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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I want to know how Hoid travels between worlds. Or, if you're not going to tell me right now, will we ever find out? | Hoid has travelled between the worlds by getting in one Shardpool in Shadesmar and coming out a different one. *pause* Okay? So that is one method he has used to travel between the worlds. The worlds are connected through Shadesmar. Um, things that people don't think about as much reflect very minorly in Shadesmar, so when you-- all the-- most of the space between planets is cut out, and there's some weird, twisted geography going on there. So that's basically how he does it, Cognitive Realm. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In Well of Ascension , there are two strange "voice in the head" experiences. One of them is with Sazed and Marsh are fighting, and Sazed realizes that he can burn the metal rings that are now in his stomach. But the other one is with Elend, when a voice comes, and he's not sure where it comes from. It says something like "If you have a dagger, the only way to win is to go in for the kill" Okay. We were just wondering if it was Preservation, or Kelsier. | That one, where it came from, is – I know what you are searching for, but it's actually just an old *inaudible* from weapons training. He's just dredging- he's not sure where it came from because he never thought he would need any of it, he thought he was just going to be a scholar. But his father did have him trained in weapons, so it's just instinct that he got from one of his old mentors in fighting. So there's nothing to see there, so no, he's not *inaudible* Nope. Unfortunately, no. I do that on occasion, but this time... |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Would a Mistborn be able to push and pull on a Shardblade? | That's an excellent question. The answer is, it would be very hard. In Mistborn, anything that's pushing on certain metals, particularly infused metals, gets progressively harder the more Investiture they've got in them. And Shardblades tend to be very highly Invested; they'd be very difficult to push on. If you got the right Allomancer, they could push on it. But I would say, in most cases, no. |
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 | Back with another update. It's been a few months, and I have worked through the third draft of Oathbringer. Original draft didn't have a few of the interludes, so I added those in this revision, as well as incorporating feedback from my team and the team at Tor Books. Earlier today, I wrote the epigraphs and the Wit monologue, then polished off the ketek. The current length is 514,000 words--so around 100k longer than Words of Radiance. Whew! That's big enough that we're not sure if we can bind it in paperback. (We can manage it in hardcover without too much trouble, though we might have to do some old term paper tricks such as expanding the margins.) The book won't be split in the hardcover US release, or in the ebook, but there's a possibility the US paperback might be split into two volumes released at the same time. (As has been common in the UK for all the books in the series.) We'll see what happens. Next revision, 4.0, is to incorporate Beta Reader comments and to make some tweaks I've been thinking about. This should be the fastest of the drafts, as I don't need to make any big structural changes or write many new scenes. 5.0 (the final draft) will be a polish and trim. Publication date is still scheduled for this November. The US cover came in just recently, so expect a reveal on that soon. Michael did a fantastic job. As a warning: I'm not going to be able to monitor this thread very well, as I'm off to Europe. (I'll be in Poland, Germany, and Bulgaria--details on the events section of my website.) So be warned in advance that I probably can't post many replies to your questions here. I'm still making my way through my recent AMA on /r/fantasy , though, so you can pop over to that and read what I've had to say recently. As always, thanks for your patience. Beta read responses to the book are strong, so I think you'll be pleased with the result come this fall. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The finale of Hero of Ages is incredibly ballsy. Were you at all concerned about backlash? | Yes, I was. As was my editor. We both agreed it was the right ending, though, and so I didn't have to do much convincing. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is investiture finite? Hemalurgy and a Return's need to consume breath seems to show us that it can be destroyed. If it is finite, is the Cosmere's magic source doomed to the law of entropy? | Investiture can not be created or destroyed. It follows it's own version of the laws of Thermodynamics. What happens to someone's body when it's not being used by a particular person? The system is built to work like that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Someone from Earth is about to be sent off to the cosmere. They've read your first Stormlight book, but they've never really taken time to really dig deep and find out about how it sits in the overall "cosmere", so they're totally unprepared. What basic concepts regarding shards, magic systems and world hopping do you think are most important? | The first, most important thing to say to the person who's being sent there is to enjoy the story you're in. All of the cosmere stuff, the interconnection between my books and all these wonderful little things, are right now mostly Easter eggs. Which means that if you spend the whole book only worried about that, you're going to miss the beauty and fun that is the book that you're part of. I often say to people, don't worry if you read them "out of order," because it's all Easter eggs right now. Don't worry and stress if you miss something about the cosmere, because while someday that might be important, you first need to enjoy the book that you're part of. But the primer I'd give to this person is that the worlds are connected. If you show up on a planet and there's a guy named Hoid around, then be very afraid, because you're someplace very dangerous. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | All right, folks! Time for the fifth update. This should be the last one that I post before some redditor inevitably beats me to the "It's Done!" post by watching my twitter feed very closely. I do hope to post another update or two during the next year, discussing how the editing and publication process is proceeding. Part Four is done as of half an hour ago. The part is around 80k words long, and brings the book total so far to 420k words. Final book is still projected at 450k, though I do plan to try to trim it back in revision. (Tor's book binding company can't do a book longer than Words of Radiance, so if I go longer, we have to shrink the font or change binders. I won't cut important parts of the book just to meet this length requirement, but I also generally need to trim significantly in revisions to tighten language.) Part Four turned out very well, and I'm very pleased with the book so far. I consider it as strong, or stronger than, book two. I also don't see any major structural or characterization problems that will slow editing. (So far, my editor's comments on Parts One and Two have been minor, save for the slow-down in Part Two that I was aware of--and probably don't mind existing, since Parts Three and Four are much faster, and the characterization in Part Two is strong.) If you're following the Visual Outline from the second update, there structure of the book has undergone some revisions as I've worked through it. It now looks something more like this Unlisted is that I nudged one flashback into Part Five. Shown is that Secondary Main character #2 had their viewpoint stretched through all five parts, but has a slightly smaller number of viewpoints in all of them. I juggled tertiary characters, making Parts Two and Four the expansive ones (with many viewpoints) and Parts One and Three the narrow ones (with a focus only on the main characters.) Yes, this is complicated, and you don't need to pay any attention to it. I posted this for those who like to dig into these things. I'm going to power forward into Part Five starting tonight, then do a second draft of Parts Four and Five together. (I'm not sure why I'm treating those like proper nous.) After I turn that in, I will still need to write the prologue, some of the interludes, and the epigraphs. (Those little bits of text at the starts of chapters.) And then, revisions. My favorite part. Yay. As with previous threads, I'll try to post answers to questions where I can--but I have to balance that with the actual writing, so some questions will go unanswered or get a quick RAFO. I apologize in advance for that. Despite jokes to the contrary, I really am just one person, and I can't do ALL THE THINGS, as much as I would like to. Also, thank you to the community for your kind words. I know that people joke about my writing speed, but this book has taken over a year of dedicated writing--and that's not counting the year before of outlining and writing out some of Kaladin's chapters. It's been two full years of work, and then some, to finish this book. With another six months of revision ahead. Together with other projects, that will make three and a half years between books two and three. So I do beg your patience with this series. The books take a lot out of me, and while I'm very proud of the result--and consider this series to be my opus--the novels aren't going to be terribly fast in their release schedule. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | They haven't minded that so far. That's not an issue. I think they just want to make sure he doesn't end up leading the Voidbringers or something. | *discussion fades in* ...I doubt they would come to regret that. It depends on your threshold for characters with depression but-- Yeah I think you'll be okay. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can Shards manifest a physical body that can actually interact with the Physical Realm? Was that the thing that Odium did at the end of Oathbringer or was that just a projection? Oh! At that point they are almost the same thing, right? | If they wanted to, yes. Umm, it starts to be really difficult to define when you're getting to these points because they generally are such massive wells of Investiture themselves that it's like, is this thing they're creating, like, they are kinda, y'know, then bending the three Realms around the like spacetime with lots of gravity so is that a projection? Is that a real thing? Does it matter? Does that definition-- Yes, exactly. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Could a person Soulcast more atium and lerasium if they had a bead? | No. Investiture messes things like that up. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What's the word for Lift's name in her language? | I don't know the actual word. I haven't written it down. I am translating the meaning of her name. They're not saying "Lift." It means "to elevate or raise up." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I asked him if a feruchemist were to visit Earth and tap Duralumin, could they do something as involved as talk local sports with someone? | No -- when you trick your spirit into thinking it's from where you're currently tapping, it's not a full transformation, like Sel-ish magic making a copy.. It doesn't just fill your head with things from the place you're visiting. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | This might be our final Oathbringer update--as today, I finished the fifth and final draft of the book, and am ready to send it off to Tor. From here, the book is in /u/peterahlstrom 's hands as he handles the copyedits, the gamma read, and the proofreads. It's possible I'll make a few small tweaks to the text, but the book is mainly his burden now. I'm extremely pleased with the final draft, which I managed to cut to 450k words. That meant trimming about 64k off of it--roughly 12.5%. These are mostly line edits, with only a few small scenes being cut out. I improved pacing, and even added a few small sections to smooth out certain plot lines. Fans tend to hate the idea of cutting--but trust me, this version reads far better. I did make sure to keep anything substantive I cut so you can see it later as deleted scenes. We're still planning a November 14th release in the US. (I think UK releases on Thursdays instead of Tuesdays, so it would be a few days later over there.) Simultaneous audio and--if we can swing it--simultaneous Spanish. For now, I'm at Supanova in Sydney and Perth--which unfortunately means I won't be monitoring these comments (or my direct messages.) Be forewarned, you might not get a reply to questions posted here. (I will try to do a proper AMA about the book once it's out.) My next project will be The Apocalypse Guard, a book with loose connections to the Reckoners. I'm chomping at the bit to do some actual writing again, as I've been working on revisions of Oathbringer nonstop for almost exactly six months now. I think the last time I wrote anything non-Stormlight was Snapshot , fourteen months ago. Whew! By the files in my folders, the first chapter I wrote for Stormlight Thee was started on June 24, 2014. The last scene I added was written today, in my hotel in Sydney. The bulk of the writing happened June 2015-December 2016, with revisions lasting until just now. It clocks in at 122 chapters, with 14 interludes, plus a prologue, epilogue, and ketek. Looking forward to you all being able to read it, come November. Thanks, as always, for your support--and your patience. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | If you drew a stick figure of a chalkling, would it be able to spike other chalklings and get their powers? | *laughter* No, because no one in this world knows what that is, because they're separate universes, but it is very clever. If you were doing it, I'd probably let you get away with it. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Last time we spoke, we were talking about the 45-hour audiobook for The Way of Kings . Each of the Mistborn books came in at 25-30 hours, but The Alloy of Law comes in at a tidy 9 discs. Did you set out to write a shorter book? | I knew I wanted to do more in the Mistborn world, and for a long time I played with writing a short story. The short story that I tried to write didn't work; I tossed it aside after maybe a thousand words, and began working on a different story. I can usually judge what the length of a story will be, and I knew this one would be longer, but I wasn't sure how long I would want it to be, or whether I should make it a full-blown novel. So I wrote what turned out to be three or four chapters' worth, and at that point I decided, it was a big enough story to can make a novel of it. I knew it wasn't going to be the same length as the original Mistborn books, but I felt okay with that, because for a long time I've been wanting to start writing some—I don't want to say shorter, but quicker, faster-paced stories; thrilleresque, maybe a little more pulpish. I just think of it as a fun book, that doesn't require quite as much of an investment of time and energy for the reader as something like The Way of Kings —which I love, but I want to be doing a variety of things. So writing a shorter book was intentional, but I kind of slipped into it. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is there going to be any more Alcatraz . | He did say something interesting about that in that he was going to write it on spec and would likely post it up for free until he found a publisher for it once that was done. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Regarding Elantris, I read a while back that you had no intentions of writing any sequels, but then you had a change of heart. I know that you've been busy with a lot of other projects, but has there been any progress at all on a possible follow-up, or maybe ideas you could share on an Elantris sequel that have been bouncing around in your head? | I doubt I will do a sequel that begins just after Elantris ends, at least not with the same characters and in the same place. There are lots of ideas I want to explore in the world of Elantris, though. I might do something about the Seons, or focus on a different culture, or write about something that happens many years after the story of Elantris. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How many different types of Investiture can somebody use simultaneously? Because we know there are characters that are gathering different Investitures. | So, how many different kinds of Investiture can a person theoretically use? Well, Adonalsium used them all at once, so it's theoretically possible to use them all. They interfere with each other and it becomes increasingly difficult the more you add, and that's all I'll say right now. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | POSTMODERNISM IN FANTASY The Way of Kings is out. I’ve been thinking a lot about the novel, what it has meant to me over the years, and why I decided to write it as I did. I’ve had a lot of trouble deciding how to pitch this novel to people. It’s a trouble I’ve never had before. I’m going to explain why this one doesn’t work as easily. But I’m going to start with a story. There’s a particular music video I saw quite often when working the graveyard shift at the local hotel. I worked that job primarily because it allowed me to write at work (I wrote some eight or so novels while sitting at that front desk, including both Elantris and the original draft of The Way of Kings ). However, part of my job there was the do the night audit of the cash drawer and occupancy, that sort of thing. As I worked, VH1/MTV would often become my radio for an hour or so, playing on the little television hidden behind the front desk. The video was by Jewel, and was for the song “ Intuition .” We’ll pretend, for the sake of defending my masculinity, that I paid special attention for the literary nature of the video, and not because I have a fondness for Jewel’s music. And there was something very curious about this video. In it, Jewel transitions back and forth between washed-out “normal world” shots of her walking on a street or interacting with people, and color-saturated “music video”-style shots of her engaging in product promotion while wearing revealing clothing. The tone of the video is a little heavy-handed in its message. Among other things, it is meant to parody rock star/music video culture. It shows Jewel in oversexualized situations, having sold herself out in an over-the-top way. It points a critical finger at sexual exploitation of the female form in advertising, and juxtaposes Jewel in a normal, everyday walk with a surreal, Hollywood version of herself promoting various products. Now, what is absolutely fascinating to me about this video is how perfectly it launches into an discussion of the literary concept of deconstructionism. You see, Jewel is able to come off looking self-aware—even down-to-earth—in this video, because of the focus she puts on how ridiculous and silly modern advertising is. The entire video is a condemnation of selling out, and a condemnation of using sexual exploitation in advertising. And yet, while making this condemnation, Jewel gets to reap the benefits of the very things she is denouncing. In the video, her “Hollywood self” wears a tight corset, gets soaked in water, and prances in a shimmering, low-cut gown while wind blows her hair in an alluring fashion. She points a critical finger at these things through hyperbole, and therefore gains the moral high ground—but the video depends on these very images to be successful. They’re going to draw every eye in the room, gaining her publicity in the same way the video implies is problematic. Deconstructionism is a cornerstone of postmodern literary criticism. Now, as I’m always careful to note, I’m not an expert in these concepts. A great deal of what I present here is an oversimplification, both of Jewel’s video and of postmodernism itself. But for the purposes of this essay, we don’t have time for pages of literary theory. The title itself is already pretentious enough. So, I’ll present to you the best explanation of deconstructionism I was given when working on my master’s degree: “It’s when you point out that a story is relyin’ on the same thing it’s denyin’.” That will work for now. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So in Shadows of Self, when TenSoon and Wax are fighting the spiked creature things, TenSoon mention that he was Harmony's "Preservation." *Brandon seemed a bit apprehensive about that statement* And he said that Wax was Harmony's "Ruin." Well since Harmony has been around for about 300 years someone else would have had to fill that role, right? And could that person possibly have been Paalm? | *still apprehensive* Yes... Probably... Maybe. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | From which stage of development does human embryo on Scadrial gain Hemalurgic potential? | Conception. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Wax's earring is now gone, would you mind sharing what Allomantic charge it had? | Um, eventually. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In your novellas Legion and The Emperor's Soul , there was a common theme of a creation of character. Were you making a comment on that as a writer? | The Emperor's Soul was much more so, specifically dealing with the artistic process. That was part of the theme for me. Legion was more "Wow, this idea's awesome." I originally told Dan (from Writing Excuses) that he should write this, it's really quirky. He said, "I got my own ideas—go write it yourself!" |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | When is the next Way of Kings book coming out? | Tor has it scheduled for November, we'll see if I manage that or not. But November until told otherwise. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Consequences of the cut Cutting the last scene was not without costs to the story. For the longest time, after removing this scene, something about what remained bothered me. I had trouble placing what was wrong. The story went through editorial revisions and beta reads, none of which revealed what was bothering me. This process did convince me to add two scenes. The first was scene with the “paintball” fight in the noir city, which was intended to mix some action and worldbuilding in while revealing more of Kai’s personality. The second was the flashback scene where Kai and Melhi meet on the “neutral zone” battlefield, intended to introduce Melhi as more of a present threat in the story. Something was still bothering me, even after these additions. It took me time to figure out exactly what it was, and I was able to pinpoint it in the weeks leading up to the story’s publication. (Which was good, as it allowed me to make some last-minute changes. I’m still not sure if they fixed the problem, but we were satisfied with them.) The problem is this: removing the final scene hugely undermined Sophie as a character. The deleted scene provides for us two complete characters. We have Kai, who wants to retreat into his fantasy world and live there without ever being forced to think about the falsehood he’s living. He wants just enough artificial challenge to sate him, but doesn’t want to explore life outside of the perfect world prepared for him. As a contrast, we have Sophie, who refuses to live in the perfect world provided for her—and is so upset by it that she insists on trying to open the eyes of others in a violently destructive way. She tries to ruin their States, forcing them to confront the flaws in the system. Neither is an ideal character. Sophie is bold, but reckless. Determined, but cruel. Kai is heroic, but hides deep insecurities. He is kindly, but also willfully ignorant. Even obstinately so. Each of their admirable attributes brings out the flaws in the other. This works until the ending, with its reversal, which yanks the rug out from underneath the reader. Sophie’s death and the revelation that Kai has been played works narratively because it accomplishes what I like to term the “two-fold heist.” These are scenes that not only trick the character, but also trick the reader into feeling exactly what the character does. Not just through sympathy, but through personal experience. Let’s see if I can explain it directly. The goal of this scene is to show Kai acting heroically, then undermine that by showing that his heroism was manipulated. Hopefully (and not every scene works on every reader) at the same time, the reader feels cheated in having enjoyed a thrilling action sequence, only to find out that it was without merit or consequences. Usually, by the way, making readers feel things like this is kind of a bad idea. I feel it works in this sequence, however, and am actually rather proud of how it all plays out—character emotions, action, and theme all working together to reinforce a central concept. Unfortunately, this twist also does something troubling. With the twist, instead of being a self-motivated person bent on changing the mind of someone trapped by the establishment, Sophie becomes a pawn without agency, a robot used only to further Kai’s development. Realizing this left me with a difficult conundrum in the story. If we have an inkling that Sophie is Melhi too early, then the entire second half of the plot doesn’t work. But if we never know her as Melhi, then we’re left with an empty shell of a character, a direct contradiction to the person I’d planned for her to be. Now, superficially, I suppose it didn’t matter if Melhi/Sophi was a real character. As I said in the first annotation, the core of the story is about Kai being manipulated by forces outside his control. However, when a twist undermines character, I feel I’m in dangerous territory—straying into gimmicks instead of doing what I think makes lasting, powerful stories. The ultimate goal of this story is not in the twist, but in leading the reader on a more complex emotional journey. One of showing Kai being willing to accept change and look outward. His transformation is earned by his interaction with someone wildly different from himself, but also complex and fascinating. Making her shallow undermines the story deeply, as it then undermines his final journey. There’s also the sexism problem. Now, talking about sexism in storytelling opens a huge can of worms, but I think we have to dig into it here. You see, a certain sexism dominates Kai’s world. Sophie herself points it out on several occasions. Life has taught him that everyone, particularly women, only exist to further his own goals. He’s a kind man, don’t get me wrong. But he’s also deeply rooted in a system that has taught him to think about things in a very sexist way. If the story reinforces this by leaving Sophie as a robot—with less inherent will than even the Machineborn programs that surround Kai—then we’ve got a story that is not only insulting, it fails even as it seems to be successful. Maybe I’m overthinking this. I do have a tendency to do that. Either way, hopefully you now understand what I viewed as the problem with the story—and I probably described this at too great a length. As it stands, the annotation is probably going to be two-thirds talking about the problem, with only a fraction of that spent on the fix. I will say that I debated long on what that fix should be. Did I put the epilogue back in, despite having determined that it broke the narrative flow? Was there another way to hint to the reader that there was more going on with Melhi than they assumed? I dove into trying to give foreshadowing that “Melhi” was hiding something. I reworked the dialogue in the scene where Kai and Melhi meet in person, and I overemphasized that Melhi was hiding her true nature from him by meeting via a puppet. (Also foreshadowing that future puppets we meet might actually be Melhi herself.) I dropped several hints that Melhi was female, then changed the ending to have Wode outright say it. In the end, I was forced to confront the challenge that this story might not be able to go both ways. I could choose one of two things. I could either have the ending be telegraphed and ruined, while Sophie was left as a visibly strong character. Or I could have the ending work, while leaving Sophie as more of a mystery, hopefully picked up on by readers as they finished or thought about the story. The version we went with has Sophie being hinted as deeper, while preserving the ending. Even still, I’m not sure if Perfect State works better with or without the deleted scene. To be perfectly honest, I think the best way for it to work is actually for people to read the story first, think about it, then discover the deleted scene after they want to know more about what was going on. Even as I was releasing the story, I became confident that this was the proper “fix.” To offer the story, then to give the coda in the form of Sophie’s viewpoint later on. It’s the sort of thing that is much more viable in the era of ebooks and the internet. Either way, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think. Does it work better with or without the deleted scene? Do you like having read the story, then discovered this later? Am I way overthinking what is (to most of you) just a lighthearted post-cyberpunk story with giant robots? Regardless, 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 | Is ReLuur's spike made of Atium? | RAFO. You get a card though. It's not that big of a spoiler, but the answer would bring up questions that are. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do highstorms get weaker as they move west because of normal meteorological reasons the same way a hurricane gets weaker over land or is it because they slowly drain investiture as they infuse spheres over the whole continent? | Both. He said that anything like that will be affected by both normal science as well as the magic, but then he added that the highstorms are a natural occurring phenomenon that were on the planet before stuff started going down. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Who will be the monarch of Idris during Nightblood ? | ...I will RAFO that. Just not-- not for any real secretive reason. But more because, when I write that book, it's possible, you know, that I will change things and whatnot, so-- It's likely to not change. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I'd also just like to say I that while I know you mentioned it basically once and haven't had any time to work on it since, I'm too excited for Soulburner (even if I shouldn't expect it for the next decade, if at all ever). | Soulburner ...well, I'll just say not to hold your breath. :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | There is a cameo of Josh & Mi'chele in Alloy of Law ! There's a gunfight at their wedding reception |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can you give us some of the magic systems that you've rejected? | Magic systems I've rejected. Rejects for me are kind of a weird thing in that they stick in the back of my brain, and when I reject something, it's more along the lines of "this isn't ready yet." And I'm constantly thinking, do I want to do this, do I not want to do this. I've wanted to do one with sound waves forever, visualizing sound waves and things, and I have not been able to write it in a way that either felt different enough from other magic systems that approached this, or that just worked on the page. It's very hard to take something auditory and make it-- put it into a book for some reason. Some things work, I mean, Pat [Rothfuss] has made an entire career of having music to his language... so it can work, but I've never been able to get a really solidly sound-wave-focused magic to work, but I think of and discard tons of these things everyday. Sometimes, I discard them, because I'm like, "No, that's too Brandon." It's like, it's too much, a challenge. "Can I make peanuts into a magic system?" That's one I haven't done. By the way, I wanted to do a story about a leekromancer, who had power over legumes. Yeah? Uh-huh. See. That's just too Brandon. You can read that, and say, "He wrote this entire story just to make the leekromancer pun!" |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Have you decided whether it'll be Dalinar, Szeth, or Eshonai as the focus of Stormlight 3? | Nope, I’m writing Calamity right now, and when I’m done, and I’m, the first thing I will do is go to Stormlight 3, and I’ll start writing on the flashback sequences for all three and decide which one matches the best. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So did you come up with the weakness of the Epics being from fears out of Steelheart book or did you already think of that ahead when you wrote Steelheart? Reveal? | I had that. In fact there’s a deleted scene where I dug into the nightmares in the first book, and it didn’t end up getting into it. Plus it was a little too-- --foreshadowy, yeah. But it was from the beginning. I always kind of thought the fears being your weakness would be a really cool way to approach superheroes. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So, Kaladin met Hoid a long long time ago, and Hoid gave him a very important flute that he has not learned how to play. Is he ever going to put the time in to get good at that? Or is that just something we're going to have to wait for? | You'll have to wait for. Kaladin has a lot of things on his mind. He sure could use something to keep him from stressing out, but you're just gonna have to wait and see if Kaladin understands the reason he was given a flute, or not. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I want to know what process you follow through building your vocabulary. Also, do you use a thesaurus? | What process do I use for developing my vocabulary, and do I use a thesaurus. My vocabulary development comes through reading other people's books and seeing the cool words they use and writing them down. And I can often pinpoint who I learned which word from. Like miasma I learned from Anne McCaffrey. Things like this-- Just seeing the words they use and looking them up when I don't know them. That's my favorite way. Do I use a thesaurus? I do use a thesaurus but only to come up with a word I know I should be using. There's two times I use it. One, when I come to a word I know there's a word there but I don't know what it is yet. The other time I use a thesaurus, which is really useful, is when I'm naming something. Like when I was naming the Reckoners, I need a cool word for this team. One that Marvel or DC hasn't used yet *laughter* They used everything. So I may use a thesaurus, but using a thesaurus is dangerous. It's a good tool but it's a dangerous tool for a writer. Because you don't want to use a word because it sounds cool, usually you want to use the right word. That can be difficult to balance. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | You've mentioned that The Stormlight Archive is broken down into two sets of five books. Is the story arc of the second set of books going to be completely different than the story in the first 5 books? | It will focus mostly on different characters, with some appearances by characters from the first five. I wouldn't call it a different story, more a sequel. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Sja-anat tries to convince Shallan she is not her enemy and tells her, "Ask my son." Is the son that she's referring to, is that Pattern? Is it Glys? | No. Sja-anat is referring to--I'll try not to give too many spoilers on this--if you look through the books for a spren that does not seem to belong to Honor or Cultivation, but is bonding a Radiant, that is where you want to look for Sja-anat's influence. RAFO! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Was the Hoid we see born naturally, or was he created? | He was born naturally. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | As I understand it, Nightblood is most comparable to a Shardblade. However, unlike a Shardblade, Nightblood requires constant input of Investiture in order to realize his full destructive potential. Why is this? | Vasher kind of hacked in order to imitate another magic system. Shardblades are organic parts of the world they are on, but Nightblood is a bunch of souls stuffed into something. Nightblood is like a Frankenstein. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What's the concept of the safehand? Let's do the writer answer. | Yes. There's a writerly answer and an in-world answer. Which do you want to know? Writer answer, so. I am fascinated by taboo. I am fascinated by the fact that in Asia you don't show your, the bottom of your foot to people. It's terribly offensive. I am fascinated that in some cultures some parts of the body are shown and others aren't. Things that we would consider vulgar, to other people are not, and vice versa. It just fascinates me as a writer and when I approached the books I was looking for a ways that I could give a feel for a human culture but not one that we have seen before and the safehand grew out of that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Indeed, there was a lot of swapping around at the last minute to get everything working right with the magic. This is actually why the Way of Kings audiobook gets the Ars Arcanum chart wrong—it was using a version that was messed up between rounds of changes. | Endpapers The endpapers were one of the things that we weren't certain whether we'd get into the final book or not. Tor was iffy on paying for them, as they add a large expense to the novels. In the end, Tor stepped up because they believed in the project, for which I am very grateful. These are one of the last things we finished, and it took several tries to get them right. I knew I wanted them to be in-world pieces of art–things that are supposed to have been created by artists living within the world of Roshar. The front endpapers are murals crafted from stone and gems fitted together, and the back endpapers are stained glass. But the tones and the exact look of the images took some time to get right. (For a while, the symbols of the various magics on the first one had gemstones overlaying them. That turned out to look bad on the page. Perhaps when Peter is putting this up, he can grab those old drafts and post them beneath here.) The first one of these is the one I'll talk about the most, the design that outlines the magic for Roshar. (Well, some of the magic.) This design is one of the very first things I developed for the art of this book, way back in 2001. The "Double Eye," as the people in world would call it, is a connection of ten elements. I avoid elemental magic systems. I feel they're overdone. However, one of the concepts of this world was to have a theology that believed in ten fundamental elements instead of the ordinary four or five. A focus would be on them, and on the ten fundamental forces—the interplay between the two being a major factor in the magic, the philosophy, and the cosmology of the world. Well, that's what these twenty symbols represent, with each of the larger symbols being a Radiant element. The smaller symbols are the forces. You can draw a circle around one element and the two forces that connect to it, and you have one of the orders of Knights Radiant. For example, top right is the symbol for air—with the symbols for pressure and gravitation connected to it. The Windrunners. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | By the way, allomancers fighting on a train? Very cool. | Oh thank you. I almost didn’t put that scene in, because it’s kind of a cliché, but then I’m like “I’ve gotta have a train fight.” And I’ll say this, Alloy of Law is intended to be slightly more of a pulp novel than Mistborn, and though even though it’s sort of a detective pulp novel, it’s got fun characters and a fun world, because that’s the way I do it. If I let myself do these sort of things, they are done for the pure fun of it, where they may not have fit in another book. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Did Odium have the assistance of another Shard to kill Honor? | I'm going to have to RAFO that for now, I'm afraid. Too bad it's not in person! I could give you a RAFO card. :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Dedication This one is for my brother, Jordan. He is, in a word, awesome. I don't know if any of you had to grow up with a domineering older sibling, but I know my brother did. I'm the eldest, and when we were growing up, I was the "good" son. I did everything right (not really, but I know it seemed that way). I was the one who got the good grades, who did what he was supposed to, was responsible—all of that. I know it was rough on Jordan. It took me until I was in my twenties to snap out of the sense of entitlement that growing up this way gave me. Many younger siblings, I think, would have reacted bitterly to a brother like me, even going so far as to cut off contact. Yet Jordan has remained my stalwart pal. He put up with a lot when we were younger, and he didn't give up on me. He's fiercely loyal, a wealth of information, and a great webmaster. Thanks, Jordo. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Can Vasher use Stormlight to Awaken things? | No, all it does is keep him alive. But he has tried and has not figured out how to Awaken things. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Do you draw from any kind of like specific set of life experiences for your writings? Or is most of it just from your imagination? | Do I draw from a specific set of life experiences for my writing or is it just from my imagination? I would say my imagination is fueled by my specific life experiences. So the answer is both. Everything I see can become a part of my books, but at the same time sometimes it's just a happy accident. People ask about Steelheart , the bad metaphors. One of the things about the main character is he is really bad with metaphoric language, comically bad. That happened on accident, I was writing his viewpoint and I'm like "This character is dry, he needs more of a soul, he needs more life. How can I make him work?" and I accidentally wrote a bad metaphor. That happens a lot when you're writing, you know, purple prose and bad metaphors just come out when you're not looking. It's like they sneak out onto the page and you're like "That was really bad". Then I paused and thought "Well, let's go ahead and leave it in *laughter* and run with this." And it was great because it became a metaphor for David's metaphor-- kind of coincidentally or ironically or whatever-- that bad metaphors become a metaphor themselves because he became the character who tries too hard. He's really earnest and he's going to get stuff done but he's trying a little too hard. And that's where the bad metaphors come from, he over-thinks them. He tries too hard to put something together and it ends up as just a big mess. But his earnestness comes through it, and that became his character and it works really well. But that one's just an accident. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | In book one, a main character was absent from several parts. (Dalinar and Shallan alternated.) Same with Words of Radiance, where Dalinar skipped two parts, I believe. Note that this is an absence of viewpoints from the character, not necessarily an absence of the character entirely. The main characters of the first part of the Stormlight are Shallan, Kaladin, and Dalinar. Two more flashback character (Eshonai and Szeth) can be considered important characters without as many viewpoints, though in the above outline, I'd have listed them as tertiary characters in terms of number of viewpoints. The actual tertiary characters are Jasnah, Adolin, Navani, and a few that I can't mention as it will be spoilers. These get significant screen time, but only have viewpoints here and there in the first five books. Jasnah, as I've said, grows more important in the back five. Others do as well. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Updates on Main Projects Stormlight As you just read about above, I am on track for starting this book on January first. I'll begin with a reread of the first three books, as I find I need a periodic refresher, even on my own novels. This will also be important for helping me really nail down the outlines for books four and five. As I've worked on the Stormlight series, I've shifted a lot of things around in the outlines. Famously, I swapped Dalinar's book and Szeth's book (making Book Three have Dalinar's flashbacks instead of Szeth's). But along the same lines, I moved a chunk of Book Three into Book Two, and then moved around smaller arcs for Three, Four, and Five. The Stormlight series has a very odd structure. Each novel is outlined as a trilogy plus a short story collection (the interludes) and is the length of four regular books. This lets me play with narrative in some interesting ways—but it also makes each volume a beast to write. The other superstructure to the series is the spotlight on the ten orders of Radiants, with each book highlighting one of them while also having a flashback sequences for a character tied to one of those orders. If that weren't complicated enough, the series is organized in two major five-book arcs. What this means is that I need to do some extra work on books four and five, as they together tie off an arc. There are some small plot lines I've been pushing back from book to book as I nail down what each volume will include—but I can't do that with Book Five, as it will be the capstone of this sequence. So I need the outlines to be tight to make certain I get everything into them that needs to be there. Anyway, that's a long way to say, essentially, I'll start posting updates to the Stormlight subreddit in January, and you can follow along there or on the progress bar we'll post here on my website on January first. I've commissioned a special piece of artwork to be used in Stormlight Four blog posts, which we should be able to reveal next year. (I'm pretty excited about it.) So you have that to look forward to as well! Note that while I'm optimistic about this being my fall 2020 release, delays could happen if the book doesn't come out smoothly on the first draft. I'll keep you updated with regular posts. A lot will depend on how long the revisions take. Status: Book Four is my main project for 2019, for an anticipated 2020/2021 release. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Will we ever see more beads of lerasium? | That's a RAFO. Definitely a RAFO. It's-- It would require some... *sighs* |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | PART ONE: MAINFRAME ANNOUNCEMENTS As I will be getting into some of these projects below, I think it’s time to talk a little bit more about Mainframe, my audiobook company. A few years back, a friend of mine from Hollywood and I were chatting about how hard it was to get things made for film/television. Such projects are just way too big for us to do on our own. Yet I had a lot of projects I thought would work really well in this space. As kind of a stepping stone toward that, the two of us founded Mainframe with Recorded Books being a launch partner. We figured that we could start taking some of the things I wanted to do for film/television and do them as audio originals—as this was a space the two of us, with some help from things like a writer’s room, could do ourselves. This would let me both explore storytelling in some new ways and build toward one of my eventual goals, which is having my own film production company. The main goal of Mainframe, then, is to take ideas I have that I (so far) haven’t been able to do anything with, or to take stories I want to see done more as a television show, then try to make audio-drama-style expansions to them. The first thing we collaborated on was The Original , which you can find right now on audiobook platforms—and is on sale for just $2.75 on audiobooks.com until the end of the year. This was written with Mary Robinette Kowal . I wrote the outline, she did the first draft, I went through (kind of more in an editorial role) and did a second draft, then she did a third draft. I hope you’ll give it a look! (Note that it, like the other things that come out from Mainframe, should eventually have ebook/print releases. However, they will need some revision to accomplish that, because they are being written specifically for audio. MRK did some excellent work in this area for The Original , as she has a lot of expertise in the world of audio.) Along with The Original , we began several other projects like this for Mainframe. And I finally get to talk about them here! The first is an extension to the Reckoners series. When I wrote the original books, in my pitch to both the publisher and Hollywood, I explained that I’d really like to do a video game or other tie-in to the series by showing a different group of Reckoners and what they were up to. To that end, we’ve developed three novellas (cowritten with the talented Steve Bohls )—Author of the middle grade book Jed and the Junkyard War (which has fantastic worldbuilding)—following a new group of Reckoners in the same universe. The novellas start around the time of the end of the original trilogy, then go past them into the future of the series. They can be seen as three “episodes” of a television show, or read together as a single novel, since they are all told from the same character’s viewpoint. The second project is working on the Legion/Stephen Leeds series. Many of you may know that I wrote the original novella as kind of a pitch for a television show—and while that show has been in development pretty much continually since then, it’s never actually gotten made. Therefore, we decided to try and basically build our own television series based on the concept, only doing it as audio dramas. In this case, we went with a traditional Hollywood writer’s room, letting a “showrunner” (in this case, my partner Max, with whom I founded Mainframe) guide the process. We’re working together on a “pilot episode” in this framework. The final project I want to announce is an expansion to the Skyward series. The way the series has gone, the second book focused only on Spensa, without much of a look at the rest of Skyward Flight. As the third novel mostly continues Spensa’s story, I worried about how isolated from the rest of the team the narrative would feel. Therefore, Janci Patterson and I have designed a sequence of three tie-in novellas to this series. These will each be from a different viewpoint, three members of the team back on Detritus, running parallel to Skyward Three and having some cool overlaps between them. While the previous two announced Mainframe projects will be audio only, it’s our intention to release these Skyward novellas simultaneously in ebook and audio, with a print follow-up. We feel that because the series is ongoing (and these novellas are therefore a little more important for keeping track of the novels), we don’t think audio exclusive is as good an idea for these. This may seem like a lot with these three projects, but we’ve been working on most of this for years now—I just haven’t been able to announce it yet. Plus, we wanted to try a variety of different things and see what my readers liked the most. The Original is a completely new story. The Reckoners novellas are a continuation of a series I’ve finished. The Legion series is a Hollywood-style adaptation, using screenwriters instead of novelists. And the Skyward tie-ins are unique in that Janci and I are working very closely on a story in progress, with the goal of expanding the narrative to give it more depth. (These should read a little more like the Stormlight novellas I’ve been doing.) After a few years, once these are all out, I’m hoping to get some feedback from you all in regards to these projects about what you liked and what you didn’t. The eventual goal will be to try some things like this in the Cosmere (since I’ve been getting a lot of requests for more Cosmere material). However, I wanted to experiment a little first with things outside the Cosmere, where continuity isn’t as complex and the stakes aren’t quite as high. So if you want to help me with quality control and making sure we’re doing expansions like this right, check out these projects as they come along! Some of them (like the Reckoners novellas) should be available to grab for free for those of you with Audible Plus, as I believe they’re being released under the Audible Originals banner. And lastly, Tor just recently released a new box set of Stormlight books 1-3 and make a great gift last minute gift for the holiday season. We’re not sure, but we’re hoping a year from now that we’ll be able to offer a hardcover box set with the first four books. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | With Soulcasting, we know what can be Soulcast based on the color of the gem. Does-- When Awakening, say you have emerald, green, Pulp. If you were Awakening straw or some other form of plant matter, if you used a source of green for the color, would it be, say, more efficient than using red? | So I haven't built that into the magic system yet. Part of me feels like I should have. But I did not. I want color to be relevant to each of the cosmere magics. It's kind of an essential part of it, and it's part of where we stray more into the magical sense. Like, in my books we treat magic scientifically but they're still magic. And it was a thing when I was building Stormlight, I'm like, "So the difference between these two gemstones is a matter of a slight impurity and chemically they are 99% the same thing. Am I actually going to have them do different things or not?" And my judgement call was yes, because I want color to be relevant in the cosmere. But by that point, when I was really getting that magic system to work, I had already written Warbreaker . And I had known that I wanted color to start being a big part. I'd already written Mistborn where I worked in color in different ways But I didn't work that into the Warbreaker magic. I felt like it already had enough restrictions. I would say my worry about the Warbreaker magic is the color feels tacked on. Like, the magic could work without it, narratively, so why is it there? And that's the question I asked myself while I was building; that's the question I continue to ask myself when I continue to work on-- for that magic system, to make sure it works for me. But my instincts say adding restrictions like that, particularly when they weren't covered in the first book, feels like the wrong way to go. It'd be like retconning the magic. It's something I considered. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I asked if we had met any other Rithmatists who gained any their abilities from some other method than the Inception ceremony besides Nalazar. | That was a flat out no. "Unless you include what Harding was doing." |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How much did you focus on writing The Alloy of Law as a starting point for readers who were new to Mistborn ? Was it hard to balance writing for new readers versus wanting to give your existing readers a "welcome home"? | It takes place hundreds of years after the trilogy, so there was enough that I had to bring longtime readers up to speed on that it felt very natural to write the book as a potential new starting point, just because the world had been updated so much. That said, I did make sure to slip in lots of fun things for those who had read the original trilogy, that are callbacks or that show how the world got updated and how it grew. I was conscious of the book possibly being a new starting point, but it's more that it felt natural for what the story required, as opposed to me sitting down and trying to force the book to be a new starting point. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The black glass beads in Shadesmar on Roshar. If you could somehow get that material into the Physical Realm, would it hold stormlight? Well, you don't have to weigh in on whether they could get it to the Physical Realm. | So, that's a RAFO. Because getting stuff out of the Cognitive Realm into the Physical Realm is a different matter from taking stuff from the Physical Realm to the Cognitive. Still a RAFO! |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | regarding “bumps” in TWoK, did the events referred to in the Part 2 bumps already occur in your other novels? | So far, the books have been chronological. Alloy of Law is a little out of order, happening before KINGS. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I did a [film] treatment for Mistborn, recently, where I'm like, "How would I envision this getting made?" And I basically had to throw out the book, start with the same premise, characters, and idea, and build it again for the medium, rather than try to pick specific scenes. Because specific scenes that I wrote in the book are there to work on the page. I needed a scene that did the same thing, but wasn't all internal. (Not really internal, but the character responding in their head.) And it needed to work differently. I have a lot more respect for adaptations. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What happens when non-Nalthians come to Nalthis. So anyone could start Awakening once they received Breaths? | They cannot use their own soul to Awaken but could do so with obtained Breath. You would probably have to jump through some hoops to Awaken (talks about systems needing rigged up to work on different planets), but anyone can benefit from a Breath. Essentially said "it's not that easy!" |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I was wondering if there was any update on the movies, similar to video games? Okay. Are they like in production right now? Are you writing the screenplays? Okay. | The movies are moving along better. They're taking some time, but they are moving along better. I think, right now the farthest along are going to be Steelheart and Emperor's Soul. No. They are in screenplays. So, yeah, nothing's really gotten done. I'm writing the treatments. I don't want to write the screenplays but I can do the treatments. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Is Cultivation's holder still alive? | Yes. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Favorite Herald? | Taln. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Hey, all. Brandon here, back for another update on your book. January went well, and the outlining process is moving along. I've set the percentage bar perhaps a little higher than it deserves to be, considering that I plan to get the outline for Book Five done as well y the time that hits 100%, but I haven't started it yet. That said, I'm feeling very good at what I've accomplished so far. I've cracked a few tricky problems in the plotting, ones I anticipate being the toughest parts of the outline--which makes me optimistic that I'm further along than the wordcount might indicate. I did have to stop to do a quick 3.0 revision on Starsight , the sequel to Skyward , which is coming out in November. That's finished as of around 1:00am this morning. I'll be diving back into Stormlight now, though I'm in LA this week doing pitch meetings for Dark One as a television show. (So far so good, but these are very preliminary-type meetings, so don't expect any big announcements anytime soon.) Plan is to be finished with the outline of Book Four by March 1st. (Tentative title: The Rhythm of War, but I'm not 100% on that yet.) Then I'll dive into the book. Writing a Stormlight book is not an easy or quick process. To finish on time, I'll need to do 40k words a month every month this year--which is a tall order. (My average is around 30k a month, though, so it's not impossible.) That would have the first draft done by January 1st, then give me six months of grueling revisions to finish the final draft by July, which would allow a Christmastime release. This isn't set in stone, though, and if I don't meet this schedule the book could slip into the beginning of 2021. For now, I'm going to solicit a little help from you. While writing Stormlight 3, I built a specific playlist of some of my favorite epic-fantasy-feeling songs. I've posted it before, but if you missed that, find it here. You can click on my profile to find the similar playlist I made for Skyward. I have been searching through other playlists people have made on Spotify with the right kind of music so I can build a similar playlist for Stormlight 4, but I thought I'd kick the question to you folks as well. Do you have any suggestions? What songs in specific (songs are better than artists, as I try to keep my playlists varied with only a couple of songs from any one given artist) do you listen to while reading the Stormlight books? What songs would you suggest to me that I listen to while writing the book? (Other than the Kaladin album, of course.) Generally, I prefer things that have an epic instrumental feel to them--though I don't mind words here and there. And I get tired of things that sound TOO trailer-esque. (Inception sound. Inception sound. Inception sound. For reference, my favorite song on the Oathbringer playlist--and the one I play in my head at the climax--is Alive by Phil Lober. Anyway, please suggest things for me to put on my playlist. Songs that are on theme, or even songs you just think are epic for whatever reason. (Though do look through the other two playlists I've made first, to double check the song isn't on one of them. I probably won't put any repeats on this playlist.) And as a final note, I won't be having replies from this thread sent to my inbox, and I don't know if I'll have time for many specific replies to questions. But I do plan a more involved AMA sometime in the near future, where I can answer questions. I will also hop back on the thread at some point and grab the suggested songs. Anyway, I'll give you another update when the outline is finished. Until then, Journey before Destination. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Does Allomancy have Cognitive and Spiritual manifestations as well as the Physical? | Yes... Yes, it does, but*. A little asterisk. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Would you come to regret naming your child Kaladin? It was requested I ask. | I might stay away from Moash but-- Considering what he did in [ Words of Radiance ]. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Will there be any sequels to Elantris ? | In 2015, the 10th anniversary of the series, he intends to release Dragonriders , three books based on side characters. They will take place 10 years after events, in the city of Dakhor. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | How can you control the ramping of power levels from human to godlike? | Knowing how long your series is gonna be, or at least how long you would like it to be at the start, is definitely going to be a help here. Also, understanding how to make character conflicts that both fall into the character's skill wheelhouse and those that don't, meaning finding a challenge for a character... I often talk to my boss about the idea that stories happen around the things that the character or the magic can't do, generally. This is just kind of storytelling basics. If you've got a character that is an excellent, excellent boxer, then you tell a story about either someone who is a stronger boxer than them that they have to face, or you tell a story about boxing being a side story to the rest of the character's story. And this is just so that there's tension and conflict. And getting good at balancing those is going to be very helpful for you. Because you don't want to just have things happen that the character's skill means nothing to. If your character's a boxer, you need boxing matches to be happening in your story in almost all varieties of stories you're going to be writing. And if your boxer's the best boxer in the world, you still are going to be expected to have boxing matches, you're going to have to find a way to make it still tense. But you can do this in a lot of different ways. It can be someone is better than them. It can be that they get injured. It can be they get older, and their skill isn't what it once was. Or they can be at the height of their skill, but there's some sort of marathon they have to go through, where they're going to have to defeat a bunch of opponents in a row. Just understanding how you can ramp up those kinds of conflicts and then how you can balance them with character conflicts, internal conflicts, and conflicts about what the character cannot do, and you will find that it works. Superman still works as a character -- I know that there are a lot of stories that don't work with him, but there are a lot of stories that still do, and he's near deific in power. Rand al'Thor in the Wheel of Time is basically a demigod by the time I took over the books, and he was a blast to write. I never felt worried about power level concerns in the three books I was writing, because I was able to balance these sorts of things because Robert Jordan had left me the seeds or the half-done story threads to be able to do this. So, practice those things. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I know that in Dragonsteel there's a lot about Hoid. Do you have any guess when you will revision(?) Dragonsteel? | Yes. Yeah... My plan is right now to finish Stormlight, then do Dragonsteel, then do the last Mistborns. So it's kind of far away. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So we know that you can't just have someone-- If someone were to do something similar to Hoid, he can't just pop and go "Oh look, I can now do Allomancy or I can now do Surgebinding". What about Breath? If someone could somebody get Breath-- Maybe not *audio obscured* Could they still get the benefits of-- So you could Awaken? *audio obscured* *audio obscured* *audio obscured* | Oh, good question... Yes you can, actually. Breath is-- Once it is given to you, it is being keyed to you. Your Identity. So that transfer makes it yours to use however you want. You could Awaken. If you-- If you were to somehow make it there, you would be able to Awaken. It's the easiest of magic systems to get the magic from, and then to manipulate. Because it has keyed into it Identity. Yes, you can take Breath onto another world. In fact, you've seen characters do this. It would work, yes. Yes, it would work the same way. The only magic that is location-dependent-- The ones who aren't interested in this, just hum to yourself, okay? *laughter* You don't need to know any of this stuff to enjoy the books, okay? I write them so that you could just-- each series can be read independently, and enjoyed. There is behind the scenes stuff, and if you want to dig, it goes pretty deep. So on Sel, we have AonDor. AonDor is based on the fact that the Dor, which is an amalgamation of Dominion and Devotion, has been pressed together and stuffed into the Cognitive Realm by Odium who didn't want it to gain sentience, as Investiture will do if it is left alone. It will either seek someone to be its Vessel or it will gain sentience. He pressed it in there; he pressed it together, which creates the violent reaction, because those two intents are opposed. And that is the foundation of the magic. Because it's stuck in the Cognitive Realm rather than the Spiritual Realm (the Spiritual Realm is location-independent; Cognitive Realm is location-dependent), it makes the magic on Sel only work in close proximity to what is keyed through there to the location they're keyed to. This has to do with Identity and Connection. Mostly Connection. So that means you can't do AonDor on another planet, but you can do other magics works anywhere, because they're drawing the magics specifically through either the place, or they're end-neutral, like Breath is, and you don't need any extra power. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | You know Hoid's Letter, that's in The Way of Kings ? It's given to a dragon, right? Is he immortal? And he's a he, not a she? | He calls him an old reptile. Functionally, meaning he doesn't age, but he could be killed. It is a he. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | If you had a pet animal that you could communicate with (just like dæmons in the trilogy His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman) which animal would you choose? | Can I cheat and make an animal that doesn't exist? Because if so, I'd pick a dragon. Because then I'd have a cool animal to talk to AND I'd be the only person around with a DRAGON. If it has to be an animal that's real--a kind of spirit dragon--I would pick some kind of intelligent bird. A parrot or a raven. Something that can fly, do things I cannot, and look totally awesome sitting on my shoulder and glaring at people. Yar. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Are we going to see any other compounders like Miles Dagouter, but with other abilities? | Yes, I plan to do more, just to show off what different compounding can achieve, so you will see some more like that. you will some other really interesting interactions with the magic system. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Could you tell me anything about the other [Dysian] Aimians? | You'll be surprised when you see them, they're barely humanoid. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The time has come! Though I’ve had an instinct for many months that the title of Book Four would be Rhythm of War , I had to make certain it fit into the last chapters of the book as I wrote them. Indeed it does, and I feel comfortable announcing this at long last as the official title of the book. Like previous titles in this series ( The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance , and Oathbringer ) this one is taken from the title of an in-world volume of text. To tell you more would, of course, be a spoiler. Let’s just say that this is the first of one of these in-world books that has involved the writings of someone who is not human. I’m hard at work on revisions, and am excited for the end of the year—when I can finally share Rhythm of War with you all! |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So I listen to your podcast, Writing Excuses, and you've been, this year, breaking down stories into different parts. Was Bands of Mourning an attempt, for you, to write a pulp novel? | The question is on Writing Excuses we've been breaking story down into different parts. Was Bands of Mourning an attempt to write a pulp novel? Actually all of the Wax and Wayne books are a hearkening back to classic serials and pulp novels. So yes, it was me looking at that-- I kind of pitched those books to myself as " Mistborn : the television show. The action serial" if that makes sense. Where the other ones were the Mistborn epic fantasies, these are the action serials. And I did try to kind of vary the genre, the first one is kind of more straight-up detective novel, the second one is psychological thriller, and then the third one is kind of a classic serial adventure story. So yeah, that was very intentional, it's me trying to take different tones and mash them up with different stories and see what comes out. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | As we said, we're not gonna do Kickstarters for most of our leatherbounds. But we will probably do one for Words of Radiance . |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | [What is] the last sentence you wrote that you were proud of? | I wish I could say, because things go through so many transformations as I'm writing. I would have to have a book open before me, and go look and say, "Wow, which of these sentences is the best?" The honest truth is that I am less of a sentence person than someone like Pat Rothfuss. Rothfuss writes beautiful sentences, and I'm in awe of his sentences. I try for workmanship prose. I try for prose that does not distract from the writing. And often if I write a really beautiful sentence, it stands out like such a sore thumb in my writing that it's better to kind of tone that sentence down. We call it windowpane prose. My goal is to write prose that doesn't ever distract you from the story. And there are certain level of writers that can do beautiful prose and not distract from the story. I have always just tried for . . . if there is a mark on the window, you'll look at that and not the story. This is George Orwell talking about this—I learned it from reading about him. And some writers, like in literary fiction, they will try to write this beautiful stained glass window, and what you see on the other side doesn't really matter. It's the stained glass window that you're paying wonderful attention to. I don't want the window to distract you. And so, I do like to have a clever witty line now and then, but my goal at the end is for you to not notice the writing and only pay attention to characters and story. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Structurally, The Way of Kings is fairly unique. There are three main POV characters in Kaladin, Dallinar, and Shallan, a handful of minor POV characters Szeth, Adolin, and then The Asides in which we only get a few pages of material largely unrelated to the overall plot. How will the cast grow and change in future volumes? Are you thinking of keeping each volume to a similar number of POVs or expanding it? | There will be a similar number, with a small expansion. At this point I believe you have met every one of the major viewpoint characters for the series. I don't want it to spiral out of control. I think too many viewpoint characters is a danger to epic fantasy, putting a writer in difficult predicaments for subsequent books—whether to leave some characters out, or whether to show a little bit of each of them without getting any major plot arcs for any of them. So you've seen pretty much everybody. Now, at this point there are several who are major viewpoint characters for the series who we have not had many or any viewpoints from yet—Jasnah is one, a character who shows up in the epilogue is another, and there are a few others—but there are in my mind essentially eight or ten major characters in this series, and it will stick to that. The interludes will continue to be what they are, which is that those characters may show up again, but it's unlikely that there will be many more viewpoints from them. The interludes are there because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too—I wanted to have the big sprawling epic with a lot of major viewpoints that we spend a lot of time on like Robert Jordan did, but I also wanted to have the quick jumps around that George R. R. Martin does, and they're two masters of the genre. And so I decided on the interludes as a way to jump around and show the world, to give depth and to give rounding to what's happening—give you little glimpses into important aspects of the world—but those characters are not people you have to remember and follow. Each of the interludes will have one character that you need to pay attention to, but you can take the interludes and read them and without having to focus too much on remembering and keeping track of what their plot is. Then you can jump back into the main characters. And that's always going to be the case in the books to come. Each book will also have one character who has flashbacks throughout that book—we'll stick to one per book, and you will find out how they ended up where they are as we dig back into their past. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I actually am having a meeting on Monday with my publisher saying "We need to get more books to India," because that is the number one complaint I get... The number one country that emails me of people saying "We can't get your books" is India. So hopefully we'll do something about that. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Oh "yet" that means i can still hope? | For what it's worth, I also agree with the poster above. Kaladin just isn't ready for this kind of [romantic] relationship yet. There is always room for hope. :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | The inside cover is beautiful. Do you plan to do something similar with every book? | We asked for colored endpages. At first Tor was hesitant; they're very expensive. We kind of begged a bit, then showed them these cool pages and talked about how great the book would be with them, and eventually Tor decided that they would go with it. One of the aspects of doing colored endpages like that is that generally you have to use the same endpages for the entire series, to offset the printing cost. So those same endpages will be in every hardcover of the series. There will be different interior art, however. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What got you reading and then later on writing? And also how do you get a child to love to read? *inaudible* | Okay, so what got me reading and what *inaudible* me fall in love with reading and-- initially-- and I'll do the second question in a minute. So originally I became a reader because of an eighth grade English teacher who handed me the book Dragonsbane . <Any> eighth grade English teachers here? Middle grade English teachers? You guys are awesome. They-- she's actually an *inaudible* professor. I'm still in touch with her. She made a reader out of me by refusing to let me not, you know? I was of age to be reading these books, but I was reading stuff I'd loved in second grade. And she just lovingly got me reading other things. How do you do that? Well for me it worked giving me the right book. I'm working on this with my seven year old right now. Who i want to be reading Harry Potter with, but he wants to be reading Fly Guy , which is about a boy with a pet fly. *crowd laughs* And so we read what he wants. And I figure if I can get excited about what he loves, and read it with them, that that will work rather than trying to get him to love what I love. Yeah, it's hard. I dunno. Ask-- don't ask me. Ask literature people, because I had to have it done to me. So I'm not even sure what happened. But it was like, I read that Dragonsbane , and I came back to my teacher, I'm like, "I can't believe people write books like that." And she's like, "There's a whole genre." *crowd laughs* |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | With Soulcasting, we know what can be Soulcast based on the color of the gem. Does-- When Awakening, say you have emerald, green, Pulp. If you were Awakening straw or some other form of plant matter, if you used a source of green for the color, would it be, say, more efficient than using red? | So I haven't built that into the magic system yet. Part of me feels like I should have. But I did not. I want color to be relevant to each of the cosmere magics. It's kind of an essential part of it, and it's part of where we stray more into the magical sense. Like, in my books we treat magic scientifically but they're still magic. And it was a thing when I was building Stormlight, I'm like, "So the difference between these two gemstones is a matter of a slight impurity and chemically they are 99% the same thing. Am I actually going to have them do different things or not?" And my judgement call was yes, because I want color to be relevant in the cosmere. But by that point, when I was really getting that magic system to work, I had already written Warbreaker . And I had known that I wanted color to start being a big part. I'd already written Mistborn where I worked in color in different ways But I didn't work that into the Warbreaker magic. I felt like it already had enough restrictions. I would say my worry about the Warbreaker magic is the color feels tacked on. Like, the magic could work without it, narratively, so why is it there? And that's the question I asked myself while I was building; that's the question I continue to ask myself when I continue to work on-- for that magic system, to make sure it works for me. But my instincts say adding restrictions like that, particularly when they weren't covered in the first book, feels like the wrong way to go. It'd be like retconning the magic. It's something I considered. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | There is an overarching storyline between all the books... that we finally find out about in the last book, between two gods that are at war, and you were saying yesterday in your lecture how you tend to freestyle your characters but you tend to plan certain other events, and specifically to do with the ring in Vin's ear. Was that a planned event, or was that a part of the overarching plot? | That was a planned event that I worked out. What I'll do a lot of times when I'm building a series is, I will build an outline for the first one, and then I'll have just a few paragraphs on the rest of the series, and then I'll write the first one, and once I'm done with the first one, and I'm sure of the characters' personalities, that really allows me to expand the outline for the rest of the series; it's very hard to write—you know, to build a full, complete outline for everything until you know exactly who the characters are gonna be, and as I said yesterday, my characters I allow to grow very naturally. Characters do always get veto power over a plot, meaning if I get to a point where I'm like, the person this character's become would not do this thing that the plot requires for them, I either have to go back to the plot and rebuild it from scratch, or I have to go say, this is the wrong character for this role. Let's try a different character cast in this role. And I've done both before. And so, with Mistborn I did plan that in from the beginning and then write the first book and then in the second two I expanded on it and said yes, this is going to work—this can be an important feature of the story—and so it was one of those things that came together that you always hope will come together, and it did. Being able to embed some of the things in book one that work for book three, and I was really using it as practice for the larger series and things like that, so the fact that it came together made me more confident I could do this sort of thing across bigger series. But I'm very pleased with how the Mistborn trilogy turned out. I did have the training wheels on for the Mistborn trilogy; when I sold Elantris , they said they were going to publish it in 2005, and that they needed my next book by then. Well, that was two years away. I had a good writing habit and work ethic at that point, and so I was able to write all three books of the Mistborn trilogy before I had to turn the first one in for publication which gave me a safety net in case I wasn't able to get all of this stuff in and whatnot—I could change the plot so that I can not have to fall face-first, so to speak—but it did all come out so I was very happy with that, but it did allow me to go back and tweak a few things, like for instance, there's a character who becomes a viewpoint character in book three who hadn't been one in the first two. That wasn't planned in the outline; that's something when I got to book three and was working on it, I felt, I really need to give this character more space, which meant that there was a location this character was in—Urteau, which was not built into the plot to be a major location—and so I had to go back and add some foreshadowing for this place, that it was important and these sorts of things; it allowed me to do some stuff like that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I asked Brandon to write in my book something about that opposing force. | There was a weapon created by the opposition of Adonalsium. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Shards and Shard intents: Holding a Shard is a contest of willpower against the Shard that, over time, is very hard to resist. Shards affect you over time, but your mind will not leave a permanent effect on the Shard. A holder's [Vessel's] personality, however, does get to filter the Shard's intent, so to speak. However, if that holder [Vessel] no longer held that Shard, the Shard will not continue to be filtered by that person. |
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Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I haven't read Way of Kings yet, but I've read Warbreaker and Mistborn, and the thing I like most about them is the Magic systems. Will Way of Kings have multiple magic systems? | Depending on how you count it, Stormlight Archive will have 3 or 30 different magic systems. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What has been the craziest, most off-the-wall, unexpected kind of feedback you've ever gotten-- ...you know kind of how it sent you in the right direction. | Ooh. *crowd laughs* Wow, craziest off-the-wall feedback I've ever gotten and what direction did it send me. I have so much trouble with these things. Some people ask me the line "what's the weirdest thing a fan has had you write in a book". And I know, if I took the time, I could think of it, but off the top of my head it's kind of hard. I'm not sure what the craziest, most off-the-wall sort of feedback I've gotten. I've given a lot of crazy, off-the-wall feedback. Legion ... came about because I was trying to convince my friend Dan Wells to write this book. *crowd laughs* "Oh, you could do this thing, and it could be like schizophrenia but not really, it could be a superpower," and he's like, "Brandon, that's not a Dan Wells book. That is a Sanderson book". And so I ended up writing the book, but that has happened. I've given weird feedback. I'd have to think about that one a little more. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why did Rashek leave two beads at the Well? | RAFO |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Anything you can tell us about Steelheart 's sequel, Firefight ? | It starts off in Chicago, but then moves to New York. It will show off an... interesting version of Manhattan, similarly to how Steelheart 's showed off an interesting version of Chicago. It will also introduce three new Epics. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I'd also just like to say I that while I know you mentioned it basically once and haven't had any time to work on it since, I'm too excited for Soulburner (even if I shouldn't expect it for the next decade, if at all ever). | Soulburner ...well, I'll just say not to hold your breath. :) |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Shallan's personas. How would they be viewed in the Spiritual Realm? Would they be an individual? Or would they be seen as being slightly separate? | They would be seen as an individual. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So how did Shallan rescue Kaladin when they fell in the chasm? | She did not. It was actually Syl, but he was in the process of breaking the bond, and so she was able to get some Stormlight to him. But that is what really set it really poorly. Like you can imagine, she-- this bond was really a strain for her to use at that point, so it was her. But doing what she did just about destroyed her, which is why you don't hear from her after that. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | I enjoy Way of Kings, it seems like that’s the one where everyone’s coming together. I was reading online about Galladon and Demoux being in it. I enjoyed that. Is that going to happen more often? | In that book- that series, yes. There will be more crossover. It’s kinda one of the core stories, along with the things happening on the Mistborn world and things like that. And so, there’s going to be a lot more crossover. Most of it’s still kind of subtle stuff, but if you keep your eyes open, there’ll be some real zingers in the next two books. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | So, most of your magic systems are limited to only a slight portion of the population. Is that a conscious decision? Are there any that are open to anybody? Is Forgery? | Certainly, the Warbreaker magic is open to everybody, and that's part of what I was doing, was I wanted to contrast the other ones. And this is just because it makes for good storytelling, honestly. And when I do this, I'm doing it too much, I go the other way. That's why Sixth of the Dusk is open to everyone, that's why different things are done differently in the magics. But, really, when I'm working on the books, I'm like, "Well, we need something dramatic and cool." And I would argue that at least some of them, such as in Stormlight Archive , those are open to anybody if you can convince a spren. And you're sincere, right? And I like going that direction. Certainly, the kind of old standby of "you're born with it" is really easy. It's really, what we call in Sci-Fi/Fantasy "grokkable." You can instantly, kind of, get it. You're like, "All right, this is just like a talent. Some people are born with different talents. Makes sense." It doesn't take a lot of explanation, you don't have to worldbuild a ton up front. Where something like Stormlight , you gotta send a lot of worldbuilding words to explain how it happens, why it happens, things like that. But the trade-off is, it's in many ways more satisfying if you do it the other way. So, I do try to balance those. But sometimes those short-hands are very handy. Forgery is a Selish magic system, so it is birth-based, tied to location. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Why did the Well of Ascension refill every thousand years rather than 500 or 200, etc.? | It's actually every 1024 years. The Lord Ruler just befuddled the information a bit. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | What is it like at the poles of Roshar, where the highstorms are circling around? | We've thought about this a lot, and I'm going to RAFO this for now. Because I need some meteorological help on some of these things. And so I'm not gonna speak until I'm sure that I know... Like, the meteorology of Roshar is bizarre anyway, the storms are magical, they're dropping crem. So it doesn't mean we have to keep to it exactly. But this is one that I don't quite want to answer yet. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Indeed, there was a lot of swapping around at the last minute to get everything working right with the magic. This is actually why the Way of Kings audiobook gets the Ars Arcanum chart wrong—it was using a version that was messed up between rounds of changes. | Endpapers The endpapers were one of the things that we weren't certain whether we'd get into the final book or not. Tor was iffy on paying for them, as they add a large expense to the novels. In the end, Tor stepped up because they believed in the project, for which I am very grateful. These are one of the last things we finished, and it took several tries to get them right. I knew I wanted them to be in-world pieces of art–things that are supposed to have been created by artists living within the world of Roshar. The front endpapers are murals crafted from stone and gems fitted together, and the back endpapers are stained glass. But the tones and the exact look of the images took some time to get right. (For a while, the symbols of the various magics on the first one had gemstones overlaying them. That turned out to look bad on the page. Perhaps when Peter is putting this up, he can grab those old drafts and post them beneath here.) The first one of these is the one I'll talk about the most, the design that outlines the magic for Roshar. (Well, some of the magic.) This design is one of the very first things I developed for the art of this book, way back in 2001. The "Double Eye," as the people in world would call it, is a connection of ten elements. I avoid elemental magic systems. I feel they're overdone. However, one of the concepts of this world was to have a theology that believed in ten fundamental elements instead of the ordinary four or five. A focus would be on them, and on the ten fundamental forces—the interplay between the two being a major factor in the magic, the philosophy, and the cosmology of the world. Well, that's what these twenty symbols represent, with each of the larger symbols being a Radiant element. The smaller symbols are the forces. You can draw a circle around one element and the two forces that connect to it, and you have one of the orders of Knights Radiant. For example, top right is the symbol for air—with the symbols for pressure and gravitation connected to it. The Windrunners. |
Answer the following question the ebst you can about Brandon Sanderson's works and the Cosmere | Consequences of the cut Cutting the last scene was not without costs to the story. For the longest time, after removing this scene, something about what remained bothered me. I had trouble placing what was wrong. The story went through editorial revisions and beta reads, none of which revealed what was bothering me. This process did convince me to add two scenes. The first was scene with the “paintball” fight in the noir city, which was intended to mix some action and worldbuilding in while revealing more of Kai’s personality. The second was the flashback scene where Kai and Melhi meet on the “neutral zone” battlefield, intended to introduce Melhi as more of a present threat in the story. Something was still bothering me, even after these additions. It took me time to figure out exactly what it was, and I was able to pinpoint it in the weeks leading up to the story’s publication. (Which was good, as it allowed me to make some last-minute changes. I’m still not sure if they fixed the problem, but we were satisfied with them.) The problem is this: removing the final scene hugely undermined Sophie as a character. The deleted scene provides for us two complete characters. We have Kai, who wants to retreat into his fantasy world and live there without ever being forced to think about the falsehood he’s living. He wants just enough artificial challenge to sate him, but doesn’t want to explore life outside of the perfect world prepared for him. As a contrast, we have Sophie, who refuses to live in the perfect world provided for her—and is so upset by it that she insists on trying to open the eyes of others in a violently destructive way. She tries to ruin their States, forcing them to confront the flaws in the system. Neither is an ideal character. Sophie is bold, but reckless. Determined, but cruel. Kai is heroic, but hides deep insecurities. He is kindly, but also willfully ignorant. Even obstinately so. Each of their admirable attributes brings out the flaws in the other. This works until the ending, with its reversal, which yanks the rug out from underneath the reader. Sophie’s death and the revelation that Kai has been played works narratively because it accomplishes what I like to term the “two-fold heist.” These are scenes that not only trick the character, but also trick the reader into feeling exactly what the character does. Not just through sympathy, but through personal experience. Let’s see if I can explain it directly. The goal of this scene is to show Kai acting heroically, then undermine that by showing that his heroism was manipulated. Hopefully (and not every scene works on every reader) at the same time, the reader feels cheated in having enjoyed a thrilling action sequence, only to find out that it was without merit or consequences. Usually, by the way, making readers feel things like this is kind of a bad idea. I feel it works in this sequence, however, and am actually rather proud of how it all plays out—character emotions, action, and theme all working together to reinforce a central concept. Unfortunately, this twist also does something troubling. With the twist, instead of being a self-motivated person bent on changing the mind of someone trapped by the establishment, Sophie becomes a pawn without agency, a robot used only to further Kai’s development. Realizing this left me with a difficult conundrum in the story. If we have an inkling that Sophie is Melhi too early, then the entire second half of the plot doesn’t work. But if we never know her as Melhi, then we’re left with an empty shell of a character, a direct contradiction to the person I’d planned for her to be. Now, superficially, I suppose it didn’t matter if Melhi/Sophi was a real character. As I said in the first annotation, the core of the story is about Kai being manipulated by forces outside his control. However, when a twist undermines character, I feel I’m in dangerous territory—straying into gimmicks instead of doing what I think makes lasting, powerful stories. The ultimate goal of this story is not in the twist, but in leading the reader on a more complex emotional journey. One of showing Kai being willing to accept change and look outward. His transformation is earned by his interaction with someone wildly different from himself, but also complex and fascinating. Making her shallow undermines the story deeply, as it then undermines his final journey. There’s also the sexism problem. Now, talking about sexism in storytelling opens a huge can of worms, but I think we have to dig into it here. You see, a certain sexism dominates Kai’s world. Sophie herself points it out on several occasions. Life has taught him that everyone, particularly women, only exist to further his own goals. He’s a kind man, don’t get me wrong. But he’s also deeply rooted in a system that has taught him to think about things in a very sexist way. If the story reinforces this by leaving Sophie as a robot—with less inherent will than even the Machineborn programs that surround Kai—then we’ve got a story that is not only insulting, it fails even as it seems to be successful. Maybe I’m overthinking this. I do have a tendency to do that. Either way, hopefully you now understand what I viewed as the problem with the story—and I probably described this at too great a length. As it stands, the annotation is probably going to be two-thirds talking about the problem, with only a fraction of that spent on the fix. I will say that I debated long on what that fix should be. Did I put the epilogue back in, despite having determined that it broke the narrative flow? Was there another way to hint to the reader that there was more going on with Melhi than they assumed? I dove into trying to give foreshadowing that “Melhi” was hiding something. I reworked the dialogue in the scene where Kai and Melhi meet in person, and I overemphasized that Melhi was hiding her true nature from him by meeting via a puppet. (Also foreshadowing that future puppets we meet might actually be Melhi herself.) I dropped several hints that Melhi was female, then changed the ending to have Wode outright say it. In the end, I was forced to confront the challenge that this story might not be able to go both ways. I could choose one of two things. I could either have the ending be telegraphed and ruined, while Sophie was left as a visibly strong character. Or I could have the ending work, while leaving Sophie as more of a mystery, hopefully picked up on by readers as they finished or thought about the story. The version we went with has Sophie being hinted as deeper, while preserving the ending. Even still, I’m not sure if Perfect State works better with or without the deleted scene. To be perfectly honest, I think the best way for it to work is actually for people to read the story first, think about it, then discover the deleted scene after they want to know more about what was going on. Even as I was releasing the story, I became confident that this was the proper “fix.” To offer the story, then to give the coda in the form of Sophie’s viewpoint later on. It’s the sort of thing that is much more viable in the era of ebooks and the internet. Either way, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think. Does it work better with or without the deleted scene? Do you like having read the story, then discovered this later? Am I way overthinking what is (to most of you) just a lighthearted post-cyberpunk story with giant robots? Regardless, 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 | Is this a prequel to the "modern" trilogy? How far into the future is that? (in-world) | There will be several "Wax and Wayne" books dealing with the next development; they're not so much "prequel" as they are a side venture into life between the first and second trilogies, but they will be used to provide some foreshadowing for the second trilogy. Incidentally, he also described the beginning of the second trilogy as "a Misting SWAT team trying to figure out how to take out a criminal Mistborn." He also said that the third trilogy will be much nearer "hard scifi" as their understanding of Allomancy and Feruchemistry enables them to develop FTL propulsion. |
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