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General Reddit 2019 ()
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Swedish_Doughnut

Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor, his nickname. Its Rock. And do ya know what he does? He cooks. THE ROCK COOKS. Adonalsium damn you Sanderson! Why would you do this to me, WHY? Why would you make a character just to have an IN UNIVERSE "what the Rock is cooking?" joke? why?

Brandon Sanderson

Would you believe me if I told you this was actually a coincidence? I DID notice it, though, when writing the first book way back when.

Boskone 54 ()
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Questioner

Is there eventually going to be a Way of Kings tenth anniversary edition?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, if I have the ability to make it, if Tor doesn’t reverse and shut these down, then yes we’ll make it. My guess is, we will probably release it broken up in a slipcase, sold as one, because I worry about the binding on a nice leatherbound like that. So my guess is we’ll start doing those divided by parts or something like that. We’ll figure it out when we do it.

Firefight Seattle UBooks signing ()
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Questioner

How do you come up with the languages? Just because it sounds cool, or...

Brandon Sanderson

Languages. So languages in my books, I have a couple of tools that I use and it depends on the book. For some books I just use kind of shortcuts. Mistborn is an example of this, there's only one language that everyone is speaking and there is a little bit of Terris, so for that I just made every region-- I based off of an Earth language and used that. Like for instance the Central Dominance is French, so Vin and Demoux--and they would say Kelsi-ay--and things like this is where the names came from. For something more intricate like Stormlight Archive, I did take linguistics classes, I only snuck into a few of those. And so I'm able to drill down and do some real linguistics. And so I know what I want things to sound like, I know how I want them to feel. And I have all sorts of goofy things that you would even need to know, like for instance they would say "Kholin" instead of Kholin and stuff like this because there's a little bit of Semitic, the language family I'm using as a basis. And then there's stuff like the symmetrical names and stuff like that. Anyway, I can talk about that forever but the answer is yes I find what's cool but sometimes it's really academically cool and sometimes it really puts people of. Like one of the first reviews I got from Elantris was like "These names are really hard to pronounce and kind of dumb" and this was like one of the major review magazines "I can't get into these names" because I had used lots of linguistic things from my time living in Korea to create the languages, and they were kind of hard to say. It's part of why in Mistborn everyone has a nickname that's easy to remember.

Calamity Philadelphia signing ()
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Questioner 1

That question I asked, I've been wondering about it a lot, how do you do misogyny *inaudible*? I think the message of the book...isn't really right wording.

Brandon Sanderson

No, I know exactly what you mean. How do you write misogynistic characters without writing a misogynistic book? That is tricky. You know, one thing that I didn’t bring up a lot is to have people on a spectrum. If every--‘cause even if you go back to, for instance--if you went back to 600 BC, there would be certain people who think different ways than everyone else. We think that cultures are monolithic, but they're not. And if you go back most of my characters are not acting like they would in the mid-1800’s. If you went back then you would find people who are anti-racist, even back then. So it’s legit that you can have certain...

Yeah. The trick is you can’t make anyone just a super paragon, like Ghandi was racist but he was really powerfully influential in what he did.  Everyone has got their biases and so if you make someone with no biases then they’re a bad character, but if you make people’s biases shine a light on each other you’ll have a stronger story.

Questioner 1

*inaudible about Kaladin* He does have that deep-seated prejudice against the lighteyes, but in every other way as with everyone else its a subtle reminder.

Brandon Sanderson

Except the Parshendi.  He’s been getting better.  But that’s the whole point of relaying this. This person has.

Questioner 2

Like you said, there's the stereotypes about Herdazians.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Herdazians. And most people don't pick it out that there's like this deep racism against the Herdazians.

Questioner 1

Do people ever accuse you of being <misogynistic>?

Brandon Sanderson

Not yet. I know it will happen. It probably has happened and I haven't seen it, but no, I haven't been upfront accused of it. My worse thing is there's some unconscious sexism in Mistborn. Vin works very well but there aren't any other women. I kind of fall into the one woman in the whole world sort of thing. But part of learning about this is we all have these biases, we're all going to these make these mistakes. You have to be okay to fail. Better that than wrong. Why is that wrong? What about is it? In what way?

Brandon's Blog 2006 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

More and more, I’m feeling that someday I will write a sequel to Elantris. A lot of people seem to want one, and there is a lot of the story that I’ve left untold–the origin of the Seons, the reason that the Dor and the landscapes are linked, the Fjordell magic. Doing book tours for Elantris and reading emails from readers has reminded me of all the wonderful things I wanted to do with that world.

Stormlight Three Update #4 ()
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usuyami

With all the linguistic elements in Stormlight, how much have you done in the way of mapping out the linguistic history of Roshar, ie deciding that this modern language descends from this older language, which descends from that ancient language that also gave rise to all these other languages, etc.?

Brandon Sanderson

I've done a surprising amount of this. The linguist in me slipping out. The vowel shifts are one of my favorites.

General Twitter 2019 ()
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Yohan Rivera

How did Lopen suck Stormlight in WoK? I assumed that as a squire he needed Kaladin to be around in order to practice his abilities.

Brandon Sanderson

We're playing a little loose and free w/timeline there. Peter asked me about this, and we determined Kaladin was close enough by the point this happened--though I can't remember if that was because Kaladin was on his way back, or if the distance was just naturally close enough.

Paris signing ()
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Narkac

KR seemed to have opposite gender spren. Why is Glys male then? Is there something hidden there?

Brandon Sanderson

More naturally, the spren is opposite gender but it doesn't have to be. It's not a indication necessarily of homosexuality, but sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. More often, you'll attract spren of the opposite gender, but spren genders are very fluid anyway. You're not supposed to read anything specific into that.

Stormblessed.com interview with Brandon Sanderson ()
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Questioner

The spren are a really unique part of Roshar. Do you have rules for deciding what "gets" spren (wind, flames, glory, creation, life, death) and what doesn't? Have you introduced most of the spren types, or will we see a lot of new ones as the series goes on?

Brandon Sanderson

You will find out much more about the spren as the series goes on. There are a lot of things that get spren where the spren are not noticeable, or they only occur in very rare circumstances or in certain regions, as Axies explains. So the phrase "There's a spren for that" that I've seen popping around on the internet is actually fairly accurate. There's a spren for quite a lot of things. I don't want to delve too deeply into this until I've written more in the series and you begin to understand exactly what the spren are.

Salt Lake City signing ()
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Nicrosil

Will we be seeing any more of stick?

Brandon Sanderson

Everybody loves stick, everybody is very fond of stick. I have no current plans for stick.

Nicrosil

Spook?

Brandon Sanderson

You will find out more about Spook.

It is not impossible that you will see some sort of story involving Spook. After all I did a little short story about Kelsier for the role playing game. It's now on my website.

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing ()
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Dragon13

Does Hoid have any relations other than his parents?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid have any-- like direct blood relatives?

Dragon13

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay. In the book, when I wrote it before, he did not. Dragonsteel isn’t 100% canon anymore so that will possibly change, but he did not, and there are none in my mind right now, so he's an only child as I have right now. It's unlikely to change, but I do have to asterisk that one because I haven't written Dragonsteel yet... Oh no, he had a little brother! He did have a little brother. Even in the original.

General Reddit 2016 ()
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PG_Wednesday

[WoB compilation about spren]

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm. With a casual glance, I see at least one here that I might have been fixated on a question that wasn't actually being asked. I do this occasionally, particularly at signings, where we're going so fast and I think someone is asking something that they're not.

In regards to there being spren bonds before the Last Desolation--there obviously were. (We see Knights Radiant in Dalinar flashbacks that are before the Last Desolation.) I think I was trying to talk my way around a different question, without giving RAFO answers, that I'm not going to get into now.

Another sketchy one on this list is regarding whether the spren call the nightwatcher Mother or if they're calling cultivation Mother. I don't think the text of the books actually implies either way, despite what I said. (Unless I'm forgetting something.) For those in the know, with the Nightwatcher being an analogue of the Stormfather, that implication is there--but I don't want to confirm it either way. You'll get more on the Nightwatcher and Cultivation, and their relationship, in the books.

Firefight release party ()
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Questioner

So there’s the scene of Kaladin standing alone in /Words of Radiance/. He’s lost his spren, everything is gone, and he's just standing there, and he still fights no matter what. Did that scene come first? Or did the rest of the book?

Brandon Sanderson

That was the pivotal scene for the book. That was the thing I felt he needed to learn and the person he needed to be. So I have several focus scenes for each book and that was one of them for this one.

FanX Spring 2019 ()
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Questioner

I'm gay, and I thought it was really cool that you had a gay bridgeman. Do you have any other LGBT stuff, your characters--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Mistborn series has Ranette, who's LGBTQ--

Questioner

Is she?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's, you know, you'll... So that's in the Wax and Wayne books, I don't know if you've read those. 

Questioner

Yes, yes, I remember her, okay. 

Brandon Sanderson

So yes, we've got her, we've got him, there are others that will show up here and there. Drehy is kind of special in that he's a very good friend of mine that I put into Bridge Four, so he's one of the ones that I kind of say "is it okay if I do it like this? Is it okay if I do it like this?" I kinda let him voice his character and things like that sometimes.

Isaac Stewart r/Stormlight_Archive AMA ()
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Isaac AMA Steel alphabet handwritten.png Isaac AMA Steel alphabet typeface.png

PaleoCrafter

I've a got a question about the Steel Alphabet and its use on Scadrial: here on Earth we've got people who are obsessed about beautiful typography, neat fonts and ligatures included.

Is that something you ever thought about doing for the Steel Alphabet? You've told us before that you've got further designs for new variants like a handwritten form up your sleeve, which of course makes we wonder whether Scadrian typography nerds will get their share, too.

(btw, any chance we could get a sneak peek of those designs? :P)

Isaac Stewart

This is a fun one!

When we were working on The Alloy of Law, we tried a few different typefaces for the Steel Alphabet. I don't know if we'll use any of these variations in the future, but we might. As for the handwritten form, here's a sneak peek. Neither of these images are canonized, so they're apocryphal at this point and maybe a tiny bit spoilery.

Elantris Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

In this chapter, I also go a little bit into the linguistics of the novel. If you'd been able to figure out that "Dor" wasn't an Aon, then you were a step ahead of Raoden at this point. I realize it's probably too small a thing to have been of note, but I do actually mention the "Dor" one time earlier in the book. It's in the discussion where Galladon discovers that the republic has fallen. He says, "Only outsiders–those without any sort of true understanding of the Dor–practice the Mysteries."

...

Anyway, if you want more on linguistics, head over to the "goodies" section of the website. I've got a whole essay on the languages in Elantris over there.

Email to Nepene - Re: Population of the Final Empire ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Blast. I've got that in my records somewhere. It's been a while, now. Off the top of my head, I believe Luthadel was the biggest city with around two million. (Peter might have a better read on this.) I was shooting for 1920 London, but with a slightly better flow of food in because of the imperial structure an absolute monarch offers. It was the biggest city by a long shot, though. Others would have trouble topping 100k. Probably a 25%/75% split urban rural, weighted on rural, through the entire empire. Scope is relatively small. Smaller than the US. Bigger than Korea. If you email [email protected], he might have the actual scale.

Brandon

FanX 2018 ()
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Questioner

Is each Shard associated with a certain color in the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

We'll go ahead, I'll RAFO that. There are some of these questions that the answers are starting to seep out anyway. So, we'll go ahead and RAFO that.

Arcanum Unbounded release party ()
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Djarskublar

So, say you have a gold/gold Twinborn and they worldhop to Roshar and they study the magic and do the whole Khriss and Nazh thing for a while so they know a lot about the magic, but they've also left themselves a lot of options with what they can do. So then they manage to pull up a gold shadow of them having actually become a Surgebinder and then kind of meld themselves with that shadow a bunch, could they change their Cognitive Identity enough so that they could, like, tap a lot of gold and grow the spren and actually be a Surgebinder?

Brandon Sanderson

Unfortunately, no. It's a good question, but no. That won't work for a couple of reasons. One of which is, simply creating Investiture is not something that can happen, right?

Djarskublar

They are a gold Twinborn, so they can tap a lot of gold...

Brandon Sanderson

They can tap a whole bunch, that's true, they can do that, but simply having it is not gonna create a spren because the spren is from a different god, right, a different Shard.

Djarskublar

So if they had Regrowth cast on them, would that do it?

Brandon Sanderson

*hems and haws for a second*

Djarskublar

A really, really big Regrowth, like in the middle of a Highstorm.

Brandon Sanderson

Hmmm, this, you are getting to the realm of plausibility at that point. I still don't think gold is the way to do it. I think you just get all that Investiture. It would become sapient by you sticking a whole bunch of Investiture in, and then you can bond to that. But it's not like people gain what you would have done. Does that make sense? That's just what's going to happen, is you're gonna, you can create a, potentially create a spren that way, but you are more likely to end up with something like Nightblood. But you could potentially create a spren, but I mean you're just gonna end up...

Djarskublar

So there are other, more optimal ways to do that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, go bond a spren. (evil grin of course)

Djarskublar

But you can't easily bond multiple, and if you did this you could maybe get multiple.

Brandon Sanderson

Nyeaaahhh... The spren still has to choose. If you want to be a Surgebinder, the choice is being made. You can't fake your way into it. Decision and Honor are too much a part of Surgebinding for you to be able to fake your way into that. Other magics you might be able to do that. Other magics that don't require, like... Surgebinding works because a piece of Honor or Cultivation or a mix has chosen you specifically. There is will from the actual Investiture involved in it in Roshar. So it's not something you can cheat your way into, right. But cheating your way into Breath might be easier.

Firefight Seattle UBooks signing ()
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Questioner

In the Mistborn trilogy, was it hard to write the final twist, or had it been planned that way?

Brandon Sanderson

This is always the way it was planned. There are some smaller things that I'll allow spontaneity to change the book, but the general structure of the book is always planned out. And if something changes while I'm writing I go and throw away the plan and rebuild the plan, so I'm always writing with a plan.

Firefight release party ()
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Questioner

I know that with creation you start to lose-- honestly, your confidence in it, with creation. I was wondering if you experience that loss of worth in it, and if so, what do you do to counteract it?

Brandon Sanderson

It happens mostly when I'm working on a book. Once it's done I'm usually proud of it, but about the three-quarter point--

Questioner

I've heard that a lot. Just what do you-- How do you convince yourself it's still worth, y'know--

Brandon Sanderson

...When it starts to happen to me, I sit down and say "How can I make this scene awesome? This one that I'm writing right now?" because I can use my tools, my skills, and my practices as a writer to make that scene really awesome. And usually I'll shake things up a little bit, I'll write a different viewpoint or I'll do something I wasn't expecting to do according to the outline, just to make that scene really great. And that restores a lot of my confidence.

/r/fantasy AMA 2017 ()
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Adontis

I've always wondered, how do you determine where the line between "Word of Brandon" and "Read and Find Out" is? Has it ever caused issues where you've said something, but later that thing changed when it went into a book making your first statement now false?

Thanks so much for writing as much as you do, I'm looking forward to all your upcoming books, keep up the great work!

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, this one is an art, not a science.

I've several times said something that I later decided to change in a book. I've always got this idea in the back of my head that the books are canon, and things I say at signing aren't 100% canon. This is part because of a habit I have of falling back on things I decided years ago, then revised in notes after I realized they didn't work. My off-the-cuff instinct is still to go with what I had in my head for years, even when it's no longer canon.

An example of this are Shardblades. In the first draft of TWoK in 2002, I had the mechanics of the weapons work in a specific way. (If you wanted to steal one from someone, you knock off the bonding gemstone, and it breaks the bond.) I later decided it was more dramatic if you couldn't steal a Shardblade that way--you had to kill the person or force them to relinquish the bond. It worked far better.

But in Oathbringer, Peter had to remind me of that change, as I just kind of nonchalantly wrote into a scene a comment about knocking off a gemstone to steal a Shardblade. These things leak back in, as you might expect for a series I've been working on for some twenty years now--with lore being revised all along.

So...short answer...yes, I've contradicted myself a number of times. I try very, very hard to let the books be the canon however. So you can default to them.

As for what I answer and what I RAFO...it depends on how much I want to reveal at the moment, if I'm trying to preserve specific surprises, or if I just want people to focus on other things at the moment. Like I said, art and not science.

damenleeturks

In WoR, Navani muses to Dalinar about how the gemstones in the Blades could be the focus that allows the bond with the Blade to exist. If this theory is correct, it would follow that someone could damage that gemstone and thus be able to steal the Blade with it then having no intact bonding mechanism, right?

I guess I'm having trouble seeing how the example you describe isn't possible.

Peter Ahlstrom

The gemstone is needed to create the bond and operate the bond's functions. If you remove the gemstone, the person the sword is bonded to can't summon it or dismiss it to mist. But neither can anyone else. If they eventually pop another gemstone in and try to bond it themselves, they will fail, and the original person can then resummon their Blade. The bond is with the dead spren of the Blade, not with the gemstone. The stone facilitates the bond.

So, you can haul around a de-gemstoned Blade with you all the time and successfully steal it that way. But this makes it very easy to steal back. You'd have to kill the holder of the bond in order to rebond it. Which is no different from usual.

And in general, if you can get close enough to a Shardbearer to steal their Blade, you are also close enough to kill them anyway.

Phantine

So that scene where Dalinar crushes the gemstone and hands the Shardblade over, he's also doing some sort of mystical de-bonding?

Or is it just 'if you WANT to give it up, you gave it up'?

Peter Ahlstrom

Yes, if you want to give it up, you gave it up.

Phantine

If nobody is currently bonded to it, does the attuning still take a week?

Otherwise it seems weird people would figure out putting a gemstone in hilt lets you summon it, since nothing would happen without a week of bonding time.

ricree

Not that weird. One of the books (WoK, I think) mentions that many years passed before the gemstone bonding was discovered. Shardblades were still really valuable, though, and even more vulnerable to theft, so it makes sense that people would have kept them close at hand long enough for the bonding process.

Other than that, all you need is someone to accidentally decorate the blade correctly, which is something that took a long time to happen, but was probably bound to happen eventually considering how key infused gemstones are to the world.

Peter Ahlstrom

Well said.

Calamity Philadelphia signing ()
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Questioner

If Steelheart becomes a movie, who would your dream person to play Prof?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't know who I pick one. Hugh Jackman would be really good.

Questioner

*inaudible* Patrick Stewart.

Brandon Sanderson

No, Patrick's too old. Hugh Jackman, as he's moving--that would be a good choice.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Origin of Awakening as a Magic System

I never did write out in annotation form an explanation of where Awakening came from. I believe I talked about the origin of the term Awakening, but never the actual powers of the magic.

As I've said, I wanted to do something that had a very "vulgar magic" feel to it. Something gritty, dealing with the forms of people, like voodoo or hedge magics. I wanted to have something that reached back into our cultural unconscious, and something that dealt with necromancy in a new way.

Those are all pieces of the puzzle. Another piece, however, was the desire to do an animation magic—a magic focused around bringing inanimate objects to life on order to serve you. As I've said, it's very tough to come up with completely new powers nobody has written about or used (though I think I've got a few in store for The Way of Kings). However, a good magic system can be crafted from the interpretation of old powers used in new ways with interesting limitations and cultural connections.

I've seen people bring objects to life in books or movies, but I've never seen a formal magic system designed completely around it.

One of the other things I'm always looking for is new ways for people to gain their magical powers. As much as I like Mistborn, the "It's genetic and you're born with it" method of gaining magical abilities is just about the oldest and most commonly used way. It's used so much because it makes sense, and because it's easy to explain. Breath, and its transference, came from my desire to come up with something different—something that had an economic component, something that allowed anyone to become a magic user, but which still had limited resources so that not everyone could be one.

I'm still trying to innovate in this area, but I think my favorite part about Awakening is the concept of Breath and how it's transferred. It turns people into resources for the magic, but in a way I hadn't seen done before.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Bluefingers Avoids Siri, So She Goes to Find Lightsong

I considered having the men performing the athletics competitions in the court be naked. After all, there's been so much female nudity in the book so far that it would only be fair to balance it out. . . .

I decided it would be gratuitous. Just because the Greeks competed in the nude doesn't mean that it would naturally happen everywhere else. Still, thinking of how much it would embarrass Siri almost made me put it in.

Stuttgart signing ()
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Questioner (paraphrased)

What idea sparked Stormlight for you?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The very first seed for everything was a man who's brother to a king. The king gets assassinated and the nephew becomes a bad king. How he copes with that is what I started thinking about. We all have somebody in our family. That became Dalinar and Elhokar in The Stormlight Archive.

Berlin signing ()
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Questioner

I would like to know the process of working with other artists, like Isaac. And I saw there was a very big list of credits in the start of Oathbringer. Does the artist also affect your writing? Or you write first, and then the artists do their artwork?

Isaac Stewart

For each Stormlight book, we have twenty or thirty pieces of art, and I can't do them all myself. We've had a bunch of people waiting in the wings, a bunch of artists that we send the art to. I read the book, I make notes, Brandon gives me notes of what he would like to see in the book. We combine it into a big list. I assign out to different artists. And then we have art reviews, where I get art from the different artists, and Brandon and I go over it and say what they got right, what maybe they could change. And then we go back and forth with the artist until it's just exactly what we want it to be for the book. The same thing happens when Brandon and I are working on maps or symbols. That's basically the process.

Questioner

So it never affects your writing?

Brandon Sanderson

It does affect my writing. I can give a couple little examples of this. The American cover for Elantris, I love. It's done by Stephan Martinière. It's this gorgeous cover, it’s a very distinctive, different sort of style. But the actual scene he painted wasn't in the book. And I liked it so much... And that doesn't matter that much. The cover of the book, think of it more like a movie poster for the book. The actual scene doesn't have to occur, that doesn't bother me. But I realized I could change one little part, and have Sarene and Hrathen on the wall, looking like they did on the cover. So I rewrote the passage to match the cover. So that has happened before.

For instance, Isaac has inserted a character named Nazh into the books, who is kind of one of the people in-world-- It's important to me, particularly in Stormlight, that all the art you're seeing is something from in-world. I don't want it to be-- The covers are different. The covers are one thing. But the other stuff that we wanna have in there, we want it to be what we call ephemera. It's a map that actually existed in Roshar. It's sketches done by a character from the books. This is to not break the immersion. You're not going into the book and getting it illustrated for you. You are getting the scraps of drawings and things that were in-world. Because I feel like-- Tolkien started this. The map that you got in The Hobbit was the map they carried. It's not like someone came along and drew a map. And I liked that way better. So Nazh is one of the characters gathering these maps, and bringing them together. So I wrote him into the books.

Other things that Isaac has done like that, or an artist has sent us something and I'm like, "This is really cool. Let's work this in somehow." It does happen, certainly. And we do get the art early enough, in a lot of the cases, where I'm still doing revisions, and I'll add tweaks and things like that.

LTUE 2020 ()
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Questioner 1

Does aluminum actually make the metals disappear, like, be metabolized? Or does it just cut the Spiritual connection?

Brandon Sanderson

So... I haven't actually canonized that... I've gone back and forth. For a while, I said it got rid of them. And there may even be... But the more I thought about that, the more it doesn't make much sense.

Questioner 1

It doesn't. Especially the way that duralumin works, it doesn't really make sense.

Brandon Sanderson

And so, I've been kind of pushing the other way. Since I haven't said it in-world, it's not truly canon, but I believe I've answered other fans saying that it burns them all away in a flash, and we might need it to do that, for future things. So, I'm undecided.

Questioner 2

It needs to get rid of them, but a path to sever the connection at the same time.

Brandon Sanderson

One of the big problems is, if it only severs the connection and leaves the metals, than you have heavy metal poisoning from some of the metals.

Questioner 1

But if it makes them burn away, that doesn't work the same way as duralumin. Duralumin only burns the ones you're burning.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I kinda have to err back on the side of "it gets rid of them," just we don't have to deal with metal poisoning, but I've kind of been wavering a little bit, thinking, "Is there a better way to explain this."

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing ()
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Questioner

Does Silverlight have a permanent Perpendicularity on it?

Brandon Sanderson

Silverlight has weird. So I'm gonna give a RAFO to that.

Questioner

It's got a physical constellation map. So they've gotta go to the Physical somehow right?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, no. That can be in the Cognitive Realm.

Argent

The constellation map can be a picture from the Cognitive?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, yeah, I mean, it can be a picture in the Cognitive. That is a picture that exists in Silverlight.

Argent

Right, sure, but they need to be somewhere to view those things.

Brandon Sanderson

Right, I didn't say that that’s from the perspective Silverlight, but what we say is the picture is hanging there.

Questioner

So that was a mis-interpretation on our part.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, the picture is hanging there in Silverlight. Okay?

FirstSelector

Is there actually anything on the Physical end of Silverlight?

Brandon Sanderson

That is-- That's the RAFO part... That's what I'm not answering. If there's anything Physical. There can't be a Perpen--well, there could be a Perpendicularity, but then you'd have to go someplace in the Physical, and it gets all-- Silverlight is really weird.

Boskone 54 ()
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Questioner

Parshendi carapace, is that necessary to them bonding spren?

Brandon Sanderson

No. There are some forms that don’t have carapace, or very much at all. I mean they might have little bits on their nails and things like that. So no it is not necessary. Good question.

Shadows of Self Edinburgh UK signing ()
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BlackYeti

With regards to the Dor, whereabouts is it located exactly, with regards to the Realms.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, you're the first to ask this one. It is in the Cognitive Realm... I think you might be the first one to crack that one. So, that's something that I've been dancing around for a while, waiting 'til people started to figure that one out. Now, that's not where most of them are.

General Reddit 2019 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

I have never said I don't let my religion influence my writing. That would be madness.

What I say is that I am looking to create a great story--I'm not seeking to put in a specific moral through fiction, though I don't think it's wrong to do so. (I respect both Lewis and Pullman who made different choices.)

My religion deeply influences who I am, and that will absolutely reflect in the story. However, these are the sorts of things that are generally easier to pick out from the outside, as for me, I'm not seeing them a lot of times--as I'm focused on character, plot, setting.

klikwize

I've noticed you sometimes include criticism of religion in your works, whether through characters dialog/beliefs or through actions of religious organizations, are most of these deliberate or do they grow naturally out of world building (or both)?

Brandon Sanderson

They are an effect of me trying to get into the character's head and legitimately put forth a criticism I think they would make. As a religious person, though, I personally think that the miss-use of religion can be an absolutely terrible thing. I think it's something the atheists and I would agree on 100%.

ICon 2019 ()
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Questioner

So, I wanted to ask. It wasn't translated to Hebrew yet, but one of your stories has a loosely based magic system based on Shabbos.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Very loose! It started stricter, it got very loose.

Questioner

Very loose!

Brandon Sanderson

*explaining to audience* Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell.

Questioner

I was wondering, on the same planet, are there more magic systems or is this magic system going to be expanded upon and built, to keep it in the religious theme?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There is more and it is... all the magics that I'll do there, they are takes on sort of religious concepts. We'll do more. Threnody is really messed up, I'm just gonna warn you. *audience laughs* You haven't even seen how messed up it is.

Commenter

*in humor* Half of the place is called HELL, how worse can it get?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's worse outside of Hell. Hell is nice. *audience laughs*

So, yeah, that's my theme...

Questioner

Will it keep the Jewish motif?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it will keep some more Jewish motifs, and things like that, because I find them fascinating, so, you will find a things like that, yeah.