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Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

In this chapter, we get our first real information on what it was like to work in the Pits of Hathsin. It wasn't originally planned this way–I was just going to have the caves here be regular caves. The cracks in the ground, however, clicked with me, as that was what I had planned for the Pits. This made for a much more defensible position, as well as let me explore some of Kelsier's past.

General Reddit 2020 ()
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Sms231

I'm surprised that ANY author today would do this, given that releasing an audio-only book [The Original] is discriminatory against Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals who can't use audiobooks.

Brandon Sanderson

Sorry. The issue here is that the money to do these things is being put up by Audible and Recorded. The story literally wouldn't exist if they hadn't wanted material for their audible original lines.

Maybe I could ask the publisher to make text versions available for hard of hearing people? Seems like a reasonable thing to ask. But being angry about this seems basically the same to me as being angry at an author for releasing a print only edition of a book, as it discriminates against blind people. The publisher is funding things for their platform--and it's an audiobook platform.

General Signed Books 2016 ()
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Weiry's book.jpg

WeiryWriter

While imprisoned Kaladin encounters a strange type of spren described as "taut wires crossing before him". When I first read this I instantly thought of the captivityspren Axies is searching for, so I was surprised when someone asked you about it and you were reported as saying they are not captivityspren. What kind of spren is it then?

Brandon Sanderson

I must have misunderstood. Those were captivityspren.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Sixty-Six

Talking Horses that Talk about Their Feelings

A fun story about this chapters beings by me admitting that I didn't come up with the "TenSoon digests a horse" trick at first. I tried writing this scene with Sazed clinging to TenSoon's wolfhound back as they ran to the south. It was awkward to describe, even more awkward to imagine, and it never worked that well.

Eventually, while working on a solution to the problem of getting Sazed south to the Homeland, I realized that TenSoon could just digest another body and use that. Easy fix, and one that fit marvelously with the magic and setting.

This intersects another story relating to my friend Nate Hatfield, one of the guys in my writing group. He's a big fan of Dinosaur Comics, a webcomic that often deals with philosophy or literary criticism. Years ago, he brought a comic to the group where one of the characters in the comic strip complains that fantasy books are all about talking horses that talk about their feelings.

All through the writing of book two of Mistborn, Nate took delight in the Vin/TenSoon scenes as they were about a talking dog who talks about his feelings. He never let me live that connection down.

And then, almost just for him, I had TenSoon take on the body of a horse for a few chapters. I doubt I'll ever hear that end of that one. At least he didn't end up saying much about his feelings. ;)

American Fork High School Signing ()
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Pod (paraphrased)

You said at the Starsight release that [Adonalsium] was intentionally preventing the spren from accessing Surges through fabrials and such pre-Shattering. Was this a passive or active effect?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It was kind of both - the way [Adonalsium] worked was just that the way he saw the world [magic] was the way the world [magic] worked. He didn't want the spren to be able to do that, so they couldn't.

Pod (paraphrased)

So did [Adonalsium] want to die?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

*makes face along with various non committal hmings*

Pod (paraphrased)

That at least gives credibility to the theory.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yeah, it gives credibility to the theory.

Footnote: *I don't know how to describe the face - it definitely wasn't confirmation but it looked incriminating to me. Brandon corrected ’world’ to ’magic’ after I left.
Sources: Blackout8444`s report
West Jordan signing ()
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Mi'chelle

I know that you've answered this before, but we don't have citation yet. Was the earthquake caused by Odium's visit to Elantris? You've answered that one before, I believe.

Brandon Sanderson

I don’t know if I have. I think I’ve given implications without a strict, direct answer on that one.

Mi'chelle

And what are the implications, so I can know if I'm thinking of the right answer?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you think I've said?

Mi'chelle

I think you've said, no it isn't.

Brandon Sanderson

The Seons existed before the earthquake.

Mi'chelle

But was the earthquake caused by Odium?

Brandon Sanderson

When Odium visited there were no Seons.

Idaho Falls signing ()
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coltonx9

Have you ever thought about doing like a Cosmere cookbook? Different recipes from different planets.

Brandon Sanderson

I would totally do this if I knew someone who was a good chef. If fans can come up with recipes, I could totally see us doing something like that.

Questioner 2

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

That's true. We could make a cookbook.

Questioner 2

He wrote the foreword for Oathbringer, didn't he?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, he did.

YouTube Livestream 6 ()
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Questioner

Will Kaladin and Kelsier ever meet? Will they get along if they did meet? Even if they don't meet, I am fascinated by the possibilities a Mistborn and a Windrunner could create by working together.

Brandon Sanderson

Whether they'll actually meet or not is a RAFO. I do not think they would get along very well. It takes a very special kind of person to get along well with Kelsier. Though you will, I promise, see Windrunners and Allomancers interact. (Technically, you already have, because Hoid is an Allomancer, but that's not what you're asking about.) You will see large clashes between various different magic systems in the future of the cosmere.

The Well of Ascension Annotations ()
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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.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eleven

This book is quite a bit more violent than Elantris. I worry about that, sometimes. I hope I don't put people off who enjoyed my first novel. Several things save me, I think.

First off, though people initially don't think of Elantris as a gruesome book, it really does include quite a few disturbing elements. The brutality of the people in Elantris, for instance, or the slaughtering done by the Dakhor monks. In chapter one of Elantris, we see a boy with his throat crushed, seeping blood. So, really, there isn't anything in Mistborn that stands out THAT much.

The difference is, I guess, that one of the heroes is himself a killer. Also, we have scenes like this one, which are just plain disturbing.

Brandon's Blog 2017 ()
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Roshar's Date System 1.png Roshar's Date System 2.png

Karen Ahlstrom

I knew I'd have to deal with it sometime, and it finally caught up with me today. My Master Cosmere Timeline spreadsheet has far too many relative dates, and not enough absolutes.

Roshar's date system

The biggest reason I have put it off is that the date system Brandon made up is both supremely logical and at the same time totally crazy. A year has five hundred days, but there's also a thousand-day cycle with different highstorms around the new year. In each year there are ten months of fifty days each. The months are broken into ten five-day weeks. The date indicates what year, month, week of the month, and day of the week it is and looks like this: 1173.8.4.3. It is impossible for me to do the math in my head to decide what the date would be 37 days ago, so I don't use the dates in my reckoning, and only calculate them as an afterthought. This dating system is also a hassle because two weeks in our world is almost three weeks there, and a month there is almost two of ours, and when writing Brandon doesn't even pretend to pay attention to those differences.

Day numbers in The Way of Kings

But then we have to talk about my relative date system. The timeline of The Way of Kings is a mess. The story for Shallan starts more than 100 days earlier than Dalinar's storyline. And Kaladin is roughly 50 days different from that. So for that book I had to pick a day when I knew there was crossover between the viewpoints and work forward and back from there. So a date in The Way of Kings might be marked on my spreadsheet as D 23 or K-57.

Day numbers in Words of Radiance and Oathbringer

For Words of Radiance I started over at day 1 for that book. Those numbers count up until the new year which is day 71. Oathbringer starts just after the new year, so I used the day of the year for my book-specific day number. Of course switching systems at the start of each book made it hard for me to calculate just how many days there were between events in WOR and OB. So I put in another column which indicated a relative number of days counting before and after the arbitrary date of the end of WOR.

Flashback dates

The next problem I dealt with were the line items that say something like "five years ago" for their date. With more than a year of onscreen time from the first chapters of The Way of Kings to the end of Oathbringer, it's really necessary to note that it's five years before what event with a solid date. Once I have a date to assign to it, I also have to decide how exact the date is. When I come back three years from now I will need to know whether this date is firm, or if it would be okay to put it three or four months on either side.

Putting it all together

When Peter found an error in the spreadsheet one day, I decided to match a serial number to each date after the year 1160 (which makes for easy calculating), and make that my absolute day number from here until forever (though I'll probably still make a book relative date, since it's a useful way to talk about things with the rest of the team). To find the Roshar dates from the serial numbers I made another spreadsheet with a vlookup table for the dates and serial numbers, then translated all the dates from the three books into that single new system (finding several more errors as I went).

 

LTUE 2020 ()
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Questioner

Is there a specific Shard that most of the spren come from?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the spren are going to be related to a combination of Honor and Cultivation, weighted certain directions for certain types of spren. But the spren are mostly both of them. 

Questioner

Are they considered Splinters?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could call spren Splinters if you wanted to. They work in the same way as a Splinter, so yeah.

Firefight Houston signing ()
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Questioner

How much of your input was put into the Wheel of Time books that you did, or was it strictly of the notes that Robert Jordan had?

Brandon Sanderson

How much of the Wheel of Time books was through me, and how much was from the notes? ...When I went to pick up the Wheel of Time materials, I was handed two things. One was a stack of 200 pages. That 200 pages contained about 100 pages of written material that Robert Jordan had written for the last books. And about 100 pages of that was interviews with his assistants, Q&As about what was going to happen. The other thing I was handed was a disk with all of his worldbuilding notes. This did not contain much at all about the last book. This was just the worldbuilding through the whole series, talking about the different cultures and things like that. And I used that to write the books. So the actual writing, I would say, it's very hard to say. I was given full creative control, I will say that. Harriet said "Take this. I'm an editor, not a writer. Do what you feel you need." In all of that, there was one sentence on what to do with Perrin. So, you can guess, if it was Perrin, it was me. There was a whole lot done with Egwene. In fact, almost, I would say, half of her scenes were written, in fact half of that stack was Egwene stuff; of the hundred pages, fifty pages just written about Egwene and a big stack of notes on what to do with her. If it's in the books and it relates to Egwene, you can almost guarantee that that is something Robert Jordan wrote or instructed me to write. With Rand and Mat, it was about half and half. Gathering Storm Mat and A Memory of Light Mat was more me, Towers of Midnight Mat was more him. A lot of his Mat stuff related to the Tower of Ghenjei. Rand was sprinkled all the way through, about half and half, I would say, on that. Most of the words you're reading are mine. Almost everything he wrote was either Egwene or ended up in the three prologues.

So, yeah, it was a big project. There was not a lot finished on it. But at the same time, those interviews, with him with almost all the characters he kind of talked about who they were, where they were going, what the arcs he envisioned for them being, and things like that, which gave me a lot to do. And even the one thing on Perrin was near the end, so I knew what to shoot for, if that makes sense? And one of the things he did write is what ended up as the epilogue. I had a target, if that makes sense. Although, a lot of the actual writing was on me to do, which is why they had me do it, by the way, rather than getting a ghostwriter. If it had been 90% of the way done, they could have just gotten someone to quietly come in and finish those last few scenes, and it would have been the right thing to do, because it was mostly done by him. The fact that it wasn't, meant they needed a writer to actually put the whole thing together. There wasn't an outline. Robert Jordan was a discovery writer. He knew what he wanted to have happen, but he had no order or form or anything like that.

Alcatraz Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Wrap-up

Again, I hope you enjoyed reading this book. Seriously, I think it was one of the most fun books I’ve ever written. It was as obsessive a task as I’ve ever participated in–I sat, working furiously and writing pretty much every day for sixteen days until it was done.

Since then, people have called it brilliant, meaningful, silly, and all kinds of wonderful words. However, for me, it’s just something that I had to write. It still means a lot to me that people are so willing to read my books. Thank you.

Brandon Sanderson

The Alcatraz ProjectBook One: July 2005-January 2007

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Vin Confronts Lady Patresen

I played with this scene, our first ball scene in hundreds of pages, several times—trying to find the right balance I wanted to convey. I wanted to have a nice circle pointing back to Vin's interactions with Shan in the first book, showing how far Vin has come. However, I knew I didn't want to dedicate much time to it, and I didn't want Vin to fall out of character. So, this is the scene that came out. A short, blunt scene with Vin pushing the politics of the party to fit what she wants, rather than playing the games the way they're supposed to be played.

Originally I had Vin's attack convince Lady Patresen to seek Vin's favor, but a friend of mine, Janci, convinced me that it was far more realistic to have the lackeys suddenly switch sides instead. For setting me straight, Janci gained the dubious right to rename Lady Patresen, who had been called something else before. And, being who she is, Janci named the woman after herself—then said, "I get to be the girl who gets spurned by Vin! How cool is that?"

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Five - Part Two

I hope the timeframe of the various armies, with Vin and Kelsier running the distances, work all right. This is one of the toughest parts about writing fantasy for me, as I mentioned last time. I don't have a really good concept of distance, and getting things moving at the right speeds on a national level, so they intersect at the right places. . . yeah. Tough.

I had to, for instance, decide how quickly a person pewter dragging could run, and how that compared to someone marching in an army, and how that compared to someone taking a canal boat. If you can do that math and get back to me, well, it's too late. I already put it in the book. So, I hope I did it right.

Oathbringer release party ()
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Questioner

Is Hoid somebody I should be rooting for?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on-- Depends... There's a big, uh, "depends" attached to that.

Questioner

Is that something we're gonna see in Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

You will see some of it in Stormlight. It's not the main place you're gonna see it.

Elantris Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-Six - Part One

Raoden's reaction to Iadon's death is just a little bit cliché, but I think that cliché exists for a reason, so I wrote the scene this way.

Sometimes, I have difficulty in my writing because I try to be TOO original. I react pretty strongly against anything I've seen before, and don't want to include it in my books. This has served me well in some ways–Moshe bought Elantris partially because he found it refreshingly different from other fantasies on the market. I generally have a strong element of originality to my worlds, my magic systems, and my plot structures. This is part of what draws people to my work.

However, sometimes I go too far. If I see something written one way–even if that way is good–then I react against it, trying to find another way. I've stayed away from "Eternal Apprentice" plots (Thank you Craig Shaw Gardner for the name) even though they are extremely popular in fantasy–indeed, they are what got me into fantasy when I was younger. But, because of some things like this, my books can be more difficult to get into. The extremely steep learning curve of my works, the focus on strange settings and odd magic systems, might be off-putting for some readers. (Elantris, by the way, is only a hint at these kinds of things. Mistborn is a much better example.)

I try to walk a fine balance in my works. The trick is to write something that is original and new, breaking convention and tradition–yet at the same time have it FEEL like a fantasy. People read in the genre because they like the things it can do. I have to add the new, Sanderson, spin to things without tossing out all that is wonderful and resonant within the genre.

That's why you'll see some old archetypes showing up in my works occasionally. In a way, Mistborn is an old-fashioned "overthrow the evil empire" fantasy. When choosing my next project, I decided that I had enough sufficiently new material–both in setting and in plot–to tell the story in a way that would be fresh. I think it adds something to the genre, rather than just recycling what is there. So, I went ahead with it, hoping that the familiar and the original would work together.

Elantris is similar. I threw in odd (for fantasy) plotting structures, but I let the air of "standard medieval culture" remain in the book. (In fact, as I've noted, this is probably my most like-Earth book in that way.)

The balance between the new and the familiar. That's what it's all about.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Sazed's Second Time in Prison

The other time Sazed was imprisoned was, of course, when he was thrown in jail in an attempt to get close to Vin and rescue her. That was way back at the end of book one. It strikes me as very amusing that the kandra have trouble adapting to what to do with a prisoner like Sazed. They eventually just lock him in one of their standard kandra prison cells and come by pouring water on him like they would one of their own.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Okay, some spoiler stuff here. Mennis does make a return later in the book, as you probably know. I actually wasn't intending to ever use him again, and was surprised when people read this chapter and expected him to be a main character. I guess I characterized him a little too well in the scene where he gets up.

So, when the time came for Kelsier to have a quiet conversation with one of the rebels, I dusted off Mennis and used him again. I'm very pleased with how that scene turned out, though it's another one I had to rewrite a couple times to get correct. We'll talk more about that later.

/r/fantasy AMA 2017 ()
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TheBlueShifting

I assume that the Worldhoppers (characters who travel from planet to planet between books) can and sometimes enter into romantic relationships. Have there ever been any children born on one world with powers from another? (For example: A misting being born and raised on Roshar)

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this has happened.

The Hero of Ages Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Forty-Seven

The Death of Bilg

You may not recognize a cameo appearance by Bilg in this chapter. He was the soldier who punched Demoux. Who is Bilg? Well, if you go read book one, you'll find a scene where Kelsier visits the caves where his army is training. He picks a soldier out of the crowd to champion him and has the man fight a duel with one of the army's dissident members. Kelsier helped his champion by using Allomancy to interfere with the fight.

The champion? Captain Demoux. The dissident troublemaker he fought? A guy named Bilg. (Perhaps you can see why Bilg would bear a grudge against Demoux.) In the original draft of book one, Bilg died in that fight. However, readers reacted harshly against Kelsier killing a man to make a point. So, I backed off and had Bilg live and become a follower of Kelsier.

I've always felt that he should have died, though. So, in this book, he makes trouble again, fights Demoux again, and this time finally gets what he deserves. The only problem is that Elend gets his name wrong here and calls him Brill instead. Oops. Since that makes it pretty much impossible to spot the cameo, I may get that changed in a reprint.

WorldCon 76 ()
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Questioner

Is there a TV show or a movie that you really like in the fantasy genre?

Brandon Sanderson

My favorite fantasy movie? Uh... probably Willow. No, it's gotta be The Lord of the Rings... Probably the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings. They're just better. But I really liked Willow.

Questioner

I'll check that out.

Brandon Sanderson

It's from the '80s, so... It's still fun.

General Reddit 2019 ()
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coragamy

Do you anticipate ever writing a climax as big as the Last Battle again? I'm sure keeping that chapter straight was a huge endeavor

Brandon Sanderson

:) I'm pleased with how people responded to its length, I must say.

In case you're interested in more than the innuendo, I don't know that I imagine ever doing a chapter of that scope again. If I do, though, it would come either at the end of Stormlight 10 or the final Mistborn book at the end of the full sequence.

General Reddit 2020 ()
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twiztedterry

I'm pretty sure that /u/mistborn worked with brotherwise on this game [Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archive], and probably had some say in the artwork.

Hopefully he sees this, and takes a moment to respond, I really wonder if this just flew under the radar, or if there's a reason that Rock has a different skin color than the rest of his peak.

Brandon Sanderson

They worked with my team--but I personally didn't have time to oversee all of the art.

Getting a lot of the characters' skin tones has been a challenge, as I'm often vague in the books. Rock is a good example; Shallan gets her paler skin and hair from the Horneaters, so a lot of people assume the Horneaters are Irish-looking, though I've intended them to be a variety of skin tones. So while it's not inappropriate to draw Horneaters light skinned (and a lot of fanart does) I intended Rock to have a bronzer tan skin.

The thing is, it doesn't quite look Alethi either, so they'll describe him through their eyes as looking "tan." It's a skin tone they don't really have, though, so there are passages an artist could look at and assume, "Oh, this guy is white, like Szeth" because of my descriptions, which are at times less specific than I should have made them.

So yes, failing on our part, but don't blame the artist--I'm sure there are places in the books that they drew on to get this description.

twiztedterry

Would you say Rock's skin is closer to a Native American, or would it be lighter, like a Pacific Islander?

My internal depiction has always placed him closer to native american skin tone.

Brandon Sanderson

I envision native American. Where the Alethi tend to run the range between someone who would look Asian to us (though the Vedens are more that skin tone) all the way through to Indian (actual Indians) skin tones. They'd look at Rock and say, "That's a tan" or "that's bronze." It's obviously not Alethi, but the words "light" and "dark" don't really work for the descriptions the way I want--in fact, a lot of the ways in literature we've talked about skin tones through history has been...well, pretty racist. It's sometimes a challenge to navigate this, my own biases, and the problems that come when working with a culture, like the Alethi, who are also pretty racist.

botanicaxu

Rock actually sputtered, an amusing mixture of indignation and incredulity, bringing a red cast to his light Horneater skin.

Though this sentence from Words of Radiance chapter 46 is what used to make me think Rock has lighter skin and it's from Kaladin's PoV. So it doesn't necessarily mean he actually has skin color close to pale/fair one, but just a bit lighter than Kaladin himself (or normal Alethi)'s tan color?

P.S. Sort of a fanart question: Do Rock's family members all have bronzer tan skin?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that's one of the ones. So I try to walk a line with Rock, where he doesn't have an Alethi skin tone, but a Horneater one--which is why I blame myself for the interpretations here. I haven't been the most clear.

Oh, and for your P.S. Yes, they should. I imagine them bronzer than him.

YouTube Livestream 10 ()
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Shad

Will there be a greatsword (montante style) in Stormlight Four, or does the longsword still get all the love?

Brandon Sanderson

I am probably changing that. The scene I rewrote today, there was a greatsword added to. So you can look forward to it. I'm gonna try it out; it's possible that I'll trim it out. But I'm going with it for now. I thought you made some very good arguments along those lines.

And for those wondering, most of Shad's arguments are along the lines of "Wouldn't this be awesome?" And he sees things the same way I do in a lot of ways of "Let's do what's cool, and then make it work."

Oathbringer Portland signing ()
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Questioner

How did you come up with Shardpools and travel between the worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

...So, what happened is (close as I can remember; it's been a long time now), close as I can remember, I wrote Elantris in, like, 1998 or 1999, and I, at that point, didn't really have the cosmere in place. I knew I wanted to do some sort of grand epic, I knew I wanted to do some sort of thing, but I just wrote that book-- Elantris is mostly a discovery-written book, rather than an outlined book. And I wrote this book, and that's when I started a lot of these ideas. I stepped away from it, and I started writing a book called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I kinda got into the dark age where I was trying to be George R.R. Martin for a while. And then when I came out of that, I wrote The Way of Kings [Prime]. And during those days, I was really looking for these tying agents. When I put the first Shardpool in, I had-- I'm just like "Here's a well of power. I don't know what this does." I was discovery-writing the book. By the time I sold Mistborn and Elantris, I sold those two in a deal in 2003, that's when I'm like, "All right, now I'm gonna do this for real." I've had all this trial run-- I'd written thirteen novels at this point, and I'd sold #6 and #14, Mistborn not being written yet... So, I sat down with Elantris, and I built out the cosmere, and I built out these things, like "Why do I have this pool of power? What am I gonna do with the pool of power in the next book? I want this to be a theme." And I started building out the cosmere from there. So, part of it was organic, part of it was by design.

Arcanum Unbounded San Francisco signing ()
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Herald (paraphrased)

What would have happened if Kelsier hasn't taken Preservation or later Sazed hasn't taken Ruin and Preservation powers? Would the earth have been destroyed due to so much raw power much before the actual destruction due to Ruin's actions?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes. Bad things would have happened.

Herald (paraphrased)

Like Sel?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not going to answer that. Just bad things would have happened.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Annotations ()
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Brandon Sanderson

I sincerely hope that you've figured out that the logbook Sazed is translating is the source of the epigraph/bumps at the beginnings of the chapters. I found this a very interesting way to use the epigraphs–almost every one of my alpha readers spent a lot of time trying to guess who wrote them, and where they came from. That kind of anticipation makes for strong storytelling, and so I'm very pleased with the way the bumps start to come together and make more sense once the book gets found.

Oathbringer release party ()
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Questioner

What did Lopen do to get on a bridge crew?

Brandon Sanderson

Lopen? Someone just thought he was annoying. Lopen, he's like the only person in Bridge Four who's, like, not a criminal. It's just like, "Oh, that stupid Herdazian, send him to a bridge crew, get him away." He's legitimately, like-- all of them have deep, dark, tragic pasts, but not The Lopen.

Questioner

Is he one of your friends?

Brandon Sanderson

No...

Words of Radiance Omaha signing ()
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Questioner

Soulcasters that use the fabrial.  Do they visit Shadesmar?  Or do we see more about them?  Because they are hidden and there is something about them that they get the stone face.  

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.  The actual Soulcasters.  The use of of the Soulcasters is affecting them on one of the realms other than physical.