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Skyward Seattle signing ()
#151 Copy

Questioner

How does the destructor blast for a Poco not destroy its own shield?

Brandon Sanderson

In Skyward, I have the shields work directionally, the same way a lot of science fiction does. Like you could fly out of a hangar bay that has a shield on it, but you can't fly back into it unless they change the frequency and stuff like that. That's how those are working for me. They will let things not come in but will let things go out... It's Sci-Fi technology that's kind of an old stand-by for how shields work and I just kind of rely on that one.

Shadows of Self San Francisco signing ()
#153 Copy

Questioner

If an Allomancer found themselves on Nalthis or Roshar, would they be able to use chromium on someone using Stormlight or Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

I am staying away from answering too many questions like that until I start having it happen. But do know that the magics interact... some ways they interact very naturally, some ways, they don’t. One way I’ve released is, you could use bronze on most forms of Investiture to find it. So you can extrapolate that some of these things would work. But not necessarily all. All of them could be made to work.

Lytherus Steelheart interview ()
#155 Copy

Lauren Zurchin

Why are the Epics, the people with the power, all evil?

Brandon Sanderson

So the idea for this story came when I was driving along on the freeway and someone cut me off in traffic, and my immediate instinct was, "You're lucky I don't have any superpowers because I'd blow your car up right now." This is what happens when you're a fantasy writer, right? You have weird instinctual reactions like that. I was very frightened, though, because I'm like, "Wow, I can't believe that's inside of me." It's probably a good thing that I don't have superpowers because I don't know that I could be trusted not to blow people off of the road when they cut in front of me. And that led me down the natural progression to, "What would happen if people really have superpowers?" Would people be good with them, or would they not? And if my first instinct is to use them in this sort of awful way, what happens if everyone starts abusing these powers?

And that led me down the road to the story of, the idea of, there being no heroes—there being a story about a common man with no powers, trying to assassinate a very powerful superpowered individual. It's weird talking about this in the terms of superheroes, though, because as I was writing the book, my focus was on sort of an action-adventure feel—definitely using some of the superhero tropes, and the comic book tropes. But I have found that in the fiction I've read, it's better to do kind of a strong adaptation–kind of like movies do. I like how movies have adapted comic books and kind of made them their own, and turned them into their own action-adventure genre. And that was what I was kind of using as a model for this. And so yeah, I wanted to tell the story of this kid—I say kid, he's eighteen—this young man, who wants to bring down the emperor of Chicago, and doesn't have any powers himself, but thinks he might know what Steelheart—that character's—the emperor's weakness is.

#tweettheauthor 2009 ()
#156 Copy

mnehring

How did you come up with what metal would give what powers in Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

The assignment of metals to powers was done mostly randomly.

I started by trying to mix and match colors and hues, but that ended up not working.

I also originally wanted the physical to be more common, and then move toward less common with mental and others.

Hence, iron is physical, Gold is mental, Atium is temporal. The mentals don't quite fit this, though.

/r/fantasy AMA 2011 ()
#157 Copy

insertcleverphrase

I know from reading your blog and various other comments that many of your books are in the same cosmos/universe, specifically Mistborn, Elantris, Warbreaker, and Way of Kings. I also am pretty sure that one day you'd like to do a series that ties all the different series/books together into one super-series. So my question is, would the various magic systems work on different worlds? For example, would a Mistborn be able to use his/her abilities in the world Way of Kings is located on?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on the magic system. They are all related to a kind of "Spiritual DNA" that one gets from their heritage on a specific planet. However, there are ways around that. (Hemalurgy, for example, 'staples' a piece of someone else's soul to your own, and creates a work around to give you access to magic you shouldn't have.) Some of the magics are more regionally tied than others. (In Elantris, you have to access the Dor, which is very regionally influenced.)

The end answer is this: With in-depth knowledge of how the magics work, and their connection, one could probably get them all to work on other planets. It may take effort for some of them.

Orem signing ()
#158 Copy

Questioner

How does one make sense of Spook's High Imperial?

Brandon Sanderson

One thing about High Imperial, or Eastern Street Slang, is that it was devised by those who spoke it in order to be intentionally obtuse. So it was hard for people to understand. And so there are a lot of nonsense words thrown in the middle. But, it's also got reversed grammar. ‘Wasing the wanting of doing the thing' is ‘I wanted to do that.' But you can also throw random words in there. As long as those parts are in there, it'll make sense to those they're speaking to. ‘I wanted to do this. Wasing the wanting of doing the thing.' You're putting everything into a gerund. You're starting with the verb and the tense. And you're turning everything into ridiculously bad gerunds. That's it in brief.

The Fringe Magazine: Author Interview: Brandon Sanderson ()
#160 Copy

Scott Wilson

Thank you so much taking the time to chat with us here at The Fringe magazine. Like Stephen King's Dark Tower series, your worlds exist in the same universe and are linked somehow. Is there any particular reason to have this link rather than create a fresh and new world, with new systems and characters?

Brandon Sanderson

I started doing this early in my career before I got published, when I felt that writing sequels was not a good use of my time. Just look at the hypothetical; if I'm trying to get published and I write three books in the same, if an editor rejects book one, he or she is not going to want to see book two. But if an editor rejects book one but is optimistic about my writing, I can send them a book from another series and they can look at that.

During my unpublished days I wrote thirteen books, only one of which was a sequel. So I had twelve new worlds, or at least twelve new books—some of them were reexaminations of worlds. But I wanted to be writing big epics. This is what I always wanted to do; something like the Wheel of Time. So I began plotting a large, massive series where all these books were connected, so I could kind of "stealth" have a large series without the editors knowing I was sending them books from the same series. It was mostly just a thing for me, to help me do the writing I wanted to be doing. And then when publication came I continued to do that, and told the story behind the story.

Why not do separate worlds? Because it was more interesting for me this way. This is the story I want to tell. The big, overarching story that I've planned out. I've been talking recently about how my inspiration for this is the idea that in science people have for a long time been looking for a unified theory of physics, some theory that will explain all interactions of physics in a concise way. I wanted to tell about a universe where there was a unified theory of magic, where magic worked according to a unifying principle. Despite the magic systems looking very different and doing lots of different and interesting things, hopefully original for each book, there is an underlying rationale that is keeping them all together. I write what I find interesting, and that was interesting to me.

Stormlight Three Update #4 ()
#161 Copy

Argent

I was talking with someone about the woman on The Way of Kings endsheet, and I wondered about her identity - could you reveal whether she is supposed to depict a someone/something specific, or is it just a somewhat generic image of a woman?

Brandon Sanderson

The woman on the border of the maps isn't meant to be anyone specific, I don't believe. I've never asked Isaac about it, actually.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 ()
#163 Copy

greaterbookwyrm

What happens when you cut a kandra with a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

So a kandra is going to react basically the same way, in that the Shardblade's going to be hitting at the soul and severing it and things like that. They are not immune to Shardblades. But because they have mutable shapes, there will be a little bit of weirdness involved in that. You'll get to see that happen eventually.

Words of Radiance Omaha signing ()
#165 Copy

Questioner

Are you going to release more Laws of Magic?

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe.  The three that I have are really solid.  I'll have to see if there's anything else I would want to write.  It partially is while I learn.  There's kind of two unofficial laws right: Law 0 which is err on the side of a process, and then there's a law about trying to make everything interconnected.  But that kind of blends into the three, right?  So I'm not sure if I need a new law for that one or not.  

Skyward Chicago signing ()
#166 Copy

Argent

Cosmere healing. Some magic systems have internal healing, such as Stormlight; external healing, such as AonDor. With internal ones, the perception of the magic user seems to matter a lot. Is that also a factor for the external ones?

Brandon Sanderson

So, there are various types of healing in the cosmere. We have things like Stormlight, where you get the Stormlight and it heals you, and that one is very, very influenced by your perception. How you view yourself, and what you view as being healed, has a huge influence on what actually happens to you. Externally, if someone heals someone else, like a Knight Radiant uses the power to heal someone, or an external force heals them, is it still filtered through perception? I'm gonna say both perceptions are important in that. They both are relevant.

Goodreads Fantasy Book Discussion Warbreaker Q&A ()
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JHWOLFSTAR

I was wondering if you had any certain inspiration for Adonalsium, Hoid, and the Cosmere other than the concept of a Creation story itself. To clarify, I guess I'm asking if you had any other author you read as an aspiring author that did anything similar.

Brandon Sanderson

There are certainly authors who have done this sort of thing before. I generally tend to react against what inspires me instead of toward it. I've talked about this before—if I think someone does a very good job with something, I'll try to approach it from a different direction because I figure they've covered that concept. At other times, if an author does something that I thought could have been way cooler, then I will react I guess in that direction...I don't know if that's a reaction for or against.

Asimov eventually had an overarching plot/universe. Stephen King did it. Other authors have done it, but they have not planned it from the beginning. As well as Asimov did with some of the concepts, I was always disappointed in his attempts to bring all of his stories together into one world because it just wasn't meant to be that way, and it felt like that. It felt clunky—I've always preferred the early robot stories and the early Foundation books to the later ones.

So I felt that if I was going to have a supermyth, so to speak—an overarching paradigm for these books—it would have to have a number of things. One, it would have to be limited in scope, meaning I wasn't going to try to cram everything into it. That's why ALCATRAZ is not involved in any of this. Number two, I would have to plan it from the beginning, and number three, I would want it to be subtle. In other words, I don't want it to come to dominate any of the stories because I want the books, the series, to stand on their own. I want this to be something that you can find if you're searching, but that will never pull the characters of a given book away from the focus on what is important to them.

General Twitter 2011 ()
#169 Copy

Chaos

So Aona is a synonym for love, hmm? Is Charity the correct Shard name?

Brandon Sanderson

Not quite. I’m trying to remember what the guesses were for the other Shard on Sel. I may have dismissed them too quickly.

Chaos

How about Mercy for Aona, then? The guesses for Skai’s Shard include Devotion, Obedience, and Order

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, I was right, then. Ha There’s something very ironic in all of this.

Stormlight Three Update #4 ()
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Argent

When, in Stormlight, Shardblade victims are described as having burned out eyes, do the eyes physically burn out leaving empty eyesockets, or is it closer to a surface burn, maybe just looking like they had burned?

Brandon Sanderson

Eyes actually burn. It is an oddity that I might some day explain.

Shadows of Self San Francisco signing ()
#171 Copy

Questioner

With regards to the audiobook, how does it feel hearing Rand and Egwene, and Kaladin and Shallan?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that's really weird. In regards to the audiobook, how does it feel to hear some of the same voices coming out from my characters that are in the Wheel of Time. That's really weird. But after just a few minutes, my mind shifts over.

Idaho Falls Signing ()
#172 Copy

Andrew The Great (paraphrased)

What would happen if a person were to burn a metal that was Feruchemically charged using Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The metal used in Allomancy is like a key or a doorway to the power that Allomancy actually uses. The metal acts as a filter, much as the Aons in Elantris do, to determine what the power actually does. However, if the metal is Feruchemically charged, then it will basically become a super-burst of Feruchemical power with no Allomantic effect. The Feruchemical charge acts as a filter as well as the metal, and changes what the power does. in this case, say you were burning steel, you would just be massively speedy for a second, and wouldn't actually have the ability to push on anything Allomantically. Hope that answered the question. I get the concept, so if you need me to explain it differently, let me know and I'll try. Oh, the other thing I forgot is that this concept only works if it's a metal that you charged yourself. If it's a metal someone else charged, it would just work like regular Allomancy, and the Feruchemical charge would just cease to exist.

Andrew The Great (paraphrased)

If someone aluminum or duralumin burned the Feruchemically charged metals, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Basically the same thing as above, except with aluminum. Aluminum, they would just go away.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
#174 Copy

trevorade

Did the publicly known nobility Mistborn have some sort of training/play ground? Like a big space they could properly train they're abilities and fly around in?

Brandon Sanderson

Some built things like this.

trevorade

Thinking about it more, a public Mistborn gathering place would probably be a big assasin bullseye... Better to have a place just for you where you can staff it with a lot of misting guards.

Brandon Sanderson

That's what I assumed the question was asking.

Orem signing ()
#175 Copy

Questioner

Is the sequel to The Rithmatist still in the works?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes... It's still in the work. The Rithmatist is this strange doc in my writing in that it's the last book I wrote before The Wheel of Time hit me like a freight train. All future plans got trampled and balefired, right? And things I'd been planning to do, I no longer knew what was going to happen. So  Rithmatist I didn't release right then. I let it sit for a while. Eventually the publisher is like, "we really should release this, it's a good book." And I think it is a really strong book.

So a couple of years back, I sat down and tried to write the sequel. And it's another one of these books that didn't work. There are a variety of reasons it didn't work. But it didn't work. I got maybe four or five chapters in and I shelved it and wrote an Alcatraz book instead--it's another series I've had looming over me. Now that I've learned to do novellas and things like this, you find me making open-ended series less often. Like with Skyward, it's going to be a trilogy and I'm going to write two of them this year--maybe all three if I can--and then it's done and turned in. And with the novellas, there's not necessarily sequels that I'm planning. So I'm getting better at managing that, but I've gotten these kind of "open" series. I really want to write The Rithmatist 2. I think it's very deserving of a sequel. I think it's a good book. I don't know how to do it yet, which is rare for me, but I don't.

So, maybe this thing will work with Dan, and I'll go, well maybe there's someone who can help me fix this, one of my friends. Maybe I will just carve out the time to do this, let's do it. But right now, it is one of those things I don't just have a date for, and I feel bad about that. The good news is I'm doing this less and less. I'm figuring out how to make this happen. Legion is now done and turned in. Alcatraz is very close. I finished half of Alcatraz 6. Well, Bastille 1, but there's only one Bastille. If you guys don't know, the first five Alcatraz books are written by a guy named Alcatraz and then he leaves the ending in a terrible cliffhanger at the fifth book, and says, "I'm done!" But the joke has always been his friend Bastille thinks that's stupid, so she's going to write the ending he refuses to write. So I wrote half of her book and it looked good. I'm pleased with where Bastille Vs. The Evil Librarians is going. So that'll be wrapped up before too long, and then that series is done. So Legion and Alcatraz are very close to being done. That leaves The Rithmatist. And so it would be next on my, "let's figure out how to get this done."

That's a long answer that just basically says, "it's coming but I don't know when."

Goodreads February 2016 YA Newsletter Interview ()
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Jessica

In Shadows of Self a few characters use some variation of "Hell!" as an exclamation when things go awry. I don't recall any reference to "Hell" as a place or philosophy in the religions of the Mistborn series. How does this word fit into their world, does it differ from our own?

Brandon Sanderson

The characters in Mistborn have been using "biblical" curses since book one. This was a specific choice made on my part, as I want the "feel" of Mistborn to be like London in the early 1800s. All of my books are to be read as if there's a phantom translator who took it from the original language and translated it into English. In many cases, there isn't a word that is an exact translation—so the translator does their best.

In The Final Empire, there was indeed a kind of "hell." Though there wasn't a specific idea of a devil—it was just the punishment ascribed to the souls who failed or disobeyed the Lord Ruler. Even the skaa knew of this, though religion was forbidden them. So it was a more vague sense, than specific theology, to them.

JordanCon 2021 ()
#177 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

I just outlined a non-genetic magic system that I think is kind of interesting. I don't know if I'll ever get to write this book; I outline a lot of books that I don't get to write. But it was a really interesting idea for a magic system where a child was chosen by society when they were a newborn to gain the powers. You know, kind of for the good of society. And being one of these people, instead, I thought... Like I said, the implications are really interesting for that narrative story, is that you're forced, even from childhood you were chosen by everybody. You weren't born to it; but how do you choose a newborn? They just chose one, and now you've gotta live the rest of your life (Hope you picked a good one!) dealing with these implications. That's been very interesting to outline and think about, the effects on the character.

Questioner

Is that Cosmere or non-Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

That one is Cosmere.

Warbreaker Annotations ()
#178 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

What did Blushweaver achieve? In fact, she Returned in the first place to be involved in this ending as well. One thing to note about the Returned coming back is that they do see the future, but when they Return, they aren't guaranteed to be able to change anything. Before her Return, Blushweaver was a powerful merchant in the city, and very well known. She was assassinated after denouncing a group of dye merchants she'd worked with for their deceptive and criminal practices. Her testimony ended with them in jail, but it got her killed. That's how she earned the title of Blushweaver the Honest (which, if you'll remember, she eventually got changed to Blushweaver the Beautiful).

She Returned because she didn't want T'Telir to fall to the invaders she saw taking it after Bluefingers and the others caused their revolt. That was why she gathered the armies. While she didn't succeed in her quest as well as Lightsong did, she did help out quite a bit. I think she's pleased, on the other side, with how things turned out.

Babel Clash: Brandon Sanderson and Brent Weeks ()
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Brent Weeks

So something that I'd love to hear your thoughts on are if you think as your career progresses that you can get away with things—story things—that you couldn't when you were less well known?

Obviously, as we grow in our storytelling skills and experience with the industry, we can try harder challenges and succeed where we wouldn't have before. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm more curious about if you think we train our readers (and book store buyers). I think—pure speculation because I haven't yet dug in to my copy of The Way of Kings—that if a 400,000 word tome hit my desk from someone I'd never heard of and when I began reading, I found it didn't follow any epic fantasy structure I knew, I'd be much more likely to assume it was just an amateur mess—but because it says "Brandon Sanderson, #1 NYT Bestselling Author" on the front, I trust that you're Doing Something Big. I think I read it differently. Do you agree?

I run into the same sort of thing: I've got a decent reputation for deep characters now, so when a character does something contradictory (dumb jock says something brilliant or whatever), my readers think, "Oh, there's more going on here under the surface, can't wait to see what." Rather than, "This character is inconsistent. Bad writing."

And I would contend that precisely because you're a magic system guy, that if you don't explain the magic in TWOK, people are NOT going to say, "Good book, but magic system doesn't make sense." They're going to say, "Obviously brilliant stuff going on with the magic, can't wait until book 12 to see what!" (That's hyperbole with a wink, not snark.)

Do you believe you can get away with storytelling stunts, elisions, or tricks now that Brandon Sanderson the debut author couldn't have? If so, what's the good part of that—and is there a bad side?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are things I can get away with now that I couldn't before—or ones I didn't try to get away with before. One big one is flashbacks. In my early years as a writer, published and unpublished, I stayed far away from flashbacks. Partially because I'd been told to do so, and partially because I'd seen them done poorly from a large number of other new writers. There are good reasons to stay away from them, and the advice is good. If you do flashbacks the wrong way, you'll break the flow of your narrative, risk undermining the tension of your story, confuse the reader, and basically make a big old mess.

Then Pat Rothfuss comes along and does a narrative-within-a-narrative where the entire book is basically flashback, and it works really well. I do know, however, that Pat had a lot of trouble selling that book of his to start. (Though admittedly, I'm not sure if that was the flashbacks or not. I seem to remember he added the frame story later in the process, and that the huge length of the book was what was scaring people away at first.)

I guess this brings us back to the first rule of writing: you can do whatever you want, if you do it well. Regardless, I decided—after some deliberation—that I'd use flashbacks as an extensive device in The Way of Kings and the rest of the series. None of these were in earlier drafts of the novel, however, because I knew that many readers (and editors) have a knee-jerk reaction against flashbacks because of how likely they are to screw things up. Now that I'm established, however, I feel that people will trust me when they see them.

(One thing I'm leaving out is that I think I'm a better writer now than I was before, and if I'd tried these flashbacks during earlier days, I'd likely have flubbed them.)

Words of Radiance Los Angeles signing ()
#180 Copy

Dawnshard (paraphrased)

So I asked Brandon at the LA signing if he could tell us about a shard that we don't know anything about (including the survival shard) and he said that there was a shard that isn't on a planet. Now I think this means that the shard is either on an asteroid, or a star. It could also be floating in space or on a moon and influencing from a distance. I will repeat it is not any shard we already know about.

Galley Table Podcast interview ()
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Phillip Carroll

Stephen King in his book On Writing says that there are some greats—and honestly when I started Alloy of Law, I thought, "This is great." You know, I was in the story immediately, it was there, I pictured it—and then he says there are some that are good, that by working hard you can get better, and then there are some that just will be able to write no matter what they do. You have a master's degree in Creative Writing which is, I think, outside the norm of science fiction...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, there are certainly others. Honestly, my master's degree was a stalling tactic. I wanted to become a writer; I was writing very vigorously, and I wanted to get the degree. It certainly helped me, but more it was a, I did not want to face having to say, "I'm not going to be doing this" if that makes sense. And I felt a few extra years of school to spend more time....you know, schooling was wonderful for me, because it was a time during which I could just be a writer, and I could focus on my writing, and the classes I would take really helped me with my writing. I would try to focus on ones that would give me things to write about, and I wanted to extend that experience.

I also wanted to, initially, approach the idea of getting teaching jobs. I soon learned once I got my master's degree there's actually the economy there. If you want teaching jobs, you really have to focus on the things that will lead to teaching jobs, and sometimes that actually is not the writing. You have to part of, you know, the Graduate Student Associations, you have to be publishing in the right journals, and writing science fiction and fantasy was not going to get me there, and I had to make that choice very very early on where I said, well, I'm going to let my master's teach me to be a better writer, but I am not going to pursue teaching any more, because I just don't have the drive to do that. There are people that have as much passion for that as I have passion for writing my stories, and those are the people that should be teaching.

Now, I'll teach this one class—I really do enjoy it—but I don't want to do it full time. By the time I'm done with this one class every year, I'm like exhausted of teaching and done reading student work, and want to be done, and it takes me a whole year to recharge to do it again. And that says to me, you know, I have an interest in it but not a passion, a super passion for it. So yeah, I made that call. The master's degree was useful, mostly to keep me around other writers, to be involved with them, and a lot of my writing classes were actually just workshops, and they were workshops with other people who were writing very good stuff.

Phillip Carroll

I have to say that, in listening to you on panels, I believe that that master's experience shows through. When other people are talking, I don't believe they are nearly as articulate in the things that they're saying.

Brandon Sanderson

Right, a lot of writers write by instinct, like I said before, and actually talking about writing is different from knowing how to do it. You know, there are a lot of writers who are really great writers—better writers than I am—that can't really vocalize why they do what they do, and I think that the study of it required me to look at it through those eyes, so that I can, which is very nice. It does make it more helpful when I'm trying to explain to people what I do, and hopefully that will help them.

JordanCon 2018 ()
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Argent

Are mandras gravityspren?

Brandon Sanderson

*Very hesitantly* Nooooo? Kind of-- So the actual gravityspren, you're talking about the things Kaladin saw stuck to the wall? Those are not mandras.

Argent

Oh no, I was thinking about the ones that appear around dead chasmfiends.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, dead chasmfiends, okay. Yyyes. The arrowheads, yeah.

Argent

But you're saying those are not gravityspren, they're--

Brandon Sanderson

Well--

Argent

--they're mandras?

Brandon Sanderson

I am not-- Yeah. I am-- So the things Kaladin saw stuck to the wall are not gravityspren, right? But I want to make sure-- So arrowhead spren, that Shallan is philosophizing, theorizing about, are mandras.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
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Questioner

How many different non-human immortals are there on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow, very specific. Most of the Aimians count. They're both small races, but there are enough of them that there are dozens of each that count as immortal, and they're non-human. The two living Shards, I would say count as non-human immortals, and most spren count as non-human immortals. So there's a ton.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Two - Part Two

Elend's Verbal Sparring with Yomen

Something to notice about the conversation between Elend and Yomen is that Yomen's arguments are quite good. Better than Elend gives them credit for being, I think—though I might revise as I go through the copyedit to have Elend notice this more.

Either way, I hope one can see why Yomen would resist making a treaty with Elend. This is a sticky situation, and in this conversation I think Elend comes off poorly. Partially because his old ball-going self is resurfacing, but partially because his role has been reversed. In book two, he was under siege and was trying frantically to keep his city from being conquered. Now he's forced to sit on the other side of the table and be the one who has come to conquer.

Prague Signing ()
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Oversleep

So you have said previously that you could categorize metals in Feruchemy like 8 Physical, 4 Cognitive, and 4 Spiritual. But the Hemalurgy chart says they are Hybrid <Feruchemy> metals so...

Brandon Sanderson

So they are what?

Oversleep

The Hybrid metals.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, remember that all of these categorizations are by in-world philosophers doing their best to come up so you can decide how you want to categorize them, alright.

Stormlight Three Update #5 ()
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RankWeis

I've been thinking about the Parshendi and I guess this is as good a place to ask as any - when the parshendi change, there's an obvious change in the physical realm, and there seems to be a change in the cognitive realm as well. Is there a change in the spiritual realm? I know we haven't dug much into it, but it seems like a change in the spiritual realm is very difficult or impossible - if you could change in the spiritual realm is it really the same 'thing' at the end of the process? Mostly I'm curious about the first question...the second question is more of a philosophical train of thought.

Brandon Sanderson

Things in the spiritual realm do change, but subtly. For instance, a person's spiritual component knows how old they are.

Words of Radiance release party ()
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Questioner

I'm interested in the background that takes place before the events of the first Mistborn book. Are you interested at all in looking at the histories of some of your past books?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. But I probably won't be writing a lot of books back there. Just because every time I've read or seen a prequel, I find myself disappointed in it. With some famous examples. And I think that's partially because you, as the writer, feel like you've already finished the story. And the reader feels, "I've already finished the story." Now, there are some really great ones out there. Ender's Shadow is kind of a prequel, that is a fantastic book. So there are people capable of doing this. You just have to find the exact right thing. I think it's better to explore in something like a video game, where there's enough new going on with the style of the storytelling that I get excited about it.

General Reddit 2017 ()
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platysaur

Is it too early to ask if you'd continue with the story you made for the game?

Brandon Sanderson

I have been tempted to do it as a graphic novel, if White Sand continues to be popular.

For my part, I want to point out that Matt Scott was awesome to work with. He really did try to make this game--but we were trying during a time when original IP in video games was a dodgy thing to start with. Several console changes, the revolution in mobile gaming, and various issues on the business side meant we could never really get this going. But there was a never a problem with their vision, passion, or enthusiasm.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
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windolf7

Is Ashyn the Tranquilline Halls?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

faragorn

Actually, my theory is that Braize is both the TQ and Damnation.

Gamers will all be familiar with the concept of rezzing after you die, often at a specific place.

The legend is that humans were forced out of the TQ and followed to Roshar. If Odium attacked and conquered Braize, and Honor created the heralds before he and Cultivation moved humans to Roshar, then the heralds might very well be rezzing on enemy-held Braize each day as described in the WoK prologue. Against the combined armies of the entire planet they get ganked as described in the prologue, only to rez the next day (kind of like the rez timers in World of Warcraft :-)).

WoR confirms that Braize was called Damnation, but I think it is now damnation, and was once the TQ.

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent theories, strange gaming parallels notwithstanding.

Mistborn: Secret History Explanation ()
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Phantine

Do the other uses for those metals [nicrosil, aluminum, duralumin] currently in the RPG also work in-universe, or are they just there for RPG mechanics?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the things in the RPG books relating to the metals that you don't see in the books fall under the "We need to make a game out of this somehow, Brandon" clause. I've told them they can extrapolate if they want, but that I wouldn't consider their extrapolations canon.

Herowannabe

So does that mean that these metals will be getting updated rules in a future RPG supplement?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a possibility. I've said before that you should consider any games you play to be in an alternate dimension anyway, where the rules work slightly differently, and your players can control the fate of what is going on. Plus, it will be years before I can get to the nature of all this in the next trilogy, so we'll see how relevant it all is in five years or so.

Ad Astra 2017 ()
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Questioner

Question for you, regarding Nalthis.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Do priests use-- to extract the divine Breath and hoard.. Do they use a sharp object to get the divine Breath and hoard from the God King?

Brandon Sanderson

The divine Breath what?

Questioner

Divine Breath and hoard. Can you get it away from him by using a sharp pointy object?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, the-- like you're asking like--

Questioner

Hemalurgy as an option.

Brandon Sanderson

It is not, but that's a good question. That is a really good question. I'm surprised no one's asked me that before.

Calamity Philadelphia signing ()
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Questioner

Is there a correlation, at all, between Awakening steel, a blade, and the revival of spren every time a Shardblade is summoned? I mean, I know Invesiture is Investiture is Invesiture.

Brandon Sanderson

So revival of the spren so--

Questioner

Similar.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay. So, are you talking about a live Shardblade or a dead one, or it doesn’t matter.

Questioner

Like Nightblood.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay.

Questioner

Awakening the steel, like that, Shardblades <are like Awakening metal> and stuff.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The big difference here is that in one you’re using a physical component, right, and Investing it. In another, a more pure Investiture is passing into the Physical Realm and taking on an embodiment, a shape. Does that make sense? And so, similar but different things. There is a correlation, but it’s not--yeah.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

The Koloss Named Human

Human is another reader favorite from this series. He completes a cycle of characters I'd conceived from the beginning of the series.

In each book, Vin is given an assistant—someone to watch over her and guide her. In book one this was Sazed, who Kelsier charged with watching over Vin. Eventually, Sazed became his own force in the books and could no longer fill this role. At that point, Elend asked TenSoon to watch over her, and he became her attendant for book two. Now in book three, TenSoon is a viewpoint character in his own right and Vin is left without an assistant.

Human fills that role for this book. I had planned him to have a much larger place in the novel than he eventually got—I intended to do something more like with TenSoon in book two, where Human was always accompanying Vin. However, I feared repeating myself in that way, as the TenSoon/Vin relationship in book two worked so very well. I didn't want to do another story about Vin and her inhuman companion growing to trust each other and becoming friends. So, I reduced Human's role in the book. A koloss would make a terrible sidekick anyway.