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"Elhokar, the king's son and heir, sat at the high table, ruling in feast in his father's absence. He was in conversation with two men, a dark-skinned Azish man who had an odd patch of pale skin on his cheek and a thinner, Alethi-looking man who kept glancing over his shoulder."
Are these two men - Nalan'Elin and Kalak?
RAFO.
You mentioned you like the interludes-- that the assigned characters don't take over the story. Is that to say that we will never really see those characters again or do--
You will see them on occasion. For instance, in the first book there's a guy named Axies the Collector, right? And in the second book in one of the interludes somebody walks by him, right? But the idea is that the interlude characters, for the most part are-- I'm not promising you an entire story about them. They-- you're getting a glimpse of the world and most of them will not return. A few of them will, on occasion. You'll see references to them and things like that. Their main point-- the main point of them is so that we can-- I can just have a pressure valve to just tell stories about Roshar that don't have to necessarily be in the main plot. Though I always choose one-- I choose them very specifically, right? I do them knowing that there's something-- some part of the world that you need as a clue for later on. If you like foreshadowing and stuff, a lot of these have foreshadowing.
I was wondering if you could talk a little about expletives and blasphemy?
*amusedly* Expletives and blasphemy... So, It's really interesting, one of the first things that I think about when I'm coming up with a fantasy world is "How would they-- How do they curse?". And I don't know why this happens to me, but it feels like you can build out and extrapolate a lot about a culture from what they curse by, and how they curse. And it's become a thing. Like in one of my short stories I did I used *stumbles over words* saying "hell take you" to someone was a compliment because they didn't want to go to heaven because there was a god-king they hated. They were like "We don't want to go where he is so hell must be the better place". Which was a lot of fun to me in coming up with that. Or other ones I have them curse by in-world and sometimes I just use the biblical curses, the damns and hells and things like that. Why do I use those? I use those in Mistborn because I was writing about a bunch of thieves living on the streets and when I tried to use kind-of more fantasy-ish curse words it just felt fake for them. And yet it didn't feel fake when I started using "Merciful Domi" in Elantris because the religion of that world was so important to all the people that they would use the name of their own deity.So this is just something I kind of dance around and it's very interesting to me being a religious person myself. I will sometimes never-- like I don't use the curses that my characters will, but I'm not my characters and things like this. So it's something I think about, perhaps way too much, is how are the people going to curse in these books. That's a very good question.
Do you find it difficult when you have to jump between the worlds when you write about like Mistborn and Stormlight do you find it difficult to transition like that?
Is it hard to transition? Is it hard to transition, the question is, between the different worlds that I write in. A little bit yes, but mostly no. The reason I jump so much is my writing style kind of requires me to do something new after I finish a big project. That's why I-- People ask me a lot how do I-- how am I so productive. It is actually because that I found out if I jump to something new-- Like a lot of time a writer finishes a book it just wears them out for six months, right? Or if you're certain writers you're worn out before you finish it somehow. Naming no names. But really it happens, you get worn out after finishing a book. I found that if I jump into something very different I immediately get excited about that and get going on it. And it is a big part-- That is why you see those little novellas like Emperor's Soul and Legion and things like that, because I finished a project and jumped into something new. And it makes me really, like I said, excited. So yes it is a little hard to switch gears, but more so it is exciting to switch gears and it just keeps me excited and enthralled through this whole process. Which is why you see me jumping around so much. I tell people "Oh can't you just write on my favorite series", I tell them if I did that they actually wouldn't come out any faster, because I would hit that kind of lull that happens after a book where it's hard to write and you get slowed down by any little thing and if I switch to something else you just kind of get books squished in-between.
The Audacity of Vin and Elend's Visit
Visiting this party in the way Vin and Elend do is supernally arrogant. I realize this, and I feel that it fits who they are and what the crew stands for. It's bold, in your face, and even a little reckless. Yet it's also dramatic, and it will have quite an effect on the members of Yomen's court.
For The Reckoners series, it's my understanding that the Epics appear after they've had some sort of life threatening experience to gain their powers is that correct?
No, not always.
That's what I thought after Firefight.
Not necessarily.
Stormlight, I know it heals wounds and stuff like that but can it heal illnesses like colds?
Yes it can.
So if Kaladin suddenly contracted brain cancer...
It's plausible-- it depends, see what it does is it takes your body and makes it align with your spirit, and partially through the filter of how you view yourself. So if you view yourself as sickly, then you won't.
Is the fundamental force of gravity [gravitational constant] the same [throughout the Cosmere]?
Oh, is the constant the same? Yes, the constant would be the same. The big difference is, what I am tweaking to the fundamental forces is, I imagine on Roshar that there are more fundamental forces. Which is totally breaking the laws of physics, right? But [in] magic there are more than four. I've broken them up into, at least, what their scientists have decided. So. But yes.
The best example of [in world pronounciations] in The Stormlight Archive is that they would say 'Hjuh-lihn' instead of Kholin, or maybe 'Hjoh-leen'.
Mr Sanderson, you have been a very active member in the communities about your books, and still manage to create such quality stories.
My question is, what has been the most memorable interaction you have had with a fan?
PS. Back when I first started reading your books, I sent you an email, and I got a reply. I just want to tell you how much that meant to me 5 years ago, no other author had ever responded to my emails, and I just want to say thank you.
Actually, the most memorable is probably when I saw someone on Reddit wishing they could be in the Stormlight Archive. (I believe it's /u/Kaladin_Stormblessed.) Well, I found her a spot in the books, and it turns out she is very involved in fandom and is a writer herself, so the two of us have become friends over the years. To the point that I forget we first met over a random thread on the internet.
You might also count the fact that a pair of fans, who met at one of my signings, eventually got engaged via a proposal that happened at one of my lectures. (With my involvement.)
Anyway, I'm glad I was able to answer that email! I don't get to do much of that any more, and a lot of people get form mail or responses from Adam instead. (It just got to be too much for me.)
Have Rosharan mathematics advanced far enough to know Julia sets?
Yes, they know Julia sets. Some of the mathematics are farther along at this time than ours, some are behind. Kinda like abstractionalism is a centuries-old art style on Roshar, calculus was discovered way earlier.
Why did TLR have to spend time old?
He didn't have to. He allowed it to happen, it was a sign of his weariness.
So, I noticed that you use a lot of principles of leadership and freedom in your books. Where do those come from?
A lot of the different things I've read. A lot of my own research, my own feelings on it. Talking to my friends who are in the military who know a lot about these sorts of things. What you get in the books is partially my own personal philosophy, but partially how I feel the character would feel about. You usually get a mix. It's not exactly what I think, but it's what I think the character would think, and I created the character.
In Elantris, we know the Shards Aona and Skai influenced the large religions, Shu-Korath and Shu-Dereth. When Odium came to Elantris to shatter... to Splinter them, did he make the [Jeskeri] Mysteries cult?
[...]
Oh, the Mysteries, the Jeskeri Mysteries? I'll RAFO that for now.
I have heard you say you consult with doctors, physicist, and other professionals in order to keep your books as grounded in reality as you can. How did you meet these individuals and how early in your career did you have their help?
This is something that grew far easier once I had access to resources such as my editor at Tor. Moshe knows EVERYONE, and he's been able to get my writing into the hands of various experts for review. I didn't do this as much in my unpublished days; it's something I've come to learn and appreciate in the last ten years.
Stormlight 3 will be next November. I had a meeting with the Tor people, and that's what we're planning. Tentatively [Stormlight] 3 next year, Rithmatist sequel, the following year, Wax & Wayne the following year, and then the next Stormlight. That is our plan. Hopefully new Stormlight can come a little faster than that, but what I've found is the outlines for Stormlight books take like a year to build, even though like-- When I do this outline process I do like the first book and then I outline each one with a couple pages? And then it takes forever to build this outline because I write Stormlight books as a trilogy, each novel is a trilogy, that I then interweave and release as one volume. And then there's a short story collection in there too, with the interludes and things. So it's a complex process. So I'm hoping, but I'm not going to promise them faster than one every three years, I just can't. They're too big and the way my process works, once I finish something I need to leave that alone for a while and try something else. And originally I'm like "Every 18 months, I can do that!" I can't do that. It's the travel and everything and whatnot. So we're going to do that. So we're going to do Stormlight, Rithmatist, Wax & Wayne-- last Wax & Wayne book, and then Stormlight-- the next Stormlight. That is our plan right now. I will also be doing another YA series to follow-up The Reckoners, for those who like those.
Of these books that you wrote in the past that you have not published, will any of them be available online?
Will any of the unpublished books be available? ...Most of them, no, they won't be available. They aren't very good. The first few, in fact, are really bad. Number six was Elantris, which after a lot of revision I eventually sold. Number seven was Dragonsteel, which was my honor's thesis at BYU and is Hoid's backstory. That is only available through inter-library loan because the book is bad, and I won't let anyone else have it, but BYU has a copy. They loan it to people. The one after that was called White Sand, which we're redoing as a graphic novel right now. If people really want to read the prose version of that, I send it to them if they write me an email and ask. Because it's not aggressively bad, it's just kind of weak, does that make sense? The big weakness of it is that it's too long for its story, and I found that, looking back through it, that I can trim it and turn it into a graphic novel that would be really solid. It's just that it's got too many pages for the story, and you have to trim a lot for a graphic novel anyway. So I think that one will work. A couple of the other ones got cut up and turned into other books, and number 13 was The Way of Kings, which I rewrote from scratch when I released it. It's a very different book now, but it was kinda the first draft of that.
Vivenna Suits Up and Leaves
Vivenna is in a similar position to Siri here in these last chapters. Things are getting so dangerous that both women (well, and Lightsong too) are rather out of their elements. However, I knew that I had to have them both involved. It would be incredibly frustrating to read an entire book focused on two characters, then have them get pushed around for the entire climax.
So during my outlining, I made certain to build the story in such a way that they could be useful, even if they're very much out of their elements. I feel this makes the story more tense in a lot of ways, since they're forced to deal with things for which they're completely unprepared.
Here, we have Vivenna sorting through her own emotions and finding enough determination left to go out and do something. This is an important moment for her, even though she doesn't realize it. This is the moment where she takes her first real step toward becoming her new self.
So the question I asked, at the beginning of this session, is: You used the definite article…
Yes.
Who’s the Rithmatist?
Who’s the Rithmatist? So I imagined the Rithmatist more being a, um, a book like, let’s see if I can find an example of it. It’s not defining a person, um, it is, uh…
The role of the Rithmatist.
...trying to. Yeah, yeah. Like I’m trying to find… There’s books that are like this, where it’s just like, uh, it’s almost like you could call a series The Rithmatist, The Archive, the this, that sort of idea where the title is… Look, it was originally called Scribbler, um, and Tor suggested changing the title to something that highlighted the magic a little bit more and was a better fit, and I liked The Rithmatist as that, but it’s particularly because the future books could be The Aztlanian and The Nebraskan.
And they’ll fit, they’ll be right next to one another--no they won’t. Cause the doesn’t get catalogued.
Yes, exactly, but it felt like it was going to, uh, it just worked. But The Rithmatist more is like, you know, it’s not specifically any individual. I know there are other books that have this feel. But yeah, all right. What do you guys want to know from me? Go ahead.
When Scadrial was closer to the sun, can we safely assume that the middle section of the planet was scorched clean of anything living? Could there have been some underground life thing going on? Anything cool or interesting sitting out there (like ruins or some lost technology)?
The middle section was scorched pretty clean. I know of a few interesting tidbits, but it's not technology. (The tech level before the Lord Ruler took over was nothing particularly special, early industrial era.) The cool and interesting things are on the southern continent.
I know you went on mission in Korea, as did I, did anything come from that?
Yeah, quite a number of things have been influenced by it. I'd say the biggest influence is Elantris, the writing system is based on the idea of Korean and Chinese mixed together. But Asian philosophy, like the kami and things like that are also common in Korea, that belief that everything has a soul. So yeah it's had a huge influence on me, just the way I worldbuild-- I mean just the fact, I don't know if you've read The Way of Kings… I don't know if you know but everyone's Asian, right? Like Szeth, the white dude, is the one that looks weird them. And that's just because-- It was partially influenced by that.
Denth's Motivations Here
If you're reading through for the second time, pay close attention to the things Denth says here about Lemex. They're having a conversation about how Lemex could be a patriot but still steal from the king. Well, Denth is kind of talking about himself here, and not Lemex. He's hinting that he thinks (or would like to think) that he can both do his job and be a good man at the same time.
These are things he's struggling with. He tries to tell himself that he doesn't care, but he does. He has kidnapped Vivenna here without her knowing it, and is very deftly manipulating her. (By the way, Jewels tails her to the assembly meeting, if you were wondering.) He does feel bad about this, just like he feels bad about killing Lemex. That doesn't stop him from doing things like this, though.
He does plan to get Vivenna's Breath. He knows, however, that in the end he can probably just torture her into giving it to him. In this scene, if you could see into his head, he's trying to figure out how exactly he can get her to give it to him without having to hurt her.
He doesn't really believe he can do it, though. Life has proven to Denth lately that he just has to do bad things. He almost sees it as inevitable.
I've picked up in bits in pieces that it's possible, for some people at least, to use the Shardpools to worldhop...
Yes.
Can non-Invested people do that, or do you have to have some form of Investiture?
*hesitantly* Every individual is Invested to some extent...
Do you have to have any special Investiture above and beyond the normal spark of life?
I'm gonna go ahead and RAFO that.
What kind of college classes (not English courses) would best prepare someone for writing fantasy?
Whatever you're fascinated by! You can incorporate basically anything into a story. If you love numbers, study economics. If you like history, pick an area and type and become an expert. Whether it be law or botany, you will find a way to use it in your books.
Has anybody read The Way of Kings on any other worlds, particularly Sazed, Elend, or Tindwyl?
The Way of Kings as a novel is known off-world, but not on any of the planets you've mentioned. At least not currently.
When Odium and Dalinar were having their meeting in Oathbringer, Odium seemed kinda freaked out by something. Could it possibly be related to how Lift can interact with spren in the physical world, and that might cause some problems for him, <seeing the impossible>?
He is weirded out by Lift, certainly. Lift is something that shouldn't exist, let's just say that. You'll find out why, probably in book 6? But she should not exist.
A lot of filmmakers and authors that have ended up producing not-great work, a lot of times, they'll cite the publishing house, they'll cite the studios, things like that, and they pressure that they get to release earlier than they initially wanted to. How have you managed that relationship with your publishers to effectively make sure that all of your books have met at least your criteria for excellence? And certainly your fans seem to enjoy them. How do you work that?
It is a balancing, because there is a business side to this. Writers don't get as much push as filmmakers do, because no one has invested $200 million into me making a book, right? And recently, I have moved my contracts away from advances and more to kind of just being a cooperative publishing deal with the publisher, kind of with the understanding that they don't get to give me deadlines. I write the book and I turn it in. And I'm able to do this because they trust me to actually write the books and turn them in.
And so, it is a balancing act, though, in a different way. I've never really felt pressure from the publisher. But at the same time, there's that famous quote, "Art is never finished; it's only ever abandoned." You can always do another revision. And where to stop your revision is something that I think each author kind of has to come to terms with. Because if the book were released a year later, it would be a different book. It may not be better; it might be better. It may just be different. So learning to balance that, to know when you're done with revisions and things like this, I think is certainly a part of it. It isn't a big problem for me.
Words of Radiance is the closest it came to being a problem. Because we had the publication date set, and then the revisions just took longer than we expected. And my core assistant, who was doing copyedits, was spending way too long on those copyedits. We've tried to learn to balance that. But it's something that authors have to learn to balance, so good question. I'm not sure I have a straight answer for you on it, though.
Will we see the Sibling?
Yes, you will see him before the end of book 5
Is he the same as he was last we saw him?
The Sibling is in the same form as he was before.
Megan and Steelheart, what was the nature of their relationship? How did they know each other, meet each other?
Employer and an employee. More like high-level employer and very competent contractor.
What limits are there on how fast someone with steel Feruchemy can go? Like is it more based on the limits of what the body can survive?
Yes, I will dig into that eventually because I actually have to run the math and just decide. It’s certainly, *pause* there are hard, very hard limits, let’s just say that. But the body generally is...I fudge Feruchemy a little bit, where I allow the body to adapt to what it’s doing for most Feruchemy. Otherwise I just couldn’t use it for very much.
How strongly does Rithmatics conform to Realmatics?
It is not bound by Realmatics.
Does burning cadmium actually slow down time or just slow down the perception of time? (there was a bit more to the question but I was on the opposite end of the room)
It does actually slow time.
What's lerasium?
That is the bead of metal that Elend finds at the end of Book 2, that Vin finds and gives to Elend.
Oh so there were only two and the Lord Ruler kind of left it there?
There actually were a bunch of them, and the first Mistborn came from people who ate that. The Lord Ruler took one for himself and he left others there to use if he needed them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Siri Visits the Palace Library
The Priests here think that Siri is making a play for power, asserting her will in the palace. They wouldn't have stopped her from reading in the library, if she'd wanted to. Treledees just wants to enforce his will over her and show that she can't bully the priests. They're worried about her trying to assert her independence. They assume she already knows the things in the histories that Bluefingers mentions, and so they aren't concerned about her studying them.
Vivenna's Thoughts on Being a Drab
A lot of what happened to Vivenna—how she saw the world and how she acted—was influenced by being a Drab. As I've said before, the Hallandren aren't right when they say losing your Breath does nothing to you. Most Drabs struggle with depression, and the fact that they're almost always sick doesn't help either.
And so, Vivenna's time on the streets was artificially made more dreary and terrible than it truly was. Being a Drab, being sick, the shock of being betrayed—these things combined to give you the person you saw in the previous two chapters. It's a way to cut a corner. I wanted Vivenna to feel like she'd been on the streets for months, but for it only to have been a few weeks.
She is able to make her hair change colors again. This is a representation of the fact that she has started to pull out of the nightmare. She's slightly in control of her world again, and the roughest time for her has passed. There's also a clue in that hair, one that Vasher mentions. Because of it, and her heritage, and something very mysterious in the past, every member of the royal line has a fraction of a divine Returned Breath in them. That makes it much easier for them to learn to Awaken than a normal person.
Can people from one area of the cosmere Return to the place in the cosmere where Awakeners are from?
Meaning, can they travel to Nalthis, where Warbreaker takes place? Yes, they can.
Did Vasher visit Roshar before the Recreance? Because he had-- *Brandon mumbles question* Because he had to see Shardblades, and... presumably live ones.
Yeah... I'll RAFO that. I'll RAFO that. It is an assumption that he had... He doesn't necessarily have to have seen alive ones. He could have heard records of them.
Okay. Because I've tried to make out a timeline, to be like, "Okay, if this is here..."
Kara has a timeline-- Not Kara-- Karen has a timeline in hand. But I would have to look at it to give you exact dates, but yeah.
Okay. So you didn't have to see...
He did not have to see.
Is AonDor Physical, Spiritual, or Cognitive?
AonDor is mixed up in all three. So I would say more Cognitive and Spiritual than it is Physical, but it is mixed up in all three.
How would your characters fit in your power cube?
I guess it would depend on the cards. But I think I'll get a demonic tutor altered to have Miss Highwater in the art.
Along the lines of chromium, according to the new Hemalurgy table, they "might steal destiny." Is destiny Fortune, or is it something new?
RAFO.
Compared to Oathbringer, how much Szeth are we going to see in the book?
This one, probably less Szeth than Oathbringer. Mostly, because we're going to get his big plot in the next book. There's some cool Szeth stuff in this still, but we're looking more like first book Szeth rather than third book Szeth, where I give him his own micro plot in book 3.
I was kind of imagining, he's like the first character expected to die in the first five books.
He starts in jail, in book four. Because Dalinar told him to go there.
So, are Shauka-daughter-Hasweth and Ali-daughter-Hasweth two different people? Are they the same person?
They are different people. Good question. They do have very similar names. That happens a lot among the Shin, and I'm trying to make it not confusing, but I can't promise it won't be. There are a lot of similar names, and a lot of people are named similar ways, and things like that.
Are we going to find out soon if the Parshendi are actually of Honor?
Yes. (You'll find out.)
Your Shardworlds have a lot of societies of varying social development. So, apropos of this charity, what would be the penalties of hitting your wife in various worlds: Roshar, Scadrial, Nalthis?
Oh, wow. The problem with this question is that no world is a monoculture. There are going to be a lot of different cultures on a lot of different planets, and a lot of different social mores, and a lot of different laws. I'm not sure that that's a question I really want to delve deeply into.
Vasher has shown us that he can substitue his need for Breath with another investiture (presumably Stormlight). To what extent is investiture interchangeable between magic systems?
Very interchangeable, but not always simple to apply.
Since Allomancy is powered by burning metal, isn't Scadrial going to eventually start running out of metal?
Hmmm... is that why there's a space trilogy? They have to mine asteroids and other planets for their metal?
It could happen. However, it's not really a danger with the current population of Allomancers. There just aren't enough of them.
When you were planning for Zahel being Vasher, how long did you [plan] that?
Vasher was in the 2002 version of The Way of Kings by name, as Vasher. I only changed him to the new name after I finished this entire draft. Because I'm like "oh, he'd probably go under a pseudonym". So he's in Roshar for 12 years our time—I mean I had written him 12 years ago, in Roshar.
And what's he doing there? Why? Is that a RAFO?
You'll have to read the Way of Kings Prime but he is in there by name, it blew my assistant's mind when he went back and found it.
He was doing much of the same thing that he did in this one. But in that book-- in Way of Kings Prime the big defining difference was that Kaladin took the Blade and Plate, and Zahel—or Vasher as he was named there—was his teacher then, and that was a much bigger part of the book because the book was about become-- you know. And it was the first book and him and his teacher, so yeah.
Did you expect the intensity of the community's reaction to Moash's killing Elhokar?
Yes.
Could Shai Soul Forge herself into becoming an Elantrian?
That would be really hard. First of all, she'd have to change where she's born, then Soul Forge the fact that she became an Elantrian. Even then, she'd probably look like an Elantrian, but not have any powers. There would probably need to be some kind of bridge, or she would need some kind of super push from AonDor to make it work.
I actually have a weird question. From the Mistborn series it says there are 16 Allomantic metals but then you go into Alloy of Law and the 16 are listed there, minus the atium and another one, so are there really 18 metals?
Well, you see those two were not really metals. Those were pieces, fragments, of a god.
I thought that might be it but the symbols are the same above them from-- the atium symbol is the same as--
No, it's a different symbol, it might be reversed though.
