Advanced Search

Search in date range:

Search results:

Found 7 entries in 0.062 seconds.

Firefight Houston signing ()
#1 Copy

Questioner

Have you ever done fan-fiction?

Brandon Sanderson

Have I ever done fan-fiction? ...I have done fan fiction a couple of times. One was this series called The Wheel of Time.

Crowd

*thunderous laughter and applause*

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Technically, right? It was sanctioned fan-fiction by the publisher, but it was basically fan-fiction. I also did a couple of video game tie-ins for a friend of mine, which was essentially fan-fiction. They were friends building a video game, they talked to me about how cool it was, and how it was inspired by my books, and I'm like "Ah, I'd better write something for you." And that's where the Infinity Blade stories come from. I can see myself doing things like that in the future, but not very much. They're only, kind of, in most cases, going to be little forefront fun projects.

General Reddit 2021 ()
#2 Copy

jmcgit

He wrote two books based on Infinity Blade (though they're currently out of print)

Brandon Sanderson

Working on getting those back in print somehow, but there is red tape that so far I haven't had the brainspace to get cut.

The problem here is that they discontinued the games--and so they, by nature, took down all related materials. They said that the novellas could go back up, but this was happening when it was "all hands on deck" to support Fortnite as a huge surprise hit--and there was a lot of trouble getting them to pay attention to anything else. (They needed to sign a document letting me put the novellas back up.)

I could probably push that through now, but it's tough, because you really need to have played the games to get the stories. I kind of want some kind of "Summary of the game stories" put into it, and to release them both as a single ebook, but we'll see if if it can happen.

Steelheart release party ()
#3 Copy

Questioner

How much influence do you have on the story of the Infinity Blade games?

Second Questioner

They tell you what to write and you flesh it out?

Brandon Sanderson

No, when I came on they said, "We don't have a story. Can you come up with one?". That was part of the reason I was interested in doing it. Basically, the whole story of games two and three, and the in between, have been my stories. I didn't write the games. I went over the dialogue and told them where it was really bad. I was focused on the novellas. The dialogue in the games, not quite as awesome as I would want it to be. But the basic story, it was me and the creators of the game brainstorming, talking about it. All the characters are ones I came up with.

Questioner

Because, really, in the first one there weren't exactly characters.

Brandon Sanderson

Though it had it's own little fun narrative, which I liked the idea of. But when I sat down with them I'm like, "If you're going to have a series, you can't have a series with no characters ever. You have fifty protagonists that die each time. You've gotta build the mechanism for this. So let's go this direction." They loved it.

Questioner

And that was why Siris wound up being a Deathless?

Brandon Sanderson

Mhmm.

Firefight Seattle UBooks signing ()
#4 Copy

Questioner (Paraphrased)

What was your involvement with the Infinity Blade franchise?

Brandon Sanderson

What happened there was, I came in when the first game was already made. They said we'd really like to do something, and I really like the guys, they're friends of mine, and I'm like, "You don't have a story here. You've got to have a protagonist and things like this." So then I said, "Okay, let's take what you have, tell me what you have for the world, and let's brainstorm together, and let's construct a narrative. And so we did it together. We spent a lot of time in their offices constructing the next two games, then I was able to write the novellas between the two.

Questioner

So did you have any input on the game stories, then?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I did. I had a lot of influence, though I did not write the dialogue, so sometimes it's a little bit cringe-worthy. They sent me the script, but I just didn't have time to go over the scripts for them. Sometime I'd like to actually do a game with them, because they make great games.

Sofia signing ()
#5 Copy

Questioner

You've mentioned before Adamant as maybe a universe where you can invite people to work with you.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah I've definitely considered that. Adamant is a science fiction novella I wrote, which I would love to do some continuing adventures of this starship and have some guest writers. It's difficult because, as a writer it's very hard to let go of anything, that's what I found. I did one story with a friend of mine, Ethan, who I did it with him because he's in the military and I've never been in the military, and I wanted to write a story that was kind of military science fiction-ish. And so we wrote a story together, and it's a great story, it's called HARRE, and you read it in English but-- It turned out really well but it was so hard to let go. Really hard to let go and let someone else do it, that's a flaw in me I think because the story turned out great, but I'm worried about doing that more in the future. Just if-- I'm worried whether or not I'll be able to let go of the story and let someone else put their stamp on it.

Questioner

So how about the other way around though. Would you be interested in working in somebody else's, like for example Dragonlance. You did something like this in The Wheel of Time, working with a pretty fine set of constraints--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it was a little different in The Wheel of Time because I was given complete creative control. So I could do whatever I wanted as long as I could convince Robert Jordan's widow that it was the right thing for the story. If I convinced her then it worked. But I very much could create whatever-- craft whatever story I wanted. In a lot of shared universes the constraints are much more binding. I wouldn't be opposed to it. I've certainly done-- I worked with some friends who make video games and worked on some stories with them, so I've done it before. I wouldn't be opposed to it. It would have to be the right thing.

Questioner

Or a Magic: The Gathering story?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah a Magic: The Gathering story, I could totally see myself writing one of those one day.

Brandon Sanderson

Is there a particular Magic: The Gathering, I dunno, what are they called-- universe?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah, they've got a Gothic core universe called Innistrad, with a-- It's just I love classic Gothic horror, and it would allow me to play with some of those tropes. You know, the zombies banging on the door and the werewolves howling in the night, and things like that, that I probably would never do in one of my stories.

Firefight Seattle UBooks signing ()
#6 Copy

Questioner

Infinity Blade - are there other plans to continue with that, and are they going to release a print edition?

Brandon Sanderson

What the plan is right now, if I can convince them to do it, is to do a nice print edition that will include the script of the first one, annotated by the guys who wrote it, my story in between, then the script for the second, then my story, then the script of the third, so it's a complete story, with the cut scenes illustrated, and things like that. So even a graphic novel, then prose, then a graphic novel - something like that.

Children of the Nameless Reddit AMA ()
#7 Copy

wackyHair

How did writing this differ from writing the Infinity Blade novellas?

Brandon Sanderson

The IB novellas were interesting in that I was specifically looking to explain game mechanics with a narrative, something that the Wizards people didn't want me to do. (That said, I slipped a little in here and there, such as Davriel "flashing back" many of his spells, using them again and again.)

I'd say that here, the biggest difference was knowing of an existing lore and mythos that I wanted to weave my story into, rather than creating it wholesale from the game. (Which is what I did with IB.)