Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

This is a transcript of the Science and Society Podcast, an interview with Brandon Sanderson on November 30, 2009.

And I gotta say that (1) there is nothing to do with the so-called "mission" of the society in the interview, and (2) this interviewer's voice and mannerisms are really kinda annoying.

Hello, everyone and welcome to Science and Society—our world, our well-being, our future. I'm Dr. David Lenberg. The Science and Society mission is to promote and support the public understanding and awareness of science, and to promote and support math and science education. Please visit us online at scienceandsociety—all one word—dot net.

Today's special guest is Brandon Sanderson, author of The Gathering Storm. The Gathering Storm, recently published by Tor Books, is book twelve of the Wheel of Time series, and the first of three novels to make up the conclusion. The final two novels will be released within the next three years.

Brandon Sanderson is the New York Times best-selling author of several critically acclaimed fantasy novels including the Mistborn trilogy and the recent Warbreaker. In five years, Brandon went from unknown college student to best-selling author to the writer chosen to complete Robert Jordan's #1 New York Times best-selling series. His first published book was Elantris, a terrific novel which won the Romantic Times award for best epic fantasy of 2005. Elantris was chosen by BarnesandNoble.com editors as the best fantasy or science fiction book of the year. Please welcome 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.

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.

David Lenberg

Brandon Sanderson

David Lenberg

Brandon Sanderson

David Lenberg

Brandon Sanderson

David Lenberg

Brandon Sanderson

David Lenberg

Brandon Sanderson

David Lenberg

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.

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.

Brandon Sanderson

David Lenberg