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Thadamin

How important are bonds like the Nahel Bond and a seon bond in the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

I'd say very important.

Thadamin

Is this kind of bond relatively common or is what seons, spren, and Nightblood do little more rare among Splinters. I'm specifically talking about the act of making bonds not a giving of magic powers really, that appearing to be function of Roshar. Also regarding your post about Stormlight 3 I am personally okay with 2000 pages if need be so make the chapters as long as you want.:)

Brandon Sanderson

The bonding is basically the same mechanic, regardless of the world, just with different flavoring. Roshar isn't the only place where the bond gives powers; it's a matter of what's stuffed into the soul, and how.

Brandon Sanderson

Vivenna and Siri Reunite; Vasher Shows Off His Returned Breath

I believe that this is the first time in the book that Vivenna and Siri talk to each other. (Weird, eh?) I knew I couldn't make their reunion very effusive, since they're both Idrians, and Siri has learned to control herself. Plus, the situation is very tense. (And beyond that, despite Vivenna's coming to rescue her sister, the two were never terribly close. They were sisters, but separated by five years or so.)

This chapter focuses on other things, primarily the changes in the God King's personality and the revelations about Vasher. For the first, I hope they are plausible. Remember, the God King has grown a lot with Siri's help. Beyond that, he's been trained to look regal and act like a king, even if he's not had any practice talking like one. I think he works well here, projecting more confidence and nobility than he really feels, speaking in ways that don't make him sound too stupid, yet still betraying an innocence.

The bigger surprise is Vasher's revelation about his nature. I almost didn't put this in the book, instead intending to hint at it and save it for the second book. The reason for this is that I knew it would be confusing.

The big question is, if Vasher is Returned, why can he give away his Breaths and Awaken things without killing himself?

The answer is simple, in many ways, but I'm not sure if I have the groundwork for it properly laid in the book. (Which is why I hesitated in explaining it.) Remember when Denth said that Awakening was all or nothing? Well, he lied. (I think you've figured this out now.) A very skilled Awakener can give away only part of their Breath. It depends on their Command visualizations. So Vasher needs to always give away everything except for that one Returned Breath that keeps him alive. As long as he has that one Breath (which he's learned to suppress and hide), he can stay alive.

Rhandric

How many worldhoppers have we seen?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I haven't kept track, you've seen quite a few. There's one from Mistborn, did you catch him? I don't think people have really picked out the Terriswoman yet, who makes her way into them, but they're mostly not supposed to be noticeable yet, until you get to know them as characters and you look back and be like "oh that was that person."

Rhandric

Is it the Terriswoman I think it is?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't know which Terriswoman you think it is.

Rhandric

Tindwyl?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

WeiryWriter

Hemalurgic spikes lose power unless they are in a person’s body (or immersed in blood), does that body need to be living, or would a corpse suffice? If so, at what point in the decomposition process would the spikes cease to be protected? When they are no longer encased in flesh, before, after?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't put a specific number or date on it, but I'd say as long as the blood itself would be viable if moved to a living body, it will work.

Patrick

Over your previous books you've developed a reputation as the 'magic system guy'. Was it therefore a deliberate move to hold back on the magic in The Way of Kings, at least compared to your earlier books?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it was. That's a very astute question. I've written a blog post that I'm not satisfied with, but that I'll probably be revising and posting very soon, that is going to talk about this. When I finished the Mistborn trilogy and Warbreaker, I felt that there were a few things that were becoming Brandon clichés that I needed to deal with. I don't mind being known as the magic system guy. But when I become known ONLY as the magic system guy, that worries me. It isn't that I sat down with this series and said, well, I'm gonna show them, I'm not going to do a magic system. But when I planned this series, it was not appropriate for me to shoehorn in a lot of the magic system in book one. Though my agent suggested that I do just that. He said, look, this is what you're known for, this is what people read you for; if you don't have this it's going to be glaringly obvious. My response was that I would hope that story and character are what carries a book, not any sort of gimmick—well, gimmick is the wrong word.

Something that I pondered and wrote about a lot—just to myself—is that Mistborn was postmodern fantasy. If you look at the trilogy, in each of those books I intentionally took one aspect of the hero's journey and played with it, turned it on its head, and tried very hard to look at it postmodernly, in which I as a writer was aware of the tropes of the genre while writing and expected readers to be aware of them, to be able to grasp the full fun of what I was doing. And that worried me—that was fun with Mistborn, but I didn't want to become known as the postmodern fantasy guy, because inherently you have to rely on the genre conventions in order to tell your story—even if you're not exploiting them in the same way, you're still exploiting them.

For that reason, I didn't want to write The Way of Kings as a postmodern fantasy. Or in other words, I didn't want to change it into one. And I also didn't want to change it into a book that became only about the magic, or at least not to the extent that Warbreaker was. I like Warbreaker; I think it turned out wonderfully. But I wanted to use the magic in this book as an accent. Personally, I think it's still as full of magic as the others, but the magic is happening much more behind the scenes, such as with the spren I've talked about in other interviews, which are all about the magic. We haven't mentioned Shardplate and Shardblades, but those are a very powerful and important part of the magic system, and a more important part of the world. I did intentionally include Szeth's scenes doing what he does with the Lashings to show that there was this magic in the world, but it just wasn't right for this book for that to be the focus. I do wonder what people will say about that. I wonder if that will annoy people who read the book. But again, this is its own book, its own series, and in the end I decided that the book would be as the story demanded, not be what whatever a Brandon Sanderson book should be. As a writer, that's the sort of trap that I don't want to fall into.

thegatorgirl00

What made you decide to release chapters in advance for Skyward and Oathbringer? I personally don't like reading books in this format and haven't for either novel since it's harder for me to get sucked into and lose myself in the story when it's split up, so I'm wondering what gave you the idea for it.

Brandon Sanderson

I've always disliked doing summaries of my books--I feel that I'm not nearly as good at it as I am at just writing them. My instinct going back to when I began trying to break in was that if I could skip the summary and just get someone reading the story, it would be more efficient.

The releases done this way are, hopefully, to get people talking about the book. I realize that a lot of readers who like my work are just going to wait and read the book when it comes out, but (particularly with Oathbringer) releasing chapters like this was a good way to get some conversations about it started.

Eric Culver

How do you feel about fans naming their kids after your characters? My wife knows two people with kids named Kaladin?

Brandon Sanderson

I find it a mark of great respect and honor that people are naming kids after my characters. It also means that, maybe, some of my names aren't terrible. My very first book, Elantris, when I published it. Elantris was the book where I kind of went out there with my linguistics. And several of the reviewers noticed. They were like, "These names are just so hard to say and so weird. Sanderson needs to calm down on the naming!" So, when people name their kids after characters then I'm like, "Oh, good. At least they're not so weird that people won't name their kids after them."

It's really cool. I remember when I met my first Rand, my first Perrin, which both happened before I was working on The Wheel of Time. It's always been really cool to me. I like it. I like meeting Arwens. I wish that fantasy names were a little more frequent in our society. I think that they're very cool.

So, it's awesome. I will try to live up to the respect you have shown me by naming children after my characters.

Zach G

Were the Alethi made by some creator-figure and given the Thrill deliberately?

Brandon Sanderson

Roshar was inhabited before Honor and Cultivation arrived. The Thrill did not exist then.

Zach G

So it's a response to the power of one of or both of them?

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't say that... :)

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty

Elend is already progressing nicely as a king. There's a lot more time passing in here than I'm showing–lots of training and lessons. One of my worries is that Elend will develop too quickly. However, considering the situation he's in, I suspect that he knows he has to either adapt quickly or be destroyed. A few tense months can really change a person a lot.

Ironeyes

What kind of qualities attract an inkspren?

Brandon Sanderson

Inkspren do not like how variable humans are. It’s a thing out of honor, and they like people who are logical and willing to think about their lives and not react as much by instinct.

They are looking more - the scholar is the perfect example, but a soldier who is very thoughtful and is not just rushing into battle could be chosen as well.

Oudeis16

If Bob the Awakener Awakened fifty straw men to dance around, then died, then Returned as FormerBob the Appropriately Named, would FormerBob be able to reclaim the Breath from the straw men in the normal fashion (once he learned the "Your Breath to Mine" Command)?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. He has enough of his original Identity, and the spiritual connection would remain.

sonofstannis

What if he instead were reincarnated as a lifeless? Is there a way he could reclaim it then?

Brandon Sanderson

Lifeless have someone else's investiture replacing their own. (As opposed to Returned, who are augmented.) Depends on how much of them is left, and if they can achieve sapience again, but I'd say this is unlikely.

WeiryWriter

What if the Lifeless is Awakened with their own Breath? (i.e. they gave it away right before they died and the person they gave it to then used it in the Awakening)

Brandon Sanderson

This has happened already in the world, and it does help.

-Nayrb

Did this happen "on screen"?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

When a Shard changes hands, does the god-metal change names and/or properties?

Brandon Sanderson

It can. It doesn't as a rule.

Questioner

So it'll still be raysium?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Well, the name, you would change the name, probably. But it shouldn't necessarily do anything different. The name that it's given is cultural. So you could continue to call it that. People might call it that. I think people in-world would call it something else. But depends on the person.

Questioner

If something is heavily Invested, it's harder for a Shardblade to go through it, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Kind of. It depends on the kind of Investiture and things that are going on. But yes. If you want to block a Shardblade... Like a metalmind would be a good thing to use to fight a Shardblade.

Questioner

A person with a lot of Breath, like the God-King, would you be able to chop them with a Shardblade or no?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to get very tricky on that, so I'll RAFO that for now. Let's just say that there are things. For instance, a Shardblade excising someone who's been Hemalurgically spiked is a theoretical possibility. 

Questioner

So you mentioned earlier that you couldn't write and code at the same time because it used the same part of your brain. Do you have any advice for coders who may also want to write?

Brandon Sanderson

I would just say "separate it". Give yourself a few hours in-between. I don't feel that I personally could code all day, write during my lunch break, code all day, or something like that. But I probably could get up in the morning, do a little bit of writing, then go to work, code all day, something like that or come home, take two hours to play with the family and things like that. You've got to have time for that reservoir, does that make sense, inside of you. I think trying to go right into it might be a mistake. But it's going to be very different based on your own writing styles. Some people it might work for. You might like-- still in the mood. Does that make sense?

unknown

Hey Brandon! If you're still answering these...what would happen if a Surgebinder absorbed Voidlight? (Or whatever's powering the Everstorm)

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. (Sorry.)

Argent

Is Voidlight a good name for it? We've been playing with the words "void" and "odium", stitching them together into Voidlight, Voids (as opposed to Surges), Voidspren, Odiumspren, etc. Are any of those accurate?

Brandon Sanderson

It may not be accurate, but it is a valid conjecture. Afraid I won't say more right now.

Matt

Were you tempted to have Kaladin be taken by Odium?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I was tempted.

Matt

What is it the held you back from doing that?

Brandon Sanderson

Kaladin, if I were going to do it, I would have done it with Dalinar. The reason being that Kaladin as a theme represents his triumph over the darker parts of his mind. And Dalinar represents that too, but he also represents in some ways, succumbing to those. Like those are both themes for Dalinar, and for Kaladin it just would not ever have worked--I don't think--reasonably well. And beyond that, Kaladin is not scary as a villain, because Kaladin's strength comes from the people he's trying to protect. Kaladin's really scary to face when he thinks you're going after somebody he's trying to keep safe, that is when Kaladin is dangerous. Or as you saw in Rhythm of War, when you've gone too far, right? But Kaladin as an overarching villain, I don't think would be scary. Dalinar would be; Dalinar would be terrifying in that situation, but I don't think it would just add very much. If I were going to have had one of them, it would have been Dalinar.

Aradanftw

Let's say you wanted to be the Mistborn equivalent of a Surgebinder, having all ten Surges, would the best way to do that to bond at least five Honorblades or can you bond more than one spren?

Brandon Sanderson

You could bond five Honorblades. That'd be the easiest way by far. Because convincing multiple spren to bond you is going to be really tough, so by far the easiest way is just to get... you'd actually need all ten Honor... No, you'd need five Honorblades for the five... Yeah.

Aradanftw

You'd have to get the right ones.

Brandon Sanderson

You'd have to get the right ones and then you'd have all ten. 

Aradanftw

And then, there's nothing wrong with bonding five individual Blades? You don't have to have five arms?

Brandon Sanderson

You do not have to have five arms. You could bond five Blades if you wanted to.

Aradanftw

Really cool. Thank you.

Brandon Sanderson

Particularly Honorblades. 

Aradanftw

They're special.

Brandon Sanderson

Mhm.

MoriWillow

So I was looking back through the scene where Shallan and gang is hunting the Midnight Essence and they come across that room covered in art, and I noticed something.

Shallan says there are murals that depict 10 kinds of spren and guesses they're for each Order. There's just one small issue. There's 12 Radiant spren. The Bondsmiths have 3 unique spren.

The passage in question with the relevant portion bolded.

Gorgeous, intricate pictures of the Heralds---made of thousands of tiles---adorned the ceiling, each in a circular panel.

The art on the walls was more enigmatic. A solitary figure hovering above the ground before a large blue disc, arms stretched to the side as if to embrace it. Depictions of the Almighty in his traditional form as a cloud bursting with energy and light. A woman in the shape of a tree, hands spreading toward the sky and becoming branches. Who would have thought to find pagan symbols in the home of the Knights Radiant?

Other murals depicted shapes that reminded her of Pattern, windspren...ten kinds of spren. One for each Order?

So what do y'all think? Is there a representation of just one of the Bondsmith spren? Is it an abstract representstion of the idea of a Bondsmith spren? Is this a writing error and there was supposed to be 9, with the glowing cloud, tree woman, and figure in front of a circle intended to be the Bondsmith spren? Perhaps the Bondsmiths were supposed to be unrepresented?

Brandon Sanderson

If you were to see this picture, the painting of the three spren to make Bondsmiths were made to make it visually clear they're the same kind of spren--and they KIND OF are.

The three you note above are not depicting the three spren of the Bondsmiths. One is depicting a perpendicularity, and the other two depicting Honor and Cultivation. These aren't the Bondsmith spren, but distinct and separate pieces of art.

Brandon Sanderson

Bondsmith

I will unite

Bondsmith oaths are focused on unity, unification, and bringing others together. However, this is a loose theme, as there are so few Bondsmiths—and the three sources of their powers are so different in personality—that the oaths can end up taking a variety of different shapes, depending on the situation.

Anyone can become a Bondsmith, subject to persuading one of the three spren who grant Bondsmith powers. Those powers tend to work differently for one Bondsmith than another, and even those Surges they share with other Orders tend to work differently for Bondsmiths.

The Bondsmiths are unusual in that there are never more than three full members. Historically, they worked to resolve disputes and help set up functioning governments. Even though there can only be three full members, there were times that some Bondsmiths did take squires. Beyond that, many of the retinues that protected the Bondsmiths were considered members of the Order–going so far as to swear oaths, even though they didn’t have a spren and never would. Some even called this the most pure form of being a Radiant, because these were oaths sworn not in the name of gaining powers, but simply for the good of the oaths themselves.

Bondsmiths are generally the heart and soul of the Radiants, the most protected and highly regarded of the Orders, capable of doing incredible things with the nature of oaths, bonds, and power. The Order, including the aforementioned squires and attendants, tends to attract the peacemakers of the world, those who want to bring people together rather than divide them.

Questioner

At the end of Oathbringer, or near the end, Kaladin is talking to Syl about not getting Shallan or whatever, and he says that she really just reminded him of someone, who is it that she reminded him of?

Brandon Sanderson

She reminded him of Tien, his brother, because his brother was a burgeoning Lightweaver, and Lightweavers, you'll notice, when they're around someone, that person starts to act a little bit more like a little bit of their best self. There's a bit of, also, counteraction to feelings of darkness and despair, it's just a natural Lightweaver sort of thing. And so, part of what Kaladin was drawing from Shallan was that feeling. I think it could've totally become love. And he's now cutting that off, he's saying it couldn't at all have become-- it could have. But that was part of what was drawing him in.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eighteen

Vindication

I didn't really intend Ranette to become a kind of "Q" figure, providing Wax with a cool gun. I had written into the outline (once I added her) that he got a new Sterrion from her.

However, I wanted some more quirk to her character. Beyond that, I felt that one of the things this book should do is show the ways that Allomancy—and dealing with Allomancers—has entered the common consciousness of the world. It makes sense to build guns to deal with them, just as now we build guns specifically to deal with armor, or specific situations a combatant might find themselves in.

I felt that I wanted to integrate the Metallic Arts more into real society. You may notice, for instance, that I worked hard in this book to work Allomancy and metallurgy into the way that people speak. The metaphors they use, the way they see the world. A person who is up to no good is a "bad alloy." That sort of thing.

It would be possible to overdo this, of course, but I feel—looking back objectively at the original trilogy—that I didn't do enough of it. That's okay, because in the original trilogy Allomancy was something that you kept hidden, and the common people didn't know much about it. Feruchemy was an underground art, and only the Inquisitors knew of Hemalurgy.

Now however, at least two of the three are very common in society. I wanted to account for that. Building Vindication, the special Allomancer's gun, was a way to integrate the two halves of this book—the historical western and the fantasy.

Isaac Stewart

We're announcing tonight that the artist for Secret Project number three is Aliya Chen. She is currently a visual development artist and illustrator in the animation industry, working for studios such as Netflix and Riot Games. She's a long-time fan of science fiction and fantasy. Stormlight is her all-time favorite series for years. She says it's such a huge honor to be working with Brandon and Dragonsteel.

Kai Ellie

If you bonded a spren, what do you think its personality would be like?

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, I have no idea. I like it when spren contrast. So it would probably be hyper-emotional, would be my guess. 'Cause it would make for better storytelling that way.

Oversleep

Does Nazh want his knife back, the one he gave to Kelsier?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, he would want it back but it's not like the flute. It's not something that was super super important to the person who gave it away. So he would like his knife back eventually,  but you know, nothing important.

Brandon Sanderson

My second book was called Star's End. I've looked back at Star's End; it is not good. But it is the first place where it's like, "Hey, maybe this guy could be good, someday." I was really interested in supernovas at the time; I'd been researching them, I'd taken an astronomy class, I'm like, "I'm gonna write a story about a research station at the edge of a star that's about to go nova." And the idea is that they're gonna try to capture the energy. They're gonna do some weird Dyson sphere thing where they're just gonna try to get all the energy out of a supernova. That was the premise. And then there's a murder mystery that happens on the station that's monitoring this. And the main character is somebody who's sent to take over the station. He gets there, there's a murder, and he's like, "I've gotta figure out what's going on with this." So murder mystery on a space station.

It does do some weird things. Kaz, from the Alcatraz books, is a transplant from this. He showed up first in Star's End. And there is an entity that lives outside of time that is contacting the main character, a very strange spren-like being way before the sprens were happening, that doesn't really belong in the story. But I wanted a cool alien. It doesn't really fit. So the idea: this creature lives outside of time and space and can influence probability very slightly inside the realm where time and space matters. And so, has influence, so random collections of things have happened that leave messages. So you communicate with this thing by taking a panel off, and you're fixing something, and you look, and the panel, accidentally some words have been scratched in there, that the person scratching them didn't know why they were scratching. Or it's just random happenstance; it's a message from this being outside of time and space.

Questioner (paraphrased)

I've lost track of the number of magical systems that you have created and I was just wondering if you could say a little bit about your process of creating magical systems.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

What I'm looking for is something interesting. It is kind of hard to explian, because to create a magic system, I've read a lot of fantasy, and personally I feel that one of my duties is to push the genre in different directions. There was a period where our worldbuilding was not as extensive as it should be. Stuck as we were for a while, it felt like the genre hit a bit of a rut, and I wanted to push it in different directions. The screwy magic systems I create are part of that. I feel excited about them, it's something I feel ?? Google Sanderson's First Law.

Questioner

How's Skyward Three going?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going really well. I am loving writing Skyward Three. It is really fun to have a change of pace, to do a single viewpoint narrative in first person after working on the Stormlight Archive for so long. Epic fantasy is my first love. I really enjoy working on them. But by the time I'm done working with a Stormlight book, I need a change of pace, which is how my whole writing life is built around, giving me those changes of pace. And Skyward is the perfect break from Stormlight. It was designed that way. Just writing from Spensa's viewpoint is a blast, and it's fun. 

And I designed Skyward Three to be a little bit more of a popcorn adventure than Skyward Two was (and then Skyward Four will be), just 'cause I knew I would need that after Stormlight Three. So if you're looking forward to a fun adventure fiction that does deal with Spensa's character arc in ways that are still meaningful, but most of the story is just me having fun, then look forward to Skyward Three.

Questioner

Are Hemalurgic spikes fabrials? Is a body that has been spiked a fabrial? Are koloss and kandra also something similar?

Brandon Sanderson

No, actually.

Fabrial means specifically a bit of Investiture that has been trapped by a gemstone and then modified to do something else. Hemalurgy is its own thing--though there is a slight similarity. In most Hemalurgy, Investiture keyed to the Identity of someone (a bit of a soul) is ripped off, and then magically grafted onto someone else's soul. Not the same, though I can see the confusion.

Koloss and kandra are similar, though in this case, the soul is mostly just being distorted by using an Invested spike. In the cosmere, the body will attempt to match the soul, and so a twisted soul (Spiritual aspect of a person) can have profound effects on both mind and body.

theFinisher4Ever

Are all wind spren really just unbonded honor spren?

Brandon Sanderson

No, they are cousins to one another, but not exactly the same thing.

FeatherWriter

The Navani and Raboniel storyline was one of my favorites in Rhythm of War, and I'm really sad we're probably not gonna get any more Raboniel for now?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that's an anti-Investiture death, so yeah. She's gone, I'm sorry.

FeatherWriter (paraphrased)

Fingers crossed maybe Herald's flashbacks we might see a little more [Raboniel]? Maybe my favorite new character in Stormlight that we've had introduced later on.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah, right you can see her in Herald flashbacks, definitely as somebody you can see back then.

Well the other thing I wanted to do with this book, was really get some Fused to show their viewpoints on life, because it's not something I've really been able to do yet. I've had her waiting in the wings in order to - basically as Rayse/Odium became, in my mind, less of a threat because Dalinar had just completely defeated him. I also I needed a more personal antagonist for this book, that we could approach in a different way. Rayse is the unknowable evil, I wanted the knowable antagonist. Not even necessarily evil, evil-ish in Raboniel. I was really looking forward to be able to write her, and one of the decisions by being able to make Navani a main character, by saying "Brandon I'm gonna let you do this" to myself. Let me pull off that dynamic between them, that was extremely fulfilling to write.

Kaimipono

If Sazed is the Hero of Ages, then who is the Announcer?

Brandon Sanderson

The Announcer was a fabrication of Ruin intended to reinforce the person HE wanted to be the Hero.

atrossin

Are dark blue eyes considered dark eyes or light eyes? Are dark eyes just brown or are they any colour but shades different?

Brandon Sanderson

A darkeyed person can have many shades of dark eyes. (I believe we've mentioned some few in the books.) So someone with dark blue eyes is a darkeyes.

b4dave

Why are they called Shardblades/Shardplate? Is it because they are a splinter of the the Shard Honor, or is there something more to them than that?

Brandon Sanderson

You are on the right track. 

Hoidonalsium

Is the sapphire in the white-gold blade specifically for Jezrien?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, yes.

Hoidonalsium

Do the gems swap out, or are there different weapons? 

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that one.

Hoidonalsium

Are they Dawnshards? Or blades of Odium, like Honorblades?

Brandon Sanderson

Those are not Dawnshards. Good question.

mathota123

With Cosmere movies looking more and more like a reality, are there any other types of media you would like to see your works in? Personally I feel Mistborn would translate very well into an anime.

Brandon Sanderson

I'd investigate that if it were an actual possibility, but the chances of it happening are basically zero. Anime companies are not regularly buying western books for adaptation--aside from the few by Miazaki's company (which I'm not going to try to spell because I can never remember how the vowels go.) I would of course say yes to them, were the chance to arise. But an anime based on my books is not something I've ever seen the faintest, tiniest nibble on from any Japanese company.

(Generally, western fantasy novels do not sell well in Japan; they seem to prefer science fiction in prose form, at least from America.)

Oversleep

How about western animation? For example, Avatar: The Last Airbender or Legend Of Korra? I feel Stormlight would do very well animated, since all the visual problems go away. And Legend Of Korra feels very much like Second Era Mistborn.

Brandon Sanderson

The problem is that these, though great, are still pitched as children's programming. I know there are all kinds of arguments with that, but the reality is that the marketing people control things like this, and the chances are really, really slim.

asmodeus

In Words of Radiance, Hoid says that there's only one person as old as him around, and seems to be referring to Cultivation's vessel. In Rhythm of War, he mentions there's a dragon on Roshar.

Are these two individuals the same, or are they separate?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. These two are the same.

r0ax_

How do you research the physics elements of your books? How much would you say you later the laws of physics, and how much do you respect them?

Specifically wondering about Skyward?

Brandon Sanderson

I, these days, am able to cheat on this a little bit, because I know I have a really good support structure of people who have actually studied physics, rather than myself, where I have flirted with studying physics. I am not a scientist, but I love pop science, if that makes sense. I'm the person who loves to read a book about someone doing science, but when I was a chemistry major in college, the actual physical labor of running experiments was mind-numbingly boring to me. And so I like to know. I like to know what rules I'm breaking, and how to play with them. But these days, I'm really able to trust my basic pop science studies. So, I'm not going to go read seven textbooks on physics. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna go to YouTube and say, "All right. What does it actually look like for someone to pull X number of g's." And I will watch those videos. (There's actually some really good ones on YouTube about that, specifically.) I'm going to go read blog posts, because our internet is so great, from pilots talking about their experiences. That's what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for what the physicist says happens. I'm looking for: how does a pilot describe it, and how is it presented for a layman.

And then, I am going to do my best and find experts to read the book for me and tell me where I'm wrong. I often say that you can get yourself most of the where there in research as an author with a minimal amount of time. You just need to find an expert, who spent all the extra time that it takes to become a true expert, to read your book and tell you where you're wrong. Preferably, a couple of people, because it turns out people in any profession disagree with one another greatly on some points, and it's good to know which points those are.

So, that's literally what I did for Skyward. YouTube videos, firsthand accounts, and a couple of pop culture essays. Stuff that's only, like, two to five thousand words long, about what the experience feels like and why it's working like it's working. Followed by getting some physicists and some fighter pilots both to read my early draft and tell me what I was doing wrong.

How much do I try? Sanderson's Zeroeth Law says "always err on the side of what's awesome." What this means for me, realistically, is: I want to tell a good story. And telling a good story takes precedent over basically anything else. That means that I don't want to break laws for physics for no reason, and I want to know when I'm breaking laws of physics. But I am going to find a cheat that lets me tell the story the way I want to tell it, if there becomes a conflict. The most famous one for me of this is the redshift that would happen when you make time bubbles in Era 2 of Mistborn. When I was working on this and researching it and be like "what would actually happen," turns out that a lot of the research I was reading said that you would redshift the light, and you would really have a chance of irradiating everybody outside or inside the bubble, depending. And I just had to say, "You know what? I've gotta come up with a law in the magic system that fixes this and makes it not happen. Because otherwise, I just can't do the magic, right?" That was good for me to know, but it's also a place where I just decided to cheat. And we can, as fantasy authors, cheat.

Ghero6

How unique are individual Breaths? Would collecting 100 Breaths from criminals and scumbags affect your personality in any way? Or collecting 100 Breaths from generous, charitable people?

Brandon Sanderson

I intended them to not be terribly individual. Breaths do bring some things along with them, but for the most part I wanted them to be a step removed from that

Questioner

So, I was wondering, as a dyslexic, when you were designing Thaylen names, was that intentionally a massive practical joke on your part?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Though I will admit, when I was designing Thaylen names, I had a little bit of Welsh going on, and things like that. Now, one of my good friends, actually, the person this book is dedicated to, Alan Layton, is dyslexic. He was one of the people I brainstormed Stormlight with, but he listens to them all on audio. It's more a practical joke on the people who read the audiobooks, because I don't know how they read those names sometimes. But they also have to do Rock's name, right? Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor. I make them do stuff like that.

Questioner

Do you update your own website? [...] I was wondering because you’re [...]

Brandon Sanderson

If it’s in my voice, then I wrote it. Uh… Anyone who updates-- Like you go sometimes [wording?] say “Assistant Adam here, here is something Brandon told me…” So if you hear an “I”, it is me. If it’s not an “I”-- it’s in third person or something-- then it’s one of my assistants.

Nanotyrann

Kaladin's new occupation raised a discussion about the use of shardscalpels against tumors in Daniel's Discord, can you clarify what happens with a tumor when it is stabbed with a shard?

Brandon Sanderson

With training, it could be made to cut out a tumor--but that wouldn't be the natural result.

Cosmere surgery stuff is going to be...odd, at least on the magical side. How the person views themselves and the disease could influence things in interesting ways.

Questioner

Something personal for you, with all of your success, you talk about having a group over near Dubai. What do you do to keep your head to fit in this room?

Brandon Sanderson

What do I do to keep my head to fit in this room. How do I keep my ego in check? Yeah. Changing diapers helps. *laughter* Last one is potty-training though so that won't last much longer. What else? Well having my children be like-- I say I write books and they go "Daddy writes books. I write books too" and then go and write one "You should use this one". They're very-- So children and family are very useful for that.

On the other thing that helps, number 1 you assume my ego wasn't enormous to start with, which it kind of was, if you talk to my friends. But really the nice thing is being a writer is not like being a movie star or a musician. What people love-- And granted they are very appreciative of me. But what they love are the characters in the books, they bond with the books. And that gives me this kind of layer where we are both like, the reader and me, are both participants in this, where we can put our arms around the other's shoulders and go "Look at that". Because the reader imagines in their head, I kind of get it 90% there and the reader does the rest. And so you guys are like part of it, right? And this just creates a nice relationship and keeps me grounded I think. But then again maybe I was never grounded so--

Questioner

Of all the characters that you've written, which one do you think is the most like you, and is there one you want to be like?

Brandon Sanderson

Understand that there are none that are specifically "most like me." There's a piece of me in every one of them, it's been very hard for me to determine. If I had one that I think the best of is probably Sazed, maybe Dalinar. But I sure wouldn't mind being as clever as some of them are. You laugh, because, like, "You wrote them, Brandon." *laughter* The thing about being clever-- and I have some clever friends, I lived with a a guy named Ken Jennings for many years in college, and his brother's just as smart as him, and our mutual friend Earl, they were all on Quiz Bowl in college together, and he [Ken] won the Jeopardy thing, like 80 in a row. And Ken, and people like this, what really makes them smart is the speed of thought. They just snap off a retort, just like that, and you get them together, it's this weird thing, where, like, spacetime seems to warp around them and they start one-upping each other with references and cultural jokes and things like that, and you just step back, and, like, they're their own power source. Of random 80's inside jokes just going at each other. And that's what really makes someone witty, is the ability to pop it off. That's not smart, that's witty, in a book. Now they're also very smart. But in a book, you can emulate that, by giving yourself three hours to think of what the perfect comeback, and then writing it in the book. And they just came up with it, and everyone thinks you're brilliant, when you're just habitually that person who's like, "That would have been smart! That's what I should have said!"

Djoic

You previously confirmed Kaladin has a depression. What about other two characters? Does Shallan has split personality disorder? And Dalinar has PTSD?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't know that I'd say Shallan has straight up DID--and that is a controversial topic even under the more current terminology. More, Shallan is certainly disassociating herself, but the result is something I consider very individual to her. (Unlike Kaladin's fairly textbook chemical depression.)

Dalinar has had some PTSD, though you'll see more of the traditional symptoms in Kaladin, and is a recovering alcoholic--and a few other things.

Orang3dragon612

Looking at the Future Mistborn Trilogy, what role will the "gods" play in that? The "gods" played a massive role in the original series, being a main character. However, seeing how the Mistborns worlds god is no longer a destructive force, what will be the new threat to their world? Themselves, the seventeenth shard, or more likely, Odium himself? 

Brandon Sanderson

The current Wax/Wayne books will be smaller-scale Man vs Man type stories. The second trilogy will deal with something larger, but giving away too much now would be to reveal my hand.

Jeremy (paraphrased)

Is the order of the Ideals fixed? E.g. does Kaladin have to say the Windrunner Ideals in a specific order, or are they situation-specific?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, the sequence is fixed. The oaths for each order are essentially a progression of understanding of the kind of person that each Order of Knights Radiant is trying to produce. The specific wording of each Ideal is not fixed, but the overall idea of each Ideal, and the order in which they are spoken, is.

Brandon Sanderson

As Elantris was getting published, I sat down and did an outline for the Mistborn trilogy (which I expanded to nine books in the middle of that outline" and said, "What if I made this backbone series to the cosmere?" (As I was then kind of officially calling it in my head.) I went to my editor, I pitched it; I talked about Adonalsium, this god who was Shattered long ago, and sixteen individuals took up pieces of that god, the Intents of the god. Like that god's Honor, or that god's sense of entropy (which was called Ruin) or things like this, and then went out into the cosmere and were kind of ruling over these planets, or involved in these planets, or sometimes just lightly touching these planets. The sixteen Shards of Adonalsium, as we call them.

Questioner

I was wondering if you could talk a little about expletives and blasphemy?

Brandon Sanderson

*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.

Tehdren

For instance, a person's spiritual component knows how old they are.

Wow. Has this been talked about before? This kind of seems like a big tidbit. Now we have some idea of how Hoid changes his age?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't said if this is a method Hoid uses or not, but it's part of the reason the Lord Ruler turned to dust when he lost his metalminds. (His body tried to match the age his spirit said he was.)

Phantine

If they somehow killed the Lord Ruler in a conventional manner, would he still have turned to dust?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. The metalminds would have stopped being tapped, and the spirit of the matter would probably still have had this strange effect. Not it didn't happen to the bodies of the shard vessels who died.

Phantine

Would koloss spikes turn off when they die too, so dead ones shrivel up like raisins?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgy changes the spirit. So not necessarily.

Daily Dragon

The light-hearted banter in your recent standalone Mistborn book, The Alloy of Law, is an unexpected yet delightful change from the more serious tone of the original trilogy. Why did you decide to make such an abrupt shift? Will we get to read more about Waxillium and Wayne?

Brandon Sanderson

This was quite conscious on my part. One of the reasons I ended up writing The Alloy of Law as I did is because I personally wanted something to balance The Stormlight Archive, which is going to be more serious and have a tone more like the original Mistborn trilogy. I'm planning a five-book sequence to start off The Stormlight Archive, so I wanted something to go between those books that was faster paced, a little more lighthearted, and more focused.

I love The Stormlight Archive—it's what I think will be the defining work of my career, but that said, sometimes you want a bag of potato chips instead of a steak. Sometimes you want to write that, and sometimes you want to read that. I knew not all readers would want to go along with me at the start on such a big, long series; they may want to wait until it's finished. So I wanted to be releasing smaller, more focused and more simply fun books in between, both for my own interest and for my readers. And I will keep doing this; there will be more Wax and Wayne books in the future, spaced among my bigger epics.