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Zenith

Szeth mentions that Lashings don't work with shardplate (on?). Is there any way to get around this (As in, lashing with Shardplate on, or lashing people with Shardplate on), and, if so, does it have anything to do with the Knights Radiant and/or their Ideals?

Brandon Sanderson

This has to do with the nature of the magics in the cosmere. They interfere with one another. Something that contains a lot of power--we call it Investiture--resists the efforts of magic to influence it. A strong spirit can interfere as well.

Questioner

You mentioned earlier that the Mistborn magic system is basically a Periodic Table of Elements. How would that affect the study of science in creating the whole Periodic Table?

Brandon Sanderson

If you can see what's happening on Scadrial, even in Era 2, they have a disproportionate amount of understanding and study of metallurgy, and they are not nearly as good at other things. So it's affected where they spend their focus and their research. Like, they don't have the radio, when they kind of should. They had to get it from some other places, the idea of that technology. So really, what's happening there is, I'm trying to keep it close ('cause Scadrial is an Earth analogue), but at the same time show what they're stronger at and what they're weaker at. It has influenced the way they approached science in some interesting ways.

We won't find out a lot more until Era 3, where one of the characters is more interested in the science. Because the characters in Era 2 are mostly interested in shooting people and perhaps creating interesting mixed drinks. And finding lost coins. (Steris.)

Fakjbf

When Sazed ascended into Harmony, he recreated many extinct plants and animals based on the fragments of knowledge he learned about from various religions. Many ancient and medieval texts in the real world had pictures of animals with wildly inaccurate features and proportions. Were the texts that Sazed drew on fairly accurate, or are there herds of monstrosities roaming Scadrial now like on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Fortunately, Sazed was able to work with something that you wouldn't be able to here. Which is—remember that Realmatic Theory is based on the theory of the forms by Plato. This is where I got it. I've been very open with that idea, that the first glimmers of that occurred when I was taking my philosophy classes in college. I liked the idea of there being this perfect version of something somewhere in another realm. Now, the thing I've done in the Cosmere is that that perfect thing can change and be shaped over time, but the remnants of those things were still there. He could latch onto something, something that knew what these things were supposed to look like, because he had this deific power.

So the answer is no, there are not versions of very very weird lions as drawn in illuminated manuscripts. I love where your brain went on this one. We were actually talking about, I can't remember the name of it, the wolf that they thought was killing all the people in France in the seventeen or eighteen hundreds, that they had these drawings of this monstrous wolf—where it was probably just a pack of wolves that were particularly hungry because their normal food source was being impacted by human expansion or something. But for a period of like five to ten years, perhaps hundreds of people got killed by this wolf, and all the depictions of it are these giant werewolfy sort of scary things.

I love seeing the pictures of all of those things, the pictures of giraffes on illuminated manuscripts that have just been described thirdhand to someone. Your brain is going cool places. You can make monstrosities like that with Hemalurgy, but fortunately Sazed did not run into that problem. 

ccstat

When Jasnah talks about soulcasting the 8 different types of blood, is she referring to transfusion typing within humans (e.g. ABO+/- on Earth) or to different kinds of blood between species (e.g. human vs axehound vs greatshell vs Aimian, etc)?

Brandon Sanderson

Both, though people on Roshar haven't hit upon the levels of complexity in blood types that we know.

KingSloth

Did these arise naturally on Roshar, or did Honor/Cultivation get lazy on templating humanity and copying existing?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. (Sorry.)

Ben McSweeney

Also that [Rithmatist] Earth is (I think) half the size of our own? Or possibly less? Brandon says it has a denser core to make up the difference.

Brandon and I discussed it when we put together the map of the United Isles... there was some hand-wavery in terms of total numbers, but the scale on the map legend is more-or-less accurate. As you can see, that puts the Isles themselves at about 1500 miles (give or take a few hundred, I'm eyeballing it) from the cliffs of the western California Archipelago to the eastern shores of New Guernsey.

In comparison, the continental United States is about 3000 miles across from shore to shore. So, loosely speaking, it's a half-sized planet with a core of something denser than iron to make the mass mostly the same. Perhaps gold?

Aside from the map, which I'm not surprised if it was overlooked, we also get some clues in the travel times and distances described during Joel and Fitch's trip.

Brandon Sanderson

Warning, Evgeni. I'm really considering doing a backpedal on savants. The more i think about them, the less I'm not liking how my current course has them being treated in upcoming books. I think it deviates too far from my original vision.

Argent

Hey, I wouldn't normally contact you directly like this, but given that you thought it important enough to reach out and let me know you might change how savants work, I figured you probably wouldn't be too upset by this message. I replied to your Facebook comment, asking if you could clarify a little bit which aspects of savantism you are thinking of keeping and/or cutting. I don't need an essay on the topic (though you know I'd love one!), just some details on what we can consider canon for theories, and what we should be careful around.

Brandon Sanderson

Evgeni,

So here's the problem. The more I dig into savants in the later outlines, the more I feel that I'm in a dangerous area--in that I'm disobeying their original intention. (Which is that using the power so much that it permeates your soul can be dangerous, a kind of uncontrolled version of a spren bond.)

And so, I don't want to let myself just start making people savants right and left. It needs to be a specific thing. Wax is the troubling one, as I have him burning so much steel that he's well on his way, but isn't showing any side effects. If I'm going to give him savant-like abilities, he needs savant-like consequences.

That's the danger, just falling back on savanthood to do some of the things I want, so often that it undermines the actual point and purpose of them in the cosmere lore.

So if I backpedal, it will be to contain this and point myself the right way, sharply curtailing my desire to make people savants without their savanthood being an intrinsic part of their story and conflict in life. (Like it was for Spook, and is for Soulcasting savants on Roshar.)

Feel free to share this.

Argent

Okay, so - if you do decide to go this route, I see the story implications (larger focus on consequences, less easy to get to the point where a character can be considered a savant). What I am not sure about is the potential for a mechanical change. Would a backpedal on your side cause a conflict with information you've shared with us, in or out of your books? Are you saying that it's possible that Wax won't be considered a savant (if you can't squeeze a good ramifications plot for him that doesn't contradict the apparent lack of consequences so far, for example)?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't decided on anything yet. It's mostly consequences for the future--just a kind of, "be aware I'm not 100% pleased with how Wax turned out, re: savanthood and Allomantic resonance."

The idea of resonance is that two powers, combined, meld kind of into one single power. This is a manifestation of the way Shards combine. Wax was intended as a savant of the two melded powers. But without consequences in his plot, I'm not confident that I'll continue in the same vein for future books.

Questioner

Is the concept of the King's Wit inspired by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a lot of Shakespeare's fools. But the fool in Twelfth Night, and the fool (for a different reason) in King Lear, both are inspirations. And I think you would find that as a blanket truth for a lot of us writers. I haven't asked Robin Hobb this, but I'm willing to bet that there's some Shakespeare's fool characters in that. Twelfth Night is my favorite of his fools. In fact, in the very first versions that I wrote of him, he was way more jester-like than he ended up being in the published version of the Cosmere. But if anyone reads Dragonsteel, the one at BYU, he'll feel even more like a jester.

sandersonfan

Why are the people of Roshar so much more aware of the Cosmere? They seem to know more than any other world you've written to date.

Brandon Sanderson

I believe the people of whom you are speaking are mostly not native to Roshar. On another side, however, it is the first planet we've seen with three Shards, and it is the furthest along in the timeline. One final thing is that they had some very unique experiences early in the planet's history. It involves the Heralds, and various items I think would be spoilers right now.

Questioner

So is there a connection with K's? Where the characters...

Brandon Sanderson

You mean names with K's?

Questioner

Yes...

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to say it's more coincidence. It has to do with what I like to name people. Kaladin's original name was Merin and it was just bad. So I eventually settled on something I liked. I just like the sound of it.  If you dig down into it, most of the names in the cosmere do not have similar linguistic roots. Some do. I'm just going to chalk it up to coincidence.

Snote85

Is the story of the girl who looked up a story that is only known to Roshar? I know it could have spread out, especially since we see paintings alluding to it in the cosmere seen by a non-Rosharan but could it be a story they talked about on... say... Yolen?

Also, was the "god" from "God's love" mentioned by Hoid a piece that either should have or did belong to/with Passion/Odium? Cause that would make all the sense in the world to me that somehow Odium was Passion but because Odium once he lost love from his being... I know it doesn't make a lot sense in the timeline. I just can't get the thought out of my head.

Thank you for the time you spend answering my inanity or was it insanity. Either/or.

Brandon Sanderson

These are actually both RAFOs, I'm afraid. I do appreciate you asking, but I'm going to remain silent for now.

Questioner

Will there be any more of Silence from the Forests of Hell?

Brandon Sanderson

The world is very relevant to the cosmere. I have several books planned there, I don’t know how many of them I’ll write. I will at least write one of them. Silence herself is not a character from the books. I designed that story and it matched the world so I put it there. But yes there will be other things from that world.

Questioner

I think you're going to get asked a lot about the Cosmere today, so I wanted to make a question about the Reckoners saga, because, while I was reading it, there was one recurring thought in my mind, and it was, "Gosh, I wish I could have read this as a teenager," and it's equally enjoyable as a adult, but that kept running in my mind, and I was wondering if when you wrote it, you wrote it with these audiences in mind, or it's simply that David is so real and so like us when we were fifteen or fourteen that it came out that way?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm very curious that you noticed this, because in the United States, this is actually published as a young adult novel. In the UK and Spain, and France, it is published as an adult novel. And I very much left it up to my publishers to decide what was best for their market, because David is nineteen, which puts it on the border between is this a young adult or an adult novel. However, when I was writing it, my target reader in my head was me at age fourteen, because, when I was young, it wasn't that nobody gave me books--people did give me books, they tried to make me into a reader--but the books were all boring, and I think the great power of science fiction and fantasy is that we are able to mix deep thought and exciting narrative. Every morning, my wife makes a smoothie for my children with ice cream. They love ice cream, my three little boys, so they're very excited, and every morning she adds a handful of spinach to it, because they love the color green and they think it's cool to drink a green drink. Of course, she adds it because the spinach is very healthy, and I feel like science fiction and fantasy is very good at this blend for books. All of our books are green, because we deal with very important issues, but we mix them with wonder, exploration, adventure, and human experience.

The Reckoners is about power corrupting. I started the first book after driving on the road and nearly getting in a car wreck because someone pulled in front of me too quickly, and I was very annoyed with this person, and in that moment I imagined myself blowing the car up. I thought, "You are so lucky I don't have superpowers." It was a very cool explosion, too. Yeah, I have a good imagination. After this, I was immediately horrified, because I write books about people, generally, who get incredible powers, and then go on to protect others, but in that moment, I had the worry that I could not be trusted, myself, with those powers. So, The Reckoners is about what happens if people start gaining superpowers, but only evil people get them. It's Marvel's universe with no Avengers.

MS-07B-3

We know Scadrial is speeding on its way to modern, Earth-like technology, including computers. So what is the internet like in the Cognitive Realm? Is it connected to Scadrial's Cognitive aspect? Does it form into its own standalone location? Do memes become spren?

Brandon Sanderson

This is going to be really fun to write some day. But RAFO until then.

Pagerunner

Let's use a time machine and change the past. Let's say you aren't asked to finish the Wheel of Time, and instead fix Liar of Partinel. How do you think the Cosmere fan experience would have been different if mysteries like Hoid and the Shattering had been explored earlier?

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, this is an excellent question, and it's hypothetical enough that I can ignore my cheeky answer to time machine questions, [which] is always, "Don't go back in the past. I've seen that story too much."

In this case... Liar of Partinel. Liar of Partinel did not work. I had already abandoned it and started working on The Rithmatist. So, if I had not been asked to finish The Wheel of Time, most likely I would have thrown myself into The Rithmatist more. And then, the question becomes, would have I decided to do Way of Kings? Or would I have gone and taken another stab at Liar of Partinel? And for your hypothesis, I will say that I did that. I don't think I actually would have. I think that I was disappointed enough in Liar of Partinel and realizing that this wasn't the right time, that I would have gone a different direction.

But, for the hypothetical, let's say I did. What would it have changed? Certainly, I don't know that I would have gotten all the way through the Hoid series before starting Way of Kings. More likely, I would have done Liar of Partinel as a standalone, then done something else, and eventually released Book Two of that. Because, remember, back then, I had envisioned this as a seven-book series. I was looking for a big epic to do, and I thought, "Let's do the Dragonsteel series. And I'll do several books about Hoid. And then I'll do the full story of Bridge Four," which was then on Yolen, not on Roshar. So, you would have gotten that story on Yolen instead, and then, who knows where that would have gone. When I release Dragonsteel itself (which won't be too much longer), you guys will be able to read the earliest version of Bridge Four, back before Kaladin was involved, and it was on Yolen. So, I think, at that point, we would have learned more about Hoid, but we probably wouldn't have pushed all the way to the Shattering, I don't think.

But, hypothetically, let's say I do. I don't know how much of a change that makes, honestly, over Stormlight. Knowing the personalities of the three Shards involved and a little bit more on Hoid certainly would change your perspective on them, but Stormlight, assuming... I mean, it's so hard to go into these hypotheticals, because if I write Dragonsteel with Bridge Four, then Bridge Four isn't in Stormlight. It's very hard to imagine where Stormlight goes. It's possible that I make it completely Taln's story, and Stormlight becomes a five-book series, which focuses on what's going to be the back five. That would be my best guess of where that would go. So, instead of ten books, you get five books, and we focus on Taln as a main character. And Kaladin just vanishes. We don't have Kaladin as a character. He's replaced by whoever takes the lead in Dragonsteel. But, of course, the flip-flopping, what actually happened is, Dragonsteel shrunk to three books that focus on Hoid, 'cause I realized I was doing in Stormlight all the things that I intended to do in Dragonsteel, and they were working better in Stormlight, and I no longer needed that Bridge Four sequence in Dragonsteel because it worked so well in Stormlight.

So, it is hard to say what exactly would go on. You would know the personalities of the Shards, how about that? You would definitely know who they are. You would know a lot more about Hoid.

Badger (paraphrased)

What will be in Arcanum Unbound?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

- All of the things.

- All of the short stories and novellas that are part of the Cosmere by the release date will be included in it, as well as the Lift novella.

Questioner

You've spoken before about if the Shattering took place at a different time or in different circumstances, the Shards would have been different.

Brandon Sanderson

Could have been. Could have been different, yes.

Questioner

Does that mean, someone 100%s the cosmere and gets all sixteen, does that make them (or does that produce) Adonalsium? Or would that be different?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO.

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."

DMTrnkers

Any other cosmere short stories in the pipeline?

Brandon Sanderson

I do have a couple more in the works! One perpetual one is the Silence Divine (which I'll probably rename, since I've used Silence in a title recently) about the planet where magic is tied to disease. But there are others!

Questioner

Aside from The Apocalyse Guard, are you planning on making a sequel to Calamity?

Brandon Sanderson

This is actually a really good question, because Apocalypse Guard was going to dig in to a few of the questions that Calamity asked at its ending. And so cancelling Apocalypse Guard leaves me saying, "Well, I maybe need to answer those questions." So there's a chance I will do a Mizzy book in the future. I'm not 100% sure, because I want to be closing off more things than I'm opening these days, so promising more sequels is a bad place for me to be.

But to run down the big sequel list, Legion is done. Reckoners is done. It doesn't mean that I might not do more, but just consider it done for now.

Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, halfway through the last book. Don't believe Alcatraz when he says Book Five is the end. He lies. You should know that from Chapter One of the first book. The last book is called Bastille versus the Evil Librarians. That one should be out pretty soon. That is the last book. You can trust me on that, because I'm saying it, not Alcatraz...

Rithmatist, I can't promise. It's the number one requested sequel I get. I was working on it when the Wheel of Time came along, and The Wheel of Time changed my career dramatically. It's been very hard to figure out how to do that sequel the right way. So no promises when on that, though it is still on my radar.

Warbreaker, Elantris, probably yes, but not until Stormlight Five is done. Stormlight Four, I start on in January. You can follow the progress bars. *applause* The last Wax and Wayne book will probably be also next year, as I need to take a break at some point from Stormlight.

If it wasn't on that list, then don't hold your breath. Most of the novellas I write, I write specifically so that I won't be starting a new series. Turns out if I write a novel, I'm very bad at writing that novel standalone by itself. Instead, I've written novellas in order to get the idea out of my head and be expanding the cosmere in interesting ways but not be promising sequels, okay? That said, there's a Threnody novel somewhere in me that will probably come out.

Questioner

If someone was a good enough writer, would you ever consider letting someone else write in the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

It is a possibility. I'd be very wary of doing it, but right now, Isaac, who's my illustrator, wants to do it, and he's been a friend for many years. So I've said, "If you really want to you can." So I'm open to the idea. You probably want to be a professional writer first, and have your own things published.

Dan Wells

This is actually an idea we came up with on the cruise last year was to do an episode about all the things that we have tried to make work and couldn't; the novels that we abandoned halfway through or the short stories that just never came together. And we thought it would be a really fun way to end this year in kind of a backhanded, inspirational way to say, look, we're all successful at this and we still screw up all the time.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. And it's not just what we do when we were trying to break in, not those old trunk novels. It still happens every year. Let's take each, our biggest one, like the thing we got the most involved in, or the one that was most tragic to us that we couldn't make work and talk about it. And I'll just go ahead and start.

Brandon Sanderson

I - right before I got the call for the Wheel of Time, which changed my life dramatically - I had finished the Mistborn series, I'd finished Warbreaker and Elantris, and next I thought, I'm going to jump back in the shared universe of my Cosmere and write the prequel series that started it all, where everything came from. This is the backstory of the character known as Hoid, who is a fan favorite. And I'm like, I'm going to do this trilogy, or more books. It's going to be super awesome. It's going to just be the greatest thing ever. And I actually finished the whole book and it was a disaster. It was a train wreck of a book. The character, for the first time - it's like this whole problem you have when you have a really engaging side character that you try to make a main character - didn't work at all as a main character, at least as the personality I had for them way back when. The plot was boring. The setting just was even more boring, which is saying a lot for me. I tried to pull and incorporate some different elements from books that I had tried before and none of them meshed. And so it felt like five books with a bad character and no plot. It was a huge, just terrible thing.

Howard Tayler

Did it have a good magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

The magic system was weak.

Here's the thing. It had a really good magic system from another world that I ported into this world that didn't jive. And the one that was from this world never meshed well with that. And so the magic system was really weak in that it was doing cool things, but in complete contrast to the tone of the novel. Dan may have read some of it, Liar of Partinel.

Dan Wells

Uh, no.

Brandon Sanderson

OK. The writing group which just kind of baffled by this. I actually tried -speaking of what we did last week - I actually started with the clichéd scene of someone being hung and then flashing back to show how they got there - like it had so many problems with it.

Dan Wells

72 hours earlier.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Yeah, it was, exactly. It was one of those things. Exactly one of those things. Like "I'm going to to try this tool. Oh, this tool is not a tool," right? Like some tools you try and you're like, "Oh, that's a cool tool that doesn't deserve its reputation." Some of them you try and you're like, "This is so..."

Dan Wells

There's a reason everyone makes fun of this one. Wow.

So I kind of want to ask questions about how bad it was.

Specifically with Hoid.

Because that's what fascinates me about this. He was, he is a fan favorite and he's always the side character, you know.

He's the one who's sits off and makes goofy comments and, you know, maybe appears once and then leaves. What did you do when you attempted to make him a main character? Like what was your process there?

Brandon Sanderson

So I knew the biggest chance for failure on this was, you know, taking him a bit, having be too wacky through the course, right? It's the Minion movie thing, which worked for my kids, but for a lot of people are like "These side characters that add flavor to a larger story, when you make the whole story about them, are super annoying." I'm like, I can't have him be super annoying! Well, that's OK. It's you know, when he was young, when you're seeing him in the books, he's hundreds and hundreds years old. He was young, and so I will take that part out. But I did this weird dual identity thing with him, where he was like pretending to be someone else for a big chunk of the book because it had a really cool twist when I did the whole reveal. But then that meant I had to characterize him as somebody you grew too emotionally invested in somebody to...at the end you're like, "Surprise! In the next book you'll get to know who he really is." Which was part of it. And the person I was having him be was bland on purpose because it was like trying to hide and pretend to... Oh, man! There were so many problems with this character, like it was trying to be too clever, leaving out the cleverness that had made him a fan favorite on purpose. Right? So it's a different kind of cleverness. And it just did not work. Didn't work at all.

Dan Wells

Do you think that if you were to write that book today, you could make it work?

Brandon Sanderson

I have completely scrapped that, and what actually changed my opinion on how to do this was Name of the Wind. It needs to be him in the future, flashing back and talking about himself because people will have already bonded to who he is in the future. And it needs to be a memoir. It needs to be...the Assassin's Apprentice is a better example of what this needs to be, because Robin Hobb does such a great job of showing you that contrast between what someone is now and what they've become. And so I need to do something like this. This is now my feel on it. If I then can set in his own voice, I can have these, you know, this first person where we're really, really fun in Hoid's voice for all, and then he fades into the story when he's telling a story, he's not nearly as, you know, he doesn't try to zing you every minute, he tries to tell the story well. That's who he is. And so he will tell the story well. And then we can pop out occasionally and get, you know, it's like Bilbo from The Hobbit.

Brandon Sanderson

So we'll see if I can write it. But that's my plan right now. And there is my true confession of failure. There've been other ones since, but that's the one that hurt, hit me the most. I actually wrote The Rithmatist as I was supposed to go into the sequel to this and start outlining it, and I'm just like "I can't, this book is so bad." And I wrote The Rithmatist without telling any one of my editors I sent that in instead of Liar of Partinel.

Questioner

I was wondering if there will be any follow-up books to Elantris?

Brandon Sanderson

Follow-ups to Elantris. Yes, I would like to do some sequels. They are probably the sequels to the world rather than sequels to the characters. One of the reasons I didn't do them, or haven't done them yet, is when I first published, Elantris was my sixth book. It was the first published of those thirteen I wrote. It's the only one of those thirteen that got published. It was the only one that was worth being published. And when I wrote it I was really excited by Mistborn--or when I published it, because it was years later. I thought I could do a really good job with a trilogy. When they said, "Do you want to do a sequel to Elantris?" I thought, "I really like that there are sometimes really great standalone books to try an author out on, and I would rather people be able to have a standalone to try me out." Because back then I remember looking at new authors coming out and saying, "Brand new author. Book one of twenty," and thinking, "I don't know if this author can pull it off," right? I would rather try them out on a single book, or maybe a trilogy, and see if they can really tell a good story before I commit to something huge. So I figured doing a couple of standalones--I did two standalones and one trilogy before I launched into anything big of my own, because I wanted people to be able to try me out. And I really like how Elantris has stood on its own as a single book.

I do have plans for some follow-ups. Elantris, that world, is pretty important to the cosmere. I need to bring it up to speed with the other things. So there will be sequels, but like I said they're going to be world sequels. Like Sarene and Roaden may get mentioned and you may see them, but they won't be the main characters.

Questioner

So if there *inaudible*.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah. Maybe a little closer to like-- For years I wanted to do the sequel about Kiin's children (that's Sarene's uncle). Like after they're grown up have them be the main characters, and I was kind of seeding that. We'll see if that's still the way I go, but that's the plan right now.

Schaaschaa

How significant of an event or time period, on a cosmere scale, was the Reod actually? 10 years seems like a blip. Do most worldhoppers even know about it?

Brandon Sanderson

It was a big enough event that by now, yes they do. Most worldhoppers, actually no. Because most worldhoppers are going to be common tradespeople, things like this. Running caravans from Roshar to Nalthis or things like that. The majority of them are not paying attention to things that are happening, so I'm gonna say the majority wouldn't. But the arcanists, the people who are watching the various magic systems, who know about the Shards and are paying attention to this, what happened on Sel was a big deal.

yahasgaruna

I vaguely recall reading a WoB somewhere saying you were toying with the idea of doing cyberpunk Mistborn between Era 3 and 4. Have you shelved that completely?

Brandon Sanderson

It's still there in the back of my mind, but I'd need to see how Era Three plays out before I say more. Beyond that, I have to make certain I'm setting goals I can realistically finish before I'm too old. I'm trying to contain the scope of the cosmere to be certain I don't start too many things that slow down the release of the main line books.

simon_thekillerewok

The Mistborn cyberpunk era and the 1940s era would certainly be fun to see glimpses into in novella form, even if they'll never be the main "Eras".

Brandon Sanderson

That's a distinct possibility.

taveren

If someone goes to every planet and get Invested from every Shard, if he was Invested enough would he become a new Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s an excellent question that I’m not going to answer.

taveren

And I am assuming you will not answer if anyone is trying to do that.

Brandon Sanderson

Yup, I am not going to answer. Sorry. That's too deeply related to things that are happening in the Cosmere and I don’t want to dig into for a little while yet.

Luke Monahan

I was wondering if you could only write in one universe from now on, assuming it was any one you wanted, what would you pick?

Brandon Sanderson

Well you gave me an out, since so many of my books are in the same universe.

Luke Monahan

You know, I thought you might say that.

Brandon Sanderson

So that, I could cheat and just say the cosmere, but I think the soul of the question is which series would I write on.

And I would probably have to... boy it would probably be a toss up between Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive, Mistborn because I've invested so much into it already. If I can only pick one, I would probably pick Stormlight because there is so much left to tell there and I've got a lot of places to explore, but I would cheat and say they're all in the same universe.

Zane Borrow

Would you ever consider creating a sport in one of your series similar to a quidditch thing?  Selling jersey and such?  Mistborn Dodgeball?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes!  In fact, the previous Wax and Wayne book has little hints about this, and the new one has another step forward.  Obviously, Rithmatist is this; but they mean in the Cosmere and more of a formalized sport.

For those who don't know, part of the reason I wrote the Rithmatist is I'm like, "I wanna do a book where they use the magic for some sort of game or sport."  But you can anticipate in Era 3 fully Metallurgic Arts-enhanced sports teams.

The Not So Dark One

With your penchant for developing very different types of world and types of magic as you go from series to series are you ever tempted to allow other writers to expand your universes in the way George R. R. Martin does with the Wild Cards series? Open but controlled?

Brandon Sanderson

I have never been tempted by this, basically because I have so many things balanced in the Cosmere to not interfere with one another, to make the story come out the way I want. I would be worried about things breaking continuity. And if there are stories in these worlds worth telling, they're stories I want to tell. That doesn't mean I won't eventually do something like that; I would consider it someday, but I haven't considered it yet.

PrncRny (paraphrased)

How and when is the type of Misting you become determined? Can you tell what type of Misting you are before you Snap?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's determined at birth. The cosmere by combining 3 aspects of self. Your physical self, mental self, and spiritual self. The spiritual self is tied to the Investiture of the world that you come from. When an Allomancer snaps, a piece of their soul is broken and some of that power leaks into them, giving them their abilities.

Questioner

Would copper or, like, an aluminum hat influence subliminal messaging and that kind of thing?

Brandon Sanderson

*laughs* Only if they are working through cosmere magics. Not if they are just normal... which is of debatable effectiveness anyway.

AndrewStirlingMacDonald (paraphrased)

Is being a little bit crazy a prerequisite to becoming a Knight Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Well, so, for many of the cosmere magics to work, you have to... it has to get into the soul somehow. Right? Sometimes you ram it in by spiking someone else's soul and ripping off a piece and sticking it into yours. Sometimes, it just seeps in the cracks. Sometimes the bond allows it to kind of bypass some of this, but it's usually traumatic experience. So crazy is not required, but there's got to be a place for the magic to go, to get in.

Questioner

Is Hoid a dragon?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh I will give you a RAFO card. You're very good, Have you read Dragonsteel?

Questioner

I have not but--

Brandon Sanderson

Don't read it, it's bad.

Questioner

Okay then. I am just-- What? Okay then. That's awesome. We have some ideas but-- Hoid is amazing. I figured he was really old but it's cool knowing for sure that he's exceptionally old.

Brandon Sanderson

He is one of the oldest people in the cosmere, but he is not the oldest.

Questioner

Ahhh...

Brandon Sanderson

The person he is writing a letter to is indeed older than he is.

EEroden

Can any invested person "skip" to other planets if they have enough investiture and the knowledge to do so? If not, is this ability specific to Nomad?

Brandon Sanderson

What's happening with Nomad is fairly individual to him, though based on Cosmere logical principles.

Brandon Sanderson

Hello, all. Time for another update on your book. (See the last update HERE, if you are interested.)

This post WILL have Oathbringer spoilers, and slight spoilers for Book Four. So if you are concerned about those things, here is the no spoiler update: I just passed the 50% mark! The book is looking good so far. Moshe had some very enthusiastic and positive things to say about the first chunk I sent him. I'm still hoping for a Christmas 2020 release.

Now, for slight spoilers. At this point, I've finished the second chunk of the book. This means I've finished viewpoint cluster two, for those who are following along. If you aren't, or if this confuses you, I whipped up a little visualization.

This book, as I've said before, starts with all the characters together--then splits into three groups of viewpoints. The first group is the largest, and the most involved, with five viewpoints characters. Two of these, however, will have only a few viewpoints (and one might just appear in other viewpoints, save for an interlude.) Really, this is the story of three characters, and forms the core arc of the book.

The second viewpoint cluster, which is the one I've now finished, follows two characters on a very involved--but more narrowly focused--plot. The final cluster takes two remaining viewpoint characters, and touches lightly upon what they are doing, without going into quite as much depth as the other two groups.

Now that group two is finished, I have turned my attention to group one--the most difficult of the sequences to write. This should take me a few more months. After that, I'll write group three and the interludes.

One issue I've been having with the book is the flashbacks. I'm not 100% sure they'll work the way I planned them to. In that case, it's possible I will toss them and doing them from Venli's viewpoint instead. I'm excited to write more Eshonai, but there's a real chance that the viewpoints will feel like fluff, as Venli is the one who knew the secrets happening behind the scenes among the Listeners at the time.

This might be a place where I have to kill my darlings and just do what makes the most sense for the narrative, even though the other way (with Eshonai having the flashbacks) always appealed to me from a "this is less expected" angle.

I can't say for certain, and my gut says that--in abstract--more people would enjoy reading about Eshonai as a character, but would find the chapters a little boring and out of place. Venli flashbacks would, instead, be filled with cosmere mysteries and answers that will be more interesting.

We'll see how it goes. I haven't written the flashbacks yet, so we'll need to see about them as I write.

Otherwise, how do we look? Well, my trip to France and Spain really took a bite out of my writing time. We're hovering right at about 30k words behind (with 200k finished of a projected 400k.) 30k behind is roughly one month behind. (We've been about this far behind since I started on the book, as touring delays continue to eat up any progress I make catching up.) Hopefully, September will involve a lot of good writing time, as I don't have any trips planned except for Dragon*Con this weekend.

Of course, come October, it's back on tour. (France and Israel this time.) The goal is still to try to finish by January. Getting halfway took basically five months, however, and there are only four months left in the year. If I don't hit January for finishing, we're likely looking at a spring 2021 release.

As always, thank you for your patience and enthusiasm. Also, as always, I promise that I do consider these goals of when to finish only to be goals--not hardfast rules. I will take the time I need to make the book great, and if it comes down to delaying the book or releasing a novel that isn't ready, we WILL delay.

I will not be sending replies to this thread to my inbox, so there's a good chance I'll miss your comments. If I do, just let me say thank you again!

Brandon

Brandon Sanderson

When I was working on Mistborn 2 with my editor, he asked me, "Are Vin and Elend sleeping together?" I said, "Absolutely." He requested some confirmation of it on the page, and I explained something that has always been my policy, and one that has served me well.

I consider what I'm writing to be a very detailed script, which you the reader direct in your mind. Each person's version of the books will be slightly different, but in sometimes telling ways. The subtext of conversations will change, the visualizations of the characters, even larger implications are changed, distorted, and played with by the reader as they build the story in their imagination.

This is an area in which I prefer to leave the answers to the reader. For those who wish to imagine that the characters are having sex, then the implications are often there. (Though I've gotten better at that balance, I feel.) For those who don't want to imagine it, and wish to pretend the characters are living different standards, I will often leave the opportunity for that--unless it is a plot point I consider relevant.

Certainly, my upbringing and beliefs are an influence on this. I'm obviously more circumspect in these areas than I am in others.

But yes, for those who don't want to pretend otherwise, Vin and Elend were sleeping together. And Wax and Lessie never had a real ceremony. My editor tried to remove the word "wife" from one of the later books, and I insisted, as the shift in Wax's thinking was a deliberate point on my part--related to his changing psychology in the books. But even to him, it's more a 'common law wife' thing.

As a side note you'll likely find amusing, I do get a surprising number of emails from people who complain to me (even take me to task) for the amount of objectionable material I include in my books, and ask me why I have to wallow in filth as much as I do. I'm always bemused by this, as I doubt they have any idea how the books are perceived in this area by the general fantasy reading world...

legobmw99

Does this mean that Wayne and MeLaan's fling is "a plot point [you] consider relevant"?

Calling it right now, Wayne's... intimate... knowledge of Kandra biology will be a point on which the fate of the entire cosmere hinges. Because why wouldn't it.

Brandon Sanderson

The plot point isn't exactly what you think it is, but yes.

One of Wayne's roles is that of a character who points out absurdity, either through word or action. There is a certain level of absurdity in what I described up above, and I realize that. Some things I talk about explicitly in books, some things I don't.

On a certain level, Wayne showing that people do--yes indeed--actually have (and talk about) sex in Sanderson books is there for the same reason that a court jester could mock the king. When as a writer you notice you're doing something consistently, even if you decide you like the thing that you're doing, I feel it's a good idea to add a contrast somewhere in the stories.

It's one of the reasons that Hoid, though a very different kind of character from Wayne, has more leeway in what he says in Stormlight.

dragontales3

I know this was a few months ago, but I have a follow up question (huge fan of your work btw!): Do you purposely mention characters having sex to show that they are maybe not "good guys"/"bad guys" are mentioned having sex as a continuation of their lowered morals? Like OP mentioned with rape, of course that would be a sign that someone is a terrible person, but I can think of several other instances in your books were someone engages in consensual sex who later turns out to be more morally loose.

ETA: I mean premarital sex

Brandon Sanderson

I don't personally consider this to be a sign of who is good or bad, but I can't speak for how the morals that shape my own society might affect my unconscious application of morals in my books. That's certainly something for critics to analyze, not for me to speak on.

If it's relevant, though, I don't perceive it this way. More, the people I mention engaging in premarital sex are ones more likely to reject societal mores. (Such as MeLaan.) I also am more likely to do it for characters who are not primary viewpoint characters, for reasons I've mentioned--the ability to allow plausible deniability for readers who wish to view the characters in a certain way. I can see myself unconsciously letting myself say more about villains for a similar reason, though I don't intend it to be causal.

Brandon Sanderson

So, for those who don't know, I'm good friends with the director of Fortnite. Before he made this came, he made a smaller game called Infinity Blade--and we collaborated on some story things for that. (Curiously, he and art director Isaac went to school together, which is how I ended up meeting him.)

Fast forward a decade or so, and one day he says to me, "Hey. We should put Kelsier in Fortnite." So here we are.

I realize this probably isn't going to be earth shattering to most of you--I expect the audience who both reads the books and plays Fortnite to be somewhat small--but it was too neat not to pursue.

ImBuGs

Is it really only Kelsier? Or are you hiding anything else? As in, perhaps Vin too? Asking because the skins are usually like $20 and if there are more coming down the pipe i'd rather wait and buy the one from the character I like most (Vin in this case), because, well, I sadly can't afford to buy many of these. I understand if you can't say anything more, but it would be nice if you could confirm its only Kelsier :)

Brandon Sanderson

The deal allows them to make Vin in the future--but I don't know if they're planning to or not. So I'm glad you asked. I wouldn't be surprised to see her in the future--and though there has been not talks of it yet, because it's in the contract, I'd lay decent odds on it happening. (But it would be at least six months away, since it took around five months of working to get Kelsier in.)

Kalinque

Ooh, a Vin skin!

That makes me super curious about the process that went into putting Kelsier in the game. Do you know perhaps if there's any chance we could see the concept art that went into it after the Kelsier skin is out?

Brandon Sanderson

I'd love to do that. I'll see if they'll let me.

Argent

How does the government of the Kingdoms of Light work? Does the Chronicle King rule them all himself? Is it a coalition? Are there vassals? And is the Dawncoast part of it?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, boy. I would have to go back to my… that is in my outline. I’m gonna have to speak from not having read the outline in, like, six months. I was looking at kind of a… I believe there’s this idea that when it comes to matters relating directly to the Dark One, the Narrative, and things like that, the Chronicle King becomes a kind of Speaker of the House, so to speak. A first among equals. And in other areas, they did not have to necessarily take the Chronicle King’s word. And I believe that is where we would go with that. I don’t think that got changed. But the actual details of how that work, I would have to pull out the outline and talk about it and refresh myself. That’s where I believe I went with it. The idea being: in matters of there being a threat and a Dark One and the Blasted Lands and all that, then you have to listen to the Chronicle King a little more than you normally would.

Isaac Stewart

I can at least answer one part of that question. At least when I was making the map and chatting with the writers, the intention was that Dawncoast is part of the Kingdoms of Light. It just happens to be around a part of the mountain range.

Brandon Sanderson

In versions one and two, there was a separate island that Paul was from that was not either part of the Blasted Lands or the Kingdoms of Light. And that, when he of course moved to being from Earth, vanished. But that did exist for a while.

ArgentSun

How much do you know about Nazh, and how much control do you have over what he does in the Cosmere?

Isaac Stewart

I run everything by Brandon and we discuss it, even with Nazh.

V_Spaceman

I know the multiverse isn’t a thing in the Cosmere, but I was wondering: if a Shard was in the world of MtG, would it have the power to planeswalk? Would their powers work if they crossed into another plane?

Brandon Sanderson

It's always hard to figure out how to cross magic systems like this. I'd say that yes, a Shard would be able to, as they're vastly powerful--but it really depends on how you decide to define certain aspects of the magic systems.

Travis Gafford

This decision [do be more Cosmere-aware] for this book [The Lost Metal] in particular, was this more out of desire or necessity to start doing this?

Brandon Sanderson

It was a mix of both. I would say it's more desire. There's some things I wanted to get in. This book introduces a character from a world we haven't visited yet who has a completely new magic system that is just kind of part of the story, and I was really hesitant about putting this character in, because you could feel lost. (Even though there's no book for this character's backstory yet.) But I thought, "This is the character I want in the story. This is the story I wanna write. I'm just gonna put him in. I'm just gonna do it." And it worked wonderfully. I love how it worked in the story. And at that point, I'm like, "This has gotta be the moment." The "gloves off," as I said. Before, I've been kind of pulling my punches a little bit.

BipedSnowman

This is just a little thing I thought of that is kinda neat. Symmetry on Roshar is seen as holy, but the letter H can be used in place of another consonant without "spoiling" the symmetry.

Is this because of the spelling of the name Honor? If the H is a stand-in for the R, it makes the name symmetrical.

Dickferret

Where is the "h" thing mentioned?

BipedSnowman

I am copying this from somewhere else, but apparently WoR chapter 47. (I guess i tagged the post wrong, but it's just barely a spoiler anyway.)

""Bajerden? Nohadon? Must people have so many names?" "One is honorific," Shallan said. His original name wasn't considered symmetrical enough. Well, I guess it wasn't really symmetrical at all, so the ardents gave him a new one centuries ago." "But ... the new one isn't symmetrical either." "The 'h' sound can be for any letter," Shallan said absently. "We write it as the symmetrical letter, to make the word balance, but add a diacritical mark to indicate it sounds like an h so the word is easier to say." "That - One can't just pretend that a word is symmetrical when it isn't!" Shallan ignored his sputtering [...]"

pwnt1337

Is this similar to the many interpretations of the spelling and pronunciation of YHWH?

Brandon Sanderson

Hebrew, among a few other languages, is an inspiration for some languages in the cosmere. (One of them is Alethi.) That said, in this case it's more like how in some Asian countries, they would give honorific names to famous scholars or rulers after they pass away.

Matthew

Have you ever talked with another author and found a fun opportunity to drop a small easter egg in each others' universes? Something small that only big fans of both would notice?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't ever done this yet, I don't believe. I know of friends doing it. The closest I've gotten is just kind of dropping my friends into my books in little cameos. I would totally be on-board for doing this, but I just haven't had the chance, haven't had the right thing. I mean, I've done it in my own works; there's a line in Alcatraz where I'm proving how bad a person a character is using great rhetoric and exaggeration, and I believe one of them says "she killed Asmodean!" or something like that, which is a reference to the Wheel of Time (which I also worked on). But I don't think I've done it with another person's books. I haven't done a cool thing like where E.T.'s race shows up in Episode [I] of Star Wars, or something like that. It would be a lot of fun to do something like that. The reason it's so fun in Star Wars is because we know that those two are friends; Lucas and Spielberg have worked on many things together, so there's just something kind of wholesome about that. Where if I dropped a reference to E.T. in my book, it'd be fun; but it's not the same sort of "here's my friend's cool science fiction story showing up crossing over with mine."

The trick is, I don't want to break immersion in the Cosmere, and I've been very careful to try to not do that. That doesn't mean I don't stick my friends in the books though, and things, so I'm sure we could find a place for something like this. I just wouldn't want it to draw too much attention, to break immersion.

Kogiopsis

Kind of along the same lines, I just want to confirm something. If someone from Earth saw an Alethi, what ethnicity would they assume they were?

Brandon Sanderson

It would-- The model I use are actually for the half-Hawaiian, half-Asians that are kind of common in Hawaii. That's the model I've used; I actually have one of their faces for Kaladin. So it would depend on what your perspective is, you might say-- some people might say Arab, but the model I'm using is kind of more Hawaiian/Asian mix is what you'd get. The only ones that would look Caucasian to you straight-up would probably be the Shin, though if you get someone who has Horneater blood-- The Horneaters might look-- they just-- they're gonna look like bizarre… redhead… things, but they might look Caucasian to you.

swamp-spirit

So would Shallan also be more towards that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Shallan has lighter skin. But she still has the epicanthic fold, and so she maybe would look to you like a Caucasian/Asian mix? With red hair? So… Anyway, she would look fairly Caucasian.

swamp-spirit

I will attempt to send you excited fanart.

Kogiopsis

I've been picturing the Alethi as Indian, myself.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, like East India? That’s a pretty good picture on them. That would work very well.

Ketamine

I am in the very small minority of your readers that finds Hoid obnoxious and unpleasant. So will we see more characters talk negatively about Hoid, or expose some of what he has done in the past? I bet there are a lot more people like Shai out there ...

Brandon Sanderson

There are a ton. But I don't know when exactly I'll be able to get to them. Suffice it to say that you wouldn't find yourself alone in that opinion in the cosmere.

Questioner

What comes first chronologically in the Cosmere series: Mistborn or Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn, for trilogy one.

Yamato

I am currently trying to write a book in which the world is drastically different from earth. Do you think it is too ambitious to start out with such a complex setting?

Brandon Sanderson

No, not at all. Just don't try TOO hard to describe every aspect of it. It's good to be ambitious. However, be careful to keep you number of viewpoints down for your first few attempts--that will spiral out of control faster than worldbuilding will. Don't feel the need to explain too much, keep the focus on the characters, and you should be fine.

Brandon Sanderson

Tertiary Projects

Aether of Night

No progress. (Though you can still get a copy of the draft I wrote back in college, around the time I wrote Elantris. Also, requisite request that you sign up for my mailing list. I give some free fiction away on the newsletter every time I send it, and the chapters I set aside as Patreon rewards usually do make their way on here eventually, though many months later.)

Status: On hiatus (but still part of the Cosmere sequence, with seeds of the story already in other books).

Questioner

When you were writing Elantris and you introduced Hoid, did you already have planned for him to be what he is now?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid started appearing in books I was reading when I was fifteen; I would imagine him in other people's books. By then, I already had this character in my head that had been worldhopping between Anne McCaffrey's books, and David Eddings' books, and all those things. So I did know what I was gonna be doing. I didn't know where it would all go. I didn't have the whole cosmere built, but I did have him. He was my first D&D character. I'm being recorded; I don't even know if they know that, that I used Topaz (is what he was called back then) as my first D&D character. He's in my first book that I tried writing when I was fourteen.

Zabeesh

If the moons are constantly pouring out spores, how do the oceans not fill up? Do they degrade eventually, or is there another method?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they degrade eventually. I'll be perfectly frank with you: my science on this, I have not gone to all of my normal science routes. The only one of the Secret Projects that we did a lot of the scientific work on is Four, because of how tied into the rest of the Cosmere it is. I have some sort of plausible wiggle room on Book One, because Hoid is telling the story, and he can get some things wrong.

Where I am right now is: the seethe is partially involved in the way that the spores degrade. And that's part of what causes it; you've got this decomposition of a fantastical sort happening deep down, and that that is causing the seethe. But I have not run the science on this.

All of my books straddle on this continuum between fully scientific and fully fantastical. And I tend to sit over on this side [scientific], where Stormlight, I'm gonna work out all of these things. But I write fantasy, and once in a while I want to stray into the whimsical. And I purposefully did it on Tress; I'm gonna push the boundaries of what I can do and still have it be reasonable that it could exist with fantastical resources, and go kind of as far whimsical as I feel comfortable doing.

That isn't to say that you should consider this non-canon; it is absolutely canon. But what it means is, I didn't start with "what's the science of this?" I started with "what is the really interesting story I want to tell, and let's tell the story there." And if it comes down that the science just can't work; well, the answer is: "A wizard did it." I have enough access to fantastical explanations for the things that happen that I can make this work." But it is me pushing the boundaries of that.

So, know that I've got general impressions. Such as: spores are degrading. The way that they're degrading is actually causing the seethe. Much in a kind of an accelerated version of how methane comes up through decomposition, and that's what we're doing. But the water cycle is really tricky; I have some instincts on how that works, but I'm not even gonna talk about them, because I don't wanna canonize that, 'cause the water cycle's a really tricky thing on this planet, in particular.

Argent

My understanding of the... spren is that they grant powers based on what they understand to be fundamental? Ish?

Brandon Sanderson

Ish. I wouldn't 100% go with that. I would say these are the fundamental forces-- They aren't as scientific as our fundamental forces, but I would say it's more than just what the spren view and what the humans view in that case. But they are more philosophical than scientific, in cases.

Argent

Other cognitive beings, could they-- A spren on Earth. Would it grant electromagnetism surge, for example?

Brandon Sanderson

That, I would say yes.