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Does the Lord Ruler have children?
So, I've been dodgy about this before, but the answer is yes, the Lord Ruler did have children. I don't think I've-- I've strongly hinted at it, and so I think people basically know. But yes, he did... But it is children.
Note: read last year’s State of the Sanderson for more talk on what it takes to make a film or television show out of a novel. However, the biggest news here is that I’ve decided to try taking a more active role in getting some of these made. To that end, I’ve most specifically been working closer with Dan Mintz, the producer who is trying to get some Cosmere things made. See below.
SnapshotNew screenplay has been written, and is being shopped to directors right now, so far as I know. Still under option by MGM, and looking good—but no real updates.
Stormlight ArchiveI’ve offered Dan Mintz to do treatments for this myself, and he’s been very amenable. He and I have been working more closely together lately to see if we can make this happen.
SteelheartOption lapsed at Fox just last month. This wasn’t surprising, as after the Fox/Disney merger, there wasn’t much of a chance that Disney would greenlight a non-Marvel superhero project. Instead of immediately going out to shop this again though, I’m taking a few months to consider how I want to approach film and television.
LegionStill under option to Cineflix Media. No updates lately.
SkywardDeal is in the works, but can’t talk about it yet.
AlcatrazLikewise, deal is in the works, but can’t talk about it yet.
Dark OneWorking on this with JMS, which has been super cool.
MistbornConsidering maybe writing the screenplay on this myself. After speaking with Dan Mintz, we decided he would focus on spearheading Stormlight, and I would focus on spearheading Mistborn. So we’ll see what I decide to do.
Favorite Joke
Rutabaga, of course.
So Nightblood is sentient, he can make choices, and now he is in Roshar. Could Nightblood bond a spren and become a Radiant?
Could Nightblood bond a spren-- *drowned out by laughter* That one's just a bit farfetched. *laughter* I rarely say anything is impossible but let's just say that one's pretty farfetched.
Are Cognitive elements like spren and seons only present on physical planes on worlds where Shards have been [Splintered]?
No. But it does require <Cognitive *inaudible*>. Alternately the Shard would have to give up pieces of their power for that. But it doesn't have to be that they were [Splintered] by someone. Seons existed on, sorry, spren existed on Roshar before the Shattering of Adonalsium. Not as many.
So I just finished rereading Mistborn, and I really liked reading the annotations with it.
Huh.
Are you planning on doing those anymore with like The Way of Kings and stuff *interrupted*?
*sighs* So here's the problem. I used to do those when I did the copyedit, which was really boring. Peter does the copyedits now. So I don't have to do them anymore.
In between the first five [Stormlight books] and the second five, are you personally taking a ten-year break?
No, it shouldn't be ten years. I do plan to write the third Mistborn trilogy. (Second trilogy being four books. But, you know.) I do plan to write the second Mistborn trilogy before I do that. But those should be 200K words, which means I should be able to write one, do a novella, write one, do a novella, write one. So we're talking about probably that taking me five years to do all those. And then I come back. So it's probably a five-year break, would be my guess, during which you get a trilogy of Mistborn books. We have to work in Elantris there somewhere, but I have to stay focused at the same time, so it's kind of hard.
Would Nightblood appear in the Cognitive Realm?
Nightblood will have a manifestation in the Cognitive Realm.
…Would it appear as a sword, or because Nightblood appears to perceive itself as something else, would it appear as something else?
So, um, you will get a RAFO. *laughter* Because most things we're going to deal with we will have some scenes in the Cognitive Realm coming up, and you'll be better able to make guesses along these lines after you've read those.
What was your soundtrack for writing Skyward?
Soundtrack is on Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/user/mistborn1/playlist/6g98k9ofImSyi37WeLwSOM?si=NZ0jQDEWQYeFonJ8npy8hg
Is Edgli Endowment's real name?
RAFO, however the flowers are related to Endowment somehow...
Can you tell me what the Truthwatcher spren are called, like do they have a name? I know it's not in Oathbringer.
Yeah, I'm not gonna canonize that yet. There're things I am still thinking about.
By the way, the mists getting pushed away from Vin and Kar here is a clue of some sorts. Inquisitors push away the mists, rather than attracting them, when they use their powers. I'll explain this in book three too.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Dakhor. One of the better words I came up for this book, I think.
Be patient with me–I'm going somewhere with this whole Dakhor monastery thing. We'll get there eventually. For now, enjoy Hrathen's visions. Or, rather, be disturbed by them. (Dakhor, if you haven't noticed, isn't a very friendly place. . . .)
I'm guessing it's a RAFO, but why do Honorblades work the way they do?
Honorblades were crafted before Shardblades existed...
So they were crafted.
They were crafted before Shardblades existed, and all Shardblades that exist came about as certain individuals trying to find out how to copy Honorblades.
So would it be fair to say that Honorblades are analagous to fabrials in some sense? Trap spren in a crystal yada yada Stormlight power?
There is an analogy there, that I think would pass the SAT's rigor for analogies.
Has Hoid been in contact with Harmony in the timeline so far? Like, physically.
Physically in contact with Harmony in the timeline so far? "Physically" as it relates to a Shard is a difficult thing to say, but I would say that yes, they have interacted.
The Women Fighting
Talk of the ChayShan leads us into the scene where Sarene's women decide to fight back. Like the ChayShan, this plotting element wasn't intended to be anything spectacular, or to provide last minute salvation. In fact, the actual battle is kind of short. (My editor, by the way, thinks that I should have expanded this scene, letting the women be a little more heroic. I didn't necessarily disagree, but that edit just never found its way into a revision.)
The women attack because it fulfills the form of this novel. This is a book about people who resist despite hopelessness, and it is about making use of you limitations to overcome your hardships. It's about the spirit of mankind.
Not everyone who does things like this, however, is going to be as successful as Raoden. I wanted the women to fight back here–I wanted them to give a nod to the theme of the book while at the same time fulfilling Sarene's "fencing plot" cycle. The women did her proud–the fought back while their men waited to be slain.
Interestingly, this Lukel scene fulfills the opposite function of what his previous one. Instead of offering a bit of hope when all the other viewpoints look dark, this one turns down while the others are having success.
Can Dalinar create a perpendicularity on another Shardworld that isn't Roshar?
RAFO.
Is Hoid from Elantris, the same Hoid from The Stormlight Archive?
Yes.
Are there kandra on other planets?
Yes.
There are?
There are.
I loved the illustrations in WoR, and the broadsheet in Shadows of Self.
I'm wondering if it's possible to put more art in the books in the future. Are there limits in terms of printing costs to putting more art in things like the Stormlight books? Do you guys think the amount of art you have in the books now is perfect?
Something like an image for every chapter seems like it would be wonderful in my opinion. For example, a picture of how the bridges were held/carried during the first scene involving them in WoK (because I found that confusing).
We actually did bump up the number of illustrations between book I and book II, but as you may know we also ran right up against the actual page-count maximum in Words of Radiance. The printer literally could not manufacture a book with more pages, we maxed 'em out.
We're never going to cut Brandon's text in favor of the art, 'cause we're not crazy, but we want to put as much in there as we can. We're probably not going to reach the point of an illustration for every chapter, but I don't think we'll be cutting back soon either.
*reading a personalization request* Specifically what Khriss knows about the red haze around Scadrial and if she was trying to clue Wax in on the situation.
I can't tell you what Khriss knows about the red haze. Definitely not. She knows too much and I-- ...I can say "She knows too much".
Does it matter how fast are the metals burned in relation to Seeking? For example, would a flared metal be easier to Seek? Could duraluminum burned metal be Seeked through coppercloud by regular Seeker?
Flaring is noticeable to the right Seeker, and strength does correlate as you theorize.
From Secret History, does Hoid have all the magic from the universe you've created?
He does not have all the magic. He did take the bead of lerasium, and you have seen him use Allomancy. So, he is confirmed to have used Allomancy.
As I was reading about nightmaws, I thought that nightmaws were like dinosaurs. Is that...?
Yes, but they are feathered.
Like a pterodactyl?
More like a giant...
Chicken!
Giant chicken. We're looking at a giant evil bird.
Theory: Imperial KKell power is the power to control the other KKell powers.
While considering the no relatives problem and what happened if the emperor died with no heir I thought "well the priests could just adopt someone into the imperial family like they tried with kkeris". This naturally led to the question, "Where do the priests get the power to adopt/unadopt people." With the logical conclusion that it is the imperial kkell power. Either the priests take a kkell oath or they adopt themselves into the imperial family.
That is actually correct as far as I know, but it never comes out in the chapters that were written. Though there may have been more than that.
You said you had thirteen books that you wrote before you got published. Did you ever go back to any of them, or are they all just totally trunkable?
So, number thirteen was Way of Kings--that first version I talked about. Elantris was number six. So those two got published. I ripped apart number nine and built it into Warbreaker--some of the ideas. White Sand was one of them but became a graphic novel. Some of them, ideas are still waiting to get used. Because some of them got ripped up and turned into Mistborn. I have reused some of the ideas, but some of them just--
Yeah, but like-- but you did reuse some of the full book?
I didn't ever--I didn't take any of the actual words, but yeah.
Could Lift's food ability be taken by Hemalurgic spike?
Theoretically yes.
Is Trell Endowment?
RAFO.
Are you willing to answer any questions about Wax's earring?
Not really. Not the one you want answered. We're going--
Won't even tell me what it's made of?
I'm going to keep that one close to my heart for now.
[Spren] are used to Invest a lot of things, fabrials, they turn into Shardblades. Are we ever going to see something similar with the seons, from Sel?
Yeah, they are basically the same thing. They're a little more formalized, a little more structured but they are basically the exact same thing so yes. Some of the things you see spren doing seons are capable of, some things that seons do spren will be capable of.
You very clearly make rules for the wine in this world, like the different colors and different alcohol content. I was wondering what the inspiration for that is, and also what some of them are actually made from, because it doesn't seem like grapes.
It's not grapes, it's a local fruit. So we would not probably call it wine, we would probably call it something else. And it's based on my desire to do funky things with world building in every way I can. The color is a cultural thing.
Wayne shows up
Another aspect of the Mistborn books is the humor. I plan the humor in each of my novels specifically. In Warbreaker, the humor is all about wordplay and lofty back-and-forths. In the Alcatraz books, it's about being audacious, whimsical, and . . . well, a little insane. In The Way of Kings, it's more character-specific, certain characters engaging in different types of humor to fit the scene.
The Mistborn books have always employed a type of humor I'll call grim banter. Friends who know each other making jokes back and forth amid sometimes terrible situations. There's usually an edge to the banter, much how Kelsier would speak in the original trilogy. I wanted to maintain that feel, and so for this series to work, it needed to be founded on at least two characters who knew one another well and who were comfortable with insulting one another in the name of levity.
It was actually hard not to get to Wayne sooner in the book—even though this is only chapter two, he's a big part of the heart and soul of this story. I wanted to get him in quickly, as quickly as possible. This was the right place, I'm confident—he'd have distracted from Lessie in the prologue.
I'm pleased with how he turned out, by the way. He's vibrant enough as a person, with a good soul and a lot of quirks, that he quite often steals the show. That was a balance I had to work on in the book to make sure he didn't steal it too much. (Or, at least, too often.)
How much research do you have to do in sciences and technology and history to create a world that is more relate-able if not as believable as they are?
What it takes is a lot of general knowledge, meaning you read a lot of history books, a lot of science books, and this general knowledge that you then incorporate. It's not like I go and say "I need to know more about this thing". I'll do that for characters and some aspects of the worlds sometimes but mostly this is coming from spending 10 years learning all this stuff. Does that make sense?
It makes total sense, and my 10 years of community college will help me write.
Yes it will.
My 120 credit-hours.
120 credit-hours, that's what makes a good writer... That really turns-- You can pick out "Oh that's my linguistics class" and I'd be like "Oh that's my chemistry class. Oh that's the class I snuck into, the psychology class".
Your favorite movies?
Gattica. The Fifth Element, actually, is up there too. The Prisoner of Azkaban movie. Empire Strikes Back. Sneakers. Jackie Chan's Operation Condor. (I know, I know.) The Emperor's New Groove. Star Trek: First Contact.
To be honest, that's probably not a great list. Those are the movies I watch over and over, but there are a lot of movies I love, but have only seen a few times. I'm not generally a 'watch it over again' type of guy, so it's hard to pick favorites. I come back to the genre films or things like Jackie Chan because they're quirky and rewatchable, but that doesn't actually mean they're my favorite—or that they've influenced me as much as other films. For instance, Lawrence of Arabia blew my mind, and The Stinginfluenced how I write quite a bit. But I've only ever seen those films once. But I do keep coming back to Gattica as one of the movies I think does what storytelling should do, when done perfectly right.
Your favorite music?
Depends on the month. Right now? Daft Punk. Before that? Anything by Harry Gregson Williams. (Often, his music is better than the film it is in.) Metallica has been a long-standing favorite of mine, though I've been listening to a lot of Desprez lately.
I'd also like to thank Brandon here for being so wonderfully accessible. It's an excellent gesture Brandon, great of you. Your fans will always love you for it.
No problem! Though that list above made me work. (Wipes brow.) I'm terrible at the "What's your favorite..." type questions.
How long did your editors want Words of Radiance to be?
Well, my editor just wants it to be the right length. My publisher is the one who wants things shorter. So, my editor, he's just interested in story. But the publisher, he's interested in money. And the shorter the book is, the more money it makes him. It's really weird, it's kind of interesting. For instance, supermarket pockets, like, the little racks that hold paperbacks, they can hold a certain number of books. My books, they can often only hold one of. And that means if it sells, that pocket is empty, which the supermarket hates. They don't want empty pockets, they want the shelf space used. They'd rather stack four books in there. So, the publisher in turn says, "Brandon, can't you cut these books down shorter?" I'm like. "Well, Tom... no. Other books are short, you have lots of short books of mine to sell," but... yeah. It's not one of them. We just have to give up on the pocket thing, and then the booksellers are like... here, let me [visually illustrate it]. If you've got a book like this [small book], and you sell it for eight dollars, and Way of Kings is this [big] and you sell it for nine dollars, which one does the bookstore want on their shelf more? Well, the truth is, they want the one that sells the most copies, so they're okay with it. But the smaller book will generally... well, it's a matter of them having sixteen dollars worth of stuff to sell or nine dollars worth of stuff to sell.
So, the publisher really does like things shorter. But it's kind of a pushback between him and me, where I'm like, "My fans also like good value-to-money." I'm just saying, good value-to-money, that's something they're, like, "Look, we'll go buy the hardcover, even though it's thirty-five dollars, because instead of buying a twenty-five dollar hardcover by somebody else that's one-fourth as long, we buy a thirty-five dollar hardcover of Brandon's and we get our money's worth. The audiobook people love that. Like, Audible and things, they're like... you know. Because it's one credit, it's the same price for their listeners, but it's three times as long.
Way of Kings epigraph:
"Three of sixteen ruled, but now the Broken One reigns (Odium)"
Words of Radiance back cover:
"The Bondsmith (Dalinar), born in blood and death, striving to rebuild what was destroyed."
Am I onto something?
RAFO.
Actually, I have a question for /u/mistborn about that bit. The epigraphs were dictated, and honor's shattered pieces are in the highstorm. Is it "the broken one reigns", or "the broken one rains"?
It is reigns. (Though that is a cool possible interpretation.)
Does Wit know what became of Helaran?
Depends on where Wit was, so maybe.
I just finished an ARC of Skyward. Is the world connected to Defending Elysium? There are some vague similarities between the two.
The connection is probably as you think.
I make cocktails, and I want to make cocktails based on the characters, have you got any ideas? Particularly Kaladin and Vin, what would they drink?
...Kaladin and Vin, ah boy. Vin wants something simple, I mean she's going to want something to relax, so maybe something fruity and simple. Kaladin, he'll want something stiff, right, something hard...
The next one actually has a mixed drinks scene. Fortunately, you'll be happy to know, I went to a bartender friend to get some advice on how to make it work, so... If you make Kaladin's stiff and blue, that might be good because of Alethi blue.
Are there any different effects on a larkin depending on what kind of Investiture it eats?
Yes, but they are not enormous.
Do you have a single name that you use to refer to all the singers, and the listeners, and the Parshmen: that entire species?
Yeah, I usually use listener, but that's a cultural thing. So, I don't right now.
I keep struggling with what to call them as a species, and eeehhh are they all singers? I mean they aren't really all singers.
We'll settle on something eventually.
Okay, but we don't have anything right now.
Yeah.
Is the Nameless Angel supposed to be the same one referenced in the official Magic story A Gaze Blank and Pitiless? If so, do you know if the story team is planning on addressing how she came back to life?
You're speaking of the fourth sister, the WB one? The team asked me to RAFO this, meaning leave it ambiguous for now.
Is there-- Can you explain the relationship between Spiritual DNA, Spiritual aspects, and the spiritweb, or are they all just terms for the same thing?
They are all similar terms for the similar stuff, yeah.
Okay. So it's not like the core is Spiritual DNA then things as you spread out is all Spiritual aspect?
No.
Vasher Confronts Vahr
Vahr's original name was Pahn. You can find it used in earlier drafts of the book. I liked the sound and look of that so much, in fact, that I based the name of the people he came from on his own name.
That made for a problem, though. That's like having a person named America. It happens, but it's kind of confusing in a book. So, I eventually had to change his name to something that had a similar look and feel, but which wouldn't lead to so much confusion.
Vahr dies here, and one of the major revisions I made to the book was to bring out more of his influence throughout the book. I didn't want it to be too in your face. However, he was a very important man. We see only the very tail end of his life here, but he worked for over a decade as a Pahn revolutionary, trying to inspire his people to rebel against Hallandren oppression. (Or at least what he saw as Hallandren oppression.) He eventually became such a popular figure that he raised an army, with monetary support from several of Hallandren's trade competitors across the sea.
We see here the end of that—Vahr, captured and being tortured. He's a lot more important than he seems, both to the world and to the novel itself.
In the cosmere, other than Frost, have we been introduced to other dragons?
There have been others around, but I don't know if.-- There have been others around. I'll just say that.
Does the word Adonalsium-- In your mind did you get that from the phrase "ad nauseum"?
No.
Because the first few times I heard someone say ad nauseum I was like "Adonalsium? Did someone say Adonalsium?"
Good question, nope but that's not the origin.
It seemed that Kelsier was fluent in Spook's street dialect, and even conversed with Spook in the dialect at one point. So I'm assuming Kelsier knew what Lestibournes really meant, and being who Kelsier was, giving him a new name probably was more about building the boy up, rather than just the length. That said, why Spook? If he was trying to boost Spook's self confidence, why use a name like that?
It's an inside joke between them. "Spook" means "Sneaky" or "Clever" in the street slang. It was a compliment.
How was Jasnah able to teleport into the [Cognitive] Realm when she didn't seem to have any Stormlight in her in Words of Radiance?
She had enough.
She had enough.
Yeah.
And is it just teleportation-- *interrupted*
Let's say... Jasnah's figured out some things that others haven't figured out, for one thing. *brief interruption* And, let's say that. But also, there's a little scene from it I wrote from her viewpoint just to know what was happening that's never going in the books. If you Google "Jasnah deleted scene Words of Radiance" you can read it. It talks about how she did what she did.
Oh good.
So that is out there. Just-- It was my reference for writing the scene. But-- One of her powers is called Elsecalling, which is basically popping in and out of Shadesmar more easily. It's hard for everyone else to do that.
My other question is, so when Shallan was on the land she was in the sea in Shadesmar.
Yes.
Is it exactly opposite?
Yeah, it's mirrored... Um... It's mirrored, yeah.
So any land is on sea. So she would have actually landed on land on the ocean.
Yeah... so... yes...
She kind of *inaudible*
Well that's, no for Jasnah that's... *interrupted*
Oh yeah yeah, Jasnah... In that scene where you see? She pops out in Shadesmar on the land.
So, was the scene at the end right as soon as that happened?
What the-- no, no, no. She spent months trying to get back out.
Oh, because she doesn't have the power to get back out.
Much harder to get back out.
*inaudible* trying to get back out, because she doesn't have any more Stormlight.
Yep. Much harder to get back out than it is to get back in even if you have Stormlight, and she is out of Stormlight, so...
Really, the third [White Sand graphic novel] is where we've done the most work, because authors-- this happens to a lot of us. Early work, we're good at doing scenes, and we're bad at endings, we're bad at bringing them together. And that's one of the things that I got better at over the years. And the ending of this one had some good things, but it had some really off-kilter things that we're fixing.
Are they gonna go to [Darkside]?
Don't have the plans yet, because I never wrote that book. But I do still have the outline, so it's possible that I'll go and I'll get with Rik [Hoskin]. (Who I really like; Rik has been great to work with. One of the best experiences I've had in collaborating has been working with Rik.) I can see myself saying, "Here are our story beats. I'm doing some dialogue, you're translating." We can maybe do something. But I can't promise.
The other thing is, we have that old Mistborn script, from the video game, that I could also turn into a graphic novel.
Will Jorgen keep the callsign "Jerkface?"
He hopes not.
