Advanced Search

sufficientlyadvanced

It says that it's dangerous to travel to Shadesmar on Sel. Why?

Brandon Sanderson

It has to do with the Dor and the lack of an entity controlling much of the power Odium left in his wake on Sel.

Phantine

Woah, that's interesting. I had no idea Odium left little bits of his power on Sel... I guess it kinda makes sense for evil monks to be powered by pure hate, though.

Brandon Sanderson

Odium did not leave his power behind, one should note. He left several other powers which are now, to a large extent, mindless...

Windrunner

If you wouldn't mind answering, does Roshar have a similar problem, with Honor being Splintered?

Brandon Sanderson

No, Roshar does not have the same problem. There are some differences going on. One reason being that the spren are far more extensive on Roshar, and provide something of a "release valve." The seons and the skaze on Sel are not numerous enough to fulfill a similar function. Though, of course, that's only one part of the puzzle. Raw power is dangerous.

It's one reason everyone should be thankful Kelsier was around on Scadrial.

Questioner

I have a theory that each one of the Shards is related to a certain number. Preservation really likes 16, Honor likes 10, and Odium likes 9. Am I onto something?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Mathieu JurassicPark

Ooh could a kandra pretend to be Returned on Nalthis by using the bones of a recently deceased person?

Brandon Sanderson

Heightenings would still recognize them as being alive, as their flesh is alive--even if they're pasting it over dead bones.

Questioner

Who, in your opinion, writes the best fantasy today?

Ben McSweeney

Until recently, I would have said Terry Pratchett, without hesitation. People mistake his books for mere comic fantasy, but that man had as sharp a wit as any Algonquin and more heart than a Care Bear Stare. He knew how to turn a phrase like a tango turns the hips. On more that one occasion, no exaggeration, that goofy old bearded bastard actually made me cry.

To reach out and touch another human through time and space and make them actually feel something... that's good writing.

But he's moved on, and there's plenty of great authors at their height today, so let's stick to the contemporary.

For pure liquid prose, probably Rothfuss.

For interesting concepts, I'm digging Guy Gavriel Kay. China Mieville is great as well.

For action, I'm pretty into my man Brandon. Butcher does a good job with that also. Larry Corriea knows how to write a rocking fight.

Joe Abercrombie is the first author I've read who took those boring battle maps with the arrows and blocks and made them into a gripping, visceral saga of honor and commitment and betrayal and vindication.

Dan Abraham is the man who made a story about a rogue banker into one of the best epics since Ice met Fire. That right there is a Copperfield-level trick.

Blightsong

In Oathbringer it is revealed that the humans who originally came to Roshar were the first ones to be named Voidbringers and that they carried magical powers. The Stormfather also implies that modern Surgebinding didn't exist before the Heralds. Were the original powers that the humans possessed Voidbinding?

Brandon Sanderson

So, we're getting into lots of interesting definitional problems here. And also the ways that different entities perceive the definitions of different terms. I will answer this question specifically as we do the flashbacks from Ash and Taln's viewpoints. So you've got a long ways to wait. But understand that definitions are not always-- the way that people define things cannot always be trusted. That said, humans were not using powers from Honor originally.

Brandon Sanderson

PART TWELVE: CONCLUSION

Whew!  That’s something, isn’t it?  Reading through all of that, you might think I’m stretched a little thin.  However, the bulk of this is centered around letting me focus my attention on the Cosmere.  The co-authored Mainframe projects are ways for me to tell stories with the help of talented writers–scratching the itch of storytelling these stories while leaving me with more time to devote to things like Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive.  Hosting a convention instead of going on tour is much, much easier on me–it lets people come to me, rather than me flying around to meet people in small groups.  Having the YouTube channel instead of going out to a lot of different comic cons lets me be available to fans, but also allows me to sign stacks of pages at the same time, so it’s not cutting into what would otherwise be writing time.

So far, it’s been working well.  All of this is why, for example, I’ve been able to dedicate more time to the Mistborn and Stormlight adaptations.  I worry more about overwhelming all of you than I do about overwhelming myself, though (admittedly) that second one is also a danger.  I’m trying to make sure I have a good work/life balance, so that I can continue telling stories as long as you all are willing to put up with me.

A strange, and very ephemeral year though it’s been, I’m still honored to be your storyteller.  Thank you for supporting me, my work, and my team.

Here’s to many more, and a year of working on Stormlight!

Brandon

Questioner

What’s the most dangerous non-Shard thing in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood’s up there, Hoid is up there, but not deadly dangerous, a different type of dangerous, yeah no, what we know of, right now, those, those are in the running. Chasmfiends, chasmfiends are pretty nasty. Whitespines are a little more nasty probably. The… the Unmade are pretty nasty. Yeah. There’s a couple of mercenary troops that you haven’t met yet that are really quite, quite dangerous, I would list them as well.

Thadamin

Do Shards need to be based on the same planet to create the interactions that made Feruchemy possible?

If the Parshendi are not originally from Odium and are referred to as the Ancient Ones by spren, then would that make the original Parshendi, bonded to the Splinters that existed before Honor and Cultivation arrived, the Dawnsingers?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seventeen

I didn't take the opportunity to point out anything at the beginning of this chapter.

This editorial–the one I put in the middle of the chapter, rather than at the beginning–was one of those inspired directly by readers. A lot of the fan mail I get mentions that a reader was kept up late by one of my books. I always take this as a compliment, and I’m pretty sure it’s usually intended as one. People want me to know that my book was good enough for them to lose sleep over, and after all, I consider the opportunity cost of sleep to be far greater than the mere cost of money spent on a book.

So, it’s a real honor. How do I respond? By making fun of people who end up reading Alcatraz late at night. 🙂 I sincerely hope that people run across this chapter early in the morning and think, “Ah! I can’t believe it!” Not only will it be really funny, but it might give a more personal connection to the book. I wrote this in my basement years before you ended up reading it, but if I can guess a little bit of what you’re feeling and doing, it brings the book closer to you.

My editor, by the way, didn’t really like the “Whoever put in that last cliffhanger” aside. (She liked a lot of the humor, by the way. I only point out the ones that she suggested cutting.) I kept it, even though it’s a bit of an awkward joke. Mostly, I wanted to give you a hint of how I was feeling as I wrote this. I was, indeed, staying up far later than I should have, working on one more chapter before I went to sleep. I thought that readers might appreciate knowing this.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seven

Here's where we start to get some of our first real hints of the dominating plotline that will overshadow these two books: The Lord Ruler is dead. What in the world have we gotten ourselves into?

As I mentioned in the previous Sazed annotation, I really like his scenes for the conflict represented in them. He is a rebel, but he feels so bad for it. It's always nice when you can make a character feel some very real turmoil for doing the RIGHT thing.

We will go a lot more into Sazed's character, and how he is regarded by the other Terrismen, in future chapters.

Argent

You've said that there are three types of Blades in The Stormlight Archive. We've seen "dead" Shardblades, Honorblades - is the third type the "living spren" Shardblades, or is there another type we haven't seen?

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood is a very unique kind of Shardblade, but IS a Shardblade.

Brandon Sanderson

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

Questioner

Have you ever regretted killing off a character, or not killing off a character, in your book series?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. In the middle of Words of Radiance, there is a character who dies, but comes back. And in my original draft, it was very clear. (Wink wink, reader; this character's coming back.) And I think that was actually the version I wanted. Because I felt like, when I did the original draft, and I sent it to beta readers, they're like, "Oh, well this character's obviously gonna come back." And I'm like, "They figured me out!" And I made it hardcore, so they had real worry the character wasn't coming back. But that was not a major moment in the series, it was removing a character so another character could shine. So, I should have just been okay with them knowing that character was coming back, because there are... I feel like I faked out the readers for no big gain. There wasn't really reason to try so hard to fake out readers on that thing. Where there are some legitimate characters where, you know, either, really they're dead and I want people to mourn their deaths. Or there are other characters where their return, I want to be very dramatic. And I feel like you've only got a certain amount of that energy from readers that you can play with them that way. And I shouldn't use it for things where I just want a character out of the way for a while.

Questioner

Could you tell us the name of one of the Shards we have not yet seen?

Brandon Sanderson

I cannot. I'm sorry. I get asked that enough that they'd all be done. If I gave you one, I get asked at the next con, and all of them would be gone. Plus, I sometimes tweak them before I canonize them. The actual word I'm going to use. The intent usually stays the same but I tweak which word I'm going to use.

Questioner

I meant the actual name. Like, how Honor was Tanavast.

Brandon Sanderson

No...I won't do that either. But I will give you a RAFO card!

uchoo786

Last question, are thunderclasts just voidspren animating dead greatshells that have bee turned to stone by crem, kind of like Kalad's army? And could light eyes who have been turned to stone by soul casters be reanimated, either by Vasher or by voidspren?

Brandon Sanderson

Thunderclasts are animating stone itself. Reanimating someone turned to stone would be more easy than simply animating the stone, but animating stone is tough, so that's not saying much.

Smye07

My question for you is this - I got the heeby-jeebies when Shallan heard about Amaram's collection of flutes within just a few pages of Wit bringing up the flute Kaladin lost?

All I can think of is that either: A) Wit's flute will end up among Amaram's collection to resurface later or B) In his work with the Sons of Honor, Amaram or his fellows have stumbled across some flute-related magic or splinterization and his flutes are the brethren and sistren of Wit's flute.

Is either of these the case? Or is there some other significance to Amaram's collection of nigh forbidden flutes?

Brandon Sanderson

It is significant. It is not a huge deal, but it is significant.

DammyJerry

Does Dalinar know about Adonalsium? Stormfather dropped the term during one of their talks, so did he tell Dalinar the whole story of Shattering and Shards? Also, does he understand what exactly he did when summoned perpendicularity or not? Does he understand what’s going on with him now (that he’s connected with Honor’s remnants)? Does he even know what “Shard” means?

I guess, the question is “How cosmere-aware Dalinar is?”

Brandon Sanderson

As of Oathbringer, Dalinar isn't specifically aware of the larger cosmere story--though he would have numerous "Aha" moments if it were explained to him, as pieces of what he does know would fall into place. The Stormfather isn't particularly interested in the larger story, however, and that's one reason.

Jasnah is a different story...

Tehdren

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

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

Brandon Sanderson

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

Phantine

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

Brandon Sanderson

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

Phantine

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

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgy changes the spirit. So not necessarily.

RandyD

Can a Shard just smite someone? Like, "Boom, you're dead," and they die?

Brandon Sanderson

So, Shards can do this, depending on where they are. For instance, Odium can't, but Endowment could.

Questioner

What are we going to do when you retire?

Brandon Sanderson

Retire? RETIRE?! I would never! I will stop writing when they find me dead in my office and my face is on the keyboard and I type the word "k" seven thousand times.

Questioner

Of these books that you wrote in the past that you have not published, will any of them be available online?

Brandon Sanderson

Will any of the unpublished books be available? ...Most of them, no, they won't be available. They aren't very good. The first few, in fact, are really bad. Number six was Elantris, which after a lot of revision I eventually sold. Number seven was Dragonsteel, which was my honor's thesis at BYU and is Hoid's backstory. That is only available through inter-library loan because the book is bad, and I won't let anyone else have it, but BYU has a copy. They loan it to people. The one after that was called White Sand, which we're redoing as a graphic novel right now. If people really want to read the prose version of that, I send it to them if they write me an email and ask. Because it's not aggressively bad, it's just kind of weak, does that make sense? The big weakness of it is that it's too long for its story, and I found that, looking back through it, that I can trim it and turn it into a graphic novel that would be really solid. It's just that it's got too many pages for the story, and you have to trim a lot for a graphic novel anyway. So I think that one will work. A couple of the other ones got cut up and turned into other books, and number 13 was The Way of Kings, which I rewrote from scratch when I released it. It's a very different book now, but it was kinda the first draft of that.

karsen (paraphrased)

Is there a similarity between fallen Elantrians caught in transformation and dead Shardblades?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, there is a distinct similarity.

Qarlin

Who were Ruin and Preservation? I mean, when they died, they had bodies, like Vin. And you went as far as to describe their hair color (Red and Black, respectively). Preservation even had a prominent nose. Why describe their dead bodies, if they weren't at one time mortals themselves? They created humans, but were at one time human themselves?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. (Sorry.)

Isaac Betzold

Could a Shard be split into smaller Intents, like if Honor were alive and then was split into maybe Integrity and Bravery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible. Very plausible. You ask some weird things sometimes, this one is not that weird, this is very plausible.

Peter Ahlstrom

OK guys, help me out on this.

Let's take a bubble where time is sped up inside, maybe to 10x, maybe to 100x. I'm thinking that if there is no light source inside the bubble, but all light comes from the area outside the bubble, to an observer outside the bubble all light that goes inside and gets redshifted will get blueshifted back the same amount when it exits the bubble. So the outside observer won't see a color change at all. (I'm ignoring refraction for the purposes of this post, but someone else may elucidate.)

The person inside the bubble will see a redshift of all light coming into the bubble--but will also see far fewer photons per second, so the world will go dim or even black.

At low time-speedups, the person in the bubble will see UV light shifted into the visible range, so will start effectively seeing in UV. At very fast speeds he can see X rays or even gamma rays. (I don't know from Brandon what the max speedup is.)

If the person inside the bubble turns on a flashlight, this will be shifted into the UV or X-ray range when it leaves the bubble. You can fry everyone around you with deadly radiation this way.

When you have a bubble that slows time, the opposite happens. People inside can see in infrared or radio waves. And if they go slow enough, visible light from the outside is shifted into the X-ray or gamma-ray range and the person inside gets fried by radiation. If they turn on a flashlight, people outside get cooked.

Can anyone point out flaws in this analysis? Does anyone have magical suggestions for why any of these things wouldn't happen?

For practical reasons it looks like there will need to be a lot of handwavium burned.

Questioner

Is there a specific Shard that most of the spren come from?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the spren are going to be related to a combination of Honor and Cultivation, weighted certain directions for certain types of spren. But the spren are mostly both of them. 

Questioner

Are they considered Splinters?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could call spren Splinters if you wanted to. They work in the same way as a Splinter, so yeah.

rjl

The voidspren for stormform were red, were they originally of Honor? 

Brandon Sanderson

Nope.

Questioner

If you were to be on Scadrial as a Mistborn and burn a god metal (such as, say, Honor), what would come of that? Would it be specific to the system that it's from? Or is it kind of like a blanket *inaudible*?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Viper (paraphrased)

Are we going to find out soon if the Parshendi are actually of Honor?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes. (You'll find out.)

CameronSouri

Will all shardholders from all the worlds/realms eventually meet in one "place"?

Brandon Sanderson

They have been in the same place before. Many are dead now, though.

Questioner

When it comes to like, touring and stuff like that, how do you pick these locations?

Brandon Sanderson

Sometimes, it's my publisher, sometimes it's me saying let's go somewhere different. And sometimes it's places where I've come a lot where they do a good job, like when I come to a store like this, I feel like they do a good job, so I put a good report into the publisher and say, feel free to send me back to that store.

Questioner

Ok, because I'm a student at Sunset University, and I have a lot of people who are fans there, and I'd love it if you know--

Brandon Sanderson

The best way to get me into places like that is if you have a local convention, science fiction convention, having them invite me to be guest of honor, I do that sort of thing a lot.

Questioner

If a Mistborn were to burn a piece of a Shardblade, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

This would be hard to make happen, but it would be possible. A Shardblade is going to act as, basically, an alloy of the god metal of Honor and so  what would it do? RAFO, but it is possible and it would do something. It would not be inert. It would be Allomanticaly viable.

Brandon Sanderson

It is my pleasure, it has been an honor. For those who couldn't hear it was a thank you for releasing books somewhat faster and a thank you for finishing The Wheel of Time.

You know, I've been there. I picked up The Wheel of Time in 1990, my 8th grade year was '89, [...] yeah it's funny, I talk about The Wheel of Time. Everything I picked up while I was coming to love fantasy was all completed series or series in the middle of being written, and so as a kid I'm like "These are all famous series, I want to find one that isn't, what's going to be mine?" You want to be discovering, so I'd go to the bookstore every week to look at the new books coming out and try to find them and I remember grabbing Eye of the World, the first Robert Jordan book, and being like "Oh, this is a big book". I was a kid with not much money, so if you bought a big book it wasn't that much more expensive than a little book but you got a lot more reading in it. It was a good bang for your buck so to speak. So I bought that book and I loved it, and I thought "Oh this is going to be it, this is--" And I remember when the second book came out and they had trade paperbacks and my little bookstore didn't get a lot of those and I went "Oh, OH, something's happening" and then the third book was there in hardcover and I said "Ah-HA! I was right!" So I had this sort of pseudo-paternal instinct for Wheel of Time even when I was 17.

But then I do know what it's like to wait, and you know George [R.R. Martin] is a guest here [at ConQuest 46], I want to speak toward the fact that he has had a long career and given people a lot of books, he may be slowing down a little bit as he's getting older, we all do. And he just wants to make sure his books are all right. I get tired hearing people-- Because I heard people do the same thing to Robert Jordan, y'know cut George some slack. He spent years and years toiling in obscurity until he finally made it big. I'm glad he's enjoying his life a little bit and not stressing about making sure-- You know getting a book that size out every year is really hard on writers. Robert Jordan couldn't keep it up, nobody can keep it up. Stormlight Archive's every two years. Even I, being one of the more fast writers out there, I'm not going to be able to do one of these things every year, there's just too much going on in one. So thank you, I will try to get them to you very consistently but it's going to be about every other year.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Another thing to know about George is George cannot write outside his particular environment-- All writers have their craft and I'll ask [Brandon] about it in a second, but George with HBO sending him out to promote, and cons, he's not writing. Whereas Brandon wrote in his hotel room I heard.

Brandon Sanderson

On both nights.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

And I often do that too. George can't do that, so that's a difficulty too. There are other factors involved. And people love to meet him but when you meet an author sometimes they're not even writing 'cause they can't keep focus. So let's talk about-- How fast do you write a novel...

Brandon Sanderson

My writing approach and how fast I write. I'm actually not a particularly fast writer, for those of you who are writers out there I'll go at about 500 words per hour. What I am is a consistent writer. I enjoy doing this and my average day at home will be I get up at noon, because I'm a writer not a-- I'm not working a desk job, I don't have a desk, I don't go to a desk, I go and sit in an easy chair with my laptop, and I work from about 1 until 5. And then 5 until 9 is family time, I'll go take a shower, play with my kids, eat dinner, spend time with my wife, maybe go see a movie, whatever we end up doing. By about 9 or 10 she goes to bed and I go back to work and then I work from about 10 until 2-4 depending on how busy I am. If I'm ahead on schedules and things at 2 I'll stop and play a videogame or something, that's goof off time, go to bed about 4. And it really just depends on what's going on. If I'm traveling a lot, that puts a lot of stress on the deadline, and I've been traveling a lot lately, so in those cases I try to get some work done while I'm on the road, and it usually is not nearly as effective. I'll get a thousand words out of 4 hours I can sneak out of the day to get writing done. When you're breaking that rhythm, artists are creatures of habit and that rhythm-- Sometimes shaking things up is really good for you, but if that shake up is also kind of tiring, tiring in a good way I like interacting with people and going to cons, but you get back up there I feel like I worked all day and now I have to work all day. It can be rough, and at the same time with the schedule I want to have which is my goal is to release one small book and one big book a year. That’s my goal. One adult book and one teen book, and sometimes those schedules get off so you get one one year and three the next year. Or sometimes I do things like write two books instead of one, I did that this year, or last year. I wrote two Alloy of Law era Mistborn books, the second era of Mistborn books, and together they are half the length of a Stormlight book. So sometimes you'll see three. But I want to be releasing consistently, I want to have a book for teens and a book for larger people who are teens at heart? I dunno. It's hard because you don't want to put a definition on them, I don't want people to go "Oh The Reckoners is for teenagers therefore I don't want to read that" and I don't want to discourage, I've had 7-year-olds come up with their copy of The Way of Kings--

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

They're strong.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah they're strong. My 7-year-old can barely read the Pokemon video game, so-- we played that-- and so I don't want to discourage anybody from picking up a book they think they are going to love, but I do want to be releasing one quote-unquote teen book and one quote-unquote adult book. By the way, since I've started writing teen, I started distinguishing them and it's really hard to say "I write teenage novels and adult fantasy." *laughter* That term does not always evoke the right image I want… I've been introduced sometimes at conventions that are outside my circuit, writing conferences, as the fantasy guy. They say "Here's our fantasy man" *Brandon makes a shocked/confused face prompting laughter* Okay I can take that.

windolf7

Is Ashyn the Tranquilline Halls?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

faragorn

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

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

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

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

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent theories, strange gaming parallels notwithstanding.

PadraicSeebrr (paraphrased)

Is Cultivation's Shardpool on the Horneater Peaks? Is Honor's Shardpool the Origin?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I don't want to say where the Shardpools [Perpendicularities] are yet, good guesses. RAFO.

LuckyJim (paraphrased)

In Oathbringer Kaladin travels with a group of freed parshmen. One of them, Sah, dies, but what about his daughter Vai? Is she okay? Is anyone looking after her?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

She is okay, well, as okay as she can be considering the circumstances (dead father and living under the oppression of the Fused). She is being looked after.

stormlightfan70

Did cultivation forsee honor’s shattering/death?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm RAFOing Cultivation questions, as I don't want to spoil things that will eventually happen with her in the books.

jmcgit (paraphrased)

Is there anything more to learn about why Helaran was on the battlefield that day when Kaladin killed him?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, but you already know the basics of that story... 

jmcgit (paraphrased)

Like it was definitely him on the battlefield, he was with the Skybreakers, his target was Amaram... 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He nods, and says the 'more information' is more about the Davar family in general.   

jmcgit (paraphrased)

I had asked whether it was that Helaran was looking for Radiants, I had suspected maybe he would have struck at Amaram again if he was determined to kill him?  Maybe he thought Amaram was a Radiant and taking the Shardblade disproved that? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, the Skybreakers knew about the Sons of Honor, they had a good opportunity to strike at the organization and they took it. 

Adarain

There seems to be a concentration of “aliens” in the west of Roshar, with both the Sleepless and the Iriali being non-Rosharan, possibly the Siah Aimians too (though I have my own headcanon about them); and of course the Ashynite humans arrived somewhere in the west too, probably in or near Shinovar. Is this a coincidence? It seems reasonable to me that in the past, Honor’s Perpendicularity was somewhere in the region and at least some of these groups used it to arrive on Roshar.

Brandon Sanderson

Not a coincidence. Having multiple perpendicularities on the land, mixed with easy-to-access Investiture, mixed with a vibrant Shadesmar side with actual cultures and cities all make Roshar a tempting destination. The amount of investiture flying around (literally) also makes the place a little easier to find in Shadesmar than other destinations might be.

There's also the fact that it wasn't created post-Shattering, like Scadrial was. There's just been more time to get to it.

Questioner

As a physicist I appreciate you being so consistent with your magic systems.

Brandon Sanderson

It is something I try very hard to do, though I do recognize that we do bend a lot of rules. When we were doing the time-based one in this [The Alloy of Law], I'm like, "Oh, boy, redshifts. Oh, no, conservation of energy." We had to do some bending to make it so that the radiation from the light passing out of the time bubble wasn't deadly.

porcipotimus

*fan art of a whitespine*

Ben McSweeney

Well done. I had a difficult time with the whitespine's anatomy, to the point of largely redesigning the body again just before the deadline (we wrote an article about it on Brandon's blog, I think? -EDIT- We did! ), but you've interpreted it nicely considering the limited reference.

Missed the vestigial claws behind the primary legs though (sorry, your quality kicked my AD brain into gear :), and the skin could be bit smoother/slicker on the flanks (they get more shellie as they dry out, so maybe he's very dry).

porcipotimus

Oh snaps, you're right! I missed that detail :*( He did come out a bit chunkier than I think I would have liked (I imagined them looking a bit more agile and bug-like and less "tanky"/dragon-y than this) but alas I just went with it since I was having fun.

Ben McSweeney

The interview talks about a bunch of the design motif stuff we went through. There was an active need to step away from the chunkier arthropod/crustacean thing we had done with chasmfiends and axehounds and cremlings, and start to widen the field a little more. I think you were right to push away from being tanky-dragony. What you have here is remarkably close to some of our earlier designs.

At the end I was thinking of the flanks being clad in a sort of sharkskin, merging with the bonier protrusions along the spine flowing just under the skin... as the creature dries out, the skin contracts and even cracks with mineral buildup, and it becomes more rocky/tanky. It needs the storms to stay active, otherwise it's inclined to go into a sort of hibernation to conserve energy unless prey comes near. I imagine as things dry out, they crawl into cracks and hollow between the stones and blend in, waiting for the next storm. Still ready to snatch up prey or even emerge to hunt when prey draws near.

When the weather is wet, they're out and hunting all the other critters that come out to feed in the aftermath of fresh rainfall and the newly stripped, tossed landscape. Then they fill out a little and become more like sleek sharks stalking the mountains and chasms. They get shinier and smoother and more able to move quickly. That's when they become the real terror of the hills, stalking like wolves or tigers but climbing like goats.

It's still a mishmash design, it's not really as cohesive as I would have liked. There's room for evolutionary improvement... after all there's probably always another breed. Southern Whitespines, if you will. The Great Northern Rockback Whitespine. The tiny but deadly Deep Chasm Whitespine. The sleek and slender Eastern Spinybacked Whitespine (much more needly). I'm making all of this up as I go, but that's half the secret to doing this at all :)

Questioner

So, Shardblades, they're dead spren, but Syl came back. Is there any way for Shardblades, the spren who are Shardblades, to come back?

Brandon Sanderson

Mmm... You'll have to read and find out.

Brandon Sanderson

PART FOUR: UPDATES ON SECONDARY PROJECTS

Alcatraz Series

As I warned you last year, 2021 was going to be spent on repackaging this series–and getting the art for the sixth book done.  I also co-wrote this one with Janci, as I got about halfway through it back in 2014 and got stumped on something, so I went to her for help both with that and with smoothing out the character voice.  (This one is from Bastille’s viewpoint.)

So, there’s not much of an update from last year.  The first five books are coming out with new covers in 2022, culminating with the final book on September 20th. Final revisions for the book are in, and artwork is approved for the new covers of the early ones, so we should be super close.

Their release schedule is below, including the brand new sixth book!

• May: Book 1: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
• June: Book 2: The Scrivener’s Bones
• July: Book 3: The Knights of Crystallia
• August: Book 4: The Shattered Lens
• September: Book 5: The Dark Talent
• September: Book 6: Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians

Dark One

A second Dark One graphic novel is in the works for those who enjoyed the first!  But in case that’s not your thing, you can go read the Mainframe update above, where we’re working on a prose version. That should be released first in audio, but Dan Wells is currently drafting from my original outline for that–and I’ve read some of his work on it, which has made me very excited. In the meantime, enjoy Dark One: Forgotten, a shorter tie-in that Dan and I have created for release this fall.

Elantris, Warbreaker, Rithmatist

Nothing here, again.  (Yes, Rithmatist fans, I hear you screaming at the screen.)  Elantris/Warbreaker sequels aren’t planned until after Stormlight Five, as I’ve been saying for years now.  Rithmatist might be a little closer than it was, as we’ve been researching potential co-authors who have knowledge and background in the real-world Aztec lore I’d like to incorporate into the book.  So don’t give up hope.  But, like finishing Alcatraz, this is more a labor of love than a mainline series of mine, so it has to take a back seat to the main stories I’m telling.

Songs of the Dead

Moving this one back to minor projects this year.  Though Peter Orullian is still working on it, this is one of the co-authored projects that has turned out to be a more difficult write.  He’s spent this year on revisions of it, and I hope you’ll all be able to read it someday.  But we need to make sure it’s working right first.

The Reckoners

If you didn’t see that there is a new Reckoners novel out…then there’s a new Reckoners novel out!  It’s called Lux, and I co-authored it with Steven Michael Bohls, another of my writer friends.  (This was a Mainframe project, and so it was an audio original.)  The reception was great, and the sales were great too, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we did another one soon.  But we’re figuring out when and how to do this.  (Also we plan a print edition sometime, but at the very least an ebook should come out around the one-year mark of the audio edition.)

The Original

This first of the Mainframe projects will soon be getting an ebook release!  So if you don’t like audio, take heart.  It’s coming in January.  I wrote it with the excellent Mary Robinette Kowal, and it’s a kind of cyberpunk/action/mystery.

Check out the pitch for it here!

White Sand

We should have the graphic novel omnibus coming at you sometime in the near future. I hear that the individual original volumes are sometimes going for a lot of money, but I’d suggest not grabbing one of those but waiting for this new edition. We’ve spent a lot of time making it the quintessential White Sand graphic novel experience, updating text and dialogue to be more in line with the Cosmere. There are 38 new pages at the beginning, revised text and art throughout, a new map and glossary, and fourteen Ars Arcanum pages. We think you’re really going to enjoy experiencing the complete package.

All Others

If there’s something not on this list you’re waiting for, then there’s not really anything to update you upon.  Other novellas and small projects continue to bounce around my brain, but I haven’t had time for most of them lately.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so most of you were probably expecting this one to appear sometime today--and here it is. The Previous Update can be found here. As I announced over social media this weekend, I have finished the final draft of Book Four. Rhythm of War is finally done. (Or, rather, my part is done. At least for the prose text of the book. See below.)

I finished the revisions on Saturday, and then today wrote the ketek and the back of the book text. (The in-world text. Tor does the marketing blurb.) The only thing I have left to do is the acknowledgements, plus the ars arcanum. The bulk of the work left to be done will be handled by Peter, my editorial director, who will oversee the copyedit (which is like a really in-depth proofread that also watches for style guide changes and things like in-book continuity) and the proofreads. In addition, Art Director Isaac will be finalizing the artwork done by himself and his artists. (Including Ben, who now works for us full time. He usually drops by the comments to say hi.)

Peter/Isaac's work will take several months to complete, and then the book will be sent separately to the US, UK, and Australian printers for English Language distribution. Excitingly, for the first time, we're hoping to do a simultaneous Spanish launch for the book, and my Spanish publisher has been putting a lot of extra effort into trying to make this happen. So if you live in Spain, and meet my team over there--translator, editor, etc--buy them a drink. They've been putting in some heroic work to try to get this beast of a novel ready in time.

I can't promise timelines for other foreign language editions; but if the Spanish experiment works, we will approach some of our other publishers to suggest trying the same thing with them.

Other random updates of note. The tour seems likely to go digital at this point because of the virus. We'll keep you in the loop. (This will likely include the release party.) Goal is to ship huge cases of books for me to sign so we can get them to partner bookstores for a signed launch, with talks/readings done digitally. Don't consider this an official confirmation of that yet, though. Tor is the one working it out, and we'll need to wait for them to figure out the details.

The kickstarter has been...well, a little crazy. We're in the process of adding new stretch goals; if you didn't see today's update over there, it has a poll of suggested new stretch goal rewards for you to mull over.

So, what's next for me? This week, I'm doing a quick revision of Songs of the Dead, the book-formely-known-as-death-by-pizza, which I'm writing with Peter Orullian. I plan this to take about a week. After that, I'm going to dive into the kickstarter novella, the official title of which I believe we'll be announcing tomorrow.

After that is done, I owe Skyward 3 to my very patient YA publisher, who has been sitting in the wings waiting for eighteen months or so for me to start it. Wax and Wayne 4 will follow, with my goal being to start it January 1st. Skyward 4 (the final book of that series) will follow starting about a year from now. After that, it will be time (already) for Stormlight 5, final book of this sequence of Stormlight novels. (Whew!) That will mark roughly the halfway point of the cosmere.

Thanks, as always, for your patience as I juggle all of these projects. Also, I'll be doing another livestream this Thursday, where I'll be chatting more about the kickstarter and this book (we keep it non-spoiler, so don't worry.)

I'll be turning off inbox replies to this thread, as usual, so I apologize if I don't see your questions here.

With that, I officially conclude my Book Four updates series. Expect to see me back in around eighteen months, January 2022, when I start updates for Book Five. (I do plan to do updates for Mistborn on that subreddit when I start the fourth Wax and Wayne. So if you're really hungry for more rambling posts about in-progress books, you can visit there.)

As always, thanks for everything. You folks are great. It's been quite the pleasure working on these books for you.

Brandon

Questioner

My commute to work has given me the opportunity to make my way through your youtube lessons and I’m now listening to the writing excuses podcast, so I consider you my favorite professor. I apologies if you have covered this in some form, I may not have listened to that yet.

My question is about flashback scenes. When thinking about where I’m going in my story, I imagine needing to use flashbacks, although I haven’t yet. My question is – what method do you use instead of a flashback? How do you give a sense of what happened and previous info without using a flashback?

Brandon Sanderson

Hey! Good luck with your writing.

That’s a great question, because often you don’t want to use a flashback. You have to be very careful with them, for while they can do some interesting things with narrative, they can also kill story momentum dead.

My favorite way to indicate things that have previously happened without using flashbacks is to make certain your characters act like they have established history together. They will have inside jokes, will make references to the past, and otherwise indicate that they’ve known each other for years. (Where appropriate.)

Likewise, things that happened in the past that you don’t intend to show in a flashback can have a huge effect on society. Think about the 9/11 disaster in America, which many are talking about this month. Could you convey in your story that similar disaster happened, but without going into too much exposition or a flashback? Practice trying it with real-world events, making your characters talk about it naturally. (Without straying into them telling each other information that they’d both obviously know. Like I didn’t need to say to you, “Well, almost twenty years ago there was this terrorist attack on the United States…”)

Practice subtlety like that, and often you won’t need flashbacks. (And it will perhaps teach you when a flashback is more powerful or useful for you to use.)

Fantasy Faction

In The Way of Kings, when Shallan zones out and draws a picture of a dead noble at a dinner table, was she drawing her own father after she killed him with her Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

Ooh, good question! You will want to read Words of Radiance, where her flashbacks may indeed involve this scene that she drew.

Darkness (paraphrased)

Did the person Sigzil tried to kill actually die, and then afterward become not dead?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

We'll RAFO that, mostly because I intend to dig into Sigzil's past more.

Darkness (paraphrased)

Ok so you're probably going to RAFO who it was?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yeah… mmhmm… but we do get a Sigzil viewpoint in this next book so…

Darkness (paraphrased)

Good! I like Sigzil.

Cosmere.es

So currently, the books from the cosmere are pretty different, maybe, from the things that you thought would be the cosmere, like thirty years ago when the young Brandon was starting to write, and we are curious about how, or if you expected it to be like this when you started?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I definitely didn't. Remember that when I very first started, I didn't have the cosmere, right? Back when I was writing White Sand Prime and Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, and Star's End and Knight Life, all of those early books, all I had was a desire to do a big epic. Even when I wrote Elantris, I put Hoid into it more as an Easter egg than as a thing that is going to be some big thing. It wasn't until writing Mistborn years later, not even Mistborn Prime, the actual Mistborn, that the cosmere started to take shape. And at that point, so that's 2004, at that point I outlined Era 1, what is now Era 3, and Era 4. And Era 4 was big galactic kind of space interaction between all the different worlds. So by then, I was very excited by the idea of—I had the shape of it. But even then I wasn't planning to write Sixth of the Dusk, I hadn't written Shadows for Silence, right? All I knew basically then was Sel, Scadrial, Taldain, and Roshar. And I knew those were going to be involved somehow and so I was working on the various different Shards that were on those planets, but that leaves a lot of Shards right? If you add those all up, that's what, seven or so Shards worth of people? Suddenly it's like wait, that's only seven of the sixteen, where's everybody else, right? And counting that seven of the sixteen are two dead ones. I knew that it would be more expansive but I didn't know where I would be going and what I would be doing and that sort of stuff.

HorseCannon

I didn't realize Horneaters had parshmen blood, didn't even realize that was possible. How closely are humans and parshmen related, do they have a common ancestor? Or is one an artificially created version of the other?

Brandon Sanderson

There was intermixing long ago. Horneaters and Herdazians are both a result. (Signs of this are the stone carapace on Herdazian fingernails and the Horneater extra jaw pieces--in the back of the mouth--for breaking shells.)

Humans and parshmen don't have a common ancestor. And as a side note, both of these strains of humanoids predate the ascension of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium.

ccstat

Are there Aimian-Human hybrids as well? (Either type of Aimian) If so, are the Thaylen people one of these?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Blightsong

*via private message*

Some of us believe that you are saying that humans and listeners existed pre-Shattering while some of us believe that you are saying that Horneaters and Herdazians existed pre-Shattering (you have mentioned that humans had been on Roshar since before the Shattering recently). What were you trying to say here?

Brandon Sanderson

Humans (other than those on Yolen) existed pre-Shattering, as did parshmen.

Brandon Sanderson

Stormlight Five has been very, very demanding. And every time that people asked if I had a new secret project, and I said "no," it was true; because I wasn't finished with this [Secret Project Five] yet. And I'm always noodling on lots of things. But I did find time; when I needed to take a break, I could have played a video game, and instead I finished Secret Project Five. It's a story I've wanted to tell for quite a long time.

How did I find the time? When my brain was dead on Stormlight and I just needed a break (otherwise I felt the quality would go down), I took a break, and I worked on something else.

The fact that there's only one this time is an indication of how busy I've been.