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The age of the Ire is really, really, really old, is that the age of the organization, or the age of those members.
Of those members, they, yes, are really, really, really old.
So each person in the IRE is really old, not just that the IRE...
Yes.
Was there ever a time when you had intended to kill off a character, but changed your mind because you liked them too much?
Hmm... I'm trying to think of whether or not this happened. I do believe that Adolin died in the original draft of The Way of Kings, which I wrote in 2002. he had a much smaller role in that book, and it played out very differently. When I did the newer version, which I rewrote from scratch, Adolin evolved much differently.
For those who don't know, he wasn't intended to have as large a role in the plot--but I ran into a problem during writing. Dalinar was feeling inconsistent as a character. I wanted to present him as strong and confident, but at the same time had him troubled by worries that he was insane from visions he was seeing.
This worked in outline form, but when I actually wrote, it seemed like he spent WAY too much time standing around worrying that he was crazy. So I expanded Adolin's character, providing a contrast. Dalinar, confident (to an extent) he was seeing something real--and his son, who worried his father was going insane.
Through this development, and giving Adolin more time on the page, he became a much more rounded character.
Another instance of this was Spook from the Mistborn series, who grew to have a much larger role than I'd originally intended.
There's another in this category--but it could include spoilers for an upcoming book. I'll talk about it eventually.
ETA: Szeth originally died permanently in the end of Words of Radiance. I also changed my mind to let Amaram live in the scene with the poison dart. Adolin killed off Sadeas instead.
So I can turn this into a general question because it's very-- people find it very interesting. How do I plot a series?
What I usually do is I have independent ideas that are spinning around in my head and they start sticking together. An idea by itself, such as "Hey what if the hero prophesied to save the world failed?" that's a cool seed but it's not a story yet. But when you smash that into "Gang of thieves want to pull off a heist. They're gunna rob the dark lord" those two ideas make something cooler. The sum of the parts, for me, is greater than the individual pieces. And ideas come from this, you start with random characters, and plot ideas, and setting ideas, and magic-- Allomancy was developed for a separate book, that I wrote and was terrible, and then it laid in my notes file until I started needing a magic system a bunch of thieves could use that could complement them and each thief could have a different power. And I pulled Allomancy and redesigned it to go in this book. All of these thing happen, often independently.
I then build an outline. I'm an outliner. I build an outline. I then do character sketches, which are short in-viewpoint or first-person dialogue/viewpoint things of the character just living their life. It doesn't go into the book. Usually. But it gives me a feel for who the character is, because it's very hard to outline a character. If you do then they start to feel rigid. And so I do this-- try to discover the character, and then I go back and rebuild my outline, then I write my book. And then I outline the next books in the series. Usually.
So Reckoners is a good example of this. I built the first book, wrote the whole book, had no ideas for sequels when I wrote the first book. Then once it was done I sat down with my team, they read it, and I said "Alright, here's the feel I want for this. We-- For instance I want illusionist powers that are very different from what Shallan does. I want to have this and this and this. Let's design sequels, and then I'll go back and re-write the first one to match, with the new outline for the sequels. I release the first book and then I write the sequels." That is kind of the basic process for designing a story for me.
Old Chaps
I love having random little viewpoints like these in books. I don't do them often, usually just once or twice a book. But I was excited to write this one, as Chaps has a very interesting way of thinking. Dance, dance, dance. I didn't plan him into the book specifically; I simply wrote this scene as it arrived and I knew someone had to fetch Nightblood. I'm always pleased when a little glimpse like this gives us such a distinctive feel and flavor for a character, though.
Nightblood is better at communicating with people who are mentally unhinged. He can influence them more easily. Really, Denth, you should have known to toss Nightblood someplace far deeper than the shallow bay.
Do we have another worldhopper potentially, with the epilogue?
There is some interesting things happening there. Good question!
[Question about stacking magic systems against each other, who would win?]
[Works on magic systems within their own context, when comparing magic systems the situation matters more. Context matters]
Are spren Cognitive aspects?
:) You guys are figuring this all out pretty well. I want to hold off on talking much about the nature of the spren because the characters in-world are discovering this as the books progress.
Chapter Two
Here we finally get to the book's main character, though I suspect that most readers won't catch that he is the one until we've come back to him at time or two.
Discounting Shallan, who was not in Way of Kings Prime, Kaladin is the one who went through the biggest evolution over the years. Dalinar has been Dalinar from day one. Adolin, Jasnah, Renarin, and Taln all solidified into themselves while I was writing Prime. Even Sadeas (under a different name) is basically the same person now as he was ten years ago.
Kaladin, though… Well, I had some growing to do as a writer before I could write him. He started in my concepts as a very generic fantasy "farmboy" protagonist. In Prime, there was nothing really original or interesting about him other than his situation. This is the danger for that style of protagonist; I feel that the best characters are interesting aside from their role.
For all my love of the Harry Potter books (and I do think they're quite excellent), Harry is a blank slate at the start. He's not interesting—the situations he's in are interesting. It isn't until later books, where he gets things to care about (like his godfather) that he starts to be defined as a character.
Kaladin was the same way. It's odd how writers are sometimes better at giving personalities to their side characters than they are at giving them to their main characters.
Chapter Thirteen
Timing of This Chapter
My editor threw me a little curveball in the last edit for this book by asking me if I could move the first Vivenna chapter (the previous one) up a few spots so that she was introduced earlier in the book.
This presented a problem, since I had her arriving, meeting the mercenaries, going to Lemex, then going to see Siri all in the same day. (Though across three chapters.) That meant that I had to move two chapters forward, then, since I didn't want to break with the mercenaries telling her that they were there to kill her. I wanted to go directly to the next scene with her.
It took a lot of juggling. One of the revisions I had to make was to move this third chapter a day later in the process. She had to arrive, fall asleep, then get up the next morning and have a conversation about giving the Breaths away. Then she had to go see Siri that same day.
I still worry that this jumble caused timing issues. I think I caught them all, but I worry that at one point Lightsong says, "The presentation of the queen is two days away," then we have Vivenna arrive that same day, then fall asleep and go see Siri the next day. If that's the case, then the explanation is—unfortunately—that the chapters aren't happening quite in chronological order.
Usually, I try to make my chapters all chronological, even across different viewpoints. But once in a while, the story is better if they aren't. The distinction is very hard to pick up. But I think it may happen here. (Note that a lot of authors, like Robert Jordan, don't strive for chronology—they like it better if the chapters are out of order a little. In a Robert Jordan book, for instance, we'll often have characters doing things in one chapter, then jump to other characters doing things a few weeks earlier. The chapters are always chronological by viewpoint, but the viewpoints can be off from one another. In fact, he plays with this concept a lot, setting book ten mostly back during the same time as book nine.)
Are Hoid and the Set aware of each other?
Yes, but I wouldn't say the Set as a general rule, but members of the Set.
How do they feel about each other?
Some various shades of loathing.
On both sides?
Yes.
Starting with the Cosmere, and now with Apocalypse Guard, it's clear that you love shared universes. If all of your works were in the same universe, what would be the most fun crossover to write?
Hmmm... It's probably the cosmere all-world mashup I'm actually planning to do in the future.
Does a Shardblade work on Sel?
Yes.
How did you meet Brandon?
Kind of in a roundabout way. We were both at a magazine at BYU called The Leading Edge. I didn't go as often. He was the editor; I met him once or twice. He didn't remember me, but I met a lot of other people that worked at the magazine who, now, some of them are my coworkers here at Dragonsteel. But I stopped going to the magazine at some point, finished my schooling, went on to start working, and decided that I needed to go back to school for optometry. I just didn't know if there was going to be a future in art for me, so I went back to school for optometry. I already had a lot of the prerequisites because I had tried a stint at dentistry for a few years before going into animation.
So I went back to school, decided to take the science fiction writing class again at BYU. By this time, Brandon was teaching it. He and I were closer in age than the other students there. This was, like, his second year teaching it. And we just clicked. We became friends. One night at dinner (because we would go out after the class and eat on those nights), I was drawing on the tablecloth at a Macaroni Grill (where they give you the crayons and things), and he said, "Oh, I didn't know you were an artist." 'Cause I was going to school for optometry at the time, I wasn't really advertising that I was an artist. So, doodling on the tablecloth, he said, "Hey, wanna do maps for my next book?" By this time, Elantris wasn't out yet, but it was about to come out. So I said, "Sure, I'll do your maps." He didn't know that I'd been doing fantasy maps on the side just for fun for quite a while, so it was kind of serendipitous.
In The Stormlight Archive there are characters with names that are different from characters they are in the other Cosmere books, and I'm wondering if there is either a place that has a "this is this person" or if there are like clues that we could watch for.
People have different names, they're using aliases in various parts of the Cosmere and things like this. The only thing I can point you toward are the fan wikis and fan forums which you probably already know about, the 17th Shard being the biggest of those. I am not revealing who the people are, but theories are on those websites and I have confirmed a few of them.
In the annotations for Elantris, you were talking about the shardpool. I know that it was the earliest one of three, and the cosmere wasn’t fully developed.
I have expanded it since.
So that annotation felt a little odd.
I’ll have to go back and look at it. I knew that they were going into the cognitive realm when I wrote it, but I had changed… Roshar for instance, did not have the spren when I wrote that. And Mistborn was only in the outline stages. No, when I wrote Elantris I hadn’t even written Mistborn. I also, you have to remember, early in my career I was being very vague about all of this. Because I was worried that people would get distracted by this and it would hurt my career. So you notice in the early appearances of Hoid, I used pseudonyms for him. Even in unpublished books where it’s obvious it’s him, he’s got a pseudonym and you never know. Because I didn’t want people to get this and be like, “He’s trying too much.” So I was really coy about a lot of things. But other things I didn’t figure out until later on, when I’m like “How exactly is this going to work?” It really helped once I had Peter to help me work out the physics of it and I could bounce ideas off of someone who knew enough about realmatic theory and stuff like that.
When Shallan does Lightweaving, is that a combination of Illumination and Transformation, or is Lightweaving just of Illumination?
Lightweaving is just of Illumination. Lightweaving is a long-established power in the cosmere. Very early books, in fact one of the very first stories I ever wrote, Lightweaving was the magic. (That story is unpublished, written long ago - long before Liar of Partinel) And so, this stems from my own personal affection for illusion and my feeling that it had not been used as well as I wanted it to be used in fantasy fiction. So I consider it only Illumination truly in The Stormlight Archive.
How many drafts do you usually go through for a book?
It really depends on the book. The highest number I believe was one of the Wheel of Time Books, which would have been 14, and I would say more commonly 5 or 6 is what's normal.
Number one [signed copy of Warbreaker] goes to my friend Scott, who was the one who (way back when) donated to charity to get his name in this book (Llarimar is based off of him.)
Did Shai have to Forge a soul for Ashravan's body because his actual soul had gone to the Great Beyond?
Rafo! :)
Aether of Night, aethers also show up in Liar of Partinel...
Yeah, that was...
Was that cannibalized...
That was a cannibalization, it's an attempt at repurposing and I didn't like it so it probably won't go forward that way but it was an attempt because it worked so well to mash Allomancy and Feruchemy into the same system and I didn't like how it went but...
Any plans on doing anything similar with Aether of Night?
Any plans to do Aether of Night, which is the next best book? And really the only other one that I want people reading, because the rest kind of fall into the threshold of, yes this is not as good as my current work and it's bad. Aether of Night is two good books put together that don't intertwine very well. I'm more likely to take Aether of Night and take pieces of it, like I did with some other books, and make a new book out of it, than I am to do a graphic novel.
Oh, and that was an Idrian kneeling before Allmother—the guy with only one leg. He's not the only one to have converted. A lot of them have, in fact, when confronted by gods you can visit and see. The other Idrians call them "scrapes," an epithet that refers to a scratch on a person's arm revealing the colorful blood underneath.
I see a lot of people commenting and suggesting that Davriel is straight up UB (as represented in this story). Would you agree that this is the case? And if a different side of Davriel were to be represented on a card (say, his days as a conquerer) what do you think his colour alignment have been then?
I think Davriel is most easily explained as UB, and the creative team agreed with that.
However, I think there's a strong argument for mono black for him. His power is a mix of a thoughtsieze and the power seen often on mono black cards (like Gonti.) Granted, it's also seen on blue cards, but it can exist in mono-black.
He does have an academic side to him, but mostly for studying demonology--a very black pursuit. His past is that of a very pragmatic economist, approached from a very black-aligned view. So mono-black makes a lot of sense for him.
He could also be seen as Esper. He believes in order, and the importance of social institutions--particularly as a means of controlling the masses.
The past version of him is very in alignment with this. He never approached his conquests in a red or green way--always in U/B/W ways.
Will Vivenna, Vasher and Nightblood reunite?
RAFO
Is healing a universal Stormlight power than?
Yes, within reason. Some are better at it. But it is a universal power.
Are there any people from Scadrial on Roshar, who we are not already aware of?
Yes.
One. Can there be Nahel Bonds with more then ten types of spren because we have ten Orders.
Meaning, are there other possible spren that could form other Orders of Knights Radiant that are not the ten? This is theoretically possible, but that is basically what you could argue is happening to Renarin. So now if you want to say... if you want to throw out the exception of spren who were one of the ten who got changed, then this is theoretically possible but right now currently wouldn't work.
In a blog you recommended Rothfuss and after reading his books I have decide you are truely a god of the written word, oh great God, recommend other good reads, I will happily pay the required sacrifice of one greedily consumed chocolate cake.
Ha. Well, it depends on what you like.
Guy Gavrial Kay is very, very good. Read his newer work, or his classic stand-alones (like Tigana or the Lions of Al Rassan.) Don't start with his first few novels.
He's a little more literary than myself or Pat, but he sure can turn a beautiful phrase, and is one of those authors that seems to be able to do it all--storytelling, prose, character, humor, drama. N.K. Jemisin is another author who has been doing very beautiful writing lately, with solid plots, who could give Pat a run for his money.
For things that skew a little more adventure, I love Robin Hobb's work, and if you liked Mistborn, I think you'll like her books. Start with Assassin's Apprentice. Same goes for Brian McClellan and Brent Weeks.
I really liked Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which is a Hugo nominee this year. But it's very different from the ones I just listed. A dark fairy tale with historical roots.
What's your favorite book?
This is also kind of a hard one for writers, right? Or maybe not just for writers, maybe just for... my type of person, I'm sure a lot of you are like this, where it's like, my favorite book changes and varies, and so I kind of have some go-to answers, because they stayed my favorite book for a while. The book that got me into science-fiction/fantasy was Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly and I often mention that. My favorite Wheel of Time book was book four, I often mention that. My favorite Terry Pratchett book is probably Going Postal, my favorite classic is Les Miserable, so that often comes up. What have I read recently that I really liked? It's now been over a year, but I really liked Jane Yolen's work, and she recently released a short story collection that I really liked. I recently finished Roshani Chokshi book, The Star-Touched Queen, which I really liked. Robert Jackson Bennett is good... I like a lot of different things I read.
People with mixed Investiture, coming from different Shards, with heritage from different worlds. Will we see them and how would they interact with magic systems?
You have already seen them. How they're gonna... it depends on the magic system.
At one point someone [on 17th Shard] asked you if seons were Shards of--
Aona.
Devotion ... yeah Aona, and you said that was close. My question is: are the Aons at the HEART of the seons Shards of Devotion?
No, but close.
But... I was sure... the floating Aon at the heart, that's not a Shard...
*taking pity* You're close but a word is wrong. You're using the wrong terminology.
SPLINTER. Are the Aons at the heart of seons SPLINTERS of Aona?
Yes.
I loved Nazh's "cameo" in the [Nicki] Savage story of Bands of Mourning. I especially like the touch of the map with the ripped edge in the book. Did the events really happen in the book as she describes in her broadsheet piece, or was the actual meeting punched up a bit for drama?
Thanks for your kind words on the [Nicki] Savage story. I hope we get to see her again. Since she's learning the art of storytelling from Allomancer Jak, I suspect her version of events was slightly embellished. :)
Well she has been in two of the stories so far, so fingers crossed!
I'm blanking on this just a little bit. Which was the second story she was in?
In Shadows of Self, there was a broadsheet article about a woman in the southern mountains who ran into a strange red and black person by a placid pool. Her name was [Nicelle] Sauvage, and I admittedly made a bit of an assumption that she and [Nicki] Savage are the same woman.
You are exactly right! She did appear in the Shadows of Self broadsheet. Thank you for reminding me of that.
The name adaptation threw me off, I only picked it up this last time I read through it in my epic-cosmere-re-read leading up to Oathbringer.
I do have to admit, while pretty cool, the dashing stranger who tried to kill a nice woman and destroyed public property in the sky above a metropolis using unknown arcana seemed... a little out-of-character for Nazh as we've otherwise seen him.
[Nicki] added some extra drama to her version of events to make it more interesting. I don't think Nazh would've tried to kill her, though he might want her to think that he was. He's easily annoyed by those who get in the way of his missions, even if they're just nosy adventurers. :)
Can an Awakened form a nahel bond with a spren on Roshar?
Depends on the spren!
What about a lerasium savant? Or would that require so much lerasium that the person attempting it would ascend to become a new Shardholder?
Basically, this is what Ascension is.
Spook still alive?
Have you read Mistborn: Secret History?
Mhm.
Then that's as much as we know right now.
Dang it! *laughs* You and your teasing last pages!
I am very teasing. There-- If I get around to it there will be more Secret Histories.
Is there any significant connection between Herdazians having stone fingernails and the essence associated with Kalak having a body focus of the nails?
No there is not, good question.
Would Inquisitors' kids have Allomancy?
Not usually. It happens sometimes, but not usually. He then mentioned a little about sDNA, but that it's not inherited as much as it is when it's natural.
Does the metal on [Scadrial] contain within it any sort of spren-like being, or anything similar to that, and also, does the Splintered nature of the Shards on [Sel] have anything to do with how the magic manifests itself without a physical representation?
Scadrial did not have an analogous, self-aware Invested set of entities. The power has to be "let go of" in a way.
If Kelsier's [Cognitive Shadow] or a seon went to the Forests of Hell, would they be shades there?
Yes, that is the same thing. Now, you can see that there-- the people on that planet; their Investiture; the lack of Shard means that their Cognitive Shadows react differently.
[...]
In fact, the Cognitive Shadow is also the same thing as the ghost you saw in Mistborn, that was the spirit of Leras is the same thing too.
So...what is the safehand about-- Like how did that develop into a thing, having one hand being scandalous?
So it relates back to philosophical treaties written in world, long ago, where a woman was saying 'these are feminine arts, these are masculine arts'; that sort of thing. It was partially a way to control access to Shardblades, when Shardblades and Shardplate first entered the-- common people being able to have them because the Knights Radiant had abandoned them. At the same time there was a struggle for power over language, and this happened long ago. Really the reason is "humans are weird".
When I first started reading Stormlight, I couldn't help but notice how similar Kaladin's name is to the Latinised forms of some Middle Eastern names, such 'Saladin', 'Saphadin', 'Nurudin', 'Meledin', etc. Initially, I just scratched it off as an interesting observation until I reached the point in WoR where we learn that Rock calls Kal, 'KalaDEEN', rather than 'KalaDIN'.
Today, many people outside the Middle East pronounce to 'Saladin' as 'SalaDIN'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1NInO-ClQ
But in the Middle East, people would pronounce it with a 'DEEN' just like Rock would. Did Brandon intend for us to think of this? Maybe not, but...
The Latinised forms of these names are more condensed compared to the Arabic forms of the names:
Saladin --> Salaah ud-Deen (Righteousness of Faith)
Saphadin --> Safaa' ud-Deen (Purity of Faith)
Nurudin --> Nuur ud-Deen (Light of Faith)
Kaladin's name can also be extended almost similarly and can be translated into Arabic.
Kaladin --> Khalaa' ud-Deen (Void of Faith)
'Void of Faith' befits Kaladin, especially in the first book as a slave and a bridgeman early on where he seems to have given up on life. I can remember some excerpt where he almost mentions something along the lines of losing faith in the Almighty or the Ardentia, but I cannot remember the exact words.
Now, to be fair, 'Khalaa'' could be also be translated as 'Lack', 'Absence', and 'Empty', but I think all those words could be considered synonyms of 'Void', which better fits the Stormlight Archive, seeing as we have Voidbringers and Voidspren.
This isn't a coincidence. Many Alethi names come from Arabic, Hebrew, or sometimes Sanskrit origins. I devised Kaladin specifically by mashing up names like Khalid and Saladin--among others. The ones you can pick out are, generally, intended to be names with Dawnchant origins. Not to imply actual Earth connections; the point here is the same one I make when using ancient Latin or Greek roots to create magic term words.
The idea is that in world, these names might actually be slightly different--but in translation, we use words that evoke the same feelings as they'd have in world. (Indicating, in this case, some names have roots that trace all the way back to original Dawnchant names and terms.)
If a Mistborn is Pushing and Pulling on metal at the same time, would it stay suspended in midair?
So most likely not. You could make it happen. Because there's no friction holding it in place, even the slightest change would zip it off in one direction, if you're not perfectly 100% balanced.
Wouldn't it be affected by gravity? If you're Pushing and Pulling at the same time, there's still that downward force.
There is still that downward force but if you're able to do that, you're able to modulate your Push so that you Push slightly harder on the bottom. Does that make sense? You could do it, the real experts can do it, they can vary how much they're Pushing. But the big problem is the lack of friction. That lack of friction--normally if you're holding a coin with two fingers, it's not going to move. But with no friction, you tap it, it's just going to zip away.
We were talking about Nightblood. How do you go about creating characters that are inanimate objects, but come to life? Because it seems a lot different. Also, gods... like, things that are otherworldly, because characters like real people, it's easy to write that. But considering gods and inanimate objects, that's beyond, sort of.
Well, fortunately, for us writers, nobody among our audience will be able to contradict us. Right? So, in some ways, writing something that nobody has ever experienced is a lot easier than writing something that a fair percentage of the population has experienced but you have not. And so, I just do my best. Being a writer is about learning to, "fake it." To pretend you're someone you're not, to pretend to have the experience that you don't, so that character sounds authentic. And faking something that no one can call you on is actually fairly easy.
With Nightblood coming in [to Words of Radiance] does that produce a magic system from a different book or does that stay separate?
It will stay separate.
Which map holds the Easter Egg?
The main map of Roshar.
From which book?
Either book, it's the main one that will go in each copy. It's VERY hard and it won't change a whole lot.
Does it have anything to do with the compass?
Not the compass.
What's your writing process?
I am an outliner, so I generally start with a really solid outline for the book I'm gonna write. I don't always stick to it 100%, but I do kind of keep it revised as I go. I work better from that. And not everybody's like that, but if you really wanna know my writing process, my BYU lectures are online. They're (*inaudible*) and comfier as opposed to mine.
What is the thing with Adolin's serial dating? Is it just...?
He is bad with relationships, and that's just it. He's a little bit scared of being good at relationships, and so there's some kind of unconscious sabotaging going on. But yeah, he's young and he's bad at relationships.
We saw with Miles what it was like if you Compounded gold. I was wondering what it would be like if you tried Compounding tin.
So Compounding with tin?
Just what it would be like the experience...
Ehhh… I’ll go ahead and I'm going to RAFO that. Because I want to write it out and see how it looks on the page.
How do you make up names and words for your fantasy settings?
Mostly, I choose an earth culture (or two) to base my linguistic influences on. For instance, in the Mistborn books, I used French. It's obvious in words like Fellise, Renoux, Blanches, Delouse and Demoux. Less obvious is Kelsier, whose name would be pronounced in-world without the last R sound.
Do you think you'll ever develop a language like Tolkien did?
Maybe. I did a lot of that in White Sand, which didn’t get published. I’ll do more for other books.
Do you use Hebrew words?
The name Adonalsium is derived from a Hebrew name for God, Adonai and Aharietiam was derived from the Hebrew/Jewish term for the end of days acharit hayamim or אחרית הימים
The people who are from the future...*inaudible* I was thinking maybe they were from Scadrial?
I will not confirm or deny it. It is someone from the Cosmere from a world you've seen before.
