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Goodreads: Ask the Author Q&A ()
#5001 Copy

Kurkistan

Could Miles heal back his Allomancy if it was spiked out of him?

Brandon Sanderson

No, he could not. He would no longer be an Allomancer. Also, he'd probably be dead. :)

Kurkistan

Thanks!

I'd thought maybe he could just do some super-tapping from his existing Health in his goldminds (since he'd still have his Feruchemy)...

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I see what you're asking. Using Feruchemy to heal the removed portion of soul. That's actually plausible, not so different from healing other kinds of soul-wounds. If he survived, then yes, this actually might work. (That's why I get for reading the questions so quickly.)

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#5003 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Parlin Is Dead

Parlin was always meant to die here. That's one of the main reasons I left Vivenna with someone from Idris to be in her team, in fact. (The other reason is that I found it unrealistic that she wouldn't have somebody with her.)

Maybe this is why Parlin never worked as a character, to be honest. I wonder if he was always in my mind as the character who was going to get killed by Tonk Fah, which kept me from giving him enough depth. I'm not sure; I do know that in the book as it stands, he's probably the biggest component I wish I had time to change. I'm not certain what I could put in his place that wouldn't distract too much from the plot—and wouldn't take away from the humor of Denth and the mercenaries—but would still be sympathetic enough that when he dies here, it would be more powerful. But I would have liked to have found something.

Tonk Fah tortured him to death. He wasn't supposed to, but he got carried away. It was an accident, as Denth claims. (Denth shouldn't have left Tonks alone with the prisoner to continue the torturing.) Denth came back and found Parlin dead, and was annoyed and frustrated. He left Tonks behind, storming out in anger, and eventually found Jewels and Clod, who were talking to slum contacts and trying to find Vivenna. They came back to regroup.

Meanwhile, Tonks heard Vivenna enter, and knew it wasn't Denth. He put his Breath into his clothing, then ducked back under the stairs, his lantern extinguished, wondering who had come. He wasn't terribly surprised to find Vivenna. That was when Denth and Jewels got back and the rest of the situation went down.

I added the corpses of Vivenna's father's agents in the last draft, by the way, since I figured I wanted it to be more obvious what had happened to them.

Skyward Houston signing ()
#5004 Copy

Questioner

What inspired you write Way of Kings? Was that your first one?

Brandon Sanderson

That was not my first one. It's different-- There are lots of different ideas that usually come together to make one book. And Way of Kings is lots of different ideas. One of them was wanting to tell a story about a world where the highstorm, where the magic storm hit it periodically... The idea of how life would have to adapt to a storm. But there are lots of different ideas that come together.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 ()
#5007 Copy

Questioner

What was your inspiration for Kaladin? What made you want to make him?

Brandon Sanderson

Kaladin's origin was in me reading about the interesting lives of surgeons in pre-industrial eras. Surgeons who were at times treated no different from a butcher, and at other times straddled this line between superstition and science in a really interesting way. And I wanted to write a surgeon who straddled that line. Where the superstition was against them, but in some ways the science that they knew also worked against them because the people didn't trust it. That's a really fascinating character. He started more as his dad, and as I worked the books he became Kaladin the son of a surgeon instead of the surgeon himself.

Worldbuilders AMA ()
#5010 Copy

mak6453

You all write such engaging and original pieces; do you ever get really frustrated by how uninteresting or underdeveloped stories/worlds are in other forms of media? I see movies and especially video games all of the time that make me think "this had so much potential - I really wish the writers had skills and creativity of some of my favorite fantasy authors."

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this does happen to me. I watch a film, or play a game, and say, "Oh, man. If they'd just given me this script, this would have been SO EASY to fix!" Then, when video games contact me and ask for help, I realize I don't have the time to actually help them. (Except in a few cases.) I famously even had to say no to Notch when he wrote me and asked if I'd write something for minecraft. (I probably should have done that one, but was tight on deadlines at the time.)

That's the big dichotomy here. We all (including many video game designers) get into this because we want to tell great stories. And when our stories have flaws, they are still OURS. I respect that many of these designers would rather tell their story, even with a few warts, than outsource it. I'd rather do the same thing, in most cases. And so while I sometimes think, "Wow, it would be SO COOL to write a Hawkeye book" when Marvel asked me to do something for them (with a blanket "Anything with any character in the Marvel universe you want) I had to say no because it would have meant delaying Stormlight 3.

General Reddit 2019 ()
#5011 Copy

Koh-the-Face-Stealer

So ever since I read your various tantalizing tit-bits about the Iriali being not native to Roshar, I've been incredibly curious about this especially considering that the other humans of Roshar all originate from a different singular source, Ashyn (unless there were more migrations that I'm forgetting). Are we going to get more info on this in the near future? Is there anything, even a tiny crumb, that you could possibly drop for us now?

Brandon Sanderson

The Iriali story is one you should expect to be continued during the space age of the cosmere, not in current storylines.

Leather_Kiwi

What about characters who are interested with cosmology in current storylines? Like Dalinar who certainly wants to seek answers about the universe. Do you plan to write more of it in future novels of current series or this is a stuff for future series with defferent set of characters?

Brandon Sanderson

The further we move in the Cosmere, the more these stories will become relevant. We're moving from the world of them just being cameos into the world of them being small (but important) sub-plots. They will evolve from there.

Boskone 54 ()
#5013 Copy

Questioner

What powers does Mizzy have?

Brandon Sanderson

I’m not telling people that yet, mostly because I haven’t decided 100% how I want it to work yet. I know basically what I want to do, but I haven’t decided how I’m going to play it out. I’m not telling people until I get the book actually written.

Questioner

Does that mean there’s another book?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, if I write another book, it will be a Mizzy book.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#5016 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood Origins

I've been wanting to do a book with a talking sword for some time. Sentient objects are a favorite theme of mine from fantasy books I've read, and I think you'll probably see more of them in future books from me.

The magic sword is its own archetype in fantasy, even if there haven't been any good magic sword books among the big fantasy novels of recent years. Perhaps that's because Saberhagen and Moorcock did such a good job with their books in the past. I'm not sure. (I don't count appearances of magic swords like Callandor in the Wheel of Time. I mean books with major parts played by swords.)

Anyway, that's a tangent, and I'm certain that half the people reading this can think of examples and exceptions to what I just said. Either way, this is a theme I wanted to tackle, and the magic system of this world lent me the opportunity.

Nightblood is another favorite character of the readers. I think his personality works the best out of any non-viewpoint character I've ever written. He doesn't get that much dialogue in the book, but it is so distinctive that it just works.

Firefight Seattle UBooks signing ()
#5017 Copy

Questioner

There was the poem at the end of Way of Kings. How long did that take?

Brandon Sanderson

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time. I am not a poet, so mixing poetry with a really rigid form... Yes, the keteks take a long time. Both of them.

Wetlander

Are you going to do that in every book?

Brandon Sanderson

A ketek? Yes, I probably will do that.

Goodreads: Ask the Author Q&A ()
#5018 Copy

Scott King

Out of all the books you've written which do you think is the best?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, Emperor's Soul is the one that won a Hugo, which gives it some objective credibility for being the best. [A Memory of Light] was the hardest by a long shot, and in some ways the most satisfying, but I'm perhaps most proud of The Way of Kings. So one of those three, likely.

Shadows of Self Lansing signing ()
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Questioner

[In Shadows of Self] there’s the new metal, I guess. I was wondering-- So if someone were to bring a metal from a different planet, say steel from Roshar, would it still be recognizable as steel on that world?

Brandon Sanderson

It would still be, yup. It would be.

Questioner

Because there was mention of it being "of Harmony" right, and that was the difference?

Brandon Sanderson

The thing you gotta remember is that the metals on Mistborn are keys and not the actual source of the power. If they were the source of the power, it wouldn’t work.

Writing for Charity Conference ()
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Zas678 (paraphrased)

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"

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

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*

Zas678 (paraphrased)

Okay. We were just wondering if it was Preservation, or Kelsier.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Nope. Unfortunately, no. I do that on occasion, but this time...

Skyward San Diego signing ()
#5021 Copy

Questioner

A question about Jasnah and your relation to Jasnah. She's a Veristitalian... Is that a part of Jasnah that is you, or is that a part of Jasnah that's somebody else?

Brandon Sanderson

The fascination with history and trying to use it to change the present is me. And that is the part of Jasnah that I-- Also, by nature, I'm kind of a Slytherin. And so would Jasnah. That part of me is there. The "do-gooder Slytherin," if that's not an oxymoron.

Questioner

And does the word Veristitalian come from "veritas"?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So, in their language, it would not actually be Veristitalian. What I do is, my books, I pretend they're in translation. So when Wit makes a pun, or when you see something that echoes Latin or Greek, the idea is that they are echoing in-world ancient languages that we have chosen, instead of transliterating, to actually translate so it gives the right feeling in English.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
#5022 Copy

marnsvi

The visions that have Dalinar and Renarin are very different. This is related to the type of their spren ? One related to Cultivation who allows to see the future and other related to Honor who allows to see the past ?

Brandon Sanderson

Afraid this is a RAFO.

DragonCon 2019 ()
#5024 Copy

Braid_Tug (paraphrased)

We asked Brandon about gem cutting tech levels on Roshar.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He hedged some. But did let us know that while it was still labor intensive, it was not as bad as Renaissance Europe. That yes, they do have an edge. But would not state what the edge was. Even with us making jokes about Shard scalpels to make the cuts.

Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 ()
#5026 Copy

Questioner

Where do you come up with your leaders, because they're phenomenal.

Brandon Sanderson

It takes a lot of reading and thinking and coming up with who the character is. I don't know how do any of the characters-- they just kind of come, but there is a lot of hanging out on forums where people are talking about leadership positions in the military so I can kind of get a view on how they're thinking. Sun Tzu was very helpful as well.

Calamity Houston signing ()
#5030 Copy

Cadmium (paraphrased)

Would a Connection medallion work for sign language?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Cadmium (paraphrased)

Would it make the person's fingers move or would spoken word be interpreted mentally as the appropriate sign? Would it overcome deafness?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Ehhh... It would translate the communication. I can say that.

Ben McSweeney AMA ()
#5032 Copy

TransFattyAcid

One of the drawings in The Rithmatist contains a spoiler for the chapter that follows. How do you all normally ensure that doesn't happen? Do you read the whole book or is it more of relying on the art request telling you what to avoid?

Ben McSweeney

That's something that falls at the feet of editing and layout, at the publisher. I produce illustrations to spec, but I don't get a lot of input on where they're ultimately placed on the page or in the book.

That being said, someone really should have caught that. [Peter], do you know if this is something that was fixed in later editions.

Peter Ahlstorm

The illustrations are all the way Brandon designed them. Some of them contain information that comes up in the text of that chapter.

Ben McSweeney

That's about as definitive an answer as an answer can be. :)

Children of the Nameless Reddit AMA ()
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marquisdc

Did you go into creating Davriel with the color pie in mind? What colors would you say he is?

Brandon Sanderson

I went into the story knowing I wanted to write a black-alinged hero. Someone who showed off the pragmatic side of black, and someone whose ambition was different from traditional black-aligned ambition.

I'd say that Davriel is black primary, with a strong secondary blue aspect. There is a slight white tertiary side to him, mostly in his belief in organized systems and society that makes sense. (Though he prefers these boundaries for others more than for himself.)

Orem Signing ()
#5035 Copy

Questioner

Does the M in M-bot actually stand for anything?

Brandon Sanderson

He says it stands for Mushroom-bot. Spensa thinks it stands for Massacre-bot. Let's just say they have a difference of opinion on that. It's not going to get answered. She started calling him that and he was like, "Oh Mushroom-bot! Mushroom-bot sounds right!"

Orem Signing ()
#5036 Copy

Questioner

How rare was it for somebody to get the warrior lenses from Alcatraz?

Brandon Sanderson

Those are not that rare. I would say they're one of the most common lenses. But you do have to go through some training and prove yourself, and things like that. So, as lenses, they're not that rare. But you're not gonna see them every day on people.

Questioner

So what are the most rare lenses?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, the lenses of Rashid would be the most rare, obviously. But a lot of the ones that Grandpa Smedry points out as being very rare... there are lots of very rare lenses that there are only one or two copies of around. And we don't deal with many of those, but there are a couple of them we mention.

Tor.com Q&A with Brandon Sanderson ()
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The Not So Dark One

With your penchant for developing very different types of world and types of magic as you go from series to series are you ever tempted to allow other writers to expand your universes in the way George R. R. Martin does with the Wild Cards series? Open but controlled?

Brandon Sanderson

I have never been tempted by this, basically because I have so many things balanced in the Cosmere to not interfere with one another, to make the story come out the way I want. I would be worried about things breaking continuity. And if there are stories in these worlds worth telling, they're stories I want to tell. That doesn't mean I won't eventually do something like that; I would consider it someday, but I haven't considered it yet.

Steelheart Seattle signing ()
#5038 Copy

Questioner

Is the Palanaeum named for Palah?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. In fact, it was named based on—it was Greek in our world—the Athenaeum? It was based off of that.

Wetlander

Did we see Palah?

Brandon Sanderson

I believe every one of the Heralds is mentioned or shown somewhere in the first book.

Wetlander

Someone was wondering whether the old woman who was wandering around the Palanaeum was her.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a very good guess. I won't say specifically, because some of them are intended to be more obvious and some of them are intended to be red herrings. So, that was a very good guess.

Boskone 54 ()
#5039 Copy

Questioner

I was just wondering what your inspiration was for the setting, for the United Isles.

Brandon Sanderson

The United Isles. We call this historical fantasy, this is where you take a historical period and you fantasize it. I knew I was so divergent from our world that I wanted people immediately to know, complete alternate dimension. I wanted an easy early sign that when you read this, you weren’t going to be asking, “What happened in the War of 1812 in this?” I didn’t want you to be asking that, I wanted you to say, this is so different from our history that I can’t take anything for granted anymore. Which allows me to sweep away expectations and rebuild them in the way I want. You run into this all the time in fantasy, like, you ever want to write a book about vampires, everyone’s immediately going to bring to that world a lot of expectations. It’s much more important early on to sweep away expectations if you’re not going to fulfill them. So with Rithmatist, I was looking for a way to do this, and the idea of America as an [planet?] archipelago was really cool to me, and I also wanted to indicate that things were really bizarre. It’s a much smaller planet version of Earth, so I could put in time distances and say, you can take the train to London and it doesn’t take that long. In their terms it takes forever, for us it’s not that long. Smaller planet, denser core, everything’s islands. This is to say, I’m throwing out everything about our Earth and rebuilding a fantastical version of it.

Firefight release party ()
#5041 Copy

Questioner

So when are you going to tell us who Gaidal Cain is reincarnated as?

Brandon Sanderson

*laughs* One of the prevailing theories online is true.

Questioner

One of 18?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Most of the-- It's not Olver for instance. People thought that for years but Robert Jordan said it wasn't. I think there are two or three leading theories and it is one of those.

Goodreads: Ask the Author Q&A ()
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Brian Seavey

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who are educated in a field other than literature and in a profession already that is not centered around writing?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! I'll tell you that you're in luck. Take what you've learned in your field of education, and in your profession, and apply it to your writing. RJ used his experience as a solider; Grisham made a career out of writing books related to his work. You have special experience and knowledge that will make your books distinctive. Make use of it!

Words of Radiance San Francisco signing ()
#5044 Copy

Questioner

How did you decide that you were going to tackle racism, classism, gender, all those things in The Way of Kings? What sort of things went into how you decided the various ways...?

Brandon Sanderson

One of the things I like about Fantasy is the ability to tackle things like this in a way that removes the baggage from our current society which is why you see me doing things like the gender relations based around whether the hand is sleeved or not; what are feminine and masculine arts... I want to do something that's one step removed—not too far removed, because I want it to be pertinent—but removed enough that we can remove some of the baggage and talk about things like this. That's where the lighteyes and darkeyes came from.

I just decided to do it because I felt it's an important part of who we are, and something important to discuss. Beyond the fact that the Parshendi-Human thing is going to be a big deal for this series so I wanted to introduce it early on in the book to let you know this is something that we're going to deal with. 

FanX Spring 2019 ()
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Questioner

I was wondering about how Alcatraz book 6 is coming along?

Brandon Sanderson

Its coming along really well. It's almost done. I've written my half, Bastille hasn't finished her half yet. Otherwise known as Janci -- A friend of mine that I'm co-writing it with so that I can blend the voice and make it sound a little more distinctive. It was sounding too much like Alcatraz, so I wrote a big chunk of it, and then I asked her to write a big chunk of it, and she is smoothing the voice together. I think she is near the last chapter of it, of the chunk she had been writing... It's going to be really cool. The ending that I have, it's really zany and it's really crazy, but it is great.

The Alloy of Law Annotations ()
#5047 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirteen

Train-Top Fight

Yes, I had a fight atop a moving train. DON'T JUDGE ME.

I couldn't help myself, honestly. This fit perfectly with the narrative, and while I realize it's a bit of a stereotypical place for a fight sequence, I really wanted to see it happen. So there you go.

This is a rather cinematic book—meaning I see it as translating easily to film. Unfortunately, I doubt that will ever happen. Not because I'm pessimistic about having films made in the first place (which I am), but because this is essentially book four in a series. Beyond that, it's a very odd book four, one that departs wildly from the previous trilogy in setting and (in some cases) tone.

What that means is that we'll probably never see a film. We couldn't start with one just of Wax and Wayne, because the setting is too much of a mismatch. Magic, plus the wild west, plus urbanized early 1900s, but it's not on our world and has three books worth of mythology to it? This sort of thing can work on paper, but I find it unlikely that studio executives would look at it and say, "Yeah, that sounds like a surefire hit to fund."

Still, we can still hope for the original trilogy making it to film. Perhaps if they’re really successful, we could see something happen with these books.

Words of Radiance Chicago signing ()
#5048 Copy

Argent

In The Stormlight Archive there have been multiple writing systems, [which] as a part of a community effort we've translated, for the most part, the Alethi [Vorin women's script], the Thaylen. Can you talk about the technical details of the glyphs writing system?

Brandon Sanderson

The glyphs were designed by Isaac Steward. He is my scribe, artist, and cartographer. He is also the art director at my company. We sat down and I wanted something symmetrical, so actually half of the glyph is repeated. When you read into it, it's symmetrical, and you can read them by the points where they slant, but you will have to go talk to him about exactly how to do it, because I say "I want a glyph for this" and he designs it. So they are readable, but-- The thing that I used as a model is, I got Arabic art; if you guys haven't read Arabic word art it's gorgeous, it's really cool. And sometimes when it gets really distorted you have to know already what it says, and that's how some of the glyphs are.

Calamity Seattle signing ()
#5050 Copy

Questioner

Are you planning to write any trans characters?

Brandon Sanderson

Am I planning to write any trans characters? I am, but it's a very... like, I need to have some people who can read who are themselves trans, and can talk me through it. I kind of dabbled in it with, like, MeLaan, but that's not a true trans character. So, I'm kinda trying to dabble my toes in it. But I really will need some good readers who can tell me, because it's one of those things that'd be so easy to get wrong.