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Brandon Sanderson
Tindwyl's training
I chose to only show a few sections of Tindwyl training Elend–I figured that these could get laborious if I did too many of them. This isn't "My Fair Lady," after all.
We never get to see Elend learning to duel, for instance. As a writer, I tend to react strongly against things I've seen done too often. That doesn't always make me not include them in books, but sometimes it does. Training a man with the sword, for instance, seems to have been done enough that you can just assume that it happened–and imagine it happening–without me going into detail about Elend’s practice sessions.
This scene that is included, however, is rather important. Elend's new look, and his decision to let his hair get cut, represent the first change we pull off for him: The visual one.
Brandon Sanderson
Updates on Secondary Projects
Elantris and Warbreaker
No change on either one from last year. The plan has always been to look back at Sel and Nalthis once the Wax and Wayne books are done. That's still my intention.
Status: Keep waiting. (Sorry.)
Questioner
Did Adonalsium have more than one Vessel?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
Markus
What do Rosharan sporting events look like outside of Alethkar?
Brandon Sanderson
Most places in Roshar, I would say they have not hit the point in society, quite yet, where mass sporting events are really a thing. Basically, sporting events are martial training during non-periods of war, even in the less martially-focused places. I would have to think about it. I haven't built any. I mean, there are sports that were played non-martially on our Earth, but even the ball game in mesoamerica had some pretty brutal aspects to it, that is almost kind of a way to have a battle when you're not having a battle.
I think that the modern concept of sporting events, the only place you're gonna find that right now in the cosmere is on Scadrial. And Wayne accidentally started a sporting league. I'm not sure if I'll get to that in the next book, or not. If you remember, in the last book, where he was like, "What we need is a way to get everybody drunk at the same time without them being drunk." And there are some implications and ramifications of that for the advent of professional sports, let's say.
Blightsong
(paraphrased)
Is Adolin's inability to form meaningful relationships important to his overall character arch?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yes, it is.
XS-Terrain
Have we seen the new Shardworld yet? ...Obrodai?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
Sofia
Are any of the Lord Ruler's descendants alive during Era 1?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO. A lot of people have asked that. The descendants of the Lord Ruler only are things I've confirmed in Words of Brandon, they are not confirmed in book. RAFO. They did exist, he has had progeny.
Questioner
If Lift went to Nalthis and got Breaths. Could she then eat the local food and turn it around and use it to Awaken?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
Hanna
Do Zahel and Hoid know each other?
Brandon Sanderson
They've met.
Otherwise, RAFO.
Questioner
How many people... What percentage of the population roughly turned into Epics, and is that number in any way significant?
Brandon Sanderson
It is not significant, and it is very rare. Like your average-- Like a big city, after collecting them for such a long time will have, like, maybe 300 Epics. Against a population of probably 2 or 3 hundred thousand. But that's after-- Remember the Epics have survived and the average people have taken heavy casualties. But the number is not significant.
Questioner
I read on your website that, to come to your class, you have to submit a manuscript or something, that you read. Has anybody in your classes published works that you would recommend?
Brandon Sanderson
The way my class works-- By the way, if you can't take the class, which is kind of hard to do since it's in Provo, Utah. I do record my lectures periodically. There's three years of them online. I don't record it every year, but every three years or so I record the lectures and just post them on YouTube. A lot of my students have gone on to write books I would recommend.
Let's see if I can name a few. Jed and the Junkyard War. Which is a really cool middle grade about a kid who goes to a world that's completely a junkyard, and everyone scavenges out of that. It has some really good worldbuilding. That's a good book. Like I said, middle grade targeted, so if you know someone who's, like, eleven or twelve and they want a good one book, that one's great. Charlie [Holmberg] writes great books. I just read Chris Husberg's new book. If you like the epic fantasy stuff, he does a very good job with epic fantasy that deals with religion and politics and things like that. I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody. There are a lot of students who go on to publish things. Janci [Patterson] ...writes teen books with a lot of emotion and problems and messed up lives, trying to sort out messed up lives, short books, and they are fantastic.
Brandon Sanderson
Wayne's adoption of personalities
One thing that I wanted to be aware of when writing Wayne was how he saw himself during these excursions where he becomes someone else. My first instinct was to blend the personality completely, until he was thinking of himself directly as the person he was imitating.
That felt like it went too far. For one thing, it was confusing to have the narrative not refer to him as "Wayne" but as the persona. For another, I didn't want Wayne to go that far—in my mind, he always has control of these things. He's not losing himself in his part; he's always aware of who he really is and what he's doing.
So, in a way, he's a method actor. He reinforces who he is in his head, occasionally giving himself thoughts as the persona to remind himself to stay in character. He lets himself feel the emotions they do, and adopt their mannerisms. But it's a coat he can take off or put back on. It's not a psychosis. That was an important distinction for me to make as a writer.
He does, however, become more and more comfortable as he plays a role. One example of this is how Wayne still thinks of constables as being lazy partway through this, though he slowly loses his prejudice as he plays the role longer, shifting to thinking of them as "constables" instead of "conners" in the later part of the chapter.
Argent
I've been listening to the Graphic Audio The Hero of Ages and just got to the point where Vin meets with Slowswift. While the meeting itself revealed nothing knew, the events after it made me wonder about something. When Vin leaves Slowswift, she burns her bronze to check whether the informant is an Allomancer, and then heads off to meet with Hoid - where, of course, something makes her turn away. Was she still burning bronze at that time? Was Hoid maybe manipulating Investiture in a way unfamiliar to Vin, so her bronze alerted her of something, but because it was such a foreign experience to her, she didn't recognize it for what it was?
Brandon Sanderson
I have to RAFO this one. It's been hard not to spill the beans here, as it's such a small thing, but it has important ramifications. You will have an answer eventually, I promise.
Questioner
I did have a question about Doomslug and M-Bot, where they came from?
Brandon Sanderson
Those are questions that will be answered, I promise.
Questioner
Are they connected?
Brandon Sanderson
That's what we call a RAFO, Read And Find Out. You will find out; I'm not gonna tell you know. You'll find out some of those answers in the next book.
ccstat
Prior to Words of Radiance, when did Wit last get a hug?
Brandon Sanderson
It had been a long time.
cyddenid
How well do Elhokar and Jasnah get on?
Brandon Sanderson
Fine, I would say. This is a bit of a spoiler for the end of Words of Radiance, but you will eventually see that they're the sort of siblings who are both used to doing their own thing and getting their own way. They've both learned to stay out of one another's business. That said, Elhokar is also used to being surrounded by domineering people of various sorts. So having a domineering sister is really nothing different to him.
Questioner
If you're an aquatic civilization on Roshar, would the oceans match the oceans? ...Because of all the spheres...
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never been asked that before. That's an excellent question... I think it would have some weird different manifestation in Shadesmar, depending on their culture, and the way they view the world.
Questioner
I was wondering: Stormlight doesn't cross walls, because people put their spheres outside. But it crosses the glass of the spheres. Is that material dependent or...
Brandon Sanderson
It's thickness dependent. In the third book there's actually a little place where it's mentioned. Some people put it right inside a little, kind of thin rock portion and the Stormlight can still reach it. So I did that quite intentionally.
Jaller
(paraphrased)
The last question I asked was if anyone had tried to include Allomantic metals in cooking.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Brandon said that other than Wax putting steel in whisky, he didn't think so.
Aurimus
As the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms aren't something that exists in real life, is it safe to say that everything within those Realms are comprised of Investiture?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes.
Dancingedge
We have seen that Epics have a compulsion to pick a name for themselves (and have been told that some apparently have very bad taste) but is there also some kind of compulsion for them to be at least somewhat appropriate or for example could Nightwielder also have called himself Sunshine Shimmer (if he were such inclined)? And on a similar note, about when does this need start to manifest itself.
Brandon Sanderson
It is possible for him to have named himself that.
Corban
When are we gonna find out who Luthadel was named after?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO!
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Nicrobursts can only affect the allomantic abilities of twinborn (He followed up by saying THIS MAY CHANGE if he needs it to)
Is Jek-son-son-Vallano important?
Is Jek-son-son-Vallano Szeth-son-son-Vallano's brother?
He is the same person as Szeth; I just changed the name. Sorry, no hidden truth there.
Zas678
How long either before modern day or before the Hierocracy was the Recreance?
Brandon Sanderson
Um...
Zas678
Like 200 years-ish? 100 years-ish?
Brandon Sanderson
Okay, Recreance to Hierocracy is what you're asking?
Zas678
Yes. Or to modern day, I don't care.
Brandon Sanderson
Uh, so Recreance to Hierocracy... Hierocracy is in recent memory. Recreance is not.
Zas678
Okay. So that's probably like a 500-year difference. Something like that.
Brandon Sanderson
Uh, yeah, or more. Hierocracy, though, is recent-ish memory.
Questioner
With Dalinar as a Bondsmith, what does that mean his power is?
Brandon Sanderson
Ah, now that's a good question! That is going to be a R-A-F-O, because you have to read and find out. But I'll give you a card.
Snipexe
Are lighteyes or darkeyes dominant?
Brandon Sanderson
Um... Depends.
Snipexe
Okay, and how do mixes work?
Brandon Sanderson
Different things can happen, but on Roshar, heterochromia is usually indication of a mixed parentage.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
He was asked a question about creating Steelheart and it boiled down to being unique with names and powers is hard, he had a hard time finding things that Marvel and DC haven't done already.
Brandon Sanderson
The Priests Give an Account of the Murder
This should set off red flags, since you saw what happened that night. Vasher didn't kill the man who was tied up, nor did he flee out the way he had come. He went into the tunnels.
Someone else was there that night. I hope that readers can put that together from the discussion; if not, however, the next Lightsong chapter lends some explanations to the occurrence.
KalynaAnne
How high up do they [Lines of Forbiddance] go?
Brandon Sanderson
Thickness determines height.
Questioner
Where did the idea of spren come from?
Brandon Sanderson
Comes from two primary inspirations. One is my perhaps too-much fondness for things classical philosophy. Specifically some of the ideas that Plato talked about with certain Ideals, and the ideal picture of something, the theory of the Forms, and all this stuff. Mixed with the idea of, in the Eastern religions and mythology, you have the idea of the kami, or things like thsi, in which everything has a soul. A rock that you pass has a soul to it. And these two ideas kind of mashing together is where the spren were birthed out of.
I can also point a little bit at The Wheel of Time. One of the things I always liked about The Wheel of Time is, there's a character named Perrin who can smell people's emotions. And as a writer, when I was working on The Wheel of Time, I'm like, "This is so convenient!" Super convenient as a writer. Because it gets really cliched to use the same sort of phrases to indicate emotion. If you're always having somebody smirk as they talk, it starts to really stand out. But since, when I get to Perrin scenes, he can describe emotion in a completely different way, because he was using different senses, almost a synesthesia sort of thing where he would catch scents and know someone's emotion, it was a really cool writing tool. And I think the spren popped a little bit out of that, the ability to show emotion in a different way in my narrative, and that would change society in some (I thought) very interesting ways, made for a really interesting narrative tool for me as a writer.
Pillotsky
What's with the Stormlight Chapter symbols, and their similarity to other Cosmere symbols? I guess this is specifically talking about Kaladin and Shallan's symbols, and their resemblance to an Allomantic symbol and an Aon, respectively.
Is this just showing Roshar's place as significant in the Cosmere? Is there a reason those specific symbols were chosen for those characters? Anything you'd want to share, I'll take.
Brandon Sanderson
The meaning of Kaladin's symbol will be made manifest eventually. The connection to an Allomantic symbol, however, is mostly coincidental. (Both were drawn by Isaac.)
Kogiopsis
Are chasmfiends naturally aggressive?
Brandon Sanderson
Chasmfiends are… Depending on where you find them in their life cycle, can be naturally aggressive.
jamiedgreen
In chapter 37 [of Oathbringer], as Rock is looking for his family after the Voidbringer attack, he notes an arrow fletched with goose feathers.
Was this intentional? Should it be chicken?
Peter Ahlstrom
Horneater language has a word for goose, and they have them in the Peaks. I'm pretty sure geese used to be mentioned another time by Rock in an earlier draft, but that might have been cut.
Oudeis16
I sorta wanna find out what a hemalurgic bindpoint would be and get it tattoo'd there... I asked Brandon once and he vaguely pointed to spots, but it didn't seem like he really considered it canon.
Ben McSweeney
it's one of those things kept purposefully obscure. There's no real benefit in being specific about it. Was a whole discussion we had internally when we did this illustration for the tapletop game. Even there we're being obtuse through style.
Questioner
What is your favorite Aspect to write in /Legion/?
Brandon Sanderson
What is my favorite Aspect to write in Legion. Â It's J.C. by a mile. *laughter* Can you guess who J.C. is based off of? ...J.C. is based off of the actor Adam Baldwin, from his various roles. He's almost always played someone with the initials "J.C."Â Go look it up. That's Jayne from Firefly or from Chuck and things. I just think he is hilarious. In my head that is who would play J.C.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Another thing he talked about was some common themes that appear in fantasy. One of them is that Rennassaince air of the Rise of the Common man. You see that in Mistborn for example. The great writing question of the Cosmere, the underlying theme is, What do men do when given the Power of the Gods? How do they act? What do they do?
Jason Wright
If a kandra eats a bead of lerasium, can he burn it? Alternatively can he gain Allomancy via Hemalurgy?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes on both counts.
Questioner
If Nightblood was on Roshar—for whatever reason—would it be a Shardblade essentially, like would it func--
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. They are exactly the same thing. [...] Nightblood is indeed a Shardblade, basically the exact same thing. Though he is a Shardblade that is twisted and he is a lot more powerful than your standard.
Questioner
First of all, Lord Ruler had his Lerasium beads. Did he use them for feruchemy?
Brandon Sanderson
The Lord Ruler, that's an excellent question, I'm not answer that one.
Questioner
Will you answer if Hoid used it for Feruchemy?
Brandon Sanderson
His bead, he originally got it because he wanted to become an Allomancer.
Are the Parshendi of Honor?
RAFO.
eagle
(paraphrased)
How close are all of the shard worlds in space?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
The cosmere takes place in a dwarf galaxy and all the worlds are close together.
eagle
(paraphrased)
Close as in say 10 light-years?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
More like 50. (He went on to say that Peter has some harder numbers and that it might have to change a little.)
Questioner
Will main characters from books 1-5 [of Stormlight] also show up [in books 6-10]?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. They will be about as prevalent, maybe a little bit more than ones from 6-10 are in these [Stormlight 1-5].
Questioner
I was wondering, like, are we gonna... From the Secret History...
Brandon Sanderson
Uh-huh.
Questioner
The people he met with... Are they the ones from Bands of Mourning, and Are we gonna see them anymore?
Brandon Sanderson
Which people? Nazh and Khriss?
Questioner
Yes.
Brandon Sanderson
Uh, Nazh-- Khriss is in Bands of Mourning. Nazh is referenced in many of the books. He's been in-- uh-- he's been in a lot of them... Just briefly, or annotating maps or things like that.
Questioner
Okay. So are we gonna see them more kind of like Hoid in the future?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, they're-- they are Hoid-esque. Khriss is the one who's been writing all the Ars Arcanum from the beginning, so...
Questioner
If you were going to live in one of your worlds, which one would it be?
Brandon Sanderson
Good question, I would live on Scadrial because they are the closest to the Internet and instant noodles.
Questioner
Did Kaladin’s name come from anywhere in particular?
Brandon Sanderson
No. I'm sure the word paladin was in the back of my head, but it's not like he shares much with like an actual paladin. His name was Merin in the initial version and it was-- it didn't work, he wasn't a Merin and all the fans-- all the readers were like "this name just doesn't work" so I spent years hunting for the right name for him, and that's the one I ended up with. It's really based-- it's Kalak, which is the Storm-- not really the Stormfather but people y'know. Most of the names you'll find are based off one of the Heralds in some way. So he's KALA + DIN, Kalak and din is a suffix.
Isaac Stewart
We do have a meaning for it though. Can I tell them the meaning?
Brandon Sanderson
Ehhh, have we canonized it?
Isaac Stewart
We have canonized it, and we have told people before.
Brandon Sanderson
Then yeah.
Isaac Stewart
It means "Born unto Eternity".
Brandon Sanderson
...I mean, it means that in the same way that names mean something, like my name means-- But when they're naming him that they aren't thinking that. What they are doing is picking one of the Heralds and making a name out of it. But my name technically means "Dweller by the Beacon", but really what it means is "He was the son of Alexander".
ParanoidKiwi
Would you see the word 'realmatic' as a term you've coined that you want to see proliferate, or a concept specific to your stories that you have dominion over?
Brandon Sanderson
It could of course be used by anyone, but I don't really intend for it to proliferate. It's more a word I devised to explain the theories of cosmere magic, and which I intended to remain there.
Questioner
How did you get the idea for The Rithmatist?
Brandon Sanderson
The Rithmatist started with the drawings. I did the little doodles first, of all the defenses and things. And I just started drawing and drawing and drawing. And I drew all those out, and I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna write a book around this idea." I wanted to do something where people played a sport with magic, rather than only using it for, like, war and things.
Questioner
There's a scene where you can see from the perspective of Nan Balat, Shallan's brother, where he's maiming an insect. It's described as soothing his aches. Is that in any way related to how Kaladin feels depressed and down during the Weeping even in his early childhood?
Brandon Sanderson
What's happening to Nan Balat is magically enhanced. What's happening to Kaladin is mostly just chemical depression. Be he is really too young to be diagnosed with depression during some of these events, but he's got the seeds in there. So Kaladin is not magically depressed. Kaladin is just legitimatly a person with depression. Nan Balat... What's up with him is... ah... being exaggerated by certain forces moving in on Roshar. (last bit is a bit indistinctive)
Peter Ahlstrom
Rights to the Reckoners books do not include the entire multiverse. (Which I have argued could also be construed to include the Alcatraz books and The Rithmatist!)
WeiryWriter
I'd be curious to hear your argument for that. Is it just that a true quantum multiverse would contain all possible iterations (even weird and wacky ones like Alcatraz and Rithmatist) or is there some underlying mechanical commonality we don't necessarily know about?
Peter Ahlstrom
It's only because the plans for this as-yet-unnamed multiverse all involve different versions of Earth in some type of crisis. And that description fits both The Rithmatist and the Alcatraz books.
Brandon does plan some of these Earths to be pretty wacky.
WeiryWriter
Since you mention its namelessness, will it actually get a name at some point?
Peter Ahlstrom
It would surprise me if it didn't get a name eventually.
vim_vs_emacs
Had never heard about this, but this fits so well! Is this the first time you're confirming it? Or is there WoB on this as well?
Peter Ahlstrom
What I said above was that I have argued for this to be the case. It doesn't mean that Brandon agrees.
