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One of the Letters in Oathbringer suggests that the Shards had a pact to all go their separate ways. And some of them held to it and some of them didn't?
Yes.
Out of all of them, how is it possible that one of the ones that didn't is the one whose nature is to obsessively keep your word at all costs?
He would argue that he kept his word.
Okay, so loophole.
He wouldn't even call it a loophole.
The Heralds seem to be insane in the ways of their Divine Attributes, at least somewhat. Is this because they're Heralds? As Cognitive Shadows, they're subject to people's perception, like how spren are?
That's a very astute question, and yes, that is influencing them quite a bit. I'm doing something here with the Heralds. Like, I want the Heralds "madnesses," as we call them, to be magical diseases. And the contrast of something like Kaladin's depression, which I'm trying to treat very real-world. I'm trying to treat them as these things that couldn't exist in our world. They're fantastical mental diseases, like we have fantastic physical diseases in Elantris. So I did make them thematic, and I would say part of the reason for that is people's perception of them and their mental state reacting against that. And that should be a theme among all of the Heralds.
I've heard that you're a fan of Magic: The Gathering and I recently heard about the collaboration you did with Steve Argyle a while back and that got me wondering; in your opinion, what color of magic would the powers of Allomancy fit under?
When I built my custom magic set, I made it primarily red, blue, and black. But you could make arguments for a lot of things.
What's the name of the fifth book of the Alcatraz Smedry series?
Alcatraz Smedry Book Five is called Alcatraz Versus His Own Stupid Self. I think. *chuckles* That might be the subtitle. It might be Alcatraz Versus the Dark Talent. I haven't settled on between those two. If you know Acatraz books, that title should make, be very fun to you.
how can you still be RAFO'ing stuff? What is left to read?
To RJ, RAFO sometimes meant "Read, think about it, and decide." It didn't always mean "I'll give an answer."
So, Brandon's always been a big fantasy fan, and he calls his characters from other fantasy novels that he's read buddies of his from college and university years. We wanted to know from Brandon, what five epic fantasy series would you recommend to the Fantasy-Faction.com readers?
Five epic fantasy series I recommend people to read. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay is my go-to recommendation; I think it's one of the most brilliant standalone epic fantasies ever written. Melanie Rawn's Sunrunner books are nowadays a little less known than they used to be, and I think that they are fantastic and people should read them. I really enjoyed Jim Butcher's Codex Alera books, and I would heartily recommend them to any reader of fantasy. Let's see. Other great epic fantasies...there are so many. I just finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, and I really, really enjoyed that. I think I can recommend that one whole-heartedly; it's a Hugo Award nominee, so I'm not the only one that's really enjoying that. And fifth...let's see. Let's pick one more. Well, you know, I can recommend Pat Rothfuss, but you've all already read that. I can recommend Brent Weeks, but you've already read that. Let's see if I can find something you haven't all already read, that I think is great. Um... Well. I mean, I mention Dragonsbane all the time, and so people have already heard that recommendation from me, but that's a fantastic book. I absolutely, highly, strongly recommend that you read Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly if you haven't.
This was the first, one of the first fantasy books...
First fantasy book I ever read, and the book that turned me into a fantasy writer, just simply because it was the one that...you know, it was the first. And I still very much love that book. So...I think that's a good list. Those are always the ones I recommend, though. And so...it's hard to think of new things, because you guys all read so much, you are already aware of all of them, but there you are.
So you mentioned earlier that you couldn't write and code at the same time because it used the same part of your brain. Do you have any advice for coders who may also want to write?
I would just say "separate it". Give yourself a few hours in-between. I don't feel that I personally could code all day, write during my lunch break, code all day, or something like that. But I probably could get up in the morning, do a little bit of writing, then go to work, code all day, something like that or come home, take two hours to play with the family and things like that. You've got to have time for that reservoir, does that make sense, inside of you. I think trying to go right into it might be a mistake. But it's going to be very different based on your own writing styles. Some people it might work for. You might like-- still in the mood. Does that make sense?
A question that's been on my mind for a while. If Returned can't have children, how are Siri and Vivenna descended from one?
Excellent question. One I have to RAFO. When I was writing WRBRKR, I was planning on two books.
I seeded two questions to be answered in the next book. One was the origin of the royal family..
The second was how Vasher was able to survive while hiding his divine Breath. I will answer these questions.
Eventually. (It has to do with restoring Breath and life to the child while still in the womb.).
In your magic systems, they all require the character to go over a great stress before they obtain that-- Do you use the concept of the price that comes with magic in a plausible magic system when you came up with that idea, or was it more about the idea of flawed characters are awesome?
In the cosmere magics, a lot of times in order to get the magic, there needs to be-- the internal logic argument is: Souls, once they have gaps in them, those gaps can be filled with other things, which often give you access to magical powers. Great trauma or stress--this is an age old fantasy idea, goes back many many years in the genre--will let you attain some of these powers, kind of as a balancing thing and mostly this is for narrative reasons.
Flawed characters are just way more interesting to write, and I gravitated to it pretty naturally as I was building the magic of the cosmere. And I would say it was mostly narrative reasons, as opposed to, when I was building the magic, some rule that felt like it needed to be there. But it's also a little of a balancing factor. It's trying to build into--whoever asked the question about the god--having god-like powers, but their flaws making it hard for them to use it.
It's a check on giving the powers to my characters, if I make sure to establish, this character has some holes in their-- some gaps and flaws in who they are, that might make them use their powers wrong once they get them, and that is in some way a narrative check on that, if that makes sense.
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.
Does the loss during the withdrawal of large amounts of attribute depend on the rate of original storage?
No.
Since I have a little room here, let me mention something I've been wanting to talk about for a while. Vin's name. I realize that a lot of people read this name and think of a man—it is, after all, the name of a current action hero.
I didn't even make the connection. When I was developing this character, I wanted something that was quick and simple. I'm not sure why, but I felt a single syllable name was important for this hero. It indicated her somewhat base, street-wise nature, I think. Simple, straightforward, but not weak.
Vin was, however, originally a boy. The hero of Final Empire Prime was a young boy named Vin. When I pulled some of those character concepts over to this novel, I realized that making the hero female worked so much better. Some of the original Vin's conflicts hadn't ever felt right—the abandonment issues, the blunt attitude. They just all worked better with Vin being female. I knew I'd written an entire book with the hero being the wrong gender the moment I tried writing my first sample chapter of Mistborn with Vin as a girl.
Is there a significant connection between Stormlight and spren?
Yes.
What is the extent of that, I guess? Is that a Read And Find Out?
That's a RAFO.
Could Shallan or Jasnah, with the help of a Bondsmith, take a bead from the Cognitive Realm back into the Physical Realm, thereby creating a version of remote controlling something in the Cognitive without having to go there in the moment?
This is RAFO territory for now.
So, one thing I think I did wrong in the books was not having more allomancer guards and soldiers who were women. I don't think our same gender norms would be the case on Scadrial.
One of the [screenplay] revisions is this: Shan is no longer Elend's fiance, but his sister. Their father has left on business to the outer domninances, and so Shan is making a play to secure the heirship, trying to prove she is more bold and strong than her brother. This is what gives the team an opening, and why they're striking now with the heist, as in this version, House Venture maintains the city policing and has access to the atium stash.
The plan is to put a few Allomancers (including Ham) into the Venture house guard, and exploit Shan's desire to prove herself by creating chaos in the city that she'll think she needs to put down with decisive action. That will involve her pulling out the atium stash, which will in turn let the team know where to go to rob them.
It streamlines the book's story in some elegant ways to do this. Shan becomes the primary "mark" of the book, in many ways. It also lets me explain a little more succinctly what various members of the crew are doing in the background while we focus on Vin, who is to get close to Shan as a confidant--which is why she's sent to the parties. And why Shan being a brat to her isn't just annoying, it means a major part of the plan isn't yet in place.
It explains way better, in my opinion, why Shan would act against Elend. It's all clicking into place as I move pieces around. That said, I understand those who want a Television show. I could see going that way, perhaps.
Trouble is, nobody in streaming needs a big fantasy property. Anywhere I go right now, I'd be in a distant second or third place to Tolkien, WoT, Witcher, or Kingkiller. The offers I've gotten have been for a fraction of the budget of those shows--since everyone has already spent big money on their big fantasy show, and isn't really interested in another.
I'm confident feature is the place I want Mistborn; but even if I weren't, I'm not thrilled by the idea of being lost on Netflix as their "other" fantasy show.
I don't know if I'm being negative, but these changes really worry and disappoint me. I really like Era 1 as it is, and all this change in the dynamics of society and the plot as too drastic.
This isn't negative; I understand this response, and think it's valid.
At the same time, I'm of the personal philosophy that a film should generally be a different beast than a book--a book can lean into the little intricacies of a story, while a film should be a bold but unified statement.
Nothing will happen to the books; those will remain the same. But if I want this film to work as a film, I believe I need to be willing to re-imagine parts of the story.
With Elend having a sister does that mean you don’t need the Zane plot anymore?
That's from the second book--so it would be in the television show, and we'd likely still do it.
prove she is more bold and strong than her brother
Which brother?It certainly could not be Elend, right? Elend had no Allomancy powers (before he ate the lerasium in WoA), so Straff despised Elend and thought him too weak.And Zane was a bastard and also mad dog.If Shan was Straff's legitimate daughter, then her succession was already 100% secure. She wouldn't need to prove anything to anybody.
It will be Elend, but it's more that this is the first time that Shan gets to be on her own, leading by herself, and wants to show off for the Lord Ruler. Also, there's the question of whether the male heir--though inferior in this case--might get the nod for sexism reasons. I think it's going to work just fine, but I'll admit, it's getting a little rough to discuss all these details on a thread like this--I can't answer everyone's questions, I'm afraid. I just wanted to indicate the kinds of changes I'm looking at making.
Whatever I do will go through my standard "show it to tons of beta readers and get feedback" process, so I should be able to catch problems and fix them.
The bit about atium is a bit confusing. The Ventures are going to have the Atium stash? Not the stash that we don’t find until the end I’m assuming? So it’ll be a stash but much smaller than expected?
So, I'm not sure I can explain it all in this, but one big change I wished I'd made from the start of Mistborn is making atium usable by all Allomancers. As I've gotten further in the cosmere, using a god metal as just for Mistborn has felt off.
So the lore change for the films will mean any Allomancer can use atium. This, in turn, lets House Venture have access to the LR's atium as a "Control the city" last resort. They keep a task force of allomancers for this purpose--which Ham can join, in anticipation of being able to steal it once Shan accesses it. (They don't know that House Venture is only given about a hundred beads of atium, not access to the full mythical cache, which will be reserved for the third movie.)
Makes the worldbuilding and storytelling more elegant, I've found, in the film. And it fits better with more "modern" cosmere fundamentals as have developed over the last decade. I think I'd make this change even if we moved to a television show and long form.
The Lord Ruler is still the "big bad" but Shan and the Inquisitors both get a little more screen time. (Actually, about the same as in the books--it's just that other parts are being trimmed, making them more front-and-center.)
Based on that, you're also streamlining away the Sign of Sixteen if it gets a sequel? To be honest, that didn't really work for me in the novel anyway.
It's one of my least favorite parts of the trilogy. It (along with Vin drawing upon the mists in book one) are big changes I'm hoping to make to fix weaker sections of the continuity.
The flakes of metal are catalysts to access the powers of Preservation. What do the birds from Patji use as catalysts?
You don't always have to have the exact same thing for catalyst, for that it’s kind of more of an innate Connection, in the same way that the metals have an innate Connection. They are the catalyst, if that makes sense.
All your novels are tied together by an overarching magic system, and we usualy see evidence of this in the form of the too-still pools of water. However we did not see any such bodies of water directly in Warbreaker. Is there such a pool in Warbreaker? Is that where the Tears of Edgli grow?
Wow. I've got some very perceptive readers.
This is speculation that I will neither confirm nor deny.
As far as I can tell, in The Stormlight Archive, we have seen three different lights: the stormlight, the amberlight in the flashbacks, and the dark light in the stone. Do those correspond to the three Shards?
No, the amberlight is more a function of...it's no different than the stormlight.
So, you see that in a storm? Like when gems gather that in the storm?
That amberlight is more related to... so, no... you are not seeing something other than stormlight. That is like saying that stormlight in a topaz is a different color than stormlight in a sapphire. It's not different colors; you're just seeing it filtered through something. The dark light of the, um, the gemstone that Szeth was given is indeed something different and distinct.
Voidlight?
Yes, it is related to a different shard. How about that?
One of the things I read when I was researching for Stormlight that was really interesting, I kind of dug into, was this idea that practical medicine, particularly through the Middle Ages up approaching the Renaissance, was actually the one that was regarded with fear, superstition, and dislike. Which is why it fell to the barbers. And what we would call the "superstitious physician" was a well-respected position, depending on where you were looking. And it was this weird area where people who were approaching things practically and actually doing what you needed to do, were being ostracized and vilified. It wasn't as bad as being an executioner; that was the worst deal. But there was this sort of thing, that those people stayed-- You did not want your son or daughter marrying into that family, and these sorts of things. It was really interesting.
Is there a limit to the size of a Hemalurgic spike?
Technically no. To be functional yes, but technically no.
And finally, whether a duralumin compounder could break into a kandra?
Um... yes, possible, yeah.
What would Mraize answer, since he doesn't lie, if someone asked him "Where are you from"?
Mraize would truthfully say he was born on Roshar.
Among the Knights Radiant, is there an equivalent for our engineers? Like, normal engineers?
Equivalent to engineers? Yes-- Not 100% one-to-one, but yes.
Is Cultivation's Shardholder still alive.
Good question, what do you think?
I want to say, but that's based on my knowledge before I read Lift's interlude from Words of Radiance. Now I am leaning towards no. Based on that interlude, it looks like spren have essence from both Honor and Cultivation. It's almost like they exist in a spectrum, on one end of which is Honor, and on the other - Cultivation; so there are spren that are, for the lack of better example, 90% Honor and 10% Cultivation, and there are spren that are 15% Honor and 85% Cultivation.
That's a very astute observation!
And since we know that Honor is Splintered, then it might be the case that Cultivation is also Splintered, and their Splinters form the spren.
What happens to the investiture that nightblood 'consumes'?
RAFO.
Are there historical figures that were inspirations for Elhokar?
Dalinar is based very slightly on Subutai, the great Mongol general. Elhokar, no one specific. I thought of him when I was a kid, when I was, like, fourteen, I wanted to do a story about a weak king and his uncle who's a really strong figure, and that interplay, and that's where he came from.
We were wondering about Nightblood, if he's sort of out-of-place on Roshar? 'Cause he's sort of the opposite of change, right?
He is supposed to be really out of place. He is a messed-up, messed-up... sword thing.
How much research into philosophical work do you do before each book? And what inspired to use thesein particular: Kantian deontology for the Knights Radiant, consequentialism for the Alethi and Taravangian, and secular morality for Jasnah?
Why did I choose the ones that I did? I really like when stories are not just a conflict of personality; they are a conflict between ideologies and ways of viewing the world which are all valid ways of viewing the world. When I put Taravangian and Dalinar into conflict with each other, it's because they are both looking at life in a different way. And I'm kind of reaching to different philosophical bases for those. And I will butcher it if I try to use the actual terminologies, because I am not a philosophy major.
Why did I take what I did? They matched the characters. And they matched what I'm trying to explore, without trying to give you the answers; trying to explore theme in stories. And I just love doing that. It's what makes me excited about writing characters.
I was just wondering if a Shard's intent can change over time without changing holders?
Without changing holders? The holder can have a slight effect on how the-- a big effect on how the intent is interpreted, but what the intent is stays the same. So it's gonna be filtered. The way it manifests can change, and you'll see that happening, but it is the same intent. When it was broken off, it took a certain thing with it.
So there's speculation in this thread about whether the Singers have a Fishform relating to the Thrill getting tossed into the sea...
and that makes me wonder - are all Singer forms predetermined by whatever deity created them or evolution, or can new ones arise spontaneously when new spren are created?
New forms could exist.
Are there thousands of more spren that you have planned out and know what they look like? Or are those just, as you’re writing them in the moment, “This is what the spren’s gonna look like.”
At this point, we’ve gotten through all the ones that I’ve preplanned, and at this point, I toss new ones in now and then. Usually, I only do that in large measure if we’ve gone to a new location. Because you have seen the spren that inhabit the area of the Shattered Plains in Shadesmar, but there can be emotion spren… like, I’m doing awespren more often in this book, and there’s a new one in this book, but everyone’s in Urithiru. Different place, you can attract different types of emotionspren. Different Shadesmar ecology.
Does Kaladin have a mixed heritage. Like maybe Yolish and Rosharan?
One thing I wanted to be very careful about in writing the Stormlight books is to stray away from people needing some kind of past or heritage to be special—it's okay for this to be for some characters, but it becomes a crutch. So your answer is no, he doesn't have much secret to his heritage. (Though his mother grew up wealthy for a darkeyes, and that's a little odd.)
Vasher/Zahel is a Returned, which means he needs Breath to live. But Breath doesn’t exist on Roshar. Does he use St--
He uses Stormlight. One of the reasons-- In fact one of the primary reasons he’s on Roshar is because Stormlight is so much easier to come by than Breath. And in fact researching about things like this is one of the reasons he discovered Roshar in the first place.
So it’s the same reason why Night-- the sword…
Nightblood.
Yes.
The exact mechanics of how Nightblood ended up there will be explored in a future book.
Is it possible to make a perpendicularity large enough that you can move large groups of people through?
Yes.
Or a spaceship?
Yes.
At any point in the Rosharan history, was it possible to form a Nahel bond without swearing oaths?
"Nahel bond" is the phrase used for a bond between a spren and a being from the Physical Realm. That is the definition of it. So the answer to that is yes; it's currently possible right now. It's how greatshells exist and grow to the size they do. It's how Ryshadium exist. Those are Nahel bonds also.
What you're asking is if a sapient spren, a spren and a sapient individual, forming what we currently call the Radiant bond, which has access to much greater power; was that possible without swearing oaths? Yes and no. The formalization of the oaths and the Orders aligned with certain spren did take a little bit of time to come together. It was possible to form a Nahel bond before that, but it was not a Radiant bond accessing the levels of powers that are currently possible. So it's another one of these "yes and no" answers, if that makes any sense.
You could find a Nahel bond... In fact, many would call the bond between the singers and the spren that give them forms Nahel bonds. It may not fit fully into the categorization that most people would use it for, but you could kinda call that the same thing.
Can AonDor heal chronic conditions, like poor eyesight? If so, does it require specialized Aon drawing to work, or will enough Aon Iens do the job eventually?
Yes, AonDor could cure a chronic condition like poor eyesight. But you would have to get the specifics of everything, kind of like they're equations, correct. You'd have to know a LOT about AonDor and a LOT about the body to get it right. *pauses in thought* It's kind of like with computer programming.
By the way, the reason the Lord Ruler's army attacked Renoux was not because they broke Marsh. It's because the Inquisitors–still tracking Vin–finally managed to trail her to House Renoux, and therefore to Valette Renoux. They hit the convoy, fully expecting her to be on it. When she wasn't, they devised their trap, knowing that Kelsier would come for his friends. They never even suspected that the team had managed to get a mole into the Ministry ranks.
Was Khriss involved in founding the (a) University at Silverlight?
Yup.
Atium spikes, they can hold a lot. Can they hold multiple different abilities, can they hold Surgebinding and--
Usually you've gotta use a spike for one thing at a time.
Was Bavadin nonhuman?
RAFO. There is at least one Shard who wasn't human, but I'm not ready to reveal who was or wasn't just yet.
If you had to choose a creature from Roshar to be your pet, what would it be?
It would be a larkin, obviously. This was the little beasty that was given to Rysn in the second book. They are very cool in that they feed on Investiture, and that turns out to be a really handy power to have. If you're not going to have magic of your own in the cosmere, then having the ability to eat other people's magic is really handy. Plus, they are the closest thing that I've had appear on-screen in a non-humanoid form to a dragon so far in the books. They're little lizard wasp dragons. Yeah, wasp-dragon, I would say, is what a larkin is. And that would be a really cool thing to have.
Can hemalurgy be used to steal hemalurgically granted powers?
Yes, technically.
How many times did a Herald break and let the Fused return to Roshar?
Oh, so how many Desolations were there, total?
Between the Oathpact and Aharietiam?
Not as many as people say there are.
More than fifty, less than fifty?
I would guess offhand more than fifteen, but not much more. That's the sort of thing I just have to look at the timeline on. You're catching me flat-footed on that one. I would have to go look. Not as many as they think, but more than fifteen.
More than fifteen? Okay, because I actually asked more than fifty.
Oh you asked more than fifty. More than fifteen, less than fifty.
Who is your favorite minor Stormlight character?
There's a new guy in Rhythm of War who has a really cool name.
Is this the Tuckerization? Stargyle? That's Steve Argyle. It is a cool name. I'm like, "How can I put a 'Steve' in that doesn't sound... He's a Lightweaver; what if he just made up a really cool stage name for himself?"
> I could easily have had an entire book with a major thread about toppling her [Ialai's] little empire on the Shattered Plains, but that would have been too backward looking.
I dunno. I think that could be fun. I'm somewhat imagining a John-Wick-alike character whose job is to take Ialai down and it turning into a surreal action/adventure/spy story.
I absolutely think this could have worked in a different narrative. But in this book, with so much of the focus moving to the greater war and the invasion, I feel that spending a lot of pages on recovering the Shattered Plains (and dealing with a group in the Sons of Honor that have been repeatedly defeated already) would just feel anticlimactic.
A different style of narrative could have pivoted to political intrigue instead of war epic after the first book or so, and then this sort of plot would have been exciting and dynamic. It's all about scope and the subgenre of your narrative.
How much artistic license did Michael [Whelan] have when designing the cover [of Rhythm of War] and what your process is when working with him to get the cover vision that you're going for?
Our preference is to give artists a lot of leeway for personal interpretation. I, personally, believe any piece of fan-art or official art is that artist's vision of what they saw in their head when they were reading the book. And that's going to differ greatly from what someone else would see, and I like seeing those interpretations. I like seeing those visions. So we try to give quite a bit of leeway and flexibility to the artist.
For instance, Michael (being the consummate professional he is) sent, like, ten sketches of possibilities. And we had ones we liked the most, and fortunately they were the same ones that he liked the most. But mostly, we say, "These are all great. Which one do you enjoy? Which one are you most excited to paint?" And we move that direction most of the time. Isaac will usually have continuity comments, and we want to make sure that things are in continuity, but we give a lot of freedom to the artists. We don't really want to chain them down. We want art to inspire art.
And so, because of that, people look different in some of our official interpretations. And I think that's okay, because that's how artwork goes. We're not trying to match a really exacting style guide on the characters, usually. And that lets us have the cover art for the UK cover look very different from the covert art form the US cover, and even have different interpretations on the characters in different ways. We'll catch the big things. We'll say "put a glove on her" if there's a scandalous hand exposed. We'll say "this is what the patch looks like that should be on Kaladin's shoulder." Stuff like that, we will do, but we try to give a lot of freedom.
I really like this cover. This is my favorite of his covers since the first one.
Are there any Allomantic metals we have not seen yet, besides Chromium and Nicrosil?
RAFO. (Sorry.) Let's just say that when Sazed said there are two metals you haven't found, he MIGHT not have been referring to a metal and its alloy, but two base metals. Who knows. Gods can be frustratingly ambiguous in times like that.
What do you think a world without non-consensual death would look like?
You know, a lot of science fiction writers have done some really good jobs with this. And I don't know what it would actually look like, it's a good question... So, you can choose. It's gonna look something like...
Have you read (this thing was really brilliant) Football in the Future? Oh my goodness, you guys probably haven't read it because (it's brilliant, it's super brilliant) but it's a new media story, and it's written-- Look up Football in the Future, it's not actually about football. And telling you anything more than that is, like, a super-big spoiler. But I read it last summer, and it blew my mind. New media meaning it's, like, hypertext and videos and music and things like this, and, I don't want to spoil it for you, really, but go read Football in the Future. You will love it. That was a really cool take out, but it's obviously exaggerated, like, that one's done for sarcastic effect. Maybe something more along the lines of a post-scarcity society, like the culture. I think the culture really has a lot of good science fiction.
The thing for me, the difference between science fiction and fantasy for me is, really good science fiction makes me say "I can see how you take something we have now, and you extrapolate to the plausible, even though it can be very far from what we are." And fantasy, I believe, takes what's impossible, and then tries to make it plausible, and we kinda meet in the middle.
So, yeah. I'm not sure, but there's an answer.
So when you are doing a kind of in-depth and very long story-- like The Stormlight Archive... Can you-- Do you tackle that, like, in short-- For like an outline?
Oh good question.
Do you outline the entire thing? Do you outline one at a time, or two at a time?
…So outlining. You picked the hardest one to outline, by far. Normally the outlining process for me is-- it goes like this, I sit down and I write Plot, Setting, Character in a new sheet. I put them in outline level one. And then I put all the things that I have been thinking in my head for a while, that I've been brainstorming with friends or-- Every book that I write I spent a long time planning it out, it's when ideas connect together that you know you have a great book. One idea is not a book, multiple ideas that influence each other in cool ways is a book, to me. So I write all this down and then I start looking for the structure and what are people's plots. The way I outline is I outline goal-based. Say I want to have an interesting relationship dynamic between these two characters, how can I achieve that? What's my goal at the end and what are my steps to get there? That is part of my outline. And I don't like-- And then I do another one. Okay, someone's got to learn to use the magic, what's my end goal, what are my steps to get there, what are cool scenes out of this? Those are all separate in my outline, it's not like in my outline there's "Chapter one: this, this, this, and this". It's Goal, with how to achieve. Goal, how to achieve it. Goal, how to achieve it. That's my normal outline process.
Now The Stormlight Archive is a strange beast, because it is plotted as ten books, each focusing around a character. And for that what I did was I sat down and wrote out my outline more in prose form, my vision for the whole series and then I wrote a paragraph about each book. Then what I just told you, I did for the first book, then I wrote the first book. Then I went back and created a much bigger and more detailed outline for the rest of the series. So it's kind of this process. The really weird thing about the Stormlight books is that I actually plot each one like I plot a trilogy. So for instance, Words of Radiance you can find-- people have noticed them-- breakpoints between quote-unquote books, that this volume is actually written as three books with a short story collection as the interludes woven between. That's how I approach those books.
My publisher has a love/hate relationship with The Stormlight Archive because they feel they could publish them as four volumes and make four times as much money but I won't let them. But they don't want me to write other things because they really want more Stormlight because Stormlight is the one that sells the best out of everything. So they are like "Write more Stormlight, but can we split it please?" and I say "No, you can't split it" and they're like "arghhh" So they release them as these big volumes, as I told them to, even though they know they are each like these three volumes-- And anyway...
That's kind of the shorter version of it. If you guys are... writers, and you want some help, I have two resources. Ask when you come through the line. I have a podcast, with a bookmark that says where it is. Fifteen minutes of writing advice every week. It's called Writing Excuses. I also lecture at Brigham Young University, and part of my requirement for lecturing for them-- I don't take salary-- is that they have to let me put my lectures online for people to see. So my lectures, for the last few years, of my university course, are posted online.
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.
