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Interview #428: BarnesandNoble.com Book Club Q&A with Brandon Sanderson, Entry #55

Joshua_Patrao

About research: What, if any, research for your novels have you done, and how did you do it?

Brandon Sanderson

The calling of a fiction writer, particularly a fantasy writer, is to know a little bit about a lot of things—just enough to be dangerous, so to speak. I tend to read survey books that talk about history—things that give overviews, such as the history of warfare, or the history of the sword, or navigation. That kind of thing. I would say I do a fair amount of research, but mostly it’s an attempt to dump as much into my brain as possible for spawning stories and writing about things intelligently. For Mistborn, I researched canals, eunuchs, and London during the mid 1800’s.

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