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JordanCon 2016 ()
#12101 Copy

Questioner

Did the Lord Ruler create the lerasium that he gave to the ten foreign kings? Or where they put there by Leras--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, good question… No one's asked me that before, I don't believe. Did the Lord Ruler create the lerasium that he gave-- No, he found the lerasium. It was existent before his Ascension.

Questioner

Can I ask if it was placed there intentionally by Leras or did it sort of grow similar to how atium--

Brandon Sanderson

The Lord Ruler-- It was not placed for him, he had to-- he had to get it.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing ()
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Leiyan

Can you tell me which is the most massive moon [of Roshar]? Not the biggest, but the most massive moon.

Brandon Sanderson

I think the biggest is the most massive. All three moons are much closer than our moon is.

Leiyan

Yes, I gathered that. And so is that Nomon?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Leiyan

How big is Nomon on the night sky, compared to our moon?

Brandon Sanderson

Larger than our moon, but not dominating of the sky.

[Interruption]

I do believe Nomon is, I told Peter, bigger. But he had to run the actual calculations, so he may come back and say, "No Brandon, that's not possible." But I believe it is bigger than our moon in the sky. You're supposed to be able to see moderately well by Nomon.

Miscellaneous 2016 ()
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Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

[Discussion of Lightweavers manipulating other forms of electromagnetic radiation]

But the ultimate form (That Brandon said would be too much to be practical both in needed stormlight and application) would be the control of Gamma Radiation. If this could be harnessed, Lightweavers could literally become mini nukes, or death guns. The biggest downside to making Gamma radiation would be the damage the lightweaver would most likely suffer. So gamma radiation is impractical but its a fun thought experiment. 

The best part of this whole speculation was how excited Brandon was about my train of thought. I don't know if anyone had brought up this train of thought before. But he was happy to remind me that things will get pretty interesting when Lightweavers discover lasers and start using them in combat.

Oathbringer release party ()
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Questioner

Is there a limit to what the spren can become, like we've seen them become a blade or a spear or a shield, can they become, like-- I've heard hints of a bow and arrow. Can they become a sword and a shield or just one main thing?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, it is more expansive than people guess it is, but it is limited.

Words of Radiance Seattle signing ()
#12111 Copy

Questioner (paraphrased)

Best fantasy author debuted in the last year

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Brian McClellan with the Powdermage books, but that's a year and a half ago so it doesn't count. I'm reading a book right now by one of my former students that's really good but it's not published yet. Most of the books I've read in the last year are either friends or things I needed to catch up on.

Calamity Houston signing ()
#12113 Copy

Questioner (paraphrased)

Do you invent ridiculous accents for Wayne just to see if Michael Kramer can do different voices?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, it's not just to torture Michael, though Brandon really enjoys hearing how Michael reads the different voices and he's amazed at the various accents, and he listens to all of the audiobooks at least once...

Calamity Seattle signing ()
#12114 Copy

Questioner

One of the things I really appreciate about your series in general is the depth of your magic systems, whether it's Investiture or-- Whatever the rules are, they're very detailed, very internally consistent. There's never anything where I can point out "Oh that contradicts something that somebody said two books ago". To what degree do you come up with--I guess--the universe before you write the novel or the--

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! So he's talking about my magic systems and how internally consistent they are. And the question is, do I do the worldbuilding first and then write the novel around it or do I do it the other way around. And the answer is: Yes! Which is one of those unsatisfying authorly answers. It depends on the story. For instance with the Wax and Wayne books, I already had the world built and so in that I'm building a story around a setting that already existed. With The Reckoners what happened is, I had the idea for people who gain superpowers all going evil and that concept spun me into building a story about it. And so that's more of an idea that spins a story rather than a setting.

Sometimes I've had a character that I really want to tell a story about, like Raoden or something like this, and then I build magic to match. It happens all different ways, and really what it is is a give and a take. Once you start with a character, you start building a story around them, and then you stop and work on the magic for a while and then you go back to the character and then you go back to the magic and then you go to the setting, then you go to the plot. As you build an outline you weave all these things together, you're not just spending time on one until it's done, and then the next 'til it's done, and then go. But it's happened all different ways for me.

Shadows of Self release party ()
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littlewilson Shadows.jpg

Brandon Sanderson

You're going to make me. They're trying to get me to canonize Endowment's gender. *crowd goes oh* ...Yes I have... I'm going to look at the thing that you guys would just love to see--

Kendra Wilson

So now's not the time to snatch that?

Isaac Stewart

It's encrypted, we've been developing a language that only we can read. *laughter* It's all in glyphs.

Zach Stay

Is it in the women's script? 

Eric Lake

Should we get Mi'chelle over here?

Isaac Stewart

It’s in a language that will never be decrypted...

Brandon Sanderson

I can't find-- Karen must have moved this. I have the name in here. I haven't canonized the name either have I?

Kendra Wilson

We don’t know. You can put that information on there too.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah but Karen moved it.

Zach Stay

People have guessed that it's Edgli but..

FeatherWriter

I think it’s gotten RAFO'd before...

Brandon Sanderson

*writes* Endowment is female.

There you go. You guys got two big ones out of me.

Skyward Chicago signing ()
#12117 Copy

Questioner

How do the Heralds come back? As Cognitive Shadows, how do they a physical body?

Brandon Sanderson

That system will be explained in the coming books, so that is a RAFO. I'm gonna dig into it pretty deeply. It's relevant for multiple reasons...

In the original version, Taln ended up in someone else, like they would get a body from someone else, which was part of fueling the "Is he crazy, is he not," because people were like, "I recognize this guy!" I don't use that system anymore.

Questioner

That's what I was wondering, because the Fused--

Brandon Sanderson

They use something kind of more like the Fused in the original draft, it's not that process anymore.

Questioner

Is that gonna give us lead-ins to how it worked with Kelsier?

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe. Maybe. You shall see.

Firefight Chicago signing ()
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Questioner

I heard earlier, through people I know, that Syl will eventually develop her memories from before the Recreance. Does that mean any spren that are alive currently have been alive for that long as well? Or are they--

Brandon Sanderson

Not necessarily. Some spren-- The thing about spren is that when does the energy become conscious? So yes they will have all existed before but at what point is consciousness attained. That's kind of their birth. It happens much more rarely than it does on the other-- on the Physical Realm, like regular people and things like that. But there can totally have been spren who have been born since then. And they would count most of the spren that you see as not being alive, well not being born. Not conscious. What's the word for the difference between humans and animals, it's not just sentience, there's another word. Starts with a C. Sapient, you're right it starts with an S.

Hal-Con 2012 ()
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Questioner

Any more Mistborn stories in the works?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. For those who aren't aware, when I pitched the Mistborn series to my editor originally, way back when, I pitched it as a trilogy of trilogies—a past-present-future—where I would do an epic fantasy trilogy and then I would jump forward hundreds of years and explore what happens with the magic in a modern-day technology level setting, and then I would jump forward hundreds more years and allow the magic to then become the primary means by which FTL—faster-than-light space travel—is able to happen. And so, the three metallurgic magic systems actually have FTL built into them. And so there will be a space-opera series set in the future, because I was able to plan all this stuff out finally knowing what I would be publishing. One thing that I ran into doing that was, when I delved into The Way of Kings and The Stormlight Archive, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get to that second Mistborn trilogy any time soon, so I didn't want to have two big epics going on at the same time—I wanted, you know, one epic, and then other things—and so what I did is I said, well I'm going to try writing a short story in the Mistborn world, and this will be something exciting for people that, you know-- I kind of sort of do some of these things to keep Mistborn going.

And, I tried writing a short story and it flopped horribly. It was a terrible story. Wayne was in it, but otherwise it was awful. It just didn't work...

Okay. Anyway, so back to your story. I tried to write this short story, and it was awful. And I said, well, it's just not working, but there's some ideas here that I want to expand on. Maybe I'll write something bigger. And I started working on it, and I got about three chapters in, and said, okay, this is a novel.

Fortunately, I'd built into—this was a time where I'd built in myself a couple of months between Wheel of Time books to just do whatever I wanted. You can go back to my blogs at the time, and I said, people, I need a couple months to do something else to refresh myself. And so, I went in my outline to a full short novel that became Alloy of Law, and this is an interim book meant to be kind of more fast-paced, only focused on a couple characters, to deal with, you know-- I describe it as, sometimes you want to go have a big steak dinner, but sometimes you really just want to have a hamburger, and Alloy of Law is a hamburger. *laughter* It's faster. It's fun. It's meant to be a cool character interaction story, and with a mystery, as opposed to something that big.

And so I plan to do some more of those; I actually got about halfway through a sequel during moments of free time that unfortunately I can't continue because the Wheel of Time project went-- I would do it when I'd like send a revision to Harriet, and it would be, she'd be like, "I'll get back to you in three days," and I'm like, alright, I'll work on this. And then when the revision comes back, I don't keep going on this; I have to work on The Wheel of Time. It's not something I can put off. And right now with Stormlight 2—I have to do Stormlight 2; deadlines are so tight—but I will eventually get back to Shadows of Self, the second Wax and Wayne book, and you will get some more of those, to have some things going on in the Mistborn world until I get to the second epic trilogy, which will happen eventually.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
#12120 Copy

Questioner

At the end of the last Wax and Wayne book, which I love, that statue that they though was the Lord Ruler. It was Kelsier.

Brandon Sanderson

That was Kelsier.

Questioner

Ok. I thought so, because the way the other thing ended with the eye, the eye thing was throwing me off and then I went and grabbed the secret thing and I was like "No that can't..."

Brandon Sanderson

That is Kelsier.

Questioner

And will we find out more in the next Wax and Wayne book or do we need to wait and find out more later?

Brandon Sanderson

You will find out more in the Wax and Wayne book, really that that's going on there is foreshadowing for era 3, and for future Secret History stories if I do them. So the Wax and Wayne books are not about the return of Kelsier, but the return of Kelsier is very important for later things in the series.

Children of the Nameless Reddit AMA ()
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drostandfound

Is the similarity between an entity and a Shard intentional? They both are objects of great power that allow their holders to move between planes and try to twist the holders personality.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this is intentional. When Notch designed a card, I liked that he had a nod to his own creation in it. I wanted to bring something that would have a "Brandon Sanderson Lore" feeling to MTG, kind of in the same way.

Words of Radiance Chicago signing ()
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Questioner

If I were to impulsively Soulcast pewter, the way Shallan does with the blood in The Way of Kings, would it come out that an Allomancer be able to use it?

Brandon Sanderson

You could create Allomantically viable metals, yes.

Questioner

But is it automatic?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say that the pure metals are, but the alloys are not.

Skyward Houston signing ()
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Questioner

How close is the enslavement of the parshmen to the Recreance, timeline-wise? 

Brandon Sanderson

Um, fairly close, as timeline issues go, but still many decades.

Questioner

Did it play any kind of factor in the decision?

Brandon Sanderson

Absolutely. But we're not talking about it happening next year. But it was a factor, how about that?

JordanCon 2016 ()
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Questioner

Did the Dawnchant originate on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

The Dawnchant originate on Roshar? Um, the Dawnchant… Yes… What I won't tell you or not is whether the Dawnchant is an evolution from a different language, but the Dawnchant itself is from Roshar.

JordanCon 2014 ()
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Questioner

Where did you get the idea of the Elantris magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

The drawing glyphs is based on Korean and Chinese writing systems. I'm Mormon, I served a mission in Korea for two years, loved the writing system and the language. It was part of what inspired me to do that. There is this really cool thing where in Korea they used Chinese characters to write for a long time and they are very difficult to learn because you just have to memorize them and there was a great king, named Sejong, who said, "My people are being mostly illiterate because this is so hard and we don't even speak Chinese, we are not Chinese. We use their characters, can we develop a language, a writing system that will allow us to do this" and his scholars got together and devised Korean which is a way to phonetically write Chinese characters kind of? It's their own thing. You write them in little groups to make little Chinese characters, it's the coolest thing ever. But you can write most Korean things, not everything, most you can write as a Chinese character or as a phonetic Korean construction of three letters that create that Chinese character sound and I liked that idea and it spun me into the idea of the Aons and the Aonic language and things like that.

Shadows of Self release party ()
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Questioner

My theory currently on Spiritwebs is that they are-- when they exist on the Spiritual Realm a person exists as nodes connected between concepts, Physical makeup, and whatnot, that’s what makes up your Spiritual DNA.

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm.

Questioner

Is there a different set of nodes for each person or do they all kind of share?

Brandon Sanderson

You're kind of imagining it the wrong way, each person is a node.

Skyward release party ()
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Questioner

At the last signing event, I was asking about a Shard[blade] and paint, if it disappears, comes back, what happens? You said the paint never disappeared with it. But you seemed intrigued by other possibilities, and then I thought of some too. One of them would be a foundry, showing people how to make weapons, you put your Shard in the sand, make a sword in there, dismiss it, fill it with your molten metal, stuff like that sounded like...interesting ideas.

Brandon Sanderson

I like that, I like that a lot.

Skyward Seattle signing ()
#12135 Copy

The Young Pyromancer

Is Hoid's inability to hurt others due to an enhanced version of the effect that makes Szeth and Wayne hear voices?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

The Young Pyromancer

Is that likely or unlikely?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm just going to RAFO that entirely because it plays into things from Dragonsteel.

Stormlight Three Update #4 ()
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Arkadious4028

Can Kandra learn to photosynthesize or imitate plants? I'm thinking no, due to the biological differences between animal and plants cells, but I gotta know.

Brandon Sanderson

They've toyed with this, and it hasn't worked so far. There are kandra who believe they can figure it out, however.

Firefight Miami signing ()
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Questioner

How much do you see your family every day?

Brandon Sanderson

So, my family is at a hotel right now. All of them, including the two-year-old. So, I had a very fun airplane flight. Normally, when I'm tour, I'm in first class. I'm not ashamed to admit that because I can write in first class. In coach, I just can't get that done. So I'm up there in first class, typing away. This time, I was in coach with a two year old on my lap, watching Elmo.

You know, it's not as bad as it looks, because every day that I'm not on tour, I'm home all day. And my schedule still being what it is, I still generally write at night. So I get up at noon. And I go the gym, I check my email, and I only really get, like, three hours or so of good writing in before 5:00 rolls around, and I go out and I play with my kids, and I spend time with my wife. And at about 8:00 or 10:00, depending on the night, I go back in to work, and I work from 10:00 to 4:00. And that's when the real work happens. My wife, being a more morning person (she was a schoolteacher; I did marry an eight-grade English teacher, as well), she, more of a morning person, goes to bed at, like, 10:00 or 11:00. So she can go to bed, and I can go to work. And it's pretty awesome, honestly. Once she got used to the idea that I'm gonna go to bed at 4:00 AM (I tried to go to bed at her time, and I just laid there at bed; I'm a night person.) But it can be pretty awesome. For instance, when the kids were babies, we didn't have the whole sleep-deprived thing. Because I would stay up with the kid, I would just stay up a few extra hours, and I'd do the 2:00 feeding and the 6:00 feeding with a pumped bottle or whatever, and then she would get up and take over. And we both got full nights of sleep. So, it was pretty awesome.

I do see my family quite a bit, although I do feel I've been touring a bit too much lately. It's the idea of having two publishers, because Random House does my teen books, The Reckoners, and Tor does the rest of my books. So when I go on tour for one, the other one, like, shows up on my doorstep, like a sad puppy, like, "We want a tour, too." And then the Brits show up, and they're all, like, charming and stuff. And they're like, "Chip chip, wanna go on a tour?" A free trip to London? Okay. It's kind of hard--  I shouldn't make fun of the Brits, but the fun thing is, when you're touring there, all of the Sarahs, every Sarah that I had to sign a book, I'd say "What's your name," they'd say "Sarah with an haitch." Every time. I got used to saying "with an haitch."

I tour too much, but I like going to these places. It's the awesome part of my job, that we get a phone call, like, "Do you want a free trip to Taiwan, because we'd love to have you sign here." I'm like, "Taiwan is cool. Dumplings..."

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing ()
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ailavyn-siniyash

The fact that Vorinism was partially inspired by Judaism and [???] means a lot to me, as a Jew, especially because there's not that much [???] other than dwarves. So thanks for that. I wanted to know if you could elaborate a little on some of the specific Judaism had on Vorinism.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, sure. Specific influences of Judaism on Vorinism. There are a couple of things. And I can go on this one for a while. I will pick Numerology which-- Jewish Numerology is really cool, particularly if you go back-- Like we always focus on alchemy and astrology as kind of the pseudosciences that were really interesting to scientists back in the day. If you don't know, Newton thought that alchemy was real and he could figure out how to make it work. I love these things that people approach scientifically but have supernat-- superstitious roots. And Jewish Numerology is really cool because the letters and numbers are basically the same thing, so a name can actually mean numbers, and vice-versa, and stuff like that. Which leads to some really cool and interesting attempts to understand the world by taking things from the Torah and transferring them back and forth between numbers and things. That sort of thing is very prevalent in the Vorin religion. To the point that it was really important to them, and then got forbidden. Because they were spending too much time on it. And you will find out roots about that. But that was an inspiration for Vorinism. Of course the Sephir, from the Tree of Life, were an inspiration for the Double Eye of the Almighty, and the idea behind all the different connections and philosophy going in that. The language. Kholin is actually pronounced /χolÉŞn/, and things like this--

ailavyn-siniyash

Was that-- Sorry... Was Kholin supposed to be kind of close to kohen? Because--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, mmhmm.

ailavyn-siniyash

Okay, cool.

Brandon Sanderson

So yeah, you're going to find all kinds of things like that in linguistic roots. And there is of course more but I will move on from that because I can talk too long on that. But yeah, there's some very fun stuff.

Children of the Nameless Reddit AMA ()
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Jay13x

Are Vex and Cabralin meant to be the names of planes?

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't get specific permission to name any planes--so while I intend them to be planes, for actual MTG canon I believe they have to be taken as regions inside of planes (that haven't been named yet.) You'll be safer assuming that unless Wizards decides otherwise. I don't think we should go around adding them to lists of planes on MTG wikis, for example.

Firefight Chicago signing ()
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Kurkistan

So for Soulcasting—-I talked a lot about those ideals that a lot of things are based on—-is that also like there's an ideal of stone that when you Soulcast stone if you don't do anything special, it just defaults as that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there will be a default of all of them.

Kurkistan

And that's the same exact thing as spren and why the Lord Ruler dies of old age and all that stuff?

Brandon Sanderson

That is-- Yes, that's the same sort of concept. Yes.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Mab the Cook

If it sounds to you like Mab knows a lot about Awakening and Hallandren, then you've picked up on something. Mab actually used to live in T'Telir. (She was born in Idris, but ran away during her teens.) During her twenties, she was a courtesan of some repute in the city. She had some fairly high-profile clients—so she was more than just a poor, street-corner prostitute. She fell in love with one of the men, however, and he convinced her to give him her Breath. Then he left her.

As a Drab, she had much more trouble finding work. She'd lost a bit of her sparkle, and whatever she'd used to capture the hearts of men, she'd lost that too. She ended up as a madam, running a much poorer whorehouse, using her old contacts and reputation to get clients.

As soon as she made enough, she bought another Breath and returned to Idris, where she got a job in the king's kitchens. To this day, she bears a lot of ill will toward the Hallandren upper crust, and Awakeners in particular.

Skyward Denver signing ()
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Questioner

Reading Legion, my question was: do you think yourself a little mentally ill?

Brandon Sanderson

The way I think about psychology (and granted, this is just Brandon, this is not me saying "This is how it has to be") is that every person has their own mixture of things. And what might be a disorder in someone else is not in others, because of the way that it works in their life and the way they perceive it. So I do not-- I think my psychology is very healthy for me. But in other people, my psychology could be unhealthy for them. How about that?

Steelheart release party ()
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Questioner

In the sample chapter for the sequel to Alloy of Law, that you read, you said that since Sazed is in charge of Hemalurgy, Hemalurgy's not wrong anymore.

Brandon Sanderson

That is what the book that Wax reads says.

Questioner

Except for the murder!

Brandon Sanderson

Except for the murder part.

/r/fantasy AMA 2011 ()
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sandersonfan

I've read that you were thinking of 32-36 books total for the Cosmere, but it seems like the series are going to go beyond that if numbers you've given before are published (e.g. Mistborn being a trilogy of trilogies so 9, Stormlight Archive 10, Warbreaker 2, Dragonsteel 6 or 7, and still White Sand and others to come) so has the estimate of 32 been thrown out the window?

Brandon Sanderson

Eh...I don't know. My original breakdown:

Mistborn 9 Wabreaker 2 Elantris 3 White Sand 3 Stormlight 10 Silence Divine 1 Dragonsteel 7 (A two book and a five book.)

That's the 32, with allowances for a few side stories to get us to 36. There are planets not included in that, however, that I may write stories about. So maybe. But the core cycle is this (in order)

Dragonsteel Mistborn first trilogy Stormlight - Mistborn second trilogy (around the same time.) Mistborn third trilogy.

Everything else is important in their own stories, but as we're talking about the connections between the worlds are considered, this is the prime cosmere cycle.

JordanCon 2018 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Let me set up this piece for you. Let me see if I can--I'm gonna look at the file and see when I first started writing this piece-- The master computer, that if you ran away with you would get all of my secrets. *crowd laughs* Nope, it says created when I created this new computer, so that doesn't help me.

But this is old. This is like 8 years old. Maybe 9 years old? And this is a story that I started writing-- You can date it by-- because you guys have been waiting for it. You can date it by when I told people I had written this thing in interviews. So it may be 2010, I dunno. You'll be able to find out I think by looking through the interview archive.

I wrote this thing that is very cosmere-aware. It's very kind of inside-- sort of a little bit self indulgent. And I wrote it, I'm like, "I'm gonna post this on my website." And then I thought, "No, this gives away too much. I can't post this on my website, and so I'm not going to finish it. We're going to wait." But now most of the stuff that it gave away then has come out in things like Secret History and stuff like that, so now I can actually read it. So I called this "The Traveler."