You have a knack for writing strong female protagonists, and I think that a lot of people agree, from Vin in Mistborn to the princesses in Warbreaker . I daresay even Egwene in The Gathering Storm to the extent that you got to write her. Care to comment on that? Did you have to take any special considerations when writing them?
It was very hard for me at first. I did it poorly. It really bothered me because I have two sisters that I studied a lot, and I would ask them, “read this and tell me what you think.” I’d look for their opinions; that was part of it. Then there’s my mother. She graduated valedictorian of her college class in accounting in a time when she was the only woman in the entire program. So, I have had good role models; that is one thing.
But for another, I saw it as something I was weak at early on, before I got published, and it bothered me so much that it became something that I focused on and worked on really hard because I wanted it to become a strength. And the real change happened when I stopped treating characters like roles in a book and I started treating them like people. Each character sees themselves as the hero in the story in their own way, and so I started looking at that thought. The early women I’d put in a book, I’d put them in there only to be a romantic interest, and that was a bad way to do it. Instead, I make them their own character. Every character starts with their own desires and goals, and nobody just starts when the book starts. They are already in existence.
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