Si quereis leer la entrevista traducida en castellano lo podéis hacer aquí.
If we had to describe Brandon Sanderson (Nebraska, 1975) with a word,
this would be prolific. He isn’t forty years old yet but he has already written
several sagas, namely Mistborn, Reckoners, Alcatraz and Stormlight
Archive, although most of them remain still unfinished. “I started writing
standalones, but they were secretly a big long epic”, confesses Sanderson. Moreover,
it is very easy to see he takes his work very seriously since he uses every
instant to write something, either if it is in a plane or between interviews.
In fact, we find him with a little notebook in his hand, lest he can progress
in his work before we get to the appointment.
Despite knowing Sanderson for his big Mistborn epic, he tells us he started
working on The Stormlight Archive
back when he was a teenager and he actually doesn’t know yet for which saga he
will be remembered by. However, Sanderson hasn’t only delighted us with his
genuine work, since he had the immense privilege to conclude Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time when he passed away in
2007. “When they offered me the assignment I was stunned, amazed and horrified,
all at the same time”, says Sanderson, although he quickly adds that putting
the full stop to the saga was a little bittersweet since he felt he would like
to keep writing about Jordan’s world and characters.
Adria’s News interviews Brandon Sanderson, one of
the biggest fantasy writers of our time who is also a big superhero fan (preferring
DC over Marvel). His wish, seeing his work turned into videogames.
***
You wrote a story on the flight home from France in the summer of 2011.
Have you written any story while on air, this time?
On the way here, I actually
slept. It’s easier for me to write a story on the flight home, because on the
way here I want to leave in the night, sleep, and then wake up in the morning
and be adjusted, but when I fly home, I kind of want to do the opposite. I want
to stay awake and then go to sleep when I get there to help with the jetlag. My
plan is to work on something on the way home, we’ll see. I’ve done it from
France and I did it from Taiwan, so I need to do one from Spain! [Laugh].
You are quite young and the Mistborn
series is very popular. Do you thing it’ll be your biggest saga and the one
you’ll be remembered by?
I’m not sure. The Mistborn certainly is my best selling so
far, though The Stormlight Archive is
catching up. I think it will probably be one of those two. Every author tends
to get known by one main thing and I am not sure exactly what it’ll be for me
yet, but I think there’s a good bet.
Plus, I intend to keep writing Mistborn
books too through the course of my career, so it’ll remain around a bit longer,
we’ll see! It’s really up to the fans, not to me.
Both in the Reckoners and the Mistborn series, several people are able
to earn some special powers. Is this an influence of superheroes? Are you a fan
of Marvel and DC?
I am. I’m fascinated by what
would happen if normal people were given divine powers, right? And I take it
different directions in different series, but I think that one of the cores of
fantasy genre is “what do we human beings do with extraordinary abilities?”
It’s the same in the superhero genre; it’s a thing they share together and it’s
something that I’m fascinated by. I’m quite a fan. I was wearing my Iron Man T-shirt
yesterday. Today is more of a Star Wars day, so I’m wearing a T-shirt according
to that.
Fantasy “Stories shouldn’t be about the magic, but about
the people”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
You talk a lot about slaves. Why are you so interested in this topic?
I think that dealing with how
people in different cultures react to terrible things, like slavery, and how
people deal with the burdens of such pressures illustrates or illuminates, I
should say, the human spirit. And what we are looking to do in fiction is to explore
the human experience. That’s really what it is. When we write a book, what we wanna
do is to take someone who is completely different than ourselves and tell a
story about them, and when I read a book, one of the main reasons I read is I
want to see what happens when people are put in extraordinary circumstances.
This is one of those things that were fascinating as a concept to me: dealing with
this in the fantasy world. And one of the strengths of fantasy also is the
ability to take something that has a lot of emotional weight to it and put it
into something like fantasy, where we can kind of strip away some of really
passionate feelings and deal with them in their own isolated way so we can
explore. Tolkien dealt with racism, but he used elves and dwarfs. And it
doesn’t mean that racism is not an important thing to talk about, but when you
kind of strip away what’s going on in our world, you can isolate it and maybe
help people understand it a little more.
You were a missionary in South Korea and in your books religion is quite
important. Do you want to transmit values with your books?
I feel like, as a religious
person, one of the most purely terrifying things is misusing religion, but also
as a person of faith I feel that my job is to try to explore things from all
different viewpoints. I think what bothers me most in a story is when I find a
person that believes like me and they’re the idiot, right? They are only
one-layer characters and I feel like my job in writing fiction is to look at all
sides, because that’s when we can understand one another, when we look at
things on different sides. So, for me, religion, I want to explore it in all
the senses, I want to explore what it is to be an atheist, what it is to be
agnostic, what it is to be strongly faithful, what it is to be half way in
between… How the crises affect us, and these things are all part of the human
experience and I experience and learn reading about people and putting
characters in that way.
In the Mistborn saga, religion
is both something that can inspire and help people and something that control
and use people for a benefit. In our world, which one is the predominant?
I think the religion used in a
bright way is one of the most inspirational things in the world, and yet all the
most powerful things that exist in our world they use to be the things that are
most easy to corrupt for the wrong reasons. I mean, if you look at it, human
spirit that drives to do something, is one of the most awesome things about us;
it is what drives us to create art, and to create all great works, but the same
drive, twisted inside of us… Nobody was ever oppressed by a lazy person; no
lazy person’s has created genocide; no lazy person has created marvelous work
of art, either. It’s the same spirit that can be turned to good or ill. The
more powerful something is the more evil it can be or the nobler it can be.
Insensitivity “What bothers me most in a story
is when I find a person that believes like me and they’re the idiot”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
Mistborn: Shadows of Self will be out in Fall 2014. Is
the second book of a trilogy set after the first one? Would you recommend
reading firstly the original one or doesn’t matter because they stand separate?
I think that they can, if they
want to. In fact, I’ve had emails from people who read the second and they had
a very interesting different experience, so yes, I think it is possible.
I was imagining the Mistborn
books more like a videogame than a movie or TV show. What about you?
I would love to see a
videogame made. I’ve been a gamer all my life, so and I can’t deny the
influences it had upon me, being a gamer. The thing I love about fiction is the
stuff it can do that the videogame can’t do. I like that genre but books are my
first love, so I’m just I’m gonna write the best books I can and hopefully someone
will come along and make some good videogames.
Do you want to see a movie or a TV show of your work?
I’m certainly willing to let
someone else, but since I haven’t practice screenplays, I don’t thing I would
make a good enough one to do it justice. I would like to find somebody who
could translate.
You finished Robert Jordan’s Weel
of Time. I know you were a fan of the series, but did you meet him
beforehand?
I saw him once in a
convention. He walked by, and that’s it. I never actually met him. I was too embarrassed
to go up and shake his hand; I wish I had, now. I never met him; it was his
wife [Harriet McDougal] who chose me after he passed away.
So what did you feel when Harriet McDougal picked you to finish the series?
It was crazy. It just was a
phone call. I wasn’t expecting it, but she asked me if I would finish The Weel of Time. I was stunned, amazed
and horrified, all at the same time.
Books “I’ve got too many open-ended series so I need to
be careful not to start more”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
I know Robert Jordan left some notes. Was it difficult to follow them or
were they very straight forward to the point?
It was a mix. He wrote an
epilogue, which was a very big help, because I knew where he was going, but he
didn’t write the climax or the actual ending. He wrote some big character
moments, but others he wrote nothing. There is a character called Perrin
[Aybara] in The Wheel of Time, and
Perrin he didn’t leave any notes except for a little note for what happens to
him after the series is done, and so I had all the space with nothing to do
with Perrin. Egwene [al’Vere], another main character, he’d plot it out an
arch, and he’d done major scenes, and he gave an explicit structure, and what
to do in various points in her arch through the books, so it was easier.
Will you write something else in Robert Jordan’s world?
I would love to, except for
one thing. I think he wouldn’t want me to. He was very uncomfortable with people
writing in his world and he only reluctantly agreed to let the ending be done
before he passed away he asked her wife to find someone. And so since I don’t think
he wouldn’t want me to, I don’t think it’s right to, so we are not going to do
anymore. It’s time to let it be done, but there is a bit of regret there from
my part. I’ve loved these characters since I was a kid and now, being not able
to do any more stories for them is a little bittersweet.
You have a book series that started with Alcatraz versus the evil librarians. Do you think librarians are
evil people? Have you ever had a bad experience?
Well, mostly I’m poking fun of
them. I did get fired from a library once. I worked there for three months, but
this wasn’t about that. I think that librarians like to make fun of themselves
and I was sitting around one day thinking what is the funniest thing I can
think of, and the image that came to my head was a little old lady librarian
with glasses and a shawl standing behind the bookshop and having a battle axe
underneath ready to grab in case somebody walked off with the wrong book. That was
hilarious to me so, that’s where the series came from.
Recognition “Every author tends to get known by one main thing
and I am not sure exactly what it’ll be for me yet”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
Nearly all your work is in a series. Is because you like to tell long
stories? Why not more standalone novels?
It really just depends on the
mood I’m in. I’ve moved a lot of my standalones to novellas these days, because
I just don’t have as much time to do as much as I want to. The Emperor’s Soul is a good example of this. Instead of writing a
standalone novel I’ve moved it to a novella and it worked really well at that
length. So I see myself doing a few more like that until I can finish up some
of these series. I feel like I’ve got too many open-ended series so I need to
be careful not to start more.
Because you still have to publish more books from The Stormlight Archive, the Rithmatist
series, the Reckoners series and the Mistborn series. How can you manage not
becoming mad with so many series open?
I hop around a lot. That’s how
I stay fresh and creative: working on different projects at the same time. But
I do think I need to close some of these loops. I’ve written the last Alcatraz book, so that series is done.
The last one is not out yet, but I turned it, so at least I closed off this
series, and I’m planning to write the last Reckoners
book this fall [he is referring to Fall 2014], and that would close two of
them. Mistborn and Stormlight aren’t gonna end for a long
time. Even for Mistborn, once I finish
this trilogy, there’ll be more. And Stormlight
is ten books, but I can wrap some of these other ones: I want to wrap the Rithmatist next. Then, all of my kid’s
series will be done. Reckoners is
more adult, but Alcatraz and Rithmatist would be done. And then, with
the Reckoners done, I’ll have more
things closed off. I feel I have too many things open right now…
The Stormlight Archive is planned as a ten book
series. How can you know it so early on?
I did a lot of planning on
that series. It’s a series I’ve been working on since I was a teenager and the
structure is built around the idea of ten characters. Each book has a flashback
sequence for that character and focuses a bit on their life, so I know I’m done
once I’ve done these ten characters.
Wheel of Time “I saw
Robert Jordan once but I was too embarrassed to go up and shake his hand”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
So you know which character will be the main one in each of them?
Yes, I do know. For those who
are fans of the Stormlight, book
three would be on Szeth, the assassin in white, book four would be Eshonai, and
book five would be Dalinar.
You won the UPC award. UPC is one of the universities in my region,
Catalonia. What can you tell me about that experience?
That was pretty awesome. It
was great. I really liked Barcelona and I didn’t know a lot about European science
fiction and fantasy fandom when I was younger and breaking in, and so being
able to come… I actually came to Barcelona first before I won the UPC award,
found out about the award and then started visiting Spain and France, and that’s
when I submitted to the UPC award, because I was able to understand a little
bit more about what was going on here, and how exciting the European fantasy
fandom was.
You did a Masters Degree in Creative Writing. I know these programs are
quite popular in the US, but we don’t have anything similar in Spain, in
general. Do you think a writer needs to study how to write?
I do thing a writer should
study those, but they don’t need to do it at university; you can do this on
your own. It’s helpful the university because you can have a teacher who can
guide you, but is more a mentorship. Sitting in a classroom and listening to someone
talk about writing can only take you a little bit of the distance. Having a
mentor who can help you out can help you more, but at the end of the day, the
greatest work is you practicing. In this stuff you can get on your own, despite
this taking a bit longer if you are by yourself, so I would say don’t worry if
you don’t have degree, if people out there that are reading this wanna be
writers the only thing they need to do is practice. And the Internet, and the
advent of being able to publish online is really democratized the publishing
industry a lot. Is a lot more open to new authors, so I say go for it.
Multi-tasking “I stay fresh and creative
working on different projects at the same time”
Brandon Sanderson and interviewer Adrià Guxens. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
How did you come up with the idea of set all your
works in a fictional universe called Cosmere?
There were
certain specific inspirations I can point to. Isaac Asimov later in his life
connected his robot series and his Foundation series, which as a kid, reading
them, blew my mind. They are happening in the same universe! Michael Moorcock
also did some of this, so the idea of a connected universe is certainly not
something I came up with. My spin on it is that I feel a very few authors have
done this from the beginning. They kind of go back and try to link things
together while when I was writing these books I said: “What if I came up of a
fundamental rules for magic and then show the different interpretations of
magic on different worlds and how different people work with them”. That was
really exciting to me. Doing this from the gig go, kind of inspired by Asimov
and Moorcock in moving forward, and so the idea was this: there was a story
behind the story. Part of the reason for this was also as I was writing as a
new writer I realized if I wrote a trilogy and book one didn’t sell, I couldn’t
sell book two. You couldn’t go to an editor who rejected book one and sell them
book two. But if you took them a different book one or a different standalone, you
could say: “I know you’d liked this, but not enough to buy it, would you like
to read this one?” They would usually say yes. And so what I wanted to be doing
was writing first books and see which one took off, but I also like epic series
and so hiding an epic behind the scenes for all of these different books that was
writing was a way that I could, as we say in English,
‘have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too’. I could be doing standalones, which I think that
would break me in faster, but also writing secretly a big long epic.
You have three writing laws. Which one is the most important? [Law 1: “An author's ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with
magic is directly proportional
to how well the reader understands said magic”; Law 2: "Limitations >
Powers” (or in other words, a
character's weaknesses are more interesting than his or her abilities) and Law
3: "Expand what you already have before you add something new."]
Actually, rule number
zero, which is the one I haven’t written an essay. Rule number zero is: “Always
air on the side of what’s awesome”, which means always pick what’s awesome. You
have to remember when you’re writing you want to write an engaging, powerful,
fun story and my rules for magic are to help me do that, not to undermine that.
Can’t become about the magic, it has to be about the people, so I have to keep
in mind “let’s do what’s awesome and let’s make sure the laws are helping that,
rather than becoming the means themselves”.
Becoming a writer “Having a mentor can help in your
writing, but at the end of the day, it is you practicing”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
Don’t you think that nowadays a lot of authors use
magic like a joker they can throw whenever in order to solve any situation?
That happens too
much and that’s what the first law says, which is basically: “Do good for
shadowing. Don’t use your magic to solve your problems. Build yourself good
rules for your magic and make your characters solve their problems with the
tools they have instead”. But at the same time, Harry Potter kind of ignores that law, and Harry Potter books are fantastic. And so she [J.K. Rowling] is
erring in the side of awesome and that’s trumping everything else. Now, I think
those books might have been a little stronger if they had been more consistent,
but at the end of the day, she sold four hundred million books or whatever and
she’s written this fantastic series, so I can’t point at her and say: “You
should have done this!” Instead, I should be saying: “What did you do? Give me
your clue!”
Do you think there is still a bad preconception regarding fantasy and
science fiction?
I do think there is. I think
that it is lessening, but there is a prejudice, and there are two main
prejudices: one is from the literary community; those who are writing, what we
call in English “literary fiction”. They look at fantasy and consider it
frivolous. On the other hand, you have this sort of people who don’t read very
much or looking at it and saying “it’s not real, therefore, it’s not important”.
Both of these prejudices are wrong. The people haven’t good intentions when
they are talking about it, they just don’t understand the importance of
imagination. And what I’d like to say is nothing awesome has happened without
imagination. You can go to the Wright Brothers, the first people to create an
airplane, and say: “This is a fantasy flying in the air”, an if you don’t have
the creativity and imagination to imagine a different world, you are never
gonna do anything wonderful.
What do we have to change to make people accept this?
I think that if they would
just take the chance to experience it! And this is why I think Harry Potter is changing this, The Lord of the Rings movies… If they
sit down and they read the Harry Potter
books and they say: “Wow! This helps me imagining, this gives me a different
feeling!” If we could just acknowledge feelings are important… It seems like we
focus so much on thoughts. How thoughtful is it, how thought provoking, not how
much emotion does it inspire. And I think inspiring emotion is as important as
inspiring thought, but in our society we have this ‘emotion is bad’ sort of
thing going on. I think that if we just would acknowledge it’s good to feel, then,
we are OK!
Challenge “I think inspiring emotion is as important as
inspiring thought”
Brandon Sanderson. Photo: Anna Guxens. |
- Interview with George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire).
- Interview with Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle).
- Interview with Neil Gaiman (American Gods).
- Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn)
- Interview with Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates).
- Interview with Joe Abercrombie (The First Law series).
- Interview with Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen).
- Interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt).
- Interview with Dmitry Glukhovsky (Metro 2033).
- Interview with Lisa Tuttle (Windhaven).
- Interview with David Simon (The Wire).
- Interview with Christopher Priest (The Prestige).
- Interview with Ian Watson (Artificial Intelligence).
- Interview with Robert J. Sawyer (FlashForward).
Merci Adriá, muy interesante. Sanderson es mi escritor de fantasia contemporaneo favorito, y su Stormlight Archives es en mi opinion la obra por la que sera recordado.
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