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YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 ()
#1001 Copy

Rexozord

Did Shallan kill Tyn with Pattern or Testament?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna let the fanbase theorize on it a little longer. I think this one is pretty clear, but I'm gonna let you guys work on those timelines, and eventually we will release our timeline, and we can see how well you did. But this is one of the things I expected people to theorize on once the book came out, and I would like to see how good a job I did. If there are holes across these ten years of writing this series that I did not consider, that you guys find, cause you totally can do that. I am definitely not flawless when it comes to these things.

Ben McSweeney AMA ()
#1003 Copy

Questioner

Who, in your opinion, writes the best fantasy today?

Ben McSweeney

Until recently, I would have said Terry Pratchett, without hesitation. People mistake his books for mere comic fantasy, but that man had as sharp a wit as any Algonquin and more heart than a Care Bear Stare. He knew how to turn a phrase like a tango turns the hips. On more that one occasion, no exaggeration, that goofy old bearded bastard actually made me cry.

To reach out and touch another human through time and space and make them actually feel something... that's good writing.

But he's moved on, and there's plenty of great authors at their height today, so let's stick to the contemporary.

For pure liquid prose, probably Rothfuss.

For interesting concepts, I'm digging Guy Gavriel Kay. China Mieville is great as well.

For action, I'm pretty into my man Brandon. Butcher does a good job with that also. Larry Corriea knows how to write a rocking fight.

Joe Abercrombie is the first author I've read who took those boring battle maps with the arrows and blocks and made them into a gripping, visceral saga of honor and commitment and betrayal and vindication.

Dan Abraham is the man who made a story about a rogue banker into one of the best epics since Ice met Fire. That right there is a Copperfield-level trick.

General Reddit 2016 ()
#1004 Copy

isotopes_ftw

I've always pictured Rock and the Unkalaki / Horneaters as Pacific Islanders. Are they based on Pacific Islanders despite their red hair?

Brandon Sanderson

Their linguistics and some parts of their culture are based on Pacific Islanders, though their physical characteristics are not.

GenCon 2017 ()
#1005 Copy

Questioner (paraphrased)

If I wanted to Hemalurgically acquire a power from First of the Sun, which metal would the spike need to be?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

This is going to be pretty complicated, but several metals would work.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Would it involve Connection between the person being spiked and the bird?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Well it would be even harder than on Roshar, where you need to somehow spike the spren and also the Radiant. You would need to spike the bird and steal the power, but also spike the person and steal Connection.

The Well of Ascension Annotations ()
#1006 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fifteen

The actions of this wildman here seem strangely logical to me for some reason. Everything he did simply felt right. Sometimes–well, most of the time–character work that way for me. It makes me worry, actually, that sometimes the characters are too clichéd. After all, if their actions and mannerisms come that easily to me, then maybe I'm not stretching enough.On the other hand, I feel that the characters act naturally because I understand them. If I really understand a character, then won't everything the do feel right because. . .well, that's just what they would do.

State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
#1007 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Updates on Main Projects

Stormlight

It's time to take a little breather. I've begun working on the outline for book four, which is kind of a mess right now because of things I've been moving around between books as I write. My goal this year for Stormlight will be to have rock-solid outlines for books four and five done by December 2018.

My current projection is that I'll spend half of my time writing Stormlight, and half of it doing other things. (I spoke last year about just how big an undertaking a Stormlight book is–and why I can't write them back to back.) I realize that many of you would prefer to have only Stormlight, but that would drive me insane–and drive the series into the ground.

I think this is a realistic schedule. So, I'm giving myself 2018 to work on Skyward (hopefully a trilogy) and other projects. Then on January 1st, 2019, I go back to Stormlight refreshed and excited to be back in Roshar, and I write on book four until it's done. (With a 2020 or 2021 release, depending on how the writing goes.) I do hope to find time for a novella, like Edgedancer, that we can put out between books. This one is tentatively called Wandersail.

For those who don't know, The Stormlight Archive is a ten-book series composed of two five-book arcs.

Status: Writing outline for book four.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As ()
#1012 Copy

dvoraen

One question I've seen arisen about Taravangian I'm hoping for clarification on: Is he basically retreating from public eye whenever he's not having a "good" (smarter) day?

Navani notes in the chapter that he's dispensed with the doddering old man act, but we the readers know he's just as likely to have a not-smart-but-emotional day where he's not allowed to enact policy, and that could be on the day meetings with the monarchs occur. How is he managing his condition with being so much more in the public eye now?

Brandon Sanderson

There is more help with this in his perspectives, so I'll leave this at a RAFO for now.

General Reddit 2020 ()
#1013 Copy
medallions.jpg spiritwebqs.jpg

Doc_John

Hey, you've mentioned before that for the Lord Ruler to be able to be a Mistborn and a Feruchemist he had to alter his spiritweb in some way because a person can't normally hold all 32 powers. What about a Mistborn Ferring? Would it be possible for someone born with all 16 powers of Allomancy to also be born with a Ferring power? What about a Ferring Misting? Thanks

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible now, when it once wasn't, but would be very unlikely.

Doc_John

Just as getting a Mistborn nowadays is very unlikely but that hasn't stopped people from trying ;) ;)

Follow up, having past a certain number of medallions doesn't work currently in world. Is this because of this same issue? Or is it more of a technical hurdle with the medallion?

Brandon Sanderson

The core root is the same issue, but it's not insurmountable with technological improvements.

General Reddit 2020 ()
#1014 Copy

Kinolee

Is Raboniel lying about the composition of the housing for the ruby in this dagger, or is she telling the truth? Is it really a silver-nickel alloy, or is is it something else (possibly nicrosil)?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO this. Interesting conclusions and theories in that post above. Very interesting indeed.

The Alloy of Law Annotations ()
#1017 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Five

Koloss-blooded

I've mentioned before, obliquely in interviews, that Sazed transformed the koloss during his ascension. Part of what he did restored their sentience to more human levels, and he changed the way they interact with Hemalurgy. (And that's all I'll say about it for now.)

Anyway, yes, it's possible for someone to be a koloss-blood. I'm reserving an explanation for precisely what this is, and how it works, for a future book.

Shadows of Self Lansing signing ()
#1018 Copy

Questioner

So during the chase scene in Shadows of Self, it seems to imply that conservation of momentum is...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Allomancy follows the law of conservation of momentum, yes. 

Questioner

So that is intentional?

Brandon Sanderson

It is, it does follow the laws of conservation of momentum. That was very intentional.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 ()
#1019 Copy

Questioner

What is the best advice you got from a beta reader or editor on your female characters?

Brandon Sanderson

Stop treating them like a role and start treating them like a person. Most of the times when guys write girls poorly, it is because they are saying  "Well, this is the X. This person's role in the story is X," and then they make the person not exist beyond that. Every character, regardless of gender, should have their own motives, passions, and you should be able to know what they were going to do with their life if the plot hadn't smashed into them, and that can go a long way toward helping with that.

That was the big thing for me, was not writing anyone to a role... making everyone the hero of their own story. That was the big thing, but it was a process over time, figuring out treating people like characters instead of roles. That's kind of nebulous, right? Tell them to read a bunch of books by women, because a lot of them haven't, and that's part of the reason they're doing it poorly.

Oh and here's another big thing. The first way of being sexist in your writing involves writing people into roles, right? Into stereotypes. The next thing that people generally do, you'll see this a lot in cinema right now, is take the underrepresented group, or the token female or something, and make them awesome, so that they don't actually have any sort of-- they're just good at everything. Right? That's the next level of doing something wrong, and the third is where you're like, "Wait a minute. Let's make everybody kind of quirky and interesting in their own way, rather than putting anyone on a pedestal," and things like that.

And it's a process for all of us. You'll notice that like in the Mistborn books... I was so focused on making sure I had a strong female lead, that there is like no other women in whole the book. And that's a really common mistake... But you just get better at it the more you write.

Skyward Seattle signing ()
#1020 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Someday... once I'm sure everything that it would spoil has been released, I will release [Way of Kings Prime] so you can read it. You can probably see that, if you read Stormlight, a chunk of the book belonging to Taln moved to Szeth, instead, who was a character in the first book but had a slightly different plot. Eventually, we will get to the whole story, though.

Manchester signing ()
#1022 Copy

BlackYeti

In Words of Radiance, we have Vasher showing up... One of his aliases on Nalthis is Kalad, which is very similar to the name of one of the Heralds on Roshar. So I was wondering how far back this connection between him and Roshar goes.

Brandon Sanderson

It goes pretty far back, in fact when I wrote Way of Kings, the 2002 version; he was a main character and was Kaladin's swordmaster. I wrote Warbreaker to jump back and write out his backstory, Vasher's. So to me Warbreaker actually came after Way of Kings. But the connection goes back pretty far, further than you would first guess.

BlackYeti

Did he actually come from Nalthis and not Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm not going to actually answer that one-- Well I can answer that: yes he does come from Nalthis. It's pretty obvious that the way that the Breath's working, the reason he moved is because it's easier to get Stormlight than Breaths, and Stormlight can fuel being a Returned like him. And so yes, he was born on Nalthis. Becoming Returned without being born on Nalthis would be really hard.

Oathbringer London signing ()
#1023 Copy

Questioner

Will you ever make a book based in Shadesmar?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I will, actually. There's one that I've plotted in Silverlight. Whether I'll be able to write it as a whole book, or whether I'll be able to do it just as a novella I'm not sure yet. But I do actually have a plotted-out story with Khriss as the protagonist in Shadesmar.

General Reddit 2015 ()
#1028 Copy

MisterEight

I really wish there was a book sales equivalent to box office mojo. Would be super interesting to compare the numbers more in depth between super popular authors like yourself and less known/new authors.

Brandon Sanderson

There is, actually. It's called bookscan, and is generally only available to insiders. (But if you can find someone with access, you can track books back for two decades of sales info.)

Problem is, it doesn't track ebooks. (Because Amazon doesn't release them.) I wish this info were more public too, personally. But I can try to guess a kind of rough estimate, based on what I've seen. (This is for first year ebook/hardcover combined, and only applies to fiction books, and not those by a celebrity.)

On the chopping block: 5k (This is a book that did modestly well, but is probably overall losing money for the publisher. Some would keep publishing an author at this level, depending on expectations of growth, award recognition, or niche interest.)

Solid seller: 5k-10k (This is a book most publishers will always be pleased with, and will continue to pay a decent advance for. This author may not make a healthy living on their book unless they can do more than one a year, but will probably always have a writing career.)

High midlister: 10k-20k (This is an author who is well known in their genre, is a dependable seller, and has a dedicated--but small-fanbase. If you can find a writer with a number of books on the shelf, but they don't chart often on the NYT list with new books, they are probably in this category.)

Genre Bestseller: 20k-50k (This is a book that charts on the bestseller lists without hitting the #1 spot. Authors who hit this consistently set trends in the industry, are well known in their genres, and are pulling low six figure advances. Breaking out of this level and into the next takes serious luck, even in a field which already requires a lot of luck.)

Dominant Genre Bestseller: 50k-300k (These are the books that hit #1 on the bestseller list. Authors who do this consistently with each new book are generally at the top of their field, and are probably what you consider "super popular" in your post. But they--we, as this is where I am--are small potatoes compared to the next levels.)

Breakout Bestseller: 300k-1mil (These are books that "break out" of their genre, or are the top of larger genres, like thrillers. Teen books with a lot of momentum can hit here too. Books in this category sell in airports or walmarts to the general public for months, as opposed to those in the category below, which sell really, really well for one week--but only because fans buy their books week one, rather than waiting. I've outsold Dan Brown and John Grisham...for one week. The next week, they trounced me.)

Movie Books: 1-5mil (These are books from one of the other categories that have a film come out recently. Also, the tail end of the breakout bestsellers and the beginnings of phenomenon books. It gets really blurry in here as we're dealing with such large swaths of numbers. Game of Thrones books are in here, I believe. Note that they basically jumped over the category between, which often happens in sf/f when you get a film or tv show.)

Phenomenon books: 5-20+mil (These are books that somehow SUPER break the mold, for reasons nobody really understands. DaVinci Code. Harry Potter. Twilight.)

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As ()
#1029 Copy

thrillofdarkness

Is there going to be any Szeth in the book? I mean as far as main characters go his screen time seems to me to have been ridiculously short until now.

I guess this is intentional on your part, to retain the mystery surrounding him and set him up somehow for book 5.

Brandon Sanderson

Afraid there's not a TON of Szeth. He does have a viewpoint, but it's an interlude. Other than that, he appears in several chapters and does a some very relevant things to the plot, but always through other viewpoints. You'll have to wait for Book Five for a larger chunk of Szeth, I'm afraid.

You're right, I've intentionally been holding him back. I worried that too much Szeth too soon would undermine his flashbacks. I think it was wise; you'll see in this book that though the Venli flashbacks are still interesting, they're not as compelling as ones like Dalinar's, since you basically know Venli's entire backstory by this point. Just not the details. There's not a lot to explore or reveal that I can't do just as easily in her mainline viewpoints.

I was careful in the outlines to front-load the flashbacks for the characters I knew would have a lot of screen time. Szeth has always been intended to get the fewest viewpoints of the main five characters.

Kitchen_Abrocoma_297

So Szeth won't be the one most prominently featured character in the main timeline in book 5, right?

Brandon Sanderson

He will have a larger part than he's had in most previous books.

Kitchen_Abrocoma_297

I am curious...how Szeth's role in book 3 could have played out if he were the focus character. Would his role increase or stay the same?

Or Dalinar's role in book 5. Will those big chunks of his story still happen in book 5 or they were moved into book 3?

Brandon Sanderson

If Szeth had been the focus, we would have had all the stuff with his homeland in three--and then had to wait until 5 to get Dalinar's flashbacks. It COULD have worked, and by doing it this way, I had to kind of keep Szeth off the center stage in book four. But I am confident it was the right choice, as delaying longer on Dalinar would have felt like a worse stretch.

Kitchen_Abrocoma_297

Oh. So book 5 main timeline narrative for Dalinar will still happen because you moved only flashbacks?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, the main storyline stayed basically the same. You will see in Book Five why my initial feelings were that Dalinar's flashbacks would work there. Szeth's joining the Skybreakers would also have meshed well with his flashbacks, but I have instead enhanced the trip back to Shinovar to be longer instead.

Note, however, that a LOT of things move around during writing. The Book Two Kaladin climax was originally outlined to happen at Urithiru, for example.

LordColms

Just curious, if you think that Venli doesn't have as much potential for the flashbacks as the others then why did you choose to focus an entire book on her?

Brandon Sanderson

In the original outlines, I hadn't intended to go into as much depth as I ended up doing with Eshonai/Venli in books two and three. I realized quickly into writing the series that I couldn't wait that long to humanize the Parshendi. So I put a lot of the mystery of their culture and their motives into books two and three.

That led me to deciding in this book to split the flashbacks between them, as I felt it added more variety to the flashbacks--as I had sacrificed some of the novelty that was originally going to distinguished the flashbacks for this book.

Idaho Falls signing ()
#1032 Copy

Truthwatcher_17.5

Are we ever gonna see more names for specific types of Twinborns?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I intend to do more of those as the Eras progress. There are so many to name that I don't know that I'll ever release a chart of all of them, and partially I don't want to canonize names because I might decide something sounds cooler for when I actually use that person's powers in a book.

Firefight San Francisco signing ()
#1033 Copy

Questioner

I was reading stuff online about like a Mistborn videogame?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, we'll still working on it. It's taking much longer than we thought. The developer, that producer of the game and I had chosen, they, ah, had a falling out and split and so we had to start over from scratch and that's what really threw us for a loop. We then took it to a really prestigious one-- game company that I love and they considered it for a long time, but it turned out that they just didn't have the time and couldn't do it. So now we are kind of back to square one finding a third group to do it.

Orem Signing ()
#1034 Copy

Snipexe

Does Hoid's Lightweaving produce light?

Brandon Sanderson

*After a very long pause* He has used different types of Lightweaving, or he has access to different types of Lightweaving.

Snipexe

Does the Yolish Lightweaving produce light?

Brandon Sanderson

Yolish Lightweaving could produce light.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#1036 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Denth's Speed

Yes, Denth is inhumanly fast. He's a Returned, after all, and has all of the physical enhancements that come with that. Even when he's chosen not to manifest most of them, he's still got an edge, just like Vasher does.

How do they hide that they're Returned? Well, it comes down to mastery of their ability to change their appearance. They can't shape-shift entirely; they can just alter some things about their appearance. They can change their weight, their hair color, and things like that at will. Vasher doesn't do this often, but Denth has been known to use it as a disguise. The problem, after you do this once and someone realizes it, your nature becomes very suspect.

They have learned to suppress their divine Breath. This allows them to hide, but they must be careful never to give away all of their Breath. Denth has been a Drab before—he's not completely lying—but never for longer than a few days. And his divine Breath is always there, suppressed. So he doesn't know what it's like to be a true Drab, which is why in this chapter he says he doesn't think it changes you that much. He's never felt it.

Shadows of Self Chicago signing ()
#1037 Copy

Volratho (paraphrased)

Humans on Scadrial have Investiture of both Preservation and Ruin inside of them.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Volratho (paraphrased)

Feruchemically, does storing Investiture in Nicrosil store this connection to Ruin/Preservation/Harmony?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You are on the right track, and asking the right questions but RAFO.

Idaho Falls signing ()
#1038 Copy

Questioner

Are you cameo'ing as a [Seventeenth Shard] character, worldhopper, in any of your books?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, I haven't really wanted to do that, I'm not sure why. If we did movies, I would want cameos. But I haven't cameo'd myself in the books. I was tempted more in Wheel of Time than in my own books. But, I think since we already have this connection thing happening with Hoid and stuff, I don't want to imply that I am Hoid or something like this, if that makes sense. Clive Cussler did that, it was always fun to find him in the book. I don't know, it's never been something that I wanted to do.

Questioner

There's just kind of a Where's Waldo for him.

Brandon Sanderson

When I first started this, I wanted Hoid to be a real thing, so I was putting this in. I feel like if I started doing cameos for me also, one would be silly and one would not be, and it'd kind of confuse the--

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
#1039 Copy

A_Dunyain

This is just a stab based on perceived hints, but is Yolen the most "Earth-like" planet in the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Scadrial is, actually. Sel isn't too far off either. Yolen has some strangeness to it. Two competing ecologies, and some strange geography. But I have wavered on how to convey all of this, so none of it is set in stone yet.

Steelheart Portland signing ()
#1040 Copy

komekoro

Wayne mentions a nervous habit that gets cut off, can you tell us what that nervous habit is?

lunarubato

Please.

Brandon Sanderson

Alright, give me the full context of this please...

lunarubato

It was after the battle on the train, and Wax basically… Wax basically says "There's worse things than being genuine. Why, before blah blah blah, before Wayne would, Wayne used to basically get so nervous that he'd start…" And then Wayne cuts him off.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, okay. Yeah, Wayne had a really, really, deep stutter when he was younger, and that, I believe, is what I was referencing.

lunarubato

Yay.

Kogiopsis

That's adorable.

Brandon Sanderson

So if you can imagine poor Wayne and his poor stutter.

Firefight Atlanta signing ()
#1043 Copy

Questioner

What happened to Alcatraz?

Brandon Sanderson

What happened to Alcatraz. Well he almost got sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of Evil Librarians but he survived to write his autobiography-- No, you mean the books. I wrote the fifth book this summer after researching for The Aztlanian long enough that I realized I have to do more research before I can finish it. So I stopped, knew that I wanted to write another middle-grade, so I stopped and wrote Alcatraz 5 and gave it to Tor. They're planning to publish it next year. They're going to start with Alcatraz 1 in January with new art and things like that, publish those first five and do the sixth book sometime in June-- Or fifth book in June is what I think. So republish the first four and then publish the fifth.

When Worlds Collide 2014 ()
#1044 Copy

Khyrindor (paraphrased)

Are there Surges that could be considered as God Surges, like the God metals on Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Khyrindor (paraphrased)

Progression and Adhesion, perhaps?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, but they could be considered as such.

General Reddit 2013 ()
#1046 Copy

wesem

Just realized what Shardblades remind me of..

In my head, they remind me a lot of Keyblades from Kingdom Hearts. The blade appearing out of nowhere when you hold out your hand seems rather similar. They're also both highly coveted in their universes and for both types each blade is different from the next (I think). Just wanted to see if anyone else noticed this or if I'm just crazy and have had way too much time to think waiting for Words of Radiance.

Brandon Sanderson

Shardblades aren't inspired by keyblades specifically, though there is a core inspiration that might be shared by both myself and the creators. While I did play the first kingdom hearts game when it came out, the first draft of The Way of Kings was well under way when the game was released.

However, I did play all of the final fantasy games--I had the first on original Nintendo, so get off my lawn, you kids. The origin of Shardblades relates to fantasy games and art in general, and the concept of the stylized sword which is also horribly impractical.

In a lot of my writing, I react toward or against the fantasy archetypes of my youth in the 80s and 90s. When designing the Stormlight Archive, one of the things I asked myself was, "Can I make a situation where these oversized, over-stylized blades are actually practical? Why in the world would you need a weapon like that? And how do you actually use one?"

Making the blades summonable seemed one of the only ways that carrying one around would be reasonable.

Miscellaneous 2012 ()
#1047 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Okay. The overarching story of all of my novels. I wrote thirteen novels in different worlds, all with their own different magic systems and own characters. But secretly I loved the grand epic, and so I started connecting all these worlds during my unpublished era, and telling a hidden epic behind them all that I was setting up for.

Well, eventually I sold book number six, and embedded in book number six was a bunch of this stuff for the hidden epic, of course, and six is actually one of the ones where I first started doing this. My first five were kind of throwaway novels. It was six, seven, eight, and nine that were really involved in this. Six was Elantris; seven was a book called Dragonsteel; eight was a book called White Sand; and nine was a book called Mythwalker, which eventually became Warbreaker, which I eventually rewrote and released as Warbreaker. So that four-book sequence was very ingrained in this kind of hidden story behind the stories. When I started publishing these books, I just kept it going, the hidden story, the hidden epic.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 ()
#1049 Copy

Timothy Ketting

If Adolin originally didn't have a significant role, was there another character that you planned to have a larger role, but changed your mind?

Brandon Sanderson

No. There's nobody whose role has been diminished. I mean, part of the reason the books are longer than I thought they would be is… Everyone likes to throw ( justifiably so) the quote of me where I'm l like “I think book one is going to be the longest,” right? I'm like “I don't think the others are going to be this long.” Well, turns out that adding another main character is one of the things that makes books go longer. When I'm like, “well I need to give a nice arc to Adolin in every book now,” and suddenly giving a nice arc to Adolin in every book means that we got tens of thousands of more words that we gotta write in every book. That's not the only reason, but that is one of the reasons why the entire series is longer, is because I did that.

Nobody's been diminished. I've only found room to expand, which I knew would happen. That's why I built the interludes the way I did, and why I moved things like Horneater to novellas—I do not want the side stories to overcome the main story. It's part of the reason we've got two bricks of five books, rather than one ten book arc—I worried that at that length, it would involve spinning of heels, rather than coming to actual conclusions and climaxes.