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Does Gallant's eyes being rainbow have any cosmere significance?
It is an indication of his spren bond; it's a way that I was getting across that. A lot of times, when you see kind of mother-of-pearl or a rainbow shimmer of luminescence, that is an indication of something happening with Investiture in the cosmere. You'll see it in White Sand being used; you see it periodically in manifestations of the Nahel bond, and that sort of thing.
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to ask this question, because, when I'm reading your books, I always find myself making the questions that you want me to make, right? And at the end, there's always a surprise, but I'm wondering how you manage to achieve that, to have me asking the exact questions that you want me to ask.
This is lots of practice as a writer, and paying attention to how the art of writing works, that's certainly part of it. I would say that being a writer is a little like being a stage magician. You often distract the audience with what you're doing with one hand, while you are slipping something else out of your pocket and getting ready to throw it in their face. The best twists in fiction are the ones that are right in front of you. Anyone can have something unexpected happen. Sometimes, it's appropriate, but sometimes, just having the unexpected happen without foreshadowing is very unfulfilling. So, if you can lead the reader to be asking certain questions, sometimes they will ignore the question right beneath the surface that is in front of their eyes, but hidden by a larger, more domineering question.
How are people with two different eye colors treated on Roshar?
RAFO - this will be explored in one of Shallan's flashback sequences in Stormlight 2, and is already written.
Chapter Fifteen
I've been waiting for you guys to read this one, as it has some of my favorite moments in the first part. From the conversation with Rlain, and me finally being able to talk about some of the mechanics that let the Listeners survive on the Shattered Plains, to--of course--being able to write a fight using Awakening for the first time in a while. I also enjoy writing about Kaladin through the eye of someone like Zahel, as it gives me some interesting opportunities.
Obviously, I'm pushing (again) the boundaries of what a reader can be expected to remember/know about the cosmere to enjoy these books.
It's my opinion that thinking "Zahel can do weird, mysterious stuff I don't understand" is all right for those readers who don't have a larger cosmere experience. In fact, I'm confident that even if Warbreaker hadn't been released, I'd be writing scenes like this in the same way. It's a common trope in fantasy for the powerful figure, like Gandalf, to do things that seem outside the rules everyone else has to follow. One thing I like about having the cosmere to play with as a creator is that it lets me do scenes like this, which both are mysterious but also fully explained by the greater magic system, if you want to dig into it.
I will say that Zahel is making an informed guess about Szeth in this chapter. He doesn't know 100%.
This is your last relatively cosmere-aware chapter for the previews, I'm afraid. There are a few more similar to this much later in the book.
Why exactly do some spike removals kill (dual eye, or central spike) but most don't?
For the same reason that a bullet through one part of the body will kill you, but getting shot somewhere else won't. The physical form of a person who has undergone a Hemalurgic transformation is no longer what we think of it. The direct connection to Preservation starts keeping them alive. (Imagine stapling someone's soul to another person's soul, their life essence, then stapling that to the power of creation itself, giving you a conduit directly to power, letting you leech it and steal it.) That power keeps you alive, despite the wounds. Some of the time, the other staples are enough to keep you alive, even if one is pulled out. Others are too important.
I can't remember, was it true that Jordan wrote the last chapter before anything else, or was that just apocryphal?
I've heard that, but can't find any evidence for it--I do know he had it in mind very early, and did write it down in a very complete form before passing. In fact, it was in a more complete form than most everything else in the notes.
But I don't think it was written before he did Eye of the World. And I seem to recall an interview with him before he passed saying something along the lines of, "I've got it in mind. I know what it is. It might be slightly different if I write it now, as opposed to if I write it after I finish the last book, but the soul of it will be the same."
Can I ask how much of the sequence where Rand and the Dark One devise possible futures post-TG was you and how much was RJ? Because that was phenomenal.
That was one of the sequences where I had to construct something to fit what I felt RJ wanted--using the notes, in part, and the momentum of the books as my guide.
In the notes, RJ said something along the lines of, "Rand and the Dark One fight. Rand realizes that he can't destroy the Dark One, because doing so destroys choice." So I constructed the idea of dueling possibilities because I felt a simple sword fight with the Dark One would be anti-climactic, and that RJ would have done something more epic.
CONCLUSION
So, there you go! Another beast of a document to keep us on track for another year. This has been one of the stranger time periods in my life, and I suspect you feel the same. I simultaneously feel like I was only just doing this, posting a State of the Sanderson for 2019—and also that the times pre-COVID like that were somehow an eternity ago.
For now, though, I intend to continue doing what I always do. Keep my eyes forward, and continue telling stories.
Wishing you the best,
Brandon SandersonDecember 2020
One of the few criticisms of Rhythm of War is that more and more Stormlight Cosmere lore is getting pretty complicated, and it's harder and harder to follow along without understanding the whole Cosmere. Will this trend continue? Will we need a degree in cosmere-ism to read Stormlight Ten?
I try to write these scenes such that, if you want to let your eyes glaze over and read kind of to the end of them, generally people summarize "this is what we need to do." This sort of stuff, honestly, goes back to Elantris. This sort of stuff is going to show up in a lot of the Cosmere books. It is a fundamental tenet of how I'm creating the Cosmere. Rhythm of War was definitely the pendulum further along toward that aspect, with Navani being a main character, than a lot of them will be. But if we do write Khriss stories, you're gonna get a lot in the Khriss stories. All I will say is: don't interpret it as increasing in complexity the more the books are written. Interpret it as: as we get to characters that that is relevant to, their sections are going to involve more of that than others.
I see it increasing in all, a little bit, as we move along, but it really depends on who the characters are, what they're talking about, and things like this. My hope is that no, you do not need to. My hope is that you can (if it really is not your thing) skim those scenes, get an explanation at the end, and still know "okay, we need to do this thing." What I don't want it to be is just technobabble, also, that does not fit into the structure and worldbuilding. It is a fine line to walk, and I would accept... I think that criticism is valid of Rhythm of War, but it's one of those sort of things, like the first book having a steep learning curve, that is an aspect of the story that I'm trying to tell.
I hope not. I hope you will not need one. This is something I am aware of, and we will see. If it gets to be way too much, I think fans will let me know, and beta readers will then pick up on that and start warning me "maybe this is too much, Brandon." We'll see.
I’m curious, are the red eyes in The Bands of Mourning also linked to Odium?
There’s a similar thing happening, but it may not be the link you expect.
What was the process that you went through for designing the various "solar" system charts from Arcanum Unbounded?
I loved making those star system charts for Arcanum. I found an old system chart that I thought looked really cool and combined it with the style of an old Arabic manuscript that caught my eye. I bought vellum, inked the start charts on there, and started painting them. It didn't turn out how I expected, so I scanned the inked lines, turned them into brushes in Illustrator, and created the charts again from there, painting them later in Photoshop and adding textures from the physical vellum projects I'd tried earlier.
Okay, that's just cool.
How accurate would they be in-world (they are obviously not to exact scale, but what about planetary colors and look)?
I would say that they're relatively accurate when it comes to the big stuff, but they are also done in a style that would suggest the people of the Cosmere still have a lot to learn about astronomy. Some planetary colors are right, some are just guessed at, so the simple answer to this question is: Your Mileage May Vary.
The specific instance I was thinking about was the depiction of the 10 Rosharan Gas Giants. Discarding the glyphs and the names, were the colors of those giants in the star chart a cultural projection, or does it have physical basis in how they appear in the Rosharan sky?
All these maps are products of the cultures and eras they came from. The mapmaker in this instance is probably using reference from all over the Cosmere, and the reference he used for this system came from Roshar itself. Since it's unlikely that the mapmaker has visited all the planets in all these systems, he has to rely on others for much of the information. I suspect he has the same questions you do about this particular map, though he rendered it based on the best information he could find. :)
What was-- There was something going on in the shadows. 'Cause the King mentioned seeing shadows out of the corner of his eye when Kaladin wasn't around.
That should be answered in Oathbringer. If it's not, ask me next time and I'll explain, but it is in there.
Majority of authors 'hear' their characters speak, finds study. 56% of the writers surveyed reported visual or other sensory experiences of their characters when they were writing, while a fifth had the sense that their character was occupying the same physical space.
Doesn't really happen to me, though I do have a lot of times where I feel I am the character. That's kind of the point; I write to explore the world through other people's eyes. Have never had any kinds of hallucinations as the title of this post describes.
Interesting! Would you say that you dive so deep into a character that you "become" that character for a time?
I always have solid separation of myself and the characters, though I can "pretend" on the page. It gets close enough that I think I can understand characters for whom that imagining crosses a line. Wayne, from one of my series, is like this--he's someone who can take it a step further than I do. I can get close enough to sense what it would be like, but I never really feel myself becoming them.
Also, how did the experiment with Warbreaker turn out, and are you planning to do this with any other things you write?
It's so hard to tell, sales-wise, how it helped or hurt. I don't, honestly, think it hurt—and I think it could only have helped, as more and more WoT readers turned their eyes on me and were able to grab a book to read for free. I do plan to do it again in the future, most likely with the Warbreaker sequel.
At this point, so far out from Oathbringer, what are the best and hardest things about having spent a lot of time writing about mental illnesses?
One of the reasons why I approached Stormlight the way I did is, during the intervening years, during those seven years, I got to know very deeply some people who we would call non-psychonormative, I think is a good way to say it. And I began to see that the various different ways we perceive ourselves and the various different ways we perceive our own mental processes influence a lot of how we act and who we are. And I also noticed, speaking to them, that a lot of my friends were a little--and there's no problem if you like these--but they're a little tired of every book that represented their mental illness in a story was all about the mental illness. That the book was only just how to cope with mental illness, which are great stories. But they're like, if you look at the statistics, psychonormative is not the norm. In fact, it seems to be this mythical person that doesn't exist, in that the way that all of us think is different, and in some of us it can be really impairing for our lives. And in some of us, the same thing that's impairing to our lives defines who we are. You guys want a really good book about this, Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon is a fantastic look at this.
But this all became really interesting to me. When I was looking at my characters, one of the things I noticed, for instance, I kind of used the pop science version of autism in Elantris. The more I actually got to know people with autism, the more I saw that the Rain Man version was a very extreme representation of something that is something a lot of people deal with, the way they see the world, and I started thinking, "You know, if I'm gonna create real characters in my books, this is something I need to be looking at." And it wasn't that I set out to say, "I'm going to write a book about lots of people with mental illnesses. I said, "I'm going to write a book about a lot of people who are like the people I know. And some of them think in different ways than others." And again, in some of them, that's a thing that they don't want to think that way. And it can be really impairing. But it's not that the story-- The Stormlight Archive is not about mental illness. The Stormlight Archive is about a lot of people that I wanted to try to make as real as I could, and that I also wanted to approach some things that haven't been approached, I thought, in fantasy fiction.
What are some of the advantages? Well, I think the story has been very eye-opening to me. It's hard to talk about advantages and disadvantages in light of this. What are the "disadvantages"? I am walking through a minefield, and I have blown my foot off multiple times. And I think this is part of that whole failure thing as a writer. If I hadn't perhaps done it poorly in some of my books, I wouldn't have had the chance to talk to people who are like, "I really appreciate the book and what you're trying. Here's how, if you ever did this again, you might approach making it feel more realistic." And that made me a better person, not just a better writer, and so in some ways that disadvantage is the advantage. But that is the thing. I have blown my foot off on several landmines. And I will probably continue to do so.
Kaladin's fight with the [Pursuer], his eyes are described glowing a color not quite the same as usual for corrupted Investiture. Is this supposed to be that he's burning a different Light?
No, it’s more he's on the border of some dangerous stuff.
The Reshi King from Rysn's interlude is probably trans. This statement is based on a few points
1: Everybody but Rysn (who's whole thing is that she's extremely green and unaware of the world) uses He/Him pronouns to refer to the reshi king.
2: When Rysn first meets the king, She genders him as a man, until she notices that he has breasts. This suggests that he has taken measures to present more masculine.
3: When Rysn refuses to call the king "king" his son loses his temper and tries to send her away. Up until then, he had been firm, but that was the point where he outright tells her to leave.
There is one line in the text where The king's son says "gender is irrelevant" in response to a question Rysn has about the king's gender.
I will say that this was written before the Author stopped using Gender and Sex interchangeably according to the WoB database.
Beyond that, I doubt the language they were speaking (thaylen) would have a robust understanding of sex and gender.
/u/mistborn was this your intention with the scene if you can confirm it? Or was it more the Egyptian style Hatshepsut-like others are mentioning?
I love Hatshepsut as an interesting quirk of history, and have long thought about ways to incorporate something similar. I did have that partially in mind when I was writing this, but more in the way that the culture was trying to understand him, rather than his own view of himself.
The king sees himself as male, and wishes to be treated that way--not just in title. In fact, in the coming months, you will see this character again briefly in some scenes I've already written, if you keep an eye out.
ooh are we going back to the Reshi Isles? Will we get a beach episode?
Ha. RAFO. :)
Generally, books form when multiple ideas stewing in the back of my brain combine in interesting ways. The most obvious idea for this one [The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England] is my desire to do a Jason Bourne type story. I know it’s a little tropey, but there’s something about me that genuinely loves the type of story where you find out about the characters as they remember who they are. I think it’s because I love books structured in such a way that the reader and the character feel the same things at the same times.
There’s this beautiful sense of discovery to a book, and though it could (obviously) get old, I personally enjoy the occasional story where you get to enhance that feeling by starting with a blank slate character. (When I’d GM role-playing games, I loved to have all the characters start with no memory and the players discover and develop them as they went.) So, I hope you’ll forgive me for using a trope that can sometimes be a little eye-rolly (amnesia). I promise I do some interesting things with it.
The other big idea that led to this was one I’ve had for years about “time-travel tourism.” A lot of time travel stories focus on changing (or not changing) the present. I wanted to throw that worry out the window and play with the idea of “past as playground.” You can hear Dan and I discuss this concept (though I’d already written this book in secret by then) on episode 18 of our Intentionally Blank podcast: “Time Travel Disaster Tourism.” As these two ideas melded into “Time Traveling Jason Bourne,” I knew I had something that would be fun.
The final element that connected here was me realizing—as I started working on this—the uncomfortable nature of the topic. Playing with the past meant playing with people’s lives, and there were some parts of this that I felt I needed to hang a lantern on. That’s when I decided to use interjections from the Frugal Wizard’s handbook. (I’d actually had this idea as a title with no context years before.) I figured I could highlight the inherent ridiculous—and somewhat immoral—nature of the basic premise with some satire, making it okay to laugh at the situation all while we talked about human nature. Because I think this is really something we’d do if we had the chance to travel to the past without consequences in the future. So it’s worth talking about it in narrative. That’s part of what SF/F is for—exploring the impossible now so that when some impossible things become reality, we as a society have already had a chance to investigate how we feel about the subject.
Anyway, those three things combined into this story. While Secret Project #1 has a fairy-tale tone, I intend this one (when in the protagonist’s viewpoint) to be more action/adventure. The Frugal Wizard inserts are comedic, but the main text is not a comedy, save for the occasional sarcastic or amusing comment by the narrator.
Can you tell us something about the Order of Willshapers that hasn't been mentioned?
No, I can't. Because, too many spoilers, in that sort of area. And plus, I don't want to lock down some of the things that... because I'm not sure how I'll represent them yet in books. I know what I'll probably do, but I have... there's certain things about it that, until I write a scene from someone's eyes, using the magic, that then is kind of when it locks down for me. So, we will stay away from that.
Double Eye of the Almighty, is that just symbolism or does Tanavast have weird pupils?
That is symbolism. But if you were to see Tanavast and you were on Roshar, he would manifest with weird pupils at that point.
Reflection of how people believe?
Yeah. But the actual Tanavast before, he did not have weird pupils.
The world of Sixth of the Dusk [First of the Sun], is it going to make another appearance?
It will likely make another appearance, I am unlikely to do another story there just because I have too many things to do sequels too, but if you keep your eyes open, you can see...
Is Hoid related?
You will see some more.
We've spoken before about how you don't usually read Cosmere fan fiction, and I was wondering, what about other things people create? Like artwork or podcasts and such.
I barely have time to get to the books written by my friends, or the ones in the industry I feel I should be reading to keep an eye on it. I look at fanart, certainly, and post a lot of it--but I don't listen to any of the podcasts.
Could the Heralds be considered the splinters or would it be the Honourblades they once held? Or perhaps are they something else entirely?
That's a RAFO, more because I don't want to dig into the nature of the Heralds until the second five books, and would rather not have people's eyes on them too much right now.
When Kaladin jumps in to help Adolin, and he's fighting and he says he feels like he can fight with his eyes shut. Is that just Kaladin being cocky? Or is that Investiture related? ...It reminded me of atium.
There's a little more going on there, but it's not as far as you think.
Throughout TWoK, Kaladin complains that he is cursed. When others call him lucky, he thinks about all the times he has failed to protect people and considers himself unlucky. Everyone around him dies.
His Journey in that book takes him to Bridge 4, the bridge team that has the most losses, that everyone knows is a death sentence. Death being the end of every journey, this is appropriate.
But what I've never really noticed before is the importance of the bridge number. 4 is, in East Asian cultures, considered unlucky or cursed. In Chinese 4 is nearly a homophone to the word death. Buildings will skip the 4th floor, companies will skip from version 3 to version 5 of their products (Palm, OnePlus, I'm sure there are other examples but I can't think of them right now).
We already know that The Stormlight Archive finds some of its inspiration in anime/manga. We know that the Alethi are what we would consider ethnically East Asian. Dark hair, tan skin, and they don't have the large, round eyes of the Shin. It seems very fitting that the least lucky bridge, the one responsible for the most death, is Bridge 4.
Of course, Kaladin comes to believe he isn't cursed as he uses his powers to defend his bridgemen. 4 becomes the most envied bridge as they suffer the fewest deaths, have camaraderie, and eventually become squires to a radiant.
They are numbered unlucky and cursed, but turn out to be the most "lucky" of the bridge crews.
This all struck me today because at the end of Oathbringer, Dalinar casually mentions that his personal guard from Bridge 13 isn't there because that bridge crew became Teft's squires. 13 is the number in Western culture that we consider "unlucky" or "cursed," so fitting that it would be the second bridge crew to become squires of a Radiant! With that realization, everything about Bridge 4 clicked in my head.
Did anyone else catch this, or notice anything else cool with these numbers?
A lot of things fans find are coincidence...but neither of these are, actually. Those are both intentional, as are a few other little numbers things.
Numerology has not become a big thing in Stormlight during the development of it, but original (2002 version) The Way of Kings leaned a lot more heavily on numerology (gematria style word/number interactions) and that's still around in the world.
*inaudible* find yourself foreshadowing in any of your books.
All the time. Like, the thing I love to do the most.
Anything you found that we haven't found yet?
Oh, yeah. But they can't really find it yet because the foreshadowing is for books way in the future. One thing I've mentioned that you can keep an eye on is the shapes the spren sometimes take, sometimes unconsciously, is related to certain connections that are going on.
What is Renarin's eye color?
PAFO - Peter and find out. He gets to canonize it.
Do you have future intentions of grouping characters or descendants from across the Cosmere together against a common foe?
The future of the cosmere does involve much more crossover between the worlds, but don't think of it like the Avengers--the goal isn't to bring together a group of heroes, but to show the intersection of cultures and ideals, told through the eyes of those who live them.
The Creative Development team has been Ben McSweeney and I for the last few years, but recently we added Rachael Buchanan to assist with Brandon’s BYU class, help me with my communications with freelance artists, work on facilitating some legal things, and just in general be helpful and awesome. She recently signed a traditional deal for a book that will be releasing in 2024. So keep an eye out for that. Hayley Lazo has been working with us on the books since Tor’s re-release of the Alcatraz series. In the last year or so, she joined the Creative Development team and has been creating lots of cool things that we’ll get to reveal soon. At the end of the summer, Jennifer Neal joined us to help keep all the art assets organized, but she also does so much more. I’ve been incredibly impressed with and grateful for each one of them.
The Creative Development team has been hard at work with Editorial in putting together the Secret Project books and shepherding them through to the printer. Like Brandon said, there have been supply chain delays, which we anticipated, but even then, there are things you can’t entirely plan for. Our printing rep, Bill, has been working miracles to get us the books as quickly as possible, and we’re incredibly grateful to him and all the awesome people working hard at the printer and bindery.
Additionally, Creative has worked with the Products team to create cool things for next year’s Year of Sanderson boxes. It’s a big team effort here to fulfill on March’s Kickstarter, with all departments involved, and we can’t wait for you to see some of the awesome things that are coming down the pipeline!
This year we put together new art, broadsheets, and maps for The Lost Metal as well as worked on the art and designs for the first two Wax & Wayne leatherbound books, prep and commissions for the upcoming Words of Radiance leatherbound, and much more. Thanks to all of you who have expressed how much you like the art. That’s not just the Creative team behind that, but also all the wonderful artists who work with us throughout the year.
One of the highlights this year and a bit of last was getting to work with Brandon and Brotherwise on defining the look of the characters for the Stormlight Archive miniatures. From the beginning, we saw an opportunity to not only create cool miniatures, but to also make a body of artwork that can serve as a visual base for what we do with visually with this series for a long time. I look forward to continuing to work with Brandon, Ben McSweeney, and Brotherwise on fleshing out Roshar. Cool things are in store!
On a more personal note, 2022 marks the first time my name appears on the cover of a fantasy book! (Unless you count Monsters Don’t Wear Underpants.) Yes, the White Sand Graphic Novel omnibus released in Spain in May and Germany in June of this year! (Though, please note the German version is split into three parts.) Other languages will follow. We can’t wait for the English version of the omnibus to be out very soon!
We all worked quite hard to make this the quintessential White Sand graphic novel experience, updating text and dialogue to be more in line with the rest of the Cosmere. There are 38 new pages at the beginning with art by Nabetse Zitro, revised text and art throughout, a new map by Jian Guo, a glossary, and fourteen Ars Arcanum pages with art by Ben McSweeney. We think you’re really going to enjoy experiencing the complete package!
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something. It’s been such a whirlwind this year! As one last tidbit, Brandon’s mentioned a few times that I’m working on a fantasy novel that tells the story of some of characters we’ve seen in the Mistborn Era 2 broadsheets. I finished the first draft in September and am actively working on revising it. Time will tell if it’s any good, but it’s been a blast to write. With any luck, I hope to be able to share it (or some version of it) with you all someday.
Chapter Forty-Six - Part Two
As I've said before, I worried about the Sarene-Raoden plot falling too much into "romantic comedy" stereotypes, so I took measures to try and make them act more honestly. In this chapter, Raoden tries to push Sarene away–but, of course, she doesn't believe him. Honestly, I think people in a lot of such plots TRY to find ways to misunderstand each other. That's the only explanation I can give for why such ridiculous things occur.
In cutting the Mad Prince, this section in the Sarene/Raoden chapters was one of the things I was sad to change. As I mentioned in a previous annotation, in the Mad Prince version of the book, Sarene thought that Raoden had returned with an army to try and take the city. I started this chapter out with a scene of Raoden thinking about the problems Sarene's realization caused. I’ll just stick it in here:
One side effect of her mistaken supposition was that she hesitated in regards to their own relationship. He could see the conflict within he–the two of them had grown very close over the last five days, acting on the feelings they had both been forced to hold back during the weeks of Sarene's food distribution. Yet, now, Sarene thought that her husband might actually be alive and, a truly devout daughter of political necessity, she felt that getting any closer to Raoden would betray her vows. With surprise, Raoden realized that he was competing with himself–and losing.
I really hate to lose that last line. It always struck me as ironically clever. However, there was another loss that was even tougher to lose. It comes in where Raoden and Sarene are at the city gates:
Raoden fell still. He wanted her to stay–he longed for her to stay. But, at the same time, he knew he had to do whatever it took to get her out of Adonis. The city was death. As much as it pained him to think of her leaving, it pained him more to think of her staying.
"He will be there," Raoden said enticingly, his voice suddenly growing quiet. "Raoden. The man you love."
Sarene's hand grew slack, and she waved uncertain eyes towards the Elantris city gate. "No," she finally said. "That's not what I want any more."
I think the reason I hated to lose this scene is obvious. Right here, Sarene gets to choose "Spirit" over the images she has in her head of the perfect Prince Raoden. It's an opportunity for her to show that she really does love him, despite what he is, despite what the other options might be. It's love offered against logic and against wished-for dreams. In other words, it's realistic love. Of all the scenes I had to cut, these few paragraphs make me the saddest to lose, I think.
I just had a question about writing, specifically regarding your laws on magic. Your first law states that the ability to solve problems using magic is directly proportional to the reader's knowledge of said magic. My question comes kind of as the opposite. What is your opinion on the ability of the author to create problems using magic? Does the reader need to know a lot about the magic system for you to be able to have the "villain" use it to create problems for the protagonists? Or can you create problems with this magic without the reader knowing a lot about it?
One thing to remember about my laws is that they're laws I devised for myself--laws I find make my writing stronger. I think they hold very well in general, but there are no "rules" for fiction. There are as many ways to do things as there are people doing them. However, like most things, I DO have an opinion. :)
Magic causing problems in the story is a great thing--as more conflict generally makes for a stronger story. Obviously, this isn't a 100% correlation, but it's a good rule of thumb. Using the magic as a kind of "human vs. nature" style plot is a great idea, and I've used it to great advantage myself. One could say that in Elantris, the magic (which is broken) is a primary antagonist of the story.
There are a few things to be aware of. First, avoid what my friend and colleague Bryce Moore dubbed "Deus Ex Wrench." Yes, that doesn't quite work. But the idea is this: Just like solving problems out of nowhere, with unforeshadowed powers or advantages, can be unsatisfying, sometimes just having problems happen out of nowhere in a story can be unsatisfying.
If a dam breaks, risking flooding the city, it's much stronger if we know the dam is there--if the characters have walked along it, or if something similar happened somewhere else in the story in parallel. Likewise, having the magic create problems unexpectedly, if handled without some measure of foreshadowing, could be unsatisfying. (For example, if the One Ring suddenly started--three quarters of the way through the series--melting your friends if they crossed their eyes.)
Just as I think you can create a great magic system that doesn't have explicit rules, I think you can have the magic be a huge problem in the books if the reader/characters don't understand it. Doing so in this case is probably going to be about making sure that the major conflict is not FIXING the magic, but overcoming it.
For example, if the magic in your world--when used--causes rainfall that floods and kills crops, one story (the explicit rules story) would be about finding out why, and learning to use the magic safely. But another story would be about surviving a terrible flood, and another about hunting down and stopping the people who use the magic. All three can use the magic as a huge conflict, but only one would probably need deep explanation of the magic system in order to have a satisfying resolution.
I asked Brandon if Sazed will resurrect Kelsier at some point in the future, since Brandon has pointed out that Kelsier's soul has stuck around and is still tied to Scadrial.
His response was "Sazed is not going to resurrect Kelsier. Keep your eyes open." And there was a verbal emphasis on Sazed's name.
I had a teacher, when I was in 8th grade--this is true, her name was Ms. Reeder *laughter* yes, she's now a professor in California-- and I was what we call in the industry a reluctant reader, that is a fancy term for "me no like-y books" and she couldn't get me to read. I was one of these boys-- it happens to a lot, more boys than girls, but it happens to a lot of kids between about 5th and 7th grade, they fall out of reading. And for me I suddenly found books boring during that era. I joke about it in one of my books actually, these books with the awards on the cover with the boy who has a pet dog and then the dog dies and that's your story. And I thought these were boring. I did try Tolkien, but if you're not a good reader trying The Lord of the Rings, I bounced off that so hard, had no idea what's going on. I got to like the barrow-wights scene, like "Euhhh what's going on? This is boring..."
That was a few years before my 8th grade year where my teacher, she realized I was struggling. And she realized that I was faking my way through book reports. And so she called me up after class and she said "The next book report is going to be a book that I have read and then you are going to read and we are going to talk about it." So she took me to the back of the room and teachers have these racks of ratty paperbacks… it's like a hundred kids have read these books, they're stained with school lunch spaghetti sauce and things like that. But these were some of her favorite books that she loaned out to students, and I browsed through those and I found a book called Dragonsbane, Barbara Hambly. Nowadays kind of a lesser known classic of the genre, it's fantastic, I love it. It has this gorgeous Michael Whelan cover on it. And it was longer than books I had tried before but it also looked more interesting. So I dove into that book, and you know the weird thing about this book is that it should not have worked, right? If you've read Dragonsbane it's about a middle-aged woman who has been told that if she would just dedicate herself to her magic-craft she could be one of the greatest practitioners ever. Her teacher keeps saying to her "Look you just need to dedicate yourself more". And at the same time she has a family, several children and a husband who in the book is called to go and slay a dragon. He's like in his fifties now, he killed one once when he was twenty, he's the only living dragonslayer and the story is sort of about him going "Oh I've got to go and kill this dragon" and her saying "Uh… You're in your fifties, you're going to get killed." It's a really interesting story, told through this woman's eyes and it's basically a middle-aged woman having a mid-life crisis, having to choose between her career and her family. Not normally what you would give to a 14-year-old boy and expect him to absolutely love it. But this is the power of fantasy, it's why I love the genre, it's why I came to love it.
It's the answer to your question, because I feel that in fantasy and science fiction we can blend the sense of the fantastic with the sense of the familiar and we can learn about people around us while having an awesome story at the same time. I remember a few years ago there were books that would come out, it was for parents to fool their kids into eating vegetables, they would say "You can mix this vegetable with this food and they won't taste it". I kind of view fantasy a little like that. You can have this awesome adventure that's really fun and exciting and at the same time you can deal with lots of interesting real-world issues but not be pretentious. You know there are a lot of great books in a lot of genres, but I'll read some that are "realistic" fiction and they just hit you with this moral so much that you are sick of it after the third chapter. Whatever the reason-- I know what the reason is that this book connected with me. My mother graduated first of her class in accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the accounting department. After doing that she had received a scholarship to go get a CPA and she had made the decision that "You know what I'm pregnant, I'm going to stay home with my son while he's a little kid until he goes back to school and then I'll go back to a job." And as a kid, you know, when I heard this story as a teenager I was "Well of course she did, it's me". Right? When you're a teen everything is about you, "Well obviously that's the right decision". In reading this book and seeing where it wasn't accounting it was magic I was like "Woooh that's how my mom feels about accounting and she gave that up, it's not an easy decision, it's not the obvious decision. Both decisions are right, she just picked one of the two and she did it for me". And so I get out of this book, this goofy fantasy novel about killing a dragon, and I understand my mother better. And that blew my mind as a kid. I ran back to my teacher, "there have to be more books like this" and so she took me to the library, which I had not spent much time in, and I just went to the card catalogue… the cards in a line, you read them by title and the next book in line was Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn so I got into those books, and then the next book after that in line was Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. That was my introduction to fantasy. I spent the next months reading every Anne McCaffrey, Barbara Hambly, and Melanie Rawn book I could get my hands on, to the point that when someone handed me David Eddings that summer I said "I don't think guys can write this genre." *laughter* I was really skeptical. That was my mentorship, those three ladies.
Hi guys, this might bore some (most) of you but this is my take on why the plants on Scadrial were turned brown after the Lord Ruler's Ascension.
So basically, heres a bit of plant biology:
Plants absorb light during the first phase of photosynthesis , converting specific waves lengths into high energy electrons, which are then used to create NADPH, ATP and Oxygen. Some of these molecules are then used in the second phase to make carbon molecules, which we break down into energy.
However, only specific light waves are used by plants, namely the red, blue, purple and to a lesser degree yellow waves. The green light waves are not absorbed and are actually reflected - the reason why chloroplasts and plant cells containing chloroplasts are in our eyes, green.
Because of the ash in the sky, plants were not able to get enough light, and thus were unable to survive. To combat this, the Lord Ruler altered many plants to have a new pigment (say chlorophyll-C) which allowed them to absorb green light waves and therefore get more energy - stopping them from dying.
Thus, green light was no longer reflected by plants and they were brown instead (probably because light absorption isn't 100% effective and so the small resulting meld of colours looked brown to the people of Scadrial - like how paint eventually just turns brown when you mix too many different colours).
Although this makes sense to me, I'm sure I've overlooked something, and I'm not sure why this would result in plants that were less nutritious to man kind. Maybe because of the ash? I'm pretty sure that at some point Sazed mentions that the plants help breakdown the ash so maybe this made them less nutritious?
But yeah, there you go, the science behind the brown plants on Scadrial!
This is actually pretty close to correct. The plats are not actually "sickly" or unhealthy. I basically looked at plants like red sea weed and some ornamental plants and asked about how they got energy--and came to many of the same conclusions that /u/neverbeenspotted has come to.
Seems like a smart worldhopper could hybridize pre-final empire plants, final-empire plants, and post-final empire plants in various ratios, and be able to market crops adapted to a very wide range of environments. Anything like that going on?
Things like this are more "Space era cosmere" than it is current era.
Will these characters or places [from Children of the Nameless] get their own cards?
That's up to the card design team to decide. I worked primarily with the creative team, and can't really say when/if cards related to this story will appear in the game. (Though a little bird tells me that fans should keep an eye on upcoming sets.)
Tertiary Projects
Dark One
Ah, the eternal Dark One update. If you've been reading State of the Sanderson posts for a while now, you might be looking forward to this one (still) making no progress.
My anti-Harry Potter story told from the viewpoint of a boy who discovers he is prophesied to be the Dark One…has made no progress this year. I've had a ton of trouble writing this one. I did set aside three different versions of the first chapter of this, each of which have a very different tone from one another, to be Patreon Random Hat Rewards for January, February, and March. If you want to read "The Eyes" and these three chapters, you could sign up for those months only.
Be warned, though, the Patreon is primarily intended for people who want to support Writing Excuses. The rewards are mostly afterthoughts as a thank you, rather than true incentives to coax you into spending money. The tidbits you'll get probably aren't going to be worth the $10 you give for them. (For example, each of the ones I've mentioned are a few thousand words at most.)
The real reward is supposed to be Writing Excuses going ad-free, so don't sign up just to get the fiction.
Status: Nope.
During the final fight between Szeth and Kaladin, Szeth seems far too surprised when Kaladin follows him out past the stormwall.
Kaladin exploded out of the stormwall, surrounded by windspren that spiraled away in a pattern of light. He shouted, driving his spear toward Szeth, who parried hastily, his eyes wide. "Impossible!"
And before that you make a point of mentioning all the windspren streaming around Kaladin as he's flying. A popular theory about Shardplate is that it's made up out of "cousin" spren. Obviously that is a RAFO question, but I wanted to ask if Szeth was surprised for any reason other than Kaladin just following him out of the storm? My theory is Szeth saw the beginnings of a vague suit of Shardplate forming around Kaladin. I know you won't answer that directly, but I was hoping to see your face when I asked it haha. Do you have any comment on that theory?
Szeth was surprised for more reasons than just Kaladin following him out. He is realizing that the Radiants are returning, and that his exile was unearned.
So Brandon, did you originally want to do complete body swap, or did you have this idea from the very beginning?
Yeah, body swap with the ghosts next to each other. Because they end up working slightly differently.
So, the idea for this was always to be able to have them see each other as themselves. I love Your Name, it's an amazing film, but I didn't want to just make Your Name again, right? And if there's a place that Your Name didn't explore, it's the interactions between these two characters as they live one another's lives.
Watching someone else live your life is really interesting! And this is something that many of my models hadn't really done. And so from the get-go, they would see each other as themselves, but everyone else would see the body and what was happening with the body. And it was designed this way from the get-go to let me have that romance of the two people interacting, but also to force them to watch the other one in the context of their life, which is kind of how both of them grow, right?
Like, Yumi watches Painter have to deal with all the stuff that's going on with Liyun and everything like that, and that helps her change - seeing someone else go through it. He has to watch his friends interact with Yumi, and really start to see life through their eyes so that he can grow beyond his hang-ups. And without them being able to do that, I couldn't have had the character growth in the way that I wanted.
The version Emily read got really confusing at the ending, and I did a lot of tweaks to play with that. The beat-by-beat of what actually happened in the story was pretty similar. This was one where the first draft and the last draft match pretty well, it's just how to execute on my ideas a little bit better to make sure that it was making sense.
Are there any particular messages that you hope readers will take away from this book?
I don't really go into books with a message. I like to explore the characters and their passions, and the theme, without any overt agenda. I just want readers to be able to see through the eyes of people who are different from them, to see that our biases do affect how we perceive the world—and that's both a good and bad thing. I just want them to come out of the story saying, "That was great, let me think about this some more."
Can you tell me how many souls Hoid has?
How many Breaths? No, but I can tell you you could look up the minimum he has based on the heightenings and things that he says.
Right, and all that i know is that he has perfect pitch.
Yeah. There is room to rise from that, so I'm not going to confirm anything else, just keep an eye on him.
It seemed like in Alloy of Law you made us like Marasi better than Steris, and then kind of switched it. Was your intention the whole time for them to end up with Steris, or...?
Yes, yes.
Okay, it was.
In fact, I like Steris a lot in the first book. But you are seeing things through the eyes of other characters. And Steris takes a little bit of time to warm up to. Like, many people like her. And once you get to know here--which, I always knew her--then there's a level of <thoughtfulness> there.
Was anyone else completely surprised in Bands of Mourning when Wax offhandedly mentions that he and Lessie had been married?
I don't remember any mention of Wax and Lessie being married before that point in the series. Together, yes. But married, not at all.
Did I just miss it? Or did /u/mistborn forget to mention it in earlier books? (Or did he slip in some hand wavy retconning and hope no one noticed)?
This is one of those things that editors kept trying to change back, but which I insisted stay as it's not a contradiction to the earlier book. Wax's thinking of her in this way is a kind of unconscious defense against what his mind perceives as an attempt by society to wipe her out of existence and force him to move on.
I appreciate that the intention here was for Wax's state of mind to feel a little off.
Still, with the concrete way he thinks of the relationship as a marriage, with how he remembers the specifics of a ceremony, it's hard for me to resolve your statement that "Wax and Lessie never had a real ceremony" with the conflicting statements in the text (emphasis mine)—
At the very beginning of chapter 1, Wax and Wayne are talking, Wax casually mentions that it's his second marriage and Wayne doesn't bat an eye:
“You gonna be all right?” Wayne asked.
“Of course I am,” Wax said. “This is my second marriage. I’m an old hand at the practice by now.”
Then, after Wax gets to the church and is getting dressed, he muses further on his previous wedding:
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he strapped on his gunbelt and slid Vindication into her holster. He’d worn a gun to his last wedding, so why not this one?
And finally, Wax contemplates the actual ceremony as he and Steris are walking "down the aisle":
Wax found himself smiling. This was what Lessie had wanted. They’d joked time and time again about their simple Pathian ceremony, finalized on horseback to escape a mob. She said that someday, she’d make him do it proper.
With all three of these in short succession, Wax clearly establishes that 1. he was married before to Lessie (at least in his head), and 2. there was some kind of wedding ceremony (was this in his head, too?).
So, the following is how I explained it to Peter, I believe, back when he raised these objections during the editing stage. Wax and Lessie had no official marriage, though they did exchange some vows (as Wax notes, on horseback, fleeing a mob.)
Lessie gave him grief, claiming that it didn't count--that she wanted more. She wanted an actual wedding, and a piece of paper to say they were married. Wax figured this was good enough, and resisted wanting to do something more formal. It was his whole, "I am the law" thing he had out in the Roughs. Focus on what matters, not what paper-pushers might claim he should do.
Over the years, they talked about getting married for real, and he started to think of the day they would. (Shifting his focus away from thinking of "my wife" but instead of kind of a long-term betrothed/common law wife.) When he lost her, and moved to Elendel, his viewpoint shifted. He wanted more and more to treat what they'd had as a legitimate marriage, for fear that what he and Lessie had would be wiped awaystamped out, by something more grand that society was demanding of him.
So while the event never changed, his perception of it certainly did. I intended for it to be contradictory, but only subtly so, and this is one of those things that I didn't feel like it was right to do in the text. (Much like Wayne's dislike of Steris for stealing Wax away from him and from the memory of Lessie--but this sentiment slowly shifting into a protectiveness of her as she reached the "inside" circle and gained legitimacy by making Wax happy.)
These are things that the characters themselves don't realize, and while I'll occasionally hang a lantern on them, sometimes I just leave it unspoken and subject to interpretation. If every little thing gets spelled out in the text, then I am left feeling that we're being too on the nose.
That said, once in a while, things like this DO annoy Peter. He'd prefer I pin the text down on things that seem to contradict one another.
Did Nalan's eyes change when he killed Ym? (And attempted to kill Lift)
*thinks for a moment* No, I don't think so.
What happened to Vivenna?
She's looking for Vasher. Keep your eyes wide open when reading Oathbringer.
Given that Kelsier seems be keeping an eye out for everything from the beyond, how does Kelsier feel about how every turned out? Has his opinion on Elend changed? How did he react upon learning Lord Ruler's true nature? I'm guessing this may be a RAFO situation, but I might as well ask.
Yes, let's RAFO for the most part. (Let's just say that he is overall pleased.)
Steelheart makes you feel a few pretty intense emotions. Were there any scenes in particular that you found difficult to write, because of these intense moments?
One of the very first scenes I imagined for Steelheart is where the main character David is trapped and pinned down. Certain things have led him to that moment and the events that happen right after that. (I'm not giving any spoilers, but those of you who have read the book will know what I'm talking about. It happens right after the motorcycle chase.) When I'm developing a book, I often go for a walk or walk on the treadmill and listen to cool music, my eyes closed, and ask myself, "What is the emotional resonance of this book? What's it going to feel like to read it? What scenes will make that happen?" This was one of those scenes. For me, it was the most important scene of the entire novel, so getting to it was a pleasure, but it was also an emotional and powerful scene to write because I'd been planning it for so long and wanted badly for it to turn out well. That can be really difficult for a writer when you've got something in your head and you worry. Can I make it turn out on the page?
I'm pretty sure moash was named after moshe, right? >.>
Wow. I'd be pretty offended if the author I got published, after something like ten huge books, named one minor vengeful, traitorous character after me. Or else I would find it really amusing.
Moash was actually named before Moshe became my editor, as Alethi has some Hebrew roots, making some of the names similar to Hebrew names. He considers it a fun homage that I left it, after he became my editor. (Even considering what Moash does in WoR.)
Alethi has Hebrew roots? Man, I'm Israeli and I didn't notice.
They're buried, but in there. The Kh that you see in a lot of Alethi (like Kholin) are a gutteral, kind of like Chet. That might help you find some. Do note that there are some other influences too, not the least of which being the Vorin idealism of symmetry. (Bonus fun fact, the Double Eye is inspired by the Sephirot, though that one's a little more obvious.)
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.
I am an editor.
Good for you. It's a terrible, terrible job. *audience laughs*
What was your process for finding an editor that you liked and now work with?
So... I work with a couple of editors. My main editor is Moshe [Feder], at Tor, and I found Moshe by going to conventions and I would ask editors which new authors' books they were working on. Then I would go read those books when they came out and I was looking for the editors that were buying books that I liked.
And that's good advice for any of you who are writers: Find out what the editors are publishing, read their books and then if you go, you'll find out what the editor's taste is. If you go to the editor and say "What are you looking for?", the editor's response almost always is "Something good." They're gonna tell you, because they don't want you to limit yourself, but if you read what they're putting out, you can find out. Plus, you'll have to something to talk about with the editor. You go to the editor and say "I love this book." and they're like "You know that I edited it?", because editors are kind of unsung heroes who don't get enough attention. Then you'll have something to talk with an editor about and can make a connection.
This is what I did, I was looking for people who were writing books that I liked... editing books that I liked. The other thing is, I was looking for people who gave me good feedback. When I got rejections, did the rejections make good suggestions? Theses sorts of things... Once I got successful, I was looking more at the first, people whose books I admired, editors who worked on books... So, my team book editor I found because she was just putting out a bunch of books that I thought were really good. She had a good eye, so I went to her and said "Would you like to publish Steelheart?" and by then I was not Brandon Sanderson, I was Brandon Sanderson, and so she said "Yes, please!" So... it's a pretty different process.
Are there any languages with clicks anywhere in the cosmere?
Yes, though I'm loathe to use them in text because of how people roll their eyes at fantasy novels that try to be too cute with non-standard (meaning non western Earth) symbols in naming.
From what we've seen so far, most of the Ideals of the Orders of the Knights Radiant have been in line with the Divine Attributes ascribed to them. Did the Divine Attributes come from the Ideals of the Knights Radiant?
These two are heavily interconnected. And the Divine Attributes, like the Double Eye at the front, are more philosophy than they are strict, you know part of-- Rather than capital-T Truth revealed. And so a lot of social structures were built out of the things going on. So the answer is yes. Not 100% yes, but certainly those sorts of things are extrapolations that people were making, as opposed to core concepts of the magic.
