If you had a flow of objects on a conveyor belt or a river that went through a speed bubble, would the objects or river consistently get deflected in the same direction? Or would it seem random?
It would seem random to you. There is a way you might be able to figure out, because it's going to obey chaos theory sort of things. But it'll be random to the extent that you're able to tell.
Zellion, is that name taken from the unpublished novel, The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora?
Yes, that name is taken from that book. Zellion's appearance in the Cosmere is related to, not that book, but it's kind of the same character, reincarnated now into the Cosmere, if that makes sense.
Overall, how many books do you think your entire Cosmere series will be?
My original outline for the Cosmere was somewhere between thirty-two and thirty-eight books. Emily has that; I gave that to her in 2006, 2007, somewhere around there. We're gonna dig that out and put it up for people to see; we'll probably display it.
This outline had some weird things. I had in my head that the series Dragonsteel was going to be seven books. I've reduced that to three books, because I took a big chunk of Dragonsteel and put it into Stormlight when I did the Stormlight revision in 2010. But I added an extra four books in the Wax and Wayne series that were not on that outline; Mistborn was nine books in that outline. Stormlight was ten books. And it had some other things in there. One of the things that people keep pointing out to me is, they're like, "Brandon. You know. Mistborn being sixteen books would make a lot of sense." And right now, there are planned to be thirteen books. And so, if I do the kind of cyberpunk series in between the 1980s and the science fiction series, and I do it as a trilogy... but there's only so many books I can write, guys!
That's kind of still my goal. We've got the ten Stormlight, three Elantris, two Nalthis. Then we've got the White Sand; do I do White Sand? Do I not? It was on there; we have the graphic novel. And then there's weird things, like the Threnody novel I want to write. Three of the Secret Projects are in the Cosmere; that adds three that weren't planned. So who knows. But the core of the Cosmere, I have viewed for a long time as being: nine books of Mistborn (that are now expanded), ten books of Stormlight, and three books of Elantris. That is the core Cosmere narrative.
I am allergic to nickel, and I realize that's not one of the Allomantic things. Are there Allomancers who are allergic to their metals? How does that work?
There are. It is not very fun for them. It is legitimately a thing. To an extent, heavy metals are bad for all of us. And fortunately for Allomancers, they burn them away, and they kind of a have a change in their physiology that this doesn't hurt them, but it doesn't cover being allergic. And this is just a miserable experience.
I believe you originally said that Era Two is Alloy of Law, then a trilogy. Do you still view it that way? Or has it changed over time?
I wrote Alloy of Law; I kind of wanted to write a standalone. I'm not very good that that. 'Cause I finished it, and I'm like, "Ooh, I know where I would go. I know what I want to do." And then I outlined a trilogy and wrote a trilogy. As I was working on this fourth book, I found a lot of places that I wanted to relate to Alloy of Law, for whatever reason. Maybe it's that sort of cyclical nature of storytelling, where where you began is often a version of where you end, and things like that. I don't view them as much as one book and a trilogy anymore, because I deeply interwove a bunch of Alloy of Law references. You'll see when you read the book that the soul of Alloy of Law is very important to this book. So it's almost an bookend, where the two in the middle are kind of in a dialogue with each other, and the first and the fourth one are kind of in a dialogue with each other.
Do you have an end goal that's going to be... everything's gonna converge to something? Or is there going to be a direction that everything in the Cosmere is moving towards?
The answer is "yes." My goal is, after I finish Stormlight Five, to kind of sit down (now that I have a whole team) and be like, "All right, here is the outline for the rest of the Cosmere, so that you have it," and work on that for a while. I always say I'm gonna do this, and I haven't done it yet, but I'm really planning, after Stormlight Five, now to do this. Now that I've got a full editorial team and a full creative development team and one narrative guy, that we'll sit down and we will talk over this, and things like that. I do have an end goal in mind. I like to start with an ending; this is how I do things.
Did Taln actually give into torture? Or was it just the collapse of the [Oathpact] in general?
RAFO. It is one I will answer eventually.
Did the decision of adding a whole new era of books to the Mistborn saga change the plans for the plotting of the two remaining eras?
It did a little bit. So, basically, things that I thought I was gonna have to squeeze in to the 1980s era, I was able to get some foreshadowing in in Wax and Wayne instead. So it kind of made my job easier. It hasn't changed the actual outline that much for the story, but it has let me put in a bunch of foreshadowing ahead of time.
Could you maybe trap an Unmade in one of those paintings from one of your Secret Projects?
That is a RAFO. It's an excellent question.
In a recent Intentionally Blank, you mentioned a Lift food heist book. Any chance of the novella between Stormlight Five and Six being that book?
There is a chance for that, yes. That is definitely something that I would consider doing.
What would Lirin do with the trolley problem?
I think Lirin's pacifist nature would not let him pull the lever. So he would have the greater number of people die because he was not behind it. Which, I think, is kind of the only way that he could answer it and stay true to the things that he rationalizes and believes in.
Is Spook still alive?
RAFO!
If you had to have another author finish your work, who would you pick?
Historically, I've said Brian McLellan. He never gave his consent to this. But Brian and I write very similarly, he's a great writer, he's a good friend. That said, if we get Dan really steeped in the Cosmere and he starts writing books that have the right feel... Like, we're not sure how much his books will be Dan books and how much will be Brandon books. We do want them to feel like Dan books, but it's possible that Dan or Isaac might be the right answer as we get further along in the Cosmere.
Could a drab become a Returned?
RAFO!
When we will see the Edgedancers in midwifery? They would be great at it?
They would be great at it, and I think you're going to start seeing a lot of that sort of stuff happening in the near future in the books.
If he didn't shave, what color would Sazed's hair be?
If he didn't shave, it would be black.
Are the Heralds from Stormlight inspired in any way by the watchers/angels from the Book of Enoch?
Well, yes, there's a roundabout answer to this. The Heralds started as me wanting to do fantasy angels, some sort of fantastical angel thing, because I knew I was gonna be doing the Shards of Adonalsium and things like that, and I wanted something that was basically lower tier. And the first idea was for someone who thought they were one of these mythical angels come back to save the world, and then we weren't sure if they actually were one or weren't. And this ended up in Way of Kings Prime, and I (for a long time) was not sure if I was gonna make this person actually an angel or not. So I'm gonna say "yes" to this one, because it was a direct attempt to build something like "servants of god" sort of thing that go and work among people was the inspiration.
Will the Cosmere persist after I retire? I like to be deliberate about my career, and I have noticed something. Authors who hit a certain success level, once they retire, books continue coming out from them for many years. This seems an inevitable part of the way that media works today. This makes some authors uncomfortable; Robert Jordan, for instance, said to Harriet he did not want to become what he called a "legacy series." This is something like Conan the Barbarian, where not just years after the author's retirement, but decades and even potentially centuries, you see more things coming out. This is part of what influenced me in saying "I want to only do the three Wheel of Time books that I signed up to do." In fact, Harriet and I had a meeting very early in the process, somewhere in 2008, where she said "what do you think?" Granted, this wasn't my decision, but she wanted to know what I thought. And what I said is, "I think we should finish his series and be done." Because I knew how uncomfortable he was.
I am less uncomfortable, but at the same time, I don't know that I like the idea of a giant legacy series. I think it is good that these things have a shelf life, because it opens up opportunities for new authors and new concepts and new stories to happen. What I'm doing is I'm very deliberately building my company in a way that, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want to have the people in place to finish the stories for you all so that you have endings. This is something that was a great honor for me to do for Robert Jordan, and I stand by that being something that should have been done. I do know there are some people who disagree with that, and I respect their choices. But Robert Jordan wanted it finished, Harriet wanted it finished, and the fans wanted it finished. I want to be in the same position. I also want to have a position where we are doing this deliberately and having control over it. Some of you know, I have hired Dan Wells as VP of narrative, my longterm friend and collaborator Dan Wells. This is so that I can have another brain in the Cosmere, so to speak. My goal is to create something that a lot of people love for a long, long time. But at the same time, I am not trying to create something that continues forever, if that makes sense. Hopefully the books will; hopefully the books that I've written will be read forever.
It's kind of a wiggly, wishy-washy answer. I think it's inevitable, at this point, that my books will continue past my retirement. I want to be deliberate about it and have an endpoint to them scheduled. And maybe we'll hit that before I retire, in which case none will need to be released. But maybe we won't. And who knows what the future will tell and how I'll be feeling about this in twenty years. I think it is likely the Cosmere will continue, but hopefully we do it in a deliberate way and in a way that is creating very high-quality stories and that is finishing up things so there is an actual ending.
What I’ve been working on is the Szeth and Kaladin sequence for this book [Stormlight Five], which means I have finished that now. It means I’ve finished all the flashbacks and I’ve finished all Szeth’s viewpoints and all of Kaladin’s viewpoints, which are somewhat intertwined at part of this book. And so I am now going to be moving on to another viewpoint sequence and try to get that all the way through. I’m going to be working on a big chunk of the characters now who have some integrated sort of thing. So it’s going to be mostly I’ll be working on Dalinar, Shallan, and some Renarin. There’s a lot of stuff going on, kind of interconnected, some Navani as well with them. The goal is to write that all the way through. And then, everyone that’s left over, will get their own set of viewpoints in kind of the last third of the chunk. Then I’ll do the interludes at the end, if I haven’t written them already.
I re-projected the map of Scadrial in TLM to an orthographic map with Earth continent outlines for comparison.
Your overlay of the map over Earth is close. There's discussion on this thread of what's possible and why is it the way it is. Rest assured we considered many things before creating this map. For example, on Earth, both Cayambe and Kilimanjaro near the equator (very tall mountains, to be certain) have glaciers.
What I'm curious about is why the Basin seems to have a temperate climate. I'm guessing the answer is just "because Harmony wants it to".
I don't necessarily think it's because Harmony wants it, though he did somewhat engineer the Basin to be the way it is. :) I'm curious why it's thought that the climate is temperate by Earth standards when there are at least giraffes, lions, and turtles mentioned in the text.
Will there still be minor POVs [in Stormlight Five]? Like Moash/Lift/etc? Or only Kaladin, Szeth, Dalinar, Shallan?
There will be minor povs.
Charlie says the Iriali just up and vanished one day some 300 years ago. How big of a population are we talking about here?
RAFO!
We tried to get a celebrity voice (David Tennant) for Tress [audiobook]. His people were great, but I soon realized that asking someone unfamiliar with my work to record something on such a tight deadline was unfair and potentially too stressful for everyone involved.
I tried a different celebrity for project two, but their schedule wasn't open. So I settled on Michael and Kate (whom I was always going to ask to do project three) for the first three. Only they were herculean enough to do it on such short notice. (And for the publishing industry, less than a year up front is short notice.)
Project four will have a narrator we haven't used before in order to try something new. We haven't picked yet, but are starting the process.
Are you able to share who the second celebrity would have been?
Henry Cavill.
I saw Brandon at a book signing back in mid-December, and I asked him about the 16 percent deal. He said that Preservation replaced the real External Temporal Metals with atium and malatium (at least I'm assuming malatium, but he didn't mention that specifically. He only said atium). So not-cerrobend and cadmium weren't counted in the 16%. nicrosil and chromium, on the other hand, were. So there are chromium andnicrosil Mistings running around, not knowing that they're Mistings.
Hello, Reddit! Back with another update on your book!
I'm going to do a spoiler free update in this paragraph, but the rest of the update will contain some small spoilers. So don't read on past this paragraph unless you want to know more! (They aren't huge spoilers, but I will talk about the structure of the book, which might lead people to guess some things. So fair warning! If you've read book four, though, none of this should be anything concerning spoiler wise.) Anyway, the non-spoiler version is this: I’m roughly 1/3 the way done, and on target for finishing first draft end of this year, with our November release next year. I’m sorry it’s taking a little longer on this one. But all looks good for our targets!
Okay, read on for light light spoilers.
First off, if you missed it in the State of the Sanderson, the working title of this book right now is some variation on Knights of Wind and Truth. I’ve been shortening that a lot to Wind and Truth in my mind as I write, so it’s possible I might just go with that as the cover title. If I do, the rest of you can know that in our hearts, the REAL title is Knights of Wind, Truth. That way, you can have your symmetrical title.
So where are we? Well, I hoped to have this section done by January this year--and it took two months longer. I’d anticipated this section, which includes Kaladin/Szeth and the Szeth flashbacks, to be around 100k words. It ended up at 150k words. Does that mean we’re actually 1/3 through the book? Or are we less, since this section went long?
Hard to say. I write each section at the length that feels right, but I do tend to self-regulate to keep things around the right length for a novel. This is all a lot of guesswork, when it comes to lengths. Best guess I can make right now is that this is what I have remaining:
Section two. This will be Shallan/Dalinar with some Navani and Renarin. I’m writing these in a group, as these viewpoints (while not as intertwined as Szeth/Kaladin) feel the next good division point. Goal is right now to write this all straight through, beginning to end, including epilogues if there are any to this sequence. My gut says this will be another 150k word sequence, on par with the Kaladin/Szeth one.
Those groups are the core of the book, but there’s still some to do afterward. Notably, Adolin, Jasnah, and Venli. Each will have a nice little chunk in this book, and while their plotlines aren’t interconnected, I’ll probably write them all through together. I anticipate these sequences to be a total of around 100k words.
From there, there will probably be a few little bits here and there to do, along with the Interludes, which total should be 50k. Now, before you go theorizing too much, if I didn’t mention a character it doesn’t mean they aren’t in the book. I’m just using a certain other character’s sequence as the kind of core viewpoint for that part. For example, Rlain will be in the Renarin sequence, he just isn’t likely to get as many viewpoints. So if there’s a character I didn’t mention that has had viewpoints before, there’s a good chance I’ll include them in one of the other plotlines.
My goal this year is to do a minimum of 30k words a month. With 10 months remaining, that gets me exactly this number of words by the end of December. Hopefully, I can keep this pace--which isn’t too aggressive for a professional author, but I’ve got a lot to do this year!
My goal is going to be to come back to you after sequence two is finished. (The second “book” of the trilogy that makes up this novel, if you remember that I treat each Stormlight book kind of like a trilogy bound into one volume.) That’s 150k words, so about 5 months.
For now, please enjoy this nifty concept art by Petar, depicting a scene that has been building for a long time....
Hey Brandon, where does Stormlight 4.5 fit into your writing schedule?
4.5 is most likely after 5 sometime. So I won't have it ready to deliver next year unless something miraculous happens. 2025 maybe?
I notice that while you're listing a lot of characters, the interlude throughline is still unspecified... I assume it's safe to say it's not any of the other characters you mention in this post (i.e. not Venli, Rlain, Navani, etc), right?
Interlude through line is a RAFO. But you are correct--I do not plan for it to be a character I mentioned elsewhere.
I am planning something interesting, and I have to see if it will work. If it doesn't, I will maybe jump to another idea.
Was Sword-nimi based on its creator replicating a Living blade, Shardblade or Honorblade?
I plan to answer this in the text of the books eventually...so RAFO. :)
What's Dan Writing?
I continue to work on the revision of Dark One. It's going well, but still not at the pace I would like, in part because I am splitting my time with three other major projects: a new Cosmere series and two secret things I can't tell you about.
What's Dan Reading?
Right now I'm reading Dawnshard, which is a small book that fits between Stormlight 4 and Stormlight 5. And that news, by itself, is not super exciting, but I'm reading it for a very specific reason which IS exciting but which I can't tell you :) You'll find out in a year and a half.
Spren are reflections of how people in the Physical Realm see things. So if you have a Cognitive Shadow, would their personality change based on what people in the Physical Realm see them as?
The short answer is, not as much as you're worried about, no more than we tend to change based on what people say to us and how we interact with the people around us.
The long answer is, over a long period of time, it can happen. And it's gonna depend on a number of factors. But we're talking a matter of centuries not years. The same sort of thing you see happening to Vessels of Shards can happen to Cognitive Shadows.
So, the long answer is yes, but it's not an immediate worry. It's not like people start thinking of you and it shifts you because your perception of yourself is enough strong usually that it rebuffs these sorts of things, being self-aware does that. And a lot of the influence to spren and things like that happen during kind of formative not-quite-self-aware times, if that makes sense.
If you were to become a Cognitive Shadow right now, it wouldn't be a major concern, but in a thousand years, you may look back and say "wow, I was shaped by public perception in ways that I wasn't expecting".
My question was, you might tell people to like start reading your books, especially with Cosmere, I tell them to start with Elantris. But I just wanna know your opinion, especially with the Cosmere though now that it's growing like - the best area for people to start.
Yea, the best place to start. That's a good question. So this is a wonderful question. I know that a lot of people love Elantris and I do too, I think it's a fine book. But I do think it's significantly weaker than Mistborn. So I usually point people to either Mistborn or Warbreaker, those are now like twenty years old, but I grew a lot. Elantris was my sixth book and Mistborn was my 14th book. If it's a person I'm talking to I kinda do find out, I say alright what do you like, do you want to jump in to the deep end first. If you do here's Way of Kings you just gotta trust me, right? It's worth it. Uhm, if they.. but uh, Emperor's Soul is also a great place to start for someone who maybe doesn't want a book like that.
Will there be slugs?
Would it be a Skyward book if there were no slugs?
depends on when it was set
I suppose.There's something announced! It's directly after Defiant. Same set of characters.I think we have now exhausted what I'm allowed to say about it. Besides that I'm really excited.
Oh, there are three books! I can say that!
Well well well@jancilynne is "Skyward Legacy" supposed to be an actual name like "Skyward Flight", or just a placeholder for "those books after these current ones"? or are you not ready to say one way or another yet?
It is the working title. If the publisher likes it it will be the series title.
If an advanced android was created with artificial intelligence using technology—but not Investiture like other artificial intelligences—artificial blood, organs, all that stuff, would they be able to access Invested Arts?
That's an excellent question. It's a really interesting question in the context of the Cosmere. So for right now, I am saying—now, maybe we will invent true AI, and I'll have to backpedal, but what I'm saying is in the Cosmere, true AI requires Investiture. And so a thinking machine is going to basically... the line between a thinking machine and a spren is going to get very blurred. And it's going to either attract [Investiture] or require it, and so the answer to you is "yes, to an extent". There are some Arts that are easier to use and some that are hard, depends on all these things, but the answer is "yes"...A thinking machine that actually is self-aware would be a person in the Cosmere for that reason, and would have the same Cognitive aspect and Spiritual aspect—so a soul, if you would—that an organic being would have.
Would you ever consider releasing the grimdark version of Mistborn as a Prime novel?
I will release it as a Prime novel, I'll do that and Final Empire because they're both cohesive stories. The one I can't release is Mythwalker because it ends part the way through the ideas I have made. The magic system in Mythwalker is just broken beyond all my ability to fix. I plan to eventually get to you Dragonsteel Prime, Aether of Night, Final Empire, and Mistborn Prime in some incarnation. The others get harder because they just get worse and worse after that. But those ones are of interest to Cosmere fans. The first is Aether of Night, there's digital versions but there's no print version. The first showing up of a Shard, and Midnight Essence, and all sort of cool stuffs in there. Dragonsteel takes place on Yolen, which is still canonically part of the Cosmere. And you see Sho Del popping up which are a race that are in Dragonsteel Prime. Final Empire and Mistborn, there's not as much of real cool interest to you because I already took the best ideas and reused them, but I'll get it out there someday.
Are you planning to release White Sand as a graphic novel exclusively, or will the story be published as a regular novel further down the line?
The plan is graphic novel right now. We'll see how the reception is, but I think it would be awesome if this entry into the cosmere story were always in a graphic form.
AETHER was the best of the patch of three you read. During that period, I was trying to force myself to write shorter books (ala 500 pages) because I thought the beastly lengths of some of my novels (DRAGONSTEEEL 1100, ELANTRIS 1200, WHITE SAND 1000) was keeping me from getting published.
What I learned was I just wasn't good at the shorter format. What happened was that instead of just writing a shorter book, I ended up short-changing something vital (Characters for MISTBORN, world elements and plotting for FINAL EMPIRE) in my attempt to slim-down. AETHER came in the middle of the patch there, and it actually turned out longer than the other two, and worked all right. (The female character was weak, ending needs a lot of work, but it's not a lost cause like the other two.)
New writers be aware (my agent tried to warn me of this): don't try and write in a way that you're just not good at. You can try to adapt to the market a bit, choosing one idea instead of another because you know the first is more marketable. However, if you force your writing too much, it will suffer.
Will we ever find out what EXACTLY gold is? That's been bugging me as well... it doesn't seem complete.
I leave gold intentionally vague, I'm afraid, even by the end of book three. I do this in novels, particularly when I feel that I might do more books in a world later on. The events of books two and three don't lend me to spending much time on gold or malatium, so I figure I'll save really digging into them when I can have a character more focused on them. (I'd someday, for instance, like to do a Malatium or gold Misting and see if I can do anything interesting with them.)
Kaladin has known two Lightweavers.
Is there anything unusual or special about the afterlife on Roshar?
There is a "far afterlife" or "real afterlife" that is cosmere-wide, but there is also a "middle afterlife" specific to each world. So Roshar's is different, but so is the afterlife for every world.
The "far afterlife" is where Vin and Elend go and where Sazed cannot reach them, correct?
Yes.
The Hallandren believe that the Returned are sent back in part to give up their Divine Breath at an appointed time. Was or is there such an appointed time for Vasher's Divine Breath?
RAFO. This is a Hallandren belief; it may or may not be true.
Does Vasher need to take any special precautions (compared to the rest of the year on Roshar) to ensure that he survives the Weeping?
Yes, but it is not too difficult. Larger gemstones last longer in the time between highstorms.
How does Nightblood work on Roshar?
Nightblood consumes any Investiture within the person, ultimately consuming their innate Investiture.
Is Mraize the leader of the Ghostbloods, or is there someone higher up in the organization? Is it Thaidakar?
Sanderson: There is someone higher up. RAFO on Thaidakar.
What's up with Roshar's moons? Do they all have the same orbital period? What is that orbital period?
They all have the same orbital period. Peter figured out their orbital configurations; they orbit twice per day.
Theoretically, could the Surges of Gravitation and Transportation be combined to gain time travelling powers?
RAFO
would a non returned be killed using nightblood if it used up their breath, or would they just become a drab?
yes and very quickly, no matter whether they are returned or not
so the same would happen if they used nightblood on Roshar with stormlight
yes just the same
Approaching the mid-way point on the book (but not quite there). I'm aiming for around 120k total, which I hope to revise back to around 100k. That seems realistic at this point. Don't know if I'll finish in December, but I'm not planning to ease up on the writing until I finish this draft.
How are you prepping Dan Wells to start working in the Cosmere?
We are working closely on Dark One, the novelization. (It's not really a novelization of the graphic novel. It's my original outline.) And this the main way: we're working on a novel together that is not Cosmere to get our feet underneath us. He is also reading the whole series and kind of being brought into dealing with how crazy a bit of this is in the business. He'll have, probably, a year before he starts writing novels in the Cosmere, would be my guess. We'll do some short stories; we've got some cool ideas for some short stories that we'll have him write. And one of the key things is, as I've said: for the most part, we want him writing that have worldbuilding like the Cosmere, but that play to Dan's strengths, that are books that I would not be as good at writing. So the Cosmere just has a little bit more breadth to the types of stories we're telling. Hopefully it won't be too jarring to have Dan writing some Cosmere stories.
We'll present it all to you once we know what we're doing, which we don't even know yet. We haven't come up with... Basically, we'll sit down and do some brainstorming and look at some of the things we need to have happen for the final endgame of the Cosmere, and then design some stories to fill out some of the things we want to have happened. I'm being very vague on purpose.
What a year!
I have been holding back these Secret Projects for so long, I’m practically bursting with excitement for you all to read them. So this next year will be an even wilder ride, particularly if the stars align and I can start making some bigger adaptation announcements.
As always, thank you for your enthusiasm. I’d probably still be writing books if I had never made it as a writer, but I can’t imagine them being as good. Your energy, excitement, and love for all of this propels me.
I wish the best to you and yours. And if you haven’t been hanging out with me on my monthly livestreams, stop by and say hello!
Brandon Sanderson (and company), December 2022
