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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seventeen

The Mists Form

In writing this book, I had to nail down a few worldbuilding issues I'd been contemplating even before the first trilogy ended. What would happen to the mists, for instance, once Sazed took over and became Harmony?

The mists, obviously, are a big part of the series. It didn't make sense—either narratively or worldbuilding-wise—to lose them completely. However, they'd been created as an effect of Preservation trying to use his essence to fight against Ruin's destruction of the world. So . . . wouldn't they go away?

I decided that Sazed would still send them. They're part of the nature of the world now. To acknowledge what had happened, they wouldn't come every night any longer. But they would come. They were changed in that they are no longer simply the raw power of Preservation; they're now a part of Harmony—so they no longer pull away from Hemalurgy in the same way as they used to. They still have the odd effect of being able to power Allomancy. (And Feruchemy as well—if one knows how to do it.)

The mists are, in part, the raw power of creation. And when one is favored of Harmony, the mists have a greater effect than they might otherwise have. We'll see more of this later.

Argent (paraphrased)

Brandon talked about something he called "Honor's purposes" or maybe "Honor's Purposes," and how they are the reason 10 is such a holy and dominant number - I assumed it meant Honor has (had) 10 of those Purposes. It was heavily implied in the conversation that Odium, if he has similar Purposes, does not have 10 of them.

Questioner (paraphrased)

What kind of spren do Dustbringers have?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

RAFO. But you asked a very wise question.

TheQuentisentialYou

Why does Marasi's memory of the voice of "Death" or Marsh, change? From Alloy of Law to Bands of Mourning chapter 15?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2/Part 3)

This is a thing that drives Peter crazy. My research tells me that people change memories based on expectations and environment.

On occasion, you'll see me having characters miss-quote themselves, or remember events clearly wrong. I do this for realism.

(Though on occasion, it's just a mistake or lapse on my part. Those we fix. The rest drive my editors crazy.)

Sagar M

Do you always know the ending of the stories when you begin them?

Brandon Sanderson

Almost always. I'm a planner. Once in a while, I do a short story where I don't. Even that is rare, though.

vineyarddawg

Do you have a shardpen, or what? Does it change to a shardbrush or a shardpencil when you have to use those tools? And can a spren change into a shardPhotoShop, or what?

Ben McSweeney

Funny thing is, working digitally is kinda magical. I mean, you can turn back time. You can stack a hundred invisible sheets of paper and draw on each one separately, with the result being no thicker than a single page. You can cut and paste and warp and blur and save a perfect copy trapped in time just in case your next experiment goes horribly awry.

And if you do it right and well, nobody will never know the difference.

It ain't a shard, exactly, but it'll do. :)

Questioner

You're a lot faster at getting your books out, getting these really awesome books out, then many other writers. And I think you know who I'm thinking about. What’s the secret?

Brandon Sanderson

The secret is my work ethic. It's beaten into me by my parents I think. I write every day. It's like that classic pioneer work ethic. I just, I write my stories every day, I do this compulsively. I think the other thing is, we talk about someone like Pat Rothfuss. He is a perfectionist, to a level beyond me. I am okay getting my prose pretty good and then handing it to the editor, and letting them work on it, you know what I mean. He has to be perfect before he hands it on, if that makes sense. And I think that as a result, his biggest strength over me as a writer is his prose is more lyrical because he works so hard on it. So it shows. It's like he takes that extra one percent, but that extra one percent takes him like two extra years to get. Some other writers, as you get older, they just, the grind of it gets to them and they slow down. I just love what I do and I write every day.

Questioner

What is your favorite curse word from your books?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably, "storming", it's the easiest.

Questioner

I noticed during Oathbringer, is there a symbolism between the color red? Because I noticed that red is mentioned many times. Is it tied directly to the Thrill?

Brandon Sanderson

When I am using red specifically for spren and eye color, I'm doing it intentionally. It means something. I'm not gonna tell you what it means yet.

Questioner

Azure's cloth was red, and Adolin picked up a red glass sphere.

Brandon Sanderson

Some of that is going to be coincidence. But the color of the thing that is going to Scadrial is not coincidence.

Vegasdev

Would a compass work on Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

A compass would work, but remember that the Final Empire is set at the north pole of Scadrial, but not necessarily at the magnetic north pole. These things are complicated, but just assume that it works the same way it would here on Earth.

Questioner

I have a question about the epilogue in The Way of Kings. You have Wit give this interesting, kind of philosophical-- sermon-thing on novelty. I wonder, what do you think about what he's saying, do you--

Brandon Sanderson

Usually those little things that Wit will do, he does one at the end of each book, are things I've thought about. I don't always one hundred percent agree with Wit. He tends to hyperbolize in order to make a point, but I do think it's really interesting that novelty is so important to us. Even if you did something independently, but come up with it after someone else, then it's not considered as great an art, right? Which is really, really, really interesting if you think about it. And I love that idea, and I like talking about that sort of thing, so these-- All of Wit's little monologues--there's one, like I've said, at the end of each book--is something I think about, but he goes off in his own direction sometimes.

Questioner

I've used that little monologue in some philosophy class that I've in, such as philosophy of art.  

Brandon Sanderson

I did take a-- I took a lot of philosophy classes, if you can't tell, during my undergraduate years. I was quite fond of philosophy. Though the philosophers were all really needed to learn how to write. Man, those guys just, I mean, paragraphs like this that don't really even say anything. I love the ideas, but man, they could use editors. But, yeah, I enjoyed my philosophy classes, and I really liked philosophy of art in particular, it's very interesting to me. The whole Oscar Wilde's intro to Dorian Gray is my favorite speech on art, that all art is, by necessity, useless. Stuff like that really, really gets me going.

Poser1313

Does anyone understand what [Brandon] means in saying that dead Shardblades cannot heal the soul, whereas living ones can?

It seems like it's been a while since I've read WoR, and I can't make out how the original scene demonstrates this? Is he talking about Kaladin's soul or Szeth's?

Peter Ahlstrom

I don't understand it myself, except that two Orders can use Regrowth. But that might not be what Brandon is talking about.

Questioner

Do you ever have trouble keeping your characters straight? How long does it take to get back into them?

Brandon Sanderson

If I stop writing and go back, it is hard. It takes about a month to get back into a story after I stop. I don't get the characters mixed up.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

I try to, but I don't always manage it, because of deadlines and things. It's always going to cost me, and I know it will, sometimes you can't avoid that. In the old days, I never did it, when I didn't have a publisher, but now it's my job. When they say, "We need this revision done," I stop and do the revision, but it costs me.

l33tmachine

Pre-Hero of Ages, was the human population of Scadrial located only within the Final Empire? Were there people living beyond the lands of the Lord Ruler? If so, what happened to them?

Brandon Sanderson

The southern continent of Scadrial is inhabited. It still is. No contact has yet been made.

Questioner

I was wondering if you had an inspiration for Cody.

Brandon Sanderson

For Cody, yes I did actually. I was at a convention in the South and I had someone, a guy, use y’all for "me", and I'm like, "Y'all for one person?" and he's like "Yeah, that's how you use it" for one person. *laughter* Really? And he just tried to convince me that this is true. So I went to wikipedia and they said there are some delusional people who use it that way. So I'm like, I'm totally building a character around this person who, you know, I couldn't tell the whole time if he was pulling my leg because I was not from the South, or if indeed that was his little regional dialect, that y'all is one person and all y'all was two, which is what he tried to convince me-- it is true? You say it's true?

Bystander

It's from Kentucky.

Brandon Sanderson

See I have gotten-- I have gotten more emails about from Southerners who say "You've committed the great sin for a non-Southerner by using it that way, and it's an abomination, and it's not true". And I'm like, wow I must have done something right. 'Cause they hate that. I'm getting it from the people from Atlanta, they're like "this is not-- this is not correct". You know, Charleston, where they're all like the hoity-toity Southerners. So anyway, yeah that's where Cody came from. That idea.

Rebecca Lovatt

The electricity-based one, is that relating at all to the novella you just put out [Perfect State]?

Brandon Sanderson

No. The electricity one is Dark One. The original idea for the setting for that book is how Nikola Tesla wanted to provide wireless energy to the world, and the experiments he did. I want to have a planet where that is just the natural state of the world. The ground there has an electric current you can harvest; you can set down a lantern on the ground and it will glow, drawing a current up through it into the air or down from the air into the ground. I haven't decided which way it's going to go yet.

Along with that I want to have interesting ecological features. Big toad monsters shoot out a taser tongue, they use spittle that somehow conducts electricity back and forth. Stuff like this. I want to have electricity be my fun theme. The problem with that again is that is very science-based. When I make a big change to the world, like that you can draw an electric current from the ground, then I have to try and figure out the science of how that works.

Rebecca Lovatt

Yeah, especially because you have bodies of water. That seems like it would be fun. You'd suddenly become 10 times more scared of rain.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, if it rains, lightning is going to happen constantly. So how do we deal with this? I'm tempted to make it not rain, -but then making it not rain is yet another big change, so where do we go there? So that one's got lots of extrapolation to do, but I have some friends who are much better at these physics questions then I am. So I'm going to them, and they are pointing me in the right direction.

fletchershair

Can you combine Aons? Instead of just adding the things that make them more detailed, can you combine them with each other?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There is an entire art based around figuring out what combinations work.

Questioner

For the next Stormlight [book], will there be chapters from Jasnah's perspective?

Brandon Sanderson

There will be, I believe, at least one chapter from her viewpoint. I could change that but the outline has at least one from her.  It’s dangerous to do too many from her viewpoint because she’s eventually going to be a main viewpoint character, and she has a large chance of taking over a narrative that she’s part of.

Questioner

I am curious about, if sprens are pieces of the god power, and investiture is the power of the god, then can Nightblood consume spren?

Brandon Sanderson

He could theoretically -- yeah, he could totally consume spren. There's not even any “theoretically” to that.

Lindsay Jo Scarpello

I wonder if creationspren pop up when people are getting busy...

Brandon Sanderson

There's a different spren for that.

Mitchell Knox

Have you considered writing a book explaining the cosmere and worldbuilding?

Brandon Sanderson

Some day, we will probably do this. But I want more of the different worlds fleshed out first.

Questioner

I didn't know you listened to metal.

Brandon Sanderson

I do, I do listen to metal. I am not as much into it as I should. Like, all the cool little metal bands, I don't know as much as I should. But I've been thinking, one of my books, I am gonna write a metalhead as one of my main characters. So I've actually been hanging out on metalhead forums, and kind of reading about what they are talking about, "that's metal", "this is not metal" and stuff like that. Reading-- submerging myself in that culture. Because I think a metalhead advocate for metal would be a really great character one day.

Argent

It has to be in Mistborn!

Brandon Sanderson

No, it wouldn't, it would actually be on our planet, because I want to use our metalhead culture as the main character.

Questioner

The rock that Vin has in the beginning of Mistborn--black obsidian rock. What was that? Was that--

Brandon Sanderson

That was a memento from an earlier part of her life.

Truthwatcher_17.5

Does Hoid have any Hemalurgic spikes?

Brandon Sanderson

I will RAFO that one.

Questioner

If a thing that is Invested under one Shard, you transfer it to another. Does the method of continuing empowerment of  the Investiture change to the source of that other Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

Naturally, no. It may do so.

Questioner

The only reason I ask is because Nightblood doesn't seem to behave different.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, Nightblood does not require, but will instead accept gleefully anything you give it. But for instance, if you took a Soulstamp to another planet and somehow made it work, it wouldn't necessarily draw on the power of that Shard to work. Granted, it's really hard to make a Soulstamp work. Here's another example. You go on another planet. Hoid is using Allomancy on Roshar. That is not using the power of Honor or Cultivation. It is still drawing on the power of, in that case, Harmony.

Brandon Sanderson

Introduction: The Longer Version

Back in January this year, Wizards of the Coast approached me. Knowing of my love for their game, Magic: The Gathering, they were wondering if I would be willing to write a tie-in story for them. They mentioned since it was the 25th birthday of Magic, they wanted to do something special—and might be able to splurge on a Brandon Sanderson story.

I was, of course, interested—but went back to Wizards with a proposal that I think surprised them. You see, I knew they'd been doing some very interesting things with their stories in recent months. (The multi-part Dominaria sequence by Martha Wells is a good example, if you are interested.) I liked how they were using free stories on their website to both enhance the lore and give some work to talented writers.

Way back in the beginning of my career, one of the things I liked to do was periodically release free stories. Defending Elysium, Firstborn, and even Warbreaker are examples. Over the years, though, I've gotten busy enough that I haven't found a good opportunity to do this again. I liked the idea of doing a story for Wizards in part for this reason.

So I went back to them with a proposal: I didn't actually want payment for this story. I just wanted them to put it up for free on their website, and then if (later down the road) it generated any money by being in a collection or in print on its own, I wanted my portion of that donated to charity. In exchange for doing it for free, I wanted to be allowed to write the story my way. That meant me picking one of their settings, then developing my own characters and plot to happen there. (As opposed to writing the story for one of their official releases, as most of the other writers they hired were doing.)

It wasn't that I had anything against writing one of the main-line-setting stories. I just felt that in this case, I wanted greater flexibility. Beyond that, for several years now, I've had a story brewing in my head that I felt was a perfect match for one of their settings—a story I couldn't make work in the Cosmere, but which I really wanted to write.

Wizards was on board immediately—and so, "Secret Project" was born.

Regarding the Story

Wizards has a lot of great settings for the card game, so I had plenty of options. The story I'd been brewing was specifically inspired by their Innistrad set—a gothic horror setting with some magepunk elements underpinning it. It has had a very interesting evolution over the years, and was the setting for one of the best Magic sets of all time. Ever since writing Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, I've wanted to do another horror/fantasy hybrid, and so I dove into what became Children of the Nameless.

I don't know exactly what Wizards was expecting of me, but I suspect a 250-page behemoth of a story wasn't it. (At 50k words, the story is roughly half the size of something like Skyward.) I have to say, though, working with them was an absolute pleasure. They jumped on board with the main character pitch I made, integrating him right away into the larger Magic story. They even went so far as to loop me in on conference calls, where I could explain my character concepts so they could develop art. I'd thought they might be worried about letting me go off on my own like this, but they were instead enthusiastic and supportive.

So, it is with great pleasure I present Children of the Nameless. Consider it a Christmas present from me and from Wizards of the Coast to you. I hope you enjoy it!

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eleven

Authors like to torture people.

If I had to pick, this would be my second-favorite rant. The mousetrap one is fun, but this one actually says something. It offers commentary. Even if it is ridiculous.

I’ve wondered about this concept. Why, exactly, do authors do what they do? Why do I write books, and why do I get a thrill every time I see a character in as much pain as I put Alcatraz through in this chapter?

I acknowledge that I’m probably not a sadist. It’s more that I love seeing good character development. Books are about emotion, and I get the greatest satisfaction from a story when people become so attached to the character that they feel like they know them. Then, when something bad happens, it’s heartwrenching, and the book gains meaning. Not because of what it says or its grand philosophy, but because it means something to that reader at that moment.

And when there are victories, they really feel like victories. Nothing is better than that.

Kingsdaughter613

I wanted to know if any of the non-Returned Cognitive Shadows have had children?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Are they any new fantasy novels that you'd recommend?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, this year I've been reading pretty much exclusively Wheel of Time. Other than Wheel of Time I've only read three books. Two were Terry Pratchett books, and one was The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which is a really solid book. So, Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is a really good book. I... it's been nominated for the Hugo and for things like that so you don't need me to tell you that. But, yeah, that's the only one I've read. Oh. And Wise Man's Fear. But I started last year on that, I think, because I got that early. But really, I haven't read a ton this year because I've committed to rereading the whole Wheel of Time, and when you do that, your reading time just kind of vanishes and I also wanted to read for the Hugo awards, so I read all of their short fiction, for the Hugo awards, and so... I did vote.

Questioner

Calamity, it is just, because it talks about it always being in the sky. Is it hovering above North America or is that a global thing?

Brandon Sanderson

You will find out in the next book.

Questioner

Could I have you write the name of-- or the intent of the Shard that's hiding on it's uninhabited world away from everybody?

Brandon Sanderson

Mostly because I don't want to canonize these things and so I get locked into it and the decision is absolutely made. I haven't changed many of them, but I have tweaked them before. I've tweaked like how I wanted to represent the intent, so...

Questioner

How many Shards have ever been on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, boy. At one point, all of them were on Roshar. Which is technically true.

Vaidd (paraphrased)

What's the approximate ratio of Epics to "normals?" Is that number increasing, decreasing, or staying roughly the same?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The ratio of Epics to normal folks is about 1 in 10,000. Brandon then clarified, without prompting, that was pre-Calamity population and the ratio is much higher now because so many normal people died. He then gave an example of Newcago, which has about 1000 Epics in a population of 250,000, so in that particular case the ratio is 1:250.

Brandon Sanderson

Lightsong Kneels before the God King

My vote for most thoughtful line of the first chunk of the book? Lightsong's comment that he'd found that make-believe things were often the only things of substance in people's lives. (Not quoted directly.)

It's a little bit cynical, yet somewhat hopeful as well. As Lightsong perceives it, it's true.

JavaPython_

I love your work. It really inspires me to improve my drawing. Do you have any rough sketches of Marsh's/Inquisitor/Obligator tattoos? I want to be Marsh for Halloween.

Ben McSweeney

I don't, the best image is probably the standing illustration of Marsh in the Adventure Game. In all honesty, they were freehanded on the page, so it was more about a general approximation of shapes than a planned composition of glyphs.

Questioner

I was wondering what the Alethi, what kind of music they listen to?

Brandon Sanderson

They're gonna like stuff that sounds stuffy and snooty to you. So, the kind of equivalent would be a soft string quartet in our world. Granted, it's a little different there, but that'll-- Not much percussion. There is a time where they like a nice battle hymn, or something like that, you could get some equivalent of brass.

Questioner

Back to the callsigns. Did you come up with Jorgen's name first, or did you come up with his callsign first?

Brandon Sanderson

The callsign was first. And then the name followed out of some of the linguistics I was using... Yeah, the callsign was first.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Can you go into healing a bit more?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Regrowth in the books - Healing is an aspect, Regrowth is ??,

Questioner

How old is Lopen.

Brandon Sanderson

Lopen is early twenties.

Questioner

When can we get a Herald of War perspective?

Brandon Sanderson

You've gotten one really brief one. You really won't get them until starting around book six. So, you got a little bit left. Taln is a main character in the back five books, but he's only kinda just a tangential character in the first ones.

Questioner (paraphrased)

What about the Mistborn video game?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

We put it off until 2014, because of the new console generation. We had planned for it to come out right when the buzz was saying the new consoles were going to launch. And that felt like a bad idea to us. The Mistborn film is also in the works, but it is very early and it is not nearly as far along as the Wheel of Time film is. So if anyone's father is J. J. Abrams, have him call me.

DSC01

I'm probably too late to this party to get a question in, but just in case... The resonances for Edgedancers and Bloodmaker/Slider pairings--are they basically the same thing? It's maybe mostly linguistic for Edgedancers and more like Invested method acting for the Wayne types, but if I'm reading things correctly, it seems that they're very closely related.

After all, Progression and Bloodmaking are quite similar. Abrasion and speed bubbles have a more tenuous link, but they do call bendalloy boys "Sliders," after all (no disrespect to bendalloy girls, but I couldn't pass up the alliteration).

Brandon Sanderson

The connections are more because the magics are all inter-related, and based on fundamental rules, and less because I was trying for any specific connection.

Questioner

How many marks to a broam?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, Peter—take out the … It’s been so long. I had it at ten, but then I think he came in and said “it can’t be ten”, and so it’s actually in our wiki. Peter—hey, where’s Peter? How many marks are in a broam? Is it ten or 25? Email Peter, and he’ll tell you.

Satsuoni

Is it possible to give cats intelligence with Hemalurgy? Or transfer cat's identity to a human?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgy can do some very, very odd things. And the endowment of intelligence is a common result of tinkering with Shard-based magic.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seven

Marasi finds Waxillium experimenting with metals

I was very amused to find that the cover of this book had been steampunkified a little bit, with Waxillium having a pair of extraneous goggles on his head. But, to be fair, I did put some goggles in the book, so I guess I can't complain too much.

One thing I was aware of when writing this book was that I didn't want it to feel too much like Sherlock Holmes. There are a lot of parallels, as I mentioned in an earlier annotation. It was important to me to acknowledge the obvious influence to myself, but try to keep myself from falling too much into the same mold.

That's kind of hard when the story is set up, basically, to be a mystery with an investigator set in a similar time period to the Holmes stories. In my head, however, I decided this book would be more police procedural and less quirky-genius-does-deduction. I wanted Waxillium to be a cop, through and through, not an eccentric who solves cases out of curiosity. In that regard, Sam Vimes—from Terry Pratchett's books—was almost as much of an inspiration as Holmes was.

Anyway, that's all a side note to what is happening in this chapter. Waxillium is being methodical in the way he tracks down what is happening. He's very much a step-by-step kind of guy in these matters. And now that he's let himself loose and decided to be involved, he's gone a little overboard.

Questioner

What do you do when you have a really great idea and you read a book and someone has already done that idea?

Brandon Sanderson

Weep into your pillow a little bit...

*Laughter*

Then remind yourself that Ideas Are Cheap; in science fiction and fantasy ideas are cheap. Writing skill is what people are really looking for. And so if your idea has already been done, you can take a new spin on it. You know how many people had written young kid finds out they are secretly a wizard and goes off to wizard school books? *laughter* I mean, there are so many of those. Diane Duane did a great series of them. I think it’s So You Want to be a Wizard or something like that. And so don’t let that destroy you. Ask yourself “What is my unique take on it. What’s my perspective on it?” and go ahead and do it. A ton of people had done heist novels as fantasy books before, but I wanted to do one. So I did.

followthehippo

Would it be too much to ask for another Mistborn novel? 

Brandon Sanderson

The last Wax and Wayne book should be one of my projects this year. We'll see how Skyward finishes up.

Sam Noble

I'm still reeling from the amount of cosmere material we got in Bands!

Brandon Sanderson

The Mistborn books in particular will slowly skew more and more cosmere-oriented over time.

Brandon Sanderson

Games and Other Licensed Work

Amazon

We've recently partnered with Amazon to help bring you more apparel options. As of now, it's the only place other than my website store to sell officially licensed clothing. And in the not-to-distant future we're going to expand our selection to include hoodies and other things as time allows.

Jemaclus

In The Way of Kings, the [epigraphs] indicate that the year is 1174 (or thereabouts). In the Prelude, the date is indicated as 3000 years ago. What mechanism is used to delineate the epochs? Obviously in the Prelude they wouldn't refer to their date as -2174. In other words, what are the B.C./A.D./BCE equivalents for that series?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to have to RAFO that