DrogaKrolow.pl interview

Event details
Name
Name DrogaKrolow.pl interview
Date
Date March 17, 2017
Location
Location Warsaw, Poland
Entries
Entries 33
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#1 Copy

DrogaKrolow

So, the first question is that, you are finally in Poland now--

Brandon Sanderson

Yaaay, finally in Poland.

DrogaKrolow

And you are already know Polish culture, maybe a little, you got to meet it-- And you know inside it's a little bit different than any other culture, actually you get the contact, do you know anything about your position as a writer here?

Brandon Sanderson

In Poland? All I know is, that the Polish have been the single most persistent at trying to get me to come visit. Of anyone. I hear more from the Polish fans about me coming out than I hear from anyone else. So I knew that I better get here eventually, but that's really all I know about my position in Poland, other than the publisher has some of my favorite covers-- Like the Mistborn books in particular. Internationally, I think they have some of the best covers. The Polish covers are better than the US or the UK covers, which is very-- You know usually I like the US best, but the Polish covers are among the, if not the single, best Mistborn covers.

DrogaKrolow

You are here since yesterday, yes?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

And how do you find Poland, by now?

Brandon Sanderson

So far so good. I got in yesterday and I crashed and I got up and I've been doing interviews all day long. Tomorrow, actually, I get to see some Poland. It depends on if we get rained on or not. If we get rained on we are going to the museum. The Polish Resistance Museum? Uprising-- Polish Uprising Museum-- and if not then we are going to go to Downtown-- the Old Town. So-- Then I will know more Poland. Really the only thing I know-- There's a few things I know about Poland. One is that you are very persistent about trying to get me to visit. The other thing is-- I was mentioning to my guide that when I was young our local grocer was Polish and we loved to get sausage from him. So how do you say it, kiełbasa?

DrogaKrolow

Yes, kiełbasa.

Brandon Sanderson

So when I was the kid, we ate polish kiebasa. Like once a month or so, my mom would make it and then that grocer went out of business and I never got it again, I was so mad. It was so good.

DrogaKrolow

You should try, definitively, something like pierogi.

Brandon Sanderson

Pierogi? Is that little dumplings? Yeah, he has told me, I'm gonna get dumplings and I'm gonna try your soup too, so apparently there is like the sourdough soup that I'm supposed to try.

#2 Copy

DrogaKrolow

So do you know anything about Polish literature, especially something about fantasy?

Brandon Sanderson

Well I know-- I can't say his name. *attempts to say "Sapkowski"* --The Witcher guy. Everybody knows The Witcher, so I do know at least a little bit of Polish-- And I have read some of his work. So I'm a little bit familiar but I wouldn't say I know a ton more. Like I bet that’s all everyone knows. “Oh yeah, Poland. The Witcher guy”.

DrogaKrolow

You should try the game.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah? The Witcher games? I have all three of them, I bought them all in one bundle together.

#3 Copy

DrogaKrolow

So you said that you liked our Polish covers. Is something that you liked the most maybe, we have… *people speaking over each other*

Brandon Sanderson

I would say that the first Mistborn cover is probably my favorite of them all.

DrogaKrolow

Yeah, it's amazing.

Brandon Sanderson

But the Wax & Wayne one also, those have really good covers too. So, the whole Mistborn series is great-- The Way of Kings is not bad either-- But the whole Mistborn series, spectacular covers. We put them in our leatherbound. So-- I don't know if you know but I do, in English, I do leatherbound 10 year anniversary.

#4 Copy

DrogaKrolow

When was the concept of cosmere, one big Universe that connects all your stories was born? Do you remember the very beginning, the first thought of it?

Brandon Sanderson

I can start to talk about this because there's a couple of things. I remember being a teenager and reading books, and I would always insert my own characters into other writers' books. This is the beginnings of Brandon the Writer. So I would read, like, a-- an Anne McCaffrey book and I would insert my own characters and eventually Hoid started jumping between all the books I was reading. And so when I started writing my own books, I started inserting him myself. I blame that. I also blame how Asimov connected Foundation and the Robots series. When I read that it kinda blew my mind, and I wanted to do something like that.

I knew when I started writing Elantris I was going to do something like this, I wanted to start connecting everything together. I put Hoid into it and stuff like that, but as I've gone back through my notes, it was really during the years following that I really designed the cosmere. Like when I first wrote Elantris, I had no idea how I was going connect it all, I just knew I was going to. But like-- You know Shardpools. I put the pool in and then I'm like "I don't know what it is". By the time I got to Mistborn I knew all this stuff and fortunately Mistborn was the first one-- Mistborn I was working on when Elantris sold, right? And so I was able to go back and revise Elantris to make sure it matched everything that was coming for the future.

Though I do have to admit, when I first wrote Elantris, a lot of things I'm like "Ah this'll connect somehow. I'll put this in. Sure”.

DrogaKrolow

And by now, can you say that you already know how Cosmere will end?

Brandon Sanderson

I do know how The Cosmere will end, yes. I'm an outliner. It could always change. But I have-- So you know the core series, Stormlight and Mistborn, and the last book of The Cosmere is the last Mistborn book, which I have an outline for. So, we shall see. At least chronologically it's the last. I don’t know, I write a lot and so who knows. Yeah, you know, keeping track of it all, I’m sorry.

#5 Copy

DrogaKrolow

What happened with the Shard that just drifts in the space, the one that wants to hide and survive?

Brandon Sanderson

What about that Shard? They want to hide and survive.

DrogaKrolow

Huh, something more?

Brandon Sanderson

I think I will RAFO that for right now.

Footnote: The questioner seems to be conflating two separate Shards in his question. There is the Shard that wants to hide and survive and another that is not on a planet.
#6 Copy

DrogaKrolow

In Arcanum Unbounded--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

Khriss said that Roshar has an unusually high level of oxygen.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

And where does this oxygen come from?

Brandon Sanderson

It is a natural part of their atmosphere. Part of this-- There's two answers to this. One answer is: It was created that way, because Roshar creation predates the Shattering of Adonalsium and a lot of things were set up that way. The scientific side is, in building the creatures that I was building on Roshar I needed a high oxygen environment, just to make the logistics work and even then I had to like-- It's high oxygen, low gravity, right? It's like 0.7 something Earth gravity. And even then I still had to add magic to get big beasties that I wanted to. Like the greatshells just can not exist. Square cube law. Even after I tweaked atmosphere and the gravity, the math didn't work, but fortunately I had the whole spren thing going on. These are both things I was trying do in order to create megafauna. I’m sorry, is that, did that make sense?

DrogaKrolow

Ok, but is there some higher level of production of oxygen, so like, there are no trees but it comes from the oceans?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah. I mean they've got a lot-- What you've got, also, to remember is, most of Earth's oxygen doesn't come from our trees-- I mean it does but it comes from the ocean and things like this. I didn't have a problem building this into Roshar because-- What we've got on Roshar is we've got, number one, we've got the highstorms-- Which are actually really good for plant life when it comes to microflora, right? And beyond that you've got-- you've got weather patterns that are very-- Like it’s rarely freezing on Roshar. Most people on Roshar have never seen snow. And so-- I mean I didn't find it a problem making a high oxygen environment work, that was the least of my troubles in building Roshar. I mean most of the planet is ocean anyway.

DrogaKrolow

Some people were curious, just about it.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, were they? Okay. I mean, yeah-- I mean all you have to do is hit-- Like really you only have to hit a stasis, right? You are creating as much as you're using. Like if you start with high oxygen and you create as much as you use, you stay high oxygen. It doesn't need to actually be creating a higher percentage than our world is creating, as far as I understand it.

#7 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Technological progress. So Scadrial is going all the way to cyberpunk.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

But do you plan to do it anywhere else?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, with an asterisk, right? Roshar has a very different technological path but they have access to so much more Investiture in an easy to use format. Roshar is really heading toward what we call magicpunk, or things like this, magepunk, where you are using a magical power source and things like this. So their technology is going to go weird but it's going to go fast once they start figuring things out because they have easy access to Investiture resources.

Scadrial: slower for various reasons and things like that, but it's ahead.

And then there was Taldain, which was really far ahead but then froze when it got-- Offworld travel was stopped and it became isolationist.

So most everybody is kind of heading that direction but, yeah.

#9 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Few months ago we've received great news about some of your books which will be adapted into movies. So what do you think, which one is most likely to get adapted first?

Brandon Sanderson

I’ve always thought that Mistborn would be the most likely 'cause it's the easiest to translate to a film, but the people who bought the rights to the Cosmere bought everything but Mistborn 'cause Mistborn was owned by someone else. And then they bought Mistborn a year later, when it became available. So Mistborn is a year behind the others. Emperor's Soul and Stormlight have been going the longest. Stormlight is so hard. Right, we’ve just got the screenplay in and the screenplay is like *does a gesture* you know, it's like for a five hour movie or something like that. And they're like "We have to cut this down!" "Yes. Yes, we do." And that is super hard. And Mistborn is a lot easier to adapt. So I still expect we'll see Mistborn first, but who knows.

#10 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Who would you like to be the composer, do the music for your movies? Do you have any idea?

Brandon Sanderson

I have never been asked that before! Wow! I have no idea. Right? Like I listen to a lot of soundtracks and I like them all but I'm not an expert in this. Michael Kamen was always my favorite. He's passed away. So we resurrect Michael Kamen and have him do it.

DrogaKrolow

A Lifeless?

Brandon Sanderson

What's that? Yeah, yeah, Michael Kamen the Lifeless.

#11 Copy

DrogaKrolow

What about cameos? Do you have some ideas in your mind?

Brandon Sanderson

Cameos for me? I want to die in a different way in every movie. As payment for killing off characters. And so I want to be like the Redshirt or whatever, the person who gets killed in a new creative way. That's my thought.

#12 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Would you like to see your stories adapted into video games?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I've tried a couple of times. So far they haven’t worked out. We had someone working on Mistborn for a long time. Video game industry is hard. But-- I mean, there've been some really great games made from books so I hope to have one someday.

#13 Copy

DrogaKrolow

As we know you're a human typewriter. You can release books faster than we can read it.

Brandon Sanderson

Now you say that but I release like a Stormlight book and I start getting fanmail for it the next day. This took me 18 months to write and then you read it in one day so I don't know if I’d agree with that. But go on.

DrogaKrolow

You certainly have some free time for, let's say, reading books. And what books do you like to read? You have some favorite authors? Maybe fantasy genre?

Brandon Sanderson

Terry Pratchett is my favorite writer. But I like to read widely. I like to read a little bit of everything. Usually-- Like people talk about how fast I write; I'm not that fast a writer. I'm just very consistent. I write a little bit every day. And that adds up to a certain amount that I can do every year. But I write for 8 to 10 hours a day and spend four hours or so with my family and then spend two hours goofing off. So, goofing off can include listening to an audiobook while I do other things or reading a book or playing a video game. So I do find time.

#14 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Do you think that writing on a high level is a matter of talent or is achievable by just hard work?

Brandon Sanderson

I have no idea. I would like to think that it's hard work but I do know that talent plays a part in that as well. I would say that it's 10% talent 90% hard work but if you don't have that 10% talent it can be really hard. So I don’t know. I feel like I started off really bad at this. And wrote a whole bunch of books and got pretty decent but I also know that I do have some natural talents.

#15 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Where the hell in Warbreaker is the Terris lady?

Brandon Sanderson

Hehehe. Do you have any guesses?

DrogaKrolow

Nurses. One of them.

Brandon Sanderson

*pauses* Why do you guess that?

DrogaKrolow

I don't know.

Brandon Sanderson

That's a pretty good guess.

DrogaKrolow

I mean they are the only females apart from the main characters who are somehow important. So I guess somewhere there because I don't think she's like in the fifth plane somewhere in the back of the alley where someone walks by.

Brandon Sanderson

That’s a very good guess. I guess you have narrowed down your options. Um, yeah… um...so… I’m just gonna say that’s a ththth-- the-- he seems-- Yeah. So, there you go. I'm surprised...

...You’re not supposed to be able to guess who the Terriswoman is, by the way.

DrogaKrolow

So we will see her somewhere else?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you will see her somewhere else. Yeah, you're not supposed to be able to guess. So that's why I'm surprised.

#16 Copy

DrogaKrolow

If you were to choose one of your own worlds to live in, which would that be?

Brandon Sanderson

It would definitely be… Does it have to be cosmere?

DrogaKrolow

No.

Brandon Sanderson

Because then I could go with one of the cool science-fiction ones and I could have-- Like, you know-- Live far away from where everyone is having war and live like in a futuristic society. I think that's kind of cheating. If I had to pick one of the cosmere worlds I would probably pick Scadrial because it's the closest to having the Internet and instant noodles.

#17 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Sentient machines, artificial intelligence. Would they be able to use Investiture? Or not? How would that work?

Brandon Sanderson

So, define "use Investiture". Like, there's a lot of different ways to quote-unquote use Investiture.

DrogaKrolow

OK, I don't mean the medallions but like if I go and peek into the Spiritual Realm and I look at the machine, do I see Investiture inside it? The Connections to the Shards and so on?

Brandon Sanderson

Chances are good that you will. But I have to add a big asterisk to that, it's gonna depend on so many factors. But consciousness in the cosmere is directly tied to  Investiture. And creating a machine in many ways cosmerelogically is not that different from creating a child.

DrogaKrolow

Okay... Interesting.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I'll just leave it there.

#18 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Will there be some other books concerned with the Wheel of Time maybe?

Brandon Sanderson

Chances are not good. I feel that Robert Jordan didn't want there to be more-- And I'm not the final decision maker on that, Harriet is, but I've mentioned to her that I don't feel it would be right to continue doing [Wheel of Time] books. So I don't think it's likely. If she decides that she wants more that's certainly not my place to say that she can't, or things. But I don't think I would write anymore just because I feel like he wanted it to be an ending. If he were still around, he would've written more. But I don't think he would want me to.

#19 Copy

DrogaKrolow

If you were choosing-- If someone messaged you that they wanted you to end a series that was not ended before, because the author died. Some other author, OK? Would you agree once again to end a series that wasn’t ended?

Brandon Sanderson

It would depend on the situation. There are very few authors I have read as much as Robert Jordan and that I felt my style was a good match to. I would have to feel like I was a good match and that I was needed and it's a job that someone else couldn't do. I don't know that I could think of any authors that that’s the case for right now. But if I could go back in time and rewrite the prequel Star Wars movies for George Lucas I would do it.

DrogaKrolow

What would you improve in the prequels?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, everything? I don't know if I would be able to fix it because that's hubris but I sure would've liked a stab at it. You know, as many people...

DrogaKrolow

Couldn't agree more.

Brandon Sanderson

I mean, George Lucas has lots of talents but the stories do not come together very well for me. I was there opening night. You guys are too young to know what it was to go wait in line overnight and go to The Phantom Menace and be like "hmm…" after waiting so long. If I were to continue anyone else's legacy I would go back in time to rewrite those scripts when George Lucas wasn't looking.

#20 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Speaking about other movies, do you have your favorites?

Brandon Sanderson

Favorite films? Picking favorites is always so hard. In recent years I really liked-- I don't know if it's my favorite-- but I really liked Live.Die.Repeat./Edge of Tomorrow.

DrogaKrolow

The book is better.

Brandon Sanderson

The book is better? I really liked that. I really liked Lincoln. I mean, it’s not science-fiction/fantasy but I really liked that-- Classics, Fifth Element, it's like my go-to guilty pleasure space opera, I really like that. I really like the movie Gattaca… You guys ever seen Gattaca? Gattaca is good movie. It's an oldie now but it's great. It's a science-fiction. What else have I really liked? I like Chris Nolan's movies, I like them all.

DrogaKrolow

Inception.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Inception would be my favorite, I think. Though I really like The Prestige also. But on that one the book is legitimately better, also. But Prestige turned out very well.

#21 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Who do you think is that we’re way too young to understand? Star Wars but I was thinking-- What do you think about the target of your readers?

Brandon Sanderson

My target audience? I write primarily for myself as a fan of fantasy genre. I trust my instincts as a reader, I read a lot. I read what other people are doing. And my primary audience is "What awesome book is nobody writing that I could write?" And so I don't know that I have-- I focus too much on that. I think madness lies in that direction, so-- I do appreciate my readers. I do rub my hands thinking "Ooooh they are gonna love this part" but at the end of the day I'm just writing the book I want to read.

#22 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Few days ago I was in my family home to take some books for tomorrow's signing and my grandma which was reading The Way of Kings couldn't let me because she was somewhere in the middle and she was... taken by it.

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent, happy to hear that. How many, how many of the older generation in Poland read fantasy novels?

DrogaKrolow

I don't know, my mom does.

Brandon Sanderson

Your mom does?

DrogaKrolow

Your mom is probably not that old.

Brandon Sanderson

Your mom is probably my age so yeah.

DrogaKrolow

I think it's more the-- It seems so a lot of old generation reads fantasy in Poland, its involving all the time.

My parents think these are just fairy tales not worth telling.

Brandon Sanderson

What's that? Your mom does? That's ok, my parents were very, very scared. They wanted a doctor and I changed to write fantasy novels. They were very scared for me. They were like "What are you doing?" Now, they don't complain at all.

DrogaKrolow

My grandma was scared at first too when I gave her Mistborn and she likes it the best I think.

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent, I'm happy to hear that. Good job spreading the word to your grandma.

#23 Copy

DrogaKrolow

We have this one bizarre question, that actually was really, really weird but we have to know it.

There was a question about Siamese twins. If they were born gold Feruchemists, and they they were split apart, would they like, form together again?

Brandon Sanderson

Uhhhnn... It depends on how they view themselves

DrogaKrolow

That's the answer to every question like that!

Brandon Sanderson

Right! But that's the whole point of the cosmere is that-- Spiritual Realm is filtered through the Cognitive Realm to the Physical Realm, right? And this lens is going to filter how things work. Perception is really important in the cosmere. That's where most of these things come from, and so-- Yeah that is the answer to everything. But that's the point of the answer to everything, is that there aren't a lot of hard and fast rules when it comes to a lot of these things, with Identity and whatnot is going be filtered through perception.

DrogaKrolow

So it is technically possible for them, if they are seeing each other as one.

Brandon Sanderson

Right.

DrogaKrolow

So we can--

Brandon Sanderson

Now the big hard question is, what if one of them views them as one and one of them doesn't?

DrogaKrolow

Oh.

Brandon Sanderson

Aaaaoooohhh! Then it depends on who's using the magic.

DrogaKrolow

What if both of them are?

Brandon Sanderson

Both of them what? Are gold? If both of them are healing and one doesn't want to and one does, magic's gonna cancel each other out and nothing will happen.

DrogaKrolow

Ok.

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm. Yeah I made your question harder and weirder.

DrogaKrolow

Well it was a very logical answer to a very unlogical question.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I've had to answer a lot of these. My feeling is that if I can make the fundamental magic principles work then you can answer those questions rationally but really what you would have to do is-- Even I'm not the expert on these things. Like I'm the ultimate word in some ways but in another ways the answer would be "I don't know, let's have a thought experiment and if it ever comes up, try it out and see what happens". But yeah, there you go. There is my best answer to you.

#24 Copy

DrogaKrolow

OK, I’ve got a question about AonDor.

Brandon Sanderson

Ok.

DrogaKrolow

So it's a lot like functional programing.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

And my question is: could you write a higher-level language of programming with that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

Oh...

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm. But. Only an Elantrian could make it, like, work, right? Not compile but could execute the function. They would have to type it out and execute it. Like if you were just-- Even if you just gave it to them, they would have to retype it and go. But yes, you could.

DrogaKrolow

Couldn't you like-- Is there an Aon for define, definition? So like you could go and define some really long sequence of Aons and then assign it to a simple shape.

Brandon Sanderson

Right.

DrogaKrolow

Then draw the symbol, and would it work?

Brandon Sanderson

Right right, object-oriented. This is realistically plausible, you would have to write all this stuff and call the function and have this constantly in a state of kinetic Investiture. But that is reasonable. I mean it's not so far off from things they actually did with much fewer-- much fewer lines of code, if you wish, in the past. It's what Elantris itself was.

#25 Copy

DrogaKrolow

The last one, a bit offtop, Me and Klaudia-- We dream about becoming a fantasy writer. I'm sure she's wondering too: how does it feel when your first book was published...

Brandon Sanderson

Man that's so hard to define. I'm a writer, I should be able to do this, but it was amazing. It's validation for having spent twenty years trying to learn how to do this. Maybe not twenty. Fifteen years trying to learn how to do this. At the same time, theoretically in some way it's also just a released breath. Okay it happened. It worked. But at the end, you write for yourself. I don't know if you guys have heard this story; I've told it before, but I had a really down point in my writing career before I got published. 

DrogaKrolow

Yes the four hundred-- uh, when you sold Elantris.

Brandon Sanderson

See, when I was trying to get published, everyone was telling me you need to be more like George RR Martin. They really did. They'd say that, and they would also say my books are too long. So they would tell me these two things. You need to be more like George Martin and your books are too long. They were all looking for Joe Abercrombie. That's who they wanted to find, right? They wanted short, brutal books. And Joe's a great writer, so there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not me. And I tried doing that. That's what Final Empire Prime and Mistborn Prime--unpublished novels--were. I took some of my ideas and I tried to write something more Joe Abercrombie-esque, even though Joe hadn't been published then. So it was just a short, sort of grimdark thing, and they were terrible. They were absolutely terrible. And so I sat back and I'm like, "Okay, nobody wants to read what I'm writing, but if I try to write what they say to write, it turns out to be a terrible book. Should I just give up?"

And I thought about that for a while and I eventually came to the decision: I'm not writing for them. I'm writing for me. That's the point. And if I die at age 90--let's say age 100 *laughter*--and I have 150 unpublished books in my closet, then I'm a success, because I kept writing, because that's what's important, was enjoying and loving that process. Even if I never got published, I wanted to be that person. And that's when I sat down and wrote The Way of Kings [Prime], which was my proverbial flipping the bird at the industry. I said, if you say my books are too long, I'm writing one twice as long. If you say my books are not George Martin enough, I'm going to go the complete opposite direction. High magic, high fantasy, all the awesome stuff. Knights in magical power armor. All of this stuff. And I wrote that book fully expecting no one would ever publish it. And that's when I got the call from an editor buying Elantris, which I'd written five years before at that point. It might have been four years, but you know. 

But when Elantris came out, I'd already made the decision that I'm a writer, no matter, I don't give up. I write for me. And so in some ways it was hugely relieving and thrilling. But in some ways the more important decision had already been made. I was a writer, and I didn't need that validation to be a writer. Because the only one that says whether or not I'm a writer is me. I get up every day and I do it.

#26 Copy

DrogaKrolow

This might be a really weird question, but how do you feel about killing your characters in books? Are getting sad, or angry, or you are just like you feel it just has to be done and "sorry, not sorry"--

Brandon Sanderson

It's kind of the last one, it has to be done. It's more along the lines of, this is what the character has been pushing toward and kinda demanding all along, and I will let them do what they feel they need to. I rarely feel like I actually kill off characters, I more feel like, characters take risks all the time and I can’t always pull the punches, once in a while I've just gotta let them pay the consequences.

#27 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Do you think that Oathbringer will be released faster than Winds of Winter?

Brandon Sanderson

I guarantee it will be, because I have a publication day. Now I guess can't guarantee it because George could always just decide it's done and call the publisher and then they would probably-- they would publish it and they could probably pick the same day as mine and I'd have to be like "Oh no." But I think the chances that I will beat it are pretty good, I just hope that I don't beat the next one too, cause George's fans really deserve to get--  to get those last two books.

#28 Copy

DrogaKrolow

OK another one about programming the AonDor. Could you go lower-level, like assembler, so like you-- The AonDor would be higher so you go even deeper--*waves arms to illustrate*

Brandon Sanderson

That's gonna be more of a RAFO because to go deeper you have to know what's going on with the magic on Sel and I haven't revealed all of that and things like this. Like why the Aons or why the various symbols-- What's going on with all of that, I mean I think people are starting to guess it but I haven't really talked about it a lot so you would have to go, to get to that level I would have to give you information I don't wanna talk about right now.

DrogaKrolow

So that's a RAFO

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO.

#29 Copy

DrogaKrolow

I think you are really active on the subreddit for The Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

I am fairly active, the problem is every time I post I get like 300 hundred responses and I'm like "I can't respond to all of that I have to write books".

#30 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Do you have your favorite fan theory? You don't have to say if it's untrue or not, but--

Brandon Sanderson

Favorite fan theories. Oh wow. I'm always really curious about which two characters people like to "ship" together

DrogaKrolow

Shalladin!

Brandon Sanderson

That one would be pretty interesting. What else-- Favorite fan theories-- I've read a bunch of them that I just chuckle about, but some of them-- I mean it's a mark of pride for me when somebody gets it right. That means that I have done my foreshadowing well. The unfortunate part of that is, when it actually happens in the books there will be a whole lot "I knew it" rather than "Oh I'm so surprised". It's getting so hard to surprise you people. If I do my job right and I put in the foreshadowing then you will be able to guess things even though sometimes you guess things you are not supposed to be able to guess yet, because there is no foreshadowing. But yeah like there will be big revelations in Oathbringer that I think will blow the average reader's mind and the people who have been reading closer "Oh yeah, that. What they don't know that yet?"

My favorite fan theories-- I can't think of one of the top of my head, I've heard some really good ones though.

#31 Copy

DrogaKrolow

I need to ask, Dalinar lost his wife's name. I was talking about it with Klaudia yesterday and I need to ask, is it punishment or it's-- was it his wish?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

DrogaKrolow

When will it be revealed?

Brandon Sanderson

It will be revealed in Oathbringer. You will get flashbacks of Dalinar going, you actually see him visit the Nightwatcher.

#32 Copy

DrogaKrolow

How many more secret societies are on Roshar? What-- More of them?

Brandon Sanderson

There are a few but most of the ones you haven't found out about are either in countries you haven't gone to and spent much time with or they are offworld societies that are involved in Roshar. You know most of them.

#33 Copy

DrogaKrolow

Last question: Are you planning to come back to Poland somewhere soon?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes but I don't know when, but I have to come to Warsaw Book Fair, my publisher has made it very clear I need to eventually, and you guys do keep bugging me so-- I'm sure it won't stop now that I've actually come. I have been to Spain like four times so--

Bystander

It's closer to States.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it's so much closer.

DrogaKrolow

We'll definitely come back with some weird questions

Brandon Sanderson

Ok great. We need a direct flight to Warsaw, that's what we need.

Bystander

From Salt Lake.

Brandon Sanderson

From Salt Lake. Yeah, not gonna happen. There is a direct flight to Paris so I'm in Paris and there’s a direct flight to London, so I end up both in London and Paris all the time.

Bystander

There is loads of flights from London to Warsaw.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Bystander

To any city in Poland.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah but if there is no direct flight then I have to change planes.

Bystander

Jesus.

Brandon Sanderson

It's hard.

Bystander

At Heathrow--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I know! Actually I changed this time in Amsterdam, that's a good airport, so easy to get around.

DrogaKrolow

How many hours did you spend traveling here?

Brandon Sanderson

Nine hours.

DrogaKrolow

Nine hours?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah-- Oh nine hours-- Sorry, nine hours on that flight to Amsterdam, and then two hours to Warsaw.

Bystander

Not bad.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, not that bad. Two hour layover, so total of 13 hours.

I wrote a really bad short story that I don't think I will ever release. It's kind of dumb. So that still happens to me.

Event details
Name
Name DrogaKrolow.pl interview
Date
Date March 17, 2017
Location
Location Warsaw, Poland
Entries
Entries 33
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