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Brandon Sanderson, the science fiction and fantasy author known for creating the Cosmere literary universe, has some advice for new writers – look for firsthand knowledge when you’re writing about mental health issues.

“Listen to primary sources,” Brandon Sanderson says during a spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2022. “When I’m exploring someone who is dealing with a mental health issue or something like that, what I will do is I will start my research usually in blogs and things like that, where people have talked about what it’s like to live with this. Reading what family members also say is usually pretty helpful to kind of get a grasp of the breadth of it, because no person is a monolith.”

“If you just go 'This is what it’s like to have [dissociative identity disorder].' Well, no, that’s what it’s like for one person to have the idea, and if you don’t have the breadth or reading about a bunch of different people’s experiences, then you will probably default. What you want to avoid is the pop culture representations of a lot of mental illnesses, because somewhere in the ‘80s, people realized that you could make a really sexy version of most mental illnesses and then took some narrative shortcuts that have been pretty damaging to most people. My era internalized a lot of those.”

“If you read Elantris, my treatment of autism is very much one of those pop culture versions of autism. I got it wrong. It’s not like there are no people that act autistic like Aiden does, but you know that is such an extreme version of something that a whole host of people deal with that they’re kind of seeing that one representation.”

For more from Brandon Sanderson, check out the complete panel video below:

 Here's how to read Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere series in order.