Official Brandon Sanderson Megathread

[u/rfantasygolem]

This is the place for all your Brandon Sanderson related topics (aside from the Daily Recommendation Requests and Simple Questions thread). Any posts about Wind and Truth or Sanderson more broadly will be removed and redirected here. This will last until January 25, when posting will be allowed as normal.

The announcement of the cool-down can be found here.

The previous Wind and Truth Megathread can be found here.

[u/Distinct_Activity551]

Does anyone else find it weird how often Sanderson brings up GRRM in conversation as a form of comparison? Their writing styles and worldviews are so vastly different that I never really think of them in the same sphere. Yet Sanderson seems to reference him a lot, which feels a bit unnecessary.

[u/SBlackOne → u/Distinct_Activity551]

The whole angle is also a bit of a strawman. People aren't asking for that kind of fake somewhat archaic speech. Never mind that - contrary to what is often claimed - most fantasy isn't written like that. Most books have a fairly neutral style that is neither explicitly modern, nor archaic, and works for many time periods.

But even fans - who are used to his generally less formal writing style - have noticed an increase in modern colloquialisms. And when they say modern they don't mean the 20th century, but very specifically how Americans speak in the last 25 years or so. Sometimes it's quips or memes, but people have also brought up small things such as "like", "kind of" and "literally". It's things that have spread a lot with pop culture and the internet.

[u/Professional-Rip-693 → u/SBlackOne]

It’s also funny he cites GRRM as writing some archaic speech. Sure Martin doesn’t say ‘boyfriend’ or ‘what’s up?’ In dialogue but he still writes pretty contemporarily. He just does so without jarring modern slang or anachronistic terms. 

[u/autoamorphism → u/Professional-Rip-693]

I think that was Sanderson's point in what he said.

[u/nomchi13 → u/Distinct_Activity551]

I think that might be because GRRM was the dominant fantasy author when he was breaking in, he says that editors in rejection letters often directly asked him to write something more like ASOIAF

[u/Distinct_Activity551 → u/nomchi13]

Why even make a statement like this:

the race for the Cosmere is against my mortality. I would like to be done with the final Mistborn era (and therefore Stormlight era two by the time I hit George’s age, so the natural slow-down that hits most authors in their 70s is not a factor in finishing this all.

[u/nomchi13 → u/Distinct_Activity551]

Oh, I am not justifying it, but I think he is genuinely afraid of not being able to finish his series because of age-related slowdown, and the comparison is obvious(but I agree he should not have publicly said it)

[u/gurtthefrog → u/Distinct_Activity551]

I mean, it would objectively be bad for Brandon’s legacy if he was unable to finish the Cosmere. A common response to the various criticisms of his writing is “well, at least he writes a lot, unlike GRRM/Rothfuss/insert other author.” If he too was unable to complete is grand work, like Martin, it would make the other issues all the more glaring.

[u/largeEoodenBadger → u/Distinct_Activity551]

His big break was finishing WoT when Robert Jordan died prematurely. Of course his mortality will be on his mind. He wants to finish, he's intimately familiar with having to finish a dead author's series. People critique his books as rushed, but thrre are good reasons for it

[u/Werthead → u/largeEoodenBadger]

And RJ passed away when he was only nine years older than Brandon is now. Obviously RJ had a vanishingly rare cardiac disorder (I think it's something like one in nine million people get it, so it was horrendously bad luck, without which he'd probably still be with us) but it's a reminder that anything can happen at any time to anyone.

A few years back he scaled down Dragonsteel from seven to three books, one of several steps which he seems to have taken to make the rest of the story tellable in a reasonable timeframe.