I’ve got a non-Brandon-specific question. I just happened to think about one thing about authors: When do you decide if the character is male or female?
Did it happen to one of your characters that you changed the gender pretty late?
What is important when choosing the gender?
So why did you make Vin female and not male, for example? Is it much easier to write a male character as a male?
Personally, I don’t like books where a woman is very physically strong. I don’t know, I’m strange. gotta admit I stopped reading Mistborn after the first book due to it. As I said, I’m strange…Still love your books and I never was looking forward to a book as much as I am looking for followup of Way of Kings . (Not even Harry Potter LOL!)
Vin, in Mistborn, started as a boy. I wrote about one chapter of Mistborn with her as a guy, then changed. However, another character by that name had existed in one of my unpublished books as a boy.
This is hard to answer, as characters are very organic things for me. I don’t plan them nearly as much as I do plots or settings. I go with my gut when writing them. I can’t say why some “feel” right as male and other “feel” right as female. I write it and see if it works. If their voice is right, I go with it.
As mentioned, Vin swapped genders. It had to do with my writing instincts, her dynamic with the other characters, her backstory, and just WHO she is. I’m sorry that I’m not being very specific. Characters are hard to explain.
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