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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I was wondering if you were thinking along the lines of a movie of Alcatraz ? | We tried really hard. We actually even got storyboards and things with Dreamworks Animation, which was going to be awesome, but then they eventually let it die. So if you buy the big art Dreamworks Animation book, there's actually Alcatraz concept art on one of the pages, which is kind of excruciating that it never happened. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So for big, big books like Stormlight , what is the ratio of time spent on the first draft versus on revisions, and has that changed over the course of your career? | Oh wow. They take more time in revision. They take more time at every step of the way than the shorter books. So a book like Calamity I can write pretty solidly, I can write 2 to 3 thousand words a day on that rough draft, and I spend two weeks on an outline and whatever that turns into it's only a couple months of writing. A Stormlight book, the plotting is so intricate it often takes me a year before I'm comfortable with the outline I'm working on-- so I will writing other stuff while working on this outline-- 'till I catch what the soul of that book is going to be, but then all of the interludes, and all of the things, and boy, every book we've had big portions we need to knock out and re-write. It just takes a long time. I would say 50% of the time I spend on-- You take the time I spend writing the first draft, cut it in half and that is the time I spend revising on your average book. But it really depends. Like Stormlight I started the outline last year, or a year ago in June, and started my first exploratory scenes--I posted a few of those online--then went back to the outline, and outlined for a year and then I felt good writing it. So I started that in June. I will write this all the way until March and then we will probably be revising it until six weeks before the book comes out, because that is the absolute deadline that Tor needs before they can print and distribute it *camera pans to Peter making a wryly amused expression* So that's about how long it will take to do this book. It's a lot of work. You know I like doing this because I like having multiple things going, right? Like I don't think I can write a Stormlight book every year, in fact I couldn't, that process I just outlined is a two and a half year process. So, it's just not something I could do. But during that two and a half years I can do some shorter books, some novellas, and just experimenting with different types of writing. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I've picked up in bits in pieces that it's possible, for some people at least, to use the Shardpools to worldhop... Can non-Invested people do that, or do you have to have some form of Investiture? Do you have to have any special Investiture above and beyond the normal spark of life? | Yes. *hesitantly* Every individual is Invested to some extent... I'm gonna go ahead and RAFO that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In Sixth of the Dusk , and where that fits in the timeline, are the visitors from anywhere we've seen before? And if I were to speculate more on which one, you'd say... | You have seen people from that place before. Then I would say RAFO. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In Sixth of the Dusk , it feels like it's a crossover... So is it a planet that we've seen before, or... And you're not going to tell any more? When will we know? | That is true. Yes. Well, you have seen the people they are calling the "Ones Above". Nope. Yeah, fifteen years maybe? Hopefully it won't take me that long, but I only just finished the outlines for Era 3 Mistborn , which is now what we're calling the 1980s, so I haven't even at the moment got the sketches of the sci-fi one, I don't have the outlines and things. So in other words, we aren't to the science fiction era; we're a ways off from that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Which of the roles Hoid has played is your favorite? And will we be seeing him in Dalinar's flashbacks? | So which of the roles played by Hoid is my favorite. I would probably say Dust from Warbreaker . I just like-- That's the most true storyteller he's been, kind of based on oral storytelling tradition and things like that. I can't tell you. You'll have to read and find out whether you'll find him in Dalinar's flashbacks or not. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | All of the females in your books seem to be very independent, strong women; do you believe that you write them that way from your perspective, or is that your experience, or...? | There's a couple of things behind that. The first is that my mother graduated first in her class in Accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the entire Accounting department. That was in an era where that wasn't something that a lot of women did, and so I've had quite the role model in my life. But beyond that, it's kind of an interesting story. I discovered fantasy with a book I mentioned earlier, Dragonsbane . Wheel of Time was my *inaudible*, but I discovered Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, and my teacher got me to read this, and I came back to my teacher, and said, "People write books about dragons?" She's like, "Yeah, there's a lot of books about dragons; go read them." And so I went to the card catalog, which we had back then in the Stone Age [laughter], and I flipped to the next title in the card catalog, and it was Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery. And so I'm like, "Well, this has dragons; maybe this is good." And it was fantastic! If you've ever read Dragonflight , it's amazing! So I read through all of those in the school library, and I'm like, "Well, what else is there?" The next title in line was Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, and so I read through all of those, which are also fantastic books, and one of the best magic systems in fantasy, in Melanie Rawn's Sunrunner books. And so I got done with those, and at that point, a friend came to me, who'd heard I discovered fantasy, and said, "Here, you'll like this book." It was by David Eddings. And I told him, "I don't think guys can write fantasy." [laughter] That was—honest to goodness—that's what I told him. I'm like, "I don't know if I want to read a guy writer; I don't think they can get it down." And so, I did end up reading Eddings, and enjoying Eddings, but my introduction to fantasy was through three women who have at times been called feminist writers—all three of them have worn that mantle—and that's still with me as part of what makes a good fantasy book, and I think that's just an influence. My very first novel that I tried, which was not Elantris — White Sand —the female character turned out really bland, and I was really disappointed in myself, and I thought, "the book is terrible." And it took me a long time to figure out—like, several books of work—what I was doing wrong. And what I was doing wrong, and I find this in a lot of new writers across the spectrum, is I was writing people specifically "the Other"; people who are different from myself, I was putting them in their role, rather than making them a character, right? And this is an easy thing to do—like, you get into the head of your main character. They're often pretty much like you, you can write them, they're full of life, they've got lots of passions, and then, the woman is like the love interest, and the minority is the sidekick, right? Because that's...you know, how you do that. And you stick these people in these roles, and then they only kind of march through their roles, and so while it's not insulting, the characters don't feel alive. It's like one person in a room full of cardboard cut-outs, like "Stereotypes Monthly" magazine. [laughter] And then your main character. And women are just as bad at doing this as men, just doing the men in that way. And so it's just something, as a writer, you need to practice, is saying, "What would this character be doing if the plot hadn't gotten in their way?" Remember, they think they're the most important character in the story. They're the hero of their own story. What are their passions and desires aside from the plot? And how is this going to make them a real person? And you start asking yourselves questions like that, and suddenly the characters start to come alive, and start to not fill the role. And you ask yourself, "Why can't they be in the role they're in?" And that makes a better character, always, than "Why should they be?" Flop roles, too, if you find yourself falling into this, you say, "Okay, I've stuck—" You know, Robert Jordan kind of did this. The natural thing to do is to put the wise old man into the mentor—you know, the Obi Wan Kenobi, the Gandalf—role, and instead, Robert Jordan put a woman in that role, with Moiraine, and took the wise old man and made him a juggler. [laughter] And these two...you know, and suddenly by forcing these both into different roles, you've got... they're much more interesting characters. And you know, Thom is named after Merlin; he could have very easily been in that role, and instead he wasn't. And so, it made even the first Wheel of Time book so much better by making characters not be the standard stereotypical roles that you would expect for them to be in. So, there you go. Also, stay away from tokenism. If you force yourself to put two people in from the same culture in your book, that will force you to make them more realistic as characters, because if you only put one in, you can be like, "All right, their whole race and culture is defined by this person." And putting in multiples can help you to say, "Look, now they can't both just be defined by that." Anyway, I went off on a long diatribe about that; I'm sorry. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was the main inspiration for Elantris ? | My main inspiration for Elantris was reading in the New Testament, actually, about lepers and leper colonies, and wanting to write a story about a magical leper colony. And that's where the idea for the people who got this disease, and the city, and everything like that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Have you actually written out the Diagram, and Words of Radiance , and so on? | Oh, heavens, no. That's the sort of thing that falls into the worldbuilder's disease thing; there's no way that writing those out is worth the effort, so no, I have not. Definitely not the Diagram. If I were going to write any of them, I would write The Way of Kings , but even that, it's probably 30 or 40 thousand words in-world. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you tell me how long it was from the Shattering of Adonalsium to the prelude of The Way of Kings when the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact? 'Cause I've looked at the current chronology and it's very, very spotty... That one takes place before Way of Kings doesn't it? 'Cause I know one of the worldhoppers from there shows up in Way of Kings ... | Current timeline, which I have NOT canonized, is around 6,000 years... I have not finished with my outline document yet. Yes it is... the real trick is... making sure that I fit in, for instance, White Sand and things with the proper amount... because I haven't released that book series yet, I have to make sure while we're doing the graphic novel, that it fits the chronology, which is why I can't quite canonize things yet. Yes Yeah, White Sand is one of the very earliest. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How did koloss-blooded people happen? | Koloss-blooded people-- A koloss-blooded is the result of two koloss having a child. A full koloss is only made once you accept the spikes and are mutated into the final form. And so a koloss-blooded-- The koloss can breed true now but that's what you get. And so they actually have a ritual at coming-of-age where you can accept the spikes or you can leave. And so all koloss in the wastes-- in the Roughs that are in the koloss tribes are-- have chosen that and outsiders can choose it too. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Title Page You'd be surprised how much can be said about the title of this book. Naming books is one of the most frustrating, and most fulfilling, elements of writing. I'm more fortunate than some authors I know–for most of my books, the names came easily. Sometimes, I even came up with the title before I wrote the book. (This has actually only happened once, when thought up the phrase "The Way of Kings," and thought "Man! That would be a great title for a book!") Elantris has had several titles. During the rough draft phase, I simply called it "SPIRIT." I knew that the main character's name would be based on the character for Spirit, and that would also be the name he took for himself when he was in exile. I never intended this to be the final title for the manuscript, but it was what I named all the files when I was typing the work. Those of you who've read the book realize the special significance of "Spirit" (or Aon Rao as it eventually became known) to the climax of the story. I'll talk more about this in a bit. Well, as I was writing the story, I realized I needed a better title. The most obvious choice was to somehow work in the name of the fallen magical city that was the focus of the book. Now, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but the city "Elantris" was actually originally named "Adonis." I'm not sure what I was thinking. Sometimes, when you're coming up with a lot of fantastical names, you create words that have a certain, unforeseen connotations or connections. In this case, I wasn't even thinking of the Greek myth. "Ado" was simply the Aon I chose to base the city’s name around, and "Adonis" (Pronounced with a long "A" and a long "O") was the word that came out of that Aon. So, I named the book The Spirit of Adonis , hoping to play off of Raoden's name. It was, however, actually a three-fold pun. I included this line–"The Spirit of Adonis" at the climax, when Raoden realizes that the city itself formed an enormous Aon Rao. I didn't realize what I'd done until my writing group met for the first time, and they said "I like the beginning of the book. I'm having trouble figuring out what this has to do with the Greeks. Is it because the god-like people were so arrogant?" Then it hit me. Adonis, from Greek mythology, was a beautiful man loved by Aphrodite. The word has become a kind of paradigm for a beautiful–almost perfect–specimen of the male species. And I had unwittingly named my book after him. Let's just say I changed that pretty quickly. However, I needed a new name for the city. I played with a number of different combinations of Ado, but somehow ended up trying up different sounds and combinations. Thankfully, I came up with the word "Elantris." As soon as I wrote it down, I knew this was my city. It sounded grand without being overbearing, and it had a mythological feel to it (hearkening slightly to "Atlantis".) I renamed the book " The Spirit of Elantris ," and proceeded.</p> Then came time to send out the manuscript. I had had some comments on the book–people liked "Elantris," but the "spirit of" was less popular. I tried several iterations, and even sent out some query letters calling the book "THE LORDS OF ELANTRIS." That just felt too cliché fantasy for me, however, and I eventually returned to " The Spirit of Elantris ." Finally, the book got sold. At this point, my editor (Moshe Feder) suggested that we shorten the title to simply Elantris . Remembering how other people had been unimpressed with the "spirit of," I agreed. Now that I've seen the cover lettering and worked with it as " Elantris " for some time, I'm very pleased with the change. The new title has more zip, and makes the book sound more majestic. I still get to have a reference to my old title, as Part Three of the book is called "The Spirit of Elantris." Of course, even this title isn't without its problems. People have trouble spelling it when I say the title, and some think of the car named the "Elantra." At one panel, I even had one person miss-hear me, thinking the name of the book was "The Laundress." That would certainly be a different book... |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Which is your favorite Epic to write? | To write? Obliteration, because he's creepy in the way I like people to be creepy. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When you started writing Cosmere novels, how much of it had you outlined? How far ahead had you thought? Have you ever backed yourself into a corner with it? | When I started writing Cosmere novels? When I started started, I was a teenager. Totally hadn't thought very far ahead. When I was an adult and I was writing them, I wrote one when I was like 20, and I had an inkling, and I played around with things. The first one that I wrote with a real, conscious eye toward the cosmere was Elantris . So the ones that have been published, yes. But when I first started, I had a little bit of an inkling. Not yet! I have backed myself into corners by saying things to fans that I've already changed in my notes and hadn't realized I had, and stuff like that - I do that all the time. But usually when I do that, I just tell them. "Ah, I'm sorry, I just changed this, guys." I'm still convinced that Stayer and Stepper - that [Robert Jordan] didn't know those were two different horses. I'm utterly convinced that he made the mistake, and then just covered it. Because that's the sort of things we writers do. One of the ones I’ve been working on a lot lately is, how much can you affect things that are Invested with other magic systems? Should it be not at all, should it be a little bit, should it be…? But then I have to go back to Mistborn, and I’ve got canon here, where people are pushing and pulling on things that are Invested, but I tried when I was even writing Mistborn to make sure that the someone was drawing on the Mist, or had extra power for some reason before they were pushing on… and so I left myself that room, but at the same time I’ve established that you can do it, so anyway. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Atium was not a basic metal. Does the Era 2 table of 16 have a similar mistake? | RAFO |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you ever have trouble keeping your characters straight? How long does it take to get back into them? *audio obscured* | If I stop writing and go back, it is hard. It takes about a month to get back into a story after I stop. I don't get the characters mixed up. I try to, but I don't always manage it, because of deadlines and things. It's always going to cost me, and I know it will, sometimes you can't avoid that. In the old days, I never did it, when I didn't have a publisher, but now it's my job. When they say, "We need this revision done," I stop and do the revision, but it costs me. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The finale of Hero of Ages is incredibly ballsy. Were you at all concerned about backlash? | Yes, I was. As was my editor. We both agreed it was the right ending, though, and so I didn't have to do much convincing. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why couldn't Joel be a Rithmatist? He wanted it so bad. | I will explain as the series progresses. That is a plot point. Every book like that, they get the power in the end, and I thought it was a much more interesting story if he has half - the knowledge - and Melody has half - the talent - and together they create a whole. It just worked, and it was much better for me as a story. I knew going into it that he wasn't going to be able to by the end of the book, but the reasons for it you'll find out as the series progresses. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I loved the ending of Words of Radiance . When you come up with an idea for a new cosmere book, do you have to go "Oh, now I have to figure out how this fits in with everything else", or do you have it pre-made? | I have a few little holes that I can slot things into, and I try to get them to fit the roles, like I know there are certain things that need to happen, and if it doesn't fit the role, I just go ahead and make it a minor planet, like Shadows for Silence , where I can write a story, but I can't put as much magic into those books. So I've got a few restrictions on me, but I think that's important for maintaining the continuity. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I want to know how Hoid travels between worlds. Or, if you're not going to tell me right now, will we ever find out? | Hoid has travelled between the worlds by getting in one Shardpool in Shadesmar and coming out a different one. *pause* Okay? So that is one method he has used to travel between the worlds. The worlds are connected through Shadesmar. Um, things that people don't think about as much reflect very minorly in Shadesmar, so when you-- all the-- most of the space between planets is cut out, and there's some weird, twisted geography going on there. So that's basically how he does it, Cognitive Realm. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you tell me anything about Kaladin's maternal grandparents? | Let's just say that his mother [Hesina]--you're asking a very astute question--gave up more than most people gave up in that city to go be what she became. She's definitely fallen in social standing since her childhood. She took a hit. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | One thing when I was reading The Alloy of Law , in Mistborn , all the [Feruchemists] were the Mistborn version of [Feruchemy], and then it changed to the Misting version of [Feruchemy]. Is there... | Yeah, there's a reason for that, and I'll delve into it a bunch more later, but basically, there's two things going on. Number one, the bloodlines have thinned, and that's the reason they're talking about [here]. Also, full-blooded Feruchemists mixing, like the populations mixed, is really dangerous, and Sazed knew this. So, I'll just leave it at that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | At the end of A Memory of Light , it mentions that Rand is no longer ta'veren - does that apply to Mat and Perrin as well? And if it does, how does it apply to Mat's luck? So you don't know whether they're ta'veren or not? Can women be ta'veren ? Because in the entire series there is not a single female ta'veren . | Everything I'm saying right now is not 100% canon, because I'm only working off of my guesstimates based on his notes. I believe that Mat's luck is a soul attribute that is independent of him being a ta'veren , but enhanced by his ta'veren nature. Part of the proof of this is the Heroes of the Horn knowing him as Gambler, which means in other Ages when he's been born and not been ta'veren , he's still had luck and attraction to things like that. Plus things in the notes, I'm basing on that. So it does not necessarily mean they aren't ta'veren right now, but even if they weren't, I think Mat would still have his luck. I do not know. My suspicion is that if he would have written the outriggers, Mat still would have been, and maybe Perrin, because Perrin was going to be in the outriggers, we know this. But I don't know for sure. But I think it would have been fun, if in some parallel dimension if I were to have written them, which I'm never going to, I would have not made Mat ta'veren, or Perrin, I would have made Tuon ta'veren , and forced Mat to deal with someone else who was ta'veren , which I think would have been interesting. There is not, but I'm very sure that they can be, based on things that I read in the notes. So, that's what I would have done, but I don't know if that's what Robert Jordan would have done. Can you just imagine that, Mat having to think that he's in someone else's story now? |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I was curious what the-- or if you had an inspiration for the scene with Vin and Elend going to his father's camp and the talk about acceptance? | Yeah a lot of these con-- these stories-- If you didn't hear it, there's a scene where Vin and Elend in Words of Radiance go to visit-- *crowd murmurs* not Words of Radiance *laughter* Well of Ascension ! They both start with a "W" I'm running out of letters to start books with. Yeah it's a good problem. So they go to talk to Straff and there's a lot of discussion about acceptance and just kind of things I was thinking about at the time and think about a lot. One of the things is "I hope people enjoy this, if not you're just going to have to deal with it." I work out what I'm thinking about life through the voices of my characters. And it's something I really look for in books as well, I do want a little philosophy with my fantasy. And, y'know, it's not that I'm trying to answer those questions, but I'm working on them. And the characters, because they have a different perspective from myself--because the characters don't voice what I think, they voice what they think about something I'm thinking about--and that really kind of helps me think about it and talk through it. And it's one of the reasons I write books, besides doing awesome stuff. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In addition to the two abilities given by each Surge, does a Knight Radiant Order have a third blended ability, the interaction of its two given Surges? So Shallan's Memories is kind of a... It's not just because she had that wonderful ability, and Pattern came along and went, "Oh, I like this one!" | Not specifically as phrased there, but each Order has quirks that are unique to it. They are magical quirks, but it's not necessarily a blend of the powers. Is associated with her Order, yes. No that is not necessarily what attracted Pattern. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Are the Sho Del hordlings and/or a hivemind? | The Sho Del are NOT a hivemind. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In The Rithmatist , you mention that Joel actually sneaks into the classroom, is that a spin-off of what you did? | I actually had a teacher once ask, "Who are you?" One of them actually picked me out. Fortunately, that was one that my roommate was going to, so I was able to [pretend I was just there with him]. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Shallan's Memory ability to capture an image doesn't seem to be working exactly like an eidetic memory... ...because she can erase it by drawing. Is that tied directly to the magic of Lightweaving? And if so would other creative Lightweavers have similar abilities. | Yes. If you look at the epigraphs there is a big hint on this, where it talks about it and yes... I have problems with eidetic memory, just because scientifically most scientists say this is not a real thing. So I would say that whenever-- Because of my knowledge of the science of it understand that you would need some sort of magical enhancement to be able to do what she does. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Warbreaker . Will we see more? | Yes you will. It is the project that is the most distant right now - the major project that is the most distant. Getting back to that, I feel like I have to do more Stormlight before I can get back to a different epic fantasy. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | If you drew a stick figure of a chalkling, would it be able to spike other chalklings and get their powers? | *laughter* No, because no one in this world knows what that is, because they're separate universes, but it is very clever. If you were doing it, I'd probably let you get away with it. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When is the second book of The Rithmatist coming out? | I haven't written it yet. I started doing the research, and it was so much work I realized I needed more time to do it, because I'm going to South America in it, and I just needed to know South American cultures better, so I decided I need to take another year to do research. So I'm doing research for it right now, I'm going to write it hopefully after I finish the next Stormlight book, and then we'll release it soon after. So it's a little ways away. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | POSTMODERNISM IN FANTASY The Way of Kings is out. I’ve been thinking a lot about the novel, what it has meant to me over the years, and why I decided to write it as I did. I’ve had a lot of trouble deciding how to pitch this novel to people. It’s a trouble I’ve never had before. I’m going to explain why this one doesn’t work as easily. But I’m going to start with a story. There’s a particular music video I saw quite often when working the graveyard shift at the local hotel. I worked that job primarily because it allowed me to write at work (I wrote some eight or so novels while sitting at that front desk, including both Elantris and the original draft of The Way of Kings ). However, part of my job there was the do the night audit of the cash drawer and occupancy, that sort of thing. As I worked, VH1/MTV would often become my radio for an hour or so, playing on the little television hidden behind the front desk. The video was by Jewel, and was for the song “ Intuition .” We’ll pretend, for the sake of defending my masculinity, that I paid special attention for the literary nature of the video, and not because I have a fondness for Jewel’s music. And there was something very curious about this video. In it, Jewel transitions back and forth between washed-out “normal world” shots of her walking on a street or interacting with people, and color-saturated “music video”-style shots of her engaging in product promotion while wearing revealing clothing. The tone of the video is a little heavy-handed in its message. Among other things, it is meant to parody rock star/music video culture. It shows Jewel in oversexualized situations, having sold herself out in an over-the-top way. It points a critical finger at sexual exploitation of the female form in advertising, and juxtaposes Jewel in a normal, everyday walk with a surreal, Hollywood version of herself promoting various products. Now, what is absolutely fascinating to me about this video is how perfectly it launches into an discussion of the literary concept of deconstructionism. You see, Jewel is able to come off looking self-aware—even down-to-earth—in this video, because of the focus she puts on how ridiculous and silly modern advertising is. The entire video is a condemnation of selling out, and a condemnation of using sexual exploitation in advertising. And yet, while making this condemnation, Jewel gets to reap the benefits of the very things she is denouncing. In the video, her “Hollywood self” wears a tight corset, gets soaked in water, and prances in a shimmering, low-cut gown while wind blows her hair in an alluring fashion. She points a critical finger at these things through hyperbole, and therefore gains the moral high ground—but the video depends on these very images to be successful. They’re going to draw every eye in the room, gaining her publicity in the same way the video implies is problematic. Deconstructionism is a cornerstone of postmodern literary criticism. Now, as I’m always careful to note, I’m not an expert in these concepts. A great deal of what I present here is an oversimplification, both of Jewel’s video and of postmodernism itself. But for the purposes of this essay, we don’t have time for pages of literary theory. The title itself is already pretentious enough. So, I’ll present to you the best explanation of deconstructionism I was given when working on my master’s degree: “It’s when you point out that a story is relyin’ on the same thing it’s denyin’.” That will work for now. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So, Vorinism and the safehand, it's obviously a modesty type thing kind of like the hijab. Where does the modesty stop? Or does it go up the whole arm? Okay, so if they had, like, a slitted sleeve? | It doesn't go up the whole arm, it actually ends at about the wrist. That would be fine. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is the chain in Celebrant made of Dragonsteel? | RAFO! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I've gotten both Legion books from Subterranean Press, and I was wondering if you've planned on doing any more through them. | I would like to. The thing is, it is kind of a hassle, just because working out release dates and things like that, part of the reason to do - I think they do gorgeous editions - but part of the reason to do the e-book things is so that I can be a little bit more spontaneous in releasing them and things like that, and so I'm likely to continue, but it is a bit hard. This time, we were like, "Why don't you guys just release a limited edition, and we'll do a print edition," but then they were like, "No, please don't do one." So I think I'd go back to letting them do a cheap edition and a limited edition if I did another one with them, I don't know. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do Cryptics have the same general dislike of honorspren as Syl has towards Cryptics? | RAFO!! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you keep it all organized when you're doing so much at once? | A wiki. An internal wiki is where I keep all the cosmere and all the notes on that. The other things, I don't have to worry about as much. For instance, Reckoners , I've got one viewpoint character and one major plot; that I can keep in my head. I've got note files and things like that, but the Cosmere ? Big old wiki full of stuff. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was the book that was the hardest to write for you? Why? | It would definitely be A Memory of Light , the last Wheel of Time book. Well, number one, I had been following that series for 20 years, and I was finishing off the writing of an author I respected a lot, and trying to fill his shoes, and not being able to do it because no one could, and the end of a journey. Every other book I've finished, I know if I wanted to I could go back and write more about those characters. Wheel of Time , I can't. It's done. It's not mine; I can't go write another book about Mat or Perrin or anything like that. So there's a finality to finishing that book that I haven't had with any of my other books. And then in addition, logistically it was a very difficult book to write. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you have any, or will you ever write a gay character into any of your books? | There are several. Drehy, in The Stormlight Archive , the bridgeman is gay, because he's based off a good friend of mine who's gay. Ranette in the Wax & Wayne books, the woman that Wayne's in love with, she's gay, and it's hinted at in the first book. By the second book, they're like "Dude, she's gay, just leave her alone." So yes, I have written gay characters. I've never written a gay main viewpoint character, maybe someday I will, it's not something I've done yet. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | First of all, how confident are you in your race with [Patrick] Rothfuss for use of the word "Stone" in your title? | You know, it's looking more and more like this might not even be Szeth's book. And if it's not Szeth's book, I may not even name it Stones Unhallowed ; I might name it something else relating to another character, but then again, Kaladin's book was named after the book Dalinar was reading, so anyway. We'll see. I'm pretty sure I will... He has said his "isn't coming out next year," as in coming out this year, and so... I'll have mine done by the end of this year, and it will be coming out next year, so it'll just depend |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Second question, if completely hypothetically, and forbid! - somebody had to do for you what you did for Robert Jordan, who would your choice be? I read McClellan's book on your recommendation. Can you let him know that he needs to put women in his books? | I would probably either pick Brent Weeks, who has a very similar style to me, or Brian McClellan, who is one of my students who is now publishing books, and writing very good books. Those guys, either one, I think would do a fine job. Yeah, that's what I actually told him. My number one criticism when he called me and said, "What do you think of my book?" I said, "You only put one woman in your book, and she's a cliche." She's the friendly cliche, *audio obscured*. The first thing that happens is you get the cliched damsel in distress, then when people realize "Oh, that's being sexist," they then make the girl awesome, but have no personality. That's like step two. Then step three is real characters, and so I did let him know, and he promised he would do better with future books. I think it is the most legitimate criticism of that book, is that he's just bad with women. But you know, my first book I was terrible; I just didn't publish that one. He's unfortunate that he published it. But even in Mistborn , I only had Vin, so we all fall into this trap, and I've read many women who only put one guy in the book, and he's perfect. It's just something that new authors have a problem with very naturally, so hopefully he'll catch on the same way I caught on. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So do you ever put a page length limit on yourself? Does the publisher ever put any limits on you? So by the time we get to Stormlight 6 or 7, they'll have to go buy a new printer? | I don't, but I know by gut generally after I start writing how long a book feels. No, they actually haven't. They do ask me if I'll write them shorter, but it's always an ask, and I usually ignore them. In fact, Words of Radiance is the largest book they can physically print with their printer, but the font is not the smallest font they could do yet. So I could actually get about another 100,000 words longer before it gets unreadable. Yeah, I've warned them. I will write it at the length that feels right. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The bit with the bandits out there, and the deserters, and she [Shallan] convinces them to all go... Was she doing Lightweaving? Was she doing Transformation? Was she doing some combination? | She was... You have seen what she was doing before, done by another character. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | neuroatypicals | Oh, my pleasure. She says that she has Asperger's and when she read the book The Bands of Mourning , and the other ones that have Steris in them, she identified a lot with Steris. I appreciate that. What research did I do, did I talk to autistic people. I have several people in my life who actually have Asperger's specifically, and they were a huge resource, as you might imagine. One of the things that I like to do, kind of a mandate I have in my fiction, is to try to get people who are heroic who have different types of psychology than we usually see in heroes. Because the more I've lived in life, the more I've realized that we all are really distinctive in our own way, and our psychology all works differently. And yet we see a lot of heroes that all kind of have the same brain chemistry, it seems. Which has always felt really weird to me. And so it's kind of one my mandates to do that. What research did I do? When I was in college, one of my favorite things to do was sneak into classes I wasn't signed up for, and the psychology classes were my favorite. This friend, who coincidentally was the one who wanted to be a chef, actually got a psychology major. His parents were "You should do something useful with your life." and so he got a psychology major, which he ended up going to med school. He didn't become a chef, he went to med school. He likes that too. But I would sneak into his classes and they were so useful as a writer, just listening to the different types, and to start to see personality not as-- We like to look at a lot of things as being normal or abnormal, but that's not the way it is. Everyone's personality is on this interesting spectrum and what is normal and what is abnormal is completely a matter of perspective. Where you stand on this line as opposed to-- It's like trying to make a value judgement that shouldn't really exist. And to come to see these personalities as great swathes of interesting color is what the psychology classes taught me. And so there was that and I did do some specific research for Steris and then I interviewed people as well. I'm glad that you picked up on it without me ever having to say what she was, and things like that. That's when I really feel like I've nailed something, when you can read something and say "Yeah that's who this person is" instead of someone outside pointing and saying "this is who this person is, who they are" |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was the book that was the hardest to write for you? Why? | It would definitely be A Memory of Light , the last Wheel of Time book. Well, number one, I had been following that series for 20 years, and I was finishing off the writing of an author I respected a lot, and trying to fill his shoes, and not being able to do it because no one could, and the end of a journey. Every other book I've finished, I know if I wanted to I could go back and write more about those characters. Wheel of Time , I can't. It's done. It's not mine; I can't go write another book about Mat or Perrin or anything like that. So there's a finality to finishing that book that I haven't had with any of my other books. And then in addition, logistically it was a very difficult book to write. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I've gotten both Legion books from Subterranean Press, and I was wondering if you've planned on doing any more through them. | I would like to. The thing is, it is kind of a hassle, just because working out release dates and things like that, part of the reason to do - I think they do gorgeous editions - but part of the reason to do the e-book things is so that I can be a little bit more spontaneous in releasing them and things like that, and so I'm likely to continue, but it is a bit hard. This time, we were like, "Why don't you guys just release a limited edition, and we'll do a print edition," but then they were like, "No, please don't do one." So I think I'd go back to letting them do a cheap edition and a limited edition if I did another one with them, I don't know. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | *Something incomprehensible about emotion* Do you like to connect with your reader on an emotional level? | I do. So here's the thing: I am not an emotional person by my nature, and one of the only things that makes me feel very strong emotions is fiction. A really good piece of fiction makes me feel like the characters do, and the rest of the time, I'm just kind of - I won't say emotionless, but not emotional. It's not that. It's like some people have wild mood swings; one day they're a 20 and one day they're an 80, on a scale of 1 to 100, right? I'm always a 70, right? Like almost consistently always pleasantly happy. I don't know what depression feels like. I don't know what it really feels like to be sad. I've never really felt that - except when I'm reading a book. Does that make sense? So that's one of the reasons I write, because I want to be able to [go through] those emotions with people. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you keep it all organized when you're doing so much at once? | A wiki. An internal wiki is where I keep all the cosmere and all the notes on that. The other things, I don't have to worry about as much. For instance, Reckoners , I've got one viewpoint character and one major plot; that I can keep in my head. I've got note files and things like that, but the Cosmere ? Big old wiki full of stuff. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you choose ages for your characters and how often does that change throughout the writing process? | How do I choose ages for my characters and how often does that change the writing process. I choose my characters... It's really hard to talk about. Because I can really drill down into how I come up with settings, so magic systems and things, and I can talk a lot about how I plot and why I plot. Character is the one that I discovery write. Writers tend to fall somewhere on this spectrum generally between what we call discovery writers and we call outliners, and I'm mostly an outliner. I like a nice tight outline, I like to know where I'm going and what's going on in my world before I start writing. But I found that I have to free write my characters, I have to figure out who they are as I write. Otherwise this outline is going to be too restrictive and I'm going to end up with characters who feel wooden. And I think that's the real risk of outlining too much, is writing the life out of your characters. And so the ages do change, and the personalities change. The famous one is Mistborn , which stars a sixteen year old girl named Vin, she was a boy in the first chapter I tried to write of that. And then that didn't work so I tried a girl with a different personality and that didn't work either. So it was the third try where it's like I'm having people walk in and and try casting calls and seeing who works. And that's generally how I go about it. With Steelheart the character didn't click for me, and I was really worried about that. Like the prologue worked wonderfully and I wrote the prologue separately, I wrote it years before I went back to the book. Because I just had that prologue pop into my head and I wrote it out. So if you read Steelheart the prologue is like 5,000 words, it's huge, it's like twenty pages or something like that. It may not be that long, but it's a big chunk. It was the first thing that I did, and then I put the book aside. And I was really worried when I started writing that I didn't have a voice for the character, because the prologue takes place ten years before when the main character is a child. So I started writing and it didn't work, and I started writing again and it didn't work, and the thing that ended up working, this is the silliest thing, but it was when I wrote a metaphor that was really bad, a simile, right? And I'm like "Oh that's stupid" because that's what normally happens. That's what you do when you are writing, you come up with something and go "Why did I write that, it's dumb?" and you delete it. And this time I started to delete it and thought "What if I ran with that?" So I started running with it and this character grew out of the fact that he makes bad metaphors. And that's just a simple trope, a simple thing, but it grew into an entire personality. This is a person who is really earnest, trying really, really hard. They are smart, they are putting things together, but they just don't think the same way that everyone else does and they are a little bit befuddled by things. It's like they are trying a little too hard. Ironically-- Or I guess coincidentally, not ironically, the metaphor of writing bad metaphors became what grew into the personality for David. His entire personality grew out of this idea of someone who is trying so hard, and you just love him because he is trying so hard but sometimes he just faceplants. And my children do this. Like I remember my child when he was five years old and he was running toward me so excited, telling me about something and this thing that he had in his hand and there was a pole in front of him but the thing was so important. And he smacked right into and fell right back over just stunned. Like "Who put this pole in front of me?" *laughter* It was at our house, it's not like he didn't know there was a pole there, right? He was just so excited by this thing Dad, this thing! And that was where David came from. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Which is your favorite Epic to write? | To write? Obliteration, because he's creepy in the way I like people to be creepy. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I was wondering if you could talk a little about expletives and blasphemy? | *amusedly* Expletives and blasphemy... So, It's really interesting, one of the first things that I think about when I'm coming up with a fantasy world is "How would they-- How do they curse?". And I don't know why this happens to me, but it feels like you can build out and extrapolate a lot about a culture from what they curse by, and how they curse. And it's become a thing. Like in one of my short stories I did I used *stumbles over words* saying "hell take you" to someone was a compliment because they didn't want to go to heaven because there was a god-king they hated. They were like "We don't want to go where he is so hell must be the better place". Which was a lot of fun to me in coming up with that. Or other ones I have them curse by in-world and sometimes I just use the biblical curses, the damns and hells and things like that. Why do I use those? I use those in Mistborn because I was writing about a bunch of thieves living on the streets and when I tried to use kind-of more fantasy-ish curse words it just felt fake for them. And yet it didn't feel fake when I started using "Merciful Domi" in Elantris because the religion of that world was so important to all the people that they would use the name of their own deity.So this is just something I kind of dance around and it's very interesting to me being a religious person myself. I will sometimes never-- like I don't use the curses that my characters will, but I'm not my characters and things like this. So it's something I think about, perhaps way too much, is how are the people going to curse in these books. That's a very good question. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was your inspiration for Sixth of the Dusk? It feels so, Polynesian or Hawaiian... | I love Hawaiian and Polynesian culture, and it was basically me reading some stories about Kamehameha, and his unification of the islands, and all this stuff, and I'm like, "Ah, I've got to use this someday." It was years later before I got to use it, but I did find a time to use it. And then we got Kekai [Kotaki] to do the illustration, and he's Polynesian, so... |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is there a word that you made up that's a favorite word of yours? | I still find occasionally find myself, curse-wise, saying "Merciful Domi", which is from my first one. Otherwise there are lots of interesting words, lately I've put the word "Catacendre" into the Alloy of Law era to mean the end of the ash. And I like how that flows with kind of almost a psuedo-Latin on it and things like that. And so, Catacendre, that's my favorite lately, but I've been working on those books a lot. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The bit with the bandits out there, and the deserters, and she [Shallan] convinces them to all go... Was she doing Lightweaving? Was she doing Transformation? Was she doing some combination? | She was... You have seen what she was doing before, done by another character. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | All the people with powers fit into one category. Was there a reason you chose to do that? Yes. | All the people with powers fit into one category? Yes. Was there a reason I chose to do that? Well, I'm not sure if I can answer that... So I assume you're asking-- The original premise for Steelheart was that everyone who has superpowers is evil. And that is just the original premise so that is not a spoiler. In my-- The reason I came up with the series is I wanted to tell a story about a world where Superman was not there to save you, or what not. Where it was "what if people started gaining these powers and did terrible things with them". When I was touring for the first book I told people the story of how I came up with that, I imagined-- when someone cut me off in traffic I imagined blowing their car up and feeling very satisfied and like "Yeah" and then feeling really guilty because I'm like "Is that really what I'd do with superpowers? Oh... Well I better write a book about it." *laughter* It's what authors do, anything that makes us think, or makes us have strong emotion, we're like "Well that's going in a book". And so it was an intentional choice, it was the whole premise and concept for me. And then the question became did the powers corrupt, or did only evil people get them, or what's going on. And that is one of the primary questions going on in the first book. They've mostly kind of drilled down to an answer by the second book. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you give us an Oath that hasn't been revealed in the story yet? | No. You'll have to wait for the stories to get those. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | During the Steelheart tour you mentioned you were trying to work with Tor to get free ebook copies for every hardcover, did anything-- | Yes something is coming, I'll tell you about it... So, I think the first chance we're going to have to do this is for my next Tor book which is going to be Shadows of Self , a Mistborn novel. And if you watch we're going to-- we're coming up with something-- it's still-- I think in about five years, maybe sooner than that, this will happen with every book you buy, but I'm going to try and jump the gun because I'm tired of waiting and I'm going to be impatient. So when I come to UBooks for that book there should be an option to get the book with the ebook. I can't promise 100% but I have a half-go-ahead from Tor on coming up with something to do with this. I can't give you details because we're being recorded. *laughter* I could trust you, all of you. And the all the people you have on Twitter that you are tweeting to but I'm not sure I can trust him. *gestures to camera* But no, it should be coming. And so watch, if I can get this together we should be able to announce what we're doing and how we're doing it before too long. It's something that is very important to me, I want to be able to do bundling like this. What I really would like to do is be able to sell you a copy that has, for a slightly higher price but not super high, the ebook, the audiobook, and the hardcover. That's what I'm trying to make work. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | There was the poem at the end of Way of Kings . How long did that take? | It took an embarrassingly long amount of time. I am not a poet, so mixing poetry with a really rigid form... Yes, the keteks take a long time. Both of them. A ketek? Yes, I probably will do that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Was there an Allomantic power that didn't make it into the book? | Was there an Allomantic power that didn't make it into the book. Oh... Yes, but I'm trying to remember. I had like two dozen of them? Oh boy I can't even remember the ones that I discarded. I was going to do a lot more stuff externally, stuff that like wasn't inside of you and it didn't end up working out. The big thing that I talk about with Allomancy that changed is originally I was using...silver as one of the metals, this is-- this is because... Dumb story time, so when I was a kid I painted these little miniatures that you do in D&D so your little guys can actually fight each other, right? And my brother still does this, they're awesome, I was terrible at it, but I painted these little guys. And at one point I went-- and they used to be lead, and then they realized that lead kills you *laughter* and so--or maybe it just makes you strange, I can't remember--I went and all of the prices had gone up, like by a double, because they had made them out of pewter instead. And I said to the guy "What is up with this, you are totally ripping us off. My figures now cost us 50 cents instead of--" I don't remember what it was and he went "Uh yeah it's because pewter has silver in it man. You're buying little silver figures now" and I went "Oh. That's cool." And I bought them. And so for years I thought pewter was an alloy of silver and I wrote an entire book. An Entire Book . The whole first Mistborn book with silvereyes and pewterarms until it went to my beta readers and like "There's almost no silver in pewter Brandon, you don't even really need it. Everything in this magic system works except that." and I went "Well maybe we can just pretend in this world pewter--" "No that's stupid" *laughter* So I had to change it to tin which is actually what you find in pewter. To this day my assistant Peter, who is my continuity editor, came to me and said "You realize you wrote silvereye instead of tineye in the newest Mistborn book that you just finished? It's been ten years Brandon get over it." *laughter* Still happens. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you go about designing new magic systems? Because that's one of the most amazing things you do. | I've written several essays about this, so if you go to brandonsanderson.com/writing-advice, you'll find my essays on magic systems. Basically, I'm trying to look for something that I can explore in a way I haven't seen people do before. It doesn't have to be a new power, it just has to be a new take on a power that I can explore, that I can have fun with, that I can find some sort of scientific rigor. I like to have this sort of have one foot in science and one foot in superstition. That's what is fun for me in worldbuilding, this idea that-- I often say a lot of the old scientists, like Isaac Newton, believed in alchemy. Like "If only we could figure out..." and they started applying the scientific method to alchemy. Which is so cool! It's like "If we keep trying, we'll eventually figure out how this works." But it doesn't work. I like this idea of applying the scientific rigor to something superstitious, and finding that it does work, and then what do you do with that. So that's what I'm really looking for, particularly in my epic fantasies. It's also got to be the gee-whiz, the wow, "This is really exciting. This is really interesting." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you like to do internal monologues or thinking between different characters who are very similar to each other. | How do I like to do internal monologues and thinking between different characters who are distinct from each other. I just try to make it be in their voice. I am a person who likes to put thoughts directly in someone's head, so you'll see them in italics. And I try to keep to their voice as much as possible, so if they have linguistic quirks I put them into the thoughts. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Title Page You'd be surprised how much can be said about the title of this book. Naming books is one of the most frustrating, and most fulfilling, elements of writing. I'm more fortunate than some authors I know–for most of my books, the names came easily. Sometimes, I even came up with the title before I wrote the book. (This has actually only happened once, when thought up the phrase "The Way of Kings," and thought "Man! That would be a great title for a book!") Elantris has had several titles. During the rough draft phase, I simply called it "SPIRIT." I knew that the main character's name would be based on the character for Spirit, and that would also be the name he took for himself when he was in exile. I never intended this to be the final title for the manuscript, but it was what I named all the files when I was typing the work. Those of you who've read the book realize the special significance of "Spirit" (or Aon Rao as it eventually became known) to the climax of the story. I'll talk more about this in a bit. Well, as I was writing the story, I realized I needed a better title. The most obvious choice was to somehow work in the name of the fallen magical city that was the focus of the book. Now, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but the city "Elantris" was actually originally named "Adonis." I'm not sure what I was thinking. Sometimes, when you're coming up with a lot of fantastical names, you create words that have a certain, unforeseen connotations or connections. In this case, I wasn't even thinking of the Greek myth. "Ado" was simply the Aon I chose to base the city’s name around, and "Adonis" (Pronounced with a long "A" and a long "O") was the word that came out of that Aon. So, I named the book The Spirit of Adonis , hoping to play off of Raoden's name. It was, however, actually a three-fold pun. I included this line–"The Spirit of Adonis" at the climax, when Raoden realizes that the city itself formed an enormous Aon Rao. I didn't realize what I'd done until my writing group met for the first time, and they said "I like the beginning of the book. I'm having trouble figuring out what this has to do with the Greeks. Is it because the god-like people were so arrogant?" Then it hit me. Adonis, from Greek mythology, was a beautiful man loved by Aphrodite. The word has become a kind of paradigm for a beautiful–almost perfect–specimen of the male species. And I had unwittingly named my book after him. Let's just say I changed that pretty quickly. However, I needed a new name for the city. I played with a number of different combinations of Ado, but somehow ended up trying up different sounds and combinations. Thankfully, I came up with the word "Elantris." As soon as I wrote it down, I knew this was my city. It sounded grand without being overbearing, and it had a mythological feel to it (hearkening slightly to "Atlantis".) I renamed the book " The Spirit of Elantris ," and proceeded.</p> Then came time to send out the manuscript. I had had some comments on the book–people liked "Elantris," but the "spirit of" was less popular. I tried several iterations, and even sent out some query letters calling the book "THE LORDS OF ELANTRIS." That just felt too cliché fantasy for me, however, and I eventually returned to " The Spirit of Elantris ." Finally, the book got sold. At this point, my editor (Moshe Feder) suggested that we shorten the title to simply Elantris . Remembering how other people had been unimpressed with the "spirit of," I agreed. Now that I've seen the cover lettering and worked with it as " Elantris " for some time, I'm very pleased with the change. The new title has more zip, and makes the book sound more majestic. I still get to have a reference to my old title, as Part Three of the book is called "The Spirit of Elantris." Of course, even this title isn't without its problems. People have trouble spelling it when I say the title, and some think of the car named the "Elantra." At one panel, I even had one person miss-hear me, thinking the name of the book was "The Laundress." That would certainly be a different book... |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you tell me how long it was from the Shattering of Adonalsium to the prelude of The Way of Kings when the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact? 'Cause I've looked at the current chronology and it's very, very spotty... That one takes place before Way of Kings doesn't it? 'Cause I know one of the worldhoppers from there shows up in Way of Kings ... | Current timeline, which I have NOT canonized, is around 6,000 years... I have not finished with my outline document yet. Yes it is... the real trick is... making sure that I fit in, for instance, White Sand and things with the proper amount... because I haven't released that book series yet, I have to make sure while we're doing the graphic novel, that it fits the chronology, which is why I can't quite canonize things yet. Yes Yeah, White Sand is one of the very earliest. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Are we going to see Book 5 of Alcatraz ? | Are you going to see Book 5 of Alcatraz , that counts as awesome. So I have written Book 5 of Alcatraz ... I have written it, Tor is re-releasing them, because we bought them back from Scholastic and are then, I bought the rights back, I didn't think they were treating the books very well, and we sold them again to Tor, and Tor just got the cover art for the first four and it looks really cool. It's the best cover art I've had on an Alcatraz book, which is good because Alcatraz, in the books, makes fun of the cover art on the books because it is so bad. I don't think our publisher liked that. *laughter* So I'm going to have to change the line or something. Anyway the plan is to re-release those starting in January next year and release them every one to two months until we get to the fifth book in the summer and release it then. So it's still a little ways off, I've been saying that for a long time but there is at least cover art now and the book is actually written. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Your Mistborn series are they trying to make a movie of it? | Yes I did-- They are trying to make a movie of it. I don't know when it will get made, or if it will get made, but I was reading the treatment for the second book on the plane today and it was actually really good. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | And the Steelheart film? | Steelheart film is owned by Fox, different company, Shawn Levy's company, 21 Laps at Fox, they are the ones who did Real Steel if you ever saw that, the Richard Matheson story, and I thought their adaptation of that was really good. They also did the Night of the Museum films, and so when they came to me asking for Steelheart , I said yes, but I only signed on that in June, so I don't know- it's only been a couple months. I wouldn't expect an update for another couple months. We signed on Emperor's Soul in November, October of last year, so I've been able to see the progress on that one come along. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Which of the roles Hoid has played is your favorite? And will we be seeing him in Dalinar's flashbacks? | So which of the roles played by Hoid is my favorite. I would probably say Dust from Warbreaker . I just like-- That's the most true storyteller he's been, kind of based on oral storytelling tradition and things like that. I can't tell you. You'll have to read and find out whether you'll find him in Dalinar's flashbacks or not. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you write in one of my books about something we don't know about the Shards, or at least one of the Shards? | *written* Odium has killed at least one more Shard than the ones we know about. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I've picked up in bits in pieces that it's possible, for some people at least, to use the Shardpools to worldhop... Can non-Invested people do that, or do you have to have some form of Investiture? Do you have to have any special Investiture above and beyond the normal spark of life? | Yes. *hesitantly* Every individual is Invested to some extent... I'm gonna go ahead and RAFO that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I heard a rumor that the universes of all your books are interconnected? | Yes. Most of my books, not all of them. If a book mentions Earth, it is not connected to what I call the cosmere, I kind of made this decision early on. So for those of you who don't know, my epic fantasies are indeed all connected. There are characters who cross over between them. I've been planning this for twenty years so I've got this intricate thing going on. There will eventually be big crossover books but for right now I don't want people to feel like they have to read everything in order to understand what's going on, and so for right now each of the books are only cameos. But you will be able to notice characters crossing between and there will be big crossover books eventually. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | As an aside, it's really funny, like I've had on and off sort of things go well with Hollywood and things not go well with Hollywood and things get optioned. Someone in Hollywood read one of my books and then went online and googled about it and found about this whole thing and then called me and wanted to buy the rights to the entire thing 'cause they're like "It's like the Avengers, everything's crossing over!" Apparently that's hot in Hollywood right now, which is very cool that someone in Hollywood was excited by it but it was kind of funny to me that now that's the big deal and this goofy thing I've been doing for twenty years is suddenly hot. So who knows it might turn into something, it might not. For those who are curious about movie things I have optioned most of the rights to a lot of my different books. I think the closest-- *sighs* What's the closest? I'm not sure what the closest is. The closest is probably The Emperor's Soul , though Mistborn is close behind it. I don't think either one is particularly close right now. That's just how Hollywood works. So don't hold your breath but I hope to have exciting things I can say eventually, because I really do like the people, both Emperor's Soul and Mistborn . They're some of the best people in Hollywood I've ever worked with, those two groups. They feel very genuine and I have a great feeling about it. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you have any word on the Mistborn video games that are coming out? | I have no official word, other than to say that we did option the rights to the film to the people who are making the video game, and told them, "You have to make the video game or you can't make the film." I actually really like them, and their script treatments on the film are great. And it's not their fault, really, that the game hasn't taken off. It's just that they've had - these things happen in video games. The studio they were working with went under, and another one split, and this sort of stuff happens. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I don't know what you can or cannot tell me but I read a comment that Hoid is your favorite character, I don't know what you can say about that. | Hoid is definitely a favorite of mine. Picking a favorite character is like trying to pick a favorite child, It's just not productive. Robert Jordan always answered this question by saying "My favorite is the one that I am writing right now" and so-- But yes, Hoid is the character-- one of the very first characters I came up with, and he travels through almost all of my books. So you can watch for him. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When you started writing Cosmere novels, how much of it had you outlined? How far ahead had you thought? Have you ever backed yourself into a corner with it? | When I started writing Cosmere novels? When I started started, I was a teenager. Totally hadn't thought very far ahead. When I was an adult and I was writing them, I wrote one when I was like 20, and I had an inkling, and I played around with things. The first one that I wrote with a real, conscious eye toward the cosmere was Elantris . So the ones that have been published, yes. But when I first started, I had a little bit of an inkling. Not yet! I have backed myself into corners by saying things to fans that I've already changed in my notes and hadn't realized I had, and stuff like that - I do that all the time. But usually when I do that, I just tell them. "Ah, I'm sorry, I just changed this, guys." I'm still convinced that Stayer and Stepper - that [Robert Jordan] didn't know those were two different horses. I'm utterly convinced that he made the mistake, and then just covered it. Because that's the sort of things we writers do. One of the ones I’ve been working on a lot lately is, how much can you affect things that are Invested with other magic systems? Should it be not at all, should it be a little bit, should it be…? But then I have to go back to Mistborn, and I’ve got canon here, where people are pushing and pulling on things that are Invested, but I tried when I was even writing Mistborn to make sure that the someone was drawing on the Mist, or had extra power for some reason before they were pushing on… and so I left myself that room, but at the same time I’ve established that you can do it, so anyway. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Where does Sixth of the Dusk sit in the timeline? So around the third trilogy of Mistborn ? | Where does Sixth of the Dusk sit in the timeline. It is probably the furthest future of any of the cosmere stories I've done. Potentially, probably not quite to that. But yeah, it is very... But yeah that's the latest. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you ever have trouble keeping your characters straight? How long does it take to get back into them? *audio obscured* | If I stop writing and go back, it is hard. It takes about a month to get back into a story after I stop. I don't get the characters mixed up. I try to, but I don't always manage it, because of deadlines and things. It's always going to cost me, and I know it will, sometimes you can't avoid that. In the old days, I never did it, when I didn't have a publisher, but now it's my job. When they say, "We need this revision done," I stop and do the revision, but it costs me. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Was Adonalsium Shattered all at once? Or did each Shard form at a separate time? | All at once. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What are some of your favorite books to read to your kids? | Favorite books to read to the kids, hands down my favorite book to read to the kids is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus *laughter* Just, that story is just so much fun-- When they get it, right? I read it to the two- or three-year-old and they don't quite get it, but by four they're like "I get to say no to the pigeon?" and they love it. They absolutely love it. Lately we've been reading one they love called Supertato ? We bought it when we were in the UK so they use all of these trolleys instead of-- And it's just about a potato that saves people-- that saves vegetables in the supermarket. And it came with stickers to stick on your own potatoes to turn them into supertatoes. And so-- I have three little boys and so they love, absolutely love Supertato . If you want to see a picture of my little boys, I did a blog thing--which was really just a big advertisement for my books, but don't tell anyone--talking about the superhero genre and my children who dress up as superheroes, and it's so funny. They are endless sources of inspiration. They go into the room and come out with things and they're like "I'm Batman" I'm like "You've got a bucket, and you've got an iPad that you've affixed to your arm somehow, and you've got an oven mitt and you're Batman?" "I'm Batman" "You look just like him." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So, in Steelheart , if you were going to have an Epic be good, who would it be? | If I were going to have an Epic be good in Steelheart , which one would it be? That it as big ol' R-A-F-O, which stands for Read And Find Out because I will talk about that through the course of the books. So you need to read Firefight , okay? |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I read online, something about one of your original drafts, [I think it was about] Gavilar, and it was where he was blind? | Yeah that was actually Taravangian, in the oldest version. One of the very first things I wrote was that, though Taravangian had a different name then, and was very different. Szeth has stayed the same through all the revisions. Kaladin has changed wildly, and almost everybody has changed dramatically, except Szeth is the same person. Him and Dalinar are the same. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you tell me anything about Kaladin's maternal grandparents? | Let's just say that his mother [Hesina]--you're asking a very astute question--gave up more than most people gave up in that city to go be what she became. She's definitely fallen in social standing since her childhood. She took a hit. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I was wondering if you were thinking along the lines of a movie of Alcatraz ? | We tried really hard. We actually even got storyboards and things with Dreamworks Animation, which was going to be awesome, but then they eventually let it die. So if you buy the big art Dreamworks Animation book, there's actually Alcatraz concept art on one of the pages, which is kind of excruciating that it never happened. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | One thing when I was reading The Alloy of Law , in Mistborn , all the [Feruchemists] were the Mistborn version of [Feruchemy], and then it changed to the Misting version of [Feruchemy]. Is there... | Yeah, there's a reason for that, and I'll delve into it a bunch more later, but basically, there's two things going on. Number one, the bloodlines have thinned, and that's the reason they're talking about [here]. Also, full-blooded Feruchemists mixing, like the populations mixed, is really dangerous, and Sazed knew this. So, I'll just leave it at that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I was curious what the-- or if you had an inspiration for the scene with Vin and Elend going to his father's camp and the talk about acceptance? | Yeah a lot of these con-- these stories-- If you didn't hear it, there's a scene where Vin and Elend in Words of Radiance go to visit-- *crowd murmurs* not Words of Radiance *laughter* Well of Ascension ! They both start with a "W" I'm running out of letters to start books with. Yeah it's a good problem. So they go to talk to Straff and there's a lot of discussion about acceptance and just kind of things I was thinking about at the time and think about a lot. One of the things is "I hope people enjoy this, if not you're just going to have to deal with it." I work out what I'm thinking about life through the voices of my characters. And it's something I really look for in books as well, I do want a little philosophy with my fantasy. And, y'know, it's not that I'm trying to answer those questions, but I'm working on them. And the characters, because they have a different perspective from myself--because the characters don't voice what I think, they voice what they think about something I'm thinking about--and that really kind of helps me think about it and talk through it. And it's one of the reasons I write books, besides doing awesome stuff. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Were any of the original Shardholders related? We know that Honor and Cultivation were romantically involved, but were any of them brother and sister or child/parent? | There was at least one relationship of that style. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do Cryptics have the same general dislike of honorspren as Syl has towards Cryptics? | RAFO!! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Prior to becoming pregnant, did [Queen Aesudan] spend most of her time at the Shattered Plains, or in the capital? But she was at the Shattered Plains, rather than Elhokar going back to the capital? | She has spent most of her time in the capital. She obviously has been back and forth. I would say she has spent more time off the Shattered Plains than at it. He has been back at least once, but it is a long trip. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In addition to the two abilities given by each Surge, does a Knight Radiant Order have a third blended ability, the interaction of its two given Surges? So Shallan's Memories is kind of a... It's not just because she had that wonderful ability, and Pattern came along and went, "Oh, I like this one!" | Not specifically as phrased there, but each Order has quirks that are unique to it. They are magical quirks, but it's not necessarily a blend of the powers. Is associated with her Order, yes. No that is not necessarily what attracted Pattern. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When Shallan does Lightweaving, is that a combination of Illumination and Transformation, or is Lightweaving just of Illumination? | Lightweaving is just of Illumination. Lightweaving is a long-established power in the cosmere. Very early books, in fact one of the very first stories I ever wrote, Lightweaving was the magic. (That story is unpublished, written long ago - long before Liar of Partinel ) And so, this stems from my own personal affection for illusion and my feeling that it had not been used as well as I wanted it to be used in fantasy fiction. So I consider it only Illumination truly in The Stormlight Archive . |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Have you actually written out the Diagram, and Words of Radiance , and so on? | Oh, heavens, no. That's the sort of thing that falls into the worldbuilder's disease thing; there's no way that writing those out is worth the effort, so no, I have not. Definitely not the Diagram. If I were going to write any of them, I would write The Way of Kings , but even that, it's probably 30 or 40 thousand words in-world. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Human, spren, Splinter, Sliver, Shard, Adonalsium - which of these is most similar ontologically to Nakomi? | *laughter* I can't say anything about Nakomi! Robert Jordan did not want anything said about Nakomi! I can't say anything at all about Nakomi! Dig into the notes when they are released, and then you can find out things said about Nakomi. The little tiny hints we have, I told you he wrote that thing at the end, and I'm like well, okay. So. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I loved the ending of Words of Radiance . When you come up with an idea for a new cosmere book, do you have to go "Oh, now I have to figure out how this fits in with everything else", or do you have it pre-made? | I have a few little holes that I can slot things into, and I try to get them to fit the roles, like I know there are certain things that need to happen, and if it doesn't fit the role, I just go ahead and make it a minor planet, like Shadows for Silence , where I can write a story, but I can't put as much magic into those books. So I've got a few restrictions on me, but I think that's important for maintaining the continuity. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why couldn't Joel be a Rithmatist? He wanted it so bad. | I will explain as the series progresses. That is a plot point. Every book like that, they get the power in the end, and I thought it was a much more interesting story if he has half - the knowledge - and Melody has half - the talent - and together they create a whole. It just worked, and it was much better for me as a story. I knew going into it that he wasn't going to be able to by the end of the book, but the reasons for it you'll find out as the series progresses. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Any more [Pen & Paper] RPGs in the works? | I know that Crafty [Games] is planning another supplement to go in line with the new [ Mistborn Era 2] books I'm releasing, because there are various things that are important to the new books that would make another good supplement. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In the Mistborn trilogy, was it hard to write the final twist, or had it been planned that way? | This is always the way it was planned. There are some smaller things that I'll allow spontaneity to change the book, but the general structure of the book is always planned out. And if something changes while I'm writing I go and throw away the plan and rebuild the plan, so I'm always writing with a plan. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When are you going to write the other Warbreaker book? Last time I came to hear you talk, you said you were going to, and now you have 3000 other projects! | I know, and the Warbreaker fans really get on my case about that. Well, I wrote Words of Radiance , and I got Vasher into it, so that would kindle interest, and make sure that you at least got to see your characters again. But did you hear the story about that? So, I wrote The Way of Kings in 2002, the first version, and in that version Kaladin trained with a swordmaster, and that swordmaster, a guy named Vasher, had a mysterious past. After I finished that book, later on I wrote Warbreaker as a prequel to Way of Kings , to show Vasher's backstory. But then Warbreaker came out before Way of Kings , which was a really kind of interesting thing. So in my head, Warbreaker is the prequel, but to everyone else... Yes, it is a totally different world, different planets, people get around... Well, a huge chunk of it…! If you were reading Way of Kings, you would know nothing, and then you’d read Warbreaker and you’d be like, “Oh, here’s a whole past that he had!” That doesn’t mean it’s all of his past. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When is The Emperor's Soul set relative to Elantris specifically and the other cosmere books? | The Emperor's Soul is set after Elantris but not so far that the characters from Elantris would not still be around. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Regarding the Ire: did they set out into the Cosmere pre- or post-Reod? | RAFO! :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Finally, what point, usually, is society at when a Desolation comes? Because Taln was prepared to introduce them to bronze... ...and Alethi society is so far beyond that. | Yes. Yes. Historically a lot of the-- What would happen with the Desolations would destroy all civilization and then the Heralds would leave, and leave people basically in the Stone Age again. And they came back numerous times and found humankind still in the Stone Age, after having left. And so they are prepared-- Sometimes they would come back and they would already be in the Bronze Age or-- and things like that and get them beyond that but frequently they had to be ready, the Heralds learned they had to be ready to try and bring humankind forward several thousand years worth of technology in a year. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So can you affect [a "zombie" Elantrian] with Emotional Allomancy? | Yes. |
Subsets and Splits