Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 (Verbatim)

My background is twenty years of military, and as I've been reading your The Way of Kings, I've found that your insight into what it like to be a member of the service, all the mental trials including post-traumatic stress disorder is all very well thought-out and I'm curious how you came across that knowledge.

Lots of interviews and lots of reading on forums. People who post their hearts and souls on-- if you find the right forums, where people are among like-minded individuals, you can watch like a fly-on-the-wall and see what people are saying and how they are feeling. Because I strive for authenticity, that's what I-- whenever someone is feeling I want it to be authentic, and the more far removed from my own experience the better it is, if that makes sense to me, to get it into my books. So I try very hard for that.

Question

In fact I'm going to be suggesting to the Veterans' Administration to use the series for treatment for PTSD. There are literally some things in there I've never seen anyone actually understand or get before. Some of my military friends have just been in absolute tears after reading your book.

Brandon Sanderson

That is an honor to hear.

brandon on research,

Firefight Tour - El Cerrito, CA (Paraphrased)

For the past year I’ve been the administrator for the Stormlight Archive Wiki and any feedback you or Peter could give me is most welcome, no feedback would be fine,-

I go there when I’m looking for, like that, like, I know I wrote something about this, what did I put in the book. Then I’ll go to your wiki and look at it.

Question

That’s cool.

Brandon Sanderson

I got that habit with the Wheel of Time, because I could find it in the notes, but it always takes longer to go to the notes than to Google and Google doesn’t index my wiki, so I go to yours. I think it’s well done. More stuff about the SA wiki and maybe they’ll link it on Brandon’s website.

coppermind.net, brandon on research,

Barnes & Noble (Newnan)

What is the most interesting or awesome thing you found in your South American research for /The Aztlanian/?

What is the most awesome thing I’ve come up with in my research for /The Aztlanian/. So the question, for those of you who read /The Rithmatist/, I’m working on a sequel doing a lot of research on South American and Central American cultures. The Aztecs all the way down to the Incas

Rithmatist, Brandon on research,

Chicago

How much research do you have to do in sciences and technology and history to create a world that is more relatable if not as believable as they are?

What it takes is a lot of general knowledge, meaning you read a lot of history books, a lot of science books, and this general knowledge that you then incorporate. It’s not like I go and say “I need to know more about this thing”. I’ll do that for characters and some aspects of the worlds sometimes but mostly this is coming from spending 10 years learning all this stuff. Does that make sense?

Brandon on research,

Shadows of Self-San Jose

Are you working on a sequel to Rithmatist?

I started working on it, realized I didn’t know the Aztec culture well enough, so I went and read four books on Aztec culture, but by then deadlines were due on something else so I had to jump. I rebuild my outline using my new knowledge but I gotta find time to write it. It’s going to have a killer plot, I’m really excited for it.

Rithmatist, Brandon on research,

Calamity-Seattle

[paraphrased] I have Aspergers, and when I read Bands of Mourning, for the first time I could really identify with a character [Steris]. What kind of research did you do when writing her?

I have several people in my life who have Aspergers, specifically, and they were a huge resource, as you might imagine. One of the things I like to do in my fiction is to try and get people who are heroic who have different types of psychology than what you normally see in heroes. The more I’ve lived in life, the more I realize that we all are really distinctive in our own way and our psychology all works differently. And yet we see a lot of heroes who have the same brain chemistry, it seems, and that’s always felt really weird to me. So one of my mandates has been to do that [vary characters’ psychology.]

So what kind of research did I do? When I was in college, one of my favorite things to do was sneak into classes I wasn’t signed up for. And the psychology classes were my favorite. And this friend—this is coincidental—who wanted to be a chef actually got a psychology major. His parents were like “You should do something useful with your life,” so he got a psychology major. He ended up going to med school; he didn’t become a chef. He went to med school and he likes that too. [Note: Brandon talked about this friend during the first part of the signing.] I would sneak into his classes, and they were so useful as a writer. Just to look at the different [neuro]types and to start to see personality not as… We like to look at a lot of things as normal or abnormal, and that’s not the way it is. Everyone’s personality is on a spectrum, and what is normal and what is abnormal is completely a matter of perspective. Where you stand on this line. It’s trying to make a value judgment that shouldn’t really exist. So it’s coming to see personality as these swaths of interesting color is what the psychology classes taught me.

I did do some specific research for Steris, and then I looked and I interviewed people as well.

I’m glad that you picked up on it without me ever having to say who she was and things like that. That’s when I really feel like I’ve nailed something, when you can look at in and say, “Yeah, this is who this person is,” instead of someone pointing from the outside and saying who this person is or what they are.

Steris, Brandon on Research,