Recent entries

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4952 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.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4953 Copy

    MS-07B-3

    It's noted in Oathbringer that Taln was the only Herald who was not supposed to have been one, and that he was not a king, general, scholar, or anyone "special" as it were. So what occupation did he hold before becoming a Herald?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He was a soldier and bodyguard.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4960 Copy

    Snipexe

    Is there one true Shardblade form for a spren?

    Brandon Sanderson

    "True" in this sense is mutable and it can change, based on perception. I would say yes, but it is not a kind of platonic truth, it is a momentary truth.

    Snipexe

    Will dead Shardblades change, when an owner has them for a long time will they slowly change or will they stay the same?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Shardblades have changed before that were considered dead.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4962 Copy

    OrangeJedi

    If all the practitioners of the Dor but one just died, for whatever reason, would that remaining practitioner have access to more power?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. Good question. There is magic systems that work that way but it is not the Dor-based magics. I've got an unpublished book that works exactly that way called Mythwalker. The magic system of that was called the Septs, and your family divided the power of the magic, but it was not a one-to-one ratio. If you had a total power, if one person had it was at a 1, but if two people have it each of them were at like a .8, and so suddenly it became this thing of, how many people in your family do you want to have power and things like that. It was really interesting. But the rest of the book was terrible.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4965 Copy

    Questioner

    Soul Forging. Emperor's Soul. If one created the stamp properly, could you, using it, say, Windrunner you stamp, rewrote past to be Lightweaver. Possible?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is possible and a little easier than a lot of other things. It's gonna run into problems... in that the Oaths are gonna be hard to align.

    Questioner

    Probably require some very fine crafting on the stamp.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Very fine crafting on the stamp. And there are certain people that they're just gonna have a hard time fitting into certain Orders. This is a lot easier though than just taking a random person and making them into one, because you're gonna already have Investiture that they've got.

    Questioner

    And have the basis of the First Oath.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. So this is not as hard as it might at first sound. It's the sort of thing that people in the cosmere are looking at. Like, being able to transfer magics between-- and things like that is one of very much interest in the cosmere.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4968 Copy

    Questioner

    lWhat if you mixed-- ike in Alcatraz, what if you mixed like a Windbringer's Lens with like a Fire--forgot the name.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh man that would be terrible. You'd have a big black firestorm. It'd be awesome. Someone should do that.

    Questioner

    So they are allowed to mix?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They can. It's very hard.

    Footnote: The questioner was probably referring to Windstormer's Lenses and Firebringer's Lenses.
    #occulators lenses
    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4969 Copy

    Questioner

    So I'm wondering, how omniscient are the Vessels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is a difficult question to answer because they don't know everything, but they could theoretically. And so, the actual Vessel needs to apply the power and learn things. And they don't know the future exactly. Particularly, you'll notice some hints of this in Oathbringer. There are certain things that really foul with their ability to see the future. It's whenever we kind of get the equivalence of an atium shadow right? Reflection that reflects that someone sees the future, and then suddenly you end up with this kind of difficult chain to follow.

    Questioner

    Can you tell me who might be the most all-knowing out of all of them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will say the older they are the more they generally know.

    Questioner

    So probably not Harmony then?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Probably not Harmony.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4970 Copy

    Questioner

    In Mistborn 3, when Ruin is controlling Inquisitors. Before, they said that Inquisitors were bald. When Ruin is controlling them, does he still have them shave and stuff like that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They still kind of go through their daily life. It's not like he's-- His control can get stronger, and weaker at times. And so they mostly kind of just do what they would normally be doing, until he moves that one right there at that moment where he seizes them, if that make sense. So yes, but it's less like he's like "I am now going to puppet-control them to go to the bathroom," right? He just lets them do that, and when he needs them he seizes control.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4973 Copy
    Instagram 32.png

    Questioner

    Where did the idea for the light bands come from? I think they are pretty neat!

    Brandon Sanderson

    I started with my desire to have starfighters changing directions quickly by using energy ropes to spear asteroids - and worked backward to have something that could foreshadow this.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4979 Copy

    Questioner

    In the second series of Stormlight Archive, are they going to be about the same characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's an excellent question. So when I sat down to build The Stormlight Archive, there were a couple of things that I learned from The Wheel of Time. One was that the further an epic fantasy series goes, the more important it is that you have a structure to the series. It's very easy for the books to start blending into one another, and it's also very easy to let side characters take over books. This is very natural for us as writers, particularly in a big epic fantasy, and I felt that when I approached The Stormlight Archive there are a couple of things I did. One is that I said "All right, I'm going to confine all my side characters to these things called interludes, where I can just go crazy and do whatever I want, but they have to be like, isolated in their own containment unit called the interludes to prevent me from turning from the books just going in all directions at once."

    The other thing I said is, "Each book is going to be about an order of Knights Radiant, and it's going to have a flashback sequence directly tied to that order." So that when you say "All right, which book is book three," you're like, "Oh, that's Dalinar's book, that's the Bondsmith book." All of the characters are in all of the books, but each book has kind of its own soul and theme that helps me as a writer structure where I'm going to release information, and what it's going to be about. And so when I set down this, I said said "I'm going to pick 10 characters, 10 orders (and they are not always going to be exactly what you expect), but I'm going to build each book to have a theme based around those things."

    The first five were Dalinar, Kaladin, Shallan, Eshonai and Szeth. So those are the five books you are going to get in the first arc. And the second arc is Lift, Renarin, Ash, Taln and Jasnah, right. Now, all the characters from the first five will be in all those books, and some of them will still be main characters. You can expect it, like it is one series. All the ones that survive *crowd groans* no spoilers. But you can expect in the back five, people that you are expecting that are main characters now will still be main characters, and you will have a lot of space dedicated to them still, but the flashback sequences, and the themes of the book, will focus on those five. And so it hopefully will help it all have a structure and a feeling. 

    Between book 5 and book 6, in-world, there will be a time jump of about 10 years, so just be expecting that. But I can't say anything more without getting into spoilers, so I won't. But that's what you can expect.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4980 Copy

    Questioner

    Based off of your previous question, the first Kaladin became Adolin?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Adolin was actually in that book, and so the first Kaladin wasn't even-- didn't even become Adolin, like the first Kaladin was like-- you've read this book before probably. The young peasant boy trains to be a knight, that sort of thing and was just too familiar, it was too-- I was playing the tropes and hitting the nails on the head, but in a way that was not interesting. Adolin and Renarinare both in that book basically as the people that they ended up being. Shallan and Kaladin are the people that I basically pulled out and replaced with new characters, because neither of them were working. I'll someday release that book and you can read it and be horrified about this book where really, really different things happen, and the characters half feel like themselves and half don't. Bridge Four isn't in that version of the book, Bridge Four is actually in Dragonsteel. Which is another book I wrote, which is where Dalinar started too. I wrote 13 books before I sold one. Dragonsteel was number 7 or 8. Half the ideas for the version of The Way of Kings you read came from that and half the ideas came from the original Stormlight Archive.

    The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson ()
    #4982 Copy

    Questioner

    Do you have any plans of writing any prequels for the Mistborn [series]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, not right now. One of the reasons that-- I have to put an asterisk on that. I did write out a prequel story happening hundreds of years earlier that was going to be the video game, that ended up never getting made. So there's a chance I will do something with that,a graphic novel or something. So there is a chance. What I won't probably tell is the story that you read in the epigraphs, the story of Rashek and Alendi and all those things, because I feel like that story is told best the way it is in the books, that you get it revealed as it's going along. If I told it again, I feel like it would just be a rehash of that. I can see myself telling other stories potentially, but I am the type that generally likes to keep moving forward. There are some great prequels out there to books that I love, but mostly I like sequels, so I like to move forward. Not impossible, but yeah.

    Miscellaneous 2018 ()
    #4984 Copy

    OrangeJedi (paraphrased)

    Are there a significant number of Shardblades that have made it off Roshar?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Define significant.

    OrangeJedi (paraphrased)

    More than 1 / A number of them are that could come up later.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    There is a connection between spren and Roshar that normally prevents spren, even dead ones, from leaving the planet. Note I said normally; do not imagine a large trade of Shardblades going off world.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4985 Copy

    Yata

    A little curiosity over the word "Shin", is it a deformation/twisting of their origin ? like "Ashyn person" --> "A Shyn person" ---> "A Shin person" ? (I assume this is a quite safe question to response without going into the rabbit hole)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Shin/Ashyn do have a relationship, but I didn't specifically intend "A Shin" to be Ashyn.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4986 Copy

    Yata

    During the Kholinar's sequence, Kaladin is covered with Shallan's illusions and suddenly the illusion runs off. How that happened ? At first I simply thought he breathed the Stormlight by accident, but that Stormlight had to be keyed to Shallan not him and therefore not elegible for a snack.

    Brandon Sanderson

    RAFO. (But don't read too much into this particular RAFO.)

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4987 Copy

    diffyqgirl

    What is writing plot twists in a world with online theory forums like? It always seemed to me like it must be incredibly hard to be clever enough that the theory forums don't figure everything out, while still dropping enough hints to keep the casual readers from being confused. As an example, while there were plenty of surprising things in Oathbringer, I had kind of forgotten that the characters didn't know that humans aren't native to Roshar.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, there are a lot of ways to look at this. The one you highlight was a particularly tricky one, because the books have to work on multiple layers. First, they have to keep the hardcore fans interested. Secondly, they have to work for what the characters know. But thirdly, they can't be so obtuse that they edge out the readers who don't follow every detail on the forums.

    With the specific element you mentioned, I tried to layer a reveal that would act as a twist for the readers with a separate one that would shock the characters (but which the majority of the fanbase had already figured out.) But on in the long run, I've realized that trying to one-up the fanbase is a bad path to go down--I have to accept that people are going to guess what I'm going to do, because there are only so many rational things that are in-character that the characters can do. And going outside that requires either bad characterization or bad foreshadowing.

    Therefore, one of the best methods is to point the tension away from certain questions toward others that depend on character strength. For example, "Will modern Knights Radiant be able to get armor?" is a weak question, and one that is pretty obviously answered in the books already. But "Will this character be able to work out their issues enough to progress in the oaths" is a stronger question, as it is in doubt--and depends on how the choices the character makes.

    Given the option, though, I'd rather live in this era where I can get away with stronger demands upon readers in terms of continuity than you used to be able to reasonably do. I think it makes it easier to do the types of stories I like to tell.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4988 Copy

    Jamester86

    Couldn't resist a cosmere question: Since rivers can be quite shallow, could someone "swim" under their counterpart in Shadesmar? (Or to rephrase that...are the landmasses in Shadesmar equivalent in depth to the "water masses" in the physical realm?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's not a 1/1 ratio, by necessity, and rivers tend to be reflected by rises in Shadesmar. So you couldn't, in most cases, swim through the beads under them.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4989 Copy

    Jamester86

    Is writing a full book with no magic system easier harder when compared to the freedom (and limitations) involved in traditional fantasy? (I haven't read the spoilers, so if there is a magic system, ignore this question :-)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Science in a book like Skyward tends to be its own type of magic--even the Legion books (taking place as the closest to our own world) really have a brand of magic, done my way. So I suspect I'd work this sort of thing into a story no matter what. I do tend to try to do a different tone or style in different genres.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4991 Copy

    mraize7

    Can [Kelsier] and [Hoid] be friends or companions or allies?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, anything CAN happen--but for now, I'll let their interaction on screen speak for itself.

    But feel free to imagine anything you would like, for yourself. It will be a while before I can get back to this particular interaction.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4992 Copy

    Phantine

    Let's say some kid ended up with Szeth's Oathstone and tried to pull an Aladdin by destroying it and freeing him.

    Szeth doesn't seem like he'd actually let himself be freed, but with the Oathstone destroyed, what does he do next (designate a new rock?)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Use the pieces and try to glue them back together, I'd say. If you actually completely destroyed it, it kind of depends. He might transfer the devotion to the object used to destroy it, or he might try to get another one assigned to him by his homeland--though he would have trouble convincing himself to go back.

     

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4993 Copy

    NightWillReign

    So you said that you’ve moved Szeth and Kaladin’s fight from book 3 to Words of Radiance. Did you make any changes like this on your outline for Oathbringer?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There was a lot of general restructuring of Oathbringer after book two was written, but there's no one "big" sequence that was moved into the book.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4994 Copy

    NotOJebus

    Hey Brandon!

    Here's a quote from Oathbringer:

    She willed steps to Soulcast beneath her feet. Individual axi of air lined up and packed next to each other, then Soulcast into stone—though in spite of the realms being linked, this was difficult.

    Hey Brandon, what's an axi?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is the word for an atom in the cosmere, coming from one of the original magics used on Yolen pre-shattering. To some, it's a theoretical smallest division of matter. But others use it scientifically to mean simply an atom.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4996 Copy

    MoriWillow

    When a Steelrunner taps speed, does it work by breaking the laws of motion, letting their speed be higher than it should be when considering their kinetic energy during movement or the force they impart upon impact with something (and inversely while storing)?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A lot of [Feruchemy] breaks the laws of thermodynamics, and this is indeed an example.

    Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
    #4997 Copy

    MoriWillow

    I've noticed a sort-of pattern in some of your work of human/non-human partnerships (spren, Aviar, Seons, etc, and now spaceships). Is this a concept you're consciously interested in? (It's actually probably one of my favorite parts of the relevant works.)

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, it's something I'm very interested in. It happens to be a theme of the cosmere, so you'll see it a lot. One reason for this is that I think a purpose of SF/F is to explore things that don't exist to our current knowledge (things that are intelligent, but not human) but which it's very plausible humanity will some day deal with. Another reason is that I like the idea of looking at the things we do from the outside--and the perspective of something like a spren or a machine is very interesting for me to try to wrap my head around.