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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 | 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 | A theme throughout a lot of the Cosmere novels is that form , of one sort or another (patterns, aons, etc.) has a crucial role to play in unlocking or using Investiture. As a chemist, I'm curious about the role of form in Allomancy and Feruchemy. Does the underlying molecular or crystalline structure of the metal or alloy play a roll? Different processes, doping ratios, and metal mixtures result in different molecular packing, lattices, and ultimately structure. It seems like that kind of very defined, orderly matrix would be right in line with other forms of unlocking Investiture. | Yes! I've actually mentioned to people before that the chemistry of the various metals acts, for Allomancy, in the same way that the Aons work for AonDor. It's more a key than it is a source of power itself. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is Threnody named in memorial of someone/something? | *big smile* Yes it is. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How big is the Roshar supercontinent? | [Peter Ahlstrom] or [Isaac Stewart], can give you a specific on that, if you need one. I don't have the scale map handy. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is "Galladon" Galladon's true name ? Yes, I had this crazy idea about "people need to have an Aon in the name to be chosen by the Shaod" and Galladon hasn't it. | It is his birth name, if that's what you're asking. Ah, that's an excellent guess. But no, that isn't the case. It's more about Connection. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Could Honor and Autonomy be considered opposites, like, Autonomy freeing from Honor's oaths? | Yes, you could definitely think of it that way. Those two are more likely to be opposed than some others. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Epigraphs in Mistborn & Stormlight : did you wrote them before, during or after writing the rest of the book? | Almost always after the book is done, with notes before certain chapters of what to include above that one. |
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 | Who/what was the inspiration for Wayne's character? He's the best! | Really, it started with the hats and went crazy from there. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can Skybreakers vow to follow a code of rules some might consider outlaw-ish, like the Pirate Code. Are they obliged to adhere to changes in the law after their vow? | Yes and yes. What you're running into with what's happening right now, the Skybreakers are under the thumb of someone who has a much more rigid interpretation of what they should do than is necessary for the Order. And so you could totally be a Skybreaker who is not of this group, and this group would not look kindly on something like the Pirate Code necessarily. (Though the Pirate Code kind of works for them, because it's in international waters, so even with the current crop of Skybreakers you could probably argue the Pirate Code, and they'd probably be okay with it.) But you could have even less, codes that's like, "I'm going to follow the code of the criminal underground. I'm going to follow the Mafia code." Current crop of Skybreakers, that would not fly with them. But in the Order in general, and the way that highspren work, and things like that, you would totally be okay. Which is kind of dangerous, yes. But you would have to follow the code as the code changes. So that could get you into trouble, also. Skybreakers, they've got an interesting way of going about all this. Hopefully, all the Orders do; that's one of my goals with them. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What's the book you've enjoyed the most writing? | Hmm.... Probably one of the Alcatraz books. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you think pantsers grow up to be planners? Or, are pantsers forever pantsers, & planners forever planners? | I think that both pantsers and planners generally learn to use the tools of the others side on occasion. And some do swap, particularly for given books. But neither is the other in embryo. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Compounding requires practice, according to The Hero of Age 's annotations. And yet, it's apparently as easy as burning a metalmind. What was going on that meant the Inquisitors couldn't figure out how to do it (despite Ruin likely knowing how and undoubtedly wanting them to learn) for over a year? What skill did they need to practice doing, exactly? And what happened while they were practicing burning metalminds without successfully Compounding? Did they get an Allomantic effect? | What I think I was getting at in the annotations was a cosmere magic rule that, perhaps, I hadn't completely refined yet. This is the idea that INTENTION is vitally important to the workings of most cosmere magics. You can learn to burn metals instinctively over time, but it does take time--time for your body to figure out what it's doing. If you have instruction and guidance, you can pick it up in an evening, like Vin did. Same goes for most of the magics. This ties into Awakening, with the idea that you have to form a command. During Warbreaker was where I really refined this aspect of the magic. Logically, since the beginning of the cosmere, I've wanted all three Realms to be important to the way the magics worked. The "Practice" therefore for compounding is mental practice--a barrier to overcome in understanding what is happening, and what it will do to you. If you already know all of these things by having it explained to you, that barrier is far less high. I think that was what I was talking about in the Annotations, without really having the idea specified yet--though I'd have to look back at the annotation and re-read it to say for certain. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Was atium truly one of the 16 metals, or can it be used by anyone just like lerasium? | Atium has some screwy things going on. It's not one of the 16, but not just anybody could use it. |
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 | If Kelsier had visited Roshar, what spren would have been attracted to his character? | Gloryspren because he pretty much always feels like he's done something awesome. :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How does it feel to be now known as a mentor to younger writers? | How does it feel to be a mentor to younger writers? Well I think the fact that I've taught a university course on How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy for ten years, I kind of had to get used to that pretty early. I took over the class because they were going to cancel it because there was no one else to teach it. The teacher who had been teaching it retired. And so I stepped in and took it over and I still teach it to this day. My requirement being that I get to post the lectures online. So if you want to read them-- err watch them, you can watch them at brandonsanderson.com/writing-advice . Or you can ask for one of these little cards that has my url on it when you come through. How's it feel? It feels pretty cool honestly. I like interacting with new, young writers. I like helping them out. I'm really proud of like Brian [McClellan] and Janci [Patterson] who've gotten published. *aside to the booksellers* You have Brian's book right there? It's really quite good. He's one of those ones I really can't take credit for, because he came through and he was writing awesome stuff and so I told him like the business side. Here's how you go get published. Some of the other ones, I've been able to give them pointers on their actual writing, that I think have helped out. But I think with Brian he was there already, he just needed the boost to get into the industry. It feels pretty cool. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Hoid, Wayne, Kelsier and Wax are playing cards. How many aces are there? | Only Wayne and Hoid are likely to cheat, and they'd be in cahoots. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Did the earthquake have anything to do with the grounds sentience? | Nothing specifically to do with the ground's sentience. Otherwise... RAFO! |
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 | I hear... that you teach... If you could, in 2 minutes or less, teach us. *laughter* | One of the requirements for teaching the class that I do at Brigham Young was that they let me record the lectures and put them online. So the entire 2 years so far of my course How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy is online. I also have Writing Excuses, my podcast which is writing focused. If you haven't ever listened to it, it's Hugo award winning, and I would recommend starting January this year. We started kind of a master class of writing a story. And we'll record that live tomorrow morning, 11 am, so you'll be able to hear us doing that. The number one thing I can tell to the aspiring writer is-- This is something I've started talking about a lot recently--remember that you are the product of your writing, not the book, or the story. Now it's a weird thing to wrap your mind around. But it was very important for me, starting out as a writer, that when I wrote a book, I was turning myself into someone that could write better books. So that book was not the product; the book, in some ways, was the side effect, of changing myself into someone who was better at writing books. Each time you do that, you will get better, and the side effect, the side product that you produce will be better. The idea is to keep in mind, "What's going to make me a better writer. What practice is going to help me." Always look at your writing as something you're practicing to make yourself get better, no matter what it is. I mean, I wrote 13 novels before I sold one, perhaps that's why I have that perspective. But I think that a lot of the very successful writers are people who practice a lot, and treat all of their writing as practice. |
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 | So are you planning to do anything like the Rysn interlude where you record and post videos again? | Yeah, I would like to do that. For those who haven't seen them, I did record myself typing one of the interludes and then I posted it on Youtube. And I will try to do another one of those. I think it's fun. I sometimes get jealous of Dan-- err Howard I mean, who can sit and draw while he's talking with people and do a demonstration. A demonstration of writing is *pantomimes writing/crowd laughs* But this can be put on and sped up, so you can watch it in speed and with cool music in the background and stuff. I'll try to do another one of those. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How accurate is the Vorin version of the afterlife? | How accurate is it? Well, the thing I'm not doing is confirming or denying, right? Like, afterlife in the cosmere, you have seen that-- As a person there, I would believe that there is an afterlife, and things like this. I would say the Vorin one is contradicted by many people all around. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So I know you talk a lot about the length of the Stormlight books before and how Tor has had some interesting worries there. How do you balance, you know, wanting to extend a scene or wanting to do more flashbacks, or do more characters, while still making sure you get the plot and turn out an incredible book? | Oh yeah . They were more worried about it-- They would like me to write shorter, but they were much more worried before they became the explosive smash hit that they are. *laughter* Now they're just like-- They've learned. "Do what you want Brandon" *laughter* Right, right. So epic fantasy does have this issue of spending so much time dallying with side stories that you lose, sometimes, focus of the main plot. So I've tried to do this thing with the Stormlight books where I consciously made two decisions. One was I would do a flashback sequence in each book that kind of focused on one character that hopefully gave a kind of soul to that book that allowed you to remember "Oh whose flashbacks was that book. Oh that was this one." and that one lead you to understanding the theme of that entire book. Hopefully that will help keep that. The other is that I try to confine my time to the side characters to the interludes, which are slice-of-life glimpses of Roshar. And if I can confine myself to little stories there, then I have a set amount of room-- It's like giving yourself this ground to play in that is bounded, so you finish when you're done with that. I get three interludes between each part, so I can write a bunch of little short stories to explore side characters. But I have to be very careful, you know, "I don't want to do this character yet because I've got this new character" I've got to balance that. And those two things together, hopefully, will help me. Now the issue is most books that-- the series that have had trouble with this in the past don't have it until books 3 or 4, so we won't know if I'll be successful until we get through books 3 or 4, where it starts to appear. So watch me for the next couple years and we'll see if it manifests. |
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 | How did you get started with Writing Excuses? | So Writing Excuses. My dopey brother, who barely reads any fantasy or science fiction or anything-- he's a computer programmer, I love him, but he is not a big reader. Who now has a Hugo award *laughter* He came and said "You know I'm taking a podcasting class, these are getting really popular. You should do one of these. You and Dan should get together and do an old-school radio drama and I'll record it." And I was not interested because "This is just like writing my books. I'm not interested." But I thought about that for several months and thought "You know--" I started listening to a lot of podcasts and thought "You know there isn't a really good writing podcast" I couldn't find one. Now since then I've found others who are good. But I wasn't able to find one, particularly one that had the quick and efficient style that I wanted. A lot of podcasts, I love them but they ramble. They just go on . You just listen for hours and hours and they sometimes get to the point. I wanted something focused. So I called up Jordan and I said "What about a writing podcast? People ask me for writing advice a lot. I have this degree, I've been trained as a teacher but I don't teach very much. What can I do to help people with writing?" And so I pitched it to Dan, got Jordan to do all of the editing and producing, and then went and grabbed Howard, who we didn't know that well at that time but I had seen him speak and knew he was clever and fun and I'm more of the dry professorly type. So I could play straight man and having Howard kind of be-- he calls it "I'm the bonehead I don't know anything" but he does know what's going on, he's just good at playing that role. And then we added Mary after we realized we were three white, Mormon dudes *laughter* with kind of the same view on life. Now granted Howard and Dan are insane so that's different *laughter* So we brought in Mary, who we fly in, or we fly to her, we don't like the Skyping podcasting thing so we do them in person. Just to make sure we were adding more variety to the podcast. Plus she had been the best guest we had had on, her puppeteering episode was great. So that's kind of the evolution of it. This year is the year we decided to give it a different sort of structure. "Okay we've done this now for nine seasons, let's try something new with each subsequent season." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you have any updates for the progress of that? Or it's like, we've got all this and it's only six months to the last one, it's not 2, 3, maybe 4 years. | The graphic novel we are working on right now is White Sand , which is one of my early unpublished novels. We felt we could adapt that to take the poorly written stuff out and leave the awesome stuff. Yeah, it's going really well. We just got a sample of the cover art for the first volume. I think they are collecting 6 chapters in a book, and there will be 18 chapters total. So three volumes, and I think we are almost done with the first six. One of the things that I told them is that I really want to be far along in this project before we release anything. Because The Wheel of Time fans got burned on their comic. I think that there have been enough instances of things like that, so I want to be able to produce something complete and say, "Look, we've got this much of it done and this much more to do. We've at least got the first 6 chapters, a complete book you can read." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Have you ever thought of teaching at Clarion West? | Have I ever thought of teaching at Clarion. The reason I teach the class I do is because I can drive to it and it's one night a week for three hours. *laughter* They work very much around my schedule. The other thing I like about it is they put it in a lecture hall so I mentor 15 students, I read their writing and things like that, but then any student who wants to take one credit-hour of "you get a free 'A' for listening" can come sit-- So I can have like a hundred people in my class while still mentoring 15. The university really bends over backwards to make it work for me. So I might consider doing Clarion or something but man it takes a bunch of time out-- Peter what did you-- There is the cruise. We do a Writing Excuses cruise which is Clarion-like a little less workshop focused than Clarion, Clarion is very workshop focused. But yeah we do the Writing Excuses cruise. So if you sign up for that when I'm going on the cruise, which I can't promise I'll do every year, but I'm doing this year, then you get the opportunity to come hear the lectures and things like that. |
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 | For The Reckoners series, it's my understanding that the Epics appear after they've had some sort of life threatening experience to gain their powers is that correct? That's what I thought after Firefight . | No, not always. Not necessarily. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Did anything help inspire Navani’s character in tWoK? | Numerous things. Partially, the fact that there’s a distinct lack of mothers in fantasy fiction. Everybody seems to be an orphan. Partially, the need for a strong, well-rounded woman of an older, wiser nature to balance out Shallan’s impulsive nature. And, in part, she was designed because I wanted a Fabrial engineer among the cast, and extrapolated personality from there. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | At the end of Steelheart , when they're fighting Nightwielder. His weakness was supposedly UV rays and he had Newcago in perpetual darkness. Except the sun produces UV rays. | Yeah when I was building the magic system for this one of the things I realized is large-scale applications of Epic powers could not be subject to their weaknesses otherwise their weakness would become easily manifest. You can see this when Steelheart turns the city to steel, if his fear was manifest far from him every person who-- I'm not going to tell you what his weakness is in case you read the book, it's the big secret-- but anyone who manifested his weakness would have a pocket around them. It would take you about ten minutes to find out what his weakness was. And every large-scale application of power that I was imagining had that big same problem. So what I decided, if it's not immediate to you, if it's not you seeing it and being right there-- That it's your actual-- Something about you that causes the weakness that causes it then it was not going to be manifest. Does that make sense? And in the third book, because enough people asked about this I had David go into a little explanation, he's very technical. But really the reason for coming up with this rule in the first place was because I thought "There's no way you can have this work the way I want to unless there is a loophole there. Unless there's an exception here." So the reason is he's distant from it, large-scale applications it doesn't happen. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who are educated in a field other than literature and in a profession already that is not centered around writing? | Yes! I'll tell you that you're in luck. Take what you've learned in your field of education, and in your profession, and apply it to your writing. RJ used his experience as a solider; Grisham made a career out of writing books related to his work. You have special experience and knowledge that will make your books distinctive. Make use of it! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | *inaudible* this thing I have fallen in love with *inaudible* when you're the only one that knows that you can only talk about... Will it ever be in print or will it always be a backstory... | I end up RAFOing a lot. "Read and find out". I do a lot of that. There will be several series about the cosmere, but they're a little ways off. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | You said that Shallan will have different apprenticeships, we know 2 , Will be Hoid another? | RAFO. :) |
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 | At the very front cover of the Arcanum Unbounded there is a constellation map, that has a lot of the cosmere stars on it. What point-of-view is that from? | So the question is, in Arcanum Unbounded ... Yes, the cover of Arcanum Unbounded has a star chart in it, a map. And the question is, is this from a specific viewpoint, and if so, what is that viewpoint. So, yes, it is from a specific viewpoint. It's the sky as seen from-- Some of the stars are enhanced a bit-- But it's the sky as seen from a specific point of reference that Isaac came up with when I told-- gave him this assignment. He's my illustrator for a lot of the interior art of the books and he RAFO'd it when we were asked at the release party. So I'm going to RAFO it until he decides he wants to reveal it. |
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 | Is it part of a series? | *Following a reading* That's called Adamant , and the premise that made me want to start writing it was this idea of basically Silence of the Lambs in Space. Right after this humankind is going to be betrayed by the "nice" aliens, who have given them this sidejack technology and helped them in their war against the violent Knockers. And it turns out they've been played the whole time, the "nice" aliens just wanted a nice race of obedient soldiers. They turn off the sidejack, it knocks out the entire command staff of the Armada and that leaves Jeff, who doesn't have one, who's not really a commander, in charge. He's able to grab the flagship and fly away with the Centurion in the brig, who is the greatest military mind that the galaxy has ever known. So what follows is the story of him trying to get the Centurion to give him advice on tactics in the war against the quote-unquote nice aliens while the Centurion is trying to figure out how to escape and get away from him. It's a very fun story, but it's not ready to be released. One of the things I'm thinking of doing is if I can maybe slide this into the Cosmere, I haven't decided yet. It would be really fun to get it in there, I think it could, I would just have to lose the Shakespeare line. That's kind of hurting me because I like that line. So we'll see if I can get it in or not... What I'm going to do is I'll probably do four or five novellas that build-- So it's like a novel told in novella form. I kind of imagine doing some episodes quote-unquote, right? And then have a six-episode season with the last episode being the end, so a mini-series basically. Kind of like what was done with… Wool , that's what it was… I think the the serial has a chance of coming back because of ebooks and things like 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 | Assuming I could travel anywhere in the universe, could I eventually find the Cosmere. In other words is the Cosmere in our universe/dimension, or in a different universe/dimension. | Good question. The answer is no - there is no path through our universe to the cosmere. It is another universe, another dimension, where the laws of physics are different from our own. I don't intend to ever connect the cosmere to Earth or our universe - in fact, one of the big decision points so far in determining if a project is going to be the cosmere or not is whether or not I want to link it to Earth in any way. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do all Epics' weaknesses come from things in their past? | RAFO. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What kind of college classes (not English courses) would best prepare someone for writing fantasy? | Whatever you're fascinated by! You can incorporate basically anything into a story. If you love numbers, study economics. If you like history, pick an area and type and become an expert. Whether it be law or botany, you will find a way to use it in your books. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The updated Elantris map (from the anniversary edition) includes a city map, and the interior of Elantris looks awfully like Aon Ela. Was it indeed designed so the streets for Ela, and if so - does this merely augment/support the giant Aon Rao, or does it have a separate effect? But does it have an actual effect, or is it just aesthetic? | This was designed this way! It is separate from the shape of the city itself. It doesn't have an effect at the moment. It might once have. |
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 | 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 | 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 | A theme throughout a lot of the Cosmere novels is that form , of one sort or another (patterns, aons, etc.) has a crucial role to play in unlocking or using Investiture. As a chemist, I'm curious about the role of form in Allomancy and Feruchemy. Does the underlying molecular or crystalline structure of the metal or alloy play a roll? Different processes, doping ratios, and metal mixtures result in different molecular packing, lattices, and ultimately structure. It seems like that kind of very defined, orderly matrix would be right in line with other forms of unlocking Investiture. | Yes! I've actually mentioned to people before that the chemistry of the various metals acts, for Allomancy, in the same way that the Aons work for AonDor. It's more a key than it is a source of power itself. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | There seem to be several black trinkets in your books (Vin's obsidian chunk, the polished-to-a-metallic-look pendant Roadan receives as a wedding present, & the sphere Gavilar gives to Szeth) My question is...are these things related? | No. Unfortunately, you've seen a coincidental connection. Several of these things are important, but for different reasons. |
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 | 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 | If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see goldshadows for a time and then obtain Compounded health when reaching the charged part of the bead? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, no gold shadows, but at a very low rate since only little health was loaded in it? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, but at a standard rate the user would always get when compounding? | He'd hack the system to deliver health for a short time instead of doing what it was supposed to do, but only until the small portion of gold Invested with his Investiture ran out. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Would you yourself be able to wield Nightblood? | Anybody can wield Nightblood for a short, short time. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can Skybreakers vow to follow a code of rules some might consider outlaw-ish, like the Pirate Code. Are they obliged to adhere to changes in the law after their vow? | Yes and yes. What you're running into with what's happening right now, the Skybreakers are under the thumb of someone who has a much more rigid interpretation of what they should do than is necessary for the Order. And so you could totally be a Skybreaker who is not of this group, and this group would not look kindly on something like the Pirate Code necessarily. (Though the Pirate Code kind of works for them, because it's in international waters, so even with the current crop of Skybreakers you could probably argue the Pirate Code, and they'd probably be okay with it.) But you could have even less, codes that's like, "I'm going to follow the code of the criminal underground. I'm going to follow the Mafia code." Current crop of Skybreakers, that would not fly with them. But in the Order in general, and the way that highspren work, and things like that, you would totally be okay. Which is kind of dangerous, yes. But you would have to follow the code as the code changes. So that could get you into trouble, also. Skybreakers, they've got an interesting way of going about all this. Hopefully, all the Orders do; that's one of my goals with them. |
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 | I just read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and loved it. How did the first shade come to be? Are there shades in other worlds? Do shades have bones? | Shades are what we call "Cognitive Shadows" in the cosmere. They're basically "spren" or "[seons]" created from human souls. (Where Investiture--or magical power--keeps a consciousness alive after it has lost its Physical connection.) Yes, shades all once had bodies. Think of them like petrified souls, where instead of stone replacing the tissue of a corpse, magical power replaced the parts of a soul that connect that soul to the Three Realms. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What was Hoid up to during the Lord Ruler's Ascension? | I might tell you some day. |
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 | Would Nightblood appear in the Cognitive Realm? …Would it appear as a sword, or because Nightblood appears to perceive itself as something else, would it appear as something else? | Nightblood will have a manifestation in the Cognitive Realm. So, um, you will get a RAFO. *laughter* Because most things we're going to deal with we will have some scenes in the Cognitive Realm coming up, and you'll be better able to make guesses along these lines after you've read those. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So, Way of Kings . Absolutely huge book, standing at 1000 pages. Even then, the book is taller than your average kind of novel. So, the question I had for Brandon was, with people like Patrick Rothfuss kind of realizing their works were too long— The Kingkiller Chronicles for example was one big book that he split into three parts so that it was publishable—what was it about Way of Kings that meant even though it was so big, it still had to be just that one book? I see. The two books in front of you here, obviously being re-released... Which point is it that this cuts off at? | I couldn't do that same thing with this particular book because of the way the plot arcs work. It worked very well with Rothfuss' book—of course, I loved his books—but what he's got going on is sort of an episodic story where Kvothe does this and Kvothe does that and Kvothe does this. And you can kind of separate those as vignettes. With Way of Kings , what I was doing is...I've got three storylines for three separate characters who are each going through troubled times. And if we were to cut the book in half, for instance, you would get all of the set up, and all of the trouble, and none of the payoff. And so what'd happen is you'd have actually a really depressing first book, where nothing really good happens and people are in places that they...mentally, they haven't come to any decisions yet; they're struggling with problems. Essentially, you'd only get the first act; you'd get all of the setup and none of the payoff. This cuts off... We decided we had a fairly good break point, because Shallan's storyline comes to...there's a resolution. And some decisions have been made, and it's kind of... We broke it right at the kind of middle point where people are deciding, you know, we've had these struggles, we've had these struggles; now we have some sort of promise of victory. But the victory or things haven't actually happened yet. And so I do strongly recommend that people read both books—have them both together to read together—because there is a certain poetry to the arcs that are built into this. The second half is lots of massive payoff for the first half. But we did find a decent break point. But conceptually it's one novel, even if you can break for a while and then pick up the second one. Conceptually, to me they are one. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you have any updates for the progress of that? Or it's like, we've got all this and it's only six months to the last one, it's not 2, 3, maybe 4 years. | The graphic novel we are working on right now is White Sand , which is one of my early unpublished novels. We felt we could adapt that to take the poorly written stuff out and leave the awesome stuff. Yeah, it's going really well. We just got a sample of the cover art for the first volume. I think they are collecting 6 chapters in a book, and there will be 18 chapters total. So three volumes, and I think we are almost done with the first six. One of the things that I told them is that I really want to be far along in this project before we release anything. Because The Wheel of Time fans got burned on their comic. I think that there have been enough instances of things like that, so I want to be able to produce something complete and say, "Look, we've got this much of it done and this much more to do. We've at least got the first 6 chapters, a complete book you can read." |
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 | How does it feel to be now known as a mentor to younger writers? | How does it feel to be a mentor to younger writers? Well I think the fact that I've taught a university course on How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy for ten years, I kind of had to get used to that pretty early. I took over the class because they were going to cancel it because there was no one else to teach it. The teacher who had been teaching it retired. And so I stepped in and took it over and I still teach it to this day. My requirement being that I get to post the lectures online. So if you want to read them-- err watch them, you can watch them at brandonsanderson.com/writing-advice . Or you can ask for one of these little cards that has my url on it when you come through. How's it feel? It feels pretty cool honestly. I like interacting with new, young writers. I like helping them out. I'm really proud of like Brian [McClellan] and Janci [Patterson] who've gotten published. *aside to the booksellers* You have Brian's book right there? It's really quite good. He's one of those ones I really can't take credit for, because he came through and he was writing awesome stuff and so I told him like the business side. Here's how you go get published. Some of the other ones, I've been able to give them pointers on their actual writing, that I think have helped out. But I think with Brian he was there already, he just needed the boost to get into the industry. It feels pretty cool. |
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 | If someone used Hemalurgy to take someones Feruchemical abilities would they be able to use that persons personal metalminds? Most relevantly perhaps to take that person's knowledge from their copperminds? If someone stored their identity in an aluminium metalmind, then had their powers and metalminds stolen via Hemalurgy, then the person who took the powers used the aluminium metalmind to draw out the first persons identity would it permanently overwrite their personality with the original persons ? ( would kind of be a long winded way of stealing someone else's body and becoming immortal ) | Yes. All Identity questions are a RAFO until I deal with it more in the books. (Sorry.) It's complicated, but no. There would be too much of the other person mixed in. Both could use the metalminds of the person the Feruchemy was stolen from, but when they made their own, their own Identity would "muddy" the creation. |
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 | What are Cultivation's feelings with regards to the Stormfather? | Cultivation's feelings... Cultivation is, *long pause* I just have to decide how I can say things that are not spoilers. Cultivation-- The Stormfather reminds her of certain things about someone else she knew, and she feels the same way about the Stormfather in some ways as this person that she knew. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Have you ever worked on a video game before? How did you get involved with Infinity Blade? | This is my first extensive experience working on a video game. I have sold video game rights on one of my other books, but I haven't begun working on that yet. They approached me. The developers of Infinity Blade were fans of mine. They tell me they spent some six months trying to get hold of me, going through different channels. But they kept trying because they really wanted to work with me. Eventually they realized they had a contact with Isaac Stewart, who has done a lot of art for my books and is a good friend of mine. So through him they eventually got me to dinner to pitch working on this project with them. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Does Shardplate have one general style as a pattern, or do different types exist (like European armour vs. Japanese armour), as the different kingdoms have different cultures? | Different types exist, but it's more along order lines than cultural ones. (That said, a person's culture could certainly influence their armor.) |
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 | Anyway, your first published book Elantris came out 10 years ago next month. You've had quite a journey since then; you've published 15 novels and half a dozen novellas. What's been the most surprising or interesting thing you've learned along the way? I'm going to exclude anything pertaining to The Wheel of Time . | One of the most interesting things was how fast the fans became experts in the world. Bigger experts than I thought they would become, and faster. But I knew that was going to happen, because I was a Wheel of Time fan and I knew what the fans did for The Wheel of Time . So it was more of a mark of honor to me that they actually doing this for me. I'm surprised to see it happening for my books, though I'm not at all surprised that they can do it. I think the biggest surprise is how little time I would have to actually write, after I became a writer. I had more time to write when I had a full-time job than I do now, because then I was working a graveyard shift at a hotel, and I could write overnight. I had a good six hours of writing time every day despite being a full-time student and having a full-time job. Now that I'm full-time as a writer, I travel and tour and do interviews. These things are all important, and I enjoy them. But what it means is that I just can't work as much as I used to. I became a storyteller because I love doing the storytelling part. It's like I have to squeeze it between the cracks sometimes, the thing that actually is my job. |
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 | 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 | 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 | Does the metal on [Scadrial] contain within it any sort of spren-like being, or anything similar to that, and also, does the Splintered nature of the Shards on [Sel] have anything to do with how the magic manifests itself without a physical representation? | Scadrial did not have an analogous, self-aware Invested set of entities. The power has to be "let go of" in a way. |
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 | 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 | So my question is how'd you create the Legion *inaudible*? | Ooh! Good question! So, Legion is a lot of fun, and it's very weird. What happened is, I really do think, as a writer, I have all these weird voices in my head who are telling me to do different things. One day, I was talking to a friend of mine who writes a lot of psychological horror, and I was talking about schizophrenia, and I said, "Hey, what if all those voices helped you out instead of drove you crazy?" And he said, "That doesn't sound like a horror story. That sounds like a fantasy story, you should write that." So I did. |
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 |
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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've been plugging away on the book, slowly but surely. Part Two went longer than I wanted. (Big surprise.) I finished it last week, though, and the full book current wordcount is at 247k. (400k is the goal. Note that of that 247, some 20k or so is for Parts Three and Four, as I wrote the flashback sequences for Dalinar all straight through.) I wanted to be further by the arrival of July, but was slowed down by two things. First, touring in February and March. Writing while on tour is killer, and I tend to be very slow during high-travel times. After that, I spent most of May writing Edgedancer, the Stormlight novella that is going in the Cosmere Collection this fall. (I consider it an apology for not having Stormlight Three out this year.) Everything is still looking good for an Oathbringer release next year. I don't have any major touring until I go to Europe in October/November, and there are no other projects like Edgedancer on my plate. So at my current rate of 10k a week, without any interruptions planned, I should be finishing up right around the middle of October. Part Two turned out well, though it's a slower, more lore-and-character focused section. (It includes some viewpoint chapters I think you'll find unexpected and interesting, though it has less action than other sections of Stormlight.) If you look at the visual outline from the second update, I've finished everything for Part Two. My next task is to do a quick revision of Edgedancer to be turned in this week, and then do a revision of Part Two. I'm doing an unusual thing (for me) in revising each part after I finish it, then sending it to my team for continuity and editing. We discovered that a big slow-down in getting Word of Radiance ready was me waiting for the team to get back with increasingly-complex and detailed continuity notations. This means when I finish the first draft of this book, it will actually be the second draft, which will speed up revisions a ton. (I should be able to move right into them, and do the third draft right away.) The biggest challenge for the book will be making sure I don't go TOO long, as (like other Stormlight books) it's important to me that the book be read as a single volume, instead of as separate books published in a split-up way. (I can't prevent this in some markets, though.) As always, thanks for reading. |
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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 | Out of all the books you've written which do you think is the best? | Well, Emperor's Soul is the one that won a Hugo, which gives it some objective credibility for being the best. [ A Memory of Light ] was the hardest by a long shot, and in some ways the most satisfying, but I'm perhaps most proud of The Way of Kings . So one of those three, likely. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The question is: Shallan from The Stormlight Archive being an illustrator herself, an artist, gave me an interesting opportunity to show the world through sketches and illustrations, is that something I thought about ahead of time? In fact that was one of my big goals with The Stormlight Archive , I wanted to-- So I have this feeling on epic fantasy, one of the cool things about it is this sense of immersion, and then the epic fantasies that I have loved the most, things like Dune , if you count that as fantasy it's one of those hybrids, or The Wheel of Time , what they do is they really make this world real to you and that helps these characters, you know I will say that characters are most important but if characters are caring about things you think are silly or interacting in a world you think is not real, you aren't going to believe those characters. And so for me I am always looking for how I can enhance that sense of immersion, and how can I do that without burdening the reader with huge long paragraphs of descriptions of the world around them. And very early in the process of doing The Stormlight Archive I decided I wanted to base a character on Pliny the Elder, which is one of the early scholars in Western thought who did all these sketches and writings-- Back in those days a scientist was everything, right? Darwin did sketches and things like this. You are going to be drawing and writing and approaching all of the sciences and arts as one. Instead of being a person who makes food or stabs other people you are going to do all the other stuff. And that was a really interesting character for me because I was able to develop this idea of "We are going to put sketches in the books". Now The Stormlight Archive , one of the rules with myself is that these all, all the art and there's some thirty pieces of art plus in each book, all have to be in-world artifacts. That's the sense of immersion, right? I don't think we've lost it but it's become a cliche that every fantasy novel has a map in front of it. And that stretches back to Tolkien, but Tolkien's map was the map they used in the book to travel, right? It's the actual map. And I like that, it says "Here's this artifact from the world" rather than "Here is an illustrator from our world giving you this extra information". And so I've taken great pains to say what kind of art they would have, how can I get this into the books, why is it relevant, and how does it help? I found that this helps, particularly with Shallan being a natural historian, sketching out creatures that I don't have to maybe spend quite as long describing-- I still have to because a lot of people listen to the audiobook and I still want them to get the picture, but it just helps cement those things. Anyway, that was one of my big excitements about the world for years and years and it's one of the things propelling me to write it. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So the question is: I use a lot of religion in my books how do I balance that with my own personal beliefs? So, I'm a religious person and what this has done to me in specific is make me really interested in how religion affects people or how the lack of religion affects people. I find that the real fun of reading and writing, raising interesting questions, and approaching a topic from lots of different directions, is a thing that is really fascinating to me. I ascribe to a school of thought that I kind of-- this is a little unfair to these gentlemen but I kind of divide it among the Tolkien and C.S. Lewis line of those two were famously in a writing group together, and if you don't know Tolkien actually converted C.S. Lewis to Christianity, which is very interesting, and they were both deeply religious people, and they approached it very differently in their fiction. C.S. Lewis felt that fiction should be didactic and teach you a lesson and Tolkien repeatedly refused to tell people what he thought the themes in his books were. When they would come up to him and say "It's a metaphor for World War II, isn't it?" he would say "No, it's a story." And I am more a Tolkien than a C.S. Lewis. I like with fiction-- I consider myself a storyteller primarily, and I hope that a good story is going to raise interesting questions but that has to be focused around what the characters are passionate about and what they are thinking about. And so I try to populate my books with people who are asking interesting questions from a variety of different perspectives. I said on a panel I was on yesterday "Nothing bothers me more than when reading a book where someone has my perspective, there's only one person, and they're the idiot. Whatever it is that they are an idiot about that I agree with." And I'm like ahh can't you at least present my side-- I want everyone who reads my books, regardless of their religious affiliation, if they see something like their own belief system in there I want them to say "Yes, he's presenting it correctly." And part of that means that I have to approach my fiction in certain ways, for instance, I like fiction that is ambiguous to the nature of deity, if there is one. I want-- If you can create a book with really cool atheist characters and then go "By the way here's this all powerful, all knowing benevolent god that he's just refusing to acknowledge" that undermines that character completely. And so I create my fiction so that the different people on the sides of the argument, just like in our world, have good arguments on both sides. And I think that if you present characters with interesting choices, making interesting decisions you will-- truth will rise to the top. That's kind of one of the purposes of fiction, is to discuss these issues. So that's kind of a roundabout answer to your question, that as a person of faith how I approach writing my books. I'm not sure if it's the right answer, but it's the answer I've been giving lately. |
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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… |
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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 | 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 | If a non-Windrunner Surgebinder (who had spoken all the Ideals of their Radiant Order) summoned Jezrien's Honorblade, what color eyes would they get? A blend? Different colors for each eye? | :) I'm going to RAFO eye color questions for the moment. We'll actually be dealing with some of these in the books. Maybe not the specific ones you ask, but the concepts in general. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The fantasy universe is very fond of antiheroes lately, so I was surprised when I read your books with charismatic and inspiring lead characters, who, almost single-handedly, give faith to people and make them claim back their dignity. What is so compelling about creating characters such as Kaladin or Kelsier? | I find that the antihero angle is very well covered by other authors. I am fascinated by people who are trying to do what is right because most everyone I know is actually a good person--and a good person needing being forced to make unpleasant decisions is more interesting to me. The great books I read as a youth inspired me; I'd rather dwell on that kind of story than the opposite. (That said, it's great that the genre is big enough for both types of stories.) It IS interesting to me that over the last twenty years, what I do has become the distinctive one. |
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 | Is it part of a series? | *Following a reading* That's called Adamant , and the premise that made me want to start writing it was this idea of basically Silence of the Lambs in Space. Right after this humankind is going to be betrayed by the "nice" aliens, who have given them this sidejack technology and helped them in their war against the violent Knockers. And it turns out they've been played the whole time, the "nice" aliens just wanted a nice race of obedient soldiers. They turn off the sidejack, it knocks out the entire command staff of the Armada and that leaves Jeff, who doesn't have one, who's not really a commander, in charge. He's able to grab the flagship and fly away with the Centurion in the brig, who is the greatest military mind that the galaxy has ever known. So what follows is the story of him trying to get the Centurion to give him advice on tactics in the war against the quote-unquote nice aliens while the Centurion is trying to figure out how to escape and get away from him. It's a very fun story, but it's not ready to be released. One of the things I'm thinking of doing is if I can maybe slide this into the Cosmere, I haven't decided yet. It would be really fun to get it in there, I think it could, I would just have to lose the Shakespeare line. That's kind of hurting me because I like that line. So we'll see if I can get it in or not... What I'm going to do is I'll probably do four or five novellas that build-- So it's like a novel told in novella form. I kind of imagine doing some episodes quote-unquote, right? And then have a six-episode season with the last episode being the end, so a mini-series basically. Kind of like what was done with… Wool , that's what it was… I think the the serial has a chance of coming back because of ebooks and things like that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | If you used Stormlight to Awaken, would you drain color or create frost? | You'll have to see if this happens in the future! (Note that mixing the investitures is usually not easy to do.) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | If you had to pick any one of your characters to be your new best friend (besides your wife) for the rest of your life, who would would it be and what do you imagine would be your weekend "Let's hang out, but I don't want to plan anything, so let's do the 'usual'" ritual? | I think I'd dig hanging out with Sazed. The usual would be, "tell me about a religion you've studied." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How do you feel on being read and worshiped as one of the best writers in the world by people that doesn't even speak English? | Humbled, honestly. I don't know if "worshiped" is the right term, and I would hope that most people are focused on the stories, rather than on me. They're what matter. That said, it has been incredible to see the reception my work has received. |
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