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thegatorgirl00

How were the people of Komashi able to negotiate the spirits to remain as hion if they didn’t have any yoki-hijo? Was it just a myth that only the yoki-hijo were able to negotiate with them to begin with?

Brandon Sanderson

It wasn’t a complete myth. They were more interested in people with this Investiture and this Connection to them. The yoki-hijo were far, far more effective. But they weren’t the only ones who could theoretically negotiate with them. Plus, after what everybody had been through, some things have changed.

thegatorgirl00

You've changed so many lives, including mine, with your stories, and so is there anything we as a community can do for you in return?

Brandon Sanderson

As for what you can do for me in return, I'm not sure. I mean...I already get to write books for a living, which is the thing I wanted most in life.

Trevor Green

What are some of the books you've been a part of, and what exactly were you in charge of?

Isaac Stewart

I’m responsible for all the maps and symbols in the four (so far) Mistborn novels as well as all the symbols, chapter headings, maps, color end pages, and Navani's notebook pages in Brandon's Way of Kings. (The other artwork in the book was done by Michael Whelan, Ben McSweeney, and Ben Call. I'm thrilled to be showcased in the same book with these amazing artists.)

On the design side of things, I've been designing self-published books—covers and interiors—for a while, but recently had the luck to get into the business professionally with the book design for Bryce Moore's YA novel, Vodnik. I've also done covers for some ebook re-releases of some science fiction and fantasy classics from the 80s.

In addition to Brandon's maps, I've also worked on maps in the re-release of Robert Silverberg's Nebula-winning novel A Time of Changes and the upcoming reprint of his very-enjoyable Downward to the Earth.

Kurkistan

Looking more closely at the [Steel Alphabet] font, it looks like we're missing some information. Note that the tin symbol for 'e' and 'i' are slightly different: the dot is in a different location. I suppose that the dots are diacritical marks, then.

Any other diacritical information we should know about the Steel Alphabet (or Alethi, for that matter), Peter?

Peter Ahlstrom

Moving the dot to distinguish vowels is a modern innovation, within the last 100 years by ALLOY OF LAW. I suspect that dots may be gone entirely (except for the two changed vowels, and maybe "capital" letters) in many fonts by the time you get to the second trilogy. Numbers might get a moved dot too. The placement of the dots in the original symbology has to do with Allomancy, but they're largely superfluous in writing.

The Feruchemical symbols (which are in the RPG) are evolved from the same root (the ancient symbols you can see in MISTBORN 3), but I don't know about their use in modern writing. It could be something like the hiragana/katakana distinction. But that's just speculation right now.

Green Hoodie Mistborn

Is there any relation between the smoke that is emitted when a Shardblade cuts somebody and the smoke that Nightblood emits in Warbreaker?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there is.

angie_rasmussen

Are there any female Shardbearers? Or would they be considered immodest for not covering their safehands?

Brandon Sanderson

Eshonai, who is Parshendi, is female. (You saw her fight Dalinar in Book One.) There are others. (One is in the WoR prologue, for example.) It is easy to hide that you have a Shardblade. Historically there were many more than there are currently.

Ian Weiry Writer

You killed Rayse this book. Could you talk about why you decided to kill him off, and have Taravangian be Odium instead. Was that always part of the plan?

Brandon Sanderson

I always work in a way where I have different options and opportunities. Was it always the thing that I was absolutely going to do? No, I keep myself open on some of these things. 

The reason Rayse needed to go: he had been essentially defeated at the end of Oathbringer, when Dalinar does not go over to him. All of his rage, and everything he's trying to do cannot make that happen. He's defeated, at least in a philosophical sense. Now you can bring a defeated enemy back to be a threat again. You can find a new way to make them a threat, but I knew - in this book - Kaladin was not going to fall to him either. But once you've had two books in a row with the characters machinations not - things stymied by the heroes. I needed a different villain at that point.

And I also think that [al]though a lot of deep into the cosmere people are interested in the original Shards and getting their stories, for the average reader Taravangian is a much more identifiable villain. And I've been building him from book one to be not just really scary, but a philosophical opposite to Dalinar. These are all the reasons this book needed to go the way it did.

It has benefits and costs. The cost is Odium stops being the evil you don't know. The evil you don't know is a very powerful force in fantasy literature. The evil you do know does different things. And I lose that evil you don't know though you still have a bit of it, because the power of Odium - the Shard itself - I wouldn't say has volition completely, but it's still there and its a thing. It is constrained by Taravangian and directed by Taravangian, but it's the rage of a deity separated from its morals should be a scary thing. In the hands of someone who is essentially a fallible mortal, should be an even more scary thing. Rayse had gotten to the point where I no longer felt - if I was going to write the books the way I did. This basically became inevitable when I swapped and made Dalinar's book book three. [host reactions: OHhh sure!] I knew something big needed to shift, but fortunately I had several options. There is a version of The Stormlight Archive, where this doesn't happen. I think it's a worse version, but until something is written no matter how much something is in the outline, it's not canon even to me. I like to be willing to reassess what I'm doing.

Talking the other direction, the foreshadowing I put in the books the more I foreshadow, the more I do, the more that locks in what I need to do going forward, because I don't want to undermine that foreshadowing. 

There's a longwinded perhaps a little wishy washy answer to you. I can tell you why I made the decision, but I can't - the outlines are these things that are really organic, because I'm always working on them, and will often have lots of division points, these are different places it can go - because of the way I write characters.

I'm sure this will cause contention. But I did not decide in the original outline, who Shallan would end up with, or who anyone would end up with. I write character relationships as I feel they are appropriate on the page, and I revise the outline to match from that how things are feeling and how it's going. I know there are some shippers out there who are like 'that means there was a version of the ship I wanted, and you didn't do it. It was the nefarious beta readers who forced you not to! [Chaos denies] It was ?Calin's fault!' [hosts laugh]. I'm sure you've heard that before. I don't want to fuel that because these decisions are made not necessarily based on beta reader feedback. These decisions are made based on me giving life to the characters, and feeling where I feel they would legitimately they would go. And rebuilding my outline to match.

While I outline a lot more than my contemporaries, I am not a slave to the outline. I will change major things such as moving Dalinar's flashback sequences to book three which had ramifications all down the line. Or deciding I need to do more with Eshonai and Venli earlier in the series, which had other ramifications to their viewpoints later on because I feel it makes the best story.

Questioner

I can write dialogue, I can write a couple of other things, but I suck at worldbuilding. And that's something I've watched you do online, I love it, it's great, but I cannot describe it. And any time I start I get two to three pages into it and then I just can't do it.

Brandon Sanderson

Practice. Number one, keep practicing. Less is more. If you can build great dialogue and great characters, you can pick a couple of cool things, just a few, and make everything else like-- try to [write dialogue] anyway. Pick an Earth culture. Changed it a little bit. You would much rather be good at character dialogue than worldbuilding, I can tell you that right now. A great character in a generic world is still a great story. But a weak character in a great world is a weak story. So, don't stress this one too much, it'll get better as you go along. But just try picking one thing that is cool for you, that's different, and make that swap, and try writing a story. Don't stress this one too much.

Brandon Sanderson

Moshe wanted me to cut this chapter further, but admitted that there wasn't really any way to do it. I hope it's fun to see old characters–such as OreSeur–coming back to us in different forms, having changed a bit during the time between books.

ryanthelion

I know that you are very meticulous in developing your stories. Were the shardblades, shardplate, mistborn cloaks, or even Nightblood from Warbreaker developed in a similar fashion, or is it a more organic process to making cool weapons and armor? How do you blur the line between what makes sense, and what is just plain fun?

Brandon Sanderson

There are connections in the things you mentioned above, though I don't want to speak of specifics yet for risk of spoiling future revelations.

As for blurring the line between what makes sense and what is fun...I err on the side of the fun. However, part of my meticulous planning is about how to make the fun make sense. I feel that is part of what makes this genre interesting. I decided I wanted to do a story about the Knights Radiant, with the Plate and Blades. From there, I spent a long time thinking about what would make those kinds of weapons reasonable and important to a society.

You can do anything, but do try to focus on laying your groundwork and being consistent.

Argent

• In analyzing the glyphs we've seen in the books, we've noticed that some of their "components" resemble the Thaylen symbols for consonants. The Thaylen don't have letters for vowels though - does that mean that glyphs also disregard vowels 100% of the time, or do vowels affect the way a glyph is written? For example, would "viv" and "vev" look exactly the same, or would there be some differences?
  • If vowels do affect the glyphs, do they affect them by somehow changing the consonant lines?
• Our best theory for deciphering new glyphs is that the glyph "letters" actually correspond to two English letters - so writing "vev" is more akin to writing <ve> followed by <v_> (or perhaps <_v> followed by <ev>). How much of this is in the right direction?

Isaac Stewart

Good questions! The vowels don't affect the glyphs any more than the consonants do. I'm going to RAFO about the glyphs relationship with Thaylen. You're on the right track, however, on half of the word being written and then mirrored. That said, please remember that glyphs aren't meant to be read or even deciphered. They're learned in the same way that we can look at dozens of stylized pictures of cats and still be able to tell that it's a cat.

Argent

So, you've said that glyphs are not meant to be read several times, and I know that, but I think I've been misunderstanding you. I've been assuming they are just too complex and decorated - like an extravagant font. Are you saying they are not a hard writing system instead?

There are obviously some rules to how the glyphs are designed, but does your reply mean that there is always a little bit of "I'll do what looks cool"? Kind of like how the band Koяn decided to flip the "R" - it's still recognizable enough, but there's no rule that says when you can and can't do that?

Isaac Stewart

Let's see if I can explain further. Glyphs are recognized rather than read. If you learn the letters in an alphabet and you come upon an unfamiliar word, you can be reasonably certain you'll know how to pronounce it if you're already fluent in the language. You can at least read it, and you might know from context what it means. Glyphs are different in that if you come upon an unfamiliar glyph you might be able to guess what it means by its shape, but until someone tells you "that glyph means 'soup'" then you're still guessing.

The calligrapher's guild has rules they follow in creating glyphs, and there's a lot of artistic license, like the flipped R in Koяn, for the very reason that the guild isn't expecting people to read the glyphs. Those in the guild--and some scholars who are interested in how glyphs morph over time--might be able to decipher some of the glyphs for academic purposes.

How's that? Any clearer?

Argent

It is clearer, yes :( I think we might still bug you every now and then, but I am coming to terms with the idea that we won't get anywhere near the level of understanding we have for the women's script, for example. It just felt so close, with the slight similarities between some glyph components and the Thaylen letters, you know?

Isaac Stewart

There's definitely a relationship between the Thaylen letters and some of the glyph components (although it's not the biggest part of what makes up the glyphs). Imagine if back in the middle ages a culture decided to use some latin letters as the basis for symbols so that it would be easy to mark things for people who don't read. This hypothetical culture threw in a smattering of other alphabets in there too. So, if that sort of thing developed naturally over time with phonemes and symbols getting added as the culture encountered other cultures, then you might get a bit of an idea of what's going on with the glyphs.

ccstat

I admit I'm still a little confused. The glyphs are recognized based on their shapes, but those shapes also appear to be highly mutable. I'm not sure how to reconcile those two ideas.

If an established glyph can be stylized into a crown, a skyeel, or the other shapes that highprinces use as their symbols, how does someone associate the new shape with the standard one with which they are familiar? Does the stylized version preserve some core recognizable shape (since the constituent graphemes alone wouldn't be enough to decipher the meaning)? Or does each instance of a glyph have to be learned separately?

Isaac Stewart

I agree that those two ideas are hard to reconcile! Let me see if I can explain it a bit more without giving too much away.

There's a calligrapher's guild that creates (and I suspect controls to a certain extent) the official glyphs. If a new glyph needs to be made, they do it in a way they see is proper, based on canonized rules that have developed over time.

That doesn't keep amateur glyphmakers from creating things from time to time, and there's certainly a shift in shape as glyphs morph through the ages. The Guild is probably a lot like the Oxford English Dictionary folks, occasionally canonizing popular but unauthorized glyphs that get used so much that they become ubiquitous.

Usually it's just guild members who are morphing glyphs into poems and such. If a nobleperson wants a glyph for their house, they go to someone authorized by the guild, and they'll stylize things into a crown, a hammer, etc. A good example of this will be seen in one of the pieces of art in the new book. We've seen Dalinar's Tower and Crown. Watch for the Sword and Crown and compare the shapes inside the Sword with the shapes inside the Tower. Maybe that will help with some understanding.

Questioner

Was Adolin and Shallan always the endgame, or did you ever shift to Kaladin?

Brandon Sanderson

I did shift, back and forth. So, what I do with a lot of my relationships is, I don't usually plan them out. A lot of characterization, I have to leave the characters kind of their own volition. So I write my way into relationships and I write my way into the character elements. I plot my world, my setting, and my plot out ahead of time but I let the characters go where they're going to go. I know some people would rather she made a different decision, but that is the decision that felt right to me going forward.

I've just validated all the Shallarin people on the internet saying, "Aw, he changed his mind!"

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sazed's Arrival

I debated how to have the crew react to the koloss threat. It seemed that having them get worked up about it would be out of character. They all know there's little they can do at the moment–the koloss are too far away to be a pertinent threat, and the other armies have them boxed in.

I eventually realized that the crew might see the koloss as an advantage. They are an opportunistic group, and have been feeling overwhelmed by events. Any change in the status could end up being an advantage to them.

So it is that twenty-thousand monsters marching on their city gets dismissed almost as easily as Sazed's warnings about the mists. The crew members aren't fools, but they are pragmatists. They have enough to worry about at the moment. More nebulous threats will wait.

Questioner

What level of completion do you write your novels and then submit to editors?

Brandon Sanderson

What level of completion do I write my novels and then submit to the editors. So here is a quick look at my drafting process. Draft 1, hopefully no one ever sees. That-- I'm a momentum writer, a lot of writers are like this, where I can't stop in the middle and revise unless something is really broken. So if there's something I want to change I just keep going and try it out for the next chapter. "Oh I needed another character in here" I will just add them in and everyone will act like they've always been there. And I'll try it out for a chapter and if it works I'll keep going that way, and if it doesn't I'll cut them out and try something else in the next chapter. So first drafts can be really weird, right? Like "Am I supposed to know this person that everyone else knows? Have I forgotten who this was?" and things like that, characters just vanish, or I'll leave out the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is really easy to put in later on, you're just like-- Stuff like this.

Second draft is to fix all that stuff. I can sometimes send that on, but what I really like to send is third draft which is the first polish. Where I actually try for the first time to make it pretty, or at least non-cringeworthy. So that's what I send to an editor. That's what also I'll send to alpha readers, which are my writing group, my agent, my friends and family, and things like that. Once that gets back I do a bunch of revisions until it's good, and then we'll get beta readers, who are usually community beta readers… If you want to be one of those I'm not the person to convince, Peter is the person to convince. He is the executi-- editorial assistant, not executive--I've three assistants, they all have different titles--He's my editorial assistant. He's the one who picks the betas, and they do a bunch of reads and then I do a bunch of drafts based on what they say. And then it goes to like proofreads and things like that.

Questioner

Any advice for integrating realistic battle tactics with a magic system when writing a book?

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, it's tough. It depends on how much the magic going to get used and if you can find a real-world analogue or not. If you can find a real-world analogue, it can be handy to be like, "this magic is basically like adding an air force, let's see how that happens." If you can't find a real-world analogue, and it's very common, enough that it'll shape-change battle, then you need to make the sure the battlefield, you're controlling it and make it about the magic, so that no one can say "oh, you got the tactics wrong" because you're controlling it and you're controlling the narrative. 

Questioner

Basically make the magic the more important part?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. There's lots of ways to do this but that's a good way to do that. That would be my recommendation.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Six

Spook Starts to Believe in Kelsier

In this chapter, Spook begins to turn into the person he was during the first draft of the book. In that draft, he immediately listened to Kelsier's voice and didn't question its existence at all. The revision changed things so that he was surprised when he heard it, looking around several times, uncomfortable. This works better in many ways, though the starkness of how unhinged his constant burning of tin had made him before was kind of sad to lose.

Questioner

When Lift the Nightwatcher to not change, or whatever it was...

Brandon Sanderson

Mm hmm.

Questioner

...her exact wording. Was that triggered by the loss of a loved one?

Brandon Sanderson

There is loss involved......that's a RAFO.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fifty-Three - Part Two

Yes, Ahan is a traitor. When building this book, I knew that I wanted one of the characters to betray the rest. I also knew that I didn't want it to be the most obvious one in the group. This left me with a problem. I had to provide a character whom nobody would suspect as a traitor, yet at the same time make it believable that he would turn traitor.

The first thing I did was throw in Edan as a diversion. He worked perfectly–virtually all of my alpha readers mentioned that they thought for certain that he would turn traitor. I had Edan run off early because I wanted to lull the readers into a sense of security, thinking that their "traitor" character had disappeared already. I also didn't want to throw Ahan's betrayal in with Edan still there–I think that would have made Edan's purpose too obvious to those who could see the two contrasted that way.

The next thing I did was begin foreshadowing that Ahan acts, and speaks, without thinking through his actions. I mention this a couple of places, including at the eclipse party. I made his character a bit indifferent, a lot blustery, and tried to indicate that he didn't quite see the treason he was engaging in as being as dangerous as it really was.

Finally, I began having him act suspicious. You can go look through the spoiler annotations if you want notes of where I had him doing things like this. Essentially, he acted odd when Telrii was mentioned, and he was the one who went to visit Telrii when the group wanted one of their party to get in good with the enemy.

These are small things, I realize. However, I think they work well enough. I wanted to get across a sense of shock and surprise at the betrayal. I always hate it when traitors are obviously oily men with shifty eyes. I don’t think people trust that kind of man.

Anyway, I think the other thing that lets me get away with Ahan's betrayal is that he doesn't completely change characters with the treason. He isn't a different person–he doesn't suddenly become a "bad guy," like happened in some stories. (Ahem. The TV show 24, first season.) Ahan just didn't think hard enough about what he was doing–he took his actions too lightly.

Questioner

Shallan has two spren. I assume the Shardblade she is using in Words of Radiance is Pattern. But had she sworn the Third Ideal at that point?

Brandon Sanderson

I will get this whole timeline explained for you. It's really intricate, though.

Brandon Sanderson

Author's Foreword

This is probably a good place to talk about the shift from third person into first person.

The book was originally written in the third person. There was a narrator telling us this story–someone listed as “Cecil G. Bagsworth the Third” on the title page. (Cecil, by the way, was invented by my friend Dan Wells as a humorous alter ego. I borrowed him for this as an inside joke, but eventually cut him–then put him back in as Alcatraz’s Free Kingdoms editor.)

There was a joke inherent in the narrator guise for this book. As the novel progressed, you realized that the author of the book was indeed Alcatraz, who was writing it and talking about himself in the third person. This let me have all kinds of jokes where the narrator would exaggeratedly describe Alcatraz as being smart, witty, or handsome. It also let me get away with some very clever word plays.

The problem is, it was too clever. Meaning that it was something I found funny, but that undermined the book. Since it was so convoluted and strange, it distracted from the story and the characters. It also felt a little bit too much like the Lemony Snicket narrator used in the A Series of Unfortunate Events books.

Credit for getting me to change the book from third person to first person goes to my agent Joshua and his assistant Steve. Joshua was very firm on the need to swap out the third person narrator for a first person that would bring us closer to the character of Alcatraz, while at the same time give a more solid narrative reason for all of the diversions and asides in the book.

Once I came around to this suggestion–which didn’t take much–I realized that I’d need a foreword to explain why Alcatraz was writing this book. Now that the ‘third person who is the first person’ mechanic was gone, I could create and use a backstory for why Alcatraz is writing his memoirs, which I ended up really liking (far more than what I lost) for what it let me do.

This introduction not only lets me acclimatize readers to the difference between Librarian lands and the Free Kingdoms, but also lets me begin to establish the character of Alcatraz the failure–the person our hero will become. That gives some tension to the narrative, I think, as the reader wonders how Alcatraz ended up like that. This introduction gives a framework to the fictional publication to the book, giving us a story we can all–as readers–be part of: the resistance against the Librarians.

Assistant Peter’s note: I’ve put up the original third person versions of the first two chapters. You may enjoy comparing them to the final versions.

NeedsToShutUp

If a Shardblade were to cut a Feruchemist's limb and turn it grey, could the Feruchemist still tap a metalmind below the cut?

Brandon Sanderson

What a great question, I've never thought that. I'm going to say they could not. That's a really good question. We'll see if I go back on that, if it ever happens in the series.

Questioner

[Compliments artwork in The Way of Kings, asks how working with illustrators has changed the way Brandon sees the world]

Brandon Sanderson

One of my initial visions for The Way of Kings was one of these cross-genre books. I wanted to bring illustrations and-- you know there's this sense for whatever reason in contemporary fiction that illustrations are for kids, not for adults. That's not the way it always was. If you go back to the 1800's every book was illustrated, to an extent. And you'd get these beautiful bookplates and things like this that would be in the novels. I wanted to go back to something like that. Though I did want to be aware of the idea that you as a reader are participating, and I wanted to be careful not to define too much what people look like, particularly characters, because I wanted that to be through you.

So I wanted to be doing artwork in the books, but I didn't want to do artwork that was too specific to the characters—other than the cover art. This meant I wanted to do in-world stories, which is how Shallan started to develop as a character. She was based off of Pliny the Elder, as a character and my research about him and some of the people like him; and a little bit about Darwin and his travels and things like this. So I wanted-- I started to build her. She replaced a character in the original Way of Kings, what I call Way of Kings Prime, that I wasn't pleased with.

So I really want to do a lot of artwork for the books, and it's been a lot of fun. One of the first things I did when I went to pitch Way of Kings to Tor was I commissioned artwork of all the characters. Because it was going to be such a visual book, I wanted to have in hand for me reference material on characters, races, things like this. I wanted to have this like world book that you sometimes get in a book afterward, I wanted that in the before. So that I had it all in hand. Because there's a lot of screwy stuff going on in this world.

It really helped me to envision, to visualize how this book was supposed to go. Beyond that it's just awesome. Who here has read Watchmen? Have you guys read Watchmen? If you haven't read Watchmen it's amazing, particularly if you're a comic book geek like me. When I first read Watchmen-- what Watchmen does, it adds all sorts of ephemera. Like one of the characters is creating action figures of all the other characters and trying to market and sell them, and they include his pitch for the action figures and things like that. And it was part of what brought that book to life for me: not just the excellent writing, but it was the idea that this is not just a comic book, this is a comic book plus a world. And I wanted to write books that were not just a book, they were a book plus a world.

It's been a blast. I am in a position where I can hire the artists myself, which allows me to have a lot of control, and so the artwork inside the book is all stuff that I've commissioned. I've gone to the artists and I've talked to them myself, and I've picked my favorite artists and we do this awesome work just as part of it.

Hopefully it's something that people enjoy, it's something that I intend to keep doing and it's been a blast.

Tyran Amiros

What happened to Kwaan? I was half expecting to see him amongst the kandra First Generation.

Brandon Sanderson

Kwaan went into hiding, and he was eventually discovered and executed by Rashek. He wasn't among the First Generation, though he would have been if he hadn't turned against Rashek. Rashek kept the plate, however, just as he kept Alendi's logbook. Partially because even then, Rashek was going a little mad, but partially because of the reminders about his old life they contained.

Vegasdev

I'm assuming you meant Alendi hunted him down because he turned against Alendi. Or did Kwaan also turn against Rashek?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I meant that he turned against Rashek. Remember, the members of the First Generation were offered immortality in exchange for their Hemalurgy. They had to make this choice for all of the world's Feruchemists. Because his uncle had been the one who gave Rashek the chance to become the Lord Ruler in the first place, Rashek blessed him and included him in the decision. (Speaking directly into his mind along with the others during Rashek's moment of ascension.)

Kwaan was the only one who turned down this offer, calling it a betrayal of who they were as a people. Rashek could have just made him one anyway, but in a moment of anger, he tried to destroy Kwaan—which he couldn't do, not with Preservation's power. As the other Feruchemists changed, Kwaan remained the same. Rashek eventually hunted him down and killed him.

Questioner

How did people-- So apparently Zahel... who is teaching Kaladin Shardblade stuff... He's Warbreaker?

Brandon Sanderson

He is Warbreaker.

Questioner

How did people figure that out?

Brandon Sanderson

The color metaphors. He displays BioChromatic Breath. It's not that great because I didn't put a lot of color metaphors into the book, even though I wish I had, I've gotten better about adding flavor to books. But really he notices when Kaladin is coming to knock on his door before Kaladin gets there. That's one of the big clues that people got.

Questioner

For the creatures on Roshar... where do you start in your worldbuilding for that kind of thing?

Brandon Sanderson

So where I started for Roshar was the highstorm. So I knew I had the highstorm and I was going to want to build out from that, and I would want an ecology that incorporated the magic. Those were kind of the two things I was looking for. I wanted everything to deal with the storms in some way and be affected by them, and I wanted Stormlight and spren to be integrated into the way that the worldbuilding happened because this was my big worldbuilding epic. So I started along those two lines, and that's where gemhearts came from. That is where-- The [singers] grew naturally out of that. A lot of the creatures and things I looked toward tidal pools because I figured this was kind of a similar sort of thing, an environment that has to deal with a drastic change, a biome that deals with this repeatedly every day.

asmodeus

If the only variable we change, during the creation of Nightblood, is to use a different Allomantically-viable metal (say, iron or bronze instead of steel), but keep everything else constant (the same Breaths, same people doing the same visualization, and whatever other factors were involved), would it have manifested different powers/capabilities?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Most likely.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Two

Time for my second favorite chapter! (The first, if you recall, was the one where Raoden led Karata to the king's palace.)

There are so many things going on in this chapter that I don't quite know where to start. I guess I'll begin with the Mysteries. I drew part of this religion, including the name, from the mystery cults of ancient Greece. I added the ritual sacrifices to give them a bit of zing. You'll get a little bit more of an explanation of the Mysteries, and why someone might decide to join one, in a later Sarene chapter.

As I've noted before, religion–especially its dark side–is a theme in this book. I don't think I could have covered this subject well in the book without including a look at cult mentality. Now, I'll admit that "cult" is a word we bandy about too frequently in religious discussions. It has been noted that Christianity started out as a kind of cult, and it seems that many consider any unorthodox religion to be a "cult."

To me, however, a cult is something that twists who you are, changing you into a shadow of what you used to be. I firmly believe that you can judge a religion by the effects it produces in its practitioners. Does it make them better people? If so, then there's a good chance that the religion is worth something. Does it turn them into people who sacrifice their own servants in an effort to make evil spirits come and kill their daughters-in-law? If so, well. . .you might want to stay away from that one.

Anyway, the Mysteries were–in my mind–a natural outgrowth of the Mystical Jesker religion. Like Galladon is always saying, they're NOT the same religion. The Mysteries are a perversion and simplification of Jesker teachings. Jesker looks to the Dor–the power behind all things–and tries to understand it. The Mysteries treat the Dor like some kind of force to be manipulated. (Which actually, is what AonDor does. . . .)

Paradox2063

Soooo, hope you don't mind, but not long ago I finished reading The Aether of Night and the White Sand ... books.

And I've seen that Dragonsteel exists, but there are only 5 copies and they're all in the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University.

Is it possible to get a copy to read the same way we can get the first two I mentioned?

Sorry to bother you. Can't wait til January though.

Brandon Sanderson

I don't send it out yet. Maybe once I've gotten far enough in the cosmere that certain things in it are not spoilers. But the book, now that Bridge Four is gone (they used to be in that one) really doesn't have much to recommend it, unlike the others.

Maybe I'll change my mind some day. For now, I don't send it out. (Sorry.)

Questioner

In Warbreaker, the royals, their hair color changes. When I was reading Mistborn, I noticed there was different times that Shan Elariel's hair was described as black vs auburn or different things like that, was that...?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a typo. There are times where if you watch that'll be a clue, that one is not.

Brandon Sanderson

THE WAY OF KINGS

The Mistborn books were successful. Many readers liked the idea of a world where the Dark Lord won, where prophecy and the hero were not what we expected them to be.

Because of how well it worked, however, I fell into something of a trap. When it came time to rewrite The Way of Kings, I floundered. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but I felt I needed to insert a major twist on the fantasy genre, along the lines of what I’d done in Mistborn. What would be my twist? What would be the postmodern aspect of this book? It literally kept me up nights. (Not hard to do, since I’m an insomniac, but still.)

Over time, I wrestled with this because a larger piece of me resisted doing the postmodern thing in Mistborn again. That piece of me began to ask some difficult questions. Did I want to be known as “The guy who writes postmodern fantasies”? There would be worse monikers to have. However, one of the major purposes of deconstructionism, is to point out the problem with self-referential material. There was a gimmick to the Mistborn books. It was a very useful one, since it allowed me to pitch the book in one sentence. “The hero failed; this is a thousand years later.”

There are a lot of very good postmodern stories out there, and I love the Mistborn books. But my heart wasn’t in doing that again. In order to write Mistborn the way I did, I also had to rely on the archetypes. My characters, for example, were very archetypal: The street urchin. The clever rogue who robs to do good. The idealistic young nobleman who wants to change the world. My plots were very archetypal as well: a heist story for the first book, a siege narrative for the second. I believe that a good book can use archetypes in new ways without being clichéd. (The Name of the Wind is an excellent example.)

In fact, it’s probably impossible not to reflect archetypes in storytelling. I’m sure they’re there in The Way of Kings. But I found in working on it that I didn’t want to intentionally build a story where I relied upon reader expectations. Instead, I wanted to look for themes and character concepts that I haven’t approached before, and that I haven’t seen approached as often in the genre.

There’s a distinction to be found. It’s much like the difference in humor between parody and satire. (As I define them.) In the first, you are funny only if your audience understands what you are parodying. In the second, you are funny because you are innately funny. Early Pratchett is parody. Mid and late Pratchett is satire. (Not to mention brilliant.)

And this is why, in the end, I decided that I would not write The Way of Kings as a postmodern epic. (Not intentionally, at least.) Mistborn felt, in part, like a reflection. There were many original parts, but at its core it was a study of the genre, and—to succeed at its fullest—it needed an audience who understood the tropes I was twisting about. Instead of making its own lasting impression and improvement on the genre, it rested upon the work done by others.

In short, I feel that using that same process again would make it a crutch to me. There is nothing at all wrong with what Mistborn did. I’m very proud of it, and I think it took some important steps. But it’s not what I want to be known for, not solely. I don’t just want to reflect and study; I want to create. I want to write something that says, “Here is my addition, my tiny step forward, in the genre that I love.”

To couch it in the terms of the Jewel video that started the essay, instead of creating a piece of art that screams, “Hey, look at those other pieces of art and hear my take on them,” I wanted to create something that says, “Look at this piece of art. This is what I think art should be in this genre now.” Part of me thinks that a video that was beautiful for its own sake, that didn’t rely upon the follies of others, would do more toward undermining those follies than would a video that pointed them all out.

And so, I tossed aside my desire to confine The Way of Kings into a single, pithy sentence explaining the slant I was taking on the fantasy genre. I just wrote it as what it was.

Brandon Sanderson

Another focal chapter. I like how this one turned out. The fountains were a last-minute addition. Originally, I'd planned executions, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I knew I needed something dramatic and memorable, but I didn't want to be so cheesy as to do something like a guillotine. Since I'd already established that there were fountains in the city, I think this way created a distinctive image.

One worry in this chapter is the population. There are a lot of people in Luthadel, and packing them all into one square is kind of a stretch. I hope that it would be believable that they would gather this many people together, and I changed the executions from single-people to four-at-once in order to make it seem like the Priesthood was taking the large population into account.

Questioner

Why does Szeth's spren not help him as a [Shardblade] even though he has said the Third Ideal?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, RAFO.

Let's just say that the highspren are perhaps a little bit different from other spren.

Skyler Cecil

Is there an Investiture cycle on Roshar? Cycling through the crem rain and flora and fauna back into the storm, or something like that. Like the water cycle. If Investiture is finite, is it recycled back into the Cosmere when Investiture like Breath or Stormlight is expended? Otherwise, wouldn't Investiture run out?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there is such a cycle. It is renewed and changed time and time again. It gets in and out of the Spiritual Realm, often with the birth of new individuals.

Temporary_Success_87

When you changed Radiant's hair to blonde was that a sort of a nod to Wheel of Time - with the Three being a reflection of Min, Aveindha, and Elayne. Or was that just a happy coincidence?

Brandon Sanderson

Happy coincidence.

Jackson Dickert

We learn [Yumi]'s repeated this day for 1700 years, and her memory is patched over by the father machine. If memory and Investiture are so closely tied together, is the father machine also taking her Investiture? How does that work, because she's such a highly Invested individual, it seems like if it could take any Investiture from her, it would take all of it, like the nightmares did.

Brandon Sanderson

When I play with this, with tweaking memory and things like that, my go-to in the cosmere, in the three cases where you've seen it happen, is that those excising memories have to be really, really careful, or the body will reject what you're doing. So, all three times you've seen it happen, it's been one little sliver of memory is getting changed. The father machine might even just be overwriting it each day, basically blanking that Investiture, but not stealing any of it. Vasher does pull a little bit out when he takes the memory, and the same thing happens with Wit when it happened to him. But I think the father machine's doing it in a slightly different way, and it has to be really careful, or it'll be too obvious, and the whole illusion, the facade, will collapse.

Marc Aplin

Okay, another question that's kind of similar to that one. Why are so many Alethi point of views used as opposed to others?

Brandon Sanderson

Why are so many Alethi point of views used as opposed to others? This was basically one of the changes I made as I was working on the series. I originally had planned to show all of these viewpoints, from all across the world, and I found that, when...the original time I tried this book, that since people's plots weren't interwoven together, the book was very difficult to read. Because people weren't connected to one another, emotionally and spiritually. And so because of that, when I rewrote the book, when I started again, I made sure to put Dalinar and Kaladin and Adolin in proximity of one another. So that this story...their stories would play off of each other. And so you would have a consistent storyline.

That said, we do have...you know, those three are all Alethi. But Shallan is not, and Szeth is not. And those two have fairly significant parts in this book. Most of the characters will be Alethi for that reason, that their stories are tied together. But you will....see, this is one of the reasons why, with this book, once I pulled everything back and was telling Alethi stories, I felt I needed to show the breadth of the world, and that's where the interludes came from, was me wanting to jump around the world and show all these different other characters and cultures, but shown in bite-sized portions so you didn't get overwhelmed with all of these different characters, that you knew when you go to an interlude, you can read this person and then you can kind of forget about them. You don't have to follow who they are, because they're there to show you the breadth of the world and what's going on, but not necessarily to show you...to go on a big distracting tangent.

Miles Stone

Will these [Secret Project] novels be published traditionally for people who can't afford the subscription service?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, we will eventually. The ebook and audio will be published very quickly next year, right around when the books come out. There will be traditional published editions for you eventually. We'll see how quickly we can get those to happen; again, the traditional published version of Dawnshard took about a year and change, about a year and three months. So going through traditional publishing is a lot slower. But that's just because they have to distribute these things to all the different bookstores, and whatnot. We will make that happen. But if you can't afford the Kickstarter, there will be ebooks and audiobooks of these, each, that you can kind of a la carte choose which ones you would want.

ShadowSgt

The history of Nightblood, we know that it's created by knowledge of the Shardblades. Would you say that Vasher's first trip to Roshar coincided with a certain individual that tried to take over all of Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

You're talking about Sadees?

ShadowSgt

The Sunmaker?

Brandon Sanderson

...I'd have to look at the timeline, but it was not-- it is not something I have present in my mind. It could have overlapped. So, it might overlap, but there's not a cause-and-effect there.

ShadowSgt

So, Sunmaker and Vasher are sep--

Brandon Sanderson

Are not the same people, good question. Sunmaker is legitimately Dalinar's ancestor.

Moderator

So the question I asked, at the beginning of this session, is: You used the definite article…

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Moderator

Who’s the Rithmatist?

Brandon Sanderson

Who’s the Rithmatist? So I imagined the Rithmatist more being a, um, a book like, let’s see if I can find an example of it. It’s not defining a person, um, it is, uh…

Moderator

The role of the Rithmatist.

Brandon Sanderson

...trying to. Yeah, yeah. Like I’m trying to find… There’s books that are like this, where it’s just like, uh, it’s almost like you could call a series The Rithmatist, The Archive, the this, that sort of idea where the title is… Look, it was originally called Scribbler, um, and Tor suggested changing the title to something that highlighted the magic a little bit more and was a better fit, and I liked The Rithmatist as that, but it’s particularly because the future books could be The Aztlanian and The Nebraskan.

Moderator

And they’ll fit, they’ll be right next to one another--no they won’t. Cause the doesn’t get catalogued.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, exactly, but it felt like it was going to, uh, it just worked. But The Rithmatist more is like, you know, it’s not specifically any individual. I know there are other books that have this feel. But yeah, all right. What do you guys want to know from me? Go ahead.

Questioner

Hemalurgy is mentioned as something that has "broad implications." But that's of Ruin, right? (Or now it is of Harmony.)

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but don't take the "of Ruin" and "of Preservation" too strongly, but yes.

Questioner

But, I mean, somebody couldn't just walk along with a metal spike on, say, Nalthis, and stab 'em and now they have the power, could they?

Brandon Sanderson

If they knew where to stab them, yes, they could.

Questioner

Anywhere in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

You can stab someone and get their power?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgy has been built in such a way that it rips off pieces of the soul. If you can rip off the right piece of the soul and attach it to somebody else, it will change your Identity, and it can rewrite anything that's attached to your soul. Identity, Connection, it can rewrite Investiture, all of this stuff it could potentially do.

Questioner

And do the things you stab people with—are they always metal or does that depend on the planet?

Brandon Sanderson

No, that's metal, that's—

Questioner

*inaudble*

Brandon Sanderson

Well yes, you could make it do something like that. That is totally possible. But the metal— Yeah. Anyway.

Questioner

With the other Shards you kind of have to be near that Shard to get that—there's no Allomancy.

Brandon Sanderson

To get it, yes. To have that part of your soul. But, for instance, Allomancy would work on other planets. The only one that's going to have trouble working on other planets, right now, are the ones on Sel because of the way that the magics are built.

Brandon Sanderson

Vivenna's Thoughts on Being a Drab

A lot of what happened to Vivenna—how she saw the world and how she acted—was influenced by being a Drab. As I've said before, the Hallandren aren't right when they say losing your Breath does nothing to you. Most Drabs struggle with depression, and the fact that they're almost always sick doesn't help either.

And so, Vivenna's time on the streets was artificially made more dreary and terrible than it truly was. Being a Drab, being sick, the shock of being betrayed—these things combined to give you the person you saw in the previous two chapters. It's a way to cut a corner. I wanted Vivenna to feel like she'd been on the streets for months, but for it only to have been a few weeks.

She is able to make her hair change colors again. This is a representation of the fact that she has started to pull out of the nightmare. She's slightly in control of her world again, and the roughest time for her has passed. There's also a clue in that hair, one that Vasher mentions. Because of it, and her heritage, and something very mysterious in the past, every member of the royal line has a fraction of a divine Returned Breath in them. That makes it much easier for them to learn to Awaken than a normal person.

Questioner

When you were planning for Zahel being Vasher, how long did you [plan] that?

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher was in the 2002 version of The Way of Kings by name, as Vasher. I only changed him to the new name after I finished this entire draft. Because I'm like "oh, he'd probably go under a pseudonym". So he's in Roshar for 12 years our time—I mean I had written him 12 years ago, in Roshar.

Questioner

And what's he doing there? Why? Is that a RAFO?

Brandon Sanderson

You'll have to read the Way of Kings Prime but he is in there by name, it blew my assistant's mind when he went back and found it.

He was doing much of the same thing that he did in this one. But in that book-- in Way of Kings Prime the big defining difference was that Kaladin took the Blade and Plate, and Zahel—or Vasher as he was named there—was his teacher then, and that was a much bigger part of the book because the book was about become-- you know. And it was the first book and him and his teacher, so yeah.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Could Shai Soul Forge herself into becoming an Elantrian?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That would be really hard. First of all, she'd have to change where she's born, then Soul Forge the fact that she became an Elantrian. Even then, she'd probably look like an Elantrian, but not have any powers. There would probably need to be some kind of bridge, or she would need some kind of super push from AonDor to make it work.

Zas

Why do Kandra need two spikes to have a blessing and to become sentient?

Brandon Sanderson

It is just the nature of how Hemalurgy works. More spikes are capable of changing form and body more, and I didn’t feel that one spike was viable for the alterations that are made to their nature.

ArgentSun

Prior to the arrival of the Everstorm, what happened to the Heralds who died? Were they immediately sent back to Braize to wait until the rest arrived and started the Isolation, or could they return to Roshar, similarly to how the Fused can return multiple times?

Brandon Sanderson

So, the mechanics of this I've been dodgy on on purpose because I know I'm gonna want some wiggle room in the books when I write them. Right now they can't return. They go, they're done. I have to make sure that works with the magic and with the narrative as I write them, so you can take this as one of those Words of Brandon that the books might contradict, but the original outline has, you die, you're there, you can't go back. But there are various incarnations of this where they were holding the Fused back by doing that, from being reborn, if that makes sense. And that's one of the parts that I'm not 100% sure where I'm going to go with, because when I came up with all this stuff, I wasn't working with the realities of the books, where I was writing the Fused, and things like this. And now that I have, this is very natural to be like, alright, let me do a reset, and make sure that the lore and worldbuilding all is consistent now that I've done five books-- I haven't done the fifth one yet, but you know what I mean. It's one of the reasons I have the break in between, is to give myself a chance to go to my outlines and make sure. Originally they were holding back... you could kill Fused and they wouldn't return, because Heralds were holding them back, the Oathpact was. But that meant when the Heralds died, they couldn't return either, and so the war could actually happen. But the Everstorm and things like that have changed that. Anyway, that's the answer until I write it in the books and get you some canon in the flashbacks of the Heralds we will be writing eventually.

Questioner

My other question is about the phrase "Shadows of Self".  It's mentioned in the last Mistborn book. Is it a specific shadow? Are we going to see if that shadow's in Shadows of Self?

Brandon Sanderson

We are not going-- Well yes and no. What it is referencing in this book is the different roles that each person plays in their life. That is the core meaning of Shadows of Self. But then, there is also, there is a kandra involved, which they change shape and become different people, so "who are you?" and identity is a big thing.

Brandon Sanderson

Hello, reddit. I figured I'd pop back in and give you a new update on your book. (I can't believe it's been six months since the last one.)

I'll give a slight spoiler warning to everything below this paragraph. I'm obviously not going to say anything story-wise that would spoil the book. However, I'll be talking a little about the structure of it and what's going on with the draft. I can see some people, very sensitive to spoilers, being concerned about learning anything at all about the book. For you who fit this description, let me just say that I'm approaching the halfway point, but I'm not there yet. The book is going very well, and I'm pleased with it.

Now, on to a deeper discussion of the novel. The first thing I did for Stormlight 3 was work on the flashback sequences for Dalinar and Szeth, as I hadn't yet decided which one would match this book. Through this process, I decided on Dalinar--a decision contrary to my original outline from the start of the series. This didn't concern me; the decision was made based on how the series had developed, and it's always good to expect some things to change during the actual writing. (For example, much of Kaladin's plot from book two was originally slated for book three.) Being too slavish to an outline isn't ever a good thing.

This decision made, I sat down and wrote Dalinar's flashbacks in their entirety. By the end of them, I was completely convinced these were the best paring for this book. That meant, as this was "his" book, I wanted Dalinar viewpoints to show up in all five parts of Oathbringer. You see, Stormlight Books have a kind of strange format. I plot them in this bizarre fashion that likely makes sense only to me. But I'll try to explain.

I split each book into five parts, which group together to form three chunks plotted like individual volumes of a trilogy--with a large, over-arching plot that ties into the five-book arc of the initial sequence, which in turn is half of the complete ten book arc. Each volume, then, has a complete trilogy's worth of arcs and climaxes for the primary characters (Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar) while also having a self-contained flashback sequence, at least one secondary novelette about a character that hasn't had viewpoints so far, and a related short story collection. The "main character" for the book gets, beyond their flashback sequence, a role in each part of the story.

So this means a slightly larger plot for Dalinar, and a slight scaling back for Kaladin and Shallan. (Don't worry; both will be in the book around as much as Kaladin was in Words of Radiance.) Now, the plotting for Oathbringer--as I mentioned--is broken into five chunks, which combine into three chunks. (I call them books here for lack of a better word, as the novel--like each other in the series--is a trilogy bound in one volume. Don't be confused. This doesn't mean I'm splitting the book for publication, only that it is plotted in a way with divisions between the story arcs.)

"Book One" of Oathbringer is all of Part one, plus the interludes. "Book Two" is parts two and three, plus two sets of interludes. "Book Three" is parts four and five, plus interludes. Of these, part two is going to be the biggest oddball, as I'm putting another novelette (separated into six chapters) in here as I feel I need a glimpse at another character. So it's going to have the least focus on primary viewpoints.

I've finished all of the flashbacks, all of the viewpoints for part one, the novelette for part two, and part of the other novelette (the one that will take the place of Szeth from book one or Eshonai from book two.) This, so far, puts me at about 180k words written--with 130k of that being part one in its entirety, and the rest being scenes listed above.

If that sounds confusing, I apologize. These books are somewhat involved to write, and more complex stories demand some outlining that gets a little crazy. However, I did whip up a visualization of the viewpoint structure, which I've posted below.

Stormlight Three Visual Outline

This doesn't give an exact view of scale, as--for instance--part one will likely be the longest of the five. Part Two looks the most full, but it's likely to have only three or four chapters from each of the primary characters (well, one chapter from one of them) so it should actually be shorter than part one. Part Five isn't cut off; I know it will be short, as it was in the other two books.

Next up is to do a revision of part one. (I don't often do revisions in the middle of a book, but with books this long, it's helpful for me to keep the plot under control and maintain continuity through the parts.) From there, I'll write Dalinar for part two, interweave with the appropriate flashbacks and the already-finished novelette, then look at the detailed plotting of the other three viewpoints in the part. I hope to bring this part in at around 70k words, bringing the total book to 200k and getting us to roughly the halfway point.

If this makes your head spin, then don't worry, you can ignore it. It is important to me that these books, though epic in scope, retain a tight view of the primary characters through all volumes. You will see a lot of Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan. You will see a moderate amount of Szeth, Eshonai, Jasnah, Adolin, and Navani. There will be a few surprises regarding other characters who have slightly larger places in the plot, but in general, anyone not on one of the above lists isn't allowed more than a viewpoint here or there. (Until the second five books, where our primary characters will shuffle. So you Renarin fans will have to be patient.)

I'm determined to maintain momentum in this story without letting it veer too far away from the primary plot. I feel that a careful outline and a consistent structure are the methods by which I will achieve this.

Thanks for your patience.

Haylo_Alex

You've said before that Soulcasting can't create atium or lerasium which makes sense since they're made of Investiture from other Shards. But could a Soulcaster, perhaps in the proximity of Dalinar's perpendicularity, provide enough Stormlight to Soulcast something into Honor's Godmetal (tanavastium)? What about Cultivation's metal, or an alloy of both, like Shardblade metal?

Brandon Sanderson

So, creating a God Metal is not something that's done easily in the Cosmere. HOWEVER, it is possible. You'd need a ton of Investiture, and being near Dalinar's perpendicularity is unlikely to be enough. I'd say Soulcasting, or something akin to it, has the means to do this if it could obtain the proper power charge.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Six - Part Two

If I had a chance to rewrite the book again, one of the things I'd change is the scene where Vin gets caught here. If you want to imagine it this way instead, pretend that she dropped both Inquisitors completely, and therefore thought she was safe to inspect the room beyond. The Inquisitors can actually heal far more quickly than I've had them do in this book.

My problem with this scene is how easily Vin lets herself be cornered and captured. I think that breaking into the room is exactly the sort of thing she'd do. However, I just don't think the writing works here (around the section where she gets surprised and grabbed by the Inquisitor.) She's more careful than that. The way it's written makes it seem like she gets grabbed simply because that's what needed to happen. There isn't enough drama, or enough realization, to the scene.

I do like what happens afterword, however–Vin using the Eleventh Metal. In this book we get our first hints regarding just how much Allomancy has been hidden and obfuscated by the Lord Ruler. Vin realizes that the Eleventh Metal must be part of the structure of Allomantic theory, as is the metal that she's given that makes her lose all of her other metals. (It's aluminum, by the way.)

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fifty-Nine - Part One

I think I've noted that my viewpoints tend to speed up as I approach the endings of books. Well, Elantris is a perfect example. We're hopping viewpoints like a crazed body-snatcher. At the risk of sounding redundant, I did this to increase pacing and tension. Quick-rotating viewpoints give a cinematic feel to the story, in my opinion–kind of like cameras changing angles. This keeps things quick and snappy, and keeps the reader reading.

It should be noted that writing and filmmaking are two completely different arts. What works in one doesn't work in the other–action sequences, for instance, have to be written completely differently in a novel than they would be displayed on screen. However, both storytelling forms try to evoke similar feelings in their audiences. So, you can't do the same things in writing as you can in filmmaking–but you can get a similar effect by using different tools. Here, I use viewpoint shifts, which is something a filmmaker can't really access without first-person voice-overs. Viewpoint is, in my opinion, one of the prime unique tools that we have as writers. That's why I think it's important to understand, and to manipulate.

If you're paying attention to such things, we actually get two complete–and well-rotated–viewpoint triads in this chapter. Again, this is to increase the sense of urgency and pacing.