Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: echigo109 on June 22, 2009, 07:27:48 PM
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All of the books that i've read by brandon sanderson has a girl main character, i was just wondering if there is a reason for that.
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Nearly every book I've read has at least one female main character...
Have you read Elantris? There is still a main female POV character but she is not the protagonist.
Also, Brandon originally began writing Mistborn with Vin as a male character, but realized that actually Vin should be female.
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Nearly every book needs a female and male main character and in it so people of both genders can relate to th book. I not saying that books with only one gender is bad, it can be done, but it's easier I think if there can be both genders in a book.
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Only if the author has a keen sense of observation and can think in the other gender's point of view... if they can't that would be a rather annoying book
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I just assumed that it was like his magic systems; he is more than usually good at it. He's a smart guy, and knows that good female characters are hard to come by. This is entirely speculation on my part. I could be entirely wrong.
RE: Elantris - I considered the princess to be the (capital M, capital C) Main Character. She certainly seemed to have the most screen time.
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I disagree she was a MC not the there is a large difference Raoden got almost as much time allotted to him and is the protaginist for the series
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I like the female characters that B. Sanderson writes, but I would like him to write more books with male protagonists. I think I just relate to them better.
I loved Lightsong in Warbreaker. He cracked me up.
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I like the female characters that B. Sanderson writes, but I would like him to write more books with male protagonists. I think I just relate to them better.
I loved Lightsong in Warbreaker. He cracked me up.
I think he does a good job evening out the female and male protagonist.
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Alcatraz has a male main character
Elantris has three main characters, two male and one female.
Warbreaker has (I think) four main characters, two female and two male.
And Mistborn has a female main character, though arguably Elend take a main role by book 3.
So by my count, that's 7 published novels, and a male/female lead ratio of 6 to 6.
I think it's just that he writes powerfully strong female leads, so they stand out. Whereas we're all used to powerful male leads.
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Alcatraz has a male main character
Elantris has three main characters, two male and one female.
Warbreaker has (I think) four main characters, two female and two male.
And Mistborn has a female main character, though arguably Elend take a main role by book 3.
So by my count, that's 7 published novels, and a male/female lead ratio of 6 to 6.
I think it's just that he writes powerfully strong female leads, so they stand out. Whereas we're all used to powerful male leads.
When I said "I would like him to write more books with male protagonists" I meant epic fantasy. I've read Alcatraz and I like it, but I guess I should have clarified that I was just thinking about epic fantasy.
I think it was Reaves comment that made me realize what I wanted was more male protagonists, not just strong male main characters. I haven't read Elantris in a long time (I need to re-read it), but it is the only published Sanderson book I've read with an actual male protagonist. (And I've read all of Sanderson's published books and some of his unpublished works.)
And a little more about Elantris...
RE: Elantris - I considered the princess to be the (capital M, capital C) Main Character. She certainly seemed to have the most screen time.
Like I said before, I haven't read Elantris in a long time, but if Sortitus is correct and the princess has more screen time than Raoden, it muddies the water a little bit. I believe Raoden is still the protagonist of Elantris, but if the main female character has as much or more POVs than the male protagonist, it still confirms echigo109's observation that "All of the books that i've read by brandon sanderson has a girl main character".
I'm just saying that I observed the same thing echigo109 did.
Elantris - male protagonist, but the main female character seems to steel the show
MB trilogy - female protagonist
Warbreaker - female protagonist* - the two most common POVs were female
In my mind all 5 of Sanderson's published epic fantasy either had a female protagonist, or the female main character stole the show.
I'm a guy and I grew up reading fantasy where the protagonist is almost always a guy. I guess that's how I've come to expect my fantasy. I do really enjoy the WoT with its many female main characters and POVs, but I get the impression Sanderson is going a little overboard with all of his female protagonists and main characters. Don't get me wrong, I like his books, but my favorite book of his is Dragonsteel. I think I like Dragonsteel more than all the books he's published because the protagonist AND the main POV is a guy. I relate to him more.
-- slight Warbreaker spoiler -- you've been warned
* - I realize the protagonist of Warbreaker depends on how you define the term. Now that I think about it, the "hero" of the book turned out to be someone else, but for the purposes of this thread I think we can agree the story was about the two sisters.
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I do really enjoy the WoT with its many female main characters and POVs, but I get the impression Sanderson is going a little overboard with all of his female protagonists and main characters.
Really? You like the female characters of WoT? I can't call them on here what I call them in my head for fear of getting banned, let's just say I call them the Witches, because they are NOT nice (or reasonable) people. I like the WoT series DESPITE the female characters, not because of them.
Now Brandon is great at his female characters. I don't really care if they are male or female, as long as the character is compelling. He seems to have no problem writing compelling characters, regardless of gender (as opposed to say Tolkien who wrote absolutely HORRIBLE female characters).
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Allwrong,
I myself quite enjoy the frailties and faults in a character, as it makes them more identifiable with real life. I loved how RJ's view of how women would act if the gender roles were reversed matched my own (so I am a little biased). Also, the men of WOT do some equally foolish things; is it OK for the men to behave poorly at times but not the women?
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All of the books that i've read by brandon sanderson has a girl main character, i was just wondering if there is a reason for that.
Because he is a dirty pervert!
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All of the books that i've read by brandon sanderson has a girl main character, i was just wondering if there is a reason for that.
Because he is a dirty pervert!
that..is...um...taking it to far. Those are things we should keep to ourselves i think......if I got the wrong thing here tell me but I think that was a tiny bit...unnesassary... ???
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It would have been funny had he added a emocon so we knew it was intended as a off-colour joke...try it again with one like this : ;) :P ::)... get it...
if you take this post seriously i will go drown myself for losing all hope in humanity
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It seems to me that he's not writing more females than males... it's just that the cliche in most mass-media is that we get a strong, handsome, young male from a back-water town that turns into a mighty hero... Mr. Sanderson does a lot to break cliches, so it appears that he makes it a point to give us both a heroic male and heroic female character in each book that are equally awesome, but since we are trained to see male heroes, the female ones really stand out.
I mean, let's just face it... Vin is one of the coolest characters out there.
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Brandon wasn't always that way. I hear that the girl in the very first draft of White Sand was just there to be the main guy's love interest. He realized how boring she was and after that worked very hard to make his female characters interesting and important to the plot.
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My problem isn't with the "frailties" of the women, or the "stupid things they do" (Lord knows the men do enough stupid stuff for that to not matter. No, my problem with the women in the WoT books is that they are so completely unreasonable. If I knew women that acted like them in real life, I would go out of my way to avoid them every time I could. (And I'm not referring to being opinionated or strong-willed. I've been surrounded by women like that my entire life. My grandmother opened the first cardiac unit in the state of Louisiana, and now the biggest cardiac unit in the state is named after her. With that kind of example to look up to, strong-willed and opinionated is not a problem I have with women.) No, my problem is that in their opinions they are right and everyone else is wrong. End of story. No ifs, ands, or buts. They are (almost without exception) all completely unreasonable.
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You've obviously not met my aunts and my mother..i avoid them myself
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It would have been funny had he added a emocon so we knew it was intended as a off-colour joke...try it again with one like this : ;) :P ::)... get it...
if you take this post seriously i will go drown myself for losing all hope in humanity
I find it safer to assume that if a post can be taken as a joke or sarcasm, one should do so. Most people aren't as mean as all that, anyhow.
But yeah, that's what a ;D is for. Because we don't want anyone to know what a dirty pervert Brandon really is.
::) ;)
I actually thought Sanderson struck a great balance with his characterization of Vin. She presents a strong front and consistently performs powerful, even lethal, acts. But as readers we're aware of the internal conflicts and insecurities that she struggles with, possibly in a way not even other characters like Elend really understand.
I can easily see how other characters in her world would see her as frightening or... "witchy" (ahem), but we understand her better than that. That's depth, baby.
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Just a thought: While Brandon tends to write many female characters in main roles, he tends to write about their interactions with men a lot more than their interactions with women. Woman-to-woman relationships aren't as common and as deep as opposite-sex and man-to-man relationships are in Brandon's books, although this may just be because Brandon wrote a woman lead who was very much "one of the boys" in both Elantris and Mistborn. So I think it balances out in his epic fantasies pretty well even without considering Alcatraz.