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ethnicallyambiguous

You've said that while many of your books are interconnected "behind the scenes", you didn't want to put too much in the books themselves so readers didn't feel like they're missing information (HIGHLY paraphrased). Have your opinions changed on that given the size of your fanbase? When do you expect to have more crossover between worlds (as in major characters or plot points as opposed to cameos and subtle allusions)?

Brandon Sanderson

I still think that keeping this to less is going to be better. However, it's going to be tougher and tougher to keep them separate, logically. As the worlds advance and more and more people begin dabbling in crossing planets, the signs will compound. I still intend to keep it from the forefront. There will be an increasing amount of this, however.

Brandon Sanderson

Priests as Scapegoats

I do think that someone being a different religion from yourself makes them a good scapegoat. We tend to be put off by anyone who is too devout toward religion, even if their passion for it mimics our own passion for something we are dedicated to. It's easy to divide ourselves along religious lines.

Once again, I think I need to mention that I didn't write this comment (or the ones about not judging) into the book as an intentional message. It just seemed appropriate for the characters to say or consider, and I happen to agree with them. What I think is important influences the book. How can it help but do otherwise?

Questioner

In The Stormlight Archive, we know the characters can draw Stormlight from various objects, right? Can they steal it from each other?

Brandon Sanderson

So... [Begins saying no, fades out]

Questioner

Too much of a reveal?

Brandon Sanderson

No, the answer is mostly no, in those situations... no. So I'll give you like a kind of, "Except in special situations." But that doesn't count if they're carrying it, only if they've invested.

Josep

Just a nagging question: What happened to Gaz? After some character development he just vanishes in chapter 59 without further explanation. Will he be back on the next books?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm planning for you to find out what happened to Gaz. There are sufficient clues that you can guess. But it is not explicitly stated, and I'm not going to say it's as obvious as Robert Jordan implied Asmodean's killer is. I was tempted to spell it out explicitly, but there wasn't a good place for it. I will probably answer it eventually, maybe in the next book, but until then you are free to theorize.

Questioner

Is the whole story going to be told through Spensa's perspective?

Brandon Sanderson

95% her viewpoint, but there are three brief chapters sprinkled through the books from another character's viewpoint.

Brandon Sanderson

There are a couple of important foreshadowings in this chapter as well. One is the seon sense of direction, which plays a very small-yet-important part in the climax of the book. The other is Sarene's insight into Ahan's character here at the party. If you've been following him, you realize that he is like she explains–a little too quick to act, not quite as politically shrewd as he'd like others to think. It's this scene, however, where I really wanted to lay the seeds of understanding in my readers, preparing them for his eventual betrayal.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Dalinar is the first character I ever wrote.

Questioner

I was interested if, the Wax character, if he was inspired a little by Sams Vimes by Terry Pratchett.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, absolutely. Vimes had a deep effect on me as a writer so any time I'm writing a copper you'll end up with some Vimes but I'd say Wax has a little extra Vimes, so does Dalinar, Dalinar's got a bit of Vimes in him to.

Dustin Warf

If Kelsier had visited Roshar, what spren would have been attracted to his character?

Brandon Sanderson

Gloryspren because he pretty much always feels like he's done something awesome. :)

Questioner

Who is your favorite author to read? Fantasy author to read?

Brandon Sanderson

My favorite fantasy author to read right now is Terry Pratchett. I think Terry is very, very good. But a very close, maybe tie to Terry Pratchett would be Guy Gavriel Kay, whose works are amazing. Also up there are Robin Hobb, who's quite amazing. The three most recent books I read are Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett, his newest one from last year. I'm a little behind on that. Robin Hobb's Fool's Assassin, very good. The Martian, by Andy Weir. If you haven't read that, it is really spectacular. But by the way, language warning, for you young kids. The main character has quite a bit of a potty-mouth. I also read Naomi Novik's book coming out in June. (I get them early. Ha ha.) And it was spectacular, it's called Uprooted, and it's kind of like a dark fairy tale, and it was very good.

Karl_the_Karling

In the third Mistborn novel, Marsh's view was shown briefly but what I want to see is a story were one is a main character. This could show many cool stories like, Marsh's training to become an inquisitor (bit like scary hogwarts) or others.

havoc_mayhem

[Brandon], any chance you could squeeze this into the upcoming cosmere short story collection?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm sure I'll do some more Marsh viewpoints eventually, but I have my hands full getting things ready for the collection. (Plus, it has multiple stories from Scadrial already. It's Roshar we're missing.)

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

<audio obscured> in the Firefight-- The Reckoners series, was there a particular character you gave the <audio obscured>

Brandon Sanderson

So the question is: In The Reckoners, was there a particular power that I gave to someone because I just thought that power was cool. And yeah, the tensors. They can turn things to dust. For years I'd been walking around looking at our society where we have all this metal and this wood around, and things like that. I just loved the idea of just being able to turn it to dust. Maybe it's like a "reducing things to their more primal state" or whatever-- but anyway it was one of those magics that was in my head for a while. And really superheros are magic. I don't pretend that they're science fiction, they're magic. So I just designed these magics that feel cool to me.

Brandon Sanderson

Epilogue - Part Two

The discussion of Feruchemy and Allomancy working together is one of the most complicated magical explanations I've ever done, and I hope it works. One of the fun things about my books are the magic, and it's really tough to walk the line between making magic that has technically interesting aspects without making it either a) too complicated or b) feel like I'm just making it up as I go along.

I was trying to get across here an unexpected consequence of mixing the two magics. Like how certain chemicals react oddly when mixed, or even like two computer programs running on the same computer can cause odd reactions, letting someone use Feruchemy and Allomancy together makes for some very strange mixtures of the powers. (I intend to get into this later.)

Of course, what this also does is un-deify the Lord Ruler somewhat, which is intentional. I don't want it to undermine the accomplishment the characters have made–what they did was difficult and they have achieved a great victory. However, what I'm trying to give in this book–however–is a sense of foreboding.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Hoid has… a lot of things influencing that. I liked the Robots story in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books, I wanted to have a character that moved behind the scenes of each story like that.

Phantine

Stormlight has a lot of parallelism with Mistborn, but with protagonists who are now on the other side of the slave revolt. In particular, there's a very strong through line going from Kelsier to Miles to Moash, with characters attempting to overthrown a corrupt system being treated differently by the narrative in each case.

How much of this inversion is intentional? I know Warbreaker had a lot of deliberate parallels to Mistborn.

Brandon Sanderson

This is pretty intentional. I like to approach things from different sides, and I knew Stormlight was about the establishment, while Mistborn about the revolutionary. I like to try to show both sides of things like this, when I can.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seven - Part One

The Kelsier-Marsh-Mare relationship was something that just kind of grew naturally as I was writing. When I started designing the characters for this book, I knew that I wanted Kelsier to have gone through something very traumatic. I settled on a time spent in the Lord Ruler's slave camps, then built his having a wife out of that.

Marsh's unspoken love for Mare wasn't something I originally intended. It actually worked into the story as I was writing this very chapter. I needed tension between Marsh and Kelsier for their relationship to work the way I wanted it to. However, Marsh's disapproval of Kelsier just wasn't enough–especially since Marsh himself had given up leadership of the skaa rebellion, proving that he himself wasn't as much of a hero as he wishes he was.

Mare provided the perfect explanation for their tension. It was something I could imply in just a few sentences, then gain a lot of weight of back-story.

Dylan

If you could have one of your characters made as an android and unleashed upon the world, who would it be?

Brandon Sanderson

That's an interesting phrasing.

Lift. Unleash Lift upon the world, and see what she does.

mmm_burrito

You snake. I just finished Hero of Ages, and come to find out I'll never know the last 2 metals. Grr.

Brandon Sanderson

Cadmium and Bendalloy are what you're looking for. They create bubbles of warped time around the Allomancer. I will be doing more books in the world, though not with the same characters, and you'll see the other metals.

Gabriel Rumbaut

How did the whole cosmere come about?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh that's a good question. The cosmere came about because- there's really two genesises of it. First off I'm a big fan of Asimov's work and if you know Asimov's work, he tied his two universes together later in his life and I thought he did a brilliant job of it, though patching it together later in his life as he did there were certain continuity problems in doing it and I always thought, "Boy, I bet he wished he'd done it from the beginning".

So, as I started to work on things, I thought, "Well why don't I try something like that from the beginning." Once again I got to see what one of the masters did and learn from them, stand on their shoulders.

The other thing is, early in my career I realized that if I were writing mini-books, writing them all in the same series would be a bad for getting published. Let's say I wrote five, I'm gonna write five books and a publisher rejects the first one. If the other four are in the same series, it's going to be very hard to convince that publisher to read book two if they've already said no to book one. However, if they are five standalone books, set in different worlds, then I can say if someone says, "I liked this book but not enough to publish it," I could send them another one and say, "Hey this one is different but similar, maybe you'll like that." It just increased my chances.

The problem with that is I grew up reading the big epics and I love big epics and they are the books of my heart, are things like the Wheel of Time. I wanted to write big epics and so I started writing a secret big epic. It started with Elantris, which is the first one that I wrote in the cosmere and right after it Dragonsteel, which is actually a prequel but in a different universe [world]. I started putting characters from each of these books in the other books to have what I call a hidden epic, mostly for myself, because I had all these books I was going to be selling and marketing separately. But when Elantris sold, all of that stuff was buried in there, and I said, "Well, I love it, I'm not gonna cut it, I'm just gonna put it in there to see if people notice." I'm going to keep telling my hidden epic because eventually I will be telling the greater story with Dragonsteel and the third Mistborn trilogy dealing with these things and so that's where the idea for the cosmere came from, those two pieces.

Dreamer129

I'm feeling a little bewildered; I keep seeing references to "Hoid" throughout these boards and the twitter page, and I'm assuming this is a character who makes a short appearance in each book. If so, is there an actual story going on with him, or was he just someone put in as a sort of "Easter egg"?

Brandon Sanderson

I think I've covered this in responses I gave before getting to your question. My forums have a lot more information. (And a lot of guesses.)

Patrick

Your solo adult novels have these recurring elements such as the character of Hoid and references to the Shards. In Mistborn, Elantris and Warbreaker these elements are minor and more along the lines of easter eggs, but they seem to be more prominent in The Way of Kings. Can we expect these elements to be expanded on further in future Stormlight books? Will we find out Hoid's full story in this series or are you holding off on that for now?

Brandon Sanderson

I will mostly RAFO that. Yes, it will continue. No, you won't get a lot of it. The Stormlight Archive will not be about the story behind the story, though someday I will write a book series about that. There are basically two large epics in the greater sequence of books I'm writing, and the Stormlight Archive is one of them. There is another one, and both of the large epics will have certain amounts of influence from Hoid. Other books will be written that will not have nearly as much influence. But I'll go ahead and say that Hoid's origin story is not in the Stormlight Archive. That's not what this series is about.

Cheese Ninja

If a character bears multiple Shardblades, can they summon them all in the same 10 heartbeat span, or does each Shardblade require a separate summoning? Dying doesn't count.

Brandon Sanderson

Separate summoning.

bmanny

At what point in your writing did the ending of [Shadows of Self] become a thing in your mind? Was is there from the beginning? Did it unfold naturally? Or was it something you saw before even writing [The Alloy of Law]?

Brandon Sanderson

I wrote Alloy of Law as kind of a free write. Once I finished it, and liked it a lot, I sat down and said, "Okay, if this is going to be Mistborn, it needs to have a tighter series outline." So I outlined three sequels, so I knew where Wax and the characters were going. Then I wrote the prologue of Alloy of Law. (It originally didn't include that scene with him and Lessie meeting Bloody Tan.) That scene was the first I wrote knowing the entire three book sequence, including the ending of SofS.

From there, I did a revision of Alloy of Law to match what was to come. The biggest change was adding in the trauma to Wax, which wasn't a piece of the initial story. (It was also something the book needed. Wax didn't have an arc in the original draft; he was kind of just "stoic sheriff." Building into him this longing to escape responsibility, and an underlying worry that his failures would break him, made it possible to create for him a four book arc.)

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Vin Reminisces about Her Early Days with the Crew

There's a lot to talk about here. First off, this is one of several nostalgia chapters I threw into this book. When I worked on the second book, I missed getting to write about some of the themes from the first book. Gone were the balls and a lot of the banter, and Kelsier's death removed one of the series' most dynamic characters.

When I got to this book, I wanted to see if I could blend what worked well in the first book with what worked well in the second book—and then, of course, add some things unique to this book. Among the most charming parts of the first book were the balls and the noble society.

So here we get to have Vin contemplate those days as a slight foreshadowing to gear us up for a few scenes that hark back to those days. As this is the final volume of the trilogy, I think it's very appropriate to recapture some of the tendrils from the first book and weave them in.

Brandon Sanderson

The King and Yarda Discuss Sending Vivenna

I go back and forth on this scene. Sometimes I think it's too long. Other times I worry that it's not long enough.

Through the history of the book, this particular scene inched longer and longer as I tried very hard to explain why a good man like Dedelin would send Siri to die in Hallandren. (And also, I wanted to be sure to explain why he was sure she would die there.) There's a whole lot of setup going on in this sequence between the king and his general.

And I worry that there should be more. While what they do makes intrinsic sense to me, a lot of readers have been confused about the tactics here. Why is the king doing what he's doing? Is it really needed? Isn't there another way? This section is the only answer we get to a lot of those questions, since it's the one and only scene in the book from Dedelin's viewpoint.

That said, I think this scene might also be too long. The more space I dedicate to Dedelin, the more readers are going to think that he might be a main character. Some are surprised to read on and find out that the king doesn't make another appearance in the novel. (Well, okay, he makes one more—but he doesn't have a viewpoint.) I don't want to put too much here or have readers focus too much on the tactics of his decision, since really all that matters is that readers understand that Siri has been sent unexpectedly to marry the God King.

I'm still iffy on the scene. Some test readers wanted to see the scene where Dedelin says farewell to Siri. (We skip it; the next scene begins with Siri riding away.) They feel they missed a chapter. But I eventually decided that I needed to keep this beginning flowing quickly, because the longer we spend in Idris, the longer it will take us to get to the real plots in Hallandren. If it weren't so important to set up Siri and Vivenna ahead of time (so that their reversal has impact), I would have just started the book with Siri arriving in Hallandren.

Shovelbum26

You've written about a huge amount of cultures where women are expected to conform to what we think of as "traditional gender roles". In Stormlight, Mistborn, Elantris and Warbreaker all, the strong women are largely defined through how they buck these rigid gender roles. I never got the sense that you think of those as "natural" gender roles for women but more that you were using the Fantasy setting with its stereotypical Elizabethan ideas of gender to critique sexism. That's a great and well established way to address sexism in novels, but the other way is to actively challenge stereotypes in the setting, by showing that our idea of gender roles isn't inevitable (by showing a society with a very different idea of gender roles).

Brandon Sanderson

I'm aware of the things you say regarding sexism, and they are things I think about a lot. On one hand, you want to make stories relateable, which often requires leaning on people who struggle against the boundaries set for them. At the same time, it becomes a cliche if every young woman is forced to become a fighter for gender equality--and it lets her gender define her struggles in a way that is not heaped upon the male characters.

With Stormlight, I'm trying to take a different look at this idea in many ways. Some of which would be spoilers to talk about here.

Questioner

Obviously, you've written different styles of books, with Rithmatist and Alcatraz and the Librarians versus huge epic fantasies and how big the Stormlight Archive looks to be. I want to know, how did your approach differ between those two books?

Brandon Sanderson

I approach each book a little bit differently. There are a few things I'm trying to do with each book. With each book, I will pick something I generally want to work on to get better at as a writer, to practice. And, of course, I want to get better in all areas, but each book has a theme. If you read Warbreaker, I wanted to practice humor, and different styles of humor. That was a big part of Warbreaker. Specifically humor in a non-humorous book, character humor. Whereas, Way of Kings, it's obviously worldbuilding. I wanted to bring the worldbuilding up a notch. And so, each book, that's a big difference. When you see me writing things like Legion, which is contemporary, often it's saying, "Can I do this genre? What is this genre like? Can I practice this genre?" One big difference between the Alcatraz books and other book is that I freewrite, I discovery write the Alcatraz books. I don't plan a big outline. I have, like, a sentence for each book. And then I brainstorm all the goofiest things I can think of that make me laugh, and I write them all down and say "I've gotta use all them in the book somehow." So, if you've seen Whose Line Is It Anyway, where they're like, "You must take these things and use these props and design a story," that's what I do with Alcatraz, is I brainstorm all these props, and say, "I've gotta have talking dinosaurs, and I've gotta have this and this and this, and at some point people have to ride on a giant pig." I've just gotta make all these things work in a story, it's a creative exercise on my part, and I think discovery-write them. I don't outline, I just go. Which is why they feel so different in tone. It's my goal to make them feel different in tone. I stay productive as a writer by doing very different projects sequentially. What I'm doing, after I finish a book, is I've gotta usually do something very different from that book in order to refresh myself, stay creative, and be doing new things. Which is why you see stuff like Legion and Alcatraz and what-not. And I'm never gonna be one of these authors that's only in one world, because I would get burned out too quickly on that.

mraize7

Have we seen any character connected in some way to actual Kelsier (era 2) in any of the Stormlight Archive books?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that for now.

Brandon Sanderson

Siri Is Confronted by Blushweaver

This is one of those little scenes you put into a book that isn't foreshadowing anything specific. I don't mind if people home in on this confrontation and worry that Blushweaver will take action against Siri, but I don't go there with the book. Blushweaver here is just jealous. She knows enough to recognize that in herself, however, and won't let it push her much farther than her little warning here.

I like what this shows about Blushweaver's character, and I like that it illustrates how she sees Lightsong. Yes, she's in love with him. Quite deeply, in fact. She brought him into her plots and schemes here partially because she trusts him, and partially because she wanted to show off for him—and perhaps finally convince him to accept her as a lover.

Questioner

I teach at university, and I had to grade a paper about Way of Kings. It dealt with Colonial and post-colonial structures, religion, fashion, and language. Did you do that consciously or subconsciously, especially the colonization part?

Brandon Sanderson

It's very conscious, that part. The Alethi are in part, based on the Mongols, particularly when the Mongols invaded China, then became Chinese culture, which I find a very fascinating period in history, where the Mongols became a Chinese Dynasty, they actually also became an Arab dynasty over in the Near East. It was just this really interesting thing. So you've got colonialism before colonialism happening there. And I was very aware with the subtext of the Parshendi being a major theme of a people that didn't just enslaved a people, they enslaved them and took away their minds, that I couldn't shy away from dealing with these topics and these concepts. You see as the series progresses, it becomes-- You've got people like Kaladin who are essentially good people, but not understanding at all even their own biases, which is how we all are. These are things I want to deal with, because I find them interesting. They're important now, but it's, I think, important to how humans work and interact and see the world. Because I think this has been happening since the beginning of our history as human beings. And so it's something that is fascinating to me, and something that I think a lot of us wrestle with, and I wanted my characters to deal with that.

Herowannabe

I recently picked up the Mistborn Adventure game and am loving it. I made a character who is a blind Mistborn because hey, I thought it would make for some interesting possibilities. As I understand Allomancy, he can hear/sense well enough to get around with Tin, plus even though he's blind he can still "see" steel lines (like the inquisitors), and I assume Atium would work the same way- that is, he could still "see" Atium shadows. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Brandon Sanderson

No, you're right. That works. He'd have to burn metals a LOT though. It might warp him a little. :)

Questioner

I was in the hospital and someone read White Sand [Volume 1] while I was there, and I didn't know-- Is the comic series going to continue on after the end of the book, that kind of seems like a very unfinished story, or if that's just a story that will probably remain unfinished?

Brandon Sanderson

If people really like the comic we will continue.

Questioner

Oh cool!

Brandon Sanderson

If they don't, I am probably going to do a book in the world eventually. It will be after the last-- like-- a different group of characters, but it will reference what happened, so you can kind of figure it out.

Brandon Sanderson

The scene where the children talk about art is one I nearly cut from the book on a couple of different occasions. I worry that this is one of the scenes that contributes overly-much to the "Kiin's family is out of place" feeling that people occasionally get. In addition, I worry that I made Kaise too intelligent here. Three things make me retain the scene. First, I think it's kind of amusing. The second is a spoiler, so I won't say much on it—just let it suffice that I wanted to give Kaise and Daorn some good characterization.

For you spoiler readers, those two would be the main characters of any sequel I wrote to Elantris. I'd set the book about ten years after the ending of this one.

The third reason for retaining the scene is because I put it in, in the first place, quite intentionally. Kaise, and to a lesser extent Daorn, are a small reaction against Ender's Game. When I read that book, and some of Scott's other works (which, by the way, I think are all brilliant) I got to wondering if children who were as smart as his really would act the way they do in his books. Not to disagree with one of the greatest sf minds of our time, but I wanted to take a different spin on the "clever child" idea. So, I presented these children as being extremely intelligent, but also extremely immature with that intelligence. I'm not convinced that IQ brings maturity with it, and think there's only so much "adult" you can have in a kid. So, I put in Kaise and Daorn to let me play with this idea a little bit in Elantris.

Nightfire

Now my interest is perked. Which character is in both Mistborn and Elantris? I must know!! Of course, if it is a secret for another book don't tell me.

Brandon Sanderson

I suggest looking through my forums and talking to the people there. Also, some questions on this forum talk about the issue. I don't like to spell things out, and so I stay away from giving too much. Look around; it's not to difficult to find, now that people have begun to catch on.

BimGab

Why are so many of your primary female characters named with "s" and "v"? Sarene, Siri, Shai, Shallan, Vin, Vivenna? Is there a reason?

(I ask because you're obviously able to find cool female-names with other letters too, Jasnah, Danlan, Navani and so on.)

Brandon Sanderson

No reason. I've noticed that trend myself; probably something to do with innate "this sounds right" things on my part. I think Vin/Vivenna is a coincidence. (Vin did start in a rough first draft as male, after all.) But there are also some other V names, a disproportionate number. So...just the way my ears work, and something I need to be aware of, I guess. Thanks for the question!

Brandon Sanderson

Updates on Secondary Projects

Alcatraz

I've been tweaking Alcatraz Six. I did a partial draft a few years ago that went off the rails, and this year, I trimmed that back with some help from a friend into the parts that worked. From there, we've been trying to figure out how to get Bastille's character voice right. It's moving. Slowly, but it's moving. Book Six, written from Bastille's viewpoint, will be the end of the series.

Now that Legion is done, the next series I want to make sure gets tied up is Alcatraz. It shouldn't be too much longer.

Status: Book Six made some small progress this year.

Brandon Sanderson

You'll notice that I start this chapter with a block of narrative, going over what has been happening since our last triad. I do this with some frequency in the Raoden chapters. Not everything in a book can be "in scene," and I sometimes find myself throwing in these narrative sections at the beginning of chapters. It's a bit of a triad-break, but not a huge one. After all, you can just assume that the narrative is coming from Raoden as he thinks back about previous events.

Speaking of that, I haven't really talked much about viewpoint in these annotations. You may or may not have noticed that I'm a big fan of strictly-limited third-person viewpoints. Third person past tense has pretty much become the industry standard during the last fifteen years (before that time, you saw a lot more omniscient–look at Dune, and to a lesser extent, Ender's Game.) You almost never see it these days, though, and I personally think that's a good thing. Omniscient is a little better for plotting in some places, but limited is far better for characterization.

Any time you read one of my books, you should remember that I'm almost always in strict limited. Whatever you read in the text, it is something that a character feels or has observed.

Brandon Sanderson

Using the Atium

I hope that the use of all that atium in this chapter was spectacular enough for you—after all, I waited three books to finally have them find the Lord Ruler's cache. I think that discovering it before this moment would have been anticlimactic. In books one or two, it would simply have meant wealth. The characters getting rich is all well and good, but I think that would have meant a letdown for the reader. All of that anticipation for something so mundane?

Instead, I wanted to use an entire army's—or at least a large platoon's—worth of Allomancers burning atium to fight two hundred thousand koloss.

Brandon Sanderson

Lightsong Gives Up

Oddly, Lightsong's character arc here in this chapter was to give in. To give up, to abandon his mocking and his glibness. To finally accept what he's been pretending all this time. That he's useless.

The games are over.

Questioner

At what point in making the Rithmatist magic system did the concept of the beauty of the drawings come in?

Brandon Sanderson

The beauty of the drawings is related to the idea of your perception influencing magic, which is a Cosmere rule. Giving things a mental order, the Cognitive aspect of it, it’s the same way that in Warbreaker, when you give an order to something you’ve Awakened with the magic, the way you perceive that order directly influences how it plays it out. I built this in because, number one, it’s better for philosophy if the answers aren’t, in some of these things, [internal?] answers where the author has said, “Truth is capital T Truth”, where the characters’ perceptions of truth allows for different people to believe different things and both be arguably right. Also because I wanted all the magic in the Cosmere to have some root in the Cognitive Realm. The idea of the magic there is, there’s a Spiritual thing which is kind of unknowable, kind of eternal, kind of all-places-one, there’s a Cognitive aspect, which is how you perceive it influences it, and then there’s the Physical world. The chalklings were built that way, how beautiful you perceive it as being, or the beings involved in this perceive it as being, will influence how well it works.

Second Questioner

In the books, in Rithmatist, you state that the better drawn a shape is, or a creation is, that makes it more powerful. Would that mean that if you drew a cube, would that be more powerful than a square?

Brandon Sanderson

The complexity of it, and how people perceive, you could make an argument that there’s some people who would be like, “The perfect cube is so hard to draw that that is inspiring”, but the average people, if you said, ”Who’s going to win this battle: this cool knight that I drew, or this cube?”, they’d say the cool knight. So that sort of general perception plays a lot into how it works.

Steeldancer

In Oathbringer, my one big issue with Oathbringer was Amaram's turn. I'm curious why you chose to not hint more at his turn. It felt a little bit out of nowhere. What were your thoughts on Amaram?

Brandon Sanderson

Which turn are you talking about?

Steeldancer

When he turns to Odium's side and he's like, "Okay, now I'm going to consume an Unmade."

Brandon Sanderson

I feel like Amaram was a slow and steady descent. But you didn't get to see viewpoints from him as he was doing it. And what he did to Kaladin was worse than anything he did in Oathbringer, in my mind.

Steeldancer

Why did you choose not to give him viewpoints.

Brandon Sanderson

Too many characters. To many people to give viewpoints to. It was kicked around. I kicked it around for a while. There just wasn't enough.

Brandon Sanderson

Siri Does Her Show for the First Time

This little sequence is far more discomforting to me than the actual nudity, to be honest. Being somewhat of a prude as I am, I hesitated to put this into the book. I realize that to most readers, it's not even very risqué. But I'm the one writing the book, and I'm the one who decides what I include. I have to be willing to take responsibility for what's in my stories.

Why did I put this in if it discomforts me? Well, to be honest, there was no other way. It was what the story demanded. I couldn't see the priests not at least listening. (And, as I think will be mentioned later in the story, they did have some people watching the first nights—no matter what Bluefingers says in this chapter. He's not lying, he's just wrong. The priests would never let a potential assassin near their God King without taking precautions. There was even a soldier hiding under the bed that first night, and another watching from a secret chamber beside the hearth. It was still a risk to let Siri into the room, of course, but they were fairly certain—after taking her clothing and instructing the serving girls to watch carefully during the bathing—that Siri had no weapons on her.)

Regardless, it was ridiculous to think the priests wouldn't listen in, knowing what they do of the God King. That meant Siri had to either sleep with him for real, or find a way to distract them. This was a clever move on her part, and I like it when my characters can be appropriately clever. And so the scene stays. If I hadn't allowed her to do this, then I would have—as an author—been holding her back artificially.

Questioner

What was your inspiration for Wit, or who?

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm. You know, the closest thing I've been able to say is the court jester from King Lear, he's one of my favorite literary characters. But I'm not sure if I can, you know, if I can point to anyone specific other than that.

Questioner

Emperor's Soul, are we going to see much in with that?

Brandon Sanderson

We are unlikely to see me do another thing just like that, because it turned out so perfectly... I don't know that I want to spoil it but at the same time, she's a great character and I keep itching to do something else with her. So we'll see...

Avivsm

Can a Nahel Bond be stagnant because of a spren's inability to progress? If the spren has a character deficiency they cannot break through or something?

Brandon Sanderson

Can a spren cause the Nahel Bond to not progress? This is possible. Not very common but it is possible.

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher Shows Her Some Commands with the Rope

I'm sorry it took so long in the book to get to a point where we could start exploring the magic system. I wanted to do it differently from the previous two books I'd written. In Elantris, we didn't get to learn about the magic system until the end. In Mistborn, we got it straight out. Here, I wanted to try putting it into the middle—to have us experience it and see it work before we got a lot of the rules. Plus, there just wasn't a good character to show learning about it until now.

NotOJebus

Scadrial question: When coming up with twinborns, do you actively avoid the incredibly overpowered combinations? Something like pure steel twinborns seem extremely overpowered.

Also, can we get an idea for how many twinborns exist? Is it dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to have to talk about them eventually, but yes, I made some deliberate choices for the Alloy era heroes.

My intent is that they're very rare, but there's this problem in fiction. You can say something is very rare, but if your two main characters are that thing, readers won't FEEL it. So I avoid making too big a deal out of it either way. Either way, I don't have the numbers handy right now.

Brandon Sanderson

Spook Asks Kelsier for Help Talking to Beldre

"Kelsier" can't help Spook with relationship advice, which is telling. Ruin doesn't understand relationships at all. It's one of his main weaknesses.

In creating Ruin as a villain, I wanted to shy away from making a force that was purely evil. I don't believe that Ruin is evil, personally. I believe that he's actually justified in what he's trying to do.

That doesn't mean the characters should just sit back and let him destroy the world. However, he is a force given sentience—or, rather, sentience that has attached itself to a force. Regardless, that force drives him and dominates him. And destruction is a natural part of life.

Questioner

Have you thought about doing parallel stories, like Ender's Game and Shadow...

Brandon Sanderson

I have considered that and I know that at least one--I may not write it--but there's at least one in my head because there's this character Hoid who is running through all my books and what's going with him might make for an interesting parallel story if I ever write that.