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Interview #593: Reddit Fantasy Bookclub Q&A with Brandon Sanderson, Entry #9

ISw3arItWasntM3 ()

Before I ask my questions I just wanted to say I loved Mistborn and found The Gathering Storm to be my favorite WoT book after The Great Hunt .

For my question I was wondering, how do you go about worldbuilding? Do you come up with a premise for a book before creating a world for it or do you like to create a world first and then come up with a story to take place in it? Got a favorite part of worldbuilding?

Also, where do you feel you’ve improved most as a writer since your beginning? And if you’d like to go one further, what do you think are some common flaws which tend to be found an author’s earlier works?

Thanks for taking the time to do this!

Brandon Sanderson

First Question:

I jump around a lot when outlining, and so things kind of grow in one place (maybe character backgrounds) and that sparks me thinking about something in the culture, so I jump over there and work on it for a while. Then over to plot, then back to world.

However, Kings is a little different in that I specifically spent months and months doing dedicated worldbuilding for the novel. In this case, I started with the most important setting elements and explored them in a kind of encyclopedia form, then moved on from there.

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