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What's with Kaladin being special with his oaths that he explodes with power every time he says it?
That is a function of Windrunners being very close to Bondsmiths, which has certain effects.
Would other Windrunners also do that, as well?
Yep.
What's it like handing over keys to parts of the Cosmere to Dan and others? How do you see this collaboration working in the future once stories begin overlapping more?
It's very interesting. It's been, in some ways, a little bit easier than some of the other things. One of the things I realized in doing some of my collaborations that I did in the past was that handing over a story that I had been working on was actually kind of hard. Like, I didn't get to write the story. And once someone else wrote it, then it was written, and there was a part of me that was kind of a little bit sad. (Though some of those stories turned out fantastically, like The Original, which I wrote with Mary Robinette. She wrote it in a way I couldn't have.)
But with the Cosmere stories, we decided we're not doing that. What's happening with both Isaac and Dan (who are working on Cosmere stories) is, we sat down and we brainstormed stories in the Cosmere using some of my worldbuilding and things, but stories they wanted to tell that match who they are and their voices. So these are not books that I was planning to write, that I had outlined. These are books we're, like, "You know what? It'll work better if someone else doesn't just try to do a Brandon story that Brandon was planning to write, and instead we let them take the worldbuilding, the basis, and extrapolate from it." So Dan and Isaac and I have a brainstorming session every week, and we are working on just, right now, the worldbuilding and the plotting for Dan's story. And we've been spending a lot of time on it. It'll probably be another six months or a year before he even starts writing it, because we want to get it absolutely right. And it's a story that's doing the themes and what-not that Dan is really interested in. We're just (Isaac and I) making sure to help out and make sure it fits in the Cosmere. So I think it's gonna be a different kind of collaboration that I think is gonna work really well.
And I'm excited by it. There's nothing for this one that I'm like, "Oh, I wish I could write that." It is absolutely a Dan story built for Dan. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I won't say anything about it. I want Dan to come on and be able to talk about what's exciting, why he's made the decisions he has. But I'll say this: one of the nice things, we're in a spot where we can do something I never got to do when I was younger. Which is: have an art team do concept art. So Dan can say "I need this," and then the concept art team goes and comes back with twenty different versions of a worldbuilding thing done by three different artists, that he can be like "Oh, this is the one; extrapolate on this." It's actually a lot of fun. Having a concept art team is something that most writers never get to have, and I am really excited to be able to have it.
Chapter Twenty-Five - Part Two
I hope the timeframe of the various armies, with Vin and Kelsier running the distances, work all right. This is one of the toughest parts about writing fantasy for me, as I mentioned last time. I don't have a really good concept of distance, and getting things moving at the right speeds on a national level, so they intersect at the right places. . . yeah. Tough.
I had to, for instance, decide how quickly a person pewter dragging could run, and how that compared to someone marching in an army, and how that compared to someone taking a canal boat. If you can do that math and get back to me, well, it's too late. I already put it in the book. So, I hope I did it right.
I'm pretty sure that /u/mistborn worked with brotherwise on this game [Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archive], and probably had some say in the artwork.
Hopefully he sees this, and takes a moment to respond, I really wonder if this just flew under the radar, or if there's a reason that Rock has a different skin color than the rest of his peak.
They worked with my team--but I personally didn't have time to oversee all of the art.
Getting a lot of the characters' skin tones has been a challenge, as I'm often vague in the books. Rock is a good example; Shallan gets her paler skin and hair from the Horneaters, so a lot of people assume the Horneaters are Irish-looking, though I've intended them to be a variety of skin tones. So while it's not inappropriate to draw Horneaters light skinned (and a lot of fanart does) I intended Rock to have a bronzer tan skin.
The thing is, it doesn't quite look Alethi either, so they'll describe him through their eyes as looking "tan." It's a skin tone they don't really have, though, so there are passages an artist could look at and assume, "Oh, this guy is white, like Szeth" because of my descriptions, which are at times less specific than I should have made them.
So yes, failing on our part, but don't blame the artist--I'm sure there are places in the books that they drew on to get this description.
Would you say Rock's skin is closer to a Native American, or would it be lighter, like a Pacific Islander?
My internal depiction has always placed him closer to native american skin tone.
I envision native American. Where the Alethi tend to run the range between someone who would look Asian to us (though the Vedens are more that skin tone) all the way through to Indian (actual Indians) skin tones. They'd look at Rock and say, "That's a tan" or "that's bronze." It's obviously not Alethi, but the words "light" and "dark" don't really work for the descriptions the way I want--in fact, a lot of the ways in literature we've talked about skin tones through history has been...well, pretty racist. It's sometimes a challenge to navigate this, my own biases, and the problems that come when working with a culture, like the Alethi, who are also pretty racist.
Rock actually sputtered, an amusing mixture of indignation and incredulity, bringing a red cast to his light Horneater skin.
Though this sentence from Words of Radiance chapter 46 is what used to make me think Rock has lighter skin and it's from Kaladin's PoV. So it doesn't necessarily mean he actually has skin color close to pale/fair one, but just a bit lighter than Kaladin himself (or normal Alethi)'s tan color?
P.S. Sort of a fanart question: Do Rock's family members all have bronzer tan skin?
Yeah, that's one of the ones. So I try to walk a line with Rock, where he doesn't have an Alethi skin tone, but a Horneater one--which is why I blame myself for the interpretations here. I haven't been the most clear.
Oh, and for your P.S. Yes, they should. I imagine them bronzer than him.
Chapter Forty-Six - Part One
Raoden's reaction to Iadon's death is just a little bit cliché, but I think that cliché exists for a reason, so I wrote the scene this way.
Sometimes, I have difficulty in my writing because I try to be TOO original. I react pretty strongly against anything I've seen before, and don't want to include it in my books. This has served me well in some ways–Moshe bought Elantris partially because he found it refreshingly different from other fantasies on the market. I generally have a strong element of originality to my worlds, my magic systems, and my plot structures. This is part of what draws people to my work.
However, sometimes I go too far. If I see something written one way–even if that way is good–then I react against it, trying to find another way. I've stayed away from "Eternal Apprentice" plots (Thank you Craig Shaw Gardner for the name) even though they are extremely popular in fantasy–indeed, they are what got me into fantasy when I was younger. But, because of some things like this, my books can be more difficult to get into. The extremely steep learning curve of my works, the focus on strange settings and odd magic systems, might be off-putting for some readers. (Elantris, by the way, is only a hint at these kinds of things. Mistborn is a much better example.)
I try to walk a fine balance in my works. The trick is to write something that is original and new, breaking convention and tradition–yet at the same time have it FEEL like a fantasy. People read in the genre because they like the things it can do. I have to add the new, Sanderson, spin to things without tossing out all that is wonderful and resonant within the genre.
That's why you'll see some old archetypes showing up in my works occasionally. In a way, Mistborn is an old-fashioned "overthrow the evil empire" fantasy. When choosing my next project, I decided that I had enough sufficiently new material–both in setting and in plot–to tell the story in a way that would be fresh. I think it adds something to the genre, rather than just recycling what is there. So, I went ahead with it, hoping that the familiar and the original would work together.
Elantris is similar. I threw in odd (for fantasy) plotting structures, but I let the air of "standard medieval culture" remain in the book. (In fact, as I've noted, this is probably my most like-Earth book in that way.)
The balance between the new and the familiar. That's what it's all about.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Death of Bilg
You may not recognize a cameo appearance by Bilg in this chapter. He was the soldier who punched Demoux. Who is Bilg? Well, if you go read book one, you'll find a scene where Kelsier visits the caves where his army is training. He picks a soldier out of the crowd to champion him and has the man fight a duel with one of the army's dissident members. Kelsier helped his champion by using Allomancy to interfere with the fight.
The champion? Captain Demoux. The dissident troublemaker he fought? A guy named Bilg. (Perhaps you can see why Bilg would bear a grudge against Demoux.) In the original draft of book one, Bilg died in that fight. However, readers reacted harshly against Kelsier killing a man to make a point. So, I backed off and had Bilg live and become a follower of Kelsier.
I've always felt that he should have died, though. So, in this book, he makes trouble again, fights Demoux again, and this time finally gets what he deserves. The only problem is that Elend gets his name wrong here and calls him Brill instead. Oops. Since that makes it pretty much impossible to spot the cameo, I may get that changed in a reprint.
In the cosmere, sixteen is obviously a very important number, or very significant, but on Roshar everything comes in groups of ten. Is that a cultural construction or is that really how things are being grouped on that planet?
It is both. It is a cultural construction that came from slight cosmere events that are not super, super, super important. Like, there's a reason we think in base ten, right? Is it important to the universe? Meh? Right... And it's maybe a little more on Roshar, but at the same time it's like--
There are ten orders of Surgebinders. Did they order them that way? Or are there actually sixteen different--
Well, it kind of goes back to there were ten [Heralds] with ten sets of power given by Honor, and Honor is an individual, right, so does that make sense? You cannot separate, in a lot of places in the cosmere, the perspectives of the sapient beings who are interfering with what's going on. Even going back to the number sixteen.
Lies of the Beholder finds Stephen Leeds in a more precarious place—psychologically and otherwise—than we've ever seen him. What are the challenges of writing a character like this with so many aspects? Was this a difficult story to write?
This was a very difficult story to write, but not because of all the aspects. They've always made the story easier, not harder. Being able to take an individual's personality and split it into various themes and ideas...well, that was fun, and helped me understand him a great deal.
The challenge of this story was finding myself wanting to explore the more philosophical and conceptual side of what it means to be Stephen Leeds—and why I related to him specifically as a character. I had to decide if I wanted this ending to be like the other two novellas—pretty straightforward detective mysteries—or if I'd let myself go off into something more conceptual.
In the end, I went more conceptual, which I felt was appropriate to ending this series. However, it does mean this story was a challenge in that I was dealing with some heady themes while trying to do justice to the actual mystery. I'm not 100% sure if those two ever ended up balancing right, but I do think this was the correct way to go with the ending.
Was the prostitute from the Way of Kings that Adolin protected Beryl?
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.
Vasher and Denth Spar; Vasher Gets Stabbed
I love scenes in books (when I read them) that imply a great weight of history that we don't get to see between characters. It gives me a sense that the story is real. That these characters lived before the story, and that they'll continue to live afterward (or, well, the ones who survive).
When I built this book, I knew that the Vasher/Denth relationship needed a lot of groundwork to give it that sense. I wanted them both to be complicated characters who have a twisted past. It all comes to head here, in this chapter, and we get the ending of a story over three centuries old. Will I ever tell those stories? Probably not. Like the story of Alendi and Rashek in Mistborn, I think the story between Vasher and Denth is stronger as it stands—as something to lend weight to this book. We will go more into the Vasher/Arsteel relationship (particularly as we deal with Yesteel) in the next book, if I write it.
By this point, you should be wondering just who Vasher is. He's been alive since the Manywar, and Denth implies that Vasher himself caused the conflict. There's obviously a lot more going on with him than you expect.
Somebody asked me if there's any Lovecraftian influences in my books, because I do enjoy Lovecraft. And so I thought, "Well this would be a good interlude to read," for that reason.
I was wondering, on Roshar, what sort of plants and animals do they use for fabrics, because they don't have a lot of woolly animals and the plants are different?
Most of them are plant-based. I think I've mentioned one of the plants. Theirs are plant-based.
They have silk though, right?
Yes. It is seasilk, you actually grow it in the water. It's pretty awesome. It comes from the coasts.
So they don't have anything like our silk, then?
If you looked at it, you would call that silk, but it is being produced in a very different way.
But our silk comes from insect cocoons, and they have a lot of that sort of thing, but they don't use it for fiber at all?
Insect cocoons on Roshar are either, they melt in water and are tied to the highstorm cycle, or they have stone in them. So they don't work really well for textiles. There are certain rockbuds you can shred the inside of the shell and get a textile from them, there's seasilk which you grow out in the ocean, and there are other plants of a similar nature.
In Shallan's drawings during the course of The Way of Kings, she sees multiple Cryptics. Were there other Cryptics accompanying Pattern in those drawings?
Yes.
Were they approving of Pattern's choices.
Yes. The Cryptics are much like what is happening with Lift, where there is more of a conscious effort on their part. As opposed to what is happening with Syl or Jasnah where there is hesitance. What the Cryptics are driven to do is in part because of what a few of their members have been experimenting with.
Is Hoid going to be Jasnah's Wit?
RAFO
Are there any possible plans for The Rithmatist becoming a virtual reality game?
We have tried. We get a lot of interest from people who don't actually make video games, who are like "I think this would be a great game. Here's my concept." I'm like, "That's great. But we would need somebody who's actually made video games." So, I think it would make a great one. BYU students did a little fun prototype one that turned out very well. But nothing real so far. So far, I have no interest from game developers who have actually developed games.
I'm a big fan of Harmony.
Probably will never happen but I'd love to see him put the smackdown on Odium.
Paging [Brandon]... what do you think of this theory :) ? Is this your plan? Or are we asking about something which is decade(s) away?
I find theories like this very interesting, but yes, you're right. This is talking about things very far away. I've said, however, that Odium is wary of Harmony.
It seems like Odium has been attacking shards that share a world for some reason (dom and dev hon and cult). Maybe his exploit against dual sharded worlds would work less well against a dual-wielding shardholder?
I won't say yes or no to that, but you can imagine that what happened on Scadrial is something he would have preferred never occur.
I'm surprised it didn't occur to anyone to grab two shards to begin with? Pairing Odium with Devotion seems like a good idea.
Did this not occur for a specific reason, or just an oversight on the part of the folks involved?
RAFO
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!
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 ProjectsSongs 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.
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
Have we seen the resonances of either Wax or Wayne?
Yes, well, Wax is really good at sculpting bullets and things away from him.
The bubble.
Yeah and things like this. This is playing with the fact that he is-- Let's just say that the abilities make this happen, and I’ll let you theorize on why, but it's just an enhancement to what he can do.
I might be wrong, but I thought you said it was because he was becoming a steel savant.
A savant, yeah, definitely, but this is what this is coming from.
But being a savant has to do with being really good with one power--
Yes.
--and resonances--
Being a savant has to do with using Investiture a lot, and it's starting to permeate your soul. Like we've ta--
So he's more a savant with both of--
He's used them a lot, and they are changing his soul, and so the powers are morphing and changing. Just in slight, little ways. You're not gonna see a whole bunch. But you can imagine these two separate powers are kind of becoming one to him.
Yeah I can see that. And Wayne?
So Wayne's is not as obvious. I'll go ahead and RAFO that right now.
Lightsong's Climactic Scene, with His Vision of the Boat
Lightsong's vision and eventual death in this chapter are another of the big focus scenes. In fact, I'd say that this little scene here is my absolute favorite in the book. It's hard to explain why, but I get a chill whenever I read it. It's the chill of something you planned that turned out even better than you expected. (As opposed to the planning for the Siri/altar image, which turned out poorly and so had to be cut.)
I worked hard to bring this scene in my head to fruition. No other section of the book has been tweaked more in drafting—everything from changing it so Lightsong grabs the God King's hand as opposed to his foot, to reworking the imagery of the ocean. (That imagery, by the way, came from my honeymoon while standing on the cruise ship at night and staring into the churning white froth above deep black water.)
Many people on my forums called this event ahead of time—Lightsong healing the God King. I'm fine with that. It did seem like a very obvious setup. One character with powers he cannot use until healed, another with the power to heal someone one time. Sometimes it's okay to give people what they expect—particularly when the result is this scene. I hope they didn't expect it to be as powerful as it is (assuming readers like the scene as much as I do). I want this one to be very moving.
It's the final fulfillment of Lightsong's character. Note that even in the end, his sarcasm and irony come through. He told Siri not to depend on him because he would let her down. Well, Lightsong, you're a better man than you wanted us to believe. There's a reason why so many are willing to rely upon you.
I love Wax as a Skimmer and a Coinshot. Is that your favorite Twinborn combination? If not, what is?
It's certainly one of my favorites. However, some of the characters in the modern day trilogy have some really neat combinations as well.
Human, spren, Splinter, Sliver, Shard, Adonalsium - which of these is most similar ontologically to Nakomi?
*laughter* I can't say anything about Nakomi! Robert Jordan did not want anything said about Nakomi! I can't say anything at all about Nakomi! Dig into the notes when they are released, and then you can find out things said about Nakomi. The little tiny hints we have, I told you he wrote that thing at the end, and I'm like well, okay. So.
I just wanted to add in my two cents and say it was absolutely brilliant... and I think I'm starting to be able to breath again (crying that much hurts)...I also really loved that there's an "cameo" for Kelsier at the end... that made me really happy to see.
Glad you liked the book, Rainbow!
You may want to note that the moment Preservation dropped out and let the last of his consciousness die, someone was waiting in the Cognitive Realm to seize the power and hold on for a short period until Vin could take it up more fully. You'll find him using it to whisper in moments of great stress in the book, to one person in specific in two places. (I'll bet someone on here has already found them.)
He never could just let things well enough alone....
Would you ever consider a Cosmere hero-shooter game like Overwatch?
Not a lot of shooting going on in the Cosmere at this point, so it would have to be late. I mean I'd consider anything video game wise. Mostly it's like: how good is the company? Like who's making that? But I mean, the video game, we had 3 people come court me to work on video games and on one hand I picked right because the other two never made their game even though they were from AAA studios. So I picked the one that actually went gold and it was by a fantastic studio full of people that I still think are great, but it just didn't go anywhere. Partially because of their monetization, partially because launching a new game is just super super hard, and Moonbreaker just kind of- I mean, I know they're still working on it and I hope that it will take off and people will enjoy and play it, but video games is just a rough rough world. Super rough world.
Pick Rito, not Blizzard lol
Blizzard did bring me in and try to court me for a while, but even then I could sense that it just wouldn't be a good match, me with Blizzard.
Well and it's hard when people want you to write their stories when you wanna write your stories.
Yeah, exactly. And there are certain things I would write for others, but it just wouldn't work. Riot did offer me a hero once for League of Legends, like if I wanted to come design one. And so at some point, maybe I'll do that. I don't know if the offer is still open or not, but I've chatted with those guys over there a decent amount.
One of the things that I definitely wanted to do with this book as I was writing it was limit the ability of the fantasy world to impact the "real world" which, um, the story that Cecil and everyone is from may not actually be, it's certainly not our world, uh, maybe our world is one upstream from that, uh, is kinda what the implication might be or maybe they're a side step from one another, uh but I wanted to limit their ability to influence one another. One of the things that makes this book work is that you're kinda going into your own isolated world, where the real world can minimally influence it but it can't influence the real world in anyway, um, real world- I say real, they're both real, but the upstream world and things like that. Um this allowed me more flexibility with the narrative uh, in was I wanted to go. You don't have to worry, as a reader, what are the implications upon my world if this were discovered well, they're very- they're very greatly limited because nothing can transfer, uh, upstream. Uh, a useful tool for just letting the reader umm, suspend disbelief a little bit more, and focus a little bit more on the story that is happening.
One big thing in epic fantasy books that I find too hard to swallow: nobody has the same name.
This is for convenience's sake. I've actually done it where I used the same name before. It gets so confusing to readers. So confusing. In fact, when I do it on purpose, my editors usually change it, because it is so confusing.
Like, in Stormlight, what I'll end up doing, is I'll say, there are core names. Kaladin's name is based off Kalak, the Herald. You've got two characters basically with the same name, where one is based off the other. Kaladin's name is the Rosharan's version of, like Matthew. There is this saint: this Herald. But the way I do it so that we don't get too confused is I change each one a little bit. Kaladin is their version of Matthew. Shallan is their version of Mary. She's named after Shallash. So you'll see a lot of Shalla- names and Kala- names. And, as we had earlier, we have Ishikk, who's named after Ishi. You'll have a lot of Ishi- names. This is my acknowledgement to you that, in a real fantasy world, more of them would probably have a lot of duplicate names, like we have now.
Granted, there are cultures where there are much fewer duplicate names than exist in, say, English and Chinese and things, where a lot of duplicate names are used. But you are noticing a correct thing, and I just have to say, for writing convenience, this is one of those things where fiction has to be stranger than truth. Because otherwise it just gets so confusing.
But I bet you could write a book where you did it, it was a plot feature, that a lot of people have the same name, that you could make it work.
You've requested a couple of characters in Stormlight that have the same name. Well, I've done that... kind of. That's about as close as we'll get. I do have some minor characters that I'll use the same name for. But like I said, my continuity editor really, really, really likes it when I don't do that, and asks me to change them.
It is fun that you noticed this, because this is one of those things ('cause I love linguistics) that I notice a lot. And I'm like, "Is there a way around this?" And I try to find ways that work both for the convenience of telling stories, but also work for worldbuilding realism. Maybe I'll put two characters of the same name in just for you in the future. We'll see.
My books are coming out in different languages all over the world! This is not a complete list (notably Spain and Poland are missing), but these are the publishers who asked to be included.
Livre de Poche (France)
In 2022, Livre de Poche published Dawnshard, Cytonic, and Sixth of the Dusk in French. In 2023, they will publish French editions of Rhythm of War, Skyward Flight, and all four Secret Projects (simultaneously with the US releases).
Piper (Germany)
In 2023, Piper will publish a German edition of The Lost Metal in June and Secret Project #1 in the fall. They are also re-releasing The Alloy of Law and all of the Mistborn ebooks.
Heyne (Germany)
In 2022, Heyne published German editions of Warbreaker, The Original, and Dawnshard. They will release Secret Project #4 in January 2024.
Droemer Knaur (Germany)
Droemer Knaur published a German edition of Starsight in 2022, and will publish a German Cytonic in 2023.
Mondadori (Italy)
In 2022, Mondadori published an Italian hardcover of The Hero of Ages. In 2023, they will publish Italian paperbacks of The Alloy of Law, The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages, and Shadows of Self. They will publish The Bands of Mourning and The Lost Metal in 2024.
Trama (Brazil)
In 2022, Trama published a Brazilian edition of The Way of Kings. In 2023, they will publish Brazilian editions of Secret Project #1 and Words of Radiance.
Faro (Brazil)
Faro will publish a Brazilian edition of the first volume of the Dark One graphic novel in February 2023.
Mipl (Serbia)
Mipl will publish Serbian editions of the Secret Projects in 2023.
Kayan (Egypt/Arab Republic)
In 2023, Kayan will publish Arabic editions of Secret Projects 1 and 2, the first Legion book, and Mistborn.
Could a higher spren manifest on a world other than Roshar in their spren form, not as a Blade?
Well, they would have to get off first.
That doesn't answer my question!
A lot of these questions I have to be careful because they're presupposing things as foundational assumptions. A lot of time people-- The really sneaky ones will ask me these questions knowing if I answer the question, that there are three steps back assumptions that I am then canonizing, so I'm just going to RAFO that one, because I'm giving you the answer, "They would to have to get off first."
Are we going to see Native Americans in the Rithmatist series?
Yes you will. The Native Americans have mostly moved to South America, but there's a Native American main character in the second book.
Yes!
What happened is the– a lot of them got pushed into South America, where the Aztec Empire is alive and well and strong. And so their perspective on what's going on is very different from the perspective happening in Joel's school, so you will see a different perspective on things.
Excellent.
It was already dangerous though, what I'm doing, and I realize this, for those very reasons. Very sensitive issues. Like when I used the Mary Rowlandson account, which is kind of a controversial account as it is, I understood that I was potentially opening a can of worms.
But I mean, I really– I just want to say this, that I really appreciate as a reader that you go into diversity because I know it is a risk, and it means so much to readers to have you writing a different set of characters and people people can relate to.
First of all, it seems that when Returned give their blessing that requires their life, to do so is to give up all of their BioChroma. Well, there was a time where Vivenna can't sense Vasher because he was a drab. Since that would mean he put all of his BioChroma somewhere and is SPOILER one of the Returned, why isn't he dead?
Also, it seems as if only the royal family has the ability to change their hair color. However, when Vasher kills Denth, his hair flashes through a ton of colors before he dies. What are his ties to the family? Is there something I missed? Will there be another book explaining this?
I did mention these things in the annotations, as has been pointed out, but boy--it's been a while. I don't remember what I wrote in the annotations and what I didn't.
All Returned are, in a way, "related" to the royal family in their Investiture. (The magic they hold.) Vasher has some specific and powerful control over his own powers, which I didn't go into much in the book. But if you delve into the annotations, you'll get more.
You hinted I think-- it was talking about it that Kelsier had kind of Ascended?
Yes. [...] Yes he did Ascend briefly. It was... It didn't work real well for him because Kelsier plus the power of Preservation is not a good match, but yes.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Sazed In Charge of the City
Sazed's in charge here. There's one small problem with that. Sazed's not very good at leadership.
It's not his fault. He just doesn't have the skillset for it. Unlike Elend, who had a buried desire to lead–and the skills to become a king, if he learned how to use them–Sazed just wants to be a quiet scholar. We saw this when he gathered the crew and couldn't keep them from arguing. We see it again here.
He's much more in his element when he looks through the book he wrote with Tindwyl. Though, of course, losing her is starting to hit him pretty hard. He keeps wavering back in forth emotionally, and that's intentional. He is confused, and doesn't know what to do.
Here's another Couple of things we'll find answers to in book three:
How Vin drew on the mists, and why she could do it.
Why she can feel the pulsing of the Well and nobody else can.
Is there meant to be a direct connection between the efficiency for transferring Breaths and the stamp magic from The Emperor’s Soul?
There's not meant to be a direct correlation only in that the magics both work on the same fundamental rules, like all of them do.
Okay.
I wasn't specifically linking those two in any way in my head when I was working on them.
Okay, because I was just wondering with the fact that the stamps work better with what there supposed to be like...and the Breath work better--
Yeah. That's just a fundamental of the Cosmere, the whole idea of perception, what you're thinking, how much something matches what you're doing, and how well you're able to visualize what you want to have happen. This is all related in the cognitive aspects of the magic, basically, and the spiritual, I suppose.
Is the cosmere, the thread connecting several of your series, something that came from the beginning, or something that kind of grew?
What a great question! So the cosmere, which is the thread connects a lot of my books together. All of my epic fantasies are connected in this world called the cosmere. Was that from the beginning, or was it something that grew?
So I had, I often point to the fact that I had those years not getting published as a big advantage, because while I was working on those books, I didn't write the first ones as a connected shared universe. It was after I had done a number of them, that I'm like, "Hey, there's something here! There's a thread that I can weave together." But by the time I got published, I knew all of that right?
And so, like when I wrote Mistborn, which was my, the first book I wrote knowing it would get published. Elantris was my first published, it was number 6 in those years. I sat down specifically with Mistborn and built the cosmere, using some of these unpublished books as the history of what had happened. So from the get-go of reading it, it was all interconnected. Elantris got retrofitted a little bit, to fit in with this. From Mistborn is where it all kind of starts working together and things like that.
I was inspired to do this by authors I had read who did this really well, that I liked. Stephen King did it. Michael Moorcock did it. It really kind of blew my mind when Asimov connected the Robots and the Foundation books. Of course, you know, comics have been doing it forever. But when I saw authors doing it is what made me really excited. I would count those as inspiration.
Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?
There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.
1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.
2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.
This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.
3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.
Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.
What is Perfect State about?
Well, Perfect State, is about, the question I had was, what if the best way to make the most people happy in the univ- in the world was to create for every person their own individualized simulation, so they basically could live a fantasy novel. You, you’d take them when they were a baby, put them in this simulation, it’s kind of like, you know, The Truman Show, where something like this, except the whole world is designed to be awesome, so that they could have a wonderful, cool life, and, what would that be like? Less you know, like, manipulating them, or, ruining their life, or you know, putting them into a simulation to, to control them, and more, here’s you get to be the most important person in the world and grow up that way. So yeah, that, that’s kind of the premise.
Brandon Sanderson provides an unintended lesson about being careful with pronouns
"All right, people," Elend said, folding his arms. "We need options. Kelsier recruited you because you could do the impossible. Well, our predicament is pretty impossible."
"He didn't recruit me," Cett pointed out. "I got pulled by my balls into this little fiasco."
"I wish I cared enough to apologize," Elend said, staring at them.
This one was unintentional. Gotta watch those pronouns!
In the original draft of one of the books, I had Elend talking about the difference between him and Vin, referencing his time going to parties in noble society. He mentioned he was a man of "Magnificent Balls."
I caught that one, fortunately.
You wanna know a cool story, guys? When I was just, like, fourteen, maybe twelve, we went to Jackson Hole and you [Brandon's dad] bought me my first ring. I don't wear a lot of jewelry, but you bought me a ring that had a big topaz in it. (Big for my age.) And when I started writing my very first book, I named a character Topaz. Which is still one of Hoid's aliases, that's where his first name came from, was the topaz that my father bought for me.
If any of you have read Dragonsteel (someday, I'll let everyone read it), that's why he's named Topaz in that. Well, he had a topaz, that's where he got it in-world. But name came from my father buying me a ring that was a really cool looking ring that I always kind of thought about and then named a character after.
People want to know if you still have the ring.
I do not still have the ring. I wish that I did. We had a rough time where we moved from Nebraska to Idaho, and a lot of things got lost. A lot of my items (I was not there, I was in Korea at the time) got carefully and delicately packed up my brother, who was very, very kind. But somewhere in that, the ring didn't make that transfer.
How do you prevent yourself from becoming a victim of your own success?
I haven't figured that out yet. I've watched it happen to other authors, so if I figure it out, I'll tell you. It is something I worry about. Particularly with how the new J.K. Rowling screenplays feel like they're just missing the mark.
I feel like she needed someone to tell her when her bad ideas are bad.
Yeah. Exactly. But, we'll see. Well hopefully Peter and Isaac and Kara and Karen will tell me when my bad ideas are bad.
What is your philosophy on prologues? You do a lot of them.
I do a lot of them. I don't think they're necessary. I'm fond of them. Usually, if you can find a way to not do one, your story will probably be stronger. But they do let you do something like, for instance, if you know that the later tone of your story is not going to match the early tone of your story, you can hint what the tone is actually going to be in the prologue, which is really handy. And there are other things you can do. You can start with a bang with a prologue in a way that maybe sometimes you wouldn't be able to do if you were going right into the main story. There's things that I like about them. But I do think that they become a crutch to some writers, and that might include me.
Do you have a recommended length in terms of how long it should be? ...Or maybe how long it should not be? What would be the max for a prologue?
Well, Robert Jordan's kind of became books unto themselves, and that worked for him. But when you're getting that long, you might be-- Short and sweet is probably your best. One of the best prologues ever written is the prologue to Eye of the World, Robert Jordan. But there's no real-- Just try to avoid the classic '80s one where it's like, "Prologue is all the worldbuilding dump that I couldn't fit in to the first chapters."
And it's interesting that you mentioned the RPG because I remember like many years ago we started reading the RPG from [Crafty Games] and some things that were inside—because when you are doing an RPG you are reading it to explain like the lore and things about everything that's going on and the magic system and blah blah—and we didn't know if, for example, the metals that were included in there that were not yet on the book were canonical, and now I think that most of them are going to be canonical as well.
Yeah when we were working on the Crafty game there were certain liberties we needed to take, and some of them I knew we were gonna use and some of them I knew we weren't going to. And this is just the freedom they asked for to make their game. You can't take everything as canon unfortunately in the Mistborn game, but theoretically there's a lot in there that will be.
I just finished a reread of WOR (actually my first audiobook listen of the series, which was great), and when I reached your last three, I definitely noticed you really had a skill with shaping chapters to speed things up or slow things down. Initially it felt like you introduced more frequent shifts in main character POV instead of some of the lengthy sections with one POV that we'd seen in RJ's last few books. This made it feel like the story was coming together and things were starting to really happen at the same time. Then later it felt almost like a kind of dilation effect where a massive amount was happening at the same time - but with the added complication of the actual timeline manipulations, which was extremely well done in this regard... I was so caught up in the story I wasn't able to keep my attention on it at the time but later, after finishing AMOL, I was pondering that it felt like a Christopher Nolan movie, where the structure itself was part of the narration.
I've always preferred a frequent POV jump style to the large chunk style Mr. Jordan used later in his books--but there are merits to both. In the Stormlight Archive, I've been pleased with a kind of hybrid of the long chunk from the later WoT books with a quick jump method. (I pick a group of characters and quickly alternate POVs.) But I have the WoT to thank for helping me, as a younger writer, study and learn the different ways POV jumps can influence the storytelling.
Please explain what you will about Shards and Splintering and Slivers.
An event happened long ago which destroyed something called Adonalsium into 16 pieces. And 16 people took up that power.
People?
I call all intelligent species people. If someone takes up the power and lets go of it, it has the effect much like a balloon that's been stretched and then the air is let out. I call that a Sliver; based off of the Lord Ruler calling himself the "Sliver of Infinity". The Lord Ruler is someone who held the power and then released it. And so, current Slivers are the Lord Ruler, Kelsier, and there may be others around who at one point held the power and let go of it. A Splinter is a term used by certain people in the cosmere for power of Adonalsium which has no person caring for it, no... no person holding it, which has attained self-awareness.
So is that like the mists and the Well? Are they...
They are not, because they have not attained self-awareness. But, the Seons are self-aware. So, any piece, for instance there were some spren on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation got there. Those were already Splinters of Adonalsium where he had left power which attained sentience on its own. So, it can be intentional is what I am saying, does that make sense? You have seen other Splinters.
Are the highstorms related to the Splintering of Honor?
The highstorms are more related to the mist from Mistborn which terminology we have not discussed yet. You have seen Splinters quite a bit on various planets.
What, for you, is the "core" to writing compelling fantasy?
That is a really hard question to answer. Do you emphasize the fantasy, or not? A really great story is going to be about awesome characters that you fall in love with. Beyond that, it's going to need a really great plot. You can't separate these things from writing a great fantasy, because I think the worldbuilding needs to be really cool, if you have terrible characters and plot, it doesn't matter how good your worldbuilding is - you're not going to have a good story.
That said, the core of writing great fantasy as opposed to other fiction, assuming that you're already doing the plot and the character right, is to get down to that idea of the sense of wonder. What is wonderful about this place that would make people want to live there, or be fascinated by it? What's going to draw the imagination?
Fantasy is writing books that could not take place in our universe. For me, that's the dividing line. In science fiction there's the speculation "This could take place here," "This may be extrapolating science beyond what we know, but it could work." In fantasy we say, "No, this couldn't work in our ruleset, our laws of the universe." That's really focusing on it is what makes the genre tick. So you have to do that well.
On Sel, in the dialogue from Khriss, the Arcanum Unbounded, she mentions that the Cognitive Realm is especially dangerous because Devotion and Dominion were killed there. Why is it dangerous? Are there bad spren?
Well it's called the Expanse of the Densities in Roshar for a very good reason.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
The Mists Chose Someone
There's a lot more going on behind the scenes than even the author of these epigraphs knows. Reasons why Vin was chosen, and why the power of Preservation needed a new mind to control it.
The author is right in that Preservation did need someone to control its power, and it did seek for a host in which to invest itself. It began this search with what mind it had left about sixteen years before the return of the power to the Well of Ascension, just as it began a search for a new host before the return of the power the previous time.
Unfortunately, just as Ruin took control and manipulated Alendi, he took control and manipulated Vin.
Do you read YA speculative fiction? Which books or authors are your favorites in the young readers category?
I've already mentioned a bunch of my favorites, but I could go on! I'm quite fond of Westerfeld's work. I think it's quite marvelous. I've read Terry Pratchett's teen books. If you've only read his adult work, you're really missing out. He is quite good. I've also enjoyed James Dashner's and Eva Ibbotson's books.
I got into a lot of the YA classics in the late 90s, well after everyone else had been into them. Things like The Giver by Lois Lowry and Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen. Jane Yolen has long been one of my favorite writers. There's just a lot of exciting things happening in YA, and I feel inspired by a lot of the works by those authors I've mentioned
The people on Scadrial have innate Investiture from Preservation. If someone from another planet, say Roshar, were to get Allomancy, from Hemalurgy or Feruchemy, would that person have to have Stormlight as well as the metal in order to do their--
No, good question. They would just need the metal if you were Hemalurgically getting the ability. Remember, Hemalurgy is basically ripping off a piece of someone else's soul and stapling it to yours. Short circuiting the soul, so to speak... All the pieces of the soul you would need, it is giving you. It has dangerous ramifications, but you wouldn't need Stormlight also.
You're planning the Stormlight Archive as this big long ten book series and I imagine that obviously look at your work with the Wheel of Time the other big long epic series, one of the issues that at least some fans perceive is that these series are at least perceived to sag or at least slow down at some point in the middle. People start to get very bogged down and it takes years for the next one's out, is that something you're considering for your structuring of the Stormlight Archive and what are you trying to do to address that?
Excellent question, it is actually something that I've very consciously thought about when designing this story. One of the reasons that I didn't release The Way of Kings when I wrote it back in 2002 is that I hadn't figured out this problem yet. And it's one of the reasons that I shelved the book and re-wrote it from scratch back a couple of years ago.
I really was conscious of it because I have an advantage over authors like George Martin and Robert Jordan, who have had these kinds of accusations levelled at them, in that I've read them! I've read Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan didn't get to read Robert Jordan in the same way, and I can see he's kind of pushed his way through the snow for some of us to fall behind and see some of the things that he did, even after he said "Boy, I think I might have done that differently." We can learn from that.
What I'm trying to do is... first off The Stormlight Archive is divided in my head into two five book series, it is a ten booker but it is two big five book sequences, which I do think that will give me more of a vision of a beginning, middle, and end for each of the sequences.
The other thing I'm doing is I consciously did some little thing in the books. For instance, one of the reasons we end up with sprawl in epic fantasy series is I think writers start writing side characters and getting really interested in them. The side characters are awesome, they let you see the breadth of the world and dabble in different places. What I did is I let myself have the interludes in The Way of Kings, and I will continue to do those in the future books, and I told myself I can write these interludes but those characters can't become main characters. Those characters have to be just glimpses.
The other main thing that I'm doing is that each book in The Stormlight Archive is focused on a character. That character gets flashbacks and we get into the backstory and that gives me a beginning, middle, and end and a thematic way to tie that book together, specifically to that character, which I hope will make each character, each book feel more individual.
Which is part of also the problem I feel with the big long series, that they start to blend. And then, if the author starts to view some of them as blending then you stop having big climaxes at the ends of some of them and view them too blended together. This isn't a problem when the series is finished. I think that when the Wheel of Time can be read beginning to end straight-through, a lot of this worry about middle-meandering is going to go away, because you can see it as a whole. But certainly while you're releasing it, you get just these little glimpses that feel so short to us.
I feel that if I can take each book and apply it to one character, give a deep flashback for each one and thematically tie it to them, each book will have its own identity and hopefully will avoid some of that. That's my goal, who knows if I'll be able to pull it off but it is my intention.
You seem to be pulling it off so far Brandon.
Well I only have one book yet! I mean none of these, none of these series... they all started with great first books, in fact I feel that a lot of them are great all the way through, but the sprawl issue doesn't usually start to hit til around book four is really where the, where the problems show up.
Do you have any leatherbound plans for the Reckoners series?
Yeah, I plan to do Reckoners. What we haven't decided yet is if we'll just do three in one volume. That's what I kind of want to do. My team's like, "We don't know if people will like that as much." So we're just kind of asking around, the fans. You would prefer it in one volume, right? 'Cause, together, they're about this length, right?
Maybe the Mitosis side story as well.
Oh, we definitely would find a place for that.
