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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Five

The joke is, of course, that Eventeo told Sarene not to do this very thing–not to overthrow Iadon and put herself on the throne. It was back in chapter two, the first Sarene chapter, and he said it in jest. (She broke her promise, though–she said she'd wait at least two months to put herself on the throne. Go read the last page of that chapter if you want to see what I'm talking about.)

Anyway, yes, I killed Iadon off-stage. I didn't see any reason to go on with him at this point. He'd done his damage, suffered his defeat. The best thing for him was to disappear without causing any more trouble, I think.

Questioner

So I'm curious, what is your favorite historical time period?

Brandon Sanderson

1880’s to 1920’s.

Questioner

I definitely look forward to that in the next Mistborn section.

Brandon Sanderson

Well this is where the Wax and Wayne books are, in that Era.

TheBurningDusk

How do artifabrians cut the rubies in half? Do they use a Shardblade? As far as I understand, gemstones don't exactly get sliced very well because of how hard and brittle they are.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO--but answered (I think) in this book.

Questioner

Where are the rest of Roshar's named gems? Like, we have the Hope diamond, we've got dozens of--

Brandon Sanderson

A lot of them are in the [Thaylen Gemstone Reserve] ...There's a lot of them around and there are places like that. One of the tricks, and I actually kind of was aware of this, particularly in book three, I was like "Yeah, I maybe should have named some of these things earlier." One of the tricks with a book like Way of Kings, there are already so many new names and terms that oftentimes I find myself finding ways to not include a new name or term because the overwhelming nature of the learning curve is so big. And I will admit, writing book three I'm like, "Ah, I should have named some of these earlier," this is what they would do.

But it's kind of this Occam's razor, well, that's the wrong term. It's this idea of "Let's try to keep it as simple as possible for that fact that it's really complex." and that's why I naturally just didn't do it. 

I would say in-world a lot of them are named. But you've also got to remember that gems are not as eternal on Roshar as they are. They are a little more ephemeral, you will often end up using them for something and they are wearing out, so to speak. So the idea that a diamond is forever is more of an Earth concept than a Roshar concept.

Kurkistan

Would it be fair to describe the three realms as the Spiritual Realm providing motivation/general directives (gravity, desires, energy, etc.), the Cognitive Realm interpreting and applying those directives, and the Physical Realm as where these directives--as interpreted by the Cognitive Realm--are actually implemented? All of this with interactions/change flowing back and forth between the Realms as well (Physical phenomena affecting thought affecting the spirit, for example).

Brandon Sanderson

Ha! That's a very interesting way to look at it. The theory isn't all there, but it's thinking along the right lines.

Questioner

I'm a physical chemist and I'm reading your book [The Way of Kings] right now and at some point you have someone studying flamespren and what they saw, that's one of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

So you got that from quantum mechanics?

Brandon Sanderson

I did get that from quantum mechanics.

Questioner

How did you come across that and decide to incorporate that into your epic fantasy?

Brandon Sanderson

Well The Way of Kings' magic systems are based on the fundamental forces. That was the original idea and the extrapolation from them. I'm fascinated by quantum mechanics and I have worked them into the way that-- Remember in my worlds, my books, the magics are a new branch of physics, in these worlds. And so they interact with our normal physics, it's not like they are ignoring them, so they obey the laws of thermodynamics, even when they appear to be breaking them, and they interact with quantum and all the stuff. It's just very natural that they are going to, to me if that makes sense? It would be weird if they didn't interact with them.

Storm Cellar

If you have a child that can't stop making up/writing stories and never wants to sleep at night, what is the best way to encourage them without letting them be nocturnal? (Child in question is about 13.)

Brandon Sanderson

Well...I'm maybe not a great person to ask, because I was nocturnal myself.  So I don't have experience at forcing the kid to go to bed--I stayed up myself, doing exactly this.  It's not a great thing, because it can have implications for school work and the like. But I never figured it out myself.  I STILL go to bed at around 4:00am. In high school, I stayed up late and took a nap every day, which I wouldn't recommend. But making sure they have time each day to write--like piano lessons, but for stories--might be a way to channel that energy and perhaps make sure they get some done each day, and are more relaxed, as they feel the story is progressing.  This helps me a lot.

Brandon Sanderson

As we get ready for the release of The Alloy of Law, I find myself wondering what the teenage me would think of what I’m doing in this book.  You see, I became a fantasy addict when I was about fourteen, and one of my mantras quickly became, “If it has guns, it’s not good fantasy.”

Now here I am, adding guns to my most successful fantasy series.

Despite the ways I’ve changed over the years, despite my belief that fantasy should be (and is becoming) something more than the standard “guy living in idealized chivalrous England leaves his farm and saves the world,” a voice inside of me is screaming that nobody will buy this book.  Because it has guns.

I don’t believe that voice, but I think it says something interesting about me and others like me.  Perhaps we fantasy readers sometimes mix up correlation and causation in our fantasy novels.  In fact, I’m more and more convinced that taste for a specific genre or medium is often built on shaky ground.

An example may help.  I have a friend who once claimed he loved anime.

Over the years, he consistently found anime shows superior to what he found on television.  But as he started to find more and more anime, he told me that he discovered something.  He liked the anime he’d seen at first because these were the shows that were successful and well made, the ones with the quality or broad appeal to make the jump across cultures.  He found that he didn’t like all anime—he only liked good anime.  Sure, the medium had something important to do with it—but his enjoyment came more from the quality of his sample than the entire medium.

Likewise, I’ve come to find that what I enjoy is a good story.  Genre can enhance this—I’m probably going to like a good fantasy more than a good thriller or romance because worldbuilding and magic appeals to me.  In the end, however, it isn’t the lack of guns (as my young self assumed) that draws me to fantasy stories.  It’s the care for setting, pacing, and character development.

This is actually a correlation/causation fallacy, and I wonder if I’m the only one to have made it.  Many of the books in the fantasy section we love (perhaps because of the setting attention or the types of writers attracted to fantasy and SF) have dragons.  Do we therefore make the assumption that we only like books with dragons?  These two things (the dragons and our enjoyment) are parallel to, but not completely responsible for one another.

On the other hand, maybe I just think about this kind of thing too much.

Either way, I present to you The Alloy of Law.  A look at the Mistborn world several hundred years after the events of the original trilogy, where the industrial revolution has finally hit and knowledge of gunpowder is no longer suppressed.  That means guns.  Lots of guns.  And magic too.

The young me might have been horrified, but the thirtysomething me finds the mix to be exciting, particularly in a world where the magic is directly related to metal

sebarial

Would a Feruchemist actively storing Identity be more susceptible to Forgery? Would more outlandish changes be able to take effect? Thanks for your time, and have a wonderful day.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, if you store Identity, it makes you susceptible to ALL KINDS of things in the Cosmere. Forgery would be on the short list.

bubblebooy

Does the difficulty of affecting metals in a body with Allomancy have to do with Identity?

Brandon Sanderson

No, more to do with the fact that most people are innately Invested in the Cosmere--and certain planets have extra Investiture. Something Invested is more difficult to transform/move/etc with another form of Investiture.

bubblebooy

That is what I had originally thought before you capitalized "ALL KINDS." Is Soulcasting people like Jasnah Kholin did doubly hard since people a have a strong sense of Identity and have innate Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

We're getting a bit far on this course, so it's time to pull out the RAFOs. I don't want to overplay my hand and leave the books without anything to talk about. :)

Phantine

Does that 'inside a body' thing work on most magics?

For instance, if Han stuck Luke into a Mistborn Tauntaun (a distant and unlucky relative of the mistborn llama), would Luke be protected from both the cold and emotional allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

He'd have to get him inside a living one.

It does work on most magics, though the interactions can be odd unless you know a lot about the workings. Emotional Allomancy, for example, works by lapping against the outsides of someone's cognitive self, influencing you the way music might stir your soul. So being inside a living body wouldn't necessarily stop it--you'd just have more interference. Kind of like how you can still hear music outside if it's loud enough.

Actual mind control in the cosmere requires you to get INSIDE the soul, which you've seen happen frequently enough. There has to be a gap or an opening.

Or, conversely, you just have to be so powerful that you can push through the interference.

ISw3arItWasntM3

Do you plan to write the stormlight archive books with the same POV characters throughout the series (like WoT) or do you think that you give other characters POV (aSoIaF) as the series continues?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the main POV characters have been introduced. Each book will take one major character (Kaladin, Dalinar, Adolin, Jasnah, Shallan, Navani, Szeth, Taln) and give them 'flashback' sequences in the same way Kaladin got flashbacks in the first book. There are some open spots for which I'm toying with other characters being used.

Questioner

Speaking of Rosharan calendar-- So seventeen year old Kaladin, is he the equivalent of a seventeen year old Earthling?

Brandon Sanderson

It's 1.1, I think is what is it. Right, they're 10% older than their accounting system. So no.

Questioner

So Adolin is 27, true?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

So then a year is obviously a lot more than 1.1 but--

Brandon Sanderson

Well no. The years are 500 days, but they're 20 hour days. Keep that in mind. So when you run the calculations kinda together, you end up with around 1.1.

Questioner

What five books do you think helped you understand leadership the best?

Brandon Sanderson

Well Art of War is definitely part of that. I would say that The Prince is important for understanding leadership, even though I don't agree with every point he's making. By the way he is not as-- Even though it is Machiavelli writing it, he is not as machiavellian as we think he is in that book… So The Prince--  Hmmm, a lot of Plato surprisingly, is where I pull some of my ideas. King Benjamin's speech from the Book of Mormon, in Mosiah, if you haven't read that, is definitely part of it. Ummm... What else--

Questioner

Like where do you get your-- because you obviously have experience because that's how leadership works.

Brandon Sanderson

It is interviews, it is personal experience, it is talking to my friends who are in the military and asking them "Does this sound right? Does this feel right? Tell me what it feels like to obey. Tell me what it feels like to be in command." And things like that. Just lots of practice and interviews and things is where most of it is coming from.

Questioner

So it’s less like personal experience and more you're really good at researching it.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, a writer has to be able to do that because for a book like this the amount of psychology and medicine, battlefield tactics, leadership, and all these other things you need to know, you can't know them all. You can't do them all personally. You've got to be able to experience it, you've got to be able to write it as best as you can, and then go to experts. Like the medicine in this I went to a field surgeon and I said "Will you read over my Kaladin scenes and tell me where I'm going wrong." Like I was able to get myself 80% of the way there with research and then the 20% is me going to an expert and saying "Tell me what I'm doing wrong."

Questioner

Does Vasher want Nightblood back?

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher feels responsible for Nightblood

Questioner

is there any reason why he didn't go by Vasher, as well?

Brandon Sanderson

Because in the original draft he was, and I'm like, "That's just too easy." Plus he's kinda trying to hide, so he's not as foolhardy as a certain other character who goes willy-nilly by the same aliases over and over again and doesn't care. Picking an alias, if you know people would potentially would be hunting for you, having them not be able to ask for you by name is useful.

Questioner

So your Mistborn leatherbounds went out tonight.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Mistborn leatherbound is coming out.

Questioner

Are there any other plans? When would the next edition be coming out?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, let me talk about these a bit. So, I love the leatherbounds that were released for The Wheel of Time, but they were very limited print-run, and they were very expensive. They were 250 bucks. And so I don't have many of those. I have the ones that I had published, but when I was a kid getting them I would just... drool over these things. When I was a college student. So I went to Tor and said "Would you do leatherbounds of my books?" and they're like "They're just so hard to distributed. Not a lot of bookstores want to carry them?" and I said "Well do you mind if I do one?" for Elantris last year. And we did a leatherbound for $100, which had-- We tried to pull out everything we could do to make something awesome. So these have 24 full-color pages, with all of the different covers from the different foreign editions around the world, some fan art we really like, new color versions of some of the maps, and stuff like that. And so we print those and we did Elantris last year and people really liked it, so we did Mistborn. The fun thing is, some bookstores told me "Yes, we want to have those. No, it's not a pain to carry them..."

But the question is, what are we doing next. So we will do these one a year. They're a lot of effort to put together. We have to contact some twenty different illustrators and buy rights to the covers to include in it. Peter goes through and does a really detailed copy-edit, fixing typos and trying to do stuff like that, making sure that-- Like in Elantris I had said something that-- people traveled a distance that was impossible to travel in the time given, so we tweak things like that. And so it takes a while. We'll do Mistborn 2 next year, then Mistborn 3, and then we'll see where we are. And they should match very nicely on the shelf...

Questioner

Did you have trouble killing Vin?

Brandon Sanderson

No, because by then, I was well prepared for it. I was worried about what the response would be, but it wasn't hard for me to do, because that was the story. Sometimes, when I'm doing this, I've outlined for a long time, I've planned it for a long time, it's almost more like I'm writing history, if that makes any sense.

Questioner

Would you rather be a misting or a Twinborn, and then which power would you choose?

Brandon Sanderson

What powers would I have? ...I would probably pick Twinborn because "Hey extra power" right? I would probably have Wax's powers from Alloy of Law, those are the ones I find the most interesting. Which is why I started with them there. I think I will be able to do cool things with them. Others are cool as well but-- With all this metal around, jumping on it would be so much fun.

Brandon Sanderson

You guys might find this amusing. I read this threat [about Andrzej Sapkowski suing CD Projekt Red] last night at about 3:00, and came REALLY close to posting, "Dear CD Projekt. You can have the Mistborn rights, if you want them..." But this was looking like it would explode as a thread, and I REALLY didn't want to wake up to several hundred replies in my inbox. I have work to do today...

In all seriousness, I'd love to do something with CDPR. They've made by far the best book-to-video game adaptations ever. It's the sort of thing the rest of us salivate over--if for the simple reason that the entire genre (books, film, and games) benefit from something high-quality on the market like the Witcher games.

I would seriously consider giving CD Project Red the rights to my books for free, because the overall cultural impact that a great story adaptation can have is enormous. Though...I suspect they're done dealing with self-important fantasy authors, and are likely more interested in creating their own new IPs.

Brandon Sanderson

Well, this kind of exploded, didn't it!

I appreciate the outpouring of enthusiasm and kind words in this thread, but let's rephrase this title a little. Saying that I'm considering giving them the rights for free implies that I have the option. I haven't talked to CDPR (though I've considered several times sending them an email and seeing if they'd be willing to meet next time I'm in the area.) I'm not in a position to offer them anything. Part of the reason I didn't post in that other thread until I was summoned was because I didn't want to come off as presumptuous.

But...I did read the original article and think, "Man, is Sapkowski crazy? I'd practically kill to have such a high quality adaptation of my work." If you magically gave me the chance to have an adaptation on the level of the Witcher--but with no payment given to me--I'd take that in a heartbeat. I'd much rather know it will be good (or at least be in the hands of someone skillful and passionate) than gamble on big money up front with a risk of bad quality.

Please, though, don't put CDPR on the spot or bother them too much about this. I've had some discussions with those who run video game companies, and I know a little of the stresses put upon them. If something goes wrong with a book I write, and it flops, then I'm the only one who suffers. But video game companies work on tight margins for years, employing the passion and enthusiasm of hundreds, to create a game. They need to pick their projects VERY carefully, because a flop has huge ramifications for all of their employees.

I'll continue to explore getting a good video game adaptation of Mistborn and/or Stormlight--in part because I want to play them myself. But the proper way for me to do this is keep meeting with companies, talking to them, and learning more about their business. I didn't want to hijack a thread about another author to do this, and I feel a little bad that this exploded like it did.

(That said, you guys are awesome.)

MistbornTaylor

Is Hoid still in a relationship with you-know-who [Jasnah]?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO

Iceblade44

So White Sand [then Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

There is some time-dilation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.

Faera

Implying that some are actually immortal? :D

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)

Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)

Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)

Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)

Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)

Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)

Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.

Shagomir

Heals from wounds, but still ages.

Would Bloodmaker Ferrings exist in this category as well? If not, what about someone Compounding Gold?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you are correct.

Shagomir

As a Bloodmaker ages, what keeps them from healing the damage and carrying on as a very old, but very healthy person? Do they come to a point where they can't store enough health to stave off the aches, pains, diseases, and other things that come with old age?

This makes sense for traditional Feruchemy as it is end-neutral, so storing health becomes a zero sum game - eventually, you're going to get sick and you're not going to be able to overcome it with your natural healing ability no matter how much you manipulate it with a goldmind.

...Unless you've got a supply of Identity-less goldminds lying around. Would a Bloodmaker with a sufficient source of Identity-less goldminds (or the ability to compound, thus bypassing the end-neutral part of Feruchemy) eventually just die from being too old?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, yes. They can heal their body to match their spiritual ideal, but some things (like some genetic diseases, and age-related illnesses) are seen as part of the ideal. Depends on several factors.

HazelCharm47

Let's say we have a hypothetical situation with Miles Hundredlives. In this scenario, he is wearing a gold metalmind filled to the brim with stored healing power. He is then spiked with a cadmium spike and loses his gold allomancy.

Now, if I recall from various WoBs, he would be able to heal using the gold metalmind and regain his gold allomancy. I could be misremembering and he cannot heal it, but I believe he would be able to since it is part of his Identity.

However, one question I have never seen the answer to is this: what happens to the ability in the spike? Is the allomantic ability still contained in the spike, leading to a duplicate? Or is the spike's ability lost? Or maybe I have this whole thing wrong and Miles could never have regained the ability in the first place.

If the ability duplicates (which I doubt), that could lead to some crazy things. Also, this applies to any Twinborn with gold Feruchemy, I just thought Miles was a good example I guess :)

Brandon Sanderson

I'd like to see the exact WoB's here to make sure I'm being consistent, as I don't know that I confirmed you could regain lost powers--only that you could heal from hemalurgic soul damage. Most likely, what you'd end up with is a person who has been healed and can remove the spike from their body without damage, and without needing it to hold their soul together--but who has lost the ability in the spike.

Regardless, though, what you want here (the mass production of spikes charged and even blanked) is possible with the right levels of investiture. It's an energy, like things in our world. The difficulty is finding out how to 1) get enough investiture and 2) key it to the right people and/or magic.

Hope that's a little more clear.

That said, a lot of times people just ask me if something is possible--and a lot of things are possible, but just very difficult. And with the right boost of investiture, in the right circumstances, it WOULD be possible to regrow lost (to spikes) powers. It's just highly unlikely.

I'm not sure if the questions people are asking me are ones I've qualified, or not, in these instances. Also, this is all something I'm playing with still behind the scenes as we enter the modern age of Mistborn.

HazelCharm47

As requested, here are the WoBs I believe are related. They might be obsolete, however. And I assume things will get changed a lot before Era 4, but hey, it's fun to ask anyways :)

WoB #1:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/331/#e9434

This one states that as long as Miles still has his Identity, he would be able to use his Feruchemical metalminds after being spiked and would be able to heal.

WoB #2:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/102/#e983

This one says that Miles would be able to heal his soul using Feruchemical healing and regain his gold Allomancy (assuming he survives the spiking). I think this is the most essential one!

WoB #3:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6335

This one is only somewhat related - implies that the Feruchemical and Allomantic powers are spiritually part of him.

WoB #4:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/7/#e6435

Also tangentially related - damage to the soul from Hemalurgy can be healed (Although this might just be a Hoid thing). I guess the question could be expanded to include non-Feruchemical healing as a way to repair the soul after being spiked.

Brandon Sanderson

Well, I don't think any of those are specifically inaccurate. I just didn't quite understand what people were trying to get out of me. A lot of times, I don't know quite what people are trying to get out of me. I can see now they're trying to figure out.

I see now, and I appreciate you putting this all together for me so I can see what the fans are trying to figure out. So the answer is a cautious yes. The problem here is that he'd need to compound a TON of healing first--but yes, it would work. You could theoretically turn someone like Miles into an invested spike factory.

If he didn't have enough healing stored, though, he'd end up with a healed soul but a gap (like a scar on his soul) where his spiked-out abilities were. That could theoretically be healed with application of more investiture, depending on things like how he views himself, and if you could get the right type of investiture.

Use_the_Falchion

Is The Apocalypse Guard going to be a standalone? I know you've talked about promising fewer sequels in your books now, but with Dan Wells co-authoring this one, I'm curious as to how you'll treat it.

Brandon Sanderson

If it works, and the collaboration is good, then I would be open to doing sequels. Dan is fun to work with.

Questioner

In Well of Ascension, Zane: how and when did he get spiked?

Brandon Sanderson

That is an excellent question. That someday I will answer, but not right now.

Questioner

I have a copy of your Dragonsteel master thesis, I haven't read it though.  And I was wondering, how you've grown as an author, do you like people to read that or would you rather they wait until you do the better version?

Brandon Sanderson

I-- I'm-- That one I don't really like people reading that much because it has an inferior version of Bridge Four that I don't want people to meet. Does that make sense? Like the Bridge Four team--

Questioner

...And when you re-write it it will be better?

Brandon Sanderson

Well Bridge Four won't even be in that book anymore I moved them to Roshar. So you go back and you find the version of Rock that is not quite the right version and you'll find-- Teft is basically the same dude but a lot of the other ones have changed and morphed and they basically won't feel right anymore, if that makes any sense. Feel free to read it, don't feel bad reading it but that's the part that I'm not--

Questioner

Is that the only part you are worried about? And the rest you are like "It's not my best writing" but--

Brandon Sanderson

The rest is not my best writing but whatever. But the Bridge Four stuff, I'm like I did it so much better that it's not even going back and seeing it in rough sketches, it's like if da Vinci had painted a Mona Lisa that was ugly and a different person? You don't want it cemented in their mind that that is what the piece of art is. The rest of it I don't mind so much, I mean the main character his conflict will change dramatically because I pulled that out and gave it to another character in the books. So basically the only thing remaining that is still going to be canon is Hoid and his story, the story what's going with him there is still stuff he would have done...

Questioner

So I was wondering, can Siri and Vivienna, does their hair change to unnatural colours, like pink and green--

Brandon Sanderson

It can. Yes.

Questioner

What would elicit that?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, I would have to go back to look at my notes, honestly. I would expect you could get green by eating something that made you sick, right? They're gonna associate these colors partially with associations that people are putting on them, the same way that spren are acting like the associations that people give them, but I would have to look at the culture, because in their culture, they may not associate green with disgusting the same way we do, right, if that makes sense. So that's why I'd have to look at the notes. These things are partially based on their own interpretation.

Questioner

At the end of “Alloy of Law” Marsh tells Marasi he is giving the diary to Wax because “.. he does my brother's work”. At this time it was a reminder of Kelsier, but with Secret History and the third book out why does Marsh think we need someone to do his brother's work? Isn't Kelsier doing that himself?

Brandon Sanderson

Well. (laughs) Marsh is of multiple minds on what's happening with Kelsier at this time. When he's referencing his brother's work, he's specifically tells Marasi speaking to the lore of the Survivor. Like he's specifically talking to somebody, and he does believe this. He may not think that Kelsier is doing Kelsier's work anymore. But that depends on... You will see interaction between Marsh and Kelsier in the future.

Brandon Sanderson

Elend Discusses the Party-Crashing Plan with Cett and Ham

If I were Elend, I'm not sure if I'd have made Cett third in command like that. Cett does very well when he's forced to listen to someone else, and he's a good tactician, but he's a terrible leader.

Brandon Sanderson

Part Four Wrap-up

Oo. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Actually, the section breaks mean a lot to me in this book. They divide the novel in my mind, as opposed to Elantris, which was divided by viewpoint and not by section of the book.

Often, when I write novels, I plan sections around climactic scenes which leave the characters changed. That's why this story broke in such places as when Vin nearly got killed, or when Kelsier really did get killed. In this book, they sometimes mark the passage of time as well—that happened with the first couple.

It's kind of an odd thing that I do, but often in my books I will have a "section" that is simply the climax. That's the way it is with this book; part four was the lead up to the climax. Part five is, essentially, one big long climax. The Brandon Avalanche, so to speak.

So, why is it like this? Why have a short "section" at the end that is the climax, rather than just having part four continue on to the end? It has to do with how I write books.

A novel has to be divided into chunks for me to work on it. I divide it in my brain by section, then plot those section separately. Often times, the climax—on my plot outline—is it's own section. That's because the division in my head requires the section before it to be set up. Then, the set up is finished, and I can move on to the pay off.

And so, that’s what you get now. The pay off. Hope you enjoy it.

Questioner 1

I'm building Plate. I would like it to be Radiant. What's the finish? Is it different from standard Plate or is it--

Brandon Sanderson

If you-- like, they often paint theirs. But say it's going to be straight unpainted it's like dull slate grey steel--

Questioner 2

And it doesn't vary order to order?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Well, I mean, if it's actual Radiant Plate it does-- But what you've got is-- Yeah, it glows and it has things, too.

Brandon Sanderson

The Two Sides of Spook

The best part of this chapter, in my opinion, is how we get to see both sides of Spook. We get to see a glimpse of the bumbling, but good-hearted, teenager in his conversation with Beldre. And we get to see the budding figure of myth in the way he deals with the people at the bars. We get to see sincere and intimate Spook, and we get to see insincere megalomaniac Spook—or, at least, hints of both.

At this point, Ruin is well on his way to corrupting the poor boy.

Arlin

You have a Twinborn. It doesn't matter what Allomancer he'd be. The aluminum Ferring. They've stored up a lot of aluminum before all this happens. 

Brandon Sanderson

Well, aluminum was really hard to come by.

Arlin

I know. Theoretically, and they've filled it up and then they become a savant.

Brandon Sanderson

Hard to do without being a [Compounder].

Arlin

I'm saying Twinborn in the other metal they become a savant. Then they tapped the aluminum.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I could see that having some very weird effects.

Arlin

Basically my thought is, is it a toggle switch?

Brandon Sanderson

So I'm going to RAFO that for now. You're theorizing around really cool lines, but I'm not going to answer it yet because I have plans for what I'm going to want to do and I don't want reveal it yet.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vivenna Drinks Juice at an Outdoor Restaurant and Plans the Meeting with the Idrian Leaders in the City

Here we have Vivenna showing off her end of the reversal quite well. This is one of the few places where I have a character point out the reversal taking place. Vivenna has learned to blend into Hallandren—she's learned not to judge quite so much. She's still not where she needs to be, but the transformation is happening.

The conversation she has with Denth, where he discusses every man seeing himself as a hero in his own story, is a kind of subtheme for this book. In this novel, everyone does think they're doing what's best. The only exception to that is, perhaps, Denth himself—which makes the conversation particularly poignant.

This is one of the very first conversations I imagined for this book, as I knew it would be very important to a later one, where Vivenna talks to Vasher. And that particular conversation might just have been the first I came up with.

Questioner

Are there plans for some more books for The Rithmatist?

Brandon Sanderson

...Rithmatist was the book I was writing when the Wheel of Time call came. And I was required, by my kind of own determination, if I was gonna do this, I had to drop everything and do it. So I finished The Rithmatist, I gave it to my publisher, and I said, "You can't publish this yet. Because I don't know when I'll be able to do sequels." And then I went to work on The Wheel of Time. Eventually the publisher just couldn't hold-- help themselves. They're like, "We have a Brandon Sanderson book. They sell really well. He says we can't publish it." And then they begged and they begged and they begged, and I said, "All right. You can publish it." But I had no idea when I'd be able to do the sequels. And I still don't quite know that. I did sit down a couple years ago and try to write one, and it just didn't work at all. There are just multiple problems with getting that sequel to work right. I still think I will be able to do it. And think I owe it to you, because the ending implies sequels. But I have no idea when.

I'm kind of trying to clear my plate of all the things I was working on before The Wheel of Time, which is now almost ten years ago that that started. I was working on Legion, I was working on Alcatraz, I was working on The Rithmatist. Legion, I managed to finish up. Alcatraz book six... the rough draft is done. So those two will be done. Then I just have to find a way to fix Rithmatist. But I don't know. Wax and Wayne four has to be written before that. Skyward probably has to be written before that. So then we'll see where I sit. I apologize. That's the one that I have to be really vague on.

Kabsal

Huh. It seems a proto-Shallan did already exist as of this version [Way of Kings Prime]. I thought with the prologue's discussions of House Davar that Shallan would have been a more recent development.

Peter Ahlstrom

Brandon sees Shinri and Shallan as entirely different people who have the same last name and are both Jasnah's ward. However, most of the other characters are the same people as they are in the published novel.

wicktacular

At the end of the first Mistborn trilogy it's really significant that 1/16th of the soldiers who got really sick are now atium Mistings.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Sixteen that he-- when Preservation set that all up. He, number one, was not all there. But he was trying to create sixteen as a symbol to say, "Hey, catch this. I've given you a clue-- uh-- help." And so it was devised specifically for that. "*inaudible* Something's going on here."

wicktacular

So were there-- were 1/16th of the rest of them just *inaudible* just not significant?

wicktacular

But we know that there's more than sixteen metals. Wh--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

wicktacular

Did he bump one of the other types then to make it sixteen?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, they would have been Mistings of other types as well.

wicktacular

Okay. Do you have in your head *inaudible*?

Brandon Sanderson

Chromium.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's right. It would probably have been one of the metals that was difficult to get at that level of technology. It would have been chromium - chromium would be hard gather at that time. Actually, no, it would have been aluminum. *about a minute later, while signing someone else's book* Hold on, there's a caveat to that last answer. Let me finish signing this and expand on that. *pause* So, it would still have been aluminum, but not for the reason you're thinking. It would have been aluminum, but there's an asterisk next to that answer.

wicktacular

Chromium?

wicktacular

Okay. Interesting.

Brandon Sanderson

Hard to get chromium.

wicktacular

I've been thinking about--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh no! He bumped aluminum. Yeah, he bumped aluminum. Sorry I had to-- I changed my mind.

wicktacular

Oh!

Brandon Sanderson

*a moment later*

Okay, Chad? I have a <qualification> for you. I'll do this and then we'll...

*a moment later*

So...

wicktacular

On the sixteen or the *inaudible*...

Brandon Sanderson

The sixteen. So the answer is "yes," but it's not something-- it's not what you're thinking it is. 

wicktacular

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

Alright, there's an asterisk on it, okay? There's an asterisk on it, it's not what you're thinking. Uh, you're making-- you're making assumptions. 

Questioner

Can you talk a little bit about why you changed Khriss's personality so much between the White Sand prose and the White Sand graphic novel?

Brandon Sanderson

I felt that the biggest weakness to a lot of my early writing (this encompasses White Sand, Dragonsteel, and Elantris) is that my worldbuilding was really working, my magic systems were really coming together, and my characters were flat and kind of boring. And this early work of mine, I look at and there's a lot of external conflict to characters.

And it works in Elantris. Raoden is a bit boring, compared to some of my other characters. But he has an enormous external conflict to deal with, and that actually kind of works. There are lots of movies, I mentioned Mission Impossible earlier. Like Tom Cruise's character in those: not the most interesting character. But he doesn't have to be, because in fact it would probably make the movies worse if you spent a lot of time on that. That's not what those movies are about. So if you have lots of tension and lots of external conflict, then you can have a character who doesn't change as much, who doesn't go through big character arcs and things. And it's not just fine; it's a selling point of the story. It's just a different type of story.

But the problem with mine is, they were all kind of the same person. They're all kind of the same level of boring in a lot of my early works. And so, when we approached the graphic novel version, one of the things I wanted to do was see if I can liven up the characters a little, if I can make them more like I would write them now. And that's what happened with basically all the changes in White Sand were attempts to do that: make the story more like I write right now. And I'm pleased with those changes.

The only thing I don't like about White Sand is, as we were new into doing this, we did not get the worldbuilding across in a visual medium the way we wanted to. I don't think that the worldbuilding made the leap. And we're trying to fix that with future things that we're doing. We're hoping that we can play to the strengths of graphic novels and not have them lose some of the coolness. Some of the things that were working in the White Sand prose didn't make the jump to the graphic novel as well as we wanted them to.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-Five

"Reen" is Ruin

Did you really think I'd bring Reen back?

Well, maybe you did. It's all right if you did; we in the fiction world have kind of acclimatized people to strange resurrections of long-dead characters. I'd guess it's due to one of two things. Either 1) The author is so attached to the fallen character that he/she wants to have them return or 2) The author wants to do something completely unexpected, so he/she returns to life a character the reader isn't expecting.

Unfortunately, both answers are based on emotions outside of what is commonly good for the actual plotting of the story. Do this enough, and readers are required to stretch their ability to suspend disbelief. This sort of practice is part of what earns genre fiction something of a bad reputation among the literary elite. (How can there be tension for a character if the reader knows that death doesn't mean anything?)

The trick with saying this is, of course, that I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I've got two books in the works where I'm planning deaths and resurrections—though, of course, I'm building in these elements as plot points of the setting and worldbuilding.

Beyond that, there are lots of instances where this sort of thing is appropriate in fiction, and where it works. After all, one of the reasons to write fantasy is so that you can deal with themes like this that wouldn't work in mainstream fiction. I just worry that we, as a genre, are too lazy with ideas like this. If we push this too far, we'll end up where the comic book world is—in a place where death is completely meaningless.

DammyJerry

Brandon, if you don't mind, I always wanted to ask this:

If Dalinar knew the story of Adonalsium (well, I hope he will, eventually) would he be like -- Yes, this is the true God I'm looking for, or more like -- if Adonalsium died then he was never a God (same what he thinks about Honor)?

I, like others, also root for Dalinar gaining knowledge about the greater cosmere. Our man deserves it.

Brandon Sanderson

To answer this, I'd probably have to give more Dragonsteel spoilers than I want to give.

DammyJerry

That's fair. Thank you, Brandon.

I have not read Dragonsteel (if we are talking about that old version of the book). Hope you will dig into these things in the future novels, especially with Dalinar :)

Brandon Sanderson

I promise that answers to questions like these are very much on my mind, and are things I do plan to eventually address in one way or another.

Brandon Sanderson

Siri Enters and Sees Returned

Just a little note here. Returned live for eight days without a Breath, though the week is seven days long in this world. Why? Well, I figured that they'd need an extra day as leeway. On day seven, they start to grow weak and sluggish. If they don't consume a Breath, their body will consume their own on the eighth day of their life, and they'll die again.

In some parts of this world, Returned aren't worshipped, but instead seen as something akin to vampires. They draw in Breath to survive, and need a supply of people to feed off of. They tend to wear black, since it's the most powerful color for draining to Awaken things.

Brandon Sanderson

Sazed and Tindwyl discuss the Deepness

When it says that "Sazed was the one who presented Tindwyl with the accumulated knowledge of the Keepers gathered while she was gone" that's a lot more involved than you might think. It included him reciting to Tindwyl hundreds of hours worth of information, the two of them sitting there, him speaking, her memorizing. It took them months, during which time they really got to know each other well. I think that's probably when he first started to have feelings for her.

I've worried about the romance between them, and not just because of Sazed's nature as a eunuch. Tindwyl isn't presented as the most sympathetic character in the series, yet Sazed is one of the most likable. I worry that readers won't be able to see to the depth of their affection for one another. I didn't originally intend to give Sazed a romance in this series, but when I was working through book two, I saw how many things it would help facilitate. You'll see what I mean later on.

By the way, you should recognize Tindwyl's line about making "occasional exceptions." That's virtually the same language she used with Elend when suggesting that it was okay for him to have a romance with Vin. That was the first hint I seeded that Tindwyl might have a soft spot for romance, and be willing to overlook some of her strict rules if love was involved. In truth, if Tindwyl were going to admit her real feelings to herself, she didn't come to the city for Elend. She came hoping–yet dreading–that she'd find Sazed there.

Lurcher

What would have happened if the Lord Ruler survived to take the power from the Well? Would he have tried to fixed Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

By that point in the Lord Ruler's life, he probably would not have. He would like the world where it is, and he was not 100% cognizant of how far he had fallen from his original ideas. So, it would not have been, I think, a good thing. It may have been not as bad as the disaster that followed, in fact I know it would not have been, but in the end, Scadrial needed to go through that eventually. So it would have just delayed that.

Lurcher

So, would he just kind of use up the power? Held it, and let it--

Brandon Sanderson

He would have done something with it. Maybe with the Southern Continent or something. But he wouldn't have fixed anything, he probably would have made things a little worse.

Questioner

My question is a follow up to what you answered in my Well of Ascension. I asked if Hoid had any love interests, and you said, "Several". My follow up question is, have we seen any of those *inaudible*.

Brandon Sanderson

They will show up in various books but you have not seen them yet. They're *inaudible*.

Brandon Sanderson

Vin's Guards Are Hazekillers

I've managed to work hazekillers into all three books. That amuses me, since I put them in the first Kelsier fight scene back in book one out of the blue, on a whim. I wanted something that would be harder for him to fight than regular soldiers, but weaker than Allomancers. I never ended up using them again in book one, since they weren't a very good foe for someone as powerful as a Mistborn.

But people never forgot about them. My readers kept mentioning them, and how much they liked the word—even though I find it kind of awkward. Alpha readers kept asking, "Why doesn't Cett have any hazekillers?" and the like. So, I felt I needed to use them some more, and they made it into this book as well.

Brandon Sanderson

Dilaf

I really wanted to bring these Dilaf scenes in and make them personal. That was my prime reasoning behind sending Sarene with him. I wanted the reader to care, and I wanted Hrathen to care–which, hopefully, would make the reader care even more.

Dilaf was very interesting to write as an antagonist. By the time he finally came to his own, I didn't have to worry about developing him as a viable threat. His personality through the entire novel had prepared the reader for the awful moment when he finally got the other characters into his power. And, because Hrathen was so sympathetic a villain through the entire novel, I think I can make Dilaf more raw and unapproachable. It's nice to have sympathetic villains, but with Hrathen in the book, I didn't feel that I needed much sympathy for Dilaf. Also, with one such well-drawn villain, I felt that if I tried to do the same with Dilaf, the comparison would make him come off very poorly. So, I went the other direction, and the contrast gives the readers someone that they can just hate.

If they didn't hate him already, then this last scene with Sarene was meant to push them over the edge. Here is a man who kills for pleasure. No matter how wronged he was in the past, he has no justification for the cruelty and enjoyment he displays in anticipating Sarene's death. This is an evil man.

Zenith

Are spren Cognitive aspects?

Brandon Sanderson

:) You guys are figuring this all out pretty well. I want to hold off on talking much about the nature of the spren because the characters in-world are discovering this as the books progress.

Alteroden

Can Hoid safely have an MRI?

Brandon Sanderson

Why do you ask that?

Alteroden

Because if you have metal inside your body, and you have an MRI, which is magnetic, it's very bad for you.

Brandon Sanderson

You're just assuming that... That's a very clever way to try to get around a question that I have not answered and intentionally said I am not going to answer, so...

Alteroden

Also, tattoos. You can't have a tattoo with an MRI. The ink has little bits of metal in it.

Brandon Sanderson

You can't? Well, I assume there are tattoo inks that are not little bits of metal.

Alteroden

That's true.

Truthwatcher_17.5

Darksiders have almost as advanced technology as second Era Scadrians.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

But then we see Darksiders in The Secret-- in Mistborn: The Secret History. So are they gonna be the first spacefarers, are they gonna get there before Scadrians?

Brandon Sanderson

So, where it is right now is that certain things have happened to Taldain that have isolated it and cut it off.

Questioner

Yeah, a little bit in Arcanum Unbounded talked about that.

Brandon Sanderson

And some-- they're under-- going through some difficult times, let's say... So, I will RAFO whether or not they're going to make it first to make it to space, but let's just say they were well on target to making it first before certain events happened.

Questioner

The metals used in Allomancy are they naturally occurring on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

They do.

Questioner

And all the alloys as well?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, the magics would...oh, all the alloys in Roshar naturally occurring… The magic of Mistborn is related to the actual metals' structure being the key. So, you can use metals from other worlds, there's no actual power in the metal. The metal is like a password.

Questioner

So this morning I just finished reading The Rithmatist. I was wondering if you could talk about your process of creating that magic system. Specifically about how it dealt with mathematics. And also if it is going to have a sequel.

Brandon Sanderson

This has a fun history in that it is the last book I completed before the Wheel of Time hit me like a freight train. I was working on a different book, you can find the sample chapters of that one on my website, its called the Liar of Partinel and it really was not going well. I have talked about this before, I talked about it in my essay that I posted on my blog when I released the Rithmatist. But things were just going poorly and I actually stopped writing that book and wrote the Rithmatist instead. This book that I didn’t have a contract for, that no one was expecting. Sometimes it is very liberating to do that. When you see these side projects, like last year, Emperor’s Soul and Legion and things like the Rithmatist, it’s me saying “Okay, I really love the big epic fantasies, it’s what I came in to do. But sometimes how complex they are and how much work they are, between them you need a break.”

The Rithmatist was a break and I had been toying with this magic system where—And I don’t even really know what started it but I wanted to do a magic where you dueled with chalk. Where you would take chalk and you would draw things and you would have a duel with someone else using chalk. I wanted two-dimensional things playing out. I guess it maybe comes from me being a gamer and me wanting to- There’s so many things that we take from the modern day and we twist them and make a fantasy world out of them. Its where Steampunk came from. Let’s take modern technology but let’s build it with an ancient- or an older technology and see what cool stuff we can do. Airships with steam, and robots with clockwork. Gearpunk and things like that. And so I was like, let’s build video games with magical chalk.

Really the magic system is, you draw a circle around yourself and you basically then play Starcraft. You draw little units and you send them over to try and break their defense—it’s more like Tower Defense honestly, like versus Tower Defense. Where you try to break through your opponent’s circle, when one of your beasties gets through the circle you have won the duel; and you can shoot off different lines of chalk that do things and stuff like that. Where this came from was just that sort of thing, all of my- One of the things that drive me to write is that “one foot in science and one foot in magic” and you can see that. When I described this magic system here I’m taking all these sort of disease concepts and the modern germ theory and all this stuff and I’m saying “let’s mix that with magic and see what we can come up with.” Mistborn was like “one foot in alchemy and one foot in vector physics” and things like that. This just gets me excited.

There was an era in our world where science was this awesome, almost magical thing. If you read back about the turn of the century, 1800’s to 1900’s you’ll find essays where people were researching- new scientific discoveries were happening all the time and everyone was so excited about them. I remember reading this essay, I’ve told this story before, someone wrote an essay in like 1910 where they went and they interviewed a bunch of ditch-diggers and they studied the Science of Ditch-Digging and they went and they told all these ditch-diggers what they learned and helped them be more efficient in digging ditches and suddenly science was for everyone. It was for the ditch-diggers- Who knew what else we could discover. And then we basically blew ourselves up and ever since then we’ve been scared of it and that’s when we got the science as an antagonist sort of thing that happened in the 50’s and 60’s in science fiction. It’s a wonderful era, and things like that. In my writing I always find that time when science was something that was for the common man that we were discovering, that there was this sense of wonder to science, it’s really fascinating to me. And I find myself returning to that time and time again, and that’s where you see this. In this one, with The Rithmatist, it’s honestly a little more lighthearted even though the prologue is someone getting attacked by these chalk monsters. The concept is more lighthearted, it’s blending teenagers playing games with magic and where would that go and what could I do with it. I did go to mathematics because I wanted the idea around all of this to have structure and rules; and I liked the idea of using “the more perfect your circle is the stronger it is, the more stable it is against someone trying to break through it.” So I started looking into the interesting properties, mathematically, of circles, and what creates-. What they do with arithmetic. And that sent me off on this whole thing where I drew all these cool whatchamadinkies and stuff like that. That’s where it came from, that’s a long explanation for a simple question.

Questioner

Three books or three authors you'd recommend to any fantasy reader?

Brandon Sanderson

If I were to recommend one, it would probably be the first Mistborn novel.

*laughter*

Translator

Apart from your books.

Brandon Sanderson

Terry Pratchett is probably my favorite writer. I really liked Anne McCarthy work and I think it translates very well to large or different types of audiences. I often give Name of the Wind to people, it's good introduction to fantasy, it's a really solid novel.

But of course there is also Wheel of Time. I genuinely recommend Wheel of Time to people who already love fantasy cause it's a big commitment.

Mad Hatter

Terry Brooks recently said he'll be doing more Shannara books and that he wishes he didn't use the title The Elfstones of Shannara already since his new arc is basically all about the Elfstones. Did your reticence to titling The Gathering Storm as such have anything to do with The Stormlight Archive? The Gathering Storm certainly seems like a perfect title for a book in the series.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I didn’t choose The Gathering Storm. If you know the story, it all happened while I was asleep, and they said this was the title they were going to use. There were a couple of reasons. Number one, I knew I was releasing a book soon afterward that was in a series called The Stormlight Archive. Perhaps I pay a little too much attention to making sure that I don’t feel like I’m repeating myself. Kaladin in The Way of Kings was originally named Merin, and one reason I changed his name was because it sounded too much like Perrin. He had been Merin for eight years or so, but when I was just a Wheel of Time fan, it was okay to have a name that sounded a little like a Wheel of Time character’s. But now I may be a little hypersensitive to that.

Honestly, the greatest reason I might have preferred The Gathering Storm to have a different title is that I felt it was just a little bit generic, more so than recent titles in the series have been. Recent Wheel of Time titles have been beautiful; I love Crossroads of Twilight as a title, for example. But The Gathering Storm is a good title for a lot of other reasons, and it works very well for the first of that sequence. So I was satisfied with it even though it wasn’t the title I would have chosen.