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Elantris Annotations ()
#51 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Prologue

I'm a very sequential writer. When I write a book, I usually start with the prologue and write straight through until I hit the epilogue. Though I can't remember for certain, I'm pretty sure that this prologue was the first thing I ever wrote for Elantris.

Back in those days, I didn't outline as much as I do now. When I first put fingers to keyboard, I really didn't know where this book was going to go. I had some vague idea of what I wanted it to be, but I didn't know how I was going to get there. However, this prologue really helped solidify things for me.

I love how it works in the story. It's quick, descriptive, and gives a marvelous outline of the magical setting of the book. It's also one of the most heavily-edited sections of the book. Moshe didn't like my original draft of it because he thought it was over-written. The original first line of the book was "Whispered are the days when Elantris was beautiful." I kind of still like this line better, but it may just be nostalgia. The line kind of has a faint. . .flowing quality to it. An etherealness.

Regardless, "Elantris was beautiful, once" made for a nice compromise. I'll probably post the entire, first-draft version of the prologue in the "deleted scenes" section of the website, if you want to compare.

Despite my preference for the old first line, I like the other changes we made to the prologue. Over all, it became more descriptive and easier to understand. It's a nice springboard to the story, and we've used it several places as a kind of quick teaser to get people to read the book.

(Including putting it on the back cover of the hardback.)

General Reddit 2020 ()
#52 Copy

VorpalAuroch

It's a good call in the abstract but the choice of character to genderswap is not great. Docks, sure, but I'd rather have Ham stay male (and, superficially, stereotypical), and swap any/all of Clubs, Marsh, and Yeden instead.

Brandon Sanderson

I understand this complaint, though you might want to look at the post I made just before this one in another thread.

Nothing is set in stone, but we need to imagine the Mistborn film as an alternate version of the cosmere, hopefully as close in heart as the MCU to the comics--but distant in some specific choices. In this case, Ham is working really well changed. Remember, you're only going to have a few comments from him/her in the film. The real place to get to know the character will be in the television show that goes between movies one and three (assuming this plan actually plays out--which it might not.)

taviow

If a TV show is successful, then it gets renewed. If Books 1 & 3 are already planned to be movies, what do you do with the TV series when, hopefully the show being a big hit, the network renews it for further seasons? Is there additional plot to be explored between books 2 and 3 somehow? Or did I misunderstand what you were talking about entirely?

Brandon Sanderson

So, there is a lot of buzz in Hollywood right now about integrated television and film properties. Further seasons, if this all works, would be Secret History blending into the time between Eras one and Two.

YouTube Livestream 10 ()
#53 Copy

David

How intertwined are the two halves of The Stormlight Archive? Will you need to read the first half to know what's happening in the second half? If you read the first half, will you need to read the second half to get that sense that the story has come to an end?

Brandon Sanderson

I've never done something like this before. They are less intertwined than, say, Mistborn Two and Three. But maybe equivalent intertwined to Mistborn, as Mistborn is intertwined to Mistborn Two and Three, if that makes sense. It depends. Maybe even a little less than that, actually.

I think that you are going to want to view them as one big series of ten books. And we are going to come to an ending, and there will be some very satisfying things about it. But it's definitely going to be a promise there is more to come. I've never done anything quite like this. Less final than Mistborn Three, certainly.

So, I don't know. I didn't think anyone would read the Wax and Wayne books without reading the first ones, but I get emails all the time from people who started with those because those are the ones that appealed to them. I think you could start with Book Six of The Stormlight Archive, and it wouldn't feel strange. I think it would be harder to stop with Book Five, if that makes sense. Of those two options. But it's all gonna depend on your personal preferences, and things like that.

It's an excellent question. Plus, I haven't written the fifth book yet, and that's gonna inform a lot. These things change and morph as I'm going; every one of them does. So, who knows. I can explain better after Book Five is done.

Words of Radiance Seattle signing ()
#54 Copy

Questioner

Why was Drehy the first one to speak up for Kaladin from Bridge 4 in The Way of Kings. They were heckling him and he said "lay off of him."

Brandon Sanderson

Drehy was a little less beaten down than the others at that point. He was a little newer to being a bridgeman, was part of it. Also also he's one of those people—he's based off my friend Ryan Drayer—who is a big guy, tall, and is very used to sticking up for people, that's part of who he is. And I put his personality into the character a bit.

Footnote: A lot of confusion/clarification, it's been slimmed down
Publishers Weekly Q & A ()
#56 Copy

Michael M. Jones

What was your inspiration for Skyward?

Brandon Sanderson

Ever since I was young, I’ve loved the quintessential "boy and his dragon story." My favorite is Jane Yolen’s Dragon’s Blood. It was one of the very first fantasy books I ever read, and it left a lasting impression on me. But there was also Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, and the How to Train Your Dragon film series. I love this archetype of story, and I’ve always wanted to do one, but I held off until I could find a new direction in which to approach it. Eventually, it drifted away from "a boy and his dragon" towards "a girl and her spaceship."

About four years ago, I hit on this idea, but I only had the framework. I still needed setting, characters, things that would really make me excited about the entire story. As a writer, it’s always about digging down deep into what I love about certain stories—what are the essential elements, what are the concepts that thrill me, and can I build those back up into something new? The more I built this back up, the more excited I became.

For most things, like worldbuilding and plots, I do outlines. But characters develop by instinct, as their voices emerge. The character of Spensa came to me almost fully formed. I was intrigued and enthralled by the idea of this girl who had been raised on stories from our world, the myths and legends, even ones we know are fiction like Conan the Barbarian. She sees herself as the latest in a long line of warriors, except her actual job is hunting rats and selling them for meat on the street. She has this idea of who she should be, what her destiny is, but in real life she’s just barely getting by. Characters come out of conflict, and hers is the contrast between what her life is like and what she thinks it should be, the difference between perception and experience.

Utah Humanities Book Festival ()
#57 Copy

dougpgc (paraphrased)

I asked him if a feruchemist were to visit Earth and tap Duralumin, could they do something as involved as talk local sports with someone?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No -- when you trick your spirit into thinking it's from where you're currently tapping, it's not a full transformation, like Sel-ish magic making a copy.. It doesn't just fill your head with things from the place you're visiting.

Words of Radiance Omaha signing ()
#62 Copy

Kythis

When you spike somebody, say a full Mistborn, with a steel spike, it could end up with four different charges.  Does it get all four of them it just depends on where you place it?  

Brandon Sanderson

Where you place it it can get all four.  Spiking a full Mistborn wastes a lot of power and the way that it's known, I mean, it doesn't have to, but the way that it's known to do it right now.

The Ten Orders of Knights Radiant ()
#63 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Skybreaker

I will seek justice

Skybreaker oaths are themed toward justice, fighting for causes, and enforcing social rules. They generally reinforce the importance of moral codes, legal structures, and similar boundaries that protect civilization.

The Skybreakers were the enforcers of the Knights Radiant, often tasked with keeping the peace, policing the other Orders, and making certain that dangerous or dark forces in the world were contained. This sometimes gave them a bad reputation among the more free-thinking Orders of Knights, but the Skybreakers (at their best) were not merciless. They were the ones who believed that nobody, not even a Radiant, should be above being questioned. They were the ones that did the sometimes tough job of making certain that the Orders didn’t abuse their power to become tyrants, as the Skybreakers saw that those with powers could easily oppress those who had none.

They tend to attract those who believe in the importance of legal code, those who have strong moral codes of their own, and those who think the best defense against anarchy are things like patriotism, moral fiber, and rules to govern behavior. Note that the current incarnation, led by the Herald Nale in his madness, is more rigid than the ancient order, which understood that the law was not perfect, but instead represented an ideal to try to reach over time. Anyone believing in finding true justice, in defending the innocent, and in punishing the guilty would be welcome in the Order.

Elantris Annotations ()
#64 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

This scene where Raoden and Sarene meet on equal grounds is, I hope, something that people have been waiting for. I intended the moment when Sarene lets Raoden take her hand to be a major event in the book. The phrase "For the first time" (I.e., she took his hand for the first time) was added at Moshe's suggestion. I'm personally not as fond of it as I could be–my opinion is often times, making a passage shorter actually emphasizes it more. However, I wasn't so set on those four words that I insisted on not putting them in.

YouTube Livestream 14 ()
#65 Copy

Cheyenne Sedai

What Order of Knights Radiant did Dalinar's plate come from?

Brandon Sanderson

I will RAFO that. Let's leave that alone for now. We're not talking a lot about Plate. You deserve a nice can of Read and Find Out. We'll start talking about...

We don't even really know where Shardplate comes from. It's all a mystery! Was Shardplate even from a Knight, ever piece of it? We don't know where it comes from!

(The cosmerenauts all know, they've figured it out. But we're just gonna pretend that they don't know.)

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As ()
#66 Copy

ailvara

In this moment: "Oh! a perky voice said in Shallan’s mind. We were almost here anyway, Veil! What are we doing?" Shallan is Veil (or was just a paragraph earlier with no hint it's changed) and Pattern calls her Veil but the phrasing is "in Shallan's mind". Is it a typo (or significant... mismatch)?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm a little tight for time now, so I can't look specifically, but I BELIEVE what is happening here is that Pattern is guessing which alter she is, and getting it wrong. It happens in this book several times, where Shallan is not giving external cues at which one she is at the moment.

Calamity Seattle signing ()
#67 Copy

Questioner

I want to say that I really admire that your characters are people first and not gender first. And I want to ask if anyone calls you Branderson? *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

She gave me a very nice compliment and asked if anyone calls me Branderson, and yes, it is starting to kind of catch on among the community. I don't know-- I don't know if it'd be my first choice but I will accept being called Branderson as opposed to-- People have called me BS since I was a kid *laughter* This is a step up.

Firefight Chicago signing ()
#71 Copy

Questioner

Do you have a plan for the entire concept of the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes I do.

Questioner

Do you have an Allomancy dude fighting a Surgebinding dude?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah it's going to be cool. It's going to be super awesome. The Allomantic space battles are really great. It's going to be like 15 years, sorry. But they are really cool.

Shadows of Self Houston signing ()
#72 Copy

Questioner

When writing, how do you work out space versus time?

Brandon Sanderson

Space versus time, what do you mean?

Questioner

So I guess distance versus time. So like, you have your math and you're writing, is it more just kind of feel how the story goes, or is it "I know this amount of space is going to take the characters four months--"

Brandon Sanderson

Oh I see what you're saying. Ok, so how do you work with, when you've got traveling characters, working out how much time things are going to take, traveling and things like this in the book, it actually really depends on the plot archetype of the book. If the book is what we call a travelogue, which is about traveling places, exploring new locations, it's kind of got that adventuresome, exploration feel to it, then the destinations you go to are the main part of the plot. For most of the books I'm writing, I don't do travelogues very often. I've done a few but not very often. So for me, that stuff in the middle is the boring stuff, and I skip it. You'll see in my books, they start in one chapter and they're like "well, we've gotta get here", and the next chapter they're like "wow, that was a ride" and then were there, and that's because the plot archetype I'm working on is usually different than that. So you've gotta kind of understand what you're writing.

One of the big things to figure out about your story, either discovering it as you write or planning it, however you do it, is why are people turning the pages, what are the promises I'm fulfilling, what is the thing that they're going to read that book to get. It can be multiple things, but if that exploration's part of it, they don't want to miss that journey. I remember reading a book once, and this is kind of an example of why this is so important, and I'm not going to name who it is because he's a very good writer. But there's one of his books where he stops, takes a break, comes back to the characters a few years later, like in the middle of the story, and you've missed the main character falling in love and getting married and this stuff. And I was like "No!", because the book is a coming-of-age book, and so the coming-of-age book skipping falling in love really felt like a betrayal of my trust as the reader. There are other books I've read where you can skip that, and it's okay, does that makes sense? Because the book is not about that, it can be about something else. So make sure you're not skipping the stuff that people want to read. Make sure you skip the other stuff though.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
#73 Copy

WeiryWriter

Is there an important reason why Lukel is the only character of Aonic descent in Elantris whose name is not based around an Aon? (Since "u" does not feature in any Aon.)

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but it's more social than magical. Like when I ran across someone in Korea named Moses, and it was so interesting linguistically compared to other more traditional names.

Elantris Annotations ()
#75 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

I worked for a while on the last line of Part Two. Originally, Hrathen thought to himself "Well, this isn't good." However, Moshe disagreed with that line. First, he thought it was too quippish. He wanted something more serious here. Second, he didn't think that these events were actually bad for Hrathen. Telrii, a man who had been giving Hrathen serious troubles, and Eondel, one of his main enemies, had just killed each other. On top of that, Roial—the main rival for the throne—is dead. All in all, a lot of annoying people are dead.

Moshe had a point, though I did disagree a bit. I think Hrathen would see Telrii's death as a wasted investment. He was still hoping to control the man, and having Telrii on the throne and amiable to Hrathen would have been a much better outcome, since it would leave Hrathen looking less powerless before Wyrn.

However, I went ahead and changed the line. It now reads "So much for avoiding a bloody revolution." It gets across the same ruefulness as before, without being as flippant.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
#76 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

We're moving in the story, timewise, much more quickly here than we were at the beginning of the book. Often there will be a week or so between chapters. It's kind of hard to tell in my books, as I don't talk very often about time passing. That's not one of my things; my books tend to feel very compressed, as if they happen over the course of a few days. However, each of the Mistborn books has covered many months—the first one covered almost an entire year. The nature of the Final Empire, where it tends to have very mild winters, makes the changing of seasons rough to follow.

Oathbringer Chicago signing ()
#77 Copy

Questioner

With Alloy of Law, with Wayne, how do you come up with that character? *laughter* And those things that he says? 

Brandon Sanderson

So, yeah, Wayne's one of those characters. So, there are certain standards to which I hold almost all of my characters in my books. Wayne isn't one of them. He gets away with more.

So, where'd Wayne come from? The original concept for Wayne was, when I was working on the Mistborn books-- For those who don't know, I originally pitched Mistborn to my editor, Moshe, as a trilogy of trilogies: Past, Present, Future. Epic fantasy trilogy, urban fantasy trilogy, science fiction trilogy, set in the same world, with advancing technology in which the magic becomes the foundation for space travel. And the original idea that the epic fantasy trilogy becomes the foundation of myth and religion in the modern day trilogy. So, I told him all this, and he said, "Wow. You're ambitious." This was after he had read Elantris and was trying to figure out what else to buy from me.

And so, as I was working on The Stormlight Archive, I realized I wanted something from the Mistborn world to balance Stormlight, because Stormlight books are big and involved and take, like, years of writing to get done, and I didn't want to be alternating thick, long, books in two series, I kinda wanted to have a shorter, more fast-paced series to balance out the bigger, longer series. And so, the first thing I started doing, the first idea for Wayne, was a person whose personality changed based on hats he put on. And he was actually originally a hat maker. And I wrote, like, three pages of this, and he was just too kooky. He was great, but I was pouring too much into him. I needed: number one, to kinda pull back on the concept in that original; and number two, I needed multiple characters around him. By the way, he was riding around on a talking horse at that point, because he was a kandra.

Yeah, it was a really weird scene. It was wacky. And that's when I said, "All right, I'm gonna sit down and write an actual novel, not just exploratory scenes." And that's where I built Wax and Wayne, and kind of, the play off of each other, and things like that. So, they kind of grew out of each other, and out of that first scene that I wrote. 

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
#78 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

As I re-read this chapter, I'm realizing just how obvious I made it here that Renoux is a kind of Mistwraith. Maybe I overdid it a bit. One problem with this novel in alpha reads was that many of my readers had also read Mistborn Prime, and so they understood the nature of kandra, and immediately knew what Renoux really was. It's not an extremely important surprise, however, so it probably doesn't matter that people can figure it out.

YouTube Livestream 16 ()
#80 Copy

Jake

Do you see yourself ever releasing any more Sanderson Curiosities? And if so, when?

Brandon Sanderson

Response to Way of Kings Prime was strong enough that I would at least like to release, in hardcover form, the good ones. The good books from the Sandersons Curiosities are: White Sand, Aether of Night, and Dragonsteel. They are all of an equivalent quality, I would say; as in being slightly worse than Elantris. Maybe significantly worse, but has similar problems. They're all good enough books that I don't think you waste your time reading them. They are just not good enough books that I would want to mass release them. They are, I think, great books to read as somebody who is like, "This is one of Brandon's early books that could have gotten published, good enough to get published, but didn't quite make it there." And I think people can have a lot of fun with those.

So I would imagine that we do one of these per Stormlight Kickstarter. Because we will probably continue to do... the Stormlight Archive books are just a big enough thing and require a big enough gear-up and enough funds that we'll probably continue to do one of those every three years. We will continue to do other leatherbounds, not as Kickstarters. They have smaller print runs, and we probably will continue to do all of those in bonded leather, and then do the Stormlight books in Kickstarters. And we will probably have a new Curiosity each time. So I would expect us to have White Sand, Dragonsteel, and Aether of Night curiosities in the next three of these Kickstarters.

And then we'll take a long, hard look at what we have left. Because after that, we go down another jump in quality. We have Mistborn Prime and Final Empire Prime, which are probably the next two in quality. Where they aren't bad books, and I think they're readable, but they're a little step further away from what ended up being my vision. But I think that White Sand, Dragonsteel, and Aether of Night are probably a little bit stronger of novels than Way of Kings Prime. So maybe Final Empire Prime and Mistborn Prime are both kind of equivalent to that.

Then, after that, we have another big dip in quality, and then you get things like Star's End, which was my second novel. You get things like Knight Life, which was my attempt at a comedic, sort of Bob Asprin adventure-style comedy. (Mostly cringe, with a little bit of actual comedy.) And the book I called The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, which is a cyberpunk look at immortality, where people have been turned into superweapons with nanites and stuff like that, and I have no idea how that book measures up anymore. It's the book I wrote right before Elantris. But those ones, I could even see releasing those.

Then, we have a huge dip in quality for White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell Prime, which are the first versions, the first books I wrote, and are really bad. And Mythwalker, which is the one I didn't finish because it just wasn't any good. And those are the other Sanderson Curiosities. I would not expect us to ever release those. Those are just bad enough that they aren't worth charging you for. Whereas a lot of these books are things I was experimenting with and exploring with and getting better at, they're my journeyman works, the first version (White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell) are the equivalent of the stuff you do as a filmmaker in high school with your parents' camera, your parents' phone, where you make your own Indiana Jones movie with your parents' phone when you're sixteen. That's the equivalent of what you would be getting, and I just don't know if I can charge people for that. Maybe we'll put 'em up free on my website, and if people really wanna complete the collection, they can complete them and have them bound themselves.

Prague Signing ()
#81 Copy

Paleo

Then we also talked about, theorized about unkeyed metalminds - that is Identity-less ones that anybody can that has the power can tap.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Paleo

We also were wondering is it like, we compared it to cryptography and encryption, stuff like that. Is it just that like, your Identity is sort of this unique encryption key.

Brandon Sanderson

And you need a key to you getting it. That's a valid line of theorizing. It is not exactly but it's close enough to be a good model.

Paleo

And would an unkeyed metalmind theoretically be capable of storing a little more than a keyed one.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, because of yeah.

Paleo

Because it has to... Is it inherent to the Investiture or is it like an extra bit?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that, mostly because I haven't considered that yet.

Skyward Houston signing ()
#82 Copy

Questioner

Can you explain how the Well of Ascension worked? How it actually held him and why releasing the power released Ruin?

Brandon Sanderson

That is the sort of thing that I can't explain in a brief amount of time, but hit me with an email, all right? Say that I promised to answer this, keep pushing me and eventually we'll get an answer written out for that one.

Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide ()
#85 Copy

Czanos

Does every metal have a Feruchemical and Hemalurgic property? If not, are there metals which have Feruchemical or Hemalurgic properties which do not have Allomantic ones?

Brandon Sanderson

Every metal has a Feruchemical, an Allomantic, and a Hemalurgic property. The godly metals each also do something else. There are several interesting Feruchemical powers yet to be discovered and revealed in the next series. Feruchemy is less widely understood because there were so few practitioners in the modern era, and a lot of the time they were too afraid of capture to really study and use their powers.

The Alloy of Law Annotations ()
#86 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fifteen

Miles talks with Suit, gets two minders, then burns gold to see two versions of himself

One curiosity of dealing only with Mistings, rather than full Mistborn, was what to do with the less powerful metals. Certainly a Pewterarm or a Tineye can be useful. We've seen them in the series do plenty of interesting things.

But what about a person who can burn only gold? I think there's just one place in the entire first trilogy where someone does it, the time Vin burns it in the first book. (I may have put a second time in; I don't recall.) Gold, as a power, was placed into the schematics to give a clue as to what the Eleventh Metal was. Beyond that, I wanted some of the powers of Allomancy to be more metaphysical, more thoughtful, and less about combat.

I'd already decided that Miles would be a Gold Compounder, capable of the Lord Ruler's healing. That meant he had to be a gold Misting. What would one do, with this power? Ignore it? Was there a way to use it? His nature as a gold Misting is a large part of why Miles is such a thoughtful, introspective person. He is not a good man, but he is a self-reflecting one.

There's more going on here, of course. Pay attention to the name he mentions: Trell. This is one of the gods from the ancient religions Sazed talked about. You might think that the spikes in Miles will let Sazed influence him directly, and they would—except that Sazed has taken a complete "free will is needed" perspective on life. He won't let himself take control of people directly unless they've "given themselves" to him, as most of the kandra have at this point. Even then, he usually only nudges.

But there is something odd going on with Miles.

Skyward release party ()
#90 Copy

Questioner

You see, in a few places, Shards that can read people's minds, or send thoughts to people's minds. What, in other settings, would be called telepathy. Do we have, in any Shardworlds, a magic system where ordinary people have telepathy?

Brandon Sanderson

I've actually designed one that I think is interesting, whether I will make that work or not, I'm not sure. But there is a very interesting world, one that i have right now in the Cosmere, that we will see. I try not to canonize these things till I actually write the story. As happened with Silence Divine, where people have been for six years, "When are you going to write this story?" Because I wrote one chapter of it.

But yes, I do have something that works that way.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
#92 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Shan's scene here is just another placeholder, I'm afraid. She just showed up to remind you that she's still around, making Vin's life more difficult.

Since I wanted to use her later as an antagonist, I had to make certain you didn't forget who she was. It was important to me that I have another Mistborn in the book that Vin could fight, if only to show off a little of what Vin is capable of. And, of course, I like the fact that I can pull a nice reversal of expectation with Shan.
Skyward Seattle signing ()
#96 Copy

Questioner

I heard you talk about the Vorin languages have a vowel shift. I'm a linguist so...

Brandon Sanderson

I'm kind of bad at vowel shifts, but it does have a vowel shift. You'll see Kalak being called Kelek, and some of these things like this. And I try to stay consistent with it, but I've also not been as rigorous with it as I maybe should be. Peter always points out little errors I've made. So it's a vowel shift that has some inconsistencies, how about that. But of course, real-world vowels shifts have it.

Questioner

You need to publish something only about the conlang.

Brandon Sanderson

Only about the linguistics? Yeah, having an assistant who has a degree in linguistics is really handy. Peter's been of very big use, particularly on Stormlight, because I didn't have him before those books. I just kind of had to muddle through it. And now I've got him. I'll call him up and say, "Pronounce this; pronounce this." There are lots of names in Stormlight that I can't pronounce that he can... The Arabic /q/ ...he can do, and I can't. Which we use a lot in some of the names over in Azir, and stuff like that.