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"Your" wiki.
Oh dear, I can only imagine the contents, not to mention the chaos it would inspire over on the 17th Shard if it ever leaked. Once the Cosmere is complete in 30 years or so, do you have any plans for letting the fans peek at it?
When the Cosmere is complete, I will share it--or have instructions to share it when, hopefully in many years, I pass away.
How many pages of notes do you have on your own universe?
I’m only around 1,000-2,000 or so, at this point. (I guess I’m slacking.)
How do you keep all of your information straight?
I have a dedicated database shared between me and my assistants. I use wikidpad and have two amazing assistants to make sure I keep it all straight, but I still mess up a lot!
My question is, your stories are so intricate and huge and I-- maybe it's because I'm not as genius as you are *Brandon makes a funny face* but where do you come up with these ideas in the first place. Like are you given a vision by the Stormfather, or-- *laughter*
So here's what I say to this, if you think I'm naturally a genius go read the story I wrote in high school. I posted it on my website and it is terrible... It's a matter of practice and a lot of spending time working on these sorts of things. This is kind of what I wanted to do my whole life now, so I practiced to be able to do it. And it's a good thing I took off because I would be worthless otherwise. I mean I did go to college, I did get a Master's degree, but all the other people in the Master's degree were running right and left to get into PhD programs and being on Student Council/Government or things like that. And meanwhile I was just writing stories. I didn't do any of that stuff. And so I'm very lucky that it took off.
I do have my own wiki, which you can't find, it's only on my computer and my assistants' computers to keep track of all this, because it has grown to the size that we need tools like that. In fact Peter Ahlstrom's wife, Karen Ahlstrom is the keeper of the wiki and her job is to go through my books and keep the wiki updated and make sure that I'm not contradicting myself.
If you die, how do we find everything out?
If I die... *laughter* This is totally legit, considering my history. So, that's why we have Peter and that's why we have Karen, my continuity editor. She goes through and enters everything into our personal wiki. I talk a lot of things through with Peter and Isaac and if I've gotten far enough into a series that we feel it's right to have someone finish it we will have someone finish it. If I haven't, or if I die tomorrow, we aren't going to have them finish 8 books, we'll just release my notes. And that will be their instructions.
Since you have such extensive worldbuilding in your books, and you have that whole connected thing, I was just wondering, do you have a book that you just have all your stuff planned out in, or do you add things as they come up in your stories and build a universe that way?
Do I have a "world book" to keep everything, or do I add things to my stories and keep track that way? I do a little of both. We have a wiki. I say "we" 'cause I have several assistants now who help me maintain this. It is a personal wiki, you can't go get into it anywhere, and it used to be just a big file, and the file was about a thousand pages long. It used to be a big file, now it's in the wiki. And we spend time-- Every time I-- It doesn't have everything, even the thousand pages don't have everything for the cosmere, it can only barely touch on it, but any time I add something to the books, they add it to the wiki, and periodically I go to the wiki and be Wikipedia Article Guy on the pages, and add what's in my brain onto there.
You've developed so many worlds and so many magic systems, how do you keep them all straight?
How do I keep everything straight, all the worlds and all the magic systems? I use a wiki--
You do your worlds all at once--
Nah I jump around-- I use a wiki. I use a personal wiki called WikidPad, you can't use it, it's only mine, and it's like 400,000 words at last count, which is about the length of Way of Kings. And I have now a continuity editor who goes in after I write a book and they put everything in. That's my method. But I am kind of scatterbrained, I will forget my keys, I'll go to the airport without my wallet and have to talk my way through security. But I don't forget stories. They stick up there.
I do have Karen [Ahlstrom] here. Karen is my continuity editor. She has the wiki up here open on the computer. The wiki began as a big notebook, like, a 3-ring-binder, that I typed a whole bunch of stuff on on the computer at work. For those who don't know, I started my career writing books overnight on the graveyard shift at a hotel. This is how I managed to go to school full-time and work full-time and write all-time all at once. It was my cool life hack that was really great, except for that whole minimum wage part. So I sat at that desktop computer at the front desk working on stories and writing books, and the wiki for The Stormlight Archive started there as just a big file of things that I wanted to do for the worldbuilding. Eventually, when it came time to write the books for real, I hand-- did you put this all in the wiki?
No, somebody else did. Maybe Peter...
...I may have done it myself. I took this thing, which was around 300,000 words, which is about the length of The Way of Kings, and I dumped it into a personal wiki. Wikidpad, it's an open source wiki software. And then eventually it got too big for me to take care of, so I handed it off to Karen. And now, I just kind of ask her things. So, you may ask questions, and I'm just like, "Karen, what do you think? Let's look it up!"
