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*in response to a discussion about RAFOs* There was the one about what painspren look like.
Yeah, what do painspren look like on the Cognitive Realm.
That's a RAFO.
That's a RAFO because it is actually relevant to future stories.
It'll be important.
Not that it's a big deal, but I got to hold some stuff back.
I asked if Nazh's knife didn't glow to Kelsier's eyes because the metal wasn't from Scadrial generally or whether it was a metal with some particular property.
RAFO.
What power do you think you would get if you were in the Steelheart universe?
...I would hope to be able to fly. That would be my favorite. I don't think I'd get that. I'd get some weird temporal power, probably.
In Steelheart you mentioned mind control Epics. Just how extensive are some of the mind control powers and are they likely to diffentiate between normal people and other Epics?
Mind control powers among Epics are more subtle than you might find in something like the Marvel universe. (Making someone think they want a sandwich, so they wander away from their post, instead of directly controlling them.) But stronger manifestations do exist. They're more rare.
Generally, mind control powers will have more trouble with Epics.
Each of the ten books will be named after in-world books. Because of this, "Stormlight Archive" is a play on words.
You have ten books for the Stormlight Archive. Was that a limit you put on yourself because you knew it could go to twenty? Or it just happened, after you structured out the story, ten was what fit.
Ten was the number. Various worlds in the cosmere have this little number motif going on with them. And I was building ten in as a number motif, as well as nine. Nine and ten and the contrast between these two very similar but very, very different numbers.
And in the original outline, numerology was a much bigger deal, actually, in Stormlight. I was working a lot on the idea that I was using a language (Hebrew is a good example) where every word can also be a number, so you can have all sorts of funky numerology things. It comes up now and then in the published books, with… Various sketchy individuals will be into numerology.
But I knew I wanted a big series. And I knew I had ten characters. And I thought ten books, ten Orders of Knights Radiant, ten characters, it just fit really well. Ten felt like the right number after I did my real outline for it, back in 2009. I felt like I had the material for that, and it was too poetically appropriate for the series to not do it as ten.
What words did Wit whisper to the doll he made at the end?
RAFO.
If I remember correctly, you did several fanart pieces of Brandon's novels, specifically Mistborn, before he ever commissioned you to do anything for him, right? What was your first introduction into all things Sanderson? And what's the story of him commissioning you to illustrate for him?
SO! Storytime.
The first time I heard the name Brandon Sanderson was around 2007. I was listening to Mennege and Stackpole's old Dragonpage Cover to Cover podcast (283A), where they used to talk craft and industry of genre novels and interview authors.
Brandon was there to talk about The Well of Ascension. I heard his elevator pitch (fantasy heist novel, superpowers, dark lord ruling for 1000 years, etc), and then he talked a bit about his thoughts on creativity and writing and I heard a kindred spirit. He and I have very similar views on creative production and craftsmanship, and I liked what I heard so much I went out and bought the first Mistborn novel, then the next, then the third in hardback when it came out.
I was especially hooked by his visually arresting concepts; men with steel spikes through their eyes, flat heads catching the light like Gendo specs, gleaming points emerging from the back of their skulls like horns? Giant raging blue hulks with their too-tight skin tearing off their muscles, carrying Big Damn Swords of pitted, jagged iron? Cloaked figures soaring over misty spired rooftops on invisible threads of force, flinging coins like bullets and slamming each other around with super-strength?
Yeah, I can work with that. :)
I figured what the heck, it'd be fun to draw new fan-art even if nothing came of it. I sketched up some Vin and Inquisitor and Koloss pieces, really basic stuff, and began posting to his fan-forums on the old Time-Waster's Guide (now long gone).
Unbeknownst to me, at that same time Brandon was looking into the market for a concept artist. Suddenly here I was on his doorstep, reasonably competent and already showing what I could do with his descriptions. He got in touch and let me know that he wanted someone to help him with a new project, a pitch for a series of epic novels that would require a strong visual component. And he was going to pay me.
Didn't even try to lowball.
So there's my "lucky break" story. Right place, right time, right work, right guy, right on.
My brother and I have been debating about Hoid and how he got his abilities. We have a couple theories. One of them is Hemalurgy. The other has to do with the portals into the worlds themselves, because the birds in Sixth of Dusk--
Ok, he doesn't have Hemalurgy right now. He has powers that predate the Shattering of Adonalsium. Not all of his powers predate, but he does have powers that predate.
Ok, so I was wrong on both counts then. Am I wrong on both counts?
I'm not saying that, I'm saying that he does have powers that predate but he has also gained powers since.
With aluminum and Mistborn, I know that it makes the metals and stuff all go away, but if someone has toxic metal, would that also make it go away?
It has to be Allomantically relevant.
Is the Ars Arcanum written by a person we have met yet?
He said some people have met this person. I pushed and he said this person is from an unpublished work.
Does a Herald using an Honorblade consume the same "dangerous" amounts of Stormlight?
Honorblades are less efficient; this doesn't change when a Herald uses them. (But they have other advantages.)
Are Honorblades closer in power to Nightblood than they are to Shardblades made from Spren?
Hard to say. They're all similar, but at the same time, very different. And in a way, Nightblood is what you might call a "Third Generation" blade.
Ah gotcha. And in this analogy, Honorblades would be 1st gen and Sprenblades would be 2nd gen?
Yes.
Did you have any hand making Aons for the first Elantris book, or preparing some for the second book?
No, that's all Isaac Stewart. He's been working with Brandon much longer than I have, and he's responsible for all the maps and icons and symbols and most of the chapter heading illustrations, with the exception of The Rithmatist where I got to do it all.
Secondary Projects
Alcatraz
My big reveal for Alcatraz promised one more book in this series, though you shouldn't read that blog post until you read the first five books.
I will probably do Rithmatist 2 before Alcatraz Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians. But I can't say for certain. This is where that part about books being art, and not science, comes into play. I can't say exactly what my inclinations will be on these books, as I need some freedom built into my schedule. We'll see what happens.
Status: Soooon also, but a little less soooon.
Will Lift get a Shardfork?
You know, she's likely to do something like that...
Is the Nightwatcher Cultivation or of Cultivation somehow?
That is strongly hinted in the book.
Movie/Television Updates
Mistborn and Stormlight Films
These rights are held by DMG Entertainment, and they've been very good at working with me and showing me things. They have scripts for both Mistborn and The Way of Kings, which they are actively trying to make happen in Hollywood.
One way they're approaching this is to do a Stormlight VR experience, which we've talked about before. This is less about making a video game, and more about making something to show off to studios to kind of immerse them in the setting of the books. As I determined early on, this is an interesting but weird world, and having visuals (like the art in the books themselves) helps a lot with bringing people around to understanding.
They do plan to release the VR experience to fans on Steam, for those with VR headsets. It's not intended to be a full game, as I said, more a demo of the Shattered Plains—you'll get to personally experience the Shattered Plains from the novels and interact with the characters and creatures that inhabit them. We'll do some posts on it in coming months as it gears up to be released, and I've invited the developers to do some guest posts on my blog.
Regardless of what happens on the film and television front here, at the very least you have that to look forward to!
I've heard you say before that Mistborn was gonna be three trilogies?
It'll be three trilogies, yes.
So the technology advances to faster-than-light?
Yes. The FTL is built into the magic systems, so there will be something where they figure out how to do that with the magic, and spaceships will be propelled using that.
Expanding bubbles around the engines and around the ships?
You'll see. You will see.
Someone on the site has a very convincing theory.
They're missing a very big important piece of the puzzle that you won't get for a few more books.
You talked earlier about your writing process when you were in college. What's it like now?
What's my writing process like now? So I'm a writer. That means I don't have to get up in the morning unless I have to come to some signing like this. I hope you guys appreciate the fact that I got up at 6:45 this morning. Normally I get up at noon. So I get up at noon, I write from noon to 5, I then go hangout with my family from 5 until 9 or so, and at about 9 o'clock I go back to work and I write from like 9 to 3. Or something like that. And then I goof-off and go to bed at about 4. It is a great life. Except when I'm on tour and they are like "Yeah you need to be up for a flight at 8 o'clock" and I'm like "AHHHHH! Curse you Brandon and you staying up late all the other nights!"
Who can consume more Investiture, Nightblood or Chiri-Chiri?
Nightblood. Chiri-Chiri would get full a lot faster.
Zahel/Vasher is in Roshar for Nightblood? Will we know in Stormlight Archive why these two were separated? Or in the sequel of Warbreaker?
The Warbreaker sequel will give clues about this, but the actual event happened between that and [The Way of Kings]. So I'm not sure where I'll slip it in.
The next thing I'll probably write is: I've been developing the world for awhile now, where... are you familiar with Tesla, Nikola Tesla? He wanted this whole wireless electricity thing to work, he was trying to make it work. It was kind of like electrifying the air and having the current run into the ground.
I want to build a world where that happens naturally, where your ground is positive and your air is negative and electrons will move through it and you can like-- animals adapted to use this and you can use fantasy-T technology, like you set a lamp on the ground and it'll just glow because a current is running through it; and stuff like that.
Can you compound like a, can you compund metalminds to the point where you become like a savant?
A savant happens because persistent use of the power has an effect on your soul, warping it. Compounding is a very different thing, so while you could draw some very powerful effects, I would not call them the same thing, even if they are imitating one another at certain points.
Is there any relationship between Hemalurgic bindpoints and the body focuses in Surgebinding? Specifically, the eyespikes and the eyes being a body focus in Surgebinding?
The relationship is there, but it's not a very strong connection.
The Book's Title
It's from this chapter that we get the title of the book. The Alloy of Law. I realize it's an odd title. However, something about it strikes me. I don't think everyone is going to like it; it's certainly not as immediately powerful as something like The Way of Kings. But then, it's also a little more unique. It does, in my mind, encapsulate the theme of the novel. The idea is that these two men—Wax and Miles—are both taking their own interpretations of what it means to follow the law, and mixing it up and making something new of it. This book is a confrontation between their two different ideals.
The working book title was simply Wax and Wayne. (As I was writing the early chapters, that was how they were titled.) I knew this title wouldn't stick, however, as it's a pretty lame pun. Now, I happen to be fond of lame puns. But they don't belong in book titles unless you happen to be writing Xanth or Bob Asprin-type novels.
I can't honestly remember which name—Wax or Wayne—I came up with first. I had Wayne as a character first, but he had a different name. Wax's name came from the Mistborn ideal, where the characters frequently had strange fantasy names that abbreviated to fun terms. (Like Hammond becoming Ham or Dockson becoming Dox.) Wax just fit well with those. Wayne, on the other hand, is a name that feels Western to me, for obvious reasons. As soon as I began thinking of the character by that name, he started to become complete to me—and so I had to keep it, even though the "Wax and Wayne" pun will probably make people groan.
Now, I will say there is one thing I've been wanting to do for a long time that will probably never happen so don't get too excited. But I had this awesome idea once, and these come to me, where I would write a book with Pat Rothfuss where *audience gets too excited*-- wait, wait, you've gotta hear this pitch - where we both have a set of characters who're competing for misaligned goals, like one wants to save somebody and one wants to assassinate somebody-- they've cross purposes. And we write them, and exchange chapters, and have try to assassinate each other and fiddle with each other's plots. And we get it to, like, 80% of the way done and then we send it to George Martin, and we say "read this and decide the ending and then we'll write it *audience laughter and applause*. And so the reason I want to this is so we can write on the cover, it's not "Brandon Sanderson and Pat Rothfuss", it's "Brandon Sanderson vs. Pat Rothfuss". And see who wins at the end if we can convince George not to kill all of our characters. It's never going to happen, but wouldn't that be fun?
*inaudible*
Eshonai indeed gets a flashback sequence. Now, Parshendi were not allowed to be surgebinders in previous eras. I'll just mention that.
Have we ever seen the spren that are in a relationship with Ryshadium on the page at any point?
I think you have, but I can't 100% say. I'm sorry. I think you have, but that one comes with a big asterisk...
Will we ever see anything else of Shai?
Yes, someday-- You may not see another novella of the same style but you will at least see her in books somewhere.
What would be your recommended reading order for the Cosmere?
Publication order, if you're already certain you're going to read them all. If you're uncertain, I'd try to find out which book will best match your interests and get you to read that one first.
Right now, order doesn't matter much, though. One thing to remember, however, is that I'm not releasing the books in a haphazard order. Other than Elantris, I've specifically chosen which books to do in which order, as I like the progression.
Why didn't Spensa just go home to get food, instead of just having to hunt?
Well, there's a couple of reasons. Number one, she's kind of independent and strong-headed, and doesn't want to admit that she can't do it. And number two, she needed that time to work on M-Bot. If she were going down and coming back up, she wouldn't have the time. But she would set snares for rats, which she could check in the off-time, which meant that it saved her a lot of time eating only rats.
Not sure how many people would buy it but it would be amazing if he created an Ars Arcanum Compilation book and released it as a stand alone Hardcover reference style book.
Could be broken down per cosmere system (sort of like Arcanum Unbounded) and go into more details of the various magic systems, charts and the like. Sort of like the Hemalurgy Chart in the Hero of Ages leatherbound.
Thoughts?
Edit just realised the perfect cover could have possibly already been designed - see the book on the cover of Arcanum Unbounded - that white cover with the gold Cosmere symbol is awesome
I've really considered doing this, particularly since there are a lot of worlds in the cosmere I don't know if I'll ever be able to do books for. So we will see, /u/NeoBahamutX. It would have to be something I do primarily for the hardcore fans, which would limit the publisher's interest--but I'm at the point where I can get them to do projects like that to keep me happy.
Is there any ramifications to the holder of a Shardblade for using a Blade in a manner that it wasn't intended?
Depends on the type of Shardblade. (You have seen three different kinds in [The Way of Kings].) For most, no. For some, most certainly.
Are <any of> the Lord Ruler's descendants kandra?
No.
After a spren has been bonded, what happens if the person it's bonded with dies?
If the person they are bonded with dies, it is an emotional event for the spren, but not a damaging event. As long as their oaths were not <broken>.
Kind of like if a friend dies?
Maybe a little more personal than that.
I guess Helaran was not bonded to a spren then?
And why do you say that?
I was looking at this line here and saw that his [Blade] had a gemstone at the bottom, so that was a clue.
That is a very good clue, yes.
One thing when I was reading The Alloy of Law, in Mistborn, all the [Feruchemists] were the Mistborn version of [Feruchemy], and then it changed to the Misting version of [Feruchemy]. Is there...
Yeah, there's a reason for that, and I'll delve into it a bunch more later, but basically, there's two things going on. Number one, the bloodlines have thinned, and that's the reason they're talking about [here]. Also, full-blooded Feruchemists mixing, like the populations mixed, is really dangerous, and Sazed knew this. So, I'll just leave it at that.
What about the three individuals we know to have traveled to and from Sel? Did they use the Shadesmar [the Cognitive Realm] anyway, or have they accessed an alternate method of worldhopping?
I'm going to have to answer that with a yes as well.
So Lessie's kandra, but in the original Mistborn series kandra can't bleed. So how was it that *inaudible* <bleed>?
I think they can bleed. In fact I think Vin has a conversation about it, because otherwise you could just prick the fingers of everybody in order to find a kandra who was imitating somebody.
Because when Ten-- well, it's TenSoon but she thinks it's OreSeur-- gets shot and hurt, it talks about how there's no blood.
Oh, they can stop the bleeding if they want.
Okay.
I mean they have absolute control of their muscles and things. But if you look in Well of Ascension they talk about, "Well, we could just prick everyone's finger and find the kandra," but that doesn't work. They can bleed if they want to. They can cut it off.
Okay, so when I went through and re-did my reading of the series before Shadows of Self came out I just probably missed that.
I'm-- I'm pretty sure I put that in. If I didn't it's in the annotations, because otherwise there's a really easy way to find a hiding kandra.
Is there such a thing as a Feruchemical savant?
I did not write Feruchemical savants into the original outline. Whether or not I will do them- it’s highly unlikely because it’s not there and Mistborn is getting trickier and trickier in that regard. But I didn’t write them in, so… that’s a “probably not”.
I wanna write books, too... One thing that really drags me down is that I'm afraid that my book is gonna be too short. Do you have any tips for beefing up your story?
Well, if you add paragraphs about the architecture, *laughter* and where the clothing comes from--
Number one way to add length to a book without making it feel irrelevant is to start adding viewpoints form other characters who have a different take on what's happening in the story, and by naturally adding in some of those viewpoints and giving them their own arcs, you will lengthen the story in a way that feels natural. It will start to edge it into a different genre. The more of those you add, the more it's going to feel like a different style of story, either a historical epic or an epic fantasy or things like that, so you do want to be careful with it. But if you get done and your story's 50,000 words, and you want it to be 80,000 words, that can be a really good way to do it.
But honestly, I wouldn't stress about this too much. There are fantastic books that are 50,000 or 60,000 words long that get published. I don't know how long the new Stephen King one is, but it's like 180 pages. So it's probably, like, 40,000 or 50,000 words. Like, A Christmas Carol is what, 30,000, or something like that? Write the book; practice at the length you are comfortable in. And if it's consistently a problem that things actually end up too short, then start asking about, "Can I add subplots? Can I add other characters to give a different perspective on this?" But I wouldn't stress it too much at the beginning.
On a similar note, since Elsecallers can physically go to Shadesmar and have access to Transportation surge, can all Elsecallers worldhop?
Yes, that is one of the Elsecaller powers.
In hindsight this seems like a really obvious question now *laugh*, but I think it's really interesting that Elsecallers can travel to other planets too--we didn't know that before.
There are hints in the names on the map of Shadesmar.
Dalinar insists that honorable men would not fight their allies, when Adolin wishes to spar. Would the knights radiant spar one another, or would they generally agree with dalinars point of view?
Some would agree but many would disagree. Do note there is a difference between sparring and prize fighting or dueling.
You've said before Hoid has had many love interests throughout his life. Does he have a bunch of distant descendants running around the cosmere?
RAFO.
Do you plan to do something like Arcanum Unbounded again?
Yes, eventually there will be AU2. I need to write more short stories before that. I'm hoping my novella this year will be about Rysn. Theoretically I will continue doing that, showing little glimpses of places around the cosmere.
Theoretically, would it be possible to form a new shard from splinters of multiple other Shards? Could I have posses enough investiture from Honor, Cultivation, and/or Odium and effectively become Unity, without holding the entirety of those shards?? I’m really just curious haha.
What you want here is theoretically possible, but more difficult than it sounds.
Shadesmar- you can WALK to the other planets. It’s a pretty far ways away (at least days, if not more), but you can go to Shadesmar, walk in the directions where it says "The Realm of the Vapors" and it runs into Scadrial (which is confirmed). In Shadesmar all of that empty space doesn't really have any human interaction, so it doesn't really have an aspect in the cognitive realm, so all of that place gets shortened immensely. Whenever a planet has enough thinking life on it that's it's considering it a planet, it drops into Shadesmar.
Eventually, he’ll come out with a Shadesmar map of the Cosmere, and a Starmap as well.
Are there feathered birds on Roshar?
Yes, they are called chickens by everybody and you've seen some of them. [...] If you watch, in Words of Radiance, there are things people are calling a chicken, which are not what you know of as a chicken.
Are you ever gonna write a book with dragons in it?
I have, technically, already written books with dragons in them. Dragons in the cosmere... you've only heard from one. There haven't been... Frost, who is Hoid's old friend from the planet where he grew, is a dragon. And he's the person that he's exchanging letters with. Look for where Hoid calls someone "you old reptile." So, there are dragons in the cosmere. They are shapeshifters. And so you will rarely see them in dragon form until I go back and do Hoid's origin story. Then, you'll see quite a number of them. But you will also see them later on.
You once told me that Roshar is the name of the planet from the cosmere-literate point of view. Were the dawnsingers cosmere-literate?
There are various levels of cosmere awareness.
Is there a link between Trell and Nalt from Mistborn and Nu Ralik and Vun Makak from Stormlight?
"No, there isn't, maybe just tenuously." He said something like that. He seemed confused that I asked that.
