In Defense of Brandon Sanderson
A reply to the article recently published in Wired by the Senior Editor, Jason Kehe
Recently an article was written about Brandon Sanderson that’s caused a bit of an uproar in the literary community and I wanted to address it.
I had so many thoughts running through my head while reading this but first, let’s get through some introductory information in case you want me to bring you up to speed.
Who is Brandon Sanderson?
Sanderson is a high fantasy and science fiction writer who has created quite a publishing empire for an array of age groups. He’s built worlds from scratch that his readers can immerse themselves in. He’s the success story we all want to be.
His works include:
- The Stormlight Archive — a series
- The Mistborn Saga — the original trilogy
- The Mistborn Saga — the Wax & Wayne series
- Several standalone novels — including a few works in progress
- White Sand — a series of graphic novels
- And so many more that you can look at here on his website.
He’s been publishing consistently since 2005 when his novel Elantris was picked up by Tor.
Sanderson began his journey as a student at Brigham Young University, a well-known university popular in the LDS community, as a biochemistry major before serving his mission. Upon his return, he changed his major to English and started pursuing his passion as a writer.
Since then, he’s been on the New York Times best-seller list an impressive fifteen times and his books have been published in thirty-five different languages.
Who is Jason Kehe?
To be honest with you, no one really knows. There’s little to be found about Kehe beyond that he’s the Senior Editor at Wired. So why in the world did he attempt to write a condescending article about one of the greatest modern fantasy novelists?
I hoped to find an answer in the article, but it left much to be desired.
“Brandon Sanderson Is Your God”
Kehe knew what he was doing here. He created an outlandish, clickbaity title he knew would get reads and he was right.
He begins by making it clear that no one around him knows who Brandon Sanderson is. Either he isn’t close to much of the modern-day fantasy community or he’s been living under a rock for the last several years.
Sanderson made $55 million last year alone. That says something about his level of success.
Kehe goes on to make several rude comments about Sanderson’s religion, appearance, and personality.
“Could it be, finally, because he’s a weirdo Mormon? But so are Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), Glen A. Larson (the original Battlestar Galactica), and Stephenie Meyer (Twilight). Mormon, I mean. Only Orson Scott Card is also a weirdo.”
“I find Sanderson depressingly, story-killingly lame.”
“…in a graphic T-shirt and ill-fitting blazer, which he says he wears because it makes him look professorial. It doesn’t. He isn’t. Unless the word means only: believing everything you say is worth saying. Sanderson talks a lot, but almost none of it is usable, quotable.”
“Maybe nobody writes about you, I say to Sanderson, because you don’t write very well.”
He then goes on to state that the quality of Sanderson’s writing can’t possibly be good due to the sheer volume of words he’s able to write, citing Sanderson’s early novels as “proof.”
“Most will hear this and think: At that rate, none of the words could possibly be any good. They’d be right, in a way, and that’s what Sanderson agrees with. At the sentence level, he is no great gift to English prose.
The early books especially. My god.”
If you look at the work of any of your favorite authors, you’ll likely see the same thing. Their later, most recent, work is going to be better than their first novel. That makes sense because the more you write, the better you’ll get. That’s the advice we constantly hear in the literary community. So why would we hold Brandon Sanderson to a different standard than other writers?
“Of his own work, Sanderson has said: ‘I detest rewriting,’ ‘I write for endings,’ and ‘I write to relax.’ It shows. He writes, by one metric, at a sixth-grade reading level.”
Here’s where Kehe takes a weird turn.
“The one question I ask practically everyone is, Why Sanderson? I only need to ask it a few times to realize the answer is always the same. It’s a two-parter. First part: Sanderson’s characters. ‘They feel like real people,’ everyone insists.”
“The second answer to Why Sanderson? is his worlds. This is probably what he’s best known for.”
He gets to know Sanderson’s audience at a release event in search of the reasons Sanderson has such a large fan base and why he’s reached this level of success. You’d think this would quell some of Kehe’s concerns, but he continues questioning the attendees about the quality of Sanderson’s writing.
“People don’t care about sentences. They care about Sanderson.”
This leads to the importance of creating a positive authorial identity and building your brand. I think it’s safe to say that a large part of Brandon Sanderson’s success is due to his loyal following. He’s created meaningful relationships with his readers through his words and his presence in the fantasy/science fiction community. He understands the importance of listening to his fans and delivers what they want to read. He’s a nice guy.
“He might not feel, he says, but his characters do. They agonize and cry and rejoice and love. That’s one of the reasons he writes, he says: to feel human.”
“As I build books,” Sanderson says, as I sit there, for once entirely enraptured, “God builds people.”
Conclusion
Overall, this is one of the weirdest articles I’ve ever read.
Kehe repeatedly insults Sanderson’s personality and writing, while admiring the fanbase he’s built and comparing Sanderson to a god of the fantasy community.
He makes several off-handed comments about Sanderson’s religion and compares it to the science fiction/fantasy that Sanderson writes. Kehe even goes as far as doing this to Sanderson’s face.
Why write an article constantly putting a successful writer down while seemingly radiating jealousy for the community he’s created and his material possessions?
I think this piece screams Jason Kehe’s envy of Brandon Sanderson’s success. If you think you can do it better, Jason, why haven’t you?
McCaylee Putney has a BA in English and Creative Writing from SNHU. She is working on her MFA in Creative Writing and is the editor of Moments of Memoir while juggling all the other facets of her life. Follow her here or on Twitter to see more of her journey.
