I travelled down to London this evening to see fantasy authors Joe Abercrombie and Brandon Sanderson in conversation. I don't get out to these events as much as I used to, but this was too interesting an opportunity to pass up. Waterstones hosted the event at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster.
Joe and Brandon are a similar age and launched their careers relatively close together, with Brandon's debut novel Elantris released in 2005 and Joe's debut The Blade Itself following a year later. Both have been highly successful, with Joe moving close to 10 million books and selling his latest novel The Devils to James Cameron for a movie adaptation, whilst Brandon has sold over 50 million books and is writing the screenplay for a Mistborn movie for Apple.
Brandon went over his career in some detail, such as writing thirteen novels before he got published, a good way of getting acquainted with failure and honing his skills of characterisation before hitting the big time. They contrasted their different takes on writing, with Brandon's big picture, pre-planned approach versus Joe's more instinctive approach.
Sanderson confirmed that he is deep in writing the first draft of the Mistborn movie and after that is completed, will work on a pilot script for Stormlight Archive, which Apple wants to adapt as series of 10-episode seasons. He also briefly discussed the adaptation of Skyward, but notes he may only be able to write some scenes or a single episode for that, as he doesn't have the time to be more directly involved.
There was also discussion on how Brandon has expanded his writing career into owning a publishing company that now has 65 staffmembers, more than some moderately-sized "proper" SFF publishers. Sanderson noted that many of the ideas he suggested 10+ years ago in terms of special editions, merchandise, extras etc are now commonplace in the field but it took a long time to get traditional publishers on board.
There was also a Q&A and some interesting answers. Brandon noted he has his own private wiki, maintained by a full-time continuity editor, to keep all the lore straight. He notes his own memory is pretty good, but one weakness is that he sometimes forgets to remember the "new" version of lore he develops in rewrites, meaning that in writing the sequels he can sometimes use outdated terms (in his example he noted using silver instead of tin in writing the new Mistborn books and had to change that when he realised). Both authors had advice for a 16-year-old in the audience working on his first novel: Brandon's key advice was don't be afraid to throw things out that aren't working and starting again (including the whole thing if necessary).
The authors also discussed the cycles of the industry, with Brandon noting a 20-year nostalgia effect in the field, which made Joe excited to realise the pendulum was about to swing back towards sword-based gritty fantasy. We'll see if that happens!
It was a fun evening, Joe and Brandon made for great conversationalists and the audience got some interesting questions in.
ETA: Skyward is not in development with Netflix directly, but with the production company who handled One Piece for Netflix.
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