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Patrick

In your previous fantasy series, you had one main character or plotline, with only a few secondary characters and subplots. But here in The Way of Kings, you expand this to three main plotlines and dozens of secondary characters. Was this division of the book into three main protagonists rather than just a single "lead" something that you had intended from the first draft, or did this story division develop over time and many drafts?

Brandon Sanderson

With how long this book has been around, it's hard to say what was in the first draft and what wasn't. If we look at The Way of Kings Prime—the book I wrote back in 2003, then tossed aside and rewrote to create this book—I did have quite a strong multi-character focus. It's always been something I wanted to do. I actually scaled back a little bit for this draft. In the previous version I used six main characters; there was another character who has not yet appeared in the new version, and Jasnah was a main character with as many viewpoints as the others. It was too distracting, too much to juggle. So I pulled back a little bit. But to me, this series is not about one person. That's just how I conceived it from the start, and that's what I want to do with it. That will continue.

Gabriel Rumbaut

In a lot of your books the internal struggle is just as important as the external conflict. How do you keep that internal struggle from devolving into just, into whining essentially?

Brandon Sanderson

Right, no, that's a real danger. We call it "navel gazing" a lot in writing where if you delve too much into that, you just have scenes with characters sitting and pondering and nothing happens. I have to walk that line. In fact some of mine probably turns into navel-gazing because I probably err on that side a little too much. I would say that the way I try to work on this is to mirror internal conflict with external conflict, meaning what the character is working on inside is, is enhanced, is conflicted, is in some ways changed by what's happening externally which then allows some very powerful ways of showing them working through their problems in the real world, not just sitting and thinking about them.

That has worked with me so far, it is certainly a danger that I'm aware of and something that I think writers need to be aware of. At the same time, you know, what fiction can do is show internal conflict, emotions, thoughts, feelings in a way that other mediums can't. It's one of our specialties and I think that avoiding it completely is the wrong move because, yes, any time you delve into that you risk just getting boring, but when you don't delve into that you're basically just trying to imitate what a film can do, do everything external and a film can do that much better. I like taking what we can do as writers and really playing to our strengths and exploring what the medium is capable of and so that's why I do it.

Ted Herman (Paraphrased)

I asked for a personalization with some autobiographical details about Lift in the form of an ID.

Brandon Sanderson

Name: Lift

Date of Birth: A number greater than ten

Birthplace: With my mom

Eye color: Brown

Argent

Would Aons work even better if they were drawn with a cartographer's or calligrapher's attention to detail? ...If you draw a map of Arelon?

Brandon Sanderson

*long pause* Yes and no. The answer really is, it depends. I'm going to say, on average, yes. 

AhoyMatey (paraphrased)

I picked up the Easter Eggs for Mraize being a Worldhopper. It was actually the sand that did it, having been fortunate enough to read White Sand.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Now there’s something odd about that sand. What color is the sand in WoR?

callumke (paraphrased)

Is Shallan's memory a Surge? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I want to wait for the right opportunity before revealing more surges.

Questioner

Phenax, which Shard do you think he is most like?

Brandon Sanderson

God of Deception. I don't know. I'd have to think about that. I'm not 100% sure. It might be one I haven't revealed yet which...

Questioner

Obviously that's the whole RAFO deal.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Phenax is an interesting character in the lore. I like all of their gods of the underworld that they do.

morph147

So first and foremost, is there going to be a second Warbreaker?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but I can't promise when. I want to do a book that deals more with the Lifeless and Nightblood, following Vasher and Vivenna a little further. But the WoT made me shelf this project for now. We'll see. It should happen eventually.

unknown

Will there ever be some overarching plot with all the Cosmere and Adolnasium stuff?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There is one already, honestly, you just don't have the beginning or the end. I will write those books eventually, and things will start falling into place.

Questioner

You said you were going to rewrite Dragonsteel? Is it going to be a one-book thing, or a trilogy, or what?

Brandon Sanderson

Dragonsteel is set to be seven books. I shouldn't tell you these things, because it scares people. The cosmere sequence is set at, what did I say, 36 books? Yeah, it's 36 books. A trilogy of Elantris, Two books from Warbreaker, ten books from Way of Kings, and the Mistborn series, and some other books. So anyways, this is a big thing, but don't get scared. You don't have to pay attention to any of this. Just go ahead and enjoy the books. This is behind the scene stuff, and in fact the reason why we don't have a book about Hoid is because I don't want you to have read all of those books in order to understand that book, does that make sense? As soon as Hoid becomes a main character, then you have to have read the whole sequence in order to get it. I don't you to have to do that. I don't want you to have to read Mistborn to understand Stormlight Archive. Hoid may be involved in these things, but he will never be a prominent character, changing things, until he gets his own sequence.

A_Shadow

I will have to go back to the books to find specific examples of why I thought this but does Shallan have Tetrachromacy?

Brandon Sanderson

An interesting theory.

Questioner

Tarah. She shows up late in The Way of Kings. Kaladin's fighting his inner wretch, as you call him. And he goes through the list a few times, and then near the end of the book a new name comes up. I'm wondering if she's important or is left out of the first book, or if we're gonna hear more about her in the second.

Brandon Sanderson

This is a person that is important to Kaladin. Definitely. From his past, and it is... Yes, a woman who is important to Kaladin. So, it's from his past. You will find out more eventually. Light RAFO.

David J Foster

I name my computers and smartphones after spren. But I am out of names. Is there a name you wouldn't mind revealing?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, do you need good spren? Or is the occasional evil spren acceptable?

David J Foster

Your call! And evil spren would be fantastic for my new phone.

Brandon Sanderson

Ulim. (Also, the Unmade count as spren. You could look those up.)

johnny papshmere

I didn't think spren could be good or evil??

Brandon Sanderson

Most spren are neither. Sapient spren (capable of making choices) can be either one.

Shawn Speakerman

Since [Robert Jordan] obviously is one of your heroes, what kind of influence has he had on The Way of Kings?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, it's so hard to pick out my influences in different ways. I mean, Robert Jordan's had a huge influence on me. I was looking back at my very first book that I wrote back when I was nineteen, and I read the beginning and I realized (I'd never realized this before) I started with a wind scene. I don't know if you know this, in Wheel of Time, all of the books start with this omniscient perspective of the wind. I did that. And I said, "My goodness, I didn't even think..." You can call it an homage, but it really was unintentionally ripping him off. And I started, I had three or four pages of just the wind blowing through and looking at things in the exact same way. And I never realized that until I looked back at that.

I was deeply influenced by Robert Jordan's use of viewpoint perspective. I think that's the thing I've learned most from him that you can see distinctly in my fiction nowadays is how deeply he was in viewpoint. When you read Aviendha, she is so different from when you read Mat that it's night and day. And that's something that I hope that I learned from him, that I wanted to learn from him, so that when you read Dalinar, Dalinar feels very different from Kaladin who feels very different from Shallan because they all see the world in a different way. Use of the third person limited is just... he was wonderful at that.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Can bronze+duralumin pierce copperclouds for a split second?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, for an instant.

Brandon Sanderson

Alcatraz's Self-Awareness

The biggest change to this chapter was one I couldn’t talk about above. You see, in the original version of this book, Alcatraz was far more self-aware of the fact that he was intentionally driving his foster families away. In this chapter, he saw it as a game. Originally, he didn’t burn down the kitchen by accident–he did it on purpose to get the parents to send him away. He did this because the first few families sent him away after he got attached to him. So his goal with later foster parents was to push them away first before they could do it to him.

Getting rid of this knowledge was one of the very first things that Anica suggested. You see, Alcatraz has such a great chance for character growth and revelation later on, when he’s in the prison, that having him be aware of what he was doing the whole time undermined what could have been a great scene.

I agreed with this immediately, since I’d been thinking of doing the same cut. The edited manuscript, then, has him accidentally setting the drapes on fire, then not caring about it. I think that gives me a nice balance.

However, the broken smoke alarm here is a reminder of the original draft. I left it in, implying that Alcatraz does partially know what he’s doing, even if he won’t admit it to himself. He broke the smoke alarm because he knew that by fixing dinner, he would likely start a fire. Grandpa Smedry hints at this later.

Questioner

On the coppermind it states specifically that Nightblood is fueled by Investiture, would that mean that an Allomancer burning, say, steel, could then [draw] Nightblood and fuel it off of that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, Nightblood would feed off that Kinetic Investiture, you could make that work. You would have to keep that portal open, and he would eat the power instead of whatever you were planning to do with it, and when you ran out of metal he’d kill you.

Questioner

Would that also work with say...whatever you have in a Coppermind or metalmind?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes, theoretically you could make that work too. That’s an excellent question, you’re the first to ask that.

Yeti Stomper

All of your fantasy worlds exist in the same universe and share linked magic systems and at least one character. Can you speak to the overall vision of this shared Hoidverse? Why not create separate worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

I started doing this early in my career before I got published, when I felt that writing sequels was not a good use of my time. Just look at the hypothetical; if I’m trying to get published and I write three books in the same, if an editor rejects book one, he or she is not going to want to see book two. But if an editor rejects book one but is optimistic about my writing, I can send them a book from another series and they can look at that.

During my unpublished days I wrote thirteen books, only one of which was a sequel. So I had twelve new worlds, or at least twelve new books—some of them were reexaminations of worlds. But I wanted to be writing big epics. This is what I always wanted to do; something like the Wheel of Time. So I began plotting a large, massive series where all these books were connected, so I could kind of “stealth” have a large series without the editors knowing I was sending them books from the same series. It was mostly just a thing for me, to help me do the writing I wanted to be doing. And then when publication came I continued to do that, and told the story behind the story.

Why not do separate worlds? Because it was more interesting for me this way. This is the story I want to tell. The big, overarching story that I’ve planned out. I’ve been talking recently about how my inspiration for this is the idea that in science people have for a long time been looking for a unified theory of physics, some theory that will explain all interactions of physics in a concise way. I wanted to tell about a universe where there was a unified theory of magic, where magic worked according to a unifying principle. Despite the magic systems looking very different and doing lots of different and interesting things, hopefully original for each book, there is an underlying rationale that is keeping them all together. I write what I find interesting, and that was interesting to me.

Questioner

And is Eshonai viewpoint like Szeth in the Interlude?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you get a sequence of interludes from her.

Robert

Was Syl's appearance and behavior caused by Kaladin giving up his shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

It was a major fundamental factor in what happened between them.

yulerule

*Written:* How much compounding would a nicrosil Twinborn would need to do to get a metalmind that is as Invested as Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson

*Reading question:* How much compounding would... *mumbling*

Wow, so much.

*Writes:* Wow so much. 

yulerule

*Written:* A thousand breaths doesn't seem to be that much--the God King has tens of thousands. Would a piece of stone, wood, cloth, or plain metal that has a thousand breaths be as Invested as Nightblood, or is there something more? 

Brandon Sanderson

No, it needs more. Needs more.

*Writes:* Needs more.

yulerule

More?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

yulerule

Does that-- is it taking stuff from people it kills?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO, good question.

Questioner

What’s the status of the second book of the Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

I will be going right into that as soon as I finish A Memory of Light. I have it outlined, I have decided whose book it will be, each of the Stormlight books will have a focal character who gets flashbacks. It’s going to be Shallan’s book. So the first major cycle of the Stormlight Archive is looking like it’s going to be Kaladin, Shallan, Szeth, Navani, and Dalinar as the five book arc. And if you haven’t heard, I’m doing it in two 5-book arcs, so the first 5 books should wrap a lot of things up and whatnot. And I might even stop then and do like an Elantris sequel and things like that, and then start the second 5-book arc. So I will do that immediately, I’m actually planning to do that and have it out, it probably won’t be next year, it’ll probably be the following spring, but it’s a little over a year away. I’ve got it all outlined, so it should be...I’ve done a lot of work on it, I just haven’t written it.

Kaymyth

We know that compounding, if you do it too much, it has permanent effects on a person.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Kaymyth

Compounding for extending stretches, can it have some sort of effect similar to pewter drag, depending on the metal?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I could say, I would say yes to that.

ccstat

A question I've been thinking about recently: In Warbreaker we see Nightblood's consciousness shift dramatically when he is actively consuming investiture. Does the Shardic flavor of that investiture (Breath vs Stormlight or Preservation Mist vs Ruin Mist) influence how his mind functions in that state?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, actually. Good question.

Brandon Sanderson

Showing Roial's seon was important, I think. First off, I wanted to give some evidence that there are indeed seons in Arelon who aren't mad. (So far, I believe that the only named seons we've seen in the book are Ashe and Ien.) Secondly, Opa is a nice little foreshadowing–it's through him that Ashe manages to contact Sarene's friends. Actually, Sarene's interaction with Ashe is quite interesting in this chapter, as it's somewhat more strained–and therefore a bit more true–than what we've seen before. When under stress, Ashe isn't quite so accommodating and straightforward as normal–but he still does retain Sarene's best interests at heart.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fifty-Eight - Part Two

Spook in Ruin's Power

In this chapter, we show Spook almost completely under Ruin's power. This is the ultimate culmination of everything that the force has been working toward with Spook.

Ruin knows how to play off the lusts of mankind. Lust makes sense to Ruin, as he has lusts himself. He needs to destroy. It's part of who he is and what makes him function. It's the driving force of the power upon which his consciousness feeds to remain alive.

Things that don't have to do with lust, yet are still human emotions, are more difficult for him to remember and empathize with.

Most of my alpha readers thought by this point of the book that I would make Spook's storyline a tragedy—that he would snap here and become a villain. I won't rule out my doing something like that in a novel, as I think it would be very compelling. I don't know how many readers thought I would do that here. However, it wouldn't work in this story. The problem is, if I showed this entire plotline just to end with Spook destroying the city, I think the sections would ultimately feel unfulfilling because they wouldn't be connected to the rest of the book.

If this were a middle novel, and not the end of a trilogy, I would have been much more inclined to show a tragedy like this. Then it could have effects on the next books, and the pages the reader had invested would mean something to the overall story. As it stands, I was always intending for Spook to be redeemed. Partially because I think that's who he is—he let Ruin urge him toward getting carried away, but he's still a solidly good person. Also, I have a fondness for him since the first book. I couldn't let him end that way.

Questioner

Can one person speak the oaths of more than one order of the Knights Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO. It is theoretically possible, but we'll RAFO anything else about that.

Questioner

When the Shards all Ascended, did they all have roughly the same power level?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

In Arcanum Unbounded--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

Khriss said that Roshar has an unusually high level of oxygen.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

And where does this oxygen come from?

Brandon Sanderson

It is a natural part of their atmosphere. Part of this-- There's two answers to this. One answer is: It was created that way, because Roshar creation predates the Shattering of Adonalsium and a lot of things were set up that way. The scientific side is, in building the creatures that I was building on Roshar I needed a high oxygen environment, just to make the logistics work and even then I had to like-- It's high oxygen, low gravity, right? It's like 0.7 something Earth gravity. And even then I still had to add magic to get big beasties that I wanted to. Like the greatshells just can not exist. Square cube law. Even after I tweaked atmosphere and the gravity, the math didn't work, but fortunately I had the whole spren thing going on. These are both things I was trying do in order to create megafauna. I’m sorry, is that, did that make sense?

DrogaKrolow

Ok, but is there some higher level of production of oxygen, so like, there are no trees but it comes from the oceans?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah. I mean they've got a lot-- What you've got, also, to remember is, most of Earth's oxygen doesn't come from our trees-- I mean it does but it comes from the ocean and things like this. I didn't have a problem building this into Roshar because-- What we've got on Roshar is we've got, number one, we've got the highstorms-- Which are actually really good for plant life when it comes to microflora, right? And beyond that you've got-- you've got weather patterns that are very-- Like it’s rarely freezing on Roshar. Most people on Roshar have never seen snow. And so-- I mean I didn't find it a problem making a high oxygen environment work, that was the least of my troubles in building Roshar. I mean most of the planet is ocean anyway.

DrogaKrolow

Some people were curious, just about it.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, were they? Okay. I mean, yeah-- I mean all you have to do is hit-- Like really you only have to hit a stasis, right? You are creating as much as you're using. Like if you start with high oxygen and you create as much as you use, you stay high oxygen. It doesn't need to actually be creating a higher percentage than our world is creating, as far as I understand it.

Cuaiir

Request that Brandon write a clue to the nature of the cosmere, specifically Realmatic theory.

Brandon Sanderson

Entities exist on all three realms that are only vaguely shadowed on the other realms.

You have seen entities who exist primarily on the Cognitive Realm + are shadowed on the Physical.

Oversleep

Okay now I have one about Shard avatars, like Autonomy's. Is it possible for one to form without the Shard's Vessel directly making it, so independent...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it is. They would be aware of it, however. They couldn't not be aware of it, but it could arise without their direct and conscious decision to do so.

Oversleep

And the one on First of the Sun, is it by Autonomy's direct...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is directly created.

Questioner

Could an old [Feruchemist] go and transfer his Coppermind to his star pupil using Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

Like Deliberate…? Right. Ask me that question after you’ve read a few more Mistborn books.

sherwin94

Is Dragonsteel still planned to be the bookends for the cosmere (2 eras)?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but not exactly how you think. It will make sense when I do it, but the final Mistborn series will be the actual end--Dragonsteel will link to it, though.

Lauren Zurchin

Talk about your writing routine—you're very prolific!

Brandon Sanderson

I, like I said, need to be jumping projects. It's just something about me. When I finish something, I feel the need to do something else very different from what I just finished. And given the chance to do so, I will jump and do something bizarre, for me. Bizarre, in a different line. And so, I'm often doing this. How do I juggle them? Well, it's more a matter of I would have more trouble not juggling them because then I would be locked into one thing, and I think it would be a lot harder for me to do my writing the way I do it. It's just my natural inclination.

Scott Wilson

Your battle systems are both complex and innovative. In writing these scenes, was a significant amount of research necessary, and did you encounter any difficulties when writing the sequences?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on what I was trying for in the various different books. For instance, in Mistborn, I wanted the battle sequences to be very personal. One-on-one, allomantic fights, or one-on-small group.

As a novelist, feel that I need to approach action sequences differently from how movies approach them. In a film you can watch Jackie Chan going through this marvelous fifteen-minute blow-by-blow fight, but I think that in fiction the same thing written out descriptively would get very boring. I can't compete with movies in that regard. So I try to make my action sequences character-driven and problem-solving-driven, as well as how the magic system works. I look at what resources the character has, what they are trying to achieve, who they are and how that influences their actions.

For The Way of Kings it was a little bit different in that I was trying to do large-scale warfare, and in that case I needed to look to historical accounts and research and read up on how actual battles played out. Something that gave me a bit of leeway was setting the battles in scenery like the Shattered Plains. One of the reasons I did that is because it's fantastical scenery that couldn't exist in our world, at least not in the same way, and it therefore allows me to exercise my fantasy worldbuilder muscles as well as my historical warfare muscles, such as they are. Putting all of that together let me create scenes that are hopefully unlike anything others have written or that my readers have read.

ISw3arItWasntM3

Do you plan to write the stormlight archive books with the same POV characters throughout the series (like WoT) or do you think that you give other characters POV (aSoIaF) as the series continues?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the main POV characters have been introduced. Each book will take one major character (Kaladin, Dalinar, Adolin, Jasnah, Shallan, Navani, Szeth, Taln) and give them 'flashback' sequences in the same way Kaladin got flashbacks in the first book. There are some open spots for which I'm toying with other characters being used.

Brandon Sanderson

As we said, we're not gonna do Kickstarters for most of our leatherbounds. But we will probably do one for Words of Radiance.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Two

Moshe mentioned to me that we're going to have to do a book after the Mistborn series that doesn't have such a gloomy setting. First, I had Elantris, with the city full of dark sludge. Now I've got Mistborn, with the entire world full of black ash.

The coincidence wasn't intentional. Remember, for me, there were seven books in-between Elantris and Mistborn . Most of those had far more cheerful settings. However, this story–which is based around a world where the Dark Lord won–kind of required a depressing atmosphere.

Questioner

Does the Almighty and the Heralds have anything to do with the bigger cosmere gods and deities?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

The Heralds, as well?

Brandon Sanderson

...Not as much, but a little bit. They do. 

Questioner

Does that mean that the Almighty is able to worldhop as well?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, the Almighty is Honor, and he is one of the Shards of Adonalsium, so he didn't originate on Roshar.

Questioner

How do you do time dilation and character time? Like how do you keep the stories straight?

Brandon Sanderson

Just practice. And good beta readers really help with that a lot because in my first drafts I will often mess these things up and then my beta readers will help me.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Ten

Are you annoyed with me yet?

This beginning is exactly what I like about the form of this book. Here, I can go on and on about how you shouldn’t separate readers from the payoff of cliffhangers–all the while keeping you from getting the payoff of the cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter.

This whole theme started with that first line, and my desire not to get right back to Alcatraz on the altar. As I thought about it, I realized there were a lot of ways I could play with the form of a fantasy novel–or any novel–while at the same time following that form. This became almost as fun for me as character or setting.

Lord_Natimus08

So basically a Thunderclast is a rock giant. I thought it was a rock monster. Same difference I guess?

JorusC

I got the sense in the prologue of Way of Kings that the dead Thunderclast there was quadrupedal. So maybe it's more the class of monster, with different shapes?

Peter Ahlstrom

This.

NutiketAiel

When a Radiant is in the Cognitive Realm, does their mind exist individually, like separately from their body?

Brandon Sanderson

Uhh, no.

NutiketAiel

So you physically travel to the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

You can kind of step in between both but you do not separate from your body.

NutiketAiel

So when Shallan is only partly in...she's in both at the same time?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. She's transitioning. It's not astral projection. But no that's a legit question.

NutiketAiel

So Shallan, and Lightweavers, are capable of physically stepping into Shadesmar?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. But the implication is yes.

Brandon Sanderson

Sazed and Goradel Discuss the Skaa Farmers

The conversation between Sazed and Goradel in this chapter is an important one, as it shows the importance of a character's perspective. Two men looking at the same scene see very different things.

Sazed, fighting depression and close to giving up, sees the skaa laboring and notes that nothing much has changed for them. They still have to work themselves near to death, and their lives are still gloomy.

Goradel, who spent his youth being despised by his family and their friends, is now a captain in Elend's army—and is known among the skaa as one of the men instrumental in helping Vin kill the Lord Ruler. He's become something of a local celebrity in some segments of Luthadel. He looks on these same working skaa and sees hope and victory.

As Sazed says in this chapter, being happy and optimistic isn't simply a choice one can make—at least, not a lot of the time. However, I think it's possible to find hope in very dark situations.

Paleo

How did lerasium get its symbol when it was already in use as "A" during the Final Empire? Similarly, who decided in-world what symbol harmonium gets?

Isaac Stewart

I imagine, like with a lot of symbols, these things grow organically in the world. With the alphabet... at some point, probably, what happened is: they had all of these symbols for the metals. And they started using them as an alphabet. And somebody along the line, probably under the Lord Ruler's watchful eye, assigned symbols for the different letters. And then as new metals are discovered, they just assigned symbols that hadn't been used for a metal.

So, probably what they did is, they said, "Okay, we know there are this many metals. We'll assign these symbols to letters. But hey, we have a lot more letters than we know of Allomantic metals, so we'll make more symbols." So they did. And then, as they found more Allomantically charged metals, then they would assign them the next one in line.

So, I imagine if we see more metals in the future in the books, that the letters that don't have metals associated with them will get assigned to metals. But that's what happened with lerasium.

David

I have read Elantris, the Mistborn Trilogy and Warbreaker and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. But I have to say, The portion of Chapter 33 with Hoid (or Dust) the storyteller was a painful experience and I was glad you never brought him back. What was the idea or point of him pulling things from his pocket and dropping it on the ground? I feel like I missed some theme or clues here.

Brandon Sanderson

That was simply a way that he tells stories—there was no particular theme other than that. He throws puffs of different-colored dust into the air as he's speaking to try and evoke the feelings of the story that he's telling. Sorry it didn't work for you; not everything is going to work for everyone, but this is how he does it.

Phantine

Are there any magic systems in the cosmere that aren't shard based?

Brandon Sanderson

This depends on definitions. The effects of Adonalsium permeate everything, and Adonalsium is also the source of the Shards. It is possible to find a magic that isn't DIRECTLY powered by a specific shard, however, though most of these would have been set up before the shattering and would be much smaller in scope than things like Allomancy and Surgebinding.

Fejicus (paraphrased)

i made a comment about the role mythology plays in WoT, and if Brandon was planning on using any real world mythological parrallels for the Stormlight Archive.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, he said that while they play a huge role in WoT, that if he were to include mythological parallels in Stormlight, that they would be parallels of Roshar's own mythology.

Barnes&Noble

Do you have, for Starsight and Skyward, aesthetic touchstones that you bring to these different books? Or does it just all sort of emerge from the storytelling as you get into your characters?

Brandon Sanderson

I do, and it depends. Sometimes, as I'm working on the book, I develop those. Sometimes it's ahead of time.

My cultural touchstone for Skyward was me saying, "All right. These people are in just this terrible situation. And they are constantly being fought by this unknown enemy. What kind of society would grow out of this?" And I pushed it towards a little bit of an authoritarian, martial dictatorship. Using, actually, North Korea as one of the touchstones, and some of the Axis powers as touchstones. And a little bit, in places, of communist propaganda, and things like that. Some of the visual touchstones was Italian futurism, and things like this, just to kind of give this same sort of feel that I was looking for. If you read the book, there's just little hints of it here and there. You're gonna see cubist designs in the architecture, and you're gonna see the paintings and things they describe have this sort of Italian futurist feel to it. There's a little post-Art Nouveau. You've probably seen the art style. It's, like, ships flying into the air leaving lines of red and yellow light in the sky, and very very almost Art Deco-ish feel. These were my visual touchstones for myself. Just because the society, I thought, this might be the closest thing that we have on our planet to how I feel this would really arise with the military being completely in control and lots of people being lost in battle but them needing to keep morale up, and things like this.

Barnes&Noble

So this whole aesthetic of speed and force and martial unity and finding themes of, there is a particular beauty to those kinds of things. There's art that reflects it.

Brandon Sanderson

There's also this kind of, "Desperate times call for desperate measures." And one of the things Spensa butts up against in the books is, "Have we gone too far on this? Have we become so focused on this that we're losing track of what it means to be human? But, at the same time, is this what kept us alive? Maybe the fact that we can even think about being human exists because of how extreme our society had to become." And these are really interesting questions that are fun for writers to deal with. Part of the reason that I write sci-fi and fantasy is it allows me to pluck some of these things from our world, separate them from some of the cultural baggage, and try and approach them and talk about them in story form. So I can just explore what it might feel like and how some of these questions might be explored, potentially, by us in the future.

PM_ME_CAKE

Here Sanderson says that the flashback chapters will be quite heavy in Cosmere content, and yet we get this before even that happens. I am so very hyped.

Brandon Sanderson

Let me point out that is NOT what I said. I said there were a few things in Venli's viewpoints that would be of interest to those watching the larger Cosmere. The flashbacks are not cosmere focused.

If people want huge cosmere revelations in Venli, they're probably going to be disappointed. I don't want to predispose them wrong. However, there ARE some interesting tidbits.