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Maru Nui

You've said you lifted the Shattered Plains from Dragonsteel, what would Kaladin have been doing if not running bridges and what will happen to Dragonsteel without the Plains?

Brandon Sanderson

Both good questions. I've spoken before of the big changes that happened when I wrote The Way of Kings 2.0. One of them was bringing in the Shattered Plains. The problem was that there was a big hole in Kaladin's storyline, because in the original manuscript of The Way of Kings (major spoiler), he accepted the Shardblade. That was the prologue of the book; Kaladin—then known as Merin—saved Elhokar's life. They tried to take the Shardblade away from him, and Dalinar insisted that he be given it. So Merin was made a Shardbearer in the very first scenes of the book. And from that point, his character never worked. So in doing the second version of the book, I decided that no, we've got to build more into this, we've got to dig deeper, and he has to make the opposite decision, which is where the entire framework of him turning down the Shardblade and then being betrayed all came from. The problem was then what was he going to do? I knew I wanted him to have therefore ended up sold into slavery and have terrible things happen to him, but I couldn't figure out what Kaladin was going to do and was unable to write the book until I mashed in the Shattered Plains and said, "Ah, that was what he needed to be doing all along."

I really don't know what I'll do in Dragonsteel without that now. The problem is that it was the part of Dragonsteel that worked, but it was the part that was most at odds with the story in Dragonsteel. The story that I wanted to tell was the first half of the book, which is the more boring part. Hopefully as a better writer now I can make that part more interesting, but that was the core of what Dragonsteel was. The Shattered Plains was always just going to be a small diversion, but when I wrote it it was fascinating, and I ended up pouring tons of effort and time into it. In many ways it was a distraction, a deviation, a beautiful darling. So for a long time I've been thinking, "I can't kill my darling, because that's the most exciting part of the book." Yet it was at odds with what the story of the book was originally intended to be. I wasn't as good at controlling my stories back then, making them come out to have the tone I wanted. Anyway, we'll have to approach that when I actually write Dragonsteel.

Ravi

I'm curious how you were <feeling about whole process of> the graphic novel. <Specifically how you felt about the whole thing translating,> because I have the draft. 

Brandon Sanderson

Uh-huh.

Ravi

<You were kind enough to send me that.> You know, you were very descriptive.

Brandon Sanderson

<And it didn't translate well?>

Ravi

Not so much-- although I did see <glimpses of you popping through>.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, so, I focus on the positives. <But there might be some things I might not agree with.>

Ravi

I think that's fair. Of course.

Brandon Sanderson

And I-- what we came up with was the < a list of a few things>... *inaudible* Like the only one that really bothered <me> was... where is the big battle?

*searches through the graphic novel*

<The big splash page> right there. I'm like... <when did this turn into> white people verse brown people? You've read the book. This isn't about white versus brown. This is, again, how did we end up with white versus brown? Why aren't these people wearing armor? These guys are the ones that are outcasts and these are the high society.

And so when I got this stuff, I was like, "Uhh..." These panels where they'd done earlier where they have the skin tones and the <the clothes for the Darksiders>, I'm like, "Really good!". But then when that one came together I was like, "Oh great, oh great, here we go." And when you put the whole thing together, some things came out really cool. Like I think the Darksiders turned out cool. The Darksiders were awesome. The magic turned out really great. But again, I'm like, "Where's the armor? Where's the cultural markings? Where's that stuff?".

But yeah, yeah. The thing is, the guy who's drawing them is Asian, right? So <he should, you know?>... alright, so that's my thing. But again, you've read the book. Like, where's <that detail?>... But that's-- when you give the story to someone else you have to let them <do what they will>.

Remagoen

When plotting a series of books, how do you account for plot changes you didn't foresee you had to do? For instance, I read that Elend was originally going to be a minor character, but the end of Mistborn wouldn't have been the same without him. How did you work him into the plot later on without breaking the story?

Brandon Sanderson

After I wrote the first book, and Elend grew more important in my mind, I reworked the three-book-outline. Usually, when I build a series, I spend a lot of time on the first book and then have a few paragraphs on the rest. Then, after finishing the first book and seeing how it worked (and how the tone was) I go and do much more in-depth outlines for the rest of the series.

When the first book is happening, things are much more 'anything goes' as I don't have any established canon yet. I allow myself to toss the rest of the outlines out the window, and just try to make the first book the best it can be. From there, I have continuity, and I feel it is important to maintain that for the integrity of the series.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seventeen

Of all the books I've written, I think this one hearkens most closely to our own world. Usually, when I develop cultures and languages, I try to stay away form basing them too closely on any one Earth society or race. I'm not certain what made me do things differently in Elantris. It's not just fencing–JinDo, with its obvious links to Asian cultures, is a good example too. And Fjorden's language has some obvious references to Scandinavia. (Dilaf's name comes from Beowulf, actually. I named him after Beowulf's heir, Wilaf.)

Anyway, in this chapter we find two very obvious "borrows" from our world. I've always been fascinated by fencing, though I've never participated myself. The idea of turning swordfighting into a sport intrigues me. In addition, I found the light, formalized dueling appropriate to the tone of this book, so I took the opportunity to write it in. (I do realize, by the way, that Hollywood has done some interesting things to fencing. Most real fencing bouts are much shorter, and far less showy, than what we see depicted. This is pretty much true for any kind of fighting, however. Think what you will, but combat is usually brutal, quick, and really not that exciting to watch.

This kind of fighting is very appropriate in some books. However, I allowed myself the indulgence of doing my fencing scenes a bit more flourish than one would find in real life. It felt right in the context to have the participants spar, parry, and jump about for far longer a time than is realistic. If you need justification, you can assume that in Teod, the rules for fencing are very strict–and so it's very hard to actually score a point on your opponent, forcing the battles to be prolonged.)

The other item of interest in that scene is, of course, Shuden's ChayShan dance. As mentioned above, his culture is pretty obviously borrowed from Asia. In fact, the link is so strong that some readers have trouble imagining his features as anything but Asian. (Note, once again, that this is not the case. The JinDo have dark brown skin. Though, I guess you'll imagine Shuden however you wish.) The ChayShan is a martial art I devised to feel just a bit like Tai Chi–though ChayShan focuses on speeding up the motions and gaining power from them. I've always kind of thought that Tai Chi would look more interesting if it slowly sped up.

Questioner

I remember in, I believe it was Hero of the Ages, when Sazed was helping TenSoon escape. When he had fallen on the guard, he said that, by increasing his weight he also increases his density so he doesn't <hurt> himself. Then in The Alloy of Law, it also says that when Wax increases his weight he said that he didn't.

Brandon Sanderson

So, Sazed is just making a mistake. He's mistaking the fact when he increases his weight his musculature changes to be able to handle the new weight and that was what he was talking about. Strength and muscle tone and things like that. I might have just gotten it wrong in the original one [scene], I can't honestly remember, but this is what we kinda decided it needs to be. 

Pagerunner

Over the course of Rhythm of War, we see Cohesion applied in three different ways as applied by different Tones, and I can see internal/external and pushing/pulling contradictions in those. Is that a pattern that will be accurate for all of the Surges?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but a loose pattern. Accurate under the loosest definition of the word. You will find connections there, as you are looking for them, and most of them will be intentional. But it will be hard to fit every Surge into exactly that framework.

Dana

We <3 you, Brandon Sanderson! Now hurry and publish more books, lol!

Brandon Sanderson

Lol. Dana, I'm REALLY trying to publish as many as possible. Magic cards do help, though... In a more serious tone, I do offer to let people read my older books. So if you're starved for something, you can shoot and email through the website and ask for White Sand or Aether of Night. They're not up to my current standards, but they're okay. And if you're really interested in the larger story happening behind the scenes in my books, those two novels are important. Watch for the Wells of Power in Aether of Night, for example. There will be an Elantris sequel some day. Hopefully.

Chris

I've seen in reviews of Mistborn that a criticsm that pops up from time to time is that you tend to repeat the basic principles of the magic system. I've seen that some feel hit over the head with it. Personally, I liked that fact since the magic system was new and it helped me to remember and understand.

I'm also seeing criticsm now with Warbreaker that the magic system isn't explained enough to thoroughly understand it. I've pointed out in discussions that not even Vasher understands it all.

But here's my question: Did criticsm of the magic system's explanations in Mistborn have anything to do with Warbreaker having considerably less explanation in its magic system?"

Brandon Sanderson

Wow, that's a very detailed and interesting question. The answer is no.

...Okay, there's more to that answer. I accepted the criticisms of the Mistborn books with the knowledge that there was really no other way around it—the way I was writing those books and the complexity of the magic system made me feel like I needed to give those hints. It's not like I'm trying to write down to the lowest denominator, but at the same time I want to make sure that the complicated magic system is a force driving the book—and is something interesting rather than something confusing. Across a three-book epic like that I wanted to make sure that I was not leaving people behind. That's always a balance in a book series. And I don't know where to set that balance. In fact, I think the balance is going to be different for every person. Any given book that you read, some people are going to find it overexplained and some people are going to find it underexplained. I'm always trying to strike the right balance, particularly for the tone of a given book, to make that work for the novel.

With Warbreaker, as you've pointed out, the magic system is much less understood by the poeple taking part in it. In the Mistborn books the magic system is very well understood. Even though there are little pieces of it that people don't know yet, those peices are easy to grasp and understand and use once people figure out what they are. In the Mistborn books the world is in a state where people have spend 1000 years using this magic system and perfecting it and understanding it. In Warbreaker, they haven't. They still don't know much about what's going on. It's very mysticized. People haven't sat down and spent enough time pursuing scholarly research about it, figuring it out. Beyond that there's no immortal Lord Ruler figure explaining it all to them—or if there is, it's Vasher and he's not telling anyone. And so the magic in Warbreaker has a very different feel to it. I wanted it to be a little confusing, because it is confusing for the main characters.

I wouldn't say that the criticism of the Mistborn books is what drove me; the needs of the various plots is what drove me.

Brandon Sanderson

Generally, books form when multiple ideas stewing in the back of my brain combine in interesting ways. The most obvious idea for this one [The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England] is my desire to do a Jason Bourne type story. I know it’s a little tropey, but there’s something about me that genuinely loves the type of story where you find out about the characters as they remember who they are.  I think it’s because I love books structured in such a way that the reader and the character feel the same things at the same times.

There’s this beautiful sense of discovery to a book, and though it could (obviously) get old, I personally enjoy the occasional story where you get to enhance that feeling by starting with a blank slate character. (When I’d GM role-playing games, I loved to have all the characters start with no memory and the players discover and develop them as they went.)  So, I hope you’ll forgive me for using a trope that can sometimes be a little eye-rolly (amnesia). I promise I do some interesting things with it.

The other big idea that led to this was one I’ve had for years about “time-travel tourism.” A lot of time travel stories focus on changing (or not changing) the present. I wanted to throw that worry out the window and play with the idea of “past as playground.” You can hear Dan and I discuss this concept (though I’d already written this book in secret by then) on episode 18 of our Intentionally Blank podcast: “Time Travel Disaster Tourism.” As these two ideas melded into “Time Traveling Jason Bourne,” I knew I had something that would be fun.

The final element that connected here was me realizing—as I started working on this—the uncomfortable nature of the topic. Playing with the past meant playing with people’s lives, and there were some parts of this that I felt I needed to hang a lantern on. That’s when I decided to use interjections from the Frugal Wizard’s handbook. (I’d actually had this idea as a title with no context years before.) I figured I could highlight the inherent ridiculous—and somewhat immoral—nature of the basic premise with some satire, making it okay to laugh at the situation all while we talked about human nature. Because I think this is really something we’d do if we had the chance to travel to the past without consequences in the future. So it’s worth talking about it in narrative. That’s part of what SF/F is for—exploring the impossible now so that when some impossible things become reality, we as a society have already had a chance to investigate how we feel about the subject.

Anyway, those three things combined into this story. While Secret Project #1 has a fairy-tale tone, I intend this one (when in the protagonist’s viewpoint) to be more action/adventure. The Frugal Wizard inserts are comedic, but the main text is not a comedy, save for the occasional sarcastic or amusing comment by the narrator.

Gogis

It makes sense that [Davriel]’s in the combat suit, because it’s war time, and it’s a game about combat, but I love my lazy, smart, tea-drinking good for nothing anti-hero.

Brandon Sanderson

We should get a version like that eventually.

Creative and I both wanted his first appearance to be a non-black version, even though Dav has a very strong secondary blue mode. (And some white he pretends isn't there.) I pitched them on the idea of him using the mask and cloak to hide his true nature, and it was pretty clear he would be using that mode on Ravnica. You'll have to wait for him to be a little more in his element for a more Dav-like card.

Brandon Sanderson

I posted about this on the other thread, but I do think we will get another card some day. This is actually a very good representation of Davriel in stealth mode, where he uses only his thoughsieze powers and wears his mask. As much as we would like a planeswalker card with art of a dude sitting at a cafe and complaining, it doesn't really fit the tone of the set...

KaladinarLighteyes

Does that mean Davriel is confirmed to live through the war?

Brandon Sanderson

I can't give any confirmations (and know less about the current storyline than you probably think I do) but I'd be VERY surprised if Davriel were a casualty of the current conflict.

Questioner

How do you decide what perspective you put it in? First person, third person?

Brandon Sanderson

A lot of it depends on the number of viewpoints I'm gonna have for a book. It's a pretty easy thing, but if I'm gonna have one viewpoint, I'll put it almost always in first. Not always, but almost always, because I can use the tools. Genre influences it also. First person's more prevalent in YA than it is in adult. And kind of, like, what tone do I want for it? Like, the first person book I'll do in the Cosmere, I probably won't do one until I do Hoid's book. Because he's the storyteller telling you the story. And the other ones, I want to be trustworthy, like the narration of which, even if a specific viewpoint is untrustworthy, the narration is trustworthy.

Dan Wells

This is actually an idea we came up with on the cruise last year was to do an episode about all the things that we have tried to make work and couldn't; the novels that we abandoned halfway through or the short stories that just never came together. And we thought it would be a really fun way to end this year in kind of a backhanded, inspirational way to say, look, we're all successful at this and we still screw up all the time.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. And it's not just what we do when we were trying to break in, not those old trunk novels. It still happens every year. Let's take each, our biggest one, like the thing we got the most involved in, or the one that was most tragic to us that we couldn't make work and talk about it. And I'll just go ahead and start.

Brandon Sanderson

I - right before I got the call for the Wheel of Time, which changed my life dramatically - I had finished the Mistborn series, I'd finished Warbreaker and Elantris, and next I thought, I'm going to jump back in the shared universe of my Cosmere and write the prequel series that started it all, where everything came from. This is the backstory of the character known as Hoid, who is a fan favorite. And I'm like, I'm going to do this trilogy, or more books. It's going to be super awesome. It's going to just be the greatest thing ever. And I actually finished the whole book and it was a disaster. It was a train wreck of a book. The character, for the first time - it's like this whole problem you have when you have a really engaging side character that you try to make a main character - didn't work at all as a main character, at least as the personality I had for them way back when. The plot was boring. The setting just was even more boring, which is saying a lot for me. I tried to pull and incorporate some different elements from books that I had tried before and none of them meshed. And so it felt like five books with a bad character and no plot. It was a huge, just terrible thing.

Howard Tayler

Did it have a good magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

The magic system was weak.

Here's the thing. It had a really good magic system from another world that I ported into this world that didn't jive. And the one that was from this world never meshed well with that. And so the magic system was really weak in that it was doing cool things, but in complete contrast to the tone of the novel. Dan may have read some of it, Liar of Partinel.

Dan Wells

Uh, no.

Brandon Sanderson

OK. The writing group which just kind of baffled by this. I actually tried -speaking of what we did last week - I actually started with the clichéd scene of someone being hung and then flashing back to show how they got there - like it had so many problems with it.

Dan Wells

72 hours earlier.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Yeah, it was, exactly. It was one of those things. Exactly one of those things. Like "I'm going to to try this tool. Oh, this tool is not a tool," right? Like some tools you try and you're like, "Oh, that's a cool tool that doesn't deserve its reputation." Some of them you try and you're like, "This is so..."

Dan Wells

There's a reason everyone makes fun of this one. Wow.

So I kind of want to ask questions about how bad it was.

Specifically with Hoid.

Because that's what fascinates me about this. He was, he is a fan favorite and he's always the side character, you know.

He's the one who's sits off and makes goofy comments and, you know, maybe appears once and then leaves. What did you do when you attempted to make him a main character? Like what was your process there?

Brandon Sanderson

So I knew the biggest chance for failure on this was, you know, taking him a bit, having be too wacky through the course, right? It's the Minion movie thing, which worked for my kids, but for a lot of people are like "These side characters that add flavor to a larger story, when you make the whole story about them, are super annoying." I'm like, I can't have him be super annoying! Well, that's OK. It's you know, when he was young, when you're seeing him in the books, he's hundreds and hundreds years old. He was young, and so I will take that part out. But I did this weird dual identity thing with him, where he was like pretending to be someone else for a big chunk of the book because it had a really cool twist when I did the whole reveal. But then that meant I had to characterize him as somebody you grew too emotionally invested in somebody to...at the end you're like, "Surprise! In the next book you'll get to know who he really is." Which was part of it. And the person I was having him be was bland on purpose because it was like trying to hide and pretend to... Oh, man! There were so many problems with this character, like it was trying to be too clever, leaving out the cleverness that had made him a fan favorite on purpose. Right? So it's a different kind of cleverness. And it just did not work. Didn't work at all.

Dan Wells

Do you think that if you were to write that book today, you could make it work?

Brandon Sanderson

I have completely scrapped that, and what actually changed my opinion on how to do this was Name of the Wind. It needs to be him in the future, flashing back and talking about himself because people will have already bonded to who he is in the future. And it needs to be a memoir. It needs to be...the Assassin's Apprentice is a better example of what this needs to be, because Robin Hobb does such a great job of showing you that contrast between what someone is now and what they've become. And so I need to do something like this. This is now my feel on it. If I then can set in his own voice, I can have these, you know, this first person where we're really, really fun in Hoid's voice for all, and then he fades into the story when he's telling a story, he's not nearly as, you know, he doesn't try to zing you every minute, he tries to tell the story well. That's who he is. And so he will tell the story well. And then we can pop out occasionally and get, you know, it's like Bilbo from The Hobbit.

Brandon Sanderson

So we'll see if I can write it. But that's my plan right now. And there is my true confession of failure. There've been other ones since, but that's the one that hurt, hit me the most. I actually wrote The Rithmatist as I was supposed to go into the sequel to this and start outlining it, and I'm just like "I can't, this book is so bad." And I wrote The Rithmatist without telling any one of my editors I sent that in instead of Liar of Partinel.

Morsker

I'd like to ask what led to this decadence in the Iridescent Tones, what were the social causes? It started out as the Cult of the Returned, and a simple faith in caring for the Returned so they'd live long enough to fulfill their purpose. And I assume the Voice even sends them back without memories exactly to foster this faith and hope in people, so that mortals can be part of their salvation instead of just getting divine hand-outs. That sounds really nice. But by the time we reach the events in Warbreaker, a lot of corruption and cynicism has found its way in, no?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it has. Part of it is something that Lightsong points out. Their religion encourages the best of the Returned to give up their lives for their people, and they hit a patch where a lot of the best of them have already given up their lives. The rest have their needs and wants seen to. Beyond that, remember this is a society in which they're living in a very temperate climate where there isn't very much harsh weather at all; they're very sheltered, they have an extremely rich resource, and they have a lot of leisure time. So we're mixing leisure time with a somewhat selfish batch of Returned in control, and we're mixing that with a religion that focuses on art and beauty and that sort of thing.

I think one of the dangers this society would have to be worried about would be for this decadence to creep in as has happened at various points in various cultures around the world. The society certainly isn't irredeemable at all, but it is going through a patch of these three concepts aligning in some of the worst sorts of ways. But there are some better Returned than we focus on in the book, and there have been much better Returned in the past.

Ghost2352

Would striking a chime or bell made of a God Metal produce a similar note to that God Metal's corresponding tone?

Brandon Sanderson

Not necessarily.

Brandon Sanderson

I worry just a tad about the light-hearted feel of the end of the chapter here. Originally, this scene was in the book BEFORE the army showed up to attack. In the original draft I showed Elend and company living (and fighting off assassins) without knowing that an army was bearing down on them. Moving the army so that it began the book on the horizon was the major pacing change I made that sped up the book, and increased the tension.

However, we missed a few of the more light scenes–like the upcoming sparring–and I didn't want to cut them because they were so indicative of character. I decided to leave them in. Kelsier's crew is accustomed to dealing with stress and remaining jovial. The only change I really had to make was in the Elend viewpoints, which you will see in the next chapter. Still, I hope the tone isn't off–that's a real worry when you transplant scenes from a previous draft, as opposed to writing them new when you change as much as I did at the beginning here.

Questioner

The word "fluting" comes up a lot in the Skyward books. I was wondering, if there is ever a TV show or movie, would you like actual flutes to be used, concerning that?

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe, good question. When I hear fluting... If you don't know, I like parrots as pets. And some parrots are good at vocalizing; other ones aren't. And if you know what they're saying, you can understand the word. But sometimes, to an outsider, it just sounds like a squawk. And that's the fluting; I imagine it mostly being pronounced, but if you weren't paying close attention, you might just hear a flute noise. But if you know that the animal is imitating what you're saying, you can pick out what they're saying.

I imagine it would be synthesized. But maybe there's a flutist out there that can make their fluting sound like the tone and what-not, and it would be appropriate if the repetition was just kind of an evocation of the word.

Brandon Sanderson

Any of you who haven't read the Evil Librarians series might want to duck out here, because I'm going to talk about the big reveal at the end of the fifth novel. This is a post that's been brewing since 2006, so I'm eager to talk about it—but anyone who has read stories like Secret History will know that I like to brew surprises over the long haul. I'd rather you discover this on your own, by reading the series. I've posted before my pitch on what the books are about, and why you might like them.

For those of you who have read up to the fifth book, it's time to give a behind-the-scenes look at what happened with this series.

If we look back to 2006, we can find the seed of the first [Alcatraz] book in a writing prompt I wrote out for myself: “So there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to be sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil librarians.”

Great first line to a story. I typed it into my phone while at a meeting one day, and quickly became enthralled by it. I'd been reading a lot of middle grade, and wanted to try my hand at something in the genre. I discovery-wrote the story, mostly as a writing exercise—and as a break from the Mistborn series, which I felt needed some breathing room before I could work on the next book.

The story turned out great. Quirky, sarcastic, and fun. So I sent it to my agent, and he liked it too. It took us only a few months to get four offers. Each of the editors we were talking to wanted to know, what was my vision for the series?

And this was tricky because the first book had left me in a bit of a conundrum. You see, a big theme of that first book was a character telling their life's story and warning everyone that he wasn't a hero, that things ended poorly for him. And yet the series was lighthearted and fun, full of humor and wackiness. It didn't have the dark tone of Lemony Snicket, despite the main character's insistence that he was no hero.

I felt I'd promised the audience a fun reversal—that Alcatraz would end up being a hero, even if he didn't think he was one. This was tricky though, because I had the feeling that if I ended it that way, it would be too obvious. Somehow I had to have an ending that justified Alcatraz thinking he was a huge failure in life, but at the same time indicating to the reader that he was actually heroic.

And that's when I hit on a structure that would let me do this. I pitched the following to the various editors interested in the books: I'll write a six-book series that I tell everyone is five books long. The main character will write five, and the fifth will end with the disasters he predicted. This will show exactly why he thinks of himself the way he does.

But then the sixth book will be from the viewpoint of his bodyguard, continuing the story and giving the real ending.

I felt this would work because it played into the themes of Alcatraz being honest about his past, mixed with his feelings of failure. But it would at the same time let us have an ending that wasn't quite so much of a downer. All it required was that we remain quiet for six years or so (it ended up being ten) about the secret sixth book. (In the intervening years, if people asked me if book five was the end, I tried to always answer, "The fifth book is the last one Alcatraz will write.")

Some of the editors loved this idea, and others didn't like it at all. One who loved it was Susan at Tor, who is now publishing the books—so yay!

My initial pitch for the release of book five this year was to have a little envelope inside the back cover that you opened and found a note from Bastille, saying she was going to write the last book. However, that proved to be a problem. First, it's easy to lose a card from an envelope, which meant that library books and secondhand books risked having the true ending get lost. Second, it seemed like it would just be too much for people to resist opening early. We ended up going with a folded-over page at the ending, which at least can't get lost. (And in the ebook, Bastille's note is at the very, very end, past all the footnotes, like a post-credits scene.)

So what does this mean for the future of the series? Well, two years ago I posted a screenshot of my folder showing all of my books in order. It hid a secret project, scribbled out. People assumed this was Secret History, and I didn't disabuse them (as I was working on it at the time). But it's actually Evil Librarians Six, which I've done a bunch of work on. I'm not sure when I'll have it out, but it won't be too long. (I will probably finish it sometime next year.) I'm tentatively calling it Alcatraz Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians: The Worldspire. (Yes, Alcatraz's name will likely be crossed out on the cover, with hers written over it.) Originally I'd named it Alcatraz vs. His Own Dumb Self, but I think that might be going too far.

Thank you to all the fans who have kept with this series over the years. It's because of you that I went through all the trouble of buying the series back from the old publisher, when they decided to end it at four books. And it's because of you that we have the gorgeous new Tor editions, finally with cover art that fits the books. (Not to mention the awesome interior art.)

But book six WILL be the last. You can trust this, because it's me saying it, not Alcatraz. 

GypsyKylara

My question is about writing, kind of.

As an author, you have achieved moderate success. People like you and have heard of you within the genre and you have established a relationship with your publishing company that lets you get a lot of books published.

This is the level of success I want as a writer and I am just wondering how financially viable this is. Like, can you write only or do you need a so-called day job? Are you able to support your family with your writing alone? That kind of thing.

Sorry if that is kind of a personal question. I've just always wondered how much money a writer makes once they've "made it".

Brandon Sanderson

I had a lot of questions like this myself during my days trying to break in. Everyone told me it wasn't possible to make a living as a writer—that, like an actor or a musician, I'd spend my life poor and obscure.

One of the big turning points came when I met and talked to a professional writer who had had modest success. Not a huge name, but a person who had done what you hope to do. Publish a book every year, never be a household name, but well-known enough in-genre that a large portion of the readers had seen his books on the shelves, though many still had no idea who he was. (The author was David Farland, by the way.)

I wish I could give you that same experience, though it's going to be harder while not face to face. The main tone of the meeting and his encouragement was this: IT IS POSSIBLE and YOU CAN DO IT!

Not everyone can make a living at writing. But it's very within reach, and for the dedicated author willing to practice and learn, it's not as difficult to make a living as many make it out to be.

I do make a living full time at this, and have for several years now. In the early years, it wasn't what many would call a 'good' income, but it was enough for me. Now, it is an excellent income. Not "Fly to Europe every week" income, but certainly "Take your friends out to eat once in a while" income.

A standard royalty for an author would be to 10-15% on a hardcover, and around 8% on a paperback. Usually, the percentage gets better the more copies you sell.

Now, books don't sell the huge numbers that people usually think they do. If you sell 2k hardcover copies in your first week, you can get on the NYT list. (Though it's not certain—it depends on what week it is and what other books came out. 3k is a pretty sure bet, though.)

Elantris—an obscure, but successful, book—sold about 10k copies in hardcover and around 14k copies its first year in paperback. I've actually sold increasing numbers each year in paperback, as I've become more well-known. But even if you pretend that I didn't, and this is what I'd earn on every book, you can see that for the dedicated writer, this could be viable as an income. About $3 per book hardcover and about $.60 paperback gets us around 39k income off the book. Minus agent fees and self-employment tax, that starts to look rather small. (Just under 30k). But you could live on that, if you had to. (Remember you can live anywhere you want as a writer, so you can pick someplace cheap.)

I'd consider 30k a year to do what I love an extremely good trade-off. Yes, your friends in computers will be making far more. But you get to be a writer.

The only caveat here is that I did indeed get very lucky with my placement at Tor. It's the successful hardcover release that makes the above scenario work. If you only had the paperback, and everyone who bought the hardcover bought that instead, you'd have to be selling around 60k copies to make it work. That's very possible, and I know a lot of midlist writers who do it.

Anyway, numbers shouldn't be what gets you into this business. If you have to tell stories, tell them. To be a writer, I feel you need to have such a love of the process that you'd write those books even if you never sold one. It's not about the money, and really shouldn't be. (And sorry to go on so long. I just feel it important to give aspiring writers the same kinds of help that I got.)

Brandon Sanderson

POSTMODERNISM IN FANTASY

The Way of Kings is out. I’ve been thinking a lot about the novel, what it has meant to me over the years, and why I decided to write it as I did. I’ve had a lot of trouble deciding how to pitch this novel to people. It’s a trouble I’ve never had before. I’m going to explain why this one doesn’t work as easily. But I’m going to start with a story.

There’s a particular music video I saw quite often when working the graveyard shift at the local hotel. I worked that job primarily because it allowed me to write at work (I wrote some eight or so novels while sitting at that front desk, including both Elantris and the original draft of The Way of Kings). However, part of my job there was the do the night audit of the cash drawer and occupancy, that sort of thing. As I worked, VH1/MTV would often become my radio for an hour or so, playing on the little television hidden behind the front desk.

The video was by Jewel, and was for the song “Intuition.” We’ll pretend, for the sake of defending my masculinity, that I paid special attention for the literary nature of the video, and not because I have a fondness for Jewel’s music. And there was something very curious about this video. In it, Jewel transitions back and forth between washed-out “normal world” shots of her walking on a street or interacting with people, and color-saturated “music video”-style shots of her engaging in product promotion while wearing revealing clothing.

The tone of the video is a little heavy-handed in its message. Among other things, it is meant to parody rock star/music video culture. It shows Jewel in oversexualized situations, having sold herself out in an over-the-top way. It points a critical finger at sexual exploitation of the female form in advertising, and juxtaposes Jewel in a normal, everyday walk with a surreal, Hollywood version of herself promoting various products.

Now, what is absolutely fascinating to me about this video is how perfectly it launches into an discussion of the literary concept of deconstructionism. You see, Jewel is able to come off looking self-aware—even down-to-earth—in this video, because of the focus she puts on how ridiculous and silly modern advertising is. The entire video is a condemnation of selling out, and a condemnation of using sexual exploitation in advertising.

And yet, while making this condemnation, Jewel gets to reap the benefits of the very things she is denouncing. In the video, her “Hollywood self” wears a tight corset, gets soaked in water, and prances in a shimmering, low-cut gown while wind blows her hair in an alluring fashion. She points a critical finger at these things through hyperbole, and therefore gains the moral high ground—but the video depends on these very images to be successful. They’re going to draw every eye in the room, gaining her publicity in the same way the video implies is problematic.

Deconstructionism is a cornerstone of postmodern literary criticism. Now, as I’m always careful to note, I’m not an expert in these concepts. A great deal of what I present here is an oversimplification, both of Jewel’s video and of postmodernism itself. But for the purposes of this essay, we don’t have time for pages of literary theory. The title itself is already pretentious enough. So, I’ll present to you the best explanation of deconstructionism I was given when working on my master’s degree: “It’s when you point out that a story is relyin’ on the same thing it’s denyin’.”

That will work for now.

Questioner

So I listen to your podcast, Writing Excuses, and you've been, this year, breaking down stories into different parts. Was Bands of Mourning an attempt, for you, to write a pulp novel?

Brandon Sanderson

The question is on Writing Excuses we've been breaking story down into different parts. Was Bands of Mourning an attempt to write a pulp novel? Actually all of the Wax and Wayne books are a hearkening back to classic serials and pulp novels. So yes, it was me looking at that-- I kind of pitched those books to myself as "Mistborn: the television show. The action serial" if that makes sense. Where the other ones were the Mistborn epic fantasies, these are the action serials. And I did try to kind of vary the genre, the first one is kind of more straight-up detective novel, the second one is psychological thriller, and then the third one is kind of a classic serial adventure story. So yeah, that was very intentional, it's me trying to take different tones and mash them up with different stories and see what comes out.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirteen

Train-Top Fight

Yes, I had a fight atop a moving train. DON'T JUDGE ME.

I couldn't help myself, honestly. This fit perfectly with the narrative, and while I realize it's a bit of a stereotypical place for a fight sequence, I really wanted to see it happen. So there you go.

This is a rather cinematic book—meaning I see it as translating easily to film. Unfortunately, I doubt that will ever happen. Not because I'm pessimistic about having films made in the first place (which I am), but because this is essentially book four in a series. Beyond that, it's a very odd book four, one that departs wildly from the previous trilogy in setting and (in some cases) tone.

What that means is that we'll probably never see a film. We couldn't start with one just of Wax and Wayne, because the setting is too much of a mismatch. Magic, plus the wild west, plus urbanized early 1900s, but it's not on our world and has three books worth of mythology to it? This sort of thing can work on paper, but I find it unlikely that studio executives would look at it and say, "Yeah, that sounds like a surefire hit to fund."

Still, we can still hope for the original trilogy making it to film. Perhaps if they’re really successful, we could see something happen with these books.

Daz925

Where were you in your writing process for Elantris-- I know it was your sixth book and you were on your nineteenth when you got it published or--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, good question.So, where was I in my process when I wrote Elantris and when I got published, which was my sixth novel. So what happened with my career, it's kind of a very weird thing. You find that everybody has a different path to success as a writer. I heard early on that your first five books are generally terrible and this was really relieving to me, because I--a part of my brain-- this would not-- someone else, this might've been the worst thing to tell them. But for me it was the best thing because my brain said, "Okay, good, you don't have to be any good at this for your first five books".

And so my first five books I experimented quite a bit in story and tone. I did a gritty cyberpunkish thing. I did a comedy. I did an epic fantasy. I tried a lot of-- I did a space opera. I did a lot of different things. And once I had done all that, I came back and said, "You know, my first love is epic fantasy, and it's what I really want to do." So I sat down to write book number 6, which was Elantris.

And at that point, I had gotten a few books underneath me. I kind of knew what I was doing, though I was not-- I hadn't figured out my process quite as well as I would have liked. Elantris and a lot of the books during that era I did a lot more discovery writing, and I naturally am better when I have a stronger outline. But that's where I was.

My biggest weakness as a writer at that point was revision. I had spent those five early books just trying different things, and that permission for me to not be good yet also kind of gave me the psychological ability to be like, "Well, I don't have to revise this one, because I don't have to be good yet." But what that meant is I didn't practice revision. So once I finished Elantris, I was not good enough yet to know how to take a good book and make it great. So it went the rounds in New York and got rejected; rightly so, because it was very flabby and had not been focused. And I know, from a guy who writes thousand-page books, focus is a weird thing to say. *laughter*

And so, when I actually sold Elantris to Tor, it was after it had gone through four or five drafts and I had finally sat down and kind of buckled down and said "I need to learn revision and learn how to make my books better". So I sold it right after-- right while I was working on Way of Kings in 2002, 2003, somewhere around there.

Brandon Sanderson

Endpapers

The endpapers were one of the things that we weren't certain whether we'd get into the final book or not. Tor was iffy on paying for them, as they add a large expense to the novels. In the end, Tor stepped up because they believed in the project, for which I am very grateful.

These are one of the last things we finished, and it took several tries to get them right. I knew I wanted them to be in-world pieces of art–things that are supposed to have been created by artists living within the world of Roshar. The front endpapers are murals crafted from stone and gems fitted together, and the back endpapers are stained glass. But the tones and the exact look of the images took some time to get right. (For a while, the symbols of the various magics on the first one had gemstones overlaying them. That turned out to look bad on the page. Perhaps when Peter is putting this up, he can grab those old drafts and post them beneath here.)

The first one of these is the one I'll talk about the most, the design that outlines the magic for Roshar. (Well, some of the magic.) This design is one of the very first things I developed for the art of this book, way back in 2001. The "Double Eye," as the people in world would call it, is a connection of ten elements.

I avoid elemental magic systems. I feel they're overdone. However, one of the concepts of this world was to have a theology that believed in ten fundamental elements instead of the ordinary four or five. A focus would be on them, and on the ten fundamental forces—the interplay between the two being a major factor in the magic, the philosophy, and the cosmology of the world.

Well, that's what these twenty symbols represent, with each of the larger symbols being a Radiant element. The smaller symbols are the forces. You can draw a circle around one element and the two forces that connect to it, and you have one of the orders of Knights Radiant.

For example, top right is the symbol for air—with the symbols for pressure and gravitation connected to it. The Windrunners.  

Peter Ahlstrom

Indeed, there was a lot of swapping around at the last minute to get everything working right with the magic. This is actually why the Way of Kings audiobook gets the Ars Arcanum chart wrong—it was using a version that was messed up between rounds of changes.

Brandon Sanderson

The Heralds, like I said, we want these Sistine Chapel type paintings of the ten Heralds in-world to make as our endpages. And you got four of them in Oathbringer. But there's ten Heralds. So we've been working, slowly over time, collecting pictures from people we really want to work with, who we think would do really good jobs. And we started on these pretty early, because we wanted to find when people had openings in their schedule, of just artists we wanted to work with.

And it was earlier last year, almost a year now, that we got Taln in. And it is gorgeous. And we've got the actual, physical painting. With these, we're buying them all, the physical painting. If they'll sell them; Dan Dos Santos won't sell us his yet. He likes them too much, which we will not push him on that. But we have Jezrien and we have Vev upstairs.

So, yeah, we've got the Taln painting that Isaac is going to grab from you. And he'll do the reveal of who did that, and things like that. But it is one of the best fantasy/science fiction artists of all time.

This will be for Rhythm of War. (If indeed that is the title. Because we haven't officially announced it, yet.)

Isaac Stewart

This is Taln. This will be one of our endpapers at some point for one of the books. Probably this one, but it might not be. I've hired out for the rest of them, so it just depends on what fits the tone of the book.

This is by Donato [Giancola]. And Donato has been amazing to work with. You've probably seen his stuff for The Lord of the Rings. He's done stuff for George Martin. He's done space stuff.

Brandon Sanderson

I have always wanted to own a Donato. He actually did an art piece for us very early in my career for a short story, but it was digital-only, so I couldn't buy it.

Brandon Sanderson

The process on this was, we have these briefs that I write up about each of the heralds. I go into our wiki, I pull out the lore, things that haven't been revealed. I put it all together, and I send out what I'm allowed to to the artist. Which is usually most of it. And then I say the whole thing about, "These are kind of like the Sistine Chapel paintings, and all of the apostles. These are something from the Renaissance of this world, where they have done Vorin representations of the ten Heralds."

So, on this one, I sent him Taln. We know that Taln (especially we know this from Oathbringer) is the one who held the Darkness back, he held the Desolations at bay for thousands of years, something like that. So what we have here, Donato interpreted that as Taln stepping forth out of Damnation with this representation of Damnation in the background.

What else can I say about this? He used our symbols for the Stonewards. We've got some of those in this. We've got our numbers; the Stonewards are number nine, so we've got the Vorin numeral nine in there. The sword, he took that from descriptions of the sword where it's kind of this large, molten nail. Anyway, we're just happy with how this turned out. He only did one revision on it for us, because we didn't need more.

amilynn

Are there any black people in Scadrial? Or any other races? I couldn't find an answer online, but the descriptions in the book all seem like white/European people.

Brandon Sanderson

The Terris had a lot more skin color diversity than the people of the central dominance. A large number of those preserved had darker skin, so in the W&W era, you are starting to see skin color become associated with them. During the Final Empire, skin color was basically ignored.

Note that for even people in the Elendel Basin, darker skin won't get nearly as dark as what you will find on Roshar or Taldain.

EDIT: Now that I'm on my computer instead of my tablet, I can dig into this a little more. What other posters have been saying is true--the region of the Final Empire we see in the first trilogy is very small, and the Final Empire itself isn't terribly big. There's not a lot of racial diversity at all.

That said, the Terris are a distinct ethnic group. I carefully didn't describe people in the original books with regard to a lot of racially identifying features. One of the Lord Ruler's goals over the years was to stamp these things out, to create a single unified people. While he couldn't change genetics, his work here did make people start to look at things like class and clothing more than accents or racial identifiers. In addition, it was important that the Terris be diverse enough that, while some looked Terris from just a glance, with others, you could meet them and (for obvious reasons that are spoilers) not know they were actually Terris.

That isn't to say they aren't there--they actually are. Elend and Straff would have a bit of an accent, and Cett a fairly strong one. Sazed would look racially distinct from Vin.

As we get further from the Final Empire, we see these things becoming more of a marker. The Terris work to preserve their cultural heritage, and this distinctiveness highlights other aspects about them, including the dark skin that many of them brought through the end of the world. The next trilogy (1980's era) is planned to star a Terriswoman right now, and she would likely resemble someone ethnically black to many of us on Earth.

sirgog

How far off your impression of Sazed was I in imagining him looking like Teferi from MTG?

Brandon Sanderson

I often give him a Teferi-like-look in my own head, but in actuality his skin tone is probably more akin to someone like Keegan-Michael Key.

Phantine

>While he couldn't change genetics, his work here did make people start to look at things like class and clothing more than accents or racial identifiers.

How did the 'skaa/noble' class genetic tinkering work out, anyway? Did the leadership of every nation just wake up the next morning and find themselves taller, more intelligent, and less fertile?

Brandon Sanderson

Most genetic differences between skaa and noble were exaggerated, even fabricated, by noble culture as justification for their perceived superiority. Height differences due to nutrition, 'intelligence' due to education and societal expectations, fertility due to common factors in urbanization. The LR did try some minor tinkering, to be played out over time through genetics, but in the end these changes weren't very successful.

emailanimal

This is actually good to know. I've seen your other responses to similar questions, where the inference was that there was indeed a significant difference.

The main changes were for dealing with the atmosphere, correct? And they were reverted by Sazed/Harmony?

Brandon Sanderson

There were also some general hardiness changes for the skaa and some fertility changes, but as I said, by the time of the books those were basically gone. And yes, Sazed reverted the ones designed to help survival in the ash.

zotsandscrambles

Here is an example of a Mongolian girl with red hair. Would she make a good example of a Vedan darkeyes, [Brandon]?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's a good example. Though do remember, Vedens aren't all redheads--that's going to depend on region, and even have a lot of variance within regions. (Alethi skin tone will be similar in its variety, depending. Vedens in general tend to be lighter.)

Here's another image I noticed a while back that feels very like what I'd imagined.

https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/55dba2321400002e002e3dd1.jpeg?ops=scalefit_970_noupscale

zxg15 (paraphrased)

I asked him for more info on what he meant when he said that Stormlight will be organized as two 5 book series within the total 10 books.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Understandably he didn't want to give much away, he wouldn't say if there would be a time skip or not. He did tell me that there would be a large change in tone between books 1-5 and 6-10. Also, he said that since book 2 is now going to be Shallan's, he wants Dalinar's book to be number 5. He then talked about how the 5 characters that were introduced in depth in WoK would be the the 5 flashback characters for the first 5 books and the others would be more focused on in the final 5 books.

Brandon Sanderson

Blushweaver's Death

My editor was uncomfortable with the way this happened—he felt that the motivations for the killers weren't solid enough. I tried to put a little more in, which placated Moshe, but I always felt that they were solid.

Bad guys in books often do stupid things, and it annoys me. They're often not allowed to do the smartest things they could because it would ruin the plot. I wanted them to do the smart thing here, and I felt that the smartest thing was to kill Blushweaver. Just threatening her wouldn't have worked with Lightsong; he refused to take things seriously. A simple threat would have earned them mockery and frustration. So, not knowing that he loved her, they killed Blushweaver to show how serious they were. Then they grabbed Llarimar, not intending to actually kill him, as they knew he was the best bargaining chip against Lightsong they had. (If he hadn't talked, they'd have started cutting off Llarimar's fingers.)

The brutality of that moment of Blushweaver's throat being slit is supposed to be a major reversal in tone for Lightsong's sections. I hope that it worked for you; I think I laid the proper groundwork that this story could have things like that happen in it. I think I justified the motivations of the killers enough.

The games are over.

Brandon Sanderson

Tertiary Projects

Dark One

Ah, the eternal Dark One update. If you've been reading State of the Sanderson posts for a while now, you might be looking forward to this one (still) making no progress.

My anti-Harry Potter story told from the viewpoint of a boy who discovers he is prophesied to be the Dark One…has made no progress this year. I've had a ton of trouble writing this one. I did set aside three different versions of the first chapter of this, each of which have a very different tone from one another, to be Patreon Random Hat Rewards for January, February, and March. If you want to read "The Eyes" and these three chapters, you could sign up for those months only.

Be warned, though, the Patreon is primarily intended for people who want to support Writing Excuses. The rewards are mostly afterthoughts as a thank you, rather than true incentives to coax you into spending money. The tidbits you'll get probably aren't going to be worth the $10 you give for them. (For example, each of the ones I've mentioned are a few thousand words at most.)

The real reward is supposed to be Writing Excuses going ad-free, so don't sign up just to get the fiction.

Status: Nope.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Six

Siri Grows Her Hair for Susebron and Talks about Seduction

I think these two chapters best show off the tone reversals I was trying for in this book—and explain partially why I was all right with those early chapters being so different from the prologue. Following Vivenna's biggest chapter for shocks, surprises, and failings, we come here—to what is one of the most flirtatious and calm of the Siri chapters.

You should have been able to notice some changes about Siri, one of the most subtle being her ability to control her hair. The hair is, in a way, an extension of the metaphor. In the beginning chapters, Siri wasn't able to control it at all, and it always changed back right after she tried to make it go to a specific color. It did what it wanted, reflecting her attitudes, and kind of represented her ability (or lack of ability, in her case) to control the world around her.

Now, she's able to manipulate things around her slightly to her liking. In contrast, Vivenna's life is completely out of control. And her hair will respond.

Argent

When coming up with the powers of the Metallic Arts, was there a magical effect you wanted to include but couldn't, for whatever reason? And what power would you have added if you could?

Brandon Sanderson

The one I most wanted to get was steelpushing and ironpulling. The others are all based around the things that I thought a gang of thieves would use. And that's the one that I'm just like, "This is cool. I'm gonna make this work. I'm gonna fit it in."

There weren't any powers that I really wanted that I couldn't fit in. There are a lot of powers I considered and didn't get around to. Like, there is often a disguise artist in a thieving crew. But I knew Lightweaving was gonna be a big part of the cosmere. (Even back then I had written Dragonsteel, which had Lightweaving in it, and I was contemplating using that in Stormlight.) And I thought, "Too much disguise/illusion, too many uses of Lightweaving, is gonna become a problem."

Plus, the moment you add that to a story, it does things to the story. From then on, you have to be playing weird espionage games. Which I like, don't get me wrong, but it changes the tone of things when anyone could be someone wearing a different face. So I just didn't put that into the books. I did a little bit of that with the kandra, in order to make a nod toward that, but I put some really strict requirements on it so that I could use it in the second book the way that I did. The kandra were designed for this; they weren't in the original (I don't believe) version of Mistborn before I came up with this story.

Brandon Sanderson

Character Shifts

This is a fun chapter, formatwise. It looks simple—we've got two alternating sequences with Siri and Vivenna. But what's going on here is that I'm trying to pull the first of many reversals in this book.

A reversal is more than just a plot twist—it's a swap. (Or at least that's how I define it in my head.) Just like Elantris's substructure was that of the chapter triads, Warbreaker's substructure is that of reversals. People change places or do 180-degree turns. This presented a challenge to me, as I had to work hard to make such often-abrupt changes well foreshadowed and rational. That's rather difficult to pull off. Most twists take characters in a slightly new direction; spinning them around completely required a lot more groundwork.

If you've read other annotations of mine, you'll probably know that I love twists—but I love them only in that I love to make them work. A good twist has to be rational and unexpected at the same time. Pulling off that balance is one of the great pleasures in writing.

In this chapter, we have the beginnings of the first big reversal in this book. It's more gradual—not an abrupt one-eighty, but a slow and purposeful one-eighty. But the seeds are here, even in this early chapter. If you look at it, we have this:

Scene One: Siri acts just like we expect Siri to. Blustering and emotional.

Scene Two: Vivenna acts just like we expect Vivenna to. Calm, rational, in control, and willing to do as she is told.

Scene Three: Siri grows calm, considers her situation with more care, and acts a little bit like a queen should in deciding to send her soldiers back.

Scene Three: Vivenna is very bothered by what is happening and acts just a little bit like Siri would—she decides upon a plan that is impetuous.

I'm very excited by the underlying structure of the chapter, even though I'm aware that most people probably wouldn't be. I'm just a screwy author type. I like how the changes are very subtle, and yet already there are hints at the way the characters are heading in life.

I like reversals and tone changes, but I still think that readers deserve to have an understanding of what the major plots and arcs for a character will be. There will be twists, but I don't want to just twist needlessly or endlessly. The characters are the most important part of the story, and one thing I rarely twist (particularly late in a book) is a character's personal arc. I keep personal arcs steady, as they're the foundation of a reader's attachment to the book.

Jamester86

Is writing a full book with no magic system easier harder when compared to the freedom (and limitations) involved in traditional fantasy? (I haven't read the spoilers, so if there is a magic system, ignore this question :-)

Brandon Sanderson

Science in a book like Skyward tends to be its own type of magic--even the Legion books (taking place as the closest to our own world) really have a brand of magic, done my way. So I suspect I'd work this sort of thing into a story no matter what. I do tend to try to do a different tone or style in different genres.

Brandon Sanderson

I had a lot of fun writing Spensa. She's a character I've been working on for many, many years. This very imaginative and passionate woman who wants to be a fighter pilot. And it was actually very tough to get right, it took me years to get right. And that first chapter is my fourth version of the first chapter. I should be-- I'll probably post the other versions on my website once the book's out. But it is one of the hardest books to start that I've ever written. Just getting that tone down and getting it right and making her feel right was very, very difficult.

Brandon Sanderson

First, to address the chull in the room. Will the pandemic change how we're rolling out the book? I get this question a lot, so I figured I should note that even the book were coming out next month, we would be very unlikely to delay its release. Books have enough digital/mail-order distribution that I have a hard time seeing this influencing th8ings. So don't worry.

I AM a little uncertain about the Stormlight kickstarter in June/July. If we're entering a global recession, and a lot of people are losing their jobs, it feels like it might be a little tone deaf to say, "Hey, want to spend a lot of money on a luxury leatherbound book?" At the same time, I wouldn't want to delay the book for those who do want to buy it. We'll have to talk to my team and see what they think. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

Anyway, let's get to the actual update! I have (as of Wednesday) finished the third draft of the book, incorporating my team's suggestions and those of my editor. We started the beta read a month or so ago, with me turning each part in to the beta readers as I finished it.

To forestall the inevitable question--we are not looking for new beta readers at this time. Though we add a few new people to each book, to make sure we have a variety of responses, there are a LOT of people who want those slots--and I generally let Peter, my editorial director, handle the decisions. For now, I think he has all the help he needs.

I still have two drafts to go. 4.0 is the big one, and I've allocated two months to do it. (April and May.) This involves me tweaking the book based on the feedback of my beta readers, who are a test audience. Though the book is in good shape at 3.0, judging on their responses, there are a few plot arcs that need subtle tweaks to work the way I want them to--and 4.0 will involve these changes.

5.0 is the final polish, and I'll be spending June on that. This does leave me with a week+ right now to work on a novella, which I've begun outlining, to go between books three and four like Edgedancer went between two and three. That's less time than I wanted, as I had to take time out of the 3.0 to work on the Mistborn film screenplay. (Short version: I've seen enough bad screenplays based on my books that I figured I'd see if I could do better or not, and am slowly working my way through an extensive treatment.) So I'll likely only start the novella now, then finish it in July.

As for how I've been weathering things here with the quarantine, really it hasn't effected me--other than to perhaps give me a little more time to work. (Since some of my publicity appearances have been canceled.) I already work from home, and other than needing to move my writing group and class to digital, I've pretty much been living my life as normal.

The TL;DR of all of this is that we are still on schedule, beta reads indicate the book is mostly working as intended, and the release is still on target for November. Thanks for reading!

Questioner

[What is] the last sentence you wrote that you were proud of?

Brandon Sanderson

I wish I could say, because things go through so many transformations as I'm writing. I would have to have a book open before me, and go look and say, "Wow, which of these sentences is the best?" The honest truth is that I am less of a sentence person than someone like Pat Rothfuss. Rothfuss writes beautiful sentences, and I'm in awe of his sentences. I try for workmanship prose. I try for prose that does not distract from the writing. And often if I write a really beautiful sentence, it stands out like such a sore thumb in my writing that it's better to kind of tone that sentence down. We call it windowpane prose. My goal is to write prose that doesn't ever distract you from the story. And there are certain level of writers that can do beautiful prose and not distract from the story. I have always just tried for . . . if there is a mark on the window, you'll look at that and not the story. This is George Orwell talking about this—I learned it from reading about him. And some writers, like in literary fiction, they will try to write this beautiful stained glass window, and what you see on the other side doesn't really matter. It's the stained glass window that you're paying wonderful attention to. I don't want the window to distract you. And so, I do like to have a clever witty line now and then, but my goal at the end is for you to not notice the writing and only pay attention to characters and story.

Brandon Sanderson

The scene where Sazed walks along inside the Conventical and talks to himself, speaking into the coppermind, is what really appeals to me about this chapter. It isn't often that, as a writer, I get to do something like this–switch up the narrative style, let myself do a monologue in first person present tense. The tense shift is, I think, what lets these scenes be so creepy. You get to feel, I hope, like you’re with Sazed, walking along in the near dark, listening to a quiet voice-over that doesn't dispel the gloom, but just echoes back to you even more creepily.

This was one of my editor's favorite scenes in the book as well. The part where Sazed describes where Inquisitors are made, and where he walks the corridors, with minimal narrative interjections by me gave this chapter a tone unlike anything else I’ve ever written.

Menderbug

Is the Well's pulsing a 'pure tone of Scadrial'?

Brandon Sanderson

Yup!

Himenss

How do you choose flashback character for each Stormlight book? Do you rather build present day narrative around someone's flashback sequence or just choose whose flashbacks better fit with already existing main narrative? As an example, when you moved Dalinar's flashbacks from book 5 to book 3, did you re-outlined book 3 narrative to make it a better match, or you already had both Dalinar's narratives for books 3 and 5 present day and merely decided where flashbacks play the best counterpoint to what Dalinar is doing in the main timeline?

Brandon Sanderson

Moving Dalinar's flashbacks was based on the instinct I had from where book three's narrative was going to go. (After finishing the first two.) Though I have outlines for all of the books, a lot of my outlining process involves starting with a big event, then working backward from it. Sometimes, the steps toward a big event are themselves pretty big events.

People imagine, I think, an outline that is like the traditional "Heading A" "Subheading a" format. But it's not that, it's a big list of things I am pointing toward--and the most interesting steps to get there. So the process of building a novel is more about looking at that timeline, figuring out what steps make their own powerful moments, and constructing a narrative around them that makes sense. I will often be doing this with a dozen or more different sub-plots at once.

So when I "move things" from one book to another, it's often a matter of me building a book (say book two) and realizing that the break point for Kaladin's story makes way more sense if it stretches all the way to include the falling into the chasms sequence. From there, I realize I might not move as far along on Dalinar's plot as i might have thought, and I turn book three to focus more on that plot. Etc.

The flashbacks are the most flexible of these, in some ways, as they are compliments to a story--but don't need to come at any specific chronological point in the series itself. So I look for the places where they will simply fit the best and match the tone of the story the best, either by contrast or compliment

Brandon Sanderson

Secondary Book Projects

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

Here's another one we've been able to clear off my list. With Tor republishing the first four books of this series throughout the spring next year (starting in February), I am at last able to get the fifth book (and the final one Alcatraz will write) out to you fans.

The new art for these editions has me very excited. For once I think we have covers that indicate to readers the tone of the books. Book Five should be out in the summer, though I believe Tor is scheduling it for August instead of June. It is written, and I'm doing final edits on it right now. (In the evenings after I feel I've hit my wordcount goal for Stormlight.)

If you haven't read these books, give them a browse once they come out again in the spring. They're very fun, but very different from my other books. They're insane, fourth-wall-breaking comedies, so they're certainly not for everyone. They have been an excellent way for me to blow off steam and refresh myself between longer, more ponderous books.

Status: Book Five Completed!

Questioner

The violet eye color in The Way of Kings. We got to know that Dunny had violet eyes and Sigzil said the color wasn't native to Alethkar. Navani also has violet eyes, Jasnah too, and Tanalan from The Rift. So, is Navani or her family line not Alethi? And is there more to this specific eye color than we know so far?

Brandon Sanderson

There's a little bit more there that I will talk about eventually. You should not look at Navani and be like, "Oh, they're not native" in that I designed the Alethi as a race of conquerors who also--like I said before, one of the inspirations for the Alethi were the Mongols and particularly how the Mongols ruled after they had their empire. They were perfectly willing to incorporate anybody. The Romans did this too, "If you want to be part of our empire, great. If you're not gonna rebel, great. We will, to an extent, respect your religions and your ways and if you're willing to integrate then we're not gonna treat you terribly."

The Alethi have this history of being one of the, in that way, most multi-ethnic cultures on Roshar. Now, the sad thing is, the reason some of those ethnicities are there is due to brutal conquest and treatment of the world. But regardless, the Alethi have--most of them have no kind of pureblood sort of perspective, they don't care. They don't care what you look like, they care about whether you act like as part of their culture, whether you're integrated.

Emily Sanderson

As long as you have light colored eyes.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, well, they'll still accept you as Alethi.

Emily Sanderson

That's true. You just don't get to be the ruling class.

Brandon Sanderson

You just don't get to be highborn. So, this is just a hint much like you will see the Alethi have a very varied skin tone, they have lots of varied hair colors. You know, you're going to see mostly the kind of traditional Alethi black, but you know, there are multiple main characters in the series [where] that is not their hair color despite being considered one hundred percent Alethi. They would not look at Adolin and say he's half-not-Alethi, he's all Alethi even though one of his parents was raised in a different culture, he's one hundred percent an Alethi. And that's just how they look at things. So that's how you'd read into that, though there is a little bit to the eye color that maybe I'll get into some day.

EagleTiger32

At one point a seon is described as speaking with an odd rhythm.

1. Would someone on Roshar recognize that rhythm, and

2. Could a seon reproduce the tones Navani discovers in Rhythm of War?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, they are speaking with an odd rhythm. This is... You are close but not quite there.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eight

Annotation for this chapter: Moash was one of the characters that was most difficult to get right for this book. There's a difficult balance to maintain with him, compounded by how difficult a line I'm walking with Kaladin in these chapters. I had to do several tone rewrites of this chapter after the Alpha read, to make it all work.

Part of the trick was to convey just how exhausted Kaladin is, mentally while in his viewpoint--since he doesn't accept it himself. Then mix that with a Moash who, in part, does still want to be a good friend--but no longer is capable of reasoning in a conventional way. (And who won't acknowledge to himself that being right, proving that he made the right decisions, is actually far more important to him than his friendships ever were.)

You'll get a Moash viewpoint in a future interlude, which should help explain where his mindset is these days. As for Kaladin, well, it's becoming more and more difficult for him to maintain the lie that everything is fine.

Brandon Sanderson

Time for another update on your book, everyone! If you missed the previous update, it can be found right here. This update will get into some nitty-gritty outlining and wordcount details, which some of you might find boring. (Just a fair warning.)

Since the second update, I've indeed started into the book full-time. However, you might have noticed a little delay in the progress bar ticking up. This is because at the end of February (just before going to Hawaii) I decided that Starsight (Skyward Two) needed some more work.

I requested that the publisher push that book back a couple of months (it's now scheduled for first week in December) as I did a medium-sized overhaul based on some decisions I'd made after reading the beta reader comments. I'm pleased to say that revision went really well, and Starsight is in excellent shape. It did put me a little behind on Stormlight Four, I'm afraid. Looking at my tracking spreadsheet (which I used to gauge how I'm moving along) when I started into Stormlight four first part of April, I was about 45k words behind. I'm moving at a good speed, and am about 42k words behind now, with about 15k words finished.

This is merely a way of marking guideposts; I don't intend rush the story in order to meet arbitrary deadlines. This is partially me just trying to give you, and my publishers, an idea of when to expect the book. If I finish it by January 1st, the book can come out Christmas 2020. If I don't, we will probably have to nudge it back.

For reference, one percent on my progress bar is 4k words, and I anticipate the final book being 400k words long. A lot could happen during the next year of writing--the book could go super long, like happened with Oathbringer. Or I could run into some serious plot problems, which require time to work out. (For example, I've already thrown away chapter one after doing a short reading of it at an earlier convention--trying again with a slightly different tone.)

That said, I really like the new first chapter, and am now well into the fourth chapter. I promised you an update on the outline this time, and I'm looking at this book in a different way from the last two. As you may remember, I tend to plot each Stormlight book as if it were three volumes, combined together. (Along with a short story collection in the form of the interludes.)

With books two and three, the outline divided the novels into "books" by section. Part one of Oathbringer, for example, was "book one" of my three-part outline. Rhythm of War, however, is plotted more like The Way of Kings--meaning the separate books in it are divided by viewpoints.

In TwoK, Kaladin's complete arc was "book one" of my outline. Dalinar's was "book two" and Shallan's was "book three" with all of them being interwoven into the final product, and with Part Five being a capstone epilogue to them all. This novel is similar, though with more viewpoints.

We have what I'm calling the Primary Arc, which focuses on four characters who are all together in one place, their plots interweaving. The Secondary Arc is three different characters, their arcs interweaving, but in a separate location from the primary arc. The Tertiary arc is the last two characters, in a third location.

There will be ties between the three arcs, but the book will read a little more like TWoK than Oathbringer--with several separate stories that imply interesting things for one another, but which generally focus on their own goals. Book Five should, then, be an interweaving like Book Two or Book Three.

That's the plan, anyway! I'm not 100% done with the outline yet, as I want to explore some viewpoints first to make sure everything is lining up the way I want.

The next update probably won't be until mid summer, as I want to take a nice chunk of writing time to determine how things are progressing before I come back to talk here.

Until then, please enjoy listening to the community playlist of favorite epic tracks that remind them of Stormlight. This is what came of the previous thread, where I asked for suggested music to listen to while I work on Book Four. I've been doing so, and am slowly cultivating a shorter list of my favorite tracks that I'll release at a later date. Thanks to /u/DevilsAndDust- and my assistant Adam for putting this together.

Questioner

Somebody said that you were writing “hands all red” in all the books, can you tell me what that means?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s just a line from the book I feel captures the tone of the book well.

Laser Wolf 214

When did the idea come for putting this novel in Hoid's voice in order to give it a more Goldman-esque feel? Was it a fairly easy decision? Or was it later on in the process?

Brandon Sanderson

It was an easy decision at the start, though I will say the seed is that I've been looking for ways to expand upon Hoid's voice. When I write Dragonsteel, which will be in his voice, it will not be like this, the tone will be very different. But I've wanted for a while to tell kind of a longer Hoid story. People often ask me, "Hey, can we get a full Wandersail told by Hoid of all of their adventures and what not?" This is a think that I knew people were interested in, and I was really interested in doing it, as well. I wanted to do something different with my prose in this book, in specific. I just felt that there was a place I could do a little leveling up in my prose, and using Hoid's voice as kind of an excuse to do that felt very good.

And The Princess Bride book is just delightful, right? If you haven't read Goldman's book, it's very good. To be honest, another person who has prose like this is J.K Rowling. The early Harry Potter books, in particular, have this same whimsical, fairy tale feel. And then, of course, you all know that my favorite author is Terry Pratchett, and he obviously had... He had a different voice from this, it's less of the fairy tale whimsy. It's just pure Pratchett; it's hard to describe. But I've always wanted to be able to practice something a little more edging toward that. So, watching The Princess Bride again and thinking "No, that's what I want to do; I want to do a voice like that. And I have the perfect person to be giving that voice."

If you go to my reading that I did at the most recent book launch, you'll hear me trying (and failing, in my opinion) to get Hoid's voice right. Kingmaker is an experiment in trying to see what I can do with Hoid's voice and how to do it correctly. And I actually started that after I finished Tress, because I wanted to find a voice for Hoid that I could edge a little away from the fairy tale. I want to use the fairy tale voice. I believe that someday I might write another one from this same voice. But I also wanted to have a voice for Hoid... He can tell different genres, right? He can tell different kinds of stories; they're all not gonna feel the same, and you see this in the books, right? The way he tells Wandersail is different from the way he tells The Dog and the Dragon. Those are two different kinds of stories. So, I tried writing Kingmaker, and I did not like how the voice went in that one. So I backed off on that, and I instead wrote Secret Project Two, which is a non-Cosmere one, just to kind of shake myself out of where I had been and do something very different. (Obviously not told by Hoid; it's not in the Cosmere.) You can see a kind of failed start in there, which is kind of fun. And there are some things I like about that piece that I read from Kingmaker that I like a lot.

Isaac Stewart

That's interesting to me, because of course, when you get to Dragonsteel and he's telling his own story, he's not going to tell it like a fairy tale. It's going to be something entirely different.

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to have a more Kingkiller-esque fell to it. I want to practice a bunch of different ways that Hoid could tell stories.

Questioner

About when will the sixth book of Alcatraz--

Brandon Sanderson

Sixth book of Alactraz draft? My goal is to write it this year. For those who don't know of Alcatraz, I did something really mean. And I actually did this-- I pitched this to my editor when I first sold the series. I planned a six book series, but I told everyone it was five books. And we played along the whole time, and then ended the fifth book on a major downer cliffhanger. And the only way you know is at the end there-- you like fold over like an extra page in the back with a note from one of the other characters. *audio skips* "...and he refuses to continue writing the series, I will have to finish it myself." So told from her viewpoint in the last book, because he refuses to write the last book. So yeah, we're working on that. One of the-- I'm working on the outline and writing the little blurbs at the beginning of each chapter. One of the things I'm trying to decide is, do I-- so that it has a completely different feel-- do I want to go to one of my friends and, like you know, swap with them and have them write my book for me and I write their book for them, or something like that. So that this book has a completely different tone, or something like that. That's the big question I'm asking myself right now.

Jeffery Johnson Jr

Which of the four Secret Projects are you most anxious about announcing?

Brandon Sanderson

My favorite of the four is Secret Project Three. Anxious? I think that the first one is the one I'm the most anxious about, because it's going to kind of set the tone for the rest of them. I think it's the one that, once you hear what I'm doing with it, a light bulb will click on very quickly for what that book is. But Secret Project Three is my favorite of them.

Secret Project Three is also my wife's favorite, and it is also Peter's favorite. However, that's not universal. I think we had people liking each of them as their favorite among the staff reading them.

Blackflame Omega

Does “Light” in a vacuum become unkeyed until exposed to a vibration upon leaving, and what happens if that vibration isn't actually a pure tone?

Brandon Sanderson

It can be overridden and things like that. You can unkey that vibration and then kind of separate it. Whether it's even fully unkeyed, to be perfectly honest, I can't even say. Like, you are dampening it, and then overriding it with something else.

This is kind of outside the world, they wouldn't be able to measure it—but I don't even think it's completely unkeyed, like Navani thinks it is, before she rekeys it. The mental component on her part is pretty important to what's happening.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapters One to Three

So, for a little commentary on these chapters, you might find it interesting that I plotted this opening sequence as if it were a climax section of a book. In the Stormlight novels, I generally limit myself to one viewpoint a chapter. This is to give a stronger identity to the chapters and characters--we usually get big chunks from a person's viewpoint (with chapters that average two or three times as long as chapters from something like Wax and Wayne or Skyward.) This gives each chapter a kind of short-story feel with their own arcs and themes.

However, as I approach climactic sections of books, I bleed the viewpoints across one another, adding to the frantic feel of a building crescendo. Viewpoints alternate in quick succession, with bite-sized chunks, hooks and payoffs, like one might plot closer to what you'd see in a thriller novel. The goal here is to evoke quick scene changes, lots of twists and turns, and a general sense that viewpoints are piling up on top of one another to enhance the feeling of an impending climax.

In a normal stormlight book, I generally start slow and build to such a climax near the end of part one. (Though I usually don't start the full viewpoint bleeds until the end of the book.) Here, I wanted to give the feeling that the year that passed had its own narrative arc, and some of those threads were culminating here. So we're beginning the book at the end of the "previous book" (imagining the in-between year as a "book."

That led to some confusion and consternation among alpha and beta readers, since this isn't how a Stormlight book generally begins--but in this case, I decided I was all right with that feeling, as this truly was the tone I wanted starting out.