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Tel Aviv Signing ()
#3252 Copy

Questioner

The moons of Roshar. Inspired by the Dragonriders of Pern?

Brandon Sanderson

If it was, it was unconscious. But, more, it was the fact that I had three gods on the planet, and I was working with that. But, of course, the moons existed before the gods came.

Boskone 54 ()
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Questioner (paraphrased)

Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. [recording starts here] And so, for the same reasons that you can, um, it is possible that a coppercloud can play with it. Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you’ve seen them do stuff similar.

Skype Q&A ()
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Alyssum

You said previously that someone with synesthesia wouldn't be affected by Heightenings differently, unless they had a lot of Breath. What would those effects be?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to depend on the type of synesthesia, because there are so many different types.

The Well of Ascension Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Vin sees Demoux in the dark

I ramped up the Demoux suspicion scenes during the final draft, since I figured I needed a pretty good red herring this late in the game to keep the heat off of OreSeur. Originally, the next "Vin Follows Demoux" scene happened right after she saw him sneaking out the first time. I moved this in the draft, giving her longer to suspect him

The result was this scene, where she hasn't eliminated him as an option yet, but also knows that he snuck out at night. I had to rationalize why she wouldn't just grab him straight out, though I think I came up with pretty good rational. It makes sense, actually, and was one of the easiest fixes I made in this book. She WOULDN'T want to spring a trap on him, not yet. She'd want to watch and see what she could learn from him.

General Reddit 2016 ()
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Phantine

Actually [Peter] what kind of gem is in oathbringer's hilt, anyway?

Peter Ahlstrom

I don't know the answer to that offhand.

WeiryWriter

This says it was set with a heliodor (which would be a cool bit of foreshadowing if true, like how Lift's lucky sphere is a diamond and Kaladin gets sapphire spheres when he sells the knobweed sap).

Peter Ahlstrom

Oh yeah, that's right. That is indeed true.

Legion Release Party ()
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Questioner

I was wondering if you had a favorite religion that you created on Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

The cheeky answer is Trell's, but that's not actually true. I don't think I do. I'd have to go look at them all and say, "This is my favorite." So I'll give you the non-cheeky answer, which is that I don't think I do. If I had a list in front of me and thought about it, I could probably pick a favorite.

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
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Questioner

Vasher is called the first Returned. Was he actually the first?

Brandon Sanderson

He is not the very first person to Return. The lore surrounding Vasher and the first Returned and things like that is not strict on the world. Meaning, it's been many, many years.

Footnote: The questioner appears to have conflated Vo, the First Returned, with Vasher.
#returned #vasher #vo
Kraków signing ()
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Questioner

So first, about Trell… He was first mentioned in the books in the first Mistborn book. Did you know what role he'll be playing in the future books?

Brandon Sanderson

When I wrote it? When I actually wrote Mistborn, no, by the time I’d done revisions and finished the series, then I knew. Mistborn was very exploratory, the first book, once I finished it then I build the outline to fit it, that’s very common for me that I write a first book without an outline and then I build the outline around it.

Questioner

Will Nalt, brother of Trell <inaudible>

Brandon Sanderson

The brother? So there’s something very weird happening with Trell, very very weird, that I’m not going to explain quite yet, so that’s a RAFO.

Read For Pixels 2018 ()
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Anushia Kandasivam

Now, parents are usually the most influential role model in a person's life. You're a father, Brandon, as a father, what do you think parents can do to help prevent violence against women and girls in future generations, and get boys involved in helping to do so?

Brandon Sanderson

One of the things that I've noticed, having three little boys, is the weird way we sometimes look at consent, just, as little boys roughhousing. And I'm not here to say, lets stop roughhousing and things like that. But I think it's a good general rule, that when your little brother is saying, "Don't tease-- Don't tickle me, please stop." Then, we say, "Yeah, you stop." When somebody says, "Stop touching me," it doesn't matter if it's your little brother. It doesn't matter if it's your mother. It doesn't matter if it's your father. You don't say, "Stop touching me," number one, and not mean it. And when someone says that, you listen and you stop tickling them. You stop jumping on them.

My boys love to roughhouse and I love to play with them and have them jump on me and things like that, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when they jump on somebody else and they say, "Don't do that," we need them to know, at least that's what I feel, I need to let them know, "Listen, ev-- other people have the right to tell you no and you have to stop, right away. That's not a thing that you, that you then giggle and do it again." And that's just one of the areas that I've seen, that-- and the thing about it is, it's a bigger, bigger-- It makes our home way more serene, when that rule, and my kids understand that rule and they know they can say, "Stop tickling me," and it means something, everybody's happier. Right?

And so, I don't know, that's one way, teaching my kids to respect everyone, right? Resp-- When somebody expresses their opinion and their emotions and the experience they've had, your response, is not to say, "No." You can say, "Well my experience has been this," that furthers the discussion, but saying, "No, you're wrong about your own experience?" I think that is something, that we all as a culture need to start teaching people to pay attention to. 

Boskone 54 ()
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Questioner

[The events of the Mistborn trilogy, obviously the … of people hopping worlds] Where does that happen in reference to the events of Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

The further we get along, the closer the series are happening together. Stormlight is centuries from Mistborn, but new Mistborn and Stormlight are happening closer together. And the further I go the closer these things will get together in time, because that’s when we have really starting to have people influence one another, and things like that. White Sand, which is actually the first one we’ve released chronologically, is really pretty far back. Elantris and Mistborn, we’re getting closer and closer together.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
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MoriWillow

I've noticed a sort-of pattern in some of your work of human/non-human partnerships (spren, Aviar, Seons, etc, and now spaceships). Is this a concept you're consciously interested in? (It's actually probably one of my favorite parts of the relevant works.)

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it's something I'm very interested in. It happens to be a theme of the cosmere, so you'll see it a lot. One reason for this is that I think a purpose of SF/F is to explore things that don't exist to our current knowledge (things that are intelligent, but not human) but which it's very plausible humanity will some day deal with. Another reason is that I like the idea of looking at the things we do from the outside--and the perspective of something like a spren or a machine is very interesting for me to try to wrap my head around.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 ()
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Sockoiid

The UV wavelength is wider for Voidlight. Is there an Investiture reason why the bands are wider instead of brighter? Wider bands doesn't make sense in physics, due to Snell's law, but brighter works.

Brandon Sanderson

The reason I did this, I actually did this very intentionally. This can go two ways. What I'm hoping you'll see is: this is Brandon understanding the physics of our world and saying, "It's okay to let go, because I am not using the physics of our world." This is supposed to say to you, "All right, I understand this doesn't work the way it's supposed to." Because what I'm doing with the constructive and destructive interference requires Cosmere intervention in order to actually work. Destructive interference is not magically different in any way than constructive interference, or than any other sound wave, it's just where you position it. You couldn't look at it by itself and be like, "Oh, that is the anti-song to this song." That's not how it works. The anti-song to this song a song that is aligned differently; they sound the same to you. They're just played in such a way that is destructive interference. And I needed there to be a dividing line that said, "We are actually working in Cosmere physics here."

And the main reason to do that is that, the nuts-and-bolts reason, is so that those who knew their physics could be like, "Ah, okay, we are in a fantasy world. We are in a world where people don't irradiate each other with redshifts, and indeed this destructive interference can be magically known as the opposite of this other sound because humans beings are considering it so and that makes it so." And there are a couple of other things about the physics through the books that are done that way.

What's the in world reason that it's like that? That is a RAFO.

Ben McSweeney AMA ()
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Argent

Are there any plans to create and release a collection of drawings as a separate book? While some of your gorgeous gorgeous arts makes its way into Brandon's novels, the focus is naturally not on them - but I am sure some of us would like to get our grubby grabby hands on a book that's only, for example, Shallan's drawings. One of her in-world sketchbooks, in a way.

If there are no such plans, is this something you would consider?

Ben McSweeney

There's plans, but they are waaay down the road. With Stormlight we're looking at a ten-book series, and we're only now on book 3.

That being said, we create and collect a lot of ancillary material during production. Failed ideas, wrong turns, and even just construction material. I don't see us leaving all that in a drawer forever. :)

FanX 2018 ()
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Questioner

The Rithmatist. Is there another one close to coming out?

Brandon Sanderson

Rithmatist, I've had real troubles with for a couple of reasons. Once I get Alcatraz, like, finished finished, my next thing to do will be to get Rithmatist taken care of. 'Cause I finished Legion, last one's coming out in a couple weeks. But I'll finish Alcatraz, and that means fewer series hanging and looming over me. And then Rithmatist will be the only one that hasn't gotten...

Idaho Falls signing ()
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Questioner

What would you say is one of the books you're most proud of writing?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably the final Wheel of Time book. That was the hardest book for me to write. Someone else's world, someone else's characters, keeping it all straight. Doing a good job of releasing something for so many people that they'd been waiting for for so long, the pressure was just really high.

Manchester signing ()
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Brandon Sanderson

This Jasnah sequence I might release in-between books as just a short little thing, like we did with Mitosis and Emperor's Soul, just to tide people over. It is something that I felt I needed to write so that I knew what Jasnah was doing, because these kinds of events are important to character development and things like this. It didn't belong in Book Two, for obvious reasons. There had to be that question. So I have this, and it's not 100% complete, in fact it's a pretty rough draft. But I feel I can't write Book Three until I know exactly what Jasnah went through.

General Reddit 2015 ()
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amilynn

Are there any black people in Scadrial? Or any other races? I couldn't find an answer online, but the descriptions in the book all seem like white/European people.

Brandon Sanderson

The Terris had a lot more skin color diversity than the people of the central dominance. A large number of those preserved had darker skin, so in the W&W era, you are starting to see skin color become associated with them. During the Final Empire, skin color was basically ignored.

Note that for even people in the Elendel Basin, darker skin won't get nearly as dark as what you will find on Roshar or Taldain.

EDIT: Now that I'm on my computer instead of my tablet, I can dig into this a little more. What other posters have been saying is true--the region of the Final Empire we see in the first trilogy is very small, and the Final Empire itself isn't terribly big. There's not a lot of racial diversity at all.

That said, the Terris are a distinct ethnic group. I carefully didn't describe people in the original books with regard to a lot of racially identifying features. One of the Lord Ruler's goals over the years was to stamp these things out, to create a single unified people. While he couldn't change genetics, his work here did make people start to look at things like class and clothing more than accents or racial identifiers. In addition, it was important that the Terris be diverse enough that, while some looked Terris from just a glance, with others, you could meet them and (for obvious reasons that are spoilers) not know they were actually Terris.

That isn't to say they aren't there--they actually are. Elend and Straff would have a bit of an accent, and Cett a fairly strong one. Sazed would look racially distinct from Vin.

As we get further from the Final Empire, we see these things becoming more of a marker. The Terris work to preserve their cultural heritage, and this distinctiveness highlights other aspects about them, including the dark skin that many of them brought through the end of the world. The next trilogy (1980's era) is planned to star a Terriswoman right now, and she would likely resemble someone ethnically black to many of us on Earth.

sirgog

How far off your impression of Sazed was I in imagining him looking like Teferi from MTG?

Brandon Sanderson

I often give him a Teferi-like-look in my own head, but in actuality his skin tone is probably more akin to someone like Keegan-Michael Key.

Phantine

>While he couldn't change genetics, his work here did make people start to look at things like class and clothing more than accents or racial identifiers.

How did the 'skaa/noble' class genetic tinkering work out, anyway? Did the leadership of every nation just wake up the next morning and find themselves taller, more intelligent, and less fertile?

Brandon Sanderson

Most genetic differences between skaa and noble were exaggerated, even fabricated, by noble culture as justification for their perceived superiority. Height differences due to nutrition, 'intelligence' due to education and societal expectations, fertility due to common factors in urbanization. The LR did try some minor tinkering, to be played out over time through genetics, but in the end these changes weren't very successful.

emailanimal

This is actually good to know. I've seen your other responses to similar questions, where the inference was that there was indeed a significant difference.

The main changes were for dealing with the atmosphere, correct? And they were reverted by Sazed/Harmony?

Brandon Sanderson

There were also some general hardiness changes for the skaa and some fertility changes, but as I said, by the time of the books those were basically gone. And yes, Sazed reverted the ones designed to help survival in the ash.

BookCon 2018 ()
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WeiryWriter (paraphrased)

So in the Way of Kings Ars Arcanum we get a really good explanation of the different kinds of fabrials. Then in Words of Radiance we get a new kind of fabrial, one that attracts certain substances, but they weren't discussed in the Words of Radiance Ars Arcanum. And they are not in Oathbringer's either.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yeah, so this is actually something Isaac has been bugging me about. There is no reason they were not included other than me being lazy.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 ()
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Nick Mancuso

Do worldhoppers take time to adjust to the different gravity of a new world? How about in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on how fast they get between things. Most of the time, no. Because most of the time what you're doing is you're leaving a planet and going into the Cognitive Realm, where for the most part you're going to have the same sort of feelings of gravity and then you are walking slowly through Shadesmar to another place and you're not even noticing the minute changes. If there were FTL travel or something then yeah, you would pretty instantaneously notice a difference, but that currently does not exist in the Cosmere. People who are getting between planets either are individuals with no physical form as it's currently... basically just the Shards, right, or are getting there through Shadesmar, basically by walking or riding or something like that. There are *hesitantly* no current faster ways, but I mean, there are depending on how fast you can get through Shadesmar and yeah. I mean, even when Hoid is getting between planets it's taking him weeks or months, he's not jumping. They aren't actually hopping between worlds, they are trudging between worlds in the Cosmere.

Dawnshard Annotations Reddit Q&A ()
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Elsecaller_17-5

Would Sleepless be the 3rd race native to Yolen? Man, Dragon, and Sleepless?

Brandon Sanderson

The Sho Del are the third race from Yolen.

celestialwolf157

I've heard you mention the Sho Del a few times, though only that they were the third race on Yolen. Is there anything else you could reveal about the Sho Del that's not too spoilery?

Brandon Sanderson

The big thing happening on Yolen (and major plot points of both Dragonsteel and The Liar of Partinel, neither of which I decided to publish) is two competing ecologies on one planet. An entire invasive ecology (called "fain") and the regular one, familiar to us. The Sho Del fill the niche in the fain ecosystem that humans fill in ours.

Calamity Austin signing ()
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heridfel

There are different kinds of spren that bond with people and it appears they’re based on a concept. Is it possible to have a concept which would make a Nahel bond that gives two Surges that don’t align to one of the Radiant orders?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, uh...this is a theoretical possibility that has not happened yet.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
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hajsenberg

When Spin heard Jerkface talking after she left DDF I thought he would be defending her. Something like "even though we hate each other, she's part of the flight and her place is with the rest".

Brandon Sanderson

Jorgen is pretty new to this situation too, remember. He's never had to deal with something quite like this before.

Calamity Seattle signing ()
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Questioner

What happens when you Lash water, or a body of water?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question, it’s going to have some hard time gripping on--

Questioner

Would it have a gravity well going on?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it would have a gravity well, it think-- yeah.  You are the first person to ask about that, I don’t think even my assistant has asked about that.  So that’s your tentative answer until I think about it some more, but I think it would.

FanX 2018 ()
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Questioner

In Stormlight Archive, of all the Oaths that you know, which Orders would be the hardest to keep?

Brandon Sanderson

The thing about it is the spren self-select. So if you're going to give them to a random person then in that case, I'd say the Windrunners, but it could be the Skybreakers. One of those guys that are closer up on the dial to Honor and things like that are probably gonna be the harder to take for a random person but that whole self-selection thing ends up making it...

Skyward Pre-Release AMA ()
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Facebook 10.JPG

Karthikeyan Eswaran

For a person to ascend as a [Vessel], is it enough to have a Connection with the Shard, or does their general intent/mindset have to align with the Intent of the Shard (like Rayse and Odium have both shown similar mindsets)? If the intent needs to be similar, how did Ati, who was described as a kind person, pick up a Shard like Ruin? And if the intent doesn't need to be similar, how did the people at the Shattering manage to ascend, as the Shards had just been created? Did they have to go through some process to create a Connection? Or did they all somehow already have a Connection with Adonalsium (and thus with all the Shards) which made it easier to Ascend?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there did need to be some Connection created--there was a lot going on with this. But it is possible for intents to not align and someone to take a Shard. It's way easier if intents do align, but humans don't tend to align 100% to any specific intent.

Calamity Austin signing ()
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Questioner

You've said that Shardblades can be made in other magic systems. So if it's not like a Shardblade from Roshar, what makes it a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

The "Shard" refers to the heavy Investiture of a Shard of Adonalsium. Most of what you’ll see will see are the Roshar ones, but it is technically possible to make them out of the other magic systems. It's going to be a heavily invested magical weapon, is kind of how I would define it.

Questioner

So are the Bands [of Mourning] one?

Brandon Sanderson

I would not call them one, but they are close. They're not Invested enough.

Forbidden Planet Interview ()
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Higgy Baby

Do the highstorms and Everstorm orbit Roshar like rings?

Brandon Sanderson

Rings is the wrong term. There's not another highstorm on the other side of the world. There is one highstorm blowing around. They were sort of mini-based on the Spot of Jupiter. But they move around; it's a massive hurricane that moves around the planet.

It goes around the planet, but if what you're asking is: "Is there a ring of highstorm? And so when it's on one side, it's on the other side?" That is not the case. There is a highstorm that's going around, an Everstorm that's going the other direction around the planet; and they are very wide, enormous storms. But imagine a storm of Jupiter moving around the planet, rather than staying where it is.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
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King_of_the_Kobolds

In Steelheart you mention the Coven, a group of Epics that I've found immensely intriguing ever since hearing their name. Is there anything you can say about their group or one of their members?

Brandon Sanderson

A member of the Coven will appear in Calamity, and others will be referenced.

General Reddit 2017 ()
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Oversleep

What is Scadrial's primary intergalactic export?

Ravi

Okay so, this is what I got from Brandon.

Prior to Kelsier exploding the Pits, Scadrial's canned goods were one of the main things exported to the intergalactic market from the planet.

NB: This is something that Brandon can change at any time if the story calls for it.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 ()
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jamlyon

What happened to Plamry in Dawnshard? When he and Nikli were stranded to keep them from interfering.

Brandon Sanderson

He was not involved in any of it. He got left when his friend and superior melted into bugs. He's probably having a hard time with that. He was left there and then recovered at the end of the book, after the last chapter. I believe that's what your asking. Plamry is okay physically. What it does to various people to watch people you have known melt into bugs... depends on the individual.

I've been waiting so long to do more stuff with the hordes. They are one of the very first science fiction races that I developed long ago. They actually appeared in Star's End (which is my second novel, which is terrible). I quickly moved them to the cosmere once I developed the cosmere, because I love them. I think they are lots of fun. They do all kinds of cool things. I really like that there's a really legit species that you refer to as "it," because that's what they are. That's how they see themselves; the swarms. They're one of my favorites, but they did not match being part of the main narrative of The Stormlight Archive for lots of reasons. There is already lots of weird stuff in The Stormlight Archive. They're mostly around because I want to use them later. I was really happy to be able to write a book where I inserted a viewpoint.

The Well of Ascension Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Vin and OreSeur

Another thing that's going well is the Vin-OreSeur relationship. In fact, because of some of the wedges Zane is driving between Elend and Vin, one of my alpha readers continually joked that he thought Vin and her dog had a better relationship than Vin and her boyfriend.

I don't think that's true–he was reading the book one chapter a week as I workshopped them. I hope, given Vin and Elend's closeness at the beginning of the book, that you can see they still love each other–even if they are under a great deal of stress. That isn't to say that Vin isn't falling for Zane a bit. However, I don't think she's falling out of love with Elend so much as convincing herself that she's no good for him.

JordanCon 2021 ()
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Oudeis

That first chasmfiend hunt, in Way of Kings, did not go as planned. Was that sheer bad luck? Or was someone or something making that happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. Sheer bad luck. Sometimes bad luck is just bad luck. There were no mysterious people pulling the strings behind the scenes on that one. It just went as it went.

Good question, though. I'm always glad when I can appropriately dispel one of those so that people don't have to theorize too much.

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
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Questioner

After Kaladin challenges Amaram, and he gets thrown into prison, are those incarcerationspren that he gets stuck with?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I'm being recorded, so I have to know if I want to canonize this. Yes. There's nothing more to it than that, I'm just not sure if I've been asked that question straight-up before. I just want to make sure that I've got the name right.

State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Updates on Secondary Projects

The Rithmatist

This continues to be the single most-requested sequel among people who email me or contact me on social media. It is something I want to do, and still intend to, but it has a couple of weird aspects to it—completely unrelated to its popularity—that continue to work as roadblocks.

The first problem is that it's an odd relic in my writing career. I wrote it as a diversion from a book that wasn't working (Liar of Partinel, my second attempt at doing a novel on Yolen, after the unpublished novel Dragonsteel). It went really well—but it also was something I had to set aside when the Wheel of Time came along.

I eventually published it years later, but my life and my writing has moved in a very different direction from the point when I wrote this. These days, I try very hard to make stories like this work as novellas or standalone stories, rather than promising sequels. I feel I did promise a sequel for this one, and I have grand plans for it, but the time just never seems to be right.

The other issue is that writing about that era in America—even in an alternate universe—involves touching on some very sensitive topics. Ones that, despite my best efforts, I feel that I didn't handle as sensitively as I could have. I do want to come back to the world and do a good job of it, but doing an Aztec viewpoint character—as I'd like to do as one of the viewpoints in book two—in an alternate Earth…well, it's a challenge that takes a lot of investment in research time.

And for one reason or another, I keep ending up in crisis mode—first with Stormlight 3 taking longer than I wanted, and now with The Apocalypse Guard not turning out like I wanted. So someday I will get to this, but it's going to require some alignment of several factors.

Status: Not yet. We'll see.

Brandon's Blog 2018 ()
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Isaac Stewart

White Sand has an interesting background. Many of you know that it was the sixth novel Brandon wrote–Elantris–that was picked up by Tor and published as his first novel, but by the time Tor released Elantris in 2005, Brandon had written more than thirteen novels. Mistborn, which came out a year later in 2006, was Brandon's fourteenth.

But White Sand was Brandon's first novel. His third novel–Lord Mastrell–was a sequel to it. When Brandon wrote his eighth novel, right after the infamous Dragonsteel, he went back to White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell and rewrote them both from the beginning, combining them into the White Sand we now give away for those who sign up for the mailing list. I believe this was also the novel that got his agent Joshua's attention, and while Joshua didn't offer representation just yet, he did offer some suggestions for a revision. Brandon also had a list of things he wanted to accomplish were he ever to have the chance to return to White Sand and revise it. But when Elantris came out, turning around and revising an old novel was just not in the cards.

When Dynamite proposed a three-part graphic novel several years ago, Brandon met with Team Dragonsteel and laid out his vision for White Sand. We pulled out his revision notes along with Joshua's commentary from so long ago. We re-read White Sand and made our own notes, and together as a team we fleshed out what Brandon would have liked to have done were he to revise White Sand today without the luxury of rewriting the book from the beginning. We clarified character motivations, we strengthened character arcs, we changed the gender of one of the main characters, and we brought in stronger elements from the cosmere at large. Together, under Brandon's direction, and with Dynamite's help, we crafted this into the canonical version of White Sand.