Questioner
Is Wayne the author that's writing the Allomancer Jak stuff.
Brandon Sanderson
No, he's not. Good question, though! Good question!
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Is Wayne the author that's writing the Allomancer Jak stuff.
No, he's not. Good question, though! Good question!
Did you have like-- I love Wayne because to me he has a little British background.
Yes. *brief interruption* Yes, Wayne-- If you heard Wayne he would sound... I mean, he's not straight up cockney, but you're gonna be like, "Oh, that's one of my mates."
Cause there's a lot of, like, words in there. I'm like, "He knows, he knows.."
Yeah, yep, yeah. I get a lot of that touring in the UK. Heading over there. I'm like, "Oh, they use this word all the time. Oh, they use this word. Oh...Okay. Things are 'brilliant.'"
In Secret History we learned a little about how the Cognitive Realm...could bleed into the Physical if the person was slightly broken.
Broken as Kelsier’s term is not right, and he realizes that over the course of the book, but yeah.
My thoughts were on Wayne, so he seems to notice--and it might just be kleptomania--a connection between items that makes him feel as if he’s not stealing, just trading things for equal value. And I’m wondering if he’s noticing something in the Cognitive-- in one of the other Realms that is actually noteworthy.
He’s just goofy.
They're called "Wax and Wayne." Is that something to do with the moon or is that just...
It's a pun, it's just a pun on my part.
So you did it on purpose but it's nothing in the book?
I did. Yeah, Scadrial doesn't have a moon so they wouldn't really... The words "wax" and "wane" still mean what they mean, but it's not part of common vernacular the way it is over here. So it's me being goofy and loving the pun way too much.
Did you write Wayne as a sociopath? Or just troubled?
As usual, I prefer not to interfere with theories that people are making, to confirm or deny them. I WILL say this, however.
The scenes where he interacts with Ranette and Allriandre are supposed to be uncomfortable, though I don't anticipate the average reader being able to pick out why. Anyone with any sort of experience with similar situations, however, will identify that something is deeply wrong with the way Wayne sees the world. His inability to understand boundaries, and his almost pathological need to PROVE that he's not a bad person any more, lead to him far, far overstepping. (His treatment of Steris is another example.)
Wayne is trying. This is all what makes him work for me as a real character, not as just a goofy sidekick, but you shouldn't just laugh it off and say, "Oh, that Wayne." He is deeply troubled, and isolation in the roughs--with someone who just kind of let him do his thing--did not help.
What's your favorite Wayne one-liner?
Probably "defecation of character". My favorite Wayne moments are the ones that you could conceivably miss. Like, there's one for the next book where he calls being pressed into the army, "corporal punishment," that I'm just totally over the moon over, that I think people will probably miss, and that's what makes them fun.
In Shadows of Self, I was wondering if there was a reason that Wayne wanted to ride with Hoid on the exterior of the carriage.
He just thought it would be fun, and he likes Hoid, but he doesn't know who he is.
What happened to Wax's horse that Wayne did?
What happened to Wax's horse that what?
That Wayne did, it's kind of referenced.
The reason the horse bit Wayne, is that what you're asking? The horse just has a nice sense of who deserves to be bit.
Have we seen the resonances of either Wax or Wayne?
Yes, well, Wax is really good at sculpting bullets and things away from him.
The bubble.
Yeah and things like this. This is playing with the fact that he is-- Let's just say that the abilities make this happen, and I’ll let you theorize on why, but it's just an enhancement to what he can do.
I might be wrong, but I thought you said it was because he was becoming a steel savant.
A savant, yeah, definitely, but this is what this is coming from.
But being a savant has to do with being really good with one power--
Yes.
--and resonances--
Being a savant has to do with using Investiture a lot, and it's starting to permeate your soul. Like we've ta--
So he's more a savant with both of--
He's used them a lot, and they are changing his soul, and so the powers are morphing and changing. Just in slight, little ways. You're not gonna see a whole bunch. But you can imagine these two separate powers are kind of becoming one to him.
Yeah I can see that. And Wayne?
So Wayne's is not as obvious. I'll go ahead and RAFO that right now.
Who/what was the inspiration for Wayne's character? He's the best!
Really, it started with the hats and went crazy from there.
Wayne, his inability to pick up guns, is there anything else to it or is it just psychological?
It's just psychological, and you'll see Shadows of Self, we talk about it a little bit. It's post traumatic stress disorder.
So, I don't know how much I've talked about this, but there are two things going on with Wayne in regard to Steris.
The first is that Wayne is a highly instinctive person. He DOES think, and more than people give him credit for, but he judges a lot of what he does by what his gut says. I've known people like this and they can be extremely charming, but have more trouble articulating why they might make a certain decision--or why they don't like a particular person.
Wayne doesn't like Steris. She feels off to him, and his instincts say she's hiding something. Trouble is, his gut is misleading him in this case. Steris doesn't think and react like Wayne does, but it's not because she's hiding something--it's because she doesn't pick up on the same social cues that someone highly sociable like Wayne sees.
There's a second issue here, and that's Wayne's over-protectiveness. Wayne tends to lump people in his head into "my mates" and "those other folks." Once you're "in" with him, he'll do basically anything for you. You'll never find a more loyal friend. At the same time, it's hard to get "in" with him--and if he perceives someone as "stealing" someone from him, he gets very defensive, even mean.
He doesn't realize it, but his subconscious sees Steris as taking Wax away from him and--even more importantly--away from Lessie. He'd be belligerent toward anyone Wax started dating, but the fact that he gets lots of false positives off of Steris doesn't help one bit. If Wax/Marasi had worked out, he'd probably have been okay with it, for example.
What's [Wayne's] effect from his Twinborn abilities?
I don't think I've released that yet.
Wayne mentions a nervous habit that gets cut off, can you tell us what that nervous habit is?
Please.
Alright, give me the full context of this please...
It was after the battle on the train, and Wax basically… Wax basically says "There's worse things than being genuine. Why, before blah blah blah, before Wayne would, Wayne used to basically get so nervous that he'd start…" And then Wayne cuts him off.
Oh, okay. Yeah, Wayne had a really, really, deep stutter when he was younger, and that, I believe, is what I was referencing.
Yay.
That's adorable.
So if you can imagine poor Wayne and his poor stutter.
Wayne shows up
Another aspect of the Mistborn books is the humor. I plan the humor in each of my novels specifically. In Warbreaker, the humor is all about wordplay and lofty back-and-forths. In the Alcatraz books, it's about being audacious, whimsical, and . . . well, a little insane. In The Way of Kings, it's more character-specific, certain characters engaging in different types of humor to fit the scene.
The Mistborn books have always employed a type of humor I'll call grim banter. Friends who know each other making jokes back and forth amid sometimes terrible situations. There's usually an edge to the banter, much how Kelsier would speak in the original trilogy. I wanted to maintain that feel, and so for this series to work, it needed to be founded on at least two characters who knew one another well and who were comfortable with insulting one another in the name of levity.
It was actually hard not to get to Wayne sooner in the book—even though this is only chapter two, he's a big part of the heart and soul of this story. I wanted to get him in quickly, as quickly as possible. This was the right place, I'm confident—he'd have distracted from Lessie in the prologue.
I'm pleased with how he turned out, by the way. He's vibrant enough as a person, with a good soul and a lot of quirks, that he quite often steals the show. That was a balance I had to work on in the book to make sure he didn't steal it too much. (Or, at least, too often.)
Your book, Shadows of Self, just released today. What do you think will shock fans the most?
I have a feeling that the ending will be the most shocking part, followed closely by how magnificently Wayne butchers our language.
No spoilers now! Why did you decide to focus on Waxillium Ladrian in this book?
Wax is the heart of these books, though it has been tough to get past his rough exterior. I wanted to really dig into who he is.
Other than Hoid, which character have you had the most fun writing?
Wayne.
I just wanted to say ... I like how the main characters are named Wax and Wayne.
Thanks. In all honesty, I was hesitant about the pun. I liked it, on one hand, but also worried that it was too goofy. By the time I tried changing the character names, however, they were too strongly cemented in my head, so changing them proved too difficult and I just left them as-is.
Does Wayne's ability to impersonate people have anything to do with his Allomantic abilities, or is it just skill?
He is just really good at it. Good question.
What's Wayne's favorite ice cream flavor?
The more-- Oh rum. Obviously, come on.
If video games existed in the cosmere, which current cosmere character that we know would be the best gamer?
Best gamer? Um...
I want to see if your statement is the same as mine.
Whew, best gamer? Who wants to sit down and game?
That's going outside of mine, my character probably would not want to, but I think they'd be very good at it.
Very good at gaming, very good at gaming... Lift.
Oh, Lift would probably enjoy it. Mine is Sazed because he can store his speed and stuff.
Yes, Sazed would be technically, you're right, would be way, way better. I don't know if Wayne could slow time and put in inputs and then they would come out, I don't know how that would work.
Is the tv outside of his bubble?
Yeah, the tv would have to be outside of his bubble. How would that work?
What happens to a wireless signal when it hits the bubble?
Wireless signal is going to have a red shift. Physicist, what happens if a red shift happens? As I understand it, that actually wouldn't change it appreciably, but we'd let a physicist say on that. Regardless, yeah, Sazed would definitely have a big leg up. That's a very good answer.
What are two cosmere characters that have never met (and maybe never will) that you would be most excited to write a scene involving?
It is Lift and Wayne. Preferably after Lift is of age, and they can go drinking together. But even before, I think, they would make a very interesting pairing.
Does the name [Wax & Wayne] foreshadow anything that's gonna happen?
No. I named them that because the pun made me crack up. It's not meant to be foreshadowing. The fun thing about that pun is, Scadrial not having a moon, means that those words exist in their language, it's not part of the common parlance like it is here, so they don't get the pun.
Waxillium gets pushed to the brink, watching the robbery
I realize it's amusing for people to think of the process of this book, which began as a "short" story. Perhaps I'll post my original attempts at writing the book. As a matter of note, Wayne was the first person I imagined for this series. In very early notes I scribbled down, he was actually going to be a hatmaker. (If you can believe that.) He developed a long way from there.
Many of you may know that I wrote this book during my "time off" between finishing Towers of Midnight and starting A Memory of Light. However, the ideas for this story had been around for some time longer, perhaps a year or two. I decided I wanted to do some shorter stories between the first two larger-scale Mistborn trilogies, and . . . well, this is what "short" means to me, I guess.
Anyway, the first scene with Wayne I dabbled in (this was before the break) was him out in the Roughs riding into town on a kandra that had the body of a horse. It was a nice spin on a typical Western motif—instead of being the quiet gunman of Western cliché, he was a screwball hatmaker. And his horse was sentient and grumbling about having to carry him around; she wanted to get back into a human body as soon as possible.
The scene didn't work, though. I didn't get far into it. Wayne wasn't working for me as a main viewpoint character at that time, and I hadn't gotten around to filling out his character with the things he eventually became. (His "borrowing," his love of accents, his good nature despite a dark past. Things like this grew as his character became more deep.)
The other thing that didn't work in those original scenes was the fact that there was no Wax. Wayne needed someone to play off, someone to be dry and more solemn—but still make for good banter. And Wayne just wasn't a leading man. The story was wrong when it was just about him. I needed to tell a story about someone else and fit him into it.
That brings us to this sequence. When I planned the original short story, this sequence at the party was going to be the end of it. The Vanishers weren't in the book—it was just a simple gang of thieves taking a hostage. The prologue didn't exist, as I've spoken of earlier. It was a more simple story of a man coming into his own and deciding to fight again after losing someone dear to him.
For that reason, this sequence here—this chapter with the next—may feel like a climactic sequence to you, of the sort you often find at the end of my books. Originally, this was going to be the ending. (Though by the time I reached this chapter in the writing, I'd already decided I was going to make the story much longer, and had greatly expanded my outline. Hints of the story's origins can still be found, however. Note that we don't get a Wayne or a Marasi viewpoint until after this sequence when we hit the expanded outline material.)
[Wayne] seems to impersonate other people--
That also is just him. There's nothing really supernatural going on, he's just really good at this.
Chapter Eight
Wayne imitates a constable
Writing this Wayne chapter was a pure delight. It was here that I was finally certain that I had his character down, following the misstarts before changing to this version of the story. Here is also where I made the decision that I'd chosen right in expanding the short story to a novel. For me, a single viewpoint character often isn't enough to carry a novel. (Unless I'm doing a first-person narrative.)
Wayne, as a character, really grew into himself here. It is interesting to me how quickly he came together as I started working on this book. That first false start was awful—yet, once I started writing about him as a counterpoint to Wax, he just popped out fully formed, Athena-like, brimming with personality and strength.
I do worry that he'll overshadow Wax a bit—which is one reason why it's good to wait until chapter eight to give him a viewpoint. However, I think it is a matter of appeal. The two of them will appeal to different readers. I really like how the two play off one another and have different strengths.
By the way, I realize the cover has a problem with Wayne holding a gun. It wasn't worth complaining about, as I felt that there needed to be a gun on the cover to indicate the shift in the Mistborn setting. However, Wax's hands are both down low, so the gun really does need to be in Wayne's hand. Just pretend he's holding it for Wax.
Wayne's adoption of personalities
One thing that I wanted to be aware of when writing Wayne was how he saw himself during these excursions where he becomes someone else. My first instinct was to blend the personality completely, until he was thinking of himself directly as the person he was imitating.
That felt like it went too far. For one thing, it was confusing to have the narrative not refer to him as "Wayne" but as the persona. For another, I didn't want Wayne to go that far—in my mind, he always has control of these things. He's not losing himself in his part; he's always aware of who he really is and what he's doing.
So, in a way, he's a method actor. He reinforces who he is in his head, occasionally giving himself thoughts as the persona to remind himself to stay in character. He lets himself feel the emotions they do, and adopt their mannerisms. But it's a coat he can take off or put back on. It's not a psychosis. That was an important distinction for me to make as a writer.
He does, however, become more and more comfortable as he plays a role. One example of this is how Wayne still thinks of constables as being lazy partway through this, though he slowly loses his prejudice as he plays the role longer, shifting to thinking of them as "constables" instead of "conners" in the later part of the chapter.
Is Wayne cosmere-aware? a couple little moments make me wonder, even though it's more than unlikely.
He is not, but he has (unknowingly) spent time around people who are. A little has rubbed off.
Wayne's Backstory
This was the final piece of figuring out who Wayne was. When I'd toyed with him as a character in the original short story, I'd intended for there to be something like this in his past. In the case of this book, however, I didn't decide upon it until I was quite a ways into the story.
I've mentioned that when it comes to characters, I often "discovery write" who they are. Meaning, I work my way into them as I write. With plots and settings, I tend to do a lot of planning and know pretty much where I'm going from the beginning. But with characters, I do a lot of exploring. If a book isn't going well for me, it's often because I can't get the characters down the right way.
That stated, one might wonder why I don't just plan them out like I do my plots and settings. It's because it doesn't really work for me to do it that way—the characters don't stick to the plan in the same way that plots do. I've found that I need this element of improvisation in my writing to give it authenticity. The characters have to breathe in a way that the plots don't need to, for me. I have to let them be more real, in a way, though I'm not certain if it's possible to explain this process.
Anyway, my instincts said there had to be something in Wayne's past like this, and I had felt for a few chapters it had to do with why he didn't use guns. But until I wrote this chapter, I hadn't settled on how it was actually going to have played out.
Who's your favorite character to write?
Usually the characters I look more-- forward to the most are the ones that are goofy.
Wayne?
So like Wayne and Lift. Like, but not up to like-- Wit I-- is hard to write, right? It's the kind of wacky but don't have to be too clever characters that are most fun to write.
Who would win in a fight? Lift, or Wayne?
I have trouble imagining why they would fight, but it's gonna depend on situation and who gets the upper hand.
The Book's Title
It's from this chapter that we get the title of the book. The Alloy of Law. I realize it's an odd title. However, something about it strikes me. I don't think everyone is going to like it; it's certainly not as immediately powerful as something like The Way of Kings. But then, it's also a little more unique. It does, in my mind, encapsulate the theme of the novel. The idea is that these two men—Wax and Miles—are both taking their own interpretations of what it means to follow the law, and mixing it up and making something new of it. This book is a confrontation between their two different ideals.
The working book title was simply Wax and Wayne. (As I was writing the early chapters, that was how they were titled.) I knew this title wouldn't stick, however, as it's a pretty lame pun. Now, I happen to be fond of lame puns. But they don't belong in book titles unless you happen to be writing Xanth or Bob Asprin-type novels.
I can't honestly remember which name—Wax or Wayne—I came up with first. I had Wayne as a character first, but he had a different name. Wax's name came from the Mistborn ideal, where the characters frequently had strange fantasy names that abbreviated to fun terms. (Like Hammond becoming Ham or Dockson becoming Dox.) Wax just fit well with those. Wayne, on the other hand, is a name that feels Western to me, for obvious reasons. As soon as I began thinking of the character by that name, he started to become complete to me—and so I had to keep it, even though the "Wax and Wayne" pun will probably make people groan.
Where'd you come up with Wayne's kleptomania where he steals things and replaces things he finds of value. I think that's the funniest part of his character, that he determines that "oh, this is worth more than this" and "that is a good trade".
I have no idea where that came from, I can take no responsibility for that man. He just kinda popped out fully formed. I started writing a short story about him, which was where I started, I was gonna do a little Mistborn novella in the wild west era with Wayne as the main character. He was a riot but he couldn't be a main character, he couldn't be the main character. He needed somebody to play off of, and so the Wayne and MeLaan story got shelved--eventually I'll show people, I only got about a thousand words into it--and instead we got Alloy of Law.
Wayne... Which order would he be in?
It would take-- He would probably fit best as an Edgedancer, would be my guess. Most of the Orders would look very strangely upon Wayne, let's say that.
Wayne from the Wax and Wayne, worldhopper?
Wayne is not a worldhopper.
What was your inspiration for Wayne?
Wayne had a lot of inspirations... Obviously, there's some Mat Cauthon going on for me when I do Wayne, particularly the way that Mat would see the world differently from the that way he would act. The original inspiration for Wayne was a character who changed personalities based on which hat he wore. He was actually the lead in a Mistborn story I was writing, and he didn't work well without someone to play off of... Some characters work way better when they are surrounded by more normal people. Not gonna say anything about things like the Minion movie (which my children loved), but it's very hard to tell a story about everyone being crazy instead of having a framework of someone to keep it going in the right direction. So that was a big inspiration for Wayne.
The other big inspiration for Wayne was something I noticed about human nature, where I wanted to tell a story about a character who had some really deep-- Wayne should bother you. Like the way he treats Steris. And the way he treats Ranette. And the way he treats some of the people in his life should really bother you. And one of my goals with Wayne was to tell a story that mimics what I see in real life, where there are people I know and I love who also have this way about them that you realize they aren't quite-- grown-up's the wrong term... Like, all of us are the heroes in our own group of friends. We're all the hero of our story. We each have different things we're working on. And some of them are classic good storytelling things, like "I'm gonna learn to be more bold." Which is totally me. Totally something I need to work on. But some of them are "I treat people who aren't in my inner circle really poorly, especially if they're trying to get into my inner circle. And then when you're in my inner circle, I have a dysfunctional relationship with you a lot of time." And I thought I could only really do that with a character that you loved while you were really annoyed by them, because otherwise I feel like the character wouldn't work. Maybe I could do it a different way, but I really wanted to dig into that in these new Mistborn books, and Wayne was my vehicle for doing this.
Some kind of nebulous sort of writerly things going on there.
What is Wayne's last name?
I haven't finished BoM just yet so it may be in there but it's been bugging me for a while.
Is it to much of spoiler?
Dang. Have I never mentioned that? I'll put it in the last one. It's not a huge spoiler.
Which one did you make yourself laugh the most?
Hmmm... I think Wayne. The Mistborn books. He's the one who makes me laugh the most.
Is Wayne sick?
Is Wayne sick? In what way?
Like, terminally ill kind of thing?
No. Good question.
Have we seen Wayne in any other series besides Era 2?
No, you haven't. Good question!
*referring to his personalization request* Just that one. Wayne is a wise man, wrapped up inside of a sad man, wrapped up inside of a silly man.
He likes a hat to be nice and stiff. To mean something. And a fedora is going to be too weak for him. Too... too floppy. It's not a hat you have to commit to, in Wayne's opinion.
Is there any chance we're ever going to get a conversation between Wayne and Lopen?
Maybe in a non-canon entry.
If Wayne and Lift were to meet, what would their reactions be?
They would get along spectacularly together and would end up trying to one up each other back and forth and back and forth.
So Wayne is my absolute favorite character. What was your main inspiration for him?
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.
Wayne's ability to mimic and create accents is used to great effect in the book, and Michael Kramer really shines in bringing these accents to life in the audiobook. Did you have a sense when writing the book that these could be challenging—and rewarding—scenes when read?
I certainly did. The thing is, I'm not good with talking in accents myself—I can hear them in my head, but I'm atrocious at trying to do them. So while I was writing the book, I was thinking in the back of my mind, "I really hope that poor Michael can pull this off." It was a lot of fun to write Wayne's accents. I'm writing in a world that isn't our world, but the Mistborn world is a bit of an Earth analogue. I intentionally used themes that make it an Earth parallel, which is different from my other worlds. So you can have a character who kind of has a light Cockney accent or something like that, but it's not our world so it can't exactly mimic that accent. So it's already a challenge in that respect. I do think Michael did a fantastic job.
Where did Wayne come from? ...Who is he modeled after?
He is not modeled after anyone specific. He came from me wanting to write a character who changed his personality based on the hat he wore. Like, literal, a person who wears lots of hats... I started a short story with him as the main character, and I found he needed someone to play off of, and that's where Alloy of Law came from.
Do Wayne and Ranette have last names?
Wayne, no. Wayne doesn’t care about a last name. Ranette does, and I’m trying to remember what her last name is. It’s in my notes. If you ask, we can get it for you.
How do you write Wayne? The guy is a little bit crazy, but when you see things from his perspective it makes sense. How do you get in that headspace to write that?
I put on his hat. Well it’s--characters are so hard for me to define how I do them. Everything else I can define, right? I can talk about it. With character I write their viewpoint and see if I get to know them, and if I do I’ve just got it. That’s all I can say.
How much older is Wax than Wayne?
Uh... 17... 20 years... Something like that. No, no, no, not quite that much. It's more like 10 years isn't it?
Which one?
Let's see, I'm trying to remember how-- Wax is 40s... Wayne... Yeah, it's about 10 years.
Does Wayne ever get married? Does he ever feel redeemed?
...I'm not gonna answer that one for you. That's a definite RAFO. Boy, it-- You'll have to see. Getting Wayne into a committed relationship with someone else who wants to be in that relationship would be a big first step. And let's just hope he can someday do that.