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Brandon Sanderson

The Origins of Siri and Vivenna

Back around the year 2000 or 2001 I started writing a book called Mythwalker. It was an epic fantasy novel, an attempt to go back to basics in the genre. I'd tried several genre-busting epics (one of which was Elantris) that focused on heroes who weren't quite the standards of the genre. I avoided peasant boys, questing knights, or mysterious wizards. Instead I wrote books about a man thrown into a leper colony, or an evil missionary, or things like that.

I didn't sell any of those books. (At least, not at first.) I was feeling discouraged, so I decided to write a book about a more standard fantasy character. A peasant boy who couldn't do anything right, and who got caught up in something larger than himself and inherited an extremely powerful magic.

It was boring.

I just couldn't write it. I ended up stopping about halfway through—it's the only book of mine that I never finished writing. It sits on my hard drive, not even spellchecked, I think, half finished like a skyscraper whose builder ran out of funds.

One of the great things about Mythwalker, however, was one of the subplots—about a pair of cousins named Siri and Vivenna. They switched places because of a mix-up, and the wrong one ended up marrying the emperor.

My alpha readers really connected with this storyline. After I abandoned the project, I thought about what was successful about that aspect of the novel. In the end, I decided it was just the characters. They worked. This is odd because, in a way, they were archetypes themselves.

The story of the two princesses, along with the peasant/royalty swap, is an age-old fairy tale archetype. This is where I'd drawn the inspiration from for these two cousins. One wasn't trained in the way of the nobility; she was a distant cousin and poor by comparison. The other was heir to her house and very important. I guess the idea of forcing them to switch places struck some very distinct chords in my readers.

Eventually, I decided that I wanted to tell their story, and they became the focus of a budding book in my mind. I made them sisters and got rid of the "accidental switch" plotline. (Originally, one had been sent by mistake, but they looked enough alike that nobody noticed. Siri kept quiet about it for reasons I can't quite remember.) I took a few steps away from the fairy tale origins, but tried to preserve the aspects of their characters and identities that had worked so well with readers.

I'm not sure why using one archetype worked and the other didn't. Maybe it was because the peasant boy story is so overtold in fantasy, and I just didn't feel I could bring anything new to it. (At least not in that novel.) The two princesses concept isn't used nearly as often. Or maybe it was just that with Siri and Vivenna I did what you're supposed to—no matter what your inspiration, if you make the characters live and breathe, they will come alive on the page for the reader. Harry Potter is a very basic fantasy archetype—even a cliché—but those books are wonderful.

You have to do new things. I think that fantasy needs a lot more originality. However, not every aspect of the story needs to be completely new. Blend the familiar and the strange—the new and the archetypal. Sometimes it's best to rely on the work that has come before. Sometimes you need to cast it aside.

I guess one of the big tricks to becoming a published author is learning when to do which.

Questioner

Other Shards, other than Odium and Cultivation, can take physical form, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Are there any Shards that can't?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Questioner

Could Ruin have taken physical form in The Well of Ascension?

Brandon Sanderson

So, yes. What it really counts to be physical, for someone like a Shard, is subject to debate, but he could have done some of the things that others have done. There were certain restrictions on both Ruin and Preservation, because of the deal that they had set up, that would not have made doing that very useful. But there is possibility he could have.

Questioner 1

Lashing really hurts my mechanical, engineering brain because the math is off with your descriptions.

Brandon Sanderson

What do you mean?

Questioner 1

So, a full Lashing changes your gravitational pull, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner 1

Well if you were doing the math on that...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah...

Questioner 1

...a full Lashing would be two times.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah. That's just their shorthand. *interrupting questioner* It's just their shorthand. I'm fully aware of that.

Questioner 2

Drives him so mad!

Brandon Sanderson

Does it?

Questioner 1

I always see the statics *inaudible* in my head.

Brandon Sanderson

If it helps, in the third book where Bridge Four is practicing, they have an argument over that very point.

Questioner 1

Oh, do they?

Brandon Sanderson

So there are certain people who think the way you think.

Questioner 1

Uh-huh.

Brandon Sanderson

That a full Lashing should make you float.

Questioner 1

Mmm-- it's-- yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

Mhm. But it's-- when I wrote it that way it was so confusing for alpha readers and they thought a double lashing should make him go up double speed.

Questioner 2

*in the background* They're not as technical.

Brandon Sanderson

And so I figured Szeth doesn't have the mathematics background to have that argument. But you do get to have it in the next book.

Questioner 1

Yeah, okay. Every time I... *interrupted*

Brandon Sanderson

So there's at least an acknowledgement of it for you.

Questioner 2

Thanks Brandon.

Brandon Sanderson

So a full Lashing means double gravitational pull upward.

Brandon Sanderson

Cett Suddenly reveals himself at the Assembly Meeting

Elend does need to learn a few things still. To be truthful, I think he's too honest to be a king. There are times when, as a king, I think you need to lie in order to comfort your people. You don't tell the dying man that he has no hope for survival. You don't let a man like Cett bully you into admitting that your Allomancer has been manipulating the audience.

But, well, Elend is Elend. He does things the way that he feels he must, even if it gets him into trouble. Actually, in that way, he and Cett are very similar. They do what they feel they must.

p0staldave

I believe I've heard you mention more than once that you weren't happy with WoK, could you explain a bit exactly what you would change or love to do-over with it or expand on your comments?

Brandon Sanderson

The original draft of The Way of Kings had some big issues. One of the largest ones was that I was trying to do too many characters with too many separate plots. (Jasnah and Taln both had full sequences with as much complexity as the three main characters in the current draft.) Beyond that, Kaladin's character (he had a different name there) was bland and never worked. I needed to rebuild him from the start.

I'll post more explanations of this in the KINGS annotations, which I'm working on right now. As for teasers for the second book, one of the interludes is from Taln's viewpoint. (He's the guy who shows up in the epilogue of the previous book.)

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Ten - Part One

This chapter has my favorite of Ham's little philosophical dilemmas. Most people I've had read the book don't think much of this argument. It seems obvious to them that resisting the Lord Ruler is the right thing for the people to do. I guess that means I've done my work well, giving the readers a distinct hatred of this government.

And yet, I don't think the answer is that simple–not for the people living in the world. Ham has a point, in my opinion. Not a big one, but at least one worth considering.

Questioner

At the end of A Memory of Light, it mentions that Rand is no longer ta'veren - does that apply to Mat and Perrin as well? And if it does, how does it apply to Mat's luck?

Brandon Sanderson

Everything I'm saying right now is not 100% canon, because I'm only working off of my guesstimates based on his notes. I believe that Mat's luck is a soul attribute that is independent of him being a ta'veren, but enhanced by his ta'veren nature. Part of the proof of this is the Heroes of the Horn knowing him as Gambler, which means in other Ages when he's been born and not been ta'veren, he's still had luck and attraction to things like that. Plus things in the notes, I'm basing on that. So it does not necessarily mean they aren't ta'veren right now, but even if they weren't, I think Mat would still have his luck.

Questioner

So you don't know whether they're ta'veren or not?

Brandon Sanderson

I do not know. My suspicion is that if he would have written the outriggers, Mat still would have been, and maybe Perrin, because Perrin was going to be in the outriggers, we know this. But I don't know for sure.

But I think it would have been fun, if in some parallel dimension if I were to have written them, which I'm never going to, I would have not made Mat ta'veren, or Perrin, I would have made Tuon ta'veren, and forced Mat to deal with someone else who was ta'veren, which I think would have been interesting.

Questioner

Can women be ta'veren? Because in the entire series there is not a single female ta'veren.

Brandon Sanderson

There is not, but I'm very sure that they can be, based on things that I read in the notes. So, that's what I would have done, but I don't know if that's what Robert Jordan would have done. Can you just imagine that, Mat having to think that he's in someone else's story now?

Comatose

Also talking about aether, a lot of the aether spores—or all of them that we've seen—map fairly neatly to a primal essence or element. And so we're wondering, if that's a continued pattern, what’s the essence for the crimson aether? Or to put it another way, what's with the red spikes? The world wants to know.

Brandon Sanderson

What’s with the red spikes? So, red spikes are the aether version of coral, which is… I did not, let’s just say, want to do a flesh aether. So we're going in a coral direction as our kind of organicish, fleshy sort of thing. Do understand they're not going to be a one-to-one, right? We might have some wiggle room there, but so far I've done them as a one-to-one.

Comatose

But that is kind of fun, though, if it is kind of mapping to flesh that it's still got kind of a horror or like a scary element to it.

Brandon Sanderson

Imagine it more like carapace and things like that as what we might call our "flesh" for mapping the aethers there. I'm not going to go with some aether that creates giant tumors. I did toy with it. It just, you know, certain things don't work as well as other things.

So the the verdant aether is— verdant and roseite have been the two that have always been the most interesting to me. Though of course, zephyr is really important for the for the space age cosmere, right? Being able to have portable air and some some propellant that breaks the laws of our universe by providing propellant that is small, very compact, and very easy to use as a propellant helps a bit with space age stuff.

Alex

Taln’s Scar.  Was it present throughout the entire timeline and just not mentioned in books, say Elantris? Or did it appear at a certain point in time?

Brandon Sanderson

It did not appear at a certain point.  And it is not equally visible through the Cosmere, simply because of where it is in the sky and where they are in relation to it and things like that.

Alex

And how much ash in the sky.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes…  Peter knows exactly where it is.

Alex

I am hoping that the map in the anthology...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it should.

Tiffany

We are really excited about the map. Also the writing, but really about the map.

Brandon Sanderson

I’ve seen the little star charts that Isaac’s done for each of the worlds, and they are awesome.  Because they’re going to be--  This is more, like it’s the Cosmere Collection, we haven’t hit scientific revolution in most of the worlds yet, so it’s going to be more like if da Vinci had drawn them or something.  So don’t expect--

Brandon Sanderson

So don’t expect it to be like science fiction star charts yet, but they will be very helpful in these sorts of things.

Argent

Could you nudge Isaac to release a wallpaper version or a poster or a printable of any of those?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay yeah, I can totally make him do that.  Like if the full Cosmere one turns out well I’m sure he’ll want to do something like that.

Brandon Sanderson

If [the Elantris Leatherbound] is popular (and it looks like it will be), then we will do the other books. Our goal will be to have them sell at around the same price, and to make them match on the bookshelf, so you can have an entire Cosmere sequence of leatherbound books.

The goal will be to proceed with the 10th anniversary idea, doing Mistborn: The Final Empire next year, The Well of Ascension the year after, and The Hero of Ages the year after that. From there, Warbreaker would be next. That’s all I’m willing to commit to now, but we would eventually like to do Stormlight in this treatment. (Assuming people like these editions we’re doing.)

Questioner

How come you don't have any gay, lesbian, or transgender characters in your books?

Brandon Sanderson

I do! This one [Shadows of Self] actually has one. Ranette is lesbian. Let's see, transgender is awkward because I have the kandra who are kind of no-gender and both, that doesn't really count, but it's kind of me testing the waters and seeing whether I can write someone who has fluid gender and not be offensive with it, does that make sense? So keep an eye on what I do with the kandra through the books. The other gay person is Drehy from Bridge 4, he's based on my good friend Ryan Dreher who is gay, and so you will see his husband appear in the series eventually as well, but we really haven't talked about that one yet, there really hasn't been an opportunity, but Ranette we've talked about and it becomes more and more obvious as we talk about it in the books.

emailanimal

From a very recent signing, we have this new Word of Brandon...

chasmfriend's son: Is there a finite amount of Investiture?

Brandon: Yes.

chasmfriend's son: So is Nightblood consuming it?

Brandon: Yes. Very, very slowly.

This worries me somewhat because of the following observation.

Nightblood consumes Breath (and other Investiture, but let's limit ourselves to Breath for a second).

Every person on Nalthis is born with one Breath.

Populations tend to grow. Which means that under normal rules of demographics, population of Nalthis should keep increasing.

This in turn means that under normal circumstances the number of people with Breath on Nalthis should be growing.

I can see the following possible explanations to this:

1. Endowment can give Breath to many more people than are currently living on Nalthis. So, the exponential population growth has not yet reached the level at which Endowment's ability to award a Breath to each Nalthis-born human is seriously challenged. When it happens though, things will not go well.

2. There is some built-in mechanism controlling population growth on Nalthis, making certain that the population stays within the limits. Nightblood's consumption of Breath makes these limits smaller, and overall may lead to Endowment's inability to grant Breath to Nalthis-born, but not for a while (essentially, Endowment controls population trends at she sees fit).

Thoughts?

Brandon Sanderson

Just as a point you should understand, the amount of MATTER in the cosmere is finite too. As is the amount of energy.

Worrying that Endowment will run out of Breaths to give is a little like worrying that the amount of carbon on Earth will run out because people keep being born.

uchoo786

So just for clarification, once Nightblood consumes investiture, that investiture gets recycled? That's what I've always assumed. That it enters the cognitive/spiritual realm?

Brandon Sanderson

The investiture he consumes is not gone forever--it's not leaving the system, so to speak.

Aneesh

If there's a Forger like Shai who plausibly had an opportunity to ingest lerasium and become Mistborn, but she passed it up, could she create a stamp that makes her temporarily a Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

She would have to have access to enough Investiture to make that happen. The stamp saying, "Hey, I'm a Mistborn!" doesn't actually give her the Investiture to do that. She could rewrite her past so that she took that bead. She would not actually be able to use the power, until she got an infusion of Investiture, which could be done with a stamp in the right manner, but most of the time you're gonna have to have some external source. Basically you're gonna have to take a hit of Investiture, a large amount of it, and then use the stamp, and then it will feed on that to change you into basically any of the other magics.

Aneesh

Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

If you could get a hit of Stormlight, that'd work. The problem is, Stormlight's not easy to get off of Roshar, and it still is technically keyed. You could get it a lot more easily-- Stormlight would work fairly well, but what you really want is some pure, unkeyed Dor. That stuff, you could do all kinds of things with. But, you know, it's kinda dangerous. But that's the stuff you're gonna want, or something like unto it.

Questioner

So, Miles Hundredlives. If you were to spike his Allomantic gold out of him, would that change his Identity such that he could no longer access his metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

That would not necessarily change his Identity, but it would change his Investiture. So if you took off the piece of his soul that could do Allomancy, and then gave him his metalminds. Well, no... No, this is more complicated than I was assuming. So you're saying if someone took away his ability to do Allomancy, could he still access his Feruchemy metalminds. Yes he could. He could still do that. That should work just fine. 

Questioner

Do the metalminds kind of have a pointer to his Identity, they don't have a copy of his Identity that they're keyed to? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah... he is still him unless you spike him and do something with the Identity specifically. 

Questioner

So you could potentially steal his Identity.

Brandon Sanderson

That strays into RAFO territory, so we'll go ahead and give you a RAFO card. But simply taking it away would not change his Identity to the point that it would prevent-- Good question. Very detailed.

Questioner

Was there an Allomantic power that didn't make it into the book?

Brandon Sanderson

Was there an Allomantic power that didn't make it into the book. Oh... Yes, but I'm trying to remember. I had like two dozen of them? Oh boy I can't even remember the ones that I discarded. I was going to do a lot more stuff externally, stuff that like wasn't inside of you and it didn't end up working out. The big thing that I talk about with Allomancy that changed is originally I was using...silver as one of the metals, this is-- this is because... Dumb story time, so when I was a kid I painted these little miniatures that you do in D&D so your little guys can actually fight each other, right? And my brother still does this, they're awesome, I was terrible at it, but I painted these little guys. And at one point I went-- and they used to be lead, and then they realized that lead kills you *laughter* and so--or maybe it just makes you strange, I can't remember--I went and all of the prices had gone up, like by a double, because they had made them out of pewter instead. And I said to the guy "What is up with this, you are totally ripping us off. My figures now cost us 50 cents instead of--" I don't remember what it was and he went "Uh yeah it's because pewter has silver in it man. You're buying little silver figures now" and I went "Oh. That's cool." And I bought them. And so for years I thought pewter was an alloy of silver and I wrote an entire book. An Entire Book. The whole first Mistborn book with silvereyes and pewterarms until it went to my beta readers and like "There's almost no silver in pewter Brandon, you don't even really need it. Everything in this magic system works except that." and I went "Well maybe we can just pretend in this world pewter--" "No that's stupid" *laughter* So I had to change it to tin which is actually what you find in pewter. To this day my assistant Peter, who is my continuity editor, came to me and said "You realize you wrote silvereye instead of tineye in the newest Mistborn book that you just finished? It's been ten years Brandon get over it." *laughter* Still happens.

Camposteria7

Do Rosharans believe that their planet is flat?

Brandon Sanderson

Rosharans do not believe their planet is flat. 

You could find Rosharans who believe that, but most of them that you had talked to would just be like, "What's a planet?"

Because if you go to rural parts of most of Roshar and you're like "What do you think of your planet?" They'd be like "What do you mean by planet?" You'd be like "Well, the thing you live on", they're like "I live in Bavland". They're not viewing a planet. They don't understand that, but like sailors all know that Roshar is a sphere, and you know the educated would definitely know. This is not a question. But even talking in terminology of a planet I feel is hard for the Rosharans because when you say "The world," that they can grasp, right like, oh just everything. When you say "Your planet," or "This planet," it makes you have to be like "Wait. There are others? I suppose there are but ramifications." And so, yeah.

Miyabi (paraphrased)

While talking with EUOL today I had asked about Hoid being Midius from Partinel. 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said he had many names, but avoided a yes or no answer.

Miyabi (paraphrased)

I then asked if Hoid was a shard.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said no and then said something about how no one has read the end of Partinel due to its not being written well and the plethora of spoilers it contains. . . .

He then told me that Hoid was there when Adonalsium was shattered.

Brandon Sanderson

Vinuarch

Yes, one of the months of the year is named after Vin. There are twelve months, one after each member of the crew, with a few tweaks. (The days of the week have different names too, but we ended up not using any in this book.)

By the way, Scadrial—the world of Mistborn—is the closest Earth analogue in the cosmere. I did this intentionally, as I wanted one planet where technology and the like progressed similarly to what we have. There are distinctions, of course, but generally we've got a lot of similarities. Even in the original Mistborn, we referenced plants and animals by Earth-style names. You can assume that on Scadrial they have horses, dogs, cats, sparrows, and the like. There are twelve months, and a twenty-four-hour day. Gravity is earth gravity. Things like this.

There's no hidden meaning there—no tie back to Earth, at least not in any important way. The cosmere is entirely separate from Earth. This one planet, however, has creatures that were developed along the same lines as Earth. (Well, it's not the only one, but to say more would be to give away too much.)

Nomi Sunrider

Do the people on Painter's planet have weird biological quirks due to living in the dark so long?

Brandon Sanderson

I am sidestepping this by use of the hion. For the most part, they are not going to deal well with sunburns. Not a lot of that going on. But at the same time, this has been going on a short enough time evolutionary wise that the adaptations would be very slight. You don't see a whole ton of that happening in the centuries that they have been living like this.

Brandon Sanderson

I almost took out the section where Vin thinks "Oh, that's why Sazed saved me. He has to because he promised Kelsier. That makes sense–after all, why would he want to save me?"

This section fits with the earlier Vin, but I think it's just a bit out of character for her now. She's getting over her feelings of worthlessness and solitude. She knows Sazed well enough now to understand that he WOULD save someone because he's a kind person, not just because he promised that he would.

So, I shortened Vin's thoughts in that section, de-emphasizing them by adding them into another paragraph, rather than giving them their own. I maybe should have cut them, but I wanted to hint that she's not over her hang-ups yet. She still has some of those old feelings. The progress is that she doesn't dwell on them as long.

Brandon Sanderson

I also wanted to get back to you on the results of the poll from last week [about the complexity level of a potential Stormlight board game], which I really appreciate you guys, again, responding. This is something we had that was kind of a conundrum for us. I don’t have another poll or anything for you today. I just want to talk about this one.

This one was tighter of a poll than the previous one we’d done. This one, our results were mid-30% being the winner for a medium-sized game. And if you want to go look at the previous post, we kind of defined what that means. So that’s what we’re going to move forward with. We’re going to be looking at companies and ideas. Again, this is a long, multi-year process, and we’re only probably going to work on one of these at a time. I don’t think that any of you want us to release five Stormlight board games in the period of a year or two and be like, “All right, now buy them all.” We’re going to start with this kind of medium-scale one.

The other thing that we will investigate, so lowest on the list was really hardcore game, and very light game, the faster game. Most everyone wanted something kind of more in the middle. And so–. Not everybody. There definitely were people who wanted the very complicated game. And that’s not off the table some time in the future, but we aren’t going to pursue that quite yet. We want to do things right and do things well, and we want to just take these one at a time. And so legacy game and pen and paper RPG both were in the low 20s, kind of neck and neck. I think maybe legacy game won by a percentage point. However, we don’t want to have two board games in the mix at the same time. So I will probably investigate doing a pen and paper RPG also, because I think that’s distinctive enough. And so those are the two things that we’re going to start working on.

Questioner

(Disclaimers so that you can't say, like, "well if a Shard...") If a regular Awakener, just a mundane Awakener with nothing more than a few hundred Breaths and not any other outside influences, is there some Command they could give a blanket to get the blanket to turn warm? Generate heat; is that a normal thing you can Command?

Brandon Sanderson

Not in just a normal situation. I mean, technically, you could tell the blanket "start rubbing one part against another part" or something like that, or "set yourself on fire," right? But that's not what you're asking. For Awakening to work, you have to work within the intrinsic properties of the matter you're making, except it can move around a bit and with a few little other things it can do.

It's not outside the realm of possibility you could activate those Breaths as Investiture to do something else, but you would need more than just the simple magic system of Awakening. 

Rexozord

Did Shallan kill Tyn with Pattern or Testament?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna let the fanbase theorize on it a little longer. I think this one is pretty clear, but I'm gonna let you guys work on those timelines, and eventually we will release our timeline, and we can see how well you did. But this is one of the things I expected people to theorize on once the book came out, and I would like to see how good a job I did. If there are holes across these ten years of writing this series that I did not consider, that you guys find, cause you totally can do that. I am definitely not flawless when it comes to these things.

Tym

Hi, I could be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that you're writing an Urban Fantasy? Just double checking that :P

Brandon Sanderson

I wrote one as a 'for fun' deviation during a break about a year and a half ago. I do this often, experimenting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This time, it was fun, but it wasn't high enough quality to release. Perhaps I will re-visit it, but more likely, I will leave it alone. Any artist creates 'b-sides' so to speak as they practice different styles and experiment. This was one of mine, and I don't like the idea of releasing something that didn't turn out well enough.

Questioner

Are we going to find out more about the cesium, the exploding metal?

Brandon Sanderson

The super cesium? Well, the last Wax and Wayne book is called The Lost Metal so....you kinda got it...yeah.

Questioner

I want to know if Taravangian, the Ghostbloods, Amaram, is there any kind of like connecting... are they working together or anything like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Taravangian, so the Diagram, the Ghostbloods, is that the two you mentioned? Amaram is Sons of Honor; Amaram and Gavilar are Sons of Honor. These are three different groups who are aware of what is happening and have different philosophies on how to deal with what is coming. They have opposed views, for example, the Sons of Honor are trying to bring back Voidbringers because they believe it will return the heralds as well. Where as the diagram has his plan... y'know, I wont give them away. Some of the are hinted at, you can read. He talks about it, but you can see what he's doing. The Ghostbloods, they have not talked about their motives very much. They have different motives. The Sons of Honor are the easiest to figure out and they are also the most wrong, right. If you read what Taravangian says you can probably see what the Diagram is trying to do.

Questioner

In the fourth book of The Way of Kings, when Kaladin ascends to the fourth thought [ideal]. The only thing I don't like is that he projects the Shard [Shardplate], you know, to protect the kid and stuff. How - I don't know, that bugs me.

Brandon Sanderson

You are allowed to be bugged. And I give readers line-item vetoes. If you want to pretend that doesn't exist, you'll just have to imagine some of the scenes in future books differently.

Questioner

Well I mean, hopefully there will be an explanation for that or something, I don't know. As of right now, it bugs me, but everything else was awesome.

Brandon Sanderson

I'll try to explain it, we'll see if it works for you.

Questioner (paraphrased)

If I wanted to Hemalurgically acquire a power from First of the Sun, which metal would the spike need to be?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

This is going to be pretty complicated, but several metals would work.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Would it involve Connection between the person being spiked and the bird?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Well it would be even harder than on Roshar, where you need to somehow spike the spren and also the Radiant. You would need to spike the bird and steal the power, but also spike the person and steal Connection.

Austin

How did you go about making all of your magic systems together in the context of the wider Cosmere in a way that feels natural?

Brandon Sanderson

I (like a lot of things related to the cosmere) had a leg up because I had written so many books before I got published. I had written thirteen novels before I got published, and among those novels were six or seven pretty decent magic systems. And I started to notice fundamental things that I did when building a magic system that were very common to my writing. And for a while, I'm like, "I want to make sure I'm doing lots of variety, so I'll push this further."

But I also kept noticing these connecting tissues, such as Intent being important behind the scenes to how the magic works, to the idea of the Three Realms. Realmatic theory showed up in Dragonsteel, which is the second Cosmere novel that I wrote and is based a little bit on Plato's theory of the Forms and things like that, but kind of taken my own way. And I always kind of start thinking of magic in that context.

And because I had designed all of these things and was noticing themes, I always asked myself, "Where does the power for the magic come from?" I'm going to bend the laws of thermodynamics, but I'm not going to break them; I'm going to have a different sort of power source. That's just fundamental to how I like to do magic. Where does the energy come from? So building a common energy source to all of these was the first thing that I started to do, just very naturally. And it's part of what made me want to link the Cosmere together. I kept having these stories where I wanted to tell stories about these kind of divine forces, the powers of gods put in the hands of mortals: what does that do? That's a common theme that started showing up in the stories that I was writing before I got published. And I said, "Well, if it's a theme, it's something you're really interested in, why not build it into the entire continuity?" And that's where the idea of the Shards came from, and creating Shadesmar and all of that. It grew out of things I did naturally and saw as themes in my writing.

And the linking then was very natural because they all were coming from the same essential power source, and they all had a few fundamental rules they were following. Mostly because that's how I build magic systems, right? If I have a problem, it's that when I try to build something that ends up not in the Cosmere, like Rithmatist, it still just basically works with Cosmere magic because that's a way that I build magic systems.

Good question, but like a lot of things, a lot of my career's success can be traced back to the fact that I was really bad at this when I started, and I got a long time to practice before I went pro.

XS-Terrain

What are the geometric properties of Shadesmar? Is it curved, or is it a Euclidean Plane?

Brandon Sanderson

It's like a single, infinite plane.

XS-Terrain

So it extends forever.

Brandon Sanderson

Well... Kind of. Kind of yes. The problem is, what people don’t think about doesn’t really appear there, in Shadesmar, so the edges are weird.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eleven

First Miles Viewpoint

Dan, from my writing group, thinks that this Miles scene is misplaced, and thinks I should have held off from putting one in for a few more chapters. (He thinks the second one is better placed.) Dan usually has a good eye for these sorts of things, so I'll admit I'm not a hundred percent sure that I like this scene being here.

However, that said, in the draft that Dan read, Wax wasn't sure it was Miles until he saw the cigar box. Even then, there was a question. I decided, because of feedback, that wasn't terribly realistic. Wax would have recognized the voice well enough from the start to begin suspecting Miles, so keeping that suspicion from the reader lacked authenticity. For that reason, in a later draft I revised so that Miles' name is mentioned in the first chapter where Wax starts suspecting him.

Miles is the most erratic character in this book, personality-wise. He's an interesting guy on several fronts, but I worry he's got too much going on in that head of his to present a compelling bad guy. He's got a lot of different motives, and he's not certain about many of them. We will see how the reaction to him is; I acknowledge that he's no Zane, however. That's probably a good thing . . .

It may sound like I'm dissatisfied with Miles, but I'm not. I just happen to like what he does to Wax more than I think Miles himself is compelling as a villain. I'm pleased with his role in the book.

Questioner

Would a Windrunner's Investiture be able to be used in space?

Brandon Sanderson

Would a Windrunner's Investiture be able to be used in space? In fact, yes. Windrunners would be particularly handy in space because they can control pressure as well as move around and things. So if you were going to pick an order of Knight Radiant, and you wanted to go be an astronaut, Windrunner would be the best choice.

Questioner

What is the best advice you got from a beta reader or editor on your female characters?

Brandon Sanderson

Stop treating them like a role and start treating them like a person. Most of the times when guys write girls poorly, it is because they are saying  "Well, this is the X. This person's role in the story is X," and then they make the person not exist beyond that. Every character, regardless of gender, should have their own motives, passions, and you should be able to know what they were going to do with their life if the plot hadn't smashed into them, and that can go a long way toward helping with that.

That was the big thing for me, was not writing anyone to a role... making everyone the hero of their own story. That was the big thing, but it was a process over time, figuring out treating people like characters instead of roles. That's kind of nebulous, right? Tell them to read a bunch of books by women, because a lot of them haven't, and that's part of the reason they're doing it poorly.

Oh and here's another big thing. The first way of being sexist in your writing involves writing people into roles, right? Into stereotypes. The next thing that people generally do, you'll see this a lot in cinema right now, is take the underrepresented group, or the token female or something, and make them awesome, so that they don't actually have any sort of-- they're just good at everything. Right? That's the next level of doing something wrong, and the third is where you're like, "Wait a minute. Let's make everybody kind of quirky and interesting in their own way, rather than putting anyone on a pedestal," and things like that.

And it's a process for all of us. You'll notice that like in the Mistborn books... I was so focused on making sure I had a strong female lead, that there is like no other women in whole the book. And that's a really common mistake... But you just get better at it the more you write.

LewsTherinTelescope

At the end of The Lost Metal, we learn that Marsh will be using atium from the ettmetal experiments to stay alive going forward. However, Peter recently revealed (and you confirmed) that the atium in Era 1 which stored youth was actually a mix of atium and electrum. How will this continue to work to keep him young?

Brandon Sanderson

They're going to have a different term for pure atium and for what has been known as atium--what they're making. It is not hard to get the right mix down for what he needs to stay alive. It is hard to make enough of it to keep him alive. Well, not hard, but definitely not scalable to more than one person, how about that. They are able to do it, you've just got to make an alloy.

I will apologize for this. This is a post-Era-1 retcon where I realized I need all the God Metals to do different things, and this is just one of the aspects that comes down. For those who don't know what's going on: I get done with Era 1, I start really working on the nature of metals in the cosmere. I'm like, "Ehhh... Atium really should be burnable by anybody. It's a God Metal. The way God Metals work is not in line with how I've made atium. So what they call atium has to have trace elements of something else, and then there's a pure form of atium out there that would be the true pure God Metal." That is one of those unfortunate retcons when you're doing all this continuity. And it works just fine in the books, because the way that atium is being made is a pretty complicated little process there in the Pits of Hathsin.

The question is the right question. Sazed is going to get out of this pure atium, which he is going to need to tweak before he gives it to Marsh. Whether Marsh knows he is getting a tweaked version or not is subject to your own interpretation.

For arcanist purposes, if you want to call the other one pure atium and the regular one just atium, I'd recommend something like that for your wikis and things like that.

Brandon Sanderson

PART TWO: MAINFRAME

As I mentioned above, Janci and I have co-written three novellas in the Skyward series.  Those join The Original and Lux as stories created as part of my Mainframe project.  (Mainframe being an audiobook company I created with my good friend–and all around excellent guy–Max Epstein.)

Max is the driving force behind Mainframe.  (He was also one of the first people in Hollywood to see the value in my work as it relates to films.)  We’ve got a couple more projects coming in 2022 that I’m excited about, so I’m going to let him tell you about them here!

Thanks, Brandon! As mentioned above, throughout, and below, by the end of this year we will have successfully released four projects. And of course we have more on the way, two of which are currently scheduled for release in 2022. Both are with our partners at Recorded Books, who have been excellent.

The first is the audio exclusive Stephen Leeds: Death and Faxes.  This is a new Leeds story within the Legion universe[, with a co-writer]. While we could have released this in 2021, our primary decision to push this to 2022 was because of the four months of back-to-back Cytoverse releases, which will culminate with Evershore in a few short weeks. We’re very excited about Leeds and can confirm that we have the wonderful Oliver Wyman back in the booth as narrator. More information to come as we get closer to our June 2022 release date.

Death and Faxes will be followed up later in 2022 by Dark One: Forgotten, an audio series that ties in with the larger Dark One universe that Brandon has created.  Dan Wells co-wrote this with Brandon (along with a larger Dark One novel that we’ll be releasing after Forgotten, though likely not until 2023). We’re all very excited about how the pages for Forgotten have turned out, and we can’t wait for you to hear them. We’re currently planning on six episodes with a full cast, sound design, and music. Very exciting stuff in the year ahead with more to follow shortly.

Mr. Suit

Can spren - like Syl - be pierced by hemalurgic spike? Will it give some effect?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. A spren can be pierced by Invested metal…

Oversleep

Could it be spiked?

Brandon Sanderson

Could a spike be used to give abilities to spren? That’s not going to work really well.

Oversleep

Could you steal from a spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could steal the Investiture of a spren. Any Investiture can be used in a spike if you know what you’re doing. It’s actually not that hard to use one on a spren.

Oversleep

Because I thought you said Hemalurgy needs moving blood.

Brandon Sanderson

It needs, uh, yeah… there are places where spren have more physical form, more tangible form.

Questioner

Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, no, not Roshar.

Questioner

The Cognitive Realm on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, if you go to the Cognitive Realm on Roshar the spren act differently than they do.

Oversleep

So you could spike in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah I’ll leave a RAFO with you on that. That’s your fifth one. So there are ways to get any Investiture into Hemalurgy if you know what you’re doing. But yeah this is not something that would be a common use for Hemalurgy. Let’s just say that.

Oversleep

We do not concern ourselves with common uses.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I know you don’t. But yeah Hemalurgy, when you’re spiking into somebody you… you’ll see when we get around to it.

Brandon Sanderson

Denth's Speed

Yes, Denth is inhumanly fast. He's a Returned, after all, and has all of the physical enhancements that come with that. Even when he's chosen not to manifest most of them, he's still got an edge, just like Vasher does.

How do they hide that they're Returned? Well, it comes down to mastery of their ability to change their appearance. They can't shape-shift entirely; they can just alter some things about their appearance. They can change their weight, their hair color, and things like that at will. Vasher doesn't do this often, but Denth has been known to use it as a disguise. The problem, after you do this once and someone realizes it, your nature becomes very suspect.

They have learned to suppress their divine Breath. This allows them to hide, but they must be careful never to give away all of their Breath. Denth has been a Drab before—he's not completely lying—but never for longer than a few days. And his divine Breath is always there, suppressed. So he doesn't know what it's like to be a true Drab, which is why in this chapter he says he doesn't think it changes you that much. He's never felt it.

Questioner

What happened to Alcatraz?

Brandon Sanderson

What happened to Alcatraz. Well he almost got sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of Evil Librarians but he survived to write his autobiography-- No, you mean the books. I wrote the fifth book this summer after researching for The Aztlanian long enough that I realized I have to do more research before I can finish it. So I stopped, knew that I wanted to write another middle-grade, so I stopped and wrote Alcatraz 5 and gave it to Tor. They're planning to publish it next year. They're going to start with Alcatraz 1 in January with new art and things like that, publish those first five and do the sixth book sometime in June-- Or fifth book in June is what I think. So republish the first four and then publish the fifth.

wesem

Just realized what Shardblades remind me of..

In my head, they remind me a lot of Keyblades from Kingdom Hearts. The blade appearing out of nowhere when you hold out your hand seems rather similar. They're also both highly coveted in their universes and for both types each blade is different from the next (I think). Just wanted to see if anyone else noticed this or if I'm just crazy and have had way too much time to think waiting for Words of Radiance.

Brandon Sanderson

Shardblades aren't inspired by keyblades specifically, though there is a core inspiration that might be shared by both myself and the creators. While I did play the first kingdom hearts game when it came out, the first draft of The Way of Kings was well under way when the game was released.

However, I did play all of the final fantasy games--I had the first on original Nintendo, so get off my lawn, you kids. The origin of Shardblades relates to fantasy games and art in general, and the concept of the stylized sword which is also horribly impractical.

In a lot of my writing, I react toward or against the fantasy archetypes of my youth in the 80s and 90s. When designing the Stormlight Archive, one of the things I asked myself was, "Can I make a situation where these oversized, over-stylized blades are actually practical? Why in the world would you need a weapon like that? And how do you actually use one?"

Making the blades summonable seemed one of the only ways that carrying one around would be reasonable.

Questioner

In Bands of Mourning, was that Jasnah?

Brandon Sanderson

No it wasn’t, good question.

Questioner

Are they in the same time period?

Brandon Sanderson

So, Alloy Era book are happening after Stormlight 5. But not nece--I haven’t said exactly how far off.

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.

Questioner

Do you think that a Skyrim game of Stormlight Archive...?

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, I would love to make one. So, here's what I've been told. I don't know this industry well enough to say whether or not. I've been like, "Let's make Skyrim." They're like, "Skyrim was only profitable after it was out for four years, and its the most profitable game in that genre ever made." So, they're very worried about spending that much on a game. So, if we had a movie come out, yes. Until then, what you're more likely to see is something that feels open-world but isn't truly open-world. Like, something with an open-world hub that you go on missions through, is kinda like the closest we'll probably get if we do get a game made. That said, someone came and offered on an MMO for it recently, so I'm going to hear their pitch.

Questioner

You said that there were some things in the Cosmere that happened accidentally. What was one of them?

Brandon Sanderson

Shard pools is a good example. So when I started writing Elantris I knew I would have these concentrations of power. But I didn't know how I'm going to use them exactly. Like what's the connection... This was way at the beginning. By the time I had Mistborn, I knew all this. I knew I had a well of power there. What does it do? Shardpools are a good example of writing into the story and figuring out how the magic works bei actually playing with it.

Jordan

What’s the status on White Sand graphic novel?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s going very well, we have pages of it turned in, I don’t know I think it’s still a year away, but it’s, it’s looking really good.

wiresegal

Why did Rashek leave two beads at the Well?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO

Questioner

Which order of Knights Radiant was hardest for conception?

Brandon Sanderson

It was definitely the Dustbringers, which I'm not even sure yet, because I haven't done a lot with them in the books. But I wanted the Dustbringers to be more than just "generic fire magic." Not that people haven't done great things with generic fire magic that they have individualized, but kind of the whole idea behind the Surges in the Stormlight Archive is that they are using, as the elements of their society and the fundamental forces, things that you wouldn't normally see as magic systems in a fantasy novel. And generic fire magic didn't fit into that schema very well.

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.

Mi'chelle Walker

What is the technology level of the singular society that existed when Adonalsium Shattered?

Brandon Sanderson

What was the technology level of the society that existed when Adonalsium Shattered? It was less than our own.

Mi'chelle Walker

Are you going to give us anything more specific than that?

Brandon Sanderson

Less than our own. You've read the book that is the preface for all of that. So you can guess.

Mi'chelle Walker

Wait, really? That's the preface to it?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, it's the series where that happens. I've said before: Dragonsteel is the series... Adonalsium is not Shattered in Dragonsteel.

SMG9000

I really enjoyed Arcanum Unbounded. Do you see yourself releasing a collection of short stories like that again? And have other authors approached you about writing a short story in the Cosmere? What other author would you enjoy seeing tackle a story in the Cosmere, and why?

Brandon Sanderson

I think an Arcanum Unbounded 2 is someday inevitable, but it depends on how many novellas I get around to writing, or short pieces. I think it is inevitable; we already have one in Dawnshard that would go in it, and we will have Horneater in a year or two, and maybe someday we will have the Lopen short story that could then fit in there. But for me to really want to do Arcanum Unbounded, I have to write some stories on other plants, like finish up the Sixth of the Dusk sequel, and stuff like that.

On the second question, there are people who are interested. Right now, the only person that is authorized to write in the Cosmere except me is Isaac. And he is working away on his first stab at a Cosmere story. I don't know what the length; we had talked about a novella. It seems like it's longer? It is. So he is working away at that. I haven't read any of it yet, I've just helped him outline, and things like that. So if that works, potentially there is a chance for more. The Skyward novellas have been very well received, and that makes me excited for the potential. I could see a short fiction collection that is just lots of different Cosmere things that different friends of mine have written.

But we'll see. I have no immediate plans; the only immediate plan for this is Isaac working on his story and me working on Horneater.

Questioner

With White Sand, you’ve expanded into a more visual medium with a new storyline. There’s always talk of when there’ll be an adaptation to the screen. Now, when that comes, will you be interested in doing an adaptation for the screen? Or write a new story for the Cosmere universe that is just solely either television or movie?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s an excellent question. It is one I’ve given a lot of thought to, and I’ve eventually settled on: the first thing that I do needs to be an adaptation of a work. This is because, for Hollywood to invest the kind of money we’re asking for, they are going to need it to be proven. One of the reasons they go to books so often is because they’re looking for the things that have already been successful in one medium. Not a guarantee they’ll be able to adapt it; in fact, it’s a really big challenge. But at least it’s a way to go to the money people and be like, “Yes, we want $300 million.” And they’re like, “Oh, really. Why?” And we can be like, “Well, this thing has sold a lot of copies.” It is a proof of concept.

I will eventually get into, I think, doing things (if this is successful) that haven’t had a book adaptation, but we’ve gotta start with a book adaptation. Just a nature of the way business works.