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…”
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.
So what character have you written that was the hardest to imagine or get into?
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.
How was it writing Mat? Was it pretty easy or–
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.
You mean how he would say that he was going to avoid trouble and then run straight into it?
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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