Advanced Search

Search in date range:

Search results:

Found 14294 entries in 0.411 seconds.

Orem signing ()
#11251 Copy

Questioner

What was your hardest scene to write?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll have to pick it by book, right. Like actual, actual hardest. Have you finished Oathbringer? Hardest scene in Oathbringer to get right was actually the scene where Kaladin met with the guy in the lighthouse, that involves the foreshadowing of where he needs to go and stuff like that. No, actually that's not it. The first chapter. The Dalinar scene where he is in the vision and he jumps off and he goes and inspects the rubble and things, I did four versions of that chapter that were completely different, that weren't in the vision. That one was actually really hard. Finding out where to start this book so that it felt like it had it's own soul, but it wasn't, you know--

General Twitter 2019 ()
#11252 Copy

Keegan Laycock

I’m now extremely anxious to see the symbol for Hemalurgy.

Isaac Stewart

We considered creating these but soon realized that Allomantic symbols were probably used by Hemalurgists and actually might've been Hemalurgic symbols before they were Allomantic. (See the little nails sticking through each symbol?) Feruchemy, though, needed something different.

Keegan Laycock

Given the rather dark and arcane nature of Hemalurgy, it does make me wonder if Rashek simply co-opted it’s symbology for Allomancy, given the quick spread of Allomantic powers during his rise and reign and the need for classification.

Isaac Stewart

That's very likely!

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#11255 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

The Priests Sacrifice Themselves

As I said, one of the reversals for this book is a reversal of my own books, where priests have traditionally been the bad guys. Here, Treledees and his people throw their lives away in an attempt to save Susebron. They're zealous; I would say too zealous. But they're good men, trying their best to serve their god. They go to their graves in that service.

Boskone 54 ()
#11257 Copy

Questioner

What was it like switching to graphic novel format for White Sand?

Brandon Sanderson

The truth is, I didn’t really have to. We hired someone who’s specifically good at this, and I looked over his scripts, but I left the hard work to him. White Sand was already written, as you probably know. And I said, “This is good, but not good enough. Can you edit it in a way to make it good enough?” And we really liked what he came up with, so it was really his call. And then I kind of left the art to Isaac, who does all of my art stuff, to go over the art with the artist. I’m pleased with White Sand, with one caveat. I don’t think they got the worldbuilding right. If you’ve read the original novel, I don’t feel the worldbuilding I described in the novel quite made it, because the person doing the edit focused really on the dialogue, which is what we wanted him to do. But the artist didn’t get it quite well enough. We’re trying to fix that in the second volume. So there might be little things where you’re like, “Wow, the worldbuilding’s much more expansive in the second one”, so that’s why.

FanX Spring 2019 ()
#11261 Copy

Questioner

You've stated before that Denth's ability to change is hair color is independent of him being Returned? So meaning he has the Royal Locks. Are Siri and Vivenna descended from him, or just a separate line of the same family tree?

Brandon Sanderson

I will RAFO that. But he does have the Royal Locks, so you can at least assume that they're related, at the very least.

Arcanum Unbounded release party ()
#11266 Copy

Djarskublar

*inaudible* [I asked if it would be possible to recall Breaths from an object that you had not placed there if the Awakener who did place them there had no Identity at the time.]

Brandon Sanderson

So, this is a very detailed, specific question, if you didn't hear it. It's dealing with the idea of Investiture and Identity, and things like this. If you can unkey the magic with Identity, for almost any case, it's going to make it much easier for other people to use. That's gonna be a blanket statement through the cosmere. If you can blank your Identity, it's at least gonna be able to be used by someone else with a blank Identity. Sometimes it's keyed, so the blank will not work with somebody who is themselves keyed. But if you can blank and they can blank, you can almost always guarantee the magic will be able to be used.

Brandon's Blog 2015 ()
#11267 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Words of Radiance Tweak

Moving on to Words of Radiance, as we were entering typo fixes for the paperback of this book, I made changes to a few lines near the end. This isn't anywhere near as extensive as the changes in Elantris, but once again I figure I should be up-front about what I did and why I did it.

This part is going to have some spoilers for the book, so if you haven't read it, please stop right here. I'll put a number of blank lines here to prevent accidental spoilers. Scroll down if you've finished the book.

So, in Words of Radiance, I think the scene I worked on the longest both in my head and on the page was the final confrontation between Kaladin and Szeth.

There was something I wanted to do, and took a stab at it in the text, then backed off because I couldn't make it work. It was important to me that Kaladin refuse to kill Szeth at the end. Kaladin is about protection, not vengeance, and once he realized that Szeth really just wanted to be killed, I wanted Kaladin to hesitate.

It didn't end up working, and I moved on to a new version and submitted it. But this itched at me, and by the time the book was released, I felt I'd made the wrong choice for that scene. So I've taken this chance to roll it back to the previous idea, and written it in a new way, which I like much better.

The events are the same, except for that moment. Szeth is now killed by the storm instead of by Kaladin, which I think is more thematically appropriate.

The question this raises is about Szeth being stabbed by a Shardblade, then being resuscitated. I'm sad to lose this sequence, as it's an important plot point for the series that dead Shardblades cannot heal the soul, while living ones can. I'm going to have to work this into a later book, though I think it's something we can sacrifice here for the stronger scene of character for Kaladin and Szeth.

Tel Aviv Signing ()
#11268 Copy

Questioner

They're called "Wax and Wayne." Is that something to do with the moon or is that just...

Brandon Sanderson

It's a pun, it's just a pun on my part.

Questioner

So you did it on purpose but it's nothing in the book?

Brandon Sanderson

I did. Yeah, Scadrial doesn't have a moon so they wouldn't really... The words "wax" and "wane" still mean what they mean, but it's not part of common vernacular the way it is over here. So it's me being goofy and loving the pun way too much.

General Reddit 2017 ()
#11269 Copy

Phantine

Is there any noble house in Elendel that plays up their relationship to Kelsier and Marsh?

Brandon Sanderson

They tend to leave Kelsier/Marsh alone and focus on the other crew members. Getting authority from Kelsier is kind of presumed, a little like the Catholic church using Peter as its line of authority, rather than Christ--because the Christ part is assumed.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#11270 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher Explains the Different Kinds of BioChromatic Entities

This is a scene I'd been waiting to write for almost the entire book. Not just because I wanted to get into the scientific rules for Awakening, but because I wanted to pull a good reversal for Vasher. When he begins talking like this, I hope that the reader responds like Vivenna: Who is this guy?

A lot of readers, my editor included, resisted the term BioChroma. They wanted me to simply use Breath, as they thought BioChroma was just too scientific sounding. I like this concept, however. I want people to read the book and think it sounds scientific. My novels, my magic systems, have a kind of "hard magic" sense to them. I want there to be an edge of science to them, a feeling that people are studying them and trying to learn about them using the scientific method.

Vasher's explanations here are dead on. He's got a lot of good information, and he has a handle on what he doesn't understand. That alone should be a big clue about who he is. The fact that he never has to trim his beard is another one.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#11271 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Lightsong Inspects the Murder Scene Again

The interesting thing about this scene is that it reveals almost nothing about what happened. At least, it doesn't reveal anything to the readers.

However, it reveals a whole lot about Lightsong as a character. I waited until he'd been established before starting to bring up questions like the ones in this chapter, where I begin to dig deeply into who he was before he died. In a way, he's not investigating the murder so much as he is investigating himself—and that's why the scene works, even though we know the information about the murders he reveals. (Though we don't know who that second person was. Unless you read the spoiler above, of course.)

Boskone 54 ()
#11272 Copy

ccstat

Nalthis has 5-centric numerology.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay.

ccstat

Do regular humans count as the 5th type of biochromatic entity?

Brandon Sanderson

[laughs] Um, I will RAFO that, not for any real good reason, but for a mini-good reason.

Firefight release party ()
#11274 Copy

Questioner

Is Mistborn ever going to be made into a movie?

Brandon Sanderson

Is Mistborn going to be made into a movie. I recently read the treatments by the guy who has the movie rights and I like them a lot. They are doing good work with the treatments. We sold the rights. Whether they'll get made or not is still kind of a crapshoot because this is how Hollywood works, right? So we will see, but the treatments are good. Peter can back me up on that. The first one we like a lot… So yes there is motion but I don't know how long it will take us, okay?

West Jordan signing ()
#11275 Copy

Questioner

At the end of Alloy of Law, when...

Brandon Sanderson

Spoiler! Talk circumloqutically, talk around it.

Questioner

When that person said that thing at the end of the book, will that lead to future ideas of books?

Brandon Sanderson

Things in the Alloy of Law are foreshadowing things that will happen in the modern day Mistborn trilogy.

General Reddit 2019 ()
#11276 Copy

BelgariathTAO

Wait, don't you also have a teaching job?

Brandon Sanderson

It's a good question, and though others have answered, I should post to explain for those who might be interested in teaching creative writing.

It is very difficult to get a teaching job in creative writing without an MFA or a PhD. I applied to many of those programs, submitting Elantris as my writing sample, but I was rejected from all of them. I managed to get into BYU on my second year of applying to programs--but only their MA program, which was a stop gap because it wasn't an MFA, and therefore wouldn't be enough to let me teach.

In the first week of that program, the graduate chair explained the work we would need to do to if we wanted to get into a PhD program that would give us a shot at teaching for a living. I distinctly remember realizing I could never do all of that and still write my novels. So I made the call and turned toward my fiction instead of academics.

I applied to teach as a graduate instructor, but didn't get the job. I applied a semester later, though, and was given a few freshman composition classes to teach--but it was a graduate teaching position, meaning a job I couldn't keep once graduating.

I only got my creative writing class after I sold a novel. Even then, it was sketchy. The professor before me had been let go for not having enough academic credentials. I love teaching my class, but it is only one course which I only got after publishing. So this is not a route I could have taken if I hadn't sold a book. This tends to be a big conundrum in teaching the arts. You can't get a job without being successful--but being successful usually takes so much time, you don't have time left to be an academic.

Orem Signing ()
#11277 Copy

Questioner

When Mizzy becomes an Epic, what's her Epic power?

Brandon Sanderson

So I very carefully didn't mention that because I wanted the freedom for when I actually wrote the books. Right now I have it in my head involving detonations, but I don't want to actually canonize that because if I write the book I want to have the freedom to take it where I want to.

DragonCon 2019 ()
#11279 Copy

Questioner

I'm sure you have characters that you maybe don't quite like, that may be based off of real people. Does it ever help you to understand them by writing out what you think they were like?

Brandon Sanderson

It absolutely does. That's one of the main reasons why I write, is to try to understand people different from myself, and even people that I may not understand before I start writing.

WorldCon 76 ()
#11281 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

This is where the writers can exploit this a little bit, and it's always a balance, right, as a novelist. The original question was: Alexander the Great survived, famously, a punctured lung. And so, the fact that it does happen means you can get away with it in your fiction, you can get away with a lot of things. But as it was brought up earlier on the panel, one of the things we try to do in fantasy, and I would say the hallmark of an epic fantasy is the sense of immersion. That's why we are writing epic fantasy, we want to draw people in, and while you are reading this book you want to feel like this is a real place and these are real events that happened.

Boskone 54 ()
#11282 Copy

Questioner

So Lift is having trouble with the physical aspects of Edgedancing. Could she actually increase friction with her surge to give her better control?

Brandon Sanderson

This is the sort of thing that she needs to learn how to do, is to modulate the amount of friction she creates in various places. But you know it’s also skill-based, there’s a lot of practice involved in things like this but, yes, uhm... If you look at the other surges you could probably guess that she is capable of much more than she has expressed so far.

17th Shard Forum Q&A ()
#11283 Copy

XFER

And I saw on facebook about the discussion about the name of the second book. This is more like a request, please, keep the name of it being The Book Of Endless Pages. That title is awesome! Oh and another suggestion, please, keep making huge books! Now, after reading your books, I expect books to be at least 600 pages, so you can see I get disappointed quite often lol

Brandon Sanderson

I will keep the books, in this series at least, long. It's what the story demands. As for title...it does have a certain charm, but I worry that it just feels wrong to too many people. Three out of four laugh when I mention it. That doesn't bode well...

Leipzig Book Fair ()
#11284 Copy

Questioner

Odium has, as I understand it, something like the meaning of God's divine wrath. How is wrath on its own able to cause such terrible destruction? I  mean, he primarily attacked di-Shardic worlds like Sel and Roshar, so could he just have sowed discord between Shards there to an extent of them actually fighting against each other and then just *inaudible*.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a good theory, that he got them to fight against each other. I won't tell you whether it happened or not, but it is a very valid theory. It's fully within his capacity; that's the sort of thing that he does.

Firefight San Francisco signing ()
#11285 Copy

Silver

If you created a Forgery where someone was killed, would that person stay dead or would they wake up when the stamp wore off?

Brandon Sanderson

Umm ok. So you, in order to kill them, would have to Forge them to death, right. You can't just like-- for instance, if you rewrote this table so for whatever reason it believed that I was dead, it wouldn't affect me at all, it would only affect the table, because if you rewrote the table to believe it had been carved a certain way and I was the carver, I wouldn't remember doing that. So the Forgery affects only the item. If you stuck a stamp on me that forged me to be dead, I think that would probably be-- Depends on what you do to me, but it could go either way.

Questioner 2

It would have to be be believable wouldn't it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it would have to be believable, but it could go either way. Depending on how you created it, and what was going on. It's a good question.

Silver

I did not come up with it!

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it is a good question... That could create some interesting paradoxes also.

Sasquan 2015 ()
#11286 Copy

Questioner

How do you go about designing new magic systems? Because that's one of the most amazing things you do.

Brandon Sanderson

I've written several essays about this, so if you go to brandonsanderson.com/writing-advice, you'll find my essays on magic systems. Basically, I'm trying to look for something that I can explore in a way I haven't seen people do before. It doesn't have to be a new power, it just has to be a new take on a power that I can explore, that I can have fun with, that I can find some sort of scientific rigor. I like to have this sort of have one foot in science and one foot in superstition. That's what is fun for me in worldbuilding, this idea that-- I often say a lot of the old scientists, like Isaac Newton, believed in alchemy. Like "If only we could figure out..." and they started applying the scientific method to alchemy. Which is so cool! It's like "If we keep trying, we'll eventually figure out how this works." But it doesn't work.

I like this idea of applying the scientific rigor to something superstitious, and finding that it does work, and then what do you do with that. So that's what I'm really looking for, particularly in my epic fantasies. It's also got to be the gee-whiz, the wow, "This is really exciting. This is really interesting."

Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 ()
#11287 Copy

Questioner

My background is twenty years of military, and as I've been reading your Way of Kings, I've found that your insight into what it like to be a member of the service, all the mental trials including post-traumatic stress disorder is all very well thought-out and I'm curious how you came across that knowledge.

Brandon Sanderson

Lots of interviews and lots of reading on forums. People who post their hearts and souls on-- if you find the right forums, where people are among like-minded individuals, you can watch like a fly-on-the-wall and see what people are saying and how they are feeling. Because I strive for authenticity, that's what I-- whenever someone is feeling I want it to be authentic, and the more far removed from my own experience the better it is, if that makes sense to me, to get it into my books. So I try very hard for that.

Questioner

In fact I'm going to be suggesting to the Veterans' Administration to use the series for treatment for PTSD. There are literally some things in there I've never seen anyone actually understand or get before. Some of my military friends have just been in absolute tears after reading your book.

Brandon Sanderson

That is an honor to hear.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#11288 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

I wanted a good, strong scene where we could see that Siri made the decision to keep her hair in check. Again, I'm moving her and Vivenna into different roles, but I want it to be natural, an evolution of their characters brought on by who they are and how their surroundings affect them.

In this case, living in the Court of Gods, there is a very good reason to learn to control your hair. If many are like Treledees, who is of the Third Heightening, then even the most minute changes in your hair color will tip them off.

This is one of the interactions of the magic system that was nice to connect, an interaction I didn't expect or anticipate. With a lot of Breath, you can perceive very slight changes in color. With the Royal Locks, your hair responds to even your slightest emotions. Put the two together, and you get this scene. It was, in a way, inevitable from the beginning of the book.

Siri has come a long way. She's still stumbling about and making a lot of mistakes. But she's also winning some victories. There's nothing hidden to learn about this chapter; she really did just one-up Treledees and get what she wanted.

Children of the Nameless Reddit AMA ()
#11290 Copy

mbue

Did you get to choose Innistrad as the setting, or was that something that was already part of the planeswalker WotC had in mind that your character got merged into?

 

Brandon Sanderson

I got to choose. I had built Davriel most of the way when they said, "Hey, we've got this blank slate planeswalker in our files. Do you want to make this your character?" It worked perfectly, as it let me fill out the lore for this person and have them work as part of the larger narrative.

Orem Signing ()
#11291 Copy

Questioner

With Kaladin, or those with suicidal ideations because of mental illness, do you have plans to explore that again with different mental illnesses and why they would have suicidal ideations?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes. I mean, Kaladin... it's just straight-up depression, which is in some ways the most simple, but also very complicated to deal with. I will delve into others. It is something that I'm very interested in, mostly because I'm fascinated by the way that different people see the world. And the more people I know, the more I realize there is no normal. There's just all different shades of how the way we all see the world. And some of those ways are... dangerous to us. Through no fault of our own. It is very interesting to me to explore.

ICon 2019 ()
#11292 Copy

Questioner

So, we know in Mistborn there is this running... you can say, motif about Ruin being associated with the color black and Preservation with the color white, we see a lot of very subtle and a lot of very unsubtle...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yes.

Questioner

Is such a motif present in any other books? I think I see it in Stormlight.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, in Stormlight you can see it. So, Ruin is a red-gold... not Ruin, Odium. Odium is a red-gold. Honor is a blue-white and Cultivation is green, obviously. So, those motifs stay, when you... when you see a red or a gold, it's a reddish gold sort of thing, either of those colors, it's going to be Odium.

Questioner

Even when we something we might suspect to be outside influence in other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

Not necessarily, because red can also mean corrupted Investiture in the Cosmere. So, I would call Odium's real color gold, because you're going to see red when Odium is corrupting other things, so...

Questioner

It's not necessarily on Roshar.

Brandon Sanderson

It's not necessarily Odium. So, you're asking for the invading force on Mistborn, it doesn't necessarily mean Odium because it's red. So red just kind of means corruption. I've talked about that before, so. Not necessarily, not definitive, yeah.

Footnote: When Sanderson said "you're asking about the invading force on Mistborn", the questioner made a guilty "caught red-handed" shrug.
#color #corrupted investiture
Idaho Falls signing ()
#11293 Copy

Questioner

How long do we have to wait until the next [Stormlight Archive]?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I divide my time about half-and-half, Stormlight and non-Stormlight. I finished Stormlight [Three] last year in June. And so, I'm taking eighteen months and writing the Skyward trilogy, and then I'm gonna write the next Stormlight. They usually take about eighteen months.

Questioner

Who's the next one gonna be about?

Brandon Sanderson

Next one, flashbacks should be Eshonai. The last flashback sequence should be Szeth. Of this group. Then, there'll be five more books, but those will take place about ten years later.

General Reddit 2015 ()
#11294 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

This is an interesting topic, and though I saw this early, I wanted to wait to post anything because I prefer to let discussions like this happen without author intervention, at least not immediately.

I do I like talking about topics like this, though. Humor is such a curiously subjective thing. There are people who just don't get Pratchett, whom I find the funniest thing ever. Conversely, I don't generally like stand up comedians, and actively dislike some of the comedies that people on reddit love. There are people who tell me that my Mat scenes in WoT are the funniest they've read in the series; there are others who consider them absolute duds.

Humor is more subjective than what we find heroic, tragic, or even beautiful. It also depends a great deal on audience buy-in and mood. This makes comedy one of the trickiest things to do in a book, because some people are just going to hate what you do. My approach has generally been a kind of shotgun blast--I try to include multiple different kinds of humor, stylized to the individual character. That way, if you don't find the humor itself funny, you at least learn what the character finds funny--and learn something about them.

In Stormlight, my personal favorite is the bridge crew humor, as it is distinctly character driven. Syl's humor is a different flavor, based on innocence mixed with sarcasm. Wit is another style entirely, though I usually only let him really go when he meets someone he dislikes strongly. I have to be careful, as he's one of the few characters I allow to stray into the vulgar, and letting him go too far risks letting such things overshadow the rest of the book.

Shallan's humor is based upon regency "women sit in a circle and trade witty comments" humor, of which Jane Austen was a master. Much of what the OP said in his post is correct--Shallan's fault is that she over-extends. She uses the humor as a coping mechanism, and to her, it doesn't matter if it's actually funny so long as she's stretching toward something more lighthearted than her terrible past. She tries very hard to prove herself. And she fails. Often.

However, her type of "wit" is to exemplify what Vorin lighteyed women consider to be amusing or diverting. And there are people who genuinely find that kind of thing to be a blast--though Shallan isn't exactly the best at it yet. (She's not terrible either, mind you. If you don't smile at some of the things she says, it's likely this isn't your type of humor, which is just fine. Hopefully, there will be other things in the books that make you smile.)

Though, that said, I'd love to read passages from other fantasy novels that people on reddit find to be actually laugh-out-loud funny. I know which ones I personally like, but it would be useful for me to see what you're liking. Feel free to PM them to me or to post them here.

Legion Release Party ()
#11295 Copy

Steeldancer

Taln, did he give in to the torture around the events of Way of Kings?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to have to look at the...So he should have given in to events in the current version of the book right before...Let's just say around Way of Kings. I'm not going to canonize that, though. In the version of Way of Kings that I wrote in 2002, he'd been around for a few years before he showed up in the narrative. And in the current outline, I don't have that be the case, but I haven't written his book yet. So for canon, but it's a Word of Brandon canon, I'm going to say, he's only been around for a couple of months before he shows up at the city.

#tweettheauthor 2009 ()
#11296 Copy

kikastrophe

So, is Kings in any way like your other books? Shall we expect an unexpected twist?

Brandon Sanderson

KINGS is like my books in some ways. But in order to be grand as a series, it had to start--oddly--more humbly. Yes, there are twists. I wrote it so that the epilogue redefines the entire book and series. Each of the 4 viewpoints has an epilogue. Much as RJ had huge prologues, this series will have huge epilogues. Those epilogues, like the Elantris first lines, are intended to be ‘BANG’ moments.

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing ()
#11297 Copy

Argent

There's a scene in... Way of Kings, where Syl appears full-sized, like a human. It’s the only time she does that, why is that?

Brandon Sanderson

That was a very special moment. And there’s was some matters of Connection going on. In the Cognitive Realm she's full-sized, when she's there, and so this is echoing that. So that when, later on, if you were to see her in Shadesmar, and if you're like "Oh she's human sized!" Well--

Argent

That's how she would appear.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you should know.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#11298 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Lightsong Attacks

And we discover that Lightsong is no good with the sword. I toyed with making him able to use it, but I felt it was too much of a cut corner. Knowing who he was before he died, he'd not have needed to know the sword. Beyond that, I felt it would have been too expected. Lightsong himself built it up so much that I feel it would have been a boring plot twist to have him able to use the sword. Beyond that, it would have been just too convenient.

Reversals. I wanted to reverse what you assume about him, and to reverse how this scene would have probably played out in a lot of fantasy stories. Once again, I'm not reversing just to reverse. I'm reversing because it's appropriate for the characters, setting, and plot—and then finally because it's more interesting this way.