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Would [Kaladin using a Shardblade to pick his teeth] work, or would it burn out your eyes immediately?
Assuming Syl doesn't just became a Shard-toothpick, but remains a sword.
I suppose I'll go with the other responders--yes, you could make this work, in a perfect world.
Breaking Out Of The Cell
Alcatraz fails to break out of here the first few times he tries. I’ve always been a believer of making things tough. Too many stories, in my opinion, have the villains acting in a stupid way. If the heroes can only win because the bad guys are idiots, then where’s the fun in that? (Big problem with 80s cartoons, I’m afraid. Even as a kid, I watched them and said, “Come on! Let Destro lead, not Cobra Commander! Let’s have a challenge here!”)
Ahem. Quick geek-out moment there.
Anyway, I figured that the Librarians would be aware of how Alcatraz and company might break out of the prison. True, they had to rile up the guard to get out–and that depended on the guard reacting in a foolish way–but people do make mistakes, particularly when they’re annoyed. I like that the prison–the part of keeping them captive that was prepared ahead of time–worked like it’s supposed to. It was human error in the passion of the moment, mixed with Alcatraz’s ability to be downright infuriating (a talent nearly worthy of magical powers), that was enough to get them out.
Of course, all this necessitates the villains running off and leaving the heroes in prison. However, try to look at it from their viewpoint. How important/dangerous are Alcatraz, Bastille, and Sing? Wouldn’t you rather keep an eye on the real threat–the centuries-old master wizard with a mysterious objective?
So, of course we need to ask you to start about something which is important, which is the sale to DMG of the rights for the Cosmere. Now it's not just, I mean, it's the champion's lake that we're talking about, right? You're at the same level as many very important authors, and the rights will be sold to the cinema, TV, and so on, so forth, the Cosmere books, which can be about thirty. My question is, are you excited about that? Are you scared, or both? Because you know that when dreams come true, sometimes it's not as nice as it seems. So, the question is, now that you have made your dream come true, will you think that you were better when you were writing and having that dream, or is it okay now?
A writer I once read got asked what he thought of the bad movie that got made from his book. Actually, the phrasing of the question is, "What do you think of what they did to your book?" And I have always remembered his response, which was, "My book is the same. It's right there. They did nothing to my book; they made a bad movie." My dream is not to make movies, my dream is to write books, and I am living that dream right now. Now, the chance of having a good movie come out is exciting to me. I wouldn't have sold the rights if I didn't want to take that chance, and hopefully we'll get some great movies and great television shows, but if we don't, I still am writing books, and my books are what I started this to do. I am going into this with my eyes wide open. I have had some good friends who had some terrible movies made of their films and I have talked to them about their experience, and I am willing to risk that happening. You can't get a Game of Thrones if you don't risk an Eragon.
You are known for being extremely meticulous in planning out the structure and details of your stories before writing. That being said, are there any times you have come up with a new idea or plot point as you are writing and just went with it?
Yeah, it happens all the time. I am, as I've come to learn, relatively detailed in my outlines compared to a lot of my contemporaries. (I am not the most detailed; I think that prize probably goes to Kevin J. Anderson. His outlines tend to be just basically the book, but shorter.) If you've seen me talk about my outlines, there are a lot of bullet points in there and goals; I don't know exactly what's gonna happen in each chapter, I'll know what I want to achieve in each chapter, which is a little bit different. I'll know, "these two characters need to interact, this information needs to come out, and this event happens to end the chapter." I'll know things like that. However, as I'm writing, as you're putting the book together, as you're getting in the zone and really getting to understand how the book is feeling and flowing, you start to change things, just from the first chapter. Not even it comes out exactly like planned most of the time. And this is just a part of the process.
Now, I am an outliner, which means that when one of these things happens, I will often go with it, but I'll also be revising my outline. I'll take a little bit of time to just go with it and see how it goes, often. But a lot of times, I'm already working on my outline. I'm already saying "oh, this is a much better idea, this is working way better." Trying to remember... from a first book, a time where that happened. Famously, Adolin wasn't a viewpoint character in the original draft of The Way of Kings, but that didn't happen during the drafting, that was during the revision process, so it's not quite what you're asking.
The personality that Doomslug ended up having in Skyward was not something I had planned out. I just kind of went with it as it came along as I was writing. A lot of the personalities of the side characters in Skyward are a good example of this. Like, even Jorgen's personality is quite different from what I had imagined in the outline. This happens a lot with characters for me that I'm writing, and who they are becoming is a much different person than who I maybe imagined them. Until I write through their eyes, I'm not 100% sure who they are. And this is the big thing that throws my outlines off. I know that my characters are going to grow to become different people than I imagined when I started, and the outline just has to adapt to that.
Unless it goes too far. Some of my fans who were watching back in the time, I added a character to Warbreaker just kind of on-the-fly as I was working on the beginning. And I really liked this character, they were great. So I'm like, "Wow, I want to bring this character on the adventure." And I wrote them into a couple of chapters, because they were just fun to write, and it just ruined the other chapters. The chapters no longer worked in the structure I was making, and it was a worse structure, and this character being along was taking away from the sense of isolation, which was a major theme for Siri in that book. And I was posting these chapters online as I wrote them for Warbreaker. I just eventually said, "This character is no longer coming on the adventure" and pretended they hadn't been there in the next chapter I posted. That happens sometimes, too, where you just decide to edit something down.
Chapter Fifty-Three - Part Two
Yes, Ahan is a traitor. When building this book, I knew that I wanted one of the characters to betray the rest. I also knew that I didn't want it to be the most obvious one in the group. This left me with a problem. I had to provide a character whom nobody would suspect as a traitor, yet at the same time make it believable that he would turn traitor.
The first thing I did was throw in Edan as a diversion. He worked perfectly–virtually all of my alpha readers mentioned that they thought for certain that he would turn traitor. I had Edan run off early because I wanted to lull the readers into a sense of security, thinking that their "traitor" character had disappeared already. I also didn't want to throw Ahan's betrayal in with Edan still there–I think that would have made Edan's purpose too obvious to those who could see the two contrasted that way.
The next thing I did was begin foreshadowing that Ahan acts, and speaks, without thinking through his actions. I mention this a couple of places, including at the eclipse party. I made his character a bit indifferent, a lot blustery, and tried to indicate that he didn't quite see the treason he was engaging in as being as dangerous as it really was.
Finally, I began having him act suspicious. You can go look through the spoiler annotations if you want notes of where I had him doing things like this. Essentially, he acted odd when Telrii was mentioned, and he was the one who went to visit Telrii when the group wanted one of their party to get in good with the enemy.
These are small things, I realize. However, I think they work well enough. I wanted to get across a sense of shock and surprise at the betrayal. I always hate it when traitors are obviously oily men with shifty eyes. I don’t think people trust that kind of man.
Anyway, I think the other thing that lets me get away with Ahan's betrayal is that he doesn't completely change characters with the treason. He isn't a different person–he doesn't suddenly become a "bad guy," like happened in some stories. (Ahem. The TV show 24, first season.) Ahan just didn't think hard enough about what he was doing–he took his actions too lightly.
Vin Tries to get to Luthadel in Time
These scenes involving Vin running toward Luthadel formed one of the pivotal sequences for me during the plotting of the story. Unlike most focal scenes like this I write, however, I'm not completely satisfied with these. Not because I don't like the sequence; I think the writing in the scenes turned out very well. However, I do wonder if the tension behind them works.
You see, with the finished product in hand, the plot sequence I worked out feels just a tad contrived to me. It's hard to avoid this in novels; if you plot out as much ahead of time as I do, then often you end up with contrived sequences because they ARE contrived. You designed them to work a certain way. In these areas, however, the "smoke and mirrors" I often mention comes into play. How good is the author at hiding his hand on the work? How easy is it for the reader to feel what the characters feel, rather than being drawn into playing the game of the metastory.
If the smoke and mirrors work, then you'll feel anxiety here. Is Vin going to arrive on time? Will she get there and find her friends dead? Will she even be able to do anything if she arrives on time?
However, if the smoke and mirrors fail, the reader will feel manipulated by the fact that I sent Vin away, only to have her turn around and come back a few chapters later. The reader will think "Of course she's going to make it. That's what this sequence is all about."
Often, I'm pleased with how the plotting keeps my readers feeling that anxiety. But in this sequence, I think the author's hand shows a little more than usual. Could just be my critical eye inspecting my own work, but I see it. Hopefully, you can read and appreciate the sequence for the emotions the characters feel, rather than the slight awkwardness of the plotting.
How would an albino with red eyes be regarded on Roshar? Do they even exist there?
They would be deeply mistrusted. (Unfortunately.)
Just because Rosharans are racist, or is it a cultural carryover from fear of the Voidbringers?
Probably both.
Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Palahabach 5.7.3.
Lightweavers
And now it's time is the strangest Order, and I can say that with authority because studying this Order is what got me selected for this project in the first place. The Lightweavers are strange not just because they are artists, renowned the world over for their stubborn refusal to act like everybody else, but because they don't worry so much about the things that most concern the other Orders. They don't tie themselves to rules or rituals, or even oaths. I mean, they call them oaths, but really they're just truths. And they're not bogged down trying to find the great truths like the Truthwatchers do; they're just acknowledging truths about themselves, as individuals. The other Orders stand on ceremony or tradition, or arcane systems of laws and rights and organizations. Lightweavers just get the job done in whatever way's best, beholden to no one but themselves. And they use art to do it.
I think a lot about their oaths. Why speak truths about themselves? I have a theory. First of all, it's important to know who we are. That's true for everybody, but I think it's especially true for artists, because they live their lives in fiction. Lightweavers are the spies of the Radiant Orders, skilled in subterfuge and trickery. A Lightweaver spy might have to spend days, or even years, pretending to be someone they're not. What keeps them grounded to reality? Core truths about themselves. When you know who you are, you can see the world through others' eyes. This helps you to infiltrate an enemy organization, sure, but it also helps you to understand people, to empathize with their needs and fears and desires, and thus give vital context to actions and decisions that might seem ludicrous otherwise. When you can put yourself in someone else's shoes, and see the world as they see it, and still come back to yourself, you find a perspective that's impossible to get in any other way.
The year 2022 catapulted our Merchandise and Events department to incredible levels of excitement, growth, improvement, and fun!
Our first big project was the “Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson” Kickstarter campaign held in March. The fandom came together and absolutely shattered records, ending with our campaign at double the next most funded project ever launched on Kickstarter.
We also attended FanX Salt Lake in September, New York Comic Con in October, and our own Dragonsteel convention in November—we loved seeing and interacting with everyone! Held this year in conjunction with the release of The Lost Metal, we tripled our attendance for Dragonsteel 2022, nearly doubled our exhibitor hall vendors, and had one fantastic time!
Between our Kickstarter campaign, our three book bundles (Skyward Flight: The Collection, Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, and The Lost Metal), and our convention, our merchandise team has worked on more than 70 new products this year! Many of these have already been released or will be coming in 2023. We are excited to be expanding our product offerings and can’t wait to see everyone’s reactions to the awesome products we have for next year.
Preparation for 2023 is well underway! First, we have tripled our employee headcount and are ramping up packaging rewards and prepping for fulfillment of our Secret Novels campaign. Second, our events team has already begun planning Dragonsteel 2023, so watch for announcements on hotel discounts and open registration. We are determined to make every year even more awesome for our fans, and we hope you’ll join us on November 20-21, 2023. Third, our merchandise team will be working on the Defiant book bundle, new releases for the store (including opening preorders for those who missed the Kickstarter), merch for Dragonsteel 2023, and the upcoming Words of Radiance campaign. Keep an eye on our social media (Instagram | Facebook) for updates on all these projects!
And finally, with hundreds of pallets of products and shipping materials received already, and hundreds more to come, we have spent much of the past year looking for a larger warehouse space. We are happy to say we found a warehouse that is 10 times the size of our current one, and we can’t wait to move in next year after the improvements are finished.
The enthusiasm for next year is abundant here at our warehouse, and we can’t wait for you to see the results of all our hard work.
I'm rereading Oathbringer right now, and I'm in chapter 36 (a Dalinar flashback). While reading through it, I noticed Dalinar commenting on a particular flamespren that seemed odd to him.
Dalinar narrowed his eyes at the flamespren. That one did have a sword. A miniature Shardblade.
Knowing that it's almost never a coincidence when we encounter a strange spren, it got me wondering; we don't know what a Dustbringer spren looks like, but it feels like it would make perfect sense if Ashspren looked like flamespren. This led me down a really interesting line of thought:
Would the Blackthorn have been a Dustbringer?
Now that we know that Dustbringers are all about self-mastery and channeling their incredible power, wouldn't that be a really interesting path for one of the most dangerous (even before he could surgebind) men on Roshar? That idea is just terrifying.
Maybe his visit to the Nightwatcher disrupted his progress towards becoming a Dustbringer and led him down a different path?
RAFO. :)
Were Hoid's eyes open when he was spray painted copper?
Yes.
You mentioned once upon a time that you had an idea for a book based on certain viruses, bacteria, illnesses giving characters powers. Has the current crisis of COVID-19 given you any new ideas or inspiration for said idea to blossom and build on?
It has, it definitely has, and it's been really kind of helpful for that reason. I think I'm more likely to write Silence Divine than I've ever been before. But I've learned I have to really be careful to curtail my side projects, particularly when a Stormlight book is due, and a Stormlight book is due on July 1st. That is creeping up real quickly.
I actually got an email from someone today that just is begging me to release Rhythm of War now, while they're trapped in quarantine, because they need something to read. If by some chance you (the person who sent me that email) are watching, the book's just not ready! I can't release it, it's not done. I'm not holding it back because I'm cruel. These books, we go right to the deadline on these books, and this book will be turned in like the hour that is it required to be turned in and not before. The last hour it can be turned in and still be printed and shipped is when we will we turn the book in. There's just lots to do - going through all the beta reader comments now, and while several of the plot lines work just fine, there's some of the plot lines that need some work. You're going to be a much happier person with this book with me doing that. I cannot stop and write Silence Divine right now, I gotta keep my eyes on the goal.
Chapter Six
Siri Is Bathed, Then Sent to the God King
This was a strange sequence of chapters to write. I've spoken before on writing characters of the opposite gender. This has grown easier and easier for me over the years, partially—I think—because I started out so bad at it that I insisted on forcing myself to practice and practice. Now, it's usually as easy for me as writing men. In fact, I don't even think about the gender of the character when I'm writing—I think about who the character is. What their motivations and conflicts are. How they see the world and how they react to things. True, their gender does influence this—just as it influences their personalities. But I don't sit down and say, "I'm going to write a woman now." I sit down and say, "I'm going to write Siri." I know who Siri is, so I can see through her eyes and show how she reacts.
All that said, I'd never before tried writing a wedding night from the viewpoint of a woman. It presented a few interesting challenges. For one, there's a whole lot more nudity in this book than in my other books. I don't shy away from this (even though I myself am probably more conservative than most of my readers in areas of sexuality), as I feel that what you do with your imagination is your own business. This scene could be done in a PG way, a PG-13 way, or an R way. It's completely up to you how you want to imagine it.
One interesting thing to note is that my own wedding happened during the process of writing this book. I wrote this chapter before then, but I was engaged at the time. While working on the novel I got to go through the entire progression of awkward moments of a wedding night myself. (Yes, it was our first time, by choice.)
I think that probably colored how I wrote Siri's viewpoints throughout the entire book.
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.
When you started writing Cosmere novels, how much of it had you outlined? How far ahead had you thought?
When I started writing Cosmere novels? When I started started, I was a teenager. Totally hadn't thought very far ahead. When I was an adult and I was writing them, I wrote one when I was like 20, and I had an inkling, and I played around with things. The first one that I wrote with a real, conscious eye toward the cosmere was Elantris. So the ones that have been published, yes. But when I first started, I had a little bit of an inkling.
Have you ever backed yourself into a corner with it?
Not yet! I have backed myself into corners by saying things to fans that I've already changed in my notes and hadn't realized I had, and stuff like that - I do that all the time. But usually when I do that, I just tell them. "Ah, I'm sorry, I just changed this, guys." I'm still convinced that Stayer and Stepper - that [Robert Jordan] didn't know those were two different horses. I'm utterly convinced that he made the mistake, and then just covered it. Because that's the sort of things we writers do.
One of the ones I’ve been working on a lot lately is, how much can you affect things that are Invested with other magic systems? Should it be not at all, should it be a little bit, should it be…? But then I have to go back to Mistborn, and I’ve got canon here, where people are pushing and pulling on things that are Invested, but I tried when I was even writing Mistborn to make sure that the someone was drawing on the Mist, or had extra power for some reason before they were pushing on… and so I left myself that room, but at the same time I’ve established that you can do it, so anyway.
What happens when a blind person burns Gold- especially of he "sees" a version of himself that isn't blind? Can he see the other version or just hear/feel/sense him? What about the other version, can it see things? Could a blind person use gold in this way to see the world around him?
A blind person would indeed sense these things, but not have the vision with the eyes. In the same way that a blind person still dreams, but doesn't "See" in them. (As I understand it.) I'd suggest talking to someone who is blind and getting their take on how this would work.
How did this [Wheel of Time] help prepare you to write Stormlight Archive?
There's actually a good story there because Way of Kings, the first Stormlight Archive, is the book I was writing when I first sold Elantris. Elantris was my first published but it wasn't my first written, it was my sixth novel. It was the first one that was actually somewhat decent, but I was writing number thirteen when I got the offer on it. You'll find that's very common among authors. It doesn't happen to all of us, but a lot of us, we write for a long time before we get it done. And I just finished Way of Kings and it was not right yet. In fact when I sold Elantris, Tor wanted to buy two books from me, and my editor asked, "send me what I was working on right now". And I sent him Way of Kings and he said, "wow this is awesome, but number one, it's enormous. I'm not sure if we can publish this, at least in one volume, from a new author." Later on I was able to convince them it should be one volume, but that's when I had a little more clout and they could print more copies, which drives prices down for printing them. But also it just wasn't right yet. The book was not right. And I said to my editor, "I'm okay not publishing it now, because I don't know what's wrong with it." As a writer, I think it was just too ambitious for me at the time. I just couldn't do it yet.
It wasn't until I had written Gathering Storm in its entirety that I started to figure out what I'd been doing wrong. It was actually managing viewpoints was one of the things. During the reread of Robert Jordan's entire series, I noticed how he gathered the viewpoints together. You start writing a big epic fantasy series, and you feel like, they have so many characters and I want to start with that. In the original draft of Way of Kings I started them all over the world. I had all these viewpoints and things like this and the book was kind of a trainwreck because of it. Where if you read Eye of the World, Robert Jordan starts with them all together and then slowly builds complexity. Even in the later books, he's grouping the characters together. Even though they have individual storylines going on, they are in the same place and they can interact with each other, and there's clusters of them in different places. That was one thing. Working on Gathering Storm, I've learnt how to make my characters, also how to use viewpoints the way he did, how to manage subtlety--he was so subtle with a lot of his writing. Just some of these things, it all started to click in my head.
And I actually called my agent and said, "I need to do Way of Kings right now." And he's like, "Are you sure? Because you kind of have a lot on your plate." "I need to do it, it's going be fast, because I know how to do it now." So I actually took time off between Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight and rewrote Way of Kings from scratch. It took me about six months, which is amazingly fast for a book that length. And then showed it to my editor and it was right this time. It's hard to explain many of the specifics. It's like, how do you know you can lift this weight after you've been lifting these other weights? It's when you've worked hard enough that you've gained the muscle mass to do it. And writing The Wheel of Time was heavy lifting. That's how it happened. I do apologize the sequel is taking so long. But after that deviation to do the first one which I could do very quickly, I couldn't stop to write the second one after Towers of Midnight because the second one would take too long and delay the last book too long. I am getting back to Stormlight now, and I am working on the second book, but I had other obligations first that were very important.
Dark One
This is a series I've talked about for a long, long time about a boy who discovers he's the "Dark One." Basically, it's the classic epic fantasy story told from the eyes of the dude destined to try to destroy the world instead of save it. I've made good progress on the setting, which is going to be awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the teen series I do once the Reckoners and The Rithmatist are both done.
As a note for fans, this is a Cosmere story.
So, at the beginning of Way of Kings, Kaladin's in the slave wagon. He sees an unusual cremling after the highstorm.
*enthusiastic* He does!
Is that one that can see that he is a budding Radiant?
Let's just say that that cremling is more than it appears.
I'll give you a RAFO card, because I didn't fully answer, but you got kind of an answer. You'll be able to... Keep your eyes out for people saying, "That cremling looks odd."
How much of an impact did interviewing professional fighter pilots have on the story? Did anything learned from them actually change parts of the book in significant ways? Did you learn anything weird or unusual that you found fascinating?
The pilots were a HUGE help. The biggest issue I had, which was really hard to get through my skull, was the different ways that G-forces interacted with the human body.
I knew the basics, and had flight suits operating correctly and was watching for people pulling too many Gs. But the fighter pilots kept explaining things like "eyes out" and how it wasn't just number of Gs, it was the direction they were pulling. It wasn't until I called one of them and had a lengthy conversation that it started to click with me.
From there, some of the direct feelings of pulling Gs--feeling like your skin is sliding off your body, or that you've aged a hundred years--I got from them.
As always with a sf/f book, one of my goals is to walk the line between realism and fiction. I tried to make the battles feel real enough to not kick an actual pilot out of the story, but at the same time, I specifically gave the fighters technology that we don't have, in order to spice up how the combat would work.
With the worlds expanding so much in book two and then even futher with the novellas you did with Janci Patterson, do you have almost like a cap in your head? Like, we can only go this big? What is the potential for this cytoverse in your head at the mometn?
One of the things, as I've been writing on the cytoverse, is I've wanted to have a good science fiction space setting to tell stories that don't fit in the Cosmere. So one of the goals of the cytoverse is to give me that receptacle for stories that I want to tell going forward. And so, where is the limit? I'm not sure that I've put a boundary on it. I know what Spensa's story is, if that makes sense. And that's where my eyes are right now. Like all of my settings, even with something like the Cosmere, the goal for that is always to give me the means to tell the stories I want to tell. And where I place a story is really depending on, as it grows and develops, what sorts of themes do I want to deal with, and things like that. If you read through the Skyward series, there are some story hooks for things that I might tell or I might not tell, going forward, if those stories decide that I need to write them.
Who owned the red chicken, and what was its purpose?
The red chicken was owned by the Feruchemist who was keeping an eye on Dalinar in his house.
So the last thing we're going to be revealing is the artist for Secret Project 4. The artist is Ernanda Souza, she is from Brazil. The way that I met her is through Dan dos Santos' SmartClass that he does. An artist class, and this is made up of students and working professionals who go to people like Dan; there are other artists who run these sorts of things too through SmartSchool to get better and improve their craft. And they often have a visiting art director who gives them an assignment and then comes in and checks in on the artist. We kinda run it like you would an assignment in the real world.
Anyway, we were doing Skyward pieces and I noticed that Ernanda's Skyward piece was really well done; so well done we actually bought it from her. And then later on I was looking for an artist for Secret Project Number 4, and started seeing Ernanda's art around. At first I didn't make the connection. I showed Brandon some of the art and then I'm like, "wait a second! I already know this artist." That was a nice reveal. So, I contacted her, and she's excited about it.
I asked her to send me a few things about herself, and she says she has worked for Hit Point Press, Paizo, Upper Deck; she's illustrated for Magic the Gathering, has done cover art for Marvel Comics. You can see her breadth of style, that she can go very realistic like a Magic card, and then go over and do very comic, bright style, so she's very versatile. She also works as a concept artist and fantasy artist for video games and other projects that she can't announce. She did graphic design at a Brazillian university, but there she met other people doing digital art and that kinda set her off to going into the videogame market to work for indie RPG companies. She says: "I love to do art, I love the amount of possibilities to create something that sometimes can't be described through words, how drawing and painting can easily describe what words can't. Art and design are the first thing to call eyes' attention. Funny, since the world is driven more and more by technology and fast-paced rhythm, our inner selves still know how to appreciate color, harmony and draftsmanship."
So, very excited to be working with Ernanda on Secret Project Number 4.
So, today I think I’ll post part of a proposal I’m working on for Tor. I’m going to send this to them, so that Tom Doherty can read about my plans and goals for the future before he and I meet in New York next week.
Enjoy.
Introduction
Writing is art, but publishing is business.
I’ve always believed that in order to succeed in this field, I would need two things. First, I’d need an excellent work ethic. Second, I’d need an eye toward my eventual goal of becoming a professional writer. When I started writing in earnest seven years ago, I realized that the chances of any one book getting published were slim, even if it was a superior manuscript. Therefore, I didn’t let myself stop writing–I figured that the more books I had to send out, the sooner I would get published. When Moshe finally called to purchase ELANTRIS, I was working on my thirteenth novel.
This background gives me an advantage, I think, over other first-time authors. I understand my writing style far better than a writer sold the first book he wrote. I know what I do well, I know what people enjoy from my books, and I have had time to hone and practice my craft. I also have a great wealth of intellectual property in the books I’ve already written. I don’t want to publish any of those books themselves–readers deserve to get books that represent my best and most current skill level. However, the ideas and settings I developed in those previous works can provide models for what to do in the future.
My foremost distinguishing attribute as a writer is my ability to create interesting settings and unique magic systems. I don’t use the standard fantasy setting–nor do I even use an iteration of it. I strive to push this genre to its full potential, giving my readers something new with each book. Another of my strengths is my ability to push my books’ plots toward dramatic climaxes with well-foreshadowed surprises and twists. I also think that I have a flair for witty side-characters and powerfully-motivated viewpoint characters.
My weaknesses are offshoots from these strengths. My books build slowly sometimes, and so the first quarter or so of a given novel tends to be the slowest. My books also have very steep ‘learning curves,’ meaning that because they have original settings and magic systems, it can be difficult for readers to grow accustomed to all of the new elements. Finally, I’m not a brilliant prose craftsman, though I think I’m getting stronger in this area. One of the things I’ve learned during my years practicing is how to focus my books around my strengths as a writer, while at the same time minimizing the effect of my weaknesses.
I’m at an interesting point in my career. My original goal, that of getting published, has been met–indeed, I’ve succeeded beyond what I dared dream was possible. I’ve been picked up by the most prestigious publishing house in fantasy, and am releasing a book in hardback.
However, getting published was always just a step. My real goal is to build a career as a writer. You don’t do that by publishing one great book–you do that by publishing a great book, then publishing an even better one the next year, then an even better one the year after that.
I can do this. However, I realize the need for a plan. Therefore, I’ve begun to look at the various books and series that I’ve written recently (within the last year) or am planning to write very soon. I’ve never published before, so I’m not sure which direction to take my career. Therefore, I developed this list of my most promising new and upcoming works so that I could get your advice on what plan I should use during my next five to ten years of writing.
Summaries of five series I’ve been developing follow. At the end, I’ll give a summary of my thoughts regarding my future.
This is my third and final essay tying in with the release of my new book, Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds. The book has been released for about a week now, and I hope you've all had a chance to check it out. This story is something special to me, particularly the third part—which might be the most personal story I've ever written.
But how did it start? The Legion stories seem, at first glance, very self-referential. They are about a man who hallucinates a wide variety of characters—but unlike many protagonists of his ilk, Stephen knows that his hallucinations aren't real, and doesn't (for most of the stories) resist the fact that he is like this. Instead, he uses this ability to help him, acting like a one-man team of experts.
The parallels are obvious. Stephen is very much like me, in that he imagines a large cast of people who accompany him. It's quite the metaphor for being a writer, though when I was working on the first story, I didn't really see this connection. I just wanted to see if I could change something that is often portrayed in film as a huge liability into (instead) a huge advantage.
The original cast of hallucinations—specifically JC, Ivy, and Tobias—were based on actors. This is rare for me, as I don't often "cast" my characters in stories. But to me, it felt like Stephen would have used people he'd seen in film as a jumping-off point to create these personas, much as many of my characters have their roots in the pop culture I consumed when young. Ivy, then, looks roughly like Gwyneth Paltrow, Tobias like Morgan Freeman, and J.C. like Adam Baldwin—with the name J.C. being a reference to the fact that he's played multiple characters with those initials.
But, like any characters I create, these were just jumping-off points, used to spin me into unique characterizations. JC went into this fun mix of self-aware, playing up his quirks, while Ivy became a representation of the fight within Stephen between cynicism and sincerity.
The more I wrote, the more this became a metaphor for the complex relationship between a writer and the characters in their head. The voices that they know aren't real—but still depend on convincing readers to buy as real people. The stories deal with mental illness, yes, but the further I wrote, the more Stephen became a stand-in for the way our perceptions—and our hopes—shape the world we perceive. And maybe for the crisis that can be caused when we realize there's a misalignment between the two.
Going back to the points I made in the first essay, however, it isn't that I was trying to express anything specific by writing these stories. And yet, by the end of the third one, I had indeed expressed something that was deeply personal—and real in ways that it is still strange to me that a piece of fiction can reach.
But that's the point of stories, or at least one of them. A medium through which we can all connect in ways that we never could solely by explaining ourselves. Because art reaches inside us, and expresses aspects of ourselves that aren't deliberate, there's a truth and genuineness to it. A raw sincerity that isn't always about which part of the three-act structure you're crossing right now, or which part of a character arc this event is fulfilling. Those are important to give us a framework. But it is not itself the art.
The structure is the skeleton, but the art is the eyes. The part you can see into and feel it looking back at you. The part that somehow—despite my best attempts to quantify it—is a soul that lives on its own, and defies explanation.
Writing my fight scenes, biggest challenges I have. One of the things I learned when I was a brand-new writer, approaching fight scenes, is that the fight scenes I loved in movies didn't translate well to fiction. I can sit and watch Jackie Chan punch and kick people for an hour and a half, and I'll just be happy. But if you tried to write that in the book, even done as dynamically as Jackie does it on the screen, it'll just get boring. "He kicked him. He punched him. He kicked him a different way. He punched him a different way." Just strict narratives of a fight are generally not very exciting, unless you make them very true-to-life and make them very short. You can certainly do just a straight fight narrative if it's a three-minute bout. But if you have somebody in battle, and it's going to stretch forty-five minutes or longer and you're gonna have this big, long, epic thing...
One of the things I learned very quickly is that the advantage we have as writers of fiction is we are inside the characters' heads. And that's an advantage that we have over film. So while they can make kicking and punching really interesting for a long time, we can focus the reader's attention by having the character have distinct goals they want to achieve, show their emotions, and show their reactions to what's happening around them. So, my biggest advice to you would be: look at your character. Decide on what you're character's goals are for this fight. Treat the fight like it's own sort of chapter, it's own sort of narrative, with beginning, middle, and end. With the character trying to achieve things, and either succeeding or failing. And trying to just filter it through their pain, their anguish, their confusion, or their excitement. Whatever their emotion is for that chapter. And keep your eyes on the character. Less on trying to have a spectacularly visual action scene, have a spectacularly emotional action scene.
What Bluefingers Knows
Siri meets with Bluefingers, who surprises her in the bath yet again. In this little exchange, Bluefingers is being very careful, as he doesn't want to let on how much he knows. As well as Siri is learning to deal with court, she has nothing on Bluefingers, who has spent his entire life there—and who was trained by a Pahn Kahl steward before him. He has been planning his coup for a long time and was actually very frustrated when Vahr started his little rebellion—drawing eyes toward the Pahn Kahl. It was partially due to Bluefingers's manipulations and information leaks to the Returned that Vahr was captured in the first place.
Here, he lets Siri think he doesn't know that the God King is mute (he does know, and has known for most of his life) and that he is worried about the replacement of the Pahn Kahl servants. (That would be a setback, but not really the main problem.) What he wants most to do is drive a spike between Siri and the priests, and he's succeeding gloriously. He almost leaped for joy when Siri offered her little "You get the God King and me out of the palace" offer. It makes his job a lot easier if/when he decides to assassinate the God King himself.
The settings of your novels often seem to be something quite different. It seems the majority of fantasy are basically earth with magic and maybe some cool animals to go along. The Way of Kings just feels different (and the Mistborn books for that matter)—harsher, darker, almost like what we would like call a wasteland. How and why did you create the world The Way of Kings in this way? The landscape of the Shattered Plains is especially unusual and evocative. Was it inspired by the landscape of the American Midwest?
The Southwest, particularly. My visits to places like Arches National Park, relatively close to where I live right now, certainly influenced me. More than that—and I've said this in numerous interviews before—I'm a fantasy reader foremost. Before I was a writer I was a reader, and I'm still a reader. As a reader, I grew a little bit annoyed with the generic setting that seemed to recur a lot in fantasy. I won't speak poorly of writers who used it very well—there are certain writers who used it extremely well—and yet a lot of other writers seemed to just take for granted that that's what you did. Which is not the way that I feel it should be done. I think that the genre could go many places it hasn't been before.
When I approached writing the Stormlight Archive—when I approached creating Roshar—I very consciously said, "I want to create something that feels new to me." I'm not the only one who does this, and I'm certainly not the one who does it best, but I wanted a world that was not medieval Europe. At all. I wanted a world that was its own thing. I started with the highstorms and went from there. To a person of our world, Roshar probably does look barren like a wasteland. But to the people living there, it's not a barren wasteland. This is a lush world full of life. It's just that what we equate with lush and full of life is not how that world defines it. In Roshar, a rock wall can be a lush, vibrant, and fertile place. It may look like a wasteland to us, but we're seeing through the eyes of someone who's used to Earth's flora and fauna. I've also said before in interviews that science fiction is very good at giving us new things. I don't see why fantasy shouldn't be as good at doing the same. Perhaps even better. So that's what was driving me to do what I did.
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...
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.
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.
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.
We Book Smugglers are faced with constant threats and criticisms from our significant others concerning the sheer volume of books we purchase and read—hence, we have resorted to 'smuggling books' home to escape scrutinizing eyes. Have you ever had to smuggle books?
I married an English teacher with a book collection as large as my own, so I haven't had to worry about that for a long time. The smuggling of books I had to do was when I was a kid. I would be up late at night reading, and my parents would want me to go to bed for whatever reason. I mean, who needs sleep? But they would come and turn off my lights or do various things to get me to go to bed. I actually lit a Melanie Rawn book on fire once, by accident, because I was reading by candlelight. I've still got the copy.
In high school, I would do the standard super-nerd-reader-boy thing where I would sneak a book into my lap as I was listening to some lecture in a boring math class.
Wisely, when I got to college, I became an English major in my sophomore year. Now people expect me to read. In fact, part of my job is reading and keeping up to date on what everyone's doing. So I don't need to smuggle any books anymore, but I feel for those of you who do, and I would warn you not to read your books too close by candlelight, otherwise dire consequences can occur.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Narrative Clues about Spook's Condition
The scene here where Spook goes into the building without a torch, and Sazed stands outside waiting, is a direct parallel of a scene in book two where Marsh does the same thing to Sazed. Both Spook and Marsh can see in ways Sazed cannot, and both tend to forget others aren't as talented in that area.
That's not the only similarity. I intended Spook's glasses with cloth wrapped around them to be a reference to how an Inquisitor looks with spikes through the eyes. Both these parallels are designed to be big clues about what's happening to Spook in this book.
Lightweaving on Roshar, is it more of a Physical thing or Cognitive Realm thing?
Lightweaving? I would say it's a hybrid between the two.
So there's a Physical effect, but also a Cognitive component to that?
Yes, and then even a little bit of a Spiritual component. Lightweaving tends to involve, I'd say it's mostly Physical. Mostly you're not changing what someone's mind is, but you're actually changing light. Mostly Physical, but Lightweaving in particular has a lot like- you'll see weird things happening with Lightweaving on occasion, that are kind of a little bit of Cognitive and Spiritual influence that's happening. So keep your eyes on that. Yeah, I would say, if you're asking is light actually being changed yes, it is.
Marsh Notes
One quick note on Marsh to end it out. If you'll remember, the crushed eye socket with the spike that has been pounded in came courtesy of Sazed back in book two. And the red tattoo he wears is an indication of what kind of Allomancer he was before being made into an Inquisitor.
Has the Nightwatcher ever changed anyone's eye color?
Yes, she has. Good question.
So men cannot write, it is a feminine art. Women do all the writing and reading while also covering their left hand with a sensible long sleeve (not godless whores). But what if a proper Vorin woman is born left-handed? Would she be forced to wear a glove in order to write? Or would she do her best to write with her right hand to avoid her sinful nature as a lefty? I wonder if these women write in secret, away from the lecherous eyes of others, and expose her safe hand to write freely.
These thoughts keep me up at night. I pity these left-handed Vorins for the rough life they must live.
This isn't as big a deal as you might think, because for a lot of the population, they just wear a glove and use their left hand.
It gets interesting when you are upper class, female, and left-handed. Part of the inspiration for the safehand was the way that the left hand is regarded as unclean in some of our cultures on Earth. You might be curious to read about what left-handed people did, historically, in some middle eastern cultures.
The short answer is "They learn to be ambidextrous" but the long answer is that it can be quite a pain, and very embarrassing. So yes, you are right to feel sorry for those left-handed Vorin women.
One of my favorite things about your books is your characters. And I was wondering... What advice would you give to an aspiring author about developing characters?
Ooh. This is the hardest one for me to talk about, because for me, it was a matter of taking what I was doing wrong and learning to do it right, which-- How do you do that? That's the story of becoming better at anything. For me with characters, the big "click" that happened in my brain was when I realized every character is the hero of their own story. Every character sees the world through the eyes-- That's the only experience they've had, and they don't exist to fill a role. We don't exist to fill roles. We fill roles! We fill lots of them. But that's not why we exist, right? We aren't "sidekick", or we aren't "spouse", we aren't-- We fill those roles, and we identify in those roles, but we are not those roles. And when I started to treat my characters each like-- I ask, what is this person's passion in life? How do they see themselves? They're okay not being at the forefront of the story, but what in their minds do they see as their life meaning? What do they want, who are they, all of these things. And when I stopped sticking people into roles-- Which is really dangerous for an outline writer, sticking people in roles. When I stopped doing that. My characters really came alive a lot more. So that's-- I don't know if that helps, but the biggest piece of advice I can give you is try to figure out a way where you can let your characters-- Pretend like, well, if this person where the hero of the story, not just the sidekick, what would they do? How would they approach it? What would they be doing if they weren't saving the world? If this plot hadn't hit them like a freight train, what would they be doing in life. They would care about things! What would they care about, what would they be doing.
Are we likely to see any more from Sixth of the Dusk's world?
You are likely to see, if you keep your eyes open, cameos from it. I am not planning anything in that world currently… It went really well, I've just so much on my plate.
White Sand revision?
That is on my plate once I finish Stormlight Five. The plan is: finish Stormlight Five. Play some video games and take some time off. Then, start on the White Sand novelization. With an eye toward starting Era Three of Mistborn January of next year.
The fact that Vorinism was partially inspired by Judaism and [???] means a lot to me, as a Jew, especially because there's not that much [???] other than dwarves. So thanks for that. I wanted to know if you could elaborate a little on some of the specific Judaism had on Vorinism.
Yeah, sure. Specific influences of Judaism on Vorinism. There are a couple of things. And I can go on this one for a while. I will pick Numerology which-- Jewish Numerology is really cool, particularly if you go back-- Like we always focus on alchemy and astrology as kind of the pseudosciences that were really interesting to scientists back in the day. If you don't know, Newton thought that alchemy was real and he could figure out how to make it work. I love these things that people approach scientifically but have supernat-- superstitious roots. And Jewish Numerology is really cool because the letters and numbers are basically the same thing, so a name can actually mean numbers, and vice-versa, and stuff like that. Which leads to some really cool and interesting attempts to understand the world by taking things from the Torah and transferring them back and forth between numbers and things. That sort of thing is very prevalent in the Vorin religion. To the point that it was really important to them, and then got forbidden. Because they were spending too much time on it. And you will find out roots about that. But that was an inspiration for Vorinism. Of course the Sephir, from the Tree of Life, were an inspiration for the Double Eye of the Almighty, and the idea behind all the different connections and philosophy going in that. The language. Kholin is actually pronounced /χolɪn/, and things like this--
Was that-- Sorry... Was Kholin supposed to be kind of close to kohen? Because--
Yeah, mmhmm.
Okay, cool.
So yeah, you're going to find all kinds of things like that in linguistic roots. And there is of course more but I will move on from that because I can talk too long on that. But yeah, there's some very fun stuff.
Hey Brandon while you’re here and we’re talking about Kal’s relationship with Lyn, we know he’s had at least one romantic relationships in the past being Tarah I was wondering if he was still a Virgin. Were these relationships just romantic? Also how negatively is sex before marriage viewed on roshar and namely vorin culture? I know these topics sometimes can make you uncomfortable but I’m really curious about this part of their culture.
In these cases, I generally allow it to be vague enough that people can think/assume what they want. However, some of Kal's relationships in the past (including the one with Tarah) progressed to the point that in our world, most people would have been sleeping together.
In Vorin culture, I'd say that they're not as relaxed about such things as most modern cultures are, but aren't as strict as the more religious cultures on Earth are. Alethi are concerned about oaths in specific--what have you promised, and do you keep those promises. So, for example, cheating is a far, far worse offense in their eyes. And opinions and strictness in areas of moral chastity would vary depending on upbringing and personal beliefs. To some, a promise of, "We'll be together until we split" that is kept would be considered honorable--while to others, that would be too lax a treatment of oaths.
Also, lighteyes are expected to be circumspect and maintain an image of certain decorum. But that's something else entirely...
PART FOUR: UPDATES ON PRIMARY PROJECTS
The Stormlight Archive
This was a Stormlight year, as you got not only a new book, but a novella and a non-canon alternate novel!
Rhythm of War is spending its third week on the New York Times bestseller list as of this writing, and has spent all three of those weeks as the #1 most read book in the country, per Amazon’s charts. So…huzzah! Thank you so much. 2020 might have been a trash year, but I hope this helped end it on a better note for many of you.
The book did about 40% better in sales than the previous volume, which is amazing. Thank you all for your support. This series is still in active progress, and I’ll dive into Book Five (the final book of the first sequence) in 2022, for a 2023 release. (Which is when we’ll probably do the Kickstarter for Words of Radiance in leatherbound.)
I also intend to write a novella about Rock to fill in what happened with him after the events of Rhythm of War. The first group of books won’t be finished until then.
After that, what happens? Well, let’s get to Book Five, and then I can talk about it more.
Status: New books!
Skyward Series
Skyward is my other active project right now. As I said above, I’m working on the third book (out of four) in the series right now, with a goal to have the rough draft done by January 1st. Hopefully we’ll be releasing tie-in novellas right around the time we release the novel, but I can’t promise exact dates.
I’ve posted some updates on Reddit where you can read more.
The short version is that I’m working hard on this project. Once it’s done, I will have one more book in the series I want to write. I anticipate doing that final book sometime in the latter half of next year, after I’ve finished writing Wax and Wayne number four.
Status: Working on it now!
Mistborn
While I haven’t been active on this series for a few years, I still consider it a main project. Wax and Wayne 4 (the last volume of Era Two) will be my next project, after Skyward 3. Watch for the status bar for that one to pop up sometime in the spring.
Right now, I’m planning to refine and update the outline for W&W4 while the beta readers work on Skyward 3—which should be around February. Then I’ll start writing probably in March/April, with a goal to finish sometime around July.
Once that’s done, and Era Two is closed out, I’ll turn my eyes to Era Three. My goal right now is to write all three books in a row, like I did for the first trilogy, maybe with a novella in between from another world to keep me fresh. That’s likely to be my writing for 2023–2025. Once that’s done I’ll dive into Stormlight 6.
Elend and Vin get attacked by Allomancers
And, yay! A fight scene. It's been a little while since we had one of those.
I worry that the lack off battles made me go a little extra-crazy with this one. I apologize if there were too many people moving about, too much going on, or too many enemies to keep track of. This wasn't meant to be a delicate Allomantic dance–this was a brutal, bash people and pop eyes kind of fight. Like I said earlier, I try to give each action scene its own kind of flair and feeling. This one was down and dirty, kill or be killed.
In fact, Vin nearly got killed twice herself. Something I worked hard in book one to establish was that Allomancers, even Mistborn, were not invincible. Both time she's gotten into serious fights in this book, it's nearly killed her. Without the edge that duralumin gives her, she'd have been beaten here twice over.
It's not that she lacks skill–not at all. This fight was simply designed, by her enemies, to be a real and serious threat. The odds were against her, and she had a lot to worry about. Perhaps she should have just grabbed Elend and fled. However, she figured she could beat them. She was right, in the end–even if she came dangerously close to losing.
Mistborn have a tendency to be over-confident.
When does Emperor's Soul take place in relation to the events of Elantris?
After them.
Like how long after?
I haven't answered that yet. A lot of people keep asking. But after them, but not so far after them that the technology level has shifted, which I allow, in my worlds, to happen. And also not so far after that the Emperor's Soul- if you keep your eyes open you will see a Derethi priest in full armor. And so, not so far after that the kingdoms we are familiar with no longer exist. They do exist and the tech level has not shifted dramatically so you can use that to kind of ballpark for yourself, a range. It's certainly not thousands of years later, in other words.
Consequences of the cut
Cutting the last scene was not without costs to the story. For the longest time, after removing this scene, something about what remained bothered me. I had trouble placing what was wrong.
The story went through editorial revisions and beta reads, none of which revealed what was bothering me. This process did convince me to add two scenes. The first was scene with the “paintball” fight in the noir city, which was intended to mix some action and worldbuilding in while revealing more of Kai’s personality. The second was the flashback scene where Kai and Melhi meet on the “neutral zone” battlefield, intended to introduce Melhi as more of a present threat in the story.
Something was still bothering me, even after these additions. It took me time to figure out exactly what it was, and I was able to pinpoint it in the weeks leading up to the story’s publication. (Which was good, as it allowed me to make some last-minute changes. I’m still not sure if they fixed the problem, but we were satisfied with them.)
The problem is this: removing the final scene hugely undermined Sophie as a character.
The deleted scene provides for us two complete characters. We have Kai, who wants to retreat into his fantasy world and live there without ever being forced to think about the falsehood he’s living. He wants just enough artificial challenge to sate him, but doesn’t want to explore life outside of the perfect world prepared for him.
As a contrast, we have Sophie, who refuses to live in the perfect world provided for her—and is so upset by it that she insists on trying to open the eyes of others in a violently destructive way. She tries to ruin their States, forcing them to confront the flaws in the system.
Neither is an ideal character. Sophie is bold, but reckless. Determined, but cruel. Kai is heroic, but hides deep insecurities. He is kindly, but also willfully ignorant. Even obstinately so. Each of their admirable attributes brings out the flaws in the other.
This works until the ending, with its reversal, which yanks the rug out from underneath the reader. Sophie’s death and the revelation that Kai has been played works narratively because it accomplishes what I like to term the “two-fold heist.” These are scenes that not only trick the character, but also trick the reader into feeling exactly what the character does. Not just through sympathy, but through personal experience.
Let’s see if I can explain it directly. The goal of this scene is to show Kai acting heroically, then undermine that by showing that his heroism was manipulated. Hopefully (and not every scene works on every reader) at the same time, the reader feels cheated in having enjoyed a thrilling action sequence, only to find out that it was without merit or consequences.
Usually, by the way, making readers feel things like this is kind of a bad idea. I feel it works in this sequence, however, and am actually rather proud of how it all plays out—character emotions, action, and theme all working together to reinforce a central concept.
Unfortunately, this twist also does something troubling. With the twist, instead of being a self-motivated person bent on changing the mind of someone trapped by the establishment, Sophie becomes a pawn without agency, a robot used only to further Kai’s development.
Realizing this left me with a difficult conundrum in the story. If we have an inkling that Sophie is Melhi too early, then the entire second half of the plot doesn’t work. But if we never know her as Melhi, then we’re left with an empty shell of a character, a direct contradiction to the person I’d planned for her to be.
Now, superficially, I suppose it didn’t matter if Melhi/Sophi was a real character. As I said in the first annotation, the core of the story is about Kai being manipulated by forces outside his control.
However, when a twist undermines character, I feel I’m in dangerous territory—straying into gimmicks instead of doing what I think makes lasting, powerful stories. The ultimate goal of this story is not in the twist, but in leading the reader on a more complex emotional journey. One of showing Kai being willing to accept change and look outward. His transformation is earned by his interaction with someone wildly different from himself, but also complex and fascinating. Making her shallow undermines the story deeply, as it then undermines his final journey.
There’s also the sexism problem. Now, talking about sexism in storytelling opens a huge can of worms, but I think we have to dig into it here. You see, a certain sexism dominates Kai’s world. Sophie herself points it out on several occasions. Life has taught him that everyone, particularly women, only exist to further his own goals. He’s a kind man, don’t get me wrong. But he’s also deeply rooted in a system that has taught him to think about things in a very sexist way. If the story reinforces this by leaving Sophie as a robot—with less inherent will than even the Machineborn programs that surround Kai—then we’ve got a story that is not only insulting, it fails even as it seems to be successful.
Maybe I’m overthinking this. I do have a tendency to do that. Either way, hopefully you now understand what I viewed as the problem with the story—and I probably described this at too great a length. As it stands, the annotation is probably going to be two-thirds talking about the problem, with only a fraction of that spent on the fix.
I will say that I debated long on what that fix should be. Did I put the epilogue back in, despite having determined that it broke the narrative flow? Was there another way to hint to the reader that there was more going on with Melhi than they assumed?
I dove into trying to give foreshadowing that “Melhi” was hiding something. I reworked the dialogue in the scene where Kai and Melhi meet in person, and I overemphasized that Melhi was hiding her true nature from him by meeting via a puppet. (Also foreshadowing that future puppets we meet might actually be Melhi herself.) I dropped several hints that Melhi was female, then changed the ending to have Wode outright say it.
In the end, I was forced to confront the challenge that this story might not be able to go both ways. I could choose one of two things. I could either have the ending be telegraphed and ruined, while Sophie was left as a visibly strong character. Or I could have the ending work, while leaving Sophie as more of a mystery, hopefully picked up on by readers as they finished or thought about the story.
The version we went with has Sophie being hinted as deeper, while preserving the ending. Even still, I’m not sure if Perfect State works better with or without the deleted scene. To be perfectly honest, I think the best way for it to work is actually for people to read the story first, think about it, then discover the deleted scene after they want to know more about what was going on.
Even as I was releasing the story, I became confident that this was the proper “fix.” To offer the story, then to give the coda in the form of Sophie’s viewpoint later on. It’s the sort of thing that is much more viable in the era of ebooks and the internet.
Either way, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think. Does it work better with or without the deleted scene? Do you like having read the story, then discovered this later? Am I way overthinking what is (to most of you) just a lighthearted post-cyberpunk story with giant robots?
Regardless, as always, thanks for reading.
So would it be possible to use Steelrunning + compounding to travel FTL?
No, it would not. You could get close, though.
Kind of like Zemo's Paradox, than? You keep halving the distance, never quite making it?
*gleam in his eye* Trying to crack Allomatic FTL?
*guilty* Maybe.
You can't.
I don't know, there are alot of good theories out there.
It involves Allomantic abilities which we don't know about yet.
"Deadeyes can't make choices," Notum said. "They don't have the presence of mind for it. I know this personally; my own father is a dead eye, cared for in the fortress now."
Third listen of the book, and I only just clocked that. I was under the impression that every single honorspren at the time of the Recreance became a deadeye, and that all currently conscious one's were descended from those the Stormfather made later (aside from the Ancient Daughter). How in the world can Notum's father be a deadeye without him being one too?
We became aware of this error sometime in the past year. Turns out Brandon momentarily confused Notum with the Reacher ship captain, who does have a deadeye father. The line will be changed eventually.
Not sure if this has been discussed. But the Oathbringer cover clearly has a new font from WoK and WoR. I thought it was just a placeholder and the final version would have the awesome Stormlight Archive font.
But today at the bookstore I noticed the Words of Radiance they had in stock also had the new (IMO boring) font. Anybody know why this got changed?
We were getting a lot of feedback that the old fond looked...gimmicky and outdated. The publisher came to us and suggested a change, I believe, but we'd been talking about it in house here too. The more we looked at the new book with the old font, the more we agreed. Somehow, it worked for TWOK but just didn't for Oathbringer.
I realized that some would like the old font, but gave the go ahead to change anyway. At some point, a font that drew that much attention to itself was going to become a millstone around our necks. We decided to change sooner rather than being dissatisfied for years. (Sorry.)
So, this was a matter of much internal discussion between Dragonsteel and Tor. It basically comes down to legibility.
The old font is just not very legible. If you don't already know what it says, you have to stop for a few seconds to figure out what it says. If you're looking from a distance, Words of Radiance looks sort of like Wobos of Bhoihnce.
After Tor spent some time tweaking the letter shapes on Oathbringer to try to make it more legible, and really didn't get anywhere (it kept ending up looking basically the same), they floated the idea of just doing a redesign. We at Dragonsteel agreed this was the best time to do that if it was going to be done.
They tried quite a few different fonts, and the one they ended up with was one they had actually proposed to use for Brandon's name. We said keep Brandon's name the same, but try that font on the title. It's not just a standard like Times New Roman; the shapes of the letters have interesting little touches with the serifs and whatnot.
No, it's not an "awesome" font like was used previously, but it's a lot more legible for books sitting on the shelf and possibly catching someone's eye when they're walking past.
Okay, A larkin and an aviar. Could you tell us how they're related - are they a bit similar? Other than that they both fly.
I would not call them terribly similar. A larkin is a specific type of creature that feeds off of Investiture. And there are some other things like that in the Cosmere. But aviar don't do that. Aviar have a symbiosis with an Invested entity. Aviar are more like, they're kind of weird because they fulfill both the role of a spren, but also the person that's bonding the spren. They're an intermediary.
Okay. And larkins don't have feathers, right?
Larkins do not have feathers. They look like little... They look like wasps.
Like wasps? That little?
No, not that size, but that's the look of them. They're in the picture in the front of Way of Kings, the magic map. If we have Way of Kings here... We can grab it for you. If you go to my website for the art for Way of Kings, look up "Way of Kings art archive" on my website. It's not the cover, it's on the magic, the double eye symbol of the Knights Radiant in the inside cover flap. There's a pair of larkin there.
Is Adonalsium going to be mentioned by name in Warbreaker and The Way of Kings or is he going to be an underlining "God"(I don't know what to call him yet) idea? I am curious now, so I will have to keep my eyes open for him.
Adonalsium (Ahy-doe-Nahl-see-um) will be mentioned by name again. Ruin and Preservation were what have been called Shards of Adonalsium. (The Voice from Warbreaker is another Shard.)
Is this "character" a common link between your books for religion or magical or maybe even both?
Adonalsium has to do with the Cosmere, which is the word Realmatic philosophers use to refer to the greater universe of the Shardworlds. It's hard to separate religion, magic, science, and society in most of these worlds. So "both" is a good guess.
I was curious because he just seemed to appear and nothing further on him/it. Thank you for mentioning that he is in these two other books, I will have to look for hints of him.
The word Adonalsium (or, well, the miss-spelling of it) appears in only one of the books. Other clues and links between the books can be found as well. (Some people on my forums have spotted some of them. Others have gone unspotted so far.)
Marsh is still alive hundreds of years after.
Uh-huh.
He's got, like, Lord Ruler level healing powers. Why does he still have a crushed eye socket?
So all healing in the cosmere has to do--or almost all has to do--with your perception of yourself.
