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Are we going to see any other viewpoints from the Heralds?
Yes, you will see-- I mean, Taln and Ash are both main characters, right? But you should see other viewpoints of other Heralds as we progress. The ones that survive long enough to get viewpoints.
Are they gonna be viewpoints in this current timeline?
You will see more in this current timeline. I know specifically several that are going to be interludish sort of things coming up.
Who do I blame for killing off some of my favorite characters in the last book of Wheel of Time? You, or Robert Jordan?
Actually, there are three people to blame. I chose about a third of them. Robert Jordan chose about a third of them. And Harriet, his wife, chose about a third of them. So you can blame all of us. She killed Bela, though. I tried to make Bela live. I know. I tried. I worked very hard.
Who killed Egwene?
Harriet has asked me not to reveal that one. Egwene, Gawyn, and some of the others...
Can you talk a little about your editing process? After you get through the first draft-- You go through it, you look at the acknowledgements in a lot of your books, and other books, there's this huge team of people that have been pouring over this thing.
Yeah, so editing for me. Here's my drafting process. First draft I just write-- I write it straight through. I don't stop, I try not to let myself stop. If there is something major I need to change I just change it in the chapter and keep going forward. And then I can change it back later, like two chapters later if I think "No that was the wrong thing". So there will be a new character sometimes in my book that will just pop up for three chapters and everyone acts like they've always been there and then they vanish and no one talks about them not being there anymore. That's just so I can keep momentum and see what works. Draft number 2 I fix all of those things. Draft number 3, polishing draft. Line by line trying to cut 10%, get rid of the passive voice, make descriptions more active, and make sure that I'm finding the right words and things like that. Really Draft 4 is where it turns into true drafting, and by that point I've given it to my editor and my alpha readers which are basically my assistants, my good friends, my wife, people like that. They read it, they come back with comments for me and I've been thinking about the book, working in my writing group with it and I make a goal-based document, where it's like "Here are the major issues. Here are the medium level issues. Here are the little things I need to fix." And I start on page one, read through with this open on the screen next to the book when I'm working on it and I try to like-- It's almost like a bug report for programming, I'm trying to clear things off the list. Major things I have to re-write the whole way through so I can't clear them off until the end. Medium issues are things I can put in two or three times to fix through a couple of chapters where they are wrong and then clear it. Little things are just fix this one little thing and it's easy to clear off the list. I do that, I don't get to everything. I move around things on this list, like I maybe [???] I move it down the list.
Then I send the book out to beta readers, who are gathered by my assistant, he handles this, Peter Ahlstrom. Then they do a thing with us on a Google Doc, where it's chapter by chapter there is a document for each chapter and they all put their comments and interact with each other. It's like having a very large focus group, with like 15 people who are all reading the book at the same time and working on it. Once that is done and I've heard back from my editor on the new draft I will then make another draft. I will do this as many times as necessary to make the book good. Last draft is proofreading and those people are also drawn from fandom, usually, my assistant picks them off forums and things like that and people we've used before. And they are just looking for-- At that point we can't change anything really bigger than a line or two. They are looking for continuity and things like that. But my process is that goal-based "I want to fix this let's see if I can do a draft where I fix this." And I'll do a couple more polishing drafts as I go along.
You are very famous for being a fast writer, we talked about that in the other conversation, and I'm not going to ask you the secret of your superpower, if you got bit by a spider or something, but I don't want to ask about the discipline of sitting and writing [unclear] straight, or the deadlines of the publishers, because if there's something that is strange about writing, it's that, in your worst moments, when you [unclear] pressure, [unclear] family conflict, you write better, you are more capable of understanding how others feel, how is the world that's around you. And when you're happy, when everything is okay, you have time to find inspiration or the strength to write, because, "The world is amazing, I have these great friends, this great girlfriend, this amazing family to be with. Why do I have to stay five hours closed in my room thinking about people having terrible problems to be happy?" So, how do you make this to keep writing, and having what a fantastic life, with fantastic friends and fantastic fans?
What a fascinating question, I've never been asked that before! I've been asked thousands, of questions, so that is very interesting. I would say, I am not a writer who writes from a place of pain. Every writer is different, and they find different inspiration. I am best at writing when I am in a place of comfort. And so, I think that most writers are very observant, and this is how we express things in fiction. We pay attention. We listen. For instance, I don't have depression, but Kaladin does. If I waited until I had depression to write Kaladin that would probably be bad, because people with depression, number one, don't want to do anything, and number two, it's just not going to work, right? You just can't sit around and wait to experience everything you want to write. So, for me, it's about research, and listening, and paying attention. I happen to have several people I love dearly who do have depression, and so I talk to them. I take notes. I listen to the things they have to say, and that becomes the foundation for a piece of a character's personality. I don't know, though, maybe I'm just a sadist and I like to do evil things.
So, what's going on here is that when I was writing Elantris... number one, Elantris is my only book that I wrote not knowing if it would get published. For those who don't know, Elantris is my sixth novel and I wrote thirteen before I sold it. And so, I was finishing my thirteenth unpublished novel when Elantris finally sold and so Mistborn is number fourteen. I didn't publish any of those other ones.
So, Elantris was the only book that I wrote without a professional team behind me. And even those early Mistborn books, I did have assistants and things... For instance, I now have a team of fifteen people that work for me, of which nine are full-time. The Brandon Sanderson business is... we take this very seriously and I have two full-time editors who work on my staff in addition to my editors at the publishers.
When I wrote Elantris, I didn't have that whole team backing me, it was just me. So, when we did the tenth anniversary edition, I said, "Let's look and see if people can actually walk in the time I say to the places I say. Let's make sure you can actually see the things they say you should be able to see". And lo and behold, they're like "You say he looks out of his window and sees Elantris, but you put his house over here and there's stuff in the way" and things like this. This is the sort of stuff that, as a writer, it's just really hard to do without a team specifically looking to ask "Can a person walk to... this distance?" and things like that.
Now that I have those resources, I was able to just update it. All the changes to Elantris, none of them change the story, but all of them were meant for these reasons: People can't actually walk this distance or it takes them too long. Like, it would take fifteen minutes, you say it takes an hour... what happened? It's just easier to say "No, it took fifteen minutes", right, and stuff like that. So, those are what the updates were mostly.
With me adding the scene - I don't know if you guys put in the bonus scene - *affirmative from the interviewer* the bonus Hoid scene in the back, which... the story of Hoid, if you don't know, is... he's the character that connects all the Cosmere. When I first started writing, Elantris was the first book ever I put him in and then he appeared in Dragonsteel, which is an unpublished novel, and in White Sand and in Aether of Night, but just little, tiny cameos.
My feeling was - early on - that people wouldn't put up with this <false> behind the scenes continuity. I thought it would scare people off of the series and things like that. I don't want someone to pick up Elantris and be like "Oh, to understand Elantris, I have to read all of that". I just wanted them to be able to enjoy Elantris, but I found out very quickly: fans, number one, loved it. They weren't intimidated by it. Plus, the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe] has done way more of that, right? *laughter from audience* When I started, the MCU wasn't out yet. People were not used to, you know, dealing with continuity between different series and things like that on the level they're willing to now. But I found that, even with the early books, there were at least people like "No, you can trust us more, you can give us more of this. It won't turn us off to the books if we know that Hoid is around" and so, I've started... like, you know, I wrote into Elantris a little bit more Hoid for a bonus scene at the end, stuff like that.
I use this chapter as a strict triad chapter–it covers the same space of time as the other two chapters. With Sarene and Raoden running around together now, the triad system has been easy to forget. While I still start each chapter with the correct character, I often let the viewpoints intermix after that.
Again, this is intentional. After this last Hrathen chapter, I have the triad system break down completely. It's supposed to be a subtle indication of the chaos of these last few chapters. I'll even start throwing in viewpoints that aren't of the core three, which I hope with give the reader a sensation that something different is happening. The world, even the narrative structure of the book, is breaking apart. None of the old rules hold any more.
I was wondering about the pictures in the cover of this [Oathbringer]. Are they specific characters in the book, or just art?
They are the Heralds. I went to some artists and said, "Do me your rendition of something that would be on the Sistine Chapel in-world for the Heralds," so that's four of the ten. So that is what we ended up with.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sazed's Arrival
I debated how to have the crew react to the koloss threat. It seemed that having them get worked up about it would be out of character. They all know there's little they can do at the moment–the koloss are too far away to be a pertinent threat, and the other armies have them boxed in.
I eventually realized that the crew might see the koloss as an advantage. They are an opportunistic group, and have been feeling overwhelmed by events. Any change in the status could end up being an advantage to them.
So it is that twenty-thousand monsters marching on their city gets dismissed almost as easily as Sazed's warnings about the mists. The crew members aren't fools, but they are pragmatists. They have enough to worry about at the moment. More nebulous threats will wait.
Part One Wrap-Up
Setting the Scene
Like always, part one is a little slow. I'm working on my style, trying to get the pacing better in the first third of my novels. However, one feature of my style is the setup, followed by fast-paced endings. I don't want to lose that; I just want to make sure every part of a given book is fun to read.
There are a lot of good things happening here, but also a lot of establishment. How Allomancy and Feruchemy work, what has happened to the characters in the year between books—the setup for the conflicts of this novel. Things start to pick up in the next section, and we add our final viewpoint: Spook.
Overall, I'm pleased with part one and the way it sets the scene of the book. The world is ending. People everywhere are in trouble. Elend, Vin, and the team have no idea how to fight it—they're just doing their best at guessing.
The Mistborn series was sold as three trilogies. The first trilogy (the one we know) is set in medieval/16th century technology and is fantasy. The second trilogy will be set in the current day, or at least with the same kind of technology. This makes it urban fantasy. The last trilogy will be science fiction set somewhere in the future. Of course, all of them have the Allomancy magic system to get things interesting. The short novel The Alloy of Lawthat will be released in the fall this year is set between the first two trilogies so the tech level is around 18th/19th century with steam power. Brandon said it was about some Wild West-like character getting involved in a murder investigation in a city. So Clint Eastwood meets Sherlock Holmes in London.
Chapter Five
Prison Names
Why did I use prison names? Well, the truth is . . . because. It felt kind of fun.
It wasn’t one of the things I’d been planning for the book. I knew I was going to name someone Alcatraz, but not that I’d use prison names for other characters. And yet, as I did it, I realized that Bastille was a great name for a girl and that Leavenworth would work really well for Grandpa Smedry’s real name.
After that, the joke took on a life of its own, and everybody got a prison name. A real-world explanation for this is coming later in the book.
It’s been a dream of ours here at Dragonsteel to get to work with Donato on a piece of epic fantasy art depicting a scene or character from one of Brandon’s books. We were admirers of Donato’s work even before he created the illustration for “Firstborn” on Tor.com, and wow, did he create something beautiful there. So when Brandon came to me with the idea of paintings of all ten Heralds from the Stormlight Archive, the first person that came to both of our minds was Donato.
And again, Donato has knocked this one out of the park. His rendition of Taln (Talenelat’Elin) is gorgeous. It strikes the right balance between realism and symbolism, and gives us a heroic, yet tormented, version of this beloved Herald. We love what Donato has done!
We have several paintings of the Heralds in the works, so this one is likely to appear on the end pages of this book or the next, depending on which Heralds we feel look good together and best represent the themes of the books.
How do you pronounce the names of the main characters in Elantris?
RAY-O-DEN, SA-REE-NEE, and hRAY-THEN. I say "serene," but in-world, they say SA-REE-NEE. That sounds a little weird in English, but it doesn't sound weird to them. It's a very common name.
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.
What's your favorite part about writing Skyward?
Spensa's character. She's a blast to write, and I have a lot of fun being in her viewpoint.
Chapter One - Part One
Tone
You can probably guess why I was worried about the transition from the prologue with Vasher to this chapter with Siri. The tone shift is quite dramatic. Actually, one of the things my agent complained a lot about with this book was the tone. Not just for this chapter shift, but for the entire book.
In his opinion, there were too many different tone shifts going on. We have Vasher's plot, which is dark and sometimes violent. We have the Siri plotline, which is romantic and sometimes whimsical. We have Lightsong, whose chapters are glib and smell faintly of an old comedic murder mystery. Then we have Vivenna, whose tone bounces around across all of these.
That's one of the things I like about the book. My agent complained, but I know he likes things more streamlined than I sometimes do. He loved the Mistborn books, and I do think they are excellent novels—but they are very focused. The characters are distinctive, but their plots are all centered on many of the same types of goals.
With Warbreaker, one of the main things I'm trying to do is contrast it to Mistborn. To do something different, something that harkens a little more back to Elantris, with its three very different viewpoints.
I want there to be a lot of different tones and feels to this book. It's part of the theme of the novel—that of vibrant Hallandren and its many wonders. I want it to feel like a lot is going on, and that in different parts of the city, very different stories can be told.
Most of your magic systems seem superhero-ish to begin with, people have an ability or two that they can do. With the exception of Elantris. Do you intend to return to that one, or do another system that's similar to that?
I will. I like to do all kinds of different things. The thing about it is that I like having discrete powers that I can really explore. I find that a lot of magic system that have just so many things you can do — it's not necessarily that it's a bad magic system, I just find that I like to take one thing and dig into it deeply. Like, I love reading the Wheel of Time, that had a very expansive magic system. But when you see my books come along, you see the characters focusing on a few weaves and using them really well. That's just kind of more of a me thing.
1) Will we see more Lift or Rysn in Stormlight 3? 2) Will Stormlight 3 have a main interlude character similar to how Eshonai was in Words of Radiance and Szeth was in The Way of Kings?
1) Yes. 2) Yes.
How did it feel writing Syl as a character, transitioning *inaudible*?
It took a long time to figure out how I wanted to do her. It took a lot of practice scenes and such. It was very fun when I finally got to do it, because I'd been planning it for so long. It was really just a matter of trying to get inside the head of this creature who is slowly becoming more and more aware of herself. Having children helps, certainly.
Fifteenth - Is there something that inspires the strength of his female characters?
His mother graduated first in her class in accounting in a year when she was the only woman in the accounting department. First three fantasy writers he read were female (Melanie Rawn, Anne McCaffrey, and one other I missed) to the point where when someone tried to give him Eddings he said he didn’t think men could write the genre.
I know you've been asked several times about other authors that have influenced your work, but are there people in other lines of work, other medias, that you deliberately learn from? And if so, who?
Yeah. So, I do really like film. I love films that, like-- one of my favorite films of all time is Gattaca. And I really like films that do interesting things with narrative, like parallel narrative between characters and stuff like that. I like films are trying, even if they fail, to do really interesting things. Like, Interstellar; I really liked Interstellar. Interstellar is a hugely flawed movie, but it's, like, so ambitious and interesting. And I like it when movies do that. So, I do study a lot of films. I like movies that have good structure. I love the original Star Wars trilogy for its structure. It teaches you so much about structure that Lucas apparently didn't learn. He learned other things; Lucas had really big dreams and great ideas and I really liked that he-- Even in the prequels, I liked that he told us a consistent narrative across three. I like doing that.
Watchmen was really influential on me, as like basically everyone who's read it. Watchmen was influential. And some other graphic novels. I loved Kingdom Come when I first read it back in the 90s or whenever it was. The roommate gave me that, and I'm like, "Wow, these do different things with the medium that I--" Yeah
I read a lot of webcomics, also. I don't know how much influence they have over me. But Dr. McNinja, until it ended, was my jam. But I would list those. Films, and the occasional really powerful graphic novel that have influenced me a lot.
Kelsier gets to have some last words in this chapter. He earned them, I think. I'm sorry to keep the truth of kandra from you so long, as I've said before. However, I needed to leave the explanation off so that the reader could experience the revelation with Vin here. Even if you'd already figured out what Renoux was, then I think this scene is more powerful by having the revelations happen like they did.
Anyway, Kelsier is among my personal favorite characters, if only for his depth. He is a complicated, multi-faceted man who managed to scam not only the entire empire, but his own crew at the same time. I felt I had to give him some last words, if only through a letter, so that the reader could bid him a proper farewell. In addition, I wanted him to pass that flower on to Vin–symbolically charging her with Mare's dream, now that Kelsier himself is dead.
Chapter Fifty-Eight - Part Four
I don't know if you've noticed this, but this chapter forms a mini-triad of its own. It shows all three characters in their traditional rotation. It's something fun I decided to, playing with my own format. The idea was to give an unconscious sense of urgency to the reader by giving them a whole triad compacted into one chapter. I don't expect anyone to pick up on it–actually, I don't want them to. For it to work right, the reader will be paying so much attention to the text that they don't consciously notice the speed up. However, I hope that it will make them read faster and faster as the book progresses.
Again in Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, there are characters from different books. Some of these books have sequels, like the people from Elantris. So when are the sequels coming out? Are they going to come out before the big book? Or…
It's going to be a while before we do them. The sequels, I want to do them. Part of the thing that is holding me back with Elantris and Warbreaker is that I like having them as standalones right now, because so much of the rest of my work is so involved, I want to have these introductory books. Eventually I probably will do them, but it is going to take me a little while. I want to number one get further in The Stormlight Archive, I feel that we've had too much delay. Book One and Book Two there was a four year delay. Which is-- That's like George R.R. Martin level delay, and granted I did two Wheel of Time books in-between. I should be cut some slack there but that's too long, I want to be consistently doing them every 18 months to two years. Then I can stop and say, "Okay do I have time to write an Elantris sequel or a Warbreaker sequel?"
Lightsong Sees the Lifeless and Takes Command of Them
They keep them in the dark. This is a bad idea. They don't realize it, but the Lifeless are far more aware than everyone assumes. Clod in this book is a foreshadowing of that, and there won't be much more about it in the rest of the novel. It's one of the focus points for the sequel, if I ever write it. (Which will actually have a Lifeless as a viewpoint character, if I can find a way to swing it.)
I've noticed that there are a lot of different categories of Epics. Did you think about any categories that you didn't put into the books?
Did I think about any categories of Epics that I didn't put into the books? Yes, I did. You know, as a comic book nerd I have lots of categories of superheroes that, as I saw them in my head, and this is kind of like my-- reaching back to my teenage years, looking at "Oh, these kind of share a similar power type" and things like that. That's what you are getting from these books, kind of my nerdy stuff. There are categories that I didn't deal with. I tried to theme a lot of powers either toward matter transformation, matter manipulation, or alternate universe stuff. Just that kind of has some things. And so, I am actually doing a series, takes place in the same universe, different characters, that takes place-- all of the powers and that will be alternate dimension things, it's gonna be really cool.
Are there any characters that were particularly difficult for you to work with?
Cadsuane from the WoT was the one that comes to mind.
Do you take a consciously different approach when writing YA versus writing an 'adult' fantasy? How do you vary your prose, or themes?
The biggest difference tends to be that in YA, I focus in on a single character and do their story in an intense and intimate way, where in the epic fantasies I'm trying to approach it as the story of the world as it moves forward.
In at least two of the books that I know of, a god is either dead or attacked in some form or fashion. Is there any reason for that?
Yes, there is an ongoing theme there, and it's primarily because there is an overarching story behind the story. The books are all in the same universe. And there is a character that's the same in all of the books. In Way of Kings it's Wit. He's actually in all of them.
Vivenna Suits Up and Leaves
Vivenna is in a similar position to Siri here in these last chapters. Things are getting so dangerous that both women (well, and Lightsong too) are rather out of their elements. However, I knew that I had to have them both involved. It would be incredibly frustrating to read an entire book focused on two characters, then have them get pushed around for the entire climax.
So during my outlining, I made certain to build the story in such a way that they could be useful, even if they're very much out of their elements. I feel this makes the story more tense in a lot of ways, since they're forced to deal with things for which they're completely unprepared.
Here, we have Vivenna sorting through her own emotions and finding enough determination left to go out and do something. This is an important moment for her, even though she doesn't realize it. This is the moment where she takes her first real step toward becoming her new self.
I like how your book covers mysteriously lead us into wrong conclusions about who characters are. Who comes up with that? You mostly, or does publisher have input??
Mostly, those are the publisher's deal. I generally have some input, but only a small input. The longer I go, the more I have to say. Often, I will suggest scenes, but it's up to the publisher/artist to decide. For example, the cover of Mistborn 3 was originally a concept cover for the cover of Mistborn One. Everyone liked it so much, they decided to tweak the sketch and do a full painting for Mistborn 3.
I was just curious, as a writer, what you find the hardest in writing a book. Is it development of the characters, keeping them separate? Or plot--
For me, usually the hardest part is revision, because getting a book 90% of the way there is not easy, but easier for me. Getting that last 10% is the really hard part, and often requires knocking out walls, figuratively, or killing your darlings and all of these sorts fo things. It's really tough, so I find revision the most difficult part. If we're talking about the rough draft, usually the most difficult part of the book for me is about at, I would say, right around the middle. Right smack-dab-- sometimes it's the one-third part; sometimes it's about the two-thirds mark. There's a point in there where you're not quite to the ending yet where all the exciting things that you've planned are happening. But all the cool stuff you frontloaded on, you're really excited about the project, and it's new, and right in there is a point where you're like, I need to keep this exciting and interesting, and yet now it's my job, right? There are points in the writing where it's just, it's your job to get up every day and get a little bit more done, and you get all these other little projects dancing around in your head, like "ooh you could do this, hey? Here's a wacky magic system, write a screwy story about that, Brandon." *laughter* And you've gotta remain focused, and you've gotta keep on working on the book and not let yourself get distracted; that's also somewhat of a hard part.
Compared to Oathbringer, how much Szeth are we going to see in the book?
This one, probably less Szeth than Oathbringer. Mostly, because we're going to get his big plot in the next book. There's some cool Szeth stuff in this still, but we're looking more like first book Szeth rather than third book Szeth, where I give him his own micro plot in book 3.
I was kind of imagining, he's like the first character expected to die in the first five books.
He starts in jail, in book four. Because Dalinar told him to go there.
I was re-reading the original Mistborn trilogy, and I was struck by how devoutly Demoux believes in the divine nature of Kelsier. And I just had to wonder, what must it have been like for him when he later became a Worldhopper and got a peek behind the curtain?
Yeah, that's a very interesting aspect of his character, for specifically that reason, and I am going to write about it and explore it more deeply at a later point.
To what extent has the economy of the world been planned out? Obviously, there's a refreshingly fair amount of economic activity happening in the novels, often times helping to move along the story. But to what extent do you have it planned out already vs. "I'll come up with it when I need it."
That is to say do you know that place A sells to place B, but place B has nothing to sell to place A and so sells to place C, which sells to place A, influencing the trade patterns of ships. And what the price of a horse is in A vs. B vs. C., or the price of an inn for the night, or the price of a pair of well made boots. Have you worked out how people are taxed and tithed, how the trade routes flow, how comparatively wealthy people are around the world, etc?
For a lot of these things I've done some of it, and for others I decide what to do when I need it. One trick in worldbuilding is to focus your attention on the things that are going to be a source of conflict or passion to the characters. It would be very easy to spend twenty years worldbuilding and never writing. So there is a fair bit of both, but most of what I focus my attention on is where is the conflict. Trade deals are a source of conflict, and so where it's a source of conflict to the cultures I have spent more time dealing with it.
So, because we have Worldhoppers like Hoid, Khriss, and Nazh, and I think that I've heard that era 4 will be more science fiction.
Yes, era 4 is science fiction.
So, will we ever have a chance to see characters from one world in the cosmere go to another world in the cosmere?
So, there's a couple of things that I need to explain to you guys in this one. First is that Mistborn, I pitched to my editor, way at the beginning, as a series where a fantasy world slowly became a science fiction world. So we would pass through a modern era, where things are like our world, and then we pass on to a science fiction era, because I'd never seen that done before. I'd never seen someone take epic fantasy and then build from the events in the epic fantasy, like religions and philosophies, and then tell another story set in a more modern and contemporary world. And then in the science fiction one, the magic will become the means by which space travel is possible. So we're in the middle of that. Wax and Wayne is an interim, I'm calling it era 2. There's an era 3 which is 1980s, cold war, spy thriller Mistborn. Then there is an era four, which is science fiction, unless I slip in a cyberpunk, near-future science fiction, which I might do. So there might be five, we'll see. I've warned people of that. The last Mistborn series, whichever era it ends up being, is the last thing of the cosmere chronologically. So, it's a long ways off. All the other series have to finish before I can do that.
The other thing that people have to understand is that all of these worlds are connected in something we call the cosmere. It is mostly, right now, just easter eggs. It's important to me that people don't go, "I can't read Mistborn until I've read Elantris," or whatever. No, each series is about that series. There's easter eggs connecting them but you don't need to know it. It's just fun to find out; you can find it all out after the fact.
Are we going to see people traveling between the planets? Yes, you will see space travel between the planets. You have seen it already. One of the stories in the anthology comes from that era, but it's on a planet that doesn't yet have space travel. Sixth of the Dusk takes place chronologically near-end of the cosmere sequence. So yes, you have seen it, and you will see more of it. In Sixth of the Dusk, there are ones they call the Ones Above who have visited and these are people from a planet that you have seen, I won't tell you who, who are visiting.
If you could bring one of your characters off the page and into the real world, which would it be and why?
Sazed. I think he could teach me a thing or two.
In The Stormlight Archive, do we ever find out how the Assassin in White, how he gets the sword?
Yes, that should be next book.
And does it intertwine any more with Warbreaker?
Oh... that you're gonna have to wait a little while for. You're talking about Nightblood. I thought you were talking about the Honorblade. Next book will explain how he got the Honorblade. How he ends up with Nightblood, really how Nightblood got onto the planet, is gonna take a little while. I will work it in. But it's gonna take a while.
Does that sword have a character arc, because it feels--
The sword is important and relevant to multiple series.
It's getting better.
He has learned some things in the intervening years. He learns real slowly.
What was your favorite book you wrote?
...That I've made? Um, it's hard for me to pick my favorite book or my favorite character from my books, because it's kind of like trying to pick my favorite child. And I can't do that. I like them all as I'm working on them.
If the characters were cards, what abilities would you like them to have?
I'd like Davriel to steal cards out of people's hands and then play them. I don't know about Tacenda, though. I've been drawing a blank so far.
What of Davriel had a unique mechanic that read something like; When an opponent casts an instant or sorcery spell, -X loyalty where X is the spell's CMC and exile it with a theft counter (activate any time you could cast an instant), and another that was +2 and return a card exiled with a theft counter to its owner's [hand/graveyard], you may cast a copy of that spell using any coloured mana?
That would be cool, and I would like to see planeswalker cards with odd mechanics. But I think it would be a lot of complicated wording to do something that would, in essence, be very similar to:
Minus loyalty: Look at target player's hand an exile a non-land card from it.
Zero Loyalty: You may play cards exiled with Davriel, and may use black mana as mana of any color to cast those cards.
Maybe Tacenda would have a tap target creatures effect?
That's a pretty good idea.
Vivenna and Vasher Watch the Vote
With this chapter, I wanted to bring together another focus chapter, a bookend—so to speak—with the one earlier in the book where everyone came to the court when Siri was first shown off. If you recall, that was the first time Vivenna saw Vasher, and also the first time we had all of the viewpoint characters together in one location.
Now we're back, kind of. Siri is here in this chapter, but she's pulled away before she can make it all the way to the arena. It's the best I could do, under the circumstances, as I knew I needed to launch us into the "Brandon Avalanche" after this chapter. That meant Siri getting taken captive.
Warbreaker, you were talking about a sequel. Is that for sure?
It is a for sure thing. It's not a direct sequel, meaning some of the characters will be in it, other ones won't. I need to get Nightblood into a certain place.
By the way, allomancers fighting on a train? Very cool.
Oh thank you. I almost didn’t put that scene in, because it’s kind of a cliché, but then I’m like “I’ve gotta have a train fight.” And I’ll say this, Alloy of Law is intended to be slightly more of a pulp novel than Mistborn, and though even though it’s sort of a detective pulp novel, it’s got fun characters and a fun world, because that’s the way I do it. If I let myself do these sort of things, they are done for the pure fun of it, where they may not have fit in another book.
What were your inspiration when you wrote the [Mistborn] series, or for particular characters--
Well, Mistborn-- I passed, honestly, through a fog bank at 70 mph driving from my mom's house, and I'm like, "This looks cool, I've got to use this." That's the first thought I can think of. Feruchemy goes back to being in high school and being an insomniac, being really tired and wishing I could store up my sleep, so I'd be sleepy when I wanted to be sleepy. Kelsier's inspiration was a guy who had been only out for himself, who realized the greater import of doing something.
Other than Hoid, which character have you had the most fun writing?
Wayne.
Did you have the ending planned out for the Reckoners series when you started writing?
Then I build a series around the ideas and themes that worked in the first book.
I had the ending of the first book well in mind. Once I finished it, I sat down and plotted the next two books.
This is very common for me in a series. Writing the first book, making sure I have the characters and ideas down first.
Were there any other Planeswalkers, Gatewatch or otherwise, that you would have liked, or would like to write for, at some point?
I like a lot of the odder, less central characters. Ashiok, Tamiyo. I do really like Elspeth, partially because of her origin, and partially because of her arc.
Thank you for finishing The Wheel of Time. How do you think it influenced your writing style? Did you adjust your writing style through The Wheel of Time to the original writing style of Robert Jordan?
What an excellent question! So, when I first started working on The Wheel of Time, I tried to imitate his voice exactly, and it came off like parody. So, instead, I backed off on trying to imitate every word and instead I tried to match the character voices as best as I could, and this ended up working a lot better. I often say, it’s like the same actors, but a new director. It had huge effect on my writing as well. I had to lift heavy weights, so to speak, and I feel like I came out of The Wheel of Time being much better at juggling a lot of different smaller viewpoints and combining them into a whole.
[Can you write] something interesting about the Seventeeth Shard? ...Or how about this, a character that's in the Seventeenth Shard that we don't know about?
*spoken* ...I can do that--
*written* So... Iyatil was once in the 17th Shard...
Will there ever be a story or book about a character as they move (fully) into a worldhopper. I'm thinking a story like how Khriss went from a protagonist in White Sand to a well known world hopper/scholar of the cosmere.
Yes, you'll see this eventually.
