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Do you have a favorite Smedry Talent?
Yes. I took a lot of these from things my mom does. Which are things that maybe I do also, like being late to everything, and being bad at dancing. Probably mine is being bad at dancing. But probably my true talent is the ability to use a lot of words to say nothing. *laughter*
Adolin's sword in Oathbringer, its name is Maya, which I think is cool cause that's my name, but is that-- is she going to become more important?
That is what we call a Read And Find out. No promises, I can't say either way. Can't give you spoilers.
Did Zane get spiked intentionally? Did someone else (Straff?) know about hemalurgy?
Zane spiked himself. It was...a very twisted and messy process. Note that Ruin tries to get Spook to do something similar. It's much easier for him to work with someone to get them to spike themselves than it is to arrange the exact circumstances where someone gets spiked.
Are left handed hand jobs the anal of Vorinism?
You people.
This would certainly be a thing, yes. But if you'd rather go more wholesome, holding hands in an Alethi culture is kind of a big deal, depending on the hand.
Did all orders of Knights Radiants use Shardplate?
It was available to all of them, and they could (all) use it. Many Knights (not Orders) chose not to. There were Knights who were not soldiers and had not interest in wearing Shardplate.
Seventeenth - how many series in the Cosmere?
36 novels, don't tell some people because they'll get scared. (Mistborn is 9, Stormlight is 10, Dragonsteel is the prequel and those are the core; everything else will be a trilogy or one-off and some might be novellas.)
I want to ask you a question about Pattern. Could you speak to anything about where your idea for...
I wanted different spren to look drastically different. And, as I was building-- Like, I wanted a lot of the spren of a lot of the Orders of Knights Radiant to kind of have an internal, natural conflict. Like, that's one of the division lines between a spren that's not sapient, and spren that is. For instance, Windrunner, honorspren, right? Honor is about rigidity in a lot of ways, and Syl is the embodiment of a lot of the opposite of that. And Pattern, who is so interested in lies, is a mathematical fractal-- a mathematical equation. This sort of thing, like naming the inkspren Ivory is just-- I want that internal, natural contrast to be part of them. And Pattern, I really wanted a spren that wasn't just another ball of light. 'Cause Syl is basically a ball of light. And a lot of the others are basically balls of light. And I'm like, I need something that's different, I want something that looks different, that feels different. That's where I went.
When Shallan reached out to the Midnight Mother, would it have mattered if she used the right hand?
It would not have mattered. Good question!
To what extent has the economy of the world been planned out? Obviously, there's a refreshingly fair amount of economic activity happening in the novels, often times helping to move along the story. But to what extent do you have it planned out already vs. "I'll come up with it when I need it."
That is to say do you know that place A sells to place B, but place B has nothing to sell to place A and so sells to place C, which sells to place A, influencing the trade patterns of ships. And what the price of a horse is in A vs. B vs. C., or the price of an inn for the night, or the price of a pair of well made boots. Have you worked out how people are taxed and tithed, how the trade routes flow, how comparatively wealthy people are around the world, etc?
For a lot of these things I've done some of it, and for others I decide what to do when I need it. One trick in worldbuilding is to focus your attention on the things that are going to be a source of conflict or passion to the characters. It would be very easy to spend twenty years worldbuilding and never writing. So there is a fair bit of both, but most of what I focus my attention on is where is the conflict. Trade deals are a source of conflict, and so where it's a source of conflict to the cultures I have spent more time dealing with it.
Was “Peragator” supposed to be “Peragrator”? Peragrate means “to travel.”
I will have to look at that. I don’t know. I don’t think it was.
Stormlight Five's title?
Haven't decided yet. It needs to fit the naming convention of The Stormlight Archive. Which means it needs to be named after an in-world book, and it also needs to fit with the palindrome. I have some options I'm choosing between. You can go look at the various threads on fan sites where they are trying hard to guess.
Did Adonalsium create the Dysian Aimians? If not, were they created by a Shard?
RAFO!
Can you store....like if there is a Twinborn, who is a gold Allomancer and a duralumin Ferring, would his goldshadow change based on what his Connection is?
I'm going to RAFO that.
Hoid, in the Liar of Partinel sample chapters, is referred to as a Jesk. Is this related to the Jesker Mysteries religion in Elantris?
No. Good question.
So, Brandon, it's Sunday now. Did Hero of Ages sell enough to become a bestseller?
*crosses fingers*
We'll know on Wednesday, but the distribution problems have us worried. A lot of stores didn't get the books on the shelves until Friday or Saturday, which only gave one or two days in that market to get on the list. We'll see. It's going to be close. It will depend on how many stores got the books on time, how well other authors did, and whether or not I sold copies at the RIGHT stores. (The ones which report to the New York Times list.)
I will post on Wednesday when I know, though it might not be until late in the day, as I've got a lot going on during tour on Wednesday.
Finally, Brandon RAFO'd me on my question about "the wicked thing of eminence" that Alice theorized about. I asked "Was the wicked thing of eminence an action of spren, of men, or both?" I didn't go into this with him in a line, but my theory is about the spren.
Alright, who would win in a fight: Rand al'Thor or Vin?
Who would win in a fight, Rand al'Thor or Vin. I'm going to go with the person who's a pseudo-diety and held the powers of creation. Which is gonna be-- Yeah. I'm gunna say Rand on that one, pretty safely. With the caveat of "You have to pick when". If Vin where able to get to Rand while he's still on a farm, I think she'll do a better job than the Trollocs did. If you replace Narg with Vin, Rand is in trouble. If at the ends of their respective series, I still think Rand would win, even when Vin is at her most powerful., because he is able to bend reality. But I don't know, Jason?
Oh I definitely agree, but I'm a little bit biased here. But yeah it really does depend on the time. Like if you take Vin at the last few pages of Mistborn, I don't know because she's--
Yeah, certain spoiler-rific things happen there. So she could give him a fight at that point, but I'm going to side with Rand on this. I'm going to side with Rand versus any character in most pieces of fiction.
What happens if you put Shardplate in a highstorm? If you are in Shardplate and you go out into a highstorm...
You're pretty well protected, but a boulder flying through the air can still do some major damage to a person in Shardplate.
What will happen to the gems in the Shardplate?
They will be recharged.
Was there life in the cosmere before Adonalsium?
RAFO.
So Lift gets her awesomeness from food. Is that a Lift thing or is that an Edgedancer thing?
That is a Lift thing. She is a very specific thing, and what she is will come out more, as the series progresses. It's not just a little one-off, there is actually something more behind it, but it is not an Edgedancer thing.
I was starting to think that maybe there was something that Cultivation's people had their own kind of Heralds, that had their own alternative energy so--
It's going to probably take until Lift's book to start to dig into it too much, but it isn't that far off, 3 books.
*laughs* Only 3 books?
Yeah, she is 6th.
Were Shardblades influenced by lightsabers?
Yes *long aside about how everyone in the last 40 years was so influenced*, but not sure how direct of an influence
I hope you noticed the difference between the way Kelsier got into the room and the way Vin did it. She walked up to the guards at the front and talked them away, rather than killing them. She just strolled through the guard chamber–the place where she killed her first time–instead of attacking. Why attack? She's powerful enough that she can just slip through and escape.
For Kelsier, the killing was always part of the victory. Vin's more goal-oriented, perhaps. In addition, she doesn't like to kill. So, her way is to just slip by the men. Then, in the room, she doesn't get close to the Inquisitors–she takes them down with tricks. On the streets, she would have had to use very little to gain much. She needed to be extremely clever with the small advantages she had. She used Allomancy in small ways to great advantage. Now that she's more powerful, I think her cleverness and resourcefulness will lead her to be far more amazing an Allomancer than Kelsier was.
The quote that Dalinar says at the end [of Oathbringer]. "I am Unity." Is that something that happened specifically because Honor is dead, and, for all these different reasons, that was able to happen? Also Odium said that he had Ascended. He wasn't supposed to Ascend, but he did...
I am totally RAFOing all that stuff; I knew people were gonna ask about it. You're just gonna have to wait and find out.
Have you thought about doing a continuation of Dreamer?
Occasionally. I haven't found the right thing to do with it yet, though. Dreamer is weird, because it starts off feeling like a Brandon Sanderson story, and a lot of people are like "Woah, I can see a whole world based on this!" And then it goes the horror route, you know, with the kids.
I really liked that. I thought it was a nice twist.
The most horrific thing I could think of was giving the kids who play X-Box too much power over peoples' lives.
Are the entities meant to be the Worldsouls of dead planes?
Yes. That is exactly what they are.
Getting those subject matter experts... like, the new Stormlight book. If I hadn't had some of these subject matter experts, I would have been at sea with no oars.
Someday, perhaps, for fans, I will release the first draft, and they can compare. But it's now so embarrassing, about which things I got wrong.
I just read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and loved it. How did the first shade come to be? Are there shades in other worlds? Do shades have bones?
Shades are what we call "Cognitive Shadows" in the cosmere. They're basically "spren" or "[seons]" created from human souls. (Where Investiture--or magical power--keeps a consciousness alive after it has lost its Physical connection.) Yes, shades all once had bodies.
Think of them like petrified souls, where instead of stone replacing the tissue of a corpse, magical power replaced the parts of a soul that connect that soul to the Three Realms.
There's that trick with Feruchemy that lets you make metalminds that others can tap. Could you do something similar with Self-Awakening?
Oh yeah, there are all sorts of tricks that you can do. You could use other peoples Breaths, make it seem like you don't have any Breath-
Awaken an object so that others could access its Breaths?
Yes.
Ever drawn a Thunderclast ? ;)
I have not! Now that the Chasmfiend is settled, Thunderclasts are high on my list. I have some ideas, but Brandon and I have yet to jam on the subject and we probably won't until they make an appearance in the novels. We'll get there though, never fear... it's a Chekov thing, you don't throw a name like "Thunderclast" out there and never come back to it. :)
Didn't a Thunderclast appear during one of Dalinar's flashbacks early in Words of Radiance? (The one in the Purelake.) There was a little bit of physical description of the beastie too... something like a giant stone skeleton with glowing red eyes.
You're right! I just went and checked the WoR text, there is a brief description of a fight between full Knights Radiant and a thunderclast, early in the book, and with enough descriptors to start with. It's been so long since I read it, and it's not a Shallan scene so I couldn't work a page out of it, that I must have forgotten.
Well, now I have to do something sometime, don't I? :)
So was The Emperor's Soul before Elantris?
It's after.
So are you going to write a book that explains what happened to the [Rose Empire] then?
You will find out more about it eventually, yes. But it's not my main project right now. We'll see how it happens eventually.
Is Shallan's truth, "I am hap-- It's okay that I can be happy?"
I'm going to dig into that, but this is a big part of it. Let me RAFO that because I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to express it as it goes along, but that sentiment is a huge part of what's going on with Shallan.
I was expecting her to manifest Shardplate in the middle of her wedding because she had spoken such a core truth of her identity.
Let's just say that I'm being very careful about how I show off the first manifestations of Shardplate for narrative reasons.
By the way, allomancers fighting on a train? Very cool.
Oh thank you. I almost didn’t put that scene in, because it’s kind of a cliché, but then I’m like “I’ve gotta have a train fight.” And I’ll say this, Alloy of Law is intended to be slightly more of a pulp novel than Mistborn, and though even though it’s sort of a detective pulp novel, it’s got fun characters and a fun world, because that’s the way I do it. If I let myself do these sort of things, they are done for the pure fun of it, where they may not have fit in another book.
I've heard rumors of a Steelheart movie and/or tv series. Do you have any updates on that?
Updates, I don't know if there are a lot of updates on Steelheart other than what I've posted. Shawn Levy's company bought the rights, they're a very good company. They made Real Steel, if you ever saw that, Hugh Jackman movie. And they made the Night at the Museum films. And they have bought the rights, and commissioned a screenplay. I haven't seen the screenplay yet. I mean they only started that in July, so it usually takes six months to get a screenplay written. So I'll let you know once I've read it, assuming they tell me I can tell you.
Was aluminum around before Adonalsium was Shattered?
RAFO.
My other question is about the phrase "Shadows of Self". It's mentioned in the last Mistborn book. Is it a specific shadow? Are we going to see if that shadow's in Shadows of Self?
We are not going-- Well yes and no. What it is referencing in this book is the different roles that each person plays in their life. That is the core meaning of Shadows of Self. But then, there is also, there is a kandra involved, which they change shape and become different people, so "who are you?" and identity is a big thing.
Is it possible for a Knight Radiant to become a kind of Drab if they use too much Investiture?
No, you can't really burn yourself out that way, no. I mean, it's possible for drabbery to be mimicked on other planets, but it wouldn't be through that method.
How would a tongueless God King give up his Breaths?
It involves the God King having a child. (Yes, it's possible.) I talk a little more about this in the annotations, but don't want to give too much away here.
Backup plan is to have a Returned heal him, like actually ended up happening.
Where do gemstones come from?
Gemstones on Roshar are mostly coming from gemhearts. And, I remembered to stick in some mentions of this in Oathbringer, 'cause a lot of people have been asking about this. It's not something-- like, the daily ranching of animals for their gemhearts is not something that we bring up a lot, but there is some limited mining operations on Roshar as well, you've just gotta get through the crem.
How are the floating cities in Ashyn held aloft?
By local magic... So basically, I can tell you how it works, because I'm not saving any secrets here.
One of the diseases gives this power. The reason it's called The Silence Divine is right now, the way I've devised it, is this power also causes hearing loss. So you have this virus that does this weird thing, but also gives you the power. And so there's a conclave of them, a chorus of them that keep the cities aloft. And that's why the book, if or when I write it, I guess it can't be a virus in this case. Whatever disease they have, someone develops penicillin and can potentially cause the city to come crashing down. That was the premise for me, but that means it needs to be a bacteria, not a virus but it needs to be a bacteria that stays with you long, so I have to work out exactly how I would make these diseases work.
So men cannot write, it is a feminine art. Women do all the writing and reading while also covering their left hand with a sensible long sleeve (not godless whores). But what if a proper Vorin woman is born left-handed? Would she be forced to wear a glove in order to write? Or would she do her best to write with her right hand to avoid her sinful nature as a lefty? I wonder if these women write in secret, away from the lecherous eyes of others, and expose her safe hand to write freely.
These thoughts keep me up at night. I pity these left-handed Vorins for the rough life they must live.
This isn't as big a deal as you might think, because for a lot of the population, they just wear a glove and use their left hand.
It gets interesting when you are upper class, female, and left-handed. Part of the inspiration for the safehand was the way that the left hand is regarded as unclean in some of our cultures on Earth. You might be curious to read about what left-handed people did, historically, in some middle eastern cultures.
The short answer is "They learn to be ambidextrous" but the long answer is that it can be quite a pain, and very embarrassing. So yes, you are right to feel sorry for those left-handed Vorin women.
He disabused me of my little theory about a herald. He said the shalebark gardener working in the night when Dalinar and Navani walk by was just a gardener. He was purposefully trying to show "regular" Alethi alongside the more prominent soldiers and leaders.
Does Khriss ever figure out how to get sand [to work] on the Darkside?
Ohhh, that’s a bit of a spoiler.
Essentially her reason to become Cosmere-knowledgeable.
It is one of her primary motivations for where she has gone, is figuring out how all that worked. But her story I want to leave for her book.
Updates on Secondary Projects
White Sand
Graphic Novel Two came out this year, and was very well received. (Save for the forced artist change, something I hated to have to do. That said, the new artist is doing a fantastic job.) Graphic Novel Three is the end of this sequence, and is well on its way to being completed.
The prose version is still available if you sign up for my mailing list. Though remember, we've made numerous updates to the story during the adaptation process.
I have no immediate plans to do sequels to this in graphic novel form, though you can expect stories set on Taldain to happen in the future.
Status: Final graphic novel is well under way. Release in 2019 or early 2020 likely.
Do Returned have a bond with their divine Breath that would give them powers on Roshar? Or are they different to seons?
They are Highly Invested beings, but the Investiture is not sapient.
Who/what was the inspiration for Wayne's character? He's the best!
Really, it started with the hats and went crazy from there.
[questions being asked on behalf of Alyx, a.k.a. FeatherWriter] About Renarin's Surgebinding. Are [his visions] influenced by Voidbinding instead of Surgebinding?
That's a RAFO.
And then if they are influenced by Odium the way that Dalinar's are influenced by Honor.
That's a RAFO. I'm not going to talk about stuff like that! I have dropped some very blatant hints, and that is enough for me right now.
I asked pretty much the same thing last time, and you pointed me to a certain page. Can I tell her what the page was?
Yes. There are certain things going on with him that I feel are very blatant. I think he [Argent] is going to point them out to you.
Blushweaver
Blushweaver was the first of the gods who I named, and her title then set the standard for the others in the Court of Gods. Lightsong was second, and I toyed with several versions of his name before settling. Blushweaver's name, however, came quickly and easily—and I never wanted to change it once I landed on it.
When developing the Court of Gods, I wanted to design something that felt a little like a Greek pantheon—or, rather, a constructed one. Everyone is given their portfolio by the priests after they Return. Blushweaver was given the portfolio of honesty and interpersonal relations, and over the fifteen years of her rule, she's become one of the most dynamic figures in the court. Few remember it anymore, but she was successful at having her name changed during her first year. She used to be Blushweaver the Honest, and she became Blushweaver the Beautiful through a campaign and some clever politicking.
Many think of her as the goddess of love and romance, though that technically isn't true. It's just the name and persona she's crafted for herself, as she saw that as a position of greater power. She actually toyed with going the opposite direction, becoming the chaste goddess of justice and honor. However, in the end, she decided to go the direction that felt more natural to her.
After these fifteen years, it's hard to distinguish when she is being herself and when she's playing a part. The two have become melded and interchangeable.
When designing this story, I knew I wanted to have a beautiful goddess to give Lightsong some verbal sparring. However, I realized early on that I didn't want to go the route of having a disposable, sultry bimbo goddess of love. I needed someone more complicated and capable than that, someone who was a foil to Lightsong not just in verbal sparring, but someone who could prod him to be more proactive. And from that came Blushweaver.
In the original draft of the book, this chapter had a slightly different tone. Lightsong didn't look forward to sparring with Blushweaver; he cringed and wished she wouldn't bother him. That artifact remained until the later drafts, though it didn't belong. I wrote the later chapters with them getting along quite well, so I wanted to revise this first chapter to imply that he looked forward to their conversations.
Did you have the ending planned out for the Reckoners series when you started writing?
Then I build a series around the ideas and themes that worked in the first book.
I had the ending of the first book well in mind. Once I finished it, I sat down and plotted the next two books.
This is very common for me in a series. Writing the first book, making sure I have the characters and ideas down first.
So in Words of Radiance, when Hoid has-- switches places with the carriage driver, who was mentioned as having a hat and a strange accent - is that carriage driver important?
Hehehehe… That's a-- I'll leave this one to you. It's a RAFO, but it's not a big RAFO.
