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Questioner

Who are the five main characters from the first of the [Stormlight Archive]?

Brandon Sanderson

Kaladin and Shallan obviously. Book 3 is Szeth, book 4 is Eshonai, book 5 is Dalinar.

DrogaKrolow

Do you have your favorite fan theory? You don't have to say if it's untrue or not, but--

Brandon Sanderson

Favorite fan theories. Oh wow. I'm always really curious about which two characters people like to "ship" together

DrogaKrolow

Shalladin!

Brandon Sanderson

That one would be pretty interesting. What else-- Favorite fan theories-- I've read a bunch of them that I just chuckle about, but some of them-- I mean it's a mark of pride for me when somebody gets it right. That means that I have done my foreshadowing well. The unfortunate part of that is, when it actually happens in the books there will be a whole lot "I knew it" rather than "Oh I'm so surprised". It's getting so hard to surprise you people. If I do my job right and I put in the foreshadowing then you will be able to guess things even though sometimes you guess things you are not supposed to be able to guess yet, because there is no foreshadowing. But yeah like there will be big revelations in Oathbringer that I think will blow the average reader's mind and the people who have been reading closer "Oh yeah, that. What they don't know that yet?"

My favorite fan theories-- I can't think of one of the top of my head, I've heard some really good ones though.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Three

Another short, but powerful, Hrathen chapter. This is the head of Hrathen's character climax for the first half of the book. He has been questioning his own faith ever since he first met Dilaf. It isn't that he questions the truthfulness of the Derethi religion–he just has become uncertain of his own place within it. I wanted this moment, when he's semi-consciously watching the eclipse, to be the moment where he finally decides upon an answer within himself.

This is a major turning-point for Hrathen. His part in the book pivots on this chapter, and the things he does later are greatly influenced by the decisions he makes here. I think the important realization he realizes here is that not every person's faith manifests in the same way. He's different from other people, and he worships differently. That doesn't make his faith inferior.

In fact, I think his faith is actually superior to Dilaf's. Hrathen has considered, weighed, and decided. That gives him more validity as a teacher, I think. In fact, he fits into the Derethi religion quite well–the entire Derethi idea was conceived as a logical movement.

Questioner

I was at a book signing in Chicago a few years ago and you were giving out these little Szeth figurines with statistics on the back of them. What ever happened with them? What was that going to be?

Brandon Sanderson

That was me trying to get [Crafty Games] to build a hybrid card game slash-- a deckbuilding/boardbuilding game that still I have hopes will someday happen. It was, you build the board as you build the characters, things like that. They were way more interested in the board game itself, which came out well. It's possible we'll still do the deckbuilding/boardbuilding game. Keep a hold of those Szeth figures.

Questioner

How much of your input was put into the Wheel of Time books that you did, or was it strictly of the notes that Robert Jordan had?

Brandon Sanderson

How much of the Wheel of Time books was through me, and how much was from the notes? ...When I went to pick up the Wheel of Time materials, I was handed two things. One was a stack of 200 pages. That 200 pages contained about 100 pages of written material that Robert Jordan had written for the last books. And about 100 pages of that was interviews with his assistants, Q&As about what was going to happen. The other thing I was handed was a disk with all of his worldbuilding notes. This did not contain much at all about the last book. This was just the worldbuilding through the whole series, talking about the different cultures and things like that. And I used that to write the books. So the actual writing, I would say, it's very hard to say. I was given full creative control, I will say that. Harriet said "Take this. I'm an editor, not a writer. Do what you feel you need." In all of that, there was one sentence on what to do with Perrin. So, you can guess, if it was Perrin, it was me. There was a whole lot done with Egwene. In fact, almost, I would say, half of her scenes were written, in fact half of that stack was Egwene stuff; of the hundred pages, fifty pages just written about Egwene and a big stack of notes on what to do with her. If it's in the books and it relates to Egwene, you can almost guarantee that that is something Robert Jordan wrote or instructed me to write. With Rand and Mat, it was about half and half. Gathering Storm Mat and A Memory of Light Mat was more me, Towers of Midnight Mat was more him. A lot of his Mat stuff related to the Tower of Ghenjei. Rand was sprinkled all the way through, about half and half, I would say, on that. Most of the words you're reading are mine. Almost everything he wrote was either Egwene or ended up in the three prologues.

So, yeah, it was a big project. There was not a lot finished on it. But at the same time, those interviews, with him with almost all the characters he kind of talked about who they were, where they were going, what the arcs he envisioned for them being, and things like that, which gave me a lot to do. And even the one thing on Perrin was near the end, so I knew what to shoot for, if that makes sense? And one of the things he did write is what ended up as the epilogue. I had a target, if that makes sense. Although, a lot of the actual writing was on me to do, which is why they had me do it, by the way, rather than getting a ghostwriter. If it had been 90% of the way done, they could have just gotten someone to quietly come in and finish those last few scenes, and it would have been the right thing to do, because it was mostly done by him. The fact that it wasn't, meant they needed a writer to actually put the whole thing together. There wasn't an outline. Robert Jordan was a discovery writer. He knew what he wanted to have happen, but he had no order or form or anything like that.

Questioner

I admire your imagination and I wanted to know when you first thought about your first book. I meant what is the earliest book you thought of and what age?

Brandon Sanderson

I was fifteen or sixteen, and it was Dalinar, the character. So he eventually became Stormlight Archive, although back then it was a book called Dragonsteel.

Questioner

Was it similar?

Brandon Sanderson

No, just vaguely similar. It was about a man who was the brother of the king who had to take over when the king was assassinated, so that part is the same. But the personality changed a lot over the twenty years before thinking that and writing it.

Brandon Sanderson

So, all of Telrii's characterization through the novel has been pushing toward this chapter. I knew I wanted him to throw a huge wrinkle into Hrathen's plans, and so the basic thing I had to decide was what Telrii could possibly do that would be as disastrous as the Mad Prince's uncontrollability. In the rewrite, then, I made certain to make Telrii a more unpredictable character. He's not just wasteful, he's arrogantly wasteful. At the same time, however, he's not as much a fool as people assume. He likes his spending, but he also likes how that luxury makes him look. It makes other people underestimate him, and makes them assume that he's predictable. That lets him pull little coups like the on he throws at Hrathen in this chapter.

Hrathen is, of course, right. Telrii doesn't have any clue how great a misjudgment he just made. The idea is not that Telrii is brilliant–he's just smart enough, just wily enough, to be surprising. He's just dangerous enough to do something disastrous like this.

Grant Willis

Are there any clues or easter eggs in Roshar/the cosmere that have not been discovered yet?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, but they're not ones that you should be able to discover. They'll just be things that you'll able to look back at. We embed some things here and there in the art, like the lastclap that was in foreshadowed in the margins of one of the art pieces in the first book, with someone catching a Shardblade. For instance, a lot of the little circles for characters at the start of the stories represent things that will happen much later in the series, but most of them are intentionally zoomed in of what the shot would be so that you can't tell right now, because these are not things that you're supposed to be able to figure out. Most things that I intended for you to figure out, you did, and some that I didn't intend you to figure out, you also did. So people can feel very proud of that. Yes, there are a bunch of easter eggs, there are a ton of them, but there is no way you can figure out what they are.

Questioner

Is there any systems of Investiture of magic that you thought of and discarded?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I tried for a long time to do one that was sound wave based. And I couldn't find anything that felt interesting to me. Maybe eventually I'll manage to make it work. The problem was, everything I came up with either had been done a hundred times, or happened too much in a way that was only in the character's head, and I couldn't actually write about in an engaging and interesting way. So I discarded that one. The Rithmatist magic was originally cosmere, and then moved out of cosmere, because there were certain things that were breaking continuity, and I just decided I can't have that in the cosmere. So, I do that occasionally, where something that was meant for the cosmere goes out of it. But equally often, I start writing something, and say "Hey, this magic would benefit from the underlying rules of the cosmere," and so I move it into the cosmere.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-Eight

The Lord Ruler's Final Message

This plaque from the Lord Ruler was very difficult to write. Originally it was much shorter, but I expanded it during the last draft because I felt it was just too useless. Even still, it doesn't say much. And that's the problem.

I was always intending the Lord Ruler's final plate to contain no answers. It works into my themes for this series—this was the "quest" book playing off the epic fantasy ideal of the powerful object that must be discovered and used to fight the evil. Except that this time, I wanted them to get to the place they'd been questing toward and find it empty, with no answers from the Lord Ruler. I felt this would only heighten the sense of hopelessness the characters are feeling in trying to fight Ruin.

The problem is, rereading this plate I realize that I've done exactly what I wanted—but that it's also a really, really big letdown. I hate letting down readers. It feels like breaking promises. After consideration I think this is still the best thing to do, but I wish I'd found another way to deal with this.

Note that the circle with a dot here is completely lost on Vin. The size of the circle in relation to the text around it, and some numerical clues scribbled around the perimeter of the circle, are indications of the size of a scale map it should be placed upon. If placed the right way, the dot will point directly at the Pits of Hathsin.

Vin's awesome, but she's barely got a basic education. A complex mathematical puzzle like that one is completely lost on her. If Elend had had the time to study the plate, he might have figured out where it was pointing. There wasn't time, however.

The Lord Ruler did leave a very important clue on this plate. However, I feel that obscure clues like this are deciphered far too often in books like this one. I think realistically if you're going to leave a clue like that, chances are good that it will end up getting missed or misunderstood. Which is exactly what happened here.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, some spoiler stuff here. Mennis does make a return later in the book, as you probably know. I actually wasn't intending to ever use him again, and was surprised when people read this chapter and expected him to be a main character. I guess I characterized him a little too well in the scene where he gets up.

So, when the time came for Kelsier to have a quiet conversation with one of the rebels, I dusted off Mennis and used him again. I'm very pleased with how that scene turned out, though it's another one I had to rewrite a couple times to get correct. We'll talk more about that later.

sempersapereaude

If /u/mistborn doesn't write a short story based on [Peter and Karen Ahlstrom] at some point i'm going to be extremely upset. Glad it worked out well!

Peter Ahlstrom

Hah, I think it would be a really different genre from Brandon’s usual. Though, the characters named after us in the Stormlight books, Peet and Ka, did get married.

Brandon Sanderson

Elend talks to Tindwyl, then returns to his room and puts his uniform on.

Elend's relationship with Tindwyl cracks me up. That is all.

During this conversation between the two Terrismen and Elend, I think Sazed speaks my philosophy on characters and writing. They have to do what is important to them. I don't like to advocate situational ethics, but in some cases, that philosophy is appropriate. If you're a Jew who follows Kosher, then you don't eat pork. (Among a lot of other things.) For that person, I think it is morally wrong to break Kosher–because you've made a promise to yourself and God that you won't. However, is it wrong for someone like me to eat pork? No. I haven't made that same promise.

The same goes for my LDS belief in not drinking alcohol. I've promised not to–but that doesn't make another person bad or evil for drinking. They haven't made the same promises I have. It's about remaining true to yourself. There's nothing inherently wrong with alcohol (Christ himself drank it, after all.) But there's something wrong with making a promise, then breaking it.

In this case, it was right for Elend to do what he did. Another king could be a good man and make the opposite decision without rebelling against his own personal morals. There are a lot of absolute rights and a lot of absolute wrongs in life, but there are far MORE rights and wrongs that depend on who you are as a person, I think.

Sazed, however, IS setting himself up for some difficulty later on with some of the things he says here. You'll see what I mean at the end of the book.

Mrrobot112

Now when Oathbringer is finished have you already chose a flashback character for Stormlight 4?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's Eshonai.

Ace_of_Face

Not really a question, but the one thing that disappointed me was that you didn't come up with new slang names for Allomancers! After three hundred years, do you really think they would still be calling steel Mistings "Coinshots"?

Brandon Sanderson

I toyed with this one, but decided that I would keep them the same for a few reasons. First off, I felt that certain things in-world would hamper some linguistic diversity. (Having the books Sazed left behind as a guide to Allomanc and history, everyone living in a small geographic area, the semi-religious nature of Allomancy making people look at it in traditional ways.) So, while I advanced the slang of the world, some of the terms I decided to leave the same.

Another reason for this came when I was writing the book. At first, I experimented with greater linguistic diversity--I even tried a vowel shift, as I figured three hundred years might be enough for that. In the end, I pulled back. I was already worried that this book not feel "Mistborn" enough, and so I wanted some direct ties back to the original series. Fiddling too much with the language while changing the setting and characters so drastically felt like a mistake to me.

Questioner

Do you see yourself as a certain character in the book?

Brandon Sanderson

They are all one part me, one part not me.

Questioner

I was wondering if you see yourself as Hoid.

Brandon Sanderson

Definitely not Hoid. Hoid is very different from me. If I'm like anyone, I'm either like Sazed, maybe older Dalinar.

CoverYourSafeHand

My other question is about Wheel of Time. At the end, Rand just kinda walks away in Moridin's body. Does he stop being a ta'veren? I can't imagine the pattern would just let him live a quiet normal life if he still was.

Brandon Sanderson

The ending portion of WoT that you reference was written by [Robert Jordan] himself, and he didn't leave a lot of explanations. Subtext and things Mr. Jordan said lead me to believe that the character you indicate is free, now. But we don't have a 100% for sure answer.

Google Moderator

Before we wrap up, Brandon have you got any news about movies or a Mistborn game?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, the Mistborn video game is very much a go. The guys at Little Orbit have just been awesome. We are working together to make an excellent game, I hope. I'm working on the story. I've turned in to them an overarching story for the whole, for the game and they are taking that and building the game and level design around that and then I will come back after they've done that and actually write the dialogue for the characters that moves the story along. So the video game is a completely go, cross-platform PS3, Xbox 360 and Steam for 2013.

The movie we are pitching to studios this month, so hopefully we can get something rolling on that, I have no news other than what I posted on my blog which is we've now got a good screenplay, it's quite good and now we're trying to pitch to studios and trying to convince somebody to pick this thing up and run with it. We're really hoping that, you know, fantasy has a really good reputation right now because of the excellent Game of Thrones adaptation, and so we're hoping that people will take a look at some good fantasy properties and that we can get a film made.

Questioner

I know the Cosmere has been around for a while. *inaudible* I guess it's a hard thing. Like, how soft...

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's all still evolving. It will continue. Like, you can't get so locked into an outline--even though I have them--that you don't change it when something better comes up. A big example of this is Adolin, right? Adolin was not *inaudible* character. And yet in the first book I needed *inaudible* I needed a viewpoint of somebody who was not imagining things, right? Somebody who was kind of more normal guy-ish. And he has a huge thing in the book. So now the outline of all ten books has changed because *inaudible*. And so, you've got to be willing to do that, I feel, as a writer.

Questioner

If two Elantrians had a baby, would he be an Elantrian too?

Brandon Sanderson

What a good question. The answer is no, actually. There's actually a character in the books who's an Elantrian who did become an Elantrian whose parents were connected to Elantris, but that was seen as something that didn't always happen.

Dragon13

Have we seen any characters who is a part of multiple [secret] organizations, for example the Ghostbloods and the Sons of Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes you have. *photo pause* I've a big cop out there, because you of know of one who is in the Ghostbloods and the Lightweavers. You give me opportunities, and I will answer truthfully.

Calderis

Feruchemical aluminum stores and taps a marker that seems to suffuse all Investiture within a person, removing or strengthening Identity. Does Feruchemical duralumin work similarly? Does tapping connection while storing in a metalmind increase the connection of the Investiture stored?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. Mostly because I've got a main character who's going to be doing this, I'm not going to spoil the fun or lock myself down yet.

Questioner

In Vol. 2 of White Sand, there is a character named Trell. Is that intentional?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is intentional, but the connections are a little more obtuse than you may be expecting.

chaoticdust75

I have a couple questions about when Tacenda sang and played her song for the demons while Davriel Slept.

From the description it seemed like she was evoking her own story of loss and in so doing the demons saw visions. Miss Highwater was flying while Crunchgnar seemed to be seeing the fires of his home go out.

What was the magical song doing to the characters?

Brandon Sanderson

Part of Tacenda's power is to use music to enhance people's experiences, memories, and emotions. This song was exploring that power--and looking specifically at things they had lost.

chaoticdust75

Why did Miss Highwater see herself flying? Did she used to be able to or envy angels?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm afraid I'll RAFO this for now. But you are asking the right sorts of questions.

chaoticdust75

What did Davriel see?

Brandon Sanderson

Another RAFO. He was very disturbed by it, though.

chaoticdust75

I'm also just curious about the soul of the Nameless Angel. Do you have an in universe explanation for why Tacenda could see it yet no one else could? Or is it just a powerful moment that had something to do with the Bog being afraid of faith?

Brandon Sanderson

You're theorizing along the right lines, but I wanted to leave this one ambiguous. Suffice it to say that odd things were happening.

bcGrimm

Did you write Wayne as a sociopath? Or just troubled?

Brandon Sanderson

As usual, I prefer not to interfere with theories that people are making, to confirm or deny them. I WILL say this, however.

The scenes where he interacts with Ranette and Allriandre are supposed to be uncomfortable, though I don't anticipate the average reader being able to pick out why. Anyone with any sort of experience with similar situations, however, will identify that something is deeply wrong with the way Wayne sees the world. His inability to understand boundaries, and his almost pathological need to PROVE that he's not a bad person any more, lead to him far, far overstepping. (His treatment of Steris is another example.)

Wayne is trying. This is all what makes him work for me as a real character, not as just a goofy sidekick, but you shouldn't just laugh it off and say, "Oh, that Wayne." He is deeply troubled, and isolation in the roughs--with someone who just kind of let him do his thing--did not help.

NotOJebus

What do you feel is the main difference between writing sci fi and fantasy is? Did you learn things in writing Skyward that you feel will help you write Mistborn Era 4?

Brandon Sanderson

For me, it's a fine line, because I'm not writing Hard SF--but instead, a kind of hard fantasy. So my books tend to ride the line between SF/Fantasy anyway. And Skyward is straight up space opera, I'd say--most of the technology that we use in the books is fantastical anyway.

In SF, I feel I can lean on shared vocabulary a little more. This has been particularly handy in the novellas I've done, where we can use Earth as a reference point. Modern (and beyond modern) communication, and expectations of character education, also play a big part in changing how I approach the stories.

In some ways, it comes down to different storytelling traditions, and what they each afford you. Again, though, it would be different if I were writing hard SF.

Questioner

How many Stormlight Archive books are you planning? And how long is the next one going to be?

Brandon Sanderson

Two series of five. So one ten book series, but you can view it as two sequences of five. My goal actually right now is to do the first five, take a little break, and maybe do the second Mistborn trilogy, or maybe do the White Sand trilogy. These are chunks of the Cosmere that are a part of the greater arc, but the next [Stormlight Archive] book will probably not be as long. This is because I actually felt Way of Kings was too long, but it was what it needed to be, for what I was establishing. There was no sooner place to cut this, so I had to do it in this place. When I first turned it in to my editor in 2002, it scared him to death because of how big it was. I do plan the others to be more around the size of Gathering Storm and things, which are still big books, but I’m hoping that they will be a little bit shorter, because those chunks are more manageable when the books are a little bit shorter. I can actually make the book tighter more easily.

I think Way of Kings turned out very tight, but it was so hard, because the longer you go with a sequence like that, the harder it is to make sure that everything, everyone is keeping track of everything. And the longer you go, the more of an instinct the reader will have to start following certain characters instead of reading it first as mixed, which makes for a better book. They’ll be like “Ah, I don’t remember this as well; I’ll just keep reading Kaladin,” or something like that. That’s actually a reason for me to keep them shorter, so you don’t have as much of an impetus to do that.

Questioner

Will Jasnah be one of the characters that gets her own book?

Brandon Sanderson

She will be.

Rah179

How significant will the White Sand be to the cosmere? Any hints on the Shard that resides there?

Brandon Sanderson

Moderately. (Its magic has some cool ramifications for off world use, and several characters factor prominently into the Cosmere.)

Phantine

Is there more than one magic system in white sand?

Brandon Sanderson

Only one in the current outline.

WeiryWriter

Does the one magic have more than one variation? Because I got the impression that there was something going on on the Darkside? Though I guess the Sky Colors (I think that's what they're called, I read the draft you send out early 2014 so my recollection is a little fuzzy) don't have to be related to magic. Or you could have written them out if they were...

Brandon Sanderson

In intended the colors on Darkside to be more a matter of the ecology than the magic--though, on that planet, magic and ecology are very closely tied together. (Well, I guess most of the magics are.)

Questioner

Will we see any more of David and Megan in the future?

Brandon Sanderson

It is likely that you will. If I write another book directly following, it will be about Mizzy. So she would be the main viewpoint character, and you would see the others in relation but it would be her story.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fourteen - Part One

Following Kelsier this night is probably one of the dumbest things Vin does in this book. Letting her follow is undoubtedly the dumbest thing Kelsier does in the book. Yet, these two characters are alike in more ways than they may seem at first. Both have a sense of brashness that borders on the foolhardy.

Vin is beginning to understand that there are crews where people truly care about each other. The problem is, she's feeling a very natural (especially for a girl of her age) desire to fit in and be needed. She has a deep-seated fear that she'll be proven useless, then be abandoned by the people that she's only just beginning to understand that she needs.

So, she wants to learn to be useful as quickly as she can. For Kelsier's part, he just feels that he's invincible. It's always been a problem of his. He's the type of man who can make things go his way. It's easy for him to ignore the failures and focus on the successes–like the fact that the Lord Ruler trying to kill him only ended up turning him into a Mistborn.

And so, they infiltrate together. And, this was the natural result.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Nine

This third "chapter triad" is the first one where I do a real intersection of the three viewpoints. Raoden sees Hrathen on the wall, Sarene and Hrathen spar, then Hrathen thinks about his run-in with Sarene on his way to the meeting with the noblemen.

I'm not sure if I'd ever want to use the chapter triad system again. It made all kinds of problems for writing the book. Almost everything else I've written has been strictly chronological–if you jump from one viewpoint, or one chapter, to the next, you're always progressing forward in time. By jumping backward in two chapters out of three, I gave myself some challenging pacing and coordination issues. For instance, the important events in each of the three storylines had to happen on generally the same days. Also, I had to rotate the chapters strictly, and so I couldn't just skip a character during a given time-frame. That meant I had to have important events happening in all three viewpoints all the time.

However, the benefits of this situation are moments like you see in this triad, where I could flow from one chapter to the next, having the timeframes play off of each other. You might have noticed from this triad that I had to fudge just a bit. Not all of the viewpoints happen at exactly the same time. The rule I set up for myself is that they had to all happen on the same day–preferably as close to overlapping each other as possible.

William Anderson

Who is the oldest character we know?

Brandon Sanderson

Frost is almost certainly the oldest by a small amount. After that, Hoid.

Questioner

I'm writing a fantasy book that's like D&D. Do you have any advice for me? I'm about 6000 words.

Brandon Sanderson

A lot of great science fiction and fantasy have come from roleplaying campaigns. Not just Dragonlance, but also the Malazan Book of the Fallen started as a roleplaying campaign. And you will find this happens time and time again. Do understand that the things that you guys experience in your roleplaying session that are really funny are probably not going to be funny on the page, because they're funny in the situation, so you have to work on making the characters all work on the page, not as they work in your-- together. Make sure everyone's on board for you lifting and borrowing the stuff for your story. And make sure you don't use any of the Wizards of the Coast trademark things. For instance, you can't use Beholder. That's a trademark thing. But you can use zombies, because zombies are in everything. So learn the difference there.

But just have fun with it. Your job right now, as a newer writer, is just to write and practice. And that practice will teach you how you want to approach your stories as you move forward. And the more you you do it, the better you'll get at it. And the more you'll know what you need in order to make it better. And that can start from anywhere. That can start from a D&D campaign. That can start from a silly song lyric you hear. It can start from fanfic. It doesn't matter where it starts. The chore you have is to practice it and learn what works on the page, as opposed to what works in person.

Tristan Gilmore

This is perhaps more of a Writing Excuses question, but at what point in the story do you intentionally finish "building up" and transition to reveals and answering the intrigue you've established? Or do these need to be intertwined to keep the novel from being a constant uphill/downhill of interest?

Brandon Sanderson

In answer to your second question first: yes, it is good to stagger these a bit. This is something I didn't understand as well when I was brand new into writing, in some of my early - particularly unpublished - books. The "Brandon avalanche" which people talk about that comes at the end of a book where all the threads are finally coming together and stuff, was just way too much in these early books, and what happened is you couldn't follow all the threads or give them time to actually have impact, because always another one was happening. And it ended up having kind of boring situations leading to too much excitement that you couldn't actually take time to reflect on anything that was happening. So staggering your reveals is a really good thing to practice. Even if you want to have an avalanche at the end like I have, staggering some of that, having some character climaxes happen at different parts, in different points in the story, just a really good idea.

But where do you start doing it? That's kind of the definition for me... like that transition... that moment act 2 into act 3, the moment right after where things have just turned south, is the moment where I start trying to have those reveals in most books. But again, I'm trying to stagger them, I'm trying to have mini-reveals. Particularly in a big epic fantasy, you want lots of ups and downs.

Arkm21ebr

If you could pick one character from the Cosmere to be a planeswalker, who do you think would cause the most chaos or have the most fun?

Brandon Sanderson

Most Chaos? Lift.

PatrickDiomedes (paraphrased)

I just remembered that someone asked about the whole movie deal thing, and Brandon gave a more thorough explanation.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

What happened is that DMG, which is a Chinese company, came to him first about The Emperor's Soul, because they wanted to make stuff that has more Asian characters. And they wanted to do it in Hollywood, because Hollywood's seriously lacking in representation of Asians. So he sold that to them first, and then they called him back a couple months later asking about the entire Cosmere. At that time, Mistborn was still optioned by another group, but Brandon sold all the other stuff, and they started on The Way of Kings right away. And then as soon as Mistborn became available they bought that up, so that they had the entire cosmere. And he said that The Way of Kings is ahead right now, but Mistborn will likely be first, because it'll be easier to produce and stuff.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Second - most difficult character interaction he's ever written.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Mat and someone else from WoT, didn't catch it because it's a bit noisy but apparently they're both liars.

Brandon Sanderson

Movie/Television Updates

Mistborn and Stormlight Films

These rights are held by DMG Entertainment, and they've been very good at working with me and showing me things. They have scripts for both Mistborn and The Way of Kings, which they are actively trying to make happen in Hollywood.

One way they're approaching this is to do a Stormlight VR experience, which we've talked about before. This is less about making a video game, and more about making something to show off to studios to kind of immerse them in the setting of the books. As I determined early on, this is an interesting but weird world, and having visuals (like the art in the books themselves) helps a lot with bringing people around to understanding.

They do plan to release the VR experience to fans on Steam, for those with VR headsets. It's not intended to be a full game, as I said, more a demo of the Shattered Plains—you'll get to personally experience the Shattered Plains from the novels and interact with the characters and creatures that inhabit them. We'll do some posts on it in coming months as it gears up to be released, and I've invited the developers to do some guest posts on my blog.

Regardless of what happens on the film and television front here, at the very least you have that to look forward to!

staircasewit

You’ve mentioned some of the characters who we are going to see throughout the Stormlight Archive series (Shallan, Dalinar, Szeth, Jasnah, etc.). However, I don’t remember seeing you comment on Wit. Are we going to see Wit (or plain ol’ Hoid) more throughout the series? Or less? (Hopefully more! :D)

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid has a large part of the story in the Stormlight Archive. You will be seeing much more of him. However, he will not get a 'book' of his own, most likely. He will get his own novels, just not among the Stormlight sequence.

Questioner

I was wondering if you meant to do the arms thing in the beginning of Mistborn with Sazed.

Brandon Sanderson

I did, I did. I feel kind of silly because it actually is a pun. And the entire Mistborn trilogy is therefore based on a pun. The first paragraph of the first chapter, like, the first epigraph. But you know, if you can't tell from me naming my character Wax and Wayne, that I have a slight problem with puns.

Brandon Sanderson

The train cars get swapped

I hope this will surprise a few people, but it's one of the more obvious twists I've had in my books. It's pretty well foreshadowed, and it's pretty much the only way this could play out, so I think the "inevitable" part of this twist is more powerful than the "surprising" part of it. That's all right for me, as I decided to give Miles viewpoints, which meant the "How is he doing it?" side of the mystery became less important to the story than his motivations.

That's part of what, to me, makes this book more of a "Brandon" book than a regular detective story. As I said in a previous annotation, I hope for this to be a fun page-turner, but it's still one of my books—which means that the worldbuilding and the characters are more important to me than the amazing mystery. (Which may not be all that amazing.)

Caitlin Shanly

Your characters often gain confidence from beg to end of a book. What inspired that trend of personal growth?

Brandon Sanderson

My own life! :)

Brandon Sanderson

PART ONE: WHEEL OF TIME BOOKS PUBLICATION TIMELINE

I posted earlier that Towers of Midnight is done, turned in, and ready for a November second release. I’m feeling pretty good (though a little frazzled) at managing to get it in on deadline, by the promised date I gave you all in the blog post I made regarding splitting the novels. I stand by what I said there. I’m not expanding the outline left to me; I’m telling the same story I would have, even if the book hadn’t been split. The order of chapters will be different in some cases, but nothing will be deleted or added.

Current projections are for the final book, A Memory of Light, to be about the length of the other two. (Around three hundred thousand words, or eight hundred pages in hardcover.) There are some who are hoping for it to be huge, the biggest in the series, but I will write it at the length it needs to be. I’ve finished two books, and have done two-thirds of the outline. So that gives a good indication that the final chunk will be the same length as the other two.

However, I do have to acknowledge that this is going to be the hardest chunk, for several reasons. The number of plots to be dealt with, the number of characters that need to be balanced, the sheer tactics and logistics of the Last Battle . . . there is a lot going on in this book, and it will be orders of magnitude more difficult than the previous two novels.

Brandon Sanderson

The magic systems for Elantris- the pitch to myself designing the world and magic systems was this kind of procedural-based, almost programing-based magic. Where in Elantris, you use these characters to program out a sequence of events that tells the power that's flowing through what to do.

What Shai is doing in this book is she carves a little seal. And the seal is very much like a little program, and she stamps it on something and uses that stamp to rewrite the history of the object. As long as the seal is there, the object thinks it has this other history. The example you see in the book is you know... an old dirty table that's not been cared for, she can write a seal for its history, she has to figure out what its history was first. And she can write out a seal that basically reprograms that past, so when she stamps it, it thinks it's been cared for all along and suddenly it gains this lacquer, it's beautiful, it's been well-cared for, because in that fake Forgery of the history, that's what happened to it. And that's what her magic does, which is why she's been hired to Forge a copy of the emperor's soul.

But, yes, the magic systems have the same root. And it's not just the Dor. I like the magics on a given planet to all have a consistent theme. And for Elantris they are these almost programming-like, very based on symbols and what-not. In Mistborn, it's based on the metals and the interactions of the metals.

Brandon Sanderson

Vivenna Goes with Vasher

I was always planning this ending for her. She's still got a lot of growing she can do as a character, and I think she'll make for a very interesting heroine in a sequel. She could never return to Idris and face her father; doing so would be returning to a lot of people who expect her to be like she was. But she can't stay with Siri either. She still hates Hallandren and just wants to be free of it—free where she can calm her fury and really explore who she is now that her life is no longer dominated by the need to go marry the God King.

Life has been very unfair to Vivenna. It's time for her to live for herself. Here we finally have the last reversal of the book. Siri has become the queen; Vivenna is running away from responsibility, out into the wilds. And it (hopefully) feels very natural for them to be in these roles.

Nadine

I found this on a blog posted July 2008. Does it have any relationship to reality?

...No matter your race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or belief system, you will find something to love in The Way of Kings. There were pirates, ninjas, monkeys, fireworks, grand journeys, infidels dragged through streets by dragons and a fair amount of buckles swashed. There were ladies romanced, men romanced, sheep romanced and one scene where even two mice get it on. And if you can forgive an inordinate amount of abuse aimed at Canadians, this just may be the book for you. Be forewarned, however, if you can't abide graphic depictions of sexual content that would make Laurell K. Hamilton blush and cover her naughty bits, you might want to skip this book...

...The way Brandon Sanderson breathes life into this story is inspirational. The characters, the storyline, the magic—seemingly woven (as only Brandon can) from sheer nothingness. One of my favorite parts of the book is where the Wizard Ooflar divides one rather simple system of magic into five complex subsets, each with its own arcane history and labyrinthine steps. Who would have thought the apprentice Pemberly could put an entire village to sleep by tapping out a quadrille in her clogs? Although it would seem implausible, somehow his magical system works, especially the dance-off. I also enjoyed the ten-day feast in section two, chapter 85. I don't know if I'll ever forget the scene in which we see King Horag the Midleth eating live grunthyean orbs. (gag) I loved this book and can't wait for the sequel...

Brandon Sanderson

Ha. These are some of the amusing fake reviews for Kings that readers have been posting on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon put up a page for this book years and years ago, when I got my first contract. Somehow, they heard I was working on a book called The Way of Kings, and jumped the gun in adding a page for it, even though I was still working on the book. (I've been planning, writing, and wrestling with this story for some ten years now.)

Anyway, readers noticed the page and began having fun with it. None of them have read the book, but that hasn't stopped them from reviewing it. There are even pictures of it, including photoshops of me holding a fake book. Look for it on Amazon. It's rather amusing.

Brandon Sanderson

Vin Versus the Inquisitors

Vin fights the Inquisitors, hoping to put herself in a situation where she can draw upon the mists. It's a reckless plan, but I hope it feels exactly like something Vin would do. She's tired of being manipulated; she knows the end is very near (less than a day away) and knows that she needs to do something. This is all she could come up with, and I think it's a good plan. (At least if you're Vin.) It's a final attempt to save the world or go out in a blaze, fighting down thirteen Inquisitors at once.

This is my favorite fight in the book. The previous ones are all too warlike. I prefer the beauty of a couple of Mistborn fighting in the rain and the mist, as opposed to the characters taking out hundreds of koloss. This fight between Vin and the Inquisitors is the kind of thing I developed Allomancy to do in the first place.

Questioner 1

[Warbreaker] ends on, you could totally write a second one. Is that in the works?

Brandon Sanderson

It is, but it's kind of a distant plan. It's kind of just more for fun. I wrote this-- I had already written Way of Kings, and I wrote this as a prequel to Way of Kings on a different world, and then it got published before Way of Kings got published. But the characters from this were already continuity in Way of Kings, so I just kept using them, because I figured it works out. Really, Warbreaker, I see it as Vasher's (and Nightblood, the sequel), the prequel, to where he came from, who was Kaladin's swordmaster in the first version of Way of Kings back when Kaladin was training to be a Shardbearer in the first book. Vasher was a major part of that, and Warbreaker was a flashback to where he'd come from.

Questioner 2

Vasher is Zahel, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, Vasher is Zahel from The Stormlight Archive. Who is still kind of the swordmaster, but he's no longer Kaladin's, it didn't work out that way. But he ends up as Renarin's instead.

Questioner

'inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

There's a lot of divisions in the lighteyes. The lighteyes are basically...there's as many of them as there are darkeyes and the lower ranks of lighteyes are basically peasants, like you would look at them and say, but they're not quite, they're like Roman citizens, not all the Roman citizens were wealthy, things like this. And so all of them, their lives would be fairly familiar to you. The higher you go on the rankings, the less likely they are to care for their own children.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

You'll see a very young child in the next book and I think at least one baby. But it's not a baby of relevance to any of the main characters.