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17th Shard Interview ()
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17th Shard

Ok, fair enough. Do you have a scene you enjoyed more than the rest, and on the flip side, was their something that you did not enjoy?

Brandon Sanderson

I will say that I really loved doing all the interludes because they gave me a sense, when I was writing this book, of jumping to something new, which is part of what kept me going in all of this. Are they my favorite scenes in the book? No, but they were probably my favorite to write because it's like I get to take a break and write something whacky and looney, so to speak.

Hmm…is there anything that was harder? You know, revisions are always hard. In the next to last draft I changed Dalinar's arc very substantially, and that was a hard write. And, you know, Adolin was not originally a viewpoint character, so there was a lot of hard writing there. So, poor Adolin probably gets the badge for hardest to write. Not because he as a character was hard to write but because I was having to repurpose scenes and toss out scenes and rewrite them with Adolin as the viewpoint character and so on to add just a little more dimension to Dalinar's plot arc.

Kraków signing ()
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Oversleep

What if a Connector tried to store his Connection to his time of birth? Because I understand that’s how spiritual age works.

Brandon Sanderson

Right, Connection to his time of birth. I’m not sure exactly how he would manage that.

I don’t think that would work, I’m not sure how you would manage it. There are other ways to make, you’re along the right path, but that’s not exactly what, the terminology it's just not working right there.

Oversleep

By the way Shadows of Self was my favourite Mistborn book. That ending was just emotional trainwreck for me. It was awesome.

Brandon Sanderson

It's weird because I think that the weakest Mistborn novel is actually Alloy of Law but I think Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning are among the strongest.

Shadows of Self San Jose signing ()
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Questioner

If you could ditch the entire Cosmere, *laughter* what would you write about?

Brandon Sanderson

Start fresh? 

Questioner

Twilight fanfiction.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, there you go, Twilight fanfic. That's...

Questioner 2

Brandon Fifty Shades of Grey would be much tamer. *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

The problem is, I don't think my Fifty Shades of Grey would hit quite the same demographic. 

Questioner 2

You'd have a great magic system, though. *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it would. It would just be a magic system based on different colors of grey and what they do. *laughter*

Questioner 2

Sorta like Warbreaker.

Brandon Sanderson

I have no idea what I would do, I'm sure I could find something, but it would probably turn into another cosmere.

Grasping for the Wind Interview ()
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John Ottinger

How did the idea germinate and come to fruition for the gem-studded magic system of The Way of Kings?

Brandon Sanderson

One of the things to keep in mind is I that developed this book before Mistborn was published. I do wonder if sometimes people are going to say, "Oh, he did metals before, and now he's doing crystals." But the thoughts arose quite independently in my head. You may know that there is a unifying theory of magic for all of my worlds—a behind-the-scenes rationale. Like a lot of people believe there's unifying theory of physics, I have a unifying theory of magic that I try to work within in order to build my worlds. As an armchair scientist, believing in a unifying theory helps me. I'm always looking for interesting ways that magic can be transferred, and interesting ways that people can become users of magic. I don't want just to fall into expected methodologies. If you look at a lot of fantasy—and this is what I did in Mistborn so it's certainly not bad; or if is, I'm part of the problem—a lot of magic is just something you're born with. You're born with this special power that is either genetic or placed upon you by fate, or something like that. In my books I want interesting and different ways of doing that. That's why in Warbreaker the magic is simply the ability to accumulate life force from other people, and anyone who does that becomes a practitioner of magic.

In The Way of Kings, I was looking for some sort of reservoir. Essentially, I wanted magical batteries, because I wanted to take this series toward developing a magical technology. The first book only hints at this, in some of the art and some of the things that are happening. There's a point where one character's fireplace gets replaced with a magical device that creates heat. And he's kind of sad, thinking something like, "I liked my hearth, but now I can touch this and it creates heat, which is still a good thing." But we're seeing the advent of this age, and therefore I wanted something that would work with a more mystical magic inside of a person and that could also form the basis for a mechanical magic. That was one aspect of it. Another big aspect is that I always like to have a visual representation, something in my magic to show that it's not all just happening abstractly but that you can see happen. I loved the imagery of glowing gemstones. When I wrote Mistborn I used Burning metals—metabolizing metals—because it's a natural process and it's an easy connection to make. Even though it's odd in some ways, it's natural in other ways; metabolizing food is how we all get our energy. The idea of a glowing object, illuminated and full of light, is a natural connection for the mind to make: This is a power source; this is a source of natural energy. And since I was working with the highstorms, I wanted some way that you could trap the energy of the storm and use it. The gemstones were an outgrowth of that.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Blushweaver and Lightsong Visit Mercystar

Just like the last scene showed off what a lot of the standard gods are like, Mercystar is supposed to hint at what a lot of the goddesses are like. I think that there would be a good number of them who would turn out just like this—given anything they want, told how important they are, and blessed with a beautiful and perfect body no matter what they eat or how they act. Imagine what that must do to a person.

JordanCon 2018 ()
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Pagerunner

Wit says an expression, "Speak your fears at a mirror when you get home tonight." I've never heard that. Is that a real-world thing? Or is that, like, a Yolish thing?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that's not a real-world thing.

Pagerunner

Any clues to what's going on with that?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I won't give any clues. I'll RAFO that.

Firefight Houston signing ()
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Questioner

What would be the Allomantic definition of "metal" as it relates to steel and iron, what shows up? Like, the metalloids, compounds, in ironsight and stuff?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, I don't know what you mean by that. What are the percentages?

Questioner

The periodic table.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, the periodic table. On the periodic table, the difference between iron and steel? What do you mean?

Questioner

What do iron and steel define as metals? So they would show up with blue lines?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, on the periodic table, what defines as metals? I see what you're staying. So, this is kind of free-form on my part. I have check marks on them on my periodic table, where I kinda just sat and said "Yes, no, yes, no." But things over on the side with cesium and what-not, they would, they would count. Not everything that looks like it should count does. But most everything in that little batch, next to iron and gold and everybody over there, most everybody right there will, and most everybody over on the side will, the stuff that explodes with water. So for instance, ...sodium and stuff like that, if they're in their pure form would, but it's kinda freeform, I just had to make calls. Because there's gotta be a dividing line somewhere.

Questioner

So, would ironsight in enhanced Inquisitor form, show up on atoms in compounds...

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, yeah, they totally would. That all shows up. Trace metals and things like that, they can see your blood, they can see all sorts of stuff.

Starsight Release Party ()
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Questioner

If you had to guess, which gender would be Doomslug?

Brandon Sanderson

Spensa thinks Doomslug's a she, and so I would go with that.

Questioner

The way she looks kind of looks like a boy but the way she talks kind of just sounds like a girl so it gets confusing.

Brandon Sanderson

Telling gender on the slugs is not terribly easy.

/r/Fantasy_Bookclub Alloy of Law Q&A ()
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midwestredditor

How are there kandra and koloss? Kandra especially, since they did their "mass suicide" thing at the end of the original trilogy.

Brandon Sanderson

The nice thing about the kandra for me in the narrative was that, though removing their spikes turns them feral, you can always stick those spikes back in. TenSoon feared that this was the end of his people, and it could have been, if those spikes hadn't gone back in quickly. As it was, there were costs. Time spent without spikes causes a kandra's memories to deteriorate, and some that were left a relatively long time were essentially reborn as new people. But the race survived, even if it is unlikely that their numbers will be added to.

Brandon Sanderson

Did TenSoon survive, then (as the TenSoon who experienced growth under Vin)?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, though he did lose some things.

West Jordan signing ()
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Questioner

So in The Way of Kings you had a whole bunch of chapters with different characters. How are you planning on tying these chapters that you didn’t really go into depth with, in the next [book]?

Brandon Sanderson

The whole purpose of the interludes is when I sat down to write this book, I thought: Okay. I want to get across the scope of this world and how big and immense this world is, and how big and immense just all of the different political structures and all of these things are. And looking at what other authors have done, namely Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin recently as a way to do that, they add new characters to show all this. But then that seems to kind of snowball on them, and by the middle books, there are so many characters that keeping track of them becomes a challenge, which may be the biggest challenge in those books. So when I sat down to write Way of Kings, I said, I want to do that, but I'm going to do that with throwaway characters. Meaning, all of the characters in the interludes are not necessarily characters you will ever see again. You can read the interludes as if they were short stories set in the world in between the main stories going on. Everything in those is important, but those characters you don't need to worry about remembering who they are because you may not ever see from them again. They may occasionally show up for things like this and if you love keeping track of all these characters—but you won't have to, in book two try and remember who those two ardents who were working with the spren were, or things like that. That's not generally going to be that important. I will usually do one interlude with a more major character, though, that I'm introducing like Szeth, in each section. Szeth, the Assassin in White. But most of those, don't worry about those. The whole point of those is that you can read them and and enjoy that chapter and then jump to something else.

Questioner

The Assassin in White, you know how he tied into the story, with the crazy king who had people killed. Is that going to tie into the story?

Brandon Sanderson

That's very important.

Idaho Falls signing ()
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Questioner

*Inaudible question*

Brandon Sanderson

*Repeating* Why do the Shin look different to the Rosharan significant <face>?

Because the Shin have spent a long time being very xenophobic. They haven't intermixed very much. When the original event happened, that I'm not going to say because of spoilers, different people settled in different places, and the Shin in particular just have been very xenophobic.

Shadows of Self San Francisco signing ()
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Questioner

I read some stuff, it’s pretty old, about the sequel to Elantris. Are you still planning on doing it, and is it the same thing?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s still the same thing, and I’m still planning to do Sarene’s uncle, Kiin, and his family as the main characters.

Questioner

And do we get to learn more about the monks, the Dakhor?

Brandon Sanderson

The Dakhor, yes. You will find more about them, it will take place over in, uh, Fjorden.

Stormlight Three Update #6 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Hey, all! Back again to talk about the progress of your book. I promised you updates through the year, and I'll do my best to pop in here now and then and let you know how things are going.

Oathbringer, if you somehow missed the update last month, is done. But it's not DONE done. I turned in the rough draft, but immediately jumped into the third draft. (Because I did the second draft at the same time as the first--basically, after finishing each section of the book, I jumped back and revised it before sending to my editor. The goal being to get him a second draft to begin editing so he could work at the same time I did.)

I've finished Part One and Part Two of the third draft as of today. This included adding in two interludes, which I hadn't finished in the rough draft. Later today, Part Two should be going to the beta readers.

(To answer the inevitable question, the beta readers are chosen by Peter--my assistant and editorial director--from among those who have been very active on the fan websites, or who know us personally.)

I'll jump into the Part Three revision soon, then will do Parts Four and Five together. That will get us through the 3.0 draft.

4.0 and 5.0 drafts will be done together, hopefully in March/April. 4.0 will input beta reader comments and writing group comments, and 5.0 will be the polish where I try to trim words and perfect the language.

We're still in the early stages of the art, as Isaac was busy last fall with the Mistborn Leatherbound and doing maps for Tad William's new series. So we'll need to work hard getting artwork done. Plan is to have a new set of colored endpages for the hardcover of the US edition, as we've done in the past, though I can't announce what those are yet.

Book is looking great so far. Part One needed a heavy revision at the intro, but nothing more than that. Part Two (the slowest of the parts) remains a bit of a questionable area. The only way to speed it up is to cut some fun, but ultimately flabby, chapters. I think they are chapters people will love, as they have some unusual viewpoint characters, but the have a bit of an interlude feel to them. If Tor puts its foot down on length limits for the book, I'll have to cut these out.

Part Three has some larger revisions I've been planning with Peter these last few weeks, so the 3.0 draft on that might take a little longer than the other two did.

Anyway, it's exciting to see the book coming along! November release date is looking very good, and I doubt we'll miss it. Also, my Spanish publisher contacted us with the hopes of trying to do a translation and get their edition out at the same time as the US/UK editions, which would be a first for any of my books in translation. So a big thumbs up for them.

Thank you again for your patience. Hope to see some of you in Boston next month, where I'm guest of honor at a convention. Otherwise, I should be mostly nose-to-the-grindstone, as my travel schedule is very light until I head off to Germany (and maybe Poland and Bulgaria) in March.

Steelheart release party ()
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Questioner

Are Inquisitors bald?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, Inquisitors are bald.

Questioner

Are they bald from being bald, or do they shave their heads?

Brandon Sanderson

They shave their heads. Hemalurgy does not automatically make you bald.

Boomtron Interview ()
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Lexie

Will we be seeing any more worlds from the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

There are other word-worlds you will see, there are several I haven’t visited yet at all. White Sand, the world of that book which was one of my earlier novels I never published. I intend to eventually do that series, it may not have the same title or anything but I do intend to do that series, there will be a sequel trilogy to Mistborn, eventually. I’m actually in the middle of working on a short story for that world right now to release online and there will be sequels to elantris but the sequels to elantris will deal with new characters they won’t they won’t, they’ll take place the second book will take place 10 years after the first book.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Quellion's Hidden Attack

Spook brings up that he feels they should have been attacked by now. This is an echo of what I said earlier, where I had planned to throw in an attack here in the middle and have them defeat some assassins. Like I said, I cut that out. Instead, I had the Citizen send his assassin to kill them all.

So, in a way, Spook is prophetic. He speaks of assassins, then Beldre shows up with orders to kill them. She didn't sneak past the soldiers; she was allowed in on the Citizen's orders. (That part should have seemed fishy to you, by the way. How did Beldre sneak past a soldier encampment?) However, her inexperience and general good nature meant that she couldn't do what her brother had ordered.

Not every Allomancer is an innate killer like Vin. Some are pampered girls who were trained to use their powers, but who never got very good at them—or even wanted to be good at them.

Alcatraz Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twelve

The Alcatraz Smedry you think you know is a farce.

And now we get the cynical side of Alcatraz’s character growth. It was an interesting experiment, writing this book from the perspective of someone looking back. I knew what I wanted to have happened in Alcatraz’s life (remember, when I changed the book to first person, I’d done a lot more worldbuilding and planning for the series than I had when I originally wrote it). And I knew where he would end up by the time he was older. (I peg the narrator at about eighteen years old.)

So I knew that he’d look at some of these events–such as Alcatraz learning to be a leader–with a sneer. I had to get that across without undermining the power of the actual event, which is why I’ve worked so hard to make the narrator seem a little untrustworthy. You see how he reacts to his young self, but hopefully you don’t see the young Alcatraz in the same way.

Kraków signing ()
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Oversleep

You told me - when we were interviewing you on Friday to tell the 17th Shard to tell them you told us how the Cosmere ends and...

Brandon Sanderson

And I totally did, right! The answer is it ends well.

Oversleep

They wanted me to tell you that they were like mindblown!

Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A ()
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Mark

It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn't Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others?

Brandon Sanderson

The "You must give up all of your Breath, not some" line was mostly perpetuated by Denth, who is saying it to Vivenna to stop her from giving away her Breath to all the people she passes. It is a lie. Now, it's a lie that's commonly accepted by a lot of people. But it's still a lie—as we find out midway through the book, you can stick some of your Breath in an object and bring it to life, and then recover that Breath. So it's very easy to give some of your Breath to someone if you know the logical steps to take. Invest most of it into an object, give what you have to someone else, then pull back what you Invested. So it's flat-out proven in the novel that what Denth is telling her is wrong. Now, he could dance around that lie by pretending to be the ignorant mercenary—he's just perpetuating a falsehood that many people believe. But it is a lie. In fact, a lot of the things people believe about BioChromatic Breath isn't true.

One of the things I was trying with this book was to take a few steps back from MISTBORN, where so much was understood. I feel that the approach I took in MISTBORN is right for that book, and yet people have so much superstition regarding all sorts of science. I worry sometimes that there isn't enough superstition in my books, regarding magic as science. What people believed and what people knew and what people understood was so varied and confused throughout most of history, that I worry that I lack realism in that. Vasher brings up at several points in the book that they don't know a whole lot and that people perpetuate a lot of myths and stories and lies.

Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to—he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life

Alloy of Law release party ()
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Questioner

Does Iron store mass or weight?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. The thing is it really does involve mass, but I’m breaking some physics rules, basically. I have to break a number of physics rules in order to make Magic work in the first place. Those whole laws of Thermodynamics, I’m like “You are my bane!” (laughter) But I try to work within the framework, and I have reasonings built up for myself, and some of them have to be kind of arbitrary. But the thing is, it does store mass if you look at how it interacts, but when a Feruchemist punches someone, you’re not having a mass transference of a 1000 pounds transferring the mass into someone else.

So there are a few little tweaks. You can go talk to Peter, because Peter has the actual math. Oh Peter’s back there. Peter is dressed up as Allomancer Jak from the broadsheet. In fact we’re giving some out broadsheets, aren’t we Peter. So when you come through the line, we’re giving out Broadsheets. Please don’t take fifty—I think we might have enough for everybody. The broadsheets are the newspaper from the Alloy of Law time. It’s an inworld newspaper. It’s actually reproduced in the book in four different pages, and we put it together in one big broadsheet.

So anyway, you can talk with him, he’s got more of the math of it. I explained the concept to Peter and he’s better with the actual math, so he said “We’ll figure it out.”

General Reddit 2020 ()
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teknopathetic.png

teknopathetic

Seeing as what is happening in the world, it got me wondering if there is a Shard along the lines on Anguish? Seems like a pretty important aspect of consciousness, but this isn't something I have seen tossed around.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a good theory, and while I can't confirm yet for various reasons, I think you should share that idea.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Spook's Message

Here is the connection between the groups, and the reason I wrote the Spook sections.

Well, that's not completely true. I wrote the Spook sections because I found him a compelling character, with a new way to use the magic and an interesting story to tell. I liked how his story played against Sazed's conflicts, and what the work in Urteau said about the overall message of the book.

However, the piece that connects the storylines and brings them together is very important too. Spook knows about things that Vin does not, and so we begin to thread these different viewpoints together. We've already had Marsh and Vin's scenes ram together, as well as Sazed's and TenSoon's. Now we'll weave Spook in too.

YouTube Livestream 11 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

I will finish Stormlight Four this week, is the goal. At the very latest, over the weekend. The last draft, sending it on to production.

And then from there, I think my next job is to spend one week doing a revision on Songs of the Dead, is what we put in the schedule next. This is the new name of Death By Pizza. Heavy metal music influenced necromancer urban fantasy that I'm coauthoring with Peter Orullian who is a heavy metal singer. I'm gonna do a draft on that.

And then it is writing the [Stormlight] novella for about the next month. So we'll start posting updates on that as I do that. And I think I know what the title's going to be. So we might announce that in the upcoming days. You'll be very excited by the title, I suspect.

Barnes & Noble B-Fest 2016 ()
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Questioner

If a mistwraith eats a Koloss will it [?].

Brandon Sanderson

If a Mistwraith eats a Koloss, you're asking "will it become it", um, "will it gain sapience because it now has Feruchemical* spikes?" Any Feruchemical* spike is not necessarily enough to make the creature we call 'Kandra', but there may be very weird side effects to what you just described.

Idaho Falls signing ()
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Questioner

What would win in a fight between a sandling and a chasmfiend?

Brandon Sanderson

Where are they?

Questioner

I don't know.

Brandon Sanderson

That matters a whole lot.

Questioner

That really does.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep. That's the answer. Where are they? They would both probably win in their native environments.

Shadows of Self San Jose signing ()
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Questioner

So, Metalminds: if you store weight, how does that work, do you decrease your mass or...?

Brandon Sanderson

So, storing weight actually plays with your mass, because if you look at how we do the physics of it… This one is really screwy, because we are changing mass and playing with it. You watch, like with Wax decreases his weight while he's in motion he'll speed up, and if he increases it, he'll slow down. The conservation of momentum and things like that, but we'll doing really weird stuff. It's like, how can you store your mass… Well, in the magic system it works, but it’s one of the weirdest things we do. *pauses to sign book* We kind of play loose and free with the physics sometimes. Like the example that I often use is Wayne doing a speed bubble, the light that is trapped in the speed bubble...like if he turns on a flashlight would actually radiate because of the redshift, and you could just kill everybody by flashing that. So, we make the speed bubbles not cause a redshift for that reason. We kind of work with what is good storytelling first, and then work the physics around it, but we have to put in all these little breaks and things like that in there regularity in order to actually have the story.

A StompingMad YetiHatter Collaboration Interview ()
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Yeti Stomper

Structurally, The Way of Kings is fairly unique. There are three main POV characters in Kaladin, Dallinar, and Shallan, a handful of minor POV characters Szeth, Adolin, and then The Asides in which we only get a few pages of material largely unrelated to the overall plot. How will the cast grow and change in future volumes? Are you thinking of keeping each volume to a similar number of POVs or expanding it?

Brandon Sanderson

There will be a similar number, with a small expansion. At this point I believe you have met every one of the major viewpoint characters for the series. I don't want it to spiral out of control. I think too many viewpoint characters is a danger to epic fantasy, putting a writer in difficult predicaments for subsequent books—whether to leave some characters out, or whether to show a little bit of each of them without getting any major plot arcs for any of them.

So you've seen pretty much everybody. Now, at this point there are several who are major viewpoint characters for the series who we have not had many or any viewpoints from yet—Jasnah is one, a character who shows up in the epilogue is another, and there are a few others—but there are in my mind essentially eight or ten major characters in this series, and it will stick to that.

The interludes will continue to be what they are, which is that those characters may show up again, but it's unlikely that there will be many more viewpoints from them. The interludes are there because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too—I wanted to have the big sprawling epic with a lot of major viewpoints that we spend a lot of time on like Robert Jordan did, but I also wanted to have the quick jumps around that George R. R. Martin does, and they're two masters of the genre. And so I decided on the interludes as a way to jump around and show the world, to give depth and to give rounding to what's happening—give you little glimpses into important aspects of the world—but those characters are not people you have to remember and follow. Each of the interludes will have one character that you need to pay attention to, but you can take the interludes and read them and without having to focus too much on remembering and keeping track of what their plot is. Then you can jump back into the main characters. And that's always going to be the case in the books to come.

Each book will also have one character who has flashbacks throughout that book—we'll stick to one per book, and you will find out how they ended up where they are as we dig back into their past.

Miscellaneous 2017 ()
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Argent

I had been thinking about the Cosmere constellations map, and why certain constellations are what they are. Some look pretty obvious to me - of course the one that includes Roshar would be a Shardbearer, and of course the one with Nalthis would be somebody exhaling or giving Breath. But others? Threnody is maybe a part of a grieving woman, so that could kind of make sense, but Sel being featured in a lamp?! 

So I asked Brandon, and he said the constellations were all you. He also encouraged me to convince you to write an essay for the website about this map, but I wanted to see if you could answer some questions about this map.

Is this alright with you?

Isaac Stewart

Thanks for the email. I'll try to answer some of your questions, and you're right, an essay about the map on the website might eventually be the way to go. (Got to find time to write it.) The constellations weren't really all me. I had several discussions with Brandon, who made many suggestions. Maybe he forgets how much input he had. :) Unless he means the actual lines of the constellations. Those are purely me.

Sel's constellation is symbolic (as is the constellation Threnody is found in). As for the lamp, notice that Sel is not exactly part of the lamp. It's part of the flame. How does Aon Dor work? An Elantrian creates an opening for it to pour through and affect the world. Think of the flame as a symbol for the Dor. Does that make sense?

Send away with your questions. Maybe they'll help direct how I should handle the essay. :)

TWG Posts ()
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Brandon Sanderson

I can't say too much without spoilers for Mistborn 3, but suffice it to say that if I were to write more books in this world, I would want to do some new things with the magic. Some events at the end of Mistborn 3 have large ramifications on the way the magic works and the way the setting would proceed.

Alcatraz Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

I came for you, as promised.

And, of course, I had to end with a lead-in to the next book, along with a final potshot at Harry Potter. You were all thinking it, weren’t you? You were worried I was just going to leave him there.

I’ll admit, that’s how I originally wrote the ending–not to be like Harry Potter, but because I really wanted Alcatraz to get back and read the note from his father. However, after I wrote the ending, I was dissatisfied with it. There needed to be something more, something to make it seem less cliché. I didn’t want to end in the same way I’ve always mocked the Harry Potter books for ending. That’s when I decided, “Hey, why not go ahead and make fun of that ending?”

So, here we have a fitting ending to the book. I hope you enjoyed it.

Elantris Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

If I were to assign Raoden two defining traits, the first would be his ability to make the best of what he's given (as I've spoken of above.) The second, however, would be the personality trait he manifests in this chapter–his simple belief in the goodness of the human race.

I suppose this is a facet of his optimism. Raoden believes in people–he believes that, as a whole, they will do what is right. He believes that they are more rational than the nobility sometimes give them credit, and he believes that most men will do what is good if they are presented with all of the facts.

He really is a noble man. He's perhaps the only person I've written in a fantasy book who, from day one, actually deserved to be king.

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Questioner

How old were you when you started writing?

Brandon Sanderson

How old was I when I started writing? That's an excellent question. I started writing when I was fifteen. I had not tried writing before that, in fact I had not discovered books until an English teacher handed me my very first fantasy novel when I was fourteen. ...My teacher, Ms. Reader, true story, got me hooked on fantasy.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty - Part One

Vin Arrives in Her Black Gown

This is kind of a girly moment in the text. I put these in sometimes. Too many female readers have complained to me that I don’t linger enough on what people wear, and I figure that Vin—trained by Kelsier—would know the power of a surprising entrance. Hence the drama of her appearing in that unexpected dress.

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Questioner (paraphrased)

Do you see Robert Jordan’s characters coming out in your writing?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No. That may happen unconsciously, but my goal is not to have that happen, because I want to tell different stories. It would be like if Kelsier started coming out in Dalinar. It's just not something we want to have happen as a writer. We want everyone to be their own individual.

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Lauren

If you found yourself as an apprentice in the Cosmere, who would you like as a mentor figure and why?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh boy, who would I like as a mentor figure and why. I would probably pick someone boring in Silverlight, because I do not necessarily want to be involved in the great workings of the Cosmere because there is a lot of danger involved in that. I would stay far away from Hoid. Khriss would not be bad but she gets into a lot of dangerous situations, and I'm not sure that I would recommend letting her get you into those situations. How about that.

So yeah. There you go. Vasher - definitely right out. Don't be near Vasher if you value not getting your soul sucked into a dangerous black sword.

But, you know, I'm not sure if I could come up with a name. If I have to name - somebody that is going to be named... Maybe Vstim. You know, he was a good mentor and yeah, he travelled a lot, but he was really careful. Granted, he did have his apprentice jump off a greatshell's head, but that was more her fault than his. I think he would take really good care of an apprentice. And he knows his way around, so he's a pretty good mentor.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As ()
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alercah

I know Nightblood was written specifically as a sort of prequel, but isn't that a bit of a violation of keeping them self-contained?

Brandon Sanderson

It is. Warbreaker has always been a little bit of a special exception, because of the circumstances of writing it.