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Those spren bodies that were brought into the Physical Realm by Ishar. Could an Awakener make it Lifeless?
This is within the realm of possibility.
What about Forgery?
Forgery would be a little harder. Because you'd need to know what went wrong to make it go well. I'd say Forgery could accomplish this.
So you've branched out into graphic novels. What about other types of media--?
So the question is, "I've branched out into graphic novels. What about other types of media? TV and things like that." Well a graphic novel is something we can kind of have enough control over to make it happen ourselves. Right? Like I know the people at Dynamite. We can work directly with the writer. We can work directly with the artist. And so a small team can put together a graphic novel. It's more than required to put together a book, like I do, but it's still a small team. It's basically me, the writer, the illustrator, and then Isaac and Peter working on this. So, you know, five people can put this together.
A movie--have you seen the credits scroll? *crowd laughs* I can't really do that on my own. So the best we can hope for is for me to sell the rights, which I've done for most of my properties, and hope that someone in Holywood can actually make a film out of them that's good. And that's just a roll of the dice. So, yes we're trying. It is slow. Watch my website--we'll say if there's any news. There really isn't right now. Fox has *Steelheart*. They've been doing work on the screenplay, which looks good. But, you know, the screenplay is the easy step--the next two steps are the hard ones.
I did not know about "Cosmere" or its cycle until this very moment. I have however, read just about every single one of your books and knew that HOID makes an appearance in them. I had always thought it would be a grand idea if someday, a long time from now, we found out that all these different worlds were connected and your last masterpiece would be the book that revealed that to us. But I guess you thought of this brilliant idea before I did , sigh.
I planned to do something just like that, actually. I considered sticking the clues more deeply into the text. (For example, in some early drafts of later books, I didn't use the name Hoid for his alias.)
In the end, though, I felt that readers would enjoy the journey far more if they could connect things and begin to dig at the deeper picture themselves. Besides, if I hid the clues so well nobody found them, then that would have required so much arranging of stories as to make for some awkward moments.
They [the Alethi] are tan.
You're not wrong for your observation, here, /u/Faenors7. When I saw them, I noted to Isaac that the skin tone for the Alethi in the cards [Stormlight Archive Playing Cards from the Way of Kings Leatherbound Kicksterter] was a touch darker than I imagined. But it was within the variance (I'll explain below) we imagine for the Alethi, so I decided here that we should leave it.
The reason is that we've allowed a lot of leeway to artists in their depictions. If they paint everyone looking white, we speak up, and we usually show them some of our guides of models and pieces of art we think are on target for character designs.
However, I haven't wanted to have a strict skin tone guide. Thing is, most Rosharans don't look at skin tone so much as eye color and hair color. It isn't that they ignore skin tone, but it isn't the same for them as it is for us, in part because a lot of cultures (like the Alethi and the Vedens) have a wide range of skin tones.
It's something I think we (myself included) are a little blind to in American culture. Like, we call someone black if they (like President Obama) are of a mixed race heritage. This is partially because of our particular biases. But what makes someone black is actually pretty nebulous as a skin tone shade when you look at the wide variety of black skin tones. The same goes for what ethnicity we consider white, when a hundred and fifty years ago, the more olive-skinned European people's would have not been lumped into that group.
I often point to India as a good example of what you might find in Alethkar--you find a ton of skin tones across the sub-continent, and they're all Indian. Same for the Alethi. And I don't spend a lot of time talking about whose skin tone is darker, and whose is lighter, within that range.
So when we get back something like these cards--and this is how the artist views and imagines the characters--we roll with it, offering little pieces of feedback here and there. (We had her make tweaks to Adolin, for example, to get him closer to how I imagined him.) Same for the poster--which has the Alethi characters with lighter skin, closer to what we'd see on a Japanese person on Earth.
This might be the wrong path, and I'd appreciate feedback on it. I do want to be careful not to whitewash characters (something I've had trouble with before in cover art) but I also worry if we focus too much on exactly how dark or light the skin of these characters are, we're missing the point a little. I believe in letting people who read the books imagine the characters as they would like, with me providing some guidance. It's a central theme to me in how I perceive the author-reader relationship.
This was why I was hesitant at first to even have depictions of characters in the books. (And why I liked the first cover of the US edition so much.) As we've moved along, however, I've taken a different tactic--that of admiring, and even including, different depictions from different artists, letting variety (hopefully) let the reader imagine as they want.
Sorry for the long post. It's a topic that keeps coming up, so I thought I should say something more definitive. Hopefully, people can keep a link to this post in their pockets whenever discussions about this pop up.
I guess I must've misremembered a quote of you talking about them as darker. Oops.
Well, you're probably not remembering wrong. I've been asked before if the Alethi skin tone is darker than, say, a person from Japan might have. And I'll usually say, yes--in general they are. But I also think it's all right to paint them like a modern day Earth person from that region, as that's often what artists will use for a model or reference. So in general, if you saw an Alethi person, you'd think, "Asian person, with tanner skin than most." But that's imagining an average Alethi, with some having a darker tone, and some having a lighter one.
Chapter Thirteen
Marsh Decides to Kill Himself…Again
This is, unfortunately, another throwaway chapter for Marsh, more intended to remind you that he's around than to actually accomplish anything. I still think this is better than just abandoning his viewpoint for most of the book, then coming back to it near the end. However, I like what I do in the next couple of sections—where we get to see him working toward something—better than these chapters of him just sitting.
This one is particularly annoying because it's simply showing him waffling back and forth. In the previous chapter, he decided that he couldn't ever get up the strength to kill himself. In this one, he decides again to kill himself.
There is some good stuff in here—we get to see why he makes the decisions he does, and we get a tiny bit of backstory on the Marsh/Kelsier/Mare relationship. We get to see Marsh in conflict, which is good.
However, reading back through the book, I'm feeling that I like the Marsh chapters in part one the least. Ah well. Somebody had to have the worst sections.
Are there any specific choices that you've made in the story of the books that years later you go "Ah man, I wish I had done--"
Oh yeah, what a great question. Are there any things that i've done in my books that I've regretted. Like I'm like "Oh I should have done this" or things, many years later. There's basically one for every book. Or two, or multiples. *laughter* One of the big ones is, at the end of Mistborn Vin draws on the mist... I'm trying to avoid spoilers on this... which is something I'd been planning to do in Book 2, and then I wrote Book 1 and did all my outlines and things and my editor got back to me on Book 1, "Could we add more pow, more punch to the end of this book?" and I'm like "Yeah we can do this thing I was going to do in Book 2". But then it didn't feel foreshadowed to me. After I put it in and released the book, I was looking through it again like "This doesn't have enough foreshadowing." And this is where I developed Sanderson's First Law. I was "I did something wrong in this book." It's lack of proper foreshadowing on how the magic works. So there's that. There's all sorts of things, like at the end of Words of Radiance I had a character kill another character in a situation where I don't think he should have. He should have just let the character die to the environment or something like that. And so I actually tweaked that between hardcover and paperback. I'm not sure if I should have done that. I wanted to try it out and see. But yeah, every book.
Most of the time you just have to let it go, right? Elsa. You have to Elsa it. Because otherwise-- Was it da Vinci? "Good art is never finished it is only abandoned" right? Or just art, "Art is never finished only it is only abandoned". You've got to learn to just to let things go and let them be canon. And it's actually very-- I've found that readers are more forgiving of these things than the author thinks they will be. They're like "We like seeing early books, and the fact that you hadn't learned to do some of these things quite right yet. It's an aspect, a fun part of the writing". But yeah, basically every book that I wish. I wish, for instance, in Mistborn, that I had made Ham a woman. I was so focused on Strong. Female. Protagonist. that I forgot half the population are women. *laughter* And like years later I look back, I'm like "Ennnnhhhh... The whole team--" I do have Vin, who turned out really well, and Tindwyl in the next book. But in the first book you're like "Are there any women in this world? It's basically all dudes". So this happens to a lot of new writers, and if you guys are new writers, don't stress it too much. You're going to make mistakes. When they become obvious to you, just realize you're in a process. That's how you learn. You come up with goofy things like Sanderson's Laws to explain stupid stuff you've done to help yourself not do it in the future.
So with the depth of the novels, and the number of novels, that you create, do you have an assistant, or some sort of system--
Do I have an assistant--
Well I mean--
A system to remember everything... Yes I do. What I use is a wiki. I use a personal wiki, just like Wikipedia that is called-- I use an open-source software called wikidpad... and I have someone whose job it is to read my books after I write them, go make all of those notes into the wiki with page references so when I write the next one I can look them all up in the book and things like this. They have a very fun, yet tedious, job.
A question in general with your writing process. Do you learn a lot from your students that have gone on to become authors in their own right? Do you come back looking at their works and maybe saying "I can incorporate this kind of style into my writing?"
I would say I tend to learn more from the writers who were with me when I was breaking in who are around my age, 'cause we're all kind of going through the same things. So people like Dan Wells or Mary Robinette Kowal that are kind of my group that broke in around the same time, I try to talk to them a lot about writing. This is where my writing podcast came from, Writing Excuses. It was me just wanting to ask them how they fix thing, how they deal with this thing, how they deal with that. Certainly, some of my students have gone on to do really great stuff that is inspiring. Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books are great. Charlie Holmberg, who writes the Paper Magician, the Glass Magician books are great. Lot of really great writers. I don't know how much credit I can take from them. But I am inspired a lot by a lot of the books that I read. But I wouldn't say that group specifically. Though working with new writers is kind of inspiring in its own way. Less about the things they're writing, and more just remembering what it was like, and the passion you have when you're a brand new writer. That kind of fresh-faced innocence is handy for someone, the longer you go.
I was wondering why the male peak spren is built with a lot of muscles but the female isn't? Is there a specific reason for it?
The appearnce of Highspren is as varied as the humans that imagine them. There can be skinny peakspren and fat peakspren as well, I think... these two are just some examples that Shallan has seen in her travels.
When a Feruchemist stores their charge in a metal, where is that going? Is that going into molecules, is that going into the Spiritual essence of the metal, is that sort of a Cognitive - what is that?
It is charging it in...in cosmere terms, more on the Spiritual level, but there are connections to the Physical as well. It's not 100% on the Spiritual.
It's not changing the molecular structure?
It is not going to change the molecular structure. If you brought that metal to Earth, somehow, and tested it, you wouldn't be able to tell any difference. Because we just don't have that element.
You can't test for Investiture on Earth
Yeah. In the cosmere, you can.
How do world travelers travel?
Well, there are various different methods. The main one that people have figured out involves pools of energy on the various planets.
So like we saw in Elantris? Okay...
If you read mostly in Words of Radiance you will see--
Also, in this chapter we begin to get a few pay-offs from the building I've done in previous chapters. The foreshadowing with the well, the foreshadowing with Karata's escapes into the city, and the foreshadowing with the child Elantrians all come to head in this chapter.
At the same time, I give foreshadowing for Iadon's paranoia, and foreshadowing regarding the passage out of his palace.
These are the sorts of little plotting events that make writing exciting for me. When they pay off–when the reader has that moment of "oh, I get it"–is when I'm the happiest as a novelist.
Let’s say that the fires of industry keep progressing in Middle Earth, and someone builds a spaceship, they get in it and go up. What do you think happens?
In Middle Earth? I think it is heavily implied by the time that happens that Middle Earth has changed to a place where there is no magic, so I think it works just fine.
[Follow-up on if Middle Earth is in the same universe as the cosmere]
You’re not talking to a Tolkein scholar here.
[...]
Yes, the cosmere takes place in a place where there is another branch of physics that is investiture, and that is the big change.
Do you ever run into problems with that, does it break physics?
Oh, yeah. If you look too deep in a fantasy book we are breaking the laws of thermodynamics and we are breaking causality. Those are the two big ones. And those are very important things to be… very dangerous things to be breaking. And you could probably write a fantasy novel that didn’t break those two things. Maybe? I don’t know. The way I avoid breaking laws of thermodynamics is by saying, we’ve got investiture that things can transfer into as well. We’ve got matter, energy, and investiture, I’ve added something to the tripod and therefore it looks like I’m just bending the laws of thermodynamics.
When you actually get down into the nitty-gritty, it starts to break down. It just has to. Causality is the big one. Once you have people teleporting and things like this, run the train experiment. I mean, you just have to say “It’s magic” at some point in a fantasy book. For most of them. I think you could do it, but in mine, with a grand scale magic system I want to do, we just have to say, “at that point it’s magic.” And this is how I think a fantasy writer differs from a science fiction writer.
A SF writer takes today and extrapolates forward. I take what is interesting and extrapolate backward. Usually. For instance speed bubbles. “I want to have speed bubbles. This is how they work. Peter, tell me the physics.” And we work it out together. We work out physics and try to hit the big trouble points and build into the magic why certain things happen. But that doesn’t stop us from making speed bubbles where there is time passing differently without using mass or whatnot to create time dilation, and it causes all kinds of weird things to happen.
I am currently submitting a story to major science fiction magazines under a pseudonym to see if I am good enough-- It's a flash fiction piece, which is the thing I'm worst at... I knew that, if I sent it as me, they would take it, because putting one pages in in order to be able to say "Brandon Sanderson" on the cover is just an enormously advantageous cost/benefit analysis for a magazine. I probably wouldn't submit a full-size story, because I I know I am good enough to get in magazines on those; but I don't know about flash fiction. So I've been submitting that under a pseudonym.
Will you let us know eventually?
Yeah, if it gets rejected from all the major places, then I'll tell you and be like, "Well. This wasn't good enough to actually sell." We still have it out at a few various magazines.
"Medical nanites" are mentioned. Does Secret Project Two take place in the same continuity as The Original?
I do not have it in the same continuity right now. Now, whether The Original happens on a dimension that's analogous, then you start getting into, "Well, anything could be connected once you're going to interdimensional travel and things." I would say that the only conscious thing that I'm doing to connect to anything else I've written is using Cecil's name, and even that's a little tongue-in-cheek.
Could this be connected to Apocalypse Guard?
I am doing another book series that has interdimensional stuff. There's a decent chance that when I revise Apocalypse Guard I will be like "You know what, I should only have one interdimensional travel series," and I might intentionally connect those. But for right now, the only intentional connection I have made is using Cecil's name. And saying it's the same personality, the same Cecil.
On Oathbringer cover, Jasnah seems to be in the air, flying, but she never had flying ability before...
She is not flying, that's more artistic liberty on Michael's part.
Can Shardblades cut Aluminum?
You're gonna have to... yes they can, well yeah. They can cut aluminum but... yeah.
What makes fantasy creatures good and how do you go about creating them?
I try to build mine from the ecology of the world of the world I'm building. I try to extrapolate from that and this is just because I have this sort of "one foot in fantasy, one foot in science" approach to writing the cosmere in particular. And because of that, I want the flora and the fauna to feel integrated with the world that they're on and to be interesting in that aspect. Obviously, I have not done this in most books to the extent that I did in Stormlight. But one of the fun things for me to do is to ask, "What have I changed about this world? What would that do to the ecology?". What do I look for other than that? I want something that's visually interesting. I want something that'll draw well. I want something that'll not just be what I've seen before and that will be a nice take on what I've seen before. That's the thing, I mentioned before: human creativity is about recombining things in interesting ways. That's how we seem to work. We don't come up something we've never seen before, we put a horn on something we've seen before and call it something new, which is cool. We're remixers, is what we're really good at doing. And I ask myself, "What can I remix that I haven't seen remixed before?"
Rithmatist? Is there...
Someday, there will be a sequel. I sat down and tried to write it. And I ran into some things that were just kind of problems, both in the worldbuilding and in the story I was gonna write, and it just didn't work. So I put it aside, and I've been working on the outline, and when I feel comfortable that I can do a sequel that's as good as the first one, I will write it, but it was not going well enough, that I felt it was... something was missing. So, I will take another stab at it before too much longer...
I now wish that I had not left that little teaser at the end of the first one. If I would have wrapped that up a little tighter, then you wouldn't have... I mean, I would still write it, but I feel bad about that teaser that there's more when it has been hard to get that sequel done.
Well, we're getting to that common meme of Syndrome from Incredibles, where it's like, "When everyone is special, no one is," because once you commodify power, which is that whole villain's point... And that's gonna be such a fascinating angle for the development. Or it will not be touched on at all, and we're just theorizing. Brandon, would you mind answering that question? Was this a worth while conversation?
Power is already a commodity. Power is a commodity in Stormlight during the Stormlight first era. Power is a commodity (to an extent) in Mistborn. So yeah, power is a commodity in the cosmere. It's been from the very beginning.
In your books, you have some pretty powerful healing magics, and we've also seen some characters sustain some pretty traumatic brain injuries. The human brain stores information as electrical connections, right? So if you blew a part of it out, you could grow it all back, but those connections wouldn't really be there. Have you considered that?
I have. This is why you will see memory... So, Cognitive Shadows maintain a person's memory. And your Cognitive aspect, your Invested self, maintains your memory in the cosmere. This is why you will also see people's memory being edited by accessing some of the Investiture. You'll see this in Warbreaker; you saw this in the end of Rhythm of War. Your Cognitive self, your Invested self, keeps a duplicate of all your memories. So this allows very significant trauma to the Physical sense; as long as the Cognitive sense is still attached to that body, those memories will be reimplanted in the Physical self, or will be accessed. And this was just necessary for me to even have things like what happened with Raoden in the beginning of Elantris, and for ghosts to exist, and things like that. It actually works pretty well, because it lets me use it to edit people's memories by accessing their Investiture.
And one of the other things that's going on here is: if you have more Investiture, you can remember more, and better. But then that's dangerous, because it's a lot easier to access that Investiture. And it's a lot harder to notice when it has been edited. Hmm.
I was wondering if it is possible to steal Surgebinding with a Hemalurgic spike?
Yes, but if you're stealing it from a Radiant, you're going to be stealing the bond, which the spren has an influence over. So, it's maybe not going to work as well as you might hope.
Once upon a time I asked you about the magic system as described in Elantris and The Emperor's Soul, how in The Emperor's Soul [Shai] describes it as, she talks about the Spiritual Realm as the, like, the wall wanting to be beautiful. And how in Elantris they describe the Dor as what makes a river want to flow. And I assumed that meant that they were connected. But according to that [Arcanum Unbounded] it says that the Investiture is housed in the Cognitive Realm and how unlike most of the other magic systems its magic comes from the Cognitive. And so now I am confused.
Okay, they are related but there's an overarching theory, er, kind of philosophy of what Investiture is and it imbuing things with desires that in our world may not actually have desires. And that is connected. The fact that the Dor is the Cognitive Realm is not the way it's supposed to be. That is a prob-- well, in some ways it's a feature, but it's also very much a bug.
Well you answered my question about Allomancers being able to burn metals in other realms. Is that because the Shards are sort of… My impression from the book was that the Shards were, in the Mistborn books, specifically in that area but is it because the universe is formed across all of them that that is why the metals...
So, most of the magics are not region-dependent, because the Spiritual Realm-- in the Spiritual Realm space doesn’t exist. All things are the same distance from one another.
Okay, so when Kelsier is in the-- Which Realm is he in?
He’s in the Cognitive Realm.
Is he seeing people from other worlds or is he--
No, he meets some people who are traveling but Cognitive Realm is location dependent. He is on the Cognitive Realm on Scadrial and the people he runs into there-- until he kind of travels off into space, which is where he finds the fortress.
So even though he’s tied to Scadrial could he go to the Cognitive Realm of other worlds?
He would have trouble getting to another planet, being a Cognitive shadow like he was.
So is there some particular thing that somebody would need to have to be able to move between the realms?
A body is helpful. Depends on what their ties are and things like that. Not always, but yeah.
Evi was shown to have very strong moral convictions in Dalinar's Oathbringer flashbacks, do you think she could have become a Knight Radiant alongside the majority of the Kholin family had she lived long enough? If so, which Order would she fit best?
I think that she would've definitely had a good shot at that. Where would Evi go? Like a lot of people usually there's... most people I know who took the test and talked to them there's often two or three they bounce between. I could definitely see Evi as an Edgedancer in the way that she liked to pay attention to people that sometimes weren't being paid attention to, but I don't think that's where she would land. I don't think that's the strongest one. I would probably put her in Truthwatcher myself, but I would perhaps prefer to sit and think on it. This is one of those things that when I actually sat down to build the outline I'd have to really dig into it, but those are my gut reactions right there. Not a Bondsmith, not a Windrunner, neither of those fit Evi really well, but there you go, there's two she could've been.
In Stormlight, with Kaladin and his brother Tien, is there a connection or a reason why, whenever his brother finds a rock, that keeps coming up several times?
Yes. So, there's a couple themes going on here. One is just the subtle theme that Tien tends to find beauty in things that Kaladin finds dull. That's, of course, kind of the metaphor. But Tien also was a budding Lightweaver, and he saw color and light a little bit differently than other people did. And he has the same general effect that you'll see Shallan having on people, which is how the Lightweaver views you influences a little bit more how your mood is, and things like that... And there is a magical element to that, as well. There's both a metaphoric reason and an in-world reason.
Do you have any, or will you ever write a gay character into any of your books?
There are several. Drehy, in The Stormlight Archive, the bridgeman is gay, because he's based off a good friend of mine who's gay. Ranette in the Wax & Wayne books, the woman that Wayne's in love with, she's gay, and it's hinted at in the first book. By the second book, they're like "Dude, she's gay, just leave her alone." So yes, I have written gay characters. I've never written a gay main viewpoint character, maybe someday I will, it's not something I've done yet.
[The Stormlight Archive] Books 6-10, do you know the Order of the flashbacks?
I've not decided the order. I know whose they are but I haven't decide the order.
Lift?
Lift is one.
[...] Taln?
Yes, Taln is one of them. The person who calls himself Taln.
How could a person from Scadrial access Shadesmar? An alloy of a god metal?
He RAFOd me on this one and said it was a plot point for future novels.
What's lerasium?
That is the bead of metal that Elend finds at the end of Book 2, that Vin finds and gives to Elend.
Oh so there were only two and the Lord Ruler kind of left it there?
There actually were a bunch of them, and the first Mistborn came from people who ate that. The Lord Ruler took one for himself and he left others there to use if he needed them.
Renarin, his visions of the future are they connected to one of his Surges? Both of them? Are they a side-effect of his order?
Umm...
Like I can kind of fit in the two of them...
Alright, how much of a spoiler do you want on this?
All of it.
*Incredulously* Really?
Is that even a question for me?
Do you want to know something secret that you then can't post?
*sighs* How-- Is it something that is going to come up in Book 3--
Yes.
--or later.
It comes up in Book 3.
I'll bear the burden.
You'll bear the burden meaning I can tell you?
I'm going to pause this actually... *Audio paused*
It is, frankly, a bit of a miracle that this [Secret Project Five] manifests in the middle of Stormlight Five. And it only did because I had a little bit of momentum on it from a number of years ago. And you'll find out once that is once we do more of the reveals. But it's something I've been writing on for maybe seven, eight years.
I wrote a bunch of this in Hawaii last year. I took some time and relaxed; I actually had two trips to Hawaii last year, one with the whole family, and then one with just myself and Emily. And that's where the bulk of this was written, was during those two trips.
Secret Project Five is much shorter and more compact. It's got, I think, really only two POVs.
Something else I wanted to talk about with this. You mentioned High Cosmere Connectivity; I worked forever trying to figure out how to write that phrase. Because it had to fit in, like, two or three words on the screen. And it had to explain... and I'm not sure if people will understand, even still, what we're getting across. Because what I really wanted to say is: this book isn't intended for first-time Cosmere readers (though if you are a first-time Cosmere reader and you understand that, you'll probably have a good time). The rest of you probably should read a few Cosmere books before you pick this one up, then you will really enjoy it better. That's what I wanted to write; that's not three words.
If they know they're jumping into future era where there's a lot more cosmere connectivity... but, the story reads just fine on its own. There are plenty of people who could read this book, not know anything, and enjoy it quite a bit. It doesn't require you to have read other books to understand. But...
And some people don't like a lot of cosmere connections. And this one does have them. It's got characters from multiple different planets; some you've seen, some you haven't. And it's taking place, kind of dealing with future era sort of stuff. I think most readers will enjoy it, but I do want you to be aware of that, right? There are some people who are just like, "I just want to read Stormlight Archive, and I don't want to worry about the larger mess." And this is probably not something they would like.
One of the things, as I was reading it (because I was keeping this idea in mind of how accessible is it to new readers), in a lot of ways I think... Imagine Lord of the Rings, except it starts after they've already left the Shire. So you don't actually get to see the homeland of anyone in the Fellowship. But you hear about their homeland, and they brag about their homeland to each other. That still works, right? It's very Guardians of the Galaxy; other than Earth, you don't really see anyone's homeworld. But you can accept, "Okay, these are all the adventurers that have come together to do the thing."
I have finished a project! Dark One: Forgotten, my latest collaboration with @BrandSanderson, is done and polished and sent. This took SO MUCH LONGER than it should have, but it’s done! Victory! Time for my theme song.
Nice! Out of curiosity, how does this relate to the first one?
It's a prequel.
The story is long. This game will have to run for 10 years in order for me to cover all of the stuff in your outline.
Are you surprised?
Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Palahevev 5.4.4
Edgedancers
There's no Order I think more self-contradictory than the Edgedancers. They have a grace and elegance and refinement that is the envy of emperors, yet they spend all their time with the poor, sick, and destitute. And there are probably some emperors out there (and I guarantee there are some highprinces out there) who see this as a total waste of proper form and beauty. "Why should they not be here with me, being beautiful?" I see it as a kind of beauty unto itself though. What better use for the best runners, performers, and dancers in history than to spend their time with the people who never get to see that kind of stuff. Don't the poor deserve beauty, too?
The actual words of the Edgedancer oath are "to remember." Remember the poor, the sad, the lost, the forgotten. The kinds of people who slip between the cracks, because nobody else bothers to remember them at all. A general wants you for your strength and your cunning. A highprince wants you for your loyalty and labor. An Edgedancer wants you for you. With all your faults and even (maybe even especially) with all your lacks. You lack food? They can help with that. You lack health or strength or even limbs? They can help with that, too, and they will look as graceful as a windspren while they do it. I'm a bit of a dancer myself, so I love any Order that puts more beauty into the world. The Edgedancers do that with both movement and kindness.
What's not to love?
Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Vevishach 4.10.3.
I begin this journal with no small amount of trepidation. That Master Hoid himself would ask me, Senne Khald, a brand new apprentice Worldsinger, to begin a treatise on the Radiant Orders, is so unexpected it boggles the mind. I shall do my best to fulfill his expectations.
These first few entries will be my thoughts only. A more complete description of each Order will come later. But what intrigues me the most as I begin this project are not the powers, but the personalities of each Order. How are the members of each Order different from the members of the others? What kinds of personalities does each Order attract? This is especially interesting in cases where some of the personalities seem to overlap. Why choose one Order over the other? How do you differentiate their similarities? This is where I will focus my initial writings.
Windrunners
Is there any greater hero than the Windrunner? The Windrunners certainly don't think so. And, to be completely honest, they kinda have a point. This is the Radiant Order that protects the innocent, upholds the virtuous, and defends the defenseless. Also, they can fly, which I was going to leave off of my list on purpose to bother them. But scientific accuracy is, I suppose, more important than what I do. Which is pestering the pompous.
Oh, here's a good bit of scientific detail: how can you tell if someone is a Windrunner? Answer: they'll tell you. In practice, Windrunners tend to be equal parts heroic and insufferable. They're always out doing things: scouting, fighting, flying, training. And it can be exhausting just listening to their schedules. They tend to take on more squires than most, which means there are a lot of them. And they can't just have normal friend groups like a normal person; it has to be organized and official. They group themselves in squads and call themselves soldiers. They're aggravatingly good at things, but also just aggravatingly good. And sometimes I just think, "Get over yourselves, right? Nobody needs to be this righteous and serious and good-looking all the time."
Now that I read back over this, it may be that I'm being a little unfair to the Windrunners. They're not really obnoxious, they're just formal and efficient, which I find to be obnoxious. They're also intensely heroic, and we would be lost without them. I will endeavor to be more unbiased in my future journal entries.
I have finished the frustratingly secret projects that I rudely refuse to tell you about, and am now working full steam on the Dark One novel. Plus a lot of detours into the worldbuilding of my Cosmere series, which really should wait until I'm done with Dark One but it's too exciting and I can't help myself :)
Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Palahashes 5.6.1.
Truthwatchers
They call them Truthwatchers, but I think that's only because Truthseekers-and-discoverers-and-enthusiastic-declarers is too long. But that's really what they do. Truthwatchers want to know the answers to things, and then they go out and find the answers to things, and then they go out and share the answers to things. And if they think that someone (especially someone in power, like a ruler or ardent) is hiding or misrepresenting the truth about things? Hoo boy. They will come down on that person with all the fury of a scholarly axehound. And they will have all of the citations to back themselves up.
One thing that I love about Truthwatchers, though, is that even when they argue (which really isn't as often as I'm implying that it is), they're typically very calm and quiet. They do so with an eager politeness that I've never seen anywhere else. They genuinely want to hear what you think about the world, and why you think that way, and what you might think if presented with new evidence. Which is a helpful trait to have. Because despite their endless quest for truth (or maybe because of it), no two Truthwatchers on Roshar can agree on what that truth is. Name a basic fundamental fact about the world, and every Truthwatcher you talk to will have a different strongly held opinion about how it's actually neither basic, nor fundamental, nor even a fact.
This can be frustrating if you let yourself be pulled into a long conversation or debate, but at least they're usually friendly when they do it.
As of last week, I am officially the new Vice President of Narrative at Dragonsteel Entertainment, which is Brandon Sanderson's company. Brandon is one of the biggest and most successful fantasy authors in the world, with a vast universe of interconnected worlds and series called the Cosmere; I will be helping to guide the Cosmere, coordinate tie-in projects, write short stories, and co-write novels. This is, in part, a response to our collaboration on DARK ONE, and my first project as VP will be a large revision of that book.
Now, you're talking about possibly (no promises being made) a revision and an actual release of White Sand. Is that something you would ever consider doing with Dragonsteel Prime or Aether of Night?
No. Main reasons being that they're too far out of continuity. I haven't been considering them in continuity. Like, Aether of Night, they fight Midnight Essence; shows up in Stormlight, shows up in Tress of the Emerald Sea. And we delve into the first appearances of a Shard of Adonalsium, but that Shard's no longer canon. And the worldbuilding of Aether of Night is totally canon; aethers have been showing up since late 2000s in my books. But Aether of Night, there's nothing about that book, of the actual plot and characters, there's nothing about that that is appealing to me or interesting to me. Hopefully, I will eventually write a book set on the aether planet, where the Aethers come from, which is where Aether of Night was. But that planet's completely different, and the story'll be completely different. Those characters aren't relevant to me.
Dragonsteel, I consider lightly canon to the Cosmere in that the events of Dragonsteel happen, mostly, but the worldbuilding's been refined so much that eventually I will write the book that will be called Dragonsteel (or maybe the series), but it'll now be Hoid's story, rather than Jerick's story. And it'll be a completely different type of story. Though little bits of it will be recognizable.
White Sand's the one that's still canon; I've been considering it canon all along. There's no events in White Sand that disrupt that. The characters are still really interesting to me. Khriss has shown up all over the Cosmere, and she's a main character in it. Baon's shown up in Stormlight twice, now (as of the little reading I did recently), so I wanna get a real good canon prose version of White Sand out there for those who don't want the graphic novel, so that it can be in the line. The big question I have, though, is: will I sit down to write it and be like, "I need to start on page one and just do this over?" Or will I be able to revise it and release it?
The last few weeks I've been doing a ton of writing for Super Secret Project X. I can't tell you what this is literally until it is out in the world, but here are some hints: it's three things, and they're in the Cosmere, and you should really come to Dragonsteel '24.
Who here is a big Brandon Sanderson fan? We've talked about doing weird collaborations forever. We actually did one. And if you are a big Brandon fan, you have probably heard about a book called The Apocalypse Guard. Which is one that he's been working on for a while, and he eventually came to me and is like, "This is broken! Help me fix it!" So I came in, and I fixed some of it. And we went back and forth and we did a few revisions, and we got to the point where everything's working except the magic system. And I'm not the a-hole that's gonna change a Brandon Sanderson magic system. So it's on the back shelf until we get a chance to go through and have him do another pass. But I'm gonna read a little bit of the first chapter to you right now.
Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Shashesev 6.1.4.
Stonewards
If I tell you that a Stoneward is solid and dependable, does that surprise you? It shouldn't, because very little about the Stonewards is surprising. They are solid and dependable; they're there when you need them, and usually out of mind when you don't. I'm making them sound boring, and that's not my goal. Stonewards can be just as varied, just as kind, and just as interesting as any other order. And then, suddenly there's a problem, and everyone wonders what to do, and you realize that the Stonewards are already there, quietly and efficiently just doing it. They work together, they work hard, and they don't bend or compromise when things get difficult. All of these qualities make Stonewards into excellent soldiers. And, indeed, Stonewards make up the main bulk of Radiant armies. When they aren't fighting, they're often running drills or playing sports, or working on some enormous project that became the new background of their lives.
Stonewards love a challenge, I think because they love effort. Most people love the feel of accomplishing a task, but Stonewards are the kind of people who love simply working on a task. People who enjoy getting their hands dirty, and building or tinkering, or carving or creating. They like doing stuff and getting stuff done and making the world a better place because of it. If you have a friend who's a Stoneward, make them some food and never let them go. A Stoneward will be the most loyal and helpful friend you've ever had. They're always there when you need them, so make sure you're there for them too.
Dan is writing the novelization of Dark One at the moment. It's not following the outline, so don't expect it to end up like the graphic novel (sadly). Dan is planning on this being about a 100-120k novel overall.
My number two was a book I don't think you ever read because I wasn't submitting to the writing group. It's called Star's End.
I've heard of Star's End, and I've read some of Star's End. But you didn't submit it to the writing group, I think that was just Leading Edge read that.
My early books I wanted to try a bunch of different genres. So this is - not really a space opera, I don't know what to call it. It's like a Star Trek episode. That's what it's like. It is a guy who gets assigned to a station whose job is to try to harness all the energy of an upcoming supernova. And they're trying to figure out how to make kind of like an expandable Dyson Sphere of energy receptors, that will with the nova go bigger and bigger, and be trapping a lot of this released energy. I don't know why I didn't just go with a Dyson Sphere, but yeah.
I was new, I hadn't read all that much science fiction. But it plays out much more like a Star Trek episode with technobabble rather than science, so it's not hard science.
And he shows up and it turns out this space station has become a confluence - he's in charge of it but a bunch of alien species are very interested in what's happening here, and they start showing up and jockeying for political position with the energy that's going to come from this station. And there's a mystery, there's a murder and all sorts of things ensue. It's basically murder mystery/ interaction with weird aliens. So like I said, very Star Trek-y.
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.
Part Four: Updates on Secondary Projects
Elantris
As I said, I’m getting ready to start into this series again! Expect more updates next year as I finalize my outlines for this and Ghostbloods. Elantris will soon become a Primary Project again.
Songs of the Dead
Back from the, uh, proverbial dead, this book is actually ready! It’s been sent out to publishers, and there are offers on it. So finally, the long-awaited story about an American necromancer living in London is a go.
Now, I did want to say one thing about this project. I built the outline and the world, but as things have gotten so busy with the Cosmere—and because revisions were taking a long time—I made the tough decision to hand this project completely to Peter Orullian, the coauthor.
I did two passes on the finished novel, but I’ve realized I won’t have the time to support the rest of the series in that way. The Cytoverse is really the only non-Cosmere thing I can devote time to right now, and while I think this novel turned out great, I have decided that I’m not going to be involved in any sequels. (Other than the worldbuilding being mine.) Now, some of you might try to read between the lines on this, so let me say, there’s nothing to find other than what I just wrote here. Peter and I get along great. I think you’ll love the book. It’s just that I can only do so much, and some five years ago I started to realize I had to limit the number of series (particularly non-Cosmere ones) that I can work on.
Peter fought valiantly for this book though, as did my agent—who really believes in it. So it finally came to fruition. I expect Peter himself to make an appearance on my livestreams in the future to talk about the book and the process, and I’ll keep you all updated. But do expect to see this one released in the near future.
White Sand
The time is nearly here. In July I expect to take the graphic novel, my original book, and a lot of notes I’ve been making, and create the definitive novel version of White Sand! Khriss is a major player in the Cosmere, and so having her book be readable in a prose version is an important task I want to get to.
Maybe we’ll have this one for Dragonsteel 2025.
Dark One
Dan is still working away on our novel here! I’ll let him give you an update.
Hi! Dan here. Dark One is a wonderful project, and one we both believe in strongly. Unfortunately, as listeners of our podcast are aware, I was diagnosed with depression in 2021, and 2023 is the year it came to a head and messed everything up. So the book’s been delayed while I get my brain in order, but that’s mostly done now and I’m working hard on a new revision of Dark One.
In the past we’ve talked about this as the first of a trilogy, but the more we look at it, the more Brandon and I have decided that it wants to be a single book. Certainly more stories could be told about this world and these characters, but this first story, now that we see it take shape, is flowing very naturally into a clean and simple novel of about 150k words (give or take).
At the same time though, we are also expanding the story’s scope a little to include Christina and Sophie, the characters from the audio prequel Dark One: Forgotten. They were intended to be one-off characters exclusive to the prequel, but not only did we fall in love with them, they can help solve a lot of logistical puzzles we hadn’t quite cracked in the original outline. All in all, the Dark One story will be a little shorter but a lot more deep and rich. We think you’re going to love it.
Again, if you missed Dark One: Forgotten, the audio original Dan wrote last year, it’s awesome.
Super Awesome Danger
You might remember that when I did the reveal for the Year of Sanderson I had five manuscripts, not four. The fifth one (let’s call it Secret Project Zero, so that in discussing it people don’t think there’s one they’ve missed) was a middle-grade graphic novel about two brothers, based loosely on my children. One designs a video game named Super Awesome Danger, and the other gets trapped in it.
It’s a whole lot of fun. We’ve moved forward on working on some test images for the graphic novel, and I thought I’d share those with you! We’ll be producing this completely in house at Dragonsteel, using Ben McSweeney (who did the Shallan’s Sketchbook illustrations, among others) and Hayley Lazo (artist for the Alcatraz books) to create the art, using my script.
Back in 2019, my son Oliver drew a picture of a creature he named Robog—half robot and half frog—and he gave it to me. I hung it up on my mirror and looked at it every day for many months. Super Awesome Danger started as the story of Robog and developed into a tale of two brothers who design a video game together, and then one gets trapped in it.
Ben McSweeney is doing initial layout on the graphic novel, and Hayley's doing pencils and inks, and while we're still at the beginning of the process, so far it's turning out fantastic. Here's an initial layout by Ben along with some of Hayley's concept art. We're excited to show more of this as the month's progress.
Part Seven: News from My Company
Many of you have asked how the Nicki Savage novel has been coming along, so here’s an update. The first draft is finished, clocking in at 118k words, about the same length as Shadows of Self. It needs a lot of revision before I show it to Brandon—he and I have discussed the story, but he hasn’t seen the manuscript yet—so getting it ready for him to read is my next step. As we build out Dragonsteel’s Creative Development department, I foresee more time to work on the revision.
So what does the future hold? So many wonderful secrets. Dark One is tentatively planned for 2025. A very cool [REDACTED] is planned for 2024. And of course my first Cosmere series is deep in pre-production; I’ve built an extensive outline, and I’m working with Brandon and Isaac on some amazing worldbuilding, and I love it all. This is a story I’ve wanted to write for literally years, and having the opportunity to co-write it with Brandon is a dream come true.
The cameo for a friend, I usually don't use very much of then. When Dan shows up in Mistborn, it's just a guy named after Dan.
Sergeant Wellen, who keeps living through brutal catastrophes and spree murders. That's my whole thing.
In fact, Sergeant Wellen's descendant shows up in Lost Metal.
[Knight Life] had a cool ending. It had a Brandon ending. Through a wacky series of events, a character gets signed up for a gladiatorial arena, where he has to fight the champion. And this is the thing looming over him for the whole thing. (You have to suffer through a lot of really bad jokes that don't land before you get there. For some reason, I was enamored with this idea of a barbarian who used, like, a metal carrot to hit people.)
Was there a pun behind that?
No. I mean, it's one of these things that you write and you think is an anti-joke. You're like, "What if instead of a sword, he used a carrot. Isn't that funny?"
But this is looming over the character the whole time. He ends up getting challenged by this right at the beginning. And it's the metal carrot guy; he's a barbarian. And they're like, "You can't fight this giant monster." It's like going against the Hulk or something like that. And it looms over, and they're trying to get out of it the entire thing. But then, at the end, through little clues, you find out that the champion has a heart problem. So the hero runs around in a circle around the outside of the arena for an hour until the guy dies of a heart attack. And that's the climax (I kid you not) of the story.
