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Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing ()
#503 Copy

Questioner 1

The ball of Preservation energy that Kelsier used, is that Stamping, Hemalurgy, or a third kind of the same thing?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a different thing. You haven't really seen that before.

Questioner 1

Because it seems to have similar effects--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you haven't seen that before. It was designed to do what it did.

Questioner 2

Is it just Connection?

Bystander

Connection juice. *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

We'll get into this, this is involving Silverlight stuff, so let's RAFO it for now.

Legion Release Party ()
#505 Copy

Questioner

Is the concept of the King's Wit inspired by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a lot of Shakespeare's fools. But the fool in Twelfth Night, and the fool (for a different reason) in King Lear, both are inspirations. And I think you would find that as a blanket truth for a lot of us writers. I haven't asked Robin Hobb this, but I'm willing to bet that there's some Shakespeare's fool characters in that. Twelfth Night is my favorite of his fools. In fact, in the very first versions that I wrote of him, he was way more jester-like than he ended up being in the published version of the Cosmere. But if anyone reads Dragonsteel, the one at BYU, he'll feel even more like a jester.

General Reddit 2018 ()
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Snote85 1.png

Snote85

Is the story of the girl who looked up a story that is only known to Roshar? I know it could have spread out, especially since we see paintings alluding to it in the cosmere seen by a non-Rosharan but could it be a story they talked about on... say... Yolen?

Also, was the "god" from "God's love" mentioned by Hoid a piece that either should have or did belong to/with Passion/Odium? Cause that would make all the sense in the world to me that somehow Odium was Passion but because Odium once he lost love from his being... I know it doesn't make a lot sense in the timeline. I just can't get the thought out of my head.

Thank you for the time you spend answering my inanity or was it insanity. Either/or.

Brandon Sanderson

These are actually both RAFOs, I'm afraid. I do appreciate you asking, but I'm going to remain silent for now.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
#512 Copy

MS-07B-3

We know Scadrial is speeding on its way to modern, Earth-like technology, including computers. So what is the internet like in the Cognitive Realm? Is it connected to Scadrial's Cognitive aspect? Does it form into its own standalone location? Do memes become spren?

Brandon Sanderson

This is going to be really fun to write some day. But RAFO until then.

Dawnshard Annotations Reddit Q&A ()
#515 Copy

tvchurch2701

Wait - there are Sleepless on other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes indeed.

Have you seen them? RAFO. (Note that non-Rosharan ones can't imitate humans.)

m4ge

Would the non-Roshar ones have hordelings that look similar to the Rosharan ones, or would they have bred completely differently?

Also, can the Sleepless communicate with the ones on other planets? Do they do so often?

Brandon Sanderson

They would look completely different.

RAFO on the second question.

FanX Spring 2019 ()
#516 Copy

Questioner

Can Hoid eat?

Brandon Sanderson

He can, yes.

Questioner

And is there anything that he can't eat?

Brandon Sanderson

There are things he does not like. He would be-- Eating something that's still alive would be very difficult for Hoid. But he-- There aren't foods that would be forbidden to him by his particular ailment.

Skyward release party ()
#520 Copy

Questioner

I'm curious, you mentioned at the Legion release that the Fused were after the spren that Hoid bonded. Was there a specific reason why they wanted that spren? Or was it just because [it was] the enemy?

Brandon Sanderson

I will say they would have done that for another spren in that situation.

Questioner

Any other spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Not any other spren; but there wasn't something uniquely identifying about that spren that they were hunting.

Questioner

They wouldn't have done it for any spren, but there were other spren they had done it for?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

JordanCon 2018 ()
#525 Copy

Argent

Ba-Ado-Mishram. Just the name sounds a little bit like a Shin name to me because they're all 'Somebody son Somebody' or 'Somebody daughter Somebody', was she a Shin woman at one point?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that cause that comes down to, they even asked this in Oathbringer, were they people or not? 

Argent

'Cause one of them says they needed to be made and then unmade. 

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm, so I do not feel I've explicitly said either way.

Argent

And you haven't, no.

Miscellaneous 2017 ()
#529 Copy

Dan Wells

This is actually an idea we came up with on the cruise last year was to do an episode about all the things that we have tried to make work and couldn't; the novels that we abandoned halfway through or the short stories that just never came together. And we thought it would be a really fun way to end this year in kind of a backhanded, inspirational way to say, look, we're all successful at this and we still screw up all the time.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. And it's not just what we do when we were trying to break in, not those old trunk novels. It still happens every year. Let's take each, our biggest one, like the thing we got the most involved in, or the one that was most tragic to us that we couldn't make work and talk about it. And I'll just go ahead and start.

Brandon Sanderson

I - right before I got the call for the Wheel of Time, which changed my life dramatically - I had finished the Mistborn series, I'd finished Warbreaker and Elantris, and next I thought, I'm going to jump back in the shared universe of my Cosmere and write the prequel series that started it all, where everything came from. This is the backstory of the character known as Hoid, who is a fan favorite. And I'm like, I'm going to do this trilogy, or more books. It's going to be super awesome. It's going to just be the greatest thing ever. And I actually finished the whole book and it was a disaster. It was a train wreck of a book. The character, for the first time - it's like this whole problem you have when you have a really engaging side character that you try to make a main character - didn't work at all as a main character, at least as the personality I had for them way back when. The plot was boring. The setting just was even more boring, which is saying a lot for me. I tried to pull and incorporate some different elements from books that I had tried before and none of them meshed. And so it felt like five books with a bad character and no plot. It was a huge, just terrible thing.

Howard Tayler

Did it have a good magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

The magic system was weak.

Here's the thing. It had a really good magic system from another world that I ported into this world that didn't jive. And the one that was from this world never meshed well with that. And so the magic system was really weak in that it was doing cool things, but in complete contrast to the tone of the novel. Dan may have read some of it, Liar of Partinel.

Dan Wells

Uh, no.

Brandon Sanderson

OK. The writing group which just kind of baffled by this. I actually tried -speaking of what we did last week - I actually started with the clichéd scene of someone being hung and then flashing back to show how they got there - like it had so many problems with it.

Dan Wells

72 hours earlier.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Yeah, it was, exactly. It was one of those things. Exactly one of those things. Like "I'm going to to try this tool. Oh, this tool is not a tool," right? Like some tools you try and you're like, "Oh, that's a cool tool that doesn't deserve its reputation." Some of them you try and you're like, "This is so..."

Dan Wells

There's a reason everyone makes fun of this one. Wow.

So I kind of want to ask questions about how bad it was.

Specifically with Hoid.

Because that's what fascinates me about this. He was, he is a fan favorite and he's always the side character, you know.

He's the one who's sits off and makes goofy comments and, you know, maybe appears once and then leaves. What did you do when you attempted to make him a main character? Like what was your process there?

Brandon Sanderson

So I knew the biggest chance for failure on this was, you know, taking him a bit, having be too wacky through the course, right? It's the Minion movie thing, which worked for my kids, but for a lot of people are like "These side characters that add flavor to a larger story, when you make the whole story about them, are super annoying." I'm like, I can't have him be super annoying! Well, that's OK. It's you know, when he was young, when you're seeing him in the books, he's hundreds and hundreds years old. He was young, and so I will take that part out. But I did this weird dual identity thing with him, where he was like pretending to be someone else for a big chunk of the book because it had a really cool twist when I did the whole reveal. But then that meant I had to characterize him as somebody you grew too emotionally invested in somebody to...at the end you're like, "Surprise! In the next book you'll get to know who he really is." Which was part of it. And the person I was having him be was bland on purpose because it was like trying to hide and pretend to... Oh, man! There were so many problems with this character, like it was trying to be too clever, leaving out the cleverness that had made him a fan favorite on purpose. Right? So it's a different kind of cleverness. And it just did not work. Didn't work at all.

Dan Wells

Do you think that if you were to write that book today, you could make it work?

Brandon Sanderson

I have completely scrapped that, and what actually changed my opinion on how to do this was Name of the Wind. It needs to be him in the future, flashing back and talking about himself because people will have already bonded to who he is in the future. And it needs to be a memoir. It needs to be...the Assassin's Apprentice is a better example of what this needs to be, because Robin Hobb does such a great job of showing you that contrast between what someone is now and what they've become. And so I need to do something like this. This is now my feel on it. If I then can set in his own voice, I can have these, you know, this first person where we're really, really fun in Hoid's voice for all, and then he fades into the story when he's telling a story, he's not nearly as, you know, he doesn't try to zing you every minute, he tries to tell the story well. That's who he is. And so he will tell the story well. And then we can pop out occasionally and get, you know, it's like Bilbo from The Hobbit.

Brandon Sanderson

So we'll see if I can write it. But that's my plan right now. And there is my true confession of failure. There've been other ones since, but that's the one that hurt, hit me the most. I actually wrote The Rithmatist as I was supposed to go into the sequel to this and start outlining it, and I'm just like "I can't, this book is so bad." And I wrote The Rithmatist without telling any one of my editors I sent that in instead of Liar of Partinel.

YouTube Livestream 35 ()
#530 Copy

Ironeyes52

What noble houses were Kel and Marsh born into? What's their surname?

Brandon Sanderson

I can't canonize that, yet. I've got it somewhere. Let's RAFO that, for now. That's the sort of thing that I need to run past continuity, make sure that I haven't contradicted it in later books. We should release that, though. It does make sense that people would want to know.

Orem signing ()
#531 Copy

Questioner

My question is, if you had two nicrosil Mistings, who, feeling like breaking the universe, and they got together and they touched each other and advanced each other's magic power at the same time by flaring nicrosil, what would happen? Would it cause a feedback loop?

Brandon Sanderson

*hands RAFO card* Well I'll go ahead and give you one right there! You got one!

Calamity Austin signing ()
#535 Copy

taveren

If someone goes to every planet and get Invested from every Shard, if he was Invested enough would he become a new Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s an excellent question that I’m not going to answer.

taveren

And I am assuming you will not answer if anyone is trying to do that.

Brandon Sanderson

Yup, I am not going to answer. Sorry. That's too deeply related to things that are happening in the Cosmere and I don’t want to dig into for a little while yet.

Orem signing ()
#540 Copy

Questioner

So Hoid, was he considered a Lightweaver pre-Shattering?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that would be an appropriate term. There are lots of different terms that would also be appropriate.

Questioner

But was it basically the same thing?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, no Stormlight. No spren. So, not a Knight Radiant. But, similar magic. But you've also seen Elantris magic do this. So there are-- there are certain things that-- I'll just stop there.

Firefight Seattle Public Library signing ()
#542 Copy

Questioner

Is Hoid a dragon?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh I will give you a RAFO card. You're very good, Have you read Dragonsteel?

Questioner

I have not but--

Brandon Sanderson

Don't read it, it's bad.

Questioner

Okay then. I am just-- What? Okay then. That's awesome. We have some ideas but-- Hoid is amazing. I figured he was really old but it's cool knowing for sure that he's exceptionally old.

Brandon Sanderson

He is one of the oldest people in the cosmere, but he is not the oldest.

Questioner

Ahhh...

Brandon Sanderson

The person he is writing a letter to is indeed older than he is.

General Twitter 2015 ()
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BrandonColevander

How come the base 8 abilities come in pairs by base metal & alloy, but the higher ability pairs are not related?

Peter Ahlstrom

Which book are you on? Things change after the first book. They don't understand things as well as they think.

BrandonColevander

I've read all 4 several times. Ex: electrum is a gold alloy yet it is opposite of atium & malatium opposite gold...>

Peter Ahlstrom

Alloys of atium can't be thought of as establishing any pattern.

BrandonColevander

@PeterAhlstrom there are alloyS (plural) of atium?! Any chance that atium or its alloys show up again in any of the upcoming novels?

Peter Ahlstrom

RAFO :)

Skyward release party ()
#549 Copy

Stormlightning

Where you *inaudible* Hoid as a Lightweaver in Era 2?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid was a Lightweaver in Dragonsteel.

Stormlightning

I mean a spren Lightweaver. Unless the timeline's still, really--

Brandon Sanderson

Meaning was I planning for him to become a Lightweaver?

Stormlightning

Before Era 2 since we thought Era 2 was going to be Era 3.

Brandon Sanderson

 Hoid has never quite stopped being a Lightweaver. He is very happy to be fully empowered with things.

Stormlightning

Does that mean he was not fully a Lightweaver?

Brandon Sanderson

You will find out someday. His magic was not fully functional, but he was Lightweaving in Way of Kings