Patrick Rothfuss
Patrick Rothfuss
Patrick James Rothfussis an American writer of epic fantasy. He is best known for his projected three-volume series The Kingkiller Chronicle...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 June 1973
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
want proud
Do you just want to get by? Or do you want to make me proud?
thinking research want
I think the best part of being an author is that I get to learn about anything I want and explain it away as research.
research pottery want
I want to learn how to pick locks, swordfight, throw pottery - it's all research. It's like the curious person's version of James Bond's license to kill. I've got a license to learn.
ideas what-if want
Fantasy is a genre that allows me to create anything I want. That, in turn, allows me to explore any sort of idea I'm curious about. I love it because Fantasy is a genre that asks, "What if...?" That's my favorite question.
evil stories want
It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.
sweet world want
Isn't that the way of the world? We want the sweet things, but we need the unpleasant ones.
boring dragons people suddenly throw time uses whatever work
The problem with dragons is that everyone uses them. All the time. When that happens, they become commonplace. A lot of people think you can just throw them into a story and suddenly whatever you're writing is 28% cooler. But that doesn't work. All that does is make dragons into some boring cliche.
ask authors few fun interviews last list questions since start
I've done a lot of interviews of the last few years, and I've actually started a list of questions that it would be fun to ask an author, but no respectable interviewer would ever ask. Since I'm not respectable, I'm going to start doing interviews with some authors I know, just for fun.
amount appeal becoming chance decided epic heavy mean people struggling time
I'm struggling with what is epic. People decided I was epic - if by epic, do you mean a big, heavy book? 'David Copperfield' is a big book - is it epic? Amount of time covered, length, drama, or story - that's the real appeal - if the story is long you have a better chance of becoming more connected.
coming until
One thing I've learned now is that I should not say when a book is coming out until I'm sure I know.
profoundly zero
It's profoundly disorienting to go from zero to celebrity.
almost bit fan modern
I'm a fan of books that are almost languorous in their storytelling. That is a little bit lost sometimes in the modern media that we have.
almost encourage good jack myth order understand work writer
The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others.
You don't want the world destroyed, because, you know, that's where your shoes are.