Questioner
Who is the most powerful non-Shard entity in the cosmere?
Brandon Sanderson
It's probably Hoid.
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Who is the most powerful non-Shard entity in the cosmere?
It's probably Hoid.
Would Allomancy affect Shardplate or Shardblades?
It cannot affected Shardblades. Well, "cannot" is a strong word. Things with innate investiture are much more difficult to affect with any of the magics at all. Which is why it's very hard, for instance-- Szeth is not able to bind people, or Lash people wearing Shardplate to the ceiling. In the same Allomancy would not be able to Push on it without some help. Duralumin and a really strong [Steel]Push could probably do it.
I was just wondering if it's actually metal.
Oh yes. It is metal-ish... it is metal enough for Allomancy to work on it.
Is there a single Alomantic symbol for “survive” or would it need to be spelled out?
It would need to be spelled out. The Elendel Scadrians have an alphabetic system rather than a symbolic system.
You have told us there are more than 30 magical systems on Roshar. I am assuming there are 10 Surgebindings and 10 Voidbindings. Do the next 10 belong to another such classification? If yes, can you give us the name for it.
Fabrials are part of it.
Has Renarin been a Radiant since before we first met him in The Way of Kings?
RAFO, saving it for the Renarin pov parts to explore.
Is there a Hoid cameo in Shadows for Silence?
There is not. I intentionally didn't put one in, because I didn't-- couldn't come-- there was no reason for him to be there, and I didn't want to be doing it just to do it, if that makes sense, like, the Cosmere isn't just a bunch of cameos, it is a story within itself.
And... Fortune and Autonomy are Shards? Yes, no?
RAFO.
Could you become a double misting if you took two lerasium/metal alloy beads (I think the example was iron and steel) at the same time?
Yes.
Is Hoid's hair color naturally white?
Yes, now.
Now? Does he have a counterpart who has black hair somewhere?
RAFO.
What's the next non-sequel book you're wanting to write or rewrite?
I really would like to get Steelheart done. That would probably be the next one I'd want to do; that or Dark One. But I don't know when I will have time for them.
Say I'm excited about this, but I'm going to stake a claim on the panel's official cabbagehead position. Every time I'm on a panel or doing a podcast it is good to have a cabbagehead. Which is, I'm the writer, right? My job is, I've found, to know enough about these things to be dangerous, so if there are writers out there and you're feeling a little overwhelmed by this, here's how I approach it. I, when I was first writing epic fantasy I found out a few of these things, and I'm like, "Oh no, this kind of destroy the types of stories I want to tell."
But the more I learned the more I realized, no, it can shape the types of stories I want to tell it doesn't have to destroy them at all. What I did was I used this kind of rule, that is it takes actually a fairly brief amount of time to become dangerously knowledgeable in a subject. Like say, if you can get yourself 20 or 30 percent of the way there, you know enough to know what you don't know. My goal is to always get myself there with research, usually on pop-history books or pop-medicine books or things like this. Write my stories, and then to find an expert, which I've used extensively, particularly in the Stormlight books, where one of my characters is a field surgeon, that's his training, and go and say "What am I doing wrong?"
Usually, the response I get from the medical professionals is "Wow, this isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, you're still wrong about a ton of things. But you don't have to rip apart your story, the fundamentals are there, you know that a gut wounds is really dangerous and often takes a long time to kill. You know about these things and you are trying to deal with them and approach them. I can give you some tips to make it more authentic." That balance has just worked wonderfully well for me.
I was wondering about the economics of the Rithmatist. Obviously, the price levels are without a century of inflation. The cost of making those dollar coins, even in terms of their economics, it seems like it would cost more than a dollar to make a dollar coin.
We spend more to make some of our money, not dollars. The argument I make on that one is that a dollar built by them is added value. That is my feel on it. Producing it might take more money than it is worth, but by the time it’s done, it is worth that much more money. At least in my opinion.
Rand/Dark One confrontation through The Wheel of Time series...was it some kind of inspiration for Dalinar/Odium confrontation from your own series?
It's very heard to separate out what in my series is WoT influenced--since all of it is influenced deeply by reading the WoT when younger. So I'd say it most certainly was.
 I was just wondering are kelek and kalak the same person?
Yes, indeed they are. A vowel shift happened in the language between the two time periods.
The fandom found out about The Way of Kings pretty early on. I don't know how this happened, but Amazon put up a listing for it in like, 2006. The book was eventually published four years later. I hadn't written it in 2006. I'd written a version of it that I sent to my editor at Tor when he wanted to buy Elantris. I said, "Here's the other thing I'm working on."
And he read Way of Kings and he called me back, terrified. Because it's 400,000 words long. Well, the print version is 300,000 words. And they say, you should shoot for maybe 120,000 for your first novel. So it's big, and I had all these notes for this art I wanted to put into it. So it was going to be really expensive to print, really expensive to edit. And he called and he was like, "Uhhh can we cut this? This is enormous!"
And I'm like, "No we can't cut it but it's not right yet." So we did a contract for Elantris and Mistborn. We never had a contract for Way of Kings. I don't know how anyone found out about it, but Amazon put up a listing for it anyway...
So the fandom started putting up fake reviews for this book. And they also devised fake pictures of it. Amazon has this Show Your Version. So they printed off fake covers and put them around books and took pictures and sent them in. So eventually, Amazon just put one of their covers up as the cover. And it had a picture of Elvis on the front. It was called The Way of Kings. And it had a quote from Terry Goodkind that said "A hunka hunka burning good book!"
This is what happens when you give fans a blank space on the internet and say "Fill this!" I didn't ask them to do this by the way. They just did this. I just started looking and people were like, "This book cured my dog's cancer!" Stuff like that! You know how they are.
Did Kelsier chose not to move on after he died or did he want to move on but couldn't for some reason?
RAFO. The thing is, Kelsier's wife Mare had certainly moved on, and that would be motivating him to go on to the next life.
What is the term for a full Feruchemist who is also a Mistborn?
They use Full Feruchemist right now. We'll see if it develops into something else.
I asked Brandon about that "Full Feruchemist" question and he said he misread the question.
In the [Purelake vision that Dalinar had in WoR] there was a pouch that the Shardbearer grabbed when the spren went into the ground. I was wondering what is this pouch? Is it a fabrial? Was it important? It was just sitting there, sitting there!
You need to get at least one RAFO. I'm not saying that's an important thing--
Hey!?
...it might be, but you need to get at least one RAFO from me, so that's the one I'm gonna RAFO.
Are we going to hear anymore about the worldhopping characters? I've been wondering what exactly their motivations are and if they have any connections with each other.
You'll need to wait a little longer on this. It will start to come out a lot more in Mistborn Era Three and beyond.
Most of your heroes are true traditional "heroes", because they want to be useful for the family/society/other, and they often lack selfish, "dirtier" motivations. Will we sometimes see characters, who are not villains but are rather egocentric?
Kelsier. :)
Expanding that, however, I feel that in general, other people are telling stories about "dirtier" characters and doing it well. I don't feel characters who are generally good characters are any less realistic, however--in fact, almost everyone I know is more like Vin or Dalinar. They want to be good people, they TRY to be good people. Fantasy has taken a very dark turn in many ways, and this is fine, but it is not the type of story or characters in which I am interested.
That doesn't mean I won't ever do it. There are some far more borderline characters mixed into some of the series, but they are more the exception than the rule.
If you needed to pick a band to write your soundtrack, which band would it be?
Band to write my soundtrack? Probably, Two Steps From Hell.
Ash is a Lightweaver... The ten Knights Radiant books, and Ash is gonna be a character; she can't be a Lightweaver?
That's a RAFO. But you are noticing something real.
Where do you get your people from? Do you take inspiration from people you know in real life?
Yes, yes I do. Sometimes, sometimes not. As I said, usually the seed that starts a character for me as I grow them is a conflict. For Kaladin it's the conflict between being trained as a surgeon and finding out you are really good at killing people, and how do you deal with that. For some it can be very simple, for Sarene I had a friend who is a woman that is 6 foot 2, or whatever she is, *to the side* How tall is Annie? She's tall. Anway, Annie's tall, and she always complains about how tough it is to be a tall woman. Which is something I never thought of, I'm like "I'm going to use that. I'm going to make use of that in a story," Of course that isn't her whole personality, but that little seed, you drop down and I grow a personality around it as I try someone out... That person I knew, a piece of her turned into a character. For other things, it's just trying and trying and trying untill something works, as I explained before. It is "What has their life done to them", often times it's "What are the passionate about? What do they want? Why can't they have what they want?" Those sorts of things lead me into creating a character
In Words of Radiance, a character named Iyatil... Is she a member of the race that we see in The Bands of Mourning in the--
She is related to them in the same way that I am Danish.
Okay, so not.
Well, I am, my heritage is Danish.
Okay, so a branch of...
Mmhmm.
I'm curious about Kaladin. Did you write Kaladin as having depression? It never distinctly says it.
Yes, he has depression. I purposefully didn't distinctly say it, because it's not like they can diagnose in their culture. But yes, Kaladin has depression. Straight-up depression. And it's not even... Like, there's PTSD stuff in the third book, but that's not the cause of it. He just has chemical depression. Even going back to when he was a teenager. And it's not like the story is... In some ways, it's about him overcoming it, but it's not about it going away. It's about a hero who lives with depression.
And I personally, I have depression, so I relate with Kaladin so much when I read it. So I just think it's really cool ,that... Most people don't write about heroes that have depression.
I wanted to do it, in part, because I have some dear loved ones that... You know, this is just part of their everyday life. It was something I just didn't see being touched upon. And I remember my wife talking about it and saying, "It's kind of frustrating to read a book about someone with depression because that's the only thing about them. Books, they're like, problem novels. Can't I just read a book about somebody who has depression?" So, she was a big help.
Who is your favorite character in Mistborn?
Hmmm, probably Sazed. The truth is, my favorite character changes depending on who I'm writing, and things like that.
Okay, I feel better about it now.
Breeze is my favorite character
Breeze is a lot of fun.
When Wax's uncle gets blown up and [the Faceless Immortal] says "you will serve us in another realm", is that a [truth] ?
Wait wait, who says that?
With Suit, the end of Bands of Mourning? He gets blown up...?
Oh right, right...So, yeah, that is not specifically answered on purpose. That is meant to be more ambiguous, it may not even be a true statement.
So their deity doesn't pick which souls...
I'm not saying yes or no, I'm just saying, don't take what they say as law, as the actual state of things. It may just be a belief on their part.
Can you both Feruchemically charge and Hemalurgically invest in the same piece of metal?
Yes.Â
What would happen if you burned the Feruchemically charged and Hemalurgically invested metal?
RAFO.Â
Is Kelsier more of a coffee or a tea guy?
Coffee.
Can you elaborate more on cadmium and bendalloy's effects? Like, if you're speeding up time, are you speeding up time for you in the bubble or what?
Anything in the bubble. You create a space around you of sped-up space-time, and anything that gets in there moves more slowly. Like, let's say that I shot a bullet at you and you popped it with sped-up time. That bullet would move really slowly. Everything around you would be slowed. Ah, no, but you would be the same so when the bullet entered it would go the same speed that you are going, but once it's out, it's either faster or slower. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does, it does. And it's the same with bendalloy, just…
Reversed, yeah. It can have some really powerful effects, but the problem is, you can't change anything. As soon as you get close enough to change it, it's in there with you. So, if you were using it the right way you could dodge bullets, as long as you were able to get it off before the bullet got too close to you, but that's hard to do.
And, if you're the one who can slow time, you could get someone in your bubble and slow time, then let everyone else move more quickly around you, which, of course, takes a lot more practice to use. You've got to have a buddy who's outside the bubble but who you could stop, he could stop you, and we would see time move the same but everything around us would go super fast. If people were ready for that they could make use of it.
What's your opinion on golems/constructs/robots? The Lifeless are a somewhat similar concept, but I was curious as to whether there's a world in the cosmere that might have a more classical take on ye ol' fantasy standby guardian, or are Awakened suits of armor as close as we can get? Is the Future Mistborn trilogy going to have Anti-Allomancer Alluminaughts?
Ha. I am fascinated the idea of golems, and when I play an RPG I'm often trying to make golems of one sort or another. However, I worry that the idea is a little overdone in fiction, so my takes on that sort of thing come in more unusual flavors.
Do you have any plans to release Death by Pizza?
Do I have any plans to release Death by Pizza? When I was getting ready for what I should do my readings on for this I was like "Oh I could read them Death by Pizza" and I opened it up and read the first chapter again and was like "No I can't read--" *laughter* Someday if I have time to fix it, I will. It was mostly-- A lot of what you see me doing is experimenting in other genres so I can practice that genre and incorporate it into my mainline epic fantasies. I think that great writing, particularly in a big book like those, means that you draw on a lot of different traditions so that the different plot lines and characters feel like different types. So I'm practicing urban fantasy, I'm practicing-- Things like Legion is me practicing a detective novel so I can use that later on. That one just didn't turn out good enough to release. It was good practice for me.
The Sleepless. When Syl is talking to Kal, and Kal just crunched up the leaves, and she says, "Is it the heart of a beetle that you have hidden in your hand?" Is that what she's talking about?
...Oh, the Sleepless? No, that is coincidence. Good question. Not a Sleepless question.
Why do the Twinborn in Alloy of Law have only one Feruchemical power, when all previous Feruchemists, in spite of breeding programs, could use all the metals?
Or were Ferrings always part of the system and we just didn't meet them in Mistborn?
The Ferrings are a new development since Mistborn, as the Feruchemists have been interbreeding with the Allomancers. Basically, the Allomancy genes interfere with the Feruchemy genes, breaking it down and creating the limitations we see in Alloy of Law.
Okay, so the question is: How do you draw the line between deciding to be realistic, and to fudge it in the name of drama, essentially. Pointed out, like, at the end someone gets shot in a way that would normally lay them out but you need the story to keep going. You have a number of options here, and sub-genre and tone is going to have a lot to do with it. The fact that Star Wars is not in any way realistic in its physics does not prevent it from being enjoyed by even a lot of us who understand how bad the physics is, right? Because Star Wars does not present itself as a story where they need to get the physics right. Whereas a hard science fiction movie that we're watching then make an enormous error-- I love The Martian, but this is why Andy Weir gets so much flack. It was way better than 99.9 percent of all science fiction stories; he gets one thing wrong and people will notice it because it's a hard science fiction story.
So, you're going to have to decide on the tone of your story, that's a large part of it. And the other thing is, you build up, in some ways, credibility, like I said, often with the small details. And then you use those small details. We often call it the pyramid of abstraction. You lay the foundation with concrete details, building the scene so the reader is on board for what you're doing. And then, when you need to fudge it and strain plausibility, even in a very realistic story, the reader generally gets on board and goes with it, and doesn't let it break immersion for them. In your example, if all the way through this story you had dealt with these things very realistically, at the end you even dealt with it realistically, but had the character kind of overcome it for a little while and push through. I am totally on board to buy that, right? I am there with you. I'm like, "This is the climatic moment. Yeah, he should have dropped, but instead, he manages to stand up and push the fire alarm or something like that." This sort of thing, readers will be on board. You just need to make sure to keep them on board and to sell them on the idea of the tone of your story.
As Sidney and Jen pointed out earlier, the wound that is ultimately fatal, often is not immediately fatal. That's one of the other Hollywood tropes that I sometimes hate is: sometimes he gets shot and immediately falls down. No, doesn't happen. A headshot maybe, but that's about it.
Yeah, I was interviewing some people for a story I was writing, and I interviewed someone who had been shot. And he said "It felt like someone had tapped me on the back, just like that, and I didn't know I had been shot." The bullet went all the way through him, but he still was up and doing things for another couple of minutes.
Spensa has this habit in citing "X is one of my ancestors". Is it possible that sometimes she has actually right ? Regardless if this lineage is relevant to the story.
She's right--but in the way that all of us have a (relatively recent) common ancestor, if you look at the actual genetics. I believe that by her point, centuries in the future, everyone on her colony could trace linage back to both European ancestors and Asian ones. So she's right--but everyone in her colony could say the same things she does.
How do your religious views affect the way you write?
You know, being religious means one of my mandates is, I always want to approach everyone's beliefs with reverence. Nothing bothers me more than seeing the one person who's a theist, who is an idiot, surrounded by everyone else. So, I like to explore these issues, I really like to kind of dig in to all these different perspectives. Being fascinated by it by myself makes me make it an element of my books.
Were books a natural part of your childhood?
Unlike a lot of writers, I wasn't a big reader when I was younger. I came to it late, when I was in eighth grade. Until then, none of the books (mostly ones about boys with pet dogs) that people had given me worked. And then I discovered fantasy. From then on, you never found me without a book. Often two or three.
What is the weirdest thing you've ever been given at a signing?
All the normal things: license plates, swords, armor, pens, lots of pens. Weirdest thing-- I need to write these things down when I get them. Sculptures... stickers, I would ask my wife. I'm going to go with license plates, that is pretty odd. They got two, put one on their car and gave one to me.
I hear... that you teach... If you could, in 2 minutes or less, teach us. *laughter*
One of the requirements for teaching the class that I do at Brigham Young was that they let me record the lectures and put them online. So the entire 2 years so far of my course How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy is online. I also have Writing Excuses, my podcast which is writing focused. If you haven't ever listened to it, it's Hugo award winning, and I would recommend starting January this year. We started kind of a master class of writing a story. And we'll record that live tomorrow morning, 11 am, so you'll be able to hear us doing that.
The number one thing I can tell to the aspiring writer is-- This is something I've started talking about a lot recently--remember that you are the product of your writing, not the book, or the story. Now it's a weird thing to wrap your mind around. But it was very important for me, starting out as a writer, that when I wrote a book, I was turning myself into someone that could write better books. So that book was not the product; the book, in some ways, was the side effect, of changing myself into someone who was better at writing books. Each time you do that, you will get better, and the side effect, the side product that you produce will be better. The idea is to keep in mind, "What's going to make me a better writer. What practice is going to help me." Always look at your writing as something you're practicing to make yourself get better, no matter what it is.
I mean, I wrote 13 novels before I sold one, perhaps that's why I have that perspective. But I think that a lot of the very successful writers are people who practice a lot, and treat all of their writing as practice.
What is the stylization of the symbol of the Faithful in the Reckoners series
It's the Superman symbol, but I couldn't say that.
Can you give us the intent of the hide and survive Shard, or as an alternative give us the name of another Shardholder?
No. I gave you something good, you got a good one.
Did you ever study a martial art yourself? Did studying a foreign language change the way you write?
My only martial arts study comes from reading and watching, with the occasional 'one shot' go learn some basics.
Studying a foreign language was extremely helpful in opening my eyes to other cultures, and my own language.
And then the final question. At the beginning of Words of Radiance, the assassin Liss, is she Chana?
*Evil laugh* I will RAFO that. Sorry!
Vin asks Ham how to kill a man burning Atium
This conversation about how to kill someone who is burning atium is another one I'd been wanting to include for a long time. It's important to the plot, and the overall arc of the book, that you worry about Vin lack of atium. Plus, I want to keep the reader thinking about the metal, as the Lord Ruler's atium cache is such a large part of the series' plotting.
It's tough to know how to fight someone who can see the future. What Ham outlines here are pretty much the only things that anyone has been able to come up with.
You've mentioned before that all your books so far are in chronological order (Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker, Stormlight Archive). Alloy of Law takes place about 200 years after The Hero of Ages. (Right?) Does this put it chronologically before or after Warbreaker?
The Alloy of Law takes place around 300 years after The Hero of Ages and several hundred years before the events in The Way of Kings. That does put it around the same time as Warbreaker.
Do you plan on having, like, a final book for the cosmere? Like, the Shards are gone; Hoid is the king of the universe?
There will be an ending to the cosmere sequence that will involve a lot of these things going on.
Have you ever worked on a video game before?
This is my first extensive experience working on a video game. I have sold video game rights on one of my other books, but I haven't begun working on that yet.
How did you get involved with Infinity Blade?
They approached me. The developers of Infinity Blade were fans of mine. They tell me they spent some six months trying to get hold of me, going through different channels. But they kept trying because they really wanted to work with me. Eventually they realized they had a contact with Isaac Stewart, who has done a lot of art for my books and is a good friend of mine. So through him they eventually got me to dinner to pitch working on this project with them.
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.
Alright, we keep seeing a title for Breeze: The Counselor of Gods. Whose idea was that?
So some of the ones that survived may have enhanced their reputations over the years of their lives, and so Breeze might have had a hand in how he has his own name.