In October, my all-time favourite author Brandon Sanderson visited the UK to promote the release of his latest book Shadows Of Self. During that time not only was I lucky enough to hear him talk at GolanczFest2015 and get several books signed, but I was also offered the opportunity to interview him in person at the beautiful Hachette offices in central London. For anyone who hasn't heard of Brandon Sanderson, he is a bestselling and award winning author of fantasy novels such as The Final Empire and The Way Of Kings and was chosen to complete Robert Jordan's The Wheel Of Time series after his untimely passing. Brandon also teaches some creative writing classes and runs the amazing podcast "Writing Excuses".
So one grey Monday morning I headed off down to the banks of the Thames for an experience I would never have dreamed possible. Armed with my trusty phone (previous experience has shown me to never rely on a Tascam for audio recordings) I managed not to fangirl too much whilst being introduced to Brandon before settling down to chat about his books. And by chat I mean that I mainly sat in awe completely enraptured by what he was saying whilst managing to occasionally squeak out some questions.
The below interview is entirely spoiler free as I wanted it to be something that everyone could enjoy regardless of which books they had read previously. So if you want to learn more about Brandon Sanderson's books, why he does what he does and much more then please read on.
***Note - the below text was transcribed from an in person conversation and has been minimally changed from its pure form***
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So, in your books, you always make up your own magic systems,
your own creatures rather than sticking to more traditional fantasy element. You don’t just stick to dragons or traditional magicians and other things that
already exist. So why do you choose to make everything up yourself rather than making it easier and going with what has already been created, and where do you get
all the different ideas from?
I love a big fantasy – epic fantasy. I discovered
it when I was a teenager and it changed my life, and I just absolutely love the
genre. I’ve read a tonne in the
genre. And I have – I’m also an academic
– I have a Master’s degree in English – and I’m very interested in the history
of the genre and things like this. As a
reader, I noticed I was getting a little bit bored. Particularly during the late nineties, with
reading the same thing over and over. And it’s this problem that we come to fantasy as a genre because we want
to discover something new; it’s about
the sense of wonder and exploration, and the first books for a reader often are
just very mind-blowing. They open our perspective up; they let us look at
something very different from what we’ve seen before. But then if we read that
too much more, we start to get – you know, we lose that sense. And certainly there are cool things about
what’s familiar as well. We like returning
to characters and things like that, but I think that the genre got potentially just
stuck in a little bit of a rut. I think
that what Grandpa Tolkien did was so revolutionary that we spent two decades as
a collective genre kind of responding to Tolkien, and when my generation came
along (you see I’m not the only one doing this, it’s kind of a movement of the
whole generation I think) we’re responding to that. We’re saying, ok, we’ve explored this; we’ve
explored what Orcs are and what dwarves are, and things like this. Instead of taking Tolkien’s world and doing
something else in it, let’s step back and say “What did he actually do in
creating all of this, and can we replicate that process, rather than just
replicating the result?”. And this was a
big motivation for me to start writing. I wanted to do something new. I feel like the fantasy genre should be the
most incredible and amazing and different genre out there. It’s the genre where we can do anything. Even, to an extent, science fiction is
bounded more than fantasy is, and so why not explore some different
directions. Science
fiction’s been doing this for years – for decades – taking us to very different
locales, and I wanted to bring a little bit more of this to fantasy. Certainly
there are other people who are doing this – China Mieville is a great example,
and Brent Weeks and NK Jemisin. It’s a
whole generation of us that are going in obviously different directions, we’re
not doing the same thing but we’re all kind of responding and saying “What can
we do that’s new?” And this is what
excites me; this is what makes me really love the writing process, is going to
these new places.
Where do I get my inspirations? They’re all over the place – people I meet,
articles I read. A lot of my inspiration
comes from reading a story or watching a film and saying “Wow – they handled
this one part of it really poorly. Can I
write a story that takes that idea and goes the right direction?” Conversely, you
know I watch something like – one of my favourite movies ever is Sneakers –
it’s this old heist film with Robert Redford and it’s delightful – and I think
“Can I write a story that’s a heist story in a fantasy world?”, taking
something I love and mixing it with something else I love. You see me doing that a lot as well. I kind of like just taking multiple things I
love and sticking them in a brew and shaking them up and seeing what
pops out.
You mentioned before a couple of
authors that do similar things, such as Brent Weeks, who's books I adore. Who are your favourite authors and what are your
favourite stories that do similar things to what you do?
To what I do? You see that’s kinda hard, because a lot of my
favourite stories are doing things that I’m not doing, that were just really
revolutionary in helping me see fantasy in a new way. My favourite fantasy novel, favourite standalone
novel, is probably “Tigana” by Guy Gavriel Kay, just because it’s one of those
books I read where the narrative mixing with the magic mixing with the cultures
is done in such a perfect way. But approaching what Guy does is not
something many people can do, and I wouldn’t even say – I wouldn’t dare to say
– I’m doing the same thing. Certainly
some of the things that he does, I’ve said “Wow! I would like to incorporate that in my
writing.” I would say right now the
writers closest to me are Brent Weeks and Brian McClellan. They would be the most
similar to what I’m doing – but I read very widely, and I mean I’ve read Naomi
Novick’s “Uprooted” this summer and it’s fantastic, if you haven’t read that.
I mentioned earlier Nora Jemisin. I’m a big fan of her work
– it’s very literary, very different from what I do. She approaches fantasy from a literary
viewpoint – very Ursula Le Guin style, playing with perspective and viewpoint
and narrative in really fascinating ways. So I have enormous respect for her and a lot of those people. The people who got me into fantasy were Barbara
Hambly, Anne McCaffrey and Melanie Rawn. Those were the writers that really – that I read as a youth – that
really pulled me in. And then Robert
Jordan started writing “The Wheel of Time” about a year after I’d gotten into
fantasy, and I just absolutely fell in love with that series. He
started off very Tolkienesque, and then as the series continued he took these
enormous leaps in other directions. It
kind of led my whole generation kind away if that makes sense, off into different waters, so to speak.
In terms of a story starting off as one thing and then merging into something else, you kind of do that with Mistborn. It starts off as almost a heist rebellion series with fantastical elements, and then by the third book it’s something entirely different. Is that something that you do intentionally and want to
do with all of your work?
What you’re noticing there is more me writing a story; I like it when my books have a
defined ending. One of my pet peeves as a reader is when I get this awesome
book, but it only feels like a slice of a story rather than an entire story, so
you know my goal in Mistborn was for each book to feel like, packed into it, an
entire trilogy’s worth of writing.
I love how each work as their own story, they all have a different feel, a different story, but then share a big overall arc and an epic adventure.
One of the tricks that I used for myself in writing that
was, each one would have kind of a different sub-theme and a different magic
they explored, and so you know, Mistborn 1’s a heist novel. It’s a fantasy: big heading; little
heading: heist novel. Book 2 is
fantasy: big heading, but now it’s political intrigue. It’s the suspense; it’s who is the spy among
us, and can we make the politics all work?
And the third one is a war epic, again big heading: fantasy.
And this is just a way, I feel, to keep a series fresh. You’ll notice - actually, something who does
this very well, are the Marvel films. The Thor films are all fantasies and the
Captain America film, the first one, was a war film, and the second one was an
espionage film, and they each kind of had their own feel. And they just did a
heist in Ant Man. It’s like they understand you can’t just give the same exact
feel with every story as it will feel bland, but if you can mix it up and say, ok,
this one has a slightly different feel because of this reason, it gets us some
more of that blending of the familiar and the strange together. It’s just –
part of why we read is that we want something familiar, but we want something
strange, and everyone’s kind of threshold of what they want of those two things
is different. But for me, you know, I
like a healthy balance.
So, one thing that’s quite a
common theme in many of your books is quite a lot of them mention religion in
some way, shape or form. So Mistborn has a really heavy element and quite a lot
of the others as well – War Breaker very predominantly, Legion too – all of
them really, to some extent. So why do you choose to tackle that? Something that can so often, for some people,
almost be off-putting and can veer some people away. Why do you choose to do that and how do your
own personal views reflect your writing?
So, I find that what I’m fascinated by gets into my
fiction. That’s just very natural. I’m not a writer who likes to seek a specific
message in my writing – I like that to be
a natural outgrowth of what the characters are interested in or conflicted by. But of course, what I am interested in and conflicted
by spawns the characters in the first place. So, I am religious – for those who don’t know, I’m Mormon – and so I’m
very fascinated by the ideas of religion, and often times, things like – you
mention War Breaker – the idea of a God who didn’t believe in his own religion, was
so interesting to me.
That’s just my favourite element of the book.
I had to,
like, expand on that. What you find me
doing is just trying to explore all different aspects of human experience, and throughout the history of humankind,
religion has been one of our most important human experiences. And how we interface with the divine – the
stories we tell ourselves, and what they mean to us, and things like this, it’s
just– it’s part of human nature. And so
you see me exploring this, you see me approaching it. And my goal as a writer is always to kind of
try to attack things from as many directions as I can. I think the best discussions and stories and
conflicts happen when you have multiple characters who are all very
legitimately interesting in their own right on different sides of an idea, and
so that’s what I try to do.
I think you succeed there,
it’s one of my favourite part of your books is that sort of religious aspect,
but they don’t push a message. It’s a lot of querying, all of the characters
think, they have a lot of internal debate with themselves, which is always
really interesting from a readers perspective.
So, one of my personal mandates is stories are
about questions, not answers, and the best stories will make you think but
won’t tell you how to think, and that’s just part of being human,
exploring these questions.
So, in terms of your writing
process, how long does it generally take you to come up with the idea, craft
all of the world, start drafting, because I imagine it must take a while due to the depth of your stories. Lots of small hints in the first book which turn out all along to explain exactly where the story is going.
You know,
there’s no rule of thumb on this. Some stories brew for decades. I can say that now because the first Stormlight book started brewing when I was 15, and I’m, you know I’m almost 40 now,
so it has been brewing for decades. Other ones, you get that flash of an idea. Steelheart was like this. I had a flash of an idea and I knew there was
a story there and I started working on it immediately. And there’s everything
in between as well. I am
a planner. I do like it when my plots
all interconnect between the books. I can see things through the novels in
interesting ways. That’s very important
to me, just for my plotting. But the
thing is, books – the core of books is not the world or the plot – the core of
the books is the character. Which is
this weird sort of balance because, you know, as I said, we come to fantasy in
the first place because we want something – it’s the world building that draws
us in, and the plot and hooks are often, you know, the things that will be the
most memorable– wow! you surprised me– punched me on the side of the face– I
wasn’t expecting it. but the characters are what make us keep reading. And a book with a bad world but great
characters is still going to be a great book, but a book with bland characters
and a great world is going to be a boring book no matter how interesting some
of the concepts are. And so it’s this
thing where I can plan the world as much as I want, and the plot as much as I
want, but once I start writing, the characters, who they develop to be, will
often require rebuilding both of these things to match, and letting the
character be in charge. Which is more
along the lines of– I’m not one of these people that feels like, you know, it’s
all mystical. It’s more like, letting my
own subconscious drive these characters in certain directions, and allowing
myself the flexibility to rebuild around them is– that’s gotta be the most
important thing for telling a story, I feel.
So do you find that
your original plan for a book might change as you’re writing the characters?
It will, it
will. You know, it’s rare that it changes really drastically. Most of the time – and I’m getting practiced at this now – what
happens is that little things change here and there. I rebuild certain plot
arcs, certain character arcs, certain themes, based on what’s developing. If the character’s just completely out of
alignment with the book, that’s when I step back and say “should I just put a
different character in here and save this character for a different story?” And often times I’ll cast, you know, I’ll start
the first chapter of a book 3 or 4 times, looking for the right voice of the
character who’s going to be the main character of that story (It’s happened
with Vin in Mistborn) until I find one that matches the
story that I want to tell, and then I’ll go forward with it.
So how many characters did you
go through to get the lead for Mistborn?
I had 3 Vins. It was the third one that worked. I posted one of them on my website so that
people could go read that deleted scene.
One final question. Do you have
a book and a character which has been your favourite to write?
You know,
it’s a great question. I don’t really have
one. It’s like all my characters are my
children, and I love them all for certain reasons, and I’m tired of them for
certain reasons, and so I don’t pick favourite books or favourite characters. It’s whoever I’m writing at the moment.
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