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Brandon Sanderson

I'm working on a story slowly about a world where diseases grant powers while you have the disease. The pitch is you catch the common cold, you can fly until you get it over. This is the idea that bacterial and viruses have evolved to grant these powers in order to spread themselves, and so I need some help with my immunology stuff. Even if it's just...

Questioner

No one ever needs immunologists.

Brandon Sanderson

Here. Give a list of good diseases that have a certain like how long it takes the average person to get over them, and I have to really work out the viruses that you don't ever really get over. Right?

Questioner

The chronic ones, like yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

Like how does that work with the magic, and cuz I actually want one plot point of the story for someone to invent penicillin. And its basically like a weapon, right? To knock out people's powers, and so, I have to make sure I can only use those for bacteria and I have to know how that's going to work and stuff.

Brandon Sanderson

People who weren't impressed by how advanced my culture was

Man, this book is preachy, isn’t it? Ah well. Good thing it’s written from the viewpoint of a guy up on his soapbox dispensing wisdom. Otherwise it might get pretentious.

Isn’t it funny how I can get away with so much in a book like this? If I tried to be this overt with theme and message in one of my epic fantasies, it would completely ruin the book. I always talk about how books shouldn’t have intentional messages–only the messages that the characters want to talk about. However, you can’t help having things come through anyway. And as soon as I started writing in first person with a humorous tone, all kinds of things popped out.

In this chapter, we get Alcatraz having to face the fact that America doesn’t have all the best stuff. This is kind of hard to swallow, sometimes. Everyone wants to believe that their country is the best, and I’m afraid that Americans sometimes tend to go overboard with this.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Sixteen

Lightsong Listens to the Priests Discuss War

Is this an antiwar novel? I'm not sure, honestly. I didn't sit down to write one, certainly. I rarely try to interject messages into my books, though sometimes they worm their way in. (The Alcatraz books are particularly bad about this.)

A war here would be a bad thing. Idris and Hallandren shouldn't be involved in trying to kill one another. But am I, myself, antiwar? Again, I don't know how to answer that.

Is anyone prowar? War is a terrible, terrible thing. Sometimes it's necessary, but that doesn't make it any less terrible. I'm no great political thinker. In fact, being a novelist has made me very bad at talking about political topics. Because I spend so much time in the heads of so many different characters, I often find myself sympathizing with wildly different philosophies. I like to be able to see how a person thinks and why they believe as they do.

I didn't mean this to be a book about the Iraq war—not at all. But war is what a lot of people are talking about, and I think it's wise to be cautionary. War should never be entered into lightly. If you ask me if the Iraq war was a good idea, you'll probably find me on both sides of the argument. (Though I certainly don't like a lot of aspects about it, particularly how we entered it.)

Regardless, this isn't a book about anything specific. It's a story, a story told about characters. It's about what they feel, what they think, and how their world changes who they are.

As a very, very wise man once said, "I don't mind if my books raise questions. In fact, I like it. But I never want to give you the answers. Those are yours to decide." —Robert Jordan. (FYI, that's not quoted exactly. I can't even quote myself exactly, let alone other people.)

Amber Burningham

Do you have a prediction or an estimation on when Horneater's release will be?

Brandon Sanderson

Horneater, if I do it right, is going to be the summer or fall before the fifth book, I think. I am, I believe, personally on the hook for that one more than I've been on the hook for other novellas and things like that, because I deliberately left these things out of Rhythm of War and it leaves a pretty obvious hole, I just didn't have the space for it and it would have been distracting if I put it in and so it is better as a novella. But if I don't do it soon, I feel like I will be breaking a small promise to the readers, which sometimes we do. Sometimes things miss deadlines and we break small promises, but it is a... it is a promise. The way that I wrote that and left out what happened, it's a promise that you will get this information, and you know three years may be a long time still to get that. But my goal right now is you know, again, the team cringes when I talk about this. But we're only two years away from doing the Words of Radiance Kickstarter and so we will. I will probably want to provide a novella for that.

Plan is right now, if I do that, I kind of... This is a much smaller promise, not even really a promise, but then we will have a novella between books two and three, three and four, and four and five. But we will not have one between books one and two and just for sake of completionism. It feels like there should be a mini Stormlight novella that takes place between books one and two and I would want to finish that, probably for a future Kickstarter. We probably also want to do the art book though for one of those kind of things, and we do those on separate years, so. Eventually I think there will be basically big Stormlight novel, mini Stormlight novel for all of Stormlight era one, if I'm... if I'm on the ball enough to make it all happen, so stay tuned. We shall see how much how much Brandon is able to do and how much he is not able to do. A lot of these things depend on how long does book five take to write? I will be starting that in January. January 1st is the goal and we'll see how long it takes. I would say it's going to be 400,000 words, but none of them have actually been 400,000 words since the first one, so. They've all been longer. 

Questioner

Do you know the part in Wheel of Time when Mat is-- seems to be trapped in his *inaudible* ways before he meets Verin?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

In the town? I always think, when I read-- Every time I feel like-- Is it a <tone> war?

Brandon Sanderson

It is, yeah.

Questioner

Writing the characters?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

And is there any correlation between that and Legion and you?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah, most definitely. Legion is... You know, I'm-- I don't actually hear voices or see things. But there is this sort of part of you that becomes a different person all the time. I can see if I were more unhinged I'd be like that or like Shallan.

Chaos (paraphrased)

This one is a personal favor... See, for metals that have Feruchemy, this verb is "charge". A metal is Feruchemically charged. But, you've been using the term "charge" for Hemalurgic metals, too, which I think is confusing. Before Hero of Ages I called Hemalurgic metals "Imbued" metals. I humbly petition to have that be the official term, because it's just confusing otherwise.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Seventeenth Shard members use the term of Invest for all of those type of things. However, what they use in world is different on each world. For example Way of Kings [Roshar] is infuse.

Questioner

I wanted to ask, at the beginning you mentioned that you had twelve books written before your first book was published, can you tell us, or are you allowed to tell us how many have actually been published?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I can actually go down the list for you. It is somewhat interesting, I think, for people. My very first book was a book called White Sand, and it was basically kind of a Dune rip-off. Your first book is always  a rip-off, right, of somebody, as a new writer? And that doesn't count the one in high school, which was a SUPER rip-off, like a major rip-off, it was basically a Tad Williams meets Dragonlance. Full blown with elves and things-- Yeah it was totally--

White Sand is the first one I finished, and I actually then went and wrote a science fiction book called Star's End.  And then I wrote the second half of White Sand, because I just stopped and said "This is long enough to be a novel" and then I wrote the rest of it and called that book two, that's actually the only sequel in there I wrote. And then I wrote a comedy, where a lot of the thesis of that comedy came out in Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians ten years later, so that one's kind of half been published. White Sand and Star's End are not any good, they have not been published. And then I wrote something called The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, which was really weird and sci-fi-y and stuff, and that one hasn't been published because it's really bad too. And then book number six was Elantris which was pretty good. Book number 7 was Dragonsteel, which became my honor's thesis as an undergraduate and half of that book ended up in the contemporary Way of Kings, the Bridge Four sequence was all from Dragonsteel and I ripped that out when I re-did Way of Kings.

After that was a re-write of White Sand, with better writing nowadays, and that one we're turning into a graphic novel, that one's good enough to read-- The biggest problem it has is its a little too bloated.  The story-- It's like 300,000 words with 150,000 words of story. And so we are going to condense it-- into a graphic novel, so you will eventually see that one. The next one was called Aether of Night, that one didn't get published, it's really two decent books that don't work well together, like one half is a Shakespearean farce about a guy who takes his brother's place on the throne, they're twins, it's mistaken identify, yadda yadda; the other half is this dark brutal war book with an invasion going on, and the two halves never really translate well. People read this and they're like, that chapter is hilarious and fun, and OH MY GOODNESS, and yeah, so-- Maybe someday I'll do something with that.

After that I wrote a book named Mythwalker which became Warbreaker. I ripped out the good parts of that and wrote Warbreaker later on. Then I wrote a book called Final Empire, which is not Mistborn: The Final Empire, because then I wrote a book called Mistborn, and neither of those books were working very well. And then I wrote a book called Way of Kings and then I sold Elantris and I said "I want to take these two books that weren't working very well, and I think if I combine them--" because Mistborn had a cool magic system and the Final Empire had this whole thing about the Hero who failed and the Dark Lord took over and mixing these too ideas turned into a great book and that became Mistborn: The Final Empire.

And basically everything from then I've published, Warbreaker came next which was a re-write of Mythwalker. The Way of Kings, the one you hold, is a complete rebuild, I started from scratch, and added the Bridge Four sequence from Dragonsteel and some of these things... The only good one in there, that wasn't published, is White Sand I think, and I think it is going to make a really nice graphic novel because the story is really solid, the characters are really solid. I just wasn't a good enough writer to know how to condense where I needed to.

Questioner

Is "Trell" Odium?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO. I'm sorry. The cheeky thing for me to respond would be, "Which Trell," but the answer is just it's a RAFO.

Questioner

Which Trell, huh?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. The name Trell has shown up multiple times in the Cosmere.  But the Trell specifically you're asking about is the one who is invading Scadrial during the second Era.

Questioner

Is that the same one in Era 1?

Brandon Sanderson

So that's a RAFO also but there's also a Trell mentioned on Taldain so the name has shown up multiple times.

Questioner

Can a pregnant woman use the fetus's Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't know. I'll have to think about that. I don't know that I'm gonna touch that one. That's one I have to, like, think about. That gets into, like, what's a person? What's viability? What is a Breath? I think I'm just gonna stay away from that one for right now.

Questioner

What's the most personal thing you've ever written?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably the third Legion story. Which is an odd answer, not as many people have read that, but that's the one I would give. If you ever get to that one, and you get to the third one, you may understand why.

Raddatatta

You've said in previous WoBs that that there have been champions of other Shards, like what Dalinar and Odium are doing in their deal. Would the battle between Elend and Marsh or Vin and Marsh count as a similar type of contest of champions, or would that have to be more formalized to have them be considered champions?

Brandon Sanderson

To be considered, I would've said that had to be more formalized. I wouldn't consider what happened there... It's definitely an echo, but I don't think it would fit. There's been legit, actual, contractual sorts of things that have happened.

Edwin Tyson

Does the Nightwatcher's boon and curse still affect Taravangian, now that he is Odium?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. Good question.

Questioner

The age of the Ire is really, really, really old, is that the age of the organization, or the age of those members.

Brandon Sanderon

Of those members, they, yes, are really, really, really old.

Questioner

So each person in the IRE is really old, not just that the IRE...

Brandon Sanderon

Yes.

Questioner (paraphrased)

When does the next Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell happen?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There's a book in that world about an entire expeditionary team that sails forth to destroy the Evil. The book starts with a person holding to the plank of a ship as the entire fleet sails back while it's being destroyed.

Argent

When Sazed picked up the Shards of Preservation and Ruin, did he actively choose to be known as Harmony (instead of, for example, Balance, or Equilibrium, or Stability), or is there some Cosmeric law that says Preservation + Ruin = Harmony?

Brandon Sanderson

He chose the name, but in part because it FELT right to him.

Argent

Is this similar to how a Shard's "personality" overwrites the Shardholder's over time?

Brandon Sanderson

Similar, yes.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, and that was an Idrian kneeling before Allmother—the guy with only one leg. He's not the only one to have converted. A lot of them have, in fact, when confronted by gods you can visit and see. The other Idrians call them "scrapes," an epithet that refers to a scratch on a person's arm revealing the colorful blood underneath.

Questioner

Do you ever listen to your own audiobooks?

Brandon Sanderson

I do on occasion. I don't listen to them for long because I will find myself wanting to change things. And that's dangerous...

Questioner

Do you have a favorite narrator that you--

Brandon Sanderson

I do--

Questioner

Of your books and of other books.

Brandon Sanderson

It is Michael Kramer, who did the Wheel of Time books. Which is why I asked for him on my books.

Argent

If I may, how do you feel about Graphic Audio?

Brandon Sanderson

I, personally, love that they are available but I find them kind of distracting when I'm listening to them.

Argent

Too much--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I'm glad-- I mean I want to sell as many of them as we can because there are some people who just love them. But I actually love straight reads, like I like Wil Wheaton's reading, where there's very minimal voices.

Argent

Well that's because it's Wil Wheaton.

Brandon Sanderson

It is Wil Wheaton but I-- I do like Graphic Audio because they use women for women's parts, men for men's parts, which is really helpful. Men doing women's voices in books, and women doing men's voices as readers, a lot of them are like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

Questioner

So, Michael Whelan did the cover for The Way of Kings, and I read that Tom Doherty called him up personally and asked him to do it.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, he did.

Questioner

Are there any plans for him to continue to do them, like Darrel K. Sweet has done for the Wheel of Time?

Brandon Sanderson

He's a very busy man. He said that, if it fits in the schedule, yes he will. But since we don't even have book two written yet, we don’t know. He's my favorite artist, so that would be wonderful. But, we will see.

Questioner

What's your favorite book?

Brandon Sanderson

This is also kind of a hard one for writers, right? Or maybe not just for writers, maybe just for... my type of person, I'm sure a lot of you are like this, where it's like, my favorite book changes and varies, and so I kind of have some go-to answers, because they stayed my favorite book for a while. The book that got me into science-fiction/fantasy was Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly and I often mention that. My favorite Wheel of Time book was book four, I often mention that. My favorite Terry Pratchett book is probably Going Postal, my favorite classic is Les Miserable, so that often comes up. What have I read recently that I really liked? It's now been over a year, but I really liked Jane Yolen's work, and she recently released a short story collection that I really liked. I recently finished Roshani Chokshi book, The Star-Touched Queen, which I really liked. Robert Jackson Bennett is good... I like a lot of different things I read.

Oudeis

I loved Nazh's "cameo" in the [Nicki] Savage story of Bands of Mourning. I especially like the touch of the map with the ripped edge in the book. Did the events really happen in the book as she describes in her broadsheet piece, or was the actual meeting punched up a bit for drama?

Isaac Stewart

Thanks for your kind words on the [Nicki] Savage story. I hope we get to see her again. Since she's learning the art of storytelling from Allomancer Jak, I suspect her version of events was slightly embellished. :)

Oudeis

Well she has been in two of the stories so far, so fingers crossed!

Isaac Stewart

I'm blanking on this just a little bit. Which was the second story she was in?

Oudeis

In Shadows of Self, there was a broadsheet article about a woman in the southern mountains who ran into a strange red and black person by a placid pool. Her name was [Nicelle] Sauvage, and I admittedly made a bit of an assumption that she and [Nicki] Savage are the same woman.

Isaac Stewart

You are exactly right! She did appear in the Shadows of Self broadsheet. Thank you for reminding me of that.

Oudeis

The name adaptation threw me off, I only picked it up this last time I read through it in my epic-cosmere-re-read leading up to Oathbringer.

I do have to admit, while pretty cool, the dashing stranger who tried to kill a nice woman and destroyed public property in the sky above a metropolis using unknown arcana seemed... a little out-of-character for Nazh as we've otherwise seen him.

Isaac Stewart

[Nicki] added some extra drama to her version of events to make it more interesting. I don't think Nazh would've tried to kill her, though he might want her to think that he was. He's easily annoyed by those who get in the way of his missions, even if they're just nosy adventurers. :)

LostKnight

I am curious if any changes were made to the story after you got A Memory of Light or after the Name of the Wind was published? The style hasn't changed, but the story seemed to flow much better this time around.

Brandon Sanderson

Actually, no. This one was finished off back before I knew anything of A Memory of Light or before I'd read Name of the Wind. Hopefully, the smoothing is a result of me trying to work out kinks in my storytelling ability. I'm learning to distance out my climax chapters, for instance. (I think I've I'd have written this book years ago, I'd have tried to overlay Spook's climactic sequence with the ending ones, for instance, which would have been a mistake.)

Also, of the three books, I worked the hardest on this one. Choosing that ending—even though I'd planned it for some time—was very difficult. I knew that it would anger some readers. I also knew that it was the right ending for the series.

I'm glad it worked for you.

Flinn

I have to admit, I am one of those angered. I will be so glad when this cliché of killing off the heroes will finally pass. I escape to fantasy for the happy ending. If I wanted to be depressed I'd grab a 3-dollar bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and drink it all and contemplate my mundane life. I can't spend much time reflecting on the book because of the mental picture of Vin and Elend dead in a field keeps popping up instead. They didn't even get a chance to reproduce.

Now outside of the horrible ending (which wasn't surprising in the least because it is so common to kill the heroes) I enjoyed them. I absolutely cannot wait to read your books written 10 years from now. You can definitely pick up the improvement in transitions and character development in each book I've read from you. I'm quite often reminded of David Eddings although I'm sure plenty would disagree. And while Eddings isn't one of my favorite writers to be at his level (to me) so early in your career leads me to believe great things will be coming.

I would like to ask you one thing to consider when writing endings. Fantasy is an escape, please don't ruin it with such depressing endings. When you have had the opportunity to look upon your dead wife in her coffin, reading about others dying isn't fun at all. It is absolutely terrible. Happily ever after.

Brandon Sanderson

I understand your anger. I wrote the ending that felt most appropriate to me for this book and series. I didn't find it depressing at all, personally. But people have reacted this way about every ending I've written.

I won't always do it, I promise. But I have to trust my instincts and write the stories the way they feel right to me. I didn't 'kill off' Vin and Elend in my mind. I simply let them take risks and make the sacrifices they needed to. It wasn't done to avoid cliché or to be part of a cliché, or to be shocking or surprising, or to be interesting or poetic—it was done because that was the story as I saw it.

I will keep this in mind, though. I know it's not what a lot of people want to read. Know that I didn't do it to try to shock you or prove anything. And because of that, if a more traditionally happy ending is something that a story requires, I'll do that—even if it means the people on the other side of the fence from you will point fingers at me for being clichéd in that regard as well.

If it helps, realize that one of the reasons I added the lines in Sazed's note was to let the characters live on for those who wanted them to live on. I ALMOST didn't have Spook even discover the bodies, leaving it more ambiguous.

Jeremy

Your work on the lore of the cosmere is immense. How much have you had to figure out ahead of time? How much do you develop on the fly while writing?

Brandon Sanderson

It really depends on the situation. I do some of both. Mostly, the on-the-fly stuff is where I realize that there is a hole in my understanding where I'm like, "I didn't account for this." And you'll see this when fans ask me questions; I'd say a good half the time or more, they ask a question, I'm like, "I didn't account for that. Let me think..." This is why I like having foundational principles of how the cosmere works, rather than focusing on little details. (Which, a lot of those, I'm deciding on as I'm writing.) I try to get these really solid foundations so that the little details answer themselves, if that makes sense.

I've heard people talk about this with characters. Like, instead of deciding when you're building a character what their favorite color is, decide who they are, decide the personality, decide the foundational moments in their life. So when someone asks you a question that you haven't anticipated, it makes sense; there's only one way you could answer. "Well, of course their favorite color is blue, because that's the color of the uniforms of the soldiers that saved them when they were a young child, so they're gonna pick that color." That sort of thing for worldbuilding works really well, too. When someone asks an off-the-wall question, you can say, "Well, the mechanics are like this, this, and this. So that leads me to have an answer that is this." That you get into more trouble when you assume that's the case, but then when you think about it later, you're like, "No, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be that way," and you can go a different way. But that's how I try to do it.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Five

Vin and Elend's Plans and Progress

This is my personal favorite of the opening chapters. I love how it establishes what Vin and Elend are trying to accomplish, but at the same time shows how stretched thin they are. Both bounce around from one emotion to another, and the argument near the end of the chapter is a good example of just how exhausted they both are.

Elend is more forceful now. He's become a wartime leader, a much different man than he was in book one, when he went to parties and read books. He's fighting to find a balance between being the man he thinks he should be and the man he knows he has to be. It all works very soundly for me.

leinton (paraphrased)

Would a person who had enough spikes to have all the Allomantic powers would be considered a Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They probably would be called a Mistborn.

Brandon Sanderson

Dedication

This book is for my father.

It’s a tough call, to match all the people you want to honor with the right books. My mother got my first book, which was a good match for her because it was very easily appreciated by people who don’t read fantasy and sf. And, of course, she’s my mother–she deserved the first book.

Next, I went for my grandmothers. I’m afraid that matching a book to my maternal grandmother was pretty much impossible. She’s not a fantasy reader, and though she loves me and reads my books out of solidarity, I know that she doesn’t really get them. My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, is pretty much insane (in a good way), and she loves fantasy novels.

The next book, however, needed to go to my father. I think this one is a good match for him. The boy in this book, Alcatraz, is about the same age that I was when I discovered fantasy novels–and the kid on the cover actually looks a lot like I did when I was that age. It’s a fun match, and the Brandon of that age owes a lot to his father.

My father spoils people outrageously. That’s just one of his things. He takes care of us, and gives us what we need–and more. In my case, that was books. He fed my addiction, making sure I was always supplied with things to read. And, because of that, I ended up becoming a novelist.

So thanks, Dad.

WeiryWriter

Can a person who dies but somehow hasn't passed Beyond the Three Realms (a la Kelsier) serve in place of a spren for Radiant purposes?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible, but it would require an unusual sequence of events.

WeiryWriter

We know that the Stormfather is a Cognitive Shadow and is also acting as a spren for Dalinar but is he able to do that because the "unusual sequence of events" took place or is there something else going on specific to the nature of the Stormfather?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. :)

Carluun

If Kelsier became a "spren" for a Radiant, would he grant Surgebinding or Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

TheKingOfCarrotFlowers (paraphrased)

The sphere which Gavilar found that Szeth now has--I've been lead to believe that it either is or was heavily invested...

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

TheKingOfCarrotFlowers (paraphrased)

Is it still heavily invested?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

TheKingOfCarrotFlowers (paraphrased)

So, it hasn't, like, gone dun or anything?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, it has not.

TheKingOfCarrotFlowers (paraphrased)

And I'm going to take that to mean it wasn't invested with Stormlight--was it invested by Odium?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Something like that.

Allura Williams

I love the symmetrical Alethi names like Shallan and Navani. How do you come up with such good names.

Brandon Sanderson

It is part instinct, part design. And trying things out and seeing how people respond to them and changing it if they just don't feel right over time. I like having a linguistic quirk, such as symmetry or repeated consonant sounds. Those sort of things are very fun for me. I like real world inspirations. Famously, Silence came from looking at names of actual... Puritans, came from an actual Puritan name that I ran across in sort of a family history context, and I'm like. "Ooh, someone named their child Silence? That I've gotta use." Real world inspirations are fun. Ran across another one of those, you may see pop up if I do some more Threnody things. I ran across a person whose name was Thomas Thomas and I just love the name Thomas Thomas.

Questioner

The fight scenes in the Mistborn novels are incredibly visual. How do you write that, do you have to diagram it out?

Brandon Sanderson

Right, how do I write the visual fight scenes from something like Mistborn? Actually, you do a lot of research by watching Jackie Chan films, *laughter* but really what you're doing is actually, at least the way I approach it, you can do whatever works for you, but the way I do it is I actually approach what I want the emotional and mental beats to be in the scene and I build the scene around that. What is someone going to realize? What is someone going to feel? What is someone going to connect? How are they going to bring these things together? And then I use those to construct the scene so that even if someone is not following it, or is not as interested in the action, they'll get the emotional parts, and have these focuses for themselves. And I just construct the action around that. And often in the first draft, it's actually pretty rough. One of the biggest things I have to do in second drafts and third drafts is fix blocking for these battle sequences, which is where everyone's moving, because I'm working on the emotional beats first. And I feel like that's the way to go for me. I can construct a really awesome looking fight scene but the problem is you can't do a Jackie Chan thing in a book, like he punched him, he punched him really fast, this other person punched her twice as fast but then she kicked him twice. It's just boring right, and even the blow by blows, when they get exciting, kind of feel boring sometimes. But if you've got those emotional and mental things connecting, and pulling the reader through the story, then it's going to work better.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Ten - Part Two

We've now seen Sazed preach a couple of religions to members of the crew. You may be interested in my process of coming up with his character.

It actually began when I was watching the movie The Mummy. Yes, I know. Sometimes it's embarrassing where we come up with ideas. However, my inspiration for Sazed was the moment when the oily little thief character gets confronted by the mummy, and pulls out a whole pile of holy symbols. He goes through each one, praying to each god, looking for one that would help him.

I began to wonder what it would be like to have a kind of missionary who preached a hundred different religions. A man who, instead of advancing his own beliefs, tried to match a set of beliefs to the person–kind of like a tailor looking to fit a man with the prefect and most comfortable hat.

That's where the inspiration for the entire sect of Keepers began. Soon, I had the idea that the Lord Ruler would have squished all the religions in the Final Empire, and I thought of a sect of mystics who tried to collect and preserve all of these religions. I put the two ideas together, and suddenly I had Sazed's power. (I then stole a magic system from Final Empire Prime, which I'll talk about later, and made it work in this world. Feruchemy was born.)

Questioner

How did all the characters learn about the different magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson

So, it really depends on the character, and the situation, and things like that.

Questioner

How did the first person discover, like--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, Mistborn powers? Ruin and Preservation, in that case, were actively cultivating the society, particularly Preservation. Some of it comes through that. Some of it comes through, if you have the Investiture, part of you kinda knows about it. But it takes experience, so you have to know the right things, and stuff. I'll get into it more eventually.

Questioner

My question is not really a question, it's more of a theory. How Odium keeps the Fused around is more if he has them tied to his essence, so it's like he's essentially fishing them out of the Spiritual Realm and since their minds are left behind in the Cognitive Realm and their minds are *inaudible* damaged, because their spirits are separated and it just pulls them back.

I'm 100% convinced Nightblood did kill the thunderclast, because Nightblood consumes all investiture, that's something I asked you back at Barnes and Noble a couple years ago, during Christmas and you said your soul is investiture. So my thought is, that thunderclast isn't coming back any time soon.

Brandon Sanderson

You are correct on that one.

Questioner

When I saw that, my thought was, "Yep, It's dead." Other people were like, "I don't know, will it come back?" Nope.

Brandon Sanderson

I'll tell you this. They have not run into something like this before, and there will be ramifications of what happened there.

Questioner

That is fun to know.

Brandon Sanderson

If you are used to death having no consequence, and suddenly your friend vanishes forever...

Questioner

Yeah I, know I already thought of that. They're going to fight over Nightblood.

Brandon Sanderson

Mmm.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Ars Arcanum in the books were all written by one person.

Questioner

There is also a thing with Alcatraz. The first time you wrote the book in third person, he was fourteen years old. And the published version, he is thirteen. And you don't explain that on the website. Why?

Brandon Sanderson

The publisher asked me to age him down. Generally, when you're writing a kid's book, the book is usually-- You make the age of the protagonist, minus two years, is about the age that you're writing the book for, when it's for teens. And they felt that about eleven-year-old was about where that book should be. So they asked me to age him down.

Questioner

How do you like to do internal monologues or thinking between different characters who are very similar to each other.

Brandon Sanderson

How do I like to do internal monologues and thinking between different characters who are distinct from each other. I just try to make it be in their voice. I am a person who likes to put thoughts directly in someone's head, so you'll see them in italics. And I try to keep to their voice as much as possible, so if they have linguistic quirks I put them into the thoughts.

Brandon Sanderson

Elend Thinks about Losing his Kingship on his Balcony.

I love this Elend scene, with him up on the balcony, thinking. It is poetic in the way that I like to be poetic–a person, alone with their thoughts, wrestling with their own ideas and motivations. I think there's some very beautiful language here, but not in a traditional poetry sense. In the way that it accents Elend's character.

He does, however, completely misunderstand Vin. I know it's a bit of an overused plot device–the man misunderstanding the woman, and the woman in turn misunderstanding the man. But the truth is, we write about it so much because it's so true. When my wife and I were dating, we each had the toughest time deciding if the other was interested. We were both terrible at interpreting each other, even though we both wanted the same thing.

We managed to get through it and get married.

Questioner

Speaking of intents, Investiture, and what Shards can see, hypothetically if Odium were to go to Scadrial would some things not be visible to him, like, say, metal?

Brandon Sanderson

Metal would be hard for him to see, yes.

Brandon Sanderson

The origin of The Rithmatist

Six years ago, I was writing a book that I hated.

Now, that's both rare and common for me at the same time. I tire of pretty much every book I work on at some point, usually during the revision process. I push through and get over it. That's what you do as a writer. By the time I'm done with the process, I'm tired of the book—but it's the good kind of tired. The "I worked hard, and now have something awesome to show for it" tired.

Unfortunately, that wasn't happening for this book. Called The Liar of Partinel, every chapter was a chore to write. Though it had started very well, it continued to spiral farther and farther down the drain. I was familiar enough with my own writing by this point to realize the problems with Liar wouldn't work themselves out. The characters were boring, the plot forced. The worldbuilding elements never quite clicked together.

It had been years since I'd had such a bad feeling about a novel. (The last time, in fact, was Mythwalker—my sixth unpublished book—which I abandoned halfway through.) Part of the problem, I suspect, had to do with my expectations. Liar, set in the same world as Dragonsteel, was to be the origin story of Hoid, the character who has appeared in all of my Cosmere novels. (Information here—warning, big spoilers.)

I needed Hoid's story to be epic and awesome. It just wasn't. And so, I ended up "hiding" from that novel and working on something else instead.

The Rithmatist. It started with some drawings and a purely creative week sketching out a world, characters, and magic. That week is the exact sort that turned me into a writer in the first place, and was a distinct contrast to the grind that had been Liar. I abandoned the book and dove into The Rithmatist (then called Scribbler), and wrote a book where everything just came together. It happens sometimes. It just works, and I can't always explain—even to myself—why.

I finished the first draft of the book in the summer of 2007. In the fall, I got the call regarding the Wheel of Time, and my world transformed forever. The Rithmatist, though an awesome book, languished for years because I didn't have the time to devote to it. Doing a tour or contract for another teen book was impossible at that time, and beyond that I couldn't commit to writing any sequels or even doing any revision for the novel.

I did tell Tor about it, though, and they started to get excited. The publisher tried at several times to get me to release it, but I didn't feel the time was right. I couldn't let my attention be divided that far. I was already stretched too thin, and I wanted my attention (and that of my readers) to be on the Wheel of Time.

The month A Memory of Light was done and turned in, however, I called Tor and told them it was time to move forward. I'm pleased to be releasing the book now, when I can give it the attention it deserves.

And hopefully someday I'll be able to fix The Liar of Partinel. (At this point, I'm feeling I need to rewrite it as a first-person narrative, though making that switch is going to cause an entire host of problems.)

MyCatGreg

I’ve never seen that antagonist issue [Skelletor Syndrome] described before, but it’s really interesting to learn about and it seems like the opposite of what I call Dragon Ball Z syndrome - something Red Rising also had a heavy problem with. It’s the endless cycle of main character beats somebody in a fight, someone stronger comes along and almost kills them, main character is defeated, then trains and gets stronger in order to ultimately win in a re-match, then rinse and repeat into oblivion. Someone stronger comes along, almost kills them, they heal and train, win in a rematch, yadda yadda yadda. It was literally the entire story structure of Dragon Ball Z, and is my least favorite part of Red Rising. Makes the story feel too predictable.

Thankfully it’s not something you have any sort of issue with! Your post just reminded me of it. IMO it seems like those protagonist/antagonist issues only truly show themselves as a problem when the creator doesn’t have an ending in mind or a story outlined before publishing the first of a series (cough Disney Star Wars cough)

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you hit on something real with DBZ syndrome too. It can make it feel like achievements the characters make are weak, and basically worthless, since they're immediately back into the same state as before--too weak to fight a new villain who makes their old "power level" look the same as their current one.

I think there is an important line to walk here that doesn't stray too far either direction--but it's not so hard as that, so long as new characters and situations present different kinds of challenges. Done right, you have something like the original series of star wars, where at first you think that simply being a better duelist will let Luke defeat Vader--but then the scope expands, and he realizes that it's not about how good he is with his weapon. The challenge is deeper, more interesting, and the person Luke could conceivably beat in a duel gives way before the more nefarious villain who requires a different type of strength entirely to defeat.

Brandon Sanderson

*reading a personalization request* Name a Shard not--

FirstSelector

Preservation... from the alternate [Well of Ascension] ending.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh! What do you mean by that?

FirstSelector

I thought that those four were-- the four mist-people--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh the four mist-people that's-- Oh... *sighs* I gotta RAFO that, right?

FirstSelector

Well it's not canon technically.

Brandon Sanderson

No it's not canon... Okay I just have to dig back deep... But there's stuff--

FirstSelector

Star.

Brandon Sanderson

There's a star, just remember the star.

*writes*

"Endowment was there*"

Thoughtful Spurts

If there's really no upper limit to Feruchemy for practical reasons* , why didn't Sazed just fill steel at ridiculous levels for a few minutes in [Well of Ascension], and then go back to running instead of leaving his steelminds there? Say, being some 100,000 times slower than he would normally be for about a minute. Meaning that a Feruchemist should be able to fill a given metalmind in very short periods of time if you fill at a high enough rate.

*(yes, you have the limit of how much you can store in a given metalmind and for how many metalminds you can carry on your person, but those are probably too high to really be taken into account in more "normal" circumstances)

Brandon Sanderson

The low end is bounded. You can pull out tons--but in filling, you can only go so far. I didn't ever explicitly talk about this in the series, but the implications are there. Not all have the same bounds, but in your example, the body just can't slow beyond a certain point. Think of it this way--you can only fill a weight metalmind with as much weight as you have to give. So you can become very, very light--but you only add to a time for doubling your weight. You can't make yourself 100,000 times slower and gain 100,000 times multiplication. You can give up all of your normal speed, and so when you tap that speed out you are at 200% for an equal period. (And that's a theoretical maximum; realistically, you can only go to down around 75% slower or the like.)

Questioner

Disregarding personal preferences, what Order of the Knights Radiant do you think you would best fit as?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, man. I've been asked this one, and it's really hard. What order of Knight Radiant would I best fit as. It's difficult, right? Because, number one, there are a lot of orders, and you can kind of see yourself going in different ways. And number two, there's kind of like the, what is it realistically?

Like, when I sort myself into a Harry Potter house (which is much easier, cause there's not as many), I always have to kind of grudgingly put myself in Slytherin. Because, though a lot of my fellow writers are Ravenclaws, I'm not about the study; I'm about the accomplishment, right? Like, I write books in part because I'm like, "I want to accomplish this thing," and it's ambition, but it's also just "I want to do this thing." So for that reason I don't know that I can put myself in any kind of the scholarly focused order of the Knight Radiant, realistically, because I don't think that I would really actually fit there, even though that would be the natural place to start putting writers.

I often wonder, maybe Lightweaver, but the problem is I don't lie to myself, I don't think, right? But I am really good at fooling myself when I want to. Like, when I don't want to deal with something, I'm very good at, like, "I'm putting this on the shelf and I'll deal with it later," which is a very Lightweaver thing. Maybe Lightweaver, but... So, we'll go with that one today, but I think I've answered that question four different ways.

Brandon Sanderson

PART TWELVE: CONCLUSION

Whew!  That’s something, isn’t it?  Reading through all of that, you might think I’m stretched a little thin.  However, the bulk of this is centered around letting me focus my attention on the Cosmere.  The co-authored Mainframe projects are ways for me to tell stories with the help of talented writers–scratching the itch of storytelling these stories while leaving me with more time to devote to things like Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive.  Hosting a convention instead of going on tour is much, much easier on me–it lets people come to me, rather than me flying around to meet people in small groups.  Having the YouTube channel instead of going out to a lot of different comic cons lets me be available to fans, but also allows me to sign stacks of pages at the same time, so it’s not cutting into what would otherwise be writing time.

So far, it’s been working well.  All of this is why, for example, I’ve been able to dedicate more time to the Mistborn and Stormlight adaptations.  I worry more about overwhelming all of you than I do about overwhelming myself, though (admittedly) that second one is also a danger.  I’m trying to make sure I have a good work/life balance, so that I can continue telling stories as long as you all are willing to put up with me.

A strange, and very ephemeral year though it’s been, I’m still honored to be your storyteller.  Thank you for supporting me, my work, and my team.

Here’s to many more, and a year of working on Stormlight!

Brandon

Questioner

So, when there's wordplay in The Stormlight Archive, we know they aren't speaking English, so are you to assume that that is a translation of the...

Brandon Sanderson

This is what Tolkein said, and I always rely upon this. You're reading the book in translation, and the person translating it is going to try to use the closest in feel, but to also make it translate to English. So even when they use idioms and things like that, sometimes they translate and the translator can drop them in. Sometimes they just don't translate, so the translator comes up with something that works in English... It gets you a lot of loopholes, like if you accidentally call something an ottoman and people are like, "But there's not an Ottoman Empire in this fantasy world!" But you're like, "Yeah, all words work that way." It's in translation. This is why when you read something like Allomancy, and they're like, "Well, it's got Latin roots, right?" Yeah... it's just the roots in their language would be something old Terris, and the easiest way to convey that feeling is to use something that's got-- you know. Stuff like that.

Kinolee

It's surprising me to me that we haven't heard from Venli yet. Considering this is her book, I would have expected her to take more of a center stage. But we haven't even seen or heard from her yet, let alone had a flashback. I wonder why /u/mistborn decided to start elsewhere.

I suppose it's important to establish the time skip early on, but I wonder why that couldn't have been done from the perspective of Odium's forces so that Venli could take the lead.

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, this part you're reading is the "end" of the in-between book, and Venli's book hasn't started yet. Her first chapter is what you might consider the "true" beginning of the novel.

As a note, though, I decided her flashbacks worked better when spread across a shorter reading space--so I don't introduce them until later in the book than the others started.

Questioner

If you wanted your sons to grow up to be one of your characters, would you want them to?

Brandon Sanderson

Uhhh. If they grow up to be Dalinar, without going through the phase of being a murderous tyrant, I would probably pick that one.

Questioner

Alright, no murderous tyrants.

Brandon Sanderson

No murderous tyrants. If they could grow up to be Sazed without being, y'know, castrated that might be-- But that's the thing. A lot of my characters have been through some rough stuff.

Questioner

Almost right.

Brandon Sanderson

No, I don't think that torment necessarily makes you a good character person, there are plenty of good people who have never been through things like that, but it makes them interesting to write about.

Patty Goldman

Is the recipient of the letter in Way of Kings also in Dragonsteel?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. (Good question.)

Patty Goldman

If so would it be the person that Topaz gets mad at?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO on the second one. I've already given you too much!

Questioner

Could you tell us the name of one of the Shards we have not yet seen?

Brandon Sanderson

I cannot. I'm sorry. I get asked that enough that they'd all be done. If I gave you one, I get asked at the next con, and all of them would be gone. Plus, I sometimes tweak them before I canonize them. The actual word I'm going to use. The intent usually stays the same but I tweak which word I'm going to use.

Questioner

I meant the actual name. Like, how Honor was Tanavast.

Brandon Sanderson

No...I won't do that either. But I will give you a RAFO card!

Lacrosse Demon

Hoid’s fixing of Charlie’s cryptic event, “curse” to “versed,” makes Aons seem more syllabic rather than logographic. Is that just a casualty of Hoid’s fairytale narrative? Will we see a more in-depth look at the concept of Aonic curses and curse-breaking?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question. It is really hard, number one, to convey that in the original text, that pun would have been a different pun. It would have worked differently. And, in fact, you can have a logographic pun. And I imagine that it probably was. I imagine that what’s going on with Wit is, like, adding a stroke, which then changes the entire meaning of what’s going on. Though, do remember that the way Aons work, they kind of work like a programming language, so you could kind of add in actual, like, “this next text is a verse.” Imagine putting it in quotation marks, and things like that. We are extrapolating on that with meaning, rather than sounds. I think it works, but probably different than the actual text of Tress manifest to us, but that’s the best way the translator (myself being the person that translated it into English) was able to indicate it.

For those who don’t know, I use Tolkien’s explanation for all of these things. I think it was brilliant. He said, “All the texts were written in a foreign language that you couldn’t read. And they have been translated into English, and some accommodations have been made in order to make things like puns still puns, even though they wouldn’t have rhymed in the original.

Alexis

How did the Knights Radiant treat their transgender members? Assuming that some underwent a physical transformation once they gained access to Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

In the past, you will find the Knights Radiant being way more progressive than the societies at large. They would treat the transgender person as the gender that they see themselves as being.