wotwiki

Interview #385: BookBanter Interview, Entry #4

Alex C. Telander

So my first question here, what made you decide to become a writer? Who were your influences?

Brandon Sanderson

I decided to become a writer when I was fourteen. Before then I actually hadn’t been a big reader. I was actually one of those boys—a lot of young boys stop reading about the fourth grade age. It’s apparently a trouble time. I didn’t know that, but I stopped reading about that age. Fourth, fifth, sixth grade, not a big reader. Seventh grade, not a big reader. Eighth grade, I had a really wonderful English teacher, who got a fantasy novel into my hands. And before then, I just thought books were boring. Someone had tried to give me Tolkien, but Tolkien was just too hard for me. She gave me Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane , which I loved. Fell in love with fantasy books, discovered David Eddings, Terry Brooks over the summer. This was before Wheel of Time was even out. Just fell in love with reading and decided this was what I wanted to do for a living. Didn’t really look back since then. Started my first book when I was fifteen. It was dreadful, but just kept writing and writing and writing.

A lot of my influences were the Wheel of Time books once they came out, absolutely loved. I would often study them, read them, and try and say, “What is Robert Jordan doing here?” I remember specifically looking at passages and saying, “Okay, what’s he doing, what’s making this work?”

A lot of my other influences were, I’d say, Melanie Rawn, and Barbara Hambly, and Annie McCaffrey would be some of my big influences. I liked the sort of hybrid fantasy/science fictions—not the ones where a fantasy world meets a science fiction world—don’t enjoy those as much. What I’m talking about is a fantasy book that treats its magic like a science. I loved, for instance, Melanie Rawn’s magic system—really, really worked for me. When I discovered David Farland, his magic system really worked for me. I loved the Rune Lords magic. Those things, really, sort of jump out at me and sing to me, and I knew when I got published, if I got published some day, that’s what I wanted to do.

ALEX C. TELANDER

Okay, great.

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