How Did Mistborn Come About?


The evolution of a novel is such a complicated, complex, and strange creative process that it’s hard to step people through it. I don’t think even I can fully comprehend it. But by the time I was writing the Mistborn books, I was in a different situation with my career. I’d sold Elantris by that point and the publisher was saying, “We want something else from you.” Rather than taking one of the thirteen books that I’d written before, I wanted to write something new. I wanted to give people my newest and best work.

At that point I had time to sit down and ask myself, “What do I want to be the hallmark of my career? What am I going to add to the genre?” I want to write fantasy that takes steps forward and lets me take the genre in some interesting direction. At first I wanted to play with some of the stereotypes of the genre. That’s a dangerous thing, though, because, as any deconstructionalist will tell you, when you start playing with stereotypes, you start relying on something that you want to undermine, and that puts you on shaky ground. I was in danger of just becoming another cliché. A lot of times when people want to twist something in a new way, they don’t twist it enough and end up becoming part of the cliché that they were trying to redefine. But I really did want to try this and went forward with it anyway.

A lot of fantasy relies heavily on the Campbellian Monomyth. This is the idea focusing on the hero’s journey. Since the early days of fantasy, it’s been a big part of the storytelling, and in my opinion it’s become a little bit overused. The hero’s journey is important as a description of what works in our minds as people—why we tell the stories we do. But when you take the hero’s journey and say, “I’m going to make this a checklist of things I need to do to write a great fantasy novel,” your story goes stale. You start to mimic rather than create. Because I’d seen a lot of that, I felt that one of the things I really wanted to do was to try to turn the hero’s journey on its head.

I had been looking at the Lord of the Rings books and movies, and the Harry Potter books, and I felt that because of their popularity and success, a lot of people were going to be using this paradigm even more—the unknown protagonist with a heart of gold and some noble heritage who goes on a quest to defeat the dark lord. So I thought to myself, “What if the dark lord won? What if Frodo got to the end in Lord of the Rings and Sauron said, ‘Thanks for bringing my ring back. I really was looking for it,’ and then killed him and took over the world? What if book seven of Harry Potter was Voldemort defeating Harry and winning?” I didn’t feel that this story had ever really been approached in the way I was imagining it, and it became one idea that bounced around in my head for quite a while.

No wonder Mistborn reads like Harry Potter Book 8 if Voldemort took over in the end. Lord Ruler = Lord Voldemort, Skaa = Muggles, Nobles = Purebloods, Half nobles = muggleborns and halfbloods.

 

Not so much inspiration as "what not to do".

Good move, tbh.

 

Brandon, you're a great writer but you need to stop fishing for compliments on Harry Potter boards.

 

Sanderson is the savior of fantasy from all the authors who can't finish their books or end their books unsatisfyingly. I rarely read any other books than Sanderson, these days.

 

Well Brando is the only famous author who still communicates with his fans with no ego on reddit.

 

Maybe that's a bad idea? It's never a bad thing to read books by different authors. Variety is the spice of life, and all that.

 

I agree but I'm still scarred by my past experiences and I'm afraid to start reading unfinished works only for it to end like Asoiaf or start a series but the end is nowhere in sight and the author slows down like Butcher. In my younger days I used to read everything but now it's a matter of time investment and I'm scared of facing the same disappointment.

 

I think you are definitely right