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Were any of the original Shardholders related? We know that Honor and Cultivation were romantically involved, but were any of them brother and sister or child/parent?
There was at least one relationship of that style.
My good friend Dan Wells and I are writing a book together. It's based on Dark One, my original outline that became a graphic novel. We wanted to do a novelization, because the graphic novel (while I love it) has a lot of the graphic novel creator's vision to it, and we thought we would do a novel version going kind of back to my original outline.
He has finished a draft, and so I am doing a draft on that. I'm only 10% of the way through that, but I hope to breeze through that because I'm very excited by this project, and I hope that you guys will all be able to experience it before too much longer.
[Brandon] how are you going to finish all this?
The only reasonable answer is the one that others have pointed out, unfortunately: I won't.
Most of the ideas I work on don't come to fruition. Others simmer for many years (like Skyward did.) My only real promise is that I'll make reasonable progress on the mainline cosmere books. Stormlight, Mistborn, Elantris, Dragonsteel. Even there, I can't say for certain if projects like the Threnody novel or the Mistborn cyberpunk will end up being written or not.
It must feel strange knowing that, right? Having your whole life’s work mapped out and feeling that you won’t finish all of it?
A little? But I realized long, long ago that I'd have more ideas than time to write them--and made peace with that.
There's also a kind of "natural selection" philosophy going on here. If an idea (like Skyward) manages to persist long enough, fight out the other ideas for a slot at the writing table, and actually turn into a book--well, those are the ideas that deserve to get written.
For what it's worth, I think you'll finish it all (and more) without a problem. And I fixed version 2 of the chart so the projected timeline isn't so exaggerated and it's much less depressing. And as long as you enjoy writing and keep cranking books out, I promise to buy every one - I'm planning to have an entire wall of just Sanderson books.
Well, thank you very much! I've been thinking a lot about this lately, though. I've been aware lately that I'm going to have to let more and more side projects slide away, an I'm finding ways to do it, so that I can keep my attention on making certain I finish my goals.
Well I think you've made a great compromise with the graphic novels for example - it's great to be able have that as canon without having to wait 30 years for everything else to be cleared out - but we still have hope that if you finish everything early there's a possibility of a prose version someday. And with your non-cosmere ideas like Adamant and Alcatraz it's great that you are collaborating with others to get things done. I don't know how much creative control you'd want to cede of the Cosmere, but you could always consider letting other authors play around in 1940-ish or cyberpunk Scadrial for example. Also, you could consider fan-sourcing some projects. Maybe it's a stretch, but if you held some contests for the more artistically talented fans, you might be able to collect enough submissions that match your vision to be able to build the worldbook. Or you could publicly release the script for Birthright or some other idea, and fans could try to build an open source video game.
Yeah, I've been pushing myself to let some non-cosmere ideas (like the Apocalypse Guard rewrite) to do as collaborations, to get them out of my system.
You make some interesting suggestions with fans. We're reaching an era where that sort of thing is increasingly plausible.
Was Odium able to Splinter Honor because the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact?
Good question. Um, their abandonment of the Oathpact is related... but mostly tangentially. If I was pinned down on that, I would say no.
Is there any of the Oathpact still functioning because of Taln's continued participation?
Yes, indeed.
As Dragonsteel expands and you have other writers like Janci and Dan telling stories in your worlds, how do you manage the difference in approaches to writing?
Yeah, so this is something we're kind of finding our way through. You'll notice that I experimented with this a bunch with side projects before I decided to do some mainline projects. And I picked two of the writers that I'm very closest with and know the best. I don't anticipate going a lot further than that, right? I do like the idea of seeing what a few other writers can add to things like the Cosmere, but I don't want to turn into Forgotten Realms, where there's always a new book coming out by a new author. I do think that some places have done a better job of this though. Like, Black Library tends to have a very good reputation with the authors that they invite in and cultivate a stable of authors rather than just, you never know who's going to be writing one. I know that I didn't necessarily like this in comics, when I read more comics, not knowing when an author on a book was gonna be fired or when you were not gonna start seeing the original creator anymore. You will never not be seeing me writing books.
How do I approach it differently? When I hand it to someone, like with Skyward, I do envision it as being Janci's now. That I am overseeing. These are now her stories. It's kind of like how I felt... Harriet told me when I took over the Wheel of Time, Harriet came to me and said, "You are the author now, Brandon. You need to follow your instances as a writer and do your best job. You do want to look at what Robert Jorden was going to do and you want to try and fulfill his vision too." But she was very clear with me, it's like, "You are the writer now." And that gave me a certain level of ownership that I feel I needed. And despite some things about what I did definitely being... You know, I'm not without criticism, and deserved criticism. I think that me taking over that series went better than the vast majority of this happening in the past. You can just look at that both in aggregate reviews, you can also look at that at sales, you can just kind of look at... Really trying not to blow my own horn, but I think Wheel of Time is the gold standard in sci-fi/fantasy for an author passing away and someone else taking over the series. And part of the reason, in fact, I would say one of the biggest reasons for that, was Harriet coming to me and saying, "You need to be the author. You need the freedom and flexibility to treat this like your own series. You're not writing this for someone as just a work-for-hire; get this, chop wood, be done. We are handing you the keys to the house." And then, of course, the fact that she was also the editor to keep me a little reigned in in the right places was a big key.
But I bring that same sort of feeling to the authors I'm working with, with: "I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna help you outline. I'm gonna help you worldbuild. I'm gonna give feedback on the drafts. I'm gonna do everything I can to make this really excellent." But when you read Dan's Cosmere book, it's Dan's Cosmere book; it's not Dan writing Brandon's Cosmere book. It's Dan writing Dan's Cosmere book with Brandon deeply involved and trying to help out. And I think this is gonna lead to just better books. I think it's gonna lead to much better books.
I remember when I went to Blizzard once. They had me in (they had Pat Rothfuss in a separate time), and one of the reasons they had me in is they're like, "We would like you to write this story for us." They wanted to investigate having me write books for them. And it was a wonderful experience, everyone there was great, but I very quickly could tell I was the wrong person for the project. Because they already knew the exact book they wanted. They had every bit of lore that they wanted in that nailed down. The level of flexibility that I could have in telling a story in the Warcraft world was just almost nil. (They were actually investigating people for Overwatch back when it was Overwatch, but they also talked about Warcraft stuff.) It was like, "You could tell this story. This is what happens in it: boom boom boom boom boom boom boom." And it's all just completely already done, they just need someone to put the words on the page. And that is not me. That's not a project I was the least bit interested in.
Seems like a lot of movie experiences are built like that.
Yes, a lot of movie experiences are built like that, too. And because of that, I politely declined that opportunity. And I have learned (particularly in these kind of collaborations) that the best things that we came up with were things where I said, "Here is my world. Here's what makes it exciting. Here's what I love about the characters. What do you want to do in this world?" And together, developing something that really matches them. Particularly when I can kind of hand off characters that I have not spent a lot of time on or have them invent all new characters.
That's what you should expect with the collaborations I'm doing. Quality control, hopefully by Brandon, hopefully really great stories, but stories I could not have written, because just handing people my outlines hasn't really worked. The best example of that being White Sand the Graphic novel. Isaac has made that book great, by kind of taking some real ownership over it. The first stuff that we did (even before he did this latest revision that you guys can now get), it felt like my outline got really stiff when someone else played with it, and some of the stuff that makes reading a Brandon Sanderson book really fun and enjoyable didn't end up in there.
There's a long rambling answer to you; I hope that's relevant and helpful. But, that's the way I am approaching this.
On a more serious note, I'll get to some of the major events in the chapter in a moment. First, let's talk over some smaller annotations. I like the fact that Lukel doesn't like Kaloo–it seems like a perfect characterization for both of them. I will note, however, that Lukel has much better lines in this chapter than Kaloo does. His crack about Ahan getting sick by sheer laws of probability makes me chuckle every time I read them. Kaloo, on the other hand, spends all of his time trying to be honorable and true. Raoden is a good hero, but he can be dreadfully boring sometimes. Maybe that's why he threw himself into the Kaloo persona so eagerly.
My background is twenty years of military, and as I've been reading your Way of Kings, I've found that your insight into what it like to be a member of the service, all the mental trials including post-traumatic stress disorder is all very well thought-out and I'm curious how you came across that knowledge.
Lots of interviews and lots of reading on forums. People who post their hearts and souls on-- if you find the right forums, where people are among like-minded individuals, you can watch like a fly-on-the-wall and see what people are saying and how they are feeling. Because I strive for authenticity, that's what I-- whenever someone is feeling I want it to be authentic, and the more far removed from my own experience the better it is, if that makes sense to me, to get it into my books. So I try very hard for that.
In fact I'm going to be suggesting to the Veterans' Administration to use the series for treatment for PTSD. There are literally some things in there I've never seen anyone actually understand or get before. Some of my military friends have just been in absolute tears after reading your book.
That is an honor to hear.
It would be an honor to even have a passing mention in any of your works....
My real name is Lyndsey, I'm about 5'4", 29 years old, pretty plain looking really, brown hair/eyes, not fat but not skinny either (about average in most respects). Huge tomboy though...
Got it. Be aware, it will be a good while before the second book is out--next year sometime, if we're lucky, spring 2013 if the writing takes more time than expected. Look for someone who has a name like yours, and who looks like you.
On Roshar, do the humans predate the two Shards coming there, or did they come with the Shards?
The humans were...not created by Honor, Cultivation or Odium.
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?
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.
Are the Knights Radiant's powers/spren derived from both Honor and Cultivation? As it seems each order has a has a power of nature e.g. light gravity etc
If yes, what powers would Odium give the Knights Radiants, if he where forced to empower them? And would there be any additional oaths they would need to swear to use these powers?
Everything in the books is alluding to Damnation and the Tranquiline Halls being one and the same. Is this true or is it more separate countries in the same landmass? And what is the general landscape of this alternate dimension?
These questions stray into RAFO type territory, which I try not to delve too deeply into on twitter. (Because of the short space I have to reply.) But there are some hints in the links [SandersonArmy] included...
I was thinking about the Shardplate in Dalinar's first vision and how it looks different than any other plate now. Would that be like how Syl could only transform after he said that second round... or was it third round of oaths, so is the Shardplate just like the next set, or would that be a totally different set of...?
I'm totally going to RAFO you. Look you've got a RAFO. You are asking good questions.
Dalinar insists that honorable men would not fight their allies, when Adolin wishes to spar. Would the knights radiant spar one another, or would they generally agree with dalinars point of view?
Some would agree but many would disagree. Do note there is a difference between sparring and prize fighting or dueling.
So the number of Shards that have been on Roshar is three, correct?
Correct.
People have been thrown by you saying that Odium is not native to Roshar.
Odium is not native... see that's the thing. Are any of them native? So if you dig the deeper question, are any of them native, ehhh, none of them are native to the planets that you've seen so far. What I probably should've said to be more precise is that Honor and Cultivation were there long before Odium showed up.
So, the Purelake in Shadesmar is mountainous. Does this in any way have to do with the fact that the Purelake is so shallow?
No. I haven't yet discussed the nature of the relationship between Shadesmar and the Physical world.
So, when Dalinar has his vision in what he assumes in the Purelake, he sees an obsidian fortress. Is that fortress in any way related to the fact that the Purelake in Shadesmar is mountainous?
No.
Is there a difference between the Shardplate of the Radiants from the visions of the past and the current Shardplate?
Yes.
Can you share a little more about what made you decide to release this book before Stormlight 5?
So, there are these things that are like...like the who killed Asmodean, that we talked about. I like having questions that I give answers to. And stories are partially about questions. And one of the things that I wanted to have is that, occasionally in the Cosmere, I want to be giving you questions, that later on books can answer. This is why the aethers show up in Stormlight before I write an Aether book, and things like that. And in this case, the question of "Woah, what happened to Sigzil?" I think is actually a nice teaser for Stormlight 5, rather than a spoiler for Stormlight 5, if that makes any sense. And Sigzil's story's just a very small one in the context of Stormlight. But, I feel like this just adds another fun question for Stormlight, and that's part of why I wanted to get it out before. And it just felt right to me. Just like we're not getting Rock's story yet, even though we know something happened with him in Book 4. There are some times that I want things to be a little bit out of chronological order in order to inspire those questions. And I do kind of like the theories, so.
Do you have questions that you've embedded that are not answered until the end of the Stormlight Archive?
Yes. Um, yes.
There are questions there. Okay, so you still believe in that kind of like-
I do still believe in that, but they're more vague. In Stormlight 1, there's a set of things called Death Rattles, which are...the best, for Wheel of Time fans, the best mimic you have for them is probably Min's visions. They are little hints of what's to come. And those are embedded for things that happen all the way through the ten books. And, you know, I've done...done things like that.
There's going to be some of us going back and reading Way of Kings and going like "Oh, you know, in Book 9-there it is!"
Yes, right, yeah. You should be able to do that. There are other things that I don't want to highlight people's attention on, but there's another big one in the Stormlight Archive that I've been doing all through the books that people don't realize is foreshadowing for the back five books. But it is! So, that'll be very fun. I can tell you what that is after the stream. It's something that I can do in my work that's very hard for other people to do in their works.
In Stormlight Archive, of all the Oaths that you know, which Orders would be the hardest to keep?
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...
The Fused only use nine of the Surges (they don't use Adhesion), and Raboniel describes Adhesion as "not a true Surge." Does this mean, in its original form on Ashyn, Surgebinding had no equivalent to Adhesion, and it was created by Honor later?
That is a valid way of theorizing, and I would encourage you to go that direction. Raboniel is biased. So take those two sentences as separate things. Do be aware she is very, very biased, but also your theorizing could bear fruit going that direction.
This is just a little thing I thought of that is kinda neat. Symmetry on Roshar is seen as holy, but the letter H can be used in place of another consonant without "spoiling" the symmetry.
Is this because of the spelling of the name Honor? If the H is a stand-in for the R, it makes the name symmetrical.
Where is the "h" thing mentioned?
I am copying this from somewhere else, but apparently WoR chapter 47. (I guess i tagged the post wrong, but it's just barely a spoiler anyway.)
""Bajerden? Nohadon? Must people have so many names?" "One is honorific," Shallan said. His original name wasn't considered symmetrical enough. Well, I guess it wasn't really symmetrical at all, so the ardents gave him a new one centuries ago." "But ... the new one isn't symmetrical either." "The 'h' sound can be for any letter," Shallan said absently. "We write it as the symmetrical letter, to make the word balance, but add a diacritical mark to indicate it sounds like an h so the word is easier to say." "That - One can't just pretend that a word is symmetrical when it isn't!" Shallan ignored his sputtering [...]"
Is this similar to the many interpretations of the spelling and pronunciation of YHWH?
Hebrew, among a few other languages, is an inspiration for some languages in the cosmere. (One of them is Alethi.) That said, in this case it's more like how in some Asian countries, they would give honorific names to famous scholars or rulers after they pass away.
Is there going to be a magic system for every Shard?
Uh, yes, whether there'll be books? We get into a problem here... is... what is a magic system, right?
So for instance like, would you count all of Surgebinding as one magic system, or is it ten magic systems, right? Is Windrunning a separate magic system from Skybreaking. Right, and is it the Surges? Is it that? What do you call a magic system? Is the system of fabrials a magic system, or is it a subset of what's happening on Roshar? And in that case, it's like I delineated it pretty strongly in Mistborn, but in Stormlight, it's like... kind of Surgebinding is kind of Honor and Cultivation, right? And so is there a magic system for each of them or not?
So the answer is yes and no, in that every one of the Shards will inspire really interesting magic systems. But is there a one to one? What do you call a magic system? And beyond that, will I have time to write books about all of these, I don't know. You could even look at Sel. Sel has how many magic systems, is it one? Is it lots? Is Forging a different magic system from AonDor, or is it two aspects of the same magic system and so... It's tricky.
There are two Shards on Roshar. Odium's presence is felt on Roshar, but he is on Braize, the third planet in the system.
Is that Shard on The Silence Divine?
Oh, you mean Ashyn. Ashyn is mostly barren with small fertile patches
There are two Shards on Roshar; however, Honor is dead.
You've confirmed that several Heralds have appeared or been mentioned in the modern (non-prelude, non-vision) parts of The Way of Kings. Have any members of the Knights Radiant (the one from the days of Urithiru, not near-Radiants like Kaladin) appeared in the modern parts of The Way of Kings? And if you have to RAFO me, could you give me a hint about the Heralds?
I can answer that--no, no Radiants from those days have appeared on screen in [The Way of Kings].
You have stated elsewhere that your story is about a world recovering, a world that has fallen from the height of its power. Why did you choose to set your story in such a setting, what about it makes it an appealing place to write about?
Several things. There's a real challenge in this book because I did not want to go the path of The Wheel of Time in which there had been an Age of Legends that had fallen and that the characters were recapturing. Partially because Robert Jordan did it so well, and partially because a lot of fantasy seems to approach that concept. But I did want the idea of a past golden age, and balancing those two concepts was somewhat difficult. I eventually decided I wanted a golden age like existed in our world, such as the golden of Greece and Rome, where we look back at some of the cultural developments etc. and say, "Wow, those were really cool." And yet technologically, if you look at the world back then, it was much less advanced than it is now, though it was a time of very interesting scientific and philosophical growth in some areas. What we have in Roshar is that the Knights Radiant did exist, and were in a way a high point of honor among mankind, but then for various reasons they fell. The mystery of why they did and what happened is part of what makes the book work.
Why is this world appealing to write in? Well, I like writing my worlds like I write my characters, where at the beginning of the book you're not starting at the beginning or the end of the characters' lives; you're starting in the middle. Because when we meet people, their lives don't just start that day. Interesting things have happened before, and interesting things are to come. I want the world to be the same way. Interesting things have happened in the past, and interesting things are to come again. I want there to be a depth and a realism to the history. It's fascinating for me to write at this point because on the one hand, there are things to recapture in the past, but at the same time there are things that the people in the past never understood and could never do. The former heights of scientific reasoning didn't go at all as far as they could have gone. So there are new places to explore and there are things to recapture. In a lot of ways, this plays into my philosophy for storytelling. The greatest stories that I've loved are those that walk the balance between what we call the familiar and the strange. When a reader sits down and there are things that resonate with stories they've read before that they've loved, there's an experience of joy to that. At the same time, you want there to be things that are new to the story, that you're experiencing for the first time. In this world, that's what I'm looking for. There is that resonance from the past, but there's also a long way to go, a lot of interesting things to discover.
If Elend had been carrying a polestone with him when he had his duralumin enhanced atium vision that transferred him to the SR, would it have become invested similarly to if it had been exposed to a perpendicularity?
Hm. That's a good question. I think it wouldn't have--though white sand would have been charged.
Did Kaladin say the words of the 2nd Ideal of the Windrunners in modern day Alethi or the ancient tongue that Dalinar uses in his visions?
He spoke them in his own language.
It's mentioned that Stormlight in gems will flicker slightly. Is this the Rhythm of Honor?
Good question, RAFO.
Brandon, if you don't mind, I always wanted to ask this:
If Dalinar knew the story of Adonalsium (well, I hope he will, eventually) would he be like -- Yes, this is the true God I'm looking for, or more like -- if Adonalsium died then he was never a God (same what he thinks about Honor)?
I, like others, also root for Dalinar gaining knowledge about the greater cosmere. Our man deserves it.
To answer this, I'd probably have to give more Dragonsteel spoilers than I want to give.
That's fair. Thank you, Brandon.
I have not read Dragonsteel (if we are talking about that old version of the book). Hope you will dig into these things in the future novels, especially with Dalinar :)
I promise that answers to questions like these are very much on my mind, and are things I do plan to eventually address in one way or another.
In Mistborn 5, Shadows of Self, Wax chases Bleeder into the mist after the party where she was speaking in his mind to taunt him. As Wax jumps into the mist to follow, he has an internal monologue thinking about Vin. He says he can see her vaguely within the mist.
"Slight of frame, short hair splayed out as she moved, mistcloak fluttering behind her. It was a fancy, wasn't it?"
Has the mist become a self aware Splinter of Harmony similar to how the Stormfather operated with Honor? Also, since the mist "tuned" Vin to be able to take the Shard of Preservation, does the mist remember Vin in some form? And is it still connected to her similar to how a Returned is connected to their former self?
You're making some excellent theories here; I'm not sure if I want to stamp any of them out. I like where you're going on this. I will say that this is related to where, if you read in Words of Radiance, you will see odd things sometimes happen with Investiture. There is a scene (that I don't think a lot of people pick up on) where Syl is responding to Connection threads being built and is looking different than she should look and things like this. We're looking more at the Spiritual Realm and Spirit Webs and Connections and things like that. Not to stamp out any of your theories, but also to kind of direct you—often times when I'm writing pure Investiture or beings of Investiture, they respond to echoes in the Spiritual Realm. And like I said, you'll see this in Syl sometimes.
I'll leave it there. Continue theorizing but go that direction.
*after reading a personalization request* What do you mean by specifically what Paalm was doing, which thing?
Her ultimate goal, we think, was to Shatter Harmony.
You think her ultimate goal was to Shatter Harmony?
*audio obscured*
Her ultimate goal was to free people from Harmony, so I wouldn't say her ultimate goal was to Shatter Harmony. So what you're asking me is "Is Taravangian trying to combine Harmony?
We thought that Paalm was trying to divide people from Harmony in order to Shatter Him. *audio obscured* Taravangian was doing the opposite, trying to gather his people so that he could pick up-- so Honor could come back.
Not really. Good question, once I figured it out.
What is the biggest change you've made based on alpha/beta reader feedback? (This goes for any of your books)
Probably adding Adolin as a main viewpoint character in the first book, which was done because I had trouble striking the balance between Dalinar worrying he was mad, and being a proactive, confident character. Worried better to externalize some of the, "Am I mad" into his son worrying "My dad has gone crazy" while letting Dalinar be more confident that his visions were something important. (I still let him worry a little, of course, but in the original draft, he felt temperamental from vacillation between these two extremes.)
Bringing Adolin to the forefront in the books has had a huge ripple effect through them, as I've been very fond of how his character has been playing out.
May I ask why you choose to use Adolin as the viewpoint character to supplement Dalinar as opposed to Renarin? My understanding is Renarin has always been the "most important brother" within SA, which made me wonder why, based on the beta readers comments, you ultimately decided to use Adolin and not your established character to bring forward the dilemma.
I am, obviously, extremely fond of how Adolin has been played out so far and while I have no idea where he is going (but zillions of theories), I am curious to know what his initial purpose in the story was. Did you draft the character's personality just for WoK's needs or did you have an idea of what to do with him when you made the change?
I was well aware that I needed certain things about Renarin to remain off-screen until later books, and him being a viewpoint character early would undermine these later books.
Adolin is a happy surprise and works exactly because he doesn't need to be at the forefront, even after I boosted his role. With Adolin, what you see is really what you get, which is refreshing in the books--but it also means I don't need huge numbers of pages to characterize him, delve into his backstory, etc. He works as a side character who gives more to the story than he demands pages to fullfill that giving, if that makes sense. Renarin is more like a pandora's box. Open him up, and we're committed to a LOT of pages. (Good pages, but that was the problem with TWOK Prime--everyone was demanding so many pages, from Renarn, to Jasnah, to Kaladin, to Taln, that none of their stories could progress.)
Adolin has basically always had the same personality, from TWOK Prime, through the original draft of the published TWOK, to the revision. The changes to making him more strong a viewpoint character were very natural, and he has remained basically the same person all along--just with an increased role in the story, and more development because of it.
I do discovery write character, usually, as a method of keeping the books from becoming slaves to their outlines. This means that Adolin has gone some new directions, but it's been a growth from the person he was in TWOK Prime. (Which you'll be able to see when I release it, sometime in the hopefully not distant future.)
> I could easily have had an entire book with a major thread about toppling her [Ialai's] little empire on the Shattered Plains, but that would have been too backward looking.
I dunno. I think that could be fun. I'm somewhat imagining a John-Wick-alike character whose job is to take Ialai down and it turning into a surreal action/adventure/spy story.
I absolutely think this could have worked in a different narrative. But in this book, with so much of the focus moving to the greater war and the invasion, I feel that spending a lot of pages on recovering the Shattered Plains (and dealing with a group in the Sons of Honor that have been repeatedly defeated already) would just feel anticlimactic.
A different style of narrative could have pivoted to political intrigue instead of war epic after the first book or so, and then this sort of plot would have been exciting and dynamic. It's all about scope and the subgenre of your narrative.
The cover of, the front cover of any Way of Kings books, there's the little engraving, are those Honorblades?
They are the symbols of the various orders of Knights Radiant stylized as Honor-- as Shardblades.
Oh, okay. That makes a lot more sense, because I've seen the symbols on the back...
*pointing at the book* So it's this symbol right here is the same symbol as this.
Right, it's just a little more expanded and stuff down the blade. Wow.
Vivenna Talks to Jewels about Religion
I'm very conscious of the fact that all of my major viewpoint characters in this book—Lightsong included—don't believe in the Hallandren religion. That worries me because the book presents a very one-sided view of their beliefs.
Religion isn't a simple thing. In my books so far, I fear that I've presented the religions in a far too one-sided way. Hrathen with his Shu-Dereth, the Lord Ruler and his religion—these were not the types of religions that are very enticing to readers. The characters, even those viewpoint characters who followed the religions, didn't present them very well. (And, in truth, the Lord Ruler's religion—the Steel Ministry—was a pretty despicable religion.)
In this book, I wanted to present several different viable religions. There is something to be said for Austrism, with its goodly monks and teachings on humility through the Five Visions. But it's a very superstitious and xenophobic religion at the same time, and it is very biased against the magic of the world. The Hallandren religion has more going for it than the characters would like to accept.
So, even though most readers might consider this a throwaway scene between Vivenna and Jewels, is a very important one to me. It is the place where we get to see a follower of the Iridescent Tones really stand up for what she believes. Vivenna deserves to be smacked down here, I think.
Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Palahesah 5.1.5.
Skybreakers
The Skybreakers are all about order. It's not just about rules, or laws, or whatever the current or local king declares is right (though some Skybreakers do go a bit too far in that direction if you ask me). It's about higher ideals of rightness, and concepts like justice and fairness, and like I said in the beginning, order. They sought to make the world the way it should be, and not the way that passing whims of power and money declare that it ought to be. Which, in practical terms, inevitably translates as, "The way that we, the Skybreakers, think it should be. Which is orderly."
In some situations, a Skybreaker is a ruler's best friend. They enforce that ruler's laws, which supports that ruler's vision and keeps peace in that ruler's realm. But a Skybreaker also believes that the law is universal, and should be applied equally to the highest members of society as well as the lowest. And this goes for everyone, up to and including the Radiant Orders and even the Heralds themselves. Nobody, in their view, should be untouchable. Even a king, maybe even a god, should be held accountable if they abuse their power and authority. Which sounds like a pretty good belief to have, I guess, until you ask who's going to stop the Skybreakers from abusing their authority. The answer is often nobody, or the other Orders, I guess, but that can get messy.
These attitudes, as you might expect, give the Skybreakers a bit of a stodgy reputation. Some of the other, looser Orders tend to see them as sticks in the mud, and free thinkers see them as outright dangerous. Revolutionaries see them as friends of the powerful, but the powerful see them as fickle friends who might turn on you if they disapprove of your choices. The only people who really love them, I guess, are the people who know they can count on them, people who need justice. And if you're the kind of person that downtrodden people know they can always rely on to defend the innocent and punish the guilty... well, that seems like a pretty good place to be.
So, at the Forbidden Planet signing you said that when Adonalsium was Shattered, all Investiture in the cosmere was associated to one of the Shards... So, what happened with Adonalsium's spren on Roshar? Were those associated to Honor and Cultivation? What happened with them?
So they were very-- They were already associated to certain parts of Adonalsium and they went with those associations. There's a lot of Cultivation in all of the spren, particularly the natural spren.
What advice would you offer to unpublished writers in approaching publishers for the first time?
A couple things. Start working on something new while you're submitting what you've finished. That would be my number one rule—always be working on something new. Don't depend too much on just one story. Secondly, do more research than just getting out the Writer's Market book, looking up what publishers publish, and submitting to them. Instead, actually take some time to learn about those publishers. If you can, find out the names of the editors who work there, read their blogs, find out who they are and what authors they've worked on. Try to really understand the vision of every publishing imprint, and figure out what it is that they like and try to match your books to their books. Make sure you're reading their books and finding the ones that are the best matches. But other than that, just keep on going.
Do the Honorblades reflect the natural pairing of Surges, or did Honor decide which Surge pair to put in each Blade?
The pairs are natural to Roshar in the same way as the metals on Scadrial.
Hey, welcome to the Brandon Sanderson Frequently Asked Questions. We're going to take some of the questions I get the most often and record me answering them on YouTube. And our first one is, "What is the Cosmere?" This is indeed a frequently asked question. Most interviewers ask me this when I begin, though most fans have kind of figured it out by now. The Cosmere is my shared universe of epic fantasy stories. What happened is ... when I was 16-17 and was really getting into science fiction and fantasy, I read Isaac Asimov's later Robot books—later Foundation books, actually—he was combining Foundation with the Robot novels, and it blew my mind. I had never seen anything like this before. Now, granted, Marvel in comics and DC in comics had been doing shared universe for a long time with continuous continuity across multiple books. But in novels, Asimov was the first person I saw do something like this, and it really, really interested me.
Meanwhile, as I'd been reading these books, I really got into Anne McCaffrey's books, one of the very first authors I read, and then I got into Melanie Rawn's books, and then I got into David Eddings, and I got into Tad Williams, and I got into—I was just reading a lot of books. And however my mind works, I started to add my own characters to their books. It's a very weird thing. I've found out that other people do it too. So, I guess it's not individually weird, but we are collectively weird, those of us who do this. I would be reading a book and imagine a backstory to this side character, because I wanted to add something to the book, put something of myself into it, I guess. And then later on I'd pick up a different book by a different author and I'd be like, "Ooh, this side character, that's secretly the same person in disguise." And I started imagining this kind of back story where characters that I had devised were jumping between these different worlds and were having this big adventure behind the scenes where they were slipping in and out of other people's epic fantasy worlds. And I thought that was just really fun. It's something I continued doing all through my teens and 20s as I was reading. I still do this a little bit with games and books I read. I'll rewrite the story to match how I want it to be for me, particularly in video games, which gives me volition over my character. So, I figure I should be able to change what the character says, even if the dialogue option isn't there. My canon version of various video games is very different from the actual canon version.
Regardless, I had this character, Hoid, who was jumping in and out of books. When I started writing my own books in my early 20s, I started adding him as cameos to my books. I wrote 13 novels before I sold one. Book 6, Elantris, is the first one that got published, and it's the first time where I really sat down and said, "You know what? Epic fantasy is really what I want to do. Let's start building something here." And so, I wrote Hoid into that book. Then I wrote a book called Dragonsteel, where I jumped back, and I told his backstory on a different planet. Then I wrote something called Aether of Night a little bit later, where I delved into what had happened to some of those characters on a different planet far, far in the future. And I started building this thing that I called the Cosmere, which was an interconnected world of all these epic fantasy stories that people were moving around behind and jumping in and out of these worlds with different magic systems and different lore, but [which] all had some fundamental rules for the way the magic worked and where all these places had come from.
Well, eventually I sold Elantris, and Hoid was in there as a cameo. And I'd been giving a lot of thought to the Cosmere at that point. So as Elantris was getting published, I sat down and did an outline for the Mistborn trilogy, which I expanded to nine books in the middle of that outline and said, "what if I made this backbone series to the Cosmere", as I was then kind of officially calling it in my head. I went to my editor. I pitched it. I talked about Adonalsium, this god who was shattered long ago and sixteen individuals took up pieces of that god, the intents of the god, like that god's honor, or that god's sense of entropy, which was called Ruin, or things like this, and then went out into the Cosmere and were kind of ruling over these planets, or involved in these planets, or sometimes just lightly touching these planets. These sixteen Shards of Adonalsium, as we call them. And I grew, out of Mistborn and Stormlight, this idea for this large, super mega series, so to speak, behind the scenes.
Part of where this came from was me knowing that, as a new writer, pitching people on something that big was going to be tough. But if I could sell them a standalone novel like Elantris, they would be more likely to try that out, or a standalone trilogy like Mistborn. So, the whole goal was to have this hidden epic behind the scenes. And I wasn't even sure if I was ever going to get the chance to do more with it than just have it be cameos. You'll notice, if you watch for Hoid in the early books, they're just very cameo-ish. He briefly shows up here and there. In Mistborn 3 he's mentioned by name and you see him off in the distance. You don't even talk to him. This is because I wasn't sure if this was going to fly. One of the things that is difficult, particularly about storytelling back in the ‘80s and '90, was that you couldn't always rely on your audience being up to date with everything in the series. You couldn't expect them always to re-read everything. A lot of the books from the ‘80s and ‘90s will take a large chunk at the beginning to try to catch you up to speed in as non-annoying a way as possible. Well, that all changed once the Internet came around, and we were all able to just go look up summaries, or if we forget a character go to the wiki and find about them and things like that, which really is what I believe allowed something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe to actually exist and work, to have this deep and complex continuity.
And I was writing books just by happenstance that was doing all of this at the same time that this became a viable way of telling stories, at least a more viable way of telling stories. And people really latched onto the Cosmere and gave me the opportunity to really launch into it deep, so that there's a lot of interconnectedness growing between the books, as I always dreamed that I wanted to do but I wasn't sure if anyone would go along with me in it. And people have.
So, there's the long version of "What is the Cosmere?". The short version is it is my interconnected world of stories. But the long version is, it is the mega epic hiding behind the scenes, starring characters who make cameos in the other books.
Is the mist creature, that was seen through out the second Mistborn book, Preservation/the mists version of the Stormfather, which seems to be related to Honor/Highstorms.
You are on the right track.
The aforementioned mist being was called a "shadow of self" in one of the original 3 MB books. Does this have anything to do with a book of the same name? The Stormfather also called himself a "shadow" of what Honor was, does this support my above theory?
The Stormfather would use the same language.
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve always wondered who “They” are, and if—by chance—they’ve never heard of Michael Whelan. Because my experience in life has been very different.
It’s been almost twenty years now since I first discovered Michael’s work. I was fourteen when it happened, and I was not a reader. I’d been handed a succession of novels about young boys living in the wilderness and taking care of their pet dogs. (Which would die by the end of the book.) I disliked reading with a passion. So, when my eighth-grade teacher assigned me to do a book report, I did everything I could to get out of it.
That failed. In fact, it failed so solidly that the teacher—unwilling to let me choose my own book to read, for fear I’d choose something not up my reading level—steered me to the back of the room, where she kept a group of ratty paperbacks to loan out to students. You probably know the type—ripped, stained by spaghetti sauce from cafeteria lunches, pages folded and worn. I was told I had to read one of these and had to do a book report on them—and she’d read them all, so she’d know if I tried to fake it.
Sullen and annoyed, I began to sift through the books. Most looked terrible. I resigned myself to another dead dog story, but then one of the books actually caught my eye. It had this vivid painting of a dragon standing in the mists, a woman held limply in its hand. Dragonsbane, by Barbara Hambly. The painting was so beautiful, so realistic yet imaginative, that I snatched it up, actually a little eager to look through the pages. I ended up taking it home with me.
I read that book in one day. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever tried reading before. (I had never been introduced to fantasy novels.) Dragonsbane was amazing, challenging, imaginative, gripping, and beautiful all wrapped up in one. I remember a severe bout of disappointment upon finishing the book because I thought surely there couldn’t be anything else like it in the entire world.
Still, hopeful, I visited the school library the next day. I looked through the card catalog, and picked the next book—alphabetically by title—after Dragonsbane. It was called Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey. I went and pulled it out, and was once again captivated by the cover. I took it home and read it.
My life changed. Now, we throw around sentences like that in writing, using them over and over again until they become as worn as the shoes of a traveling salesman—hardly capable of holding meaning any longer. But let me say it again. My life changed.
I devoured every Anne McCaffrey book in the school library. Suddenly, what I’d discovered in Dragonsbane wasn’t a single, freak event. There was a pattern. If two authors could do this, perhaps there were others. Hungry for more, I went to the bookstore and discovered there was an entire fantasy genre.
There were so many books. Which to choose? Dragons had treated me well so far, so I looked for some dragon books. And there, right on the shelf, was a beautiful book called Dragon Prince. I consumed it, and then everything else Melanie Rawn was writing.
What do these books all share? It wasn’t just the dragons; it was the covers. Each time, there was something dramatic and special about them. I now own prints of Dragonsbane and several of Melanie’s covers. All were painted by Michael Whelan.
By the time Tad Williams’ Dragonbone Chair came out, I could recognize Michael’s art on sight. And I also knew to trust it. It didn’t seem logical—you really shouldn’t be able to judge a book by its cover. But a Whelan cover became a seal of approval to me, a sign that the publisher trusted the book so much that they got the best person available to do the cover.
I can’t tell you all of the authors Whelan’s art led me to over the years: Patricia Mckillip, Joan D. Vinge, Stephen Donaldson, and even Asimov. (Yes, you read that right. I first picked up Asimov because Whelan had done the new Foundation covers.)
I remember when winter 1993 rolled around. My local bookseller noted to me that Whelan had a new art book coming out, one half dedicated to covers, one half dedicated to his fine art. It was the only thing I requested for Christmas, and my parents bought it for me despite the cost. I spent hours leafing through the wonderous, fantastic art. Those imagines sparked things in my mind. I was an author in embryo, absorbing, thinking, dreaming. One of the very first stories I ever wrote was a ‘fanfic’ based on Whelan’s Passage series of fine art prints.
The years have passed. There are other wonderful fantasy artists out there—and, in a way, the market has finally caught up to Whelan (much as the fantasy genre itself needed time to catch up to Tolkien.) I’ve been lucky to have some of those incredible artists paint covers for my books. But I’ve rarely felt as much excitement, wonder, and awe as I did the when I got to open an email and see the cover for The Way of Kings.
Irene Gallo (Tor’s art director) asked me to provide a quote about how I feel having a Whelan cover on one of my books. My editor, Moshe, noted “Surely you’ll mention how it’s a dream come true for both you and your editor.” But 'Dream come true' is another one of those phrases we use so often it has lost its meaning.
How do I really feel? Well, when I was a senior in high school, I was forced to take a life-planning class. In that class, we had to write down ten 'life goals' we wanted to achieve some day. #1 on my list, which I still have somewhere, was “Publish a book someday that is good enough to deserve a Michael Whelan cover.”
It has always been a deep-seated desire of mine to one day have a Whelan painting on one of my works. Without this man’s skill and vision, I might never have discovered the fantasy genre, and I might not be writing novels today.
You might say I’m a little bit pleased.
Have you ever designed a character based upon a loved one in order to honor their memory?
Yes, I have--but it's almost always a side character, more a cameo than anything else.
Brandon: I'd like to ask your opinion of the current state of the fantasy genre....
Fantasy has always been a "series-powered" genre but it seems that lately several authors (or publishers) just don't know when to suitably end a long-running saga... Drawing out a series for the sake of more installments, it seems.
And there seems to be fewer and fewer standalone novels like Warbreaker and Elantris. (I love standalone novels, by the way, and am hoping that that "format" makes a return!)
Any comments on this from your perspective? Thanks!
It's a good question, Paul. One I've been considering, actually, for a long time. Certainly, there's an economic piece to it.
When a stand-alone comes out, it tends to gather praise from both readers and reviewers. Then proceeds to sell far fewer copies than a series book does. The Wheel of Time didn't hit #1 on the New York Times list until book eight or nine, I believe, and I don't think Sword of Truth hit #1 until book ten. Series tend to sell better. Even as readers complain about them. And so I think publishers do push for them.
But why do they sell better? Well, I think this is partially the learning curve factor. We like fantasy for the same reason that fantasy is hard to read: the learning curve. Starting a fantasy book can be tough because of how many new names, concepts, societies, religions, and laws of physics you have to learn and get used to. Epics, with their dozens upon dozens of characters, are even tougher in this regard. And so, after investing so much energy into becoming an expert in the world, we want to get a good payoff and be able to USE that expertise.
Beyond that, I think that fantasy is character driven—and when we fall in love with characters, we want to read more about them. Fantasy, particularly the epic series, allows us to follow characters across sweeping, life changing events. Fantasy (like historicals) give us lots of pages and time to know these characters. So we want more from them.
But the very thing that we love about fantasy in this regard also tends to present problems. We want lots of characters, but eventually this large cast gets overwhelms us and makes the books seem to drag. Personally, I think these complaints will be much lessened when some of these great series are done, and you don't have to wait years and years between volumes.
Anyway, Terry Brooks talks a lot about this in his biographical work Sometimes the Magic Works. (Bet you can find it here on BN.com, and I highly suggest the book as a quick, interesting, engaging read.) He mentions how, when he left Shannara to write other things, the fans begged and begged him for more. Until finally he broke down and gave them more books in the world.
A lot of authors I know tend to live in this state of perpetual wonder and amazement that, finally, people are actually enjoying and reading their works. (After all the years of failure trying to break in, I know that I feel this way a lot.) When someone comes to you and talks about how much they love one of your works, asking you to write more...well, we're storytellers. If people want a story, we want to give it to them. It's hard to say no. (Though so far I have.)
I intend to keep writing stand-alone novels. But I do so knowing that 1) they will not sell as well as series books and 2) readers will ask me for more, and so each stand alone will only increase the number of requests for future books that I can't write. I'm in the fortunate place that I can write, and publish, what I want—whether it be series or stand alone—and no longer have to worry about the money.
But, in my heart, I've got a strong desire to write a big epic. I grew up reading them. I want to see if I can do one, my way, and add something new to the genre. So maybe that's the reason. Looking through Robert Jordan's notes, reading interviews, I don't think he ever artificially inflated the length of his series because of publisher desire or money reasons. I think he loved the long-form epic, and wanted to tell the story his way, no matter how long it took. And as he added more characters, it took longer and longer.
In a way, being free from the worry of finances gives creators a chance to really explore their vision the way they want to. And...well, we’re fantasy writers, so we can get a little long winded.
Kind of like this response, eh? ;) Thanks for the question.
The Starfall vision. Ten Deaths, referring to the Midnight Essence. That's what the one Radiant said, they're the Ten Deaths. Is that the Unmade, the Ten Deaths.
Well, there's nine Unmade, so...
Are spren able to manifest Surges like the humans they are bonded to? Syl is able to stick things together are other types able to do other things or is the sticking things together something else?
The Spren are living Surges, in a way. There are some "higher" spren which have more ability than others to touch certain Surges. Honor, for example, is not a force of nature--but a force of thought. What is attributed to it relates more to the abstract.
And that didn't really answer you, did it? Well, hopefully it's enough.
Is them being living Surges the same as how seons are living Aons?
Similar.
Could one combine all of the Rhythms—Honor plus Odium plus Cultivation? Would the result be the ultimate Light?
RAFO.
The next segment from my Tor proposal talks about a book some of you may have heard of: THE WAY OF KINGS. Originally, this was going to be the second book I published, but I’ve decided to put it off in favor of MISTBORN. The reasons are explained below.
This decision was met with a great deal of disappointment by some of the manuscript’s fans, but I really think it’s best for my career right now to delay KINGS. It’s a magnificent story, but it needs some more time before it’s ready for the general public.
—————
THE WAY OF KINGS (Book one of the Oathshards Series.)
KINGS was the book I was working on when Moshe first called me to buy ELANTRIS. While we were in contract negotiations, he asked to read a bit of my current work. I sent him KINGS, and he decided he wanted to purchase it as well. I don’t think, however, that he knew what he was getting into.
The OATHSHARDS is a massive war epic centering around ten angelic beings who have been driven insane—each in a slightly different way—by millennia spent protecting, fighting for, and dying for mankind. The first book, THE WAY OF KINGS, follows six separate viewpoint characters (one of them an immortal) during a time when the three peninsulas are thrown into a massive war. It is an intensive character piece coming in at over 300,000 words, and can be quite brutal with its characters.
It still does the things I do well—it has several original magic systems (though magic isn’t a focus in the first book.) It has a very interesting setting (which is one of its strong points) and has an array of interesting characters from all walks of life. (One a young peasant soldier, one a middle-aged sister to the king, one a battle-hardened nobleman general, one an honor-bound assassin serving an evil master, one a young lady-in-waiting, and the final one being an immortal protector of mankind who is slowly breaking beneath the pressure of his station.) The central theme of the book is that of leadership, and each of the six viewpoint characters are defined in one way or another by how they lead others.
KINGS has a lot going for it. It’s the kind of story that people remember—it has a grand scope, meaningful characters, and an expansive plot that would have to cover at least five books. However, I don’t know that it’s the best thing for my career right now. The book needs a lot of work before it could be published—at its current length, it would have to be cut into two pieces or slashed by a third in order to work. I also have to do some serious revisions to the plot. I like how all of the characters work, but I worry that the book is too slow (even for me) at the beginning as I establish six viewpoints and six separate plots. I need to find a way to combine some of the plotting so that several viewpoints can work on the same problems.
I think this series could really make an impact on the genre. However, it would take far more work than MISTBORN to get to a publishable level. Perhaps it would be best for me to publish a few books like MISTBORN or ELANTRIS before I do something this ambitious.
Are gloryspren composed entirely of Honor's investiture?
RAFO.
None of the Heralds mention or address the Almighty in the opening scene of [The Way of Kings]; it's a little strange, considering they are his champions. Have they seen or spoken to the Almighty?
Yes, the Heralds have spoken with the Almighty. They also feel that what has been done to them is partially his fault. They are all broken in some way and aren't really honorable anymore.
Was that how and why the deal with Odium showed up?
RAFO.
We know that there are spren that are partially of Honor, partially of Cultivation, and Odium. Can there be spren made of any combination of Shards?
Yes. Well, you would have to call them... Under that definition if you call a seon a spren, then yes. If you don't call a seon a spren, if you define a spren as, "On Roshar, related to the natural world of Roshar," then no. Theoretically yes, but it wouldn't really work. But it depends on how you define spren. If a Shard were to come and reside on Roshar like the other ones have, then you could theoretically see other new spren appearing out of them.
Could there be a spren of all 16 Shards combined all at once?
*hands out RAFO card*
