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Skyward Denver signing ()
#51 Copy

Questioner

We're doing a piece of art for a friend that's a crossover between The Stormlight Archive and Harry Potter. How would you sort Dalinar, Kaladin, Jasnah, and Shallan...

Brandon Sanderson

Jasnah's a Slytherin. Hands down, very easy.

Dalinar's would depend on which Dalinar you're talking about. Dalinar is probably going to be Gryffindor either way, would be my guess.

Shallan's a Ravenclaw, straight up.

Kaladin's tough. You could Hufflepuff Kaladin. You could totally Hufflepuff Kaladin. I think that works.

You got one of each in that case.

General Reddit 2016 ()
#52 Copy

cinderwild2323

What were you dissatisfied with in WoR?

Brandon Sanderson

It's twofold. Spoilers follow, obviously.

In the original draft, none of the alpha readers felt that I had 'sold' Jasnah dying to them, and were all like, "Ha. Nice try. No body. She's alive.' So I kicked the assassination scene up a notch, until betas were like, "Stormfather! Jasnah just died!"

That was a mistake, I now believe. (Though this didn't get changed, and won't get changed.) Sometimes, I over-emphasize to myself the importance of surprises and twists. The book is fine if readers suspect Jasnah is still alive--actually, I think it's stronger, because it is more satisfying to be right in that situation, and doesn't detract from Szeth's miraculous survival at the end.

I knew this soon after I'd released the book, but decided it was just too extensive a change to try tweaking.

The other one I did tweak. In the battle at the end between Kaladin and Szeth, I'd toyed with letting the storm take Szeth--him essentially committing suicide--as opposed to him spreading his hands and letting Kaladin kill him. I felt that after the oath Kaladin had just sworn, stabbing a docile opponent unwilling to fight back just didn't jive. This I tweaked, changing the paperback from the hardcover, which has produced mixed results.

Most people agree the change is better, but they also say they'd rather not have the hardcover and paperback have different accounts in it, and would rather I just stick to what we put in the hardcover. It was interesting to try, to see what the response would be like, but it seems that the better option all around is to just wait until I'm certain I don't want to revert any of the revisions or tweak anything new.

General Reddit 2021 ()
#53 Copy

the_doughboy

Its interesting that his most popular female characters all seem to have mental health issues.

  • Steris: Autism Spectrum
  • Shallan: Dissociative Identity Disorder
  • Jasnah: Also Autism Spectrum but not as much as Steris, and was treated for some kind of disorder as a child.

Peter Ahlstrom

Hmm, I’m not aware of Jasnah being on the spectrum. Her trauma is something different, though we may not find out until we get her flashbacks.

All of the Knights Radiant (basically, all of the Cosmere’s Investiture users) have some kind of trauma.

Calamity Chicago signing ()
#54 Copy

Questioner

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

Brandon Sanderson

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

General Reddit 2020 ()
#55 Copy

Tim

Hey, I've been thinking about that section in WoK with Jasnah and the "thieves" she killed, and it feels like a setup to me - it's weird that the messages Taravangian sends to the guard are on Jasnah's radar, and Jasnah even says that the situation is odd enough to "suspect that there is more going on".

Was this a Taravangian plot?

Taravangian leaks the information about the "reprimands" he sent to his city watch about these dangerous criminals, and watches to see how Jasnah reacts to it, ideally catcher her using her powers? (Just like how he used that cave-in to test her Soulcasting).

Brandon Sanderson

Taravangian was under the hope that Jasnah would see the world the way he does--with a very strict (even dangerous) level of utilitarianism. He thought about recruiting her to his mission, but decided against it for various reasons.

Brandon's Blog 2010 ()
#57 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

I started writing my first novel when I was fifteen years old. I didn’t have a computer; I had an old, electric typewriter. It would remember your file on a disc, but it was really just a printer with an attached bare-bones word processor. (It had a tiny LCD screen at the top that could display three lines at a time. You could scroll through and edit bit by bit, then you hit print and it would type out the document.)

The book was terrible. It was essentially a hybrid of Tad Williams and Dragonlance, though at the time I felt it was totally new and original. It did have a wizard who threw fireballs with smiley faces on the front, though, so that’s kind of cool. At its core were two stories. One vital one was the tale of a wise king who was murdered by assassins, forcing his younger brother to take up the mantle and lead the kingdom while trying to find/protect the king’s son and rightful heir. The other was about a young man named Rick, originally blamed for the murder.

I still have some of these pages. (Not the entire book, unfortunately.) I used to hide them behind a picture on the wall of my room so that nobody would find them. I was so anxious about letting people read my writing, and was—for some reason—paranoid my family would find the pages and read them, then make fun of them.

Over the years, many ideas proliferated and matured in my mind. I began writing books in earnest (I never finished that one I started as a teenager.) I grew as a writer, and discovered how to make my works less derivative. Most of my ideas from my teenage self died out, and rightly so. Others evolved. My maturing sensibilities as both a reader and a writer changed how I saw the world, and some stories stood the test of both time and internal criticism, becoming stronger for the conflict.

Rick became Jerick, hero of the book now known as Dragonsteel. (It was my honor’s thesis in college, and will someday be rewritten and published. For now, the only copy available is through interlibrary loan, though it appears to have vanished.) Jared, the man who lost his brother and had to lead in his stead, protecting his nephew, slowly evolved into a man named Dalinar, one of the primary protagonists of The Way of Kings. Some of you may be curious to know that the character many now call Hoid also appeared in that ancient book of mine.

These two epics—Dragonsteel and The Way of Kings—have shaped a lot of my passions and writing goals over the last two decades. For example, in my last year of college I took an introductory illustration class to try my hand at drawing. My final project was a portfolio piece of sketches of plants and animals from Roshar, as even then I was hoping to someday be able to publish The Way of Kings with copious in-world illustrations of Roshar and its life. (At that time, I was planning to have an illustrated appendix, though I eventually decided to spread the pages through the book.) Fortunately, I was able to hire artists to do the work in this book instead of forcing you to look at what I came up with . . .

Well, finally—after two decades of writing—Tor has given me the chance to share The Way of Kings with you. They’ve taken a risk on this book. At every juncture, they agreed to do as I asked, often choosing the more expensive option as it was a better artistic decision. Michael Whelan on the cover. 400K words in length. Almost thirty full page interior illustrations. High-end printing processes in order to make the interior art look crisp and beautiful. A piece of in-world writing on the back cover, rather than a long list of marketing blurbs. Interludes inside the book that added to the length, and printing costs, but which fleshed out the world and the story in ways I’d always dreamed of doing.

This is a massive book. That seems fitting, as it has been two decades in the making for me. Writing this essay, I find myself feeling oddly relieved. Yes, part of me is nervous—more nervous for this book than I have been for any book save The Gathering Storm. But a greater part of me is satisfied.

I finally got it published. Whatever else happens, whatever else comes, I managed to tell this story. The Way of Kings isn’t hidden behind the painting in my room any longer.

YouTube Livestream 35 ()
#59 Copy

SapphireBombay

Is Jasnah left-handed? If so, did that play a role in her perceptions of how women are treated on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Left-handed women become very ambidextrous, kind of are forced to use their non-dominant hand, on Roshar. I will have to give it some thought whether Jasnah was originally left-handed. It seems like it would totally fit her.

And I don't think I've mentioned any lefties; I actually get emails, now and then, from people being like, "Hey, can we know who's a lefty in the Cosmere?" I think that it is something on my radar, to canonize some lefties, but I'm not going to do that now.

Bands of Mourning release party ()
#65 Copy

Questioner

Of all the characters you've written which one has the most of you in them?

Brandon Sanderson

Of all the characters I've written which has the most of me in them. Boy, y'know every character is a bit of me and every character's got something that's very unlike me. Um, I really have trouble answering that. People have asked it of me before. Some days I think it's Jasnah, some days I think I'm arrogant to assume it's Jasnah. Any character I would mention it would feel like the things I like about them are the things I wish I would have, if that makes sense? I don't know if there's any one that is really just me. My mother reads the Alcatraz books and says that's me. *laughter* She really does. Like she loves those books because she says "No that's you". When I have no inhibitions and I'm not trying to be self important I just do stupid things like in the Alcatraz books so maybe Alcatraz?

Supanova 2017 - Sydney ()
#66 Copy

Darkness (paraphrased)

Was Ivory watching when Shallan was in Jasnah's bathing chamber and that whole swap thing kind of went down… what did he relay to Jasnah…?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Umm… he would've been there… but I don't have an answer for that, mostly because I haven't considered it.

Ad Astra 2017 ()
#67 Copy

Questioner

Jasnah's name. What was the origin for it?

Brandon Sanderson

Jasnah's name predates most of the language work that I did. It comes from ancient, kind of Semitic languages-- playing around with those. And then her name became one of the ones that I built the language around. Because after I had named her, and written the whole book, I had named her and Dalinar. Kaladin's name changed once I had rebuilt the linguistics. Shallan's name changed once I rebuilt the linguistics. But Dalinar and Jasnah kind of became the origins. But it's ancient-- you know, a blend of Arabic and Hebrew. It's kind of-- yeah.

Questioner

Because I have an interesting tidbit--

Brandon Sanderson

Uh-huh

Questioner

"Jasna" in Polish actually means "bright."

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I've been told that! Just-- I went to Poland, like, last-- like a couple of months ago, and they're like, "Did you know this?" I had no idea.

Starsight Release Party ()
#68 Copy

Questioner 1

My friend and I always argue. He's like, "Amaram and Jasnah are the same age." Are they really?

Brandon Sanderson

Amaram is a little older, I believe, but they are around the same age.

Questioner 2

Like 24ish?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, no. Jasnah's like in her mid to late thirties. Mid thirties. I get it mixed up which one's Earth age and which one's Rosharan age. Whatever I say in there, it's about 10 percent more for our age. But yeah, Jasnah's not...

Questioner 2

She's not a spring chicken.

Brandon Sanderson

She's not a spring chicken. 

Questioner 2

But Amaram's older?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I think Amaram's like a year or two older, but they're around the same age.

Skyward San Diego signing ()
#69 Copy

Questioner

A question about Jasnah and your relation to Jasnah. She's a Veristitalian... Is that a part of Jasnah that is you, or is that a part of Jasnah that's somebody else?

Brandon Sanderson

The fascination with history and trying to use it to change the present is me. And that is the part of Jasnah that I-- Also, by nature, I'm kind of a Slytherin. And so would Jasnah. That part of me is there. The "do-gooder Slytherin," if that's not an oxymoron.

Questioner

And does the word Veristitalian come from "veritas"?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So, in their language, it would not actually be Veristitalian. What I do is, my books, I pretend they're in translation. So when Wit makes a pun, or when you see something that echoes Latin or Greek, the idea is that they are echoing in-world ancient languages that we have chosen, instead of transliterating, to actually translate so it gives the right feeling in English.

Stormlight Three Update #2 ()
#71 Copy

gabbim

I was just wondering if any of your characters from Cosmere is interested in same-sex relationships, romantically speaking. Jasnah perhaps?

Brandon Sanderson

There are some, but I have left main character relationship issues to be discussed until characters have progressed further in their stories. Jasnah, in particular, is complicated.

YouTube Livestream 10 ()
#73 Copy

Andrew

Had the Stormfather sent visions to Jasnah instead of Dalinar, how would that have changed her?

Brandon Sanderson

That's an excellent question. I think that Jasnah and the Stormfather would not be a terribly great match. But I think her coming to understand a very powerful spren like the Stormfather and seeing all of this, I think it would have really helped Jasnah build her philosophy of life. Because, what's going on in the cosmere, is that the gods are lowercase-g gods, right? And this is a really fascinating thing that I like when fantasy deals with. I'm certainly not the only one. But at what point do you worship a being who is pretty flawed, but super powerful and able to help you in your life? And what kind of worship is that, right?

There's a level between atheism and theism in fantasy works, where it's like, "We can see that someone legitimately has supernatural powers, and following that person makes some logical sense. But does that make them God?" Certainly not as the church teaches, where there is a perfect being who is concerned with the lives of people and doesn't make mistakes.

So I think Jasnah would have arrived at some of the conclusions that she made, probably, faster if she had had these visions to see the past. She would have known some things that she was suspicious of and hoped would be the case. She probably could have gotten to Urithiru much faster. It would have made a big difference in a lot of different ways. But it was not a good match, let's say. She was not the person the Stormfather was looking for for these sorts of things, to continue the legacy of Honor and things like this.

White Sand vol.1 release party ()
#74 Copy

Questioner 1

How was Jasnah able to teleport into the [Cognitive] Realm when she didn't seem to have any Stormlight in her in Words of Radiance?

Brandon Sanderson

She had enough.

Questioner 1

She had enough. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner 1

And is it just teleportation-- *interrupted*

Brandon Sanderson

Let's say... Jasnah's figured out some things that others haven't figured out, for one thing. *brief interruption* And, let's say that. But also, there's a little scene from it I wrote from her viewpoint just to know what was happening that's never going in the books. If you Google "Jasnah deleted scene Words of Radiance" you can read it. It talks about how she did what she did.

Questioner 2

Oh good.

Brandon Sanderson

So that is out there. Just-- It was my reference for writing the scene. But-- One of her powers is called Elsecalling, which is basically popping in and out of Shadesmar more easily. It's hard for everyone else to do that.

Questioner 2

My other question is, so when Shallan was on the land she was in the sea in Shadesmar.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner 2

Is it exactly opposite?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's mirrored... Um... It's mirrored, yeah.

Questioner 2

So any land is on sea. So she would have actually landed on land on the ocean.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah... so... yes...

Questioner 1

She kind of *inaudible*

Questioner 2

Well that's, no for Jasnah that's... *interrupted*

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah yeah, Jasnah... In that scene where you see? She pops out in Shadesmar on the land.

Questioner 2

So, was the scene at the end right as soon as that happened?

Brandon Sanderson

What the-- no, no, no. She spent months trying to get back out.

Questioner 2

Oh, because she doesn't have the power to get back out.

Brandon Sanderson

Much harder to get back out.

Questioner 1

*inaudible* trying to get back out, because she doesn't have any more Stormlight.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep. Much harder to get back out than it is to get back in even if you have Stormlight, and she is out of Stormlight, so...

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 ()
#76 Copy

Sapphire_Bombay

In Way of Kings, when Jasnah gifts Shallan the Book of Endless Pages, she mentions that someone dear to her once made a very attempt at converting her to Vorinism. Who was he, and how did he manage to appeal to her senses?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, wait for the Jasnah flashbacks.

Adam Horne

Did I miss something about it being a "he", or did they assume a gender?

Brandon Sanderson

They're making some assumptions, I believe.

Footnote: Jasnah does refer to the person who attempted to convert her as "he".
JordanCon 2018 ()
#77 Copy

Mrs. Jofwu

If you had to characterize in a few sentences, as adults, what the relationship was like between Jasnah and Elhokar...

Brandon Sanderson

...As adults. Their relationship is that of a fond-but-unyielding sister and an earnest-but-insecure brother.

Mrs. Jofwu

So they were affectionate?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I would say they were affectionate. Not as much as, maybe, some other siblings. Like, you can look at Renarin and Adolin and see genuine affection. With Jasnah and Elhokar, it is almost-- there's definitely some affection, but there's almost more of an allegiance. Like, they're both dealing with certain pressures upon them, and their lives were very much consumed by these pressures, and they had that in common. But, I mean,  Jasnah's not a hugger anyway, if that makes sense?

Mrs. Jofwu

There was no jealousy between them?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, there was definitely jealousy on Elhokar's part. Definitely, the insecurity there. But Jasnah, was-- I mean, she was a little bit aware of it, but you know how she is, right?

Mrs. Jofwu

I didn't know if that contributed to why she removed herself from the Shattered Plains.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a little bit. I mean, her quest was more important to her than any of that. But, you know. Let my brother not live in as many shadows. Because he had a lot of shadows that he had to live in. And she was one of them, certainly. That would've been a consideration to Jasnah. But if had been right to stay, for her quest, she would have.

General Reddit 2017 ()
#80 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

I've watched this conversation with interest, and wasn't planning to step in, as it's exactly the sort of thread that's generally better without me. Author intervention can derail a good discussion.

But after considering, I decided I did want to talk about this topic a little. There are two things going on here. One is the mistake I made with Jasnah in Words, which I've mentioned before. One is a larger discussion, relevant to the cosmere.

Warning, WALL OF TEXT. This is me we're talking about.

You see, Jasnah wasn't originally meant to be a fake-out. Jasnah originally was going to go with Shallan to the Shattered Plains--but she was really messing up the outline, diverting attention from Shallan's character arc and pointing it toward Shallan/Jasnah conflicts instead.

My biggest breakthrough when outlining the book in detail was the realization that the book would work so much better if things I'd planned to do with Jasnah in it were diverted to later books. When that came together, WORDS really started working. Hence her jaunt into Shadesmar. I initially wrote the scenes with it being pretty clear to the reader that she was forced to escape--and it was super suspicious that there was no body.

In drafting, however, early readers didn't like how obvious it was that Jasnah would be coming back. I made a crucial mistake by over-reacting to early feedback. I thought, "Well, I can make that more dramatic!" I employed some tools I've learned quite well, and turned that into a scene where the emotion is higher and the death is more powerful.

HOWEVER, I did this without realizing how it mixed with other plotlines--specifically Szeth's resurrection.

We get into sticky RAFO areas here, but one of the biggest themes of the Cosmere is Rebirth. The very first book (Elantris) starts with a character coming back from the dead. (As I've mentioned before, a big part of the inspiration for Elantris was a zombie story, from the viewpoint of the zombie.) Mistborn begins with Kelsier's rebirth following the Pits, and Warbreaker is about people literally called the Returned. (People who die, then come back as gods.) The Stormlight Archive kicks off with Kaladin's rebirth above the Honor Chasm, and Warbreaker is meant as a little foreshadowing toward the greater arc of the cosmere--that of the Shards of Adonalsium, who are held by ordinary people.

Szeth's rebirth, with his soul incorrectly affixed to his body, is one of the things I've been very excited to explore in The Stormlight Archive--and the mistake with Jasnah was letting her return distract from that.

That said, you're not wrong for disliking this theme--there's no "wrong" when it comes to artistic tastes. And I certainly wish I'd looked at the larger context of what happened when I shifted Jasnah's plot in book two. (Doubling down on "Jasnah is dead" for short term gain was far worse than realizing I should have gone with "Jasnah was forced to jump into Shadesmar, leaving Shallan alone." I consider not seeing that to be the biggest mistake I've made in The Stormlight Archive so far.)

However, the story of the cosmere isn't really about who lives or dies. We established early on that there is an afterlife (or, at least, one of the most powerful beings in the cosmere believes there is--and he tends to be a trustworthy sort.) And multiple books are about people being resurrected. What I'm really interested in is what this does to people. Getting given a second try at life, being reborn as something new. (Or, in some cases, as something worse.) The story of the cosmere is about what you do with the time you have, and the implications of the power of deity being in the hands of ordinary people.

More importantly (at least to me) I've always felt character deaths are actually somewhat narratively limp in stories. Perhaps it's our conditioning from things like Gandalf, Obi-Wan, and even Sherlock Holmes. But readers are always going to keep asking, "are they really dead?" And even if they stay dead, I can always jump back and tell more stories about them. The long cycle of comic books over-using resurrection has, I think, also jaded some of us to the idea of character death--but even without things like that, the reader knows they can always re-read the book. And that fan-fiction of the character living will exist. And that the author could always bring them back at any time. A death should still be a good death, mind you--and an author really shouldn't jerk people around, like I feel I did with Jasnah.

But early on, I realized I'd either have to go one of two directions with the cosmere. Either I had to go with no resurrections ever, stay hard line, and build up death as something really, really important. Or I had to shift the conversation of the books to greater dangers, greater stakes, and (if possible) focus a little more on the journey, not the sudden stop at the end.

I went with the latter. This isn't going to work for everyone. I'm fully aware of, and prepared for, the fact that things like Szeth coming back will ruin the stories for some readers. And I do admit, I've screwed it up in places. Hopefully, that will teach me better so that I can handle the theme delicately, and with strong narrative purpose behind the choices I make. But do warn you, there WILL be other resurrections in my books. (Though there are none planned for the near future. I took some extra care with the next few books, after feeling that things happening in Words and the Mistborn series in the last few years have hit the theme too hard.) This is a thing that I do, and a thing that I will continue to do. I consider it integral to the story I'm telling. Hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to achieve these acts with the weight and narrative complexity they deserve.

If it helps, I have several built-in rules for this. The first is that actual cosmere resurrections (rather than just fake-outs, like I did with Jasnah) can happen only under certain circumstances, and have a pretty big cost to them. Both will become increasingly obvious through the course of the stories. The other rule is more meta. I generally tell myself that I only get one major fake-out, or one actual resurrection, per character. (And I obviously won't use either one for most characters.) This is more to keep myself from leaning on this narrative device too much, which I worry I'll naturally do, considering that I see this as a major theme of the books.

...

(Sharders, please don't start asking me at signings who has had their "one death" so far. This is me drawing the curtain back a little on the process, I really don't want it to become an official thing that people focus on. Do feel free to talk about the mechanics of resurrection though--it should be pretty obvious now with Elantris, Warbreaker, Szeth, and a certain someone from Mistborn to use as guides.)

Orem signing ()
#81 Copy

Questioner

What was your inspiration for Jasnah?

Brandon Sanderson

I had done several times, when I was designing characters in the cosmere, someone who kind of thought they were an awesome scholar but really wasn't. That's the kind of thing with Sarene and a little bit of the thing with Shallan. They're young people who haven't quite made it there yet, whose opinion of themselves is kind of beyond their actual skill level. Who would be, like, the scholar? Like, the ideal Rosharan societal scholar? And I built Jasnah out of that, and then took her in a way that would allow her to also be in conflict with that at the same time. Always a good source of writing a character.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 ()
#82 Copy

Robert W

Does Jasnah still consider herself to be atheist and what would she have to see in order to change her view?

Brandon Sanderson

Jasnah would stop being atheist if she got definitive proof of an omniscient and caring and omnipotent God. She does not, and I kind of agree with her, consider the Shards to be Gods (capital G). In her realm these are beings that, you know, everything is Invested, they're Invested more. Atheist means she does not believe that there is, in these terms, an omnipotent God. It doesn't necessarily have to mean loving, I might have said that. She means that there is no omnipotent, capital G God. She doesn't think one exists. She would need to have irrefutable proof that they do or that they did and then she would believe. It doesn't mean she would worship, but it does mean she would believe.

Firefight Chicago signing ()
#83 Copy

Questioner

Are there differences in pronunciation between the different worlds in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Do you have any record of that?

Brandon Sanderson

So, it depends on the culture and things like that, what it's going to be like. You can kind of bet in Mistborn it's going to be French, if it's from the Central Dominance. So they'll say "Kelsi-ay" and "De-MOH" but where Elend's from is a lot more Germanic so "EE-lend" "STRAHFF" and stuff like that. The other worlds are all going to have their different things. In Roshar you are going to get some of the "YAS-nah kHo-LIN" it's going to be a little more Semitic in its language family.

Oathbringer Portland signing ()
#84 Copy

Questioner

For Jasnah, it seems like maybe a couple times it's been hinted that maybe she prefers women *inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just have you Read on And Find Out on that one. There is-- Her book isn't 'til, like-- at the earliest, Book Eight. So, we've got a long ways to go before we're digging into Jasnah some more.

Idaho Falls signing ()
#86 Copy

Questioner

Have you ever regretted killing off a character, or not killing off a character, in your book series?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. In the middle of Words of Radiance, there is a character who dies, but comes back. And in my original draft, it was very clear. (Wink wink, reader; this character's coming back.) And I think that was actually the version I wanted. Because I felt like, when I did the original draft, and I sent it to beta readers, they're like, "Oh, well this character's obviously gonna come back." And I'm like, "They figured me out!" And I made it hardcore, so they had real worry the character wasn't coming back. But that was not a major moment in the series, it was removing a character so another character could shine. So, I should have just been okay with them knowing that character was coming back, because there are... I feel like I faked out the readers for no big gain. There wasn't really reason to try so hard to fake out readers on that thing. Where there are some legitimate characters where, you know, either, really they're dead and I want people to mourn their deaths. Or there are other characters where their return, I want to be very dramatic. And I feel like you've only got a certain amount of that energy from readers that you can play with them that way. And I shouldn't use it for things where I just want a character out of the way for a while.

YouTube Livestream 1 ()
#87 Copy

Adam Horne

They want to know who your favorite character of Brandon's is.

Emily Sanderson

Oh, favorite character of Brandon's.

Brandon Sanderson

Stick. *laughter*

Emily Sanderson

No, I really like Lift. I'm enjoying Jasnah quite a bit.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you don't get a lot of Jasnah in these early books though, unfortunately. There's a couple Jasnah viewpoints in the new book [Stormlight 4], so that's good. You'll get a little Jasnah, but you really aren't going to get a lot of Jasnah for a while.

Emily Sanderson

I kind of think... It's hard because it's like whichever one I happen to be reading at the time is my favorite. 

Brandon Sanderson

That's what Robert Jordan said, when someone asked him who his favorite character was, is, "Whoever I'm writing right now."

Emily Sanderson

It's kind of true though. Whoever I'm reading right now, I'm like, "Oh, I love this character." I read a Kaladin chapter and I'm like, "I love Kaladin." Then I read a Dalinar chapter.

Adam Horne

Did you say who your least favorite character was?

Emily Sanderson

My least favorite character? Can I choose Padan Fain?

Brandon Sanderson

Padan Fain, Padan Fain.

Emily Sanderson

He's not technically one of your characters.

Brandon Sanderson

He's very hateable. He's pretty despicable.

Emily Sanderson

Moash is pretty despicable, but I don't know that he's my least favorite.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
#88 Copy

WeiryWriter

What are your current plans with regards to the Jasnah novella you wrote last summer?

Brandon Sanderson

Jasnah Novella is for my eyes only, unfortunately. It was needed so I could work out mechanics of what was happening, but I don't like releasing it for various reasons.

Footnote: The following scene is from the novella in question: https://www.tor.com/2014/08/06/stormlight-archive-scene-after-words-of-radiance/
Sources: Reddit