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Questioner

The second set of Stormlight books, [six] through ten, will that-- will those be more focused on the Heralds' point of view, is that the idea?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, so Taln and Ash, who are both Heralds, are going to be main characters, and they'll each get books dedicated to them. The characters who survive the first five will still be main characters as well, but it's gonna turn more on what happened with the Heralds and things like that. The first five are turning more on what happened with the Knights Radiant and then the last five are more what happened with the Heralds... 'Cause we'll get flashbacks to the time of the Dawnsingers and things like that.

Brandon Sanderson

So, as I said, I felt that I needed to wait to make Elend a viewpoint character. There are several reasons for this. The primary one is that this book is really about Vin. Kelsier has some time, but really everything in this book is focused around its effect on Vin.

Elend couldn't come in as a viewpoint character earlier because I think he would have been distracting. I like him a lot as a character. However, by leaving his viewpoints out, I allow readers to wonder whether or not he's playing Vin. My writing groups responded quite well to Elend, having constant discussions about whether or not his motivations were pure. They could do this because they didn't know his mind, and I think that by letting them do this, they could grow more attached to Vin. After all, whether or not Elend's viewpoints were pure only mattered in relation to her.

But, finally, I decided to ease that tension and let the readers know that he really was the person they thought. This should come as a relief, which relief will quickly be destroyed by the worry I create in this chapter. (In short, I couldn't bring Elend in as a viewpoint until doing so twisted the plot more, rather than simply untwisting it.)

Questioner

What was your motivation behind-- for killing Elhokar and simultaneously ripping my heart out?

Brandon Sanderson

So, it was-- I never feel like I'm killing characters, I'm letting characters take risks and I'm letting other characters have agency to do the things they're doing in the books. That whole plot cycle was more-- less me killing someone off and more me letting Moash go down the dark path that he have been demanding that he go down.

Questioner

Okay, but you realize half the fandom-- or the whole fandom practically wants him dead now.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes. Well, they should! He made a very, very bad decision, and he deserves everything that the fandom is throwing at him.

Questioner

[In Secret History] there was a key scene with a character named Drifter. And, uh, that was the first time that I felt like there was a sense of malevolence with this character. And I was curious if that's something that I should state with that punch? Or was this just a particular thing? 

Brandon Sanderson

I would say yes. Drifter is an ancient entity who has very, very many sides and that is accurately one of them. That said, in that particular scene, there are certain personalities that play off of each other poorly, in real life and in books, and you happened to catch one that-- Drifter and this character do not-- Let's just say they rub each other the wrong way. But I would definitely say that is an aspect of his personality. 

Brent Weeks

1) Brandon, multi-volume epic fantasy presents unique storytelling challenges and unique demands upon a reader. You said in your essay that with The Stormlight Archive, "I didn't want to intentionally build a story where I relied upon reader expectations." But I assume you meant that in a specific rather than a global way: you do intend that subplots will get wrapped up eventually, that there is a main plot, that characters have arcs, and that the story has an ending...right?

2) If that's a valid assumption, then as a storyteller chunking a story out in ten volumes, how much do you worry about imposing the traditional limits of a novel on each volume? (i.e. Chekhov's Gun: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must absolutely go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.")

For example, I wrote a scene for The Black Prism which was interesting in its own right and introduced a cool monster and a setting that I plan to use later in the trilogy—but it didn't accomplish anything necessary for book 1. It slowed the headlong rush to the end of the book; it looked like gratuitous worldbuilding. It wasn't, but a critic wouldn't know that until they read book 3—which I haven't yet written. So I cut it.

Would you have? Would you have cut an analogous scene in Mistborn 1, but not from TSA 1?

Are you writing these books so that each volume has that rousing, bang-up finish, or are you fine with a cliffhanger, content that the series must be judged as a whole? In a ten-volume epic, do you conceive of them as telling one story or ten stories? Or both? Or more?

Brandon Sanderson

The short answer to your first comment is a yes, you are right. The realization I came to while working on The Way of Kings was that I was so accustomed to writing self-aware fantasy in the Mistborn books that I was searching to do the same with Kings. While anyone can enjoy Mistborn (I hope) it works best as a series for those who are familiar with (and expecting) tropes of epic fantasy to come their direction. That allows me to play with conventions and use reader expectations in a delightful way. But it also means that if you don't know those conventions, the story loses a little of its impact.

But this is an interesting discussion as to the larger form of a novel. Is it okay, in an epic fantasy, to hang a gun on the mantle, then not fire it until book ten of the series written fifteen years later? Will people wait that long? Will it even be meaningful? My general instincts as a writer so far have been to make sure those guns are there, but to obscure them—or at least downplay them. People say this is so that I can be more surprising. But it's partially so that those weapons are there when I need them.

It often seems to me that so much in a book is about effective foreshadowing. This deserves more attention than we give it credit. When readers have problems with characters being inconsistent, you could say this is a foreshadowing problem—the changes, or potential for change, within the character has not been presented in the right way. When you have a deus ex machina ending, you could argue that the problem was not in the ending, but the lack of proper framework at the start. Some of the biggest problems in books that are otherwise technically sound come from the lack of proper groundwork.

In the case you mentioned, however, I think I would have cut the creature. Because you said it was slowing things down. There's an old rule of thumb in screenwriting that I've heard expressed in several ways, and think it works well applied to fiction. Don't save your best storytelling for the sequel. If your best storytelling isn't up front, you won't get a sequel. Of course, once you're done, you do need to come up with something as good or better for the sequel, otherwise it might not be worth writing.

For The Way of Kings, I've had to walk a very careful balance. I do have ten books planned, but I had to make sure I was putting my best foot forward for the first book. I had to hang guns for the later novels, but not make this story about them—otherwise readers would be unsatisfied to only get part of a story.

Questioner

I know that Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Elantris are set in the same universe, and they've all kind of got certain Shards and I was reading that, like, you might do a book about that? 

Brandon Sanderson

I will eventually, there's no 'might' about it, but I always try to talk somewhat timidly about it because I don't want the focus to be on that, I want the focus to be on each story that's happening. For instance, The Stormlight Archive will only be about The Stormlight Archive. I will be upfront when I do a crossover, but it is many years in the future. For now, I like it being a behind the scenes thing for fans who really want to get into it. I don't want to scare a reader who'll be like "I can't read Mistborn because I haven't finished all of these other books". You can read Mistborn on its own, and there will be cameos that you will notice as you do more, and the more I write, the more to the forefront some of these things will come, but I will lead you gently into it. But yeah, I will be doing crossovers eventually.

Questioner

And when did you kind of-- was that something you wanted to do from the very beginning, or were you halfway through--

Brandon Sanderson

No, that was something I wanted to do from the beginning. I was inspired by Isaac Asimov combining his Robots books and his Foundation books, and he did it late in his career. It kind of felt a bit hacked together a bit, but it blew my mind when he did it and, as a writer, I always thought, what if somebody did this from the get-go.

The actual origins of the kind of worldhoppers for me was reading books as a teenager and inserting Hoid into them. I really did this.... Do you read books and you like change what is happening in the book, or maybe it's just a me thing? I would have my character interacting with the characters in the books, in my head, as I played the movie of that book in my head, while I was reading it, and there was this character hopping between worlds, with this knowing smirk on his face.

And so, when I was working on Elantris I said, "OK", I knew I had something in that book that was good, that was important, that was relevant, I was very confident in that book. It was my sixth novel, by the way, so I kind of had a handle on these things, and so that's when I decided I'm going to start doing some of this, I'm going to insert Hoid into this and I'm going to start planning this larger epic. It was particularly important to me because I knew I was not going to write a sequel to Elantris immediately, but I wanted to be writing epic stories, and the reason I didn't want to write a sequel to Elantris is because, if an editor rejected Elantris I wanted to be able to send them another book, because when you're getting close to publishing you'll start getting rejections that are like "This is actually a really good book, it doesn't fit our line, you just wrote a great mystical llama book but we just bought one of those, do you have anything else?". I wanted to be able to send them "here's my next thing" rather than "oh, I've got a sequel to the one you just rejected". And so I sat down and wrote the sequel, which was not a sequel, it was called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I jumped forward and I wrote White Sand which is another book connected to all these things and it went on, you know, it went crazy from there. And then when I actually sold Elantris it was already going and already in there, and I was able to sit down and write Mistborn, well in hand, knowing what was going to happen. That's why you find Hoid in Elantris and Mistborn and the sneaky, the scary-- well, it's not sneaky and it's not scary-- the moment in the third book when Vin gets creeped out by Hoid is a very important moment, Cosmerologically, but I'm not going to tell you why!

gabbim

I was just wondering if any of your characters from Cosmere is interested in same-sex relationships, romantically speaking. Jasnah perhaps?

Brandon Sanderson

There are some, but I have left main character relationship issues to be discussed until characters have progressed further in their stories. Jasnah, in particular, is complicated.

Questioner

Who is your favorite character you've written, if you had to pick one?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a hard question, I can't pick a favorite character. Dalinar is what I normally say, just because I've been working on him the longest. Honestly, I don't know. It's whoever I'm working on at the time.

Questioner

Dalinar is a good character, I like Kaladin a lot too.

Brandon Sanderson

Kaladin has really worked out well. It's interesting because Kaladin-- the first time I wrote The Way of Kings, in 2002-- did not work and I had to rip him out and try a completely different personality and things for him. So it's cool to see it finally working.

Questioner

Why do you decide to do more series like Apocalypse Guard or the Secret Project [Skyward] when you still have so many more unfinished sequels?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a good question. No, it is totally legit. *laughter* So, I did finish Legion. I did that. So, those who are looking for that, that will come out next year. Why do I do it this way? Well, most of the time, it's because I try a book, and it doesn't work. Rithmatist fans probably know, I tried to write Rithmatist 2, I built an outline, I started writing it, and the book didn't work. I wasn't-- the outline was wrong on that one. I got, like, three chapters in, and I'm like, "Nope. This book is broken." And it was mostly due to my lack of research into the proper things to do the book the right way. And because Rithmatist and Alcatraz, which you'll get Alcatraz 6 eventually, those are the two that are looming most; those are side projects. Those are things that I do for fun. They have to slot in between my main projects, if that makes any sense. Like, I have to do them when there's time from other projects. So, for instance, I couldn't go to Random House and say, "I'm gonna do Rithmatist 2 sequel," because Rithmatist is not their series. It belongs to Tor. So, if I wanna do more with Random House, I have to do something that works for them. And that's kind of the long and short of it.

I mean, I will get around to things like Warbreaker and Elantris sequels. *cheers* But the thing about those is, those are sequels to the worlds, not necessarily sequels to the characters. I won't promise you that the same characters will appear in them. Some of them will. But it's the idea that those are standalone books that I plan to do more in the world, and the time isn't right in the cosmere to do those. For something like Rithmatist, that's more pressing, because I'm like "that promises a sequel with the same characters". But I have to find out how to write it first. And, for various reasons, a Rithmatist sequel is really tricky to pull off. So, that's kinda the answer to it. Sometimes, I also just need a break to do whatever my mind wants to do. It's not a very satisfying answer, but it is the way my brain works. But you can know that if it's, like, one of the main line things that I've got contracts for, that I won't be doing that to you on. So, Stormlight will be pretty regular, Mistborn will be pretty regular. But some of the side projects, it's just when it's right it's right.

Zas678

I have some more in-depth questions that might be RAFO'd. For fans who want to know what I'm talking about, go here. Here they are:

Who is Hoid in Well of Ascension? We (TWG) have found some candidates:

Wolfhound merchantTerris person that Elend meets after Vin went back to LuthadelTeur or old Jed (the two Skaa in the first Sazed chapter)Crazy cannibal Skaa (I doubt it though)

We already know it isn't the man who discovered duralumin, or the Skaa leader outside the dress shop, or the old Skaa who waits with the Holy First Witness when the Koloss attack.

I think those were all of the characters that we found as candidates.

Brandon Sanderson

People are really close to this one, and I noticed that later in this thread, you or someone else mentioned the footprints in the deleted scene.

Hoid's appearance in Mistborn: Well of Ascension is a little unlike the others. When the scene at the Well was moved in revision, one of Hoid's major influences on the book had to go (for various reasons). Left in the book is only one little hint, really. A character notices something odd about someone, but doesn't dwell on it. You can probably find the line if you look very closely.

Let me say this. Hoid got wrapped up in things he didn't expect to be involved in, and they dominated much of his time during the events of Mistborn: Well of Ascension. He spent most of the book in a different place from most of the viewpoint characters. He's only near them for a very short time, and he's deeply in disguise. I couldn't include his name, as he'd never have used the name "Hoid" for himself there, because it wouldn't have been right for the disguise. He'd have used another pseudonym. (He didn't, by the way, mention one.)

I've probably said too much already. Now, perhaps what people should asking me is this: "What has Hoid been up to in all of these books?" Or, maybe they shouldn't ask me, as I wouldn't be likely to answer. (There are clues in the novels, however.) No, he's not just hanging out. Yes, I know what he's been doing. Will I write his scenes some day? Maybe. We'll see. There may be short stories posted on my website.

Questioner (paraphrased)

I thought that three years ago you wanted to write a book with Tad Williams and have George R.R. Martin finish it. Is that still just a pipe dream?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That's still a pipe dream

So the question is; I had this goofy idea one time, and I thought "what if I get this other famous fantasy writer and together the two of us wrote"... and we would write a book together, but it wouldn't be a Brandon Sanderson and, it would be a Brandon Sanderson versus where we each create a set of characters who have contrasting role, were against each other, and who would try to achieve this, um, they would both be on opposite sides and they would seduce each other's characters or murder each other's characters and thing like this and we would write it almost to the climax, and then we would go to George Martin and we would say "you have to adjudicate how we would write the ending" and so the cover would be like 'Brandon Sanderson vs. Pat Rothfuss with guest judge George R.R. Martin".

It is really just a pipe dream, especially when its a matter of 'when are we gonna do that', and it's really just a pipe dream. Maybe i'll make it happen, the trick is I'd have to find... like I cant do Pat because his fans would kill me for slowing him down. So it would have to be someone like Brent or Anya. Somebody who is a little faster, but I could totally see a 'Brandon Sanderson vs. Brent Weeks' right, you guys don't have to root for him cause he lives here. Yeah, something like that. We'll see if I can make it happen.

Freelancer (paraphrased)

In the opening of The Emperor's Soul, I see a scene familiar to Warbreaker; the first character we meet is in jail. Was this "connection" intentional?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes and no. Originally there was a prologue which featured Hoid speaking with the main character and setting some of the plot in motion, but it was cut before final revision. Also, it's convenient to begin with a character who is already in trouble.

Questioner

We were talking about Nightblood. How do you go about creating characters that are inanimate objects, but come to life? Because it seems a lot different. Also, gods... like, things that are otherworldly, because characters like real people, it's easy to write that. But considering gods and inanimate objects, that's beyond, sort of.

Brandon Sanderson

Well, fortunately, for us writers, nobody among our audience will be able to contradict us. Right? So, in some ways, writing something that nobody has ever experienced is a lot easier than writing something that a fair percentage of the population has experienced but you have not. And so, I just do my best. Being a writer is about learning to, "fake it." To pretend you're someone you're not, to pretend to have the experience that you don't, so that character sounds authentic. And faking something that no one can call you on is actually fairly easy.

Brandon Sanderson

If you didn’t know, Mistborn was pitched to my editor as a trilogy of trilogies. I told him I wanted to do a trilogy of epic fantasy books, then the same world in a modern setting, which we’re not to yet, but it’s going to be Allomancers in the 21st century-equivalent technology. It’s an urban fantasy series. Then I wanted to do a Science Fiction series in the same world, using the Epic Fantasy world as kind of a mythology to this new world, and the magic system becoming the means of Space Travel.

So Alloy of Law I wanted to set up things for the second trilogy. I didn’t want to do the second trilogy yet, because the second trilogy, like the first trilogy is kind of bigger books, with a very involved storyline evolved across three books, and I didn’t want to be releasing that parallel to Stormlight Archive, which is the same sort of thing. Very evolved books where you tie a lot of things together, and so I wanted a series of Mistborn novels that were more independent.

Alloy of Law is intended to be a “read it, have fun.” Eventually I may end up doing more with those characters, but when I do, you won’t have to remember that much about this one. It’s not like you have to remember a cast of 500 characters. You can just keep track of the main characters. They’re more of an episodic adventure. I kind of imagine Alloy of Law being—I’m not totally sure how to describe it. It’s like you have the giant movie that comes out, and then you have a TV show that’s based off of it, and then another big movie series, or something like that, if that makes any sense. So that’s what Alloy of Law is.

Questioner

Will Hoid be appearing as a major character in other books besides Stormlight and Dragonsteel?

Brandon Sanderson

Will Hoid be appearing as a major character in books other than Stormlight or Dragonsteel. Yes, he will have a major role to play in the end sequence of the Cosmere, where he will be a major viewpoint character.

Questioner

In the first three Mistborn books, and Elantris and Warbreaker, you focus a lot on sort of gods and religion, is there a particular reason for that?

Brandon Sanderson

Why do I focus on gods and religion in my books. Well there's a couple of reasons. The main one is the kind of overarching story of the cosmere, which all my books are connected, there is some divine force named Adonalsium that was broken apart long ago and the scions of that-- people who have that power are showing up and causing problems and things on planets. So that's kind of the hidden epic behind the scenes, and so because of that religion is a very big part of what happens there.

I'm also a religious person. For those who don't know, I'm Mormon, I'm LDS. And so religion is important to me and whatever I'm fascinated by works it's way into my books. Now I'm generally the type of writer who doesn't feel like I should go into a book with a theme, I should explore what the characters are passionate and let the theme manifest naturally. And so I do that a lot, I don't go in saying "Oh I'm going to teach people this" I say "Who is this character, what are they passionate about" But the things I'm interested in you see. That's why you end up with stories about a god who doesn't believe in his own religion, from Warbreaker. Or you end up with these different things, with Kelsier founding a religion to use it, or having people with different types of faith. And I really think that part of the point of fiction is to, for me, to explore different ideas from different angles and try to just tackle them. And so you'll see me coming back to some of the same concepts again and again, because I want to try them from a new angle, see how this person thinks, see how this character deals with it. Because that's just really interesting to me.

Brandon Sanderson

Updates on Main Projects

Death (Without Pizza)

A major bombshell update here: we have finished a first draft of this book! I'm moving this up to major projects, as I anticipate a release of this novel in the coming two years. It is a Dresden Files-esque urban fantasy series set in London, starring a necromancer. (With a very Sanderson-style take on necromancy.)

Many of you have been following along with this project, which I've mentioned for many years in the State of the Sanderson posts. I wrote a rough draft of a big chunk of this book back some years ago now, but didn't like how it was going, so I shelved it. The idea stuck with me though—and I really wanted to give it another chance. Over the years, one part I didn't like was actually the pizza aspect. The original pitch was for a pizza delivery man who became a necromancer.

Well, over the years, I found I wanted a stronger character for the protagonist. Starting with the title Death by Pizza had pushed me to make the story more jokey than I wanted, and had led me to cut corners on the worldbuilding in ways I didn't like. So when I went back to the drawing board, I started going in different directions with the storytelling. A more intricate, interesting magic system. And a character with more heart. Where I eventually ended up going was studying metal music culture.

The subculture of heavy metal music is fascinating to me. I really like how passionate the fans are about it, and how often outsiders are wrong about those inside it. (Do a little reading on the topic, and you might find that a lot of your stereotypes of metal fans are wrong—like mine were. The more I read about and talked to metal fans, the more fascinated I became by the subculture.) It seemed to me that a metalhead who finds out he's a necromancer could be a cool hook.

Well, around the time I was really getting into this, I was chatting with Peter Orullian, a novelist who is a friend of mine. He's mostly known for his epic fantasy series The Vault of Heaven, but he also happens to be a metalhead and a musician. (He's toured internationally fronting metal bands, and recently composed an entire rock opera in the style of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He's even written a book with the band Dream Theater, in conjunction with one of their concept albums.)

Well, the match seemed perfect. He could bring the expertise on metal music, and I could provide the worldbuilding. So we jumped into a collaboration. I wrote out a lengthy world guide and outline, and Peter did a lot of experimenting to find the right voice for our character. We worked on the first volume all during the summer and fall, and the resulting book is quite promising. It's the story of an American metal singer living in London whose day goes from bad to worse as he gets kicked out of his band, then makes his way to his favorite pub to lick his wounds—only to end up getting shot in the head during an apparent robbery. And after that, things start to go really badly for him.

Peter finished the first draft in November, and I've been spending my December doing a second draft. After that, I'll kick it back to him for a third draft so that we can make sure our different voices are smoothed out. We'll see where it goes from there! In any case, though, Death Without Pizza will not be the final title for the story. We'll pick something a little less silly; I'm a little worried people will expect something over-the-top metal like Brütal Legend—which was great, but not the direction this story ended up going. Anyway, I'll post updates as we go along!

Status: Being revised. After that, we'll look for a publisher.

virgineyes09

Writing question. When writing a fantasy novel in which the setting and the plot are so tightly linked (i.e. the plot of Stormlight is linked inextricably and specifically to the world of Roshar) which area do you focus on first, world or story, or both simultaneously? Can you talk about Stormlight specifically and how you built the world and the story to work so tightly together? Do you ever make small changes in the worldbuilding that end up forcing you to make big changes to the plot and vice versa?

Brandon Sanderson

The way I design stories, I'm usually always thinking about items in three areas that catch my attention: Character conflicts, setting themes, and plot archetypes. I keep a notebook where I'm writing down in these three general areas, looking for ideas that strike me as feeling new or interesting in some way.

Books begin to form when several of these ideas start to grow together, and influence one another in interesting ways. Roshar, as a planet, was interesting--but the story wasn't working t until the idea of the spren, the characters who interact with them, and the world all together started to play off each other.

When I feel like something is really coming together, I sit down and build an outline from all of these idea. This back-and-forth experience leads to the story being interconnected as I jump back and forth between outlining plot, setting, and character. Often, these things will change one another greatly as I work through it, trying to see it all as a whole, rather than parts.

staircasewit

I suppose my question is about how you name your characters. I've been reading WoT and notice some similarities, for example Cenn, and Sarene, and Shalon (different spelling, but they probably sound the same). Is it purely by accident that you have characters with similar names, or is it a homage to a recent master of the fantasy genre? Or is it just that with RJ's 2000+ names, it's impossible to escape some overlap? :) So I guess I'm curious about how you name your characters in general (and even places. Urithiru is an awesome name.)

Brandon Sanderson

I ended up with a lot of unconscious similarities in KINGS as I was working on it for such an extended period of time. Cenn wasn't actually intentional. (At least, I don't think so; sometimes, it's hard to remember back to which names pop out intentionally and which do not.) The eyebrows of the Thaylens were, however, an intentional homage, as is the name of the mountains by where Szeth's people live.

There is going to be some overlap. Sarene is a great example of this; I'm pretty sure that one is just coincidence, though I'd lay odds on Cenn being an unconscious influence.

Some of the names in the book were constructed quite intentionally to fit linguistic paradigms of the setting. Urithiru, for example, is a palindrome--which are holy in the Alethi and Veden tongues. Some names, like Shallan, are intentionally one letter off of a holy word--as to not sound too arrogant. (Shallash would be the holy word; nobility will often change one letter to create a child's name to evoke the holy term, but not be blasphemous.)

With many, I just go for the right feel. I've worked these names over for years and years at this point. Dalinar's name has been set in place for a good ten years or so, but Kaladin used to be named Merin and Szeth used to be named Jek. (The first changed because I didn't like it; the second changed because the linguistics of the Shin people changed and I needed a name that better fit.)

Brandon Sanderson

The origin of The Rithmatist

Six years ago, I was writing a book that I hated.

Now, that's both rare and common for me at the same time. I tire of pretty much every book I work on at some point, usually during the revision process. I push through and get over it. That's what you do as a writer. By the time I'm done with the process, I'm tired of the book—but it's the good kind of tired. The "I worked hard, and now have something awesome to show for it" tired.

Unfortunately, that wasn't happening for this book. Called The Liar of Partinel, every chapter was a chore to write. Though it had started very well, it continued to spiral farther and farther down the drain. I was familiar enough with my own writing by this point to realize the problems with Liar wouldn't work themselves out. The characters were boring, the plot forced. The worldbuilding elements never quite clicked together.

It had been years since I'd had such a bad feeling about a novel. (The last time, in fact, was Mythwalker—my sixth unpublished book—which I abandoned halfway through.) Part of the problem, I suspect, had to do with my expectations. Liar, set in the same world as Dragonsteel, was to be the origin story of Hoid, the character who has appeared in all of my Cosmere novels. (Information here—warning, big spoilers.)

I needed Hoid's story to be epic and awesome. It just wasn't. And so, I ended up "hiding" from that novel and working on something else instead.

The Rithmatist. It started with some drawings and a purely creative week sketching out a world, characters, and magic. That week is the exact sort that turned me into a writer in the first place, and was a distinct contrast to the grind that had been Liar. I abandoned the book and dove into The Rithmatist (then called Scribbler), and wrote a book where everything just came together. It happens sometimes. It just works, and I can't always explain—even to myself—why.

I finished the first draft of the book in the summer of 2007. In the fall, I got the call regarding the Wheel of Time, and my world transformed forever. The Rithmatist, though an awesome book, languished for years because I didn't have the time to devote to it. Doing a tour or contract for another teen book was impossible at that time, and beyond that I couldn't commit to writing any sequels or even doing any revision for the novel.

I did tell Tor about it, though, and they started to get excited. The publisher tried at several times to get me to release it, but I didn't feel the time was right. I couldn't let my attention be divided that far. I was already stretched too thin, and I wanted my attention (and that of my readers) to be on the Wheel of Time.

The month A Memory of Light was done and turned in, however, I called Tor and told them it was time to move forward. I'm pleased to be releasing the book now, when I can give it the attention it deserves.

And hopefully someday I'll be able to fix The Liar of Partinel. (At this point, I'm feeling I need to rewrite it as a first-person narrative, though making that switch is going to cause an entire host of problems.)

Questioner

If you wanted your sons to grow up to be one of your characters, would you want them to?

Brandon Sanderson

Uhhh. If they grow up to be Dalinar, without going through the phase of being a murderous tyrant, I would probably pick that one.

Questioner

Alright, no murderous tyrants.

Brandon Sanderson

No murderous tyrants. If they could grow up to be Sazed without being, y'know, castrated that might be-- But that's the thing. A lot of my characters have been through some rough stuff.

Questioner

Almost right.

Brandon Sanderson

No, I don't think that torment necessarily makes you a good character person, there are plenty of good people who have never been through things like that, but it makes them interesting to write about.

Kisaoda

I got my wife hooked on Sanderson's works recently, especially the Stormlight novels. She absolutely loves Shallan as a character and fell deeper in love with her when she saw your illustration of her... which is now saved as her current desktop wallpaper. So kudos there!

My question to you is this: how much reading into the novels do you do before coming up with an idea of a setting or character to paint? What is your process when deciding the best scene to depict?

Ben McSweeney

The Shallan endpage is mostly Michael Whelan, I assisted some in the layout and design but he's responsible for the finished painting.

I read the full text of the novel while it's still in the draft stages, which is a rare privilege and part of what makes our production a little different than usual. When deciding what subjects to choose for Shallan's pages, I first look for seed that Brandon plants in the text, usually moments where Shallan specifically mentions drawing something. Or I look for subjects that are suitable for her to draw and which she's reasonably likely to see (and have time for) during her travels. Based on that and the conversations I have with Brandon and Isaac, we come up with a list of 6-8 subjects which we then develop further.

Even though Shallan does draw portraits of people, we avoid trying to reproduce those so as to not define the features of various characters too strictly. Instead we focus on plants and animals and hints of the world around her.

Questioner

I was curious what the-- or if you had an inspiration for the scene with Vin and Elend going to his father's camp and the talk about acceptance?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah a lot of these con-- these stories-- If you didn't hear it, there's a scene where Vin and Elend in Words of Radiance go to visit-- *crowd murmurs* not Words of Radiance *laughter* Well of Ascension! They both start with a "W" I'm running out of letters to start books with. Yeah it's a good problem. So they go to talk to Straff and there's a lot of discussion about acceptance and just kind of things I was thinking about at the time and think about a lot. One of the things is "I hope people enjoy this, if not you're just going to have to deal with it." I work out what I'm thinking about life through the voices of my characters. And it's something I really look for in books as well, I do want a little philosophy with my fantasy. And, y'know, it's not that I'm trying to answer those questions, but I'm working on them. And the characters, because they have a different perspective from myself--because the characters don't voice what I think, they voice what they think about something I'm thinking about--and that really kind of helps me think about it and talk through it. And it's one of the reasons I write books, besides doing awesome stuff.

Questioner

How much influence do you have on the story of the Infinity Blade games?

Second Questioner

They tell you what to write and you flesh it out?

Brandon Sanderson

No, when I came on they said, "We don't have a story. Can you come up with one?". That was part of the reason I was interested in doing it. Basically, the whole story of games two and three, and the in between, have been my stories. I didn't write the games. I went over the dialogue and told them where it was really bad. I was focused on the novellas. The dialogue in the games, not quite as awesome as I would want it to be. But the basic story, it was me and the creators of the game brainstorming, talking about it. All the characters are ones I came up with.

Questioner

Because, really, in the first one there weren't exactly characters.

Brandon Sanderson

Though it had it's own little fun narrative, which I liked the idea of. But when I sat down with them I'm like, "If you're going to have a series, you can't have a series with no characters ever. You have fifty protagonists that die each time. You've gotta build the mechanism for this. So let's go this direction." They loved it.

Questioner

And that was why Siris wound up being a Deathless?

Brandon Sanderson

Mhmm.

Brandon Sanderson

Ars Arcanum

It's kind of surprising to me, but to some people, appendices like this can be very divisive topics. There are people who will pick up a book and check to see if it has a map and appendix–and if it has both, they're more likely to read it. (I was actually one of these when I was younger.) I guess the philosophy here, if I analyze my teenage self, was that if an author put so much work into a book–and if the book was so complex–that there had to be an appendix, then that was a book I wanted to read.

Others have the opposite reaction, I've come to learn. I've met people who think that this sort of thing in the back of a book indicates that the author is sloppy, and can't tell a tight story. Or, that the story is going to be too complicated to enjoy.

In Elantris, my first book, I fought for a pronunciation guide and a cast of characters in the back. I like appendixes, though now it's mostly because my untrustworthy brain often forgets who characters are. With the Mistborn trilogy being as complex as (hopefully) I want it to be, I figured I'd need cast lists in order to help you remember book one when reading book two.

So, book two has a bigger appendix. However, I wanted to do something in this one as well. One thing I knew people were going to ask about was a way to keep the metals straight. That's why I developed the quick reference chart, and my friend Isaac did that beautiful metal table for a visual reference–I absolutely love how it looks.

...

My magic systems are generally like a new science for the world in which they are practiced, so I like the feel this gives. Hopefully, you found this appendix useful. If not, I suspect you'll really appreciate the one in book two, as the cast of characters there will provide a lot of helpful reminders.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it's looking like my next series--after Warbreaker, which is looking like it will be a two-book cycle--will be set in the Dragonsteel world. I'm revamping the setting significantly, mashing it together with Aether of Night, which always had a cool magic system but a weaker plot.

I have some sample chapters done, actually. Dragonsteel is now the series name, and the first book will be titled "The Liar of Partinel." (Probably.) The book you all read (now tentatively titled "The Eternal War") will be the third or fourth book in the series, and we will wait that long to introduce Jerick, Ryalla, and Bat'Chor. "Liar" will take place some five hundred years before "The Eternal War."

Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn was my fourteenth book, Elantris my sixth.  One, named Dragonsteel, was my seventh and a number of the people on my forums knew me when I started writing it.  It was, in a way, the book that 'made me famous' among my group of friends.  So, many of them are excited to hear that I'm reworking the setting and planning to do the book for the big leagues. Dragonsteel Prime, the original, just isn't publishable as is.  There were some great ideas, but I didn't have the skill at the time to make them work.  So, I'm stealing some of the best ideas--and characters--and planning a new series around them.  Hence Ookla calling me a cannibal, since I'm 'Cannibalizing' my old ideas to make new books. 

The following is a complete Brandon Sanderson Bibliography, published and unpublished.  Prime indicates an early attempt at a book which was later redone.  (Note that when I redo a book like this, it isn't a 'rewrite.'  Generally, it's me taking some elements from the setting and writing a whole new book in that setting, using old ideas and mixing them with fresh ones.)  Published books are in bold.

1) White Sand Prime (My first book, took two + years to write.  1998)

2) Star's End (Science fiction.  1998)

3) Lord Mastrell (Sequel to White Sand Prime.  1999)

4) Knight Life (Fantasy comedy.  1999)

5) The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora (Science fiction.  1999)

6) Elantris (2000.  Published by Tor: 2005)

7) Dragonsteel (2000)

8 ) White Sand (2001)

9) Mythwalker (Never finished. 2001)

10) Mistborn Prime (Stole the magic system and title for a later book.  2002)

11) Final Empire Prime (Stole a character, some setting elements, and title for a later book.  2002)

12) The Aether of Night (2002)

13) The Way of Kings (350,000 words.  Took a long time.  2003)

14) Mistborn: The Final Empire (2004, Published by Tor 2006)

15) Mistborn: The Well of Ascension (2005.  Contracted to Tor for 2006)

16) Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians (2005.  Contracted to Scholastic for 2006)

17) Mistborn: The Hero of Ages (2006.  Contracted to Tor for 2007)

18) Warbreaker (2006.  Tentatively to be released by Tor for 2007)

19) Alcatraz vs. The Scrivener's Bones (2006.  Contracted by Scholastic for 2008)

20) Dragonsteel: The Liar of Partinel (Unfinished.  2007?)

21) Alcatraz vs. The Knights of Crystallia (Planned.  2007  Contracted by Scholastic for 2009)

22) Nightblood (Planned.  2008)

23) Dragonsteel: The Lightweaver of Rens (Planned. 2008)

24) Alcatraz vs. The Dark Talent (Planned.  2008.  Contracted for Scholastic for 2010)

I'm not sure if I got all of those dates right, but the order is correct.  I'm finished with all the books up to Dragonsteel, though Mistborn 3, Warbreaker, and Alcatraz 2 are all only in the third draft stage.

Brandon Sanderson

You DON'T have to have read the other Dragonsteel to understand this. The other Dragonsteel will never be published. Some of the plots and characters in it, however, will eventually become book three of this series. Not because I'm doing a 'Dragonlance' type thing, but because when I sat down to work on this project, I realized that I'd rather start back in time a few hundred years. In other words, I'm writing the prequels first, if that's possible.

Brandon Sanderson

In worldbuilding this, I realized that I missed a big opportunity in Dragonsteel Prime by not dealing with fainlife all that much. It was a powerful world element that got mostly ignored. By writing a book here, where I can slam a city in to the middle of the fain assault--before people learned really how to keep the alien landscape back--I think I'll be able to focus more on the setting.

One thing that always bothered me about Dragonsteel Prime is that it felt rather generic for me. I like more distinctive settings, with more distinctive magics. Yet, Dragonsteel Prime had a fairly standard fantasy world (though one set in the bronze age) with magic that didn't really get used all that much in the first book. The idea here is to add the Aether magic in, which is a 'day-to-day' magic, and to enhance the originality of the setting by using fainlife more. Microkenisis, Realmatic Theory, Cognitive Ripples and Tzai Blows, and all of that will STILL be part of this world. I've simply folded the Aethers in as well, and hopefully I can make it all feel cohesive.

17th Shard

Ok, fair enough. Do you have a scene you enjoyed more than the rest, and on the flip side, was their something that you did not enjoy?

Brandon Sanderson

I will say that I really loved doing all the interludes because they gave me a sense, when I was writing this book, of jumping to something new, which is part of what kept me going in all of this. Are they my favorite scenes in the book? No, but they were probably my favorite to write because it's like I get to take a break and write something whacky and looney, so to speak.

Hmm…is there anything that was harder? You know, revisions are always hard. In the next to last draft I changed Dalinar's arc very substantially, and that was a hard write. And, you know, Adolin was not originally a viewpoint character, so there was a lot of hard writing there. So, poor Adolin probably gets the badge for hardest to write. Not because he as a character was hard to write but because I was having to repurpose scenes and toss out scenes and rewrite them with Adolin as the viewpoint character and so on to add just a little more dimension to Dalinar's plot arc.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirteen - Part One

I hope this first paragraph isn't too overly-poetic for you. I have a tendency to dabble in writing poetic language, and can veer into sections of prose that are a bit over-written. But, my editor didn't strike this down, so I assume it's all right.

The things Vin talks about in this first scene are, essentially, the things that will come to form the plot of the entire series. In the original drafts of the novel, she worried about these issues much earlier in the book. However, I backed off on them to let the siege take form first.

It's not that these worries about the Deepness and the past aren't important–they're VERY important. And, they'll play a big part in this book. The armies and politics, however, are the established plot of the novel. This book–book two–isn't about the deepness. It's about the "What Next?" So the characters overthrew the empire. What's next? In my opinion, what they're doing now–struggling to keep something going, rather than tear it down–is far more difficult than anything they did in the first book.

This grueling process is going to have a powerful influence on their characters, and make from them the people they need to become in order to deal with the events of the final book. In a way, that makes this the most important–and most interesting–book of the trilogy. It’s the one which is about character over plot.

My goal with Vin, here, is to take the mists from her. Kelsier gave them to her in book one, and now it's time to take them away.

They are the haven of the Mistborn. But, if you watch as the story progresses, you will see that I slowly take them away and leave her without.

Questioner

I would like to know the process of working with other artists, like Isaac. And I saw there was a very big list of credits in the start of Oathbringer. Does the artist also affect your writing? Or you write first, and then the artists do their artwork?

Isaac Stewart

For each Stormlight book, we have twenty or thirty pieces of art, and I can't do them all myself. We've had a bunch of people waiting in the wings, a bunch of artists that we send the art to. I read the book, I make notes, Brandon gives me notes of what he would like to see in the book. We combine it into a big list. I assign out to different artists. And then we have art reviews, where I get art from the different artists, and Brandon and I go over it and say what they got right, what maybe they could change. And then we go back and forth with the artist until it's just exactly what we want it to be for the book. The same thing happens when Brandon and I are working on maps or symbols. That's basically the process.

Questioner

So it never affects your writing?

Brandon Sanderson

It does affect my writing. I can give a couple little examples of this. The American cover for Elantris, I love. It's done by Stephan Martinière. It's this gorgeous cover, it’s a very distinctive, different sort of style. But the actual scene he painted wasn't in the book. And I liked it so much... And that doesn't matter that much. The cover of the book, think of it more like a movie poster for the book. The actual scene doesn't have to occur, that doesn't bother me. But I realized I could change one little part, and have Sarene and Hrathen on the wall, looking like they did on the cover. So I rewrote the passage to match the cover. So that has happened before.

For instance, Isaac has inserted a character named Nazh into the books, who is kind of one of the people in-world-- It's important to me, particularly in Stormlight, that all the art you're seeing is something from in-world. I don't want it to be-- The covers are different. The covers are one thing. But the other stuff that we wanna have in there, we want it to be what we call ephemera. It's a map that actually existed in Roshar. It's sketches done by a character from the books. This is to not break the immersion. You're not going into the book and getting it illustrated for you. You are getting the scraps of drawings and things that were in-world. Because I feel like-- Tolkien started this. The map that you got in The Hobbit was the map they carried. It's not like someone came along and drew a map. And I liked that way better. So Nazh is one of the characters gathering these maps, and bringing them together. So I wrote him into the books.

Other things that Isaac has done like that, or an artist has sent us something and I'm like, "This is really cool. Let's work this in somehow." It does happen, certainly. And we do get the art early enough, in a lot of the cases, where I'm still doing revisions, and I'll add tweaks and things like that.

Brandon Sanderson

I think short chapters do some good, and accomplish a lot. Martin is a master, and he uses them well. (At least, in some places.) Pratchett does an equally good job at it in a different type of sub-genre. But used poorly (or, well, unfairly) they do some terrible things to me as a reader.

An example here for me is Dan Brown. I don't want to pick on him, as big targets are often too easy to pick on. He's obviously been very successful, and has some very interesting things about his writing. However, one thing I noticed reading the Da Vinci Code was that he seemed to be using the same tricks over and over and over to simply get me to turn the page. Someone would open a door and... We don't find out what was on the other side. The chapter ends. We go to the next chapter, and we either find out that nothing really that important was on the other side of the door, or we get told "I'll tell you what was on the other side of that door eventually...if you keep reading."

This actually works, quite well, for a little while. (For me in the Da Vinci Code it worked for about half the book.) And then, it just gets wearying to me. The gimmicks start to show through, and I get tired of never finding anything out. There doesn't feel like development, just one big long stall. Yes, it's possible for a book to be "too exciting." Because if excitement is all there is, we lose character, setting, and a whole lot of depth. We go from trouble, to trouble, to trouble. High tension moment to high tension moment.

Now, this is an extreme example, but I think that it's something for writers to think about. You suggest that self-indulgence is a danger. Yes, perhaps it is. At the same time, I'm not writing thrillers. I'm writing epic fantasy. I'm writing 300,000 word plus books. There should be ups, there should be downs, there should be moments of frantic pace, and there should be scenes of (yes) dinner. Sometimes, the most telling scenes in a story can be a simple dinner sequence. The scene with Faramir riding to charge while his father eats from the LoTR movies comes to mind.

But this isn't exactly what I was trying to get to. I write long chapters not to (hopefully) indulge. I do it to make each chapter (or sequence of them) to have its own rising action, its own climactic moments, its own falling action. I want to open the door and, instead of cutting away, show something on the other side that really does upset the scene. Then continue through the scene to show the ramifications. I want to have each chapter be a story unto itself, rather than a movie trailer for the next chapter. (Which, in turn, is a movie trailer for the next one...and so on.)

Again, I do think there are great ways to use the short chapters. But I worry that the conventional wisdom of "Don't ever let them put the book down!" is bad advice for some authors. Les Miserables has a whole lot of parts that are not very exciting. There are plenty of parts where, once I'm done with the scene, I can put the book down and walk away. It pulls me back to read not because it uses a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, but because the deep, rich characters draw me back to read further about them.

I do agree that the larger casts are a problem that doesn't seem to have a good solution. Either you ignore half your characters for a book—as GRRM did—or you give them only brief appearances—as Robert Jordan often did. I don't think I'm in a position to criticize either author as, unlike Dan Brown, I think they both do/did fantastic jobs with their works. But I am consciously keeping the cast of the Stormlight Archive down.

Questioner

If you could have dinner with three characters from books (not just yours), who would you dine with, and why? Plus what would you be eating?

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm... Let me answer this as one from a classic, one from a sf/f book not my own, and one from a book that is my own. Otherwise the question is too big for me to get a real answer to, as there are so many.

Well, my favorite character from a classic is Jean Valjean. I don't know what we'd eat, but I'd avoid ordering bread...

My favorite character from a fantasy book not my own is probably Perrin from The Wheel of Time, though that's a half-cheat, as I worked on the series. So it would either be him or, if I had to pick another, maybe Sam Vimes from Discworld. We'd avoid sausages in a bun.

From my own books, I don't know if I can pick a favorite, as they're all my children. So maybe I'll just tie it to who would be the most fun to go to dinner with. Kelsier would be too dangerous--you never know who is going to show up and try to kill him. Probably Shallan, as I feel she'd have the most interesting conversation. We wouldn't order men's food because I'm too much of a wimp, and it would probably be way too spicy.

Questioner

So Wayne is my absolute favorite character. What was your main inspiration for him?

Brandon Sanderson

Wayne started with a character, I wanted to do someone who changed personalities based on the hat they wore, and it actually started as a haberdasher, a hat maker, and as a character staring in his own story in the Mistborn world and it didn't work. He needed somebody to play off of and so I shelved it and started The Alloy of Law where he could have somebody to play off of. Wax actually grew out of Wayne.

p0staldave

I believe I've heard you mention more than once that you weren't happy with WoK, could you explain a bit exactly what you would change or love to do-over with it or expand on your comments?

Brandon Sanderson

The original draft of The Way of Kings had some big issues. One of the largest ones was that I was trying to do too many characters with too many separate plots. (Jasnah and Taln both had full sequences with as much complexity as the three main characters in the current draft.) Beyond that, Kaladin's character (he had a different name there) was bland and never worked. I needed to rebuild him from the start.

I'll post more explanations of this in the KINGS annotations, which I'm working on right now. As for teasers for the second book, one of the interludes is from Taln's viewpoint. (He's the guy who shows up in the epilogue of the previous book.)

Questioner

How has the process of portraying women changed from Elantris to the more recent books?

Brandon Sanderson

Portraying women? A couple of things. I would say the primary one is just getting better at characterization all around. And the other one has been kind of this-- *sighs* struggle to figure out how to make every female character's conflict be about her role-- Not just her relationships, that one's not as big a deal because-- I mean if you look at the male characters, they all have relationship issues too, right? But it's more like fighting against-- Like if every woman is fighting against society's expectations of her that becomes a cliche very quickly and there are plenty of people, of both genders who are fighting against society's expectations but people of both genders are like "This is my society, I'm part of this" it's not fighting against it it's "finding my place". It's very difficult though when you are writing characters in states of conflict. So, I don't know.

Questioner

I read Shadows of Self and Elantris back-to-back, and that was really interesting to see the differences between the first published and most recent published.

Brandon Sanderson

Right, yeah. Those books will have some very big differences.

Brandon Sanderson

I started working on THE WAY OF KINGS fifteen years ago. I wrote the first version of the book in full back in 2003. It was always planned to be big. You don’t grow up reading Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, and Melanie Rawn without wanting to do your own big epic. When I showed it to my editor back in ’03, he thought it was too ambitious to be published, at least as my second novel.

There are thirty magic systems in this world, depending on how you count them, and around six thousand years of history I’ve mapped out. There are dozens of cultures, a continent of enormous scope, and a deep, rich mythology. However, when I say things like that, you have to realize that very little of it will end up in the first book. The best fantasy epics I’ve read begin with a personal look at the characters in the early books, then have a steady expansion into epic scope.

I’ve spent many years thinking about the epic fantasy genre, what makes it work, what I love about it, and how to deal with its inherent weaknesses. And so I’m trying to make use of the form of the novel (meaning how I place chapters and which viewpoints I put where) in order to convey the scope without distracting from the main stories I wish to tell.

Anyway, I don’t jump between dozens of characters in this novel. There are three central viewpoints, with two or so primary supporting viewpoints. I intend the first book to be its own story, focused and personal. I don’t want this to be the “Wow! Thirty Magic Systems!” series. I want it to be a series about a group of characters you care about, with a lush and real world that has solid and expansive depth.

In other words, I promise you a variety of magics, mythology, history, and cultures . . . but not all in the first book.

Questioner

What is the best advice you got from a beta reader or editor on your female characters?

Brandon Sanderson

Stop treating them like a role and start treating them like a person. Most of the times when guys write girls poorly, it is because they are saying  "Well, this is the X. This person's role in the story is X," and then they make the person not exist beyond that. Every character, regardless of gender, should have their own motives, passions, and you should be able to know what they were going to do with their life if the plot hadn't smashed into them, and that can go a long way toward helping with that.

That was the big thing for me, was not writing anyone to a role... making everyone the hero of their own story. That was the big thing, but it was a process over time, figuring out treating people like characters instead of roles. That's kind of nebulous, right? Tell them to read a bunch of books by women, because a lot of them haven't, and that's part of the reason they're doing it poorly.

Oh and here's another big thing. The first way of being sexist in your writing involves writing people into roles, right? Into stereotypes. The next thing that people generally do, you'll see this a lot in cinema right now, is take the underrepresented group, or the token female or something, and make them awesome, so that they don't actually have any sort of-- they're just good at everything. Right? That's the next level of doing something wrong, and the third is where you're like, "Wait a minute. Let's make everybody kind of quirky and interesting in their own way, rather than putting anyone on a pedestal," and things like that.

And it's a process for all of us. You'll notice that like in the Mistborn books... I was so focused on making sure I had a strong female lead, that there is like no other women in whole the book. And that's a really common mistake... But you just get better at it the more you write.

Questioner

Who's your most frustrating character to write?

Brandon Sanderson

Mmm... gonna be some of the Wheel of Time characters. I was never a huge Cadsuane fan. But I ended up enjoying writing her viewpoint more than I thought I would. I would say Mat from The Wheel of Time was the hardest for me to get right, so probably him. Otherwise, most frustrating... I don't know. Like, when I'm writing a character, they have to be my favorite while I'm writing them. Otherwise, something's wrong, if that makes sense.

Questioner

What about the funnest?

Brandon Sanderson

The funnest would probably be Wayne, probably, from the Mistborn books. He is a blast to write.

Questioner

I personally love Wayne, the character. <Explain to me> what that inspiration was.

Brandon Sanderson

I wanted-- I started with a character who changed personalities when *inaudible*. And I kind of built out from that.

*interruption*

Questioner

Was there a personal... Was there a person who like-- that might have reminded you.

Brandon Sanderson

No. *inaudible* It was just that I wanted to write somebody who was a little more goofy. A little more interesting. A colorful character who would be a *inaudible*. Who could just be a representation that this is a little of a lighter world than we were in before.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Four

Sazed was many people's favorite character in the first book. I knew pretty early on in the writing process of that book that Sazed would become a major force in the novel. In fact, he was one of the very first characters I outlined and built in my head. Who he is, and what he stands for, is quite integral to the plot arc of the entire series.

So, knowing that, you probably aren't surprised to see him become a major viewpoint character in this book. I loved writing his chapters. The way he sees the world–always trying to look from other people's viewpoints, always trying to understand others and give them the benefit of the doubt–makes him very dear to me. He is pleasant to write about, and his inner turmoil (we'll talk more about that later) is so much more painful because of how basically a nice person he is.

Questioner

Have you chosen a flashback character for book two of Stormlight Archive yet?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I have chosen to use Shallan as the flashback character for Stormlight Two. I feel that her narrative is the best one right here, and so I pretty much filled out the first five, 'cause Stormlight's in two five-book narratives, where we're going to anchor it with Kaladin is the first one and Dalinar is the last one, and then we'll use Shallan, Szeth is number three, and then probably Navani is number four. That's the one I haven't nailed down yet. It's either Navani or a character I can't tell you yet.

Brandon Sanderson

Back in update #3, I promised to check back with you mid summer. I'm here a little early, as this felt like a good point to let you know how your book is going. Yesterday, I finished Part One of the novel, which (at 111k words) puts us at just under the 28% mark, assuming the book is 400k words total. (The first book was around that; the next two were longer, so fair warning, the % may not be entirely accurate.)

The short, TLDR version, is this: Part One is done, the book is looking good, and I'm modestly confident in a 2020 release.

Read below for a more fiddly, numbers oriented analysis of how things are going.

I gave myself 10 months to do the rough draft as a hypothetical deadline. That is a little on the quick side, but doable. That translates to about 1300 words a day, if I were writing seven days a week. (Which I don't do--I usually manage to write new fiction four days a week, with one day dedicated to email, meetings, newsletters, grading student finals, that sort of thing.) Once in a while, I sneak in a little work on Saturday, but I don't count on it.

What this really means is during those four days writing time, I need to do about 9k total words to keep pace. This wordcount number, I should warn you, is more a way for me to judge my progress rather than it is an absolute requirement. The writing process needs to remain flexible, even for someone who likes a strong outline like myself, and while guidelines for wordcounts are helpful, I'm careful not to treat them like a factory quota, to be achieved regardless of quality.

They are helpful for pace, though. In an average week, I commonly do between 8k and 15k of writing, so this is a manageable goal. With that in mind, how is it going?

Well, as talked about in the last post, I started Stormlight about a month late because of some work I decided needed to be done on Starsight. That meant I started the book at about 44k words behind in April. Steady writing through April up until May saw me making up ground. When I flew to Germany for the tour there, I was 31k behind instead, and was feeling good about the progress.

Germany was, of course, a disaster for new writing. (Tours almost always are.) I got some work done on a sequel novella to Sixth of the Dusk, but no Stormlight writing. (Really complex narrative is difficult for me to do when traveling a lot, as it requires more focus than I can often give.)

When I got back, I had slipped to 52k words behind. I dove back in, and restored the writing grove for Roshar, and have made back most of that time. As of yesterday, I'm 33k words behind, assuming I want to have the rough draft done by January 1st. (Which is pretty much a must if I want to release the book in 2020.)

As before, I do need to give the warning that if the book needs more time, I WILL take it. I recognize that is what most of you would like anyway, so we'll see what happens. Part One, however, turned out very close to my plan--and I'm pleased with it. As I said, this book follows more of a Book One style plot than a Book Two or Three style plot. The characters will be mostly isolated doing their own thing in three separate plot lines, interwoven in the narrative, but with little interaction between them. In fact, the three different arcs should (if I work it out right) hit their climaxes at three different points, giving a more sequential hit of more intimate plot moments rather than one big enormous finale, like happened in Books Two/Three. (Not that there's anything wrong with that; I just prefer some variety. Book Five, as you should be able to guess, will be more like Books Two/Three than Books One/Four.)

So my next step is to dive into a revision of Part One. This will put us a little more behind, as it will take about a week--but it will let me get the first chunk (which is book length on its own) to Moshe for editing over the next few months. That way, we can use his time in parallel to mine, as well as let Karen do continuity edits and Peter (eventually) do an editorial pass.

If that works as it should, and if I do this with each part as I finish them, I'll have 3/4 of the book waiting with editorial work done on it come January 1st. That will let me dive into a third draft immediately.

My goal after the revision of Part One is to pick one of the character clusters mentioned in the previous updates, and work on it straight through to the end. (I'll probably pick the second arc, which should be around 80k words long and follow three viewpoint characters in their distinct plot sequence.)

As always, thanks for reading and for putting up with my eccentricities as a writer. As a note, like in the other posts, I will not be sending replies to my inbox--so apologies if I miss something you say in this thread.

Brandon Sanderson

The scene with Vin standing in the darkness and looking in at the people having fun inside was one of the first and fundamental scenes I got for her character. Those who have read other annotations and essays by me know that I build my books by important focal scenes. This image of Vin keeping herself aloof from the fun and good humor, yet desiring to be part of it so badly, seemed to me to be the perfect character for Kelsier's apprentice.

Of course, this scene was actually only half of the image I conjured in my mind. The other half comes, of course, the scene later in the book where Vin has become fully a part of the crew, enjoying their friendship, and looks out of the kitchen at the dark hallway beyond, where she once stood. Nice little brackets of a character arc, and the main focus in my mind of Vin's growth in this book.

Questioner

One of my favorite aspects of your books is you always have this character that kind of has a submissive personality starting out and they evolve into a more dominant personality. Do you have an author for a series that kind of inspired this?

Brandon Sanderson

Inspires me? He says frequently I have a character who's in a submissive position that becomes dominant through the course of the series. Do I have an author that I'm relying on specifically. No more than the "Hero's Journey", the general idea of the person growing and becoming master of their domain where once they were not. I don't think I have a specific person I'm looking at for that. But it is a fun type of story to tell, just because of the way you can show progression with a character.

Questioner

Do you have a favorite character that you've created or one that you've tended to favor over another?

Brandon Sanderson

Do I have a favorite character? No, that's again, you know, the thing. I will say Dalinar is my oldest character, followed by Hoid. Those two have been around since I was 15 and so, there is some favoritism for them, perhaps, just in longevity sense.

Questioner

The art featured in The Way of Kings is very striking and has been well-received by readers. Do you have any plans to include more art in your future books—other books as well as The Stormlight Archive? Or maybe as bonus content on your website?

Brandon Sanderson

There will be more art in future Stormlight Archive books. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and I think adding a visual aspect to novels helps create a more complete and immersive experience. You'll notice that art has been important to one extent or another in all of my books. Elantris had its map and the Aons; Mistbornhad its maps and the Steel Alphabet. The Rithmatist, when it comes out in 2012, will have extensive magic system diagrams with every chapter.

Including a map in a fantasy book has become a bit of a cliché ever since Tolkien did it. But if you go back and look at what Tolkien actually did, the map that was in the book was an in-world artifact—it was something the characters carried around with them and used. So I've approached the art in my books in a similar manner. Each piece represents something that is made and used by the people in the world of the books. I think that helps give a richer feel to the world I'm creating.

One thing you probably won't see me doing in future novels is including character art. I want to leave exactly how characters look up to the imagination of the reader. But I'm a big fan of the sequential art storytelling form as well, so you'll likely see me do some completely graphic novels in the future.

PyroSkink

Is each book in this series a focus on a particular character? Did I read that somewhere?

Brandon Sanderson

Each one has a flashback sequence dedicated to a certain character, and a plot that has something to do with the flashback sequence. I do this to help differentiate them, and we sometimes call it "their" book--but that's a little of a misnomer, as the main plot may not revolve around the flashback sequence. It will simply relate to it.

PyroSkink

Ah right. It was Kaladin then Shallan, next is Dalinar? Or is it Szeth?

Brandon Sanderson

This one is Dalinar most likely. Then (probably) Eshonai, then Szeth. Unless I swap those two.

Back five are Lift, Renarin, Ash, Taln, Jasnah. Not necessarily in that order. (Though that is the planned order right now.)

I do have to give my standard disclaimer. Someone getting a flashback sequence does not indicate they survive until that book. I'm fully willing to flashback to a character who died in an earlier volume. So that isn't as much of a spoiler as it seems.

And Taln is defined as "The man who thinks of himself as the Herald Taln, and whose viewpoint we got briefly in Words of Radiance."

Phillip Carroll

Waxillium? Why Waxillium?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, that's a great question. The thing about Waxillium's name is, a lot of people don't like it. I actually love it, but that happens a lot in my books; I'll do something I love that I kind of know other people are going to be annoyed by. The Wax books came, actually....as I was designing the books, I was figuring the characters, and the pun Wax and Wayne struck me, and I thought, "I can't do that; that's too lame a pun." But the characters adopted those name before I could even do anything about it, and I actually tried changing the names, and it didn't work. You know how sometimes, organically, it just happens, and you're like, "I gotta go with this." And so I didn't want to actually just named them Wax and Wayne; I wanted Wax to be short for something, and it fits very well into the Mistborn universe, because all the characters tend to have nicknames that—you know, there was Clubs and Ham and Breeze in the last series—and I wanted a name that fit with that, and so Wax worked really well, but I wanted it to be short for something, and so I started looking at period names, things like William that worked and I actually ended up picking Waxillium because it also has a metallurgic sound and I figured names in this culture in the Mistborn world where metals are so important to the magic, you might have people named after metals; you might have names that sound like metals intentionally because of that resonance. At the end of the day I just really ended up liking it. It is a bizarre name.

Esc777

From what I understand, Sanderson (a long-time MtG fan) wrote the novel entirely of his own volition, using only the pieces of MtG lore he deemed necessary, with entirely new characters he created, and then approached WotC and said "Hey, I wrote this, do you want to publish it?"

That sounds unbelievable. Very few people just do work like that for free. I think something about that story is exaggerated.

Brandon Sanderson

It...well, it actually did happen. Kind of like /u/StrictlyFilthyCasual said (though not quite) and it is a kind of weird thing that I did that was terrible in a business sense. I wanted to do it anyway.

Basically, for years I've thought, "If I were going to write a MTG story, what would it be?" The answer was what became Children of the Nameless. I basically had it, and the characters, plotted in my head. When Wizards came to me, they wanted to hire me to write one of their stories.

I knew, right out, they wouldn't be able to afford what it would actually cost me to write a story for them. In fact, I suspected it would be orders of magnitude different. So, I counter offered and said, "Look, I have this cool story I want to write. It's in one of your worlds. I'll do it for free, as a gift to MTG and the community, but you have to let me do my own thing."

They were on board. I realize, doing something for free for a huge corporation is...well, kind of dumb. But I didn't decide to become a writer because I have good business sense... I just wanted to do my thing, and have it be a real part of MTG lore and get to have a card designed based on my character.

Leman12345

I knew, right out, they wouldn't be able to afford what it would actually cost me to write a story for them. In fact, I suspected it would be orders of magnitude different.

Does this mean its unlikely we'll see you write full length magic novels? :( Children was so good.

Brandon Sanderson

It's unlikely, I'm afraid. There's a chance I'll do another story about Dav, but it wouldn't be longer than what I've done already--and it wouldn't be anytime soon. One difficult reality is that I have promised a lot of things to those following my cosmere novels, and anything I write that isn't on one of those projects needs to be looked at skeptically on my part, if only for the purpose of keeping my promises. So it's less a matter of money, and more a matter of time.

Kirsty Cabot

Were there any characters you found difficult to connect with when writing the remaining books of The Wheel of Time series?

Brandon Sanderson

I've never really been able to get into Cadsuane as a character, and so she was the most difficult for me to do. I love Aviendha and Tuon, but both of them think so differently from the rest of the characters that they gave me a challenge.

Questioner

I was intrigued ever since I saw your State of the Sanderson about Death Without Pizza.

Brandon Sanderson

It's good. I'm one chapter, or no I guess it's like three chapters. I'm one day's work away from finishing my revision, to then kick it back to Peter [Orullian]. I'm really, really excited how it's turning out. He knows his metal culture really well, and one of the tricks has been integrating that without making it feel jokey and things like that. I'm very pleased with how it's going.

Questioner

What kind of metal influences were you going for?

Brandon Sanderson

...Peter really likes the lyrical metal like that, like Dreamtheater. I don't know my subgenres very well, but Apocalyptica gets a mention, that's one I knew, Dragonforce gets a mention, I knew them. But I guess Dragonforce is the same subgenre. My job is worldbuilding and plot, and his job is character voice and making sure all of that works. I'm fascinated by it all.

Questioner

So is he more in the editing process, or is he an official co-writer?

Brandon Sanderson

He's a co-writer! I came up with the plot and the worldbuilding, I sent it to him, he wrote the whole first draft. Now I'm doing the next draft and then I'm kicking it back to him to do another pass and make sure the voice still matches, and then we'll take it out to publishers.

Questioner

What's the character's name?

Brandon Sanderson

The main character's name is Jack Solomon.