instruction
stringclasses 1
value | input
stringlengths 0
2.43k
| output
stringlengths 3
90.1k
|
|---|---|---|
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you come up with the languages? Just because it sounds cool, or... | Languages. So languages in my books, I have a couple of tools that I use and it depends on the book. For some books I just use kind of shortcuts. Mistborn is an example of this, there's only one language that everyone is speaking and there is a little bit of Terris, so for that I just made every region-- I based off of an Earth language and used that. Like for instance the Central Dominance is French, so Vin and Demoux--and they would say Kelsi-ay--and things like this is where the names came from. For something more intricate like Stormlight Archive , I did take linguistics classes, I only snuck into a few of those. And so I'm able to drill down and do some real linguistics. And so I know what I want things to sound like, I know how I want them to feel. And I have all sorts of goofy things that you would even need to know, like for instance they would say "Kholin" instead of Kholin and stuff like this because there's a little bit of Semitic, the language family I'm using as a basis. And then there's stuff like the symmetrical names and stuff like that. Anyway, I can talk about that forever but the answer is yes I find what's cool but sometimes it's really academically cool and sometimes it really puts people of. Like one of the first reviews I got from Elantris was like "These names are really hard to pronounce and kind of dumb" and this was like one of the major review magazines "I can't get into these names" because I had used lots of linguistic things from my time living in Korea to create the languages, and they were kind of hard to say. It's part of why in Mistborn everyone has a nickname that's easy to remember. |
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 | Was the Thaylen accent changed between The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance ? Because the Wind's Pleasure crew and Tvlakv all sound a bit different. | Yeah. That's not intentional. That is just more, I leave the accents completely up to the audiobook readers. I don't tell them an accent... I do try to send them pronunciation guides, but those don't always arrive in time, which is why you can see some discrepancies. But, yeah, I let them pick the accents. |
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 | Which of the worlds is your favorite? Like if you could find yourself living in that world? | Woah, that's two different things. *laughter* Which is my favorite. Roshar is my favorite. I've been working on that one the longest. I think it is the most unique. I've put a lot into it, but I don't know if I would want to live there because on Scadrial, where the Mistborn books take place they have flush toilets, right? *laughter* They have some of them on Roshar too but on Scadrial they have cars . I like modern conveniences. I like mac & cheese. I like the internet. And so the answer to you if someone were to say "You have to live in one of the worlds you're going to make" I would go hurriedly and write one that is far-future and awesome where nothing exciting ever happens. *laughter* Because that would be the best place for a writer to live. |
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 | Does a Shard's power being manifested either physically or not (through metals vs through light) have anything to do with its individual abilities/powers? | RAFO. :) |
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 | Have we seen a Svrakiss in a book so far? Can you tell us anything about Svrakiss, like are they originally from Sel? | Um... RAFO Um... I'm not going to go into that. |
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 | Does investiture have a consistent form (regardless of magic system and its Physical form) in one of the other realms? | It's consistent in the Spiritual Realm. Location isn't particularly important there. |
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. |
|
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I'm happy to post this update only two months after the previous one--which seems like a much more reasonable interval than the many months between two and three. I do feel bad at how long this book is taking, but I'm coming to grips with the fact that Stormlight books are just too involved to do as quickly as I once imagined. I still intend to get to them at a reasonable pace, but this year of work is showing that big epic fantasies require a lot out of even a somewhat quick author like myself. In the wee hours this morning (3:00 am) I sent Part Three of Oathbringer to my editor. This means I've finished the rough draft (of Part Three) then done a quick revision, putting it at second draft level. (I explain in previous updates that I'm doing more revisions as I go on this one, hopefully to speed the editing process.) Part Three is tight and fast, a nice counterpoint to Part Two, which was more leisurely and character-focused. The book stands at around 325k words right now. (Words of Radiance was right around 400k at publication.) I have on my website "73%" I believe, though I intend to move that to 75% soon. I started out counting 4k words as 1%, but I'm pretty sure that the final wordcount will be in the 450k range, which is why I have slowed the percentage bar velocity a tad. (Goal is for Part Four to be around 100k words, Part Five to be around 25k, and the interludes to take around 25k. Then I'll trim the book before publication, getting it down to around 450k.) If you're following the general outline shape from Update Two, I moved the novella from this part to the next part, after deciding I liked the feel of this book having a narrow-wide-narrow-wide focus for the first four parts. We'll see how I feel after finishing the next part. Next up, I'm going to dive into writing some Szeth flashbacks (which won't reflect on the percentage bar moving up) so I have his past nailed down. Then I'll expand the outline for Part Four, and write it. Goal is still to finish the book by the time I go on tour in late October, but we'll see. This part took me two full months. Even if I'm a little late, however, having sections of the book already with the editor means we will still be on schedule. Plan is still for a late 2017 release, and it would take a major upset in writing plans to budge us from that. Thanks, as always, for your patience and your kind words. The book is feeling very strong to me, and I think you'll be pleased with how it turns out. Brandon |
|
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Any new information about the Steelheart movie? So excited about it! Will you be involved in making it? | Last I heard, they had a script they liked, and were sending it out for a polish. I will be as involved as they will allow! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Was the Thaylen accent changed between The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance ? Because the Wind's Pleasure crew and Tvlakv all sound a bit different. | Yeah. That's not intentional. That is just more, I leave the accents completely up to the audiobook readers. I don't tell them an accent... I do try to send them pronunciation guides, but those don't always arrive in time, which is why you can see some discrepancies. But, yeah, I let them pick the accents. |
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 | 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 | Katarotam was an evil guy who owned Kaladin as a slave. He beat his slaves + killed friends of Kaladin's. *on the receipt it goes on to elaborate* Katarotam cheated Kaladin of both food and clothing… |
|
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 | Can you tell us the name of factory from which Tia gets her Cola pouches? And perhaps the city? | Factory is one that doesn't exist in our world, but I believe I have it in Chattanooga. |
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 | My son said if I got to ask a question he wants me to ask when's the next Rithmatist and also when's the next Alcatraz ? | So I'm currently writing Stormlight 3, that is projected for Christmas of next year. It's really going to depend on when I finish it. If it goes-- Peter's smirking because he's like "Yeaaaah." If it goes any later-- the first draft goes any later than March of next year, that means we'll have to push back. So if you watch on my progress bar, if I finish it by-- my goal is to be done by the last day of February, and that's going to take some dedicated writing, *Peter's smirks some more*, but we'll see. If it strays much longer than that, than we'll push it back. They're just big involved books to write. I've already finished enough that would be a finished manuscript for another novel, the same length as Calamity or the new Mistborn books, but it'll go four times that length. So Rithmatist is a side project that I will write when I have time. My main sort of focus right now-- I kind of have to focus on three things. Stormlight , Mistborn , and The Reckoners , which I'll have another trilogy with Random House which will be something new, but my mainline teen stuff is the more adventure type stuff. I'd love to do another Rithmatist . I think it was a very fun book, and for people who liked more involved worldbuilding, and more fantastical sort of things that want something for teens, Rithmatist is what that is. Steelheart is more action movie. And so I would like to do that. Alcatraz , I did finish Alcatraz 5, which is the last of the ones that Alcatraz will write, and that is scheduled for next summer after we do a rerelease of the Alcatraz books with brand new art. We'll be showing that off on my website soon. The art's looking really great, we finally got a look I like for them, some interior art, a nice map, things like that. So those will start being released in January, and the newest one coming out in June. Warbreaker and Elantris sequels? No immediate plans, they're happening someday. Really, once I finish Stormlight , I'll go into the next series for Random House, the follow up to Steelheart , and then we'll see where I am, and see if I have time to write another side project which would be one of these books before I jump into Stormlight 4. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | With the White Sand graphic novels, do you intend to continue the sequence past the first MS of White Sand ? | Yes, if they are popular enough, I do. |
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 | In Stormlight Archive what inspired you to come up with the idea of bridges & how they carry them across chasms? | I wanted a form of siege warfare that was different from anything that readers had seen before, but had the same despair to it. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | if you could have any of the powers from your books which one would you choose? | Windrunning, probably. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is it known to most people in Elandel that Ranette has a girlfriend? Or are they hiding? | They don't need to hide in particular in Elendel. |
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 | Is there any substance that reflects Allomantic power? (For example, such that a Coinshot could appear to be a Lurcher if this substance were behind the piece of metal being Pushed, or perhaps said Coinshot could Push things around a corner if this substance were angled properly? | Nothing like this is known right now. |
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 | Do you always know the ending of the stories when you begin them? | Almost always. I'm a planner. Once in a while, I do a short story where I don't. Even that is rare, though. |
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 | Did Nazh fall in with Khriss before or after the Forests of Hell were colonized by Patience's people? | RAFO. (Sorry. I am toying with a book on Threnody, and don't want to lock myself into anything yet.) |
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 | I know they are not a part of the Cosmere, but does the Reckonersverse follow the rules of Realmatic theory? | No. Instead, it follows quantum multiverse theory. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is Edgli going to make an appearance (or be mentioned in) another book? I want to know more about Edgli! | Yes, this will be answered eventually. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why isn't Alcatraz part of the Cosmere ?The lenses seem like they could be investiture-related. | I didn't want Alcatraz to have to follow Cosmere continuity and rules. Yes, the magic could work in the cosmere |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Other than Hoid, which character have you had the most fun writing? | Wayne. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I'm assuming they met in White Sand , if Hoid is who I think he is in that one ;) but more how well does she know his agenda? | I'm not sure if you're thinking this, but Nazh and Hoid are separate people. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Any new information about the Steelheart movie? So excited about it! Will you be involved in making it? | Last I heard, they had a script they liked, and were sending it out for a polish. I will be as involved as they will allow! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Any updates on movie/tv/video game adaptions? | Nothing big. Steelheart has a script. It's the only one so far to hit that stage. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How hard was it for you to get your first manuscript published? Did you send multiple copies? | It took me ten years of work to become an author who wrote books that were of professional quality. Once I hit that point, my chances improved. Elantris was rejected half a dozen times over four years before selling. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Could you Awaken an Honorblade? | It would take a Looooooot of power. (A near impossible amount.) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you tell us the name of factory from which Tia gets her Cola pouches? And perhaps the city? | Factory is one that doesn't exist in our world, but I believe I have it in Chattanooga. |
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 | If a large group of Windrunners lashed enough mass towards a single point, could they create a black hole? | Offhand, I think that would be theoretically possible, though in practicality impossible. We'd need [Peter Ahlstrom] to do some math. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Radiant vs. Mistborn: who wins? | Depends on the situation and the Radiant order. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is Raoden unable to use the Shardpool like Vin because Devotion is Splintered? | That is part of it, but not the main part. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Of the 7 remaining Stormlight Archive books (or 3 in the sub-series), which one are you most looking forward to writing? | Book ten. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Parshendi/Parshmen/Gemhearts vs ISIS/Non-radical Muslims/Oil - A comparison you've considered while writing? | The Parshendi aren't the radicals, though. In that conflict, I'd argue that the humans are. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | With the White Sand graphic novels, do you intend to continue the sequence past the first MS of White Sand ? | Yes, if they are popular enough, I do. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Out of the Cosmere , you have your whole plan, I'm assuming you have in your brain or written down... When do you finalize, like, whenever you're writing. Is it all finalized then? | ...The books become the canon. Even the wiki is not canon. Until I write it into the books, it's not canon. For instance, you can go find Oaths of various orders of Knights Radiant in there, but I don't canonize those until I write the books, because I usually tweak some of the words. By the way, sometimes people ask me "Can you write an Oath of a Knights Radiant that we haven't seen yet?" in a book, and I always say no. Number one, like, if at the release party I got asked that, like, 8 times; we'd be out of Oaths by now. That's the same reason why I won't tell you the names of Shards that I haven't canonized, or their intents, or things like that. Until I get to it in the books, it's not canon. Because I need that flexibility going forward as I'm putting the whole thing together, to get all the puzzle pieces to fit. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Where did the Cosmere come from? What inspired you? | Lots of things. Isaac Asimov connecting his Robot books and Foundation books was a partial inspiration to be certain. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Will there be a sequel to the secret project? (are we allowed to use it's name yet?) | Yes, you can use the name now. And yes, I plan a sequence of these. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When you write.do you see the characters as real people or cartoons or comics? | Real people. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you watch Doctor Who ? And if so, would you like to write an episode? | I have watched some Doctor Who and liked it a lot--but I don't do screenplays, so I might not be a good choice. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I've seen people saying that Alloy of Law takes place during the gap between the first five Stormlight books and the last five. Is there any chance for some crossover? | Yes. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why are the Epics, the people with the power, all evil? | So the idea for this story came when I was driving along on the freeway and someone cut me off in traffic, and my immediate instinct was, "You're lucky I don't have any superpowers because I'd blow your car up right now." This is what happens when you're a fantasy writer, right? You have weird instinctual reactions like that. I was very frightened, though, because I'm like, "Wow, I can't believe that's inside of me." It's probably a good thing that I don't have superpowers because I don't know that I could be trusted not to blow people off of the road when they cut in front of me. And that led me down the natural progression to, "What would happen if people really have superpowers?" Would people be good with them, or would they not? And if my first instinct is to use them in this sort of awful way, what happens if everyone starts abusing these powers? And that led me down the road to the story of, the idea of, there being no heroes—there being a story about a common man with no powers, trying to assassinate a very powerful superpowered individual. It's weird talking about this in the terms of superheroes, though, because as I was writing the book, my focus was on sort of an action-adventure feel—definitely using some of the superhero tropes, and the comic book tropes. But I have found that in the fiction I've read, it's better to do kind of a strong adaptation–kind of like movies do. I like how movies have adapted comic books and kind of made them their own, and turned them into their own action-adventure genre. And that was what I was kind of using as a model for this. And so yeah, I wanted to tell the story of this kid—I say kid, he's eighteen—this young man, who wants to bring down the emperor of Chicago, and doesn't have any powers himself, but thinks he might know what Steelheart—that character's—the emperor's weakness is. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When Kaladin helped Adolin fight in the arena, did Elhokar notice him Surgebinding? | RAFO. :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is the Cognitive Realm flat or spherical? Yeah, 'cause I was going to say, if you make a globe flat... | The Cognitive Realm is this weird thing, where it's flat, but it's distorted. You can walk from one planet to the next. So it's got really weird...the spatial reasoning doesn't work the same way. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you store any sort of Temporal Connection? | Um, most. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can a person who dies but somehow hasn't passed Beyond the Three Realms (a la Kelsier) serve in place of a spren for Radiant purposes? We know that the Stormfather is a Cognitive Shadow and is also acting as a spren for Dalinar but is he able to do that because the "unusual sequence of events" took place or is there something else going on specific to the nature of the Stormfather? | This is theoretically possible, but it would require an unusual sequence of events. RAFO. :) RAFO. |
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 | Can an Awakened form a nahel bond with a spren on Roshar? | Depends on the spren! |
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 | Are spren bound to Roshar or can they travel to other worlds? Could they do so if they were bound to someone that traveled to other worlds? | RAFO. Excellent question, though. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you be Connected to two locations at once? Will that help with doing Sel magic off-world? | Yes RAFO |
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 | Have we seen a Svrakiss in a book so far? Can you tell us anything about Svrakiss, like are they originally from Sel? | Um... RAFO Um... I'm not going to go into that. |
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 | 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 | Another thing to know about George is George cannot write outside his particular environment-- All writers have their craft and I'll ask [Brandon] about it in a second, but George with HBO sending him out to promote, and cons, he's not writing. Whereas Brandon wrote in his hotel room I heard. And I often do that too. George can't do that, so that's a difficulty too. There are other factors involved. And people love to meet him but when you meet an author sometimes they're not even writing 'cause they can't keep focus. So let's talk about-- How fast do you write a novel... They're strong. | It is my pleasure, it has been an honor. For those who couldn't hear it was a thank you for releasing books somewhat faster and a thank you for finishing The Wheel of Time . You know, I've been there. I picked up The Wheel of Time in 1990, my 8th grade year was '89, [...] yeah it's funny, I talk about The Wheel of Time. Everything I picked up while I was coming to love fantasy was all completed series or series in the middle of being written, and so as a kid I'm like "These are all famous series, I want to find one that isn't, what's going to be mine?" You want to be discovering, so I'd go to the bookstore every week to look at the new books coming out and try to find them and I remember grabbing Eye of the World , the first Robert Jordan book, and being like "Oh, this is a big book". I was a kid with not much money, so if you bought a big book it wasn't that much more expensive than a little book but you got a lot more reading in it. It was a good bang for your buck so to speak. So I bought that book and I loved it, and I thought "Oh this is going to be it, this is--" And I remember when the second book came out and they had trade paperbacks and my little bookstore didn't get a lot of those and I went "Oh, OH, something's happening" and then the third book was there in hardcover and I said "Ah-HA! I was right!" So I had this sort of pseudo-paternal instinct for Wheel of Time even when I was 17. But then I do know what it's like to wait, and you know George [R.R. Martin] is a guest here [at ConQuest 46], I want to speak toward the fact that he has had a long career and given people a lot of books, he may be slowing down a little bit as he's getting older, we all do. And he just wants to make sure his books are all right. I get tired hearing people-- Because I heard people do the same thing to Robert Jordan, y'know cut George some slack. He spent years and years toiling in obscurity until he finally made it big. I'm glad he's enjoying his life a little bit and not stressing about making sure-- You know getting a book that size out every year is really hard on writers. Robert Jordan couldn't keep it up, nobody can keep it up. Stormlight Archive 's every two years. Even I, being one of the more fast writers out there, I'm not going to be able to do one of these things every year, there's just too much going on in one. So thank you, I will try to get them to you very consistently but it's going to be about every other year. On both nights. My writing approach and how fast I write. I'm actually not a particularly fast writer, for those of you who are writers out there I'll go at about 500 words per hour. What I am is a consistent writer. I enjoy doing this and my average day at home will be I get up at noon, because I'm a writer not a-- I'm not working a desk job, I don't have a desk, I don't go to a desk, I go and sit in an easy chair with my laptop, and I work from about 1 until 5. And then 5 until 9 is family time, I'll go take a shower, play with my kids, eat dinner, spend time with my wife, maybe go see a movie, whatever we end up doing. By about 9 or 10 she goes to bed and I go back to work and then I work from about 10 until 2-4 depending on how busy I am. If I'm ahead on schedules and things at 2 I'll stop and play a videogame or something, that's goof off time, go to bed about 4. And it really just depends on what's going on. If I'm traveling a lot, that puts a lot of stress on the deadline, and I've been traveling a lot lately, so in those cases I try to get some work done while I'm on the road, and it usually is not nearly as effective. I'll get a thousand words out of 4 hours I can sneak out of the day to get writing done. When you're breaking that rhythm, artists are creatures of habit and that rhythm-- Sometimes shaking things up is really good for you, but if that shake up is also kind of tiring, tiring in a good way I like interacting with people and going to cons, but you get back up there I feel like I worked all day and now I have to work all day. It can be rough, and at the same time with the schedule I want to have which is my goal is to release one small book and one big book a year. That’s my goal. One adult book and one teen book, and sometimes those schedules get off so you get one one year and three the next year. Or sometimes I do things like write two books instead of one, I did that this year, or last year. I wrote two Alloy of Law era Mistborn books, the second era of Mistborn books, and together they are half the length of a Stormlight book. So sometimes you'll see three. But I want to be releasing consistently, I want to have a book for teens and a book for larger people who are teens at heart? I dunno. It's hard because you don't want to put a definition on them, I don't want people to go "Oh The Reckoners is for teenagers therefore I don't want to read that" and I don't want to discourage, I've had 7-year-olds come up with their copy of The Way of Kings -- Yeah they're strong. My 7-year-old can barely read the Pokemon video game, so-- we played that-- and so I don't want to discourage anybody from picking up a book they think they are going to love, but I do want to be releasing one quote-unquote teen book and one quote-unquote adult book. By the way, since I've started writing teen, I started distinguishing them and it's really hard to say "I write teenage novels and adult fantasy." *laughter* That term does not always evoke the right image I want… I've been introduced sometimes at conventions that are outside my circuit, writing conferences, as the fantasy guy. They say "Here's our fantasy man" *Brandon makes a shocked/confused face prompting laughter* Okay I can take that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Are the Ten Essences related to the Ten Shardworld's Form-of-Investiture | They are not as related as philosophers from ancient days, who created those tables, thought that they were. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Vasher has shown us that he can substitue his need for Breath with another investiture (presumably Stormlight). To what extent is investiture interchangeable between magic systems? | Very interchangeable, but not always simple to apply. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How much time elapses between the beginning of the main part of the story [where they start out at the Shattered Plains] and the end of the series? | And the end of the series? Because the end of the series, um, we have a 15-year gap between [books number] 5 and 6. So, the first five will probably be Wheel of Time -ish, sort of, each one picks up where the last one left off; we have a little more time, maybe, than Wheel of Time , but not terribly much, so it will probably be just a couple of years for the first ones, but then we will jump. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Did you have the ending planned out for the Reckoners series when you started writing? | Then I build a series around the ideas and themes that worked in the first book. I had the ending of the first book well in mind. Once I finished it, I sat down and plotted the next two books. This is very common for me in a series. Writing the first book, making sure I have the characters and ideas down first. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was your premise behind the main character David [in The Reckoners ]? Why did you create him as he is, scared yet fearless at the same time, smart about specific things yet totally ignorant about others, etc.? | I built David around two pillars of personality. One is his interest in the Epics, which balances between hatred and fascination. The other one is his fierce determination, which leads him to be impulsive and bull-headed at times, but also pretty inspiring at others. I feel that as people, sometimes our greatest strengths are also our greatest liabilities. In this respect, every human being is a conundrum in at least one or two ways. With David, his fixation on the Epics is a huge strength but he's been so narrowly focused in his interests that he neglected many other areas of study. So he's both smart and stupid. At the same time, he's impulsive and determined, which leads to acts of great bravery, but he lives in a society that beats people down so if he stops and thinks too long, he can often psych himself out. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was it that inspired you to write a superhero series in which all the super-powered heroes had become so corrupt? | I did it exactly because I hadn't ever seen anyone do it! I've enjoyed the superhero genre quite a bit during my years, and as a writer I'm generally looking to do something similar to stories I've loved in the past. At the same time, something in me rebels at just doing "the same thing" again. This is the conflict of fan against artist inside me and the result is usually that I spend time thinking about a genre of stories, and try to find a take on it that feels fresh and original. It's like eating my cake and having it too! I feel that I can add something to the genre, giving people a new story, yet also incorporate some of the things I love about the genre the things that make it really work. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why do you so often include some sort of religious government in so many of your worlds? Is it something that comes from looking at how history developed on Earth, or do you think your religious faith influences the way you write/worldbuild? | There are a lot of reasons. One is because it happened that way so often in our world. Another is my fascination with religion, and wanting to explore what people do with it. The biggest one, however, is related to how I worldbuild. I like things to be very interconnected, as I think that's how real life is. So, when I build a religion, I ask myself what its political ties are, as well as its relationship with things like the magic, economics, and gender roles of the culture. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I'm going to skip asking you to tell us about yourself, I think you're already fairly well known. But are there any stories about yourself that readers wouldn't know? Well done, corrupting the youth. | Oh, I'm sure there are tons of stories about myself. The one my dad told at my wedding is a fun one. My parents, like any normal people, will occasionally let certain words slip through their lips around their children that they probably don't want their children repeating. I was 4 or 5 and I had learned to say, from my father, certain expletives. And I walked around saying them all the time. So my parents had to sit me down and say, "Ok we don't say these words because they are bad words." So I said, "All right, I got it." I'm a Mormon, and in the LDS church children are assigned to talk in their own meeting. Your talk is like 30 seconds when you're a 5-year-old, and you're just supposed to get up and say, "I like Jesus," and that's the end. But I decided I would talk about these words, with nobody knowing, even my parents. So I got up in front of all the little primary kids and I said, "We don't say 'oh rust' because it's a bad word." And then I proceeded to talk about all the bad words I knew-to the other kids. That was my talk. So there you go, Brandon swore from the pulpit in Mormon church when he was a kid. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How often (if ever) do you reread your own books to make sure the content stays fresh in your mind? Or do you just rely on your notes and timelines you have for your books? | Depends. If it's been a long time, I'll reread. (Or at least look up specific chapters.) It depends on how much the story is "present" in my mind as well. The Stormlight Archive and The Reckoners have been solidly in my mind these last five years, and I have enough a grasp on the story that I'm in control of it and can work with it the way I need. When I get back to The Rithmatist , however, I'll need to reread the whole thing. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Having completed the The Wheel of Time series for Robert Jordan. Who would you want to complete your books if anything should happen to you? | Boy! Let's hope that I make it. But, having done what I did for The Wheel of Time , I've had to consider this. I think right now, I'd like either Brent Weeks to write it (as he and I have very similar styles, and I like his books a lot) or Brian McClellan, my former student who is now writing excellent fiction. (I can't take much credit for Brian, as he was an excellent writer before he took my class.) I haven't asked either of them to do this, though, so it's more just idle consideration to me. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I always wondered. You say you produce clean drafts, and you apparently produce stories quickly (relatively to a lot of people I've met.), how do you keep cranking it away? What is the motivation to keep creating? (I think this might be the key to why some many people start and never finish projects. ??) | I'm not actually a fast writer, hour by hour, but I am very consistent. I enjoy writing, but I will admit, some days it is hard. What keeps me going? This has changed over the years. At first, it was a desire to prove myself, and to make a living doing this thing I love. Eventually, it has transitioned into a feeling of obligation to the readers mixed with a desire to see these stories in my head told. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I've heard you are a plotter, yet chose to write The Reckoners as a pantser. What were some of the unexpected difficulties or advantages of pantsing? | I "pantsed" the first few chapters of Steelheart , but I quickly went from there to creating an outline. The early part was exploration, the first three or four chapters. That's not uncommon, even for an outliner. However, I did then stop and produce a really solid outline for the book. (Actually one of the most solid I've ever made.) When you're discovery writing, you often have a lot more success creating and discovering characters, in my experience. That's why I often free-write a few opening chapters to a book, so I can get a feel for who these people might be.However, a difficulty with discovery writing (pantsing) is plotting it's very difficult to create a tight narrative without an outline. (That said, many people who love to discovery write can fix this problem in revisions.) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What do you think is the difference between SciFi and Fantasy? But wouldn't you say Star Wars is really both? | SciFi works with the improbable becoming reality; Fantasy works with the impossible pretending to be reality. I think the line is between what could be and what can't be. By my definition, that kind of takes Star Wars into Fantasy. I don't necessarily like Asimov's definitions, just because he was very down on fantasy. A lot of the fantasy of his era was very Conan-ish. He was a great writer, I respect his fiction a lot, but I don't think he gave fantasy its fair due. I would count Star Trek definitely science fiction, they're trying to talk about - even though they're using fantastical teleporters and stuff - they're trying to say this is what's possible. It's social science fiction, a lot of it. I would say it’s a mash-up hybrid. It’s a fantasy magic system in a space opera science fiction setting. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In Shadows of Self a few characters use some variation of "Hell!" as an exclamation when things go awry. I don't recall any reference to "Hell" as a place or philosophy in the religions of the Mistborn series. How does this word fit into their world, does it differ from our own? | The characters in Mistborn have been using "biblical" curses since book one. This was a specific choice made on my part, as I want the "feel" of Mistborn to be like London in the early 1800s. All of my books are to be read as if there's a phantom translator who took it from the original language and translated it into English. In many cases, there isn't a word that is an exact translation—so the translator does their best. In The Final Empire , there was indeed a kind of "hell." Though there wasn't a specific idea of a devil—it was just the punishment ascribed to the souls who failed or disobeyed the Lord Ruler. Even the skaa knew of this, though religion was forbidden them. So it was a more vague sense, than specific theology, to them. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What would you say is the best approach to battle the growing apathy, greed, violence, corruption, pollution and misery in the world today―using Sazed's wisdom, education, research on religions and unity through equal- mindedness or Kelsier's way of personal example, sacrifice, and unity through action? | I am more a Sazed than a Kelsier. Sazed is focused on patience, careful change, and thoughtfulness. But we need Kelsiers too—people who are willing to act decisively, to become the type of person that others follow, and to make things happen, even if sometimes there are terrible consequences. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | If you could have an Epic power in your everyday life—you know, just every once in a while, not enough to corrupt you—what would it be? | I would love to be able to fly. It's not the "right" decision, which would probably be some kind of healing/comforting power to make myself and those around me more healthy. (Even if it is to get rid of the common cold.) But…flying! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you have any advice for new fantasy writers to smooth out any road bumps on the way to getting published and how do you juggle success with the life you had before your books took off? | I have a ton of advice, but most of it I can't put here. I have a couple of resources where I go into depth. The first is Writing Excuses, my podcast. I suggest that you start listening the with January 2015 episodes—it will be very helpful. For something more in-depth, I post videos of my writing lectures on YouTube. This is the class I teach at BYU, and goes very in-depth on publishing. Here, I'll just say this: Practice a lot. Write the kind of books that you wish were being written. Make good habits, and learn to be a writer long before you publish—own being a writer. Do the work, learn to think like a writer, and guard your writing time as if this were your job. Then when it actually happens, it will be more like "Hey, it finally happened" than "Wow. What do I do now?" |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I know you have your masters in creative writing, as do many authors, though some do not. How much has getting your masters helped you as a writer? | No class, even the one I teach, can take the place of writing on your own and practicing. That will be the most useful thing to you in your career—practicing lots of styles, lots of writing tools, and lots of types of stories. Your job is to learn for yourself what works for you, and develop your own mix of strategies—writing methods, outlining methods, viewpoint/tense decisions, prose decisions—that help you consistently create great books. A writing program does several things. First, good writing classes should give you tools to try out, and explain to you what they normally do in writing, and why you might like this too. They give you feedback from established writers. And they give you a writing community to be part of—people to make into a writing group, to bounce ideas off, and to help you along your path. The danger of a masters in creative writing is that some professors are determined to help people create only one kind of fiction, very narrowly defined, and will try to shove you away from other types of writing. Don't let them do this to you—they should be a resource to you, rather than a force that tries to homogenize you into a single type of storytelling. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Pat Rothfuss recently worked with the folks from Albino Dragon to create a Kickstarted Name of the Wind deck of cards in which each face card features a character from the book. All those designs were discussed with Pat, and the final result is shaping up to be pretty spectacular. Are there plans, or if not - are you open to planning, - to do something like this for one or more of your own worlds? | I know about Pat's deck, it's really awesome stuff! I can only say that I do have plans to do something similar, but you will have to wait for Words of Radiance to find out more about it. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Were there any characters you found difficult to connect with when writing the remaining books of The Wheel of Time series? | I've never really been able to get into Cadsuane as a character, and so she was the most difficult for me to do. I love Aviendha and Tuon, but both of them think so differently from the rest of the characters that they gave me a challenge. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Hello, Reddit. As someone else has posted, I have finished the rough draft of Dalinar's flashbacks for Stormlight Three. I consider the experiment of writing his flashbacks for this book, instead of waiting for book five, to be a success. Therefore, I'm proceeding with the Dalinar/Szeth flip. The reasoning for this is something I can't discuss in detail until the book is released. I'd be happy to revisit this topic once you all have a chance to read the novel. But for now, a few statistics. I'm working at about 2,000 words a day on average. That's slow for me (a better rate is around 3,000 words) but Stormlight is difficult to write. The complexity of the worldbuilding and the narrative structure require extra attention and detail. At this rate, though, I should be finishing the book sometime between December and February. We'll see--I have a tour for the new Mistborn book, as well as several weeks in the UK, coming up. They'll impact my ability to write. I'm doing a revision on these Dalinar scenes right now, and I'm very pleased with them. At fifteen chapters and 55k (rough draft) they're significantly longer than the other two sequences--I had a lot more to cover in them. I still anticipate the finished novel being about the length of the other two; Dalinar's flashbacks will simply eat a little into his other narrative. Also, expect the wordcount to shrink as I do revisions. Next step is digging into Part One. I anticipate this book moving well in the coming months; my outline is solid, my enthusiasm high, and I will finally get to write some scenes I've been planning for over a decade now. Thank you for putting up with the delayed pace of Stormlight releases. I know you all think I'm freakishly fast, but the truth is that even if I can get this book in on time, it will be two and half years between Stormlight releases. I've accepted that this is just how my process has to work. The difference between me and other writers (ones I wish readers would disparage less) doesn't seem to be one of actual speed. It's just that the thing that relaxes me for the next book happens to be writing side projects that, hopefully, you all enjoy reading. Edit: As a bonus, here's the first line from the first flashback: "Rockbuds crunched like skulls beneath Dalinar’s boots as he charged across the burning field." |
|
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So I know that there's going to be a second Mistborn trilogy. Is Alloy part of it? So is the second trilogy in the same time period? | No. This is foreshadowing the second trilogy. I may do some more books with these characters. It will be a little future forward from this. More like mid–20th century. |
Subsets and Splits