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Firefight Chicago signing ()
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Questioner

Is there any possibility of the novellas being released in like a bound--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, we will eventually do-- Tor really wants to do a collection of all the cosmere novellas. So like... *Brandon stumbles over the words* Shadows for Silence, The Emperor's Soul, Sixth of the Dusk. But I was trying to say Shadows for Silence but I almost said Shadows of Self, that's going to be a problem for me going forward, using "shadows" in two. But all of those in one collection is what we're probably going to see.

Words of Radiance Washington, DC signing ()
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Questioner (paraphrased)

In order to use magic from one world on another world, do they need a bit of [the first world's] Shard with you?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It helps a lot. But there are other ways to do it. What's going on in the Cosmere is people have 3 sets of DNA. They have Physical DNA, Spiritual DNA, and Cognitive DNA. Their Spiritual DNA is what encodes the magic system into them, their Investiture. So if you can find a way to rewrite your Spiritual DNA, you can do all kinds of funky things. That's what Hemalurgy does. It rips off a piece of someone else's soul, staples it to yours. So if you went with a Hemalurgic spike to the right place, ripped off a piece of someone's soul and stapled it to yourself, you could create short circuits that will let you do all kinds of goofy stuff.

BYU Writing Class Wrap-up 2017 ()
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Just another guyn

If a Shard were to wield Nightblood more directly, like Odium's champion and Odium channeling his power through Nightblood, would we see a lot of world ending stuff from that?

Brandon Sanderson

That-- What you just described would work no differently from a Knight Radiant wielding Nightblood

Just another guyn

Okay. And that would be scary powerful?

Brandon Sanderson

No. No, they'd feed off the Investiture and eventually would either run out or be drawing it so quickly that it would dissolve the person's soul.

Just another guyn

So souls are made of Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, in the cosmere, souls are. So you'd have a little while, but eventually the person would just die and get eaten.

Oathbringer Chicago signing ()
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Questioner

In Sixth of the Dusk, are the Ones Above Scadrians who invented faster-than-light travel? 

Brandon Sanderson

You know, I haven't-- I danced around answering that one, just because I don't quite want to get into it yet. I like the Ones Above being somewhat mysterious. But I have said it is someone you know, right? It is part of the cosmere in the very future. So you're not going to be surprised, because there's a limited number of options. But I haven't said-- 'cause I might do more in that world, and I just want to leave them mysterious for now. 

Firefight release party ()
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Questioner

Where did you get the idea of gloryspren and fearspren showing up when people feel certain emotions?

Brandon Sanderson

So spren in The Way of Kings where did I come up with these ideas for things that physically manifest people's emotions. So I honestly think the earliest seed of this, years and years ago, was reading Perrin in The Wheel of Time where he can smell people's emotion and I thought that having an actual different sense to recognize emotion was so cool I think that is what planted the seed in the back of my brain. The other thing that that is mashing-up with though is kind of Shinto ideas, because I was relying a lot on some Eastern philosophy when I was building Roshar and The Way of Kings. And the Shinto believe that everything has a soul and a spirit, a kami as they call it, and things like this and wanting to expand that into not just the rock but your emotions have a soul and they manifest and things like that. And then I was working in the cosmere and all this stuff but in the end I think it is a mash-up of those two concepts. Wanting a cool way, a different way, a way that changes society that emotions play out mixed with this idea of the kami and the Shinto beliefs.

C2E2 2024 ()
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Questioner

My question is around connections between corrupted Investiture on different planets. We have the shroud; we have Midnight Essence; we have the nightmares; and we have Nightblood. All of them have, like, oozy black smoke. Are they all connected somehow with the corrupted Investiture of Odium, Ambition...?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. The question is: all of these different manifestations (we've got the Midnight Essence, we've got the shroud, we've got Nightblood), are they connected? Are they all related in some way to Odium or Ambition? The answer is no to the second.

When I was building the Cosmere, one of the things that I knew is that I wanted to explore magic systems really in depth. And in order to do that, I built fundamental principles by how magic, Investiture, would manifest. And I wanted it to be consistent. For instance, I wanted the rules... if you're making illusions in one world, I wanted those illusions to behave a lot the same way that they would on other worlds. So I built these fundamental principles that I build up from. And one of those fundamental principles is about Investiture that is trying to become alive and is being held back by something. And that is where you get Midnight Essence sort of things. It's, like, one step from being able to become self-aware, but it's being held back. And there's even, kind of, some frustration in there, as much as something not truly self-aware can have. So if you watch for that theme, you'll see it more and more.

Holiday signing ()
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little wilson

Are Trellism and Trelagism the same religion?

Brandon Sanderson

Uuhheha, that's a RAFO too.

little wilson

Is it the same god in both?

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that… who Trell is and what happened is a matter of some interest in the cosmere and amusement to me.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 3 ()
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Kael_the_Adventurer

The Lost Metal announcement blurb mentions "offworlders" and factors "from the larger Cosmere"; are there any particular books or series that you would recommend be read or reread before reading The Lost Metal?

Brandon Sanderson

If I said what they would be it might be giving too many spoilers.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 ()
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Nico Bufasassa

If everyone in the Cosmere begins to understand that there is space travel, does that change the distance needed to travel around in Shadesmar considering it's made up of the beliefs of the people?

Brandon Sanderson

What's going to happen is it is going to make the travel distances longer. However, people cannot conceive the immensity of space. The amount different it's going to make it is not going to be so vast that it's insurmountable. It's not going to come one fractional piece of what the actual distance is.

Shardcast Interview ()
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Argent

The Lost Metal Ars Arcanum calls Hemalurgic decay a thing of the past. The term has been used to describe the loss of power in spikes outside of bodies, as well as the small amount of power that is lost at the moment a spike is created. Which one of those things no longer happens?

Brandon Sanderson

The first one, the decay of spikes outside of a body. They have figured out how to make that no longer a thing.

Argent

So it's still a thing that happens in the cosmere, they just know how to avoid that completely?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

FanX 2018 ()
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Questioner

I love Emperor's Soul. Are you going to expand that into more in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

I have an idea for a sequel. But I'm timid about writing it because the first one turned out so well, and I don't want to Lucas it. So we'll see.

State of the Sanderson 2019 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Part Three: Updates on Major Projects The Stormlight Archive

Book Four has a release date next year on November 17th. I allowed Tor to set this because I’m confident that we’ll meet it—so we should be in good shape for that release, barring some catastrophic responses that I haven’t anticipated during alpha/beta reads. The tentative title for the book is still Rhythm of War, but because of the way Stormlight books work (where each book title is an in-world book title as well), I can’t 100% say that will be the title in this case until the book is finished.

When Book Four is done, we’ll have only one more book in the first Stormlight sequence. As I’ve been saying for years, Book Five is one of the major end points of the series. I anticipate writing that in 2022, for a 2023 release. Yes, I know, many of you wish those gaps were shorter. It’s turned out that a three-year gap is best for my writing psychology, so we’re going to stick with that for now. And, since they’re each as long as four regular books, it’s like getting a Stormlight book faster than one per year—except you have to save them up to read in batches.

STATUS: All systems go!

Mistborn

I had hoped to squeeze in Wax and Wayne Four this year, but falling behind a month (plus the aggressive tour schedule) made that impossible. I sometimes forget just how much touring takes out of me—which is partly why there wasn’t a Starsight tour. (And partly why I put that question in the survey about how to make book tours a little less exhausting.)

I consider Wax and Wayne’s final book to be imperative to finish before I start Stormlight Five. Starting in July, once Stormlight Four is fully revised and turned in, I’ll have two main projects demanding my attention. Wax and Wayne four is one of those, Skyward is the other. (I might need to get to Skyward Three before it, FYI, depending on how much Stormlight burns me out on epic fantasy. But both Skyward Three and Wax and Wayne Four should be finished by the end of the year next year.)

After that, it will be time for me to be looking to Era Three of Mistborn—which will be written in the years between Stormlight Five and Stormlight Six.

STATUS: Wayne is threatening to beat me up if I don’t get to this soon. 2021 or maybe 2022 release for the final book.

Skyward

Book Two is out, if you somehow missed that fact. I’d like to say thank you to everyone for indulging me so much on my side projects. Starsight was a huge success, even without me touring for it. These books are really fun to write, and good for my writing as they allow me to relax between big Cosmere projects. The fact that all of you are willing to embrace and read them is quite gratifying. One of my biggest fears becoming an author was that I’d get locked into doing only one thing, then get burned out on it.

As you can see from the last 15 years of my publishing career, I am interested in a lot of different things. The fact that you’ve been willing to read about Spin, Jerkface, and Doomslug as readily as you do about Kaladin, Dalinar, and Shallan is wonderful to see. Thank you so much for making this new series a success.

STATUS: Should write Book Three sometime late next year. 2021 release is likely.

Secret Project #4 Reveal and Livestream ()
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simon_thekillerewok

In your first livestream, you told us to watch for your take on the Monte Cristo revenge narrative. Is that Secret Project 4?

Brandon Sanderson

It is not.

simon_thekillerewok

If you can't say, could you at least tell us whether or not it is going to be in the Cosmere and whether or not it is in one of the projects we already know about.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO

Dragonsteel 2023 ()
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Questioner

Now that Skyward and Reckoners are over, and it seems like Apocalypse Guard is never gonna get written, is there anything you can tell us about the connection between their multiverses?

Brandon Sanderson

I've kinda been playing loose and freaky. Multiverses are annoying, right? When I wrote Steelheart, I realized, "Ah, multiverses are annoying." And the more I worked on Apocalypse Guard, the more I realized I didn't want to lean into this. And I'm glad I didn't, because as certain media properties have shown us, multiverses are just real hard to juggle and keep any sense of weight or value to the actions of the characters. And so, one of the reasons I didn't want to release Apocalypse Guard is I want to rethink all of that. I do prefer things like I did in Frugal Wizard, where I'm like, "There are certain stable realities. It's not an infinite number of realities; there's an infinite number of possible realities, but some of them are solid. Some of them are real." So you can find alternate versions of yourself, just not an infinite number of them.

So that's one of the places I was going with that. And Apocalypse Guard did lean into this and start to progress that idea. I think one way you could do a multiverse (kind of have your cake and eat it, too) is just be like, "There's not four billion versions of you. There might be seven." And things like that, that are what we call stable, and "real." Which allows you to kind of play with that idea of multiple versions of yourself without everything going out the window in terms of... You know, you guys have seen Rick and Morty. It doesn't matter if we die or if we mess up the plan. There's another one over there. We can only do this an infinite number of times. So, that was one of the things I was playing with, there.

And then, multiverses are just, like, so overdone. Everything Everywhere All At Once did the best one, and we don't need to even try. But that movie is proof you can still have emotional connection and power in a story that is about alternate versions of yourself. And so it is possible.

So what's the connection? I do kind of have in my head that each of these non-Cosmere properties kind of are on the continuum with this multiverse and are shades of one another, and Apocalypse Guard was gonna kind of be jumping between them. But whether or not we'll get to that, I don't know, because I certainly don't want to have Skyward be ruined by the existence of multiverses. I like how Skyward turned out; the whole series, I'm really proud of. So that's the question mark in the back of my head.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 6 ()
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Questioner

Why did you make Design hot?

Brandon Sanderson

This is what she wanted in order to explore the cosmere. She spent a lot of time making people’s brains break, and she wanted to get a different perspective on how human beings interact with her.

Barnes & Noble B-Fest 2016 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

[Aether of Night] is two halves of good books, kind of shuffled together. Half of this good book and half of this good book shuffled together. The Shakespearean farce, which is fun and, kind of silly, and this guy who's in not in a position to lead... and the deep worldbuilding war novel with the cosmere magic. And it's like, "We're going to shuffle these together and see how it turns out."

Questioner

I loved it. I thought it was good.

Brandon Sanderson

And my brother's cameo is in this book. Darro is named after my brother, Jordo.

Stormlight Three Update #4 ()
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Phantine

If a heroic guy was also an organ donor, what happens to his original organs when he Returns?

Will the recipient's heart grow three sizes that day?

Brandon Sanderson

Ha. Not a question I'd anticipated, but the body is healed when made Returned, so anything missing would be regrown. So everything is fine.

Arcanum Unbounded release party ()
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Questioner

In the Mistborn books, there's no one who can do chromium Feruchemy. If there was someone who had both the Feruchemy and the Allomancy related to chromium, they could create infinite luck. So doesn't that mean they could just do whatever they wanted?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, we will deal with how exactly Fortune works in the cosmere at a later date. There's a reason I haven't shown somebody with it yet, because I'm saving that for later on. Let's just say that even the Terris people don't quite understand it, even during Era 2.

Words of Radiance Backerkit Launch Party ()
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Brandon Sanderson

The Secret Projects went kind of bonkers in that a lot of people who had never read my books bought the Secret Projects, because I pointed out to them that they were good starting points. I don't think this Secret Project [Five] is a good starting point into the Cosmere, not like Tress or Yumi would be.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 ()
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Phillip Denny

Is there a "how the sausage is made" reason why there are 16 Shards, instead of 15 or 17?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it splits really nice on a table. When I was developing the Cosmere in general, I was looking for... the division of multiples of 2 is just so much fun for designing things like the Allomantic Table. You can do that with 10, you can do that with 15, yes. I find aesthetically pleasing the way that 16, 8, and groups of 4 work, and that's how I arrived at that number.

I also did have some kind of boundaries on myself. I needed it to be a large enough number that it could cover the full group that I wanted to do in Dragonsteel, but it had to be small enough that people could track them all. 16 is a little on the high end for that, but doable, I believe. Particularly since you really only have to track all 16 when I write the Dragonsteel stories. (You'll really have to track 17 because we have Hoid, who did not take one.) But lately, you have at least one of the Shards being combined, and others of the Shards no longer being relevant to the course of stories, and things like that. So you won't actually, in the future, have to track 1.

But it was a nice number for what I wanted to do; not too big, not too small, and I liked how the divisions broke down. And I knew I was going to do 10 with Roshar by that point. If I was gonna pick 10, I would have to use 10 again in Mistborn, which I could do, but I wanted to have different themes. I wanted their tables and math to look a little different visually on the page, since they were two pillars. So 10 and 16 felt like the two good pillars. The Aether world is a 12 world, so we'll have a 12 also. The Aether world does not play into things nearly as much, but it'll depend on how many books I write using the Aethers in the future.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
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platysaur

Well Mr. Sanderson, I finally finished Words of Radiance as well. I thank you for answering previous questions of mine on this thread.

I didn't read Warbreaker but I intend to. That said, if I don't get to it (college is quickly approaching now), will it be a setback? I know that Szeth's sword is now a character from Warbreaker, but I don't want to be at a disadvantage if I can't get to it.

Brandon Sanderson

If you don't read Warbreaker, I doubt you'll be confused. I wrote Warbreaker as a prequel novel (after writing the original draft of The Way of Kings) to give some backstory to side characters I knew where cosmere-aware, but the story should work just fine without having read it.

General Reddit 2015 ()
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Questioner

[question about using Feruchemy in Dungeons and Dragons]

Brandon Sanderson

Why Feruchemy "works" in book terms is because it's about intrinsic trade off. We see the character pay something, so we accept when later on, they're able to do something dramatic. Narratively, their boost is "earned" in much the same way that a character "earns" their ending winning a duel by showing us through the story that they've been practicing with the sword.

You need to "earn" your boosts. If I were a GM, I'd suggest that you can store attributes during one day of gameplay, to use it during another day of gameplay. -2STR for one day, +2STR for the next day. I'd say no more than -/+2 at first--with feats or Feruchemist prestige class levels allowing you to do 4 or even 6. Storing senses could be covered with WIS, and health with CON.

Alternately, if you want to get into the specifics, you could try something where when you land a hit, you can use a smaller damage die (a d4 instead of d6) to "store up" strength. Then later, when you need it, you can trade in one of those stored moments (which would be capped with a maximum number that could be stored at once, to be raised by requiring you to find special metals) to raise a damage die during a climactic battle--maybe making your d6 into a d10. You could do the same thing with spot checks (take a penalty for specific rolls to be able to add to the later on.) HP could be done the same way--drop your HP for a battle to "store" then raise them for another battle.

This is more of a tweak to the way the books use the magic, but the idea is to make certain your cost is still a cost. You get ahead by choosing the times to - or +, making it fun--but you are always paying a price.

So the first question I'd ask myself is do I want this to be a time period thing or a specific instances thing--which would be more fun to play? Then ask is this about attributes or specific skills/hit points, etc? Define some rules, define how you get better, and then have fun within the system.

Personally, I'd avoid the will save as a cost to drawing out the attribute or ability. Perhaps make it require concentration checks if you want to make it tougher--but requiring a will save to magically gain strength doesn't feel very "feruchemist" to me and downplays the real fun you could have with the character. Role playing a day spent with very low spot checks, or a terrible constitution, could be really fun.

I'd also figure out if you can do some kind of "super move" with the abilities by storing up a whole lot. (Like ten units, however you decide upon them.)

My take on the attributes: Iron: To be used in a role playing way, making yourself lighter or heavier, with no battle implications. Steel: Increase/decrease movement speed in a fight. OR under the effects of a "slow" spell for a day, vs under the effects of a "haste" spell. Super move: Very limited time stop. Tin: Spot Checks or WIS. Pewter: STR checks, damage die, or +/- damage to each hit. Zinc: Bonus to hit (for thinking through the situation) or bonus to initiative. (With corresponding negatives.) Brass: Specific fortitude checks.Copper: Mostly role playing. Memorize a book, or an entire library, if given time. Blank things from your mind to prevent mind reading. Bronze: Mostly role playing, with (perhaps) being able to "rest" immediately and get back any abilities that come with it. (Haven't played 5e--these were big in 4e, but don't know if they kept them.)

These metals are going to be rare.

Cadmium: Not having to breathe for a time could have all kinds of applications, though I'd love to hear you role play hyperventilating all day for one session. Bendalloy: Not eating and storing calories. Great for role playing.Gold: CON bonus, hit points, or something like that. Sudden healing is great for gaming. Electrum: General bonus to all skills. Chromium: Bonus or minus to any roll.

The rest aren't even understood in-world, so I'd stop there. If you go all in on this, I'd say you need some kind of class built around it--perhaps a rogue or monk base, replacing their bonuses with feruchemical abilities that you gain over time.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 ()
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Yosef Joe

If Brandon got a Shard, what Shard would it be and what would he do with it?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't know, I've been asked something along these lines before. I do fit Autonomy pretty well, but I also feel like I fit Invention pretty well, so probably one of those two. There's definitely some that are not very Brandon. Whimsy: not a very Brandon Shard, let's just point that one out, but I could see myself with bunches of them.

What would I do? Pocket universes and... I guess you can't really create those in the... well you can and in the Spiritual Realm, but... Y'know, building funky planets and weird magic systems, that's what I do anyway. You would probably just float through the cosmere and find just planet after planet of screwball magic systems that people are trying to figure out how to use and being like wow, the person who did this, why did they make us use magic based on bagel flavors, can't we have the one where we just fly?

Brandon's Blog 2017 ()
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Roshar's Date System 1.png Roshar's Date System 2.png

Karen Ahlstrom

I knew I'd have to deal with it sometime, and it finally caught up with me today. My Master Cosmere Timeline spreadsheet has far too many relative dates, and not enough absolutes.

Roshar's date system

The biggest reason I have put it off is that the date system Brandon made up is both supremely logical and at the same time totally crazy. A year has five hundred days, but there's also a thousand-day cycle with different highstorms around the new year. In each year there are ten months of fifty days each. The months are broken into ten five-day weeks. The date indicates what year, month, week of the month, and day of the week it is and looks like this: 1173.8.4.3. It is impossible for me to do the math in my head to decide what the date would be 37 days ago, so I don't use the dates in my reckoning, and only calculate them as an afterthought. This dating system is also a hassle because two weeks in our world is almost three weeks there, and a month there is almost two of ours, and when writing Brandon doesn't even pretend to pay attention to those differences.

Day numbers in The Way of Kings

But then we have to talk about my relative date system. The timeline of The Way of Kings is a mess. The story for Shallan starts more than 100 days earlier than Dalinar's storyline. And Kaladin is roughly 50 days different from that. So for that book I had to pick a day when I knew there was crossover between the viewpoints and work forward and back from there. So a date in The Way of Kings might be marked on my spreadsheet as D 23 or K-57.

Day numbers in Words of Radiance and Oathbringer

For Words of Radiance I started over at day 1 for that book. Those numbers count up until the new year which is day 71. Oathbringer starts just after the new year, so I used the day of the year for my book-specific day number. Of course switching systems at the start of each book made it hard for me to calculate just how many days there were between events in WOR and OB. So I put in another column which indicated a relative number of days counting before and after the arbitrary date of the end of WOR.

Flashback dates

The next problem I dealt with were the line items that say something like "five years ago" for their date. With more than a year of onscreen time from the first chapters of The Way of Kings to the end of Oathbringer, it's really necessary to note that it's five years before what event with a solid date. Once I have a date to assign to it, I also have to decide how exact the date is. When I come back three years from now I will need to know whether this date is firm, or if it would be okay to put it three or four months on either side.

Putting it all together

When Peter found an error in the spreadsheet one day, I decided to match a serial number to each date after the year 1160 (which makes for easy calculating), and make that my absolute day number from here until forever (though I'll probably still make a book relative date, since it's a useful way to talk about things with the rest of the team). To find the Roshar dates from the serial numbers I made another spreadsheet with a vlookup table for the dates and serial numbers, then translated all the dates from the three books into that single new system (finding several more errors as I went).

 

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
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Questioner

So I have a question about the cosmere. I recently read The Stormlight Archive books and I love them, and then I reread Warbreaker and I noticed something. When Siri was teaching the God King how to read, she says one of the letters is called shash and this is the name of one of Kaladin's slave brands. I was wondering why.

Brandon Sanderson

It was just a coincidence, that one's been asked of me before, yeah it's just a coincidence.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
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WhatWasThatHowl

Hail Brandon Sanderson, Master Worldsmith

That's the nature of my question, I'm not quite sure how to make it broad enough, but just how did you birth Roshar? Let alone the entire Cosmere? I find it too easy to view the worlds I've built in my own writing as silly or contrived. Do you see yours in dreams or did you construct yours? Please, I would be personally grateful for the backstory on how these places were forged.

Brandon Sanderson

Building these worlds was a long, long process. Most of that process, however, was in building myself--creating a practiced writer who had build enough worlds that he got an instinct for what created good conflicts and settings, and what did not. So the best thing you can do is keep practicing and writing.

In more specifics, Roshar's origin was in studying the great storm of Jupiter. I went with the idea of a constant, traveling storm, then tried to build the ecology off of that idea. From there, I asked myself how this affected sapient beings, and how I could use the storms to shape culture, and how the characters I was planning to use could interact with it.

Most of this comes down to instinct now, though. Keep writing, and don't stress too much about whether you are silly or contrived. We all feel that way at some point. Put characters into the worlds we care about, and let the rest sort itself out.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 ()
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Argent

We've always understood Elantris to be one of the earliest books in the Cosmere, but we see Kaise as Codenames in The Lost Metal, one of the latest books. Has the timeline contracted significantly, or are we just looking at the typical Shadesmar time dilation tricks?

Brandon Sanderson

So, here's thing, Argent. I'm not going to be able to give you strict timelines until I write Elantris 2 and 3. So my plan, originally, which might have been a bad plan, was Elantris 2 to take place some ten or fifteen years after Elantris 1. Maybe a little less than that. But years have passed. It was called Dakhor, in my notes. And then for 3 to be hundreds of years later. I don't know if that's the right move anymore, and if 3 isn't hundreds of years later, then where we slot Elantris in is going to change because of where I need certain characters to be in some of these things, and certain things to happen. We are getting really close to where this is going to be nailed down and locked down, and I'll get locked down. Probably right when we start Era 3 is when all of this is just gonna start... I've promised you guys a timeline. Once we've released that, we don't want to retcon it, does that make sense? So that's why we're waiting to release it.

But Kaise does have some time dilation going on, though. Though I say her name wrong because I'm not from Sel. But yeah, she has time dilation going on, she is... yeah. More time has passed than the ten or so years that... she's like what, 7 in Elantris? And she's like young 20s now, visibly, the age that she appears. I believe, something like that. So yeah, there you go. There's some information for you on that. I'm playing loose and free with this until I really get down to writing these. My loose plan is still write Mistborn Era 3 book 1, Elantris 2, Era 3 book 2, Elantris 3, Era 3 book 3. Five years of writing there that I can't even really think about until I've got Stormlight 5 in Tor's hands, if not your hands.

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing ()
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Questioner

Any new Alcatraz books coming up?

Brandon Sanderson

Any new Alcatraz books coming up? So, for those who haven't read my really goofy middle-grade series, if you like it in this speech when I've been goofy, that's what's in-- what those books are basically all. *laughter* It's basically Professor Sanderson riffing for a bunch of pages. I write them as escapes from things in the Cosmere which are-- I take very seriously, right? They-- To the point that I try not to make them self-important but they got to take themselves seriously. Even if the characters can laugh at situations, the situation itself must not be ridiculous. And so to blow off steam I write these books about people who have really dumb magic talents. Like "arriving late to appointments" is a superpower. Which I chose because I do it all the time.

And I had this evil plan with the Alcatraz books. That I was going to tell everyone it was a five book series. And then end the fifth book on a huge, huge down note, and then be like "It's the end!" Except have in the back-- It was supposed to be a card, a little, printed card, but we realized that would get lost when you check it out from libraries and things. So we just made it a folded-up page [marked] "Don't read it first". There's a character who says "Okay since the main character, this Alcatraz, is not going to write the last book and show that he's actually a hero, I will write it." So we're going to change character voices, dramatically, to someone else and write one last book, that is not a big downer.

This is because when I wrote the first book-- You know how I did that outline thing I talked about? I wrote the first book of Alcatraz and it was this whole-- this story about this hero who claims he's not a hero, he's actually a big failure and he's writing an expose on himself to get people to stop worshipping him for all the cool things he supposedly did. And it's very ridiculous and funny, but I wrote this book and I'm like "Okay great. Either we have to have the ending everyone's expecting, which is 'He's really not that bad a guy, he's just been playing with you the whole time.' which feels like too cheap and easy or it has to be a really downer of an ending like he promised." The first paragraph starts with him about to be sacrificed. And that scene is on the cover of the fifth book, 'cause it's a flashback when he talks about it. So I came up with this dual-nature. The editors were kind of baffled by it, "We tell them it's a five book series but then we have one more book. So we can have both, a real downer of an ending and not a real downer of an ending?" And so the sixth book I will write some time this year.

Kraków signing ()
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Questioner

Could you tell me something about Cosmere, that we don't know?

Brandon Sanderson

Oooh boy, that is so hard, people ask this all the time and I keep running out of things... Was there anything I haven't added recently... There are Shards whose Shardpools are not on a planet they currently inhabit. At least one.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 ()
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Striker_EZ

Was the prostitute from the Way of Kings that Adolin protected Beryl?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it was not, good question.

So, I like connections between characters. I liked it in Wheel of Time when Bayle Domon shows up again and things like that, but it would have gone too far in another series without the explanation of the Pattern weaving them together. It sometimes strains plausibility. The Wheel of Time has a built-in mechanism, it's ta'veren, they're getting woven back in, and people are showing up time and time again. I feel like that was enough of a selling point in the Wheel of Time, and the Wheel of Time did it really well. When I built the cosmere, I wanted to be careful, because I knew I was gonna be bringing back a lot of worldhoppers and having people show up in other people's stories. And if I went too far on this, and every random person that you run into ends up being someone later on, it just is too much. So whenever I've considered one of these things, I sit down and say, would they really be there? What are the statistical chances? If I make this happen, what does it do to the lore in the fandom, where now they're theorizing about the connections between these characters, and things like this. I try to be very careful on that. I brought Yalb back for a quick scene in Dawnshard, he's in the prologue of Dawnshard. Partially to be like, hey, this guy did survive! But I intentionally didn't bring him and put him on the crew that is the main story of Dawnshard, because that was one step too far for me. And maybe fans would like more of this, but it's something I want to be careful about. We already have things like Gaz showing up and joining this crew, and we have Felt jumping between worlds, and these are all kind of planned things that I wanted to do. I gotta be careful, I want to be careful, and maybe I'm overly careful on this. But in other words, a lot of times I'm gonna tell you the random person who shows up does not have any connection to the greater story that I'm telling, and that's by design.

Oathbringer London signing ()
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Overlord Jebus

This map,

*Hands Brandon the Part Four Sea of Lost Lights Map*

How much of a hand did you have in this map or did you kind of let Isaac go crazy?

Brandon Sanderson

So this one is half and half, I went to Isaac and said put this and this and this and then he added some craziness. One of Isaac's voices in the cosmere is Nazh and almost everything that is written by Nazh is Isaac and he named a bunch of this stuff, he ran it all by me. I actually vetoed a few. He came up with some, I'm like "Ehh" and then I renamed them to things that actually fit.

Overlord Jebus

Okay, why is spren fishing banned here, is that you or Isaac?

Brandon Sanderson

That was Isaac...

Shadows of Self Boston signing ()
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AndrewStirlingMacDonald (paraphrased)

So Wax, in the prologue of Alloy of Law thinks of himself as Wax, and then as Waxillium for the rest of the book, and then that's reversed in the second one. Is that a thing of cosmere import, or is it just a--

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It kind of indicated how he feels about himself.

AndrewStirlingMacDonald (paraphrased)

Could it have any impact on his ability to use Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not really. The investiture on Scadrial is not going to care how you're feeling about yourself. On other worlds, that's important, but not on Scadrial.

YouTube Livestream 3 ()
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Star Share Gaming

Would you ever consider writing a cyberpunk Era 4 for Mistborn? Or are you gonna be doing just the four Eras?

Brandon Sanderson

I would consider, and I've talked about before liking that idea. Once I did the Wax and Wayne novels, it became a natural thing to ask if there is a step between the 1980s and the science fiction era. And a cyberpunk-type era would make a lot of sense. The caveat to that is I have a lot on my plate in finishing the Cosmere already, and so I can't make any promises. But it does seem like it would be a natural fit to do.

Original Mistborn series was each between 200,000 and 250,000 words. For a frame of reference, Way of Kings books tend to be between 400,000 and 450,000. And the Wax and Wayne books tend to be between 100,000 and 110,000. So, having another 100,000 to 110,000 word, faster-paced shorter series (shorter in total word count) would make a lot of sense. Because Era 3, the 1980s era, is going to go back to the 250,000 to 250,000 word sized books.

State of the Sanderson 2021 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

PART FOUR: UPDATES ON SECONDARY PROJECTS

Alcatraz Series

As I warned you last year, 2021 was going to be spent on repackaging this series–and getting the art for the sixth book done.  I also co-wrote this one with Janci, as I got about halfway through it back in 2014 and got stumped on something, so I went to her for help both with that and with smoothing out the character voice.  (This one is from Bastille’s viewpoint.)

So, there’s not much of an update from last year.  The first five books are coming out with new covers in 2022, culminating with the final book on September 20th. Final revisions for the book are in, and artwork is approved for the new covers of the early ones, so we should be super close.

Their release schedule is below, including the brand new sixth book!

  • May: Book 1: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
  • June: Book 2: The Scrivener’s Bones
  • July: Book 3: The Knights of Crystallia
  • August: Book 4: The Shattered Lens
  • September: Book 5: The Dark Talent
  • September: Book 6: Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians

Dark One

A second Dark One graphic novel is in the works for those who enjoyed the first!  But in case that’s not your thing, you can go read the Mainframe update above, where we’re working on a prose version. That should be released first in audio, but Dan Wells is currently drafting from my original outline for that–and I’ve read some of his work on it, which has made me very excited. In the meantime, enjoy Dark One: Forgotten, a shorter tie-in that Dan and I have created for release this fall.

Elantris, Warbreaker, Rithmatist

Nothing here, again.  (Yes, Rithmatist fans, I hear you screaming at the screen.)  Elantris/Warbreaker sequels aren’t planned until after Stormlight Five, as I’ve been saying for years now.  Rithmatist might be a little closer than it was, as we’ve been researching potential co-authors who have knowledge and background in the real-world Aztec lore I’d like to incorporate into the book.  So don’t give up hope.  But, like finishing Alcatraz, this is more a labor of love than a mainline series of mine, so it has to take a back seat to the main stories I’m telling.

Part Four: Updates on Secondary Projects

Songs of the Dead

Moving this one back to minor projects this year.  Though Peter Orullian is still working on it, this is one of the co-authored projects that has turned out to be a more difficult write.  He’s spent this year on revisions of it, and I hope you’ll all be able to read it someday.  But we need to make sure it’s working right first.

The Reckoners

If you didn’t see that there is a new Reckoners novel out…then there’s a new Reckoners novel out!  It’s called Lux, and I co-authored it with Steven Michael Bohls, another of my writer friends.  (This was a Mainframe project, and so it was an audio original.)  The reception was great, and the sales were great too, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we did another one soon.  But we’re figuring out when and how to do this.  (Also we plan a print edition sometime, but at the very least an ebook should come out around the one-year mark of the audio edition.)

The Original

This first of the Mainframe projects will soon be getting an ebook release!  So if you don’t like audio, take heart.  It’s coming in January.  I wrote it with the excellent Mary Robinette Kowal, and it’s a kind of cyberpunk/action/mystery.

Check out the pitch for it here!

White Sand

We should have the graphic novel omnibus coming at you sometime in the near future. I hear that the individual original volumes are sometimes going for a lot of money, but I’d suggest not grabbing one of those but waiting for this new edition. We’ve spent a lot of time making it the quintessential White Sand graphic novel experience, updating text and dialogue to be more in line with the Cosmere. There are 38 new pages at the beginning, revised text and art throughout, a new map and glossary, and fourteen Ars Arcanum pages. We think you’re really going to enjoy experiencing the complete package.

All Others

If there’s something not on this list you’re waiting for, then there’s not really anything to update you upon.  Other novellas and small projects continue to bounce around my brain, but I haven’t had time for most of them lately.

Stormlight Book Four Updates ()
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Brandon Sanderson

All right, so most of you were probably expecting this one to appear sometime today--and here it is. The Previous Update can be found here. As I announced over social media this weekend, I have finished the final draft of Book Four. Rhythm of War is finally done. (Or, rather, my part is done. At least for the prose text of the book. See below.)

I finished the revisions on Saturday, and then today wrote the ketek and the back of the book text. (The in-world text. Tor does the marketing blurb.) The only thing I have left to do is the acknowledgements, plus the ars arcanum. The bulk of the work left to be done will be handled by Peter, my editorial director, who will oversee the copyedit (which is like a really in-depth proofread that also watches for style guide changes and things like in-book continuity) and the proofreads. In addition, Art Director Isaac will be finalizing the artwork done by himself and his artists. (Including Ben, who now works for us full time. He usually drops by the comments to say hi.)

Peter/Isaac's work will take several months to complete, and then the book will be sent separately to the US, UK, and Australian printers for English Language distribution. Excitingly, for the first time, we're hoping to do a simultaneous Spanish launch for the book, and my Spanish publisher has been putting a lot of extra effort into trying to make this happen. So if you live in Spain, and meet my team over there--translator, editor, etc--buy them a drink. They've been putting in some heroic work to try to get this beast of a novel ready in time.

I can't promise timelines for other foreign language editions; but if the Spanish experiment works, we will approach some of our other publishers to suggest trying the same thing with them.

Other random updates of note. The tour seems likely to go digital at this point because of the virus. We'll keep you in the loop. (This will likely include the release party.) Goal is to ship huge cases of books for me to sign so we can get them to partner bookstores for a signed launch, with talks/readings done digitally. Don't consider this an official confirmation of that yet, though. Tor is the one working it out, and we'll need to wait for them to figure out the details.

The kickstarter has been...well, a little crazy. We're in the process of adding new stretch goals; if you didn't see today's update over there, it has a poll of suggested new stretch goal rewards for you to mull over.

So, what's next for me? This week, I'm doing a quick revision of Songs of the Dead, the book-formely-known-as-death-by-pizza, which I'm writing with Peter Orullian. I plan this to take about a week. After that, I'm going to dive into the kickstarter novella, the official title of which I believe we'll be announcing tomorrow.

After that is done, I owe Skyward 3 to my very patient YA publisher, who has been sitting in the wings waiting for eighteen months or so for me to start it. Wax and Wayne 4 will follow, with my goal being to start it January 1st. Skyward 4 (the final book of that series) will follow starting about a year from now. After that, it will be time (already) for Stormlight 5, final book of this sequence of Stormlight novels. (Whew!) That will mark roughly the halfway point of the cosmere.

Thanks, as always, for your patience as I juggle all of these projects. Also, I'll be doing another livestream this Thursday, where I'll be chatting more about the kickstarter and this book (we keep it non-spoiler, so don't worry.)

I'll be turning off inbox replies to this thread, as usual, so I apologize if I don't see your questions here.

With that, I officially conclude my Book Four updates series. Expect to see me back in around eighteen months, January 2022, when I start updates for Book Five. (I do plan to do updates for Mistborn on that subreddit when I start the fourth Wax and Wayne. So if you're really hungry for more rambling posts about in-progress books, you can visit there.)

As always, thanks for everything. You folks are great. It's been quite the pleasure working on these books for you.

Brandon

Arcanum Unbounded release party ()
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Questioner

On Roshar, we're very aware of... there's humans and non-human species. Is that a unique phenomenon to Roshar? Or do we see that on other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

You do see that on other worlds. Dragonsteel has one, so Yolen has one. Of course, Scadrial has them, but they started as human, so it doesn't quite count. Everyone on Scadrial started as human, but now there's been some divergent things. Meddling. Other planets do have things like that, but most of the cosmere is human. Based... coming from the origins on Yolen. But there is at least one planet where there's no humans. And I'm not talking about Braize.

General Reddit 2020 ()
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Windrunner17

The other one is me trying to understand Bondsmiths a bit for their article. Dalinar uses his powers to heal the buildings in Thaylen City, and what he does does not seem to be a straightforward application of a Surge. Is he making use of Tension or Adhesion? Or some mix of them both? I realize that sometimes things may not fall easily into one category or another, so I'd accept any sort of clarification on this.

Brandon Sanderson

What Dalinar did is a mixture of abilities, and a spiritual connection, that is only possible to a Bondsmith.

Worldbuilders AMA ()
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tay95

A theme throughout a lot of the Cosmere novels is that form, of one sort or another (patterns, aons, etc.) has a crucial role to play in unlocking or using Investiture.

As a chemist, I'm curious about the role of form in Allomancy and Feruchemy. Does the underlying molecular or crystalline structure of the metal or alloy play a roll? Different processes, doping ratios, and metal mixtures result in different molecular packing, lattices, and ultimately structure. It seems like that kind of very defined, orderly matrix would be right in line with other forms of unlocking Investiture.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! I've actually mentioned to people before that the chemistry of the various metals acts, for Allomancy, in the same way that the Aons work for AonDor. It's more a key than it is a source of power itself.