As an example, and a follow-up question I have is, I’ve noticed you try to include characters with very diverse backgrounds, and you even have in some of your books LGBTQ characters. How do you approach the sensitivity of these issues when writing these characters?
… In the real world, all of these different voices are represented, and it’s about trying to write a story where the real world is, where the real world breathes and if I were to take one group and erase them from the fiction, that would be untrue. That would be violating a fundamental thing I believe in, and that is that we shouldn’t be trying to erase people. That’s a major evil that can happen in the world.
And so when I put in characters who are LGBTQ, I do have to be really aware that I am likely a person to get that experience wrong. If you’re going to find somebody who is going to get that wrong, I am at the top of the list. So … I go to my friends who are gay and ask, “OK, guys, how am I screwing up here?”
… It’s kind of interesting, in some ways, writing those characters are easier than writing other characters I have no experience with. For instance, there is a scene in Oathbringer (with a character) who has not been around strong drink very much, goes out drinking, and has all kinds of preconceptions about what’ll happen and then gets drunk, and my first write of that was terrible.
I gave it to some people and they were like “Oh man, Brandon, you have no idea what it’s like to have this happen.” You’re right, I don’t, I have no idea whatsoever.
Granted, I cannot ever accurately replicate the experience of being gay or transgendered. But feeling like an outsider, growing up as the only Mormon kid in a school, at least I can know what it’s like to be an outsider, to feel like I can’t talk about certain things about myself without being subjected to ridicule. There are certain things I can approach, so I can get it a little bit right and then go to people who have that life experience and they can give me some pointers.
There is a character in this book that is a drug addict. Now, we’re making the book sound like something it’s not. The book isn’t about drug addiction; it’s not about living as a gay person; it’s not about any of these things. But it is about people who feel real, and I want to approach all of their experiences accurately. If I’m going to put them in the book, I want them to be right. I went to a person who was incarcerated — who also was a fan — for heroin addiction. I said, “will you let me interview you? Will you read these scenes and point me in the right direction?”
Part of what makes writing a Stormlight book so difficult is I do try to approach all of these different walks of life. People might ask “why are you putting this in a fantasy book? Why is this here?” My answer is all great fiction is a reflection of our lives and trying to say something about it or the people that we meet or the experience of being human.
That’s what this is about. That’s why we write.
And I do it through the form of really fun, action adventure fantasy novels. But at the end of the day, it’s still this art trying to reflect the world around me and say interesting things about it. The reason it’s there — I think the core concept as created by J.R.R. Tolkien, who was really the father of this medium — is to create a really immersive experience. … That’s how we achieve what we do in the stories is by looking at realism first, looking at a sense of immersion is what we call it. I often say that the difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction tries to take what we have now and extrapolate plausible futures from it, whereas fantasy takes something completely impossible and tries to make it feel plausible while you’re reading the story. We both use this for the device of “we’re going to try to say something about the world.” … I don’t sit down and say, “what’s the moral of this story,” but I sit down and say “OK, what am I interested in right now, how is this a reflection of who I am?” This is all there for immersion.
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