and being in Randland helped me get through some tough times. I was very sad when Jordan died, and when Harriet made the announcement that you were going to finish the series, I must admit that I had my doubts.

    So I figured I would take a look at your work, and picked up Mistborn. That book was awesome! So after finishing the trilogy, I was like "Ok, this guy can write, he is the perfect pick to finish WoT."

    I wanted to jump in and start reading The Gathering Storm, but by that point it had been a while since I had read Knife of Dreams, so I went back and started at the beginning, and when I got to the books you wrote, I was very impressed.

    There were so many good moments in The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, I don't know where to begin. The one that stands out the most in my mind is Mat's story at the end of Towers of Midnight.

    Anyways, I'm really looking forward to the release of A Memory of Light. You rock, Brandon Sanderson!

    tl;dr: Just wanted to let Sanderson know how much it means to me that he has done such a stellar job in completing one of the fantasy series that is near and dear to my heart.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It has been an honor.

    yongshin

    I've read things before from you saying that you received a lot of written guidance as well as ideas that hadn't been fully fleshed out by Mr. Jordan to help you take the stories towards the conclusion he'd always had in mind.

    Once you had worked through the stories that Mr. Jordan wanted to be told in your head and got down to writing, was there anything that you really wanted to include or thought would have a special level of awesomity but felt that you shouldn't because it went against (or would probably be against, under different circumstances) the ideas Jordan had?

    For clarification, did you ever feel like a character should experience something that Mr. Jordan hadn't mentioned or had clearly discouraged? Or feel that something should happen that Mr. Jordan hadn't conceived or didn't want?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a good question. Yes, there are things I'd have done differently—but out of respect for Mr. Jordan's desires and the integrity of the series, I haven't done them. For example, I like to use magic in ways that Mr. Jordan didn't. You see me playing with this a little bit in my use of gateways. There are many things possible with weaves (particularly since you can tie them off) that I feel exploring would have changed the focus of the stories in ways I don't think Mr. Jordan would have wanted.

    One thing that specifically came up once was me wanting to delve more into the Heroes of the Horn. The Wheel has always turned, and time is infinite. If people can occasionally be added to the Horn, that would mean that the number of people tied to the Horn is also infinite unless people get unbound as well as bound. I wanted to explore this idea—in conversation only, this isn't a plot point—but was persuaded by Team Jordan that RJ wanted nobody ever to be unbound, and that exploration in this direction would go against his vision for the world.

    yongshin

    Thank you for your answer, I've never had the pleasure of interacting with you directly before, although I am making my through your series of lectures on YouTube (that I've always assumed you consented to?) which are truly very informative.

    You mentioned that there are aspects of the world of the WoT that you would like to explore in ways that Mr Jordan wouldn't. Would you be interested in writing spin off books, perhaps with different characters set in the same universe/world? Regardless of your interest in doing something like that, would you ever be allowed to?

    On a slightly related note, do you feel that there are any aspects (characters, magic, unexplored possibilities etc.) in the WoT series that have since influenced your other writings?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The main reason I haven't done things like this is because it's not my world, and I feel it should remain closer to RJ's vision. So, even if I were to do spin offs (which I don't think will happen) I would feel the same constraints. My goal has never to be to turn the Wheel of Time into something else; there is plenty of room in my own work to explore magic as I like to explore it. In the Wheel of Time, the magic is RJ's—and should remain true (as much as possible) to his vision.

    I would say that RJ's work, and my experience on the WoT, has taught me a number of things. RJ was far more subtle in some of his plotting than I am, and I'd like to think that seeing that has helped me learn to be better in that area. I also like how wonderful his third person limited viewpoint can be, as proven by Mat. (See the other answer I gave.) The way he shaped a narrative to the character giving it is amazing, and has influenced me greatly.

    yongshin

    Thanks again for the answer. I'm going to be far more conscious of Mat's narrative from now on with that answer!

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  • 909

    Interview: 2012

    sleepinghour (August 2012)

    For clarification, did you ever feel like a character should experience something that Mr Jordan hadn't mentioned or had clearly discouraged? Or feel that something should happen that Mr Jordan hadn't conceived or didn't want?

    Good question. I've been wondering the same since RJ mentioned in an interview once that he had no intention of showing the test for Aes Sedai outside of New Spring.

    Nynaeve's Aes Sedai test was one of my favorite parts of Towers of Midnight, so I'm glad that was included, but it would be interesting to know whether RJ changed his mind or it was Brandon/Team Jordan's idea to include that.

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    This one was me. I realize he hadn't intended to do it, but he always reserved the right to change his mind on things like this. (If you read what he had to say on the last word of the book, for example, he said he thought he knew what it was—but that he might change that at any time.)

    In working on the outlines, I felt it would feel strange not to show this. The challenge was to do it in a way that wasn't simply a repetition of what Mr. Jordan had shown in New Spring. I felt if I could make the experience unique, it would have a place in the novel—and if it did not, I would need to cut it. I felt good with the way it turned out, and it indeed found a place in the novel.

    sleepinghour

    So you're the one responsible for the braid being singed off! Murderer!

    I think it made a great addition to the book. Nynaeve's my favorite character, and I've always found it unfortunate that we haven't gotten too many POVs from her since she got married in A Crown of Swords. So it was great to see scenes that showed just how much she's grown since, while still remaining the same person at heart. The references to Nynaeve's greatest fears—spiders and heights—were very neat too. Thank you for giving the test a place in the novel.

    Tags

  • 910

    Interview: 2012

    Sneegro-damus (August 2012)

    Firstly, the speed in which this happened is amazing. Thank you for answering so quickly. When you started writing for the WoT series, how difficult was it for you to balance writing your other books along with WoT? If I recall, Way of Kings was released very near one of the WoT (Towers of Midnight?).

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    It was difficult, but not as much as you might think. I only did two projects during: The Way of Kings and Alloy of Law. For Kings, I had a complete draft done before the Wheel of Time came my way.

    That said, I did rewrite The Way of Kings from scratch—and those were some busy months. I felt strongly that this was the time to put out the book, and so I threw myself into the work, but balancing it and Towers of Midnight was the most busy I've ever been. I never want to have to work those hours again.

    Alloy of Law was more simple, as I took a few months off between books and did some freewriting. This is what came of it. I often find it good to change projects between books in a series like that. It was juggling two books the size of The Way of Kings and Towers of Midnight that was so hard.

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  • 911

    Interview: 2012

    necrosxiaoban (August 2012)

    Mat's voice really changed from The Gathering Storm to Towers of Midnight. In The Gathering Storm he seemed almost a parody of himself, while in Towers of Midnight he eased back on his roguish nature and felt much more real. Why do you think Mat came across that way in The Gathering Storm, and were you specifically motivated to correct it in Towers of Midnight or did that happen naturally?

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    One of the big dangers in doing what I'm doing is turning the characters into parodies of themselves, exactly as you stated. This is kind of the 'uncanny valley' of working in someone else's world. If you get them close, but still wrong, it can feel worse than if you'd been more off.

    Jason from Dragonmount, in the early reads, was the first one to warn me that Mat was "off." I was surprised, as I felt I'd gotten him down. However, in going back to Mr. Jordan's writing and delving into it, I realized I'd missed large parts of what made Mat into Mat—the tension between what he says and does, the constant little quips in narrative (which tend to be more clever than the actual things he says out loud), the complaining that isn't really complaining. I didn't understand Mat. I tried so hard to make him funny, I wrote the HIM out of him. (I feel Peter Jackson did some of this with Gimli in the Lord of the Rings films.)

    So I'd say I was specifically motivated rather than it happening naturally. I should mention, however, that the sequences RJ worked on for Mat all ended up in Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light, not in The Gathering Storm. Some of what you are noticing isn't me, but the master himself.

    necrosxiaoban

    Thanks for the reply!

    I can appreciate the difficulty of trying to write someone else's characters! For what its worth, Mat was the only one who gave off the uncanny valley feeling. Given the number of characters Mr. Jordan created I'd think that was quite a bit of an accomplishment.

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  • 912

    Interview: 2012

    kornork (August 2012)

    As far as you know, have you finished all the plot threads with the last book? How did you keep track? Were there certain threads that RJ forgot about in his final telling to his family that you had to figure out on your own?

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    I have not finished all of them. There are a few that got cut from the book during the revision process, for example. (I'll reveal what these were after the book is out.) In other cases, RJ asked for certain threads to not be tied up.

    My goal has been to tie up as many as I can, respecting Mr. Jordan and leaving alone the ones he said not to. He left many unexplained in his final telling—his last months were spent on the major plot cycles, and many smaller things were left to me.

    Tags

  • 913

    Interview: 2012

    kurin (August 2012)

    At the end of A Memory of Light, I assume you're going to leave some questions unanswered intentionally. Will any of these have canonical answers that simply aren't shared, or will you try to resolve all the open questions?

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    There are canonical answers that are not in the book. (Mr. Jordan sometimes said in the notes "Here is the answer to this, but it isn't resolved in the last book.") He didn't want everything answered because he wanted the world to live on in people's minds. All major plot elements are dealt with, but some smaller ones are left open.

    kurin

    So there's going to be a new acronym after RAFO? Like YNFO?

    Question

    (Probably left this too late to expect a response but...)

    Will you (or anyone) ever provide those answers? Whether it be by blog/new "world of RJ's WoT" or Q&A?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will try to answer some questions once the book is out. I'd like to do some blog posts talking in-depth about the process, and about the notes. But it will depend on a lot of factors.

    Kooreth

    Even Maria's large reference book won't contain those secrets?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The reference book will contain some of the things not resolved in the book, and I've given clues about some others. Other things...well, he wanted them to go unanswered. So they will be. (And some we don't even know the answers to.)

    Kooreth

    Thanks Brandon! I am excitedly and sadly awaiting the final book. After so many years, it's going to be rough finishing it, and closing a chapter of my own life.

    Tags

  • 914

    Interview: 2012

    AreYouReadyToReddit (August 2012)

    A question I had, if you're still answering. I believe you said on your blog that the "very last scene" is Robert Jordan's, and touched very little by you.

    Could you please specify what you mean in this? (Last scene of the main story arc, last section of the epilogue, last section of the last chapter, etc)

    Thanks for all the work you have put into the series!

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    It's the last scene of the book. RJ had a large influence on the ending as a whole, but when I say "Last Scene" I'm referencing the final 1000 word section with the words "The End" following it.

    AreYouReadyToReddit

    Cool, thanks! : )

    Tags

  • 915

    Interview: 2012

    zas678 (August 2012)

    Do you still have the "Brandon Avalanches" in the WoT books? I've noticed them scale down considerably in your own books, but I was just wondering if you plotted/paced things differently with the WoT books.

    Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)

    I tried to avoid some of my 'signature' stylistic flourishes, and that was one of them. Overall, I'd say I did a blending. Some things from my style, some more like RJ, trying to do what felt best for the book and for the setting.

    Tags

  • 916

    Interview: 2012

    PostPostModernism (November 2012)

    How excited are you right now?

    Also, what are some of your next projects?

    Brandon Sanderson (November 2012)

    Hmm... For me, the excitement probably won't hit until the day of, but it will be mixed with a steadily growing sense of anxiety. It's the same anxiety for every book release. Will I have hit the target? Will it provide the right experience? Did I succeed or fail? These are things you can't know for certain until the book is out. It will be worse with this one in some ways, since there are no second chances here. Mistakes in earlier WoT books could be compensated for by future volumes. That doesn't exist for this one.

    Next year, I actually have a few YA books coming out (projects I was working on before the Wheel of Time came my way.) One of them, Steelheart, I'm very excited about. I'm also working on a sequel to The Way of Kings.

    Arithered

    Yep. Sometimes I just stare at that progress bar on your site, willing it to suddenly jump forward in real time. I can imagine it must be pretty bizarre from your end of things, having what begins as formless inspiration become quantified, written down, picked to pieces, bound, and then eagerly awaited by large numbers of people.

    We're grateful for it though, those pieces of your brain. :-)

    wisd0m (December 2012)

    Need more Stormlight Archive.

    It is very frustrating to get into a series at the beginning and have to wait for each book. I started WoT this year and ASOIAF last year, so I avoided years of waiting. The Stormlight Archive will be the true test of my reading patience.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm working on book two now. Hopefully, the wait won't be as bad for future titles in the series.

    Tags

  • 917

    Interview: 2012

    adribbleofink (December 2012)

    Brandon Sanderson (December 2012)

    Just opened the document, as I figured I could give some hard statistics on this. The chapter is just shy of 79,000 words. It contains (by my quick count) 72 scenes—but only 31 distinct viewpoints, as numerous ones repeat. (There are eight Rand scenes, for example, and six each for Mat and Egwene. Three or four each for another eight characters.)

    It is not the last chapter of the book, but is a very important one, as you might have guessed. From the get-go, I lobbied Harriet to let me do this sequence as a single, massive chapter as I felt it fit with what was going on in the book as well as fitting with the series as a whole. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

    Sarkos

    This may be a silly question, but what exactly is it that defines a chapter? Why the reluctance to break it up?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a tough question to answer because what defines a chapter is dependent upon context. I have done chapters a paragraph or two long, and I've done some (well one) at this length. In addition, if I were to go into depth about what makes this chapter a single chapter to me, I feel it would give too many spoilers. It has to do with the pacing, the sensation I wish to convey, and the attempt—through prose and the form of the storytelling—to evoke the same emotions in the reader that the characters are feeling.

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  • 918

    Interview: 2012

    philosophyguru (December 2012)

    Brandon Sanderson (December 2012)

    It was very interesting to read this while trying to figure out what scenes she was referring to...

    philosophyguru

    I know you're incredibly busy on Stormlight 2, but if you have a few minutes, I would love to hear how you approached the notes that RJ left behind. I've heard the story about the ending and who killed Asmodean when you first visited Harriet's house, but where did you go from there? I assume you didn't just read all of the notes straight through...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, okay, this is going to be kind of long.

    To understand my next step, you have to understand what we mean by "Notes." There are really three groups of these.

    1) Robert Jordan's Worldbuilding Notes. These were in a series of dozens, maybe hundreds of files embedded chaotically inside of files inside of files, using his own system of notation. The notes reach all the way back to early books he was working on, as he was working on them. They aren't intended to be read by anyone other than him, and are sometimes very difficult to figure out. This is the group that Harriet has said, in her estimation, include a total wordcount equal to or greater to that of the published series.

    2) The notes for the last book, gathered by his assistants Maria and Alan, with Harriet's help. These are far more focused on the last book, notes that RJ wrote specifically focusing on the last book. This is a much more manageable amount, maybe fifty or a hundred pages. It includes interviews that Alan and Maria did with RJ before he died, asking him what was to happen to certain characters.

    3) Scenes for the last book, either in written form or dictated during his last months. This includes some completed scenes. (The last sequence in the book, for example. Also a lot of prologue material, including the scene with the farmer in The Gathering Storm, the Borderlander Tower scene in Towers of Midnight, and the Isam prologue scene from A Memory of Light.) A lot of these are fragments of scenes, a paragraph here and there, or a page of material that he expected to be expanded to a full chapter. This is different from #2 to me in that these are direct scene constructions, rather than "notes" explaining what was to happen.

    Together, #2 and #3 are about 200 pages. That is what I read the night I visited Harriet, and that is what I used to construct my outline.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I took all of the items, but particularly the things in 2&3, and then I re-read the series start to finish, taking notes on character motivations, plots that had not been resolved, and foreshadowing. I used this to create a skeleton, using character touchstones from the notes (like Egwene's climactic moments in The Gathering Storm) to construct plot cycles.

    Where there were big holes, I used my instincts as a writer and my re-read to develop what the story needed. From there, I started writing in viewpoint clusters. I would take character who were in the same area, and write their story for a chunk of time straight through. Then I would go back and do the same for another group of characters.

    Tags

  • 919

    Interview: 2012

    Robert Moreau (December 2012)

    So how long is the series going to be? RJ's answers from 95–06

    Friend of mine posted this on Dragonmount and I got a kick out of it, a timeline of RJ's estimates on just how many books the series was going to be:

    1993

    He still isn't sure how long WoT will go on for, saying probably seven books but adding that when The Eye of the World first came out he saw the series as four books.

    "At present I am indeed hoping to complete the cycle in either seven or eight books. I am 90% confident that I can do it in seven, 95% confident that I can by eight. The thing is, as a famous manager of an American baseball team once said: 'It ain't over till it's over.'"

    1994

    "It will last several more books, until I reach the last scene, which has been in my head since the very beginning."

    "I do hope there will not be ten books all told. I'm planning for eight, at present, and hope very strongly that I can wrap it all up in that length."

    He said he writes as the ideas come and he has no clue as to how long the series will be!

    "I knew from the start that I was writing something that would be multiple books. I just never knew how many, exactly."

    Not only did he decline to set the number of future WoT books, but he denied ever setting a number and says he never planned it to be only a trilogy. But he seemed to indicate he was planning 9-10 books total. When faced with the prospect of about twelve books, his wife threatened to divorce him and his editor began to make jokes about the Irish Mafia.

    "Several. Some. A few. I'm not even speculating now on how many books I hope it will take, because every time I do mention a number I hope I can finish it in, it turns out to take longer. It will be at least eight, because I've signed the contracts for books seven and eight."

    "I've stopped saying how many more books there will be."

    "At one time, I did hope for eight; now I don't think so. I certainly hope (Please, God!) it doesn't go to ten books, but I have stopped saying anything except that I will write until I reach the last scene of the last book, which scene has been in my head from the beginning."

    1996

    "There will be a few more books, some, not a lot, hopefully fewer than seven more."

    "It will be at least ten books, yes. There will be some more books, not too many, and please God, not so many as I've already written. I am, in truth, writing as fast as I can. I want to maintain the pace of the story until I reach the final scene, which has been in my head since before I started writing The Eye of the World."

    1997

    "There will be at least three more books. I'm not saying that there will be ONLY three. I'm saying that I can't finish in fewer than three."

    1998

    "I believe—believe!—there will be three more books. I am trying to finish up as soon as possible, but I cannot see how to do it in fewer than three books. That isn't a guarantee, mind! In the beginning, I thought that there would be three or perhaps four books total, but it might go to five, or even six, though I really didn't believe it would take that long. It wasn't a matter of the story growing or expanding, but rather that I miscalculated—brother, did I!—how long it would take to get from the beginning to the end. I've known the last scene of the last book literally from the beginning. That was the first scene that occurred to me. Had I written it out 10 years ago, and then did so again today, the wording might be different, but not what happens. It has just taken me longer to get there than I thought."

    "When I finished A Crown of Swords, I said it would take me at least three books more to finish. Now that I have completed The Path of Daggers, it looks like it will take me at least three more books to finish. Believe me, guys, I'm trying as hard as I can to get there as fast as I can."

    "I don't have a set amount of books planned. I believe it will take at least three more books to reach the ending that I have known for more than 15 years."

    "Remember, after A Crown of Swords I said at least three more books....the same thing I say now."

    The usual "at least three more books" was mentioned several times in an increasingly loud voice.

    "I am only asked that question by about 300 people a day. The answer is that there will be at least three more books. At least. As I said earlier, I know everything that I want to happen and I have known the last scene of the last book for fifteen years. I also know that I cannot get everything that I want to happen into less than three more books. So that's where we stand at the moment."

    1999

    Firstly, RJ said three more books "at least" and that he'd try to do it in three if he could, but he couldn't promise it would be only three. And he said he thought it would take "at least five years".

    2000

    "Sigh! At least three more. I know I've said that before, but it's still the case."

    "It still sits at three more books to finish, but I've always said from the time I began using the three books that it would be AT LEAST three books—that I'd try to finish in at least three books, but I couldn't promise. I know that I couldn't possibly finish in fewer than three. If I can finish in three, I will. But that's what I'm hoping for, what I'm trying for. NOT a promise."

    "There is no set number. It takes as much space as it takes."

    2001

    The next book will be out very soon after he's finished writing it. He don't know how many more books there'll be. At least three. If he can finish it in three, he will.

    There will be no more than five, but also no less than another three books to be expected to appear in The Wheel of Time series.

    "There will be at least three more books. The next book will be in bookstores very shortly after I finish writing it, and Michael Jordan is my kid brother whom I taught to play basketball."

    2002

    "After Crossroads of Twilight, there will be two more books, knock wood, God willing and the creek don't rise. I never intended The Wheel of Time to be this long. The story is progressing the way I planned, but from the beginning I believed I could tell it in many fewer words, many fewer volumes."

    "I think twelve."—Harriet

    2003

    When asked "how many more books?", which of course met great laughter, he responded that he had started the process intending to have only five or six. Now on book 10, he remarked that he would complete the series in two more books if at all possible. If not, then three.

    Jordan showed up around 7, and gave a little speech. He said there will be at least two books, and that he will not write a word more than he has to.

    "How many more books will there be? There will be at least two more books. I apologize for that. I cannot finish it in fewer books. I will try to finish it in two more. I have known the last scene of the last book since 1984. I know where I'm going. The problem is...[my tape is once again inaudible and this was one of the few parts of his speech I could not hear, sorry gang]. That's about it."

    "I really hope—knock wood, spit over your shoulder, and sacrifice to the gods—that I can finish up in twelve books total. We shall see."

    "No, at least two more books, I'm afraid....I've had some people say they'd like five or ten, but I generally throw something at them."

    2004

    "I hope—please God, are you listening?—that there will be only two more books in the main sequence."

    "I very much hope to finish in two more main sequence books. It's not an absolute promise, but I'm very much hoping for it and I think I can do it."

    "I sincerely hope it will be possible to tie everything up in two books."

    2005

    There is only one book left in the series but it will be a doozy. He will fight to prevent it from being "George R.R. Martined," or split for publication.

    "I am committed it is going to be 12 books, even if it is fifteen hundred pages long and it requires you to bring a luggage cart to get it out of the store. Bring your knapsack, you may need it, because no matter what the case that is going to be it."

    "One more—the twelfth book. That will be so even if that book has to be 2000 pages in hardcover, and require a luggage cart and shoulder strap to get it out of the store."

    "I have said it before and will say it again. There will be one more book. Even if it has to be a 1500 page book. It will be the last book even if you have to use a luggage cart to move it."

    "For Segovia, my intention is finish with twelve books, and that may mean that the last book will be VERY long, but I really can't say how long it will take me to write. My publisher is always trying to get me to commit to a time frame. I just do a little sand dance until he goes away. I carry a small bottle of sand with me in New York for exactly that purpose."

    Book Twelve will end the main sequence if he has to personally go to New York and beat the publishers at Tor, even if it runs two thousand pages and they have to invent a new way to bind the books (shudder). There will be two more prequels a la New Spring, and there might—very big MIGHT—be another trilogy in the same universe.

    First, "the next book will be out very shortly after I'm done writing it." Next, "the next book will be the last book, even if it's 2000 pages, and you need a luggage cart to carry it out of the bookstore."

    "Can we all say it together? One more book. I don't care if it has to be 2000 pages and you have to wheel it out the door. One more book."

    2006

    "After Knife of Dreams, there's going to be one more main-sequence Wheel of Time novel, working title A Memory of Light. It may be a 2,000-page hardcover that you'll need a luggage cart and a back brace to get out of the store. (I think I could get Tor to issue them with a shoulder strap embossed with the Tor logo, since I've already forced them to expand the edges of paperback technology to nearly a thousand pages!) Well, it probably won't be that long, but if I'm going to make it a coherent novel it's all got to be in one volume."

    Brandon Sanderson (December 2012)

    Ah, and what a marvelous 2,000 page book it would have been. I was really shooting for this. Turns out, however, that I don't have the influence that RJ did, and couldn't persuade the publisher that printing a 2,000+ page book was viable. You'll have to be satisfied with three 800 pagers instead.

    I do kind of hope we'll be able to do a cut of the volume in ebook where I weave the three books back into one, which would fix some of the timeline confusion in Towers of Midnight, which was the big casualty of the split.

    (I knew that, in all likelihood, a split would be mandated, and so I prepared for it by deciding on the three book split instead of a two book split, as I feel it fit the narrative flow better. However, I was working on Perrin when the first split happened, and didn't realize until afterward that by jumping back to the beginning of his story after finishing The Gathering Storm, I was going to create the issues it did with Tam.)

    archaeonaga

    So you're planning on doing a Phantom Edit of your own work? I, for one, would be really interested to read something like this, but I think that what you lost in chronological clarity in the split, you gained in pacing and narrative clarity.

    That said, you mentioned in a previous interview that The Gathering Storm's intensity also came from an awareness that your first effort in the Wheel of Time really needed to be a home run. Would your decisions regarding the narrative structure have changed if you didn't feel that pressure?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wouldn't consider it a phantom edit, as I wouldn't be removing sections. I'd be moving them around, adding in a few deleted scenes. More like an extended edition mixed with pacing tweak.

    I don't know how my decisions might have changed if I hadn't felt that pressure. I might have chosen to do Rand/Perrin in the first book and Egwene/Mat in the second book. Perrin/Mat have great stories in TofM—but they're not as focused as the ones for Rand/Egwene. I don't know. The timeline might have been even worse.

    This is something I'd have to play with, if I were actually to attempt it, to even see if the narrative flow would work that direction now that I've made writing decisions with three books—instead of one—being the reality.

    archaeonaga (January 2013)

    Now that I've finished reading A Memory of Light, I have to say, I think this would be an insane task. Mostly, The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight would be the things caught up in reorganizing, since A Memory of Light's timeline is internally consistent enough to justify things. It would also let you sprinkle the Black Tower POVs a bit more nicely throughout the trilogy, since the frontloading of that plot at the beginning of A Memory of Light is one of the few structural weaknesses I thought I saw.

    In any case, congratulations! You've really done it! Those annotations will be fascinating, assuming you get permission to take it on.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You're right on the Black Tower structural weakness. I actually plotted that sequence to go all in Towers of Midnight, but ran up against deadlines and only did a few chapters of it. It would work far better moved earlier.

    Thanks for reading. I'll see what I can do about annotations.

    archaeonaga

    That makes a lot of sense. One gets the feeling that a lot of your writing was done with several different forces tugging you one way or another; collaboration can be tough, especially for artists who are used to working in the silence of their mind, and I can't imagine adding a massive fandom to that.

    Seriously: congrats. Tai'shar...Utah? :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tai'shar Nebraska, actually. But I like Utah well enough. :)

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  • 920

    Interview: May 2nd, 2012

    Terez (8 May 2012)

    Can you supply date, town, and bookstore?

    Mark Grayson

    This past Wednesday May 2nd in Las Vegas in the lobby of the Golden Nugget hotel. He was in town as one of the guests/teachers of a writers convention. He squeezed in a quick signing for local fans. If you signed up for his newsletter and gave your location as in the Vegas area you got an email from Peter about the signing. There were 8 or 9 of us there so it was pretty cool.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He let us ask some questions but didn't give any new details that aren't already out there. The info on the prologue came up as he was talking about his progress revising the book and how the ending was pretty much all RJ and didn't even need to be polished. He then mentioned that parts of the prologues of all 3 books had been written or dictated by RJ but the scene that was released was not one of them.

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  • 921

    Interview: May 2nd, 2012

    Mark Grayson ()

    I'll try to sum up a few other things I remember:

    Brandon Sanderson

    We talked about if he laughed when fans were guessing who wrote what and getting it way wrong. He said the story he could tell about that was someone looking at the chapter titles to tGS and saying they could tell that Brandon wrote those when of course Harriet has named all the chapters since the start.

    He was disappointed that DKS couldn't finished the last cover even though he really thinks Whelan is the best fantasy artist around. He likened it to the same as it being too bad that he had to finish the series instead of RJ.

    He talked some more about how he felt Mat was the hardest character to get write because he's pretty complicated. His thoughts don't always match up with his actions and it was hard to strike the right tone.

    He knows that his action sequences don't sound like RJ's. He said he just doesn't have the real world experience that RJ did as a combat soldier so he just writes them as the best action scenes that he can.

    He said Perrin was his favorite character so one of his goals was to redeem the character a bit and make him awesome again.

    I asked about his Alcatraz books and he said there will be one more but it's not high on the priority list and will be several years. He also said the Scholastic distribution wasn't great and he's working on buying back the rights and bringing the series to TOR for wider distribution and ebook release.

    Mark Grayson

    Stuff like that. Nothing that hasn't been covered before.

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  • 922

    Interview: 2012

    Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Herid (27 October 2012)

    Dragonmount is now a complete @BrandSanderson bashing ground. This is becoming unbearable. What happened? Was not so last year.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    It's unfortunate, but natural. I've grown popular enough that some people say my wot books are better than RJ's, which isn't true.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The hardcore fans then feel the need to point out the flaws in my efforts, and many things they say are true.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do wish some were not as vicious as they are, however.

    Luckers

    So, apparently @BrandSanderson has chosen to believe that the criticism levelled at him is just a jealous reaction.

    Luckers

    A response by hardcore fans loyal to Jordan to the suggestion that @BrandSanderson's work on the Wheel is better than RJ.

    Luckers

    In @BrandSanderson's defence, he does offer that the hardcore fans use some truth in their jealous rage.

    Luckers

    So I suppose at least @BrandSanderson offers efficacy to our criticism, if not legitimacy.

    Luckers

    I'm curious as to where you gain your insights into the criticism? After all you could not even bring yourself to read a...

    Luckers

    ...critique wrapped in kiddy gloves that you yourself requested. Are you sure this isn't some sort of self-rationalisation?

    Luckers

    After all, a small select group blowing minor (but admittedly real) flaws out of proportion in a misguided attempt...

    Luckers

    ... at loyalty to Jordan is a much easier thing to swallow than the idea that the criticism might have truth...

    Luckers

    ... in both the specifics and in the degree of its existence.

    Luckers

    Anyway, I'm done raging at you now. Wow. That was weird. Must have seen someone suggest you were better than Jordan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Luckers, I worry sometimes about how strongly you react to things like this. I didn't call the criticisms minor or misguided.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I agreed they are true. I am flawed. I cannot yet write well as you want me to. I'm sorry you find that personally offensive.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do not think that is the only reason people criticize me. Twitter makes it hard to explain things in depth.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have seen it being a factor—explicitly, by the poster's own words—in criticism. I find that noble. I didn't want to offend.

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  • 923

    Interview: 2012

    Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Jan Carrick (30 October 2012)

    Will we see more of the serious, dark Mat that we left in Knife of Dreams? That is, the one Tuon refers to as...

    Jan Carrick

    ... "a lion on the high plains" and who leaves wounded enemy combatants to suffer and die (Knife of Dreams ch. 27)? Thanks for your time.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    I've tried. I do worry that sometimes I'm too lighthearted with Mat, and need to remember his dangerous side too.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have attempted to walk this balance in A Memory of Light.

    Tags

  • 924

    Interview: 2012

    Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Herid (19 December 2012)

    Memory 24 is such a boring teaser and on @BrandSanderson's birthday too. This is not right! @tordotcom should give us a bonus memory.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Ha. Okay, Teaser: "River of Souls" was a direct result of me trying to do be better at something RJ did well & I did poorly.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Problem is, I overdid it, and the story veered far too "Brandon-ish" as a result, which was why we cut it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Fortunately, by having done "River of Souls", the added depth behind-the-scenes helped fix the very issue I was worried about.

    Tags

  • 925

    Interview: Dec 7th, 2012

    Narrator

    When fantasy author Brandon Sanderson was selected to finish the Wheel of Time, fans rejoiced. Over the next four years, Sanderson skillfully penned the final three volumes of the series, working from Jordan's notes and partial manuscript.

    Brandon Sanderson

    What I've pointed the entire sequence that I've worked on toward is this last scene that he finished. He always promised us that he had it in mind, and he did write it before he passed away.

    Harriet McDougal

    On January 8th, 2013, A Memory of Light will go on sale. If ever a book was long-awaited, it's this one.

    Jason Denzel

    Robert Jordan's legacy lives on. Just as Jordan wrote, there are no beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. His masterpiece stands as one of the greatest achievements in modern literature.

    Tags

  • 926

    Interview: Dec 19th, 2012

    Narrator

    In 2005, Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan was diagnosed with a fatal blood disease, disrupting his plans to finish the beloved series. With his fans in mind, Robert Jordan worked diligently through his final days, writing outlines, notes, and manuscripts so that his masterwork could one day see completion.

    Tom Doherty

    His fans—the people who had stuck with him all these years from 1991 on—deserved closure. And, he had created an outline which gave them closure, and he wasn't able to finish it himself. We wanted Jim's story to be told.

    Harriet McDougal

    A friend was staying with me in the week after Jim's funeral and put a print-out in front of me and said, "I think you need to read this." It was Brandon Sanderson's eulogy for Robert Jordan. And it was—it was beautiful. Such an expression of love for the books and for Robert Jordan's work. And it ended, "Mr. Jordan, you leave us silently, but you leave us trembling." And I thought, gosh, this is the attitude I would love to see. Brandon at this point was a published fantasy writer, so I called Tom and said, "I want one of his books to read." His world, his people, his conflicts were all clear in my mind. And I called Tom, and said, "Tom, I think this is the guy."

    Tom Doherty

    And she picked Brandon. And we're just delighted because we think nobody could have finished it as well.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had no idea how to react to this. I could barely talk when I replied to Harriet. In fact, I sent her an email the next day. It said, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot." Because I couldn't get out words. Yes, I wanted to be involved in the Wheel of Time. No, I didn't think anybody else could write the Wheel of Time. What do you do when you're in that situation?

    Harriet McDougal

    We met in December, and I picked him up at the airport, brought him back, and said I've got some hot soup on the stove. He said, "I'd rather have the ending if I could, please." [Laughs]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Which I sat in his chair and read, well into the evening that night.

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  • 927

    Interview: Dec 19th, 2012

    Narrator

    Together, Brandon Sanderson and Team Jordan began building the strategy for finishing the last volume for the Wheel of Time.

    Harriet McDougal

    Well, he was working with everything Robert Jordan had ever written, including all the notes and speculations, as well as the outline that Jordan dictated in those last weeks.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He intended this book to be enormous. Getting the notes, I said, yup, it's here. I can do this, but it's going to be over 2000 pages long. At some point Tor and Harriet discussed how long it was going. And so that's when they came to me and said, "We want to split it."

    Tom Doherty

    This outline was too complex. There was too much that needed to be told, too much story.

    Brandon Sanderson

    We didn't add to it. This is the length that it was always going to be. But in splitting it—what it allowed us to do is take three books and focus them. The Gathering Storm has a focus on Rand and Egwene. They were able to shine in a much more spectacular way because of that. And the things happening with Mat and Perrin could have very easily been overshadowed by Rand and Egwene, who have monumentous things going on.

    Tom Doherty

    These last two books—number one best sellers. Number one international best sellers, number one up here on the Globe and Mail, as well, the national paper. People read and realized that, yes, it wasn't Robert Jordan, but by god it was being finished properly. And it was being finished from Robert Jordan's notes and his ideas, and Brandon's talent was that he could capture the dream.

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  • 928

    Interview: Dec 19th, 2012

    Narrator

    With Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight complete, Brandon Sanderson had to face his greatest challenge yet—writing the final battle in A Memory of Light.

    Brandon Sanderson

    A Memory of Light was a challenge for a number of reasons. There is a lot of warfare in this book—more so than all of the others—which needed to be realistic, and the tactics needed to be sound. And these were the sorts of things that Robert Jordan was extremely good at doing—he was a military historian. I don't have his background, so I had to rely a lot on the notes, and on Team Jordan. You want the story to be focused on the characters—it has to be a personal story. How to balance that, how to tell the story of these wars in a series which is primarily concerned with the characters was a real push back and forth with the text, trying to massage it and edit and work it to the point that it would convey their stories but still be true to the tactics that would make this all come together.

    Tom Doherty

    There's been huge enthusiasm. People have been waiting for this for a long time. If they once dipped into it, they wouldn't be able to put it down.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And in January, they will finally get the full story—the final volume of the Wheel of Time. The end of an Age has arrived. The Dark One is almost free. The Wheel of Time hangs in the balance, and prophecy must be fulfilled. The Last Battle begins January 8th.

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  • 929

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    The publication of the final Wheel of Time book is a big event for fantasy readers, many of whom have been anticipating the end of the series since the first book in 1990. As a longtime fan yourself, how do you feel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's really a weird experience. I discovered fantasy when I was 14, and the Wheel of Time books were the first series that started when I started. I have been following it all through, and it's also one of the few series that continued with me: I enjoyed it both as a youth and as an adult. Wheel of Time has always been there through my whole career, so I understand completely how [fans are] feeling about it.

    But it is also a weird experience for me as a fan. I read Robert Jordan's ending in December 2007, so part of me has had the Wheel of Time done for five years now, and the rest of the world is finally getting to catch up with me. I think that people are going to feel a lot of what I felt when I read that last scene; I was very satisfied. I loved the scene, but there was also this deep sort of sense of, "Wow, it's actually over." The series has been going for 23 years, and we have joked in Wheel of Time fandom for 22 about when the ending would come. It's a reverent feeling, it's an excited feeling, and it's also a sad feeling.

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  • 930

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    Endings can often be the hardest part of a book to get right.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Since Robert Jordan wrote the last scene, that actually made this whole project mountains easier. I had a target to shoot at. While I didn't have a ton of written material from Robert Jordan that I could actually put in—there are about 200 pages worth of scenes and notes that needed to become somewhere around 2,500 pages [Books 12-14 by Sanderson total 2,556 pages]—a lot of those 200 pages were summaries of scenes he wanted. Robert Jordan wrote by instinct. He was what we called a discovery writer, so what was handed to me was a big pile of half-finished scenes or paragraphs where he wrote, "Well, I am either going to do this, this, or this. I was thinking of this, but it could be this." Yes, cracking an ending is hard, and the Wheel of Time had a lot of loose threads. My job was to take all those threads and weave them into an ending, which was a real challenge.

    When I was handed this project by Harriet [Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's wife and editor], she handed it to me as a collaborator, not as a ghost writer. It's not like building a shelf from Ikea, which is good, because otherwise my creativity wouldn't have been engaged. She handed me full creative control for the first draft, and then we went into the editing phase where we really worked on it to make sure that it fit her vision and Robert Jordan's vision for the series. But going into it, nothing was off-limits. So I wrote them like I write any novel. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is sacrosanct.

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  • 931

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    How much liberty did you have in deciding which characters would play the biggest roles in the last battle?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In a lot of ways the "why" or the "how" was not said, and in other places in the outline there were just empty holes where a character is in one place and 800 pages later, then another place.

    [In the final book] we've got a lot of questions that still need to be answered. Robert Jordan did leave me instructions on which ones, in some cases, not to answer. There are things he wants to leave unresolved, and there are other things he said do answer this, and there are some things that he said either way. He left a lot of instructions about who lives and who dies, but there are also plenty of cases where I got to make the judgment call. It's a big, cool, awesome, scary thing, and all of the gloves are off. Anything can happen in this book, because I don't need to worry about setting up any future books.

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  • 932

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    Many plot points are in motion at the end of the next-to-last book in the series, Towers of Midnight. Can you set the stage? What can readers expect in the final book, A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A little bit of spoilers here: One of the big things we got going on is Rand and Egwene on opposite sides of the big decision regarding what needs to happen with the last battle. It's a power struggle that has been brewing for a long time behind the scenes. Some may not have noticed it until I brought it to the forefront in the last book. We've just had a main character who has been gone for a long, long time show up again in the end of Towers of Midnight, and there are ramifications for that. Can we work together? How do we work together?—that's going to be one of the themes.

    And, of course, this is the last battle, which means there's a lot of war in this book. And that's actually very different for a Wheel of Time book. There have been big battles before, but not ones that span half of the book or more.

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  • 933

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Dave Golder

    Was this a big responsibility to take on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Oh, man, it's hard to explain what it was like because I started reading these books as a kid. I studied The Wheel of Time when I was trying to figure out how to write fantasy books in my twenties. So to be handed this project and be able to help finish the work of one of my heroes felt really good, but the weight of it was also like an enormous burden. I really wanted to make sure that I did a good job. Beyond that, there are millions of fans who all love the series so much and I felt a great debt to them. With my books, I own them so I going to tell my vision and I'm less worried about what the fan reaction will be. But with The Wheel Of Time books, I feel that they own them as much if not more than I do. I'm a steward of these books rather than the owner, so I had to keep that in mind and take a different approach."

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  • 934

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Dave Golder

    Did you ever meet Robert Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I saw him once at a convention but I didn't know him. I saw him as a fan and he wouldn't have known me from Adam. He asked his wife Harriet McDougal to find someone to finish the series and after he passed away, she went hunting. She considered it something of a dying request so she searched through a lot of fantasy authors. She hadn't heard of me, but she read my Mistborn series. She then called me up and asked me to do it. I didn't know I was being considered: it just came out of the blue. To be asked to finish the series was just astonishing and I wasn't expecting it. It was a little bit like winning the lottery when you haven't bought a ticket but someone you love has to pass away before you can win."

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  • 935

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Dave Golder

    Was it your decision to split the final installment into three books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Robert Jordan was always telling fans that this book was gong to be so big that they'd have to invent a new binding system to get it out the door. When I was offered the project, I got all his notes and then spent about five months constructing an outline until I'd built the ending that I felt he'd indicated. I felt that he wanted it to be this big epic story and when I have an outline, I can usually tell how long the story is going to be. I realised that it was going to be a pretty big book—I was estimating it to be about 800,000 words, which is just enormous. I told Harriet and the publisher that this is what Robert Jordan wanted and what the story deserves. They then asked me if there were any places where I could split it. I agreed to do that as long as they would let me decide where and how to do that. There are some natural break points but it has to be done the right way. I haven't expanded the outline or lengthened what I felt the story should be; I've just portioned it into three volumes instead of one massive volume."

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  • 936

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Dave Golder

    So what can we expect?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I can tell you a few things as Robert Jordan was once asked what the series was about and he said that 'It's about what it's like if you're a normal person who is told that the world is going to end unless you try and save it.' This end book is what everyone has been expecting. They call it the Last Battle, so it's the last showdown as there's this massive war going on. You can also expect the last chapter written by Robert Jordan himself. He always promised fans that he knew what the end of the series would be, so he sat down and wrote it before he passed away. It's gone into the book virtually unchanged by me. It's the goal I've been working towards all this time.”

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  • 937

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Dave Golder

    One of the themes of the series is the cyclical nature of time so is it ironic that you've inherited The Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan's death?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I'm not unaware of how that relates to what's going on with me. One of the things that Robert Jordan did early on as an author was to work on the Conan books, so he was working on the stories of another author that had passed. Then he passes away and I ended up working on his story, so there was this cyclical thing going on there."

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  • 938

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    kcf

    How much have ideas that you or other members of Team Jordan first saw in fans discussion influenced the book? Spoiler follow-up: Such as the tactical use of gateways?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tactical use of gateways is honestly all me. I hadn't even played Portal before I wrote these books. I have since went back and played it, and they're doing some of the same fun stuff. That was me from years and years ago as a guy who likes magic systems reading the Wheel of Time books and saying, "If I had gateways, this is what I would do." In fact, I had built up some magic systems using things like gateways that I will never be able to use now, because I got handed the master magic system with gateways.

    Team Jordan was somewhat uncomfortable with my use of gateways, in a lot of ways. They felt I was pushing them. But my response back was that I didn't want to push the magic system in other ways; I didn't want to be inventing a lot of new weaves. I didn't want to be doing a lot of things like that, because I felt it would be taking the system too much in the directions I take the Brandon Sanderson systems. I really do like Robert Jordan's magic system, but I wanted to take some of the specifics that had already been done, such as gateways, and say, "Here's where you can extrapolate with them."

    As for other things that have been discussed in the fandom—I certainly wasn't as big a part of the fandom as I am now, not anywhere near it. For instance, I didn't care about Asmodean until I started talking to other Wheel of Time fans, and it was a big deal to them, and so it became a big deal to me. There are certain things that through fandom and talking to other fans you tend to rally around, that I kind of wanted. One was a reunion between Tam and Rand. There are other things like that, that for a long time we'd been waiting for and we'd talked to each other about, and we'd imagined what they'd be like. Those sorts of things did influence me; I had to be really careful not to be too influenced though. Being too influenced would lead me to put in lots of inside jokes, things like Narg—that would have been letting the fan in me run too wild. So I did have to rein that in.

    It’s hard for me to separate the years of talking about the Wheel of Time with friends and reading about the Wheel of Time from what I eventually ended up doing in the books. Once I did start working on the books, I didn't go plumbing through fan forums looking for things that should be included. I specifically stayed away from things like that, though I did suggest to Maria at times that she should watch and see what people were expecting, so that we would know what things we were not going to end up fulfilling, and could be prepared for them.

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  • 939

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    kcf

    You have a tendency to break the fourth wall at times in your WOT writing. How did you come to this choice as it's not a technique that Robert Jordan used? How have Team Jordan and fans of the series reacted to this?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My answer is that I disagree with you. I don't think any of those things break the fourth wall. Robert Jordan put fan names in the books; he named things in the books after streets in his hometown; he named characters after people he knew. That's how he wrote these books, and it's how I've written all of my books. It's just how you get inspired as a writer. With Roedran, I honestly think that's what Rand would think and say; it's what he would come up with. It's one of the big theories I felt was really what Rand would consider in-world. So I just have to disagree with you; I don't think that any of this is breaking the fourth wall.

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  • 940

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    kcf

    As I was reading A Memory of Light there were many times where I was fairly overcome with emotion—which is not too common of a reading experience with me. To use a WOT phrase—laughter and tears. Sometimes I just had to set the book aside for few minutes to let the motion calm down. I'm not novelist, but through this blog and my day job I do write a fair amount. I've experienced that sense of pride, that sense of emotional overload that happens when the writing feels right, when my emotions for what I'm are writing cross over onto the pages themselves. I imagine that as you've written the final three WOT books you've experienced similar feelings. That you sometimes sit down to dinner with your family after writing and are overcome with your love for them as a result of what you had just written. That you have that urge to hug, love and be comforted as events from you're writing stick with you. Assuming you can relate to this, please share a moment or two.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Boy, that's a hard one, because those are going to be personal moments. You describe it quite well, but it's the sort of thing that happens with writing any series. The most personal moments for me honestly happened when I read the ending years ago. For me, the series has been finished already for all of that time. It has been an emotional experience, and I'm certain it will continue to be one.

    You also have to remember that writing this was very draining, and that has kind of the opposite emotional effect. But I'm not a terribly emotional person. I'm not sure I can come up with anything specific other than that night sitting and reading the ending that Robert Jordan had written.

    This is spoilery, but there's also the moment when I wrote Egwene's death scene—that was probably the most emotional scene I wrote. I finished it, and then it was like a "wow, so that just happened" sort of moment. I don't know if I can describe it in the same way.

    For you, reading the book, these moments are going to come like unexpected smacks to the face. For me, I spent five months working on the outline for this book specifically, after I had spent months outlining the other two books. So I knew what was coming, and that makes it a different experience.

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  • 941

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    kcf

    Spoiler follow-up: What specific scenes in your writing proved to be the most memorable? What are a few of your favorites from the final three books in the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin forging his hammer is probably my favorite that I worked on extensively. My favorite that Jim worked on extensively would be Verin's last scene. Rand atop Dragonmount at the end of The Gathering Storm is a pretty big one for me. In the last book, my favorite would have to be Lan's charge right at the end, which is a scene that I worked out years ago, that I pointed a lot of things toward, and specifically in this book built a lot of things around. For a fun scene, getting Mat on the back of a raken was a pure joy for me to be able to do.

    What other scenes really stand out to me? Robert Jordan's last scene, which I've mentioned before, is a great one because it's become the focus, for me, for the entire sequence that I have written. From the beginning, that was the ending that I was working toward. So I was very excited to be able to actually get there.

    That's just a few scenes; there are a lot of them in this book and the series.

    Tags

  • 942

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    You've written extensively about magic systems in fantasy novels, including "Sanderson's First and Second Laws" for fictional magic. Were you tempted to change any part of the Wheel of Time magic system?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Being a fan for so long, there was a danger that I would come in and say, "Well, this is my chance to fix all the things that have bugged me about the Wheel of Time." But I realized I couldn't approach the story like that.

    Robert Jordan handles magic systems in a different way from how I handle a lot of mine. He works harder to preserve the sense of wonder than I do. I explain more nuts and bolts. He reserves the right to say, "We don't know how this works." I had to tell myself my job is not to change that. That's how his magic works, and it works really well like that. Even though on the Sanderson's First Law scale, it is much more to the middle than mine are. Mine are on the right side (right meaning direction-wise, not correctness-wise), where his is more toward the middle and Tolkien is more toward the left side. And I didn't want to push it.

    The balance that I struck is, I was going to do my best to avoid a lot of new weaves [different kinds of magic], and I was going to take the existing weaves and push them further along the scale than I would let myself [in my own books]. The two instances are what happens in the world of dreams and gateways. I told myself, I am going to play with these two parts of the magic systems and let myself do some of the fun things I will do with magic. I am not going to spend a lot of time inventing new parts of the magic.

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  • 943

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    Goodreads member Erfna says, "As a fantasy writer, does writing about different worlds affect the way that you see the real world around you?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is an interesting question, and it's not one I've pondered very much myself. I would say fantasy has changed the way I see the world, but at the same time I am a pretty logical guy. People talk about my book a lot as kind of a science fiction and fantasy crossover, because I like to look at magic in logical ways. Storytelling for me is about characters. I try to write these characters in such a way that someone who is reading the book will say, "Yes, he understands me." That's my mandate and challenge as a writer. The fantasy world has not changed me nearly so much as the need and the passion for trying to get characters liked by readers who are different from me—and that is the big change in my life.

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  • 944

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    Goodreads member Joyshumaker says, "Many of Mr. Sanderson's original books are very theologically based. I enjoy the complexities of the religions he creates but wonder what drives him to write literature that is so deeply theological, even if those theologies exist solely in these fictional worlds."

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am a religious person, and so I am fascinated by religion and all of its aspects. I am fascinated by why people believe, why people don't believe. I am fascinated by the motivations behind this, and I am fascinated by what happens when religion goes bad. I am fascinated by what happens when religion goes well. So what I am interested in ends up in my books.

    Beyond that, it pops up time and time again because [my books] are all connected: I hid some recurring characters in Elantris and the Mistborn trilogy, and [readers] started to pick it up by the time Warbreaker came out. There is an underlying theme behind them all and an underlying deeper story that is going on behind the scenes with some big theological components. It's within the thematic nature of the complete series—one that will eventually be told, assuming I live long enough. And if not, I'll leave good notes, so someone else can finish it! Turnabout is fair play.

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  • 945

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    On that note, Goodreads member Regina says, "My biggest question for Mr. Sanderson is if finishing the Wheel of Time series has had any sort of impact on him or his other writings, and if so, in what ways?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it has, certainly because I learned a lot. Wheel of Time I've described as "power lifting." I had to get into shape as a writer very quickly and swim in the deep end, and it has improved my writing drastically. A good example of this is The Way of Kings. I was writing it in 2002, and the draft wasn't good enough. I didn't know why, but I was dissatisfied with it, and I told my editor we weren't going to publish it yet. I didn't know what I had to learn, but knew I had to learn things. The ideas were all there, but the technical skill wasn't there yet to pull off the book that I wanted to do. It wasn't until after finishing The Gathering Storm that I knew what was technically lacking, and I was able to go back and write that book. I feel it turned out quite well on the second attempt.

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  • 946

    Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013

    Goodreads

    Briefly describe a typical day spent writing. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I work until about 4 a.m., and then I don't wake up until noon. The job I do lets me have the weirdest sleep schedule ever, because sometimes I sleep for like three hours, and then I get up and work and go back to bed. An average day for me is two four-to-six-hour writing blocks during this time. In each, I try to write at least 1,500 words, and I am somewhat goal based. I have a tread desk that I walk on while I type a lot of the time. It's not like I am getting any real exercise because it's moving like one mile per hour, but it is good for just moving and not just sitting there. I write in my bedroom. I have an easy chair that I also sit in.

    I get done at about 5:30, and I go out and play with my kids and hang out with my family and do all the stuff that dads and husbands do, then I put my kids to bed, hang out with my wife for a bit, then usually go back to work at about 9 or 10 and get my second block.

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  • 947

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    At signings, I've often told the story of reading the last scene of The Wheel of Time. This might not be news to some of you. However, it's one of the questions I get the most. What did it feel like, some five years ago now, to read that last scene of the book as Robert Jordan wrote it?

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  • 948

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Soon after I was tapped to help complete the series, I asked Harriet about the last scene of the book. (The one that Robert Jordan had, over the years working on the series, promised fans he knew in detail.) She told me that he had indeed written that scene—and though there were large swaths of unfinished portions of the ending that he hadn't had time to work on, he'd been determined to get that last scene on the page.

    You can imagine my excitement. I flew out to Charleston for the first time in late 2007—before this, I hadn't read any of the materials, as Harriet preferred that I come get them in person. After a long flight from Salt Lake City to Charleston, Harriet picked me up at the airport and drove me to her house in the city. We got in at nine or ten, I recall, and she had soup warming on the stove. She asked if I'd like some. My reply was, "If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to read the ending please . . ." Holding my enthusiasm was somewhat difficult.

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  • 949

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, I spent the next hours late into the night sitting in a chair beside Robert Jordan's computer (it had been moved, by coincidence, out of his office and into the sitting room) reading his ending to The Wheel of Time, then poring over the rest of the notes. I remember Harriet passing by once and asking—with a satisfied smile—"It's good, isn't it?"

    And it is. As a Wheel of Time fan for nearly 20 years at that point, I found myself supremely satisfied. The ending is the right one. Somewhat unexpected, somewhat daring, but also very well done. I knew that whatever else happened—whatever mistakes I made—at least this ending would be there, as Robert Jordan intended. We've put it in almost untouched, with just a few edits here and there at Harriet's direction.

    You're going to love it.

    Brandon

    Tags

  • 950

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    A lot of people are asking what it feels like to be done. That's an odd question to consider for a couple of reasons. In some ways, the Wheel of Time was "done" for me when I read Robert Jordan's last scene back in 2007. The work wasn't done, of course, and I had a very long road ahead of me. And yet, I'd read the ending. We managed to get it into the final book virtually unchanged, with only a few minor tweaks here and there. The sequence (it is more than one scene) that I am referring to most of the time when I talk about this encompasses the entire epilogue of A Memory of Light. Once you get there, you can know you're reading Robert Jordan's words, though of course there are other scenes scattered through the book that he worked on too.

    So that was one ending, for me. Another came in January of last year, when I finished the rough draft of this book. Still, there was a great deal of work to do, but I was "done" after a fashion. From there, I transitioned from writing a new Wheel of Time book to doing revisions—and for the last time ever.

    Another ending came for me when I handed the book over to Maria from Team Jordan to handle all of the final tweaks from the proofreads and copyedits. That happened late last summer, and with some regret, I stepped away from the Wheel of Time. Like a parent (though a step-parent in this case) waving farewell to a child as they leave the home, I no longer had responsibility for this book in the same way. I was done.

    And yet, I wasn't. This month and next I'll be touring for the Wheel of Time. That will probably be the final ending, seeing all of you and sharing in your mixed joy and regret at the finale of this series. Over twenty-three years ago now, I picked up The Eye of the World for the first time, and my life changed. A lot of you have similar stories.

    I know how you feel. I've been feeling it for five years now, ever since I read that last scene. There is no glossary in this last Wheel of Time book. We wanted to leave you with the memory of that scene, as Robert Jordan wrote it, for your final impression of the Wheel of Time.

    I'm happy I can finally share that scene with you. After five years of waiting, I can talk about it with others and reminisce without having to worry about what I'm spoiling. I hope to chat with as many of you as possible in the upcoming months. For those who can't make it, I'll post some responses to frequently asked questions below.

    May you always find water and shade.

    Brandon Sanderson
    January 8th, 2013

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  • 951

    Interview: Jan 5th, 2013

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    Because of this, Sanderson had a paternal pride for the series he saw become more and more popular and make it onto best-sellers lists. He even studied the series as a developing author to help his own writing as an upstart fantasy author at TOR publishing, the home of The Wheel of Time series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "When I began to be a writer, I thought Wheel of Time was the best-written series and used it as a basis of how I would become a writer," Sanderson said. "I studied the books, and I kind of had a university course on how to be a fantasy writer by studying the books and taking notes."

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  • 952

    Interview: Jan 5th, 2013

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    The best-selling series originally penned by the late Robert Jordan was first thought of as a trilogy; however, it has spanned 14 books and 23 years. When Jordan passed away in 2007, the series—and its ending—seemed to be in jeopardy. Then Sanderson stepped in.

    Sanderson, who graduated from Brigham Young University and now calls Provo, Utah, home, was chosen for the job by Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal, after he wrote a heartfelt eulogy for Jordan that was published on his website.

    He felt mixed emotions about taking over the series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Working on it has been bittersweet," Sanderson said. "You just won the lottery, but you didn't even enter. Your grandfather passed away and left you the ticket."

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    Even with those emotions, Sanderson jumped at the opportunity to take over the series, and now as it draws to a close, there are more mixed emotions.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "It feels very relaxing to be finished, but also extremely sad," Sanderson said. "It's relaxing like finishing a marathon—more relieving than anything."

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  • 953

    Interview: Jan 5th, 2013

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    During the past five years he worked on the series, Sanderson said, the material and notes Jordan left have made him a better author in his own right.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "As an author myself, working to be a better author, there is nothing better than being able to see behind the scenes to see how a master did it," Sanderson said. "Having (Jordan's) notes felt like I had the master there to guide me along the way."

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  • 954

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Ed Huyck

    What were you thinking when you wrapped up the final chapter of the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I felt like a person who had just run a mental marathon. I was tired, I was satisfied, I was excited, and I was saddened. That was five years of my life writing, and twenty-something years of my life reading and working on it. It was really bittersweet. But you have to remember that that was tempered for me, because the ending that Robert Jordan had written—I had read that years ago. So in a lot of ways the series was already finished to me, and had been finished since 2007 when I read the ending.

    That last chapter was his chapter. There were only minor tweaks that I put in; there's one scene that I added from a certain character's viewpoint. But basically, that whole ending sequence, the last chapter, and the epilogue, are Robert Jordan's. So it was more a matter of finally putting it in with the rest of the book. Now, it's finally done. The capstone that was finished five, six years ago can finally be slipped into place and the book can be complete. So all of those emotions were mixed together.

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  • 955

    Interview: Jan 5th, 2013

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    That master's guidance has helped Sanderson move ahead on his own work, especially his 2010 New York Times best-selling epic fantasy The Way of Kings.

    Sanderson first attempted to write the epic story in 2002. However, after a couple of attempts, he said, he left it for a few years.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I knew as an artist that it hadn't worked," Sanderson said. "But after working on The Wheel of Time, I went back, and this time it worked. I can only say this story worked because of my work on The Wheel of Time."

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    Sanderson said finishing the series gave him an inside look at how the craft works. It gave him a grasp of storytelling and all the things readers don't see behind the scenes in what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece.

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  • 956

    Interview: Jan 5th, 2013

    Michael Mason-D'Croz

    The former Journal Star paperboy and Lincoln East High School graduate has achieved much in his life. And during much of his life, The Wheel of Time has been there.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I don't know how to respond to the idea of writing The Wheel of Time," Sanderson said. "The whole opportunity happened because my favorite author has passed away. But because he hasn't been here, I've been able to work on the series that has meant the most to me throughout my life."

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  • 957

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Ed Huyck

    When did you first start reading The Wheel of Time, and what were your initial impressions of the stories and the writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I still remember the first time I saw The Eye of the World on bookshelves, at age 15. I can almost feel that moment, standing and holding the book in my hands. I think the cover of Eye is the best [longtime series cover artist] Darryl Sweet has ever done—one of the best in fantasy. I loved the cover. The feel of the troop marching along, Lan and Moiraine proud and face forward. The cover screamed epic. I bought the book and loved it.

    I still think Eye is one of the greatest fantasy books ever written. It signifies an era, the culmination of the epic quest genre which had been brewing since Tolkien initiated it in the '60s. The Wheel of Time dominated my reading during the '90s, influencing heavily my first few attempts at my own fantasy novels. I think it did that to pretty much all of us; even many of the most literarily snobbish of fantasy readers were youths when I was, and read The Eye of the World when I did.

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  • 958

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Ed Huyck

    In turn, how did you react when you were chosen to complete the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nobody was more surprised by it than me. I didn't even know I was being considered. Like most fans of the series, I was just shocked and saddened that Jim Rigney wasn't going to be there to finish it himself. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that. I considered Jim in many ways to be a mentor. I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced.

    I'd never met him, so I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call. I was absolutely stunned. I felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time. While I didn't ask for this, the truth is that I'm extremely excited to have been involved. I love this series, and I wanted to see the last book written as much as any other fan. For a writer like me, the next best thing to having Jim write the novel was being able to work on it myself.

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  • 959

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Ed Huyck

    How extensive were the notes that you had to work with? Were all of the plot lines tied off, or did you have to find conclusions on your own for some of them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Since Robert Jordan wrote the last scene, that actually made this whole project mountains easier. I had a target to shoot at. While I didn't have a ton of written material from Robert Jordan that I could actually put in—there were about 200 pages worth of scenes and notes that needed to become somewhere around 2,500 pages—a lot of those 200 pages were summaries of scenes he wanted. Robert Jordan wrote by instinct.

    He was what we call a discovery writer, so what was handed to me was a big pile of half-finished scenes or paragraphs where he wrote, 'Well, I am either going to do this, this, or this. I was thinking of this, but it could be this.' Yes, cracking an ending is hard, and Wheel of Time had a lot of loose threads. My job was to take all those threads and weave them into an ending, which was a real challenge.

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  • 960

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Ed Huyck

    Are we going to be happy with the end of A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The ending was written by Robert Jordan, and as a reader I found it extremely satisfying when I reached it. And so I feel very confident that the ending of the book is going to be what everyone has been hoping for and wanting—without being exactly what they expect. I think the ending that Robert Jordan wrote is just wonderful.

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  • 961

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Geek's Guide to the Galaxy

    Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time, launched in 1990, quickly became one of the most popular series in the history of fantasy, though as the story continued year after year, swelling into many mammoth volumes, some fans wondered if the tale would ever be finished, especially after Jordan's death in 2007. But this month sees the release of A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume, completed by author Brandon Sanderson, working off Jordan's notes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "The last thing that Robert Jordan wrote is the last chapter of this book," says Brandon Sanderson in this week's episode of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I felt when I first read it that it was a satisfying ending. I felt it was the right ending. It's been my guidepost for all the work I've done on this."

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  • 962

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Geek's Guide to the Galaxy

    Brandon Sanderson on writing Robert Jordan's characters:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I'm going to bring my own interpretation as a longtime fan of the characters, and in most cases they're spot-on with what most people think—there haven't been many complaints about my Perrin, for instance. In some cases there are complaints and they're right. My early Mat was off, and I acknowledged this, I looked at what the people were saying. In other cases, such as Lan, they're wrong. [Laughs] What can I say? I'm a fan too, and we will have these arguments about whether this character would do this or that character would do that, and you'll find that in any community. On the other hand I do get complaints and the complaints are legit. I'm not Robert Jordan, and I can't do some of the things he could simply because I don't have his life experience and in many ways I'm not as good a writer as he was. . . And if that really bothers you, then hopefully we can get the original notes released . . . so that those for whom my interpretation was not good, or my failings ruined the experience for them, they can at least look at what Robert Jordan had and imagine their own story."

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  • 963

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Geek's Guide to the Galaxy

    Brandon Sanderson on making videos of your creative process:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Some artists that I like, they're doing this thing where they'll film themselves painting a piece, and you get this awesome thing where you start with the blank page and then you see in fast motion them painting the whole thing. . . I can't do that with writing. It's not nearly as engaging to watch someone typing as it is to watch someone creating this amazing piece of art out of nothing, but I wanted to try, and see what it was like . . . I do these things called 'interludes' in the Stormlight Archive where I basically write short stories in the world and put them between major sections of the book, and I screen captured myself typing that out . . . The idea is just to put those things up as something fun that people might enjoy, probably sped up a bunch, since it took me six hours to write the scene . . . It totally makes you self-conscious. Mostly it's the spelling. I'll be typing along and I'll see that I've spelled some word wrong, and I'll be like 'Oh man.' . . . It does actually keep you focused, though, because every time your instinct is 'I'm going to go check my e-mail' or 'I'm going to check this browser,' you're like 'Oh, wait a minute. I'm filming. I probably should not do that.'"

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  • 964

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Petra Mayer

    It's here, it's here, it's here. It's A Memory of Light. It's the last Wheel of Time book, and it's in my hot little hands. True to form, it's enormous: two and a half pounds, two and a quarter inches thick, and 909 pages—all of it to tell the story of a backcountry farm boy who finds out he's the Dragon Reborn, a hero out of prophecies, destined to defeat the Dark One, and probably die doing it. Here is how author Robert Jordan described the story, when he was asked to summarize it:

    Harriet McDougal

    Cultures clash, worlds change, cope.

    Petra Mayer

    You'll note that's not actually Robert Jordan. It's his widow and editor Harriet McDougal. Tragically, Jordan could not finish his epic work by himself. The series he originally planned as six books had stretched to book eleven when he died in 2007. McDougal picked fantasy author Brandon Sanderson to finish the last book, which—no surprise here—grew from one, to three volumes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was like getting hit with a freight train. There was, you know, all this continuity and all these characters, it was a massive undertaking.

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  • 965

    Interview: Jan 4th, 2013

    Petra Mayer

    Oh yeah, the characters. There are 2,000 of them. And that's the thing about the Wheel of Time—the writing is workmanlike. But the world sucks you in and doesn't let you go. Those 2,000 characters are at play across ages and continents, each with their own distinct languages, customs, food, ethnic groups, military tactics—oh my god, you could pretty much just blow a couple of months figuring it all out. Brandon Sanderson says he actually had to rely on the Wheel of Time fan community to keep it all straight in his head. He also had the notes that Jordan dictated on his deathbed and the very last chapter. Again, Harriet McDougal:

    Harriet McDougal

    I picked him up at the airport and brought him back to my house, and said, well, I have some soup for your supper, and he said, what I'd really like is the end of the series.

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  • 966

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Terez (13 January 2013)

    I once wrote a poem about writer's block. I was reminded of it when I the last scene of chapter 44... @BrandSanderson https://twitter.com/BrandSanderson/status/106123521532493824

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would love to see the poem. And it sure was nice to have Thom around to help with inspiration.

    Patrick

    Thom's chapter viewpoint in Memory of Light, hands down for me, was my favorite. Beautifully written.

    Brandon Sanderson (13 January 2013)

    Thanks!

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  • 967

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Brandon Sanderson (15 January 2013)

    Man, it feels good to be writing again. Revision (which I spent most of last year doing) is very important. But the writing is what I love.

    Brandon Sanderson

    About a year ago I turned in the rough draft of A Memory of Light. It was VERY rough. Took eight months of hard work to get it into shape.

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  • 968

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Austin Moore

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon stated that, as we knew before, RJ had the fates of the major characters worked out in the notes but that some had to be done by Brandon based on the current emotional moment of the story and what worked best.

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  • 969

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Bob Johnson (15 January 2013)

    Just finished A Memory of Light...juggling all the POVs is quite an accomplishment!

    Brandon Sanderson (15 January 2013)

    Thanks. It was one of the most challenging parts of working on the book, to be certain.

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  • 970

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    How do you keep track of all those characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lots of use of online resources. Also, Maria and Alan are invaluable assets for that. Brandon told a funny story about trying to figure out who was with Perrin, and Maria pulled out some notes from Robert Jordan that had a list of every single person from the Two Rivers that came with Perrin! Brandon also said he thinks there are more than 2800 named characters throughout the entire series.

    Footnote

    Brandon has told the story of the "with Perrin" file a numer of times before; in this example from 2009, the person he said that he queried was Alan. Other times, he has just cited "RJ's assistants".

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  • 971

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    Is there a character you took in a different direction from what Jordan had intended?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In terms of a character, and what would happen to them ultimately, no, not really. However, there were times when some things had to be adjusted, specifically some plot points, in order to make the narrative as a whole flow better. Brandon did mention that he wanted a character that he felt was his own, which he got to do the most development on. That character became Androl. A lot of what Androl did were things which Jordan said had to happen. Brandon picked Androl to do them, and gave the character his own touch more than any other.

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  • 972

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    Did Brandon insert a character in the story based on himself?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. He did however mention two items, one for Robert Jordan, one for him. In the ter'angreal cache found in Ebou Dar, there is a man with a beard statue. The power of the item is to be like an easily movable library. [MY NOTE: We see this in A Memory of Light.] This was Robert Jordan. Brandon then told the story of how he got his sword, with the dragon scabbard, while in Mr. Jordan's home in South Carolina, and meeting with Wilson. That sword appears in the book, and is the one which Rand gives to Tam in A Memory of Light. So Brandon's sword is in the book, but not Brandon himself.

    Footnote

    RJ referred to his appearance in the form of the bearded man ter'angreal as his "Alfred Hitchcock moment". Aviendha first discovered the use of the bearded man ter'angreal in Knife of Dreams 15. Brandon's sword appears in A Memory of Light 15.

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  • 973

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    [Side note: One person almost got himself lynched by asking a somewhat spoilery question, regardless of what people had been instructed...] Some characters die in A Memory of Light. How do you choose which characters to kill and which to keep alive?

    Brandon Sanderson

    [My note: Brandon tried to keep this out of spoilers and make it more general about writing and dealing with killing characters off in general.] In this book, Robert Jordan had left very specific instructions regarding the fates of some characters. He left a lot of notes, and some of those determined their fate. In general, characters have to be allowed to take risks in order to create a compelling story. There has to be a real danger for them, or the characters fall flat. Sometimes, that means characters are going to die. (Brandon added a nice bit that made the crowd laugh: "Which character can I kill off that will really piss everyone off and which no one expects?")

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  • 974

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    How much was already completed when you took over the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon referred to what Tom Doherty had previously said on the issue. He said there were about 200 pages when he took over. Also, the Epilogue in A Memory of Light was almost entirely written by Jordan with Brandon trying to bring everything else to that point.

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  • 975

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Nygmus

    The real standout question for me was someone who asked if there was anything that Brandon found difficult or uncomfortable to write.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon talked about going into the outline, finding a couple things that made him go "Huh, that's interesting," (making specific mention of a certain conversation involving dresses and the color thereof), but the one that really stood out was "Oh, come on, you're going to make me write a spanking scene?"

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  • 976

    Interview: Jan 11th, 2013

    Question

    How did Brandon feel when he was chosen to complete the work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Dumbfounded stupefaction." Brandon repeated the story of how Harriet found Brandon and hired him to finish the series. It's been stated several times, so I won't repeat it here.

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  • 977

    Interview: Jan 11th, 2013

    Question

    Which character is most like you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said he identified with Perrin.

    Harriet McDougal

    Harriet stated, "Verin, minus her wrong turn, but I still want her owl."

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  • 978

    Interview: Jan 11th, 2013

    Question

    Did Brandon question himself when he was chosen?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Apparently, Brandon was unable to sleep that night after saying yes, because he knew that he would fail. Anyone who took on this project would fail, because no one could tell the story as good as Robert Jordan would have. Brandon had only published two novels at the time, so it was a huge risk for him, and it was a risk for Harriet to ask him. However, he knew that he was a fan of the series, and that, if he didn't say yes, and it went to someone who wasn't a fan of the series and they messed it up, it would be his fault. He decided that in the Venn Diagram that consists of Wheel of Time fans in one circle, and pretty good writers in another circle, he was the person in the middle. "I'll screw it up the least," he said.

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  • 979

    Interview: Jan 11th, 2013

    Question

    With now having the new series on top of Brandon's other work, is he concerned that he's spreading himself too thin?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "That is a worry." Brandon is a compulsive writer; he does side projects to keep himself fresh and able to write.

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  • 980

    Interview: Jan 11th, 2013

    Question

    What was Brandon given to start his work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He received one scene from each prologue—the first scene from The Gathering Storm that was dictated, the Kandori tower scene from Towers of Midnight, and one scene from A Memory of Light that I will not state since it contains a spoiler. There were large chunks of the ending, including the entire epilogue. He received fragments of Egwene's visit from her "special visitor" inThe Gathering Storm, and a proposal at the end of Towers of Midnight. There were also discussions of scenes, and answers from Team Jordan.

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  • 981

    Interview: Jan 11th, 2013

    Question

    Either my hand was cramping up or I missed a segue, but somehow a discussion of Brandon's writing style commenced.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He stated that he works from an outline, and that Robert Jordan grew and nurtured scenes over time. Brandon did not try to imitate Robert Jordan's writing style, and left the blending of the two writing styles up to Harriet. Harriet was Tor Books' original editor, discovering Mr. Rigney and editing the two best-selling series in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Harriet was in charge of blending the voices together.

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  • 982

    Interview: Jan 12th, 2013

    Question

    How does it feel now that you are done with the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Bittersweet. Has been reading the series longer than he has had some friends!

    Harriet McDougal

    It was truly done well.

    Maria Simons

    Bittersweet. And wow!

    Alan Romanczuk

    Brain Dead.

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  • 983

    Interview: Jan 12th, 2013

    Question

    Writing Life: How did you sell Elantris?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was hard, but it gets easier as you go. An editor can see in one page who has been training for years on their writing. You have to practice for years, and have good writing habits. For example, I was working on book 13 when I sold book 6. Just learn, adapt, and network.

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  • 984

    Interview: Jan 12th, 2013

    Question

    What do you like most and least working on the novels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Liked Perrin, and misses writing some of the PoVs. Had to constantly research things to make certain it was accurate, but won't miss fulfilling everything that was foreshadowed...lots of the foreshadowing will be mentioned in the encyclopedia in a year and a half.

    Harriet McDougal

    Two years.

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  • 985

    Interview: Jan 12th, 2013

    Question

    Any of the characters you got caught into?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, so lots of trimming and pruning, and had to write some others back in.

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  • 986

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    How did you keep track of all the characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are, what? What are we up to, like 2800 named characters in the Wheel of Time? [laughter] It's more than two thousand; it was more than two thousand when I started, and it was like 2400 or something like that when I started, and I've added a few. So, how can we keep track of all of these characters? That actually is when people ask me, what the hardest part about this was, I often say that that was the hardest part. It's not just keeping track of them, because actually keeping track of them is somewhat easy; there's lots of fan resources, which I use. The Encyclopaedia-WoT is my favorite, though tarvalon.net runs a very nice Wiki which goes more in-depth and things. And keeping track—that's the easy part. The harder part is, Robert Jordan gave them all voices, right? Everybody talked in their own way, and was their own person, and when, you know, Perrin is traveling with like three random Wise Ones, they're all individual personalities, and so before I could write a scene, I had to go back and remind myself, how each of these three people...what their attitudes were, and how they spoke, that sort of thing. It was very difficult.

    I don't know if you—I mean, I tell this story; I don't know if you guys have heard this before—but the level of detail Robert Jordan went into in the worldbuilding...there was one point where I was working on Towers of Midnight, and I sent an email to Maria saying, "I can't keep track of who is with Perrin. Do you have just a list somewhere?" And I was really just meaning the Wise Ones, right? And, you know, named characters. Maria comes back and says, "Well I just dug this out of the notes; I hadn't seen it before. Maybe this will help. It's a file called 'With Perrin'". I went, "Oh, good." And I opened it up...no, that's not what it is; it is the names of all the Two Rivers folk who haven't been named in the books yet. [laughter] ...who are traveling with Perrin, and often a little bit about each of them, and a list of several dozen names of people who haven't been named yet. That's the level of detail we're talking about with this, and it was a challenge; it was a challenge on all of us.

    Fortunately, we did have Maria and Alan, who we should mention—Alan Romanczuk, who is also one of the assistants and very good at this sort of thing, and I would focus my writing, particularly in first draft, on just getting the emotional content of a scene down, right? Get the narrative flow down, make sure it's working, and I would try to get all the voices of the characters right, but I wouldn't worry as much about continuity. I would then send it to Maria, and she would send back this thing with all of these notes saying, "Oh Brandon. Oh Brandon, you can't do this." "Oh Brandon, you killed her." "Oh Brandon..." You know, stuff like that. You see her shaking her head over each of these things. And then we would try and fix all of the problems caused by that, and that's kind of how it went.

    Tags

  • 987

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    Was there a character that you took in a different direction than Robert Jordan had originally intended?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not specifically against his wishes. If it was in the notes, talking about a character...one of our first requirements, and I put it on myself on this, was to avoid going in different a direction from Robert Jordan with anything, specifically because I didn't want these books to become about me. I wanted them to remain the Wheel of Time. Now, I had to be nudged by Harriet at several points early on. She would tell me, you have to change some of these things. You do have to be willing to write the book as it needs to be written; Robert Jordan wouldn't have stuck to this outline exactly, and if you did stick to it exactly, it would feel like it doesn't have any life to it.

    And so, there are times, when I was working, and mostly these are plot things—I would say, "You know what, we need to change this." An example of this is in The Gathering Storm, there's a scene—it's not too bad; it's not a big spoiler [laughter]—but there are several scenes where Egwene is having dinner with the Amyrlin. Well, that was originally in Robert Jordan's notes as one scene, and I split it to two scenes, where there's a dinner, it breaks, and then we come back, and I put some things in between because with the narrative flow of that sequence, it felt more powerful for me to work with it that way. I didn't remove any of the things that Robert Jordan said to have happen, and used several of his scenes that he'd written to construct those, but in that case, I felt that moving it around like that made for a better book. And so that's the sort of thing I would change.

    I will say that, early on, when I first met with them, I did say, "I would like to have a character that I can just kind of do whatever I want with," so that I have, you know...it was kind of, maybe hubristic of me or whatever—I wanted to do that, I'm like, "Can I have one to play with? I want an Asha'man to play with." And it was actually Maria who suggested Androl, and said "Go look at him; there's not a lot written about him. The personality, Robert Jordan doesn't have much written down for who he is, and he seems like he's well-poised to do this. That would be a very good one." So Androl, almost everything that's happening with him, Robert Jordan didn't say "Do it with him." There are things I have him doing that Robert Jordan said, in this notes, "This has to happen." But I specifically took Androl as a character and went places with him.

    Tags

  • 988

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    Did you insert a character based on yourself in the books like you did with fans?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let me answer that in reverse. The whole fan name thing, where it came from is, I wrote the first book, The Gathering Storm, and I got several notes from Maria that said, "You know, a lot of your names don't feel right. They don't feel like Wheel of Time names." And it was one of the areas that, fans noticed it too when the book came out. I named people like I name people, and so for Towers of Midnight, I felt, "I need to radically change the way I name. I need to use Robert Jordan's methods." So while talking to Maria and Harriet, Harriet told me this wonderful story where...you think he named someone after...(to Harriet)...a washing machine, was it? You remember you said, like there's a little name on one of the washing machines...was it you?

    Harriet McDougal

    The stove.

    Maria Simons

    The stove is a Jenn Air, and every time I looked at it, I would think of the Jenn Aiel. [laughter]

    Harriet McDougal

    And at one point I was taking allergy medicine, and whoever considered Corianin's surname—Seldane?

    Brandon Sanderson

    And there's an Ogier St. in Charleston. And beyond that, Robert Jordan was naming a lot of characters in the books off of mythological figures, with some twists. And so I felt—I actually said, "I'm going to grab a phone book, and I'm just going to go looking for names and try and tweak those names to start naming in the Wheel of Time." And when I did that, I stopped and thought, "Wait a minute. I had a list of names; it's in the list of the names of the fans who were part of this one charity drive we did." So I just started grabbing their names; that's as random as the phone book for me, and that's where the naming [characters] after fans thing came from. It was me forcing myself to try and do something different in the way that I'd been naming.

    Now, back to the original question, did I name anything after myself: Actually, there's a cameo by Robert Jordan in the books, of Robert Jordan. Do you guys know what it is? If you know, raise your hands. If you don't know...most of you do know? No, most of you don't know. There is a statue of Robert Jordan in the books. It is discovered among the ter'angreal that were originally in Rhuidean, right? Rhuidean? No, Ebou Dar; that's right, it's the Ebou Dar cache. See, that's why I looked at Maria, and I'm like, "Where did they come from?" And there's a man that has the contents of many stories contained, and that was described to look like Robert Jordan.

    I gave myself a similar cameo to that, in that, one of the times when I was visiting Charleston, Wilson—who was Robert Jordan's cousin, and they were very dear friends, like siblings—was taking Robert Jordan's weapons collection, and figuring out what to do with, and he had so many weapons. [laughter] It was really awesome to go walking through his workshop, so to speak—where he'd work—and see all these weapons, and see all of the different versions of the ashandarei that he had, and you can just imagine him swinging them about and deciding how he was going to do this, and describing certain weapons. He had everything, and so he'd use it. And Wilson was doing this, and he said to me, "Brandon, go out there and pick one, anything you want. Go grab one." And so, I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, stunned though I was, and I went out there and I found at the very back a katana with a scabbard that had a red-and-gold dragon on it, twisting around the scabbard. And I don't know if the idea for Rand's dragons came first, and then he bought the scabbard and the sword because it looked like that, or if that was part of the inspiration. I suspect it was the former, that he saw that and thought, "Wow, that's just like the..."

    But either way, I picked that one, and then I wrote that sword into the books, which you will find if you look around; that sword is mentioned. So that's my cameo, is I put my sword in. It now hangs on my wall, inside a case—my wife had it, got a case and a little plaque that says "Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time," underneath. And it hangs on my wall with Robert Jordan's birthdate underneath it.

    Tags

  • 989

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    Alright, I finished the book...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, no spoilers about the book itself, please.

    Question

    There are characters we've been with for twenty years or so who don't survive this book. How do you choose when characters meet perhaps an untimely end in a book? [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    For this book in specific, there are characters that Robert Jordan left notes on requiring what would happen to certain characters; he was actually fairly detailed. There are a couple of cases where we made decisions on our own, and in any case, when a character dies in a book, I am trying to do what is best for that character and for the emotional beats of the storytelling. I don't look at it as killing off characters; I look at it as letting characters take risks, the risks that they would demand of me that they be allowed to take, and if those risks don't occasionally come with consequences, then there is no story to me, because there is no tension, and there is no possibility for things to go wrong, and without that possibility, I wouldn't be able to write the books. I would be unable to write novels if the characters were unable to have actual danger from the actions that they're taking.

    And so, I make these decisions based on what the character demands and what the story demands. It's never easy. I don't sit there gleefully, as I do imagine certain writers doing [laughter], who will remain unnamed [laughter], saying, "What two don't they expect me to kill, and how can I do it in a really, really brutal way?" [laughter] And that's a certain skill that certain authors have; that's not how I approach it. It's what the story demands of me, is how I approach it, and in some cases what Robert Jordan demanded of me. I agree with everyone that he killed, though. [laughter] I felt that it was right for the story.

    Tags

  • 990

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    How much of the last books were completed, or do you have an idea of the percent before you took over?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Fortunately I can fall back on Tom Doherty, who answered this question, so I don't get in trouble. And I don't usually—I get in trouble a little bit sometimes. [laughter] There are certain things that I have to be careful not to say, to get into spoilers and things like that, but Tom Doherty did answer this. There were about 200 pages of material that was done, and that did include lots of different things. It included completed scenes; it included dictations that he'd done while he was sick; and it included fragments of scenes, and in some places, some Q&As with Maria and Alan, where they would say "You said this about a character; can you go more in depth on that?" And then there's like a page of him talking about that character and that scene, and those 200 pages were given to me, and I have used that as a guide in writing the books.

    There were holes. There were some very big holes, which actually was exciting to me in some ways, because it allowed me to actually be part of this, rather than following a very strict "This happens, this happens, this happens." In fact, they weren't in order, which was also exciting to me, because I work from an outline, and Robert Jordan didn't. Robert Jordan knew where he was going, but he would often discover what was going on as he got the characters there. They call that a 'gardener'; it's George R.R. Martin's term for writing; it's how George R.R. Martin; it's how Robert Jordan wrote books; it's how Stephen King writes books. There are others of us that, we are more 'architects'; we build a structure, and then we work from that, and I was able to take all of these things and build a structure from it, and one of the gems in there was what is now the epilogue of the book you're holding, which was finished almost in its entirety—that whole sequence, with very minor tweaks by us—and that ending is the last scene that Robert Jordan talked about many times, that he knows how the book ends; he knows how the series ends. He did write that before he passed away, and that became like my goalpost; that was the thing I had to hit, was that scene, and everything leading up to that was to make that scene work. And so, when you get there, you can read...that epilogue is all Robert Jordan. Significant chunks of the rest of the books were too, but that one, you can just use as a marker, and say "Okay, this is his ending."

    Footnote

    There is some clarification on the issue of the epilogue here.

    Tags

  • 991

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    How did this prepare you to write The Stormlight Archive series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There’s actually a good story there because Way of Kings, the first Stormlight Archive, was the book I was writing when I first sold Elantris. Elantris was my first published, but it wasn’t my first written. It was my sixth novel. It was the first one that was actually somewhat decent. But I was writing number thirteen when I got the offer on it. You’ll find that’s very common among authors—it doesn’t happen to all of us, but a lot of us, we write for a long time, until we get it done—and I had just finished Way of Kings, and it was not right yet. In fact, when I sold Elantris, TOR wanted to buy two books from me, and my editor asked, you know—"Send me what you're working on right now." And I sent him Way of Kings, and he said "Wow, this is awesome, but number one, it's enormous! I’m not sure we can publish this, at least in one volume from a new author." Later on I was able to convince them that it should be one volume. But that's when I had a little more clout, and they could print more copies which drives the prices down for printing them. But also, it just wasn't right yet; the book was not right. And I said to my editor, "I'm okay with not publishing it now, because I don't know what's wrong with it." As a writer I think it was just too ambitious for me at the time, I just couldn't do it yet. And it wasn't until I'd written Gathering Storm in its entirety that I started to figure out what I'd been doing wrong.

    It was actually managing viewpoints, was one of the things. During the reread of Robert Jordan's entire series I noticed how he gathered the viewpoints together. When you start writing a big epic fantasy series, and you feel like, "Well, they have so many characters, I want to start with that." And the reason on the draft of Way of Kings, I started with—all over the world, I had all these viewpoints and things like this, and the book was kind of a train wreck because of it. Where, if you read Eye of the World, Robert Jordan starts with them all together, and then slowly builds complexity, and even the later books he's grouping the characters together so even if they have individual story lines going on they're in the same place so they can interact with each other and there's clusters of them in different places.

    And that was one thing. Working on The Gathering Storm I've learned how to make my characters...also how to use viewpoint the way he did, how to manage subtlety—he was so subtle with a lot of his writing—and some of these things, it all started to click in my head. And I actually I called my agent and said, "I need to do Way of Kings RIGHT NOW," and he's like "Are you sure? Because you kind of have a lot on your plate." And I'm like, "I need to do it; it's going to be fast, because I know how to do it now." And so I actually took time off between Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight and re-wrote Way of Kings from scratch. Took me about six months, which is amazingly fast for a book of that length. And then I showed it to my editor, and it was right this time. And it's hard to explain many of the specifics. It's just, you know...it's like how do you know you can lift this weight after you've been lifting these other weights? When you've worked hard enough, that you've gained the muscle mass to do it. And lifting...writing the Wheel of Time was heavy lifting. And that's how it happened. I do apologize the sequel is taking so long, but after that deviation to the first one, which I could do very quickly, I couldn't stop to write the second one after Towers of Midnight because the second one would take too long, and delay the last book too long. And so, I am getting back to the Stormlight now—I am working on the second book—but I had other obligations first that were very important, and they're why you're here, so... [laughter]

    Tags

  • 992

    Interview: Jan 9th, 2013

    Question

    When you first read Robert Jordan's ending, did you have a clear-cut idea of what you wanted to do with the series, or did it develop over time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question, and the answer is it developed over time. Specifically, after I read that ending, I started to reread the whole series—the first time I'd read the series knowing I was going to be part of the series which...you have to approach it very differently, knowing you're going to be a part of it. And I took all of those notes, and I reread the series, and I built an outline using Robert Jordan's scenes as touchstones. A lot of times when you're building an outline—even Robert Jordan who was more of a discovery writer, I heard from Harriet did it this way—you kind of plan your book like you would plan a road trip, where you know you're starting in D.C. and you're going to end in San Diego, and outlining for me is putting in between them all the road markers of places you're going to go, and so I laid down this map where I said, "Okay, here's a scene he wrote; let's go there. Here's another scene he wrote; then we'll go there. Here is another scene..." and I used those as my touchstones to get me across this map toward the ending.

    And I then had places where there were gaps, where I didn't know what happened in between, and that's where I would fill it out. "This is what I'm going to do here..." And I actually did a lot of that with Harriet and Maria and Alan in Charleston where we sat down, and I actually got big sheets of butcher paper—because I can be a visual thinker at times—and I would start with a character and start writing down where I thought they should go, and pitch different things to them. And I usually had a couple of different ideas, and they'd say, "Oh, this feels right; this doesn't feel right," that sort of thing. And together, we hashed that all out for all three books, because they were one book in our head then. One very long book, but one book. [laughter] And I then took those sheets of butcher's paper and typed it all out into a big, massive outline, which then I used across the next five years, working on the books, as my data post, and I used that to point me toward that ending. And that's where it came from.

    Tags

  • 993

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Harriet McDougal

    (to Melissa) Cool t-shirt! [laughter]

    Melissa Snedeker

    Hi; my name's Melissa Snedeker; I'm from Colorado Springs. I have been reading the series for about ten years now. Love it. My question is to Brandon. There is a notable difference between you and Robert Jordan's writing. I was wondering what the biggest influence that you had on the books [was], and what were your main thoughts that you added on top of Robert Jordan's?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually shy away from saying too much about this because we prefer that when you read the books you not spend a lot of time trying to figure out what was me and what was Robert Jordan. It's safe to say that, at any given point in the book, you will find my influence and his influence.

    That said, I've said before the epilogue of this book—and significant chunks of the last little part as well, but specifically the epilogue—was written by him before he passed away, so you do know that. Things I've said before—and I'm probably not going to say much more than this, at least until the books have been out for a while—in Gathering Storm, if it was Egwene, Egwene's plotline was more Robert Jordan, and Rand's plotline was a little more me—we both were involved in both, but there is that—and if it was in Towers of Midnight, Mat's plotline was more Robert Jordan, and Perrin's plotline was more me.

    But it's really hard to get down into specifics, because I don't want you focusing on that, and beyond that, I've even started to forget. [laughter] Because I've been working on this... No really! You guys laugh about that, but I've been working on it so long, I will do things, and it's things that came out of the notes, and then I'll go back and look and I have forgotten that those things came from the notes, because at this point in the creative process, you're building a book, and you're looking for the inspirations from the stories or from the notes, and they're kind of sometimes the same to me, whether it's the notes or the stories. And so, anyway, I'm sorry to give you kind of a roundabout non-answer to your question, but maybe in another year or so I can say a little bit more. But really, we would rather it just remain....we don't want it to be at the forefront of people's minds when they're reading.

    Melissa Snedeker

    Yeah. Alright, thank you so much.

    Footnote

    More info on who wrote what in the epilogue.

    Tags

  • 994

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Justin Ellis

    My name is Justin Ellis; I've read several of your novels. Now that you're at the top of your game, Brandon...what do you want to do—what would you do—if you weren't a writer? [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'd be laying in a gutter somewhere, unable to produce anything valuable for society. [laughter] I don't know. I mean, I was always [?] My mom sent me to school to become a doctor, but that was never gonna happen. [laughter] I don't know. I mean, I went through my grad program—all the other grad students were doing all this work to go get PhDs and stuff, and I didn't do any of that. I was writing books, only. And if I hadn't sold a novel, then, I don't know. Maybe I'd be still working at the hotel, the graveyard shift I worked at for years, writing books overnight. I wanted to be a writer, and I put pretty much everything into it. I'd probably be teaching English at a community college somewhere, and still writing two books a year without anyone ever reading them.

    Jason Denzel

    And playing a lot of Magic the Gathering. [laughter, cheers]

    Tags

  • 995

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Zach

    Hi. I'm Zach [?], and I'm from here in Orem, and I kind of feel like a child with all these people that have read it for so long. I'm pretty new to the series—just a couple of years—but I love it just as much. And I'm really grateful you guys brought your assistants with you as well, because I know, with the creative writing process and writing, it takes a lot more than just one person.

    And so I was wondering, probably more directed to Brandon, how did you keep everything together? How did you encompass everything... [laughter] Just a little idea; I just wanted to know a little bit about how you kept up with everything.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's interesting. I am somewhat absentminded in a lot of things in my life, but I don't forget stories. Stories stay in my head, and perhaps that's why I forget everything else. [laughter] I can remember stories that I was planning to tell twenty years ago, and I've still got the details in my head, and I'm ready to write it at some point; I just haven't gotten around to it.

    That said, a lot of the minutiae that isn't part of the soul of the story to me—it's very important, but it isn't part of the soul of the story—and that sort of thing, I do need to keep track of, and so recently we've been using the Wiki, and the Wiki has worked really well; that's for my own books. For the Wheel of Time, I just let other people make the Wikis, and I use theirs. [laughter] So the Encyclopaedia-WoT—Bob Kluttz, and Encyclopaedia-WoT—and if there's anyone here from Tar Valon who worked on their Wiki, the Tar Valon Wiki is fantastic, and I really liked the Tar Valon Wiki. And so, those were two things that I used for the simple questions, the questions they couldn't answer. Maria was like our version of the Brown Ajah that has been gathering all sorts of things and getting them ready for us whenever we have requests about them and whatnot, so it's been very useful.

    Harriet McDougal

    She doesn't have a live owl on her desk, but she does have a large plastic iguana that has a cigarette in its mouth. [laughter]

    Maria Simons

    And I have two beautiful brown shawls proving I am of the Brown Ajah. [cheers, applause]

    Tags

  • 996

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Niels Oleson

    My name is Niels Oleson. Tai'shadar [sic] Manetheren, and Tai'shadar [sic] Pleasant Grove. [laughter] That's where I'm from! Go Vikings!

    The one question I have is—this wouldn't be a panel without asking—who killed Asmodean? [laughter, cheers] And I know you can't answer it, but is it in the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For those who missed it, it's in the, um...the glossary of Towers of Midnight. [boooo] It's actually mentioned in there who killed Asmodean. [laughter] Towers of Midnight, last book; it came out last year. Two years ago. [laughter] So, you've got your answer; you just have to go find it in there.

    And let me give a little explanation on that, so you guys who haven't heard this story—I know many of you have—when I first went to Charleston—this was 2007, in December—I had signed the contracts, not knowing how much was written of the book or what was even available, because you know, that's how it had to go; I had to sign all the NDAs and things before I could see, so I flew out there, and picked up the material, so to speak—the material we call the notes and everything—and I got in very late because it's—you know, flying to Charleston from Salt Lake is uh, and you gotta connect at Atlanta, and things—you know, I get in late, and we walk in; Harriet picks me up from the airport, brings me in, and she—(to Harriet) it was bean soup you had made, or something like that—and you're like, "Would you like some food; I know you've been flying a long time..." I said, "No, I'd like the ending, please, thank you." [laughter]

    So she laughed and got me the materials, and handed them to me in a stack, and I went in to the room—the sitting room—and I sat down to read them, and on the very top was a post-it note, on top of a page of a fan...fan information, like it printed off from the internet—a fan theory—and all it said is, "This is right." And the fan theory was about who killed Asmodean, and that's all we had, was a "This is correct." Maybe they have more—maybe Maria has more—but all I knew was, "This is correct." I didn't know the how, the why, or anything that this person...why they did this.

    And so when it came time to put it in the books, I kind of almost jokingly said, "We should put it in the glossary, because we don't know, so we'll just put it in for fans in the same way we got it, which is just a post-it note." [laughter] "...We'll stick it in the book like a post-it note, in the glossary," and that's because we don't have the full story. And so we went ahead and did that, and then when I was writing the book, I actually worked it into the text, and Harriet wrote back and said, "No, no. I like this glossary thing; it's going in the glossary." [laughter] So, we cut it out of the text and left it in the glossary, and the idea is, you get to feel like we felt because I didn't know anything more than "This is it," so I gave it to you as transparently as possible so that you could have the same feeling of confusion that I had.

    Harriet McDougal

    And did you see where he got Moghedien from my basic character? [laughter]

    Tags

  • 997

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Michael Chantry

    Hi, I'm Michael Chantry from Podunk [?] Idaho—[claps] someone knows the area. Thank you for the books; they're amazing. Thanks Robert Jordan for the books. I like them so much I actually named my second child Perrin. [applause]

    My question is to both Brandon and Harriet. I know you love this new book, A Memory of Light, that you've created for us, and out of it, is there anything that we... What is your favorite part? What did you enjoy most about it? If you can give us a chapter, a section...anything. I know you're going to say "the whole thing." [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    (flips through book) [laughter] There's a 200-page chapter in this book. [hoots, buzz of talking] I felt it very thematically important, and my favorite part is right at the end of that chapter and the beginning of the next chapter, and the next chapter is actually very short, and so really, it's probably Chapter 39, but with the lead-in at the end of chapter 38.

    Michael Chantry

    And Harriet, do you have a favorite part?

    Brandon Sanderson

    (talks to Peter) 37 and 38? Okay, 37 and 38. Peter knows these things better than I do. [laughter]

    Harriet McDougal

    Well, I love the end of Chapter 23—the final sequence—and as you're aware from Brandon's other books, I mean a lot of the chapters will have a piece here, and then there's a two-line space and you jump five hundred miles away, and so on, but the last segment of 23 I think is just super. But there are an awful lot of things that I do love in this book; the scene I read for you is one of my favorites; there's more of it, but I thought, "Oh, I don't know; I think I'm getting on too long," because we hadn't quite timed it out. I think it's a wonderful book. [laughter, applause]

    Jason Denzel

    I know that the question wasn't directed up here to me, but I think I definitely need to say that—without being cliché—the ending, the epilogue, was far and away everything I could have hoped it was, and it was my favorite part of the book. It was just...I can't wait for all of you to eventually read it, and hopefully have the same kind of reaction that I did. It's pretty awesome.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can talk a little bit more about that, because...I told you the Asmodean story, but next under that sheet was this, was the...were the scenes that Robert Jordan had written for the book. And so, that included sections from the prologue, which got split into various pieces of the various prologues of the three novels; sections out of the book; and then this ending, the epilogue, and it's one of the most...one of the scenes where you're able to preserve, a sequence that's the most close to the way Robert Jordan left it. Because a lot of scenes he'd leave, he'd leave like a paragraph, and then it's like I have to expand that into, or I have to work a whole thing and then have that paragraph in.

    There's a famous scene, for instance, with Verin in Gathering Storm where he left, you know, the kinda...what you would imagine is the important parts, but it's only the important parts, and then it doesn't have a lead-in or an exit to the scene, and so I had to write up and then lead in to what he'd written, and then lead out of it, and that sort of stuff. And this, it's actually...we've got complete sequences that he wrote before he passed away. And so, when you get to that epilogue, you can know...there's some very non-touched-by-the-rest-of-us stuff that he had in a very good shape to be published before he passed away.

    Harriet McDougal

    And I should have thought of that, but as he read it in 2007—and so did I, and I had known some bits of it for years before that—but it really is splendid.

    Michael Chantry

    Thank you very much. [applause]

    Footnote

    More info on who wrote what in the epilogue.

    Tags

  • 998

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Chris Wells

    My name is Chris Wells; I'm from Salt Lake City. I'm a bookseller, and avid Wheel of Time fan. I'm also the TAVEREN license plate guy. My question was for Brandon. I've started writing now, and I love to listen to music when I write. I was just curious about, what is your ritual for when you write? Do you like music? Do you like complete silence?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually have to listen to music. For some reason, I don't like the silence; I like something going. And so I usually...I generate Pandora stations based around different moods, and I'll turn them on for different sequences and different scenes. At some points, I will just pick out specific bands that I have music by, and I'll play that, depending on what I need to be writing. And so, yeah...there's a lot of different things, but it's often just Pandora-ish sort of backgroundy generic sort of things.

    I do like...during my early years writing, I listened to a lot of what we call OverClocked remixes, because they were great. [cheers, applause] Game music—video game music—that were remixed into different orchestrations and stuff. And I was too poor to buy a lot of music, so I went and grabbed those, and so I still have many favorites among those.

    Chris Wells

    Okay, and then...just...because you two have created something so wonderful that has changed my life—it's my very favorite series—I made something for each of you. (holds up two necklaces) These are Amyrlin chains. They follow the seven colors of the Ajahs in the pattern of the Amyrlin's stole, and they are made from anodized aluminum. I made one of these for Harriet, and one for Brandon. [applause]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you.

    Harriet McDougal

    Thank you!

    Tags

  • 999

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2013

    Elizabeth

    My name's Elizabeth; I'm from Eagle Mountain. And, Brandon is kind of known as "the magic system guy," and so I was just wondering, what was it like to work with saidar, saidin, and Robert Jordan's magic system in comparison to your magic systems, and how did Robert Jordan's magic system influence your development of magic systems?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really have always liked, obviously, his system, which is part of why I love the books. His system had this nice mix between the visual aspect—I really loved the weaving, and things like this—and it had some interesting ramifications on physics and whatnot, and I also liked a lot of the sense of mystery to it, in that they didn't know everything, which is one thing that I like, when a magic system—you know, I like to write very rule-based magic systems, but I feel that, if you know everything...I mean, we don't know everything about physics; we don't know everything about science, and so how can you know everything about the magic, which is the science of a certain world? That said, Jim generally was more flexible with himself on allowing himself to do different things with the magic. He had a more open-ended magic system, I would guess. A lot more weaves were created, and things like that, and I tend to make my magic systems more restrictive.

    Because of this, growing into the books, I worried that, working in a system where I was uninhibited in that way, that I would just go completely bonkers. [laughter] And so, when I sat down to work in this system, I decided it was...when necessary I would develop new weaves, but that I would resist the urge, and that there had been so much developed by Jim so far that I would use weaves either in the books or from the notes whenever possible, and I would prefer to take those and try to go new places with them as opposed to developing lots of new and different weaves, which is why you see me doing things like pushing gateways a little bit further, because I thought there was a lot of room to explore there, or pushing what Perrin does in the wolf dream, and these sorts of things, because these are established systems that Jim created for me, and for all of us, and I felt there was so much room to move in those that I didn't need to go other places. There are some places in the books where a new weave was appropriate, and we did that, but I tried very hard to cap that, because I worried I would just do too much, if that makes any sense.

    I really enjoyed working with it. In fact, the Wheel of Time...in a lot of ways, the Wheel of Time doing what it did had prevented me in my career from ever approaching doing those things, if that makes any sense. Because I loved the Wheel of Time, I didn't want to be repeating something that...I didn't want to be, you know, accused of just copying Robert Jordan. And so, because of that, you don't see me writing a lot of the types of things that he did, like you know I'd always wanted to do a dream world, but I never did a dream world because the Wheel of Time had done one so well. And then when I was able to work on this, I got to kind of do all of those things that I'd made off-limits to myself because Robert Jordan had done them already, and done them so well, and it was pretty awesome to be able to do that. It was one of my favorite parts about doing this, is all these things that were on my list of "Robert Jordan did this so don't do it," suddenly became things I could do. So... [applause]

    Elizabeth

    Thank you.

    Jason Denzel

    And as a follow-up to that, I think that, instead of just being the magic system guy, I think that Brandon has every right to be the good, quality compelling character guy. So... [applause]

    Tags

  • 1000

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    Where did the idea for the zombies come from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Are you speaking of Hinderstap? (Questioner explains further.) ...Yes you're speaking of Hinsderstap. Hinderstap came out of working with bubbles of evil and things like this, and Harriet saying to me at one point, "The book’s not creepy enough." [laughter] She said, "Go read..."—she gave me the scene with the dead rat from early—is it Eye of the World, that has that scene, where they're in the dreams, and things?—she's like, "Get me some more creepy. It's supposed to be getting worse and worse." And so I'm like, "Alright, creepy it is." And that was where it came from.

    Harriet McDougal

    Thus is the nature of inspiration.

    Tags

  • 1001

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    Do you write your own books? [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I do write my own books.

    Question

    Has working on another author’s writing influenced your own writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say yes. I...but let's just make clear, I probably would not have said yes to doing this project for anyone else. The Wheel of Time characters are like my friends from high school, that I've known them for so long—I grew up with these books, and that was a big influence in me making the decision to say yes. And I often describe working on the Wheel of Time like the equivalent of heavy lifting for weight training. It forced me to grow, or break beneath the weight. And I've learned a lot more about, for instance, Robert Jordan's subtle use of foreshadowing, his excellent use of characterization, his ability to blend a description with narrative flow.

    There's just a lot of things I've learned while working on this, but probably the biggest thing I've learned is how to interweave so many viewpoints, which is not something I'd ever done successfully before. I had tried it in books that didn't get published, with that many viewpoints, and I had not been as good at weaving back and forth between.

    Tags

  • 1002

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    How does it feel to finish it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It feels sad, but satisfying.

    Tags

  • 1003

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    How old were you when you decided to become a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was sixteen. It was one year after I'd started reading the Wheel of Time, and about a year and a half after I discovered fantasy novels. Fantasy novels changed my life.

    Tags

  • 1004

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    You talk a lot about [what you enjoyed about writing WoT]. What was your least favorite part of this entire project?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My least favorite part of the entire writing process is the extensive revisions that are necessary to make a book become better, and it's something I have disliked from the beginning, but I've accepted as a very necessary part of the process. If you don't revise, your book remains good and doesn't become excellent. And one day I realized that all my favorite writer friends—people I knew; all the best writers I knew among them—were people who are actually better revisers than actual writers. They could do an okay first draft, but they could really knock it out of the park with a few revisions.

    And so revising has never been my favorite part of the writing process at all; I like to be discovering new things and writing new things. And part of what took me so long to get published—for those who don't know, I wrote thirteen books before I sold one; Elantris was my sixth novel—and the reason Elantris sold was because that's when I finally sat down and said, "I really do need to revise; I can't just keep telling myself, 'I'll do better on the next book.' " And I did six or seven really solid drafts of Elantris, and then it sold.

    Specifically Wheel of Time: I don't know if there was a least favorite part. The most challenging part was keeping track of all the side characters; that was really tough. There were so many of them, and Robert Jordan was so good at giving them distinct voices. You know, I've got Rand and Perrin and Egwene down—I know them like I know my family—but all the Wise Ones and Aes Sedai...this can be a little bit rocky. I'd say that was definitely the most difficult part of the process.

    Tags

  • 1005

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    This is a different person's writing for you. A lot of writers discover along the way, and for you, how different was it working on this book. Where there still discoveries?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were still discoveries, but I am more what we call an architect. This is a type of writer who builds a frame and then builds a story around that frame. I certainly do discover certain things, like...I don't know what each chapter exactly is going to be—I know what will be accomplished in that chapter, and then I sit down and then I find interesting ways to do it—but on the macroscopic scale, I almost always know exactly where I'm going when I'm writing a book, and with this, that actually worked the same way, because Robert Jordan had written many scenes and had left many instructions on what was to happen, and those became the foundation of my framework that I used to write from, and so instead of me brainstorming those, which would happen in one of my own books, I used his framework that he had given me, and I built the story around that.

    Tags

  • 1006

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    How are your plans for Stormlight Two doing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am trying to get done for a fall, late fall release this year. Harriet snickers at me when I say that, because she knows that the chances of that actually happening are kind of slim. It could happen. It's more likely that it would be spring the following year, but I'm going to try. I'm going to try very hard. I'm about forty percent of the way through the first draft; the problem is never first draft, though; revisions take a long time on a book this big. Rothfuss once described it as, "It's like ninety percent awesome, but you don't want to release something that's only ninety percent awesome, and that last ten percent is really hard to get to sometimes." So we'll see.

    Harriet McDougal

    And then, production on an enormous book is also very time-consuming, and the way I think of it is, there will be Gelusil on coffee carts at Tor, or other remedies for stomach upsets. They say, "You want this book by when?"

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tom, who runs Tor, is optimistic, though I noticed he had little stickers—there's copies of Way of Kings to give out as prizes, and they have a sticker on it that says, "Watch for the sequel in late 2013."

    Tags

  • 1007

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    Can you still read the books and appreciate them after The Wheel of Time being your job for so long?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, I still read Jim's—Robert Jordan's books—and enjoy them, and I just recently picked up one and started reading through it. I don't reread my own books usually unless it's to reacquaint myself with certain things so that I can work on a sequel, because I will simply find too many things I want to change. This is the artist's dilemma; you've got to let it be done; you can't go back and continually tweak and revise and rewrite. At some point is just has to stand as a work of art, and reading your own books again...it's too dangerous for me to do that. So I don't reread mine, so I've never reread Gathering Storm, for instance. Now, I did read it fourteen times while we were revising it [laughter], so I do know that book pretty darn well, but I haven't reread it since.

    Tags

  • 1008

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    Was there anything in the notes that surprised you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, I got everything at once. There are two things that stand out that are moments when I was looking through the notes and I was like, "Oh!" And then there was one that I'm like, "Oh no." [laughter]

    The two that were "Oh!" were, in Gathering Storm where Egwene gets a special visitor, and colors of dresses are mentioned. [laughter] That one was kind of mind-boggling, and that's one of the things that Robert Jordan had complete. Not—I had to write into it and write out of it, but the important parts you're thinking about were done. The second scene was in another section that he had complete, and this is where, at the end of Towers of Midnight, someone you haven't seen for a long time and someone else have a romantic moment together, and that surprised me. I was not one that was expecting that—it's well-foreshadowed, but I just hadn't been expecting it. I actually went to Team Jordan, and I'm like, "This? I—What?" And they're like, "No, it's in there; here, look at this, look at this," and all the foreshadowing, and I had just completely missed it. And so, those two were the surprising moments for me.

    The kind of "Oh no" moment was when...he didn't actually write the scene, he just made a sentence that said—oh, someone's plugging their ears because they don't want spoilers; I'm trying to talk around the spoilers, so—in Gathering Storm, there is a scene where a certain member of the Forsaken gets spanked [laughter], and Robert Jordan wrote, "This happens, and she gets spanked." And I'm like, "I'm not going to write a spanking scene; I've never written a spanking scene before!" [laughter] And I was kinda like, "Come on, Jim, do you really have to do this?" But I was like, it was in the notes, and there was no good reason not to [?] that scene, so I went ahead and wrote that scene.

    Tags

  • 1009

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    All of the females in your books seem to be very independent, strong women; do you believe that you write them that way from your perspective, or is that your experience, or...?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's a couple of things behind that. The first is that my mother graduated first in her class in Accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the entire Accounting department—that was in an era where that wasn't something that a lot of women did—and so I've had quite the role model in my life. But beyond that, it's kind of an interesting story. I discovered fantasy with a book I mentioned earlier, Dragonsbane. Wheel of Time was my [?], but I discovered Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, and my teacher got me to read this, and I came back to my teacher, and said, "People write books about dragons?" She's like, "Yeah, there's a lot of books about dragons; go read them."

    And so I went to the card catalogue, which we had back then in the Stone Age [laughter], and I flipped to the next title in the card catalogue, and it was Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery. And so I'm like, "Well, this has dragons; maybe this is good." And it was fantastic! If you've ever read Dragonflight, it's amazing! So I read through all of those in the school library, and I'm like, "Well, what else is there?" The next title in line was Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, and so I read through all of those, which are also fantastic books, and one of the best magic systems in fantasy, in Melanie Rawn's Sunrunner books.

    And so I got done with those, and at that point, a friend came to me, who'd heard I discovered fantasy, and said, "Here, you'll like this book." It was by David Eddings. And I told him, "I don't think guys can write fantasy." [laughter] That was—honest to goodness—that's what I told him. I'm like, "I don't know if I want to read a guy writer; I don't think they can get it down." And so, I did end up reading Eddings, and enjoying Eddings, but my introduction to fantasy was through three women who have at times been called feminist writers—all three of them have worn that mantle—and that's still with me as part of what makes a good fantasy book, and I think that's just an influence.

    My very first novel that I tried, which was not ElantrisWhite Sand—the female character turned out really bland, and I was really disappointed in myself, and I thought, "This is terrible." And it took me a long time to figure out—like, several books of work—what I was doing wrong. And what I was doing wrong—and I find this in a lot of new writers across the spectrum—is I was writing people—specifically "the Other"; people who are different from myself—I was putting them in their role, rather than making them a character, right? And this is an easy thing to do—like, you get into the head of your main character; they're often pretty much like you; you can write them; they're full of life; they've got lots of passions—and then, the woman is like the love interest, and the minority is the sidekick, right? Because that's....you know, how do you do that? And you stick these people in these roles, and then they only kind of march through their roles, and so while it's not insulting, the characters don't feel alive. It's like one person in a room full of cardboard cut-outs, like "Stereotypes Monthly" magazine. [laughter] And then your main character.

    And women are just as bad at doing this as men, just doing the men in that way. And so it's just something, as a writer, you need to practice, is saying, "What would this character be doing if the plot hadn't gotten in their way?" Remember, they think they're the most important character in the story. They're the hero of their own story. What are their passions and desires aside from the plot? And how is this going to make them a real person? And you start asking yourselves questions like that, and suddenly the characters start to come alive, and start to not "fill the role." And you ask yourself, "Why can't they be in the role they're in?" And that makes a better character, always, than "Why should they be?"

    Flop roles, too, if you find yourself falling into this, you say, "Okay, I've stuck—" You know, Robert Jordan kind of did this. The natural thing to do is to put the wise old man into the mentor—you know, the Obi Wan Kenobi, the Gandalf—role, and instead, Robert Jordan put a woman in that role, with Moiraine, and took the wise old man and made him a juggler. [laughter] And these two...you know, and suddenly by forcing these both into different roles, you've got...they're much more interesting characters. And you know, Thom is named after Merlin; he could have very easily been in that role, and instead he wasn't. And so, it made even the first Wheel of Time book so much better by making characters not be the standard stereotypical roles that you would expect for them to be in. So, there you go.

    Also, stay away from tokenism. If you force yourself to put two people in from the same culture in your book, that will force you to make them more realistic as characters, because if you only put one in, you can be like, "Alright, their whole race and culture is defined by this person." And putting in multiples can help you to say, "Look, now they can't both just be defined by that." Anyway, I went off on a long diatribe about that; I'm sorry.

    Tags

  • 1010

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    What’s your favorite part of the creative process?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm gonna say...[audio cut]...is the ending, writing the last sequences that I've been planning so long—because I always know what my ending is, and I tend to point everything at the ending—writing that last sequence is my favorite. For instance, my favorite scene to write in A Memory of Light comes right near the end. There's a very long chapter that you'll read; it's the last part of that very long chapter, into the next chapter which is very short. (something from audience) Yeah, it's 200-something pages.

    Harriet McDougal

    For good reason.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, for good reasons.

    Tags

  • 1011

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Question

    What comes first—the magic system or the world—and do you have a specific inspiration for your magic systems?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Usually, it's a process that they're intertwined. I would...usually for a book to grow in my head and start, so I want to build that framework, it has to have a couple of good ideas for some magic, a couple of good ideas for a setting, a couple of good ideas for characters, and a couple of good ideas for a plot. And those, like I'll have those sometimes independently. I'll say, "Okay, this would make a great magic system, but I don't have a place for that yet." Or I'll say, "This is an awesome place; I eventually want to put something in that." And they'll both have grown separately, and then I'll put them together, and they become greater than the sum of their parts. And I'll say, "Ah! That works so well together. The magic system is about people who can store up their attributes in chunks of metal, and then the magic system is about people who eat metal and gain powers; those can both work in the same world." And I'll [?] those together, and things like that. So it's much more organic of a process in that case, while I'm brainstorming to build it out.

    Tags

  • 1012

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Jeffrey Bernard (23 January 2013)

    With all the deaths that occurred in A Memory of Light, were there any that hit you harder than any others?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Egwene. After that, Bela. I'd promised she would live, but Harriet decided that I was cheating to keep her alive.

    Raj Ayer

    How long did it take you to write Egwene's death? What were your emotions then? How much had RJ written of it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was a hard one, to be sure. Hardest in the books. Had a long conversation with Team Jordan about how to manage it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    RJ had not written much of that sequence.

    Andy Lee

    Why did Egwene have to die? Very sad.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I agree. But if you look at the arc of her character, you might begin to see why it was important.

    Travis Hall

    Without spoilers, were there any characters you want to kill/save that you couldn't do to Jordan's wishes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There was one. But it was Harriet's call, not RJ's, that ended them.

    Bellygod

    Who did you find hardest to kill?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Egwene by a mile. Followed by Bela.

    Bellygod

    Why did you kill Bela?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I tried to keep her alive! Harriet told me I'd put her in too bad a situation, and she needed to die.

    Brandon Sanderson

    She was right, of course, but it still hurts.

    Tags

  • 1013

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Jared Garrett (23 January 2013)

    How did it feel to be one of the only humans who knew who killed Asmodean?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Fun, but also annoying, since I couldn't tell anyone.

    Kevin Cantrell

    Did Graendal kill Asmodean? Huge fan of yours and WOT, first read The Eye of the World when I was 13, 15 years ago.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, she did. And thanks!

    Tags

  • 1014

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Radbeard (23 January 2013)

    Don't you feel some of the character endings were too rushed (Fain, everyone Demandred killed)?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Finishing everything that RJ left to be finished in the amount of space required results in some dynamic pacing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't feel rushed is the right term. But I can see how people might feel that way. I could have gone three more books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was not right to do so. This was what he wanted, and I did my best to fit everything in. I'm pleased with the result.

    Brandon Sanderson

    In regards to your specific questions, the Demandred kills were supposed to be abrupt to convey emotion of sudden loss.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's how things are in war. As for Fain, a piece of me does wish there had been time for more with him.

    Brett

    Do you plan on expanding on the Wheel of Time series more or is it done? Why did you have so many abrupt deaths?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, no more. RJ wouldn't want it. Abrupt deaths happen in war; it is the way this sort of thing plays out, I'm afraid.

    Daniel Egonsson

    Was there anything in A Memory of Light you wished you could have changed?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I might have done more with Fain if I'd had the time and the pages.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The biggest challenge for the book was fitting everyone in, and making sure they had relevant things to do.

    Tags

  • 1015

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Bob Defendi (23 January 2013)

    Great structure from @BrandSanderson, by the way. The book required you break normal structural rules in just the right way. Great work.

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Thanks, Bob. You rock.

    An Algorithm

    So what kind of prewriting did you do for A Memory of Light @BrandSanderson?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lots of practicing character viewpoints. I also make a huge outline, which started on big sheets of butcher paper.

    Sandy Stuckless

    Is there anything specific process-wise you learned from completing WoT that you will apply to future projects?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm in awe of RJ's subtlety and hope to be able to transfer my understanding of that to my own works.

    Avalyn

    Did the ending of A Memory of Light influence the end of Emperor's Soul?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not intentionally, but it's hard not to be influenced by projects like this.

    Brandon Sanderson

    For example, I wrote Rithmatist while developing the revision for The Way of Kings, and both ended up with a redhead artist.

    Brent Holmes

    Did the confrontation between Vin and Ruin in Hero of Ages influence the Rand v Dark One scenes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Everything I do influences everything else, so I'd say yes—but in this case, I had RJ guiding me as a greater influence.

    Simon Ponder

    How does it feel now that the Wheel of Time is over?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sad. Awesome, but sad.

    Chris from Jax

    Is it tough knowing you can't continue the story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, and no. I feel the ending is the right one. And I can imagine in my head what happens, so for me, that is enough.

    Tags

  • 1016

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Jim Short (23 January 2013)

    A Memory of Light moved at a very fast pace. Did you have enough material for maybe one or two more books?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Yes, I did. But I can ALWAYS see more room to expand. Part of being an epic fantasy writer, I suppose...

    Tags

  • 1017

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Chris Coen (23 January 2013)

    I assume the answer is no, but in your interconnected universe, does the Wheel of Time have a place?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    No. I felt it would be arrogant to do something like that.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That said, you could imagine that most possibilities of worlds are mirror worlds to the WoT...

    Tags

  • 1018

    Interview: 2013

    Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Bellygod (23 January 2013)

    Which character was easiest to write and who was the hardest?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Easiest: Perrin. Hardest: Mat. Followed by Aviendha and Tuon.

    Dave West

    Now that you're finished, what was your favorite scene to write? Character?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin, and the forging of his hammer. In A Memory of Light it was the sequence with Lan near the end.

    Dan Zambito

    What character was most difficult to write for?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mat was the most difficult for me to get right.

    Jacob Corbin

    The Rand and Mat dialogue where they try to one up each other was amazing. Thank you for that (and the whole book).

    Brandon Sanderson

    That scene was one of my favorites to work on.

    JB Tank

    What was the most shocking thing you learned when first reading RJ's notes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Verin.

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  • 1019

    Interview: 2013

    Brent Weeks (8 January 2013)

    I have yet to meet an SFF writer who thinks they could have done a better job finishing the WoT than @BrandSanderson has done.

    Brandon Sanderson (8 January 2013)

    Thanks, Brent. And congrats on making just about everyone's "best books of 2012" list. You deserve it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Jumped on the internet on the plane flight. Thought "I'll check my email quickly." Ten billion new emails. Oh, right. New book out . . .

    Marc Rivera

    Sorry, I was overly excited about the book. My bad.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. No, it makes me feel loved. Thanks! Unless you sent them all. Then you are scaring me.

    Rob Houston

    How do you handle that? Interns? You can't possibly read them all yourself.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I try to at least look all of them over. Most can be answered quickly with a pre-written email.

    John Scalzi

    HUMBLEBRAG SOME MORE, BRANDON.

    Brandon Sanderson

    WHAT DO YOU KNOW? YOU'RE JUST A DIRTY SELL-OUT! SCALZIIIII!!!! :)

    Christopher Turkel

    I am taking bets on the impending @scalzi and @BrandSanderson knife match.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Scalzi writes SF. He'd bring a laser rifle. This is why I only taunt him from 30k feet in the air.

    John Scalzi

    IT'S A COHERENT BEAM, FANTASY BOY. ONLY THE CURVE OF THE EARTH WILL SAVE YOU NOW

    Brandon Sanderson

    . . . Did you just call me your "fantasy boy?" I don't quite know how to take that.

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  • 1020

    Interview: Nov 4th, 2012

    Rebecca Lovatt

    Also, not so much about your stories in particular...but you've written a lot of different types of books, the huge epic fantasies, short stories...different types of fantasy, and the odd ones like Legion. Which do you enjoy writing the most?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Answering questions like this one is difficult; it's like "Pick your favorite food". If you eat that food every day you're going to eventually hate it...or slowly find the food less and less enjoyable. For me, that's how it is with writing.

    Epic Fantasy is my favorite form, but if I'm only ever doing Epic Fantasy, I feel like I will get burned out on it, and I'll stop enjoying it as much and so I don't want to see that happen. So when I start to feel like it, I let myself, within certain bounds, write whatever I want to write so that when I get back to Epic Fantasy I'm feeling fresh. It's not a matter of what I like to write the most, it's a matter of what I'm feeling like at the time. Sometimes you may not want to eat your favorite food.

    Rebecca Lovatt

    And when you're switching between these different types of stories, are there any major difficulties that you face?

    Brandon Sanderson

    If I do, then it means something's going wrong and I kind of need to look at why I'm trying to write it... Switching is not hard, usually. You get to know your writing style, you get comfortable with how you approach things.

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  • 1021

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    How did you become a writer? If I'm not mistaken you had originally planned to become a doctor...

    Brandon Sanderson

    The moment I read my first fantasy novel—it's cliché to say this, but—I said, "This is me. This is what I'm going to do." So I basically directed all of my efforts toward doing that. But my mother really wanted me to be a doctor. Toward the end of high school I let myself be convinced that writing wasn't a realistic career for me, so I started college as a biochemistry major. But before long I realized I just didn't enjoy chemistry and missed writing, so I changed my major and threw myself into writing.

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  • 1022

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    The majority of your novels belong to the fantasy genre. Have you ever considered trying your hands at other genres?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I recently wrote a novella, Legion, that's more a technothriller than science fiction or fantasy, but it still has a fantastic element. I expect that everything I write in the future will have some kind of fantastic element. It's what I enjoy reading, so it's what I enjoy writing.

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  • 1023

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    What does fantasy mean to you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Fantasy is an exploration of what could not be. This is how it differs from science fiction in my mind, in that science fiction is usually an exploration of what could possibly be and explores the ramifications of that. In fantasy, I try to look at worlds that couldn't exist, with our current understanding of the laws of physics. I like to think of new branches of physics, to tell stories that no other genre could possibly tell, because all other genres focus on what could be or what is. The soul of fantasy is the impossible.

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  • 1024

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    In your novels such as Elantris or the Mistborn series, you like experimenting with magic and its different manifestations. Why do you always keep looking for new kinds of magic? Where do your ideas come from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've always been a daydreamer; that's probably why I ended up doing what I do now. Books, for me, come when I've got a lot of good ideas bouncing around in my head, and several start to combine together. It's like a person trying to match various colors in a room; you try out different shades together and see what works. Except I'm trying out different ideas together and seeing what kind of chemical reaction I get.

    With magic systems, first of all, I'm looking for something that fits the book that I'm writing. So for instance, in Mistborn, I was looking for powers that would enhance what thieves could do. I was also looking for something that had one foot in alchemy, in that kind of "coming-of-age magic into science" way. Alchemy is a great example because it's a blend of science and magic... well, really, a blend of science and superstition, because the magic part doesn't work. So something resonates there.

    I'm also looking for interesting ways to ground the magic in our world, and using something mundane is a great way to do that. Magic is naturally fantastical, and so if I can instead use something normal, and then make it fantastical, it immediately creates a sort of ease of understanding. Burning metals sounds so weird, but it was chosen for that same reason, because we gain a lot of our energy through metabolism. We eat something, we turn the sugars into energy, boom. So that's actually a very natural feeling. When I started writing out some sample things, it felt surprisingly natural, that people eat metal and gain powers, even though it sounds so weird. It's because of this kind of natural biology. So I'm looking for that.

    Once I have a magic system, I look for really great limitations. Limitations really make a magic system work better. A good limitation will force you to be creative, and your characters to be creative. Pushing and pulling metals is basically telekinesis, right? But by making it center of mass, you can only pull directly towards yourself or push directly away from yourself... Number one: it's vector science. It has one foot in sciences. Number two: it feels very natural to us because this is how we manipulate force ourselves. Number three: it limits things so much that it forces creativity upon the characters. There's that sweet spot, where they can be creative and do cool things, where it doesn't become too limited, but it also keeps you from having too much power in the hands of the characters, so they are still being challenged. I'm looking for all that, and on top of that I want to have good sensory ways to use magic.

    I don't want to have two wizards staring at each other, and then be like "and they stared at each other very deeply! And then they stared harder!" I don't want it all to be internal, which is where the lines for the metals came from. You see something, you push it forward. The pulses that some of the Allomancers use, they'll hear. I wanted sensory applications.

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  • 1025

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    Speaking about writing: do you prefer any specific working method? How do you put your stories on paper?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I generally like to have a good outline; for me that's important to have an ending in mind before I begin. It's really the most vital part for me. I like explosive, powerful endings, and without knowing it ahead of time, I can’t point it [the story] to where I want it to go. So I would say that I'm an outliner. I do, however, like my characters to be more organic, to grow and come alive, and so I don't spend a lot of time trying to force my characters into a box as outlined in an outline of a book, but try to let them grow and become who they want to become, so to speak, as I write.

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  • 1026

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    In 2007, Robert Jordan's widow selected you to complete the Wheel of Time series. What was your reaction when you heard the news and how did you start the work on the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nobody was more surprised by it than me. I didn't even know I was being considered. Like most fans of the series, I was just shocked and saddened that Jim Rigney (Robert Jordan) wasn't going to be there to finish it himself. About a month after his passing, I woke up one morning and found that I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it said, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson, this is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me back. I've got something I want to talk to you about." It was one of those moments where you are absolutely certain at first that someone is playing a prank on you and then you start to shake nervously at the thought that it might not be a prank.

    When I got hold of her, I found out that she was looking at me as one of the candidates to finish the Wheel of Time. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that. I considered Jim in many ways to be a mentor. I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced. I'd never met him, so I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call. I was absolutely stunned. I'm afraid I stammered a bit when I told her I would be honored to be considered; in fact, a while after I got off the phone I sent her an email that started, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot."

    I felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time. While I didn't ask for this, the truth is that I'm extremely excited to be involved. I love this series, and I wanted to see the last book written as much as any other fan. For a writer like me, the next best thing to having Jim write the novel is being able to work on it myself.

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  • 1027

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    As it was mentioned earlier, you always like to create a unique world in your books. How did it feel like to write in a universe created by another author? Did the limits of this universe prove any inconvenience to you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In some ways it was difficult, because for the first time in writing a book, I wasn’t the one who had the ultimate decision on how things went. But in another way, this was the one series created by someone else that I could write in comfortably. I grew up reading these books, so the characters were like old high school buddies to me. I felt like I knew them and knew their world, for even longer than the worlds I had been inventing myself. So in that way, writing in the Wheel of Time was doing something familiar, like coming home.

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  • 1028

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    According to recent news, the last book of the series, A Memory of Light had already been sent to the publisher. Now that you had finished the series, do you think you reached your goals? Are you satisfied with your work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. My main goal all along was to do the book in a way that Harriet would be pleased, as Robert Jordan's widow, because she had to be the guide on this. At the end of the day, my job was to satisfy her desires for a book that lived up to Robert Jordan's legacy, and I feel very confident in the way I've done that. I feel very satisfied with my work on the project. I don't think I did a good a job as Robert Jordan would have done it, but I think I did it better than anyone else—other than him—could have.

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  • 1029

    Interview: Nov, 2012

    Szabó Dominik

    Finally, would you like to impart some message to your Hungarian readers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really appreciate my Hungarian readers. I don't think I have a specific sort of message or goal; people talk about "What's the goal of my writing," and it really is just to tell a good story. I don't sit down and say, "What's the theme I want to get across with this?" Granted, themes will grow out of one of my characters, but I don't sit down to teach a lesson. I just sit down to tell a story. That's kind of the goal of my entire career. And so I don't know if my career is to teach a lesson, other than "I want to tell great stories, and I'm glad people enjoy them."

    Szabó Dominik

    Thank you for the interview, and we wish you all the success in the future.

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  • 1030

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time is probably the most important epic fantasy series of my generation. A lot of people from the generation before grew up reading Tolkien. Well, my generation grew up reading the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, and it was...it's very Tolkien-inspired, but it goes in its own direction, and basically, Robert Jordan—who started this series—once was asked, "What is the series about?" Well, it's now fourteen books and a prequel, so what is that about? But he had a really good answer. He said, "The story's about what it's like to be told that you have to save the world, and that you're probably going to die doing it, and you're just a normal person." And that's really where it starts; it starts with a young man who is told that he's this figure from prophecy, that he's going to have this whole world on his shoulders, and what does that do to a person? What is the life like once you've learned this? How do you figure out what you're supposed to do? You've just been told this... And it's really a character study about him and several other people, and the life they go through.

    Petra Mayer

    If I was being facetious, I would compare that to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, Buffy's very like that, because Buffy's like, you know, here's an ordinary person smashed into something extraordinary, and that's kind of the soul of what we do in speculative fiction. I like to say that what we do....um...a lot of people accuse fantasy of being backward-looking. I don't see that. Yes, we're dealing with kings and queens and magic and things like this, but what we're really trying to do, is we're trying to explore human nature in a controlled way. We're going to control—just like in a scientific experiment—we're going to control for a lot of things, and we're going to make this stable, and we're going to control the government, society, and these things, and then we're going to change a few really interesting things that could never be changed in our world. You know, if our world, you can't be told this is what's going to happen, you have to do this. We want to explore what that does to a person, and I find it a very forward-looking genre in that we're trying to explore what human nature is capable of doing, and what we would do under extreme circumstances.

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  • 1031

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Petra Mayer

    One of the things that I like about the Wheel of Time series is the unbelievably detailed worldbuilding that...I mean, coming into that, it was already eleven books along when you picked it up? My God, what did that feel like? How did you step into those shoes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, boy. So, the story is, I was a fan of the series—I picked the first one up when I was fifteen, and that was in 1990—and I'd been reading them all along; they are part of what inspired me to become a writer. I eventually broke into publishing myself in 2005, and two years later, Robert Jordan passed away without having finished the end of this series that I'd been following all along. And, like a lot of fans, I was heartbroken. I mean, we'd [inaudible] almost twenty years of following these characters. And one day, I got a call on the phone. I had not applied for this; I didn't know I was being considered. It was his wife. I didn't know her, but she had read my book—she had read my book Mistborn—and she had heard that I was a fan of the series, and had looked into some of the things I'd written, and then she just said, "Would you like to finish it?"

    Now, this is a major best-selling series; I'm a newbie author with a couple of books out. It was like getting hit by a freight train. And there's all this continuity and all these characters....it was a massive undertaking. I was scared out of my wits, to be perfectly honest, but honestly, I almost said no because of that, but there was that piece of me—the fan—that said, "Look, if you say no to this, and someone else comes along, and they do a bad job, it's going to be your fault, Brandon." So my own conscience was like, "I gotta do this. If Robert Jordan can't do it, they're going to have somebody do it. I've gotta do it." So I threw myself into it, and you know, the most interesting thing is, how have I done it? Well, I've had great resources, and part of those are fan resources. What the internet allows us to do with Wikis and things like this is, the fans have gotten together and created these detailed outlines and chronologies and all of these things, which have just been wonderful. You don't expect that, you know, but the fans do a better job than we do, as writers, sometimes, of keeping track of all of these things, so I've relied on their resources.

    I do think I've been able to do some fun things with the series, as a fan, that I've been wanting to do, from reading it since I was a kid, but that's actually a weird things because, as a fan coming on, I had to be careful. You don't always want to do what the inner fan wants you to do; otherwise it just becomes like a sequence of cameos and inside jokes. So I had to be very careful, but there are some things that I've been wanting to have happen, and the notes left a lot of room for me to explore. I did get to have a lot of creative involvement in it; it wasn't just an outline, which has been awesome. You know, if it had been mostly done, they would have been able to hire like a ghostwriter to clean it up, and they didn't have that. They needed an actual writer, and so there are lots of plots I got to construct, and as a fan, that's awesome.

    But he did write the last chapter. He wrote it before he passed away. He was very dedicated to his fans—there's great stories—he was on his deathbed dictating, and I have those dictations where his cousin Wilson is sitting there with a tape recorder just listening to him, and I got all these things passed on to me. It was really an interesting process. I was actually handed about two hundred pages, what would become 2500. Yeah, 2500. It's multiple volumes; it got split into three books. But, got handed two hundred pages, and in these are scenes he wrote, dictations that he did, fragments of scenes he worked on, little comments he made, Q&As with his assistants where it says, "This is what's going to happen, this is going to happen..." I just describe it like, "Imagine there's this beautiful Ming vase, and someone puts it in a paper bag and smashes it up, dumps out half the pieces, hands it to you, and says, 'Alright. Build the vase exactly as it was going to be, as it was before.' " That's kind of been my job on this.

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  • 1032

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Petra Mayer

    Now, I know we can't talk about A Memory of Light, but is there something that's out now that you can talk about in terms of plot twists that you really wanted to make happen, and then you got to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, yes. So, the main character, Rand. He is the one who's been told this, and he leaves in the first book, goes off, chased out of his home city by all of these, you know....different factions want him, and want to do things with him, and he left behind his father. They had a very nice relationship, and one of the things I wanted to do was kind of bring it full circle and have him and his father meet back up again. I wanted to do that; it felt like it would be a very touching thing. There was nothing in the notes either way to say if it could or couldn't happen, and so I went into and I said, "I really want to have a meeting between Rand and his father again; it's very important for me." It's very important plotwise, because you kind of look at the hero's journey and things like this, the return home was a very important part of it, but beyond that, you know, these are about characters; great stories are about great characters, and we love both of these characters; they needed to meet up again. And that was something that I got to do.

    Petra Mayer

    I have to say, if this was George R.R. Martin, he would have killed off Tam al'Thor.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, yes. Yes, he probably would have forced Rand to kill Tam, or you know, he would have....yeah, George really likes his body counts. He likes killing people in very unexpected ways...

    Petra Mayer

    I mean, these two series are sort of parallel, in my mind. It's almost like, sort of, I don't even...Star Trek and Star Wars.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. No, no...they are very similar. Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin were friends. In fact, Robert Jordan has a cover blurb on the first George R.R. Martin book, Game of Thrones. It says, you know, Robert Jordan recommending this book, and they were friends, and they kind of had parallel careers, and Robert Jordan is more on the kind of epic side, like Tolkien, with this sort of, you know, Grand Quest, and Martin is more what we call the heroic side, which is you know, gritty characters living in a really sometimes dark world, and fighting for survival, and there are two kind of archetypes in the fantasy genre that are both very important, and we've had them all along, and they're great writers in both traditions. They're kind of parallel in that way.

    Petra Mayer

    Do you have any advice for George R.R. Martin, because I know people are like, "Don't..." And it's horribly insensitive. People are like, "Please! We can't go through this again! Don't die in the middle!"

    Brandon Sanderson

    [laughs] Well, you know, I saw George last week. He seemed to be very healthy and nice. He was eating some Italian food at the time, so that may not be the....but I'm not one to speak; I like my Italian food too. No, George is awesome; I think he's going to be just fine. He's having the time of his life. He's got his show on, and things like that, so I think you guys are going to be fine. I think George is going to finish his series. He looks really excited, and he looks really good.

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  • 1033

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Petra Mayer

    I know you can't give too much away, but what can we expect from A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um, A Memory of Light is awesome. When I first got this, I had to say yes sight-unseen to the notes. I knew there was an ending, and so I flew out to Charleston where his wife lives, and I flew out there just weeks after this whole thing had come down; I was doing this, I had signed the contracts. It's a long flight from where I live in Utah, and I walk in the door to Charleston, and Harriet, bless her heart, says "Would you like some food? I know it's been a long trip." And I said, "No, I'd like the ending please." And I sat down, and that night I read Robert Jordan's ending to the series, and I was immensely satisfied. It was the right ending. It's what I've been writing toward all along. Having that means that I can get everything pointed toward it, and I think that it's a beautiful, perfect ending to this two-decade-long journey, and so, I hope you all enjoy as well. I really think you're going to be pleased.

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  • 1034

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Lenore Applehans

    What's on the top of your to-do list before the world ends?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Finish all these darn books I want to write. I have around two dozen that need to get done before the world ends, so I'd better get cracking.

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  • 1035

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    The Wheel turns, and the Wheel of Time series has come to an end with your completed final draft of A Memory of Light, due out from Tor Books on January 8, 2013. It must have been exciting yet daunting to be chosen to finish such an acclaimed series. How has the experience affected you as an author and as a fan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's been a very interesting experience, both as a writer and as a fan. Picking up something that you've loved for many, many years as a fan and then becoming the writer on it really changes your perspective on the entire process. Suddenly I had to dig into it in a way I didn't as a fan. I'm not one of those fans who always have all their favorite lines memorized or anything like that. I never had to keep track of all the subplots and minor characters, and suddenly I not only have to keep track of them, I have to know them intrinsically, which is quite the challenge.

    It's been five years that I've been working on these books, and it has forced me to do a lot of heavy lifting as a writer. Things that I wasn't as good at doing, I needed to become better at doing. It's kind of like suddenly being thrown into a swimming pool and told, "All right, now start swimming. You know how to tread water, but now we need you to swim ten miles." It's forced me to grow a lot as a writer. It's really given me a deeper respect for Robert Jordan and his works, seeing the process and how much goes on in creating these novels.

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  • 1036

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    What was your biggest challenge while completing the Wheel of Time series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Keeping track of everything is a real challenge. I've described before the way I approach this. Essentially, when I get ready to write a scene from a character's viewpoint, I dump everything into my head that I need, and I try to write all of those scenes in the book for that character while maintaining all of that knowledge. Then I dump it out and get everything ready for another character. That's the only way I can do it, because there's just so much to hold on to.

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  • 1037

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    Your new epic fantasy series, The Stormlight Archive, has been in the works for quite some time. In an interview earlier this year with Fantasy-Faction.com, you said that you set the project aside in 2003 because you needed to "get better as a writer." During the interim, as you worked on other projects such as the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker, and your middle-grade Alcatraz series, which skills did you improve the most?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say that I learned to juggle multiple characters a lot better. That's one of the places where I needed to grow, and it's one of the aspects where the original Way of Kings that I wrote in 2002 flopped. I wasn't good at juggling all these viewpoints. Working on the Wheel of Time really forced me to learn that, and I think I've gotten much better at it. I've also learned to be more subtle with my writing; Robert Jordan was incredibly subtle in his foreshadowing. Going through his notes and rereading the books and seeing how he set up things for many books later, it impressed me quite a bit that he was able to do that. I think I've been able to learn from that.

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  • 1038

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    How did you find the time and energy to work on The Way of Kings while you were immersed in Jordan's Wheel of Time? Are you a hidden Allomancer, a slider like Wayne in The Alloy of Law, with the ability to set up a mind-boggling speed bubble?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wish I could magically create bubbles of time to give myself more space to do these things. After working on The Gathering Storm, I felt more and more that I needed to do The Way of Kings—I had done it and failed once, and I began to see all of the places where it went wrong and how I could fix it. When you get excited about a book that way, you kind of have to write it—strike while the iron is hot. It's something I never want to do again—working on that and Towers of Midnight at the same time just about killed my entire family. The hours were very long, and I'm still kind of recovering from that. How did I find the time? I didn't do much else during that year when I was getting those both ready. I think it was really good for me to do, and I don't think I'll ever do something like that again.

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  • 1039

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    Shallan's sketches in The Way of Kings are terrific additions that enhance the epic feel of the novel. What inspired you to push for these illustrations?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wanted to use the form of this novel to try and enhance what epic fantasy can do, and downplay the things that are tough about it. One of the tough things about epic fantasy is the learning curve—how much you have to learn and pay attention to, how many things there are to just know. I felt that occasional illustrations could really help with that. For instance, how Shallan's sketchbook, or uses of multiple maps, could give us a visual component to the book. Pictures really are worth a thousand words. You can have on that page something that shows a creature much better than I can describe it. And so I felt that that would help deemphasize the problem of the learning curve, while at the same time helping to make this world real. Epic fantasy is about immersion, and I wanted to make this world real since that's one of the great things we can do with epic fantasy. We've got the space and the room to just build a completely real world, and I felt that the art would allow me to do that, which is why I decided to do "in world" art.

    I didn't want to take this toward a graphic novel. I like graphic novels, but it wasn't appropriate here to do illustrations of the scenes and characters from the books because I don't want to tell you what they look like. I want that to be up to your own imagination. And so we wanted that in-world ephemera feel to it, as though it were some piece of art that you found in the world and included.

    I think it goes back to Tolkien. There's a map in The Hobbit, and that map isn't just a random map, which has become almost a cliché of fantasy books and of epic fantasy. "Oh, of course there's a random map in the front!" Well, Tolkien wanted you to think this map was the actual map the characters carried around, and that's why he included it. He wrote his books as if he were the archivist putting them together and translating them and bringing them to you, this wonderful story from another world, and he included the map because the map was there with the notes. That's what I wanted the feel for this ephemera to be. As though whoever has put this book together—done the translation and included pieces of art and maps and things that they found in the world that had been collected during these events—that's what you're getting.

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  • 1040

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    The light-hearted banter in your recent standalone Mistborn book, The Alloy of Law, is an unexpected yet delightful change from the more serious tone of the original trilogy. Why did you decide to make such an abrupt shift? Will we get to read more about Waxillium and Wayne?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This was quite conscious on my part. One of the reasons I ended up writing The Alloy of Law as I did is because I personally wanted something to balance The Stormlight Archive, which is going to be more serious and have a tone more like the original Mistborn trilogy. I'm planning a five-book sequence to start off The Stormlight Archive, so I wanted something to go between those books that was faster paced, a little more lighthearted, and more focused.

    I love The Stormlight Archive—it's what I think will be the defining work of my career, but that said, sometimes you want a bag of potato chips instead of a steak. Sometimes you want to write that, and sometimes you want to read that. I knew not all readers would want to go along with me at the start on such a big, long series; they may want to wait until it's finished. So I wanted to be releasing smaller, more focused and more simply fun books in between, both for my own interest and for my readers. And I will keep doing this; there will be more Wax and Wayne books in the future, spaced among my bigger epics.

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  • 1041

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    If you could have one Allomantic ability, which would you choose and why? (I still have my suspicions about you and speed bubbles.)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would pick Steelpushing, because who doesn't want to fly, right? That's as close to flying as any of the powers get. As I'm walking or driving around I'm often noticing where the sources of metal are and considering where I could push off them to go where I want to go, and that's always exciting to think about.

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  • 1042

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    You posted the chapters of Warbreaker on your website at BrandonSanderson.com as you wrote them. The first and some subsequent drafts of the novel are still available for download to help aspiring writers study your revision process. What are some of the positive and negative consequences of posting your work in progress?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For one thing it lets people see all of the pops and bells and whistles that go into a book, meandering, sometimes, toward becoming a better novel. My agent and editor's big worry is that readers would read an unfinished work and therefore have a wrong taste in their mouth for how my books are. So I'd say that's the biggest disadvantage. I don't think personally that there has been any sort of sales repercussion. I can't say for certain.

    I would like to say that it has been better for my books, particularly releasing it when I did, when a lot of Wheel of Time fans were discovering that I was taking over their series and wanting to know what kind of writer I would be. They were able to download the book for free and know a little about me and my writing. I think it was helpful. I think the big advantage is that I was able to give something back to my readers. I'm always looking for something I can give back. They support me; I get to do this job because of them, so I like to add as much value as I can to the books for them.

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  • 1043

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    With all the focus on social media these days, what impact do you think fans might have on story development in the future?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Boy, I think that they will have some impact. What, I'm not sure. With Warbreaker I was able to read perspectives on the book online as I was working on it, and that certainly did inform how I did my revisions. Maybe you'll see more crowdsourcing on editing and that sort of thing. I do think that the ability to directly connect with fans helps me understand the way a reader's mind works. Usually that doesn't translate one-to-one to changes in a novel, because there are a few steps in between in deciding what the reader really actually wants and what they say they want—working on the Wheel of Time as both a fan and a writer has helped me figure that out, because there are things that as a fan I would have said I wanted, but looking at it as a writer I can say, "Oh, if I gave that to the fans, it would actually in the long run make the story less satisfying." So there is some work to be done there, but I think social media is a great resource.

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  • 1044

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2012

    Daily Dragon

    What other projects do you have planned or in the works?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My novella Legion just came out from Subterranean Press and I'll do a signing for it at the Missing Volume booth at noon on Saturday; it's a modern-day story about a guy who has something like schizophrenia, but he's a genius. He himself can't do anything special, but all of his hallucinations are experts in their respective fields. People come to him with problems they need solved, and he brings a few of his hallucinations along with him to help solve them.

    In November I have another novella, The Emperor's Soul, coming from Tachyon Publications—it's more like my fantasy books, in a world where trained Forgers can change reality, and the main character has to Forge a new soul for the Emperor, who was left brain-dead in an attack.

    Next summer I have two YA books coming out: The Rithmatist, which is about fighting with magical chalk drawings, and Steelheart, which takes place in a world where all the superheroes are evil; the main character is a boy who knows the weakness of the Emperor of Chicago and wants to hook up with a team of assassins to hunt him down.

    Then my next book that will come out after those is the sequel to The Way of Kings, which I'm working on the outline of right now.

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  • 1045

    Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011

    Helen O'Hara

    Speaking of adaptations, of course, you've taken over Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and sped up the pace of the story considerably, so as a long-time reader there, thank you for that!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Credit needs to be given to Robert Jordan; he started to speed up in Book 11 [Knife of Dreams]. In fact, I've read interviews where he admits that the focus was a little bit wrong in Book 10 [Crossroads of Twilight], which is the one that the fans complain about being the most slow, and he himself changed that for Book 11 and picked up the pacing. And I like spectacular endings. When I build my books, I start from the end and work forward with my outline. I write from beginning to end, but I outline end to beginning, because I always want to know that I have a powerful, explosive ending that I'm working toward. Endings are my deal: if a book or a film doesn't have a great ending, I find it wanting. It's like the last bite, the last morsel on the plate, so I get very annoyed with the standard Hollywood third act, because they seem to play it most safe in Act Three, and that's where I most want to be surprised and awed. That's where it's got to be spectacular. You've got to give the reader something they're not expecting, something they want but don't know it, in that last section.

    Helen O'Hara

    Does that go for something like your Mistborn Trilogy; did you start with the end of the trilogy or go book-by-book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I plotted all three backwards and then wrote them all forwards. I had a great advantage writing those books, because I sold my first book, Elantris, in 2003. The nature of how books are 'slotted' into release dates is that a new author doesn't get the best slot. They want to give each author a good launch, but they can't give them in the really prime slots. So we had a two-and-a-half year wait, and usually you have a year between books. That meant I had three-and-a-half years before Mistborn would be out, so I pitched the entire trilogy together and wrote all three before the first one came out.

    Helen O'Hara

    Is that something you have in common with Robert Jordan, because re-reading the prologue to the first book you think, 'This guy knows how it's going to end'.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He actually wrote the ending that I worked towards. The last pages were written by him before he passed away. He always spoke of knowing the ending, so I think we do share that. He was a bit more of an explorer in his writing than I am. He knew where he was going, but getting there he wove around a lot. You can see that in the notes I've been given; he jumps from scene to scene. So there's a difference there, but he really loved endings. And that ending is really great; I think fans are going to love it.

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  • 1046

    Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011

    Helen O'Hara

    How long did you have to think about it before taking on Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I didn't know I was being considered. I got a voicemail, which was nice because I didn't get it cold. It was Robert Jordan's widow asking me to call her. I couldn't get a hold of her for a couple of hours, so I had time to think! I was prepared, so when she asked me, I said yes. I still could barely get the words out. I was so starstruck talking to her and so befuddled that the next day I wrote her an email saying, 'Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot.' I do remember sitting that night and having... not a panic attack, but the realization that if I mess this up, I am messing up a story beloved by millions. A piece of me started to acknowledge, 'The Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan's, and I cannot do what he would do'. What I am doing shouldn't have to be done; he should be here to write it the way he wants to do it. There's no way to do it right! I'm setting myself up for failure. That almost made me say I shouldn't do this.

    A writer friend called me and said I was crazy. 'Whatever you do right, they'll say Robert Jordan did, and whatever goes wrong you'll get the blame. But I started reading Eye of the World when I was 14, in 1990, and those characters became my high-school buddies, and I'm still in touch with them. If someone else took it and did a poor job with it that would be partially my fault for saying no! I realized that if somebody is going to do this who isn't Robert Jordan, I wanted the shot because I am a fan and I won't screw it up too much.

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  • 1047

    Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011

    Helen O'Hara

    Are there bits in it where you were aware that it felt like your writing rather than him?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, there are some. For example, Robert Jordan was a Vietnam veteran: he'd been in real battle. My battle training has been watching cinema and reading great books. So my perspective on fight scenes is very different from his. I can't get that authenticity 100%, and if I try too hard it's going to feel fake. I have to do the action sequences like I do action sequences. So it'll flow like cinema rather than having the chaos and insanity of real battle.

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  • 1048

    Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011

    Helen O'Hara

    Who are your favorite writers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My favorite living writer right now is probably Terry Pratchett. There is no one who can balance humor and plot and character like he does, particularly in his books about Vimes. I really like Guy Gavriel Kay a lot, and I try to read a lot of new writers to see what's going on in the field, so recently I read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin, and that was a great book. I read a lot of history books and non-fiction as well. If you opened up my eReader you'd find three or four Terry Pratchetts, all the Wheel of Time, all the current Hugo nominees and a bunch of books right now on psychology. When I do research I cast my net very widely and then snatch what feels right out of that. Occasionally I'll read a specific book for a specific book, but usually I'm trying to increase my general understanding.

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  • 1049

    Interview: May 11th, 2012

    Sean

    I've read interviews with you where you've mentioned the numerous books that you have yet to write. By the sound of it, the next twenty years of your writing career sound mapped out already. Is that the way you see it?

    I have more ideas than I could ever find the time to write about and I'll always have random side projects here and there that aren't necessarily planned, to keep me fresh, but for the most part, I have my future books planned out. I wrote a blog post about it awhile back that explains things in more detail (a few things have changed since I wrote it, but not too much.) Here is a link if you haven't seen it.

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  • 1050

    Interview: May 11th, 2012

    Sean

    Do you devote all of your writing time to the current book you're working on? If not, how much time do spend on books that won't be coming out for years to come either outlining, world-building, or even writing them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Because I'm trying hard to finish The Wheel of Time right now, all of my writing time is spent on that. However, at other times I might be writing one book, revising another book and brainstorm a third. As a writer I'm essentially always writing or thinking about writing pretty much all of the time.

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  • 1051

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Epic Games

    What do you think you were able to bring to the story of Infinity Blade?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm a writer. This is what I do. One thing I've noticed—and I'm a big gamer, I enjoy video games—is that a lot of video game people have great ideas. They have excellent storytelling instincts. What they don't have, often, is a lot of practice doing it—you get better at telling stories by telling stories. A lot of the video games out there will have this core of awesomeness but a little bit of roughness around the edges when it comes to dialogue, making sure that the worldbuilding is rigorous, making sure that the characterizations are smooth and have nice arcs. I think that's something I can bring expertise to.

    One of the nice things about video games is that it's a big collaborative effort. There are certain things that a writer like myself should not be involved in. I don't have any practice coming up with fun ways to play games. I know some writers who assume that because they know how to tell stories, they'll be able to make a game that's interesting, but that's certainly not the case. The developers at ChAIR are experts at making really fun, awesome games. But I can help them with their worldbuilding, making sure it's consistent; with their dialogue, making sure that it's both evocative and interesting without being cliched and overdone. I think that the more people with skill in various areas you have working on a project like this, the better the outcome will be.

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  • 1052

    Interview: Nov 21st, 2011

    Epic Games

    What are the benefits of people becoming more comfortable consuming their books, games, etc. digitally?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Certainly there's just a convenience factor. In book sales, we lost a big convenience factor during the 90s and early 2000s, and that is that we lost mall stores. A lot of the bookstores in malls went away. And a lot of the distribution to little gas stations and corner stores went away, for various reasons that I can't explain in the length of this interview. Basically, our science fiction and fantasy books lost a lot of the places where readers could pick them up. As I said before, a lot of people when they run across a good book and start reading it, they love it. Yet now they don’t have as many opportunities to come across books. Recently they've been having to go to one of these big box stores, they have to make reading a destination. Because of that, all the people who would pick up a cool science fiction book that they would see in their corner store aren't reading anymore. Hopefully if we can show them books on their phone or in their game, they'll be reminded, and we can replace those distribution methods we lost with these new distribution methods where we can sell books for half the price and deliver them right to you in the moment of super convenience. I'm hoping this will encourage more people to look into our stories.

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  • 1053

    Interview: 2013

    John Leafback (23 January 2013)

    Should you have your pen name trademarked/copyrighted?

    Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)

    Some people think it is a good idea. I don't think it's needed, but it is not a bad choice either.

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  • 1054

    Interview: 2013

    Brandon Sanderson (28 January 2013)

    I recorded myself writing a chapter from the next Stormlight Archive book. This video is the prewriting. More to come.

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  • 1055

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Matthew Peterson

    Yep. Well, you do give a lot of advice, don't you? I mean you teach creative writing classes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do.

    Matthew Peterson

    Do you still do that? Even with all this on your plate?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I still do it. But I only teach one class a year nowadays. So, it only lasts for about three months. But I feel a need to do that because it was in that class when I was an undergraduate, long ago, that I got the final bit of information I needed, it was the final kick in the pants, so to speak, to go get published.

    Matthew Peterson

    Oh.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was taught by David Farland at the time who was just doing what I'm doing. He was a professional writer. He was just stepping in to teach the class for a few years. And he gave me real world publishing advice, gave the whole class real world publishing advice. A lot of creative writing classes are very touchy feely. That's a good thing; they'll talk about the feel of writing and how to grow a story and all of this stuff. But Dave was the first one that came in and said, "Look, you can do this for a living. I'm going to tell you how and we're going to talk about the nuts and bolts of creating a story." And that was wildly useful to me. And so I feel a need to go back, when I have the opportunity and explain to new writers, those same sorts of things.

    Matthew Peterson

    Dave knows what he’s talking about too. I mean, he did the Runelords.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yep, Mm hmm. Which is also a New York Times bestselling success now.

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  • 1056

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Matthew Peterson

    Yeah! I know everybody is excited to talk about The Wheel of Time, but let's first talk, really quickly about your Mistborn and your Alcatraz series. 'Cause I think it's interesting to find out where you came from before you got into The Wheel of Time. From the title, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, I get the hint that it's little humorous. Tell us a little bit about that series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, that series is targeted a little younger, but most of my fans of it are actually older people. It's a silly series about a kid who discovers that evil librarians secretly rule the world.

    Matthew Peterson

    [laughs]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Let me back up and kind of explain how I work as a writer. I spent many years trying to break in, as a lot of us do, and during that decades worth of time, about, I wrote 13 novels. I was working on my 13th novel when I sold my first novel which was Elantris.

    Matthew Peterson

    Oh.

    Brandon Sanderson

    A stand alone, epic fantasy. That was the sixth book I'd written. And then my next series was the Mistborn Trilogy, which you've mentioned. That was the first time where I had to sit down and write three books in the same world, which was actually pretty tough for me, to manage because I wasn't used to doing that. And after I'd written the second one, I needed to do something different. I needed to do something new. And so I jumped and wrote this book and in a lot of ways it was me riffing on what I do in my other fantasy books. You know, my epic fantasy, I think, takes itself very seriously as epic fantasy has to. And so I wanted to do something that poked some good-natured fun at that. And that's where Alcatraz came from.

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  • 1057

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Matthew Peterson

    And your Mistborn series, like you said, it is more serious. Tell us a little bit about the Mistborn series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay. One of the things I felt that I wanted to do, when I finally did break in, was find some way that I could add to the genre, rather than re-treading the same ground. I felt that I wanted to try and look at the fantasy genre and do plots that hadn't been explored yet. And the Mistborn books are my attempt at doing that.

    A lot of epic fantasy has this same sort of concept. This young protagonist, raised in the rural area goes on a quest to defeat the dark lord. And it's a wonderful, powerful story; it's the story that Tolkien used to an extent; it's certainly the story that Robert Jordan used, and you see it coming up over and over again in fantasy and I worried it had come up too many times. And so the Mistborn series came from me saying, "Well, what if he failed? What if this kid, this plucky protagonist, you know, went to save the world and it went all wrong?"

    Matthew Peterson

    And it failed? Oh!

    Brandon Sanderson

    What if Frodo kept the ring? Or what if Sauron had killed him and taken the ring? What if Voldemort killed Harry Potter at the end of book seven? What happens? And the way that I approached this is saying, "Okay, that's happened. You've got your generic epic fantasy story that all happened, and the hero failed." Thousand years later, now what? And it focuses around a team of thieves who get together and decide, "Okay, the prophecies were lies, the hero didn't save us, the world is essentially enslaved. Let's try this our way." And their plot is to rob the dark lord silly, use the money they get to bribe his armies away from him, and over throw the empire. And that's Mistborn.

    Matthew Peterson

    You know, Brandon, as you were talking about the Mistborn [series], you brought up some memories of my childhood. I don't remember what this series was, but I read this series that exactly was kind of like that: you know, the character is a normal person, he's great, throughout the series, but the very end, it doesn't all turn out right. He becomes evil and the series ends! And it haunted me. My whole life. And I still don't remember what the series was. I wish I would have remembered it, but . . . yeah, that's a very interesting concept and it doesn't happen very often.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was tempted to actually do that. I felt that would have been too much of a downer. Which is why I jumped forward a thousand years and then used kind of flash backs to tell the story of what happened a thousand years ago, because it's not as clear cut as I've made it sound.

    Matthew Peterson

    Well, that series I mentioned, I mean, that scarred me for life. [laughs] So I'm glad that you did a little different at the end there.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The other thing is I would have had to write it as a kind of more generic fantasy at the beginning and then take it other places, and I wasn't sure if I could do that because I don't know if my heart would have been in it, trying to write a fantasy that is more generic.

    The other big thing I like to do with my books that I hope does something new and interesting is try to approach having interesting different types of magic. And I think the best fantasy books do this, and I wanted each book that people read of mine to have a new magic system. I like to write magic that feels like it could be a science, that in this world there's another branch of science that we don't have in our world, that if you explore and apply the scientific method to it, you can figure out how it works. And I tend to write stories where we've got people figuring out the magic. They're working in sort of a magical renaissance. That's the theme for my next series, The Way of Kings, which is what's going to be coming out next year, is the idea that we're living in a world where people are discovering the magic and bringing it back to the world and trying to figure out how it works and actually applying reason and science to it to get some hard numbers on what it can do and what it can't do.

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  • 1058

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Matthew Peterson

    Well, your Mistborn series did bring attention to you. I mean, that's one of the reasons why you are writing the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan wrote the first one in 1990, it's called The Eye of the World. Eleven books later, he passed on, suddenly, and left millions and millions people with their mouths open like, "Well, what's next?" Tell us a little bit about how you jumped on board to complete the Wheel of Time series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay. I got up in the morning one day in October of 2007, fumbled downstairs to my long commute to my couch, picked up my phone to see if anyone had called me. And lo and behold there was a message from someone I didn't know the number of. And so I picked up my phone and I listened to it and was completely dumbfounded and shocked to hear a message from Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's widow, asking me if I would call her because there's something she wants to talk to me about. To be perfectly honest, my response was something on the lines of, "Blah, blu, blahb".

    Matthew Peterson

    [laughs]

    Brandon Sanderson

    I mean I couldn't even talk. Well, turns out that I was well known at TOR as a big fan of the series. I had written, when Robert Jordan had passed away, a eulogy for him, that kind of explained how he had been such a big influence on my life and upon how I had decided to become a writer and why I even chose my publisher. And so that eulogy had ended up on Harriet's desk and she had read it and then called Tom Doherty the publisher, and asked him, "Is this one of your guys?" He's like, "Yeah, this guy's a good writer. You should look into his work; he's a possibility." And so that's how I got brought on. I've described it like being hit by a freight train that I wasn't expecting.

    That’s the first I had heard of it. It was out of no where. At least as far as I was expecting it. So at that point, she requested some copies of the Mistborn books and she called me. Her initial call was a call to ask me if I'm interested before she did the work to search through my books and decide if she wanted to choose me. And so that initial phone call, when I finally got a hold of her. . . It was actually pretty hard to get a hold of her. She had left the house and I was just kind of running around in circles like a chicken with his head cut off because I didn't know what was going on and I was very tongue tied. And I eventually got a hold of her and she just said, "I want to see if you're interested before I do the work of reading one of your books and deciding." Well, to be perfectly honest, my response was something along the lines of "Blah ble blahh . . ."

    Matthew Peterson

    [laughs]

    Brandon Sanderson

    I mean, I couldn't even talk. I wrote her an email the next day that I sent care of Tom Doherty, that really essentially said, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot, even though I sounded like one."

    Matthew Peterson

    [laughs]

    Brandon Sanderson

    But she then sat down and read Mistborn, and it was about a month later. She read Mistborn. She considered some other people. She called me up and said, "Yes, I would like you to do this. Are you still interested?" And of course I was. It is one of those things that just happens unexpectedly.

    Matthew Peterson

    Just an amazing thing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And it changes your life.

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  • 1059

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Matthew Peterson

    Yeah. Well, I caught Tom Doherty at a convention a couple years ago. He was alone, which doesn't happen very often. So, I chatted to him a little bit about this. At that time it was one book, and he said, "Well, he's actually written like close to 1,000 pages so far, and he's only gotten like 1/3 into Jordan's notes. So, we might have to split the book into two." And then lo and behold, there's going to be three books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's an enormous amount of work and we feel that fans will enjoy it better, if we give it to them 1/3 at a time, for three years. As opposed to making them wait an extra three years and then get the whole thing.

    Yeah. What happened was. . . and I want to make this perfectly clear as I try to explain this. I've not expanded the size of the book at all. Robert Jordan, before he passed away, kept saying, "This book is going to be enormous. This book is going to be huge. They're going to have to sell a wagon with the bookstores, so you can get it out of the bookstore." And I took that to heart and was writing it as I felt he would have written it. He wanted this book to be enormous.

    And Tom Doherty and Harriet made the call, I left it up to them, that they were going to decide how it was going to be divided or if it was going to be divided or if they were going to be printing it as one. And what really happened is about January of this year, Tom and Harriet got together and they looked at what we had and they made the call for two reasons. One reason being, they felt that it was too large to publish as one book. Harriet had said to me, kind of in private, she said, "I don't think Jim could have done this in one book." I don't think he was planning to do this in one book. He maybe would have tried to get them to publish it as one book, but the realities of the publishing business . . . the larger reason I think that they did it because it was going to take me another two years to finish that one book if we were going to be publishing it as one. And they didn't feel that it was right to make the fans wait that long. It's already been four years since the last Wheel of Time book.

    And so the decision was made that they would take the first third, which I had finished already, and then have me work with it and edit it so that it was a single volume and it doesn't read like the first third of a story. The way I approached writing this made for some very natural break points. And they were going to publish that and then we would publish the second third and the third third. And it's really more about the fact that this just takes time. These things are enormously difficult to write, in a good way, but very, very hard, because of how much work it requires to get it right and how many pages there are. I mean the first third is going to be as long as an average Wheel of Time book.

    Matthew Peterson

    Oh, yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And so you can imagine stacking three copies of Eye of the World on top of each other; that's how long Jim planned this book to be.

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  • 1060

    Interview: Nov 5th, 2009

    Matthew Peterson

    Now for a bonus question: From your experience teaching creative writing, what is some advice you give your students?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The biggest piece of advice I would give them is: You just gotta finish stuff. A lot of people want to be writers. And a lot of people have really great ideas. And get their great ideas together and say, "Wow! I think this could be a book." Then they start on it and for various reasons, they stop. One of the main reasons is they get discouraged because it's not turning out as they want it to turn out, or they get distracted by another really great idea they've just had, or they want to go back and keep revising this initial stuff that they've written. And you've got to finish. You won't understand how to be a writer until you actually finish a book. And you've got to remember that nobody starts off being perfect. And it's that process of writing books that aren't so good that teaches you how to write books that are good. No one expects to sit down and play the piano perfectly the first time. Yet a lot of people sit down and try to write the perfect book the first time. So, my biggest piece of advice to them is: Sit down, write, finish a book. And that will teach you how to write a good book.

    Matthew Peterson

    Ah. That's some good advice.

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  • 1061

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Details

    What was the process of finishing the Wheel of Time like?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's kind of like discovering an ancient vase that has been shattered. In some places you just have to polish off the pieces that you've found, but in other places there are pieces missing. It's a blend of using someone else's outline and also trusting my instincts a writer and a longtime reader of the series.

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  • 1062

    Interview: Oct 27th, 2009

    Details

    Are you nervous about The Gathering Storm's reception?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was a lot more nervous before I got it done. The fan community realizes that Robert Jordan wanted this book written, and they want to know the ending. There are going to be people who don't like it—I think that's inevitable. I can't write this book as well as Robert Jordan would have. That said, I think I've done a dang good job.

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  • 1063

    Interview: Oct 3rd, 2007

    Robert Thompson

    When I think about some of the bright new voices in fantasy and science fiction literature, Brandon Sanderson always comes to mind. Technically you're not that new since you've just released your third and fourth novels with lots more to follow, but for those that may not be familiar with your work, can you just tell us a little about what inspired you to become a writer, how & why you ended up at Tor, and why readers might find your books worthwhile?

    Brandon Sanderson

    After being a voracious reader as an elementary school student, I eventually got bored with the books people were handing me, and by Jr. High I didn't read at all if I could help it. Luckily, a wonderful English teacher introduced me to the fantasy genre, and I've been hooked ever since. I read everything I could get my hands on, and even tried to write a fantasy novel when I was fifteen. It was a bit of a disaster, but when I tried again at 21 things went better. Though I started college as a bio-chem major, I soon realized that I enjoyed writing so much more than chemistry. I changed my major to English and dedicated myself to becoming an author. All through my undergraduate classes I worked nights as a hotel desk clerk because they let me write during my shift, and I could still go to school full time. I began to learn about marketing and publishing and sending my works to editors. I was writing my 13th novel when Elantris, my 6th novel was sold. I met my agent at the Nebula awards. He didn't actually become my agent until I had a contract, though. I met my editor at the World Fantasy convention. Tor was my favorite publisher, and so I looked for Tor editors, and tried to get them to read my work...

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  • 1064

    Interview: Oct 3rd, 2007

    Robert Thompson

    With your debut novel Elantris (2005) you made some noise with the intriguing storyline, imaginative magic system and the fact that it was a standalone book. What were the greatest challenges you faced in writing Mistborn, a series that follows the more traditional trilogy format, and in particular The Well of Ascension, which is the middle volume in the trilogy, oftentimes considered the weakest of the three? What about the positives of writing a series opposed to a standalone?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mistborn was difficult because it was the first trilogy I'd ever written. I want all my books to feel like standalones because I really like wrapping up a story satisfactorily in one volume, but with the Mistborn books I had to make sure the story was consistent across three volumes. The Well of Ascension was particularly difficult in that a second book in a series has to effectively recap what happened in the first book, without being too repetitive. Also, a second book has to end in such a way that it leaves readers wanting to read the third, but I've never liked big cliffhangers. I struggled with finding a balance in these two things with the second book. To me, the advantages to writing a trilogy are that I can develop characters further and get more in depth into the world. For example, I could develop three magic systems in Mistborn instead of just the one in Elantris. People like to read about continuing characters, and it is fun for me to be able to expand on some of the side characters.

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  • 1065

    Interview: Oct 3rd, 2007

    Robert Thompson

    In both Elantris and Mistborn: The Final Empire you pointedly made an effort to defy certain age-old, fantasy clichés. What formulaic story elements did you try to redefine or avoid in the second volume of the Mistborn trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In The Well of Ascension I focused on the concept of prophecy. So many fantasy stories involve the idea of an ancient, infallible, and comprehensible prophesy which guides the actions of the characters. In The Well of Ascension I wanted to show the dangers of relying only on prophecy to provide a guide for your life. I also wanted to turn on its head my own concept of optimism. Many fantasies, including Elantris, show that If you are just determined enough you will succeed. I wanted to deal with what happens if you believe in yourself and things go wrong anyway.

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  • 1066

    Interview: Oct 3rd, 2007

    Robert Thompson

    One of the many projects that you’re working on is a new children's fantasy series, book one of which just came out October 1, 2007 via Scholastic Press and is called Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians. Can you give us a rundown on how this idea was conceived, what kind of story readers can expect from it, your plans for the series, and why you chose Scholastic as the publisher?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Alcatraz actually started out as a freewrite. In the middle of writing the Mistborn series I needed a break, so I wrote down a silly sentence that had been tumbling around in my head, then just kept writing. It took me 16 days, and I wasn't really setting out to write anything in particular. I ended up with the completely looney first Alcatraz book. I wasn't even sure if it could be marketable, but I sent it to my agent, who suggested some small but significant changes, and then sent it out to children's publishers.

    Once I realized it could go somewhere, it fit into my plans quite well. I knew I wanted to start a second series, because it is much easier to make a living as an author if you have two books coming out a year rather than one. I wanted to write something that was different enough from my epic fantasies that my readers wouldn't feel overwhelmed, but similar enough that those who liked my other books would still read it. I decided this meant writing either humor, science fiction, or young adult. I'd actually been reading a lot of YA, and was most excited about that idea, so when we decided to market Alcatraz as middle-grade, I was pleased. I immediately had all kinds of wacky ideas for the series.

    Robert Thompson

    As far as the writing, what are the differences between a children's fantasy and the books that you've already produced?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Obviously the biggest difference between a middle-grade fantasy like Alcatraz and the stuff I write for Tor is the length. Alcatraz is sixty thousand words long, while The Well of Ascension is two hundred fifty thousand. Writing the Alcatraz books is nice because I can do it relatively quickly, and they don't take themselves so seriously the way my epic fantasies do. I do find that I have to simplify things in order to write for kids—fewer viewpoint characters, simpler plot, etc. It is sometimes more satisfying to create an intricate story like I can do with my Tor fantasies. I'm actually really enjoying having the two types of books to write.

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  • 1067

    Interview: Oct 3rd, 2007

    Robert Thompson

    Moving on, another of your projects is the standalone fantasy novel Warbreaker. What's cool about this book is that you're offering it as a free download while you're writing it, giving readers the opportunity to witness & provide feedback on the book as it evolves from its roughest stages to eventually, a final version and publication, all in the name of publicity. Personally, I love the concept and just wondered if you had any other innovative ways for authors & publishers to promote books, especially with newer writers?<.p>

    Brandon Sanderson

    I like the multimedia idea. I've often wondered if offering a CD with a book might be good—an audio book with some of it read by the author, or music inspired by the story, or something like that. I post excerpts of different drafts of my books on my website, and readers, especially those who are aspiring writers themselves, seem to like that. I think there are many kinds of "bonus material" that writers could include with their books in the way of special features that are often included on the DVD versions of movies. This is what I try to do on my website with my annotations and deleted scenes.

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  • 1068

    Interview: 2008

    Rebecca Cressman

    Now Brandon, I know that you probably are asked this frequently, but when did you begin the creative writing process? Was it as a child?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well actually, I'm a little bit different than most authors. I didn't start as early as a lot of them. If you asked a lot of authors that question, they'll say, "Oh, I wrote my first book when I was in first grade, and ever since then I wanted to be a writer." Well, I didn't start off as a writer. I actually had a big period in my life where I didn't like to read, didn't like books at all. And it wasn't until I was in junior high and a teacher handed me a fantasy novel that it really all started.

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  • 1069

    Interview: 2008

    Rebecca Cressman

    I want to talk to you about that, because I have kind of read some of the things you have written about the role of fiction, and the role of fantasy, and how it is so essential to understanding humanity. I'm really intrigued by that. Obviously when we talk about the books that you have written we have Elantris, Mistborn the Trilogy, Alcatraz and the Evil Librarian, we will talk a little bit about those. I'm curious, fantasy captured your imagination; what is it that inspires you to begin writing your own...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well you know there's that huge imaginative exercise. Fantasy—well all fiction really—is about taking you to a different place and letting you see through different people's eyes. I think fantasy can do things with fiction that nothing else can do. It can take you to a place no one has ever been, really. The book I read when I was in junior high was called Dragonsbane. And it's still a delightful book, I love it. What it was about was a middle-aged woman. And I wouldn't think that me as a fourteen year old boy would really read that book and get into it, but it was so well written.

    Rebecca Cressman

    And identify with its character. Sure.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. And It was so imaginative, and it had just this wonderful world of dragons and all these things; and also a story about a middle-aged woman who is struggling kind of, to choose between how much time to spend with her family and how much time to spend on her magic. And it was fascinating to me even as a junior high kid that when I finished this book I felt like I kind of understood my mother better, and yet I had this wonderful romp in a fantasy world at the same time. I look back at that and say the emotions that these books can cause are something special, because it can give us this wonderful adventure, but also can make us really understand people we would never be able to understand otherwise.

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  • 1070

    Interview: 2008

    Rebecca Cressman

    When I first emailed you, Brandon, I indicated to you that my sons are readers. One out of three is not so much an avid reader, but they were captivated by the book that probably gave you a national name, and that was Elantris. And in there, there were themes of a Utopia, and then the opposite. What happens when Utopia crashes, or there's the fault line, there's a crack in it? And then we go to Mistborn, and with your permission to sum up kind of shortly, it was, some said, "A revolution of a new generation against someone in power, and yet they don't even understand the consequences of what they are beginning." So there are underlying themes that you are hitting as you move forward in your writing. Are these themes that you set out, you think, "This is something that is important to me as an author and I want to explore it?" Or does it evolve through the characters that you develop?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's much more an evolution, the second one you mentioned. I'm not one of those who sits down and says, "I want to write a book about X." I don't go and inject any sort of philosophies or theories into my book. I sit down and say, "I want to write a book about this character. Well what's going to be important to this character? What's going to make them tick?" What makes them tick actually tends to be things that I am worried about, or I am concerned about, or I like to think about and so, the two do cross. You'll end up... In my fiction you will often find me exploring concepts and ideas that I am interested in, but that will be because my characters are interested in them.

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  • 1071

    Interview: 2008

    Rebecca Cressman

    Okay, I want to take us to one of your series right now that the children at school are being exposed to, and I'm thinking librarians around the nation are worried about the title, Alcatraz and the Evil Librarian.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians actually is what it's called. It is a story about a kid who discovers that librarians secretly rule the world.

    Rebecca Cressman

    So this is a juxtaposition of the typical look of a librarian who is quiet, unassuming, gently stacking books. And so you've kind of lifted the veil and said there's a whole underworld here.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, well part of the... This book was written mostly on a whim by me. I came up with a first line. I was just sitting one day and it just popped in my head, sometimes this happens, and it was, "So there I was, tied to an alter made from outdated encyclopedias about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil librarians." I jotted that title down and thought, "Wow, I have got to write that story. I have no idea what that story is, but I have got to write it." So I jotted it down, and it sat there and stewed in my head and on my notebook for a long time. And meanwhile The Da Vinci Code was getting very big, and I picked up that book and read it. You know, I kind of have something against all these conspiracy theory books. I don't think that there are any groups out there that are just like the Illuminati secretly ruling the world or anything like that. And The Da Vinci Code took it so seriously that I started to hypothesize something ridiculous, as kind of a mockery of that. And so I thought, well what have I got here? I can tell a story about a secret group ruling the world that would be completely ridiculous. Of course it expanded far beyond there. I wanted to tell a story also about people who had really dumb magical powers that they learned to use for their advantage. And there's a whole lot more to it than just that one concept. But that's where it started, as kind of my look at a silly conspiracy theory book.

    Rebecca Cressman

    Well congratulations, because the talk of the middle school, the talk of the school community is that this is just capturing the imaginations of children.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was a lot of fun to write.

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  • 1072

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Chris W

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Brandon started the event by reading the scene of Talmanes riding to the rescue of Caemlyn. He mentioned that he has always appreciated the relationship between Talmanes and Mat, and so he was excited to see so much from Talmanes in RJ's prologue. He said Talmanes' prologue appearance is one of his favorites.

    He chose to read the Wind scene at the beginning of Chapter One as well, because the wind followed the route of the three ta'veren on their journey. It is a scene that is symbolic of the series, and very special to him just as it is to the fans.

    After the short reading, we moved on to the Q&A.

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  • 1073

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    First, how do you feel doing this, and finishing it? Is there going to be a followup?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's hard to pin it down to one emotion; there were so many. RJ's books were among my favorites growing up, books I studied teaching myself how to write. In a lot of ways, it was just a deep honor. My favorite author, finishing his journey, and I got to walk along supporting him. That's how I regard it. It's been amazing. Me being the journeyman writer, being able to apprentice under RJ, in his workshop, looking at his things and taking them, working with them, polishing them, finishing the last sequence, has been incredible for me as an artist to gain an understanding of the writer that he was. For the second question, there will be no more. He'd planned to write two more prequels and then a trilogy of outriggers, but we can't do them. One reason is because he didn't leave enough notes about them. As I wrote these, I had specific direction in the notes and could relay everything back to RJ. In the outriggers, I wouldn't be able to do that. It would be more me than him. I don't think he would've wanted any more to be done, so out of respect for him, even though many would like to see these, I think we need to say "let's let it end where he wanted it to end". If we keep going, where do we stop? Do we want more 80 more Wheel of Time books? I think we're better off just saying "we know he wanted this done, let's end on a high note".

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  • 1074

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    What kind of research did you have to do to make the battle tactics so believable?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Memory of Light tactics were the things I was most worried about getting right. RJ was more a military historian than me and he was a soldier, so we went looking for help. Harriet knows a man named Bernard Cornwell who writes a lot of military fiction, so he helped us, and Alan Romanczuk is a war historian, who was able to help us a lot. He built the battle plan for the entire war, as far as troop movements and the tactical portion of the Last Battle. Connecting them and making it meld into the story with the characters was my job. We went rounds about "this is tactically sound" or "no it's not", so Alan was a big help making it believable. I did research, but my feeling is that I can get to 70–80% of knowledge on a subject pretty quickly through a month or two of research, but getting that last 20% is something that takes 10 years of work. My goal is to get to 70–80, and then give it to someone who knows their stuff and have them help me from there.

    Chris W

    The names of the people Brandon referenced here were probably butchered. I was just trying to keep up with him so I could record the main parts of his response instead of focusing on the names of his references. [Fixed—Terez]

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  • 1075

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    What happens with the Green Man?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have no answer for you. It is not spoken of by RJ, so you will have to extrapolate yourself. I could make something up, but I don't do that anymore. If it was for the books, I could say "this needs to happen" with my creative freedom I was given, but at this point, with it done, that's no longer my job. So my answer is, I don't know! We know that the Nym must come back as the Ages turn, but we don't know when they will be "reinvented".

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  • 1076

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    So what were some of the holes that you filled in with that creative freedom?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I tried to avoid talking about this much before because I don't want you to focus on what's Brandon and what's RJ, but now that it's all out, I do have a little more freedom. One thing is that early when I went to Charleston, I felt RJ was always adding characters, so I didn't want to add too many. I wanted to show something happening at the Black Tower, so Androl became my character that I took and expanded on from minor to main character. Androl himself and his relationship with Pevara was me. I felt the series needed it, and I’ve always wanted an Asha'man to play with, so to speak.

    More generally, for The Gathering Storm I have said RJ worked a lot on Egwene's viewpoints. Not as much on Rand. Rand was more me, Egwene was more RJ. In Towers of Midnight, RJ worked a lot on Mat and not much on Perrin. So if it's Mat, it's more likely to be RJ. If it's Perrin, it's more likely to be me. In A Memory of Light he worked mostly on beginning and end, not much on the middle. Merrilor and the last few chapters are a lot of RJ. In between, it's a lot more me.

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  • 1077

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    You work on 4 or 5 series at time, how do you keep them from leaking (into each other)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's a challenge. Being a writer is a lot like a juggler, keeping the balls in the air. One of the things I worry about is repeating myself. It's a valid thing, making sure you don't do that and keep them separate. I use an extensive wiki for myself and my books. A lot of my childrens' series are breather novels, and things I do between big epics where I don't have to worry so much about continuity. There's a lot of continuity with The Way of Kings and books like that, so it can be very in depth and intensive, so to keep my sanity, every once in a while I'll take a breather.

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  • 1078

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    What was the hardest part about writing in RJ's universe?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Probably keeping track of all the side characters. There were so many. I'd be reading a scene and be like "there's seven Wise Ones, now who are they again?" Now as the writer I need to know who they are exactly, as well as each of their distinct voices. When I get them wrong, people notice and I hear about it.

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  • 1079

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    When you read the books, did you have an affinity for a character and as you wrote did you change?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I read it was mostly Perrin. I'll admit I had a fondness for Mat later on, but it never became my supportive Perrin, even when he was down in the dumps. I didn't stop being a Perrin fan because he moped a little. He was my favorite all along. When it came time to write the books, Perrin remained my favorite. He was among my favorite viewpoints to write as well. I was very excited by the prospect of being able to do a lot of Perrin in Towers of Midnight, and having a lot of freedom with his sequences was a real pleasure. When I finished the rough draft of A Memory of Light, there was a lot of, like 20% more Perrin than Rand, so that didn't turn out right. It's really Rand's series, it needs more Rand, so when I sent it to Team Jordan, they said there was a lot of Perrin, so we upped the Rand count. There was a Perrin sequence that didn't really feel right for the book that was about 20,000 words, so we cut that out and added a Rand sequence that was about the same length which I had already been working on, and that helped restore the balance. When I started A Memory of Light I was fresh off Towers of Midnight and in a Perrin mindset, so I was like PERRIN IS AWESOME, did his stuff, then moved on to the other characters' arcs in succession.

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  • 1080

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    How do you think finishing the RJ series will affect the Stormlight Archive?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the things is that it has influenced and taught me to juggle viewpoints much better. When I first tried to write Way of Kings, the viewpoint juggling was off and when I rewrote it, it was better. I also really liked RJ's subtlety. His foreshadowing has a light, gentle touch and I'm not always so light. I kinda punch you in the face with it. So those two things are something I learned a lot of. In general, something a lot of fantasy writers have problem with is side characters going out of control. It happens to about everyone. I have the advantage is that I got to read RJ. He said he wouldn't do it again if he had to do it over, so I can learn from that and be able to keep the tighter focus for the story. I like The Wheel of Time and the side characters, but RJ said he wished he did Book 10 differently than he did.

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  • 1081

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    Question

    Androl is like your character, so as far as that, how much of that was kinda fought by the rest of Team Jordan as far as his gateway talent and stuff?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let me start by saying that if they hadn't been happy, it wouldn't be in the book. But anything where you work with an editorial team, you'd show them a scene, and they may say that's great, or they may say that it doesn't feel right or wouldn't be a good fit for the story. And sometimes you'll say "I'll change it" or "let me finish this draft, and we'll see what it looks like at the end". As far as the gateways, I felt it wouldn't be realistic otherwise. I've wanted to do with gateways since I was a kid, doing things like I showed in the book. If I had them, what would I do with them? I asked this when I was a kid, so there was a lot that I wanted to do with gateways that were in my own notes that I wanted to do that I couldn't do in my own books, so I stayed away from things that the Wheel of Time had done. So when I got to write WoT I broke out those files. The gloves were off; it was time to do things that I wanted to do but didn't want to rip off the Wheel of Time. At the end of the day, I convinced them to do it. They kept saying "they're all over the place!" so I said "if you could use them, you'd use them a lot". I didn't intend it to be a shout out of any kind, it's things I've wanted to do with gateways for like 15 years. It wasn't a shout out to the fandom. It's been an interesting experience. A lot of people think that I just wrote what the fans thought, but it's things that I felt the characters and the world would do, and if the fans happened to have talked about it, it's because it's what I thought would happen. In fact, as I wrote the books, I read very little of the fandom in order to prevent those exact thoughts from taking root.

    Chris W

    During and after the signing, we had the discussion with Brandon about Dannil Lewin. Originally, Dannil had actually gone with Rand, Perrin, and Mat from the Two Rivers on their journey, and played a major role in events of book 3 or 4. In the end, Harriet convinced RJ that it may be better without Dannil, so some of Dannil's comments in A Memory of Light are a shout out to that of sorts. Just a fun story I thought you all might find interesting.

    Footnote

    Dannil is on the inside cover of The Eye of the World.

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  • 1082

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    About Androl and Pevara, the dynamic and internal dialogues were right on, and his unique skills made for some of the most remarkable scenes since the cleansing. I know that RJ had some things lined out for many of the characters, but you sort of took Androl on as your guy, can you speak to that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    (Prefaced his answer by reminding everyone to avoid spoiler questions, and made it clear that this one did not cross that line) When I began to work on the books, I felt that with each book, it seemed that Robert Jordan usually took a side character and made them more of a main character. As I was outlining the series, I decided I wanted to take a side character and make them into more of a main character, but there wasn't a specific person in the notes designated to do that with. But I felt that we really needed somebody at the Black Tower, because of all the things going on at that time in the notes, and we needed another viewpoint there.

    During my second trip to Charleston, this would be April/May of 2008, we used big sheets of butcher paper, outlining what was going on with these as a visual aid. I wanted an Asha'man to have a sequence of major viewpoints. Maria and Alan, who were Robert Jordan's assistants, and are now Harriet's assistants, chatted about it a moment and said you should use Androl, because there's not a lot about him, he's pretty much a blank slate and you can go wherever you want with him, which was really exciting for me. I then pitched the Talent of gateways for him, and they liked that.

    Shortly after I got home, I got in the mail a printout or photocopies, of magazine or book pages from Harriet about leatherworking, and she had written on it, "I know that Jim had planned to use this in the book somewhere, is there anywhere that you can fit it in". Well I'm developing this character, let's make him a leatherworker. So I used that in building the personality of who this character was, and in that way, there was some of Robert Jordan in the character, even though I was taking a blank slate and going my own way with him. And that's where Androl came from for the last three books.

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  • 1083

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    Which character's contribution to A Memory of Light did you enjoy most?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This book was supposed to be about Rand, and so Rand's contribution is the most important to me. So much so, that in the revising process we felt several times we needed to bring out more. One of the big elements of revision was, we needed to make sure that Rand remains the focus of this book, and even though things are going where there are lots of different sections and regions where Rand is not involved, we needed Rand to be at least the heart of the book.

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  • 1084

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    Can you talk a little bit about the "River of Souls" sequence?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I can totally talk about this. So, "River of Souls" is about a specific character, and in the drafting process this is not something I actually pitched to Harriet early on, but in the later meetings I got together with them and pitched something which was a deviation from things Robert Jordan had said. Harriet told me from the get-go, Look you've got the notes, you've got the outline, you've got to be a writer, not a transcriber. Robert Jordan would not have kept this the way it is, that's not how we work, and in a lot of places he said I'm thinking of doing this, OR this, and you'll have to decide which of those to do, or to do a third.

    And so I pitched one of these kind of audacious sequences to her; sometimes these work, sometimes they don't. It's the sort of thing you need to do to create fiction, that I feel is daring, and you need to take these chances. But a lot of times you don't know if it's going to work until the book is done, and you can look at it together. And this was taking place in a region of the Wheel of Time world that Robert Jordan said I really don't think we're ever going to visit. Which is the part that was deviated, by doing this sequence. And it's not that long, only about 7,000 words, so it's like a novelette. I sent it to Harriet, and she said "I really like this, but we're going to cut it". The reason being, that it broke up the flow of the novel, and it was introducing too many new elements at the beginning of the volume that was supposed to be wrapping up elements. And those who do storytelling know that can be a really dangerous thing to do.

    Harriet McDougal

    That was the reason. It was a big additional segment, and this is not what you call a slim volume anyway. So as a reader, it was not fun. Not that there was anything wrong with the sequence, but it was not what my antennae said we needed. We needed to get on with it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, instead of going sideways, when we needed to go forward.

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  • 1085

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    A compliment to you, Harriet and the entire team that put this together, but the really stunning thing about the last book was how many characters had a role in this book, down to multiple dozens of people, secondary characters and below. How did one do that? How does one create that continuity? Obviously some of it comes from Jordan's original work, but how does one pull that all together?

    Harriet McDougal

    Someone in the audience said "magic". I don't know that there's a better answer.

    Brandon

    It was the biggest challenge of this last book. I've said for years, even before I was involved in the project, once you hit book seven in the Wheel of Time as a reader, you have to realize something that I realized. The series itself is not about Rand. The series is about all of these people facing the end of the world. Rand of course is at the center, and there are other figures close to the center, but the series is about all of these people. And going into the last book we all felt that the last book needed to evoke that. Rand needed to be the heart, but it needed to be about the world, all of these people facing the end of times. That was something we struggled with, went back and forth on. The creative process is a mysterious thing, even to us involved. I'm glad that you felt that, because when I went into it that was one of the things I said, this is what we need to do, it needs to feel like this, and if we are successful, that's what it will feel like.

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  • 1086

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    There was some little inconsistencies in the lengths of chapters, especially kind of in the last book...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, you're talking about the several hundred page chapter, and then the five page chapter?

    Question

    ...was that sort of picked to try to break up things specifically, or was that more in how it fell out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The chapter lengths, in this book in particular, were very consciously chosen. Under Harriet's direction, through the first two books Harriet came to me a lot and said "No, this chapter needs to be these viewpoints, and this chapter needs to be those viewpoints", and she actually taught me, I don't know if she realized that she was doing it, and then in the last book, she didn't have to do any of that. There was no changing of viewpoints between chapters. (Meaning via revision) Harriet had trained me better in chapter breaks and things like that, so I broke up the chapters. (To Harriet) I don't know if you even noticed that, in the previous two you did a lot of that, and this one you didn't.

    The very long chapter, a very, very long chapter, you can see it in the Table of Contents, the purpose of that is, I wanted you to feel like the characters do in that chapter. They can't put down their weapons and go to sleep. I don't want you to be able to put down the book and go to sleep. I want you to hit that chapter at 1AM, and be like "I gotta to be at work at seven, and I'll read just one more chapter". One of the things Harriet unconsciously showed me that I picked up on, was the use of chapters for that kind of narrative structure in a better way, so that was done very intentionally.

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  • 1087

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    I've really enjoyed it, I've read book twelve and thirteen, it's always kind of difficult to get a transition between voices of different authors, but I've really enjoyed the last two books. Was there a particular character that was difficult for you to write? You don't have to answer if you don't want to.

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, no, I can answer, I've answered this before. I would say that the toughest character to get right was Mat. His voice, he has the most distinctive voice in the entire Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan had perfected that voice, and if you read the series, Mat as a character evolves to the point that in book ten he's just this majestic . . . piece of work. Piece of work used as, yeah. And he's just amazing, and to go from like book ten and eleven, Robert Jordan at the height of his skill, telling of this character that's very difficult to tell, and me then trying to do it, I think is also the most jarring. So he was tough, and I'd say the other tough one was Aviendha. Getting the Aiel right, because Robert Jordan had a lot of experience with the cultures he was basing the Aiel off of, and I don't have much experience with them, I have experience with the Aiel only, if that makes any sense. And the first time I wrote Aviendha, Harriet sent me the chapter back and said "You've written an almost perfect Elayne". And I'm like "Oh, great!" Well, I know I've got Elayne down then. I got her on the third try, and she said "Ahh, you've got it". But it took me several tries to get Aviendha right.

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  • 1088

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Question

    Regarding the cache of ter'angreal recovered from Ebou Dar, and identified by Aviendha, were no more of them employed than we'd seen due to space or continuity constraints, or were they never intended to be used?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We used what was given to be used in Robert Jordan's outline and notes. It may be that he would have found a use for more of them, but we stuck to what he had prepared.

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  • 1089

    Interview: Jan 29th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm starting a new weekly bonus content feature for the next few months as a bit of an experiment. Right now I'm writing the sequel to The Way of Kings, and I've recorded my writing process for one chapter using Camtasia (which was provided to me by the folks at TechSmith). The chapter I've recorded is the new interlude featuring Rysn (who was in one of the interludes in the first book). I've split the recording up into multiple videos that I'm uploading to YouTube. The first one is up now, and it covers the prewriting/outlining for the chapter. For now, the videos are in real time, but once they're all uploaded I'll make a high-speed version of the whole chapter for those of you who don't want to sit and watch my normal typing speed.

    Some of you are wondering if this video will have spoilers for Stormlight 2. As an interlude, it takes place away from most of the action of the rest of the book, so you shouldn't see more than hints. This first video has the interlude's outline in it, so it will partially spoil the rest of the videos, but you'll find that the outline is very sparse. It's probably more likely to make you more interested to read more than to spoil you for the rest.

    The main point of these videos is to show you my writing process, which is something I get a lot of questions about. Enjoy. Stormlight 2 should come out before Christmas if I can get the first draft finished in April. I'm working hard on it right now, so we'll see if that happens.

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  • 1090

    Interview: Feb 5th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've uploaded the second video of me writing the Rysn interlude from the sequel to The Way of Kings. If you missed the first video with the prewriting, it's here. This week's video starts the interlude itself.

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  • 1091

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The third of my Stormlight Archive 2 writing videos is now up on YouTube. Be sure to watch it in 720p for the best quality. I WILL be posting a sped-up version of the whole chapter once I'm done posting all of the videos; if my typing is too slow for you, don't worry.

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  • 1092

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    DJ Stipe

    WOT Questions (paraphrased from notes while also taking fan pictures):

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    When asked how hard the pacing was to get right on A Memory of Light he said that was the most difficult part of the book and that's where most of the revision came in. Follow-up question was asked if he'd written each perspective individually like he had other books and he said that he started out doing that, but as the perspectives began to switch more frequently he stopped.

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  • 1093

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    DJ Stipe

    Someone asked if Brandon intended to write any more science fiction books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He indicated first that the upcoming Steelheart (available September 2013) is a sci-fi, though it's superhero sci-fi. He then said the third trilogy in the Mistborn series would be science fiction. He explained that built into allomancy is the ability for faster-than-light-speed travel and that the final trilogy would involve space travel.

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  • 1094

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    Question

    A couple people asked about the Patrick Rothfuss blog and Goodreads review that mention adding Brandon to a short list of "authors [Patrick wishes] to kill so that [he] might eat their livers and thereby gain their power."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon said he wished he could get some of Patrick's powers, that his prose is absolutely beautiful. (Check out Patrick's work here: http://www.patrickrothfuss.com.)

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  • 1095

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    When asked if he ever thought about working a Magic card game into one of his books he admitted that he'd toyed with the idea and might like to.

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  • 1096

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    Question

    An entire writer's group (besides Jason Denzel's group, who were also there) came through the line and talked to Brandon together.

    When he found out they were an unpublished writing group he told the story about how, shortly after having books published, he was at a friend of a friend's house and was introduced as a writer to the host. The host responded, "So you're unemployed." Brandon was excited to be able to tell him "No, I actually get paid for it now." He is very supportive of aspiring writers (if you don't know about it, check out his weekly writing podcast here: www.writingexcuses.com).

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  • 1097

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    DJ Stipe

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Bela's death was the runaway winner for most brought up subject, to which Brandon usually arched his arm across the head of Memory Keeper Aviendha, pointed at Harriet and said, "Blame her." At one point he said he wrote a scene where she fought back to life, but Harriet cut it. She overheard this, said it wasn't true and Brandon responded that he'd wanted to. He then said that he likes to think that when the Horn is called next one of the Heroes will be riding a shaggy, gray mare.

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  • 1098

    Interview: Feb 8th, 2013

    Question

    Was the Last Battle chapter in A Memory of Light 190 pages long because that was how Jordan wanted it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, Brandon made this decision himself because he felt like none of the characters could put their weapons down during this stretch, so he wanted the reader to be in the same predicament and not be able to put the book down.

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  • 1099

    Interview: Feb 12th, 2013

    billiam

    Just got back from the Seattle signing. First off, I want to say that Brandon is really super cool; just a nice, personable guy. First and foremost the guy is just a fan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He even said that the best part of being done with writing WoT is that he can go back to being a fan; discussing and theorizing with others, something he felt he couldn't do while still writing the books. He said that he can finally start talking to other people about the end of the series.

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  • 1100

    Interview: Feb 12th, 2013

    billiam

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    While getting my books signed I asked Brandon how many books he had written before Elantris and he said seven, not all of which were epic fantasy. He also said that that number had risen to thirteen books by the time Elantris was published, making Mistborn the fourteenth book he had written.

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  • 1101

    Interview: Feb 9th, 2013

    talinthus

    We went out to the signing, and it was overwhelmingly crowded without being oppressive. The questions and answers were almost identical to those asked at other signings, as my fellow keepers have already reported on. No outriggers, WoT encyclopedia next year, and stories about the notes and the writing process.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    The most interesting piece was on Androl, who was almost wholly Sanderson's creation. Jordan had many view points at the Tower, and Sanderson collapsed it into one, giving the soldier a power that Sanderson wished had been in WoT since his youth. Apparently, Jordan had a book of leather working he had intended to use somehow, and Sanderson gave that skill to his character in homage.

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  • 1102

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Kathy

    I don't know if you remember me, but I was a Stormleader for The Gathering Storm...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you.

    Kathy

    ...and I got that first RAFO part, which was then answered in this book. And I was wondering if that question that I gave to Robert Jordan so many years ago, and he gave that wonderful answer, was the reason [?] or was it...[?]

    Brandon Sanderson

    (laughs) You're dog girl. Yes, you are! I will say...there's an inside joke here. Once, this wonderful young woman asked Robert Jordan what would happen if you balefired yourself through a gateway, and what exactly did he say?

    Kathy

    He said, "Young woman, I need you to go have an affair—with man, woman, or German Shepherd; it doesn't matter. Either way, you need to get a life." (laughter, applause)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Now, I, uh...(laughter continues)

    Kathy

    I also happened to then, several years later, marry a man who also read, and this is our daughter Aviendha.

    Harriet McDougal

    Awwww! (applause)

    Kathy

    See...[?]. (laughter)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't have one either, and I'm worried...my big question was always about gateways, and when I began reading the series, as soon as I discovered them, I started to think about what would happen, cause I'm a magic system guy, right? And I'm like, "Oooh, what could you do with this? What could you do with this?" In fact, I started taking notes on what I could do, and they sat there in my notes file for years and years because I eventually started moving away from things I had seen done by other authors, and that meant, specifically the few things I was most interested in in the Wheel of Time. I didn't end up ever writing a magic system using. gateways and the World of Dreams, the way Robert Jordan had it. I avoided these things intentionally. And yet I had all these notes of things that I would like to have done, if I ever did a magic system with them.

    Lo and behold, I got that opportunity, and so I found ways to....when I got the project, I didn't want to come in and make any sweeping changes—that wasn't my goal—but there are some places where I felt it appropriate to add some of my touch to the books, and one was with the gateways. I didn't want to be spending a lot of time doing anything with the magic system, you know—inventing a lot of new weaves, or anything like that—but I did want to expand some parts.

    And so I actually....I went to Charleston, and we needed a new viewpoint character, specifically someone in the Black Tower—we hadn't had...we didn't have the right viewpoint character for the Black Tower—so I said, is there an Asha'man you guys think that I could take over, so to speak, and really flesh out and make into a more...you know, elevate a side character to a medium level character, which is something Robert Jordan frequently did in the series, and they came to the decision that Androl was the person that I should take, and I gave him the gateway Talent because I wanted to explore what happens with gateways.

    And so, right there....we are all on the same wavelength; it wasn't necessarily me trying to answer your question. It was me answering questions to myself as a young man reading the series, wondering a lot about gateways. And so, Androl was a lot of fun.

    In fact, there's another story there. At one point, I'm working on the series, and I get in the mail this envelope—it's a manila envelope from Charleston, and in it are a bunch of photocopied pages, and Harriet has written on the front of them: "Jim planned to use this somewhere. Can you fit it in?" And what it was was a detailed explanation from the viewpoint of a leatherworker about how one goes about using leather, and leatherworking. And this is the sort of detail, craftsman-style sort of things that Robert Jordan really liked to find places for that sort of detail in the books, and meanwhile, I've been sitting here trying to build a character for Androl, and I'm like, "Okay! I've got a place for it." And that's how Androl became a leatherworker, is from that stack of pages from Robert Jordan; it was just a photocopy of a leatherworker talking about their work.

    So, there's some Androl stories. And so the answer is, it's half to you, but it's mostly to me (laughter). It's to both of us.

    Footnote

    Kathy met her husband at tarvalon.net

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  • 1103

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Question

    How did you end up with a 190-page-long chapter?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is a 190-page chapter in the book, in this book. And it was done very intentionally. I actually planned it that way from the beginning in my outline, the goal being that that's a point in the book where the characters can't just put down their weapons and stop, and I did not want the readers to be able to put down the book at that point. And a lot of people say, "Well, I'll just read one more chapter." (laughter) I wanted you to feel like they did at the end of that chapter, where they have been, and involved in something that is just draining emotionally, mentally, and physically, and the closest...the best way I can think of to make you have empathy for them was to push you through the same thing.

    Question

    It worked! (applause)

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's authors getting tricksy, is what it is.

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  • 1104

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Question

    So I had a very emotional reaction to this book, and I'm sure a lot of people did. I actually had to put it down for about two weeks... [inaudible] As you the writer, how did you manage to get through the ending of a lot of characters that are part of our lives?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The answer is a complicated one dealing with the creative process. One part of the answer is I had a lot longer to get ready for it than you did. In fact, I was building the outline from this out of Robert Jordan's notes.

    We talked about the notes. I was handed two things by way of notes. One was a stack of 200 pages. And this is the writing Robert Jordan did for the last book, and including the Q&As he did with his assistants, where they would say, "Okay what's going to happen with this character?" And he would talk about it for a page or so, and they would actually just record that, and then they transcribed it for me. And so that's what those 200 pages were. And then there was a CD with all of this five million words of other stuff, which I would spend my time reading, but which would have taken me years and years and years to read through all the way. And so fortunately I had Maria and Alan working on that. It was real interesting because a lot of this is stuff like 'Chronology of events for Book 5', which there had been a lot of things like that, and then there'll be hidden little tidbits in there.

    But anyway, I was building the outline by rereading the series, taking the 200 pages—because we knew those were the scenes that he wanted in the book—and out of those two things I build the outline for the 800,000 word novel that I was planning. (laughter) So I used that. And I got very—I got time to come to grips with what was going to happen in a lot of the books. I had years to come to grips with it. It doesn't mean it wasn't an emotional time when I wrote it. We don't talk a lot—intentionally—we don't talk a lot about what was Robert Jordan and what was me. We don't talk a lot about where he decided characters needed to go, and where I decided characters needed to go, and where Harriet decided on occasion. But there were some long phone calls, where I would call and say, "This needs to happen. This is going to be really painful, but this is what the book needs." And we would talk it over and decide how to work it in and where it would go and how it would come about. Some of those conversations were tear-jerkers, but the Last Battle doesn't happen without some tear-jerking moments.

    But beyond that, of course, the idea that it was all coming to an end, right? That this was years and years and years of effort, and years and years and years of reading, coming to an end. And that was emotional in and of itself. So, I've now had six or seven months. It finished for me July/August-ish when I handed off the document to Maria, and she took over the copy edit, and the continuity—you know, tweaking little continuity things. From there on, I couldn't change anything—I could write to her and have her change things. That's when the book was done, to me. And I've had all that time to get used that idea, also, of the book being done. And so, yes it was emotional, but I had so much more time to deal with it than you did.

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  • 1105

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Question

    For us, we get the benefit of the worlds that you and Robert Jordan built, but what is it personally like for you to build such an expansive world and to build a life?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For me, what is it like to build such an expansive world and to create it? It's . . . I don't know, what is it like? It's what I do. You know, it's what I've done since I was a kid, and I've just found a productive outlet for it instead of an unproductive outlet. Which . . . the unproductive outlet was sitting in my classes, dreaming of these things, creating little notebooks full of notes about them, and not paying attention in class. I got into a lot of trouble for that. And, what is it like? It's supremely satisfying. It feels like the true creative process of taking nothing—blank pages—and being done and having them be something. That is awesome. And it's a really special something, because it's something that's going to create something in your mind. Those pages are really nothing, really. They're words, but they're abstractions. But I get to take what's in my mind, create these words, put them there. And then you will do this, and you'll see a picture in your head. That's amazing. It's a painting that's never existed except in my head, and then it's like telepathy—I'm projecting it into your head. It's awesome, it's incredible, and it's what I love to do. And I'm just very, very blessed and very, very lucky that I've found a way that I can continue to do this and still have food for my family.

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  • 1106

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Question

    How much of your own books were you consciously looking at books like Jordan and saying, "I like that kind of world," and trying to create that kind of world in your own stuff?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I spent most of my early career, as I kind of implied earlier, reacting against books that I had really liked. The main purpose for this being that I felt that Robert Jordan and various other authors really covered that type of story and that type of world really well. And so I said, "Well, what other room is there to explore?" And so you see me reacting against.

    For instance, Mistborn is a direct reaction to the Wheel of Time. Mistborn began as the question, "What if Rand were to fail?" That's what spun me into creating that entire book series: what if the prophesied hero was not able to accomplish what they were supposed to accomplish? And that became the foundation of that book series. So you can see where I was going and things like that. A lot of times I will read something, and if it's done very well I'll react against it, and if it’s done very poorly then I’ll say, "Oh, I want to try and do this the right way". And both of those are kind of an interesting style of reaction to storytelling. So I would say I was deeply influenced, but it's more in the realm of, "Hey what have they done? What have they covered really well, and where can I go to explore new ground?"

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  • 1107

    Interview: Feb 11th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    All right, I have to call on Mr. Brent Weeks, because he . . .

    Harriet McDougal

    Because he is who he is.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He knows many assassins, I hear. (laughter) So if I don't call on him, I could be in trouble.

    Brent Weeks

    So I hear the Stormlight Archive is supposed to be ten books. So does that mean 15 or 20? (laughter)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Stormlight Archive is supposed to be ten books. I'm hoping it will be ten books. It is two sequences of five, so you can ask me after the first five-book sequence where I am in my original outline. It should stay pretty close to that, I hope. I don't know. I used to be able to say everything stayed the same length I wanted it to be, but then my Wheel of Time book got split into three, so I can't say that any more.

    Brent Weeks

    Two years between books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, two years between books. They're very thick and involved, and I want to be doing other things as well. I like to jump projects—it's what keeps me fresh. It's what allows me to keep on doing this productively, and if I get stuck in one thing, no matter how much I love it, I find that I get less and less excited about it as time passes. But if I finish one book and skip to something else—like an Alcatraz book—for a little while and then jump back, I find my enthusiasm has come back to the beginning, where it was. And so I do a lot of jumping between projects.

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  • 1108

    Interview: Feb 7th, 2013

    Question

    Is there anyone Brandon wanted to include in A Memory of Light but didn't get to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, he was able to get to everyone. There were two major sequences cut from the book. One of these will appear in the charity anthology Unfettered. The other character POV just didn't work.

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  • 1109

    Interview: Feb 7th, 2013

    Question

    Did he get to include anything from his "Cool Stuff" list in the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A few things did end up in the book, but he won’t expand due to spoilers. He did say that he had ideas about gateways long before he was selected to finish the series. He wanted to include some of these ideas in his own work but he was too worried about copying Robert Jordan, so they just stayed in his file. He was able to pull these ideas out and use them with Androl in A Memory of Light.

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  • 1110

    Interview: Feb 7th, 2013

    Question

    How did reading The Wheel of Time inspire his magic systems?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The first influence was Robert Jordan's focus on human characters over fantastical ones. He felt that Jordan's concept of weaving was complex and interesting, as opposed to magic systems of authors such as David Eddings. With the Wheel of Time, the rules and restrictions on magic made characters more clever and interesting. He didn't want to modify the WoT magic system but he did explore two aspects of it using ideas he had as a teenager: the World of Dreams and gateways. He avoided adding new weaves because the series was coming to a close.

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  • 1111

    Interview: Feb 7th, 2013

    Question

    Who was his favorite character to write and who does he see himself the most in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin was his favorite. Even though Perrin went through "a slump" in the series in order to build tension, Brandon always stayed "Team Perrin." Perrin was the most natural. Mat was tough and thus a cooler character to write. Brandon enjoyed writing Mat, especially in A Memory of Light. Mat challenged his skills more than anyone else. The saddest part for him with finishing the series is that he can't write Mat anymore.

    Harriet added that there will not be any more WoT books (other than the encyclopedia). She said that Robert Jordan hated the idea of someone taking his material, although he did want the series finished. He stated he would run over his hard drive before allowing others to "sharecrop." Harriet stated that the two sentences about the outriggers that Robert Jordan left behind will be released in April or May. She said that with the encyclopedia there is "the work of at least a year."

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  • 1112

    Interview: Feb 7th, 2013

    Question

    Could you elaborate on some of your recent comments about the difficulty of writing shorter books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of Brandon's favorite stories is "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, and it's only five pages long, but he has struggled with writing shorter works. He's tried, but he has felt bad at it and it's not something he's ever been trained in. He realized that he was trying to write shorter fiction for the wrong reasons—he was doing it for New York and not because he wanted to do it. He feels that his best short work is Emperor's Soul.

    He goes on to praise Harriet for her remarkable career, specifically pointing out her role in Ender's Game and Eye of the World, two of the greats in sci-fi/fantasy. Harriet modestly says, "I put my shoes on one foot at a time."

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  • 1113

    Interview: Feb 7th, 2013

    Question

    Who was the most challenging WoT character to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mat was the most challenging, the second most was Aviendha. He explains that it is hard to write about someone so different than yourself and the Aiel culture seemed the most unique in the series. Of Rand's three women, Aviendha is Brandon's favorite. He recalls that after writing his first Aviendha scene, Harriet read it and then told him that it was a "picture perfect Elayne." Brandon went on to discuss how he has to write his way into his characters. Vin, in Mistborn, was originally a boy. Lots of his early work on The Gathering Storm was scrapped by Harriet because Brandon wasn't "there yet" with the characters.

    He then goes on to discuss the volume of notes left by Robert Jordan. There are about 200 pages for A Memory of Light and then there is roughly 32,000 pages of other notes for the series, three times as large as the entire series put together. Brandon tells of how he tried to open it once and it crashed his computer because the file was so large. He also wants to commend the enormous efforts of Alan and Maria for their help in managing all of the details of the series.

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  • 1114

    Interview: Feb 15th, 2013

    Rebecca Lovatt

    Also of interest to WoT fans and aspiring writers, both: one fan asked, given the lack of majorly epic-scale battles in Brandon's other work, how he approached the near endless warfare that makes up the bulk of A Memory of Light.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    The answer: research, research, research, and lots of help from experts. Brandon asserts (and I can believe) that he can get himself to about 80% expert on just about any topic in the course of writing prep, but his lack of personal experience with warfare (reminding us of Mr. Jordan's service in Vietnam) put him at a disadvantage in accurately conveying what needed to be conveyed in the last battle. Military buffs and armchair historians came to the rescue (including Team Jordan member Alan Romanczuk), outlining a series of strategies and tactics based on real-world battles that Brandon used as a guide. However, Tarmon Gai'don being on a somewhat different scale than we're used to in our Age, both metrically and dramatically, there was a lot of back-and-forth between Brandon and the battle guys about amping up the drama without sacrificing realism—inserting twists and character moments to make us cheer or weep.

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  • 1115

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Question

    Which WoT character did BWS take the most liberties with?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Androl. BWS told the story of how he asked HM if there was a character for which the notes did not have a role for and if BWS could make his. HM was receptive to the idea. One of them (I cannot remember who) mentioned that RJ had in his notes material on leatherworking. HM had asked BWS if he could incorporate this into the books. BWS felt it would be perfect for Androl.

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  • 1116

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Question

    What was BWS' favorite miserable situation in A Memory of Light?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was a tie. The scene at the end of the Last Battle Chapter (the 200 page chapter) and the scene in the garden at night concerning the character BWS likes to put in miserable situations. (BWS phrased the answer in this manner due to a no spoiler rule.)

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  • 1117

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Question

    How does BWS manage to distinguish his own style and writings from WoT?

    Brandon Sanderson

    BWS jumps between different materials/works as a means of taking a break. In other words he could not write the WoT novels (or his own for that matter) from beginning to end without working on unrelated writings. That said, BWS did mention the horror (his word) of writing both Way of Kings and Towers of Midnight simultaneously. This is why he could not work on the second book of the Stormlight Archive series until he completed A Memory of Light.

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  • 1118

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Question

    HM was asked how, as an editor, it was to work with BWS? Also how was working with BWS different from other authors and RJ?

    Harriet McDougal

    She stated that by the middle of the series, she would give RJ "curb-side edits" (her phrase) or if there was a "big problem." With BWS, it was a new author, but these were old characters. One of them told the story that she made the same edit for both RJ and BWS (he noticed that she is wearing...). Also, either BWS or HM told the story of the Aviendha/Elayne edit comment (that the Aviendha that BWS wrote was a great Elayne).

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  • 1119

    Interview: Feb 3rd, 2013

    Giles Hardy

    Sanderson almost didn't take on the role. Not for lack of interest; rather, because he was too much of a fan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "That was actually a consideration in this for me," he says. "I would not be able to read a Wheel of Time book when everyone else got to.

    "I balanced it with the knowledge that I got to go and read the ending he wrote. Because he did write the last chapter of the series himself before he passed away.

    "I got to read that basically before anyone else except for his wife and his assistants. Getting to read it a few years early was a pretty big advantage."

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  • 1120

    Interview: Feb 3rd, 2013

    Giles Hardy

    One other consideration almost held Sanderson back.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I sat there thinking, 'I'm setting myself up to fail. No matter how good a job I do, it's not going to be Robert Jordan's book. Why am I saying yes?'"

    Giles Hardy

    Once more, his passion as a fan won out.

    "The thing that made the distinction for me was when I realised if I said no and someone messed it up, I would be responsible. If I wanted to make sure that a fan took control of The Wheel of Time and did it in a way that a fan would, then I needed to do it myself.

    "My job is not to save The Wheel of Time, to fix The Wheel of Time, or anything like that. My job is not to screw it up."

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  • 1121

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Indy Week

    Does it feel like the weight of the world is off your shoulders a bit?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it does. That's a good way of phrasing it. This project's been unlike any other. In a lot of ways, as a writer, when I write something, normally I feel beholden only to myself. I do what I feel is best, and I just write the story.

    But with this project, I didn't feel that was right. This story doesn't belong to me; it belongs to the fans. I'm kind of a stepfather, in a lot of ways. So there was a lot more performance anxiety for this project than any book before that.

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  • 1122

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Indy Week

    You obviously had some materials Robert Jordan left for you, and your own skills as a writer that you're bringing to the table, but you're also bringing those fan expectations to the table. What was the biggest challenge in keeping all this straight and just getting the work done?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, you know, as a writer, you train yourself to deal with distractions. Yes, this was a big project. Yes, this was a stressful project. But when I sit down to write, those sort of things flee my mind. During the actual writing period, nothing really matters except the words on the page.

    Still, it was a challenge. Writing a given scene for this series would take me about twice as long as it would take me to write a scene from another story. That's because when I would work on these books, I would need to go back and read what Robert Jordan had written for all the characters in this scene, that I had their voices in my head, that I was using them correctly, that I was fact-checking things that had happened in the past.

    I did a lot more revision than when I'm usually writing, where I would usually focus on, "Let's keep the story moving." Instead, I would have to ask myself, "Does this character know this piece of information? Does that character know this piece of information? Have these two characters ever met?"

    There were 14 books of continuity in this series when I was working on this last one, if you count the prequel. And there’s a lot of material to dig through—they're big, thick books!—to keep track of everything I needed to know. Keeping track of the side characters was a real challenge, and filling out all of their plots.

    At the end of the day, you know, the most important thing for the book was that we kept our promises—that the storytelling promises that Robert Jordan made were kept. And that's the soul of being a good storyteller, making interesting promises to the reader, and fulfilling them in even more interesting ways.

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  • 1123

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Indy Week

    And what was the biggest challenge of keeping your own voice in the mix, while staying consistent with Jordan's voice from the books before?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that was a big challenge. Fortunately, I had Harriet for that. Harriet was the editor on all of the Wheel of Time books, and was able to point out all those inconsistencies, along with a lot of line-editing to smooth over the issues between what I had written and what Robert Jordan had written, things like that. One of the reasons why this project was even feasible was because Harriet was involved.

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  • 1124

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Indy Week

    Harriet's going to be at the signing with you—I imagine that there's going to be a real overall tribute to The Wheel of Time at this event.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. What we usually do is the Q-and-A with fans, which is probably the last time they’ll get a chance at a signing like this to ask whatever they want, so we want to give them that—what it was like working with Robert Jordan, how the series came to be. A lot of times, fans are very excited to see Harriet and give her standing ovations. She was the driving force behind this—she discovered Robert Jordan as a writer and was behind The Wheel of Time getting published in the first place.

    There’s a lot of tributes to her and Robert at these events, and they get pretty emotional, because for fans, these books were part of our lives. I started reading these when I was 15. I’m 37 now! The Wheel of Time has been with me longer than anything else. It’s been with me since before I wanted to be a writer, longer than I’ve known any friends that I’ve had.

    Indy Week

    That's got to be a hell of an emotional experience for you.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. The end it all is really weird . . . just to be at the end. And it's bittersweet, in more than one way, that I got to see it through to its ending, that I got to be part of it, but . . . this is it! There are no more Wheel of Time books to wait for. And that's a surreal feeling, to realize that it's all done now.

    Indy Week

    And it's got to be doubly overwhelming for you, as a fan and a writer.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Granted, I had more time to steel myself for it. I got to read the ending Robert Jordan wrote, the epilogue . . . wow, back in 2007. I was one of the few who got to read that, to see that ending, and know how it ended.

    There was still a lot of work to do, but I knew, "This is the ending, and I've got to prepare myself for it, because I know what it is."

    For the fans, what they're feeling now, I started feeling it in 2007.

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  • 1125

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Indy Week

    Did you know Robert Jordan personally?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did not know him. I saw him once at a convention, and he was my favorite author growing up. When he passed away, I wrote a eulogy for him on my website, and by then I'd sold a book and I mentioned just how important he'd been to me, and to my development as a writer. Harriet read that, and she found it touching, so she read my book, and then called me and asked me if I'd be willing to finish the series.

    Indy Week

    What was your initial reaction to being asked?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was complete dumbfoundedness. I could barely speak. I remember being on the phone and not even being able to go "Yeah," because it came so unexpectedly for me.

    Indy Week

    The closest experience I can imagine is that Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star, where he gets to take over as lead for his favorite hair metal band.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's—it's just one of those surreal things that—it just can't happen, right? This doesn't really happen to people! And yet, it did.

    And yet, in saying yes, you realize, this wonderful thing I'm saying yes to, that I'm going to be part of, wouldn't have happened if my favorite author hadn't passed away. That tempers the excitement. I mean, I wish Robert Jordan had been here to write these books, not me.

    I had a wonderful time being involved, but I would rather have not been involved, if that makes any sense. It's a weird mix of emotions.

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  • 1126

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Indy Week

    Would you ever consider trying to finish another series, or was it more of a one-time thing for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really feel this was a one-time thing for me. The only reason I was able to do this was because I had read the series multiple times, and had followed it since childhood. But beyond that, when I was consciously writing my own books, I had learned my style from Robert Jordan. His style and my style share a number of things. The fact that there are certain similarities is what let me to work on these books. I don't think I'd be appropriate for any other author out there. I'd just be the wrong choice.

    It's not something I ever expect to do again—I loved doing it, but now it's time I give my own work its due.

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  • 1127

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Despite battling hordes of rejections and criticisms, author Brandon Sanderson has garnered acclaim with his magical stories.

    Adjunct BYU English instructor Brandon W. Sanderson (BA ’00, MA ’05) began his writing career behind the front desk of a Provo hotel.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "It was pretty dead there from about midnight to 5, but they were required to have someone on staff," he explains of his post-mission job. "And so when I got hired I told my boss, 'I'm just going to write books all night,' and he replied, 'That's great. At least you won't sleep on the couch like the person before you."

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Squeezed between BYU homework and what little sleep he could muster, eight novels emerged over five years of Sanderson's graveyard writing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "The first five were terrible," he says. "I once heard that your first five books are generally bad, and so I determined I would write six at the very least."

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Novel number six was Elantris, which sat on an editor's desk at Tor Books for an agonizing 18 months before Sanderson got a response. Little did the haggard student know then that in a mere eight years, he would publish not only Elantris (in 2005) but 12 more novels, including his acclaimed Mistborn series and the middle-grade Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series—as well as the final three books of The Wheel of Time, by epic-fantasy writer Robert Jordan.

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  • 1128

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    When Jordan died of a rare blood disease in 2007, he left copious notes for concluding his renowned Wheel of Time series to Harriet McDougal Rigney, his wife and editor. Rigney searched for an author to finish her husband’s work and chose Sanderson after reading a heartfelt eulogy to Jordan from Sanderson's blog as well as his first Mistborn book.

    Harriet McDougal

    "The beautiful eulogy he wrote made me see the necessity of checking out his stuff," says Rigney. “Brandon's world—his characters and their situation—were all very clear to me. I saw that he could do it."

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Robert Jordan had this beautiful way of looking through someone's eyes, that when you were reading their viewpoint, you felt like you knew them," Sanderson says. "As an early writer, I would study that and say, 'How is he doing this?'"

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  • 1129

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Although he is now a six-time best-selling author known for creating relatable characters, vivid settings, and unique magic systems, Sanderson was not a bred-in-the-womb writer. Like many adolescent boys, he avoided reading. But when his eighth-grade teacher convinced him to pick a book off her shelf, he chose Dragonsbane, by Barbara Hambly—because of its cool dragon cover.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "It was like the story of my mom, except in a fantasy world with dragons, and that was just awesome," Sanderson says. "It had all the action and adventure, and it had all the relate-ability."

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Sanderson went on to read every fantasy book in his high school.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Fantasy gives us this imagination, this power, this wonder, alongside real human problems, and it mixes all these things together in a package that is fun and readable and interesting," he explains. "It grabbed me, and that's when I decided I was going to be a fantasy writer—and I started writing."

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  • 1130

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Initially a biochemistry major at BYU, Sanderson served a mission in Korea, where his mission president allowed him to write stories on preparation day.

    "The most inspiring facet of Brandon and his work is that he understands thoroughly and profoundly how much writing is just that: work," says Ethan M. Sproat (BA '02, MA '08), a PhD candidate at Purdue who worked with Sanderson on BYU's student-run science fiction and fantasy magazine, The Leading Edge.

    Sanderson returned to BYU, changed his major to English, wrote a bunch of novels, got a host of rejection letters, applied for grad school (twice), and got rejected from just about every top writing program in the States—except BYU.

    Again and again Sanderson was told that his books would never sell because they were too long or too moral. But he was determined.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "At the end of the day if you told me, 'You will never get published,' I would have still written the books," he says. Halfway through his master’s program, he started work on The Way of Kings, which, he says, "I planned to be bigger and full of all the nobility and awesomeness that I wanted to see in epic fantasy. It was flying in the face of what everyone had told me. I wrote the biggest, coolest, epic-est book I could."

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Between working on The Wheel of Time and his other novels, Sanderson eventually finished the 1,007-pager, which debuted at no. 7 on the New York Times Best Seller list in 2010 and begins the anticipated 10-book saga The Stormlight Archive.

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  • 1131

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Although Sanderson has emerged as a powerhouse in the genre, he always speaks of his success as a gift.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "There are a lot of writers who are better than I am who are not successful," he says. "It's a measure of luck, perseverance, and providence."

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    Perseverance in particular is a virtue he teaches to aspiring writers—both in his BYU fantasy and sci-fi writing class and in Writing Excuses, the weekly writing-advice podcast he cohosts.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Sit in a chair and write," Sanderson says. "Ignore this thing they call writer's block. Doctors don't get doctor's block; your mechanic doesn't get mechanic's block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don't feel like it. You have to write it poorly before you can write it well. So just be willing to write bad stories in order to learn to become better."

    Krista Holmes Hanby

    One of Sanderson's first students, new author Janci Patterson Olds (BA ’05, MA ’08), took Sanderson's lessons of tenacity to heart. "Brandon really believes that anyone who's willing to work hard can succeed," she says, "which makes him a fantastic teacher and writing mentor."

    For Sanderson, creating worlds is all in a day's work.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I love this job," says the father of three. "You get up and do something different every day: you become a different character, you work on a different problem, you create something new. There's nothing as supremely satisfying to me as looking at nothing . . . and at the end having something—a story, this thing that is almost alive."

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  • 1132

    Interview: Feb 6th, 2013

    Freelancer

    Among the items from the cache of ter'angreal from Ebou Dar which were identified by Aviendha, where there more intended to be used according to Jordan's notes, but which you had to drop due to space or continuity reasons? Several were mentioned as facilitating long-distance communication.

    Brandon Sanderson

    What was used in the story were all of the items referenced in the notes. This is not to say that Robert Jordan would not have decided to use more, but we decided to stick with what was outlined by him.

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  • 1133

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Terez

    There was a signing table report on Reddit where you mentioned some research RJ had done on leatherworking, and how you worked it into Androl's character. Anything else you can tell us about that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm not sure what I can say here that will be all that interesting. While I was working on the outline for the book (what eventually became the books) Harriet found something she'd forgotten about until then. It was a photocopied stack of sheets from what appeared to be a magazine about craftsmanship. In it, a leatherworker went into depth about what he did in his art. Harriet had written across it "Jim planned to use this somewhere." We didn't know where.

    Previously, in visiting Team Jordan, I'd suggested that I would enjoy having an Asha'man character who had previously been a side character that I could make into a main character. I wasn't planning to add any other characters in significant roles, but I did want an Asha'man to add some viewpoints in the Black Tower. Beyond that, I wanted as a storyteller to have a character I could use that had very little baggage, one I could develop fresh. It's something you will often find me doing in my own books, something Jim himself did, in expanding a side character in later books of a series.

    They'd suggested Androl, who was basically a blank slate in the notes. I took him and made him my gateway-Talented Asha'man, and the leatherworking sequence seemed to work very well with how I'd been developing him. And that's how the Androl of these later three books came to be.

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  • 1134

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Terez

    I'm guessing you're aware that RJ told a couple of fans that the Heroes had to follow the Horn no matter who blew it (and that, if the Shadow blew the Horn, there would be some kind of 'rift' in the Pattern). What's the story there?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is an interesting one for a multitude of reasons. I actually worked under the assumption that whoever blew the Horn would control the Heroes, going so far as to write several sequences in the last book referencing that to heighten tension that if the Horn were indeed captured things would go VERY poorly for the Light.

    I was quite surprised, then, when Harriet wrote back to me on the manuscript quite energetically crossing out these lines and explaining that the Heroes could not ever follow the Shadow. I called and asked for confirmation and clarification, pointing out that it seemed otherwise from the text and from fandom interpretation. She explained that this was one of Jim's ruses, that the characters in book were wrong and repeating bad information, and that Jim had been very clear with her that it was not the case. I can only guess that these reports in fandom were cases where people asked Jim a question he could Aes Sedai his way out of, and something got muddled in the communication or the reporting somehow.

    (Feel free to follow up with Harriet and Maria on this one, if you want more. Honestly, I was surprised, and it was something we had quite a dialogue on as I worked on the final book. I fought longer than I probably should for the "Shadow can use the Horn" theory.)

    Maria Simons

    I really can't add anything here. I thought I was led to believe (as opposed to coming up with it myself) that the Heroes really wouldn't follow the Horn if it were blown by Team Dark, but I cannot swear to that. I was unaware of the rift answer. Of course, it's possible that the Heroes themselves don't know the correct answer; they're Heroes, after all, and unless there's some Hero orientation meeting where they are filled in on all the details, they may just assume that they're always going to be Heroes, as in champions of goodness and Light.

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  • 1135

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Rob B

    Brandon and Harriet arrived after their dinner with the library staff to rousing applause.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Brandon apologized for his voice because he'd be sucking on cough drops because, well, he's been touring. He recounted the story of his introduction to The Wheel of Time and fantasy in general. Brandon told the story (which I'm sure he's recounted at many of these signings and many interviews) of how Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly (a terrific novel recently re-released by Open Road Media in eBook) was gently forced upon him by his teacher named Mrs. Reader and Brandon was hooked on fantasy. Realizing he liked big books, he found The Eye of the World at his local comic/book/Magic store and was happy to finally have a series that was 'his' to share with his friends who were always sharing 'their' series with him. When Brandon mentioned submitting his novels for publication, the one novel he submitted directly to Tor rather than through his agent was the first published novel Elantris. Brandon recounted how he didn't let Joshua do his job and negotiate because he wanted to be published by Tor, specifically because they published The Wheel of Time. In 2005 Elantris was published.

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  • 1136

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Rob B

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    When asked why Brandon didn't write the second Stormlight novel between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light he indicated writing The Way of Kings simultaneously with The Wheel of Time nearly drove him crazy.

    Rob B

    (Personal note, it is amazing that he produced two quality novels under that type of pressure.)

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  • 1137

    Interview: Feb 19th, 2013

    Rob B

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Brandon also indicated that he felt selfish about asking if he could create a new character or work with a character which was mostly his own creation for the books. Harriet immediately shushed him for hinting that he was selfish for thinking such a thing, then Brandon continued to tell of the creation of Androl, which allowed him to play with the magic in ways he'd hoped (fannishly) to explore (i.e. Portals). Harriet also provided Brandon with a folder about how leathermaking works in Randland which was perfectly timed to provide Androl with more depth as a character.

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  • 1138

    Interview: Feb 18th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    In the fourth of my Stormlight Archive volume two writing videos, two of the included songs are the actual songs I listened to while writing. I've been able to include them in the video thanks to the artists, Ray Lynch and Incendio. This might help you feel even more like you're looking over my shoulder while I write.

    "Her Knees Deep in Your Mind" by Ray Lynch. © ℗ Ray Lynch Productions/BMI/1994 Music can be found on his website, Facebook, Amazon, and iTunes.

    Incendio, "Temple of the Sun" ℗ 2003 Incendio Music Music can be found on Facebook, Amazon, and iTunes.

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  • 1139

    Interview: Jul, 2012

    John Hartness

    And I basically accosted Brandon in the hallway as we were leaving the JordanCon party and said, "Do you have ten minutes?" I've used four of them already.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, I've accosted my share of people for the podcast idea. So I'm used to this. We sometimes tie people up and tow them over.

    John Hartness

    Yes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "You podcast with us, or we won't let you go."

    John Hartness

    And I do have Scott W. Baker from episode two times ago in the room. And Scott's another big dude, so between us we could probably have manhandled him. It's not like a James Tuck, or anything, but . . . Anyway, so Brandon what project am I currently keeping you from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time–the last book of The Wheel of Time. A Memory of Light comes out January 8. I am going to go to my hotel room and work on it some more because the deadlines are pretty crazy.

    John Hartness

    How well I know, 'cause my deadlines are two weeks ago for revisions on book two of my series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, yeah. And here we are sitting and chatting instead.

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  • 1140

    Interview: Jul, 2012

    John Hartness

    Yes. So this is book twenty-seven?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, four hundred and thirty. No, it's book fourteen.

    John Hartness

    Book fourteen.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is the last one, though. For those who were skeptical, it really, really is. This is the end.

    John Hartness

    You know, J. K. Rowling said that once.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh yeah? But then . . . she's not writing more Harry Potter is she? She's doing, like, some other thing.

    John Hartness

    There's this nasty rumor that there's another Potter book coming.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh really?

    John Hartness

    But, I have not heard it confirmed.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, you know, when they make four hundred gazillion dollars, maybe she needs to go buy another continent.

    John Hartness

    Right, like Australia's not enough.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, yeah. You need a couple more continents, what are you going to do? You gotta write another book, right?

    John Hartness

    Absolutely.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You only own one private fleet. I mean, the Queen has three. How can she show her face at parties?

    John Hartness

    Seriously. By the way, if any of Ms. Rowling's people are out there, we would love to have her on Writing Excuses and Literate Liquors . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    At the same time.

    John Hartness

    At the same time, because I'm pretty sure that she'd have to get liquored up to hang out with us.

    Brandon Sanderson

    We could do it on your private fleet. It would be great . . . we could sail to your continent.

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  • 1141

    Interview: Jul, 2012

    John Hartness

    So you're working on the last Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am.

    John Hartness

    How does that feel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It feels really scary.

    John Hartness

    Yeah?

    Brandon Sanderson

    And well, really awesome. It's the whole thing: scary, awesome, and daunting. I don't know what to say other than that. I mean, it's the last book. I’ve been following this thing since I was fourteen or fifteen . . . whatever, 1990.

    John Hartness

    Wow . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've been reading them ever since then, reading them since they came out. It's like the Wheel of Time has been the one constant throughout my entire life.

    John Hartness

    You weren't able to drive . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right, I wasn't able to drive when I started reading the Wheel of Time, and now I'm almost 40, and so . . . yeah.

    John Hartness

    So am I, and I look a good ten years older than him. This is why I have much more encyclopedic knowledge of alcohol. Clean living (points to Brandon). Literate Liquors (points to self). So, that's awesome, and we did just come from the JordanCon party. So this thing . . . it's not even just a series of books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    No.

    John Hartness

    It's a whole culture. It's a con, it's . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    People are into Wheel of Time in the same way that people get into Star Wars. It's not just a book series. There are huge communities of people. There are people that their entire friend circle is built around Wheel of Time fandom because this thing has been going for so long. It's awesome, and it's incredible.

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  • 1142

    Interview: 2013

    rohittee1 (January 2013)

    Do you think that there will be post AMoL books that follow Rand or his children at any point in time, or is the Wheel of Time series done for good?

    Edit: Actually more like the Wheel of Time universe, since the series that lead to the last battle is completed.

    Edit2: Also sorry if you mentioned that you were or weren't going to continue with that universe already, but I had to ask. I just finished the book today at 3:30 am and I just don't want to move on... :(

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Sorry for the slow reply. Haven't been around much lately. I figured you'd still want some sort of response, however.

    There is no more. I'm sorry. I understand not wanting to move on (I still hope for some good video games or films that will let you explore the world more) but I don't feel comfortable going forward in the world any more. I'm confident Robert Jordan wouldn't have wanted it. He didn't leave enough notes for future books that I feel they would be able to be true to his voice.

    I'm sad about this too, honestly. I love the world and the characters. But all good things must end, and it is for the strength of the work as a whole that I think we must allow this one to conclude.

    rohittee1

    Thanks for the reply, I'm honestly surprised you got around to it. I've actually picked up The Way of Kings and it is a really good story so far, I am loving the awesome world you've created. It's totally taking my mind off of WoT. Anyways, thanks again for the reply, hopefully we get a sweet video game or movie soon or we at least get an updated WOT MUD.

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  • 1143

    Interview: 2013

    bennmann (January 2013)

    Thank you so much for AMOL. I cried, I laughed many times, I feel a sense of loss at it being over, which is all to say I will reread it many times in the years to come.

    Have you addressed anywhere any of the criticisms for plot points that have popped up in reviews and on fan sites? Would you be willing to address any? For example Padan Fain's being something new that had never been in the Pattern before and yet dying before having a final confrontation with Rand or the Dark One? The TOR reviewer agreed with this point and a few others.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    I will try to get to some of these questions in a spoiler-filled AMA in a few weeks, once more have read the book.

    Thanks for the kind words.

    Brandon

    leverofsound

    Sort of in line with this. On page 357 of AMoL when Cadsuane says "you have cracks in you..." Was that a reference to how you felt about the final copies of the series?

    I think you did a wonderful job, but obviously it was different than it had been originally intended.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sorry for the late reply.

    I didn't write it that way intentionally, but you can never tell what the subconscious is working into a story.

    Brandon

    leverofsound

    No worries. I was a week after you, so it's NBD. Thanks for the answer, and thanks, so very much, for the books.

    bennmann (February 2013)

    Thanks for signing this and addressing my question in Atlanta!

    For the readers following along, I printed out my comment and Sanderson's reddit post above and he was awesome and humble enough to sign the print out AND TO ANSWER MY SPOILERED OBJECTION! I will put the few points from your answer paraphrased for our and the communities future reference spoiled below:

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    1. RJ left notes for many characters that were open for Sanderson expansion, but the expansion on many was not necessary. Padan Fain is one of those characters, however everything RJ left for Fain specifically for AMoL was used. 2. 'Padan Fain is a weasel' and many, many other characters deserve more words than him. 3. Fans built up several plot points that did not come to fruition and RJ even recognized this explicitly. Padan Fain is one of those characters.

    bennmann

    Harriet also signed the comment which I feel is very fitting and thank you Harriet so much for being unified with Brandon on his work and your husband's.

    I am very much more satisfied now than before you answered me verbally Brandon, thank you again so much. Keep being awesome.

    Tags

  • 1144

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Terez

    Now, are Graendal's actions in Shara mentioned at all in "River of Souls"?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't think we talk about them.

    Terez

    I was just curious as to how that interacted... (crosstalk)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I mean, I considered...Yeah, it certainly helped with what he was doing.

    Terez

    Right, right.

    Brandon Sanderson

    But I mean...yeah. It's...

    Terez

    Because she totally didn't know he was there, so....

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. It certainly helped, and if I had been able to go back, and do—which I wouldn't have done—but if, you can imagine, there's a very cool interaction there, where he's there, and she's doing stuff, and he's taking advantage of it, but she's not seeing him and things like that. Like, the whole Demandred In Shara thing is awesome, because there's like twelve books worth of coolness of him being the hero...

    Terez

    Because all this stuff is in the notes, right?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What's that? Oh, some of it is, not all of it.

    Terez

    Oh, well yeah, because I know you said you had to kind of....you know, extrapolate a little bit...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had to extrapolate a lot of the Sharan culture and things, which is where "River of Souls" came from. At the end of the day, because I was extrapolating these things, that's what made them distracting from the main plotline, if that makes sense.

    Terez

    Mmm, yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And so, a lot of what I was doing was like, it you know...all of Demandred's flunkies. Jim didn't name those; they're not in the notes...but I put them in because, you know, we have to evoke this entire two years of awesomeness....

    Terez

    Yeah, it can't just come out of nowhere, and be nothing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, so there's that. But yeah, it was too much me, also.

    Terez

    Yeah...gotcha.

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  • 1145

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    JaimieKrycho

    Brandon then came up and spoke. Here are some of the highlights:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I read the WoT books all through my career, and all through college. I loved them, and at times hated them. Anyone else remember when Book 6 came out and it wasn't the end? I was not happy. I went through everything WoT fans seem to go through—the appreciation, and the transition from waiting for the ending to just letting Robert Jordan do what he wants to do.

    In 2007, when he passed away, I was as surprised as anyone was. For me, I became a fantasy author in part because of my love for his books. I learned to write novels by reading his books, and I chose my publisher because it was the one that published the WoT books. So it was the end of an era. We talk about the end of the Third and the start of the Fourth—well the end of that age for me was when Robert Jordan passed away. I didn't think for a minute I would be here, five years later. It has been an amazing journey, and the last five years have been unparalleled.

    I can't tell you how awesome it was to look through [Jordan's] notes and see things in the middle of their progress. As a writer, I haven't grown as much since writing my first book. It was amazing and wonderful, but over it all there was this cloud, that I couldn't have done this if my favorite author hadn't passed away. People ask me how I feel; it's a weird mix of emotions. It's probably similar to the emotions you will have reading the last page [of A Memory of Light]. It's wonderful and awesome you got to be part of this, but now it's done, and there's sadness. It's like Christmas: you've opened all your presents, and now what?"

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  • 1146

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    My question is, are you going to tell which scenes are entirely yours and which are entirely Jordan's?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm avoiding a lot of detail until people have a chance to read the books. I'll repeat what I said before. In The Gathering Storm, if it was Egwene, a lot of those scenes were Robert Jordan. If it was Rand, a lot of those scenes were me. In Towers of Midnight, if it was Mat, a lot of those scenes were Jordan, and if it was Perrin, it was more me. Mat in The Gathering Storm was me. The Mat in Towers of Midnight was more Jordan, but a few scenes were me.

    I can spin this into a larger story. I've been reading the books for 23 years. When I picked up the series, I had read Eye of the World 8 or 9 times. When each of us read a book, we bring something to it and reinforce that when we read. I have a friend who insists Thom Merrilin doesn't have a moustache. I can point out the page where it says he does and my friend says, "That line doesn't exist in my copy." This is part of the power of fiction. This is what I love about fiction. We write a script which you direct in your head. Readers have different perspectives on how much freedom they have for changing that. I say you have line item editing capability—you change it how you want and that's how I've always read.

    When I came on this project, I had a lot of baggage—17 years of baggage, and I had to have some of it beaten out of me! There are various things, like some of my pronunciations. There are other things, like Tar Valon. I did not view the bridges as being as big as they are. From my perspective, you can stand on one side and see the other. No, they're like 3 miles long! They're just enormous. They are things like that I've imagined since my youth. There are some characters I interpret a certain way, and I don't think others would interpret them that way. I've tried to interpret the characters, I believe, the way Robert Jordan did, but we can argue all day on how he interpreted them, and that's what I think people don't understand. We can have a distinct argument on how he interpreted and we would both be right.

    I interpreted Mat a certain way and I believe I got better at writing Mat as I went along. Mat was a really hard character because he's so complicated. What's so hard about him is that, from a narrative, he's one of the few characters in WoT whose thoughts and actions are at a disconnect. Perrin, the way he thinks and acts are in line. He doesn't [do] the same thing Mat does, where he has this big thing in his head and opens his mouth and a completely different thing comes out, and they're both hilarious. But they're at a contrast with each other in their hilarity. And this is something where if you read WoT, you see Jordan develop this character and come up with this sort of awesomeness that is Mat. And it took some writing for me to get Mat right.

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  • 1147

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    You said in The Gathering Storm, the Rand was very dark. Was his darkness in the book hard to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Rand's darkness was certainly hard to write. But there's a piece of the writer that says when this is tough, that's good. One, you're pushing yourself. Two, if it's emotionally hard for you, and you're doing this the right way, it's going to be emotionally hard on the reader, and that's a sign that they will be emotionally invested. So yes, it was hard. How did I get into the mindset? The same way I do everything. There's actually a lot of method acting to writing, where you sit down and become that character for a time. Harriet has a story about Robert Jordan and how he did it. She could always tell.

    Harriet McDougal

    I could generally tell when he came in for the evening news and supper whether he had been writing a good person or a bad person. In particular there was an evening when he came in and slammed the door, and was skulking around the wall like this [hunches up against the bookshelf behind her], and I said, "You've been writing Padan Fain, haven't you?" And he said, "How did you know?" Usually he came in and said "Hello, honey!"

    Brandon Sanderson

    So you get in the mindset and go, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and if it doesn't, you throw it away and start again the next day.

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  • 1148

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    Do you see Robert Jordan’s characters coming out in your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. That may happen unconsciously, but my goal is not to have that happen, because I want to tell different stories. It would be like if Kelsier started coming out in Dalinar. It's just not something we want to have happen as a writer. We want everyone to be their own individual.

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  • 1149

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    Did you have a method for keeping the voice of the characters the same as the previous book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did, and that method was to read the last scene of that character before I wrote the new one. That became tougher as I wrote more and more on the last three books as I went along and the characters changed. Reading Rand from Book 11 didn't help a lot with Book 14, but it did help with Book 12.

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  • 1150

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    Is there any method to keep the universes separate in your mind?

    Brandon Sanderson

    People often ask questions like this. It's a hard question to answer because I'm very absent minded—I forget my keys or where I parked my car. But I don't forget stories. I have stories from when I was 15 still crystal clear in my mind, waiting to be written down. That's just how I work. I do have tools to help me work. One of them is a personal Wiki, it's open source, and called WikiDPad. I really like that. It's helpful visually. But at the end of the day, I've just got to get the stories down on the page without screwing them up.

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  • 1151

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    When did you find time for sleep during all this?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was a long, hard, 5 years. Fortunately, I work from home, and I'm able to stop work for the day, go see my family without a commute, visit with them for 3—4 hours, and then go back to work and still get in 12-hour days. That was a lot of my life, especially during the first 3 years. During the last 2, we slowed down a little bit, just because it was so hard. That's part of why the last book took 2 years—I just couldn't keep up the pace.

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  • 1152

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2013

    Question

    In your novellas Legion and The Emperor's Soul, there was a common theme of a creation of character. Were you making a comment on that as a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Emperor's Soul was much more so, specifically dealing with the artistic process. That was part of the theme for me. Legion was more "Wow, this idea's awesome." I originally told Dan (from Writing Excuses) that he should write this, it's really quirky. He said, "I got my own ideas—go write it yourself!"

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  • 1153

    Interview: Feb 14th, 2013

    Kazmero

    For the Q&A he went closer to an hour than the scheduled half an hour, which was greatly appreciated.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He answered questions regarding his writing practice (at least 2000 words per day), the editing process of WOT, and strategies for working with more than one editor at a publishing house to get your own book published.

    Kazmero

    I also know that he asked each person that brought a book to get signed if they had any questions for him. It was fun for each of us to take a few minutes here and there to listen to the variety of questions and answers.

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  • 1154

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    How much of the story in the last three books were things Brandon had to do, and how much was laid out by Robert Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's really hard at this point for me to even sometimes remember, because I've been working on it for five years now. But, a lot of the big touchstone moments, he had mentioned in his notes. Now, when I mention the notes, we have the 32,000 pages, that is obviously too much to work with. And most of that was notes for previous novels. The assistants came up with 200 pages for me, that were focused on this book. That became the core of what I worked with to make these three novels, or this book, because it's still kind of one book in my head.

    And of those 200 pages, there were about a hundred pages of actual written material that he'd done. And about a hundred pages of Q&As with his assistants regarding scenes that needed to be written, or where characters needed to end up and things like that.

    I would say in a given scene, there's me and there's Robert Jordan in basically everything. But, if you want something a little more specific, in Gathering Storm, Egwene's plot line, he had a lot done for. For Rand's plot line, it was more me. For Towers of Midnight, Mat's plot line he'd done a lot on, Perrin's plot line was more me. And for the last book, the beginning and the end, he'd done a lot of work on, and the middle was more me.

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  • 1155

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    In the last book we see a lot less of [character X] than in previous books. Is there a particular reason for that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did everything that Robert Jordan instructed me to do with [character X], and that is what I felt was appropriate, rather than adding a lot.

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  • 1156

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Who was Hinderstap?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hinderstap was me, that was one of my additions. Entered in because Harriet actually said, we need things to be scarier, it's the end of the world. Come up with some really cool bubbles of evil, Brandon. And here are some examples of things that Robert Jordan came up with. Be freaky. And I did my best.

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  • 1157

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Do you have any advice for up and coming authors?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have a lot of it. The number one piece though is just to keep at it and practice. However, if you want a lot of advice, I've got two resources for you. I do a podcast called Writing Excuses. And I have all of my University lectures posted online at a website called Write about Dragons. One of my grad students recorded them and put them all up. If you've already seen those, then you already have all of my advice. Why are you asking? Keep at it, just keep at it. BICHOK: Butt in chair, hands on keyboard.

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  • 1158

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Do you ever see yourself creating a series of books of this level?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't know that I see anyone ever creating another series of books on this level, what he did. But I do have lots of stories that I want to tell, and I can hope.

    Harriet McDougal

    And I would recommend that you pay attention to a book of Brandon's called The Way of Kings.

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  • 1159

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    (Could you see a) crossover novel with the Wheel of Time and any other fantasy series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time already crosses over with every fantasy series because the Wheel of Time contains the multiverse philosophy, that all other worlds are shadows of the Wheel of Time world. So they're already there. Otherwise I just wouldn't want to see anything like that happen, it just wouldn't feel right to me. But that's an amusing question, thank you for it.

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  • 1160

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    This is the last stop of the tour for Memory of Light. How do you feel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    How do we feel? The last hurrah, the last stop on the Memory of Light tour. It's really kind of, honestly, a weird experience for me, because after today, I basically set down, you know, the mantle, right, that was handed to me five years ago. This is my last official event involved in the Wheel of Time.

    Now I will be involved for the rest of my life. I will go to JordanCon every year, which is only over in Atlanta, so you should all go. I just drove there today, from Atlanta, I know how easy a drive it is. I will be going to JordanCon, I will always be willing to sign these books, and talk about the Wheel of Time, but after today I take a big step toward fan, and away from author.

    And so it's a really . . . It's the culmination of a bittersweet experience, it has been five years of bitter-sweetness. It started with reading his last scene, that he'd written, and it comes up to here. Where after five years of a lot of hard work, I put down that burden and, I move on to other things, which is really, really sad. You know, it's kind of weird, because every other series that I put down, there's been that voice in the back of my head that said, well you could return to this, if you want to. In this one I can't.

    That's been made off limits to me by myself from the beginning. You know, Harriet and I, on one of the very first times in Charleston, we had this conversation about the other books and we both were very adamant about the idea of them not happening. And so, it's not, you know, it's not Harriet saying, no, it's me saying no too. I would not do these if the opportunity were even offered. And so, it's strange, because these characters I can never do more with. Everyone else I can. So it's a final farewell to Robert Jordan, and it's sad, but it's also awesome because the last book has been well received. I think it turned out very well. And the experience has been amazing.

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  • 1161

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    How hard was it for you to separate the fan from the writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This was something I'd never had to do before, and it was somewhat hard at the beginning. Basically, I wanted to stay away from letting the fan control too much, because you couldn't have that. Otherwise Narg would do a cameo every other chapter and things like that. And yet, you know, I am a fan and I can't separate completely the fact there are things I wanted to see. I wanted to see a reunion between Rand and Tam. There are things that I wanted these last books to provide, and I had to listen to the fan when working on the outline and saying, "Is there an opportunity for this?, what did he instruct me to do?, what places are there things that I know as a fan I wanted for years?, and which ones are appropriate to put in?" And so I didn't completely separate, but it was something that I had to be aware of.

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  • 1162

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Having been so involved in these books over the last five years, and as an author with your own projects in the works, how hard is it to separate the heart and soul of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time from your own stuff?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, this is something you just learn as a writer. To juggle projects. And writing is my passion, and I don't usually have trouble mixing up projects. Now that said, I do sometimes get influenced by certain projects, or end up repeating myself, and that's something you have to really watch out for as a writer. Where you've got to be careful not to let the same themes and ideas make you do the same thing over and over again. But that's a different question. Separating myself from the Wheel of Time was not as hard as you might think, because it's something I had to learn to do when I first started writing. Because the Wheel of Time was a dominant force in my writing from the beginning, I had to say let's write something that doesn't just copy the Wheel of Time. And I think every writer learns to separate themselves from their influences. Our first stories are usually derivative. And we learn over time, hey here's how to express my own voice. My first novel, the first one I finished, I went back to it years later, just a couple of years ago. I went back and I dug it out and looked at it. And it started with the wind scene, it started with an omniscient view of the wind blowing across something. I'm like, oh I've totally lifted that from RJ. But, you know, that's okay on your first novel. It's something you learn.

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  • 1163

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Having worked on this project after somebody else, how will this affect your future writing style?

    Well, I think I gained a lot of insight, working on this project, and that has changed my writing style. I don't think that necessarily, the work on it normally has, because I, like I said, studied the Wheel of Time, and learned about managing influences early in my career. And yet, working on this, being able to see the things RJ did, and gaining a better admiration of some of the things that he managed to pull off. His level of subtlety and foreshadowing for example, really made me say wow, I can see what he's doing and I can see it even better, and it's challenged me to be a better writer. So, I think, as to be better at working with multiple viewpoints, lots of different characters.

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  • 1164

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Mr. Sanderson, I noticed that Utah seems to be producing a lot of writers lately, You, Dan Wells, and Larry Correia come to mind offhand. Do you have any insight as to why Utah has been producing a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy writers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, a lot of people ask this. I think it has to do with the fact that once a community gets started, they lift each other up. For instance, I gave Dan the contact info for my editor. Larry Correia, when he was publishing, got some help from some people locally. And what happens is you see people kind of helping each other out. It started with Orson Scott Card, way back when. And that started a class at Brigham Young University, it was 'How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy', which I took. And it's not that there's any sort of inside club or thing, it's just that, you see people being successful. It becomes more possible for you. And, like for instance, I took this class, it was taught by Dave Farland, who writes the Runelords, which is a fantasy series. It's quite good. And I was able to say, How do you do this thing, how do you get published? He's like, oh, here’s some advice. Go forth and meet editors and things. So, I think it has to do with this idea. if you go back, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were in the same writing group. It just starts a sort of community thing, where it becomes a viable, possible thing. Like, I grew up in Nebraska. I didn't know any writers in Nebraska. I didn't know anyone who was a published science fiction/fantasy writer. There weren't conventions in Lincoln, and things like that. But when I moved to Utah suddenly there's a bunch of writing conventions. You've got a ton of them around here too. And things like that. That sort of community is just really helpful for helping writers along. I think that's got a lot to do with it.

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  • 1165

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Why did you have to kill Vin and Elend?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They demanded that they be allowed to take the chance they did. And I just let them take the chance. I didn't kill them, I just let them take the chance that they demanded that I let them take. That's kind of a cop-out answer, I'm sorry, but that's what it feels like to me. And if I always make it so that there are no consequences, then the books have no heart.

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  • 1166

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    How do you meet these people who read books and provide critical comments?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most of my Alphas and Betas are my friends from college or my family.

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  • 1167

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Did you ever conceive of breaking the "Last Battle" chapter into sections?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, I felt like I wanted you to feel like the characters felt. And that you couldn't just put your sword down and go. That was my goal.

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  • 1168

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Is that really the end of it? Absolutely?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, that is the end. He didn't leave anything more.

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  • 1169

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Did you know from a young age that you wanted to be an author?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did not, I was a teenager when I discovered fantasy novels, and I decided I wanted to do it then.

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  • 1170

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Did you ever fail an English class?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did not fail an English class, but I did fail Handwriting. All through elementary school I got unsatisfactory marks.

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  • 1171

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    What was the hardest thing for you to overcome as a starting writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As a starting writer I would say the hardest thing for me was learning to revise. I just hated revision. I had to learn to do it, and do it well.

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  • 1172

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Brandon Sanderson

    You were the person with the Moiraine question. RJ wrote in his notes that main purpose of Moiraine is to prevent a war between Rand and Egwene. And then she was to go with him into the Pit of Doom, but in the Pit of Doom there was nothing for her to do. And I felt bad about that, but that's what he instructed. It was hard to come up with stuff for everyone to have a part and a role. But I did what he instructed. It was a good question, people wondered. She did have an important role to play.

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  • 1173

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Who was the hardest character for you to personify?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was Mat. He's the most complex of the WOT characters, so getting him right was a real challenge.

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  • 1174

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Egwene, was that your idea or Robert Jordan's?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I haven't been telling people about that one specifically. Almost all the deaths in the book were RJ's instructions, but I did choose a few of them. So, it could been either one of us.

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  • 1175

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Was it your idea for the dead mule in the last book, or was it Robert Jordan’s?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That was his idea.

    Question

    Well he had one set of dead mules, I didn't know if you wanted to add yours and become a Southern writer too?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well I can be a partial one.

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  • 1176

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    In book 6 or 7 when Moiraine gets thrown through the portal, was it RJ's plan to bring her back in Towers of Midnight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, he actually wrote most of the scenes that take place in the Tower of Ghenjei and afterwards.

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  • 1177

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    The last book had a lot of military action in it. Did you have to do a lot of research for that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes we did. And I relied a lot on some experts that we know to give me a lot of help on that.

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  • 1178

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    My favorite character, Elmindreda. How much of that were you fleshing out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not a ton. Just a little bit. I got to do most of her and Tuon.

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  • 1179

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Androl—is he yours?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He is mine. From the beginning, I asked Team Jordan if there was an Asha'man that had a blank slate that I could take over, because I wanted to have a viewpoint in the Black Tower, and I wanted to do some of these things with gateways.

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  • 1180

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Did you have any Air Force consultation with the to'raken scenes at all?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That was in mind. We had a lot of military experts help us out with these books. I relied on them a lot.

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  • 1181

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Was Robert Jordan's original draft of that as bloody as the way it came out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A lot of the deaths, he didn't write any of the actual death scenes, he just indicated who lived and died. I just upped the ante somewhat. I wasn't going to have the Last Battle come without substantial losses, and so, where he didn't instruct me, this person lives, I had some measure of, yeah. And so, I did up the body count. I know he was planning to kill off a number of characters, but he also, killing people, and letting them stay dead was not one of Jim's strong suits. He was very fond of his characters, and I know there were lots that he was planning to kill. I don't think that he would have killed as many as I, maybe. I don't know. It's what we felt the story needed, in talking to Harriet and Team Jordan. Maybe he would have. I did what I thought made the best story.

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  • 1182

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    What about Cadsuane being summoned to become Amyrlin?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Cadsuane was going to give up the three Oaths, and go live forever. Cadsuane's fate was not my idea.

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  • 1183

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    Two words that I find very evocative are Dreadbane and Balescream. What's yours?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You can usually guess that if it's not Old Tongue, it's probably me.

    Question

    I mean what's your favorite word? What's the word you find most evocative from the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    In the series. Let me see. Hmm. I've always liked the term Heartstone. I would think. That one is very evocative to me.

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  • 1184

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    From Freelancer again. Moiraine promised Thom to tell the names of the Red Aes Sedai (who gentled) Owyn. Does she ever do that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. It's not onscreen but it does happen.

    Question

    And is there anybody in that list that we would be interested in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I actually asked that question to Maria, and Maria said no.

    Question

    OK.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Really what I said is, "Do we want to do this, is this relevant?" She said, "No I don't think this is relevant, and it's not worth jumping through hoops."

    Question

    OK.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Because there is nothing there that's going to, yeah.

    That was what came of it. Now whether that actually means, is there any name you'd recognize, you might recognize a name, but it wasn't relevant enough to jump through storytelling hoops to get that on screen, to bother with it.

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  • 1185

    Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013

    Question

    In the scene where Mat is going to see Queen Elayne for the first time, there are the details of him handing off the ashandarei, and all this, which I find very amazing. So when you are writing something like that, do you see the scene?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do. I'm there, the question is just what I describe, and what I don't.

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  • 1186

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    DeleriumTrigger ()

    You're obviously known for your creative and unique magic systems, and magic-centric stories. How often do you have the urge to write works that don't involve any magic at all? Have you done this in the past and they've gone unpublished?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on if you count the vague 'science' of a soft science fiction as magic. If you look at something like "Firstborn" or Legion, there are only faint magical elements. However, since I'm not a hard SF writer, they are there.

    I'd say that once in a while, I feel myself wanting to write something along those lines—but I've never had an idea that wasn't at least marginally sf/f that screamed at me to write it. What can I say? It is the wonder and the imagination of sf/f that made me into a reader in the first place. Whatever idea I come up with, I find that adding some speculative fiction elements makes me more excited about it.

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  • 1187

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    DeleriumTrigger ()

    Maybe I'm a bit ignorant here, but what is the motivation for a fascinating character like Wit/Hoid?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have always been impressed by masterworks like those done by King/Asimov, weaving multiple works by one author together into a single continuity. I felt that most authors who have done it didn't have the chance to start from the beginning intending to combine worlds. It is something that they decided upon after the fact. So, I thought I'd give it a try from book one.

    I love stand alone novels, but I also love big epics. This was a way to let me have both at the same time with some of my works. And so, Hoid was born as a character plotting behind the scenes of my novels, connecting them together into a larger tapestry.

    Kurkistan

    Have you ever felt constrained by this commitment to consistency across the Cosmere, or does it amount to "limitations are more interesting than powers" as applies to own options as an author?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I feel it has always helped. If an idea doesn't fit into the limitations, I simply move it to a non-Cosmere story instead.

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  • 1188

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    BrianMcClellan ()

    You've got a reputation for pumping out tons of content. How much time do you spend writing every day? Do you have any tricks for keeping yourself on task?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hi, Brian. Good luck with the book launch!

    I write about 2,500 words a day, writing at around 500 words an hour. My production is more about being consistent than about being fast. I do tend to write around ten hours a day. Don't know if I have any tips other than to perhaps turn off the internet or go outside and write for a while.

    EDIT: Posted a little bit of clarity on the 2,500 words a day, and what I do with the rest of the time, below.

    FishingForCod

    If you write about 500 words an hour and write for 10 hours a day? Isn't that 5000 words a day?

    I see that doing good at math isn't very important as an author. ^ ^

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. I should have been clear. You're absolutely right to point this out.

    I spend a large amount of time each day answering email, working on the wiki for my worlds, planning new books, and revising. Many days, I actually do around 3500 words, but the average tends to be closer to 2500 or even 2000 once editing and everything is factored in.

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  • 1189

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    elquesogrande ()

    How much of writing is based on 'nature' and an individual's innate abilities versus the 'nurture' part of honing your craft? There are those writers who seem to strike a brilliant tone with their first works while others spend a lifetime studying without much success.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wish I could answer this first one in a specific way. I think both are certainly a factor. In my class, people come through with immediate talent—but, then, those also tend to be the ones who have practiced writing the most.

    I would say that the nurture part is the most important part for the vast majority of us. However, there are savants who just HIT it their first try.

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  • 1190

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    AlextheKiller ()

    What things influence you when creating and developing characters? Are you pulling from real-life experiences with other people? Are you pulling from parts of yourself?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A lot of both, honestly. The third factor, however, is a good conflict. When I see or imagine a conflict for a character to have to deal with, I end up wanting to put it into a story. Sometimes, it's a conflict that another character in media has that I have either enjoyed or (more often) feel that the book/film didn't do it justice. So, I pull that part out, rework it until I'm satisfied that I'm being original with it rather than making a copy, and put it to work.

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  • 1191

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    AlextheKiller ()

    Does music play any role in getting your creative juices flowing? If so, any specifics you'd like to credit?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. I will use music to inspire me if I'm having a hard time or need a specific punch. Other times, I generally just have Pandora going on a station with lots of classical and electronica. I'm a huge fan of Daft Punk, however, and will use Alive (the live album) to get me in the right mood for some scenes. Soundtracks are great too. Anything by Michael Kamen can usually get me into the right mood for writing. Harry Gregson-Williams is another go-to composer for me.

    Oh, and I almost forgot. I love OC Remixes as well. I tend to listen to a lot of them while planning stories while I run on an exercise Machine. One of my favorites is here.

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  • 1192

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    zeusfireair ()

    What is your favorite scene from any of your books that you've written?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Boy...favorite scene? That's going to be tough, as anything about my books plays into the "which of your children do you like the most" mentality that authors have. It's hard to choose.

    I would say either Raoden finally gaining his Elantrian powers at the end of Elantris, since it was the first scene like that I ever managed to pull off in a book, or the final Lan/Demandred sequence at the end of A Memory of Light. I had planned that one for five years, and was pushing toward it all through my work on the Wheel of Time.

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  • 1193

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    sadius551 ()

    If George R. R. Martin kicks the bucket before he finishes A Song of Ice and Fire, would you kindly do so in his place?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha. Honestly, I'd be an AWFUL replacement for Mister Martin. My writing style is very different from his.

    Let's just wish him to be in the best of health so he can continue to write the story that so many people love.

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  • 1194

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    rahmuss ()

    For an architect, should a book be written as a complete work, which you then break into chapters? Or should I be focusing on writing chapter by chapter from the start?

    Also, what order should revision be done in, what do you work on first? Punctuation and grammar, trimming, pacing, characters? What do you find usually gives the biggest pay-off first?

    Brandon Sanderson

    1) Both methods have worked for me in the past, so I don't know if there is a "Should" here. I think that early on, visualizing the book as a sequence of chapters which achieve certain goals is a useful way to finish your first few novels. It helps with the step-by-step method of getting it done. I use something more organic now, however.

    2) My method is this:

    Revision One: Fix continuity, big problems.

    Revision Two: Make the language more active, get rid of repetition.

    Revision Three: Fix problems mentioned by alpha readers (so long as I agree with them.)

    Revision Four: Cut 15%

    Revisions 5-7: Beta reader issues, more editorial fixes, more of all above.

    However, in those early chapters, the biggest payoff is going to come from making certain character voice is solid and that the language isn't dull. (Trim info-dumps, get rid of passive constructions, that sort of thing.)

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  • 1195

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    awkwardgirl ()

    I was just wondering what your process for developing magic systems is? How do you turn a cool idea into something that makes sense and is cohesive without taking away from the mystery and magic of it all?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a difficult question to answer in the space given. I'm going to assume you've read Sanderson's First Law and Sanderson's Second Law, the rules I place upon myself in writing magic systems. I assume you've also watched the lectures on the topic.

    I'll just answer the second part of your question, then, and leave the above to answer the more general "What is your process?"

    Every bit you add to magic's cohesiveness does take away from its sense of wonder somewhat. It's a trade off. However, it doesn't have to steal everything. Letting characters be able to use the magic, but leaving them without understanding the WHY it all works is part of this. (Better if you know why and can start dropping hints.)

    There will always be mystery in the world to a character with an inquisitive nature. If they are asking questions, wondering, striving to learn and explore, you will have wonder in your books.

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  • 1196

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Xenokaos ()

    Do you have any regrets about the Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do wish I'd managed to either get it all into one book, or managed the split between The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight better. Also, I might have tried to work Fain in more if I'd had more time. Also, there are some little continuity errors here and there that I wish I would have caught.

    It's hard to say. For example, would I have written Mat differently in The Gathering Storm if I'd had the time? Perhaps. But it was writing Mat the way I did that helped me understand him, so perhaps not. There are mistakes in the books I did, as there are in all the books I've done, but I'm not sure if the right thing to do is change them. Otherwise, we get into a Lucas-style revision-fest.

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  • 1197

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Shillster ()

    Why did the Heroes say they could be stopped by the One Power (wrapped up in air) when in The Great Hunt they clearly weren't affected by the damane's attacks? That seems inconsistent.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I thought we had this wiggle room through observation of the text and what RJ had written, but it's entirely possible that I'm wrong. I'd have to go look and dig out the appropriate quotes. That entire scene, I'll admit, came from my insistence that the Heroes not be able to simply fight the Last Battle on behalf of mankind. Since RJ wasn't explicit either way, I wanted it specifically mentioned that the Heroes are there to help, not to do all the work on their own. It's a narrative point of importance to me. Perhaps I went too far. I'll ask Maria about this at JordanCon this week and see if we made an error.

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  • 1198

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Shivertongue

    do you ever try to match the music with the setting of a specific book or scene? Is there any one artist or style of music that works no matter what?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, indeed I do. I actually listened to era-appropriate music when working on Alloy of Law. In general, a good stoundtrack can work no matter what, but for some scenes I need something more powerful. (Szeth's scenes in TWoK were usually to Daft Punk.)

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  • 1199

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Shivertongue

    What aspect of a new setting do you find to be the most difficult to develop?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hmmm.... The everyday stuff is actually the hardest. For example, the question about racist jokes. They'd have them in world, but getting everything like this into a novel can be tough--particularly since it has a chance of squeezing out the story if you do too much.

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  • 1200

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Brendan

    Now that you have finished writing WoT, how does it feel going back to telling your epic story that you have wanted to share with the world and being able to write a story naturally without the outside constraints that came with WoT? What if anything has been the biggest challenge getting back into writing Stormlight Archives after working so hard on WoT?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It feels great, though it's a feeling I've felt before. It was the feeling I had when jumping out of the Mistborn world after finishing all three books and instead doing Warbreaker. For most of the process with the WoT, I didn't feel 'constrained' really. It was more a sense of difficulty--it was difficult to do for unique reasons. Matching RJ's story, making certain to keep characters consistent, that kind of thing. It is refreshing to move to a new project, but this one presents difficulties of its own. I have to follow up The Way of Kings, which I feel is the best book of my career so far. I poured twenty years of effort into that book. Now, the sequel needs to be equally awesome, which is a real challenge. Also, I keep wanting to use WoT curses.

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  • 1201

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    McCullough

    In what ways do you feel that finishing the Wheel of Time helped to prepare you for The Stormlight Archive and how did it change your writing in general, if at all?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I gained three things, I feel, by working over the years on the WoT. (And, in particular, by studying RJ's work in depth.) I learned how to better balance lots of different viewpoints, I got a better grip for foreshadowing and subtlety over many books, and I gained a deeper understanding of how to write a really sold third person viewpoint.

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  • 1202

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Yamato

    What has turned out better for you, starting with the characters, the plot, or the world when you are beginning the writing process for a book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Any time I have the characters from the get go, I feel like I'm leaps and bounds ahead. Having a very strong ending in mind before outlining is also very, very helpful.

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  • 1203

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Robospawn

    How extensively do you outline?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Depends on the book. Alloy of Law had a few pages. The Way of Kings had hundreds of worldbuilding notes. The outline for Book two sits open on my computer right now at...12 pages single spaced. It's maybe 2/3 done.

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  • 1204

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    astalduath

    2) I am formerly a Sergeant in the United States Army Reserves. Having read all of your work except for your Wheel of Time additions, I couldn't help but to see that you have a good grasp of leadership displayed in your writing. When I finished reading the scene in The Way of Kings about Kaladin ordering Bridge Four to carry their bridge into battle in a way that would protect them, but ended up causing defeat for the rest of the army, you wrote a well described contrast between an NCO and a high ranking officer (not saying an officer would act like Sadeas by the means of using bridge men like he does), and how the two types of leaders look at battle. I was wondering, do you draw from your own experiences, or study others, or something entirely different you use when you write leadership roles in your characters and how they act in different situations utilizing that trait?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's very flattering to hear. I've made a study of leadership in many different areas, the military being one of them. It's a topic that fascinates me, and I try hard to get it right. I wouldn't say I have any practical experience in it, unfortunately--just a lot of study, questioning, and curiosity.

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  • 1205

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    XFER

    Are you planning to include a gay character in the second book of the Stormlight Archive? I know there is that bridge guy, but I mean a character with some weight on the book. Would be cool.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've tried to be more GLBT aware in recent years, but I want to be careful. Doing it poorly could be more insulting than doing it not at all. Having Ryan, the real world Drehy from Bridge Four, as a friend does at least give me access to someone who can give early feedback and tell me where I might be going wrong. So let's just say maybe.

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  • 1206

    Interview: Sep, 2012

    Arcanist

    3. And related to this last question: most of your heroes are true traditional "heroes", because they want to be useful for the family/society/other, and they often lack selfish, "dirtier" motivations. Will we sometimes see characters, who are not villains but are rather egocentric?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Kelsier. :) Expanding that, however, I feel that in general, other people are telling stories about "dirtier" characters and doing it well. I don't feel characters who are generally good characters are any less realistic, however--in fact, almost everyone I know is more like Vin or Dalinar. They want to be good people, they TRY to be good people. Fantasy has taken a very dark turn in many ways, and this is fine, but it is not the type of story or characters in which I am interested. That doesn't mean I won't ever do it. There are some far more borderline characters mixed into some of the series, but they are more the exception than the rule.

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  • 1207

    Interview: Nov 6th, 2012

    Question

    How long on the Emperor's Soul, from having it pop into your head in Taiwan to getting it on the page, about how long are you looking at it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    How long am I looking at it? This was thirty thousand words, I'd say probably two to three weeks actual writing time and then, you know, several drafts after that. About an equal time in revision is usually what it takes me on a book. So, probably this is a month and half's worth of work. The thing about that is it was spread between times when I was sending drafts to Harriet and having an open moment to sit down and, you know like, "Well I can't be working on the next draft of the Wheel of Time because I just sent this one in. I need to see what her response to these changes is, so I will take these three days and I will work on Emperor's Soul." And that's where it came from. Filling in the gaps, yeah. It's like pouring milk into the jar full of marbles, that's where, you know, this came from.

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  • 1208

    Interview: Nov 6th, 2012

    Question

    How do you keep your characters straight, among all the characters that you have to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don’t know, it just happens. Characters are just one of those things. Like I always have trouble describing how I write my characters, because characters just kind of happen. I plan my plots, I plan my worlds, and characters I write my way into to make them work. And I have a hard time explaining to people how I develop them. They just are who they are, if that makes sense.

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  • 1209

    Interview: Apr 4th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    And here's the newest video of me writing a chapter from Words of Radiance.

    Tags

  • 1210

    Interview: Apr 11th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tor.com is continuing its reread of The Way of Kings. This week's article covers chapters 1 and 2, which include Kaladin's introduction.

    And here's the newest video of me writing a chapter from Words of Radiance. This is the climax, but there are two short videos after this. I'll upload the sped-up version of the chapter the same day I upload the final video.

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  • 1211

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tor.com has put up another two chapters of their reread of The Way of Kings: chapters 3 and 4. This covers Shallan's introduction and Kaladin's arrival at the Shattered Plains.

    If you missed my AMA at Reddit, you can find my answers here.

    I've finished uploading the videos of me writing one of the interludes from Words of Radiance, the sequel to The Way of Kings. I've also made a high-speed version of all of the writing, which you can see below, if the real-time version was too slow for you. There's a playlist of all of the real-time videos here, and the final video (if you were keeping up already) is here.

    This has been a bit of an experiment, to show my writing process. Now that it's all done, what have you thought about the experiment?

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  • 1212

    Interview: May 14th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The origin of The Rithmatist

    Six years ago, I was writing a book that I hated.

    Now, that's both rare and common for me at the same time. I tire of pretty much every book I work on at some point, usually during the revision process. I push through and get over it. That's what you do as a writer. By the time I'm done with the process, I'm tired of the book—but it's the good kind of tired. The "I worked hard, and now have something awesome to show for it" tired.

    Unfortunately, that wasn't happening for this book. Called The Liar of Partinel, every chapter was a chore to write. Though it had started very well, it continued to spiral farther and farther down the drain. I was familiar enough with my own writing by this point to realize the problems with Liar wouldn't work themselves out. The characters were boring, the plot forced. The worldbuilding elements never quite clicked together.

    It had been years since I'd had such a bad feeling about a novel. (The last time, in fact, was Mythwalker—my sixth unpublished book&mdsah;which I abandoned halfway through.) Part of the problem, I suspect, had to do with my expectations. Liar, set in the same world as Dragonsteel, was to be the origin story of Hoid, the character who has appeared in all of my Cosmere novels. (Information here—warning, big spoilers.)

    I needed Hoid's story to be epic and awesome. It just wasn't. And so, I ended up "hiding" from that novel and working on something else instead.

    The Rithmatist. It started with some drawings and a purely creative week sketching out a world, characters, and magic. That week is the exact sort that turned me into a writer in the first place, and was a distinct contrast to the grind that had been Liar. I abandoned the book and dove into The Rithmatist (then called Scribbler), and wrote a book where everything just came together. It happens sometimes. It just works, and I can't always explain—even to myself—why.

    I finished the first draft of the book in the summer of 2007. In the fall, I got the call regarding the Wheel of Time, and my world transformed forever. The Rithmatist, though an awesome book, languished for years because I didn't have the time to devote to it. Doing a tour or contract for another teen book was impossible at that time, and beyond that I couldn't commit to writing any sequels or even doing any revision for the novel.

    I did tell Tor about it, though, and they started to get excited. The publisher tried several times to get me to release it, but I didn't feel the time was right. I couldn't let my attention be divided that far. I was already stretched too thin, and I wanted my attention (and that of my readers) to be on the Wheel of Time.

    The month A Memory of Light was done and turned in, however, I called Tor and told them it was time to move forward. I'm pleased to be releasing the book now, when I can give it the attention it deserves.

    And hopefully someday I'll be able to fix The Liar of Partinel. (At this point, I'm feeling I need to rewrite it as a first-person narrative, though making that switch is going to cause an entire host of problems.)

    Anyway, thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoy The Rithmatist.

    Brandon

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  • 1213

    Interview: May 13th, 2013

    The Book Smugglers

    First and foremost, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us!

    You are an established (and highly respected and loved) author of adult fantasy (we are huge fans of your Mistborn books, The Way of Kings, and Warbreaker—excuse us while we fangirl a little bit). The Rithmatist, however, is a young adult title—what made you want to get into the YA space? Do you read YA fantasy novels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First off, thank you very much! I really appreciate the fangirling. I do read quite a bit of YA fiction. In fact, during the era when I was trying to break into publishing—the late 90s and early 2000s—a lot of the really exciting things in sci-fi and fantasy were happening in YA and middle grade. Garth Nix, J.K. Rowling, Dianna Wynne Jones and others created some wonderfully imaginative writing during this time.

    I dipped my toes into middle grade with my Alcatraz series soon after I got published. I hadn't written a YA before, but I wanted to—for the same reason I write epic fantasy: there are awesome things I can do in in epic fantasy that I can't do in other genres. And there are awesome things I can do in teen fiction that I don't feel I can get away with in the same way in adult fiction.

    Science fiction and fantasy have a very fascinating connection with YA fiction. If you look at some of the series I loved as a youth—the Wheel of Time, Shannara, and the Eddings books, for example—these have enormous teen crossover. In fact, when you get to something like the Eddings books, you've got to wonder if they would've been shelved in the teen section in a later era.

    Back up even further to the juveniles that were written by Heinlein and others, and we see that teen fiction has been an integral part of science fiction and fantasy. Some of the early fantasy writings—things like Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and C.S. Lewis's works—were foundational in how the fantasy genre came to be.

    So YA feels like a very natural thing for me to be writing because I enjoy it and I respect what it has done for the genres.

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  • 1214

    Interview: May 13th, 2013

    The Book Smugglers

    What can your fans expect from The Rithmatist, as compared to your other adult novels? Was it easier or harder to write for a YA audience (or was there anything different about the writing process for this particular book)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's an excellent question! I wouldn't say it's either easier or harder. For me, a story grows in my mind till I just can't ignore it anymore, and I have to write it. That certainly happened with The Rithmatist.

    As for what I did differently, there are a couple things. When I work on a teen book, I usually try to focus the viewpoints. That's one of the big distinctions for me between an epic fantasy that has teen characters—like the Mistborn books—and a book that I've specifically written for a teen audience. I usually focus on a single character—maybe two—so the narrative is a bit more streamlined.

    The other big difference here is that I really wanted to write something with a sense of fantasy whimsy to it. I say whimsical, and it might be the right term, and yet it's not. For example, the magic system is one of the most rigorous and specific that I've written. I hope readers will find it as interesting as I do—with the defensive circles and the different types of lines.

    With my epic fantasy books like The Way of Kings, for example, I looked at the size of the planet, its gravitation, its oxygen content—all the sorts of things that allow me to worldbuild with some scientific rigor. I consciously didn't want to do that with The Rithmatist. I replaced the United States with the United Isles, turning the country into an archipelago. I shrank the planet, and I did really weird things to the history of the world because I thought it would be fun. For example, I let Korea conquer the world, because I'm a fan of Korean history.

    It's not like I'm sitting down and saying, "What is plausible?" I'm sitting down and saying, "What is awesome?" Then I write a story in which that awesomeness can shine. I let myself do that in my YA works more than in my adult works to give them a different feel. Writing this way allows me to exercise different muscles.

    I believe that children and teens are better able to mode shift. When they pick up a book, they don't necessarily feel that it has to fit in one of the genre boxes. As an author, that allows you to do some interesting things in teen that are harder to do within an adult genre.

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  • 1215

    Interview: May 13th, 2013

    The Book Smugglers

    In all of your other books, you write strong, layered female characters—what can we expect from The Rithmatist in the protagonist/heroine department?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I often worry about falling into the trap of making female characters strong by not making them feminine. In Mistborn, Vin is strong in part because of how good of a warrior she is, and that's fine. There are plenty of women like that, who can hold their own in a fight. But in The Rithmatist, one of the things I wanted to do was write a female character who is more girly, so to speak. I wanted to make her a strong protagonist in a way that does not undermine her femininity. I hope that I've managed to approach that with Melody in The Rithmatist.

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  • 1216

    Interview: May 13th, 2013

    The Book Smugglers

    You create some of the most elaborate magic systems in fantasy today; these systems function as intrinsic parts of your worlds and characters. Typically, how do you address the different types of magic systems in your different books? Do you define these systems before you start writing the books, or do they evolve and develop as you go along?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The answer to that is yes! It's different for every book. With my Cosmere books—which are the shared universe of my epic fantasies—I need to be a little more rigorous. There are fundamental underlying principles that guide the magic systems, and so there's a larger developmental phase before I start writing the book. Then I stick more strictly to the rules I've given myself.

    All the way back in 2007, I was writing one of my epic fantasies, and it just wasn't working. I needed a break to something creative, different, and distinctive. So I jumped ship, abandoning that epic fantasy, and wrote The Rithmatist instead, which had a lot less planning than one of my epic fantasies.

    With something like The Rithmatist—which is outside the Cosmere—I'm allowed a little more freedom, which is one of the reasons I like writing books like this, where I allow myself to develop it as I write. The magic was the first thing that got me excited about The Rithmatist, so I based the book around it.

    The first thing I wrote was the scene—now late in chapter one—where Joel watches Fitch get defeated by Nalizar in the classroom. It started out on a chalkboard, but I eventually moved it to the floor because that made more sense. As I was writing these chapters, I developed the Rithmatic lines and let the story feed the magic and the magic feed the story in a way that some writers call "discovery written."

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  • 1217

    Interview: May 13th, 2013

    The Book Smugglers

    In addition to The Rithmatist, you've also ventured in the the Science Fiction realm with your short stories ("Defending Elysium" and "Firstborn"). We recently learned that you're creating a cool, limited edition tête-bêche ("head-to-toe") bind-up format of these two novelettes, in the style of the groovy old school Ace Doubles. What made you want to create this particular type of print version of your novelettes? And, since these are science fiction, tell us a little bit about writing scifi and how that differs (or is similar to) fantasy.

    Brandon Sanderson

    We were looking at doing con exclusives, something I can take to conventions to make them a little more special for those who make the extra effort to come see me. Yet we didn't think it would be fair to my readers who can't make it to the cons—my readers in Sweden, for instance—if I took a story that was only available at cons. But "Firstborn" and "Defending Elysium" fit perfectly. Both stories have been out awhile, and both are free to read online. If you can't make it to the con, you can still read and enjoy these stories.

    Singly, neither story was long enough to justify the price point required for us to go through all the effort to create a book. But both stories are science fiction, and both are novelettes, so doing an Ace Double-style book sounded like the way to go.

    A lot of my short fiction comes out as science fiction. When I sit down to write something short, I've often wondered why a science fiction story pops out. Why do my longer works come out as epic fantasy? I've got lots of theories. They're armchair theories from Brandon the English major, not so much from Brandon the writer.

    In science fiction, a lot of times the worldbuilding is easier to get across. Science fiction films have been such a part of our culture for so long—and imagining the what-ifs of the future leaves you with more groundwork to build upon—that in many ways there's more the reader immediately understands and accepts.

    I've often said that great stories are about great characters first. But beyond that, science fiction stories are about ideas and fantasy stories are about the setting. I think that's why when I come up with a great idea story, I write it as science fiction. If I come up with some interesting setting element, like a great magic system, I write it as fantasy. I've found that getting across an interesting and complex magic system in a very short amount of time is extraordinarily hard, so it tends to work better for longer stories.

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  • 1218

    Interview: Jun 20th, 2013

    Joel Williams

    What was it like to take on the project of finishing Jordan's series? Did you have any idea what you were you getting into? Did any unexpected challenges come up?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I certainly did not know what I was getting into. I started reading these books when I was 15, back in 1990, and I've loved them ever since. So I was aware of the complexity of the series and I understood how excited people were, but I didn't know how much or little Mr. Jordan finished before he passed away. So on the one hand I had an inkling, but on the other I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Famously, before he passed away, Jordan had been telling fans that this book would be so big that they would have to sell luggage carts to get them out of the bookstores. He was planning an enormous, epic finale to his series. That's what I was anticipating. When I got the notes it was all there, in theory. The notes indicated a great epic book. But not a whole lot had been done yet. He had written some important scenes, but most things were just outlines or pre-outlines. A project that I expected to take year and half, ended up taking up five years of my career in order to do it right.

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  • 1219

    Interview: Jun 20th, 2013

    Joel Williams

    You mention that started reading the books at the age of 15. As a fan of the series, did you ever think you'd be the one called upon to finish the series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It completely blew my mind. When Robert Jordan passed away I made the choice that I didn't want to be the literary version of an ambulance chaser. So I said to my agent, we're not going to pursue this. I would love to do it, but I don't think it's appropriate. When I got called about it, it completely blindsided me. I had consciously decided I wasn't even going to let myself consider it. I never thought I'd be here where I am. I've gotten to participate in the dreams and vision of an author that inspired me to be a writer in the first place. That's been incredible, but if you had asked me what are the chances of doing something like this, I wouldn't have given myself any reasonable chance.

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  • 1220

    Interview: Jun 20th, 2013

    Joel Williams

    Are you concerned because you were a fan, you put something in that might've been cut by Jordan? Are you confident you ended it the way he wanted it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were a lot of holes in the notes. I had to put in scenes where I don't know if Jordan would've put it in. We're different writers. The idea was to capture the feel, the mood, the tone. [Jordan's widow] Harriet was also his editor. She discovered Jordan when she was working as an editor and then she married him. I like to joke that it's one way to make sure your editorial advice is taken. If I strayed, Harriet would let me know. She has the final say. And we've been upfront about it, I'm not ghostwriting this. I'm a coauthor. There wasn't enough done to be finished off by a ghostwriter, it needed somebody to fill in holes. That's why I was brought on and that's what I've been doing.

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  • 1221

    Interview: Jun 20th, 2013

    Joel Williams

    When you were working on this project did it all feel like you were cheating on your world? Maybe feel like you were cheating on a spouse?

    Brandon Sanderson

    [Laughs] That's an interesting way to put it. Not cheating on a spouse, but cheating on my hobbies. I was still able to release Way of Kings, which is my big capstone epic I'd been working on up until that point. I was still able to do a book in the Mistborn sequence. I had to put a lot aside, but it didn't feel like I was cheating because I view these characters as closely to my own as possible. Beyond that Jordan, even though I never knew him, was a mentor to me. His writing is what I studied when I was trying to figure out how to be an author. I picked up Wheel of Time and tried to figure out, how is he doing this? I wouldn't have said yes to anything else, but I said yes because it was Wheel of Time and I was so familiar and attached to these characters.

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  • 1222

    Interview: Jun 20th, 2013

    Joel Williams

    It's all coming to end, for yourself as well as the millions who read the books. What does that mean to people reading the books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can get a sense for it because I felt it myself in 2007. When I first was offered the project, and we signed contracts and I flew to Charleston where Harriet lives and I read the last scene that Jordan had written. The last scene in the book and the epilogue are his writing. I read that and got the same sense fans are having now. Having been on a long journey, with many wonderful experiences along the way, and having time to think about what it meant and why you loved it so much. It's bittersweet, when a journey is done. There's a sense of loss and regret. I felt it back then and I suspect that's what a lot of fans are going to be feeling.

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  • 1223

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    How many of you guys read the books in 1990, anyone here? That's a surprising number. Man, it's been a long road, hasn't it? You know, being a Wheel of Time fan is a really interesting experience. I don't know if any of you guys felt this, but it seems like everyone I talk to has like at least one period of extreme rage toward Robert Jordan.

    Harriet McDougal

    [laughter] Never!

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's weird isn't it? We love the series, we love him, and yet this is honest truth. My friend Micah and I, my roommate—he actually took my jacket photos, you can go look. It's Captain Demoux from the Mistborn books I named after him, Micah DeMoux. For years in the late 90s, early 2000s, any time someone said Robert Jordan's name—[to Harriet] I don't know if I told you this—we both raised our fists in the air and said, damn him! [laughter] In unison. He still does it. I can't do it anymore. But yeah, we did it in unison. It was like a thing for us because, you know, it's like this series is never ending. We love it, yet at the same time it's been ups and downs over the years, and the Wheel of Time has followed me through my career.

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  • 1224

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's a really interesting thing. When I got to college, I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I started reading the books that I loved as a youth and studying them and trying to figure out how to do writing. Because . . . I love my professors, but writing teachers don't actually teach you how to write. I don't know if any of you guys have taken writing classes, but they're like well, let's explore your inner voice. And I'm like, you're telling me I have to hear voices? Well, I already do but they're not telling me how to write. How do I write? How do I make a character cool? And teachers aren't really big on teaching you how to make characters cool. They like to teach you how to develop your style.

    And so I started reading books, and I was actually very very disappointed because some of authors that I read—I won't mention names—but some of authors I read as a youth did not hold up when I was an adult. And they were perfect for me at the age, but as I tried to inspect them as an adult writer trying to develop my style, I didn't find the depth that I wanted to dig into that I thought would teach me how to write. Robert Jordan still did. In fact, Robert Jordan was the one that I would dig into and find how much I'd missed. I constantly tell a story about as a 15 year old reading these books, you know, there's this character Moiraine who's just like always keeping the boys down and not letting them . . . She's always giving them orders, and I was always like, Moiraine, just leave them alone, they need to go off and do cool things! And then I read the books as an adult and I'm studying them and I'm like, you stupid kids, listen to Moiraine!

    [laughter]

    There's this depth to Wheel of Time books that the various characters are all expressed on very different levels. And Moiraine has an entire story going on behind the scenes that you don't see because you don't see through her viewpoints. And there's a little subtlety and detail. I mean, maybe I'm dense, but I didn't get the whole thing with it being our world, and there . . . and who was it? Not Buzz Aldrin, um—

    Harriet McDougal

    John Glenn.

    Brandon Sanderson

    John Glenn being in the book referenced, and America and Russia and the Cold War being referenced in legend. I didn't get that stuff till I was in college, and I'm like how did it miss that? You know, it's like a smack to the face, right, the first time you realize that Egwene is Egwene al'Vere, which is Guinevere. And you know, I didn't get this as a kid, and building these things out and understanding them and seeing the depth of writing that he was capable of—the really wonderful sentences that evoke so much feeling, emotion, and description.

    I started studying the Wheel of Time to learn how to write. It became my primary model, just on a prose level, of how to do this thing that no one could teach me how to do. I spent the next . . . I decided I wanted to be a writer—actually, I was serving mission for the LDS church in Korea. The reason is I . . . I really wanted to be a writer before then, but my mother convinced me that writers don't get scholarships, and that I should be a doctor instead. And so I actually applied to BYU—I grew up in Nebraska—to go be a chemistry major, because that got scholarships. And then I got into college and realized what they do to all those people who just said they want to be chemistry majors to get a scholarship, is they put them in a really hard chemistry class that other people don't have to take their freshman year to show you what chemistry is like.

    And I then went to Korea and was so happy to be on a different continent from chemistry. I did not enjoy that freshman year, but I did spend a lot of that time writing. And I decided I missed writing so much, but I didn't miss chemistry, that I had made the wrong choice, and I decided to start writing a book on my days off during my missionary work, and I just started writing in a notebook. And I completely fell in love with the process. I'd known since a kid this is what I wanted to do, but that's the first time that it clicked for me, that what I loved to do should be my job, right? That I could spend eight hours working on a story and come out of it feeling awesome and have not missed that time at all. I get the same thing from a lot of my friends who are code monkeys. It kind of scratches the same itch—that you get into it, and you're creating something, and it's working, and it's clicking. And yes, it can be hard but you love it at the same time. That's what I wanted to do.

    Over the course of the next eight years I wrote 13 novels, trying to break in. And I eventually sold Elantris, my sixth book. And I sold it to Tor books. And when I got an offer from Tor . . . It was funny, I called up my agent. He said, well, I want to take this and I want to shop it, because usually you can get a better offer if you have one offer from somebody. This is basic business philosophy, right? And you go to everyone else and say, well, we got this offer from this company, will you beat it? And I said no, you can't do that. And he's like, but we can get more money. And I said, Tor is Robert Jordan's publisher. [laughter] We're not going anywhere else. When you have an offer from the top you just take it, and I did. And he, to this . . . not to this day, because things have kind of changed in my career, but there were many years where he would say to me, you know, I still wish you'd let me taken that, I bet we could have, you know, got a bigger launch, and yada yada yada. And when I did start working on the Wheel of Time, I actually called him and I said, so do you still wish? And he's like ah, you know, ah . . .

    Harriet McDougal

    [laughter]

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  • 1225

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    But in 2007, Robert Jordan passed away. And I had never met him. I had been able to see him once at a convention, but I had never met him. All this time I viewed him as a mentor, but I didn't know him. We had sent him my first book. He got all sorts of ARCs, though. Harriet later found it. Everyone sends their book to Robert Jordan, right? And you know, when you get your first book . . . I just sent him a book because, you know, of course you're going to send your idol a book. But I never expected him to read it, and it was perfectly all right. But we did send him a book, we did dig it out later.

    And I was terrified for what would happen to the series, as everyone was. But I trusted Tor. I trusted Robert Jordan, and I assumed that the series was in good hands, even though I had read many interviews where he said if he passed away the series would not be finished, and that he would have his notes bulldozed. And in 2007, about a month or so maybe—maybe less than that—after he passed away, I got a phone call. And I'm actually going to let Harriet tell her story now of where that all came from.

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  • 1226

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Harriet McDougal

    So anyway, that was the beginning, and I really was quite sure. But I do have remnants of common sense, and I called the British publisher and said, do you have any suggestions? And I called an editor in New York whose opinion I trust and said, do you have any suggestions? Anybody better out there? And that went on for a number of weeks while I stewed on this decision a bit.

    And then I called Brandon Sanderson. And I didn't do the professional thing and say, hey Tor, give me his number. I thought Provo, Utah, that's got to be . . . that big. I called information, and I got a woman who answered the phone. I said, is this Brandon Sanderson's house? She said, yes it is. And I said well, my name's Harriet McDougal, and I'm the widow of Robert Jordan, and I'd like to talk to him about finishing the series that my husband wrote. And she said, I have no idea what you're talking about. [laughter] It was the other Brandon Sanderson.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He's a wrestler. [laughter] That's all I know about him. Google mixed us up. Bing mixed us up. [laughter]

    Harriet McDougal

    So anyway, then I called New York, got the right number, and called Brandon.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And so I got up in the morning . . . Now, I keep an artist's schedule. That's a nice way of saying that I sleep in till noon. I work from about . . . I do a lot of my writing from about ten until four a.m., and then I sleep until about noon, and then I get up. And then I work from about noon until five, doing mostly during that time email and things like that. But anyway, so I get up, and every day when I get up, the first thing that I do is I check my voicemail. I used to—now I let people call my assistant. Voicemail annoys me. I'll answer it if it's Harriet.

    But I listened to my voicemail, and there was a voicemail that said, 'Hello Brandon, this is Harriet McDougal. I would like you to call me back. There's something I'd like to talk to you about.' And she said . . .oh, 'Robert Jordan's widow', but I already knew who Harriet McDougal was. And so, I just got this voicemail, I'm like, what . . . what? Now, you’ve got to remember, it's not like I applied for this or anything.

    Harriet McDougal

    No.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did not. And it's not like I had any clue. I honestly assumed that it was taken care of, and it was just a fan wanting to read what came out, just like everyone else. And so I called Harriet back, and she didn't answer. She was out having a massage.

    Harriet McDougal

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So I called my editor, and he didn't answer. But he never answers, so it's okay. But then I called my agent, who always answers, and he didn't answer. And so I wandered upstairs to my wife and I—this is one of those distinct memories that get kind of burned in your brain—and I walked into the bedroom, and she was folding clothes or something, and I said, Robert Jordan's widow just called me. And my wife is like, what?

    Because, when we got married, we exchanged books. She had to read the Wheel of Time, and I had to read Robin McKinley—Robin McKinley's book is like that. But she was well versed in the Wheel of Time. She'd actually read Eye of the World before we got married, so that was a point in her favor early in the dating process. She hadn't read the whole series, which she has done now. And she said, so what did Robert Jordan's widow want? And I said, I don't know, I can't get a hold of her!

    And so my wife . . . she said she's never seen me that nervous. And she really hasn't. I'm not the nervous type. I'm very comfortable with lots of different situations. I'm just kind of a go with the flow sort of guy. If you get my wife up here, she says that on that day, I was more nervous than on my wedding day—she says that jealously.

    [laughter]

    But I had months to get ready for the wedding. This was out of nowhere, right? It just came out of nowhere. And I finally got smart, and I called up Tor. And I got a hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who is one of the editors there. And I said, Patrick, Robert Jordan's widow just called me. And Patrick said—I remember this distinctly, too—oh yeah, that's probably what you think it is. [laughter] I'll have her call you back. And I'm like, what do I think it is, Patrick? He wouldn't say a word. He would not say a word. He knew Harriet very well and knew that he did not want to be breaking any news. And so, Harriet called me back, and she said, well, I was just wondering if you would be interested . . . we're compiling a short list.

    Harriet McDougal

    Yes, a short list. [laughter] But, that's not what I said. We're compiling a short list.

    Brandon Sanderson

    A short list of people we're considering, and I'm wondering if you would be interested in finishing the Wheel of Time. And I said, aaahhhhhhh. [laughter] I always say this, and everyone laughs, but really it's true. I don't know if Harriet remembers it, but I could not speak. I had to write her an email the next day in which I said, I promise I can form coherent sentences. I was completely unable to reply to her. I did get out a 'yes'.

    Harriet McDougal

    Yes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    But that was about it. I was just stuttering and things. And then that night, it hit me. That night I couldn't sleep, as one might imagine, and I came to the realization—a couple of realizations. The first one being, holy cow, if I screw this up . . . [laughter] It's going to be the worst disaster of my life. Both personally, because I love these books, and because I know there's like ten million fans who will all find out where I live and then they will . . .

    Harriet McDougal

    And they'll write things that begin, Sanderson who . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. And I thought if I screw this up, and it kind of went further than that with me thinking, how can I not screw this up? Because the only person who could write this the right way is Robert Jordan, and anyone who tries to write the book is going to screw it up to an extent, because it won't be one hundred percent his vision, the way it was supposed to be.

    And I still believe that. I think we got really close. I think we made fantastic books. I think we did a wonderful job. I'm very proud of my work, but at the same time I acknowledge it's not quite what he would have done. There's no way for me to do what he would have done.

    And so I debated calling and saying no, because I thought, nobody can do this. It is impossible to do this work. And something stopped me. Kind of the third realization of the night, which was: What would happen if I said no, and they went and they hired somebody who didn't love the series? What would happen? And there are a lot of writers out there who are better than I am. I will be up front with that. I know many a writer who were much better writers than I, but none of them had read the Wheel of Time. Maya Angelou hasn't read the Wheel of Time, you know. And . . . what would happen if one of them took over the Wheel of Time, and then wrote it beautifully, but didn't get the characters right? And didn't do the book the right way? It would be my fault. Because I said no, and I could have done it.

    And I came to the realization that if Robert Jordan couldn't write the books, as a writer myself, yes I wanted to do it, because I really felt that I would screw it up the least. I felt—maybe some of you have felt something like this—like, I'm going to do it myself. And I had these moments of, yes I will do this, and I will do this myself. And I will make sure that everyone who's out there like me, terrified of what's going to happen, that they get the book, and it's the right book—that it's still the Wheel of Time.

    And so, that's when I wrote that email to Harriet the next day and I said, yes I want to do this. And I was very straightforward that time—no hemming and hawing this time—I really want to do this. I think I can do it, not as well as Robert Jordan, but better than anyone else out there. Because, if you take Wheel of Time fandom—and there are bigger Wheel of Time fans than me—but if you take all of Wheel of Time fandom, and you take pretty good fantasy writers, and you make a Venn diagram, I'm right there in the middle.

    And so I said yes. And then Harriet said, well I need a little more time to consider, which is justified. And I went on book tour, completely nervous for an entire month, not able to tell people that I had been offered the chance to work on the Wheel of Time . . . maybe.

    After this nerve wracking book tour, which—yeah, one of those tours. I was very early in my career—that was one of those tours where I would go to bookstores, and sometimes nobody would be there. And they would have not have ordered in the books, because they’re like, who are you again? And things like this. I got back, and Harriet called me and said, yes I would like you to do this.

    In a few weeks, we had all contract negotiations done. Contract negotiations went like this. My agent—who I do love by the way—even though I . . . His job is to offer me the business side, right? Because I'm an artist. My agent said, okay we'll do some negotiations, and this is our bargaining ground, and this . . . And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We just say yes. [laughter] And he's like, well we could try to push for this, and I'm like no, no, no, no. We say yes. And so he had to call back right after the offer and say, we say yes. The shortest negotiation of my entire life. I had contracts in hand like lightning speed. When we got the offer on my first book, offer came in April. We had contracts in November. Offer on this came on Monday, and I think we had contracts on Thursday, or something like that. And within a week, I was flying to Charleston.

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  • 1227

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    And I . . . I tell this story a lot, but it's a fun story. I flew in. Harriet herself picked me up at the airport. I had been really nervous to meet Harriet—like, you know, really nervous. I knew Harriet . . . like, she was one of the big editors in the field, and authors have this kind of—even, you know, published authors—are sometimes kind of scared of editors, right? And Harriet . . . I don't know if you guys know . . . I mean, she edited Ender's Game, okay? She edited—and discovered—Robert Jordan, and she's behind the two biggest books in fantasy and science fiction of the last 30 years—Ender's Game and Eye of the World. So I was really nervous.

    And so I'm like . . . and then I meet her, and as you can tell, she's like this wonderful, just so nice, awesome person. It was such a relief. I'm like, oh good. I actually called Emily that night and I'm like, ahh, I didn't need to be worried. Like, take your favorite grandmother and mix her with a southern gentlewoman and you have Harriet.

    Harriet McDougal

    I've hidden the whips.

    [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    And she drove me to the house there in Charleston, which is this wonderful house, built in the 1700s, right?

    Harriet McDougal

    Barely. 1798.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And we walk in the door, and Harriet had been cooking dinner, and it was a bean soup. I still remember all these things where she said, well I put some soup on, and I can warm it up, and would you like to have some food? And I said, I would like the ending, please.

    [laughter] [applause]

    Because I didn't know . . . You know, I just signed the contracts without knowing. You know, you guys work for Microsoft, NDA stuff, you got to say yes first, and then you get the NDA, and then you get to be a part of it.

    And so, I knew that there was an ending, because Robert Jordan had talked about writing the ending. I knew, and Harriet had confirmed, the ending had been written. And so I walked in, and it was like ten o'clock at night. But I got that ending, and I sat down in the front room—sitting room—and I read what you now have as primarily the epilogue of A Memory of Light. Almost all the epilogue was in there.

    Also contained in there were several big important scenes from the prologue, which we split among the three prologues. There were a couple of the really cool scenes in there. There was the Tower of Ghenjei. There was a place where Egwene gets a special visitor, and—I think it's called A Cup of Tea—that scene, but really it was the ending that I wanted to read.

    Harriet McDougal

    And there's the blank in the blank.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's the blank in the blank, yes, which is in the prologue of A Memory of Light—one of the prologue sequences. And I read all of this and read his ending, which you now have in your hands.

    And Harriet afterwards—she said, well what do you think? And I said, it was satisfying. That was my word for it. It was the right ending. I felt a huge sense of relief. In a lot of ways, there wasn't a lot there. There were 200 pages, and so it wasn't huge. But at the same time, it was a huge relief to me, because the ending had been done, and it had been done right. And my job, then, was not so impossible, because all I had to do was get from well-written book to well-written ending without screwing it up too much.

    And having that ending in hand is really what has made this possible, and made me able to work on these books in a way that I really feel conformed to Robert Jordan's vision for them, because I knew where he was going. And I tend to work from an ending—that's how I write my books, is I always have the ending in mind first. And so, that is the story of how you came to get A Memory of Light. And it has been an awesome and daunting and horrifying and extremely hard and wonderful experience all in one.

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  • 1228

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    People like to ask, how does it feel to be done? It feels like—I can only imagine—finishing a marathon. My wife has done one, and she's talked about how finishing one feels. It's like that. It's been a marathon of five years for me, and for a lot of us, a marathon of 23 years. And setting down that weight has been a relief, but again, it's something I couldn't set down until I was sure it was right. And I feel really good about what's happened. I'm very proud of my place in this, and very honored by my opportunity to work on it.

    And that's what I wanted to share with you guys. That's my presentation, so to speak. But we are going to do some questions. We have about 20 minutes left for questions. And so I'm going to go—there are three hands that went up really fast, and I'm going to go through these questions. Go ahead.

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  • 1229

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, will you come up and use the mic? Because then the people who are listening can hear what you have to say. They're sitting at their cubicles furiously producing new Microsoft Word products for me to write books with, so . . .

    Question

    It's a short question. Did you ever finish the book?

    Harriet McDougal

    No. [laughs] But I've read . . .

    Question

    It was a tease. That’s why I thought it was. Because you didn't say you did or did not. But you read 47 pages, but you didn't finish it, right?

    Harriet McDougal

    No.

    Question

    And still have not?

    Harriet McDougal

    But how many pages of Brandon Sanderson have I read now? [laughs]

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was very interesting working with Harriet during that first year. She's talked about this a little, but she considered getting somebody working on the book to be like a dying request of Robert Jordan's. And once she found me and gave me the stuff, she basically disappeared for a year. And if any of you have lost someone dear to you, you might understand why that was.

    I worked for a year basically in seclusion, getting all the notes ready and working on the outline and things, and it wasn't until after that year that Harriet came on board. And you know, she's an editor, and she needs something to work on, done, before . . . So she left me with it for that year, and grieved. And then, that next year is when we worked on Gathering Storm, after I had worked on some prose and things.

    Tags

  • 1230

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    Hi. Thanks very much for coming and doing this, I appreciate it. I've been looking at some of your . . . You've done the webcasts where you record yourself writing, and something I've noticed—maybe it's just because of the thought process going on in your head—but you seem to type fairly slowly for somebody who's written multiple thousand page novels. Is that intentional, and it sort of goes along as you're thinking, or is it something that you wish that you could speed up? Have you ever actually formally trained on how to type quickly?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can type very quickly. I can get up to, I think, 87 or something like that. I work by the process. The creative process is slower than the fingers. I'm not actually a very fast writer. I'm not a slow writer. I'm about middle of the pack. People talk about how quickly I write. I don't write quickly. I write a lot.

    I do this compulsively. I love to tell stories, and one quirk of mine is that in order to take a break from telling stories, I just tell a story I'm not supposed to be telling. Which is where a lot of the interesting books—I'll talk about a few of them in a few minutes, because Dwayne has them for sale—that's where a lot of those things come from. And so, yeah, I do not wish I could speed up.

    In fact, I don't even want to be able to read faster. I actually started taking a speed reading class in school, and the first thing they said is: you need to stop hearing the words as you read them, in order to read faster. And I said, I don't want to stop hearing the words. That's part of the beauty. And I actually dropped that class like that because I realized that's not what I want. Speed reading is not what I want. I don't want to go faster through the Wheel of Time—that doesn't make any sense. And it's the same thing with the creative process.

    Tags

  • 1231

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    I hope you don't mind if I have a second question since . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh, it's the guys behind you that you gotta . . . they look like they're nice fellows.

    Question

    Thank you. Jordan didn't plan 14 books certainly. As you said, you know, this trilogy will be good. And it's no secret that as an author . . . no author seems to be in complete control of their creation. It evolves. And he kept saying, no more than three more books, for like five books from the end. I think it appears like George R. R. Martin seems to be in a similar place, where, you know, there's this . . . [laughter, applause] Do you think that the experience of writing the end of Wheel of Time has given you a different perspective that will help you with Stormlight Archive? Or do you think that would never have been . . . Or do you think that your style, you know, did you always have it plotted out that it would never expand in that way?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It certainly could expand. It does happen to all authors, but authors do tend to fall into two general categories. George Martin has great terms for these, so I steal his. He calls them gardeners and architects.

    Gardeners, which Robert Jordan was and George Martin is, they explore their story and more discover it as they go. Robert Jordan was actually a little bit like halfway between architect and gardener, because he would always have waypoints that he was writing toward, and he knew the ending and things like that. Stephen King is a complete gardener. He says he doesn't know where he's going. He just puts characters in interesting situations, and starts writing. And George R. R. Martin has said that he's a gardener.

    I'm an architect. And an architect is someone who plots out things beforehand, and then writes them. But even being an architect the creative process is such that if while you're working on it, something better comes along, you have to be willing to knock down the blueprints that you have done, and build them up again.

    That said, things have not expanded on me in the same way. People point to the last book being split into three, but I point to my very first blog post I made about it, where I said I was planning to write a single 800,000 word book. And instead I wrote one—it's about a million words. So I'm within a fairly close hit on what I initially . . . [laughter] Eh, 200,000 words, 20 percent, whatever. But yeah, I'm more like a 20 percent than expanse—does that make sense? And Stormlight is written out as ten books . . . and I honestly think that it will hit that: two five book arcs, for those who are wondering. I think it will hit that, but we'll see. I have never done something this long before on my own, so . . .

    Tags

  • 1232

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    All right, and second question. Without being too terribly spoilerific, what's the one thing you wanted to find out, and didn't?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is an event in the epilogue, that one of the characters performed something that seems impossible by our understanding, and Robert Jordan did not explain how or why.

    Question

    That's fair. All right. I’ve got my own fan theories, and they'll just stay there. Thanks.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh huh.

    Tags

  • 1233

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    I actually do have a spoiler question, and I don't know . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, why don't you save that till afterward and come ask us.

    Question

    Okay. But I do want to say that your answer to his question there makes a whole lot more sense now—that you didn't know that . . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do not know either.

    Question

    Okay.

    [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nope, sorry. When I say he wrote the epilogue, he wrote the epilogue. And he left notes on a lot of things, but he didn't leave notes on the things he'd already finished, because we didn't need to know how to write those.

    Tags

  • 1234

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    So, this is a question expanding on the whole gardener versus architect thing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh huh.

    Question

    You say that you're an architect.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes.

    Question

    Now that—not a Wheel of Time question, actually—but your non Wheel of Time works have this whole meta world connecting them, the shard worlds and the sixteen shards and stuff. Where do you think you're going to go with that now that you . . . ?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, I can tell you where I'm going to go with that. I'm not sure how much I can say. For those who don't know, my epics are all connected. There are continuing characters through Elantris into Mistborn into Warbreaker into Way of Kings. It's a behind the scenes sort of thing—it's not something . . . you don't need to read them in order. It's not something you need to know in order to read one of the books. But there are continuing characters.

    And I have a grand arc for what is going on. It has to do with my original pitch to my editor on the Mistborn trilogy, which was actually a trilogy of trilogies. Way back in 2005 when I told him about it, I wanted to do three trilogies: one past, one present, one future. And I wanted to do an epic fantasy trilogy, which really explored kind of mythology and magic. And then a modern day trilogy, in which the epic fantasy had become the foundations of myth and religion for a trilogy set in about a 1980s level technology. And then I wanted to do a far future science fiction, in which the magic which had gone through all of the other books became the means by which space exploration became possible and the foundation of technology, particularly faster than light technology. And so that is a core spine of the greater story that I'm telling.

    Question

    I love Wheel of Time, but please do that, too. That sounds amazing.

    [laughter]

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  • 1235

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    Hi. So, you mentioned earlier that you have a tendency to write books you're not supposed to write, so you could kind of take a break.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, uh huh.

    Question

    I assume a couple of those are like Alloy of Law and Legion.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Legion was one, yep.

    Question

    So, I really liked those books, but it seems kind of mean of you to leave so many unresolved plot threads. [laughter] Any chance we'll get anything there?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, Legion I actually wrote as a television show pitch, was the idea for it . . . pitch a series. And I immediately sold it to Lionsgate. And so, we'll see. It's always hard to say what will happen in Hollywood because there's so much moving there, and to get the pieces in place to make a show or a movie just takes so much work. But I'm hopeful that you will see more there. I am doing more with Alloy of Law. I'll explain that in a minute. Okay?

    Question

    Thank you.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yep.

    Tags

  • 1236

    Interview: Feb 13th, 2013

    Question

    So, you already spoke to how daunting taking over the Wheel of Time is, and what an extensive series it is. One of the most impressive and interesting things to me in it is there's more than, I believe, 1700 named characters.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, you already spoke to how daunting taking over the Wheel of Time is, and what an extensive series it is. One of the most impressive and interesting things to me in it is there's more than, I believe, 1700 named characters.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's 2500.

    Question

    2500. That's even more than I thought.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's crazy.

    Question

    What is a fantasy author—since you can't just look in the phone book or something to grab a name—how do you find your inspiration for names for characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It really depends on the book I'm writing. For some of my books, I use interesting linguistic quirks that interest me. I've taken a number of linguistics classes, and so for instance, for Warbreaker I used just something simple like repeating consonant sounds, so we ended up with Vivenna and Susebron, to give a theme to some of the name. In Way of Kings, symmetry is holy, and so I use palindromes or one-letter-off palindromes as names, and that's where a lot of names came from in there.

    For Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan actually did look in the phonebook. The reason for this being is he wanted to harken to our world with the Wheel of Time, implying the Wheel of Time is perhaps our world in the future or in the past. And so he wanted names that felt like names of people you knew, but changed a little bit. And this is where things like "Thom" came from, spelled with an "H", or Mat, with you know, and all of this stuff.

    And so he would go through the phonebook looking for common names and tweak them. And so for Wheel of Time naming, I got lists of names. I just had fans' names, and I just used these names and tweaked them, in order to try and get the same style and feel of naming.

    One trick—if you're having trouble with this—that a lot of writers use, is they will pick a geographic area in our world, and they will base the names off of those geographic names. Like they'll say . . . I've used actually ancient Persian. I'm like, ancient Persian names, sure. And then I'll go and look at those and I will change them to fit my characters. But that way, everyone from the same region has a similar naming paradigm. So, there's all sorts of things that you can do.

    Question

    Thank you. That was the most informative explanation of naming I've heard.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.

    Tags

  • 1237

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    I am curious if professional writers ever get psyched out by their own works. When you are working on an epic series, such as The Stormlight Archive, do you ever have moments of doubt in your ability to see it through to completion? Does it ever feel overwhelming that you have so many volumes ahead of you to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's not the part that psychs me out. Length doesn't do that to me, particularly when I have a series well planned and I have a feel for how each book is going to be distinctive. This really helped me with the Mistborn series, for instance—when I planned it out, I planned each book to have its own identity. That kept me interested in them.

    No, what psychs me out is that sometimes something just turns out really well, like The Way of Kings, and then I immediately start thinking, "I have to do that again, and I don't know how I did it in the first place." Writing becomes a very instinctive thing.

    Most of the time when I talk about the process of writing, I'm analyzing what I've done after the fact. The truth of it is that right in the moment, right when you're sitting there working on a book, a lot of that stuff isn't going through your head. You're just running on instinct at that point. So it's easy to get psyched out when you're not sure if you can ever do it again.

    Tags

  • 1238

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    Do you feel that each new book you release should be better than the last? Is that something you think about while writing, or do you just do the best job that you can and hope that your works improve naturally over time with your skill?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It really depends on the project. Yes, I want every book to improve, but that's a bit of a platitude. It's an easy thing to say. It gets a bit different when you sit down to think about it.

    I followed The Way of Kings with The Alloy of Law. Is The Alloy of Law a better book than The Way of Kings? No, it is not. The Way of Kings I spent somewhere around ten years working on; with The Alloy of Law I had a couple of months. In the case of a book like that, I sit down and say, okay, there are things I want to learn in this process. Different books are going to have a different feel. Now, there are people out there who like The Alloy of Law better than The Way of Kings—it's not a better book, but there are people who will enjoy it more.

    When I sat down to write Warbreaker, I said I wanted to get better at a certain type of humor. And I think I did get much better at that, in that book. Is the book itself better than The Hero of Ages that came before it? I do some things better, but it's hard to compare a standalone volume to the third book in an epic trilogy. They're going to do very different things.

    So it's hard to say "better book"/"not better book." I think "always learning and growing" is a better way to put it than getting better with each book.

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  • 1239

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    Writing an epic series over many years will surely gather you many fans and many haters. In the case of Robert Jordan, it seems like bad reviews and fan backlash mounted up with each new volume as the series went on. Is that something you are concerned about? Do you try to figure out why people responded that way to that series and work to avoid a similar situation with your own, or do you just disregard the naysayers in general?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Of these things that you've asked me questions on, this is the one that I've spent the most time thinking about. It is an interesting phenomenon. Each Wheel of Time book sold more copies than the one before it, yet each one up through book ten got more and more negative reviews. They start out strong, then a few of the books have balanced numbers of reviews, and then they start to take a nosedive—even as the sales of the books go up and up.

    The same thing has happened with my own books—as they have grown more popular, they've gotten worse and worse reviews. It's very interesting. You can watch a book like Elantris, which when it came out had more or less universal acclaim, partially I think based on expectations. People read it thinking, hey, there's this brand new author, it probably isn't that good—hey, this book isn't half bad! And then they go and write reviews on Amazon. There are a number of early reviews there that say, wow, this wasn't half bad! This new guy is someone to watch!

    As you gain a reputation, more and more people pick you up by reputation—simply hearing "This is a great book" and picking it up, rather than looking into the book and deciding it's a book they will like. That's going to lead to more people picking up the book who it's just not a good match for. I think that certainly is part of it.

    I do also think that there is epic series sprawl; there's a legitimate complaint against these series like the Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire. I think the fans still like the books, but they have complaints about how they're happening. George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan are really doing some new and unique things. Robert Jordan didn't get to read any ten-book epic fantasy series of that nature; he had to do it on his own without a model to follow. I think that as we go forward in the genre, hopefully we're picking up on things—we're standing on the shoulders of giants, and hopefully we will figure out how we can do this without necessarily sprawling quite so much, which I think is part of the problem. There's this push and pull in epic fantasy where we read epic fantasy because we love the depth of characterization and world building, and yet if the author does too much of that in every book, then we lose the ability to move forward in a central plot. That can be very frustrating.

    I will say that when I was able to read the Wheel of Time from start to finish, having the complete story, that feeling that it wasn't going anywhere in places just wasn't there. That feeling came because you would wait two years for a book, and then when you finished it you'd have to wait two more years for the next book, and because of the nature of the epic series you're just getting a little tiny sliver of the story. So that part of it is just the nature of the beast, but I think we can do things to mitigate that, and I will certainly try.

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  • 1240

    Interview: Apr 21st, 2013

    Invisible Vanguard

    Lastly, what advice can you give to new and unknown authors with limitless ambition who want to write epic fantasy and/or sci-fi books? From my own personal research, it appears that agents and publishers do not want long word counts from new authors. Is it best to start simple with shorter stories and work your way up to your true love: the epic, or should you just go for it and write as much as you deem necessary and pitch your grand masterwork as a whole?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are so many questions in there that are going to be very situationally dependent. If you have not already written a few novels, I would say absolutely do not write your grand epic yet. You won't have the skill to do it, and it will disappoint you. I've run across a lot of new writers who this has happened to. They want to do their own Wheel of Time, but they don't yet have the skill to achieve it. I tried this myself and learned this the hard way.

    That's not to say that it's impossible to do, but I strongly recommend to most writers to try a few other books first. Standalones or something, to really get your head around the idea of characterization and plotting and narrative arcs before you say, okay, I'm going to tell a story across ten books instead.

    If you are confident of your skill, and find that you are just incapable of writing anything else? Writing is the most important thing. If something makes you not write, then it's usually going to be bad advice no matter who it comes from. So then I suggest just writing and loving what you're writing. If you can somehow style your book as "a standalone with sequel potential," then that's probably a better way to go.

    This is not just for publishers and agents. New readers have a built-in skepticism toward a new author who is trying something that massive. I've found that a lot of readers like to try the standalone to find out what kind of writer you are, before they then read your big series. Having a couple of standalones has been very useful for me for that reason.

    At the end of the day, just write what you love. Yes, editors and agents say they want shorter books. This is because historically it has been proven to them that authors trying to write books that are too long for them bite off more than they can chew and the book spirals out of control. But the draft of Elantris that was the first thing I sold was 250,000 words. That's a full 100,000 words longer than what everyone was telling me agents won't even look at. So by empirical proof: They will look at a longer book if it works for them. So write what you love—if you can get into your head that you're going to do this professionally, and that you have years to learn how to do this, then that's going to help you. Taking the time to practice with shorter works will help you get ready to write your epic. But if you just can't do that, then go for it.

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  • 1241

    Interview: 2013

    Magick8Ball (March 2013)

    Sanderson AMA? I know he already did one about a year ago, but I remember hearing he was planning on doing another AMA a couple months after the last book came out so we could ask some wrap-up questions. Is this still in the works?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    As mentioned in this thread elsewhere, I will be doing it on the 15th of April. I chose the date so there would be time for those waiting for the ebook to at least have a chance to read some before the AMA.

    I chose /r/fantasy because the mod there has been asking me for some time, and I feel he does a wonderful job with the community. However, I intend this to be for AMOL, and will happily answer WoT questions.

    I'm always willing to answer questions when people find me in a thread, however, and have something they want answered. If you have one or two now, I'd give you a reply (do use the spoiler tags if needed).

    ilostmyfirstaccount

    I'm trying real hard to think of a question to ask you that I know you can answer but the ones I have, you've already stated that they are meant to be unanswered.

    So instead I'll just take this opportunity to thank you for an epic conclusion to a large portion of my life. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. So thank you for your part in that magnificent ending.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was an honor. I say that a lot, but I mean it.

    Tags

  • 1242

    Interview: 2013

    chaosgeneral (March 2013)

    Just wanted to say, I love the way you interact with the community. I have only started reading your books in the past year or so (and I've read them all already), and I love your writing style.

    When it comes to Wheel of Time, I think you nailed it, Jordan's books got a bit muddy and slow towards the end, but as soon as I get to your 3 it becomes exciting and I honestly think your wrote it better than Robert could have.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I doubt I deserve that particular compliment, but thank you for the kind words.

    Tags

  • 1243

    Interview: 2013

    iwasazombie (March 2013)

    Hey Brandon! I'm the redheaded dude who was helping at the last two Midnight Release parties, and I am actually at BYU right now. I have two questions:

    I know you've said you can't answer these directly, so, rather than give the "official" answer, I was wondering if you could give us your "fan theory" on the answer, as if you weren't the writer.

    What do you think about Mat, Rand, and Perrin keeping certain "abilities"? I know you've said that they may or may not still be ta'veren, and Perrin thinks they aren't, but can Perrin still talk to wolves? Is Mat still lucky? Does Mat still have his memories?

    In your opinion, who do you think Nakomi was? Do you like the "Nakomi is the avatar of the Creator theory"? Do you think of her as the third member of the Christian godhead?

    Finally, Harriet was quoted as saying that she thinks Rand's special ability at the end was a "new magic"? Do you agree? Or do you think it is something else?

    Thanks for being awesome!

    Brandon Sanderson

    1. Perrin can still talk to wolves. That is certain. Also, Mat keeps his memories. These two are official, not theories on my part. What I can't give official on is the ta'veren-ness of the guys. I don't think RJ ever even says in the notes. Me? I think they aren't.

    2. I'm too close to this one. I can't say, unfortunately. I can answer as a fan for things I don't know because it's not in the notes, or for things I could theorize about before I came onto the project. For things I learned about while working, I don't have a "fan" perspective, only a writer perspective. Sorry.

    3. Harriet is more likely to be right than I am, but I don't believe it is a new magic. I think it is a result of Rand touching the Pattern directly.

    iwasazombie

    Awesome! So, I'm still unsure about Mat's luck. Would you say that's part of his "ta'veren-ness?"

    Thanks for the great answers. I'm more at peace now with some of the previous answers you've given.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My gut tells me Mat still has his luck, but not to the extent he once had. But I have no foundation for this in the notes.

    Tags

  • 1244

    Interview: 2013

    RockguyRy (March 2013)

    I want to echo comments about how wonderful of a job you did juggling this epic and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion.

    I do have one question: Was the inclusion of Dannil always planned in your mind or did your re-read of WoT and seeing Jordan's notes on the potential main fourth character revive him? I have to say, seeing him—after knowing his importance from your discussion during the re-read—was one of the dozen moments that made me tear up.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My upping (by just a slight amount) of this character's place in the last few books came exactly because of the reasons you mentioned. It was not planned until I had conversations with Harriet about the character, and I came to have a specific affection for him because of them.

    Tags

  • 1245

    Interview: 2013

    depricatedzero (March 2013)

    I can't wait! I had a couple questions I posted asking for another AMA from you a couple months back. I'll reword them here to be more concise, if you feel up to answering.

    My questions are more Mistborn related than WOT, so wouldn't be entirely appropriate to the topic of your planned AMA. I got into Mistborn after reading The Gathering Storm—it's now my favorite series, above even WOT. Anyway, my point is this: you gained a number of fans through the Wheel of Time.

    So first: Do you feel like your work on WOT has overshadowed your other works at all?

    Second: Any plans you can share for the future of the Mistborn series?

    And third: Looking back, how was the ride? Were there moments where you despaired of finishing it, or was it a constant fanboy-rush?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First: It probably has right now. I have no problem with that. Being able to work on the Wheel of Time was a literal dream come true for me. If, at the end of my career, the thing I'm remembered for most is being involved with something I love, then I'll be happy I'm being remembered at all. That said, I hope to create some things in my own life that are worth remembering.

    I don't know if I can or should strive for the height of popularity the Wheel of Time reached. But I never did get into this for popularity. I did it, and do it, to tell the stories I like telling—and whether one overshadows another isn't a very big deal to me.

    2) I do want to get to the modern day trilogy eventually, but more and more, I've been itching to do a few southern continent books. They have a cool way of interacting with the magic.

    3) In working on any book, there are many moments of beating your head against the wall. There were a particularly large number of those working on these books—they were far more difficult to do than my own work. The ride was a great one, but was not without its moments of frustration as things weren't clicking, or I missed something important and had to rewrite to get it in, or a character just wouldn't come out right.

    depricatedzero

    Wow, thank you for the thoughtful reply. I had the pleasure of meeting you at a Towers of Midnight signing, and one thing I keep thinking about it is how truly happy you appeared being there. Every other author I've met seemed to take signings as a chore, and they always felt rushed, dispassionate even. Talking to you, I got the feeling you really enjoyed being there and getting to be a part of the series. Like a fan living his dream. I thought that was amazing.

    As my questions go, I like trying to stir thought. It struck me that that's a situation I couldn't even conceive of being in, but which must have some impact and consideration. I already hold a deep respect for you, and that just vindicates it.

    As Mistborn goes, again it's my Favorite series. Not just of yours, capital F. You've replaced Orson Scott Card as my favorite author with it. That's a massive tease haha, I would love to read either one. Can you say more about the way they interact with the magic on the southern continent?

    And on point 3: That sounds like my job - programming. Haha. I can entirely understand that.

    Thanks for answering!

    Tags

  • 1246

    Interview: 2013

    Fencinator (March 2013)

    If you're still hanging around, there's something that's been nagging at me since I read A Memory of Light.

    SPOILER
    Lan. Why is it that Lan ended up surviving? Was this your decision, or RJ/Harriet's? Lan has pretty clearly been building towards dying to the Shadow the entire series. Was it just too obvious of a move? That being said, it was one of my happiest moments when he stood back up. Kinda nice to see Lan stay an unstoppable juggernaut.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lan's survival was mandated by RJ. It was something we could have changed, in that he didn't say directly "don't kill him", but some of his notes talk of what happens after the Last Battle, and those involve Lan. It is clear to me that he wanted Lan to live. I took comments like this as mandates unless there were very good reasons to do otherwise.

    Note that I have not weighed in on whether Lan died or not. The position some fans have theorized (that he died, and Rand changed the Pattern) is defensible. Some asked me about it on tour. I haven't said whether it is the case or not.

    And, because I have more leeway with such things now, here are some nice quotes for you directly from RJ's notes regarding what happens to Lan and the Borderlands following the Last Battle.

    "Malkier might have a lot of uniting to do with the western end of the Borderlands under Lan, who will find himself made king out there . . ."

    "The Blight recedes to some extent, I'm not sure how far, it recedes a good bit, though. And they can reclaim some, I'm not sure they can reclaim all of Malkier at this point, but the Blight has visibly retreated so they can go down there and check on the towers on the Blight Border. And they are miles inside the Borderland now, instead of being right on the Border, towers sitting right on the edge of the Blight. They're not on the Blight anymore."

    So, talk that the Blight is completely gone isn't true, though it does retreat. (And there are other pockets of land in the north where it is not present.)

    Fencinator

    Thanks! I would love to say that I responded like a normal 20-year old would and was mildly happy about getting this extra information. However, instead, I squealed in glee. So thank you for bringing me squeal amounts of joy, Mr. Sanderson.

    Tags

  • 1247

    Interview: 2013

    Kintanon (March 2013)

    Why, of all of the people in the internet, do you have 'Novice Writer' as your flair? I mean, I understand that you don't have the ungodly library of titles to your name that someone like David Weber or Piers Anthony does, but I think once you write more than 1 best seller you have to at least upgrade that to 'Professionla Writer' or at least 'Journeyman Wordsmith' or something!

    Also, I must give you many many many thanks for the way you handled completed the Wheel of Time series. I admit to being overcome with trepidation when I heard that you were going to be completing the series because while I really really really liked the Mistborn novels, then didn't seem quite in line with the feel of Jordan's universe. I was worried. But you handled the completion of a series that has been with me since middle school incredibly well and brought everything to a satisfactory conclusion in some an artful manner that it was never at any time obvious that Jordan himself wasn't penning every word.

    I'm looking forward to more of your works in the future now more than ever.

    Brandon Sanderson

    See elsewhere in the thread why I chose that flair, but I've been persuaded that at this point, "novice writer" was strange enough on me to be out of place. So I've gone ahead and changed it.

    Working on the Wheel of Time was one of the great pleasures of my life. Thanks for the kind words.

    Tags

  • 1248

    Interview: 2013

    anotherface (March 2013)

    Brandon has written 18 books in the last 8 years.

    Robot jokes aside, there are three possible explanations for this:

    - Brandon writes just over two books every year for 8 years. That's not impossible, but given the size of the work in question it's very difficult.

    - Brandon had already written lots of these books in draft form prior to the publication of Elantris/Mistborn. These currently published titles were written in that time period. (He alludes to this in his writing of The Way of Kings).

    - (Tin foil hat time!) Brandon isn't just one person, but several people working under the Sanderson name with him having the final say/edit. This one is entirely unsubstantiated and given that it's 18 books and not 30 I'm not inclined to believe it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You're pretty close on several of these points. I generally write two books a year—a big one and a small one. This is a habit I fell into during my early, unpublished years. I'd do one longer epic fantasy and one shorter "breather" novel to try something new or to keep myself fresh.

    Off the cuff, here's how I think it breaks down. (Elantris was finished long before, in 2000.) There's one year of three shorter books instead of an epic. (That was the year I tried to write a book called the Liar of Partinel, and it just didn't work. Wrote The Rithmatist instead. This is also the year I got called and asked to work on the Wheel of Time.) Also, note that the year of Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings just about killed me, and is the busiest I've ever been.

    A Memory of Light—last book of the Wheel of Time—took by far the longest of these all, particularly with the revision demands during 2012 (which is why I had no epic fantasy that year, only the two novellas.)

    2002: The Way of Kings (early draft)
    2003: Mistborn
    2004: Mistborn 2, Alcatraz 1
    2005: Mistborn 3, Alcatraz 2
    2006: Warbreaker, Alcatraz 3
    2007: Steelheart, The Rithmatist, Alcatraz 4 (Alcatraz was a 4-book contract.)
    2008: The Gathering Storm, Part of Towers of Midnight
    2009: Towers of Midnight, The Way of Kings (New draft from scratch.)
    2010: Alloy of Law, half of A Memory of Light
    2011: Half of A Memory of Light
    2012: Legion, Emperor's Soul,
    2013: Words of Radiance, Steelheart 2 (hopefully)

    anotherface

    Thank you for taking the time to address some of my points!

    Tags

  • 1249

    Interview: 2013

    RazGriz3 (May 2013)

    Was anyone else a little disappointed with the way to Ogier showed up for the Last Battle? Kinda just like "Oh yeah, we are here too." Then that was it. The scenes in which we see Ogier fighting are awesome, but I felt their introduction to the Last Battle was a little lacking. Anyone else?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The way they show up is actually the result of a sequence being cut. Originally, Perrin led an expedition into the Ways to try and close the Waygate in Caemlyn from behind. During this, the Ogier arrived, full of song, to drive off the Black Wind. Unfortunately, this sequence had logistical problems with the rest of the book, and had to be deleted entirely. The biggest casualty of this cut was the Ogier introduction, which didn't work nearly as well in the new sequence as it once had.

    kaybeesee

    Thanks so much for adding your insight.

    Ever thought about publishing a deleted scenes book? If movies can do it, why not books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Afraid it isn't my call. You'd have to convince Harriet. That said, we are releasing some deleted scenes in the Unfettered Anthology to help with a friend's medical bills. (They aren't the Perrin ones, though.)

    Andre_Gigante

    Thank you for being a redditor as well as an awesome author.

    Pilkunussija

    Did the same thing happen with Mashadar?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, no deleted scenes here. I did Mashadar the way I did because of the small amount of information in the notes about it or Fain, and I felt that going with what little I did have was better than exploring widely without knowing where RJ wanted to go. In some other cases, I did extrapolate when we didn't have much from RJ, but here it felt better to go with the "less is more" idea.

    There was a big danger in these books in me taking over too much and driving the books far from RJ's original vision. I had to pick and choose carefully which parts I extrapolated, and I did it based more on my own instincts and talents than anything else. For example, I felt very comfortable with Perrin as a character—he'd always been my favorite, and I felt like I knew him very well and could write him strongly. So, in Towers of Midnight where we had very little direction on what to do with Perrin, I felt that the right move was to expand his part and develop a sequence on my own.

    However, for Mat in the Tower of Ghenjei, RJ had been planning this sequence for years and years. He wrote or outlined a good portion of it before he died. It was a small sequence, however, only a couple of chapters worth. I realized fans would be expecting more from this sequence, but my instincts said that it would be wrong to develop it into something much larger. That would not only go against RJ's wishes, but would risk messing things up royally. RJ had laid careful foreshadowing and groundwork for the scenes, and had a specific vision for this sequence. Perhaps if he'd lived, he would have expanded it in additional directions, but it would have been the wrong place for me to add.

    Fain through my three books feels very similar to me. It wasn't as strict here as it was with the Mat/Ghenjei sequence—I COULD have expanded, and perhaps I would have, given more time. However, at the same time, there is an argument to be had that RJ wanted Fain to have a lesser-than-expected place in the Last Battle, and expanding him would undermine this.

    devoidz

    I wish the Ways had been touched on. They were very interesting, as well as the portal stones. Was there any more info, or back story, on the Black Wind that hasn't been shared? Thanks for responding to us, by the way. I loved the last three books, you did an awesome job on them. I am getting ready to start going through some of your own stories.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is some, but not as much as I think fans hope. In regards to something else mentioned on this thread—I believe that RJ was planning to do the Ogier/Seanchan Ogier relationship exploration in the Outriggers.

    1anthony90

    What logistical problems were there?

    simps984

    IIRC in some of Brandon's other posts on Reddit, he indicated that the deleted scenes were casualties of keeping the book reasonable in length. Additionally, Harriet or the publisher preferred that the storyline in A Memory of Light should be directly approaching the Last Battle, and this sequence got a little too far away from that.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were a number. The biggest one was that the sequence wasn't needed. As you can judge from the final book, the Waygate didn't NEED to be closed. The structure of the battle worked just fine without it, as the plan was always to draw the Shadow's armies upward and through the woods. By the time the big fights here played out, it didn't matter terribly much if the Trollocs were being resupplied from behind.

    Beyond that, the weight of this heavy Perrin sequence in the early middle of the book was distracting, keeping attention away from Rand and from the push toward the rest of the Last Battle. (this is what simps984 mentioned in his reply, which is correct.) The sequence was awesome on its own, but distracting in conjunction with the rest of the novel.

    I would still have liked to have found a way to make it work, but I feel that way about every scene I end up deleting from the book. The truth is that aside from the Ogier arrival, nothing big was lost by cutting this ten thousand words—and a whole lot was gained.

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  • 1250

    Interview: Jan 12th, 2013

    nutsocharles

    So who's at the Charleston Q&A and signing right now? Anybody?

    We could have an impromptu meetup at the rotunda if anybody else is around.

    njm1314

    Well, what did you ask?

    nutsocharles

    Second question, how did they feel now that it's done.

    njm1314

    I thought that you were there personally. No?

    nutsocharles

    I was. I was the second person up to ask a question at the panel at 3pm.

    njm1314

    Oh, thought you meant second question for the people that were there.

    Well then what did they say?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Harriet McDougal

    Collectively, that it was bittersweet. Brandon because he got to write the last three but it was over, Harriet that Robert's quest was completed. Probably a lot of the same things the readers were feeling, as we finally got the last book, but now there's no more books. Except the encyclopedia, which is around two years away.

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  • 1251

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    sleepinghour

    Was anything new revealed during the Q&A?

    TsorovanSaidin

    Not really.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He said Androl was strictly him, no sorta fan shout out. But as fans, we all sorta have those things we see as "should be" possible. And for Brandon, Androl was like playing Portal. That's why Androl came across as such a real character. Androl Is Brandon thrown into the world.

    Tags

  • 1252

    Interview: Feb 1st, 2013

    TsorovanSaidin

    The only other thing we asked him was about a certain lighting of a pipe.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He said that he has no idea what the ending with Rand lightning the pipe truly meant. That was completely RJ. I asked him, based on my own theory, that what Rand did was a by product of him being almost a convergence of the Pattern. Since he wove with all three powers and wove the whole of the Age lace that he was now able to bend the Pattern and essentially "weave reality." Which would be more far helpful than the One Power. It may also explain why he's burnt out and not going crazy because of, he has a far better substation.

    TsorovanSaidin

    Pops! Forgot to add! Brandon said he doesn't know for sure but, that is close to his own theory. And they ARE releasing the complete encyclopedia on the series. He estimates by sometime next year.

    Tags

  • 1253

    Interview: Jul 16th, 2013

    Dagobot

    What was your inspiration for Steelheart?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was on book tour, running late to meet my editor in Pittsburgh. My phone was dead, I'd forgotten my charger, and was rushing along, when someone cut me off in traffic. I got very annoyed at this person, which is not something I normally do. I'm usually pretty easygoing, but this time I thought: "You're lucky I don't have super powers, guy-who-just-cut-me-off, because if I did, I'd totally blow up your car right now." Then I thought: "That's horrifying that I would even think of doing that to a random stranger!"

    Anytime that I get horrified like that makes me realize that there's a story there somewhere. So I spent the rest of that drive thinking about what would really happen if I had super powers. Would I go out and be a hero, or would I just start doing whatever I wanted to? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing? I came up with a world where people become what I call Epics. They gain super powers, but they use them in the wrong ways, like I was tempted to do when that car cut me off. That spun me into the story. How would normal people fight against these individuals with awesome powers? How would the country deal with them?

    Tags

  • 1254

    Interview: Jul 16th, 2013

    Dagobot

    With so many superhero comics running for so long, did you ever run into problems with originality in writing the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Again, Steelheart is an action book. It deals less with the superhero tradition and more with the story of ordinary characters trying to take down Steelheart. Still, I am evoking some of those superhero concepts, so I did run into some of the issues you're talking about.

    For example, I found that a lot of potential names for superheroes and super villains have been used a dozen times by DC or Marvel over the years, so coming up with original names was difficult. Finding original uses of powers was also very difficult for the same reason. I had to scratch into nooks and crannies to discover things I hadn't seen done extensively before.

    I do enjoy the comic form, but&mdash'outside of some of the indies—I find I don't often get complete storylines in the way that I would like to. One of the things I want to do with Steelheart is to create a complete story with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. I do hope that I've been able to clear some new paths and add something distinctive to the genre. At the end of the day, though, I was just trying to tell an awesome story.

    Tags

  • 1255

    Interview: Jul 16th, 2013

    Dagobot

    Some people may say that stories about superheroes are predominantly highly-colorful, action-packed, but most of all a visual experience—how can you get over this with a prose novel? What does prose bring to the table that "comics" can't—or don't?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question. I've thought about this quite a bit and have a few of my own theories about the novel as form. What can novels do that films can't? The trick is to highlight what a novel can do. For example, more so than in visual media, novels allow you to really dig into character thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Steelheart is told from the first-person viewpoint of the main character David. In doing that, I can really dig into who David is as a character and have the way he describes the world inform us about him. Granted, a good comic is going to give you some of this, but there just isn't a lot of space for words. The more thoughts you add in comics, the more the reader just wants you to move on with the story. There are different strengths to the different mediums of storytelling, but one of the strengths of the novel is its ability to showcase character.

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  • 1256

    Interview: Jul 19th, 2013

    Austin Teen Book Festival

    What's the hardest thing about writing a sequel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here's something about the way I work. New projects excite me. In fact, I'm often dangling the new project in front of myself as incentive to finish my current project, saying, "When you get this book done, and it's done right and it's awesome, you get to go do something new." It's part of what I like about my job, always being able to do something new. It keeps me productive as a writer.

    The hardest part about doing a sequel is this: yes, it's new, but it's also familiar, and there's a part of me that says, "I don't want to do that. I want to do something completely different." However, it's important to have the discipline to say, "No, you promised your readers that you were going to finish this!" Beyond that, there are certain themes, characters, and stories that you can only explore by doing something that's more long-form, like a series. As a reader, I prefer to read series, but as a writer sometimes it's hard to make myself do the familiar instead of something brand-new.

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  • 1257

    Interview: Jul 19th, 2013

    Austin Teen Book Festival

    What character of yours would be a great addition to Game of Thrones?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha! I don't know if I hate any of my characters enough to do that to them! What interesting questions you have! I think Kelsier from Mistborn would probably fit in the best. Not a lot of people pick up on this, but Kelsier is actually a psychopath. He likes to kill people. He takes pleasure and joy in it. He only lets this side of himself out once in a while, but there are points in the book where he takes down a nobleman, and he's just gleeful about the ability and the chance to do it.

    In the Mistborn world, he's a hero because the people Kelsier is killing are oppressors. Part of the fun of writing him was the idea that in another story, if things had gone differently, he'd be the villain. But in this story, Kelsier is the hero, and it's because he's able to channel his being a psychopath into a noble cause, but still, there's a danger behind Kelsier's eyes that might let him survive in Westeros better than a lot of my other characters.

    Tags

  • 1258

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    When you've finished 12 novels and you haven't made a single dime, you really ought to, you know, have a long, hard look at what you're doing. And I did.

    When I look back and say, what grabbed me? What was it? And I think it's partially the imagination, the sense of wonder. We as people like to go do this. We want to see new things. There’s an adventurous, exploratory sense inside of us. And fantasy books are about that: taking us to places that we haven't been, that we can't go. But our imaginations can.

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  • 1259

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    BYU Magazine

    Adjunct instructor and BYU alum Brandon Sanderson (BA ’00, MA ’05) harnessed his imagination to write 12 manuscripts filled with magical worlds and inspiring characters–but after six years of writing, not one book had been accepted for publication.

    Brandon Sanderson

    These books that I'd started writing—you know, after the first six. The first five I thought, you know, were just practice. But, books six through about nine, I really put a lot into those. I felt I was getting really good as a writer. I felt I knew what I was doing, and I felt I was writing really good books.

    I was getting stacks and stacks of rejections. And people were telling me, "Why don't you be more like this writer over here?" "Why don't you be more like this writer over here?" "Your novels are too big. They're too long. We can't buy things that are this long. Write them shorter."

    And I had to make the decision that, at the end of my life, if I had a hundred unpublished novels in the closet, would I be okay with that? Would I be okay with never selling anything? I decided I was going to write the biggest, baddest, most awesome book that I could. I was going to ignore everything that people were telling me.

    At that time, really popular in fantasy was kind of very gritty and dark fantasy. And I said, no, that's not what I want to write. I'm going to write heroic fantasy—you know, stories like I want to read.

    By coincidence, it was a few months after I'd finished that book—I hadn't sent it anywhere—that someone called me wanting to buy Elantris, the sixth book that I'd written—that I'd really had felt would be the book that broke me out, all those years ago.

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  • 1260

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    BYU Magazine

    Once Sanderson published Elantris in 2005, the floodgates were open. By 2013, he had published 14 novels, including the final three books in the epic Wheel of Time series, whose original author, Robert Jordan, died in 2007.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was kind of a—I don't know—a fulfillment for me that I was doing the right thing. But it was also this great moment where I realized, hey, people do want to read those things that I was doing.

    I'm glad I had the crisis, and came out of it, before I sold the book. I'm glad that I was able to make the decision that this was what I wanted to do, and commit myself to writing, even if I never sold anything. And then it was perfectly all right and awesome for me to get a really nice book deal with a big New York publisher, and become a best seller. I'm perfectly okay with that now that it's happened.

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  • 1261

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2013

    BYU Magazine

    Sanderson hit the New York Times best seller list six times in four years. With A Memory of Light, the 14th and final book in the Wheel of Time—delivered to a throng of die-hard fans at a BYU midnight release party in January 2013—Sanderson topped the list again.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Stories are about people; the stories aren't about the fantasy. When I read Tolkien, the story of Sam and Frodo and what they went through, and their determination, and Sam's loyalty—these are inspiring. This is what changes peoples' lives.

    That's my goal in writing this. You know, people—real people—and the struggles they go through. And hopefully, by reading them, and having a fun time because it's an adventure, but at the same time, what should stay with you is the choices they make. And hopefully that will help the people who have read them to lead better lives.

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  • 1262

    Interview: 2013

    Patmcc10 (January 2013)

    How many books can one man write? (AKA A new Brandon Sanderson book)

    drake129103

    I thought he was writing Stormlight 2? AMOL just came out, as did Legion and The Emperor's Soul (both novellas, I know). When did he write this? I wish I had half the work ethic that Mr. Sanderson does.

    moose_man

    It's one of his 'breather projects' between/during the writing of larger works.

    mes09

    It's also one of the books that he started/wrote before he got involved in WoT.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Mes09 is right. This is one of the projects I was developing before I got involved with he WoT. I've actually been reading the prologue at conventions for years. I had to put the book aside in order to do the Wheel of Time. Now that I've finished, I had time to do revisions of this justice (Doing that was a breather project for me between AMOL and Stormlight 2.)

    The odd thing is, I still feel kind of bad about not having a book come out last year, only short fiction. It's been almost three years now since The Way of Kings, still with no sequel.

    I did need to get this book out of my system, though. It had been brewing for way too long. Fortunately, I had the majority of it done years ago.

    queentenobia

    Another book?? I cannot wait to delve into it. I started on your books with The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight. Then I picked up Emperor's Soul because the story looked intriguing and omg the cover art was so brilliant, and now am reading The Way of Kings. I have to say I became an instant fan, I cannot wait to read your other books. I love the way you portray your characters. I don't know if you will ever see this but thank you, your book, your writings they filled me with hope.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did see it. Thank you for reading, and for the kind words.

    Tags

  • 1263

    Interview: 2013

    Chlis (January 2013)

    Quick question if you're still about; Is this book [Steelheart] part of the Cosmere? Since it's based in Chicago I'm wondering if that maybe isn't the case?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, most of my "breather novels" are not Cosmere. The Cosmere requires meticulous planning and continuity. That's not usually good for what I'm looking to do when I take a break from a big project for a small one, though occasionally I can fit in a novella or such.

    alexanderwales

    I don't suppose there's any way that we could read the prologue outside of a convention, is there? Or should I go surfing youtube for bootlegs?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I should do this. I'm on tour right now, though, so it's going to be tough—and I will probably have to coordinate with the publisher.

    If you find a bootleg, let me know, and I'll tweet it for people. If it's already out there, I don't have to worry so much. If not, I'll see about doing something to get the prologue on line somewhere.

    17thShard

    Brandon,

    If you want to post it online somewhere, you know we're always happy to post this sort of thing...

    -Josh

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thanks. I might do just that, but I have to coordinate with the publisher first.

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  • 1264

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    chrismansell ()

    Obviously, taking on the Wheel of Time was a massive task. How do you feel now it's over? Relieved to return to your 'own' work full time, sad it's done? A bit of both maybe?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, most certainly both.

    Tags

  • 1265

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    chrismansell ()

    Are you secretly a robot? Your rate of output is incredible, and what I've read has all been excellent quality. If you're not a robot, do you have a particular secret to it? I manage 500-1000 words a day, but it never feels like enough.

    Brandon Sanderson

    500-1000 words a day is perfectly reasonable. I do on average 2,500—and that is after twenty years of practice, not to mention being able to do this full time. If you can do 500 words a day five days a week, that's a novel every year. Don't feel this is a bad rate. Keep at it.

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  • 1266

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    chrismansell ()

    Do you ever see yourself writing in genres other than sf/f?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Eh...not likely. I like what I do too much. Maybe some light sf thrillers, a la Jurassic Park.

    Tags

  • 1267

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    chrismansell ()

    How do you feel about modern fantasy? I'm not sure if it's down to religion, but I've noticed you never write sex, and thought you have action, it's never crossed into what I consider to be gory. Do you feel fantasy is going too far down the 'realistic grimdark' route?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do prefer to both read and write things that are more reserved in these areas. What I like about fantasy, however, is that it is a very broad and expansive genre. It has room in it for everything. Some of these people are fantastic writers. For my own writing, I feel that I can both tackle interesting and complex issues while writing works that do not include graphic content. It is a personal decision, and an intentional one.

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  • 1268

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    badger-banjer ()

    I know your Mormon faith is very important to you. In a lot of your books, religion plays a major role in the story. How important is it to you to include religion in your stories? Do you ever try to subtly influence your readers views on religion through your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    I tend to write about things that interest me. My religion is important to me, and so religion in general fascinates me. I find myself including it not as a requirement, but as an aspect of what I find interesting.

    As nothing bothers me more than reading a book in which the person who believes like me is treated like an idiot, I try to be aware of peoples beliefs (or lack thereof) and explore the issue in multiple dimensions.

    My intention in writing stories it to write great stories. Who I am, and what I find moral, is going to seep into it—I don't know that I'd want to stop that. However, I'm not trying to influence people specifically. I do try to present interesting ideas, but I let those be driven by the characters.

    This is actually a harder question to answer than, at times, I've realized. I feel that people are given talents to enrich the lives of those around them, and I feel our job as people on this earth is to do our best to make life better for everyone involved. Can fantasy stories do that? I hope so. But I don't sit down to say "What am I going to teach people today?" I sit down and write, "What can I do that is awesome."

    I guess I hope that increasing the awesomeness in the world will make people's lives better.

    Tags

  • 1269

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    ShakaUVM ()

    Could you explain what the deal is with the Great Serpent? I was half-expecting it to appear in the middle of the big showdown at the end of A Memory of Light. Is it just a different metaphor for the Wheel?

    Did we ever meet the Creator in the series? If so, who?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'll preface this with a warning. Even though the series is done, and I can speak more freely, some things are intended to be vague by RJ's own intention. This allows dreaming and thinking about the world to continue. For example, I can't answer question 2 for these reasons. For question one, I think RJ himself was vague. (Maybe a Theorylander can speak here.) This isn't one I'm capable of answering, because I don't want to make an answer canon one way or another, as I don't think RJ wanted that.

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  • 1270

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    ShakaUVM ()

    If we get enough donations to bribe you with the Power Nine, would you write an outtake for the scene between Tuon and Hawkwing? I loved A Memory of Light, but I really wanted to see that scene. =)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I really, really want to avoid writing any more WoT fiction—even for fun or as an outtake. That's a slippery slope. I know you said this mostly in jest, but I want to be careful on this one.

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  • 1271

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    havoc_mayhem ()

    Now that you're done with the Wheel of Time series, could you update us on your writing plans going forward? I know about the three books coming out this year, but it would be great to see what your thoughts are on the multi-year plan, including the scifi Mistborn trilogy. Are there any plans for sequels to Rithmatist or Steelheart?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Current plans are as follows:

    2013: Rithmatist, Steelheart, Words of Radiance
    2014: Shadows of Self, Steelheart 2
    2015: Stormlight 3, Rithmatist 2

    Usually, in the past, I've done one smaller book and one larger book a year. This is what I'd like to get back to doing. (As opposed to last year and this year—where last year had no novels, and this year has four, including A Memory of Light.)

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  • 1272

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    smb89 ()

    What was your favorite bit of A Memory of Light to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lan/Demandred

    Tags

  • 1273

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    solembum ()

    I've got a non-Brandon-specific question. I just happened to think about one thing about authors: When do you decide if the character is male or female?

    1. Did it happen to one of your characters that you changed the gender pretty late?

    2. What is important when choosing the gender?

    3. So why did you make Vin female and not male, for example? Is it much easier to write a male character as a male?

    Personally, I don't like books where a woman is very physically strong. I don't know, I'm strange. gotta admit I stopped reading Mistborn after the first book due to it. As I said, I'm strange...Still love your books and I never was looking forward to a book as much as I am looking for followup of Way of Kings. (Not even Harry Potter LOL!)

    Brandon Sanderson

    1. Vin, in Mistborn, started as a boy. I wrote about one chapter of Mistborn with her as a guy, then changed. However, another character by that name had existed in one of my unpublished books as a boy.

    2. This is hard to answer, as characters are very organic things for me. I don't plan them nearly as much as I do plots or settings. I go with my gut when writing them. I can't say why some "feel" right as male and other "feel" right as female. I write it and see if it works. If their voice is right, I go with it.

    3. As mentioned, Vin swapped genders. It had to do with my writing instincts, her dynamic with the other characters, her backstory, and just WHO she is. I'm sorry that I'm not being very specific. Characters are hard to explain.

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  • 1274

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Giovanni13 ()

    Hey Brandon once upon a time you posted Final Fantasy X song "To Zarkanad" on your Facebook page and said it was perfect for the scene you were writing in A Memory of Light, so tell me if you remember which scene was that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was the last few scenes I was working on, Perrin after the Last Battle and a few of the Loial sequences in the epilogue, which were parts I had a hand in writing as opposed to putting in what RJ had written.

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  • 1275

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    austenw ()

    Thank you for doing this AMA, Mr. Sanderson! You're a huge inspiration to me and, though you may not remember me, I met you in Portland on your AMOL tour a few months ago. I had mentioned that I had been working on my book and you told me to listen to your podcast and that there was no excuse not to write! I've taken that to heart and have been writing my fingers off ever since.

    But what I've found is that I've been written pages and pages of history about the world that I'm creating as a sort of encyclopedia for myself. My question is thus:

    When preparing to write a book, how do go about world building? Do you have everything in mind from the start and just work from there, or do you write everything out to use as a reference later?

    I feel like I'm doing too much work on building the history, and not enough time writing the actual story. Therefore my question. Thank you for any response you give!

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am the type that likes to do a lot of worldbuilding ahead of time, before writing. However, I feel it is easy to go too far in this regard. I usually give myself a set amount of time to spend planning a story, then I need to start writing. (At least a few chapters.) By writing some of the book, I can get a better idea of how much worldbuilding I'll need, and which areas need the most work.

    One thing to keep in mind is that great worldbuilding is usually that which intersects with character interests and conflicts. Having your history in line can help the world feel rich—but it can also distract if you spend too much time in the book giving dumps of information about historical events that don't have any bearing on the current characters or conflicts.

    You don't need to have everything in place before you start. You can always add more as you go. Focus your attention on those aspects of worldbuilding that will help the story be better. Worldbuild religions if those are important to the story; otherwise, spend a shorter amount of time planning them. Same for languages, history, governments, and all the other things you can do.

    At some point, you need to start writing. Err on the side of not enough worldbuilding. You can fill more in later.

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  • 1276

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    EverAccelerating ()

    When you were working on A Memory of Light, I know Mr. Jordan had the fates of most, if not all of the characters written down. Were there any characters where you got to decide the fate of, either in A Memory of Light or the previous two books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, there were some. For example, Pevara's fate isn't mentioned in the notes, which is why I felt all right co-opting her for the Black Tower storyline, which was mostly mine. Siuan's fate wasn't mentioned in the notes, save for the rescue of Egwene from the White Tower. Harriet made the decision on how her story was to play out.

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  • 1277

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    EverAccelerating ()

    What was your favorite scene in any of your published books that you had to eventually cut from the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin traveling the Ways in A Memory of Light.

    iwasazombie

    What?! Can you tell us about that scene? This is the first I've heard of it. That sounds awesome.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin gathered a team and traveled the Ways in order to try to close the Waygate in Camelyn from behind. It was determined that this section, among having other issues, was not needed for the final book and was distracting from the momentum toward the Last Battle.

    Tags

  • 1278

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    DangerMacAwesome ()

    Is there anything in any of your books that, after the fact, you wish you had done differently?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes and no. For example, I think that some of the explanations in Elantris for how the magic works at the end are not terribly clear. However, at the same time, it is the process of making mistakes like this that helps us learn and evolve as writers. Beyond that, going back and changing a piece of art to be something else kind of defeats the point of creating different works of art as one changes as a person. So I don't know if I'd change the mistakes.

    Tags

  • 1279

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Wulvaine ()

    You're turning out often huge books with alarming regularity while still managing to make appearances, sign books, record a podcast, teach others, have a family, and possibly patrol the streets in costume by night. I feel accomplished if I manage to write a couple of thousand words and eat a solid meal in a day. Are you, in fact, a wizard?

    Brandon Sanderson

    YOU HAVE FOUND ME OUT!

    Honestly, I just love what I do, so I find excuses to do it instead of other things. That's only secret there is to it. However, if you are doing a couple thousand words in a day, you're keeping up with me. Don't sweat it. Keep writing at your own pace, and enjoy the process.

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  • 1280

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Wulvaine ()

    For me, editing/redrafting is a vastly more intimidating process than writing the initial draft. I can recognize things that need to be altered or fixed, but once I begin that process, I feel that I have difficulty focusing the elements into a cohesive whole. How do you manage taming all the threads?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I keep telling myself that if I don't fix it in this draft, I can do another one, and that's okay. So narrowing down my drafting goals to something manageable each time helps a lot. Also, giving myself specific goals. If a character needs to be revised, I look for every scene with that character and make the revisions. I don't always read the whole book, I go and fix that character. Then, when I next read the book, I can watch for continuity with the fixes.

    It doesn't need to be done all at once. Be like a sculptor, going through, slowly working the shape out of the stone pass by pass.

    Tags

  • 1281

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Wulvaine ()

    In the Mistborn Trilogy was one of the coolest twists I've ever come across, and foreshadowing is kind of a tightrope walk. If you don't point out Chekhov's gun often enough, it won't have impact when it's fired, but if you belabor it, it'll be too obvious that it's important (almost like watching an old cartoon where you could see which objects were going to be animated before the fact because they stood out so much against the static background), and the payoff won't be as satisfying. How do you determine exactly how much to emphasize foreshadowing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For me, I use beta readers to help with this. They give me a read on when I'm being too heavy handed, and when I'm not being heavy handed enough.

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  • 1282

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Wulvaine ()

    I'm probably 80% architect and 20% gardener; I tend to make a lot of plans and know what my plots are leading up to, but I leave room to adjust along the way if my characters decide to take different paths to the end. When laying out your stories' structures, how much of each character's arc is planned, and how much arises organically?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will often have the arc in mind from the start, after doing a few chapters to figure out the character. However, this is where I go gardener myself—and so I will just keep an eye on the character and see if they're becoming someone who would fulfill that arc, or if I need to revise my outline to fit the person they have become.

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  • 1283

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    ajonelis ()

    When you took over writing the Wheel of Time series, was there anything that RJ had in his notes that just completely surprised you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hmm... The scene where Egwene gets a specific visitor in The Gathering Storm surprised me the most, I think. Also, at the end of Towers where Moiraine and Thom get engaged. I hadn't noticed how strong the clues about those two were.

    Tags

  • 1284

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    runevault ()

    How would you say doing Writing Excuses for all these years has impacted you as a writer? The content has impacted those who listen, but I'm curious what it's done for you going through all those discussions w/the rest of the crew.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It certainly has helped me work on the theory of the craft. Having to think through what I do and explain it, along with listening to people who do things differently, has helped me a great deal. Also, the brainstorming sessions we do are pure gold. Some of the most purely creative sessions in my life.

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  • 1285

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    The_Zeus_Is_Loose ()

    Mistborn didn't contain any explicit sexual themes but did have gore. I would have no trouble recommending it to a YA reader. Did you go about changing your style/tone/whatever for something like The Rithmatist that is geared more towards YA or is it mostly the same?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The whole YA movement is a difficult one to parse in sf/f. We have a grand history of books that might be packaged right now as YA. Would Shannara be YA if published today? What about the Belgariad? I think you could make arguments for both.

    At the core of designing a story, I don't think about which audience it is for. I design something I think is interesting and fun. However, during the writing process, I think it is appropriate to consider audience. In a YA book, I will focus more on the younger protagonists and their viewpoints. I will also generally try to streamline the story—not dumbing it down, but keeping my attention on a more focused narrative.

    Tags

  • 1286

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    AlmightyBean ()

    Hi, I'm a male writer writing fantasy at the moment with a female perspective character. I'm having trouble with the tone whenever my character bumps up against barriers women have to deal with in my universe. I don't want to beat my audience over the head with gender issues or come off as preachy, especially as I'm still new to writing a female character.

    My question is, when you were writing your female characters, especially Vin who jumped out at me as a natural but strong female protagonist in a male character dominated genre, did you find her voice came from your previous writing experience, or did you consult much with other authors and/or women you knew? I keep feeling like I should consult some female friends on how I'm writing her, but I don't want to lose my own voice in doing so.

    Also, I love your novels. I find fantasy is a genre filled with characters who feel like tropes or someone's DnD character, while your characters jump off the page and walk around. If you have any general tips for writing a realistic person, that would be great. If not, just thanks for writing such great people.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do consult with others. I think it's vital, particularly when writing 'the other' so to speak. Someone who is different from yourself in some fundamental way.

    At the same time, every character should be different from yourself in some fundamental way. And, beyond that, there's a trap in thinking "My character has to think like a woman." No, your character has to think like herself. That's an important distinction to make. For every generalization, grouping, or stereotype out there, you can find many, many people who break that mold.

    I actually focus on personality, wants, and needs first. Gender is a part of the character as a concept, and it informs how I write the person—but it is secondary to their passions, goals, and temperament.

    I'd say write the character first, then consult with your female friends. Let them read the character in the context of her story, and get a read on it. So long as the character is strong and individual, you should be fine. Some pointers will undoubtedly help, of course.

    The best way I've found to make someone realistic is to separate them from the plot and ask yourself who they are, and what they'd be doing, if the plot had never come along and swallowed them up.

    Tags

  • 1287

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    l33tmachine ()

    Hey Brandon! Big fan, and a regular listener to the very insightful Writing Excuses. I recently took all your talk about making time to write to heart and have since found a way to juggle my career, life, and MBA study in order to write. Over the past 6 weeks, I've done about 50k words and still managed to stay on top of everything. So, I guess I'm saying thanks to you, Mary, Howard, and Dan for the kick in the butt I needed to get to writing!

    I do have some questions however: What do you do to refill the creative well?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Congrats! Nice work.

    Family is a big part of it for me. Also, times just listening to music and not writing anything down.

    Tags

  • 1288

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    l33tmachine ()

    What method do you use to store you ideas for later use?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Files on a computer. Nothing fancy.

    Tags

  • 1289

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    ethnicallyambiguous ()

    You've said that while many of your books are interconnected "behind the scenes", you didn't want to put too much in the books themselves so readers didn't feel like they're missing information (HIGHLY paraphrased). Have your opinions changed on that given the size of your fanbase? When do you expect to have more crossover between worlds (as in major characters or plot points as opposed to cameos and subtle allusions)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I still think that keeping this to less is going to be better. However, it's going to be tougher and tougher to keep them separate, logically. As the worlds advance and more and more people begin dabbling in crossing planets, the signs will compound. I still intend to keep it from the forefront. There will be an increasing amount of this, however.

    Tags

  • 1290

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    PuckPenguin ()

    As an abuse survivor I just wanted to thank you for creating a character like Vin. The emotion you brought about through her story, was so authentic. How do you create your characters and how much research do you do?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most of my character research comes from talking to people, reading interviews, and taking notes. For Vin, it was particularly important to me that I get it right, so I did go speak in person with some special individuals that helped me out. In most cases, however, I look on-line.

    Tags

  • 1291

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    i_are_pant ()

    Hey Brandon, love all of you work and so does everyone I give them to. Keep up the good work.

    Which of your protagonist characters do you dislike the most as a person? Taking into account that you know all of their inner secrets and motivations.

    On the flip side. Which of your antagonists do you connect with the most? The Lord Ruler seems an obvious choice as he was misunderstood by everybody for so long. But still, I'm curious.

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a tough one, as while I'm writing, I HAVE to like everyone. However, the most disturbing of them is probably Kelsier. He's a psychopath—meaning the actual, technical term. Lack of empathy, egotism, lack of fear. If his life had gone differently, he could have been a very, very evil dude.

    Elend. I see myself as an idealist like him.

    Tags

  • 1292

    Interview: 2013

    krackato (March 2013)

    I just saw the $2.99 Kindle deal for The Way of Kings and someone mentioned "it had a slow start."

    I don't read a lot of fantasy, but I'm trying to get more into it. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that every seemingly uber-popular Fantasy series out there has "a slow start". (LotR, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, the Stormlight Archives, etc.)

    But who cares if I'm right or wrong.

    Are there any fantasy books or series out there that 'start REALLY FAST' and just don't slow down?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Writing a fantasy book that is fast in the way you say is not difficult—it's writing a fast-starting epic fantasy that is difficult. A good epic is often like a good piece of electronica music&mdsah;it's the slow build, the steady adding of complexity and worldbuilding that I find exciting about the genre.

    That's not the only way to do it, I'm certain, but it is the route I took. The Way of Kings does indeed start slow. The slowness isn't caused by what I think you may be assuming, however. It's caused by multiple viewpoints arranged in a puzzle for which the final picture is not yet clearly obvious. There are plenty of action scenes in the first ten chapters of KINGS. There is a lot of motion and conflict. However, we don't get a viewpoint from the main character until chapter three, and don't come back to him until chapter five. This gives a real sense of "What is this book even about?" which, mixed with some very steep worldbuilding, slows the book down.

    Contrast this to a traditionally fast book, like a thriller or mystery. You are presented with one character, and the conflict for that character is often clear in the first chapter. You know what the plot is going to be early on. There are some fantastic books written this way (Jim Butcher has been mentioned, and I think his Codex Alera books are a great example of someone doing a hybrid epic fantasy and thriller. They are some of the fastest epics I've read. But even they don't "Start really fast" like you say. I think you'll be hard pressed to find an epic that does. The examples will mostly be heroic or urban.)

    I find that the slow build allows for far more explosive endings as all of the pieces come together. It is something I avoided doing to the extent that KINGS does it, however, until I already had a reputation as a writer.

    pensummoner

    I feel like starting slow and creating buildup is sort of the "classic" way to write fantasy, as that's the way Tolkien wrote. Could that be another reason so many fantasies are written this way? Are writers are saying, "This was good enough for Tolkien and it worked and people liked it, so I'm going to emulate his method."?

    Edit: I should add that I usually like slow build-up and wasn't really critiquing them, but rather just wondering about them.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Tolkien certainly casts a long shadow. It's hard to separate anything we do in epic fantasy from his influences. Certainly, I'd say this is part of it.

    In the end, most writers create things like they loved to read. Hopefully, we're adding to the tradition, rather than just replicating what has gone before.

    Tags

  • 1293

    Interview: 2013

    stumpitron (March 2013)

    Why are you tagged as a novice writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Heh. I picked the tag on a whim quite a while ago, and forgot it was there until this post. I felt like quite the novice at the time, surrounded in the field by giants like GRRM, Robin Hobb, and the like.

    Maybe I'll change it once I hit the ten year mark. (2015 will make it ten years from the publication of my first book.) It seems to me that I really haven't been doing this very long. One of the things I keep reminding myself is that, in entertainment, there are a lot of flash-in-the-pan tastes of the week. I want to aspire toward more.

    Calvertorius

    Why on Earth would you list Robin Hobb alongside yourself and GRRM?

    I had the misfortune of reading her Soldier Son series while I was deployed, and I thought the entire concept of the story was terrible.

    I looked at her website just now, and she's not much more prolific of a writer than yourself, so what constitutes her as a 'giant'?

    **Tangent: Please develop your Stormlight series into something much more than a trilogy! With WoT completed, and GRRM writing at a snail's pace, I need another inspiring epic series to fill the void. Also, I commend your writing work-ethic. /fanboyrant end

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'll preface this by saying that I adore Robin's work. However, Soldier Son is divisive among her fanbase, and is not as widely loved as her Assassin's Apprentice series, which is where I suggest people begin.

    That's beside the point. I chose her deliberately because of her story as a writer, which is similar to that of GRRM. Both toiled in relative obscurity for years and years as writers. Robin published under the name Megan Lindholm for a long time, and never found huge commercial success. She finally hit it big with Assassin's Apprentice, which was one of the bestselling epic fantasy trilogies of the 90's. In a similar way, GRRM wrote and published for decades before hitting it big with Game of Thrones.

    These are the kinds of writers I admire, and one day wish to join. The writers who have been through the ups and downs, and who have continued to press forward. They didn't write their best work when they first broke in—they are doing it now, after years and years of growth, effort, and occasional failure.

    As a side note, in 2006 I was nominated for the Campbell award for best new writer. I lost to John Scalzi, and was kind of down in the dumps. GRRM found me sitting on the side of a bed at a hotel party that night. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Don't worry, kid. I lost that damn award the first year it was offered." And he did—he lost it to Jerry Pournelle in 1973, two years before I was even born. GRRM handed me one of his famous "Hugo Loser" badges to wear with pride, gave me a pat on the shoulder, then continued on.

    ***As for the tangent, don't worry. I have big plans for Stormlight...

    reidhasguitar

    Wait, so you're published? Change your flair!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ha, okay. Enough people have pointed it out, that I have officially done so. Flair changed. :)

    Kintanon

    Why, of all of the people in the internet, do you have 'Novice Writer' as your flair? I mean, I understand that you don't have the ungodly library of titles to your name that someone like David Weber or Piers Anthony does, but I think once you write more than 1 best seller you have to at least upgrade that to 'Professional Writer' or at least 'Journeyman Wordsmith' or something!

    Also, I must give you many many many thanks for the way you handled completed the Wheel of Time series. I admit to being overcome with trepidation when I heard that you were going to be completing the series because while I really really really liked the Mistborn novels, then didn't seem quite in line with the feel of Jordan's universe. I was worried. But you handled the completion of a series that has been with me since middle school incredibly well and brought everything to a satisfactory conclusion in some an artful manner that it was never at any time obvious that Jordan himself wasn't penning every word.

    I'm looking forward to more of your works in the future now more than ever.

    Brandon Sanderson

    See elsewhere in the thread why I chose that flair, but I've been persuaded that at this point, "novice writer" was strange enough on me to be out of place. So I've gone ahead and changed it.

    Working on the Wheel of Time was one of the great pleasures of my life. Thanks for the kind words.

    Tags

  • 1294

    Interview: 2013

    Cpt_Life (March 2013)

    Read them all. Loved them. The characters are extremely realistic. I'm jealous, really I am. I want to steal your ideas so badly (but won't of course).

    shlomif

    Hi Cpt_Life,

    As long as you don't copy+paste text, I don't think you should feel bad about "stealing" ideas. Stealing memes, stories, and characters is a time-honoured tradition, and even the stories in the Bible are in effect various tales that circulated all around the Near East, and were constantly enhanced, improved, and incorporated into larger epics. Some of my own stories are crazy crossovers/mash-ups of various characters, plot elements, ideas, concepts, and phrases from various sources: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, the Bastard Operator from Hell, the "Friends" television series, Buffy, Star Trek The-Next-Generation/Deep-Space-9, Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Illuminati and Elders of Zion conspiracy theories, the television show Sabrina The Teenage Witch, Sesame Street, the film The Princess Bride, the Jewish Bible and the Jewish "Midrash" (= "to study", "to investigate"), etc. etc.

    If you look at the wikipedia entry for Milady de-Winter—who is featured in Dumas' The Three Musketeers (and is a truly formidable, resourceful, and awe-inspiring antagonist—and as a result a very attractive and captivating character), you can see that he borrowed her from characters by previous writers about this. Back in the 19th century, copyright only applied to texts, not to characters or concepts or worlds in the story, and I have decided to place all of my original things of those under CC-by.

    I'm not saying you should do blatant plagiarism, but you should feel free to incorporate some of those in different variations in your stories. Ideas can not be copyrighted—only patented, and patents on such non-tangible things such as software, business practices, or on storylines or plots (see this Slashdot.org post titled "USPTO Issues Provisional Storyline Patent") are absurd and given the current United States patent regime, are hard to avoid, and you probably should not worry about them.

    Regards,

    -- Shlomi Fish (a.k.a "Rindolf").

    Brandon Sanderson

    Shlomif is right. Every author is influenced by what they've read. Mistborn was deeply influenced by my love of heist movies, and you can trace where characters came from if you watch enough of them. Let yourself be inspired by what you read, just make sure to take your own spin on it.

    Thanks for reading!

    Tags

  • 1295

    Interview: 2013

    anotherface (March 2013)

    Brandon has written 18 books in the last 8 years.

    Robot jokes aside, there are three possible explanations for this:

    - Brandon writes just over two books every year for 8 years. That's not impossible, but given the size of the work in question it's very difficult.

    - Brandon had already written lots of these books in draft form prior to the publication of Elantris/Mistborn. These currently published titles were written in that time period. (He alludes to this in his writing of The Way of Kings.)

    - (Tin foil hat time!) Brandon isn't just one person, but several people working under the Sanderson name with him having the final say/edit. This one is entirely unsubstantiated and given that it's 18 books and not 30 I'm not inclined to believe it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You're pretty close on several of these points. I generally write two books a year—a big one and a small one. This is a habit I fell into during my early, unpublished years. I'd do one longer epic fantasy and one shorter "breather" novel to try something new or to keep myself fresh.

    Off the cuff, here's how I think it breaks down. (Elantris was finished long before, in 2000.) There's one year of three shorter books instead of an epic. (That was the year I tried to write a book called the Liar of Partinel, and it just didn't work. Wrote The Rithmatist instead. This is also the year I got called and asked to work on the Wheel of Time.) Also, note that the year of Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings just about killed me, and is the busiest I've ever been.

    A Memory of Light—last book of the Wheel of Time—took by far the longest of these all, particularly with the revision demands during 2012 (which is why I had no epic fantasy that year, only the two novellas.)

    2002: The Way of Kings (early draft)
    2003: Mistborn
    2004: Mistborn 2, Alcatraz 1
    2005: Mistborn 3, Alcatraz 2
    2006: Warbreaker, Alcatraz 3
    2007: Steelheart, The Rithmatist, Alcatraz 4 (Alcatraz was a 4-book contract.)
    2008: The Gathering Storm, Part of Towers of Midnight
    2009: Towers of Midnight, The Way of Kings (New Draft from scratch.)
    2010: Alloy of Law, half of AMOL
    2011: Half of AMOL
    2012: Legion, Emperor's Soul
    2013: Words of Radiance, Steelheart 2 (hopefully)

    NeilaK20

    More recently I've noticed myself writing on something different than my main projects when I need a break. Wasn't sure it was the best thing to do, but after reading your post I'm convinced it may be! I have yet to have a chance to read one of your books, BUT I intend to as they sound awesome. They're on my list of "stuff I need to read when I have money to buy books again". :D

    Brandon Sanderson

    Cool! If you do the ebook thing, Warbreaker is free on my website.

    http://brandonsanderson.com/book/Warbreaker/page/20/WARBREAKER-Rights-and-Downloads

    There's an html version on there somewhere too. My assistant posted it.

    Best of luck with your writing!

    It-just-is

    Confused: Steelheart—written in 2007, Amazon says it won't be released until September 2013. Are you re-writing an early project?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I finished a good chunk of it back then, but had to put it on the shelf and leave it alone. The Wheel of Time demanded all of my attention. Now that I'm finished with AMOL, I have time for side projects again, and have taken this one off and given it a solid polish to be released this year.

    PeterAhlstrom

    I'm pretty sure Brandon has Steelheart misplaced; he wrote it in very early 2010, before Alloy of Law, though he came up with the concept earlier than that. 2007 should have Liar of Partinel in it, which Brandon talked about above.

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  • 1296

    Interview: 2013

    wesem (June 2013)

    Just realized what Shardblades remind me of...

    In my head, they remind me a lot of Keyblades from Kingdom Hearts. The blade appearing out of nowhere when you hold out your hand seems rather similar. They're also both highly coveted in their universes and for both types each blade is different from the next (I think). Just wanted to see if anyone else noticed this or if I'm just crazy and have had way too much time to think waiting for Words of Radiance.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Shardblades aren't inspired by keyblades specifically, though there is a core inspiration that might be shared by both myself and the creators. While I did play the first kingdom hearts game when it came out, the first draft of The Way of Kings was well under way when the game was released.

    However, I did play all of the Final Fantasy games—I had the first on original Nintendo, so get off my lawn, you kids. The origin of Shardblades relates to fantasy games and art in general, and the concept of the stylized sword which is also horribly impractical.

    In a lot of my writing, I react toward or against the fantasy archetypes of my youth in the 80s and 90s. When designing the Stormlight Archive, one of the things I asked myself was, "Can I make a situation where these oversized, over-stylized blades are actually practical? Why in the world would you need a weapon like that? And how do you actually use one?"

    Making the blades summonable seemed one of the only ways that carrying one around would be reasonable.

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  • 1297

    Interview: 2013

    Massawyrm (June 2013)

    Most people believe that creative success is a pipe dream only achieved by people they don't know. They also don't embrace anything like it until it has been approved of by a mainstream gatekeeper. My favorite story illustrating this happened last year around this time. A waitress at our local diner overheard me and my buddies talking about movies, one of them being a movie I wrote. She was making small talk with me at the register and asked "So your movie, will it play at a theater here in Austin or something?" I said "Yes, several. It's on 2500 screens nationwide, and it should be on a number of them here." Her eyes lit up "Oh! you mean it's a real movie. I thought it was just, you know, an indie thing."

    In their eyes you are not a writer, you are a dreamer, until proven otherwise.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Similar thing happened to me. A friend was having a party at her house, and I dropped by. She introduced me by saying, "This is Brandon. He's a writer."

    One of her friends piped up immediately. "Oh, so he's unemployed."

    This attitude in our society has always bothered me. As if mastering an art weren't hard enough, we have to deal with the derision of those who think we're fools for even trying.

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  • 1298

    Interview: 2013

    jag51989 (July 2013)

    Which book should be my next to read?

    Elantris and Rithmatist were my next two books on my list and I was going to read which ever I just got my hands on first. I ended up getting both of them in my hands right now, so I don't know what I should read first.

    Elantris is his first novel and many people really love it while Rithmatist is new and sounds really interesting.

    What would you suggest reading next?

    Also, if it makes a difference, I will be going to an event that he will be at over the weekend, so I want to be able to talk about more than just Mistborn.

    Thanks for the help.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Elantris was my first published book, and it does show. I think it's still perfectly readable, but do go into it knowing that it wanders in places, that the prose is a little rough, and the characters a little more straightforward than those of Mistborn. It would be a good one to read if you are interested in the Cosmere, as The Rithmatist isn't a Cosmere book.

    The Rithmatist is a stronger work overall, but has a weaker start. (That's the roughest part of the book.) It is also more narrow—it has one viewpoint character, and is about basically one event. It's going to read faster than Elantris, come together more tightly, but overall is going to feel less deep because of its focused nature.

    Either way, thanks for reading.

    --Brandon

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  • 1299

    Interview: Jun 20th, 2009

    General Questions:

    ANDREW THE GREAT

    How do you name characters?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Based mostly on linguistic patterns and other things like that. When Brandon has a particular group of people, they speak a particular way. He constructs names for them using those speech patterns.

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  • 1300

    Interview: Dec 6th, 2012

    Question

    Do you get carpal tunnel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nope, I don’t. Good question though. Who got carpal tunnel- Dan got carpal tunnel? One of my writer friends got carpal tunnel.

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  • 1301

    Interview: 2012

    notjcg007 (August 2012)

    Just finished The Way of Kings Stormlight Achives.

    If you, like me read Mistborn and wanted more then do not hesitate to read this book. It is definitely slower, but this book is fast on so many other levels. I really wanted B Sanderson to immediately finish more Mistborn books. Now, I do not care if he eats, sleeps or spends time with his family. I am willing to sell my house and buy him a lifetime supply of Red Bull so that he can finish the rest of these books. Great books and stories. I wish that damned wax would hurry off 75%!

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Whelp, guess I'd better get off of reddit and go back to writing again.

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  • 1302

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2013

    Question

    You've been described as "insanely prolific," and with all of your recent releases that's an apt descriptor. How do you find the time to write so much, and more importantly, how do you keep the stories and characters fresh?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will write something big, like one of the Wheel of Time books or Words of Radiance, and once I'm done with it I'll need a break. But the thing I find most fun in the world is writing—I don't want to go do something else, I want to write something—but I want to write something I don't have to write. So a lot of these side projects you're seeing—this is where The Rithmatist and Steelheart came from—are from me taking a break from the big epics to do something a little different, to have a change of pace.

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  • 1303

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2013

    Question

    Steelheart is intended for a younger audience. If and how does this affect your writing process?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For teens the main thing I change is, I tend to focus on one character or two characters instead of a very large cast. And I make the pacing a bit faster.

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  • 1304

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2013

    Question

    Of course it wouldn't be an interview without asking about Wheel of Time. How has that experience informed the storytelling you've done since?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Watching how the community interacted with Wheel of Time was eye-opening. There are a lot of book series out there that sell a lot of copies, and yet they have not inspired the fan base and the devotion Wheel of Time has. I would rather have that than the thrillers that sell three times as many copies, and yet people read them and throw them away. They don't throw conventions, they don't have these deep discussions. What was it that Robert Jordan did that did this to all of us? That I've thought about a lot.

    Writing specifically, juggling multiple viewpoints has become easier for me since I was forced to lift heavy weights. I had to jump into a series where I had to juggle two dozen viewpoints instead of the three or four I was used to.

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  • 1305

    Interview: Aug 9th, 2013

    Question

    What was your biggest hesitation?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What if I screw this up? I would be known as the one who ruined the Wheel of Time, which would be awful for me as a fan of the series. That was a real thing, me thinking there was no way I could win at this, that I couldn't do it as well as Robert Jordan would—nobody can. They came to me because I was a fan who became a published writer. Going to someone who was not a fan but was a writer who specialized in writing other people's property, I worried it would just be another job to them. Knowing it was in the hands of someone who cares... That's what made me say yes.

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  • 1306

    Interview: 2011

    gruevy (January 2011)

    MFA in Creative Writing grad school—need recommendation

    I'm looking at getting my MFA in creative writing, and I write speculative fiction, which appears to be undervalued by the academy. Does anyone know of any good schools that have speculative fiction writers on the faculty, or somewhere that it might be appreciated? I know it's a bit late to be applying, but I've already sent out most of the applications I intended to—just wondering if there's somewhere else I should be looking.

    Also, anyone out there gotten this degree and loved/hated their university? I'd like to hear from you as well.

    PS—My goal is to teach writing at a university. I'm quite aware that having a degree won't necessarily make me a better writer (although I expect that the years of dedicated writing will have that effect.)

    PPS—I know that Brandon Sanderson teaches at BYU, but it looks like he teaches undergrads, and only one class every so often.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Best of luck to you. I submitted Elantris (about three years before I sold it) as my sample writing to a large number of university MFA programs. Some were top tier: Columbia, NYU, UC Irvine, University of Utah, Iowa, UVA. There was a smattering of second and third tier as well. Twelve to fifteen total, I recall. I got rejected from every single one.

    Now, part of this was my fault. I had a chip on my shoulder about fantasy, and still kind of do. I didn't manifest it in my letter of intent, however, so that wasn't the problem. However, I ALSO didn't do some of the things you're supposed to do for grad programs. (Which is find someone at the university you specifically want to work with, and explain in the application why.)

    The problem was, I couldn't find anyone at any of the programs that admitted to reading sf/f, let alone writing it. So...I'm not sure where that leaves us. I've heard stories now and then of an MFA program or two that do have a sf/f writer on staff. (Ursula, Gene Wolfe, and Cory Doctorow have all done guest lecturer stints, I think. Gene might teach full time.) I hear the UK is more friendly toward fantasy and sf among the literary community.

    I'm really hoping that someone here can post some better information for you about where to look, but I thought I'd let you know my story.

    gruevy

    Could you tell me anything about the program at BYU? I know it's new, but do you think it's any good? I'm sort of fond of my beard, but I have to be realistic about where I'm more likely to get in :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, it's easier to get into—but it's not terribly high ranked. Universities tend to specialize, particularly regionally, and the University of Utah has an excellent program and tends to draw the best applicants. So BYU, while fair, has a focus in other areas.

    I enjoyed my program, and I think it's kinder to fantasy/sf than others—however, with jobs teaching creative writing being so tight these days, I'd shoot for the top first and work down. The nice thing about BYU is that they did finally bump their degree up to the MFA from an MA. (They only had the MA when I went.) I think with a BYU MFA, though, you'd probably have to go on to get a PhD in creative writing to land a good job. (As opposed to getting one from Utah or Iowa, which alone could be enough.)

    The thing is, publications (particularly in top literary journals) trump any schooling when it comes to jobs in creative writing. That and networking.

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  • 1307

    Interview: 2011

    gruevy (January 2011)

    Where do you people find writers' groups?

    I'm in Provo, UT, I write fantasy, and I need a good writers' group. I've looked on craigslist and tried google, but I really haven't found anything. Not meaning that I haven't found good ones; meaning, I haven't found any at all. I know that a number of you out there are writers, and I assume that most of those have some affiliation with a writers' group, so how did you find them? Did you grow them yourselves, or were they community things, or what?

    Also, do you shop around? What happens if I get there and I'm the only capable writer of the bunch? I enjoy helping others improve their writing (and in fact, I'd like to do that for a living) but I admit that I'm looking for a group with selfish reasons as well. I want help improving from people that I can trust.

    Do mixed genre groups work very well, or should I only be looking for a scifi/fantasy group?

    Has anyone found an online group to work? Do you use Skype or something, or just text to communicate?

    Finally, anyone in Provo/Orem area in a good one? Mind letting me audition? :)

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Finding a good writer's group is a process, usually, not an event. It involves being a part of many writing groups, finding out what critique styles work for you, and discovering writers who have a dedication level similar to your own. If you write at a rate where you have something to submit every week, you want to be with writers who do the same. If you'd rather meet once a month, you want everyone to be on the same page.

    I've been a part of around a dozen different groups. Usually, after a year or so of attending, I have a good sense of which writers I click with and which I don't. At a later date, if another group has need of members, I know which people to invite.

    Right now, my group consists of mostly people I've known for years and years. I met many of them during my undergraduate days. Your best bet in Utah is to attend LTUE, Conduit, or Superstars. I guarantee I can get you a writing group if you come to Superstars, but it also is very expensive.

    Or try to take my class (I used to just let anyone in, but this year, the university has clamped down and only given me a room that seats 30.) There's a shot if you show up on Thursday (when I'm going to have to turn away a lot of people who want to add) that I can point you all in the same direction and you can try to set up a writing group then.

    gruevy

    What time of day does your class take place? On the off chance that you have fewer than 30 students, they wouldn't just let me come sit in, would they? I'd have to enroll and pay, I assume. Probably worth it, though. I wonder if they'd let me audit the class for no credit for cheaper. I know that at Weber, a single class for one semester was around $800, and I assume that's going to be a bit higher at BYU. Again, probably worth it, however.

    I don't think that I could pass as a student for long due to some significant shagginess, but I'd certainly be happy to show up when you're going to turn everyone away and help them form writer's groups. Other than that, I guess I'm going to have to wait for LTUE and Conduit. Superstars looks like it's for someone who's closer to being ready to publish than I am, but I may be mistaken about that, and if I move to the day shift at work I just might attend. I've only got about 5 chapters and a few stories, though, so publishing is a ways off. What I mostly need is a deadline, preferably weekly, and a few better minds to help me clear away the crap.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I honestly just used to let people sit in, without paying. But the university is troubled by this, hence the cap. I doubt that there will be room, but if you want to show up, look up the 318R class taught by me. It's thursday night, 5:10. I honestly don't know the room number—my assistant will point me in the right direction on Thursday, and I'll go.

    Superstars is indeed probably something beyond what you need right now, particularly for the price. I think it will be useful to anyone, but I think that you're right that right now, you need a deadline and a writing group far more.

    Kardlonoc

    As an aspiring fantasy writer do you really need a writers group? I mean certainly they seem like a nice thing but I am uncertain they are a necessity. Your thoughts?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, certainly they aren't needed. Stephen King warns people away from them, as a bad writing group can do far more harm than good.

    I didn't get one until I'd finished a few (unpublished) novels. At that point, it was extremely useful to have one for me—and has continued to be useful. They can be a great tool. But there are dangers. (Letting the group hijack your book being the biggest.)

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  • 1308

    Interview: 2011

    wawayanda (January 2011)

    Do creative writing workshops actually deter students from writing novels?

    mushpuppy

    The bottom line is you don't learn how to write in a classroom. You learn how to think, how to critique, how to appreciate there. Maybe you gain some self-confidence. But self-confidence is useless without publication.

    Perhaps there you also will make a few friends who later will be able to help edit your work—though this is doubtful, as they'll either give up on their own writing and not want to see yours or not want to waste the precious few free hours they have to write by reading yours.

    Instead, you learn how to write by sitting by yourself in a room and writing, hour after hour, day after day, for years.

    That's how you learn to write.

    It is a solitary and almost entirely unrewarding experience. The only relevant difference between becoming a writer and going insane is that eventually, if you're lucky, you'll be rewarded with publication. And even then the reward in all likelihood will be minimal, as very few writers manage to make a living at it.

    This is why a person writes because he/she has to. Because otherwise a person wouldn't do it.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    True, you don't learn to write in a classroom. That first paragraph you wrote is spot on. But I don't know about the rest.

    Unrewarding? The years I spent learning to write were indeed solitary, but also wonderful. Watching myself progress, learning how to express myself and get the ideas in my head onto the page in a way that conveyed emotion to people...that was extremely rewarding. Teaching myself something difficult was extremely rewarding.

    Publication isn't the reward. Publication is the way that you share, and if you are fortunate, find a means by which you can survive off of your art. You could call that a reward, I suppose, but it's not the primary one. You yourself mentioned that a person writes because they have to; publication is secondary.

    Writing can be painful, frustrating, and maddening. But if it's not rewarding at the same time, something is wrong.

    Also, the "only relevant difference between becoming a writer and going insane" is publication? I think that might be a tad on the side of hyperbole. You're right that few writers manage to make a living at it, but I think that you'd be surprised at how easy it is to improve your odds. The people who spend the years and years of practice that you speak of have a better shot than most realize, though genre, skill, and luck all play a part.

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  • 1309

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    I remember coming to see you the very first time, when Elantris was just barely out. I've always been impressed, because I was a nobody and you had read my book. There can't be many other publishers of major companies who read as many of the books as you do. Why do you do that?

    Tom Doherty

    Well, if I've got an editor working for me, it's because I believe that that editor really has something to contribute. Moshe [Feder] was so enthusiastic about Elantris that I couldn't not read it. And when I read it, I loved it.

    I think it's pretty clear we really loved what you were doing. I may be a little prejudiced as his publisher, but I think Robert Jordan really created one of the great epic fantasies of all time—a magnificent series, and you just finished it magnificently. We never could have turned it over to anybody that we didn't have tremendous confidence in, Brandon. We loved what you were doing. It said to us, "Yes, he can do this."

    Brandon Sanderson

    If you weren't the type of publisher who read all the books, you couldn't have fingered someone like you did with me. You couldn't have said, "Give him to Harriet." I remember she said she asked you to send her some of my books. And you said, "Well, I'll send you Mistborn instead of Elantris. I've read them both and Mistborn is a better novel."

    Tom Doherty

    Yep.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Elantris is a first novel. The second novel's better. You knew to send her Mistborn, and it's that book that made her choose me. In a lot of ways, if you hadn't been on top of things, it may not have happened the way it did.

    Tom Doherty

    Well, Mistborn's really great. We thought of it as a trilogy, but then you wrote more.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I'm in the Robert Jordan tradition, right?

    Tom Doherty

    You are. But, anyway, it's smaller scale than The Way of Kings. The Stormlight Archive is such a natural progression for you, I think. You've told me you picked up foreshadowing from Jordan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yep. One of the main things I learned from him.

    Tom Doherty

    If I recall, you said that you'd actually written the first draft of The Way of Kings in 2003, and that you had ideas for it way back to high school, and that when you and Moshe were talking about what to do after Elantris, you weren't completely happy with it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It wasn't good enough yet. I had all these dreams, these aspirations of doing something big and momentous like the Wheel of Time, but I couldn't do it yet. I tried, and I couldn't. The problem was juggling the viewpoints, and the foreshadowing.

    What I learned, when I was rereading the Wheel of Time to work on the series, was that Robert Jordan kept everything really quite focused for the early books of the series. He expanded it slowly. He didn't hit you in the face with twenty viewpoints.

    We had something like a seventy viewpoint chapter in the last book. That's something you have to earn, across years of writing. You have to get the reader invested in the main characters. Without that investment in the main characters, I wouldn't have cared enough to pay attention to the side characters.

    It was a matter of scale and scope and building upon itself, rather than just trying to start off with this massive book that gets everyone lost. That's one of the big things I did wrong in the original write. I had six main characters with full arcs and full viewpoints. It was too much. You couldn't really attach to any of them. In the revision I cut that down to three, which really focused the book. It let me give the passion and focus on these three characters, so that you felt it when you read the book.

    Tom Doherty

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Working on those Robert Jordan books did that for me. Writing The Gathering Storm in specific was like going to the gym and having to lift some really heavy weights you aren't used to. Either you get used to it or they crush you. I had to get used to it very quickly. That taught me a lot. I grew more that year than I had at any point in my writing career, except maybe the very first year I was writing.

    Tom Doherty

    When I look at the Stormlight Archive, you also like to jump around like George R. R. Martin. These are the two great epic novelists of our day, Martin and Jordan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's really one of George's big strengths: jumping to keep the pacing up. But even he didn't start with a lot of characters at the beginning of the first book. I've actually tried to learn from Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin and say, "Okay, what are the things they had to deal with? There are growing pains when you're creating a series this long. There are certain things that are difficult to do. What looks like it was difficult to do for them, and what can I learn from them?"

    I often say that I had a big advantage over Robert Jordan: I've been able to read Robert Jordan, and he couldn't, at least not in the same way. Reading Robert Jordan showed me what happens when you create a big series. Nobody did this before him, right?

    Tom Doherty

    No.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were no massive epic fantasy series of that scope at the time. You have things that are episodic, like [Roger Zelazny's] Chronicles of Amber, which is fantastic, but it's thin little episodes. You have nice trilogies like Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. But you don’t have anything with the scope of the Wheel of Time.

    I was able to watch and benefit from what Jordan did. After the fact, he said "You know, I don't think I would have done book ten the same way if I had it to do over again. I learned this and I learned that." Being able to pay attention to those things allows me to hopefully use that.

    When I went into The Way of Kings, I saw what George R. R. Martin does, jumping to these other places and giving you a scope of the world. It makes it feel epic. But if you spend too much time on jumping to those places, you get distracted and can't focus.

    So I did this thing where I would end a section of The Way of Kings and do what I call interludes, where we jump around the world. If this is the sort of thing that doesn't interest you, you can skip those interludes and go on to the next part, where we get back to the main characters. But there are these little stories in between each part, showing the scope: "Here's what's going on around the world, now we focus." You get distracted for a little bit, after a natural end point, then we come back to the main story.

    That restrains me. It makes me say, "Okay, I can only put this many of these chapters in." It makes me keep my eyes on the main characters more. One of my main goals with writing this series is being able to juggle that. It's hard.

    Tom Doherty

    I think you’ve done a particularly great job of still having that broad, epic feel with fewer characters. You only have the three principals: Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar. Jordan had six, maybe eight depending on how you count them.

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  • 1310

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't know if you know the history of The Rithmatist.

    Tom Doherty

    No, I don’t.

    Brandon Sanderson

    In 2007, before Harriet [McDougal] called me about the Wheel of Time, I was writing a book that wasn't working. It was called Liar of Partinel. You've never seen it. No one's ever seen it. It just happens to writers: once in a while you write a book and you know something deep is wrong with it, like it's fundamentally broken in some way. I was bored while writing it. This wasn't writer's block—that's something different. Across two months, every chapter I would go through the motions, but I wouldn't feel any passion to the chapters. Eventually, halfway through, I said, "I just can't do this anymore. I need something I'm excited about."

    I sat down and started sketching. I don't do a lot of drawing. The last time I did some sketching that started a book was Elantris, where I did all the symbols for the Aons. I just started sketching, and I started imagining this story where people would duel with these chalk circles. You draw this chalk circle around yourself, and then you draw little beasties, little creatures that would crawl across the ground and attack your opponent's circle, and when your circle got breached that was the end of the thing. It's like a magical version of a tower defense game or something like StarCraft. I imagined these kids playing this game and thought, "Where do I go from this?"

    It was one of these purely creative experiences where I was just drawing and making notes at the side and coming up with things in order to not have to do this other book, which I found so boring. Over the course of a month, instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing, I wrote The Rithmatist. It's one of those books that just flowed out of me. It just came out like it is, basically, right now. We've done revisions and so on, of course, but the revisions are all minor.

    It's hard to even explain why it happened, but it came from those sketches. I just started drawing.

    When I finished The Rithmatist, Harriet called me [to ask Sanderson to complete the Wheel of Time series]. I was really relieved that I didn't have to go back to that book that I didn't like anymore. I turned my attention toward the Wheel of Time.

    Tom Doherty

    I love The Rithmatist. Great system of magic. You do these unique systems of magic, and yet you say all your worlds are related.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, they are all related, but I didn't connect The Rithmatist to that.

    Tom Doherty

    Oh, okay.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Because The Rithmatist has connections to Earth, and I don't want the Earth books—anything on Earth—to be related to the big system of everything else, because it adds too much. Does that make sense? It adds too much baggage.

    So The Rithmatist is its own contained world. I wanted to play with Earth history. I just wanted to do wacky things. The JoSeun Empire, which is the old name of one of the Korean dynasties, has conquered Europe at various points, and so European food is very Asian influenced. You'll eat spaghetti with chop sticks, and things like that.

    I'm not trying to do true alternate history. True alternate history is when people say, "What if this arrow had hit this guy in this battle and instead . . . ?" That's not what I'm doing. What I'm doing is alternate world, where we're reimagining everything and just letting it be fun.

    I've shrunk the planet. It's much smaller. You can take a train to Europe. The United States are a bunch of islands instead, and people duel with chalk, and my hometown in Nebraska is the source of all evil in the world, with a magical tower the monsters come out of.

    By the way, all the Rithmatic defenses are named after friends of mine from Nebraska, or people I knew, or things from Nebraska history. There's something called the Osborne Defense. Well, if you're from Nebraska, you know that Tom Osborne was the great coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers for many years. All the defenses are named after things like that, just for fun.

    Tom Doherty

    How about your parrot?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My parents?

    Tom Doherty

    Parrot. Didn't you have a parrot in there?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did. Well, it's a cockatiel. He's called Beaker, because he sounds like the Muppet. All sorts of random things from my life. Like Professor Layton, the math teacher, is a good friend of mine who was the best man at my wedding and who is a math teacher in real life. You know, you can do fun stuff like that in a book set in our world that's not our world, things that you just can't do in something like The Way of Kings where you want it to be a little more serious and epic. It has to take itself seriously. You've got to maintain continuity. Oftentimes, when I'm escaping from something like that, I write something like The Rithmatist, which I don't need to be quite as serious with. In some ways, it's a release valve from writing the big epics. They're my true love, but there are things you can do in a book like The Rithmatist that you just can't do in The Way of Kings.

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  • 1311

    Interview: Aug 21st, 2013

    Tom Doherty

    How do I get you to write one book in the Stormlight Archive every year?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Is this the part where I get in trouble for not having the second book in to you yet? I keep promising it, and I'm usually very good at meeting my promises on deadlines, but I'm touring so much this year. I've had to tell the fans, "I have to support the books that are out there, and you all want to see me, and you all invite me to conventions." I have to learn how to manage that better, because since January, I've basically only been home for about two months. I'm out there all the time, all over the place.

    It's tough. I have to write. I had to write 3,000 words on the plane yesterday, and writing on the plane is not easy, but I'm going to have to write a big chunk of this book on this tour. Grit my teeth and go.

    Tom Doherty

    I don't want to wait myself.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm trying. I'm trying, Tom. If I finish this one in the next couple of months, it will have been one year since I started writing it. That makes it more reasonable that we'll get them every year. I really think every 18 months is more likely, but I don't want the readers to have to wait. You know, as much as I respect the guy, I don't want to do a George R. R. Martin thing to people, where it's four years between books. That's just too long to keep all these characters for a big epic fantasy in mind.

    Tom Doherty

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So hopefully, one every year, two every three years, will continue to be my goal for this series.

    Tom Doherty

    Beautiful. Do you expect any crossover between worlds ever at any time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh yes, definitely. In fact, if fans go read right now, there's crossover.

    Tom Doherty

    There is?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the characters from Elantris is in The Way of Kings, just in one chapter. And one of the characters from Mistborn is in The Way of Kings. There is crossover. It's never going to be the forefront of the series. I don't want you to have to have read Mistborn to enjoy the Stormlight Archive, but if you have, and you really want to get into these things, you can find all the clues connecting all the worlds. It's a story hidden behind the story. Someday I'll write its own dedicated series for it. But again, it's important for me that I make sure that fans don't have to have read my entire breadth of work in order to enjoy a given series. It has to stand on its own.

    Tom Doherty

    Well, I think we've got something special going. It isn't often I can't wait for the next book. I've got too much to read.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, thanks Tom. That makes me feel pretty awesome.

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  • 1312

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Shawn Speakman

    Steelheart is published today! Tell Suvudu readers about it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Steelheart may not be what you expect to see from me because I've primarily released epic fantasy so far. As a writer, one of my main goals is to always be trying new things to advance my writing skill and to make sure that you have a varied experience reading my books. If you've enjoyed my books, particularly ones like Mistborn, and you pick up this, you'll find lots of things to love. But you'll also find some new things. Steelheart is an action-adventure thrill ride. I wrote it to be exciting, fast-paced, and fun. It is my experimentation of dabbling more in science fiction than fantasy, and dealing with some of the current tropes in action movies, particularly some of the superhero tropes. In the end, however, it is very much a Brandon Sanderson novel.

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  • 1313

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Shawn Speakman

    Steelheart is a young adult book. That shouldn't dismay adult readers though, as many of the bestselling stories in the last decade are from that genre. What is it about young adult that appeals to so many people? And do you think you achieve that with Steelheart?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm not sure if I can answer what it is about YA that appeals to so many people, but I can try to explain why the genre appeals to me. Part of it is the grand tradition of YA in science fiction and fantasy. Soon after I became addicted to sci-fi and fantasy, I was reading things like the Belgariad and The Sword of Shannara, which both have a very young adult feel to them. There's also something about the teenage years that involves discovering yourself. I was a teen when I found myself, when I discovered fantasy novels and writing. Those were the years when I transitioned from being the child I'd been to become the adult I am now. We all go through that, and there's something special about it that draws us back time and time again to that threshold. It's almost like the thresholds characters pass through in Cambellian myth, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood is a big one. Telling stories about that age, that transition, is exciting and fascinating. It helps me understand myself, so that's why I find myself doing it. I certainly hope I achieved that with Steelheart! But it's up to the readers to decide whether I've been able to. I think the book is fantastic, but who doesn't publish a book thinking it's fantastic?

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  • 1314

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Shawn Speakman

    The book's main character, David, is out for revenge. At the beginning of the book, we see the event that led to that desire. Was it hard writing a character out for revenge in a young adult setting?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sometimes you write something and it just comes together, and that's what the prologue was for me. It introduces David, his driving motivation, and was what gave me the passion and excitement to write the book. For those interested in the book, I really do suggest reading the prologue, which is free online. [link: http://brandonsanderson.com/steelheart-prologue/]

    I don't think David being a teen made the revenge aspect of the story more difficult. In fact, it felt like a very natural fit because of the passions of adolescence. Yes, at its core, Steelheart is a vengeance novel. David's passion for what he wants to do is a big driving force behind the whole story working.

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  • 1315

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Shawn Speakman

    You have finished Words of Radiance and it publishes in early 2014. What are you currently working on? The sequel to Steelheart, I hope!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Actually, I'm working on the revisions for Words of Radiance. "Finished" should be in quotes. Yes, the first draft was turned in at the end of June, but since then, we've been working on revisions. It is a long, arduous process to take 400,000 words—1000 pages—and take it from good to excellent. We're in that process right now. However, I've often described how I can write one book while revising another—so I am indeed working on a sequel. The sequel to Steelheart, titled Firefight, which should be coming out in the fall of 2014 if everything goes well.

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  • 1316

    Interview: Sep 23rd, 2013

    Paul Goat Allen

    It's hard to believe it's only been eight years since your debut novel, Elantris, was released. You've accomplished so much in less than a decade of work: the Mistborn saga, your Alcatraz series for young readers, finishing the Wheel of Time, beginning The Stormlight Archive, the Writing Excuses podcast, and now the Hugo Awards.... In a career of high points, what is your most proud moment so far?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You ask some tough questions, Paul! By the way, thank you for that very nice review and spotlight you did of Elantris many years ago. I've always remembered and appreciated that.

    How can I pick a high point from my career so far? I mean, getting to work on the Wheel of Time, that's like a once-in-many-lifetimes opportunity. Normally, I would have to pick that, though the fact that this year I also won a Hugo Award kind rivals it.

    Ten years ago, I was writing books furiously, trying to get published, and dedicating my life to this art. If you'd asked me then what would be the high point, I would've said that it had to be that first moment when an editor called me and said, "I want to buy your book." Everything since then has been awesome, amazing, and wonderful. But after over a decade of work, writing thirteen novels that had never seen the light of day, I don't think anything can ever rival the knowledge of finally being told, "All right, kid, you're going to get a shot at doing this thing for a living." Nothing will ever be able to parallel that professionally.

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  • 1317

    Interview: Sep 23rd, 2013

    Paul Goat Allen

    Great answer. I have to be honest, Brandon. I'm not a big fan of superhero fiction—but Steelheart blew me away. I described it as a "mind-blowing" experience. Do you recall where the original seed of inspiration for this novel, and series, came from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's very cool to hear! Approaching this book was in some ways very difficult for me because I have read superhero prose, and it usually doesn't work. I came to it with some trepidation, asking myself, "Is this really something you want to try?" A lot of the superhero tropes from comic books work very well in their medium and then don't translate well to prose. So for my model I actually went to the recent superhero films. Great movies like The Dark Knight or The Avengers have been keeping some of the tropes that work really well narratively. Tropes that feel like they're too much part of tradition—like putting Wolverine in yellow spandex—work wonderfully in the comics. I love them there! But they don't translate really well to another medium.

    I think part of the problem with superhero fiction is that it tries to be too meta. It tries very hard to poke fun at these tropes, trying to carry them over into fiction, and it ends up just being kind of a mess. But the genre has translated wonderfully well to film through adaptation. So when I approached Steelheart, I actually didn't tell myself, "I'm writing a superhero book." In fact, I've stayed very far away from that mentally and said, "I am writing an action-adventure suspense-thriller." I use some of the seeds from stories that I've loved to read, but really, Steelheart is an action thriller. I used that guide more than I used the superhero guide. I felt that adaption would be stronger for what I was doing. Comic books have done amazing things, but I felt this was what was right for this book.

    As for the original seed that made me want to write this story, I was on book tour, driving a rental car up the East Coast when someone aggressively cut me off in traffic. I got very annoyed at this person, which is not something I normally do. I'm usually pretty easygoing, but this time I thought to myself, "Well, random person, it's a good thing I don't have super powers—because if I did, I'd totally blow your car off the road." Then I thought: "That's horrifying that I would even think of doing that to a random stranger!" Any time that I get horrified like that makes me realize that there's a story there somewhere. So I spent the rest of the drive thinking about what would really happen if I had super powers. Would I go out and be a hero, or would I just start doing whatever I wanted to? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing?

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  • 1318

    Interview: Oct 9th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually do a Q&A session as part of my book signings. One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: "What did you learn from working on the Wheel of Time?" I often struggle to answer; I have no idea how to cover the topic in brief.

    I've long wanted to a series of blog posts collecting all of the things I've said at signings, during interviews, and in other blog posts talking about the Wheel of Time experience. I'm going to add to this my thoughts and feelings, and then try to use it all to tackle talking about some of the things I've learned along the way. This will be a multi-day process! So if you're interested in this topic, check back across the next few weeks as I work my way through a retrospective on my involvement in the Wheel of Time.

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  • 1319

    Interview: Oct 9th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Notes

    As I've said before, I signed the contracts with Harriet to finish this series before I was given the notes. Therefore, going into this, I knew very little of what had been done for A Memory of Light already. In fact, the only thing I did know was that Mr. Jordan had written down the ending—the one he'd been promising for years that he had in his head. (Though, being the gardener-type writer that he was, he always noted that the ending could change shape as his view of it evolved over time.)

    Eager, daunted, I flew to Charleston in December 2007 to meet Harriet. I knew her by reputation only—the editorial director of Tor Books during its foundational years, the woman who edited Ender's Game and who discovered Robert Jordan. I was rather intimidated. Turns out, Harriet is quite grandmotherly—in a southern gentlewoman sort of way. She's confident, capable, and has this air of knowledge about her. However, she's also kind, quick with a smile, and remarkably genuine. I don't know that I've ever met someone who so effortlessly blends self-confidence with compassion.

    Once I arrived at Harriet's house, I asked for the ending, which she gave me. I spent hours picking through the notes and reading—I was at it after Harriet retired for the night, though before she left, she pointed to the computer in the front room where I was sitting. "That's Robert Jordan's," she noted to me. "That's where he wrote many of the books, on that computer, that keyboard. We recently moved it in from the office into this room."

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  • 1320

    Interview: Oct 9th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    So there I was, sitting beside Robert Jordan's computer, looking at printouts of his notes, and feeling supremely overwhelmed. You might wonder what was in those notes. Well, in preparing to write this piece, I went to Harriet and (as I'd often promised fans) asked if it would be possible to release the notes, or to at least speak specifically about their contents. (I still someday want to do a series of blog posts where I take scenes from the notes, then compare them to scenes in the finished books, with a commentary on why I made the decisions to change them that I did.)

    In response to my question, Harriet pointed out that work on the encyclopedia of the Wheel of Time is still in progress. She and Team Jordan haven't yet finished deciding what tidbits from the notes they want to include in the encyclopedia, and she thinks now is not the time to release them. (Or even for me to talk about specifics.)

    Therefore, I can't talk about many specific scenes. Instead, then, I want to talk about the general process—which might be of more interest to many of you. You see, as I've explained before, the "notes" aren't what people assume. I was handed two hundred pages of material by Harriet, and this is what I read that first night. Those pages included:

    Written sections by Robert Jordan: Robert Jordan was a "discovery"-type writer, meaning he tended to explore where he wanted his story to go by doing the actual writing. He didn't work from an outline. Harriet has explained that he had a few goalposts he was aiming for, big events he knew would happen somewhere in the story. He didn't know exactly how those would play out until he wrote them, but he knew what they were. Otherwise, he would write and explore, working his way toward his goalposts and discovering many parts of his story as he worked.

    Robert Jordan was also not a linear writer. From what I can judge by the notes, he was one of the relatively more rare breed of writers who work on a scene as it interests them, no matter where it may be in the story. It seems like he'd often dig out a file and write a short time on it, then stick that file back into the notes. The next day, he'd work on a different place in the story. It's possible that as he started work on a book in earnest, however, he progressed in a more linear fashion. The largest chunk of actual writing he left behind was for the prologue of A Memory of Light, after all.

    However, from what Harriet has told me, he did not show his notes to people, nor did he show them early drafts. Even Harriet often wouldn't get to see early drafts—she says what he gave her was often draft twelve or thirteen.

    In the stack of notes I was given were all of the scenes he'd actually written for A Memory of Light. Together, these were about a hundred pages. I can't tell you everything that was in there, not yet. I can speak about the things I've said before, however. One thing in these notes was the ending. (This became the epilogue of A Memory of Light, though I did add a couple of scenes to it.) Another was his unfinished prologue. (I split this into three chunks to become the prologues for the three books, though I did add quite a few scenes to these prologues as well. Scenes he'd finished, mostly finished, or had a loose first draft of include: the farmer watching the clouds approach in The Gathering Storm, the scene with Rand seen through the eyes of a sul'dam from the prologue of The Gathering Storm, the scene with the Borderlanders on the top of the tower in Towers of Midnight, and the scene with Isam in the Blight at the start of A Memory of Light.)

    Also included in this stack of scenes were a smattering of fragments, including the scene where Egwene gets a special visitor in The Gathering Storm. (Dress colors are discussed.) The scene in Towers of Midnight where two people get engaged. (The one that ends with a character finding a pot in the river—which is a piece I added.) And the scene at the Field of Merrilor inside the tent where someone unexpected arrives. (Much of that sequence was outlined in rough form.) I've tried to be vague as to not give spoilers.

    Q&A sessions with Robert Jordan's assistants: Near the end, Mr. Jordan was too weak to work on the book directly—but he would do sessions with Maria, Alan, Harriet, or Wilson where he'd tell them about the book. They recorded some of these, and then transcribed them for me. Most of these focus on someone asking him, "What happens to so-and-so." He'd then talk about their place in the ending, and what happened to them after the last book. A lot of these focus on major plot structures. ("So tell me again what happens when Siuan sneaks into the White Tower to try to find Egwene.") Or, they focus on the climax of the final book. The bulk of this information gave me a general feeling for the ending itself, and a read on where people ended up after the books. A lot of the "How do they get from the end of Knife of Dreams to the climax of A Memory of Light?" wasn't discussed.

    Selections from Robert Jordan's notes: As I've mentioned before, Robert Jordan's larger notes files are huge and have a haphazard organization. These are different from the notes I was given—the two hundred-page stack. My stack included the pages that Team Jordan thought most important to the writing of the book. They did also give me a CD, however, with everything on it—thousands and thousands of pages of materials.

    Though you might be salivating over these, the bulk are not things many of you would find interesting. Each version of the glossaries is included, for example, so Mr. Jordan knew what they'd said about given characters in given books. (These are identical to the ones printed in the backs of the books.) There are notes for many of the books, things Mr. Jordan used while writing a given novel in the series, but much of this ended up in the books and would not offer any revelations to you. There is, however, a great deal of interesting worldbuilding, some of which ended up in the books—but there's also quite a bit here that will probably end up in the encyclopedia. There were also notes files on given characters, with the viewings/prophesies/etc. about them that needed to be fulfilled, along with notes on their attitude, things they needed to accomplish yet in the series, and sometimes background tidbits about their lives.

    Maria and Alan had spent months meticulously combing through the notes and pulling out anything they thought I might need. This was the last chunk of my two hundred pages of notes, though I was free to spend time combing through the larger grouping of files—and I did this quite a bit.

    To be continued.

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  • 1321

    Interview: Oct 10th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Process

    The first thing I did upon receiving the notes was dive back into a reread of the series, notes in hand, looking for foreshadowing that I needed to fulfill and character arcs that were incomplete. You can read my book-by-book reactions; I posted them as a sequence of blog posts in 2008 as I was rereading.

    This took months, and I built for myself a large file of questions, potential scenes, and ideas while reading. My next visit to Charleston was in the spring of 2008. (April, perhaps? I don't recall exactly.) I was nearing the end of my reread, though I don't believe I was quite finished yet.

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  • 1322

    Interview: Oct 10th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    At this point, I sat down with Team Jordan. In case you don't know the members of this group it includes:

    Harriet: Robert Jordan's editor and widow. She discovered him as an aspiring writer in Charleston after moving there to raise her son from a previous marriage. (She didn't think NYC was the place to do it, and she had inherited the family home in Charleston.) She was encouraged by Robert Jordan's writing and started publishing his historical novels (she still worked for Tor, but telecommuted). Eventually they fell in love and were married. She edited all of the Wheel of Time books, as well as doing some other things. (For example, she is responsible for nearly all of the chapter titles in all of the books.)

    Maria: Maria was hired on somewhere around book seven, I believe. At first, her work seemed to be more clerical—but over time, she impressed Robert Jordan and Harriet, and moved into a more editorial position. She'd maintain continuity for him, as well as work on his copyedits. These days, she is also in charge of making certain things like the Wheel of Time graphic novels are following the storyline and descriptions in the right way.

    Alan: Alan came on later than Maria, but has still been there for years and years by this point. He helps with office work and is the resident timeline king. He also is a military history buff, and knows warfare quite well. He became my "Great Captain" for the last books. (Though he and I did butt heads quite a bit as I pushed for more drama and he pushed for more specific descriptions of tactics.)

    Wilson: I don't know if he'd agree he was part of Team Jordan or not, but I view him as part. Wilson is Robert Jordan's cousin and close friend growing up—the cousin that was like a brother. Jovial and welcoming, he recently dressed up in a costume of me for a costume contest. He's been a cheerleader for Jim's work for years, and every time I felt daunted by this project, it seems I'd get a little note of encouragement or help from Wilson.

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  • 1323

    Interview: Oct 10th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    During this second Charleston visit, I sat down with Alan, Maria, and Harriet to outline my thoughts on where the last books should go. I asked for big sheets of butcher paper, and upon this I started writing down characters, plots, goals, and sequences as headings. Then, we brainstormed answers to holes. I often presented my (somewhat daring) plans for sequences Robert Jordan had not outlined. I think a lot of the things I suggested were surprising to Team Jordan—and made them worried.

    My argument was this, however: Robert Jordan would not have kept the last book stale. He wouldn't have done everything as expected. He wouldn't have flatlined the character arcs, he wouldn't have stopped the worldbuilding. If we played this book safe, we'd end up with a bland climax to the series. Harriet agreed, and told me to proceed with some of these plans—but with the warning that as editor, she would read and see if I pulled off the sequences. If I did, they'd go in the books. If I didn't, we'd remove them.

    This ended up working really well. It allowed me to exercise artistic freedom, driving the books in directions I felt they needed to go without limitations. Granted, I had a personal rule—I didn't contradict Robert Jordan's previous books, and if he had finished a scene in the notes, we were going to use it.

    This might make it sound like I was trying to steer the books away from his vision. Nothing is further from the truth. In rereading his series, in getting close to his notes, I felt like I had a vision for the types of emotional beats Robert Jordan was striving for in the last book. These emotional beats required surprises, revelations, and transformations—I felt like I truly had the pulse of this series. My goal was to fulfill his vision. However, in order to do this, I needed to exercise my artistic muscles, as he would have exercised his own. I had to allow the creative writer in me to create, to tell stories.

    It meant approaching these books as a writer, not a ghostwriter. Harriet understood this; she hired me rather than a ghostwriter because we had notes and fragments of scenes—not an almost-completed novel. However, she was also very right to tell me that she would act as a stabilizing force. Letting my creativity out of its proverbial Pandora's box meant walking a dangerous line, with things that were too "Brandon" potentially consuming the series. I didn't want to let this happen, and Harriet was the failsafe.

    This is why some sequences, like the "River of Souls" sequence that became part of the Unfettered anthology, needed to be deleted from the books. It's not the only one. Others include a sequence where Perrin went into the Ways.

    During the process of writing these books, all members of Team Jordan offered commentary on every aspect—but a certain specialization fell out naturally. Harriet did line edits and focused on character voice. (She famously told me, regarding one of my very early Aviendha scenes, "Brandon, you've written an almost perfect Elayne." It took me a few more tries to get that one right.) Maria would watch for continuity with other books. Alan would pin me down on timeline, troop movements, and tactics.

    To be continued.

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  • 1324

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Gathering Storm: Writing Process

    I attacked the project in earnest in the summer and fall of 2008. I realized early on that there was too much to keep in mind for me to write in a strict chronological fashion, as I had normally done in the past. For this project, I needed to take groups of characters, dump all of the information about them into my mind (like loading a program into RAM), and write for weeks on just that group. This way, I could keep track of the voices of the many characters and maintain the numerous subplots.

    The hardest part of this project, I feel, was keeping track of the subplots and the voices of the side characters. This is not surprising; though I'd read the Wheel of Time many times, I was not a superfan. I loved the books, but I was not among the people who made websites, wikis, and the like for the books. I read the books to study the writing and enjoy the story; I did not spend too much time keeping track of which minor Aes Sedai was which.

    I could no longer be lax in this area; I had to know every one of them. Part of Robert Jordan's genius was in the individual personalities of all of these side characters. So I began dividing the last book (which was at that time still one novel in my mind) into sections. There were five of them. Four of these—one for Rand, one for Egwene, one for Mat, and one for Perrin—would push these four main plots toward the ending. They would happen roughly simultaneously. The other plotlines leading up to the Last Battle, and then the battle itself, were the fifth section.

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  • 1325

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    It became obvious to me early in the outlining process that I was going to be writing a big book. I was well aware of what Robert Jordan had said about the final volume—you can find quotes from him on the internet where he promises it would be so large, fans would need a wheelbarrow to get it out of bookstores. I took this to heart, but knew that there was little chance Tor would let me write the book that large without cutting it.

    Indeed, by late 2008, Tor had gotten word that I was promising Harriet a 2000-page book. I believe it was in January 2009 when I got the call from Harriet asking about splitting the books. I was ready for this. My first line was to tell her, "I still view this as one book, and would like to try and get it printed as one book if at all possible." She took my arguments back to Tor, and had a long conversation with Tom Doherty. When she came back to me, she said they strongly advised a division.

    I'm still not certain what would have happened if Robert Jordan had tried this. Perhaps Harriet would have persuaded him that the realities of publishing forbade a book so large. Either way, I felt I had made as strong an argument as I could—and I admitted, despite my desire to see the book as one volume as Robert Jordan had envisioned, that I would have to either discard several major parts of the outline or agree to split the novel.

    I think we made the right choice. Three books gave me the chance to really dig into the project not as a one-off event, but as a process. Cutting major plotlines would have made the last book a rushed endeavor, requiring me to ignore several large threads. However, the division of the outline did create some problems, which I'll talk about during the Towers of Midnight post.

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  • 1326

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    When Harriet asked me about splitting the book, she wondered if there was a natural breaking point. I told her breaking it once wouldn't work—but breaking it twice might. I didn't feel A Memory of Light would work as two volumes. Looking at my outline and what I needed to accomplish, two books would either mean one very long book and one normal-sized one, or two books split equally. Both would have been awkward. The former because doing a double-sized Wheel of Time book would have the same problems as just printing the original 2000-page novel. 1400 pages isn't much better in publishing terms. 1000, like some of the Wheel of Time books, already pushes against those limits.

    The second option—two 1000-page books—was even more of a problem. If we cut it in the middle like that, we'd get the first half of all four plot sequences I mentioned above—but none of their climaxes. This (writing one book as a setup book, with the payoffs mostly happening in another book) was an experiment that Robert Jordan had already attempted, and he had spoken of the problems it created. He was a better writer than I am, and if he couldn't accomplish such a split, I didn't want to attempt it.

    Instead, I felt that splitting the book as three books would allow us to have complete arcs in each one. Two, actually, for each of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight—followed by the climactic book, A Memory of Light. So I set out to divide the plots and decide what would go where.

    I knew fans would be skeptical of me taking over the project in the first place, and I knew they'd be more skeptical when we announced a three-book split. That meant I wanted my most dynamic plots in the first book. (I knew the ending would carry its own book, and was never worried about that one being dynamic enough.) In addition, I wanted to split the four sequences—Rand/Egwene/Mat/Perrin—so that we had at least one in each book that Robert Jordan had done a lot of work on. Rand and Perrin had much less material finished for them than Mat and Egwene. So it was either Rand/Egwene or Perrin/Mat for the first book.

    It soon became clear that I needed to lead with Rand/Egwene. They mirrored each other in very interesting ways, with Rand's narrative descent and Egwene's narrative ascent. When Rand was being contemplative, Egwene's plot had action—and vice versa. While my personal favorite of the four is Perrin's arc, I felt his involved a lot of buildup and some less straightforward plotting as we pushed toward his climactic moments. I also decided that the plots would work with shaving off some of what Rand/Egwene were doing to save it for the second book, but I couldn't do the same as easily for Perrin/Mat.

    A book was forming in my head. Rand's absolute power driving him toward destruction and Egwene's specific lack of power elevating her toward rebuilding the White Tower. We needed a Mat section—I didn’t want him absent for the book—so Hinderstap was my creation, devised after Harriet asked me to be "more disturbing and horrifying" in regards to the bubbles of evil that were coming into the book.

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  • 1327

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Egwene

    The Egwene plot was an absolute delight to work on. Of all the things that Robert Jordan had been building for this last book (including the final chapter) before he died, I feel this was the most fully formed. Egwene's rise and the Seanchan assault played together perfectly in classic Wheel of Time fashion, and I got to participate in unique ways, working with his notes and instructions to craft his plotlines exactly as I feel he envisioned them.

    One large change I did make was splitting the Egwene dinner with Elaida into two distinct scenes, instead of one single scene. I felt the pacing worked much better this way, and it complemented the Rand sequence better with the first dinner happening, Egwene getting sent to further work, then a climactic second dinner happening where I could really bring about Egwene's victory, all without her ever channeling.

    In the Egwene sequence, I got to do the most truly collaborative work with Robert Jordan. In other places, I inserted scenes he'd written. In many others, I had to go with my gut, lacking instruction. With Egwene, I had a blend of explanations of scenes, written scenes, and Q&A prompts from Robert Jordan that made me feel as if I were working directly with him to bring about the sequence. If you want to see a full sequence in the books that I think is the closest to the way he'd have done it if he could have, I'd suggest the Egwene sequence in The Gathering Storm. (And beyond. Most of what we have for her was by his direction, inclusive of the events leading up to—and including—Merrilor.)

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  • 1328

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Rand

    In taking on this project, one of my personal goals—if the series would allow it—was to focus more time on the main characters, particularly Rand. I love the middle books, with their exploration of other plots and characters, but the first book presented to us Rand, Perrin, Mat, and Egwene as our main characters. I feel that, in the true nature of the Wheel of Time, the appropriate thing to do was bring the attention back to them for the final books—and I feel Robert Jordan would have done so himself.

    Rand needed to be the heart of the three novels. In pondering how to accomplish his outline, I was reminded of things I'd felt when first reading The Dragon Reborn. Rand's anguish as a character was powerful to me, and I thought, "Surely he can't go lower, be forced to go through more, than he's had happen to him here." The next few books affirmed this.

    Then I read Lord of Chaos. That book breaks your heart; I found myself amazed that Rand could be brought down even lower. This progressed through the next books, with more being piled upon Rand—but the low points of Lord of Chaos are the most stark in my mind. I remember thinking, "Surely this is the bottom."

    That was why, in The Gathering Storm, I needed to attempt what Robert Jordan had successfully done twice. I needed to bring Rand even lower than the reader had assumed, expected, or even thought possible. This was in part to fulfill arcs Robert Jordan had in place, in part because of his love for the Monomyth and the Campbellian hero's journey, but mostly because it felt right to me. Rand's redemption, so to speak, needed to be preceded by his lowest point in the series.

    This also offered me an interesting storytelling opportunity. In the original outline, Rand's descent, his decision on Dragonmount, and his following actions as the Dragon Reborn would all happen in a single volume. In splitting the books, I could do the first part in one book, then have his actions in the second book introduce an interesting tension—the question of whether or not this new Rand was still the Rand we loved. I could prompt readers to fear that just as he became unrecognizable in the depths of his fall, he might become something unknowable in the heights of his redemption. It would make for a new kind of conflict, one I'd never explored before, through Towers of Midnight—before finally giving Rand more viewpoints in A Memory of Light to humanize him again. (Something Harriet was very glad to hear I was planning to do. Her main point regarding Rand was that he, in performing the actions he did in the last book, had to be very human in his approach to them. This was to be the story of an ordinary man who achieved something amazing, not an unknowable deity doing the same.)

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  • 1329

    Interview: Oct 15th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Other Characters

    I have a fondness for Aviendha, my personal favorite of the female leads in the Wheel of Time. (My favorite among the male leads is Perrin.) I wanted to see a return of Avi in the last books, as I felt we just hadn't had enough of her lately. I also have an interesting relationship with Nynaeve, a character who I (as a young man) resented. My opinion of her is the one that grew the most during the course of my reading as just a fan, and by Knife of Dreams I absolutely loved her. I knew that with all of the crowding in the last books, she actually wouldn't have a large part to play in the Last Battle. (Very few would be able to do so, beyond Rand/Egwene/Perrin/Mat.) Therefore, it was important to me to give her a solid and interesting sequence of scenes through both The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight. Her raising was not instructed by the notes, but was something I was insistent be in the books. (And along those lines, one thing Harriet insisted happen—and I was all too ready to oblige—was a meeting between Rand and his father.)

    To be continued.

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  • 1330

    Interview: Oct 17th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Gathering Storm: What did I learn?

    The obvious thing I learned has to do with juggling so many side plots. I'd attempted this level of complexity one time before in my life, the first draft of The Way of Kings. (Written in 2002–2003, this was very different from the version I published in 2010, which was rebuilt from the ground up and written from page one a second time.) The book had major problems, and I felt at the time they came from inexpert juggling of its multitude of viewpoints. I've since advised new writers that this is a potential trap—adding complexity by way of many viewpoints, when the book may not need it. Many great epics we love in the genre (The Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire included) start with a small group of characters, many in the same location, before splitting into much larger experiences with expansive numbers of viewpoints.

    I couldn't afford to be bad at this any longer. Fortunately, finishing the Mistborn trilogy had taught me a lot about juggling viewpoints. Approaching The Wheel of Time, I was better able to divide viewpoints, arrange them in a novel, and keep them in narrative rhythm with one another—so they complemented one another, rather than distracting or confusing the reader.

    The other primary thing I feel I gained working on this book is a better understanding of my outlining process. Robert Jordan, as I said in previous installments, seems to have been more of a discovery writer than an outline writer—I'm the opposite. Working with The Gathering Storm forced me to take all of these notes and fragments of scenes and build a cohesive story from them. It worked surprisingly well. Somehow, my own process melded perfectly with the challenge of building a book from all of these parts. (That's not to say that the book itself was perfect—just that my process adapted very naturally to the challenge of outlining these novels.)

    There are a lot of little things. Harriet's careful line edits taught me to be more specific in my word choice. The invaluable contributions of Alan and Maria taught me the importance of having assistants to help with projects this large, and showed me how to make the best use of that help. (It was something I started out bad at doing—my first few requests of Alan and Maria were to collect things I never ended up needing, for example.) I gained a new awe for the passion of Wheel of Time fandom, and feel I grew to understand them—particularly the very enthusiastic fans—a little better. This, in turn, has informed my interactions with my own readers.

    I also learned that the way I do characters (which is the one part of the process I do more like a discovery writer) can betray me. As evidenced below.

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  • 1331

    Interview: Oct 17th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Gathering Storm: What did I do wrong?

    My take on Mat is very divisive among Wheel of Time fans. A great number feel I did him poorly in The Gathering Storm. I've had a similar number approach me and tell me they like my Mat better than they did in previous books. Unfortunately, in doing so, these latter readers prove that the first readers are right. People don't come to me and say "I like your Perrin" or "I dislike your Perrin." They don't do it for Rand, Egwene, or any of the other major characters. While undoubtedly there are some who feel this way about those characters, there isn't a consensus opinion among a large number of fans as there is that Mat was DIFFERENT in The Gathering Storm. Those who like him better are likely ones who just naturally prefer the way I do a roguish character as opposed to the way Robert Jordan did one. It doesn't mean Mat is better—just that I wrote him differently, and anytime there's a difference, some will prefer the changed version. (There are even people who prefer New Coke!)

    I don't mean to demean the opinions of those who feel Mat was great in The Gathering Storm. I'm glad you enjoyed him, and I think there is some excellent writing involved in his viewpoints. However, I feel that I was wrong and the critics are right. Looking at Robert Jordan's Mat and what I wrote, there are some subtle differences that made Mat read wrong to a sizable portion of the audience. (Jason Denzel, who is a good friend, was the first to point it out to me—not maliciously, but truthfully. His comment was along the lines of, "I think your take on Mat feels like very early books Mat." This was a nice way of saying that my Mat lacked some of the depth of characterization he'd gained over the course of the latter books of the series.)

    My Mat wasn't an attempt to fix or change Mat—the sense that Mat is "off" was created by me trusting my instincts and in this case being wrong. You see, as I say above, I discovery-write characters. I write a viewpoint, and then judge if it has the right feel. I try again, changing the way the character reacts and thinks, until I arrive at the right feel. It's like casting different actors in a role, and I do this quite deliberately—I feel that there is a danger in outlining as much as I do. It risks leaving your characters feeling wooden, that they are simply filling roles in a plot. (I find that many thrillers, which as a genre focus on tight plotting, have this problem.)

    To combat this, I let my characters grow more organically. I allow them to violate the plot outline, and then revise the outline to fit the people they are becoming. They often do this, but mostly in very small ways—usually, my casting process finds the right person for the plot, and this doesn't require major revisions as they grow.

    However, I've read The Wheel of Time over and over—and I had never noticed that my picture of Mat was still deeply influenced by his book one/two appearance. The sidekick rogue. While some of my favorite parts of the series are his latter appearances where he gains a great deal of characterization (although this starts in book three), I cast the wrong Mat in these books, and I simply wrote him poorly. It was a version of Mat, and I don't think it's a disaster—but he's much farther from his correct characterization than the other characters are.

    The interesting thing about this is, though it is the biggest mistake I made in my writing of The Gathering Storm, it also is one of the things that taught me the most. My digging into viewpoint for the next book became one of the greatest learning experiences of my career so far.

    To be continued.

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  • 1332

    Interview: Oct 22nd, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Towers of Midnight: Writing Process

    Part of the reason I'd decided upon doing Rand/Egwene first was because I knew that this book—Perrin's sequence in particular—was going to be the trickiest of the four major viewpoint sequences. Of the four leads, I felt Perrin was one of those who needed the most growth. In fact, he had as much to grow as Rand did—but in more subtle ways. Rand's descent was a result of the multitude of forces pushing against him, bearing him down, threating to crush him. He was brought to the point where he was because his personality issues were magnified a hundred times over by the extreme circumstances of his life. He cracked while trying desperately to find the right thing to do.

    Perrin was different. He had major hangups that he consistently refused to confront, and in many ways was the farthest of the main characters from where he needed to be. Rand's transformation was more dramatic, but Perrin's was just as necessary.

    It should be noted that I felt, both from the notes and my own readings of the series, that Mat was basically where Robert Jordan wanted him to be. This remains true even after I re-looked at Mat and tried to fix my interpretation of him. That doesn't mean that Mat is finished as a character, just that he was where Mr. Jordan wanted him for the Last Battle. Mat was going to have another series all his own after the main group of books, and some of his character progress was saved for those. (Note that those books are not going to be written.)

    Egwene had a small amount of development left to do, but was mostly there. In The Gathering Storm, she faced the most critical challenges of her career, but Robert Jordan had brought her to the point where she needed to be in Knife of Dreams, and in the notes for A Memory of Light he had indicated specifically how she was to progress. It was mostly a matter of using the confrontations in the White Tower to manifest things she had already learned, and to show once and for all the person she had become.

    As for the other characters, Elayne was where she needed to be, but Avi was not. (She had a great deal of growth left to her.) Nynaeve had reached the peak of her development, in my opinion, as had Min. At least this is my read on it, which is reflected in my interpretations of the various arcs of the characters.

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  • 1333

    Interview: Oct 22nd, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin

    Perrin is my favorite character in the series, and has been since I was a youth. Like many readers, I was frustrated by his choices through the later books, though the writer in me really appreciated Robert Jordan's skillful guidance of the character. The problems Perrin confronted (sometimes poorly) highlighted his uncomfortable relationship with the wolves, his unwillingness to cut himself a break, and his ability to devote himself so utterly to one task that everything else vanished. (As a note, I feel this is one of the major things that made me empathize with Perrin for all those years. Of the main characters, he is the only artist. However, he's an artist like me—a focused project builder. A craftsman.)

    Though I wanted to be careful not to overdo the concept, one of my goals in these last few books was to bring back ideas and conflicts from the first books—creating parallels and emphasizing the cyclical nature of the Wheel of Time. Again, this was dangerous. I didn't want these books to become a series of in-jokes, homages, and repetitions.

    However, there are places where it was not only appropriate, but vital that we return to these themes. I felt one of those involved the Whitecloaks and Perrin, specifically the two Children of the Light he had killed during his clash with them in the very first book. This was a tricky sequence to plot. I wanted Perrin to manifest leadership in a way different from Rand or Egwene. Robert Jordan instructed that Perrin become a king, and I loved this plot arc for him—but in beginning it with the Whitecloaks, I threatened to leave Perrin weak and passive as a character. Of all the sequences in the books, I struggled with this one the most—mostly because of my own aspirations, goals, and dreams for what Perrin could become.

    His plot is my favorite of the four for those reasons.

    I had other goals for Perrin in this book. His experiences in the Wolf Dream needed to return, I felt, and push toward a final climax in the Last Hunt. This meant returning to a confrontation with Slayer, a mirrored character to Perrin with a dual nature. I wanted to highlight Perrin's instinctive use of his powers, as a contrast to the thoughtful, learned use of power represented by Egwene. People have asked if I think Perrin is better at Tel'aran'rhiod than Egwene. I don't think he is, the balefire-bending scene notwithstanding. They represent two sides of a coin, instinct and learning. In some cases Perrin will be more capable, and in others Egwene will shine.

    The forging of Perrin's hammer, the death of Hopper, and the wounding of Perrin in the leg (which is mythologically significant) were in my narrative plan for him from the get-go. However, weaving them all together involved a lot of head/wall-bashing. I wanted a significance to Perrin's interactions with the Way of the Leaf as well, and to build a rapport between him and Galad—in my reads of the characters, I felt they would make for unlikely friends.

    Of all the major plot sequences in the books, Perrin's was the one where I had the most freedom—but also the most danger of straying too far from Robert Jordan's vision for who the character should be. His instructions for Perrin focused almost entirely on the person Perrin would be after the Last Battle, with little or no direction on how to bring him there. Perrin was fully in my hands, and I wanted to take extra care to guide my favorite character toward the ending.

    I will note, by the way, that Verin's interaction with Egwene in The Gathering Storm was my biggest surprise from the notes. My second biggest was the Thom/Moiraine engagement. Robert Jordan wrote that scene, and I was surprised to read it. (As I said, though I loved and had read the books, there are plenty of fans who were bigger fans than myself—and to them, this was no surprise.) I didn't pick up the subtle hints of a relationship between the two of them until my reread following my getting the notes.

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  • 1334

    Interview: Oct 22nd, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mat

    Robert Jordan had written much of Mat's plot, and left instructions on much of the rest. My challenge with Mat in this book, then, wasn't to complete his arc—which was quite good. It was to do a better job with Mat than I had in the previous book.

    In order to do Mat right, I went back to Robert Jordan's writing. This time, I dissected Mat, looking at him as a craftsman. I saw a depth of internal narrative that was unlike anything I'd analyzed before. Of all the Wheel of Time characters, Mat is the least trustworthy narrator. What he thinks, feels, and does are sometimes three very different things. His narrative itself is filled with snark and beautifully clever lines, but a relative few of those actually leave his lips. The harder he tries to do something, often the worse it turns out for him. Mat's at his best when he lets instinct lead, regardless of what his internal monologue says.

    This makes him very tricky to write, and is why my initial gut instinct on how to do him was wrong. I think for a lot of Wheel of Time readers, Mat is the big surprise in the series. The sometimes snarky, but often grumpy sidekick from the first two books transforms into a unique blend of awesomeness I haven't found in any other story.

    I feel that my stab at writing Mat in Towers of Midnight is far better than it was in The Gathering Storm, though I'm not sure I got him right until A Memory of Light. I know some fans will disagree that I ever did get him right, but I am pleased with—and comfortable with—the Mat of these latter two books. Though, of course, having Robert Jordan's more detailed instructions for Mat in these books does help.

    To be continued.

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  • 1335

    Interview: Oct 24th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Towers of Midnight: What did I learn?

    Set Your Sights High

    I've never been one to dodge a challenge. However, after failing to do The Way of Kings right in 2002, I was timid about tackling complex narratives across many, many viewpoints. Towers of Midnight marked the largest-scale book I'd ever attempted, with the most complexity of viewpoints, the greatest number of distinct and different scenes to balance, and the most ambitious forms of storytelling. Aviendha's trip through the glass pillars was the most audacious thing I believe I pitched at Team Jordan, and was one of the things about which they were the most skeptical. Perrin's balance between action and inaction risked having him descend into passiveness.

    I worked on the new version of The Way of Kings during this time, in 2009–10, when I was also working on Towers of Midnight. I doubt I will ever be more busy than I was in those two years, tackling two of the biggest books of my career at the same time. However, during this time I entered a place in my writing where something clicked, dealing with the next stage of my writing career. I'd always wanted to master the complex epic—my favorite stories of all time fit this mold. Before this, however, I'd done very few sequels—and Towers of Midnight was the most complicated sequel I'm ever likely to do.

    I learned a great deal about myself during this period, and the results are on the pages of these two books, Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings.

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  • 1336

    Interview: Oct 24th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Depth of Viewpoint

    Working on Mat sent me down a proverbial rabbit hole, as I studied—really studied—how a master approached the use of the third-person limited viewpoint. I have always respected Robert Jordan's ability to characterize through viewpoint. (By this, I mean his ability to show how a person thinks and feels by the way they describe the world while you're seeing through their eyes.) Mat changed my perspective on how to write narrative, and how to make characters live beyond the words stated about them.

    When asked what I think Robert Jordan's greatest skill was, I don't say worldbuilding or juggling a complex narrative, though these are certainly two areas in which he excelled. No, I talk about his viewpoints. If there's one thing I wish to learn from Robert Jordan, it's how to accomplish this—how to make you feel a character's culture, history, temperament, and current emotional state by the way they describe the simple things in the world around them.

    I think I have improved at this. But it's one of the things I believe I'll be working on for my entire career.

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  • 1337

    Interview: Oct 24th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Increased Subtlety

    I like novels where a multitude of different threads, some hidden, twist together to a surprising conclusion. This is one area where I think I've, for the most part, done a good job in the past. Working on The Wheel of Time, however, I was able to see Robert Jordan's hand in new ways—and see how delicate he could be with some of his plotting and characterization. I worry that sometimes, I beat people over the head with a character's goals, theme, and motivations. It's because I feel a character with well-defined motivations is one of the hallmarks of a strongly written story.

    However, I do think I need to learn to be more subtle—and The Wheel of Time taught me a great deal about this. Robert Jordan's light hand in dealing with the Thom/Moiraine relationship is a good example. Other characters, however, stand out as well—Pevara is an example. The subtle clues about how some of the Sitters who had been chosen were too young is another example of his very delicate hand. It's not an important thread, in the grand scheme of things. Little touches like this, however, are what makes a world live beyond the page. It is something I think I learned from this project—not necessarily how to accomplish this (we'll see if I can), but how to recognize and appreciate it.

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  • 1338

    Interview: Oct 24th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Towers of Midnight: What did I do wrong?

    I'm the culprit of numerous small mistakes, most of which there is no time to point out. The biggest flaw in my writing of Towers of Midnight, however, has to be the chronology.

    All of my solo books have been basically chronological. Elantris had some funky storytelling where each group of three chapters happened concurrently, but most of my other books had a forward progression without much jumping back and forth in timeline for different characters.

    The Wheel of Time, however, does jump around a lot—you just don't notice it, as Robert Jordan juggled the timelines quite well. Mat could be progressing at one rate, and when you jumped to Perrin, you'd jump forward or back in time. Those who wanted to look for the clues could find out and build a timeline using the phases of the moon or other hints. Those who didn't want to notice, however, were never thrown out by perceived incongruities.

    When we split the books, some of the timeline things I'd done got too far out of sync. At the end of Knife of Dreams, the character viewpoints were somewhat out of sync, as Robert Jordan often wrote them. I didn't have any experience juggling something like this, and in Towers of Midnight I flubbed it. Not that the timeline is messed up—it's actually pretty good, all things considered. However, the perception of it brought us troubles. Because characters interacted across timelines, it felt like they were in two places at once (Tam is an example) even though it all worked narratively.

    This made for some confusing moments for readers. Mr. Jordan did things like this without distracting; I didn't juggle this as well, and because of it, I think the book suffered. I hope I've grown better, but it was eye-opening for me when Towers of Midnight came out and people mentioned being confused. I hadn't even noticed the potential problem until the book was out.

    To be continued.

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  • 1339

    Interview: Oct 30th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Now we come to the big one. The Last Battle, the final book of the Wheel of Time.

    There was so much to pack into this book that at times I wondered if I'd be able to create a cohesive narrative from it. The danger was that instead, it would feel like a sequence of "Oh, hey, I forgot to tie this up" loose ends being completed one after another. Many of these things did need to be tied up, but it needed to happen in a way that came together into a story.

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  • 1340

    Interview: Oct 30th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Perrin

    When I launched into this book, I'd just finished Towers of Midnight and was in a very "Perrin is awesome" mood. I wanted to keep writing Perrin, so I did his sequence for the book first. It worked, to an extent. I love the Perrin parts of this book. However, by the end—and after finishing the other viewpoints—we found that the book had way too much Perrin in it. Cutting the sequence where Perrin travels through the Ways to try to close the Caemlyn Waygate from behind was one method of balancing this out. The sequence was also cut because Harriet felt I'd gone too far in the direction of returning to previous themes in the series, bringing back something better left alone so we could focus on the Last Battle. (In addition, Maria thought my descriptions of the Ways just didn't fit the story.)

    This was a 17,000-word sequence (and it ended with the Ogier rescuing Perrin and his company from the Black Wind, driving it off with their song). I love the sequence, but unlike the sequence with Bao (the deleted scenes named "River of Souls" and included in the Unfettered anthology) it is not canon. It couldn't happen for a multitude of reasons, and got trimmed.

    Otherwise, Perrin ended up as I wanted him. A lot of people were surprised that I knocked him out of the fighting for a big chunk of the Last Battle, but I felt it appropriate. The fighting armies were Mat's show, and Perrin's focus for the fighting was to join Rand and protect him in the Wolf Dream. There was so much else going on, I decided to bench him for a chunk of the warfare—and I'm pleased with the result. It brought real impact to the Slayer fight, where Perrin was left wounded.

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  • 1341

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    How did you become interested in being a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My start as a writer can be traced back to when I was fourteen years old. I was not a very distinguished student, so to speak: Bs and Cs in all my classes. I really didn't have any direction, either; there was nothing I really loved to do. I was also what they call a "reluctant reader". My reading skills were not fantastic, so when I tried reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, it was just completely over my head, and I assumed that all fantasy novels were boring. It was a teacher who handed me the very first fantasy novel I ever really finished reading. The book was called Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, and it had this gorgeous Michael Whelan cover on it which immediately caught my eye. I read the book and absolutely fell in love with it. I became an avid reader, mostly of fantasy novels, over the next couple of years. Soon I began to think, "You know, somebody out there is making a living at this, and it seems like it's something that I would really enjoy doing." That's when I found some purpose and direction.

    There were certain influences in my life, my mother primarily, who convinced me that being a writer was hard to do, and she was right. It's one of these jobs where not everybody who tries it actually makes it. She convinced me to go into chemistry during college because I had done well in the sciences all throughout high school, thinking I could write in my spare time and have a real, solid job. It wasn't terrible advice; I'm just not sure it was the right advice for me at that time. I served a mission and during that time I was very, very pleased to be on another continent, away from chemistry. I really missed writing, though, because I'd been doing it for fun all through that freshman year before I left. I actually started my first novel when I was fifteen, but it didn't go anywhere. It was rather derivative and all those things that you expect from the majority of novels written by guys in high school. Knowing I could actually produce something, though, gave me some encouragement. Of course I didn't show it to anybody. I hid it behind the painting in my room because I didn't want anyone to see the pages I'd printed out and make fun of me.

    When I got back from my mission, I thought, "You know what? I'm going to give it a try." It sounds kind of stupid, but like I said, there are people that get to do this for a living, and I decided that I was never going to be happy unless I gave it a shot. So I changed my major to English because I assumed that's what you did if you wanted to be a writer. I've since learned that that's not the only way to go about it, but it did work for me. It gave me a much better grounding in the classics. I was able to take some creative writing classes too, as a part of my required credits. I got a job working the graveyard shift at a hotel, which was great for my writing because I was there most weeknights from 11 pm until 7 am, and the only requirements that they put me to were, "Just don't fall asleep. Do whatever you want, just don't fall asleep. We need you awake in case there's an emergency or if anyone comes in." I ended up spending a lot of my time working on novels during those early morning hours, and that's how I was able to pay for school, attend it full-time, and still have time for writing. I did that for about five years until I eventually decided that I would go back for a master's degree. It was sort of a way to delay having to make the inevitable decision of what I was really going to do with my life. My backup career then became working as an English professor, partially because I do enjoy teaching, and I enjoy scholarship on the academic level. My parents were worried about me, though. They were afraid that I was going to end up begging for beans on the side of the road, or whatever it is that starving artists do. At least being able to tell them that I was getting a master's degree was helpful. It was also nice to be part of a community of writers and to be able to see what other people were creating.

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  • 1342

    Interview: Oct 30th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Egwene

    There were three particular things that were quite a challenge in writing this last book. The first was how to use Rand fighting the Dark One in a way that would be interesting, visual, and powerful. The second was how to do the tactics of a large-scale battle. The final one had to do with Egwene.

    In his notes, Robert Jordan was very specific about the fact that Rand and Egwene needed to almost come to blows in the lead-up to the Last Battle. He called it the grand union of the armies against Rand, whose decisions were considered too radical, too dangerous, to be allowed to proceed. Moiraine was to be the force that brought the two of them together, unifying the armies of light, cementing her importance—and showing why she needed to be rescued by Mat before the Last Battle. (There were a lot of instructions about what Moiraine was to say, and some good writing on that meeting at the Field of Merrilor.)

    The burden upon me was to realistically bring Rand and Egwene to the point where the reader believed they'd fight one another—or at least go to the Last Battle separately, without cohesion—if Moiraine hadn't intervened. This was difficult. Having The Gathering Storm end on such a high note for Egwene left me struggling to figure out how, in Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light, to make her go at cross-purposes to Rand without alienating the reader from her viewpoints. I felt what she was doing was very realistic and in character for who she was, but I also knew that making the decisions she would make was going to cause some readers to be very annoyed with her.

    In the end, I decided that the proper course was to let them be annoyed. The very same strength that had made Egwene shine in The Gathering Storm was also the strength that let her lead the Aes Sedai—of whom she had truly become one. The will of the Aes Sedai against the rest of the world is a major theme of the Wheel of Time, and say what you will of it, the theme is consistent—as are the characters. Egwene was at their head. Yes, I wanted her to be relatable, but I also wanted it clear that she was Aes Sedai, and she wasn't about to let someone else dominate the decisions on how to approach the Last Battle.

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  • 1343

    Interview: Nov 1st, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Robert Jordan didn't leave me a ton of direction regarding the Black Tower. There were a few gems that we knew, but in a lot of places I was left to follow my instincts regarding the plotting points he had built across the last few books. He did leave a lot of clear instructions regarding Taim, fortunately, including his backstory and instructions for a scene where Taim was named as one of the Forsaken.

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  • 1344

    Interview: Nov 1st, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Androl and Pevara

    In working on the Black Tower plot, one thing I realized early on was that I wanted a new viewpoint character to be involved. One reason was that we didn't have anyone to really show the lives of the everyday members of the Black Tower. It felt like a hole in the viewpoint mosaic for the series. In addition, each Wheel of Time book—almost without exception—has either introduced a new viewpoint character or added a great deal of depth to a character who had only seen minimal use before. As we were drawing near to the end of the series, I didn't want to expand this very far. However, I did want to add at least one character across the three books I was doing.

    I went to Team Jordan with the suggestion that I could fulfill both of these purposes by using one of the rank-and-file members of the Black Tower, preferably someone who wasn't a full Asha'man and was something of a blank slate. They suggested Androl. The notes were silent regarding him, and while he had been around, he so far hadn't had the spotlight on him. He seemed the perfect character to dig into.

    A few more things got spun into this sequence. One was my desire to expand the usage of gateways in the series. For years, as an aspiring writer, I imagined how I would use gateways if writing a book that included them. I went so far as to include in the Stormlight Archive a magic system built around a similar teleportation mechanic. Being able to work on the Wheel of Time was a thrill for many reasons, but one big one was that it let me play with one of my favorite magic systems and nudge it in a few new directions. I've said that I didn't want to make a large number of new weaves, but instead find ways to use established weaves in new ways. I also liked the idea of expanding on the system for people who have a specific talent in certain areas of the One Power.

    Androl became my gateway expert. Another vital key in building him came from Harriet, who mailed me a long article about a leatherworker she found in Mr. Jordan's notes. She said, "He was planning to use this somewhere, but we don't know where."

    One final piece for his storyline came during my rereads of the series, where I felt that at times the fandom had been too down on the Red Ajah. True, they had some serious problems with their leadership in the books, but their purpose was noble. I feel that many readers wanted to treat them as the Wheel of Time equivalent of Slytherin—the house of no-goods, with every member a various form of nasty. Robert Jordan himself worked to counteract this, adding a great deal of depth to the Ajah by introducing Pevara. She had long been one of my favorite side characters, and I wanted her to have a strong plot in the last books. Building a relationship between her and Androl felt very natural to me, as it not only allowed me to explore the bonding process, but also let me work a small romance into the last three books—another thing that was present in most Wheel of Time books. The ways I pushed the Androl/Pevara bond was also something of an exploration and experiment. Though this was suggested by the things Robert Jordan wrote, I did have some freedom in how to adapt it. I felt that paralleling the wolf bond made sense, with (of course) its own distinctions.

    Finding a place to put the Pevara/Androl sequence into the books, however, proved difficult. Towers of Midnight was the book where we suffered the biggest time crunch. That was the novel where I'd plotted to put most of the Black Tower sequence, but in the end it didn't fit—partially because we just didn't have time for me to write it. So, while I did finish some chapters to put there, the soul of the sequence got pushed off to A Memory of Light, if I managed to find time for it.

    I did find time—in part because of cutting the Perrin sequence. Losing those 17,000 words left an imbalance to the pacing of the final book. It needed a plot sequence with more specific tension to balance out the more sweeping sequences early in the book where characters plan, plot, and argue. I was able to expand Androl/Pevara to fit this hole, and to show a lot of things I really wanted to show in the books.

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  • 1345

    Interview: Nov 1st, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    Rand and Logain

    I made a few interesting decisions with the Black Tower sequence. The first was to not involve Rand. Though it would have been a nice narrative balance to have Rand come save the Asha'man in contrast to them saving him in book six, I felt that Rand was riding to the rescue too often. The Black Tower was about to lose him permanently, and if its members could not face their problems on their own, then thematically they'd be left at the end of the series hampered and undermined. Beyond this, I believed that Rand's personality (as shown in earlier books) would push him to avoid being pulled into a potential trap at the Black Tower. His argument that he couldn't risk a confrontation is a good one. Androl and company had to face their problems on their own—save for the help of an Aes Sedai, another thing I felt to be thematically important.

    Perhaps the most controversial decision (among Team Jordan) that I made with this sequence was to push Logain toward being a darker figure. Following his extended torture, I felt that Logain would emerge as a different person—though he'd always been somewhat dark. Some members of Team Jordan felt he was past that, and I disagreed. Logan was a false Dragon, gentled then healed, head of a group of men going insane who owed loyalty to Rand—but who rarely interacted with him. There is so much going on with this guy that he could have carried an entire series on his own.

    I wanted him to wrestle with all of this. Logain's life ever since his capture way back when seemed to have been one of being shoved this way and then that. He needed to decide for himself what kind of Black Tower he was going to rule, if he was going to earn the honor of men as was promised. (And yes, this had not yet happened at the end of the series.) Logain, so far as I know, never once let go of power in the series—it was always ripped from his fingers. In this case, he was allowed to choose.

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  • 1346

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    How did you get your start as a published author?

    Brandon Sanderson

    By this time, I had already written about twelve or thirteen novels, which I was trying to market for publishing. I was still working the graveyard shift at the hotel, and eventually one of the manuscripts that I'd sent somewhere got me a callback from an editor who had finally looked at my manuscript and wanted to buy it. I actually got the phone call as a voicemail. It was from an editor that I'd sent a book to eighteen months before. By that time I had pretty much given up on it; eighteen months is a lot longer than you expect for them to ever get back to you. You figure, "Okay, it's either lost or they didn't like it and just rejected it but forgot to send you a letter." It's a funny story, though. The one who gave it to the person who finally contacted me was actually an agent I had met and talked to at a convention. He said to me then, "Oh, you seem so nice," and later told me that it was because I was such a nice guy that he didn't want to just reject the book without looking at it. I guess that got me lots of points, because he sat on it for all those eighteen months before he eventually looked at it. But by then all my contact info was wrong, because during the time that I had sent the book out, I had moved and had AOL get rid of my e-mail address because I stopped paying for the service. I had also purchased a cell phone, so my phone number was no longer accurate. So this person, who would later become my editor, had to google me. He found my contact information on my BYU grad student page, which fortunately I had kept up-to-date, and when he called me, the voicemail said, "Hi, I don't know if this is the right Brandon Sanderson, but if it is, you sent me a manuscript about eighteen months ago, and I finally started looking at it last night. I got a few hundred pages into it, and I knew I had to call you and make sure it's still available, because I think I want to buy it."

    I called him back, and then I called the agent that I had met, because it seemed like his editorial style matched mine. He handled the contract negotiations, and I became an author. I quit my graveyard shift job, taught freshman English composition in between to keep me going while we were waiting for the books to actually come out, and fortunately I've never had to go and get another real job. I've always worried I would have to.

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  • 1347

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    You have many blog posts and podcasts about the writing process and getting published. Could you touch on a few of the core things would-be authors should do?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say that the first and most important thing for an author is to learn to write consistently. It's just so important. A lot of people say they want to be writers but don't actually write, or they just write here and there. You can't expect to be a master at something when you first try it. Even if you're pretty good at it, you're still not a master. So just write something. Write a book, edit it, start sending it off, and then immediately start writing something else. Give yourself time to learn to love the process and learn to become a professional, because if you really want this, then you need to act like one. The way you do that is you learn to make yourself write. You need to learn how to deal with writer's block, too. It happens to all of us and we all deal with it in different ways, but you have to find what works for you and how to get yourself to produce.

    You don't need to be writing as fast as I did. I just absolutely love the process, and one of my big hang-ups early on was that I wouldn't edit my books. That's part of what took me so long. When I'd get done with a book, I'd say, "Yeah, I learned a lot from that; let me see what I can do now," then I was always excited about the next new idea. I always thought, "Oh the next one's going to be really good." But because of that mentality, I never gave the books that I did finish the credit or polish work that they deserved. It wasn't until I learned to start editing and revising that I got published. The first book I sold, Elantris, was actually the one that went through the largest number of revisions. Learn what works for you.

    Another big thing I want to mention is that you shouldn't try to write just toward the market—write toward yourself. Write something that you would love to read. It's good to be aware of what's happening in the market and what types of stories are out there and who else is writing books like that so that you can better explain what you're writing. What you don't want to do is say to yourself, "Teenage girl vampire romances are selling really well—I'm going to write one of those," unless you happen to really love writing teenage girl vampire romances. If you write a good book, someone out there will want to read it, and someone will want to buy it and produce it for those people. Not all genres are as viable marketwise as others. But again, you can't just say, "This sells well, so I'm going to write it," unless you happen to really like what happens to sell well.

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  • 1348

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    How does your website fit into your work as a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I want to do the things for my readers that I wish I had had as a reader, and the Internet gives us this wonderful opportunity to do them. We really couldn't connect with readers in the same way before. The other thing is that fantasy is a small-selling genre compared to some others. That may surprise people because it's so popular, but it's only popular among readers. It's not as popular among non-readers. Most people who buy books are buying either romance novels (most often because they buy only those kinds of books or they're grabbing something as they move through the airport) or they are buying a non-fiction book because it was suggested to them, and it tends to be the only book they buy that year. Because of all this, we fantasy authors depend on loyal readers who buy all of our books. We may have a smaller fan base, but our fans are much more dedicated, much more loyal. If fantasy readers really like an author, they will search out books by that author and read everything that they've produced. They will support you. They'll even buy the books in hardcover if they really like them. Because of things like this, I think it's appropriate to do a lot of outreach to readers—to give them a lot for their money. I mean, if someone buys one of my books in hardcover, that's almost thirty bucks they're spending, and I feel like I should do whatever I can to make that book the best experience for them possible.

    My number one goal is always to write a really fantastic book. But I can give some added value by saying, "Here are chapter-by-chapter annotations," which are kind of like a director's commentary on a DVD; or if you're an aspiring writer yourself, "Here are some drafts so you can see how this book progressed and how I came up with the plot." All of these are things that I want to do to reward the people who are willing support me and actually go out and find my books. In a lot of ways, I think about it like this: in the past, for an artist to survive, they would have to have a wealthy patron. The patron would financially provide their living so that the artist could create this great art. We do a lot of the same things now, except the patron is the buying public. All the people that read my books are my patrons. It's because of them that I get to do what I love for a living. I feel indebted to them, and I want to make sure I give them everything to enhance their reading experience.

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  • 1349

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    Your books don't have overtly Mormon characters in them, but they do contain many recognizable Mormon elements—especially in book three of the Mistborn trilogy, The Hero of Ages. How do you feel that your faith has influenced your writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Being an author, the story is what is most important to me. Theme and message are really secondary. I don't go into a book saying, "I'm going to write a book about this." In other words, I don't want to preach with my books. What I want to do is have compelling, realistic characters who care about different things. Some care about religion, others don't. By writing compelling characters who care about issues, I realize that what the characters care about tends to be influenced by what I care about. As for my faith, it is what primarily influences me because it makes me interested in certain topics. For instance, religion does tend to be a theme in my books. Yet if you read Elantris, my first published work, the religious figure was the primary antagonist. People have asked me, "Brandon, you're religious—why are you painting religion so poorly in this book?" And my answer for them is that I'm not painting religion poorly. The misuse of religion is one of the things that scares me the most in life. Someone who is taking faith and twisting it and manipulating it is doing one of the most purely evil things that someone can do, in my opinion.

    With the Mistborn books, I wasn't ever trying to be overtly LDS. Yet my values shape who I am and what I determine to be important. I then end up having characters who deal with these same things, and I think there are a lot of LDS things going on. But of course I think there are a lot of Buddhist things going on as well. I served my mission in Korea and have a lot of respect for the Buddhist religion. Because of that, I think some elements of Buddhism show up in my writing. Not because I set out to say, "Okay, I'm going to use Buddhism here," but because it seems to happen when I'm developing a character who cares about something. That's one of the tricks about being a writer.

    One of my main goals is that any time I put a character in whose beliefs are different from mine, I want to make sure that I'm making them realistic, that I'm painting their ideas and philosophies as accurately as possible. I think it's important for all authors to make their characters actually feel real and not just portray them as talking heads who are there to learn a lesson. Another author, Robert Jordan, once said that he loved it when his books made people ask questions, but that he didn't want to give them the answers—he believed that they should come up with their own. That's what I try to do, too.

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  • 1350

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    You mentioned that one of your most popular series is the Mistborn trilogy. How did those books come about?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The evolution of a novel is such a complicated, complex, and strange creative process that it's hard to step people through it. I don't think even I can fully comprehend it. But by the time I was writing the Mistborn books, I was in a different situation with my career. I'd sold Elantris by that point and the publisher was saying, "We want something else from you." Rather than taking one of the thirteen books that I'd written before, I wanted to write something new. I wanted to give people my newest and best work. At that point I had time to sit down and ask myself, "What do I want to be the hallmark of my career? What am I going to add to the genre?" I want to write fantasy that takes steps forward and lets me take the genre in some interesting direction. At first I wanted to play with some of the stereotypes of the genre. That's a dangerous thing, though, because, as any deconstructionalist will tell you, when you start playing with stereotypes, you start relying on something that you want to undermine, and that puts you on shaky ground. I was in danger of just becoming another cliché. A lot of times when people want to twist something in a new way, they don't twist it enough and end up becoming part of the cliché that they were trying to redefine. But I really did want to try this and went forward with it anyway.

    A lot of fantasy relies heavily on the Campbellian Monomyth. This is the idea focusing on the hero's journey. Since the early days of fantasy, it's been a big part of the storytelling, and in my opinion it's become a little bit overused. The hero's journey is important as a description of what works in our minds as people—why we tell the stories we do. But when you take the hero's journey and say, "I'm going to make this a checklist of things I need to do to write a great fantasy novel," your story goes stale. You start to mimic rather than create. Because I'd seen a lot of that, I felt that one of the things I really wanted to do was to try to turn the hero's journey on its head. I had been looking at the Lord of the Rings movies and the Lord of the Rings books and the Harry Potter books, and I felt that because of their popularity and success, a lot of people were going to be using this paradigm even more—the unknown protagonist with a heart of gold and some noble heritage who goes on a quest to defeat the dark lord. So I thought to myself, "What if the dark lord won? What if Frodo got to the end in Lord of the Rings and Sauron said, 'Thanks for bringing my ring back. I really was looking for it,' and then killed him and took over the world? What if book seven of Harry Potter was Voldemort defeating Harry and winning?" I didn't feel that this story had ever really been approached in the way I was imagining it, and it became one idea that bounced around in my head for quite a while.

    Another idea I had revolved around my love of the classic heist genre. Whether it's Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery or the movies Ocean's Eleven and The Italian Job, there are these great stories that deal with a gang of specialists who are trying to pull off the ultimate heist. This is the kind of feat which requires them to all work together and use their talents. I hadn't ever read a fantasy book that dealt with that idea in a way that satisfied me or that really felt like it got it down. So that bounced in my head for a while as well.

    One more of the ideas for the Mistborn series happened when I was driving home to see my mom. She lives in Idaho Falls, and after passing Tremonton on the I-15, I just went through this fog bank driving at seventy miles an hour. Even though my car was actually driving into the fog, it looked like the mist was moving around me instead of me moving through it. It was just this great image that I wrote down in my notebook years before I ended up writing Mistborn.

    After a while, all these different ideas, like atoms, were bouncing around in my head and eventually started to run together to form molecules (the molecules being the story). Keep in mind, a good book is more than just one good idea. A good book is twelve or thirteen or fourteen great ideas that all play off of each other in ways that create even better ideas. There were my two original ideas—a gang of thieves in a fantasy world, and a story where the dark lord won—that ended up coming together and becoming the same story. Suddenly I had a world where the prophecies were wrong, the hero had failed, and a thousand years later a gang of thieves says, "Well, let's try this our way. Let's rob the dark lord silly and drive his armies away from him. Let's try to overthrow the empire." These are all the seeds of things that make bigger ideas.

    After I outlined the book, it turned out to be quite bit longer than I expected, and I then began working through those parts that weren't fully developed yet, changing some things. I ended up downplaying the heist story in the final version of the book, despite the fact that it was a heist novel in one of my original concepts. But as I was writing it, I felt that if I was going to make it into a trilogy, I needed the story to have more of an epic scope. The heist was still there, and still the important part of the book, but it kind of became the setting for other, bigger things in the story, such as the epic coming-of-age of one of the characters, the interactions between the characters, and dealing with the rise and fall of the empire. But that happens in the process of writing. Sometimes the things that inspire you to begin a story in the first place eventually end up being the ones that are holding it back. Allomancy, the magic system in the book, was a separate idea that came about through these revisions.

    I wrote the books in the trilogy straight through. I had the third one rough drafted by the time the first one had to be in its final form so that I could keep everything consistent and working together the way I wanted it to. I didn't want it to feel like I was just making it up as I went along, which I feel is one of the strengths of the series. I don't know if I'll ever be able to have that opportunity again in a series, but it certainly worked well for the Mistborn books.

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  • 1351

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    Could you tell us a little bit about The Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sure. The Wheel of Time is a very important series to me as well as to a lot of my generation of fantasy readers. The first book was published in 1990, and it's called The Eye of the World. It was one of those books that, in my opinion, took the genre in new directions. It built on what had been done before, but it did new and important things with the storytelling. It became the preeminent epic of my time. When I was a student in high school, The Wheel of Time became the best-selling fantasy series and one of my personal favorites, if not my number one favorite. While he was working on the final book of the series, which all of us had been waiting for, for almost twenty years, the author, Robert Jordan, passed away in 2007 from a very rare blood disease. It was one of those tragedies that you can't even describe, and a lot of us didn't know how to react. We knew that he was sick. He'd talked about it. He even mentioned it on his blog, but he always spoke so optimistically about it that we were all sure he was going to beat it. So when he passed away, it was a shock. Like every other fan, one of my first thoughts, besides my concern for his family, was, "Boy, I hope that whoever they give the last book to doesn't screw it up." It was probably a little selfish of us to think this, but we'd been following the series for so long. Lo and behold, about a month later, I woke up one morning and found that I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it said, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson, this is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me back. I've got something I want to talk to you about." It was one of those moments where you are absolutely certain at first that someone is playing a prank on you and then you start to shake nervously at the thought that it might not be a prank.

    When I got a hold of her, I found out that she was looking at me as one of the candidates to finish The Wheel of Time. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that. These books are a really, really big deal. They are the biggest books that the publisher has, and I was absolutely stunned. It turns out that a number of people had recommended me to her, but she wanted to make sure I was interested first. She then went and read Mistborn before calling me back and asking me if I would do it. This isn't the sort of opportunity that you pass up; you just don't.

    I considered Robert Jordan in many ways to be a mentor. I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced. I'd never met him, so I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call. After I accepted the offer, Harriet, Robert's two assistants Alan and Maria (who have all been involved with The Wheel of Time for a very long time), and I started working on compiling the book. As to be expected, we found big holes in the writing that are now my job to fill—hundreds of thousands of words' worth of things that still need to be written. We've got notes. We've got materials. We've got dictations. We've got all sorts of things. But it's a big, big project.

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  • 1352

    Interview: Mar, 2009

    Nathan Morris

    Do you ever plan to write any works dealing with Mormon characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've considered it. The thing, though, is that since I tend to write high fantasy, which entails other worlds that are completely unrelated to this one, there haven't been many opportunities to create one. I've been tempted a couple of times, and if I do end up doing it, it would probably be in a science fiction setting or more of an urban fantasy setting. Nothing is ruled out, though, except that I'm pretty soundly involved in the high fantasy epic genre right now. I haven't done it, but who knows if I will?

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  • 1353

    Interview: 2013

    adribbleofink (August 2013)

    Brandon Sanderson announces Infinity Blade: Redemption

    Xyrd

    I wonder which of the BSBs (Brandon Sanderson Bots) wrote this one? I'd guess it was BSB_04, since I'm pretty sure the current situation is:

    BSB_01 is focused on Words Of Radiance
    BSB_02 is working on Firefight (Steelheart sequel)
    BSB_03 is prepping the Rithmatist sequel
    BSB_04 is prepping Shadows of Self (next Mistborn)
    BSB_05 is handling the promotional events
    BSB_06 handles the Writing Excuses stuff
    BSB_07 does M:TG/fathering

    Seriously, how the hell does he do all of this?!

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    You forgot BSB-8: The Reddit bot.

    Actually, this was my breather short piece between Words of Radiance (rough draft) and diving into Firefight and the WoR 2nd draft. I'm really feeling like I could use a few more bots, these days. The promotional events side of things has been killer.

    I do have to say that these two Infinity Blade shorts have been quite fun to do. They've been my first chance to dive into something video game related, which is another entire world of writing. I plan to write the Mistborn video game when we finally get around to doing the thing, and getting some first-hand experience with the backend of video gaming has been wonderful.

    Jimmith

    So much awesomeness at once. Please don't burn out though! We want you to keep making books in the years to come too.

    Also, we'll keep bying your books, so you don't need all that promoting ;)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, promotion for someone like me is more about going out and saying "Thank you" than it is about going out to encourage people to buy my books. Most of that promotion involves doing booksignings or conventions, which I do explicitly to meet with readers. (Without whom, I'd never have been able to do what I've done.)

    The problem comes in saying yes to a full slate of conventions, then having two publishers decide to release three of my books this year. (When I had no book releases last year.) That added a heap of publicity onto my slate. Next year should go back to a more normal schedule.

    Jimmith

    Well, I can't pretend to be sorry for getting several books out of you this year, but it does sound like a monumental task.

    PiR8_Rob

    Some of us really appreciate you interacting with your fans here, so thank you. That being said, I really prefer reading works that came completely from your own imagination than that of someone else.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I understand this, and don't worry—I don't plan to do a lot of this. At the same time, working within confines like these offer me a chance to flex different kinds of writing muscles, ones which I'd like to practice using. I plan to take these kinds of projects sparingly. However, if I'm going to dabble in video games, I figure I should gain some experience with the medium before I tackle something like Mistborn.

    Slug_Laton_Rocking

    Are you tempted to write some content for an RPG like Patrick Rothfuss is doing for Torment? Love the books by the way.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The thing that would most tempt me would be doing Magic: The Gathering content, as that is my nerd obsession. I could foresee doing some kind of RPG content, however. Depends on the project and how behind on things I'm feeling.

    Slug_Laton_Rocking

    Ha my respect for you just went up a notch. Nothing more fun then playing Magic: The Gathering with a big group of friends.

    savramescu

    To be honest there must be versions BSB-9 and BSB-10 because you're also in those writing lectures on youtube.

    I'm loving them by the way. At the start of the last years session where you started asking if anyone read Honor Harrington I literally raised my hand in front of the screen (couldn't believe more people didn't). You should assign it as a mandatory reading!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Glad you're enjoying them. Keep writing.

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  • 1354

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Ansalem (August 2013)

    A lot of your works that are stand alone novels or seemingly completed stories, you have announced or started working on sequels for. Are there any stories that you feel complete and don't need to work on the same world or characters again? Or do feel there is always some new tale to tell about every world you make?

    Thanks for being involved in the reddit community so much, and for writing books I've enjoyed very much.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's hard, because the way I plot I always have to know what happened before the book and what will happen after the book. Knowing that doesn't mean that I have to continue. It's also hard, though, to say no to fans who are so passionate about a specific project.

    The Vin/Elend story is most certainly done. As is the Raoden/Sarene story, as is Siri's story from Warbreaker. So there are completed threads. There might be other stories to tell in those worlds, though, so I'll avoid closing the door on them for now. (That said, it did feel very good to finish the Wheel of Time for good, and look forward to putting some of my own works to rest in a similar way.)

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  • 1355

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    tumello (August 2013)

    What are you currently reading and how is it affecting what you write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I just finished a friend's book, which is as of yet unpublished. It's different enough that I am not worried about influence worming its way into Words of Radiance—but reading Promise of Blood (which is what I read just before) did make me want to go write more Alloy of Law era Mistborn stories.

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  • 1356

    Interview: 2013

    SaeLow (November 2013)

    Are YA authors considered "inferior"?

    I am very interested to know what the sub thinks about YA fantasy fiction. I have often wondered why (other than the obvious financial benefits) a talented author would choose to write in a style that is more easily digestible if they are capable of writing at a higher level. I imagine this may be a sensitive topic and don't mean to offend, but I always assumed that an author would write at as high a level as they possibly could. Upon reading some YA fiction (and quickly deciding that I hate it), it seems to me that the level of writing is very low. How can these authors be proud of these works? In my opinion, at least, selling a million copies of a book is not synonymous with good quality writing. Am I alone?

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Well, this (including the discussion of my writing) was not what I was expecting to find when I opened this thread.

    I must admit, one of the things I find most frustrating about discussions of literature in our culture is the need we all seem to have to polarize and demean. When it comes to artistic taste, it seems we can't simply enjoy something—we have to declare that what we enjoy is superior to the alternatives. That the piece we dislike is unchallenging and immature.

    Enjoyment of art is about personal taste. This is as true for novels as it is for a painting on the wall. And yet, we seem unable to accept this, and assume that those who like the writing we do not must somehow be inferior.

    I find this disappointing in the face of the constant attempts by the sf/f community to rebuff the literary elite who would dismiss, demean, and ignore our genres. We shout until we're blue in the face about the virtues of fantasy. (There several posts the front page right now, arguing about the power of a sense of wonder.) And yet, we're just as quick to do it to ourselves, deciding the thing that does not suit our particular taste must be worthless, written poorly, and created by those of inferior skill who are looking to cash in on a fad.

    There is a difference between poor writing and writing that does not suit our personal tastes. I don't mean to say that we shouldn't criticize authors or try to hash out for ourselves what makes great writing great. I just wish that we, collectively as a genre, would spend less time talking about why the writers we don't like are crap.

    OP, by the way, most of this isn't directed at you—but instead represents my frustration at how often topics like this become so argumentative. To you, I'd ask: Is a Pixar film less valuable because of its sometimes more straightforward themes and lack of brutal depictions? Perhaps ask what the creators of such films can accomplish through their medium that another story cannot and you will find why writing pieces for younger readers is sometimes so fulfilling for writers.

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  • 1357

    Interview: Apr 15th, 2013

    Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)

    Shadowrise_ (October 2013)

    Not sure if this question has already been posted. Which author would you say has influenced your writing the most? From deciding to be an author to making you write like you do. You are my favorite author right now and therefore what made you decide to start and to have the style of writing that I so love.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's really hard to judge the MOST influential. Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly was the book that got me into fantasy, and the Dragonriders of Pern books kept me there. My favorite classic is Les Miserables. Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, and Melanie Rawn were very influential on me during my early years as a writer.

    My style came as a mix of many of the things I was reading, as a reaction against some elements—and toward others. Brent Weeks, I've noticed, has a very similar style to my own, particularly in his Lightbringer books. I believe we're both products of the same era and books.

    Phantine

    Did you read any Steven Brust? He's got a recurring character who cameos in every book, and a repeated number with great mystical significance (17, not 16). And, of course, lots of snarky conversations.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't read as much Brust as I should, but what I have read has been excellent.

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  • 1358

    Interview: Nov 12th, 2013

    Sara

    What can you tell us about your new book and what can we expect from it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Steelheart may not be what you expect to see from me because I've primarily released epic fantasy so far. As a writer, one of my main goals is to always be trying new things to advance my writing skill and to make sure that you have a varied experience reading my books. If you've enjoyed my books, particularly ones like Mistborn, and you pick up this, you'll find lots of things to love. But you'll also find some new things. Steelheart is an action-adventure thrill ride. I wrote it to be exciting, fast-paced, and fun. It is my experiment with dabbling more in science fiction than fantasy, and dealing with some of the current tropes in action movies, particularly some of the superhero tropes. In the end, however, it is very much a Brandon Sanderson novel.

    The hardest part about doing a sequel is this: yes, it's new, but it's also familiar, and there's a part of me that says, "I don't want to do that. I want to do something completely different." However, it's important to have the discipline to say, "No, you promised your readers that you were going to finish this!" Beyond that, there are certain themes, characters, and stories that you can only explore by doing something that's more long-form, like a series. As a reader, I prefer to read series, but as a writer sometimes it's hard to make myself do the familiar instead of something brand new.

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  • 1359

    Interview: Nov 12th, 2013

    Sara

    What book is easier to write: the first book, or the second book? Why?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here's something about the way I work. New projects excite me. In fact, I'm often dangling the new project in front of myself as an incentive to finish my current project, saying, "When you get this book done, and it's done right and it's awesome, you get to go do something new." It's part of what I like about my job, always being able to do something new. It keeps me productive as a writer.

    The hardest part about doing a sequel is this: yes, it's new, but it's also familiar, and there's a part of me that says, "I don't want to do that. I want to do something completely different." However, it's important to have the discipline to say, "No, you promised your readers that you were going to finish this!" Beyond that, there are certain themes, characters, and stories that you can only explore by doing something that's more long-form, like a series. As a reader, I prefer to read series, but as a writer sometimes it's hard to make myself do the familiar instead of something brand-new.

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  • 1360

    Interview: Nov 12th, 2013

    Sara

    Did you always want to be a writer, or did you have other career aspirations?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, I haven't always wanted to write. Unlike a lot of writers, I was not born as a novelist, and I wasn't writing as a kid. I actually didn't like books until I was a teenager. My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Reader, gave me a fantasy novel, and it was in fantasy novels in which I discovered myself and came to love the idea of storytelling. That's when I decided I wanted to be a writer. I was fifteen, but I had no idea how to write. I just jumped into it and started practicing. I think that's the best way for someone to become a writer—you're a writer if you write. If you sit down and say, "I'm going to be a writer!" and you start writing, working on your fiction, you're a writer! If you want to break into publishing, the best thing to do is to practice your craft

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  • 1361

    Interview: Sep 29th, 2013

    Lauren Zurchin

    You're known as an epic fantasy guy. Why the change-up?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I like to do different things. It's what keeps me productive—switching projects. And usually after I've finished something big, I want to do something very different. And so I like to try different genres. Granted, the speculative aspect, the science fiction/fantasy aspect of things, is what really interests me. I basically have never written a book without some at least hint of the science fiction or fantasy element because that's what I love, so that'll show up in everything. But I also do like thrillers. And writing this book—it's been called dystopian now—I viewed it as action-adventure. Dystopian in the same way that some of the darker superhero films are dystopian.

    Is it my first YA? I have another YA called The Rithmatist. This I wrote as an older middle grade novel, which is a very fine distinction that really only matters to literacy professionals, and to authors, and things like that. Middle grade ended up getting published as a young YA novel instead—the line there blurs very much. So, yes and no. I mean, Mistborn, which I'm best known for, stars a sixteen-year-old girl. That's shelved in 'adult' because there are adult characters as well, but the story's about her. So is it my first YA, is it not? I'm really honestly not sure. That's sort of a distinction I'll let the librarians and the booksellers argue over.

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  • 1362

    Interview: Sep 29th, 2013

    Lauren Zurchin

    Talk about your writing routine—you're very prolific!

    Brandon Sanderson

    I, like I said, need to be jumping projects. It's just something about me. When I finish something, I feel the need to do something else very different from what I just finished. And given the chance to do so, I will jump and do something bizarre, for me. Bizarre, in a different line. And so, I'm often doing this. How do I juggle them? Well, it's more a matter of I would have more trouble not juggling them because then I would be locked into one thing, and I think it would be a lot harder for me to do my writing the way I do it. It's just my natural inclination.

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  • 1363

    Interview: May 31st, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    A Letter from Brandon Sanderson to his Hero, Robert Jordan

    31st of May, 2013

    Dear Robert Jordan,

    I'm the guy who finished your life's work. I like to imagine myself as a Boy Scout, rushing to help my aging mentor cross the last street of his life. Other people aren't quite so . . . considerate. They consider me an opportunistic hack who managed to worm my way into something over my head. Either way, this was my task and my burden: to finish the greatest book series of my time, a series I grew up reading.

    I never met you. I know your family really well now—your fans, your assistants. I know your characters and world better than I ever knew them before as a fan. I've seen your half-finished drafts, something I know would have made you very uncomfortable.

    But I don't know you. In some ways, even the fan who shook your hand once at a signing knows you better than I do. It's surreal sometimes—to put on your shoes in the morning, and go out to the Wheel of Time fans, and talk to them about the series. But I still don't know you.

    I hope that you're proud. I hope that you're looking down and saying, "Nice work, kid. It's not as good as I would have done, but it'll do." And . . . well, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. I kind of also hope to escape you. Wheel of Time casts a long shadow, and if at the end of the day, I'm known only as the guy who helped finish The Wheel of Time, I'll actually be okay with that, so don't get me wrong.

    But now I've got to get out from underneath that shadow. I've got to do my own things, like you did yourself. I've got worlds to explore, books to write. I hope that I can make half the dent that you did in the industry. I hope that I can inspire new writers, like you did. I hope I can help kids—teenagers who don't know what they're doing—find themselves in fantasy books, like you did. Most of all, I just hope that I can stay true to myself and my vision for my worlds, like you did.

    I never knew you. I did never get to meet you. But, I hope that someday, I'll be able to shake your hand, and we'll be able to chat.

    Brandon Sanderson

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  • 1364

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Question

    Why are you at WorldCon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, why am I at WorldCon? In the early days trying to break in, WorldCon was one of these wonderful resources, right? Where I would come here to meet editors, to meet other writers, and it was just a great community. It's very different from the media cons like Comic-con, where it's a spectacle. This isn't a spectacle. This is a bunch of fans hanging out, and so I just like it. So I come back to WorldCon—usually I come at least every other year—just to meet everybody. And also, you know, all the authors were coming when I was trying to break in and had such great advice. I feel like it's useful for me to appear on panels and talk about breaking in, in the era I did. Granted everything's changed since then, but it's changed even more since the older guard broke in, so hopefully I can be of some use to people.

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  • 1365

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Question

    [What is your opinion on] outlining versus free-writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I tend to . . . based on the project. Some projects, you need an intricate outline. Usually what an intricate outline will do for you is it'll allow for a more explosive ending. But the danger of an intricate outline is you risk not being able to discover as much of your story, so your story won't feel as alive sometimes. And so, trying to balance that, making sure your characters have this life to them. Because in the real world people make weird decisions all the time, and we don't follow this rigid path that's set out for us. And if you are too rigid with your outline, you'll have this stilted feel to your writing. But if you don't do any outlining, then your ending tends to kinda just be this thing . . . you're like, "Eh, now I've reached the ending."

    And often you can tell writers, whether they're discovery writers naturally or whether they're outline writers, based on those kind of things. If you go look at your favorite series and it seems like it meanders a lot, that's probably a discovery writer, but their characters are probably really strong. Both George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan are discovery writers—Robert Jordan was, and George R. R. Martin is. And these are strengths of their writing, but also the ending thing is not something that works as well. A lot of authors, if they can hybridize—like I know Robert Jordan said all along he had the ending in mind, and his ending was very good. And having that one piece of ending that he's working to would help focus, and that's something that you can help do if you're a discovery writer.

    For me, I just try to use both tools, so that when I'm working on a book I use the tool that fits the book the best. If I want more spontaneity, I will outline less. If I want more of a powerful intersection of five different viewpoints coming together, I'll outline more.

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  • 1366

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Question

    [What is] the last sentence you wrote that you were proud of?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wish I could say, because things go through so many transformations as I'm writing. I would have to have a book open before me, and go look and say, "Wow, which of these sentences is the best?" The honest truth is that I am less of a sentence person than someone like Pat Rothfuss. Rothfuss writes beautiful sentences, and I'm in awe of his sentences. I try for workmanship prose. I try for prose that does not distract from the writing. And often if I write a really beautiful sentence, it stands out like such a sore thumb in my writing that it's better to kind of tone that sentence down. We call it windowpane prose. My goal is to write prose that doesn't ever distract you from the story. And there are certain level of writers that can do beautiful prose and not distract from the story. I have always just tried for . . . if there is a mark on the window, you'll look at that and not the story. This is George Orwell talking about this—I learned it from reading about him. And some writers, like in literary fiction, they will try to write this beautiful stained glass window, and what you see on the other side doesn't really matter. It's the stained glass window that you're paying wonderful attention to. I don't want the window to distract you. And so, I do like to have a clever witty line now and then, but my goal at the end is for you to not notice the writing and only pay attention to characters and story.

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  • 1367

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Myke Cole

    (Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops series): And so, you had this dream of being a writer, and you achieved it. You achieved it probably beyond your expectations. Is it what you expected? I mean, you're on tour all the time, you have deadlines barking at you. How do you like it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Man, that's a good question. You know, I like meeting readers—that's fun. Being on tour, as much as I go, is not so much fun. And I think this is the first year where I said "yes" to too many things. I've just made too many appearances, and it's impacting the writing. Nobody tells you—that's why you make such an astute question. No one warns you that when you first break into this business—you know, you think, "Oh, I'm going to sell a book, and then I can go full time as a writer, and all my time will be writing."

    But then, you break in and realize the touring and stuff almost becomes like a second job to you. You become . . . I describe it like in Hollywood you have the writer who writes the script and sends it off, and then the director who directs the script, and then the actors who go out and do the publicity later on. And in writing you're all those people, plus the business person financing it all in the back end. And so you have to wear so many hats. It's bizarre, how many things you have to do.

    That said, I really love doing signings. I just wish that I could manage that a little bit better. So we're trying to, starting next year. Just a few fewer cons, making the tours a little bit shorter—make sure that I'm not stretched so thin. And it came about partially because we released three books this year, and last year released zero, which is a really stupid idea of us. Right? You really would rather be releasing a book or two a year, instead of three in one year and none the year before. But that's how things played out.

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  • 1368

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Question

    Brian McClellan (the Powder Mage trilogy) was a student of yours. Why is it that you recommend his writing so frequently?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, when I read his very first story—he wrote this cool thing, I hope he posted it online somewhere—it was a novella he wrote for my class the first year. You get so many authors through the class that sometimes you start forgetting them–most of the time, honestly, I get so many. But once in a while, a person comes along and their writing is just amazing. And at that point, I shift from the mode of "I'm going to help you become a better writer" to the mode of "you're already doing all the stuff I'm talking about, you just need to know the business side now." And Brian was one of those. I can't take any credit for his writing because it was already awesome.

    And he wrote this wonderful story about these paragons in the world. It was our world plus, where people get chosen as paragons as like a religion . . . it was so cool. There's like an ancient Greek paragon next to a Christian paragon that's based on kind of . . . anyway, it's great. You ought to have him post on it. It was the best thing I had had come through the class in a long while. It's a mixture of a lot of things. Mostly, I talk about the grand scale of being a fantasy writer is being able to, in the first few pages, get across a sense of character and world without dumping paragraphs of thick text on us. And that is the best—if someone can learn to do that, if you can pick it up and read it, and read a few pages and feel like you're in the world and character, but you haven't been dumped on—that's what Brian was doing. Also, the premise was awesome, the premise was great. But you know, it's that character voice. And it's weird because in fantasy, right, it's our magic systems and our worldbuilding that distinguishes us. But a great magic system and terrible writing is a bad book. And a weak magic system with great writing is a great book. And so even though this is what it's about, the skill that a writer really needs to learn is not the magic systems or not the worldbuilding—that's great. The skill is telling a powerful character in a different world from ourselves without making you feel like you're reading a history textbook. And Brian did that.

    So, there you go . . . so you guys should read the book. I just finished it—I read it late. This is what a bad teacher I am, right? He gets published, I read the book a year later. It came out in April and I finished it in June, but he gave it to me . . . It's really just good, it's fun, it's great. So, I should have read that earlier. But Brent Weeks was on the ball, and he got a cover blurb. So yeah, Brent took care of us.

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  • 1369

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Question

    What do you get out of doing your Writing Excuses podcasts?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So what do I get out of it? I get to be part of the community. I went to my very first convention when I was seventeen. It was held in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I was growing up. I'd never been to a sci-fi con before, and Katherine Kurtz was the guest. And I wanted so badly to be a writer, but I knew nothing about any of this. I chatted with her for a good 45 minutes about being a writer. She sat down with me and chatted with me, and it blew my mind. She's a best seller, she was top of her game. And it was so inspiring to me. And later on, Lee Modesitt did the same thing. Robin Hobb did the same thing. When I started coming to the conventions, I would say, "I want to be a writer. I have no idea what to do." And they'd say, "Sit down, kid." And they would start telling me stuff, and I try to regurgitate it on Writing Excuses. The thing to remember, guys, if you listen to the podcast, remember that everything we talk about is a tool you can try. It is not the method, because there is no method. Keep that in mind. But I'm trying to just be part of this. Writing is so solitary that when you can have a community and be part of one and chat with people, it's wonderful.

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  • 1370

    Interview: Aug 31st, 2013

    WorldCon Flash AMA (Verbatim)

    Question

    A bit of a different question: I've been trying to write a fantasy story for a few months now, but I have a chronic procrastination tendency.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, so we kind of all do.

    Question

    I've tried to write, but I think I've written about five lines so far. It's pretty ridiculous, I know. It's just very hard for me to do.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Understood.

    Question

    Have you done something similar in the past, and/or do you know any writers that just have the utmost trouble with actually writing something? It's not about a writer's block, where you don't know what to write. It's more along the lines of a cringing feeling you get when you try to write. It just does not feel right even though you want to. Would love to hear from you.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, this is perfect. This is a great question, okay? Here's the thing. You are in the unenviable position in that you know good writing, and you're trying to write right now. This is unenviable because when I started, I was stupid. I was a teenager, and I was not a very good reader or a very good writer. I had just discovered fantasy novels, and kind of found myself in them, and I started writing. And I had the sense of everything I did was awesome because I couldn't recognize good writing. I could, deep down, but I couldn't, you know . . . I thought everything I did was awesome. I didn't get embarrassed by my writing. A lot of people do, especially if they have a better eye for editing and a better eye for writing.

    What you've got to remember is writing is like any other art. You don't start off doing it the right way. It's more like playing the piano than you would think. And when you sit down to play the piano for the first few times, you're not going to be very good. You've got to push through, anyway. You've just got to write. Get a notebook, go outside, go away from the computer so you can't self edit, and sit down without any distractions and try writing longhand–that works for some people. But remember, you are not writing the perfect book, you are training yourself to write the perfect book. Just like an artist has to train himself to be an artist. Just like a baseball player has to train himself to hit the baseball. And in the future, you will get to the point that you will know how to swing at this baseball naturally. And you don't know that yet. Right now you're missing with every swing, and you recognize it. But you just have to put your dues in. You just have to work hard. You have to be willing to suck at this long enough to get good at it. All right? And you can do it, you gotta go for it. Okay?

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  • 1371

    Interview: 2011

    Reddit 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    CrypticDemon (February 2011)

    Reread Wheel of Time 1-10 or find summaries somewhere and start on 11?

    I'm really torn on this one. It's been nearly 7 years since I've read any of the books and 10+ for some of the early ones.

    I'm leaning toward a reread but, damn, i know it's going to take me nearly 10 months to get through them all. Probably about the time Sanderson has the last one done.

    Are there even any good thorough summaries out there for each book?

    Edit\Update: So I decided to start rereading them and am nearly done with the first book. I'm really glad I'm not doing the summaries, it's almost like reading them the first time since it's been so long. There's so much I had forgotten and I'm really enjoying the read.

    SgtPsycho

    I just purchased the last few books, and am restarting the series from the beginning. As you say, I'm pretty good up until Lord of Chaos. After that... will be a bit of grind. The one where nothing happens in the entire book (brings all characters up to 'a great disturbance in the Force') shits me.

    I think I will stick in there, but it will take some time.

    Linky time for CrypticDemon
            Dragonmount Summaries
            Tor's comprehensive chapter-by-chapter summaries
            Compiled Summaries by P.Korda

    DiscursiveMind

    I've always liked Encylopaedia WoT's summaries, they break down each chapter for each book with plenty of embedded references.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Encyclopaedia WoT is basically my go-to quick reference in working on the books. I went so far as to get a copy from the creators to upload locally on my machine so I'll have it for internet outages. It's great for quick reminders, or for locating the right scene I need to re-read in the books in order to get a viewpoint or scene right.

    Don't know that I can weigh in on this more than that. What has been said here is excellent. The summaries sgtpsycho posted are great. TarValon's wiki is a good resource too. But whether to reread or not...depends on personal preference. I will say that the books that people tend to feel drag felt a lot less draggy to me during my last reread, as I knew the ending.

    Having an ending in hand changes things, at least for me. Instead of raging about a book because it makes such little progress, and one has waited for it for years, one can read the slower book and appreciate the side stories being told, as you know the ending is right there waiting. I suspect more people will have this response once the last one is done.

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  • 1372

    Interview: 2011

    greybeard88 (January 2011)

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    This isn't a bad look at the issue, though I think one major point is missed: What type of story are you trying to tell?

    Worldbuilding any element of a fantasy novel can overwhelm and distract. Yes, there are people who spend too long on their magic systems—just as there are people who spend too long on their linguistics, their geography, or their religions. "Too long" is hard to define, however.

    It depends on the type of story you want to tell, the world elements that are important to the story and characters, and your preferences. I'd contend that LotR had a well-defined magic system for Tolkien, but he didn't include viewpoint characters who used the magic. Therefore, he didn't let the magic system steal the show. However, try to do a superhero story without a well defined magic system. It doesn't usually fit to treat it the same way.

    Harry Potter also has a very strict magic system for a given book. The books do not have strong cohesion of magical principles—characters often 'forget' they have powers, or the like. However, what we're given in a book generally remains consistent through the book, and is important to climactic moments within that book. It's not the most strict of magic systems, but I feel it is more to it than the author is giving credit.

    That said, this essay accurately defines some of the problems with focusing too much on your magic, particularly to the detriment of actual writing time.

    Tags

  • 1373

    Interview: 2011

    Reddit 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    CreeDorofl (February 2011)

    Do you ever think "I hope this author finishes the next book before he dies" then feel guilty and selfish afterwards?

    I'm looking at you, George RR Martin. I mean, he's only 62 it turns out, I thought he was older, but anyway. His first books of that series were only 2 years apart, then it took 5 to come out with a feast for crows, and it's been six years since then. At this rate, if it's released this year, he will be wrapping up the series at 74. And it's turning out longer than expected.

    Not just him though, I remember thinking "Will Robert B. Parker ever do something major with Spenser, or the new guy?" and then he dropped dead.

    TTChopper

    I was incredibly saddened when Robert Jordan didn't get to finish his series before he passed away. Even though the series gets some hate here on reddit, it has been something I've enjoyed reading over the years.

    Currently, I am really hoping Terry Pratchett can keep churning out the books.. hearing about his Alzheimer's makes me scared that the world will be robbed of his talent prematurely.

    CreeDorofl

    man I didn't even know about robert jordan. I got through like 5 books then the thrill was kind of gone. That's a shame he didn't finish the series. On the other hand, it was up to like ten books, I think the guy needed a new editor or something. I can't imagine anything staying interesting for that long.

    TTChopper

    He spent the last year or more of his life in a hospital bed explaining how the story ends to his wife, Brandon Sanderson (the guy who is now finishing the series) and a tape recorder so that the story could be finished after he died.

    That's dedication to your craft and your characters.

    And tens of thousands of fans breathed a sigh of relief at the same time that they mourned his passing.

    mrgreen4242

    Actually, I don't think Brandon was brought into it until after Jordan died. He wrote a bunch of the final (three) books, dictated some, created outlines, and told his wife (who was also one of his editors) a lot of it.

    But, ya, pretty dedicated.

    TTChopper

    Yeah, you are right. I was under the impression that Jordan actually chose Sanderson to finish it.

    Still, I'm now looking forward to when the final book is published and I can put that series to bed once and for all.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    Yes, I wasn't brought on until after. (Robert Jordan's wife Harriet chose me, after he asked her to pick someone. She worked as an editor in New York for many years, so he knew this was something he could lay at her feet.)

    The part about the tape recorder on the death bead is right, however.

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  • 1374

    Interview: 2011

    Reddit 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Question (March 2011)

    Within 5 Years, Digital Books Will Only Cost $0.99

    AnalyticContinuation

    It is amazing to see sales take off when the price falls below some resistance point.

    But $0.99 seems very low for a full-length novel. Such a novel probably takes a year to write, and I would have though it was similar in terms of creative effort to a complete album rather than just one song.

    muhfuhkuh

    See, that's the magic of volume pricing. When it's priced to sell at $.99, an author (no doubt indie, because there is no possible way a publisher, with all their overhead, can price like that and still remain viable) gets two substantial effects: They get the "cash register candy" impulse buyer to pull the trigger without much thought; and, because there are alot more of those readers (as evinced by the explosion in sales of ereaders), they make up in volume what they sacrifice in price.

    If you're #60 in the Kindle top 100, you're selling something like 500 copies a day. These ebooks stay for (afaict) an average of 8 weeks on the charts. So 500 x 56 days = 28000 sales. If you're pricing at, say $2.99, you'll get $2.10 a copy after Amazon's cut. 28000 x 2.10 = $58,800. In 2 months of being on the charts. Not saying everyone will do that, but let's put it this way: You have as much a chance as anyone with a novel of similar quality and luck. Now, if you wrote 3-4 breezy, genre novels of sellable quality, and you had even 1/4 of the sales, you can see how this volume pricing can provide you with a pretty comfortable living, even if Amazon takes 65% of the 99 cents.

    Such a novel probably takes a year to write

    That's the romanticized "Great American" notion of the Novel as singular artwork and the novelist as auteur. It aggrandizes people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Salinger to the level of genius (which, arguably, is well-deserved), but not every novelist is like that and writes those kinds of timeless classics.

    The two darlings of the 99-cent authors, Amanda Hocking and John Locke (yeah yeah...) are absolutely brand-spanking new to fiction writing. She's written 6 novels, he has 7. Almost all their novels were written within the last year or two (Locke, I believe, never wrote any of his novels before last year, Hocking had one or two of the 6 novels done before hitting it big).

    All of their novels are in the top 100 Kindle store, selling, on average, between 500-6000 ebooks a day. Last I heard, Hocking was selling something like 100,000 ebooks a month, priced between 99 cents and 2.99. And, there are hundreds of previously mid-list writers publishing their back catalogs this way and making more on 99-cent or 2.99 ebooks than they ever did as a published mid-lister, even with the modest advances.

    Brandon Sanderson ()

    There are things you aren't taking into account here. The biggest one is this: all books are not the same. The Gathering Storm took me eighteen months to write. That's not a romanticized "Great American" novel. That's me, writing commercial fiction. True, I hope there's some strong literary value to it. But at the end of the day, I'm a craftsman—and I'm writing every day, working full days. It just takes a lot of time to create a 1000 page novel.

    Selling a book at .99 is one thing if it's a short book (which the ones selling for that price are) that is very episodic (which they are.) Write a book at 400k words instead of 70k words, and the difficulty of managing plot lines grows exponentially, not to mention the months it takes to worldbuild a realistic epic fantasy world.

    Beyond that, Epic Fantasy—which I write—has a shorter 'amplitude' than something like Hocking is writing. The biggest bestselling epic fantasies—at any price—sell far fewer copies than the best selling romance or paranormal romance books do. There are fewer people who want to read them, and for those who do read them, time is less of a barrier (to many) than price. You can only read so many books of that length. (Well, you can only read so many of any length, but you get what I mean.)

    Even accounting for collectors grabbing everything they can at low prices, if you drop epic fantasy books to $.99, the genre will probably no longer be able to support full time writers. That's not to say it won't happen, and maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised at how many new readers we can pick up. But I'm skeptical.

    I find the $.99 ebook thing kind of baffling, honestly. We'll pay $10 to go to a movie, we'll pay $10 for an album, but we want a book to cost a fraction of that?

    Phinaeus

    Wait wait. Are you saying you're Brandon Sanderson? I'm honored. I was a big fan of the WoT series but haven't caught up fully due to no time.

    I don't know if it's been revealed in TGS, but who exactly killed Asmodean?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's me. And the killer of Asmodean is revealed in Towers of Midnight. (Brows through the glossary if you want a 'quick fix' answer. It's in there, though the text of the book makes it pretty clear too.)

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  • 1375

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Chris King (Miyabi)

    So the first one we have here is: We've seen some hints of the over-arching cosmere story arc, what was the inspiration behind that originally?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I had an idea for a book when I was fifteen, just getting into fantasy novels—just getting into meaning, reading everything I could get my hands on and diving in face first—and I developed that idea over the next few years. I started writing and realized I was just no good as a writer yet. Which was okay, it wasn't a big deal to me. I realized it was beyond my ability to approach, it was a vast, enormous story. Years later when I was writing Elantris I thought "Well let's just pretend I wrote that book and it was awesome and it's the prelude to what's going on here." That expanded into something much larger and much greater. I've mentioned before, part of my inspiration for this was the fact that one of my favorite writers, Asimov, later decided to connect two of his main story universes, the Robot books and the Foundation books. It was really cool when he did it and I felt what would happen if I started doing something like this from the get go. I've known several authors who do it at the end of their careers—well I guess Stephen King's not even at the end of his career, in the middle of his career—saying let me tie a bunch of these things together. What if I seeded all of this from the get go and use this story, this awesome story, that I wasn't able to write when I was younger as a foundation for it.

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  • 1376

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Chris King (Miyabi)

    Next one we have is on a similar note: When you reach the end of the cosmere will there be something else? Or do you feel this will take most of your writing career to achieve?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yah, I think this kind of the Story of my writing career. Now, who knows. As I plotted it - right around mid-Mistborn series time - I came out with thirty-six books, of which I've done what five or six? More than that...

    Chris King (Miyabi)

    Three, four, five, six, seven...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Seven. I think there is plenty of time so ask me in thirty years.

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  • 1377

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Chris King (Miyabi)

    This one's kind of similar: When or if you reach the end of that, were you planning on expanding more or were you going to get done with what you had planned and be done with it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's really a "ask me in thirty years" sort of thing. I want to see if I can't get this whole thing done. I want to do it in—There's this sort of tension to it, in that I view this as—The arc is my life's work. But at the same time I don't want to be belaboring it. There are cool things going on that I want to get to and I want to tell people about. And so there's this push and pull inside of me, wanting to do this. We will see.

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  • 1378

    Interview: Mar 24th, 2014

    Question

    Every one over at Fantasy-Faction appreciates the amount of writing you are able to put out each year. At this point of your career, does writing feel like work or play to you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's always been both. But once you become a professional, the less fun aspects of it are the revision, particularly revising on a deadline. The writing of the actual books is still as fun as it ever was. But in the old days, if I didn't want to revise something at a certain moment, I just didn't have to. Even when I was not as popular as I am now, I didn't have to revise right away because there was so much time between when I turned in a book and when it came out. Nowadays, when editorial comments come in, I've basically got to drop everything and do revisions. I've never liked revising very much. So I would say that part of it feels more like work, while the rest of it feels about the same

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  • 1379

    Interview: Mar 24th, 2014

    Question

    Is there a big difference in this for The Stormlight Archive versus projects like Steelheart?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, in that the more streamlined the story, the easier the revisions tend to be. Because the more complicated the story, the higher number of viewpoints, the more you have to worry about continuity and about the characters, how what they do influences the timeline of other characters. In something like The Stormlight Archive, there is a lot more continuity involved, and that makes the revisions a lot harder.

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  • 1380

    Interview: Mar 24th, 2014

    Question

    I'm curious as to whether committing to a 10 book series ever feels daunting.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Good question. I would say no, it doesn't. The reason being that The Stormlight Archive, as I've said many times before, is this series that I have been planning for years and years and years and years and years. Twenty-plus years I've been wanting to do this book series. Having that, and having that desire to do this, means that the book series is this awesome thing in my head. Books get into my head, and they have to come out eventually. They bug my brain until they do. This one's been bugging my brain the longest. I don't think it's daunting, because it's not like I don't know what to do for ten books. I know what to do for ten books. These books have been screaming at me for decades to get written. It's more a relief that I can finally get them on the page, that I finally have the skill in order to accomplish it. It's a relief to finally be doing the ten-book series like this that I've wanted to do for so long. That said, at dinner tonight I was chatting with my assistants, and they said, so we're going to be working on this series until we're past age fifty, aren't we, Brandon? And I said yes, we are.

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  • 1381

    Interview: Mar 24th, 2014

    Question

    The Way of Kings was around 1000 pages. Words of Radiance is almost 1100. I've done the calculations and using extrapolation book 10 will be 280,000 pages long (assuming geometric growth). Of course, that is only really a problem for the printers (who have to find a way to bind them), but do you think there are any limits as to how long a book should be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, in some ways The Wheel of Time is a single novel, and can be read that way, and is actually eligible for some awards this year as a single completed novel. If there is an upper limit, it's longer than The Wheel of Time was. I don't think I'm likely to hit it with The Stormlight Archive. On a more serious note, when creating a book of this length, what I have to ask myself is, what is the purpose of the length? Why am I doing what I'm doing? I like to be conscious as a writer. In this case, as I mentioned earlier, I do view each book in The Stormlight Archive as multiple books unto itself. You can pick up The Way of Kings and read it with break points at certain places to make it into a trilogy of books. In Words of Radiance, they're even more distinct. It's like you're picking up a collection, an omnibus that is called Words of Radiance, that is really three books, plus a short story collection, plus an art book. For me, length is a way that I can tell you these smaller stories are all connected in a larger story, which is in turn connected in a larger story. It allows me to create a type of art that I can't create in the shorter form. Yes, I'm sure there is a boundary. I would personally think it's far beyond what I'm capable of achieving in my lifetime.

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  • 1382

    Interview: Mar 24th, 2014

    Question

    And, if the convention of printing books disappeared tomorrow and every one began reading ebooks only do you think the way you write books would change (i.e. being able to disregard wordcounts or even being able to consider serialising a book)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think that would offer some very interesting opportunities. I think I would be unwise not to try to take advantage of them, if such a thing did happen. In fact, it's possible to try right now. I've got thoughts in my head about how I would do this. Because the form of the story is a very important thing to me, if you can't tell from the way I was talking about everything before. The form of the book, looking at the book and saying, what am I doing with this actual thing? What is the shape of it? Elantris had a specific shape, with the chapter triads that were happening at the same time as one another. These things are interesting to me, and I want to do things like this with e-books also. But there are other things we would lose. Just like if you go and you can compare, a great example of this is the US cover of Words of Radiance, which was hand painted in oil by Michael Whelan. It has a certain feel to it.

    In fact, you can see the oil. You can see the brush strokes if you look very closely at the painting. You look at the gorgeous digital painting that Stephan Martiniere did for the US edition of Elantris. But if you look at these different covers, one is digital only, and has this interesting use of digital light, and the other has texture and feel. Those are two different forms for creating art, and they both have awesome things to them. I think if we lost the book as a form, we might lose some of that idea—the book as a texture, and what it feels like to hold it goes away. I'd be sad to lose that. But I can't tell right now if that would be the sadness of someone watching an antiquated technology that no longer really matters in life go away, or if it would be losing something that will very much negatively impact society. We will just have to see. Time will tell.

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  • 1383

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    Brandon Sanderson

    When asked about his favorite Forsaken, he said "My favorite Forsaken is probably Demandred." He went on to say that his second favorite was Lanfear, and that "I was happy to bring Lanfear back into the forefront of the series."

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  • 1384

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    When asked about his prodigious writing pace:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I don’t write any faster than any other writer, I just spend much less time not writing."

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  • 1385

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Dalinar is the first character I ever wrote."

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  • 1386

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    When a fan complimented him on the accuracy regarding horses in the Wheel of Time:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Mostly that's Robert Jordan, he was much better at that than I am. I've taken some crash courses."

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  • 1387

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    Brandon Sanderson

    When asked about Aviendha’s second trip through the pillars in Rhuidean, Brandon said that he pitched that sequence. He related that Team Jordan was initially reluctant, but once he actually wrote a draft of the scene, they loved it. He said that he is most proud of that chapter.

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  • 1388

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    One fan thanked Brandon for all the advice he offered to aspiring writers, to which Brandon replied in part:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I got lots of good help when I was starting out, and I want to do something for others as well."

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  • 1389

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    One fan asked him about his process when writing an emotional scene, when he will leave the writing and go walk on his porch:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I'm… trying to escape from the words and get to the images."

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  • 1390

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    When asked about how much time a day he spends writing:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I take off between five and eight to spend time with my family." "If I'm not doing anything else, I'm working on my books."

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  • 1391

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    When asked about his own contributions to the Wheel of Time, Brandon related a request he had made of Harriet.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I wanted an Asha'man of my own… Androl had been in the books, but there was no personality with him, just a name." "I took him wherever I wanted to go." He clarified that Androl was not an author surrogate, or a way of inserting himself into the books, but that he was a character that Brandon could develop and write as he pleased.

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  • 1392

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    One fan asked if the Wheel of Time RPG had any impact on the development of the powers in the series:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I have never read the role-playing game."

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  • 1393

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    The Cosmere—How?:

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I don't know if it's something I can answer, simply because I don't know how." He went on to relate his feelings when reading Asimov's Foundation, and how cool it would have been if Asimov had known from the beginning that he was going to be tying all these things in, and the subtle hints he could have left in the earlier stories.

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  • 1394

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    How did you keep Legion straight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I cheated a little bit in Legion and based each personality off an actor." He pointed out that his favorite personality was JC, who was based on [Adam] Baldwin from Firefly. He also related that Ivy was based on Gwyneth Paltrow. The fan commented that he envisioned Brandon having a folder on each personality, which Brandon confirmed.

    When asked how he approaches writing a novella as opposed to an epic, Brandon reiterated that he was an "architect" style writer, and viewed novella writing as an opportunity to practice his pre-writing skills and his "discovery writing."

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  • 1395

    Interview: Jan 10th, 2013

    NutiketAiel

    One fan asked Brandon to rank Mat’s combat ability compared to other characters in the series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Brandon described Mat as "good" and "above the curve." However, compared to Lan, Mat was "completely out-classed." Brandon confirmed that Lan is at the top in terms of combat ability, but added that, at his height, Tam was "pretty darn good" and could have taken Mat. However, Brandon cautioned that all this was not factoring Mat’s luck. Mat's combat abilities vary a great deal, depending on whether he was "ticked off," what the stakes of the battle were and whether he was in "awesome Mat mode."

    Regarding the battles in the end of the series, Brandon said that some of the researchers working with them studied historical battles and fed him movements for authenticity.

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  • 1396

    Interview: Mar 21st, 2014

    Question

    Did it seem really awkward working with someone else's characters, with Robert Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, I thought that it would, but the fact that I've been reading them since I was a kid, they felt really natural to me, like writing my own characters. I'm quite pleased—I was quite surprised. Perrin and Rand and everyone, they're like my high school buddies. It was refreshingly familiar to me.

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  • 1397

    Interview: Mar 21st, 2014

    Question

    How often do your characters take you completely by surprise when you're doing the actual writing, and take you away from your outline?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They don't surprise me very often, I'm usually aware of it long before it would actually become an issue and I've rebuilt the outline by then.

    Question

    So you're not ever in the process of writing and they—

    Brandon Sanderson

    They don't do that. I cast people in my role, like not real people but I try a character out, and if they fit the role I keep going with them and if they don't then I throw that chapter away and I cast someone else. I rarely have someone go complete crazy off what I was expecting, if they do, it means they were probably the wrong character for that role.

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  • 1398

    Interview: Mar 21st, 2014

    Question

    How do you come up with all your detail for your books, all the different sequences.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Just lots of practice. Practice a lot, and it starts coming to you.

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  • 1399

    Interview: Mar 21st, 2014

    Question

    You were talking about the magic of writing, how you had to have your own kind of magic for writing, and I was wondering, did you kind of snap into that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, it took a while to kind of figure out, all of this took a while to figure out, none of it came, I had to practice, I had to learn, and this is just kind of my philosophies as I write.

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  • 1400

    Interview: Mar 21st, 2014

    Question

    Who helped you go on when you had to do those eighteen drafts?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My wife is a big support to me, but I wasn't married during the early books, and then it was just my own desire to write, and I did have a writing group that helped me, and they're good people too.

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  • 1401

    Interview: Apr 10th, 2014

    Terez

    [You said that RJ wrote the scene where Rand comes out of the mountain, but you said you based Nakomi on something "deep in the notes". Did you add anything to the scene RJ wrote?]

    Brandon Sanderson

    [RJ wrote the woman in the scene. I had to dig deep in the notes to figure out...] ...who this person is. It is something that I had to put together myself.

    Terez

    So you had to...you didn't change anything about that scene.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't believe that I changed anything about that scene. You will have to compare it to the original if that ever comes out in the notes—I don't know whether that's in the stuff that was released to the [library]—but I don't believe any changes were made except for perhaps proofreading and editing changes as we went through. The big changes I made to the epilogue were the addition of certain viewpoints, but were not changes to what was written. Some of these scenes we have in the epilogue were some of the cleanest scenes that we got. And sure, we had to clean them up in some ways, but I don't believe that scene had any major edits to it, but it's now been quite a long time since I worked on that scene, so take that with a caveat.

    But that was one of those scenes, when I read it...now, you'll have to remember, it was 2007 when I went to Harriet's house and I got handed this stack of paper, and I sat down and I read it, and I started with that scene. That was the first thing that I read, because that was the completed—like, I wanted to read the ending, right? There was stuff written before that, but [...] the ending to me that I read started right with what you're talking about, that exact moment with him stumbling out, and the things that he's kind of mumbling, and the things that he's hearing and saying and stuff. But, you may have to—I honestly, it's so hard for me, some of these things, it's so hard for me to remember because we're going back seven years, where I started working on that outline, right after reading what he'd written—and started building it, and over the years, we get a lot of questions, was this you? was this him? I've forgotten. [laughter] Because...no, you have this whole thing and you're working on it for seven years, and what was him and what was me stopped really being that important when we're building the story. Granted, there are certain things we really wanted to preserve of his because we wanted the actual writing he completed, but you know, which themes, and which concepts—there are things where I'm like, "Oh!—I was looking back through my outline, and I'm like, "Oh, I put this in. Why did I put that in? Oh, it's because of this," and then I went back into his notes, "No wait, no he said to do that!" And he wrote that! And they blended together quite a bit. Like, that scene, over the years, I thought, "Oh, I added some stuff to that scene." And then I went back to the original when I was going to put it in, and lo and behold, I hadn't added anything to that scene, is my recollection. It was there, and I'm like, "Oh wait, no that was him, and that's what sparked me to do this other thing," which then, we turned into this other scene, and...but it gets really hard for me to parse without having, in front of me, to say, "Okay, did I change any words?" So...

    Next Question

    What can you tell us about that woman?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That right there is one of the two main things which I have said I'm not going to say anything about. So I'm not answering...that's...that's one of the big...I feel that the notes indicated that this should be a mystery that he wanted to be left, and...things that...there are actually very few of those that we haven't said anything about, and I think this is the one that I'm just not gonna talk about. The other one of course is the pipe, and that's because we don't know. That...the woman you're talking about, I do know things about, but I'm just not...that's...you know, this is the mystery that he wanted us to have, and the pipe is another one. Those are the two big things I can't give you answers on, one because I won't, and one because...um, because I can't. The other thing I haven't been answering is I haven't been answering who made the decision on every specific character, who should live and who should die, and I don't think that focusing on that is really productive, and so I haven't been telling people who, except for one character [looks at Harriet; audience laughs] that I didn't want to die [awws], that Harriet decided needed to go, of the four-hoofed persuasion. [laughter] In general I just don't talk a lot about those, so I'll just give you a warning, those are things I'm not going to answer. I am pretty free about a lot of other things, but I don't answer those.

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  • 1402

    Interview: Apr 10th, 2014

    Question

    A certain male channeler who liked portals—how much of that was you just thinking of portals?

    Brandon Sanderson

    (laughs) So I had not played Portal at that point (laughter), which is actually very advantageous. I've told this story before, so I apologize if this is a repeat. Growing up reading the Wheel of Time and being a magic systems guy, certain aspects of the Wheel of Time magic system were very evocative to me. And I would list the two that were most interesting to me being the World of Dreams and portals themselves, gateways. These were two things that...you know when you... We've all done this, we've read these books. You put down the books and you keep dreaming, right? You keep thinking. And for me it was often what would I do if I were there, and devising aspects of the magic. I often inserted characters of my own into books I was reading as a kid, very frequently. I think I can trace back Hoid, one of my character's origins, to my always kind of saying, "Well there's a character behind the scenes who's doing all this."

    And imagining what I would do with gateways...Actually, it's one of these things that I sat down and started devising a magic system based around for a book. And eventually I did all this work and decided I just can never write that book because it's too similar to Robert Jordan. As I've said many times, I wanted to be very conscious of staking my own claim in the fantasy genre in doing different things because I feel that one of the places that the genre went in the late 90s was very much trying to mimic and copy Robert Jordan, who did really awesome things and I felt had covered the area, right? And I said I don't like that this is where the genre is going. I want to be covering new ground, be doing new things.

    And so reluctantly I kind of put aside some of those ideas, and then I got asked to work on the Wheel of Time. And I said, "Well, guess what I have in my little quiver back here, is a desire to really play with some of these magic systems." And so the meeting I did during my second visit to Charleston was in April or May of 2008, where we sat down. You guys remember that—we got out the butcher paper. I asked for butcher paper. We gotta see if we can dig those out. But I like sometimes to do visual outlining, and I took these big sheets of paper and wrote down character names and started making connections and building an outline. Wrote Team Jordan saying, "What if we did this? What if we did that?" It's where I threw out some of my weirdest ideas and I think terrified them, sometimes. Some things worked. Some things I threw out there, and there were like the whites you could see around their pupils. They're like, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" I'm like, "What if Perrin adopted the Way of the Leaf?" I remember Maria just flipping out about that. She's like, "Please, please don't do that!" [Looks at Maria:] Yeah, you remember that one, don't you? And throwing out all kinds of things because I feel that being brought on, one of the big dangers in working on the Wheel of Time books would be to play it too safe. Robert Jordan would have expanded the world, and the characters would have taken risks, and things like this. And one way we could fail is by not following his vision. But another way we could fail would be by creating bland books. And I think this is where a lot of media properties, like people who write on some big television movie—these books are really bland. Where they fail a lot is because they can't make any changes. They don't feel they can change the canon, they can't take chances, they can't push the stories In new directions, and the books often because of that will end up very bland. And I said we can't fall into that trap. We have to be willing to shake things up. We have to be willing to do things on the level of the things Robert Jordan did, where you know, look at Rand cleansing saidin and things like this. We have to be willing to do this.

    (indecipherable)... One of the things I said I really want to do is, I said I want a character who has a Talent for gateways, because I love gateways and I want to play with them. And I also kind of want to add a new character—well, do a Robert Jordan and take a side character and make them more a main character for these last books because I feel he would have done that with somebody. It's what he does. And so, Androl was... I said, "Is there an Asha'man I can have?" And I think...was it Maria? It was either you or Alan said—I think it was you—who said, "What about Androl? We know almost nothing about him. How do you feel about him?" And I said, "That's perfect, exactly what I was looking for." And I took him. And so this is kind of a place where I was allowed to take some of what I like to do about fiction in the fantasy genre and play with it in a way that wouldn't dramatically change a main character, and which would allow me to push the magic system in some new and interesting directions without overwhelming and dominating it. One danger I felt for me was if I took the whole magic system and dealt with it, it would go too off the wall. But taking one little aspect and kind of doing what I love to do, and really explore the ramifications of what this would do to a world, was something that really excited me and I felt would allow me to have some fun, but not take over too much. And Androl filled that perfectly. I really am pleased with how he turned out. And all these things that I dreamed of as a kid: "Ooh, if I had gateways, here's what I'd do. Oh, I'd do this. I'd use them as a weapon. Ooh, bottom of the ocean—what do we do if we go to the bottom of the ocean?" You know, and things like this, and whatnot. And it was just a lot of fun.

    So yes, that's what it was. And I give a lot of credit to Team Jordan for things like this. When I was doing this, I felt part of my job in these situations was to be the one pushing this toward that level of let's not play it safe. During this time, Maria and Alan kind of became the ones to say let's make sure we're not going too far. And that balance worked really well. They let me get away with on gateways a lot of stuff that I appreciate them letting me get away with. I know at some points, they were like, wow, I'm not sure if this is...yeah, this is a lot of gateways. I remember you [Maria] saying to me once, "This is a lot of gateways, Brandon." But I think in the end that push and pull between us ended up making the book very strong. And Androl became a really great character to add to the Wheel of Time canon, and so I'm very pleased with how that all turned out.

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  • 1403

    Interview: Apr 10th, 2014

    Devon Wolfman Starr

    What was your experience like working on specifically tactics of the biggest military engagement of the last novel?

    So this is another one of those places where it required a lot of push and pull between us. This is something that Robert Jordan had more talent for than I have. He was a military tactician and military historian, and I am not. I am an action movie buff, and a Chinese Kung Fu movie buff. And I love vibrant, engaging visual action sequences. And large scale battle tactics are something I usually go to other people to use as resource on. And so on this one, we made Alan Romanczuk our Great Captain who was going to define our tactics....(indecipherable)...There was a lot of conflict between he and myself—good-natured, but sometimes heated—because I kept pushing toward more cinematic and more character focused. And he kept pushing toward more realism and more focus on the tactics. And that was a lot of push and pull between us. We did go to some people starting out to ask for advice on what we should use as patterns for this. And we got some great advice there on which real historical battles would make great models for us to follow. We felt that was one of the things that we should do is rather than try to come up with this from scratch, we really should use something which happened in our world as a patten because that would help us from making any big blunders. And then Alan would say, "This is what the tactics would be here." And I'm like, "That's not dramatic enough. This is what needs to happen to make the story go." He'd be like, "That violates these rules of tactics." And I'm like, "All right. What can we do in between these two that is still dramatic and still tactically sound?" And we went back and forth a lot on that.

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  • 1404

    Interview: Apr 10th, 2014

    Question

    In the final confrontation, the reality healing crystally stuff—was that something demanded by the notes, or just a spectacular way for that girl to deal with that guy?

    Without delving too much into specifics, because I'm not sure exactly what's going to end up in the encyclopedia and what's going to end up in the notes, and things like this. Without going too much into specifics, for the Last Battle itself a lot of what Robert Jordan left me are concepts: concepts on this is how I want this to feel, the big crux of the Last Battle comes down to this question, this is where someone's crowning moment is—these sorts of emotions. It was like he was laying down the emotional beats, and the actual how to put it together—a lot of that was left in my hands. He did have some brainstorms on that, but some of those brainstorms were from years ago, before he wrote... For instance, I've mentioned before that there is a brainstorm we have on "here's how Rand is going to do it"—here's a brainstorm that Robert Jordan had left. But he'd written this brainstorm around book 7 or 6 or something, and it involved the Choedan Kal—both of them. And we're like, well he obviously threw that out the window and decided not to go with that. But some of these brainstorms that he'd had, we can say, oh this is the emotional resonance he's going for. Looking at the idea between we want to have the different powers work together, to work in this way from his brainstorm, even though we can't do it in the way that he was thinking of doing it ten years ago, we can still see the sort of thing that he was going for.

    And the scene that Terez mentioned at the end mentions Rand's big revelation that needed to happen so that the last moments could occur—he's reflecting on that when he comes out. And so we knew this emotional resonance that Robert Jordan wanted. And we had all these sort of other things where he talks about just the feel he wants and things like this. And so a lot of the specifics—how to put these things together—were things that I pitched to Team Jordan to fit the framework of the notes, and then we tried out and saw if they worked. Which is kinda how you do writing, at least if you're an outliner like me. I pitch ideas at myself, I build an outline out of it, and I try it out and see if it works. And what ended up in the book are the things that did work. What didn't end up in the book are the things that didn't work. For instance, "River of Souls", which was in the (Unfettered) anthology, is one of the things I mentioned—that's the sort of thing that we tried that doesn't work. And the reason a lot of times that these things are being cut is because we are striving for that balance between "let's push the story in new and innovative ways" between "let's make sure we're not straying too far from Robert Jordan's vision". And something like "River of Souls" strayed too far, and also kind of was distracting from the main point of the book—there were two big reasons to cut that sequence. But you see us doing things like that, and so the ones we end up with... A lot of these things about the actual Last Battle are me looking to put together what I feel creates the emotional resonance and the plot structure that Robert Jordan wanted for this ending.

    I've said before that the main bulk of the writing we had for this last book involved three main areas: the Epilogue, the scene at the Field of Merrilor where Moiraine shows up and things like this, and the scene at the beginning in the Town, the village in the Waste—what does he call it? Does he call it the Town? The Town is what he calls it. Yeah. And those are three places where we have kind of unchanged Robert Jordan writing. Granted, all through the books, each of the books, you'll find sprinklings where I'm able to use a paragraph or two, or a page, or something from his notes that spawns a chapter, but that's where we have untouched Robert Jordan writing in this last book—I think those are the three main places.

    Tags

  • 1405

    Interview: Apr 10th, 2014

    Leigh Butler

    Once upon a time, I edited an article on a certain very large website that provides answers to questions people ask a lot, and one of the articles was called 50 Ways to Kill A Squishy Invulnerable Assassin Creature...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. [laughter]

    Leigh Butler

    And, you know, there were many lists, and most of them were sort of facetious; some of them were, you know, less so, and I was just kinda wondering, when we did actually kill the Squishy Invulnerable Assassin Creature in, I think it was the second-to-last book.....

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, mmhmm...

    Leigh Butler

    ...where did the inspiration for that come from? Was it maybe from that site? Because there one there that... [laughter]

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will say that I am, with a lot of things in fandom, I am...was familiar with that list, and I did, after I had built the outline, go to the list and say, "How did they suggest doing these?" It had been a long time, but I was familiar with the list.

    Leigh Butler

    Alright.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And so I can't say that I said, "Oh, I should do it this way." But I can say that this thing and some of these, like a lot of the Asmodean theories—which, by the way, I didn't have to choose on [laughter]—but, things like this were in the back of my brain. It's part of being part of fandom.

    Leigh Butler

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Like, I'm not the only one that theorized about gateways, right? Fandom had been theorizing about gateways forever; it's one of the things that drew me to fandom, is when I come on...I had been dreaming about what to do with this, and I'm like, "Ooh, here's other people who are magic system people like me!" and this is a magic system thing, right? How do you kill this thing. And so, this... So, yes, I was familiar with them, but I can't pinpoint and say, "This is something that inspired me."

    Leigh Butler

    Okay.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um, but it definitely was in the back of my brain. The entire FAQ is something I had read, at various points in its development, and so, yeah. It's hard to say what of the FAQ, over the years, seeped in there and got in my brain, and, you know, it's only things like the...some of the really tough stuff to talk about with the Wheel of Time is, when you start reading a series when you're 15, and you read it multiple times, certain things get cemented into your head that aren't actually part of the books, and some of them are, but they're your own weird interpretation, and...

    Leigh Butler

    It's called fanon vs canon.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, yeah. And when you...being brought on as the writer, I tried to become aware of these, and say, "Okay, what are my own biases?" But I couldn't separate them all. Working on one of the books, I remember this scene—I've told you guys this story before—where I wrote this whole scene, happening with the bridges going into Tar Valon, and Maria's like, "They can't see. This is like a mile-long bridge." And I'm like, "A mile-long bridge!? Not in my Tar Valon!" [laughter] I imagined it perfectly! And nope, going back there, these enormous bridges that I had not imagined, even though they're pivotal to Tar Valon. I have a good friend who insists to this day that Thom Merrilin does not have a mustache. That's pivotal to the character, right? But each of us are going to have these things...when we are reading, our initial impression of the character becomes canon in our own head, and shaking us from that is very difficult sometimes to do. And so, bringing the legacy of all of this with me to writing the books means that you sometimes end up with me being unable to trace where an idea came from. Is it, when I was reading and I was 17 saying, "Oh, I wish this will happen." Is that the origin of the scene, you know, when we bring Tam and Rand back together? Is that the origin of that? I mean, how long had I been thinking about that? Is the origin of that when that meeting with Harriet in April where she said "I have one big request, and it is that you find a way for Tam and Rand to meet again early in one of these books." Was that...? You know. How much of it was that, how much of it was my own fan desire, how much of it was....you know, it's so hard to trace these things and break them down, but I suspect it's a bit of everything.

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  • 1406

    Interview: Apr 10th, 2014

    Question

    Why was the answer to who killed you-know-who buried in the back of the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh! So, this is a great story; some of you have heard this one before. So, when I got there—this is the 2007 visit, so this is December 2007, right before [?] was announced and my inbox exploded, right before the interview with Jason went live that preempted the [?]—I got the notes, and stuck on a post-it note on top of the notes was the answer to who killed Asmodean, and it isn't the answer you think it is. I don't even know—[to Harriet] was this Robert Jordan's writing, or was this yours?—there was fan sheet that was printed out—there was a fan theory, and a post-it note that said "this is right". And I don't know who even wrote the "this is right".

    Someone

    I think it was Jordan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You think it was Jim, yeah. Robert Jordan. And so, anyway, we had this thing with the "this is right", and the only thing I had really from him was the "this is right". And I kind of felt like the fandom, like "Well I've got my answer but there's no explanation; it's just "the fan theory is right", that it was this person, and so, as we were doing our brainstorming session months later, I said "You know what would be funny? Is if we made...we forced the fans to feel like we do," because we don't really know much about this answer, and we just...we put it in the appendix because then, they would have to, you know, they would found it like we found it. I got a post-it note; you got an appendix item, and Harriet loved this idea. She thought it was awesome. She has, you know, I think she, over the years, got infected by her husband and transitioned from nice editor to mean author [laughter], because we authors love to be mean to readers. Those provoking strong emotions in readers is one of the things that we love to do, and so sticking it back there, I actually when I was writing Towers of Midnight, I was...there was a sentence I wrote where I made it a little more clear in text, and Harriet was like, "No, this is going in the appendix; strike that sentence out." And I was like, "Alright! She's on board with this." So that's...and it is...you know, a lot of what we do in writing, at least in my vision, is to try to make sure you feel like the characters feel, like the Last Battle. Why is it 90,000 words, or whatever it is—that chapter. It's because the characters can't put down their weapons. They are back-to-the-wall, this is the End, and I don't want you to feel like you can put down the book. I want you to be like, "I'll read to the next chapter." [laughter] All they're thinking is, "Well, I'll try and make it to the next day." Well, that's how you have to feel too; this is using the form of the story to try and evoke the right emotion, and putting [?] in the back was to evoke for you the same emotion that we felt in finding just the post-it note answer.

    Next Question

    Okay, so before you got the note, who did you think killed that appendix item?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here's the story of appendix-item man: Like, when I...and I found since that this was actually pretty common. I didn't really care until I started reading fan theories, right? Like, this was not one of the questions I had. The questions I had were things like, "Oooh, what could you do with gateways? Ooh, what kinds of Talents exist out there and what could they do? Ooh," you know, "what kind of weaves exist in the Age of Legends and how did they develop into the contemporary weaves?" These are the things I was really interested in as a reader, and then, you know, you get Asmodean, and like, "Who cares about him?" I mean, yes, he was a fun character, but he's dead, probably one of the Forsaken. And then, you start reading the theories, and then you go through this thing where you're like, "Wow, this is actually really a mystery. Oh, I really want to know!" And then you transition into the, "I'm so tired of people talking about this." [laughter] "Can we talk about something else?" And so, by the time I was working on those, I knew all the theories, and I didn't...I had transitioned out of that caring too much. I'm like, "These are all good theories, and I have no idea which one is right." And so, I didn't have...you know, I was more interested in, you know, "Which of the women is Rand going to end up with?" That's a really...that's a question I wanted answered. "Will he survive the Last Battle?" "Who killed Asmodean?" was not a big deal to me at that point, though there is a fun story. Matt Hatch, who runs Theoryland, or founded Theoryland—I don't know if you run Theoryland any more—but Theoryland kind of runs on its own...

    Matt Hatch

    Theoryland has always run on its own.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, you're just the unfortunate person who started it and got trampled by the masses. So, um, he came to me—when was it? JordanCon? No, it couldn't be JordanCon. DragonCon?

    Matt Hatch

    JordanCon.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was JordanCon. Okay.

    Matt Hatch

    [unintelligible]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, something like that. The book wasn’t out yet—Towers of Midnight—but I had mentioned that you will eventually, in one of the books, get the reveal on who killed Asmodean. And he pulls me aside, and he says, “All right, I’m not going to ask you who it really is, but I just want to say, it’s not Graendal, right?” And I didn’t say . . . I didn’t say anything. But he’s like, "Okay, if it’s Graendal, just don’t tell everybody. Just make it remain a secret forever. I would rather it remained a secret forever than you actually reveal it. Just so you know, If you’re gonna throw me a bone, don’t reveal it if it’s Graendal.” Sorry, Matt. My duty to the entire Wheel of Time fandom was greater than my duty to you.

    Matt Hatch

    So my side of the story is, I said Brandon—I was watching his face—and I said, I did add in there, “I will kill myself if it’s Graendal,” because if you say crazy things to people, they get human for a moment for your health. And so I swear, and I told everyone this on Theoryland after I asked Brandon that question, I’m like, "It’s Graendal, and it’s pissing me off”. It’s his look of concern like, “Oh, I don’t want Matt to kill himself”. Just momentarily a blip across his face like, “Oh. Oh, okay.” After that point, I just, I knew it was coming.

    Brandon Sanderson

    On the Gathering Storm tour, we did dinners with fans before each signing, which was wonderful but exhausting because it just added an extra hour or an hour and a half to each signing. But at one of them, I wrote “Graendal” on the tablecloth because it was one of those paper tablecloth things at one of those Italian restaurants in Korean, and then scribbled it out. And then said, “Hey I just wrote down who killed Asmodean right here.” And they’re all like, “What?!?” And so someone actually cut that piece of paper out and took it with them. But I’d scribbled it so well they couldn’t figure it out, and I didn’t tell them it was in Korean. Somebody’s still got that thing, I’m sure. Did they scan that and post that online and stuff?

    Matt Hatch

    I was there, I don’t know . . .

    Jason Denzel

    Yeah, I was there, too. You scribbled both sides of the tablecloth, just to make sure. [. . .] He was panicked that someone would figure it out. He was terrified. He was like, “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have done that."

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  • 1407

    Interview: Feb 2nd, 2014

    Henry L. Herz

    Tell us about your writing process.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am an outliner. I like to have books with explosive endings, and to manage this—for me—I need to know what is going to happen in the story. I generally plot my books backward, starting my outline with the ending, then I work my way forward. When I write, I go the other direction.

    Henry L. Herz

    Well, your technique works, even if it flips the Cheshire Cat's advice on its head. Keep it up, sir!

    "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
    "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
    "I don't much care where," said Alice.
    "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. — Alice in Wonderland

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  • 1408

    Interview: Feb 2nd, 2014

    Henry L. Herz

    What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Practice. Don't worry about anything other than finding time to write—then spend that time on your stories. Publishing shouldn't worry you; nothing should. Just practice.

    Henry L. Herz

    Indeed, I cannot underscore enough the value of belonging to a good critique group. I would also offer up Brandon's Laws (again from Wikipedia):

    "Sanderson's First Law is that "An author's ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." While originally created as a rule for magic systems in fantasy novels, Sanderson has specified that this law need not apply just to fantasy, but is also applicable to science fiction. This Law was originally defined in Sanderson's online essay "Sanderson's First Law". In the essay he qualifies the two extremes of design as being:

    1. Magic/technology has well defined rules that the audience understands. As a result, one can use this to solve conflict more easily as the capabilities are cleanly defined. Sanderson classifies this as "Hard Magic". C.L. Wilson in her essay "Worldbuilding 101 — Making Magic" advocated this method of creation, stating, ". . . create your rules, then follow them."

    2. Magic/technology has unclear or vague rules, or none at all. This allows for a greater sense of wonder to be attained for the reader, but the ability to solve problems without resorting to deus ex machina decreases. Sanderson classifies this as "Soft Magic". Lawrence Watt-Evans specifically advised "The trick is to be a benevolent and consistent deity, not one who pulls miracles out of a hat as needed."

    Sanderson's Second Law is "Limitations > Powers", that a character's weaknesses are more interesting than his or her abilities. It was initially set down in Episode 14 of the podcast Writing Excuses. John Brown, likewise looked to Sanderson's work in his own essay involving magic systems, noting "What are the ramifications and conflicts of using it?" Patricia Wrede likewise noted several issues on this topic ranging from magic suppressing other technologies, to how a magic might affect farming. In explaining the second law, Sanderson references the magic system of Superman, claiming that Superman's powers are not what make him interesting, but his limits, specifically his vulnerability to kryptonite and the code of ethics he received from his parents.

    Sanderson's Third Law is that a writer should "Expand what you already have before you add something new."

    Sanderson's Last Law is that a good magic system should be interconnected with the world around it. Sanderson points out that magic does not take place in a vacuum. It is related to the ecology, religion, economics, warfare, and politics of the world it inhabits. The job of the author is to think farther than the reader about the ramifications of the magic system. If magic can turn mud into diamonds, that has an effect on the value of diamonds. Sanderson states that readers of genre fiction are interested not just in the magic system but how the world and characters will be different because of the magic."

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  • 1409

    Interview: Feb 2nd, 2014

    Henry L. Herz

    If you could have three authors over for dinner, who would it be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First would be Robert Jordan, easily, because I would like to question him about the things he wanted to do with the Wheel of Time that he didn't leave us notes on and get answers to the questions that he didn't leave us answers for. Then I would pick Terry Pratchett because I've seen him at conventions and he seems like a blast. After that, probably Moses. I'd have to get an interpreter, but hanging out with Moses would be pretty awesome, and I would have a lot of questions for him as well.

    Henry L. Herz

    Great choices (and what an honor for you to be chosen to complete Robert Jordan's work). And kudos for remembering you'd need an interpreter for Moses. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have Moses over for dinner, but not be able to converse with him? I'm guessing dinner would include matzoh and quail.

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  • 1410

    Interview: Mar 2nd, 2014

    Karen Hoag

    How do you imagine all this magic? Tell us briefly of your rules of magic.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Seven or eight years ago, I was thinking about what I love in fantasy. My love of the fantasy genre is this sense of another world that really couldn't, but for a while, we pretend that it could. With a science background, (I started my academic life as a chemist) I like to imagine worlds where our fundamental laws of physics don't apply but other fundamental laws of physics do. And so, for me, I like "magic" to be a new branch of physics that only exists in these worlds. That sounds a little sterile. It's more sterile than I wanted to sound because I think science has this wonder to it, and as you discover and you learn, there's this beautiful sense of discovery.

    It's where the great discoveries of our age is happening and scientific. I love particularly the era at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. The feel the people had for science back then—I often find myself writing in my books during a similar era, an age you might call an enlightenment. That's really the Renaissance, a little post-Renaissance age of industry where people are discovering that the magic follows rules and laws.

    I have rules for myself about how to write my magic systems and these are really just storytelling rules. I call them Sanderson's Laws. I can't really go into depth in an article here. (I've done essays on them, you can Google them.) But they're really writing advice to myself. I call them Sanderson's Laws, not because I think everyone should follow them, but they are laws I follow myself.

    They have to do with things like properly laying the foreshadowing for my magic so the reader understands what it can do and looking and exploring the different aspects of what a magic can do rather than adding a ton of new powers. Taking one power and setting (to see) if I can really explore it in its depth, things like that.

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  • 1411

    Interview: Mar 2nd, 2014

    Karen Hoag

    What types of worlds do you create?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I create worlds that feel like our world, but not. I like the "but not." Fantasy is about the "but not," the "what is different, what couldn't be, but what do I maybe wished could be?" or "What do I wonder about?" There are things that come from my dreams and my imaginations and then I try to make them feel real.

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  • 1412

    Interview: Mar 2nd, 2014

    Karen Hoag

    When you are off in another world, how do you come down from it and relate to, say, your children, your wife and your students?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Writing is hard. You spend a day at work writing and at the end of it I feel tired. But stepping out of my room and transitioning out of that is not as difficult as it was once. Because it's time to be done and I've divided my life in such a way that when I pass out of the door, I'm transitioning out of the writing mind and into the family mind.

    When I was younger, when I was just first married, these transitions were hard. But it was just a matter of practice. I feel that it's important to have my family ground me in real-life experiences, otherwise, I won't actually have anything to write about.

    Fantasy is the genre of the imagination and it is only as imaginative as we have real-life experiences to explore. We take what we know and we expand upon it. People often say, "Write what you know." For fantasy, that applies to taking your real life experience and asking the "what ifs" about it.

    Really, I think fantasy is a genre about the now, the things that we're worried about, the things we're concerned about, the things we wish could change in our world—these could become manifest in our fantasy stories. I don't think there's a fantasy book out there that isn't in some way an allegory for the author's own life experience.

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  • 1413

    Interview: Mar 2nd, 2014

    Karen Hoag

    What are you proudest of?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What I'm proudest of? That is an open-ended difficult question to answer. There are a lot of things that I'm proud of. More than proud, I'm thankful, honestly. I'm thankful that I get to do this. I'm thankful for the readers who support me. I'm very proud of all of my works in some ways and yet, at the end of the day, it's less about being proud of these things and more just supremely thankful that I get to do what I love for a living. That people enjoy experiencing it, that I get to do this thing that it is supremely creative that engages all of my faculties and gives me a zest for life and then, I actually get to do that for a living. I'm sometimes just in awe that it all comes together and works.

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  • 1414

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Jason Krell

    So when you come to events like this and you sit on the panels, do you do it more so the fans can understand you more as a writer or do you do it to help out young aspiring writers and try to give them some tips and tricks?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, it's a little bit of both. When I was young—I was 17—I went to my first convention and Katherine Kurtz was there and she sat down with me. And I was just a young, teenage, aspiring writer, and she talked to me for a good half hour on the business, how to write, and other advice. I've remembered that ever since, and I thought if I ever get in this position where I can do the same thing, I want to be available.

    Becoming a writer, so much of it is solitary. You have to spend all this time sitting, writing on your own, and practicing that when you can actually connect with someone who has gone there before, it can mean more than basically anything else in your writing career—save just practicing. So I like to be available.

    I'm at this place in my career where my fans support me. They read the books and that makes it possible for me to do what I do, and I want to be available for them. I use the metaphor that—I guess it's more of a simile—you're like the people in the 19th century. If you wanted to be an artist you had to find a wealthy patron to take care of you. And my wealthy patron is the fandom, right? I exist with them supporting me actively. I mean these sci-fi and fantasy fans are well connected. They can all go pirate the books—they all know how to. But instead they buy them and support me. So I want to be available.

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  • 1415

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Jason Krell

    Words of Radiance has been really well received. Do you think that's at all indicative of the epic fantasy genre opening up?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Opening up? I'm not sure. Yes there is—how should I say this? I love the epic fantasy genre. I grew up reading it and I absolutely love it. I want to be part of the conversation. I think there are places the genre can go. We haven't hit what epic fantasy is really capable of doing yet, and I feel that one of my passions is to be a part of this, to bring it along. So I want to push the world building a little bit further than it's been done before.

    I think we did have a period, for whatever reason, where not a lot of epic fantasies were taking off. If you look, basically, from after Robin Hobb up to the emergence of Patrick Rothfuss, you really only had Steven Erikson. Now there's Jim Butcher's books, which were great, but he was really Urban Fantasy. So, I don't know if it was just the market saying "oh, we're saturated," or the writers were just not going where the fans wanted, but there were a lot of great books that just didn't take off.

    I don't know what it is, but it seems like we're back in a place where epic fantasy is something taking off. And it's probably a mixture of us as writers evolving and having this history of reading while adding our own spin on it mixed with the genre kind of saying "hey we want some more this. We haven't had it in a while."

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  • 1416

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Jason Krell

    You had that essay on Tor.com where you talked about The Way of Kings, and I'm guessing Words of Radiance too, being your most honest work. Do you think it's important for other writers not to worry so much about the business side, and write what they want to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can only speak from my own experience, which may be abnormal, but I really feel that the times where I worried too much about the market were the times I wrote my worst fiction. And the times where I wrote: "this is what I want to read—this is what I'm passionate about," I wrote my best fiction. And so that's what I would advise.

    That being said, I was very steeped in this genre. You can say what I wanted to read was very naturally an outgrowth of what a lot of what the fandom wanted to read because I was one of them. That's why it worked for me. And I'm sure there are a number of people who are writing to their passion, and it just doesn't end up catching on. I wrote 13 books before I got published, and at the end of the day I decided I would rather keep writing and never publish than give up writing or go do something else. And if I reached the end of my life and had 70 unpublished novels, I'd still consider myself a successful writer. That decision has driven me ever since and it's worked out for me.

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  • 1417

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Jason Krell

    I also saw the interview where you sat down with Tom Doherty and talked about your "master plan" to tie all your books together. And I know you're always big on endings, so how are you approaching writing something so big and tying it all together?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lots of work in my internal wiki mixed with continuity editors. I've hired people whose job it is to just keep me honest. Because when I sit down to write the first draft of a book, I'm trying to lay down the emotional resonance, get the characters right, get the plot right, get these really important things right. Following that I'll worry about continuity sometimes—like, the little continuity. Of course you want character continuity from the very beginning, but some of these things we do like that. So having a continuity editor is very helpful in that realm and that's one of the things I've done. Peter Ahlstrom is doing a lot, and Karen, his wife, has jumped in since she was a professional editor as well. So they've jumped in and are keeping me honest.

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  • 1418

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Jason Krell

    In a panel on mythology from earlier today, you talked about establishing folklore that isn't necessarily crucial to the plot—maybe ancillary—but that people read into it too much for clues. Do you find that to be, maybe not annoying, but distracting?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't think so, if it's the right book. I feel like if it's a big, thick, epic fantasy then it's partially about the immersive experience. Those sorts of things are important to consistently indicate to you as a reader that this world is big—this is a real world, we'll be living in this world for a while. But when you're doing something else, a more tightly paced urban fantasy for instance, fewer of those things should be put in because you're trying to pack much more in while trying to keep your narrative focused.

    But at the same time, I kind of feel like not every character attribute should be part of the main plot. I mean, who we are certainly influences us, but sometimes a character just likes collecting stamps. It's just who we are. And if you're treating your setting like a character, there are going to be things about your setting that are like the stamp collecting, that are just part of it. And if you do it right, these things will feel like pieces of the world and readers won't be distracted.

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  • 1419

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Jason Krell

    You often talked about the influence that Robert Jordan had on you as a writer, so how do you feel about now being the same influence that RJ was to new young writers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is just amazing to me. I became a writer in the first place because reading the fantasy books that I love had such a profound effect on me emotionally that I said, "I have to learn how to do this. I have to." Now being able to talk to people and realize its working and inspiring another generation—and you know, people react against or toward me in the same way I'd react against or toward the things that came before —that's cool. You're part of something—part of something big. Part of this genre I love. It makes me really excited.

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  • 1420

    Interview: Mar 20th, 2014

    Paul Simpson

    What's the most surprising thing a reader or reviewer has said about your work?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When you do something like I do, you live in a perpetual state of surprise. You spend years and years admiring the great authors who you've read and loved, and you dream of managing to pull it off yourself someday. When you do pull it off, you have a tendency to think, "Is this me they're talking about? Really?"

    It's hard to pick out just one that is the most surprising. I would say that the things that struck me most were in the early days of my career, after I published Elantris. That book is about, in part, people who wounds continue to hurt, and the pain doesn't fade. Their bodies are broken; healing doesn't work on them any longer. I once got a very nice email, a year or so after it was published, from someone who was dealing with cancer, who thanked me for writing this book and said it was a metaphor for what it's like to deal with a chronic illness like cancer. Now, I hadn't gone into this book thinking, "I'm going to write a book about a metaphor for people with cancer," and yet, the poignancy and power of this letter really drove home to me the strength that a story can have for each individual reader, when they adapt it to their own circumstances. I would say that was something that left me in awe of this whole process.

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  • 1421

    Interview: Mar 20th, 2014

    Paul Simpson

    What aspect of the creative process do you find most challenging?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am not naturally inclined toward revision, but revision is vital. My first drafts, while fairly clean because I do a lot of planning and outlining, are still quite a distance from being fantastic. Sometimes they're good, but they're not really good. The first draft might get a book's quality to ninety percent of what it needs to be, but getting that last ten percent takes just as long as the first ninety. To this day, forcing myself to sit down and take something that I know is working pretty well, and instead try to make it really good, is hard for me. My mind always wants to be creating something new.

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  • 1422

    Interview: Mar 20th, 2014

    Paul Simpson

    Are there themes you don't yet feel you can tackle for whatever reason?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are indeed. There are things I've shied away from—more because I haven't found the right character voice that I would want to tackle them with yet—things that are very far removed from my own experience. Writing a transgendered person, for instance, is something that is so far removed and so different from what I've done, that it's something that I've intentionally not tackled. If I find the right character, the right story, and the right resources, then perhaps I'll tackle it. But writing the other, someone who is very different from yourself, is not something to approach lightly. I don't think it's something that you should absolutely avoid, or absolutely be afraid of, because otherwise some voices are just not going to get as much visibility as they probably deserve. But I might be the wrong person to do it, or it might just be the wrong time in my life.

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  • 1423

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    Graeme Flory

    1. On a scale of flashlight to floodlight, how radiant are the words in Words of Radiance?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say at least 300 broams' worth, if not more. Full broams.

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  • 1424

    Interview: Mar 17th, 2014

    SFFWorld

    1. So: Book 2. How does this book differ from Book 1?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Living up to a really successful book is always hard. The second book expands the world and the characters. It shows off a new magic. It has Wit being himself. It involves more depth into the understanding of Realmatic theory and the Cosmere. It lets several of the characters really come into their own. It moves at a fast pace, and things where you may have been thinking, "Oh, it's not going to go there at least for a few more books," happen immediately instead of taking forever. This is all part of my desire and goal for the series. I wrote a really big essay for Tor.com about how I envisioned these books going, where I look at each one as being more than book, where I'm playing with the idea of what it means to be an epic. Words of Radiance went very well in that regard. I plotted it like a trilogy, and wrote it as this one book made of three books. Anyway, I'm just super excited about how it turned out. The major difference between this book and the first book is that Shallan comes more to the forefront. Kaladin's presence in the second book is about the same as it was in the first book. But this one is more Shallan and has a little less Dalinar than the first one.

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  • 1425

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2013

    Octavia

    1. With Steelheart every superhero I've worshipped as a kid, was pretty much blown to bits and replaced with the scariest bunch of "supers" I've ever seen. How did you come up with the idea to take superheroes (and even today's, not even close to epic level, villains) and make them so amazingly evil?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was on book tour, driving a rental car up through West Virginia when someone aggressively cut me off in traffic. I got very annoyed at this person, which is not something I normally do. I'm usually pretty easygoing, but this time I thought to myself, "Well, random person, it's a good thing I don't have super powers—because if I did, I'd totally blow your car off the road." Then I thought: "That's horrifying that I would even think of doing that to a random stranger!"

    Any time that I get horrified like that makes me realize that there's a story there somewhere. So I spent the rest of the drive thinking about what would really happen if I had super powers. Would I go out and be a hero, or would I just start doing whatever I wanted to? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing?

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  • 1426

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2013

    Octavia

    2. Newcago was a HUGE surprise for me. I expected to see Chicago, but roughed up in a dystopian way. Instead you took a major city we all know, and made it completely new and interactive. The catacombs, in particular were really interesting to me. Did you base Newcago's catacombs off of a "real" place?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Newcago's catacombs were actually based more off of mid-eighties cyberpunk stories where you've often got this sort of techie underground, and I love that visual. I intentionally didn't want to take Steelheart in a dystopian direction, even though it technically is a dystopia. I just feel that the whole "wasted world" dystopia has been done so well by so many writers that I wanted to have something that felt new and different.

    When I gave Steelheart this sort of Midas power to turn Chicago into metal, I thought it would be cool to have these catacombs dug underneath it because the visual was so different and cool. The catacombs I've visited in various cities are, of course, awesome, but really I'm looking back at those cyberpunk books.

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  • 1427

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2013

    Octavia

    3. Steelheart makes you feel a few pretty intense emotions. Were there any scenes in particular that you found difficult to write, because of these intense moments?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the very first scenes I imagined for Steelheart is where the main character David is trapped and pinned down. Certain things have led him to that moment and the events that happen right after that. (I'm not giving any spoilers, but those of you who have read the book will know what I'm talking about. It happens right after the motorcycle chase.) When I'm developing a book, I often go for a walk or walk on the treadmill and listen to cool music, my eyes closed, and ask myself, "What is the emotional resonance of this book? What's it going to feel like to read it? What scenes will make that happen?" This was one of those scenes. For me, it was the most important scene of the entire novel, so getting to it was a pleasure, but it was also an emotional and powerful scene to write because I'd been planning it for so long and wanted badly for it to turn out well. That can be really difficult for a writer when you've got something in your head and you worry. Can I make it turn out on the page?

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  • 1428

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2013

    Octavia

    4. If Calamity did come (and most of us did not turn evil), what power would you want? Would you be a hero? Villain? Switzerland?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What power I would choose depends on how rational my brain is that day. It makes the most sense to have Wolverine's regenerative powers. At the same time, it's not like I’m jumping off cliffs or getting into fights. So I probably wouldn't do much with this power.

    But in the back of my mind, there's a part of me that says, "Boy, would I really love to be able to fly!" Which is why a lot of the magic systems in my books wind up dealing with people having powers that let them soar in the air.

    Honestly, I want to think I'd be a hero, but as I've mentioned, the reason I wrote Steelheart was because of a moment where I had intense anger toward someone else. And that moment of me imagining myself destroying someone else because of a minor annoyance is part of why I wrote this book. I was frightened of myself. I'd like to think that I'd be a hero. I'm worried that I wouldn't be.

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  • 1429

    Interview: Mar 1st, 2014

    Michael De Groote

    The two Stormlight books together weigh almost 6 pounds and take up 5 inches on a bookshelf. That's wider than two full collections of Shakespeare and about the same width as The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

    With eight more books planned for the series, Sanderson is just getting started.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "What I love about the epic fantasy genre is the chance to do something big—lots of characters across a long time," Sanderson said recently in an interview at Weller Book Works at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City. "The scope you can cover in a book like this, in a series like this, is fun for me to deal with. You can really dig into characters and show them changing over a large period of time."

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  • 1430

    Interview: Mar 1st, 2014

    Michael De Groote

    Creating characters

    Sanderson was signing and numbering about 500 copies of Words of Radiance for fans who preordered the books from Weller. There were no crowds as he signed each book secretly in the store's back room. The sounds were of a black Sharpie marker on the pages and the thump of the books as helpers plopped them down in piles next to him and then squirreled them away on shelves to be sorted for shipment around the world.

    Sanderson is known for well-thought-out worlds that have elaborate magic systems. When somebody uses magic in a Sanderson book, there are laws. Some things can't be done—and using magic has a price. The world created in The Stormlight Archive is as in-depth as any ever created for a fantasy book and rivals that of The Lord of the Rings in its intricacy and joy.

    But what Sanderson would like to be known for is his characters—the people he writes into his imaginary worlds. Such as Kaladin, the soldier-turned-slave in The Stormlight Archive who is as compelling as Jean Valjean in "Les Misérables." Or Szeth, the assassin who weeps as he is forced to kill. Or Shallan Davar, a woman with secrets that threaten everyone and everything she loves. Or Dalinar Kholin, the reluctant prophet who must unite a world gone mad.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Action is only as interesting as it is putting people you care about in danger," Sanderson said while signing another book. "A great world is only as interesting as the people who live in it and have to live with this really interesting world. And so if you don't have a compelling character, you don't have a story—at least not of the type I would like to read."

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  • 1431

    Interview: Mar 1st, 2014

    Michael De Groote

    A sense of wonder

    There is an aspect of fantasy that motivates Sanderson to create his worlds and that he thinks can also affect people in the real world.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I want to give people a sense of wonder," he said, "and a vision of where the fantasy genre has gone that it hasn't gone before. I feel like the genre has a lot of potential that hasn't been explored or tapped. I want to be one of those who takes a few steps toward where it can go. To be my own paving stone in the path that is leading the genre toward bigger and better things."

    Michael De Groote

    And fantasy is tied into the imagination, which is tied into the shaping of the real world.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "Before the Wright brothers flew, flying was fantasy. Before the civil rights movement, people getting along together and the races being equal was a fantasy," he said. "Things change because we imagine a different world, a world that is not. And I think that imagination is one of the most important and defining aspects of human existence: our ability to imagine a world that is not."

    Michael De Groote

    Fantasy, in his mind, is an exploration of reality and capturing a vision of possibilities. In The Stormlight Archive and its second book, Words of Radiance, he hopes to create a work of art that will stand the test of time. But, he said, he can't do it on his own. Readers are needed to complete that work of art.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "The book isn't done until you've imagined what's happening in this book," he said. "I'm only giving you half of it—maybe it is more like 75 percent—but I'm only giving you part of it, and you have to do all the rest."

    Michael De Groote

    In that collaboration, he hopes there is a sense of wonder.

    After journeying in Sanderson's compelling world, one emerges back into the real world. By making the trip, the reader may see, perhaps for the first time, the world in all its variety and with all its amazing characters and beauty. And that may be enough to make trees tremble in anticipation for a book as large as the imagination.

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  • 1432

    Interview: Apr 22nd, 2014

    Frannie Jackson

    Sanderson began writing his first book, "a bad knock-off combination of Dragonlance and The Dragonbone Chair,” within the next year. Embarrassed by his efforts, he hid the pages behind a painting in his bedroom so his family wouldn't discover them. This first attempt at writing would become the only manuscript he ever abandoned before it was completed.

    Fast-forward several years to college, where Sanderson concocted a grand writing scheme.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I had heard somewhere, and I can't remember where it was now, that your first five books are generally terrible," Sanderson says. "For me that meant, 'Well, I don't have to be good until book six. So that's okay!' I sat down and decided to write six books."

    Frannie Jackson

    Instead of penning six novels, Sanderson wrote 13 in eight years. He'd taken the graveyard shift as a hotel desk clerk after graduation, allowing him time to write from midnight until 6 a.m. every morning.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I actually did the starving artist thing, which is awesome to be able to tell people," Sanderson jokes.

    Frannie Jackson

    Rejection letters for eight years of manuscripts piled up, and Sanderson's family became nervous.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "[My mom] kept having my dad call me; she was so worried about me," he says.

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  • 1433

    Interview: Apr 22nd, 2014

    Brandon Sanderson

    I sit here thinking that something has CHANGED. Something is missing. Some hated you, Mr. Jordan, claiming you represented all that is terrible about popular fantasy. Others revered you as the only one who got it RIGHT.

    Personally, I simply feel indebted to you. You showed me what it was to have vision and scope in a fantasy series—you showed me what could be done. I still believe that without your success, many younger authors like myself would never have had a chance at publishing their dreams.

    You go quietly, but leave us trembling.

    Brandon Sanderson
    September 19, 2007

    Frannie Jackson

    So concludes Sanderson's eulogy on his blog to Robert Jordan, the world-renowned author of The Wheel of Time series. Jordan had passed away a day earlier, ending his battle with cardiac amyloidosis that began in the spring of 2006. As the fantasy world mourned Jordan, fans also questioned the fate of his popular series.

    Though Jordan had written some scenes and outlined sections of the final tome in The Wheel of Time series, the book remained unwritten at the time of his death. Fans knew Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow and editor of the series, would pick an author to complete the last book, but her choice was anyone’s guess.

    Soon after Jordan's death, a friend of McDougal handed her a printed copy of Sanderson's eulogy for Jordan.

    Harriet McDougal

    "Brandon's eulogy was really beautiful and very loving," McDougal says in a Tor Books interview clip. "And I thought, 'Gosh, this guy, he knows what the series is all about.'"

    Frannie Jackson

    Having never heard of Sanderson before then, McDougal decided to read one of his books. Soon afterward, she called him and asked if he'd like to finish the series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time," Sanderson says. "While I didn't ask for this, the truth is that I'm extremely excited to have been involved... For a writer like me, the next best thing to having [Robert Jordan] write the novel was being able to work on it myself."

    Frannie Jackson

    Sanderson only had three novels in print, Elantris and two titles from his Mistborn trilogy, when McDougal contacted him. Though they were selling well, his titles had yet to establish him as a master of the genre.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "I sat there thinking, 'I'm setting myself up to fail. No matter how good a job I do, it's not going to be Robert Jordan's book. Why am I saying yes?'" Sanderson says. "The thing that made the distinction for me was when I realized if I said no and someone messed it up, I would be responsible... My job was not to save The Wheel of Time, to fix The Wheel of Time or anything like that. My job was not to screw it up."

    Frannie Jackson

    Far from screwing it up, Sanderson expanded Jordan's plan for the final book, authoring three, #1 New York Times bestselling novels to conclude the series. Jordan fans quickly embraced Sanderson, who is committed to making convention appearances and attending book signings for The Wheel of Time for years to come. At JordanCon, where his panels overflowed with eager listeners, cosplayers dressed up as characters from both The Wheel of Time and Sanderson's original novels, revealing how the two fandoms have grown to overlap for many readers.

    But it's Sanderson’s respect for Jordan that has most endeared him to The Wheel of Time community. In a 2012 blog post written the day after he finished working on the series, Sanderson wrote:

    Brandon Sanderson

    Robert Jordan was a great man, and was the single greatest influence on my development as a writer. What I have done these last five years has been an attempt—a sometimes flawed but always earnest attempt—to show my appreciation. This entire genre owes him an enormous debt. My debt to him, and to Harriet, is greatest of all.

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  • 1434

    Interview: Apr 22nd, 2014

    Frannie Jackson

    Dedication to his craft, intricate world building—none of this would matter if there wasn't a relatable, human element to Sanderson's characters. Three-dimensional personalities permeate his novels, from Vin, a street urchin yearning for friendship yet terrified of ever needing to rely on others, to Dalinar, an aging Highprince who seeks to replace the fury of his youth with peace and scholarship.

    Moshe Feder

    "Brandon's characterization has gotten stronger with each book," Feder says. "A number of times, he's surprised me. For such a young person, he's shown genuine wisdom in understanding people, and I'm really impressed by that."

    Frannie Jackson

    Through talking with Sanderson, it's evident that his wisdom extends from a unique interpretation of the relationship between authors, their books and readers.

    Brandon Sanderson

    "For me, the beauty of a book is that it is the entertainment medium where we don't give you everything," Sanderson says. "When I write a book, I give you 75% and then you take that script, you are the director in your mind and you add to what I've done. You change the characters, or you imagine what they look like. Your version of my books is completely different in some ways than another person's version, and that's what I love about fiction... I don't believe a book lives until it's been read."

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  • 1435

    Interview: Jan 28th, 2014

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time

    The final item I want to talk about is a little more tricky. Others have been posting about this online, and I thought I should mention it. One feature of the Hugo Awards is a rule that exists to make certain a longer work which is serialized has a chance at an award if the serialized version was overlooked. In short, if no smaller piece of a large work has ever been nominated, the larger work is eligible once completed.

    That means the Wheel of Time, as a whole, is eligible for a Hugo Award in the novel category.

    This is both awesome and a little frightening. I'm certain I don't have to make the case to you why I think that Robert Jordan's masterpiece deserves award recognition. It was the driving force in fantasy for over two decades, deeply influencing an entire generation of authors. Beyond that, I believe it has great literary merit. Robert Jordan did incredible things with worldbuilding and character viewpoint. He was one of the most skilled writers of this genre who has ever lived.

    I'm quite close to this topic, however—probably too close to speak without deep bias. I try to avoid campaigning too much for my work to gain award attention, instead limiting myself to posts that explain what of mine is eligible, then letting the pieces speak for themselves. The Wheel of Time puts me in a strange position, then, because I'd want to talk all day about how awesome Robert Jordan is—yet at the same time, I've now been involved in the series on a fundamental level. So...yeah. Conflict of interest.

    So, I'll stop here, by posting Guy Gavriel Kay's toastmaster address at the World Fantasy Awards the year Robert Jordan died. He made some wonderful points.

    Some Words of Caution

    Now, above, I said this eligibility is something both awesome and frightening. Let's get into the frightening part. I've posted about my love and respect for the Hugo Awards. This award has a great deal of history and integrity attached to it. It is a Fan-voted award—but I use that capital letter intentionally. It's not voted on by fans of a specific work, but Fans of the genre. People who want to see science fiction and fantasy progress, succeed, and improve.

    I have little doubt that the Wheel of Time community could "buy" this award for their series. In so doing, they would make the award meaningless. The Hugo Award works because such a large portion of the voting audience takes it so seriously. This award really is what we make of it. It belongs to us.

    And so, I give a charge to the Wheel of Time fans who might be reading this and considering the Hugo Awards for the first time. We want you to be involved. We love new blood, and new enthusiasm. However, agreeing to nominate and vote for the Hugos is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. If you decide to join in—and I sincerely hope you will—please nominate liberally. But when it comes time to vote, please vote only in categories where you have read the majority (preferably all) of the nominees. And please vote only for the piece you work is the best work. Don't vote by author; vote by work.

    This doesn't mean you have use anyone else's criteria for determining the "best" work. Follow your heart. For some of you, that will mean voting for the work that is the most fun. For some, it will mean choosing the one with the most literary merit. Personally, I try to find the work that walks a line between the two, having a solid and engaging narrative but also advancing the genre or doing something impressive with it. (Redshirts, last year's novel winner, is a good example of a work that does this for me.)

    Pick your own criteria, but read before you vote. The last thing I want to hear about is a ballot box filled with people who listed "The Wheel of Time" or some of my solo works, but nothing else.

    Conclusion

    That said, if you are eligible to nominate and you weren't considering The Wheel of Time, do be aware that that it is eligible. It is certainly deserving. I can't think of a series in our genre since Tolkien that has inspired so much devotion, passion, imitators, and discussion—all without ever receiving a single Hugo nomination. This is our last chance to fix that.

    I'm personally very curious to see what happens if it does get a nomination.

    Brandon

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  • 1436

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Question

    Do you spend a lot of time on google when you don't know something? Like distances?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, well I used to. Now I can just write in my manuscript "Peter find the answer to this" and I'll just let it go. He's my assistant so when he does his readthrough afterwards he's like "oh great" and he'll do all the research for me.

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  • 1437

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2013

    Question

    A lot of people I know think that you are an atheist because you've written a really great atheist, and one that we all like in Jasnah and I'm wondering if you interviewed people or if you got that from philosophy classes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I spent a suspicious amount of time hanging out on atheist forums. Really I paid attention to threads where they discussed misconceptions about them and things like that and used that to inform creating Jasnah's philosophy on life.

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  • 1438

    Interview: Jun 10th, 2014

    Underbelly (Tor.com)

    As a man of many projects, you seem very good about compartmentalizing your workload to be able to complete or advance a project independently while midway through even larger commitments. That being said, even authors such as Stephen King have viewed a certain project as their 'life work'. Would you consider The Stormlight Archive to be this to you (or at least your early life's work-being as young as you are) or rather does your ability to compartmentalize extend to your accomplishments as well as your workload in that you can view your achievements independently?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I consider the cosmere sequence to be my life work—of which the Stormlight Archive is a major part, but it's not the only part. Compartmentalizing projects is the nature of how I work, to keep myself fresh, but the interconnection of the cosmere means it's not entirely compartmentalized.

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  • 1439

    Interview: Mar 6th, 2014

    Question

    Why did you gloss over [audio obscured]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Because Jasnah, that was not going to happen in this book. In the initial plot it didn't happen, and Shallan was unable to, in the initial scenes I wrote, come into her own and so I had to make major revisions to the plot for this outline, the biggest thing I did was that.

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  • 1440

    Interview: Mar 7th, 2014

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Ninth—Target audience?

    Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

    "Honestly I want everyone to read my books"; [The Way of Kings/The Stormlight Archive] is targeted at epic fantasy lovers, Mistborn is more approachable for heist novels, Alcatraz books are written at himself at age 13 (kid too clever for their own good but convinced that books are boring).

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  • 1441

    Interview: Mar 7th, 2014

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Tenth—Third son born during Words of Radiance, did that affect the writing process?

    Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

    Yes, can now pick out when children are written poorly in books. Family keeps him grounded; writing is about our world, not the fantasy world, and family reminds him of that.

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  • 1442

    Interview: Mar 7th, 2014

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Twelfth—Is it challenging to write from the POV of a female character and why/why not.

    Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

    Early on—yes it was, now less so. Problem was: treated characters other than the main character as roles only, centered around main character. "Writing characters without giving them their due". "You have to be able to write the other. Every character has to be a piece of you and a piece of not you." Discusses Jasnah in particular. Point of literature is "to see what it's like to be people who aren't us".

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  • 1443

    Interview: Mar 7th, 2014

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Fourteenth—Have you ever considered writing a horror novel or dark fantasy?

    Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

    Yes, played with it, wrote a short story for a Charlene Harris anthology coming out this year and a book called Death by Pizza about a necromancer running a pizza shop. Is glad dark fantasy exists, but "fantasy is the language of imagination and the language of hope" (quoting Robert Jordan) and will write about mostly people he would like to be/admires.

    Footnote

    The short story is called "Dreamer" and is included in the anthology Games Creatures Play.

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  • 1444

    Interview: Mar 7th, 2014

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Twentieth—Are there any characters you dislike writing about and would like to kill off?

    Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

    Joking answer: Cadsuane from [The Wheel of Time], someone else from WoT—Masema.

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  • 1445

    Interview: Mar 19th, 2014

    darkanimereal1 (Paraphrased)

    I basically asked how long he thinks it will take him to write future Stormlight books, since The Way of Kings took 6 months to write and Words of Radiance took 18 months to write.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My anticipation is that Stormlight should take about 12 months to write. It went in six months the first time because I had written the book already once. And so being able to start over from scratch, I had done it all once, so it was really like, even though I really wrote every word new, it was like doing a second draft. Words of Radiance took so long because I had to lurch out of the Wheel of Time mindset. I hadn't written this book before, I had written the other one, and I was so steeped in the Wheel of Time doing two books that it took a lot more to pull me out. And I would start on it and would end up getting distracted by some other project like one of the novellas or I'd start on it and then I'd go back and do a revision on Steelheart and then I'd start on it. Eventually I managed to start on it and stay in it, but it took that extra six months of spinning my heels before I really dug into the book. And so, I would say that I'm hoping 12 months. I might be able to do them faster, maybe nine months. I don't know. They are big complicated books to write, and you can't really do these on the speed that you can do other things. It doesn't scale. If I can write a novella that's 20k words and I can write that oftentimes in a week, that doesn't mean that when I'm working on Words of Radiance I can do twenty thousand words a week, because it's just a lot harder to get everything connected. The longer you go, the longer it winds up taking per word.

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  • 1446

    Interview: Mar 19th, 2014

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Please don’t tell me you’re going to do a love triangle between Adolin, Kaladin, and Shallan.

    Brandon Sanderson

    (he phrased this very carefully) I'm not a fan of the traditional love triangle. However, I am fond of conflict in relationships.

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  • 1447

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 15)

    This two-chapter cycle is one of my very favorites in the book. It's the sort of thing you can only pull off—in my opinion—after good set up. The reader has to feel an attachment to the characters so that the tension works. They also have to understand the magic so that the action is quick, not laden with explanations or confusion. And, they have to understand the context so that it feels like something is at stake.

    But, when everything comes together, you get chapters that are very powerful and, hopefully, fulfilling. The scene with Vin falling in the rain, hitting the rooftop, then crawling into a puddle is one of the first and most vivid ones I had for this book. Then, the image of Sazed—the quiet, humble scholar—appearing at the lair with the dying girl in his arms...

    Well, I feel that these two chapters are some of the best I've ever written.

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  • 1448

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    I kind of wish I'd had more time to show Yeden's transformation into trusting—even liking—Kelsier. Unfortunately, I've focused the book around Vin. By now, you should be seeing that she's taking more and more viewpoints, and Kelsier is getting fewer and fewer.

    That's another reason why I shifted the book from being a true heist book into what it became. I wanted the story to be about Vin, not about the various clever members of the crew. Vin is a deep and interesting character to me, and she deserved the screen time to develop. That's more important to me for the overall series than the clever heist against the Lord Ruler.

    The result is that I don't have a lot of screen time for characters like Yeden. So, their character arcs have to happen quickly and abruptly—such as the way he shows his changes in this chapter.

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  • 1449

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    Also, I think it was about time to establish firmly the relationship between Kelsier and Vin. She—if you haven't guessed—has a bit of a hero-worship crush going on with him. It will never be stated explicitly, but it's there, and kind of has to be there.

    Kelsier, however, regards her like a protégé, and perhaps even a daughter. That's it. I apologize to those who were looking for a romance between the two. I realize that I'm breaking some laws of storytelling by introducing a female viewpoint in chapter one, then a male viewpoint in chapter two, and not having them get into any sort of romantic way. However, that's not what this book is about. Kelsier is not only much older than Vin, he really doesn't look for relationships any more. Not his focus in life right now.

    I never intended there to be any romantic tension between the two of them. However, some of my alpha readers were hoping to find it—and found more than I anticipated. So, I added the lines here from Kelsier about wishing he had a daughter, just so I could make things clear.

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  • 1450

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Elariel ballroom isn't a place I've ever visited. (Unlike keeps Venture and Lekal—which are both based on real places.) I just liked the concept of a ballroom with the stained glass windows on the roof. It seemed like a good image, especially if it were lit from above. The ballrooms are the only places I really get to show off noble extravagance in this book, and so I worked hard to make each of the four distinctive and visually interesting.

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  • 1451

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 19 Part 2)

    This is the only chapter where we get to see directly what Kelsier is going about doing at night. You may think that a thousand manuscript pages is a lot of room to do things in a book, but you'd be surprised. With the focus on Vin's progress, I really can't spend that much time showing Kelsier running about being sneaky. In truth, I think it would get old very quickly.

    Yet, one chapter—such as this one—makes for a very interesting break from what we have been doing. It gives us an idea of Kelsier's part in the job without being laborious. Actually, I find this chapter quite fun, since it gives us quite a bit of information in a very short amount of time. Having Kelsier ask about House Renoux, and getting the response, lets the reader know that the crew is safe for the moment. Yet, having Straff ask about the Survivor lets us know that Kelsier's reputation is growing, and that the crew might soon be in danger.

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  • 1452

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    M.M. Schill (Goodreads)

    I always wondered. You say you produce clean drafts, and you apparently produce stories quickly (relatively to a lot of people I've met.), how do you keep cranking it away? What is the motivation to keep creating? (I think this might be the key to why some many people start and never finish projects. ??)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm not actually a fast writer, hour by hour, but I am very consistent. I enjoy writing, but I will admit, some days it is hard. What keeps me going? This has changed over the years. At first, it was a desire to prove myself, and to make a living doing this thing I love. Eventually, it has transitioned into a feeling of obligation to the readers mixed with a desire to see these stories in my head told.

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  • 1453

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    What advice would you give to someone who is trying to write an epic fantasy novel for the first time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Turn off the internal editor. Write with passion, and don't spend a lot of time on revision. You will grow so quickly as a writer during your first book that you want to power through it, learn a lot about the process, THEN do your revisions. Otherwise, you might end up stuck in an endless loop of revising the first few chapters.

    Also, don't spend so long planning that you don't get around to writing. The goal is to train yourself to learn how to write—and you only do that by actually writing.

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  • 1454

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Hello Brandon ! The fantasy universe is very fond of antiheroes lately, so I was surprised when I read your books with charismatic and inspiring lead characters, who, almost single-handedly, give faith to people and make them claim back their dignity. What is so compelling about creating characters such as Kaladin or Kelsier?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I find that the antihero angle is very well covered by other authors. I am fascinated by people who are trying to do what is right because most everyone I know is actually a good person—and a good person needing being forced to make unpleasant decisions is more interesting to me. The great books I read as a youth inspired me; I'd rather dwell on that kind of story than the opposite. (That said, it's great that the genre is big enough for both types of stories.)

    It IS interesting to me that over the last twenty years, what I do has become the distinctive one.

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  • 1455

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    How much time do you usually spend on creating a magic system?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It really depends on the book, the length of the story, and how integral to magic is to that particular story. Some are as fast as a couple of days; some take months and months. It is also difficult to answer this question because I spend a lot of time thinking about a book before writing, and the Magic is often part of that. I will often spend years with an idea growing in the back of my mind before writing—and in those cases, the actual "outlining" may take a month, but that doesn't begin to cover the time spent on the idea.

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  • 1456

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    I love stories in any medium, and I would love to tell one myself. But, I don't think I have anything in particular to say that hasn't been done a thousand times before. I invariably come across some story that already parallels my ideas. What makes a story worth telling even when its like has been done before?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The answer is simple: YOU are what makes your story worth telling. Harry Potter wasn't an original story, and yet told very well, it became an excellent series.

    My suggestion to you is to ask what unique passions or life experiences you have that aren't found in the average fantasy book. This genre still has a lot of room to grow. A person passionate about sports could write a very different fantasy novel from one passionate about lawn care—assuming they take what they know and love and make us, as readers, come to know and love it as well.

    Good luck!

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  • 1457

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Won't it be difficult to keep the storyline interesting for 10 books straight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We'll have to see! I think the storyline for the series is quite captivating, but I've never done something this long before.

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  • 1458

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    How quickly are you able to get back into the storyline flow when you begin another book? e.g. Do you have to review notes extensively for a few days? Thanks.

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is one of the most difficult things for me to do. I wish I had a better way to do it, actually. I usually lose a few days or more while trying to get into a book I've stopped for some reason. My primary method is to read what I've written before (or, if it is a new book in a series, the last part of the previous book.) That tends to help get me into a mood, so to speak. But it can take days of thinking, working, and throwing away my work to get into the groove.

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  • 1459

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    How do you keep so many different worlds you created separate so they don't "float" into each other?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lots of notes, a good internal wiki, and an even better continuity editor. (In the form of Peter Ahlstrom.)

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  • 1460

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    You have a lot of books potentially coming out in the next couple of years. Is there a particular order that you are writing the books in? As in Cosmere-only one year and then Rithmatist and Reckoners in another? Or do you write whatever suits your whim at a given time, aside from basic outlines?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's more the latter. I've found that to be productive and creative, I have to be willing to let myself jump to the projects I'm most excited about at the moment.

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  • 1461

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    One of my favorite things about being a Brandon Sanderson fan is how consistently you publish books, I always know you'll have a new book coming out without having to wait years. What do you do to help keep up the consistency and overcome the times when you sit down and the "creative juices" aren't there, or at least not easily accessible? Thanks for all your awesome books & doing the Q&A. :)

    Brandon Sanderson

    I throw away a fair amount of fiction. If it isn't flowing, I write anyway, then file that chapter away under junk. I also hop projects a lot. I've found this makes me much more creative and eager to write.

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  • 1462

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    How much do you use science to influence/guide your world building in what most people would identify as a fantasy setting?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I use it quite a bit, but as I'm writing fantasy, I go by the rule "do what is awesome first, then explain it." Meaning, I am looking to tell a certain kind of story, and while science is often a springboard into a magic, I will sometimes chose to do what I think makes the story better as opposed to what is scientifically rational. The way the metallic arts work with mass is one example.

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  • 1463

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Can I read your Wheel of Time books without reading the ones you didn't write and still understand and enjoy them? I hate that there are books you wrote that I haven't read and I am finding it impossible to even get through chapter 1 of the first Wheel of Time.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I sincerely doubt you will like my entries into the series if you didn't like the earlier books. The characters and setting were what made me passionate about finishing the series, and I didn't come into the WoT to change or fix it—only to do the best I could at fulfilling what it already was.

    Now, mind you, it's perfectly all right for you not to like them. Not every series is for every person, and the WoT just might not be to your taste.

    If—despite this—you really want to try mine out, you can read very detailed summaries of the previous books on http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/. These are chapter by chapter, so it will probably take you a while to get through them.

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  • 1464

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    What has been your favorite book to write so far?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've liked them all for different reasons. Some are fun and fast, others are deep and challenging. My favorite would change day by day based on my mood.

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  • 1465

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Brandon, your books are always seamless and so well put together. Do you use any specific software when compiling a story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm afraid I don't. I use Microsoft Word. Compiling is all done the old-fashioned way with lots of editing.

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  • 1466

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Were there any characters you found difficult to connect with when writing the remaining books of The Wheel of Time series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I've never really been able to get into Cadsuane as a character, and so she was the most difficult for me to do. I love Aviendha and Tuon, but both of them think so differently from the rest of the characters that they gave me a challenge.

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  • 1467

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    My wife is curious about where your inspiration comes from when coming up with names of people, places, magic systems, etc. what would you say?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They come from all over! Inspiration is a tough thing to pin down. I've had casual meetings, long-time friends, movies I loved, movies I hated, passing something interesting on the freeway, visits to museums, and basically anything else give me an idea. I'm generally looking for some kind of interesting conflict.

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  • 1468

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Hi Brandon. Firstly I would like to say thank you for coming to Manchester last week. I really enjoyed the readings and book signing. I am currently reading The Way of Kings and my question is Do you get inspiration for the settings in your books from anywhere?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Settings are often inspired by something I've seen in our world, then taken to the extreme. The storm on Roshar, the mists on Scadrial...even Elantris was based on my readings about leper colonies.

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  • 1469

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who are educated in a field other than literature and in a profession already that is not centered around writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes! I'll tell you that you're in luck. Take what you've learned in your field of education, and in your profession, and apply it to your writing. RJ used his experience as a solider; Grisham made a career out of writing books related to his work. You have special experience and knowledge that will make your books distinctive. Make use of it!

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  • 1470

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Hi Brandon! When you're writing/planning a new series, how much time would you say you spend on world building? Do you like to have a good sense of the world before you starting writing or do you adapt and evolve the world as you write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do a moderate amount ahead of time, but it depends on the series—most importantly, the length of the book. If I'm writing a shorter work, I can develop more on-the-fly, knowing I can make it all consistent after the fact. If I'm writing in a series, I need much more ahead of time. Developing the world for The Way of Kings took years.

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  • 1471

    Interview: Aug 13th, 2014

    Question

    Hi Brandon, love your work and I appreciate you doing the Q&A. I absolutely love the fact that your Stormlight books are so big. I enjoy the feeling of starting such an epic quest and pushing myself to complete higher word count books. That being said, is there a possibility that we might see a 450k, maybe even a 500k word book by the end of the Stormlight Archive or by the end of the Cosmere works? Take care!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thanks for the kind words!

    It's certainly possible. I will write them at the length they need to be. After 400k, though, the print has to start shrinking which makes reading more and more difficult.

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  • 1472

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2014

    Jean Marie Ward

    This year, with Words of Radiance, you return to one of your own worlds after years of working, or I should say publishing because of course in writing, everything takes years to appear, but after years of publishing novels in the Wheel of Time series, originated by Robert Jordan, how did it feel to return to your own world after such a big gap?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, I hadn't ever spent that long away. The Wheel of Time was my dominating project for about five years. I grew up reading The Wheel of Time and though it belonged to someone else, it feels as much a familiar place to me as any world could. You start reading something when you're 15, it's going to feel very familiar to you.

    I didn't begrudge my time on The Wheel of Time. I really enjoyed my time on The Wheel of Time. As I was working on The Wheel of Time, I would stop in between books in The Wheel of Time and do little things. Granted, I didn't have as much time to do larger works, but I did write Alloy of Law, which is a Mistborn book in between Wheel of Time books and I did have some time to work on the Stormlight Archive.

    More I'd say, how do I feel with The Wheel of Time being done? At which thing that's been dominated my life for five plus years my career, it's a really odd feeling. Never before have I had a series get done that I wasn't planning to someday go tweak a little bit more, add another short story in the world or something like that.

    With The Wheel of Time, I don't have that opportunity. It's not appropriate to do it. Robert Jordan wanted it to be done. We're going to leave it done. There is a strange sense of loss in finishing this series that I've never felt before.

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  • 1473

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2014

    Jean Marie Ward

    Are you going through the five stages of grief?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't know. I had such a long time to prepare for it. It's not like getting hit with the five stages of grief in the same way, since I knew this was only going to be a short thing. But there is a sense of regret. At the same time, being able to write the Stormlight Archive is awesome.

    I had been planning this series for many years and being able to share with people these stories that I've wanted to tell for such a long time is very gratifying. Words of Radiance, the second book, this has scenes in it that I initially sketched out to write some eight, nine years ago that I'd been planning.

    They came out just as I'd been planning them and it was really exciting that people can now read those.

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  • 1474

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2014

    Jean Marie Ward

    Do the things you sketch out in advance generally come out as you plan them? You've mentioned that you are a person who outlines and plots and prepares very extensively. Do the things you see in that first flash of inspiration come out, or is it a rare and beautiful thing when it happens?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, I would say it comes out usually in a somewhat unexpected way. There's usually something about it that wasn't originally planned. This is the nature of writing. You have to be open and free to do what you're not expecting to do. Otherwise your writing's going to be wooden and lifeless. You have to be willing to explore ideas as they come to you in the writing process.

    That said, I am an outliner. My initial sketches, my outlines, calling them outlines is really a glorified version of a bunch of notes about how a scene is going to feel and what goals I want to achieve in it, but it is an outline. Often, it's very similar but with some distinctive and major differences.

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  • 1475

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2014

    Jean Marie Ward

    Well, it’s good to put yourself in your own writing in ways people don’t quite expect. That, I’m sure, is not what they were thinking of you. We’ve touched on some of your series, and they’re big books. You’re writing novellas on top of that. You finished “The Wheel of Time”. You’re doing all of these things. Where do you find the time to teach?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I only teach one class, one semester a year, and it's one night a week. Teaching from 5 until 8, one night a week, one semester a year, is really not a big time commitment. It is something that I enjoy. It gets me out of the house. When someone else might go bowling or go watch the game, I go teach my class.

    Jean Marie Ward

    You're teaching writing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am, how to write science fiction fantasy, the lectures of which are posted online.

    Jean Marie Ward

    Oh, wonderful. What is the one thing that you hope your students will take away from your classes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I hope that they will learn that being a writer is about training yourself to write great books. It is not about having written a great book. Too many people look at this not as the process of becoming a writer, but as an event of writing a single book. That's not how it works in the arts.

    You want to be a person who can write great books. You want to train yourself to do that. The way to do that is by writing bad books at first. You practice, you write, you experiment, you learn your style. At the end of doing that for years, you figure out what you're doing, to an extent.

    I don't think any of us actually believe we know completely what we're going. The writers really just need to practice. If they will practice and sit down and write, they will learn way more than I can teach them.

    Jean Marie Ward

    Do you find yourself still evolving, still learning?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, yes, of course. I don't think there is a writer who doesn't think that. That's what we do.

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  • 1476

    Interview: Sep 24th, 2014

    Jean Marie Ward

    The Stormlight Archive is, I believe, your big project at the moment. . .

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is.

    Jean Marie Ward

    . . . the dominating project. Could you give our viewers a hint of what to expect in Words of Radiance, and also the next books in the series, not spoilery, just a hint, and then tell them some of the other projects you may be working on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say that what to expect, hopefully lots of awesomeness. It's so hard to explain what to expect. Solid world-building. . .

    Jean Marie Ward

    Your trademark magic.

    Brandon Sanderson

    . . . great characters, magic systems. It is the story of Teton people and their backstories, how they become who they are and whether they fail or succeed. I don't know what to tell you to expect other than I hope more of the same.

    What am I working on right now? I am just most recently finished Firefight, the sequel to Steelheart, which was my teen release from last year. I'm currently working on the sequel to Rithmatist, which hopefully both will come out next year some time.

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  • 1477

    Interview: Sep 4th, 2014

    Question

    My one question is how do you make it so writing isn't work, because if I'm writing for work I don't write as well. How do you get in the mind set?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know for me, taking a walk before hand, listening to some awesome music, and just imagining why this scene is going to be awesome and the emotional impact of it really helps. But at the same time writing is always going to be a little bit work and there is no getting around that. I mean, it's hard sometimes and so-- I don't know. For me I've enjoyed it more as it has become work and I can devote more time to it and things like that. But... Try that.

    Question

    Just get in the mood...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Listen to music and put myself in that scene, what it feels like, what it sounds like, smells like. Just put myself here and think about what is going to make it incredible and I'll get really excited about writing it. Excitement translates I think at least for me onto the page.

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  • 1478

    Interview: Sep 4th, 2014

    Question

    Aether of Night, aethers also show up in The Liar of Partinel...

    Brandon Sanderson

    yeah, that was...

    Question

    Was that cannibalized?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That was a cannibalization, it's an attempt at repurposing and I didn't like it so it probably won't go forward that way but it was an attempt because it worked so well to mash Allomancy and Feruchemy into the same system and I didn't like how it went but...

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  • 1479

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, I always talk about how I like happy endings. And yet, everyone always complains that I'm too brutal in places. Here is a good example.

    Kelsier dies. Yes, he's really dead. Yet, his death isn't truly that sad to me. He accomplished a lot, and died facing down the Lord Ruler himself. It's not a sad death.

    Honestly, you should have seen it coming. I worried about doing this, actually, since it seemed a little too expected. The mentor figure always ends up getting killed. I nearly didn't do it simply for that reason. However, I eventually decided that a good story is more important, sometimes, than avoiding the expected. Once in a while, you just have to do what feels right, even if that feeling leads you into areas that others have tread. Hopefully, I take it in my own direction. (See the next chapter.)

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  • 1480

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Part 4 Wrap Up)

    Oo. I can't wait to see what happens next!

    Actually, the section breaks mean a lot to me in this book. They divide the novel in my mind, as opposed to ELANTRIS, which was divided by viewpoint and not by section of the book.Often, when I write novels, I plan sections around climactic scenes which leave the characters changed. That's why this story broke in such places as when Vin nearly got killed, or when Kelsier really did get killed. In this book, they sometimes mark the passage of time as well—that happened with the first couple.

    It's kind of an odd thing that I do, but often in my books I will have a 'section' that is simply the climax. That's the way it is with this book; part four was the lead up to the climax. Part five is, essentially, one big long climax. The Brandon Avalanche, so to speak.

    So, why is it like this? Why have a short 'section' at the end that is the climax, rather than just having part four continue on to the end? It has to do with how I write books.

    A novel has to be divided into chunks for me to work on it. I divide it in my brain by section, then plot those section separately. Often times, the climax—on my plot outline—is its own section. That's because the division in my head requires the section before it to be set up. Then, the set up is finished, and I can move on to the pay off.

    And so, that's what you get now. The pay off. Hope you enjoy it.

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  • 1481

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 35 Part 1)

    If you couldn't tell, this is one of the climactic scenes I was writing toward.

    I'll admit, I didn't have this exact twist down when I started the book. As I worked through the novel, I quickly began to realize that Kelsier had to have some master plan—something greater than he was letting on. That's just the way his personality is. Plus, I needed something that lent more weight to the book. Made it more than just the simple heist story that I'd originally conceived. (After all, a heist story could be told in far less than 200,000 words.)

    Kelsier's real plan wasn't firm for me until I wrote the scenes with him in the caves, influencing the soldiers. By then, of course, over half the book was written. So, I had to begin building Kelsier's true plan from there—and then do a rewrite to put it in from the beginning.

    I had known from the beginning that Kelsier was going to die, and that he was going to gain such renown with the skaa (before his death) that the crew began to worry that he would turn into another Lord Ruler. Putting these two things together so that his growing reputation was part of his plan all along was the realization I needed to connect. Then, I could have the bang I wanted in the ending chapters, when the crew realized what Kelsier had been planning all along.

    As surprises go, I think this is one of my better—but definitely not one of my best. It required keeping too much back from the reader when in Kelsier's viewpoint, and it required to much explanation after-the-fact to make it work. There's a much better surprise later on. Still, I'm pleased with the bang on this one—especially since I got to have such a beautiful scene with the crew standing atop the building, the mists coming alight around them, as if representing their own growing understanding of the job they'd always been part of.

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  • 1482

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson

    Kelsier gets to have some last words in this chapter. He earned them, I think. I'm sorry to keep the truth of kandra from you so long, as I've said before. However, I needed to leave the explanation off so that the reader could experience the revelation with Vin here. Even if you'd already figured out what Renoux was, then I think this scene is more powerful by having the revelations happen like they did.

    Anyway, Kelsier is among my personal favorite characters, if only for his depth. He is a complicated, multi-faceted man who managed to scam not only the entire empire, but his own crew at the same time. I felt I had to give him some last words, if only through a letter, so that the reader could bid him a proper farewell. In addition, I wanted him to pass that flower on to Vin—symbolically charging her with Mare's dream, now that Kelsier himself is dead.

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  • 1483

    Interview: Jul 29th, 2006

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 37 Part 1)

    Whew! Getting tense now. I love endings—they're my favorite parts of books to write. Once, I wrote 16,000 words in one day to finish up a book. (That was my record until I finished Scribbler a few weeks back. I think I did 23k on that book in one day to finish it off.)

    We start this chapter off with our only Dockson viewpoint. You'll notice that it's a hallmark of my style to start multiplying viewpoint characters as books draw to their climaxes. I like the feeling of chaos it creates, and I like the way it lets me show a lot of sides of what is happening. In addition, it just makes the endings feel more special, since you get to see from eyes you haven't before.

    Elend stays true to character in this scene, coming in with his idealism and his talk of theory and politics. He really did turn out to be a good character, which is why you're going to see plenty of him later.

    Captain Goradel, by the way, is named after my friend Richard Gordon.

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  • 1484

    Interview: Aug 1st, 2007

    Brandon Sanderson (Chapter 1)

    This was the hardest chapter in the entire book to write.

    That's often the case for me. I will write a first chapter, continue on through the rest of the book, and then be forced to write the first chatper a few more times to get it right. For this book, I wrote the chapter some five times. If I'm feeling proactive, I'll post some of these chapters in the deleted scenes section about the time Mistborn 3 comes out.

    Anyway, I just couldn't get the right feel for the first chapter. I wanted to start with a dramatic fight scene involving Vin (you now get that in chapter two) but every time I did, the book actually felt too slow. That's because, in order to have a fight, I need to explain Allomancy.

    I started to get this one right when I backed off of the fight a bit and just had Vin creeping through the city. This let me get out a little bit about Allomancy before I threw her into the fight.

    However, I didn't actually get it right until I added the Elend and Ham scene at the beginning. This scene had been in the book, but much later. The first chapter wasn't the only one I rewrote, actually—this entire first section of ten chapters underwent some significant revisions to fix the pacing. Originally, I didn't say much about the army until the later chapters, after Vin's fight.

    However, I realized that I needed to give the sense of large-scale danger to the book before I got into the smaller danger of Vin's fight. Elend and Ham here talking sets the book off right—it introduces the conflict right off, shows what we're going to have to worry about in this book, then gives context to Vin's fight.

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  • 1485

    Interview: Mar 8th, 2014

    JamHeretic

    How do you pick names?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It really varies based on the book. I'm often picking a linguistic paradigm. Alethi - there are two separate paradigms because I like linguistics to be messy. Usually based on symmetry being holy, so they'd pick names one letter off from symmetrical to avoid hubris. Also suffix - like Kaladin is Kalak (Herald) + din which is a suffix, all of them mean things, like the old Hebrew names have "born of" or "comes through". Stick that on and drop the last letter. Dalinar, Elhokar, all of those have suffixes - nar, kar.

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  • 1486

    Interview: Mar 13th, 2014

    Macen

    I have read White Sands and Aether of Night. Why aren't they published?

    Brandon Sanderson

    White Sands isn't published because I feel that Kenton doesn't have the depth of character that I like to have nowadays. He's more of an oldschool character of mine where he just isn't--personality wise doesn't have quite enough. Beyond that, I feel that White Sands is narrative. It meanders a little too much. I felt that if I cut 50k words and fix them, we would have a good book. Aether is not published because I feel that I wrote two different books and didn't blend them together very well. There's kind of the farcical Shakespearean switch-places-silliness and it's fun but it's like mistaken identity almost, sort of stuff, and the romance. Mixed with these dark things are coming out of the shardpools and destroying the world. And these two stories never meshed together well enough for me to want to publish it. White Sand one more revision, we're trying to go to graphic novel. I'm not sure what I could do with Aether of Night.

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  • 1487

    Interview: Mar 13th, 2014

    Macen

    Will there be more romantic subplots? I really enjoyed the scene between Shallan and [can't make this out].

    Brandon Sanderson

    There will be more romantic subplots. There will definitely be. If you watch, there will be a lot more. I'm a big fan of romance.

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  • 1488

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    I loved the ending of Words of Radiance. When you come up with an idea for a new cosmere book, do you have to go oh, now I have to figure out how this fits in with everything else, or do you have it pre-made?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have a few little holes that I can slot things into, and I try to get them to fit the roles, like I know there are certain things that need to happen, and if it doesn't fit the role, I just go ahead and make it a minor planet, like Shadows for Silence, where I can write a story, but I can't put as much magic into those books. So I've got a few restrictions on me, but I think that's important for maintaining the continuity.

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  • 1489

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    Second question, if completely hypothetically, and forbid, somebody had to do for you what you did for Robert Jordan, who would your choice be?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would probably either pick Brent Weeks, who has a very similar style to me, or Brian McClellan, who is one of my students who is now publishing books, and writing very good books. Those guys, either one, I think would do a fine job.

    Question

    I read McClellan's book on your recommendation. Can you let him know that he needs to put women in his books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that's what I actually told him. My number one criticism when he called me and said, "What do you think of my book?" I said, "You only put one woman in your book, and she's a cliché. She's the friendly cliché, *audio obscured*. The first thing that happens is you get the clichéd damsel in distress, then when people realize "Oh, that's being sexist," they then make the girl awesome, but have no personality. That's like step two. Then step three is real characters, and so I did let him know, and he promised he would do better with future books. I think it is the most legitimate criticism of that book, is that he's just bad with women. But you know, my first book I was terrible; I just didn't publish that one. He's unfortunate that he published it. But even in Mistborn, I only had Vin, so we all fall into this trap, and I've read many women who only put one guy in the book, and he's perfect. It's just something that new authors have a problem with very naturally, so hopefully he'll catch on the same way I caught on.

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  • 1490

    Interview: Mar 18th, 2014

    tganchero

    (Brandon mentioned changing Kaladin's plot so that he chose the "hard" path) What was the hard path?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Kaladin initially accepted the shardblade and plate in the first book, and the rest of the book was about him fighting with them. Really boring.

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  • 1491

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question (Paraphrased)

    Why do you have so many series going on at once instead of finishing one of them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A couple of reasons. The main one is that it's the way I stay fresh as a writer, I find that I get burned out on things. Another main one is that I feel if I'm not practicing different styles, I'll get into a rut, and my writing will repeat itself. It's kind of like a philosophical reason and an instinctual one. I tell people who are annoyed that I'm not writing Stormlight that you wouldn't get Stormlight any faster if I weren't writing these other books in between&mdas;you might get it more slowly, because it's working on other things that really rejuvenates me as a writer. So I would be writing at a Rothfuss speed if I weren't jumping between things.

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  • 1492

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    So do you ever put a page length limit on yourself?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't, but I know by gut generally after I start writing how long a book feels.

    Question

    Does the publisher ever put any limits on you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, they actually haven't. They do ask me if I'll write them shorter, but it's always an ask, and I usually ignore them. In fact, Words of Radiance is the largest book they can physically print with their printer, but the font is not the smallest font they could do yet. So I could actually get about another 100,000 words longer before it gets unreadable.

    Question

    So by the time we get to Stormlight 6 or 7, they'll have to go buy a new printer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I've warned them. I will write it at the length that feels right.

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  • 1493

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    In the Mistborn trilogy, was it hard to write the final twist, or had it been planned that way?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is always the way it was planned. There are some smaller things that I'll allow spontaneity to change the book, but the general structure of the book is always planned out. And if something changes while I'm writing I go and throw away the plan and rebuild the plan, so I'm always writing with a plan.

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  • 1494

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    Have you come up with the title character for Book 3 of Stormlight yet?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have not. I have to finish Calamity.

    Question

    Do you still think 2016 is realistic [for Stormlight 3]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it is realistic. One every two years is very realistic for me, and you can just watch along. I'll have Calamity done by March, and then all I have to do is finish the book by January next year and we'll be fine, so I'll have eight months. Considering I have the outline done, that's about a third of the work for me.

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  • 1495

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    What was the book that was the hardest to write for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It would definitely be A Memory of Light, the last Wheel of Time book.

    Question

    Why?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, number one, I had been following that series for 20 years, and I was finishing off the writing of an author I respected a lot, and trying to fill his shoes, and not being able to do it because no one could, and the end of a journey. Every other book I've finished, I know if I wanted to I could go back and write more about those characters. Wheel of Time, I can't. It's done. It's not mine; I can't go write another book about Mat or Perrin or anything like that. So there's a finality to finishing that book that I haven't had with any of my other books. And then in addition, logistically it was a very difficult book to write.

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  • 1496

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    *audio obscured* Do you like to connect with your reader on an emotional level?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do. So here's the thing: I am not an emotional person by my nature, and one of the only things that makes me feel very strong emotions is fiction. A really good piece of fiction makes me feel like the characters do, and the rest of the time, I'm just kind of—I won't say emotionless—but not emotional. It's not that. It's like some people have wild mood swings; one day they're a 20 and one day they're an 80, on a scale of 1 to 100, right? I'm always a 70, right? Like almost consistently always pleasantly happy. I don't know what depression feels like. I don't know what it really feels like to be sad. I've never really felt that—except when I'm reading a book. Does that make sense? So that's one of the reasons I write, because I want to be able to go through those emotions with people.

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  • 1497

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    Do you ever have trouble keeping your characters straight? How long does it take to get back into them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    If I stop writing and go back, it is hard. It takes about a month to get back into a story after I stop. I don't get the characters mixed up.

    Question

    *audio obscured*

    Brandon Sanderson

    I try to, but I don't always manage it, because of deadlines and things. It's always going to cost me, and I know it will, sometimes you can't avoid that. In the old days, I never did it, when I didn't have a publisher, but now it's my job. When they say, "We need this revision done," I stop and do the revision, but it costs me.

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  • 1498

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    In The Emperor's Soul, when did you decide to change the beginning?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was Mary, from the podcast with me, is very good at short fiction. She read it, and she said, "This intro is just holding the story back". And I read it again, and I'm like, "I really feel that she's right". I felt at the end of it that the intro was interesting for people who liked Hoid already, but for people who didn’t, it was just distracting and confusing. So at the end of the day, I cut it out, and I think it was a good move, even though it was sad. If you google the phrase "killing your darlings", it's a phrase we talk about in writing and storytelling. That scene was what made me want to write the book, it's what started me off in writing the book, and then I cut it out. But sometimes you have to end up doing that.

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  • 1499

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    There was the poem at the end of Way of Kings. How long did that take?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It took an embarrassingly long amount of time. I am not a poet, so mixing poetry with a really rigid form... Yes, the keteks take a long time. Both of them.

    Wetlander

    Are you going to do that in every book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A ketek? Yes, I probably will do that.

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  • 1500

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    So have you decided whose book is going to be the [focus for Stormlight 3]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have not. What I've decided is that I need to actually write out, rather than just having the outlines, write out the three backstories that are left of the first five, and then compare them to the story as I'm writing it, and see which one works. Because any one of them could work, but as I'm writing the book... Yeah. It's one of those things that I know I need the flexibility on, as I write, to make it work.

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  • 1501

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Question

    When you started writing cosmere novels, how much of it had you outlined? How far ahead had you thought?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I started writing cosmere novels? When I started started, I was a teenager. Totally hadn't thought very far ahead. When I was an adult and I was writing them, I wrote one when I was like 20, and I had an inkling, and I played around with things. The first one that I wrote with a real, conscious eye toward the cosmere was Elantris. So the ones that have been published, yes. But when I first started, I had a little bit of an inkling.

    Question

    Have you ever backed yourself into a corner with it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not yet! I have backed myself into corners by saying things to fans that I've already changed in my notes and hadn't realized I had, and stuff like that. I do that all the time. But usually when I do that, I just tell them. "Ah, I'm sorry, I just changed this, guys." I'm still convinced that Stayer and Stepper—that [Robert Jordan] didn't know those were two different horses. I'm utterly convinced that he made the mistake, and then just covered it. Because that's the sort of things we writers do.

    One of the ones I've been working on a lot lately is, how much can you affect things that are Invested with other magic systems? Should it be not at all, should it be a little bit, should it be... But then I have to go back to Mistborn, and I've got canon here, where people are pushing and pulling on things that are Invested, but I tried when I was even writing Mistborn to make sure that the someone was drawing on the Mist, or had extra power for some reason before they were pushing on... and so I left myself that room, but at the same time I've established that you can do it, so anyway.

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  • 1502

    Interview: Jan 6th, 2015

    Brandon Sanderson

    I actually plot The Stormlight Archive books as a trilogy; each book—like I would plot the entire Reckoners series—I plot that for a book, and then I plot the short story sequence, and then I plot the novella. Usually the flashback sequence is a novella. And so then I write basically three books, a short story collection, and a novella, and put them all together woven as one book.

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  • 1503

    Interview: Apr 16th, 2014

    Question

    From the moment you begin worldbuilding, how long did it take you before it really resembled what we read in The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Resembled? I would say about a year. But I started worldbuilding it in 2001, if you read the version I wrote in 2002 you would say "This feels like Roshar" but the spren weren't in it yet.

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  • 1504

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2014

    Question

    On Shallan's origins as a character:

    Brandon Sanderson

    mostly derived from a character in Dragonsteel (I'm guessing the woman who turns up at the end of the "Liar of Partinel" book fragment that's been posted on his website) and Mat Cauthon. Specifically mentioned that she has issues with authority figures.

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  • 1505

    Interview: Aug 4th, 2014

    Question

    On origins of Dalinar

    Brandon Sanderson

    From story he wrote as teenager - his brother is the king who gets assassinated and he has to decide whether to take over from his nephew or not. Hoid is the court magician

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  • 1506

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    In Words of Radiance you have a great line which said “careful planning is the water which nourishes creativity”. I was wondering if, when you wrote that line, were you specifically thinking about novel outlines?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So there’s a line in Words of Radiance that’s says “careful planning is the water which nourishes creativity”. Was I specifically thinking of outlines? So when I speak most lines like this, I’m trying to speak through someone’s eyes. That’s Navani I believe who says that am I right? The idea being that that’s the way they’d perceive it. There are other people who would disagree. Now I am a planner, so I understand that mindset a lot. I use a lot of outlines. There are other people who don’t plan at all and their books still turn out awesome. So I think there are a lot of different ways to be creative. But I don’t think that Navani thinks that there are a lot of different ways. If that makes any sense. She has a different perspective on it perhaps.

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  • 1507

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    Inspiration for Szeth?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Discovery writes his characters. Writes characters into a plot like casting them into roles. For Szeth it came from the idea of a religion worshipping stone.

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  • 1508

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    Most unforgettable frustrations of becoming a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Meeting deadlines; trained himself to be creative and excited about necessary book. Touring also exhausting.

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  • 1509

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    How do you keep everything straight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He has an internal wiki with [WikiDPad?]. He’s scatterbrained; forgets wallets, keys, but never forgets stories. They stick in his head.

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  • 1510

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Your duty is to practice writing in such a way so you can write great books. Your job is not to write a great book. It takes practice, like being a doctor or pianist. Resolve to practice. Don’t worry if you’re not playing Rachmaninoff immediately. Practice trumps perfectionism on a small level.

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  • 1511

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    What has been your most favorite character arc to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um… Normally it’s very hard to answer questions like this because it’s like all my characters are my favorites, but in this case I can say writing Perrin’s arc in the Wheel of Time was very satisfying and fulfilling since I’ve been a fan for so many years and being able to do the things there, yeah. That was very satisfying, how about that?

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  • 1512

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    I’m at a magazine and we were wondering if you could do an interview or a short story.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I can do the interview, but I don’t do short short stories, short means 17,000 words for me.

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  • 1513

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    Do you ever feel that when you are writing becomes forced and what do you do…[?]

    Brandon Sanderson

    I write it even when it’s feeling forced when read it over the next day and see if it reads forced.

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  • 1514

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    From the very beginning did you already know like the Cosmere? Like was that your goal setting out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was my goal very early on. In fact, before I wrote any books I wrote a short story about Hoid. So he goes back to before the very first book that I wrote. So yeah it goes back pretty far. I can trace inspirations back to Asimov tying Foundation and Robots together and feeling like that was really cool and wanting to do something like that, if it makes sense. And so I would say that’s probably like the first seed was when I read the later Foundation books and they tied them together.

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  • 1515

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    What books you use to improve your own writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Orson Scott Card’s books. Stephen King’s book is very good. Improves more when I read writing I admire and ask myself what they did well. Anne McCaffery for example.

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  • 1516

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    Do you always stick to your outline?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do not. I will rebuild my outline. If I think I’m gonna break it, I’ll try a chapter that direction and if it works rewrite the outline.

    Question

    Do you ever refer back to your previous book …?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Definitely. Usually I make an outline for the first book, write it, then outline the series.

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  • 1517

    Interview: Jan 17th, 2015

    Question

    What’s the secret to getting books out as fast as you do?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The secret is my work ethic. Pioneer work ethic. Pat is a perfectionist. I get it pretty good and hand it to my editor to polish. His biggest strength over me is his lyrical prose. That extra 1% takes him two years. I love what I do and I write every day.

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  • 1518

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    manamachine (Reddit)

    What would your advice to aspiring fantasy writers trying to break into the industry be?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    The podcast has been mentioned.

    The number one thing I'd do right now, however, is try to write two books a year--then dedicate one to self publishing and one to traditional publishing. This will greatly increase your chances of making it full time, I feel--and the self-publishing experiences will inform how you approach traditional publishing, if you even end up doing it at all. At the very least, you'll know how much a NYC publisher would need to give you to match what you're doing on your own.

    I'd network by attending sf/f conventions, but I'd focus most of all on my writing. Make sure you're spending time in the chair, working on your fiction. Not all writers write at the same speed, so perhaps two books a year is totally impossible for you. Make sure you are being consistent, though. That's the only way you'll get better.

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  • 1519

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    Saphro (Reddit)

    Hello Mr. Sanderson,

    I've read a few of your books and have absolutely loved them. Please keep bringing joy to those of us that love your work. I have three questions to ask you:

    1. Pepsi, Coke, or RC?
    2. Have you ever snuck references or inside jokes into your books for specific people in your life to find?
    3. What is your advice for those of us who are struggling to get through a first draft of our novels?

    Thank you very much for doing this AMA. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    1. A nice cup of ice water. (Not much of a soda man, I'm afraid.)
    2. Yes indeed! Mostly my editor and agent, who have little cameos here and there.
    3. Remember that the product of your writing career is NOT the books themselves, but YOU. Your purpose in writing is to train yourself to be someone who can write incredible books, and you get there by finishing story after story. Don't get too bogged down in the project of the moment; keep moving forward. YOU are what you are creating, not the story.

    Saphro (Reddit)

    Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!

    I guess now is a good time to realize that spending a few years on the same story without finishing it is not a good way to become a good writer. Thank you very much.

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    It can be tough. You get really invested in that first story; I know how it feels. Often, what holds you back is that you know your skill isn't up to doing justice to the great story you've imagined, so you end up getting frustrated or dragging your feet.

    Sometimes, the answer is to tell yourself, "I'll do this one after I've practiced some more." Give yourself permission to do something else, knowing that you're not abandoning your story--just delaying until you can do it right.

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  • 1520

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    willherpyourderp (Reddit)

    How do you come up with names for your characters? Sorry if you've been asked that before.

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    I use a variety of methods. In a deep worldbuilding piece, like The Stormlight Archive, I delve into actual linguistics and develop my own rules. But for many pieces, I look for something that feels right, and allow myself to be guided by the real-world linguistics of a culture in our world to give a "feel" for the culture.

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  • 1521

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    lanternking (Reddit)

    What is a current goal you have for your writing, or something that you are currently working/hoping to improve in your writing? What's different about trying to improve your craft now that you're a published author who has found a great deal of success?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    My primary goal in the macro sense is to make a long series, where every book stands on its own. This is very difficult in epic fantasy, and I'm trying to learn from authors who have come before.

    On a micro sense, I'm playing with ideas to create suspense that doesn't lean too heavily on action set pieces. I like those action set pieces, but don't want them to be a crutch.

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  • 1522

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    Karbine (Reddit)

    Hi Brandon.

    I am a huge fan of your work. A few years ago a friend introduced me to the Mistborn series and since then I have a vampiric urge for your work. Thank you for building this amazing Universe of Cosmere.

    I play Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder with my friends. I have a lot of notes and detailed descriptions of each session we played. It is like a big jigsaw puzzle. I wanted to write a book based on the campaign. Not to publish but just to pass around and for record keeping in novel format along with using these jigsaw pieces to play out the story as a GM.

    When you have your ideas and when you jot them down, how do you actually start putting those jigsaw pieces together? Do you mostly spend time on planning or do you just look at notes and go with the flow?

    PS: As you may have noticed, English isn't my first language. I will increase my vocabulary!

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    I'm a planner, but that doesn't work for everyone. Some like it to be more organic. But since you already have the pieces, let me suggest this:

    Identify the most important moments in the story. Those "stand up and cheer" moments--or the ones that feel like a punch to the gut. Build your outline around those. What pieces are necessary for those important moments to have the impact they demand? What things might be distractions? What things would be good to include, but not needed?

    Try to build your story so that you are pointed toward the moments of incredible power, emotion, and connectivity.

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  • 1523

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    coldforged (Reddit)

    I believe I'll speak for most when I ask: how on earth do you maintain such a prolific output of quality material? You don't slow down, you don't let up, you don't put out tripe... how is this possible?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    This is a tough one for me to answer, sometimes, because I don't think I write all that quickly. I do about 2000 words a day, most days. That's 250 words an hour working a normal schedule, and I often work more.

    250 words an hour is NOTHING. Try typing a few emails, and you'll find out how fast 250 words goes by. I think for me, there are two secrets.

    First, I jump projects often. I understand my own psychology, and I know that nothing gets me revved up for writing than doing something fresh and new. This can mean returning to a series, if I haven't been working on it for a while, or it can mean doing a novella or the like.

    Second, I'm just very consistent. I write a little each day, and I love what I do. I spent ten years writing books and earning no money from it. Why would I slow down now that people are actually reading my works? It's incredible!

    Tags

  • 1524

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    potterhead42 (Reddit)

    Hi, Brandon, I read Mistborn last year and now you're my favorite author. Thanks for writing books that make me go "hell yeah this is awesome!". Also, your video lectures are great. I have no writing aspirations myself, but it is really cool to know all that inside info on the craft and the publishing industry. So, the questions...

    1. You recently changed up the text of Elantris and Words of Radiance. Do you feel like you need to change something about the Mistborn trilogy? I think it's perfect
    2. Will we ever see you write a series with a non-rigid magic system? Not that there's anything wrong with allomancy etc. (they're pretty cool to be honest), but I would be really interested in seeing you handle something vague.
    3. On Scadrial, humans were created as the result of deal between Ruin and Preservation. But what about the rest of the humans on the other worlds of the Cosmere?
    4. Do you think Kelsier could defeat Miles one on one?
    5. I recently started the Wheel of Time (2 books down), and it is quite fun. What would you say is your favorite book a. among the ones written by Mr. Jordan? b. Among the ones written by you?
    6. What can you tell us about your new book, Rampart? ;)

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    1) I've expressed that my one regret with Mistborn is the climax of Book One, where I think I bring in drawing upon the mists too early in the series without enough foreshadowing. That said, I'm not planning to revise it, even if we do a 10th anniversary edition like with Elantris. The problems with Elantris created continuity issues; the problem with Mistborn is more of an artistic choice, making it similar to the problem in WoR. The difference here is that I'm still working on Stormlight, so it is considered to be an open book in my head--while Mistborn is done, and it's time to leave it alone.
    2) I understand exactly what you mean, and I've played with some, but they don't work as well in the Cosmere. I think I might be able to slip one in, or, do something non-Cosmere.
    3) It's split. Some predate the shattering; others were created. The humans that existed before were always a model, which is why they're so similar to one another.

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  • 1525

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    _0_-o--__-0O_--oO0__ (Reddit)

    With Jasnah not being dead when we thought she was dead and Szeth coming back to life; how will you retain tension during future battles if the audience thinks that death might not be the end of someone?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    I try hard to make sure things like this are well foreshadowed, but it's always a concern as a writer. Basically every book you write, in an action/adventure world, will contain fake outs like this.

    There's certainly a balance. Gandalf coming back in LOTR worked, and Anakin turning out to be alive Empire Strikes back is a powerful moment--but I feel RJ, for example, may have brought people back too often.

    Not sure where this balance is for me yet. I know the story I want to tell, though, and I try to leave clues when something like this is going to happen so that it feels less like a fake out and more like an "Aha. I knew it."

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  • 1526

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    rszrama (Reddit)

    Hey Brandon, long time reader and avid fan. When I found out you were taking over The Wheel of Time, I waited until you'd finished it and then read it straight through for the first time ever. I started in May 2013 and finished in December 2014 - and I absolutely loved it. I especially appreciated that you maintained the "character" of the characters. I laughed at Mat's quips as easily in A Memory of Light as in any of the earlier books, and honestly, you may have injected a bit more humor than Jordan was capable of. I seem to remember laughing a lot (and tearing up) through the first Mistborn as well.

    How do you manage the personalities of all of your characters? And how do you go about creating and "enlivening" these characters whose personalities are necessarily so very different from your own?

    Keep doing great work! <3

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    Thanks! I do think I finally started to get Mat right in AMOL.

    I manage character personalities with a careful mix of notes, instinct, and free writes in their voice. For the WoT, many of the characters were easy, as I'd been reading about them since I was a young man. They were like my high school buddies. They WERE different from my own, but in part because I created my characters as reactions against these characters--I didn't want to do what RJ had already done.

    A lot of what I do with character, however, is very instinctive. It is the one big part of my writing process that is difficult to explain, as I often go with my gut.

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  • 1527

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    ajthesecond (Reddit)

    Brandon,

    I got to meet you in Austin last year, at some point I'm going to take you up on that MTG match.

    I'm sure you saw that Terry Pratchett passed away today - what is your favorite type of humor/comedy to use in your book? Obviously you have characters that act as comedians/entertainers within your book, is that process different than writing a serious or plot-driven character? Also, what is your favorite "funny" book or short story?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    My favorite funny book would be The Truth, by Terry Pratchett, because it is the one I connected with the most. Though if someone wants a good laugh, this one never fails to get a chuckle out of me:

    http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory

    In my own books, I find characters interacting in a way that--through rubbing against one another--you learn something about them, but also laugh at their idiosyncrasies, to be my favorite type of humor. The way Wayne and Wax interact, for example, or the members of Bridge Four when you get them all together.

    I don't look at "humorous" characters and "plot" characters differently. My favorite characters to read are ones that are funny, like Mat from the Wheel of Time, because their own unique perspective is so interesting that it makes me smile. Cracking a joke is all well and fine, but any great character will be both a plot and a humor character, depending on who their around and what situation they're in.

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  • 1528

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    c3rbutt (Reddit)

    Hello, sir. Really appreciate your work.

    1. Who is Jon Snow's mother?
    2. Why do people like Kvothe so much when he's such a Mary Sue?
    3. I would love to read an encyclopedia on the Cosmere. Any thoughts on writing something like this, or would that be too meta?

    Thank you for your time!

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    1. Not qualified to answer.
    2. We tend to like characters for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes, we like characters because they're like us--but other characters (like Superman and James Bond) we like because we admire things they can do or who they are.
    Mary Sue has become a bad term in storytelling circles, but I think we're too hard on it--and in dismissing it, we dismiss a huge part of what makes us human beings. It is natural to like reading about Kvothe because, like James Bond, he is just naturally good at a lot of things--and that, in its heart, is just cool. It's like enjoying the character of Indiana Jones. Character arc? None. Mary Sue? Yeah, probably. Still very fun.
    At the same time, it's very natural to DISLIKE that kind of character, and the difference between Indy and Kvothe is that the narrative keeps bringing Indy down (making him seem like the underdog) so we maintain rooting interest. Kvothe, on the ohter hand, is telling his own story--and is arrogant about it. There's nothing wrong with disliking this narrative style.
    In Kvothe's specific case, I enjoy reading about him because he's so self-destructive. Every time he takes a step forward, he seems to take another back by ruining it with his own arrogance or stupidity. He's one of the few characters I enjoy reading about, while disliking as a person immensely. I think that takes a lot of talent to pull off, and watching him destroy himself is much like watching King Lear or Hamlet destroy themselves.
    For the third question, there will be one some day. But it's far off.

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  • 1529

    Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

    radda (Reddit)

    Hi Brandon!

    You're pretty well known for your more conservative approach to sex in your writing, which is very unusual in the fantasy genre. Was this a conscious decision of yours, or is it just a natural consequence of your writing style?

    Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

    A little of this, a little of that. I'm glad that the genre is big enough to accommodate a large variety of writing styles. Personally, I'm fond of the old-school classics of film and literature who, in this area, seemed to be able to get so much more across while showing so much less.

    I try to write my books in such a way that if you want to go further in your mind, you know which characters are most likely getting it on. But if that's not your thing, you can leave it out.

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  • 1530

    Interview: Apr 24th, 2016

    Question

    When did you start writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    First book was around 15. It was terrible.

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  • 1531

    Interview: Apr 24th, 2016

    Question

    Are there any characters that you see yourself more in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is a bit of me in every character. There is something very different than me in every character. The something that is and something that is not me, helps make each character. Nobody is me. The closest we get is my mom claims that Alcatraz speaks in my voice. So she laughs and likes those books the best. He’s way… a super caricature of me.

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  • 1532

    Interview: Apr 24th, 2016

    Question

    Whose part are you working on right this moment?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am writing Lift for the novella. Before that I was writing about Dalinar.

    Tags

  • 1533

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    You say you put limits on magic to make it interesting, do you do the same to characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes! A lot of characterization comes from conflict in what the characters can't do.

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  • 1534

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    He’s taken programming classes, and someone wanted to know if he’ll apply that knowledge into magic systems.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, see: Elantris.

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  • 1535

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    He was asked a question about creating Steelheart.

    It boiled down to being unique with names and powers is hard, he had a hard time finding things that Marvel and DC haven't done already.

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  • 1536

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    How does he keep what he’s read and what he’s written out of what he’s writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ehn, you need to be aware but also unique. you have to know what’s going on in your genre and other stories so you can stay unique, practice.

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  • 1537

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    The way he got asked to talk about how he came to finishing the Wheel of Time.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He got a voicemail “Hello, I am Robert Jordan’s widow. please give me a call" . RJ had asked her to find someone to finish his books, and after he passed away a friend read Brandon’s eulogy for RJ at the funeral, and the friend told her about his writing, and she read Mistborn then gave him a call. He said it was like winning the lottery but in order to do that your favorite author had to die.

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  • 1538

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    Have you accidentally written any other books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He tried writing AOL’s sequel but it was hard. It is easier to start new. Practice writing he does a lot to get used to different genres, but he doesn't really accidentally write things.

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  • 1539

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    Stormlight 3 POV character? Some say Szeth other say its up in the air?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He said he’s not going to canonize it or anything, he’s also looking at Dalinar and Eshonai and going to see who’s backstory fits the flow of the book best.

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  • 1540

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    Question

    How do you come up with names?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He takes a culture then breaks down the linguistics of it and its kind of complicated but he uses the rules from one language, then breaks them and makes his own? He said you can do it on a smaller scale, take a list of baby names from one country or language, and break them into their sounds and rearrange them and make a list where none of the new names are like the ones on the list.

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  • 1541

    Interview: Jan 21st, 2015

    the_archduke

    Will book 3 be Szeth's book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He used to think so. Now it might be Dalinar's. He is going to do the flashbacks for both (and Eshonai) and then decide.

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  • 1542

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    I want to know what process you go through for building vocabulary. Also, do you use a thesaurus?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My vocabulary development comes through reading other people’s books and seeing what cool words they use and writing them down. And I can often pinpoint who I learned which word from. Like miasma I learned from Anne McCaffrey. Just seeing the words they use and looking them up when i don’t know them. Do I use a thesaurus? I do use a thesaurus but only to come up with a word I know I should be using. There’s two times I use it. One, when I come to a word and I know there’s a word there but I don’t know what it is yet. The other time I use a thesaurus, which is really useful, is when I’m naming something. Like when I was naming the Reckoners, I need a cool word for this team. One that Marvel or DC hasn’t used yet *fake exasperated* They used everything *end fake exasperated* So I may use a thesaurus, but using a thesaurus is dangerous. It’s a good tool but it’s a dangerous tool for a writer. Because you don’t want to use a word because it sounds cool, usually you want to use the right word. That can be difficult to balance.

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  • 1543

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    We hear a lot in The Final Empire about various titles and such in the Steel Ministry. Can you give a little as to their actual structure and what they do?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah I can talk about this. [They only thing you can’t is the ranks] So the Steel Ministry, in the Mistborn books. The interesting thing I considered when I was writing was “What is the purpose of the priesthood when god is there in the palace and everyone knows it? And if you disobey you just get your head cut off.” So I made the Steel Ministry more government, like the post office is run by priests. A lot of what priests do is witness official business, take your money in doing so and give you a stamp that “Yes I witnessed this” but they also run all the public works. It’s not like they’re cleaning the sewers themselves but overseeing the sewers, overseeing engineers, most of the engineers who designed the cities would be obligators. Which by the way you named didn’t you? There he is [???] who was in my writing group for many years. We were driving to writing group once and I wanted a cool word for a priest, because I was just using priests in the original version of Mistborn. I’m like “I need a great word” and he--

    WeiryWriter

    How did you come up with that word?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You really want to know?

    WeiryWriter

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thesaurus. So you can congratulate [Nate?] for coming up with obligator, and was it you that came up with Conventicle or was that Peter? It was Peter.

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  • 1544

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    Question about Brandon’s outlining process.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh good question… You picked the hardest one to outline, by far. Normally the outlining process for me, I sit down and write Plot, Setting, Character in a new sheet. [...] And then I put all the things that I have been thinking in my head for a while, that I’ve been brainstorming with friends or-- Every book that I write I spent a long time planning it out, it’s when ideas connect together that you know you have a great book. One idea is not enough, multiple ideas that influence each other in cool ways is a book to me. So I write all this down and start looking for structure and what are people’s plots. Now the way I outline I’m goal-based. Say I want to have an interesting relationship between these two characters, how can I achieve that? What is the result at the end and what are the steps to getting there? [...] Somebody wants to learn to use the magic, what’s my end goal, what are my steps to get there, what cool scenes will there be. Those are all separate in my outline, it’s not like in my outline there’s “Chapter one: this, this, this, and this”. It’s Goal and how to achieve, Goal and how to achieve, Goal and how to achieve. Now the Stormlight Archives is a strange beast, it is plotted as ten books, each focusing on a character, and for that what I did was sit down and lay out more in prose form by vision for the whole series and then I wrote a paragraph for each book. Then I did what I just told you for the first book, then I wrote the first book. Then I went back and did a bigger, much more detailed outline for the rest of the series. The interesting thing about the Stormlight books is that I actually plot each one like I plot a trilogy. So for instance, Words of Radiance you can find breakpoints between quote-unquote books, that this volume is actually written as three books with a short story collection as the interludes woven between. That’s how I approach those books. My publisher has a love/hate relationship with the Stormlight Archive because they feel they could publish them as four volumes and make four times as much money but I won’t let them. But they don’t want me to write other things because they really want more Stormlight because Stormlight is the one that sells the best out of everything. So they are like “Write more Stormlight, but can we split it please?” and I say “No you can’t split it” and they go *arghhh* [...]

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  • 1545

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    Are some of the [interlude] characters going to be making re-appearances?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes some of them will, I’m seeding characters who will become main characters later in the series by what I’m doing in that book, in those interludes. Not all of them will be. I have ten characters that are forming the spine for this series-- and like Lift is one of the ones who is going to be in the back five books which will take place-- After Book 5 of Stormlight we will have a break, in-world, for about fifteen years. Not out of the world, not in our world, but we will have a break and when we come back fifteen years or so will have passed and we will start on the back five characters.

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  • 1546

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    I really like Alloy of Law, do you see yourself making anymore of those in-universe novellas? [...]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes I do see myself doing many more novellas. I enjoy the process, it helps me get stories out of my brain that are itching at me without having to start another 7 book series or whatever. What I reading to you tonight is from a novella but it is not cosmere. Though I do have several more cosmere novellas going. [discussion on currently released novellas and where to find them] I’m planning to do many more, I really enjoy it. I think short fiction is fun and exciting-- short for me.

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  • 1547

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    Are you going to write a sequel to Sixth of the Dusk?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I’m not planning to write a sequel to it, though you may see people from that world, or even Sixth himself, in other books if you keep your eyes open.

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  • 1548

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    Can you talk a little about flash fiction?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think flash fiction, micro fiction, is awesome. I’m terrible at it. I’ve tried it a couple times. I’ve got a good friend, Eric James Stone, he’s one a Nebula Award, and his business cards have a story on the back. That’s the coolest thing ever. I want to steal that and use it but every one I come up with is junk. It takes like eight pages to write a name, so…

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  • 1549

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    WeiryWriter

    Can you talk a little about your editing process? In your acknowledgements there’s this huge team of people that have been pouring over this thing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here’s my drafting process. First draft I just write straight through, I don’t stop, if there is something major I need to change I just change it in the chapter and keep going forward. And then I can change it back later, like two chapters later if I think “No that was the wrong thing”. So there will be a new character sometimes in my book that will just pop up for three chapters and everyone acts like they’ve always been there and then they vanish and no one talks about them not being there anymore. That’s just so I can keep momentum and see what works. Draft number 2 I fix all of those things. Draft number 3, polishing draft. Line by line trying to cut 10%, get rid of the passive voice, make descriptions more active, and that I’m finding the right words and things like that. So Draft 4 is where it turns into true drafting, and by that point I’ve given it to my editor and my alpha readers which are basically my assistants, my good friends, people like that. They read it and they come back with comments for me and I’ve been thinking about the book, working in my writing group with it and I make a goal-based document, where it’s like “Here are the major issues. Here are the medium level issues. Here are the little things I need to fix.” And I start on page one, read through with this [document] on the screen next to the book when I’m working on it and I try-- It’s almost like a bug report for programmings, I”m trying to clear things off the list. Major things I have to re-write the whole way through so I can’t clear them off until the end. Medium issues are things I can put in two or three times to fix a few chapters where they are wrong and then clear it. Little things are just fix this one little thing and it’s easy to clear off the list. I do that, I don’t get to everything. [...] Then I send the book out to beta readers, who are gathered by my assistant, he handles this Peter Ahlstrom. Then they do a thing with us on a Google Doc, where it’s chapter by chapter there is a document for each chapter and they all put their comments and interact with each other. It’s like having a very large focus group, with like 15 people who are all reading the book at the same time and working on it. Once that is done and I’ve heard back from my editor on the new draft I will then make another draft. I will do this as many times as necessary to make the book good. Last draft is proofreading and those people are often drawn from fandom, my assistant picks them off forums and things like that and people we’ve used before. At that point we can’t change anything bigger than a line or two. They are looking for continuity and things like that. But my process is that goal-based “I want to fix /this/ let’s see if I can do a draft where I fix this.” And I”ll do a couple more polishing drafts as I go along.

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  • 1550

    Interview: Jan 7th, 2015

    Question

    So with the cosmere, do you come up with stories and see if they fit? Or does the cosmere lend itself to stories already?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s mostly the first. [...] When I come up with a story I’ll ask, “Does this fit the cosmere?” and if not [...] I don’t want to be doing far-future science fiction stuff in the cosmere, yet [...] Or the Rithmatist which I bounced back and forth with, I eventually decided it just didn’t fit the story. If things do fit, I put them in.

    Question

    Is that a really exciting moment[when things fit]? Or…

    Brandon Sanderson

    )No, it’s just nice. I like all my stories. The cosmere-- Part of my rules for myself is “The cosmere is not my entire body of work” because then I would try to shoehorn more things in and I’ve found sometimes when authors create a multiverse they shoehorn everything in. Stephen King did this, [Asimov] it doesn’t work. I think if it is a deliberate thing I'm intentionally doing, then it gains more cooler than if I tried to make everything connected.

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  • 1551

    Interview: Jan 19th, 2015

    Jason

    What’s the favorite title from my books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, I would say brightlord is my favorite. I really like how brightlord works.

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  • 1552

    Interview: Jan 19th, 2015

    Question

    In transitioning from Merin to Kaladin, was there any plot sacrifices that were particularly difficult for me?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. I had been disappointed enough in the way that Merin turned out in the original draft of The Way of Kings, that transitioning to someone more vibrant and more interesting in Kaladin really didn’t feel like a sacrifice to me.

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  • 1553

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    In /The Reckoners/, was there a particular power that I gave to someone because I just thought that power was cool.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And yeah, the tensors. They can turn things to dust. For years I’d been walking around looking at our society where we have all this metal and this wood around, and things like that. I just loved the idea of just being able to turn it to dust. Maybe it’s like a “reducing things to their more primal state” or whatever-- but anyway it was one of those magics that was in my head for a while. And really superheros are magic. I don’t pretend that they’re science fiction, they’re magic. So I just designed these magics that feel cool to me.

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  • 1554

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    What’s my writing process like now?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So I’m a writer. That means I don’t have to get up in the morning unless I have to come to some signing like this. I hope you guys appreciate the fact that I got up at 6:45 this morning. Normally I get up at noon. So I get up at noon, I write from noon to 5, I then go hangout with my family from 5 until 9 or so, and at about 9 o’clock I go back and I write from like 9 to 3. Or something like that. And I then I goof-off and go to bed at about 4. It is a great life. Except when I’m on tour and they are like “Yeah you need to be up for a flight at 8 o’clock” and I’m like “AHHHHH! Curse you Brandon and you staying up late all the other nights!”

    Tags

  • 1555

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    Do you find it hard working with multiple publishers and multiple houses?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Do I find it hard working with multiple publishers… and multiple houses as a writer? Uh, yes there are some hard parts to it. I do two tours a year instead of one, because I have two publishers now-- And that’s rough. Every time one publisher asks for something the other one is like “Well we want that to” so I'm going to BEA, that’s the Book Expo, and the other is like “Well you have to come to this thing for us”. So it fills my time a lot more, which is hard. But at the same time it is very nice because it gives me a little more credibility with both. That they both know that they kind of have to make me happy. That is pretty nice. And there is also the piece of mind that if for some reason one of things I was doing tanked I’ve always got another one. That was much more important to me early in my career, when I was doing the Alcatraz books with Scholastic and the epic fantasies with Tor.

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  • 1556

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    If characters are reflections of their authors, which character do you feel reflects you the most?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Which character reflects me the most. I don’t think there is one… I think each of my characters represent me in some way and each character is different from me in other ways. So I can’t say which one represents me more or less. They’re all a bit of me.

    Tags

  • 1557

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    Which book was the hardest to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Which book was the hardest to write. /A Memory of Light/, the last of /the Wheel of Time/ books by a LARGE margin is the hardest book I’ve ever written because the last /Wheel of Time/ book mixed with a lot of war scenes that--I don’t have the history in warfare that Robert Jordan did so all this stuff I had to do, there was a lot of research and a lot of going back and forth with Alan Romanczuk with Team Jordan. It was by far the hardest.

    Tags

  • 1558

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    Do you have a special way of coming up with your bad analogies?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Do I special way of coming up with bad analogies. Which are actually similes. So here’s the thing-- So /Steelheart/, I wrote /Steelheart/ in like 2008 or 2009, it was pretty early on, I had the idea-- I was touring for some book, I think-- I feel like it was /Warbreaker/ or /Mistborn/ 3, any way I was touring for one of these books and I get cut off in traffic, I get really mad at the person, and I imagine blowing up their car. I get horrified, like “If I had superpowers is this what I would do? Would I blow up cars of people who cut me off in traffic?” and I was like “OOh that’s a story”. So I went and wrote the prologue, like almost immediately, I think on that tour I wrote the prologue. I remember reading it at DragonCon that year, whenever year that was. Then I put the whole book aside and had to wait for like 5 years because I’m like “I’m working on /the Wheel of Time/ I have no time to write this other side project.” I was much better at that and not going crazy on side projects when I was doing that. When I finally got back to it I had this prologue-- The prologue was ten years before in-world time, like the character grew ten years between the prologue and chapter 1, so I was “Alright I need a voice for this character” and I started writing, doing my standard thing. I was having so much trouble coming up with a distinctive voice for David, the main character, and I accidentally wrote a bad metaphor. That happens a lot when you’re writing-- you just come across something and it’s a terrible analogy and you delete it, but here I said “Well what if I ran with that?” The fun thing is by coincidence that became a metaphor for his entire personality. He tries so hard, is very earnest, but sometimes he tries a little too hard, and looks beyond the mark, and stumbles a bit. And that is who he became as a character, and the bad metaphors are a great metaphor for that. Coming up with them now is really hard. Doing it on purpose is way harder than coming up with good metaphors. They are rough. Sometimes I’ll sit-- Like the most time I spend staring at the screen when working on these books is coming up with one of David’s metaphors.

    Tags

  • 1559

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    I would want to know what is your favorite character you’ve ever written.

    Brandon Sanderson

    What is the favorite character I’ve ever written. I actually can’t pick one, because they are like my children and picking a favorite child is basically impossible. I don’t have one. Robert Jordan, I quote him a lot because I studied his life a lot, he always answered this question by saying “My favorite character is the one I’m working on right now” and I like that answer.

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  • 1560

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    Do I consult with other fantasy authors? Or do we keep things to the vest?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We consult a lot. We talk to each other a great deal. The ones that I know best are the ones I often go to but sometimes-- I talk to Pat Rothfuss quite a bit, and Brent Weeks, were kind of in the same area but with three different publishers and that’s really useful to us. I consult with my Writing Excuses buddies all the time. Somebody who knows a ton that I don’t know very well but I know he knows a ton so I’ll often ask him question by email is Cory Doctorow. He just like knows everything. We talk a lot, whenever we can. Because it is a very solitary business, so having people to talk to about it is great.

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  • 1561

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    You talked about creativity earlier, and if you look back on your career until this point as a writer, how have you changed as a writer over that time? What has writing done for you as a point of self-improvement?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What has writing done for me as a point of self-improvement over the course of my career. That’s excellent. I discovered writing when I was 15, that was when I was this young, gangly boy who is trying to figure out what to do with his life and I found solace in books and writing, which I had not done when I was younger. It was a teacher who handed me, it was a book called /Dragonsbane/, when I was 8th grade that changed my life. What it did, right off the bat was give me purpose, and that is so important. Knowing there is something you want to do. All through college, you know I had friends who “I’m taking this degree because it’s what was expected of me but I don’t know if this is what I want to do”. I knew what I wanted to do, and knowing that. That alone has been worth it’s weight in gold. Spending the time writing and practicing gave me confidence, that’s been very important. Like when I finished that first book, it took me three years to write it. I said “You know what, I can do this. I can create this thing.” Then being able to see myself get better and better and better, the confidence from that was great. The big decision I also made late in my career, before I got published, I had to decide who I was doing this for. Because once you’ve got a dozen unpublished books, you start asking yourself the questions everyone is asking you. At the end I just decided this idea of “I’m just going to keep doing this. If I am 70 and I have a hundred unpublished manuscripts on my dresser. I love doing this, it is very fulfilling. I’m getting these stories out of my head, I can see myself getting better. I’m not going to be a failure if I have a hundred unpublished manuscripts, I’m going to be more of a success than if I never wrote them.” And that decision is what drove me to write /The Way of Kings/, because before I’d been really hunting how to get published and trying to write things like I saw getting published and people kept telling me “Your books are too long” so I’ve been writing these shorter ones. And I just said “I don’t care what you people are saying, I’m going to write the most awesome epic of the style I would love to read, that I don’t feel enough people are doing. It’s going to have this crazy world and all these characters and all this stuff and I know noone is ever going to want to publish it, but I’m going to write it” And that’s when I wrote /The Way of Kings/, it was right after that decision.

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  • 1562

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    I had another question, did you ever read books by other authors to get your ideas?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes I read a lot of books by other authors and what I usually do is I will read something and if they did it well, I don’t want to do anything like it. But if I think they messed it up then I’m like “Oh I need to do a story that does this the right way” …It is one of the most fun parts of being a writer. You can watch a movie and go “Ah they totally did this the wrong way [...] and then do it yourself, the way you want it to be.

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  • 1563

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    How is the transition to first-person writing going?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s been surprisingly easy. I think it helps that I do the first-person generally as different types of stories. It helps me differentiate those stories for myself.

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  • 1564

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    As a writer how do you manage the details of-- not only in a book but-- Vin, her earring you did a reveal----three books in. How do you manage keeping those things--

    Brandon Sanderson

    I make an outline-- A good outline can help you have great reveals like that.

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  • 1565

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    In Alcatraz when he was talking about “out of the frying pan and into the fire” like when he replaced out of the frying pan and into the fire, how long did that take you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That one? I just came up with most random thing I could think of. So it was actually really fast. That one wasn’t a hard one. Some of them are hard, that one was pretty easy.

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  • 1566

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    I am playing a GURPS roleplay where my character is a lawyer and I’m in law school. And I was wondering if you have ever considered having a character in the books who is a lawyer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    An attorney? There is a story I’ve wanted to tell forever... I’ll never do it, though. But it's one of those ideas. I wanted to do a story where aliens come down and decide that throughout human history possession of land indicates ownership, by our historical record. We have to convince them in court that that's not the way we do things. They just want to annex the planet. "Look at the Americans. You just took this land and said it's yours. So we want to do that to your planet." And have a science fiction story that is a legal battle about why they can't take over our planet.

    Footnote

    reminds me a little of Year Zero

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  • 1567

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    Are going to do anything else in the world of the story "Dreamer" [from the Games Creatures Play horror anthology]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Probably not. She [Charlaine Harris] wanted me to write a horror story, and I'd never written one before so I said, "All right, what is the most frightening thing I can think of?" The most frightening thing I could think of was the kids who play Xbox having power over real people’s lives, and that’s where that story came from.

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  • 1568

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    I’ve been watching some of the videos online and you say writing-- ideas are cheap, and they are, you can get ideas pretty easy, but how in the world do you get-- I can get the begining and figure out an end but how do you do get all the stuff in the middle?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So if you’ve got your end, try and say what things, try to get a brainstorming session where you write with bullet points underneath it what things will help me earn this ending so that it feels-- that it has the emotion that I want. And try to brainstorm five or six things and make those waypoints along the way, if that makes sense, between-- Where it’s not just one point and two points, it’s five points, “I’m going to hit this one, this one, and this one” and if you can come up with four or five interesting things to happen through the end of your book that you can earn that way you’re going to have a sequence of like twenty touchstones that can each form a chapter or a couple of chapters that you can work on to get to that ending.

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  • 1569

    Interview: Jan 24th, 2015

    Question

    There’s a huge movement in the genre, almost away from heroic, truly good figures and it seems to me like a lot of your books are kind of, there is some darkness in them but you are holding really tight to the light… What do you think about the idea of the true heroic character and where they’re going?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I think that people can be truly heroic and I’m happy that the genre has lots of room for different types of storytelling, but the books I’m most interested in are the ones that are people still trying to do what is right, and so that’s what I want to write about.

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  • 1570

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    What is the favorite character you have written?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What is the favorite character that I have written? I would say Perrin, from The Wheel of Time. Because I can’t pick my own characters, because they don’t feel like I’m-- They are my favorite while I’m writing them, whoever they are. But Perrin was my favorite Wheel of Time character and when I got to finish the Wheel of Time he was the character that Robert Jordan left the least amount of notes on. In fact there was one sentence, for three books-worth, about him. And so I got to take him and really Perrin was the one I had the most influence on through the course of those three books and it was very special to me him being my favorite character and being able to do that.

    Tags

  • 1571

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    Do you ever write like two versions of a scene in a book and if you do how do you decide which--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Two versions of the same scene. I do it quite frequently. Every book there will be a couple times. Usually what happens is I’m writing a scene and I’m not pleased with it and so I put it aside and I write it again the next day. And usually letting me subconscious work on it means I end up fixing it. About one out of ten times I start writing it and I realize “It was right the first way, why am I writing something new?” And then I just go back to the book, and it wasn’t that the scene was bad it’s just I had a bad day. And sometimes you do, no matter what you write you are going to think it stinks. How do I decide? It’s very instinctive, I’ve never had one like “These are both equally good” Always I know one of them is not working. In fact the best way to get over writer’s block, I find, is to write the scene anyway, have anything you can think of happen--even if it doesn’t make sense in your story--so that you get the scene out, and then attack it again the next day after you have had time to think about it.

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  • 1572

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    How do you decide who lives and who dies? Do you know before or is it up to the characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    How do I decide who lives and who dies? I just decide based on the demands that they make to me by their character arcs and the risks they want to take. I don’t ever feel like I’m killing characters off, I feel like I am writing the stories that need to be written the way they have to be written. They often are planned out ahead of time, I’m an architect as a writer, I come up with an outline and then I hang my story on it. But characters have veto power over the story, if they decide they want to go somewhere else. If who they are growing is somebody the story demands-- I say they decide, it doesn’t really happen that way for me. If when I’m writing the story I’m like “This character would not make this decision. I either need to put in a new character in this place or I need to rebuild my outline to match who this person is.” And both of those have happened to me. Usually I’m not replacing the character except in the early parts. Usually if I like the character enough as I’m going I replace the plot.

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  • 1573

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    When you develop a character, like as the change over time, does it come naturally or do you have to force it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As I develop characters and they change over time, does that come naturally or do I have to force it? For me it comes very naturally. I do a lot of planning ahead of time on my plots and a /lot/ of planning ahead of time on my settings. I do less on my characters. I cast people in roles. I start writing someone in this role and I see what becomes of them in the first few chapters and if I’m not liking that I put it aside and cast someone else in that role and write for a few chapters and then set that aside until I find a mix that I like and then it is a very natural progression as I write them. That’s just the way that it works for me. It’s a matter of practice making that happen.

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  • 1574

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    Talking about reading unpublished material.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I always like to read something that is unpublished. So that is something new that you get only by coming to my signings or going to the internet where people will have inevitably posted it online already. *laughter* It’s really exclusive for like the first signing that I do and then after that everybody on the 17th Shard, which is the fan website, are like *hilarious “oooh” sound* No… I have to be very careful about what I read because the publisher has certain deals about exclusivity on new releases. Like for instance I can’t read any more from the new Mistborn books because Apple has an exclusive release of new material on that and things like that. It’s just part of the deals that we do and so-- I also have to make sure that it’s not making big spoilers for other books. I have to make sure that it’s not containing errors that are glaring continuity errors and things like that. So we are going to read from a novella called Perfect State. This is a novella that I wrote oh about two years ago now and I didn’t really L-- get it done. Like I wrote it and then there was something wrong with it and I wasn’t sure what it was. I actually finished it a couple months ago. I finally figured out what it was that was wrong.

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  • 1575

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    I was wondering how you schedule all the books that you write. Do you have adhere to a solid schedule or is it more like you finish a book and go into one you are more excited to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, at this point in my career I have the ability to have a little more influence over that. I do try to keep to kind of a regular schedule. My publishers have learned I’ll turn in what I’ll turn in, and then they’ll publish it. Because I am more productive if I can jump between things.

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  • 1576

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    I’m a graphic designer and I want to know how you visually communicate-- You have such great visuals in your books...Do you draw them all? Or do you just tell someone what you need?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Lots of practice. It really is just practice. So I have artists. I commission concept art for my descriptions and then… That doesn’t always end up in the book. In fact usually it doesn’t. For the things that end up in the book I’ll often do like a quick sketch and say “make this awesome” or I’ll do a paragraph or two of description.

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  • 1577

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    You know how usually you read a good book and it will change your perspective on some aspect of life, do you ever finish writing a book yourself and-- From your own writings do you ever “Ah I’ve never…”

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s usually the research I do. Like when I’m like “I need to get in the mindset of /this/ type of person” and I go read about it. I see the world in a different way after I become immersed in that.

    Question

    So what character have you written that was the hardest to imagine or get into?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Jasnah was very hard originally, and that took a lot of research into the mindset of people who think differently from myself. In the Wheel of Time books Aviendha and Tuon are both very different cultures so getting into those.

    Question

    How was it writing Mat? Was it pretty easy or--

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, Mat blindsided me. Mat I thought would be easy because Perrin and Rand were and I grew up with Mat, Perrin, and Rand, right? But the thing is Mat is a really hard character to write, meaning actual-- you look at him, he says one thing, he does a second thing, but he /thinks/ a third thing. And so there is a lot of contrast to him and I just started writing him naturally and I wasn’t getting all of that contrast because I was like “Oh I know who Mat is. Mat’s my--” But he was saying the things that he never said, if that makes sense? I got his actions right but I flipped what he said and what he thought. It was actually really hard to get him down.

    Question

    You mean how he would say that he was going to avoid trouble and then run straight into it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it’s like “I’m going to avoid trouble”, he runs into trouble, and he’s thinking all the way about something completely separate, and then something else leaves his mouth.

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  • 1578

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    You have said you are an architect, so I was wondering if the plot twists at the end of the book, did you have those at the beginning?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say most of the time I have them at the beginning but sometimes during the writing I rebuild my outline to do something different. You always have to be open to that I feel as an architect, to rebuilding your plot for when the creative process takes you in a different direction.

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  • 1579

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    When do you know a book is finished and send it to an editor/agent/whatever, wherever it gets sent?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say… that my process is I write the first draft and I do a second draft where I am fixing the problems that I recognized on my first draft. Then I do a third draft where I try to clean up the prose, that’s just making the writing line by line better. I try to cut 10% and I just try to take each line and make it tighter. At that point I send it off. But I generally send it-- At that point I send it to my alpha readers, which are my agent and editor for me. If you are doing it I would suggest giving it to a round of readers from friends first. Get feedback from them, then do one more draft and then send it off.

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  • 1580

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    How do you think about reddit or the 17th shard and the Coppermind-- All the different theories going around? Do you ever find one that hits your plot line or something?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh yes. I don’t change it. I’m just like “There’s a smart person.” But what I learned in Wheel of Time fandom was that you can’t-- There is madness that lies in trying to change things once someone figures it out. Like particularly with the way that I do my plots, there’s foreshadowing so there’s someone who’s going to be able to figure it out. If they /can’t/ figure it out I haven’t put in the foreshadowing properly. So almost everything that I’ve put into the books, /somebody/ knows. Some of them are really obvious and everybody’s got it, and I’m okay with that because the people who don’t read the forums, a few of them will be surprised, but mostly it will be like “Yeah of course we know this Brandon. Of course we know yada yada yada” I don’t--I don’t *mutters* I think you’ve figured it out-- But there are things like that. But there are other little things that there are a dozen theories on, and one of them’s right.

    Question

    You are probably going to get that when there’s large populations...

    Brandon Sanderson

    There’s large populations and there’s proper foreshadowing, somebody is going to get it, and I think that’s appropriate.

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  • 1581

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    I was curious Mat and then the second-hand man Talmanes… Did you have inspiration for those-- Because I absolutely enjoyed, I laughed out loud multiple times reading those characters. And I wondered--

    Brandon Sanderson

    With Mat it was always just me trying to match Robert Jordan’s style, sometimes awkwardly at first but I think I got it down. With Talmanes there was more room for interpretation because I had always-- In fandom people interpret his personality in a lot of different ways, and I was a certain theory because we’d never seen through his eyes. When I did write scenes through his eyes I used my interpretation. There are some people “No that’s not how he is”. There are some people “Yes I always knew he was like that”. But that’s how I’ve always viewed him, with kind of the tongue in his cheek as he’s talking to Mat. And I’ve always loved him as a character because of that. Which is why I wanted to write him and include him. There weren't any notes to use him.

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  • 1582

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    When it comes to major, pivotal plot twists. Moments where the reader goes “WOAH” or “Oh my god”. Are those something you write as starting point or ending point?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What I do is I plot my outline backward, starting with those scenes. And then I write the book forward to those scenes. The reason I can do it that way is because in the plot I don’t need to know the characters’ emotional state, I can just come up with “This is going to be a great scene”. But I have to have been with the characters through the journey to write their reaction to the scene. So I can’t actually write it early.

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  • 1583

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    My question was, have you ever written a scene and had it published and then wanted to change one of your scenes?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I have. There have been a couple of them. There’s one at the end of Words of Radiance, when it came time for the paperback I reverted to a previous version of the scene. So yeah you guys will see that when the paperback comes out. One of the ending scenes-- It’s a very minor tweak but I had done like four different drafts of this scene and I didn’t like the one we ended up with. Even immediately after we sent it in I was like “No that’s the wrong one”. So we reverted.

    Question

    Will you post that online?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I’ll post that online when the book comes out. I’ll be like “By the way guys, Warning. There’s a change here.”

    Question

    The internet will freak out.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. The other thing is the ending of Elantris, the spatial-ness of it, and things, I got some of the math wrong. I didn’t have Peter back then. And so now that we are doing a 10th anniversary edition I actually had Peter and Isaac, who does all the maps, get together, work out the actual math. The size of the city, the size of the continent, and all this stuff and Isaac’s doing a new map and we are changing the text to now match that map. So for instance where it says something is in the original text it will actually move now that we have an actual real map, rather than my MS Paint thing that I was using ‘cause you know me and maps. So yeah you nodded, there are a lot of mathematical-- just problems. We’ve got the new map now and it all works. So I’m glad that it all actually works, once you get the math right. But like the number of steps is way off at the end of that one for instance. [To Argent/Kurk] Have you guys figured that out? Like it makes the size of the planet stupidly big.

    Question

    When is that coming out by the way?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I’m not sure, we just have to see when we turn it in. I think maybe later this year. Maybe early next year. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to get it out with one of the Mistborn books, at around the same time.

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  • 1584

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    I was wondering about , how much of your day do you spend writing? Because you have five(?) books coming out, I didn’t count them all.

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, I’ve only got two books this year. I do two books a year, with a third book occasionally. It just depends on how long the books are. For instance a Way of Kings book is four of these [Firefight?] in length, so when I do a Stormlight book you get less, fewer other books. When I do-- For instance I can do two of these [Reckoners?] and two Mistborn books in the same length of time. I work a normal workday usually, plus a little bit… I don’t write particularly fast. I do write a large amount but mostly I’m very consistent. I just write a little bit each day and then it happens.

    Tags

  • 1585

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    How did you sort of develop and write the character of Vin? ‘Cause her upbringing is so different from anything we-- that I have experienced and I’m guessing you had a similar experience. So did you have a model or somebody you could talk to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I-- Not really. Now I did have two sisters, which helped, but my sisters were not raised in such a manner. It is more just trying out personalities, like I talked about in my speech until I got one that worked. Lots of practice if you want to be a good writer, lots and lots of practice. Try writing people very different from yourself and try to get them right. Give it to people and have them see if anything “Yes this feels right” and things like that. Just do lots of practice.

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  • 1586

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    Do you set out to write a specific-- like a teen book or an adult book? Or are they just--

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually do set out these days. Originally I was not as cognizant of it, but I do think keeping audience in mind is an important attribute of writing. The thing is when you are doing a teen book its not about writing down it’s about dealing with issues, like it’s the type of conflicts that really make something a teen book in my opinion. And those conflicts can transcend into adult books but-- I don’t know it’s just there’s a feel for it.

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  • 1587

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    I’m 66 in a couple months and I want to make sure I live long enough to read the whole Stormlight--Am I going to? I just retired so I have plenty of time to read.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You’ll definitely make it through the first five. The thing about it is I’ll break in the middle, but the first five come to a natural climax, and then there’s an in-world break of 15 years. Not 15 years away for us but an in-world break. And then I’ll do another trilogy. I think you’ll make it through them all. I think you’ll easily make it, you look very hale and healthy.

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  • 1588

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    So are the rumors true are you [and Pat Rothfuss] going to write a book together?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, but every time we are on a panel we are like “AH we should write a book together.” It’s highly unlikely, that we would ever do anything together. Just because our writing styles are so different. Pat’s writing process-- It’s not so much style it’s the writing process-- is so different. But you can hold out hope. Perhaps some day I will have a pitch for Pat or something like that. But I would hate to inconvenience his fans by distracting him with something else.

    Tags

  • 1589

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    When you finish a book how do you celebrate?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I usually, unless I have a really tight deadline, I pick a video game and I play the video game. Usually once a year I’ll do that and I’ll take like two weeks off and just play through a game.

    Question

    I like that idea. I’m trying to finish up my master’s thesis and deciding what I can do when I’ve finished it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh okay, I don’t know if you can take two weeks off.

    Question

    Well I’ve already told my boss I’m going to take three weeks off. But i’ll probably go somewhere.

    Brandon Sanderson

    See traveling, I travel so much for work that I don’t really want to go anywhere. I just want to stay home where I don’t have to do anything. I played Skyrim, I broke it out over the holidays. I hadn’t ever played that one. That’s my latest.

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  • 1590

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    [I love Writing Excuses and I’m actually going on the Retreat this year. I think the cruise is a good idea.]

    Brandon Sanderson

    See Mary did the Steampunk cruise, and she just kind of asked “Wait a minute, what are people paying for this?” and it was less than we had to charge them for the retreat at her house, because of all the food and stuff we had to do. We were like “Wait a minute, you can do this for the same price or less? Why are we doing this at her house?”

    Question

    Cruises are a blast.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I’ve been on several and I’ve enjoyed everyone of them.

    Question

    The Alaska cruise has been one of the best experiences of my life. So it’s going to be good for writing and inspiration.

    Brandon Sanderson

    My cruise story is the Taravangian interlude [in Words of Radiance] was written on a cruise with my family. I sat on the little balcony to our room typing while everyone else went off and did stuff where there were people. And I was by myself and it was great.

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  • 1591

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    What was the hardest part of finishing the Wheel of Time?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The hardest part, I would say, was the battle logistics.

    Question

    So A Memory of Light took a while?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, A Memory of Light is all battle logistics, it was really hard. And the second half was really tough to get that all right. And just to work with the assistants and things like that.

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  • 1592

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    Why do you do interludes? What possessed you to go that direction instead of just including it as another chapter?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I felt that one of the foibles of the large series epic fantasy genre is the tendency of authors to go afield down paths of side characters. It happened to Robert Jordan, it happened to George R.R. Martin. And so reading theirs I hoped to learn from them and say “I’m going to do this thing that gives me a pressure valve to tell these stories that are outside the main line but I’m not going to give myself enough room that I can just turn this into a full character, yet.” That allows me to do goofy stuff around the world but have a form for it built into the book.

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  • 1593

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    Do you have any sort of set pattern for when you are getting ready to do a rewrite on a novel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I grit my teeth, bang my head against the wall, and try to do anything else except the rewrite.

    Question

    Yeah it’s...

    Brandon Sanderson

    You must be like me then, I hate revising but deadlines are what make me do it. Setting them on my own, you just have to learn to do it. The number one thing I think held me back as a writer is my dislike of revision. And it wasn’t until I learned to do it..

    Question

    And just get it done…

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...and just get it done that I started writing books that would be publishable.

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  • 1594

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    Was Androl, from Wheel of Time, your own creation?...I love his use of Gateways.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. When I went into the trilogy I actually asked them “Is there a character I can have to just do whatever I want with?” and they looked through for one Robert Jordan had left no notes on and they gave me Androl. I went crazy... He was a little bit of a pressure valve, for me, being able to do the things I like to do in a novel, in the Wheel of Time, so I didn’t then take over other characters too much. A bunch of me creeped into Perrin too but...

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  • 1595

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2015

    Question

    In your talk earlier about character arcs do you have a character who surprised you the most in how they ended up developing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Spook from the Mistborn books, he was not in the original outline having the role he did in the third book. But when I finished the second book I was like “Ennnh he’s grown into something that needs more exploration”.

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  • 1596

    Interview: Oct 12th, 2015

    Question

    Which character in your books have you had the most fun bringing to life?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Probably Wayne. He's just the most fun to write. When I get in his viewpoint, the weirdness takes over and it's great.

    Tags

  • 1597

    Interview: Oct 9th, 2015

    Question

    Is it true that if you don’t write six pages a day, you implode?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, but if I don’t write for a couple of days I feel like I might.

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  • 1598

    Interview: Oct 9th, 2015

    Question

    Would you ever want to write an episode for Doctor Who?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would consider it. But I don’t have enough screenplay writing background right now, so I would have to work with someone else. So if there’s a screenwriter willing to work with me, then yeah.

    Tags

  • 1599

    Interview: Oct 9th, 2015

    Question

    If you could ditch the entire Cosmere and start fresh, what would you write about?[From the audience]: Fifty Shades of Grey fanfic!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that. Fifty Shades of Grey fanfic.

    Question

    Except Brandon’s would be much tamer…

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I don’t think mine would hit quite the same demographic.

    Question

    It would have an awesome magic system though.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it would be based on the color grey, where each shade of grey produces a different magic effect.

    Tags

  • 1600

    Interview: Oct 8th, 2015

    karsen

    Any plans to release another interlude writing video?

    Brandon Sanderson

    (paraphrased)- Yes. Since he will be writing it anyways and enjoyed the last one, he will probably do another for this book.

    Tags

  • 1601

    Interview: Oct 17th, 2015

    Question

    How did it feel writing Syl as a character, transitioning ?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It took a long time to figure out how I wanted to do her. It took a lot of practice scenes and such. It was very fun when I finally got to do it, because I'd been planning it for so long. It was really just a matter of trying to get inside the head of this creature who is slowly becoming more and more aware of herself. Having children helps, certainly.

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  • 1602

    Interview: Oct 17th, 2015

    Question

    What was your inspiration for Warbreaker?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I kid you not, I was talking to my US editor. I'd just finished Elantris and Mistborn, and he said "Your next book needs to have more color in it."

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  • 1603

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    I listen to your podcast, Writing Excuses, and you’ve been this year breaking down stories into different parts. Was Bands of Mourning was your attempt to write a pulp novel?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Actually, all of the Wax and Wayne books are a harkening back to classic serials of old novels. It’s interesting looking back at that. I kind of pitched those books to myself as Mistborn the television show, or the action serial. The other ones were the epic fantasy, these were the action serials, and I did try to kind of vary the genre. The first one is straight up detective novel, the second one’s a psychological thriller, and the third one is classic serial adventure story. That was very intentional. It was me trying to take different tones and mash them up with different stories and see what comes out.

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  • 1604

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    [paraphrased] Your magic systems are all very detailed and internally consistent. To what extent do you come up with the world and then write a story within it, versus building the world to fit the story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The answer is, “Yes.” Which is one of those unsatisfying authorly answers. It depends on the story. Like for instance with the Wax and Wayne books, I already had the world built, so in that I’m building a story around a setting that already existed. With the Reckoners, what happened is I had the idea for people who gained superpowers all going evil, and that concept spun me into building a story about it. So that’s more of an idea that spins a story rather than a setting. Sometimes I’ve had a character I’ve really wanted to tell a story about, like Raoden or something like this, and then I build magic to match. It happens all different ways, and really it’s a give and a take. Once you start with a character, you start building a story around them, and then you stop and you work on the magic for a while, then you go back to the character and then you go back to the magic and then you go to the setting and then you go to the plot. As you build an outline you weave all these things together. You’re not just spending time on one till it’s done and then the next until it’s done. It’s happened all different ways for me.

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  • 1605

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    As a writer who’s written a lot, do you still struggle with some aspects of writing, like your punctuation still sucks or something?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My biggest weakness as a writer is repeating words and phrases, which is a very common thing for writers to have. There are people like Pat Rothfuss who don’t have this problem. Because they slave over every sentence. For years. [audience laughs] You know I love him. The way I deal with it is to highlight the ones I struggle with a lot, and have my assistant look for them. Then do a search and replace in Microsoft Word for the word but with brackets around it, so it leaves the same word it just brackets it so I can decide, do I really want that word, or did I just use it because that’s what I always use. The other big thing as a writer is I still don’t like revision. I want to be writing a new story, not revising an old one. Fortunately, this is a battle revision won like twenty years ago. More like fifteen. But I’ve gotten used to how I have to do it. When is the book done, and the number of drafts it requires. So I do it, even though, you know…

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  • 1606

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    What level of completion do you write your novels to before you send them to your editor?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Here’s a quick look at my drafting process: Draft one, hopefully no one ever sees. I’m a momentum writer. A lot of writers are like this. I can’t stop in the middle and revise unless something is really broken. If there’s something I want to change, I just keep going and try it out for the next chapter. So if I decide I needed another character here, I will just write them in and everyone will act like they’ve always been there. I’ll try it out for a chapter. If it works, I’ll keep going that way, and if it doesn’t, I’ll cut them out and try something different. So first drafts can be really weird. “Am I supposed to know this person everyone else knows? Have I forgotten who this was?” And things like that. Characters just vanish, and I’ll leave out the foreshadowing—foreshadowing is really easy to add in later. Things like this. Second draft is to fix all of that stuff. I can sometimes send that off, but what I really like to send off is the third draft, which is the first polished. Where for the first time I try to make it pretty, or at least not cringe-worthy. So that’s what I send to an editor. That’s also what I send to alpha readers, which is my writing group, my agent, my friends and family and things like that. Once that gets back, I do a bunch of revisions until it’s good, and then we get beta readers, which are usually community beta readers. If you want to be a beta reader, I’m not the person to convince, Peter is. He’s my editorial assistant. He’s the one who picks the betas, and they do a bunch of reads, and I do a bunch of drafts based on what they say, and then I go to proofreaders.

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  • 1607

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    In the Wax and Wayne series, how do you come up with all of Wayne’s little wisecracks?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So here’s the deal. It’s kinda hard to write people who are more clever than you are. It’s one of the tricks you have to learn as a writer. The big difference, they do it off the cuff in the moment, and you can spend a week or two trying to find the perfect thing to say, and that’s really how it goes. Oftentimes the characters who are more humorous, like Wayne’s a great example. It’s very natural how he says things; it can take me weeks to come up with like a couple of lines of dialogue for Wayne, where other things get written very quickly. My favorite Wayneisms are when I can have him use a word that looks–when you’re reading along you assume it’s a word, but then you go back and you’re like, “Wait a minute. Did he actually say defecation of character?” Or something like that. So you don’t even notice on the first read through. The things that a copy editor’s like, “You used the wrong word here,” those are my favorite Wayneisms. Those take forever.

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  • 1608

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    So I just finished The Bands of Mourning, which was my favorite out of that series. Did you know when you were writing Alloy of Law how you were going to link this to the original, with the kandra, the bands of the Lord Ruler...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah the kandra were seeded, MeLaan you can go and look back in the original three. Like I’m going to use her in the next series, for sure. Now what I usually do is when I’m starting a series, and I did this for this one, is I will write the first book in the series. So I did this with Steelheart, I did this with the original Mistborn, I did this with Alloy of Law. I write the first book, I sit down, and say “Okay, what worked about that, what can I expand upon” and then I outline the series with those characters and then go back and revise the first one to match and then I release the first one. Does that make sense?

    Question

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So not everything do I know writing the first one but by the time I’m through the revisions I usually do.

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  • 1609

    Interview: Feb 17th, 2016

    Question

    Can I get the name of a character we have not met yet?

    Brandon Sanderson

    *pause* who can I dredge up… The problem is I don’t usually canonize them until I’m sitting and writing them. Uh… *sound obscured*

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  • 1610

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    How many words do you think you average a day?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I average about 2,000.

    Question

    [Laughing] That's actually a goal I could hit!

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, not too many - I'm just incredibly consistent.

    Tags

  • 1611

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    The magic system you wrote in the Wheel of Time, that seems like a non-constrained system, and then most of your worlds have a constrained system of magic. Which one was harder to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Wheel of Time was harder to write, because just my natural inclination is the other way.

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  • 1612

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    I really admire how [prolifically?] you write, just like things that I'd be terrified to write, so I haven't [?]...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Did you hear my speech?

    Question

    I did! But whenever I write something it sounds really hollow...

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's okay, it happens to all of us. Everyone kind of starts that way. It doesn't have to be good until you've done revisions. Give yourself the permission to do a crappy first draft.

    Question

    The writing defies me if it's really crappy...

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, yeah, but everybody fixes it, don't stress. You've got to learn how to do the crappy first draft. You've gotta trust me on this one!

    Tags

  • 1613

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    How long did it take you to come up with the bad metaphors in the Reckoners?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was really hard. I thought it'd be easy, cause writing bad stuff you usually do on accident, and then it took me forever to come up with them. It was the hardest part of the books.

    Question

    Yeah, it wasn't that they were bad, they were just a different way of thinking...

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's right.

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  • 1614

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    Do you wish you had [?] any of your stories based on fan feedback?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, with the exception of a few things in the Wheel of Time, where there a few things I don't think I got quite right. With my books, I'm pretty confident...I mean, that doesn't mean everyone will love everything about them, but I'm confident that I told the story I wanted to tell, and sometimes that's not the story everybody wants, but it is the story I felt was the right story.

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  • 1615

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    Have you ever considered writing nonfiction?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I briefly considered writing a writing book, but I don't think I know enough yet to write one.

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  • 1616

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    How do you make cultures so vibrant?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Dig deep rather than go wide. One or two cultures that play off of each other in an interesting way, where you've considered a lot of the ramifications, are going to be better than trying to create 30 different cultures. Try to keep focused on what's going to be important to the characters and the books, and try to spend your worldbuilding there. So like if the characters are going to have conflict over religion, spend time on religion. But if instead they're going to have different linguistics and that's a source of conflict, spend time on the linguistics.

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  • 1617

    Interview: Feb 25th, 2016

    Question

    [on David's bad metaphors]

    Brandon Sanderson

    It came from me writing a bad metaphor on accident, and then being like, "I'm going to run with this and see where it goes." I like it [as a character quirk] for David because his personality is that he's a little overzealous about things, and so trying so hard on the metaphors is a great way to express that.

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  • 1618

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2016

    Question

    When did you decide to make a whole Cosmere?

    Brandon Sanderson

    By the time he was first published.

    Tags

  • 1619

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2016

    Question

    How did you come up with the powers of allomancy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I made a crew and thought, what powers would make them better?

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  • 1620

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2016

    Question

    How do you channel Wayne?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wear his hat.

    Tags

  • 1621

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2016

    Question

    Conflicts?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Make conflict and setting important to the character. Making a religion that opposes something the character believes will make instant conflict.

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  • 1622

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2016

    Question

    Do you worry that you get too repetitious with words?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, he thinks all authors do. (I totally worry about this.)

    Tags

  • 1623

    Interview: Feb 20th, 2016

    Question

    How do you set a scene without describing for pages?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One or two really powerful sentences, let the reader fill in the rest.

    Tags

  • 1624

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    You have thousands of years of history, mostly talking about Stormlight Archives, like Radiants have done this, Heralds have done this, you have in some ways figured out what happened and what’s going to happen with that stuff. And you have a friend/author Patrick Rothfuss that also does this, stuff that happened many many years ago, have you guys ever talked to make sure you’re not going to do the same cool thing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Good question. No I haven’t ever asked him about that. The only thing I ever remember talking to him about world-building wise was magic and his magic and things like that. I was really interested in sympathetic magic also warbreaker has an element to it, I really liked his sympathetic magic in Kingkiller. But when I get together with Pat I try not to ask the questions that I know the fans are asking him a lot, I try to be somebody who’s a colleague that we can talk about other sorts of things to give him a break from that. I never ask him when the next book will be out, that’s your job not mine. I ask him how his kid is, how has it been working with DAW lately, are there any frustrations for you in the business. The stuff he can’t talk with other people about. He can talk about his kids but he can’t really talk about publisher stuff with a lot of other people.

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  • 1625

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    Are any of the magic systems stronger, do they have an advantage?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, definitely some are stronger than others. Definitely. There is no attempt made on my part to power balance between magics. Power balancing is for RPGs where it’s very important, it’s not for storytelling. A lot of people like to ask the “Who would win, X or Y?” sort of thing, and I don’t get into a lot of that, I usually say, “Well, what’s the situation?” I’m not big on the - if people clash, if powers clash, I will write the situation, but it’s so conditional. So I have a hard time with these cage match things that people really like to do, because they’re fun, but as an author, I can come up with a dozen situations where either one of them would win. That’s what you do, in writing - you say, what is the context? But that’s a tangent from your question. The powers are not equal. The Shards were generally equal. Some have given up more power than others.

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  • 1626

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    I get it that sometimes writers have organic process when they’re writing sometime, they start writing one thing and then something else. Is there one particular character, situation in the story where as you were writing it, it kind of evolved on its own, kind of surprised you, if you don’t mind, could you tell us about it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So… there are always things when you’re writing that evolve beyond what you expect of them to be, and it happens even to the most strict of outliners. And I do, even as I usually call myself an outliner, say that you shouldn’t be too strict about the outline. Just because the more- What happens with the writers, the more you steep yourself in your story, the more your subconscious will start to make connections and the more your skill as a writer will start to, uhm, start to take over? It’s hard to explain a lot of why it is, but a similar in… honestly, like hitting a baseball, right? When you, when you’re practicing, you can be very conscious about it. “Alright, here’s how my stance should be, here’s what I’m doing wrong, let’s work on that”, consciously. But in the moment when you’re, like, swinging at the ball in the game, most of that’s out of your head and you’re just letting instinct go. The planning is all of that sort of stuff beforehand that you do, like a baseball player, and then the writing often involves a lot more of the “just swinging”, and then the revision goes back to more, a lot more conscious, if that... makes sense as an explanation. And so as you’re going, a lot of time it’s the instincts that start going somewhere, you’ll get this chapter and say “huh, something’s wrong with this”, or “oh, this is a better path, let’s go look at my outline and see what needs to be rebuilt.” Uhm, some examples of this, if I can give them… uh, well, I mean, I write the Alcatraz books completely just as free-written books, but in books you’ve read, for instance, Spook’s story in Hero of Ages was not in the original outline. Uhm, you know, what happened to him and things like that in Well of Ascension was, and then I was like, um, I want to take this character further and feel like I need more to this story, I’m missing something and Spook’s story is where I started taking that. So that was a more natural, uh, sort of outgrowth of the storytelling. But that happens in every book, there are certain things that’ll… that go off target a little bit and turn out to be better. Yeah, there’s a target that you’re at that your subconsciousness is leading for[?] that your consciousness doesn’t know about yet… uhm, yeah, it happens every book.

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  • 1627

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    I know the whole, like, “all those characters are your children” type of thing, but is there a favourite one of yours, from your writing and, or how the character is played out.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uhm, I… you know… Robert Jordan always said, “It’s whoever I’m writing at the moment”, which I’ve stolen wholesale and said that a lot of times. If I’m pressed, I’ll usually pick Dalinar, just cause he was one of the first, but that doesn’t do it justice, because you really do need to... whoever you’re writing needs to be your favourite at the time.

    Tags

  • 1628

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    As your characters have evolved and grown, we’ve been seeing them in different books, we’ve also seen, like with your character Wayne, kind of the sense of humour of the character’s changed, we’ve been kind of seeing this… I guess, uh, more seedy and base sense of humour with him, which in some ways made him more lovable, but like with kids, I’m a little bit worried sometimes, with the age level [laughs], and I’m wondering if we’ll see more characters like that grow in as we’re looking at Mistborn era 2 and 3 coming out, and if so, do I need to be more concerned, or is it really gonna be, or is it… what methods, do we need some rating system [???]

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I would say that this is more... “I write the character that fits the situation” rather than any sort of an evolution on my part of this, so… I don’t know. I will… really, I would leave that to other people. [pauses] This is kind of one of those weird things where, like, I will both get on the same day, sometimes, e-mails from someone who’s like “how can you be so crude in your books, I thought your books were supposed to be family-friendly” followed by “why won’t you address adult topics in your books [pause as audience laughs], why do they all feel so children-esque, child-esque”, and I would assume that those are the types of e-mails that everyone gets, even George RR Martin. [huge laugh from everyone] “When are you gonna get to some real adult themes, George?” I’m sure there’s someone who’s sent that e-mail to him. Uhm, yeah, I write the books, you know, I have… I’m certainly not as interested as some authors in digging into the more... quote-unquote “explicit content”, but at some points there are characters like Wayne where I’m like, “you know, I need to write this character, who they would be”, and I can have them dance around the words to obstinate… [laughs]that was not the intention! Dance around the words to obfuscate things and something like that, but if I don’t let Wayne say some of the things he wants to say, then I’m not being true to that character in the same way I wouldn’t be… being true to Dalinar if I didn’t let him, you know, be… the strictly “I follow the rules” type of person that he’s become, because both of those types of people exist in the world. Uhm, your specific question on era 3 of Mistborn, um, is… I don’t anticipate a Wayne-like character, but who knows? Right, era 3 right now is kind-of focused on… two Terris people, the main character and her brother, and she’s a computer programmer in the early days of computer programming, and, well, like a Fortran programmer or something like that… And… You know, it’s going to be… her story’s going to be a little bit more geek-culturish and things like that… It’ll very fun with the artwork in those, she’s saying that. I can’t promise you one way or the other what I’m going to do, so I think what you’re, what you should be doing is reading them yourself and then deciding for yourself with whom you will share the books.

    Tags

  • 1629

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    I was just wondering if you had any plans for a longer Legion type work.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The goal was for a long time if I could get a television show off the ground, and I would write a novel to accompany it to kind of publicize the show. We sold the rights a couple times, but it never got off the ground. I still think it’s possible someday, but I probably don’t envision doing a longer one - in fact, I’ll say, I don’t envision doing a longer one right now unless that happens. Though I do envision doing a third story at some point.

    Question

    So you would say that Legion is best consumed in forty-four minute blocks?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I mean, when I came up with the idea, I thought, this would make a great television show, let me write a few episodes.

    Tags

  • 1630

    Interview: Apr 23rd, 2016

    Question

    As the Cosmere gets a lot bigger, what is your biggest worry going forward writing the books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Going forward, my biggest worry is making sure that I do things like get the SA done as a solid, complete whole, rather than letting it become...like, too distracted about the Cosmere. Like, I’m not worried about that for Mistborn, but I’m worried about that for Stormlight. Stormlight needs to be a self contained whole, it needs to be a self contained epic, and I have to be really careful not to - in the later books in particular - let it turn into the Avengers, something like that. So that’s my biggest worry right now, that I will let too much of that seep in. I’m being very careful.

    Tags

  • 1631

    Interview: Sep 1st, 2016

    Question

    Stormlight feels very to me on so many levels. You've got the interludes where we get a lot of world-building, get to see more of the planet that just one place. But there is also a sense a lot of your books we are experiencing the aftermath of something. And in Stormlight that something is coming. How is this affecting the way that you are building your world for us ?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, this is gonna get you a story, okay? So here's the story - yeah, I have time. So, alright, darkest time in my writing career, okay? - was when I was writing books 11 and 12 unpublished. I was getting rejection letters - and they were rejection letters for things like Elantris and Dragonsteel, which I was really confident in. Elantris, Dragonsteel, and White Sand were the good books in the era of unpublished Brandon. White Sand by the way, is out as a graphic novel now. You can also read the prose version by emailing me by my website form, we just email it out for free, so you can compare it to the graphic novel. And by the way, Dragonsteel, you're like "Hoid's origin story" - we'll do that eventually. The shattered plains started in dragonsteel, and I pulled them out, and I pulled Dalinar out, and a bunch of stuff, when I build stormlight. And so it's a really schizophrenic book now - shizeophrenic is the wrong term, but half of it was what became Stormlight, and half of it is Hoid's origin story. So, the half that is Hoids origin story will eventually get a book. Anyway, darkest point- I'm not selling anything, everyone is telling me like "your books are too long", this is the number one things I'm getting from rejections, "your books are too long, and your books are not market friendly in that the worlds are too weird". I'm getting at a time - you gotta remember, I love George but you gotta remember this is right after George got huge, and George introduced gritty, low magic, earth-like fantasy as kind of "the thing" that was big. And his books were large too, I don't know why people kept telling me mine were too big, but they wanted gritty and they wanted low magic and they wanted earth-like. So I was getting rejection after rejection on these things. What people were buying were things like Joe Abercrombie's stuff, which is great, Joe's a great writer, but you know, short things that gave people a similar feel to George RR Martin, but you know, but were low magic, kind of earth-like medieval societies. Basically shorter versions of George is basically what they wanted. So I would go to cons and they would be like "have you read the beginning of game of thrones? write something like that" and so finally against better advice, I sat down and said "alright I'll try something like that". And you guys do not want to read Sanderson trying to be like George RR Martin. It was embarrassing, and so I wrote these books, each something different. And I like trying to do something different, I'm not sad I tried to do something different, but at the end I was like "I can't do this, these books are crap". Worst books I wrote were the two that were books 11 and 12, like I shouldn't be getting worse as a writer, I shouldn't be getting worse the more books I write, and finally I was like "screw it, I'm gonna write the biggest, baddest, most awesome book that I can!". They want it more short, this is gonna be twice as long! They say the world is too weird, I'm gonna do the weirdest world I've always wanted to do, I'm gonna write the type of fantasy book that nobody's writing that I wish they would write. And I'm gonna break all these rules that say "don't do flashbacks". Screw you, I'm gonna put flashbacks and they're long! They say "don't do prologues", screw you, I'm doing three prologues! It really does, because Way of Kigns starts with the Heralds prologues, then it goes to Szeth prologue, then it goes to the viewpoint of the guy in Kaladin's squad, also a prologue. Then it jumps like eight months and then we start the story. I did all the stuff they told me not to do because I just wanted to make the biggest, most coolest and baddest epic I could - bad in a good term. And I finished this book, which was basically flipping the bird to the entire publishing industry, right? And that - within a month of finish that is when Moesha [sp? - his editor], who I told you is bipolar, got manic and read through his backlist of books people had sent him, including one I'd sent him two years earlier, which was Elantris. He'd never looked at it, he read it in a night, he called me manic, and he said "I wanna buy your book!". And actually what happened is, he called me and I'd moved since then, and gotten a new phone number, we used to have landlines back then, I had a cellphone by then but I had a landline at the time, and I'd actually - this is gonna date me - my first email address was AOL. And then I realized AOL - I wont speak ill of AOL - yes I will, AOL sucked, and so I'm like "well I need to get my own email address", so I went and got one, but that meant the email had changed. So I sent to anyone who actively had one of my books on submission like "this is my new contact info", but he'd had it for two years, so I figured I was never seeing it - if you were on the last panel, I mentioned that I sent things into tor and they vanished, but I never got rejections - I never got rejected from Tor, I sent them four books, they're still sitting there somewhere I'm sure. But, so I finished this big beast of a book, right, and then I sell Elantris, and I'm like "great, now I don't know what to do". So my editor is like "well what are you working on now, I want to see that too", so I sent him Way of Kings, and I still remember after he called me, he was like "Uhh...Well this isn't the sort of thing that new authors usually publish. Can we split it?" and I said "No, you split the book and it's a really bad book, cause you have all the buildup but none of the payoff". And he's like "uggh", and I said "that's alright, I've got this idea for Mistborn", I pitched him Mistborn, "I'll do Way of Kings later", there were some things I wanted to fix about it, it actually needed something, and I didn't know what that something was yet, and I didn't learn it until working on the Wheel of Time, but that's a different story. But you're asking why is stormlight so different, and Stormlight is a series of my heart, this is the series I wrote when nothing else mattered, and I thought I might never get published and I just wanted to do what I felt that the genre needed that nobody was doing, right? And so I felt like fantasy needed to be pushed a little further in its worldbuilding, and so I did that. I felt like, there was a lot going on. The interludes were kind of my solution that Robert Jordan and George RR Martin were having, which - they were fantastic writers - I was able to learn from them, and Robert Jordan, one of the problems I think he was having was he fell in love with the side characters, and then these side characters took over the story to an extent that it was hard to manage. I'm not bashing on Robert Jordan, he talked about this, he talked about book 10 and how being a parallel novel was a mistake. I could learn from his mistakes, it doesnt make me a better writer, what it means is I can learn from what they did. And I said "okay, I'm gonna put pressure valves in my book, I'm gonna put a short story collection in each book where I'm gonna write about side characters, and those who wanna skip them can, and those who don't can read them", and I'll just make sure that I contain them in these short stories, these interludes, and that lets me do what I want but also lets the book keep its focus. So I'm doing a lot of things with these books that were like my love letter to the epic fantasy genre, and so I'm enthusiastic that you actually all like it and want to read them.

    Tags

  • 1632

    Interview: Sep 1st, 2016

    Question

    How much of your- the way you interact with your fans and your process with us (?) is a reaction to being a Wheel of Time fan, and the thins that you wanted to happen...?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Right. I think a lot of it is, but it's a mix of being a Wheel of Time fan and just a fantasy fan in general, wanting to know more about business, being an author, and just... wanting this transparency and... I don't think that the authors before can really be blamed, they didn't have the Internet, right? I mean, you couldn't really have a thing like I have now on my website, or that most authors have a website, I mean, some authors tried newsletters, but those were huge productions, requiring, you know, actual paper, you know, that stuff they used to use, then sent through the actual mail, not email... the email's named after it, kids. (laughing) These were huge productions, and so they were- It's not like I sat one day and said "oh, those authors!", but then... you see, my generation, when we broke in and were, the Internet was becoming the thing that it is, were like "ah, let's use this!" I remember when Kevin James said to me "but so here's Twitter", and I'm like like, "eh, Twitter. Why would... they're so short", he said "No, but it's like you can create your own newsfeed from all the people you're following, and it's like a little kind of newspaper about what's going on in everyone's life." I'm like "oh, that's a really useful thing as an author", so I hopped on Twitter very early, I hopped on Reddit very early, I hopped on... eh, some of the other defunct places, but yeah, the idea was that... I'm gonna go off a tangent, you'll get a lot of this. I have this view, as a writer - and again, don't go say that to other writers, you shouldn't do this - the way I feel is that I'm an artist and you are my patrons. In the old days, you used to... to be an artist, you used to have wealthy patrons, right? That's how you made art, that some rich person came and said "here's a bunch of money to live on, now go make this art and then, you know, mention that I'm your patron". And a lot of great art we have, in fact almost all of it came from somebody paying so the artist can actually have food and a life while they're making this art. In the modern society that's changed to the kind of crowdsourcing, "you are my patron". The crowd in general says "okay, we're all going to be in (???) so that you don't have to be one" - thank you - "You write these stories and then we'll support you". And so my philosophy is: in a lot of way, you are my boss, in more of a patronage sort of thing, you're my patron, and so I should be accountable with what I'm doing. It doesn't mean that I'm going to necessarily change what I'm doing, and it doesn't mean that I'm always going to be writing the thing you want me to, but I will be clear about what I'm doing and when, just for that transparency, 'cause we can do it now, when we're not- we couldn't before.

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  • 1633

    Interview: Sep 1st, 2016

    Question

    Can you give any example or examples of some things that you got to hear in (???). What that something that you did, or was that actual (???)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question, I'll go through a few of these things for you, that one was me. One of the things that was awesome, but also a little bit difficult to- anyway, it was awesome to be able to come as a fan, having read the books for twenty years and be thinking about "wow, I wish this would happen", and then say "wow, I'm gonna make that happen". But as I was doing it, I was also realizing it was dangerous, because there was a real danger for putting in fanservice type stuff, not in the traditional meaning of fanservice, but like the fanservice of Na(???) showing up in the last battle or things like this, like little fan jokes. I found that I had a lot of temptation to put those in, and so I had to tread this really careful line where I was saying "what do I as a fan want to make the book more fulfilling", not just as a joke. One of the things that as a writer I've always wanted to see was gateways used for more than they were used and the books were never bringing up that point, you know, teleportation, instant travel has a lot of ramifications. One of the things I kind of put on myself was that I didn't want to create a lot of new (ways/weaves?), because I knew if I did, I'd really risk taking it to far away from Robert Jordan's vision, so I said "let's stick mostly to the weaves(?) he's used, and see if I can use them in more different ways. This whole idea of taking the magic and digging deeper into it rather than going wider with it. And so a lot of the stuff with gateways is me. A lot of- so for instance, I also went in and said to Harriet "every book that Robert Jordan's done, almost all of them, has added a new character who's become a main character or at least a side character. If we don't do that for these last books it's gonna feel weird to people. So I would like to take one of the (???) and bring them to prominence, and make them a viewpoint character and do what Robert Jordan's done" and so that's what (???) came from and though there's nothing in Robert Jordan's notes about this little bit of, about his profession, take him and play with him, and do whatever you want. And that was almost a little pressure valve for me, to put more "Brandon-y" sort of things, goofy magic system stuff with that, and that pressure valve allowed me to, not really knowing my writing style, I was able to make the rest of it be a little more Robert Jordan-esque, if that makes sense. You see that pressure valve with Perrin and the (world dream?), the world dreams(?), because, as I've said before, Robert Jordan didn't leave much on Perrin, Perrin is a big, empty... big blank slate for these books. We knew where he ended up at the end and that was it. So Perrin was the other sort of "do whatever you want, Brandon" sort of thing. He left a lot more on the other characters. So if you're reading Perrin scenes or if you're seeing him play with gateways, you're seeing me kinda let Brandon leak out a bit more. And this was done intentionally, I'd say that was my pressure valve, but also... when I was given this, Harriet sat me down and said "you are the author now. I didn't hire a ghostwriter on purpose. I didn't want somebody who was just going to be Robert Jordan, because that would make a bad book", in her opinion. "Robert Jordan can't finish this, so you have to do it and yes, we want to stay true to his vision, but you are the writer now." And she was very clear on that, and I always remembered that and how much that meant to me, being... you know, she was the ultimate authority, but I had creative control to do whatever I felt the books needed, and her job was to rein be back if she though I went too far, and make sure the voice was consistent and things like that. So I got to do a lot with these books that I don't think a ghostwriter would be able to do.

    Footnote

    [I'm guessing this refers to Wheel of Time writing]

    Tags

  • 1634

    Interview: Sep 1st, 2016

    Question

    I like about your writing that you know when to stop. There are a lot of writers who just keep going and going and going and just don't seem to know when to stop. How much of... pre-planning do you do for your writing, and when do you know when to... cut with the breaks off(?), like "you know, I've gotta finish this up, cause I don't want this to drag out", like so many other authors have done in past.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um, so one advantage I had - I found I'm more rare in this, I though I would be the normal - but I am a heavy outliner, and usually what you find with outliners as writers is that they write good endings, but they have trouble with characters. Usually what we call a discovery writers who just kinda find their way through the book as they go is that they have this really lively characters and then their endings just kind of... whatever. And there are great discovery writers who have great endings, and there are plenty of outline writers who have great characters, you just have to learn to shore up(?) what you witness, learn your writing style, and for me that is my early books, the ones that weren't published, where the weakness was characters. I was really worried about it, and so I spent like five years being "how do I make the characters work", and I can only do this kind of hybrid method where I took my friends who I know write really great characters and I tried the methods they used, and so I kind of discovery-write characters and outline my plot and then if the characters grow into something the plot wouldn't work for, I either take those characters out and grow someone else in that place or I build the plot for characters. So right now I have this floating outline that changes as I'm going. But I like good endings. And I feel like good endings are something that a lot of... Hollywood(?) skims on them, and a lot of books just don't quite bring it together. And so it's something very important to me, that I don't start my book until I know what the ending I'm pointing toward is. And then (???) then I'm done, when I've got that ending and I'm pointed at it, when I finish it, I can then be done. I always feel that a piece of art that's continuous, like writing a serialized work, it needs to finish at some point to actually be a piece of art. And that's why, you know, Mistborn trilogy, the publisher hates that I ended the Mitborn trilogy with them dying, he said "yes, but you've just hit the bestseller list, hopped on the bestsellers", and yep. I'm done, though. That is a piece of art. It's finished. And it's not, you know... one of the things I knew I was going to do in my life and I think the publishers were okay with it because a lot of things I was doing very early in my career was, you know, start with convincing readers - I hope I've convinced you all - that what they're following is kind of Brandon Sanderson Book Brand rather than latching on to a series. A lot of authors have this trouble with people kind of latching on to the series and not the author, and then they feel tied to this series, and I never wanted to do that, cause like you said, I think there are plenty of series that have gone for a very long time and their authors always loved it. But I've also read series where it feels like the author feels chained to the series, and he only writes one of these when they actually need to pay checks or something like that, and I never wanted to be there. And so very early I'm like "I'm not writing the sequel to Elantris immediately, I might never" - I probably will, but I told people that it's a standalone book, it's just there, and if I write a sequel, it will be about different characters, cause that story's done. Mistborn trilogy... yes, I'm gonna come back to the world, but the story of these characters is done. And training people to, like, "alright, I like what Brandon does, I'll trust him that the next thing will be good too", and... hopefully that works, and even if it doesn't, I'm still gonna do what I do, I'd rather be a person who writes a lot of different things even if that means I have a smaller audience, because I really like jumping projects, it keeps me fresh. People ask me how am I so productive. It's really a mix of two things. And I'm going on tangent, like I said! But people ask this all the time, and I'm like, "I don't know how to answer that, I just do my job, right?" I write every day, consistently. I don't write very quickly, I'm not a fast writer, but I write very consistently. I think I am lucky in that I didn't get published earlier and so I had to have a job and all of this stuff and go through school all while finding time to write two thousand words a day and I did that for ten years before I got published, and so I had momentum, I knew I could just do these two thousand words a day and I would always have a book that I was working on and getting ready, and I also learned to jump projects a lot to keep myself fresh, and so when I finished something, I immediately looked for something very different to do, which will refresh my mind, let me hit the ground running. A lot of writers have downtime between books, and that downtime is because... I don't know if you guys get this kind of, this... funk after you finish great book you've read and you realize like "oh maaan", kind of like coming down from a high. Writers get that too, when you finish a book and you're like "whoah". But if I can get excited about the next thing very quickly, and start on it immediately, then I just keep my momentum and keep going. So it's kind of a mixture of those two things, good habits and switching projects, so that means you shouldn't be frustrated when I do a book that's not your favourite series, whatever it is, because your favourite series would not be coming in faster, most likely. In fact, what you can look at the time the Stormlight books have taken, and compare them to time that other big epic fantasy series taken, I do a Stormlight book at about the same rate actually, I'm not that much faster than Pat or George or something like that, it's just that I know to fill that time between those big books with something else to keep my momentum going - or at least my psychology lets me do this, and I don't think the books would be any faster without that.

    Tags

  • 1635

    Interview: Sep 1st, 2016

    Question

    One of my favourite things about your books is your characters. And I was wondering - what advice would you give for aspiring authors about developing characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oof. This is the hardest one for me to talk about, because for me, it was a matter of taking what I was doing wrong and learning to do it right, which... how do you do that? That's the story of becoming better at everything. For me with characters, a big "click" that happened in my brain was when I realized every character is the hero of their own story. Every character sees the world through their eyes, that's the only experience they had, and they don't exist to fill a role, we don't exist to fill roles, we fill roles! We fill lots of them. But that's not why we exist, right? We aren't sidekick, or we aren't spouse. We fill those roles, and we identify in those roles, but we are not those roles, and when I started to treat my characters each like, I ask, what is this person's passion in life? How do they see themselves? They're okay not being at forefront of the story, but what in their minds they see as their life meaning? What do they want, who are they, all of these things, and I stopped sticking people into roles, which is really dangerous for an outline writer, sticking people in roles. I'm like, stop doing that! My characters really came alive a lot more. So that's... I don't know if that helps, but the biggest piece of advice I can give you is try to figure out a way where you can let your characters pretend like, well, what would it be like with this person the hero of the story, not just the sidekick, what would they do? How would they approach it? What would they be doing if they weren't saving the world? If this plot hadn't hit them like a freight train, what would they be doing in life, they would care about things! Would would they care about, what would they be doing.

    Tags

  • 1636

    Interview: Sep 1st, 2016

    Question

    So, I wanted you ask: you, I think more than almost any other fantasy author, you create universes and then you leave them behind. I feel like you could have pages of a physics lecture for each of your universes and you'd have equations for everything. Have you always had these ideas for these various universes with gods and magic systems and things like that, or are you always creating them as you go?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Its yes and no. A lot of the ones you're seeing in the cosmere are things I created at the beginning to be kind of what the cosmere was. But I left some holes intentionally cause I knew I would come up with cool things that I wanted to add, and so I built in that wiggle room, and I'm always coming up with new ones, and there are way more that I want to do than I can write, like the one I keep wanting to find a chance for is like - do you guys know how Nikolai Tesla tried to create wireless energy? I think I've talked about this one. Like, he tried to create wireless energy, and I'm like "what if there were a world where that happened naturally"? Where you had an actual current going, and you could set your lantern on the ground and it would create a current and your lantern would just turn on, you don't need electricity, and you could have giant toads that could shoot out electrodes in their tongue that would create a current, like tazer tongues? *Brandon makes tazer noises* Stuff like this. And so, I started jumping in to looking at electricity and things like this, and current and whatnot, and that's just all back there and I'm like "aww, someday I need to be able to write this." But there are so many things that I want to write that I just don't have the time for, so it's a yes and no.

    Tags

  • 1637

    Interview: Dec 6th, 2016

    Question

    I’ve gotta ask, you talk about your writing process and there’s so much joy and motivation. How do you keep that going?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mostly, I love doing it. I’ve had to build good habits, cause otherwise we’ll all goof off. But I just love it.

    Tags

  • 1638

    Interview: Dec 6th, 2016

    Question

    When you put together different magic systems, do you just have a file of those?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have a file of magic systems, characters, and settings and plots. Periodically I review it for a while and certain connections are made. I build on those in my head, then put it back in if it isn’t working. Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, I wanted to write a book about a bounty hunter woman who runs an inn and kills the people who come to the inn. I developed that all without the magic system or anything like that, and then said what world would this fit on? Would it fit on any of them? Do I need to make a new story? This worked really well on Threnody, so I put it there and put the magic in. Usually it’s the other way around, I’ve got the world and I need some characters to plug in.

    Tags

  • 1639

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2017

    Justin Carmony

    So it's been a little over three and a half years since Words of Radiance came out, how does it feel to have this book ready for release on Tuesday?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It feels great. Stormlight books are an enormous undertaking. People know me for big, thick, awesome but fat fantasy books. If you look in between, I've released four or so normal-sized books. The majority of the books I write are about the size you would expect the average novel to be.

    But these books are something different and something special. It's not just the idea of, you know, "I want to write big." Big doesn't mean better, necessarily, but what I can do in these books is I can really dig into a topic that you just can't in a shorter book. I tend to plot these books like an entire trilogy, and each book had the plotting of a trilogy inside that single book. I include a short story collection in there that is interspersed in between. It's a really different way to plot a book, just because there are so many moving pieces, so many different things going on, so many plot lines to cover, but also it's really engaging and exciting to write because nothing else is like it. … There are really interesting things I can do with the format of a novel, and the methods of storytelling, that I just can't do in anything else. It is really exciting but it is so exhausting.

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  • 1640

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2017

    Justin Carmony

    We talked a little bit about some of the challenges that you have publishing something as large as Oathbringer. For you what was a highlight moment during this journey of writing and releasing the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    One of the things about it — and we're trying to do a spoiler free interview here — is the story of the Stormlight Archive, the story about the story. … I sat down in the early 2000s, before I had actually even sold a book, and I started work on this project that I wanted to be a really big epic of monumental proportions.

    I worked on this book for a good two years and I just didn't have the skill to pull it off yet as a writer. The book just didn't work. There were lots of pieces in it that did, but the book itself didn't work. One of the problems is that I created all of these interesting characters, but I told all of their stories all at once, which meant that in the book I only got like 15 percent of each of their stories before it was just too long. … So the book as a whole was unsatisfying, a little piece of a lot of characters stories.

    When I came back to it years later, after working on The Wheel of Time (series), after growing a lot as a writer, I decided the method I would use to tell the story would be to … focus on the backstory of one of the characters. That way I didn't have to dive into the backstory of each character at once, I could keep focused, and I could give each book in the series its own soul and heart, so to speak. That's a long, round about way of saying I have been waiting now years — 15 years — to be able to tell Dalinar's story, which I finally get to do in this book.

    Tags

  • 1641

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2017

    Justin Carmony

    I definitely agree after having read it. It leads me to my next question. I'm not going to lie, there are multiple heart-wrenching moments for many of the characters. As an author, what is it like taking these characters you've created and love, and putting them through these situations that elicit a very emotional response from the readers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are a lot of different ways to respond to this. … On one hand, most of the times, since I'm an outliner, I've been able to see it coming for a long time.

    So on one hand I don't have the same sort of anguish that a reader might since I've had that time to get used to the idea that this is what this character's arc is going to be, this is what is coming, and I'm prepared for it. Sometimes in the middle of writing you realize there is something (as an author) you need to do, and one response to it is an excitement, not because we're sadists, but because as a writer as you're creating a piece of art like this, and bringing it together, and something clicks where you say "Oh, that's what I need to do" — the kind of moment of excitement, relief.

    I'm not sure I can explain the feeling of satisfaction when these things come together, and a little bit of awe that the process is actually working. Every writer I know has this sense in them that yes, they've been able to write books in the past but is this actually going to work this time? Is this the time where it's just not going to come together, and the book is going to fail?

    There is always that worry.

    And when a book is snapping together, even when it involves something really traumatic happening to a character, there is a part of you that is just so glad that it's working, and so excited by how it's working. Like I said, it sounds a little sadistic but often times the response is "ohhhh, that's right, that's absolutely right."

    … Then there is the sense that books are catharsis. Books are a way for us as human beings (to) learn to deal with trauma and emotion in a safer emotional environment, even though they can be heart-wrenching. … When you can elicit strong emotions in readers for things like this, it's in a way, hopefully, what we're trying to do — making it so that the person is able to cope with that better in the future when it happens in their own life.

    There is this sense of — and maybe I'm over-inflating my own usefulness in the world — but this is one of the things we try to do actively as writers is come up with these powerful scenes and emotions just to give you a chance to feel that before it blindsides you, perhaps, in real life when it happens in a more real and much more powerful way happening to yourself, or to people around you.

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  • 1642

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2017

    Justin Carmony

    Many times in the past when you've been interviewed, people have asked you how being LDS (a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) has influenced your writing. I would like to ask the inverse: how has the experiences of being a successful fantasy writer influenced your faith?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a great question. One of the things I consider the mandate of a writer is to get inside the heads of people other than yourself and present them accurately, on the page, in a way that people who have that belief system or that philosophy on life would read it and say "yes, you got it right, that is how I believe."

    … I get really, really annoyed when I read a book and the only person who has a faith like mine in the book exists to (show) how stupid they are. That is my biggest pet peeve. I love reading books where people have a different philosophy on life than me, I have no problem with that, but if you put in a character who is like me, and that is the only character who exists to be shown how stupid they are, or if you just get it wrong, horribly wrong; we've all read that where we pick up the book and it's like "oh no, there is an LDS person. Oh, yup, they're talking about their horse and buggy." Nope, they meant Amish. Things like that drive me crazy, and I never want to be doing that to someone else.

    So one of the things that being a writer has done and has influenced and informed my faith is by making me — driving me — to go look at how different people see the world; look at different belief systems, study them, ask myself "why do we believe what we believe?”; ask myself what the nature of belief is (and) why do I believe. These sorts of things have been a really great experience, forcing yourself to dig down in your soul and ask yourself these hard questions.

    When I write a character, I'm going to say, "OK, I'm going to write an atheist," one of which is in Oathbringer, who speaks and makes the arguments that actual atheists make, not strawman arguments. I want people to read this, and when they read that character, and say "oh, Brandon must be an atheist." And then when they read another character they think "he must be a theist," or read another character and think "oh, Brandon must be a socialist, oh no Brandon must be a monarchist," depending on who they're reading.

    … So looking at these different characters — maybe again, this is me over-inflating the importance of a writer — but I think it's part of the purpose of fiction. We read these books, we see people through different eyes. … You can argue 'til you're blue in the face with someone, but if they read a story with somebody who sees the world differently than themselves, I think that helps a lot more with just kind of saying, "oh, this is a real person. This is why they believe. I still don't agree with them, but I can see now."

    That's one of the points of writing, one of the purposes of writing fiction. So that has certainly had a big effect on me, asking myself "what do I believe?"

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  • 1643

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2017

    Justin Carmony

    As an example, and a follow-up question I have is, I've noticed you try to include characters with very diverse backgrounds, and you even have in some of your books LGBTQ characters. How do you approach the sensitivity of these issues when writing these characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    … In the real world, all of these different voices are represented, and it's about trying to write a story where the real world is, where the real world breathes and if I were to take one group and erase them from the fiction, that would be untrue. That would be violating a fundamental thing I believe in, and that is that we shouldn't be trying to erase people. That's a major evil that can happen in the world.

    And so when I put in characters who are LGBTQ, I do have to be really aware that I am likely a person to get that experience wrong. If you're going to find somebody who is going to get that wrong, I am at the top of the list. So … I go to my friends who are gay and ask, "OK, guys, how am I screwing up here?"

    … It's kind of interesting, in some ways, writing those characters are easier than writing other characters I have no experience with. For instance, there is a scene in Oathbringer (with a character) who has not been around strong drink very much, goes out drinking, and has all kinds of preconceptions about what'll happen and then gets drunk, and my first write of that was terrible.

    I gave it to some people and they were like "Oh man, Brandon, you have no idea what it's like to have this happen." You're right, I don't, I have no idea whatsoever.

    Granted, I cannot ever accurately replicate the experience of being gay or transgendered. But feeling like an outsider, growing up as the only Mormon kid in a school, at least I can know what it's like to be an outsider, to feel like I can't talk about certain things about myself without being subjected to ridicule. There are certain things I can approach, so I can get it a little bit right and then go to people who have that life experience and they can give me some pointers.

    There is a character in this book that is a drug addict. Now, we're making the book sound like something it's not. The book isn't about drug addiction; it's not about living as a gay person; it's not about any of these things. But it is about people who feel real, and I want to approach all of their experiences accurately. If I'm going to put them in the book, I want them to be right. I went to a person who was incarcerated — who also was a fan — for heroin addiction. I said, "will you let me interview you? Will you read these scenes and point me in the right direction?"

    Part of what makes writing a Stormlight book so difficult is I do try to approach all of these different walks of life. People might ask "why are you putting this in a fantasy book? Why is this here?" My answer is all great fiction is a reflection of our lives and trying to say something about it or the people that we meet or the experience of being human.

    That's what this is about. That's why we write.

    And I do it through the form of really fun, action adventure fantasy novels. But at the end of the day, it's still this art trying to reflect the world around me and say interesting things about it. The reason it's there — I think the core concept as created by J.R.R. Tolkien, who was really the father of this medium — is to create a really immersive experience. … That's how we achieve what we do in the stories is by looking at realism first, looking at a sense of immersion is what we call it. I often say that the difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction tries to take what we have now and extrapolate plausible futures from it, whereas fantasy takes something completely impossible and tries to make it feel plausible while you're reading the story. We both use this for the device of "we're going to try to say something about the world." … I don't sit down and say, "what's the moral of this story," but I sit down and say "OK, what am I interested in right now, how is this a reflection of who I am?" This is all there for immersion.

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  • 1644

    Interview: Nov 10th, 2017

    Justin Carmony

    It was a very immersive book, and it was excellent. You now have the three books out, and you are averaging about three and a half years between Stormlight Archive books. With balancing all of the other series you write, do you think this release pattern will probably be the same for the next books, or do you think it might change?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yup, I have no idea. I originally wanted Stormlight books to be every 18 months, that was — way — optimistic. And even though I'm a fast writer, because these books take so much out of me, there is only a certain frequency at which I can write these books, much to the consternation of my fans, I think they are caught in this weird Catch-22 because they acknowledge I am a very prolific writer. I am good at getting things out and meeting deadlines.

    But my core series, the one that a lot of them are the most interested in, still isn't coming out any faster than some of the other epic fantasy writers who are infamously slow in their release. I think it just comes down to when writing one of these books, whether you're me or somebody else, it just takes a long time to get one of these epic fantasies together, and I might do other things in between. In fact, I will always do other things in between, it's just how my brain works.

    Would I like them to be faster? Yes, I would like them to be faster. Am I optimistic that I can make sure they come out at a reasonable pace? Yes, I am. Can I absolutely promise that the next one won't be another three and a half years, I cannot promise that. I wish I could.

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  • 1645

    Interview: Sep 30th, 2014

    yahasgaruna (1 October 2014)

    Who wrote the scene in which Aviendha flash-forwards to the future in the glass towers? The scene was beautifully epic because of how it shows the transition of the post–Last Battle Randland, and every time I read it, I feel well and truly sad that I will never see stories set in that time.

    (Having said that, what you did with the Mistborn series and the Wax/Wayne novels is a pretty good substitute for reading Fourth Age stories, so there is that. Thanks a lot!)

    Brandon Sanderson (1 October 2014)

    The glass pillars was me, as I believe some fans have already figured out. One of my big pitches to Harriet and company was that we needed to take risks and chances with these stories, because that's what RJ would have done. If we played it exactly safe, we would have a bland ending to the story.

    We couldn't always take the same risks that RJ would have, but we needed to have a dynamic plot where characters, and the world, grew and became something different. They were very scared of this sequence during my pitch, but it's one that—when they read it—they were sold on it very quickly.

    As for Wax and Wayne, just wait until we get the Mistborn space opera books.

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