Golden Son
Better audio version but wrong time codes HERE
Pierce Brown reading the beginning of Golden Son; 00:30
On how his dad taught him to walk; his dad taught him how to be a man; 08:10
On how his mom taught him to speak; his mom taught him how to voice his opinions; 08:56
On why Red Rising is listed as YA; it's a mystery, Darrow was a teen in Red Rising; 09:40
On why he writes in isolation; to capture the melancholy of Darrow and a work ethic; 11:20
On why he chose a Colortocracy; Freedom of Choice in history intrigues him, he was inspired by what would happen when the complete Meritocracy of Plato would be perverted by humans; 13:15
On which character is his favorite to write; Sevro is easiest, Mustang is hardest, Pax was most fun; 16:17
On the inspiration for Victra; based off of a character from Gene Wolfe’s Shadow and Claw Series; 18:05
Was he planning to add Victra while writing Red Rising; Yes; 19:15
On actors for the Film; he wants an actor from a storytelling background or from anonymity; 21:07
Gold eyes/eugenics don’t shine/light up, they are a subtle gold; 22:52
On how involved he is with the film adaptation; he is going to be ‘very involved’; 23:17
Attempted change of character features in the film adaptation; 25:01
On the Influences from Sci-Fi & Fantasy; Red Rising is ‘Fantasy with a SciFi clothing on’, Star Wars, Hyperion Cantos, Dune, Count of Monte Cristo ; 26:25
On listening to music while writing; he can’t listen to lyrics, when writing a scene, he loops a song 54 times, cares a lot about the tone that a song captures about the scene; 28:33
On Darrow’s theme song; Buried in the murder, your bones; 30:09
On the average lifespan of a red; 39-45 for the men and women last longer, cancer is prevalent due to the radiation and old equipment used, a lot of them die by RustLung which is degeneration of the tissue and lungs; 30:48
Pierce Brown reading the beginning of Golden Son; 00:46
Star Trek or Star Wars; Star Wars; 03:24
Coffee or tea; Coffee; 03:27
PC or Mac; both; 03:33
Night owl or an Early bird; both; 03:39
Batman or Superman; Batman; 03:44
Automated(animated?) or Live Action for Red Rising; Live Action; 03:53
How hard was writing the screenplay; very; 05:43
Can razors be shaped into anything; they can shape it into whatever they want; 06:52
On the creatures that Carvers make; there is a hunting ground on Europa; 07:52
What wakes you up at 3 in the morning; thinking the plot went the wrong way; 08:26
Do you plan your character to go right but they insist on going left; constantly; 09:00
Why is the forbidden song forbidden; it was used as an act of rebellion; 10:56
Favorite book from childhood; abridged version of the illiad, dune, count of montecristo; 11:32
On darrow’s last name and his clan; just Son of Dale or Of lykos; 12:35
On the red Clans; they are broken up intentionally into 12 clans; 13:11
The most drastic thing he has done for a deadline; 2 day no rest working on a 35 page thesis; 14:40
On his previously written books; one with pegasus writers, one with atlantis; 16:44
How long did it take for you to start writing your ideas; like 2 days; 19:42
On how to write super intelligent characters/what decision they would make; leave the thread hanging and wait for inspiration; 21:29
On the pitch for the movie; they didn’t like the mars setting; 02:38
Was jumping into screenplays a part of a plan; yes, he has other screenplays he is working on; 03:34
On his other books and before red rising; wrote 6 books before Red Rising, rejected by a total 60 agents, 130 rejections; 04:18
On the plot of Red Rising; 07:46
On keeping the series in the solar system; people are more attached to the planets/myth; 09:40
On the characters the died; Pax’s death was decided by pulling it from the hat; 11:50
Moods while writing; he gets sad while writing sad things, etc, his friends don’t mind; 12:52
At the end of Golden Son; the book is about trust, the end is the result of Darrow’s mistakes and lessons; 14:24
Easier to write action or love scenes; he prefers writing the quiet scenes; 16:49
On the duality of Darrow; Darrow has done great things but still committed many mistakes; 18:16
On the razor; in sci-fi, you lose the connection because of the size, he wanted to make it technological but not technological; 21:23
On the primal nature of the fights; it’s a thematic exploration and it reflects their decadent society, and how even the height of the hierarchy can’t get rid of the dirt ; 23:28
On the laurel-tide dance; it's like the drunken dancing of Irish(like the dance in the titanic in the bowels of the ship); 26:30
Why do you think readers are connecting so well with the series?; People relate to the disenfranchised characters in the series; 00:33
Do you have a favorite character?; Pax au Telemanus, Sevro; 01:05
Why are readers attracted to the Reds; They are the oppressed and weak class which resonates with the people; 01:43
How do you make new superhero characters; he finds a trope he likes and puts it into a new scenario; 3:39
What is the most interesting part of the Hero’s journey; the compromise the character has to make; 18:43
How to build a world and supporting cast around the character; the secondary characters are weird part of his personality that he wants to explore; 29:51
What superpower would you like to have; change the molecular structure of things; 33:57
How do you handle diversity in your books; ethno-types as we know it don’t exist in the Red Rising universe, but the color system lets him comment on what he wants to; 40:47