JordanCon 2014

Event details
Name
Name JordanCon 2014
Date
Date April 11, 2014
Location
Location Roswell, GA
Entries
Entries 39
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#1 Copy

WeiryWriter

What are Cultivation's feelings with regards to the Stormfather?

Brandon Sanderson

Cultivation's feelings... Cultivation is, *long pause* I just have to decide how I can say things that are not spoilers. Cultivation-- The Stormfather reminds her of certain things about someone else she knew, and she feels the same way about the Stormfather in some ways as this person that she knew.

#2 Copy

Questioner

Alcatraz?

Brandon Sanderson

Alcatraz 5. When am I going to write Alcatraz 5? I have a few things on my plate but I do want to finish it. I have re-releases of the series coming out next year probably. We sold the series to Tor, I bought it back from Scholastic. We are repackaging them with new covers and we are hiring an illustrator to illustrate them, to have cool illustrations all through the book. It looks like we'll do 25-30, little half-pagers and things like that through the book. We're doing a map, Isaac is commissioning a very nice map. And then we are going to re-release them and so I will try to have Book 5 come out when we have that going.

#4 Copy

Questioner

When are you going to work on the next Mistborn book?

Brandon Sanderson

Right now I am going to write Rithmatist 2, followed by Stormlight 3, and the next Mistborn book [Shadows of Self] is going to come after that. Tor has asked that I write the next Stormlight book before I write the next Mistborn books, so I will be doing that. I do have a chunk of the sequel written, but I had to put off writing it until later.

#5 Copy

Questioner

Any hints at the thing hiding in the maps of Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

The map of Roshar, what hints can I give you? The same thing is hiding in all of the maps of Roshar. All of the ones we have done so far have the same thing.

Footnote: This is referencing the fact that the shape of the Rosharan continent is based on the shape of a Julia set.
#8 Copy

Questioner

Will you tell us a little about the sword from Warbreaker?

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood is a weapon that I devised. He is partially inspired by my love of Michael Moorcock's writing. He was built into the cosmere using many of the foundational cosmere magic system things that exist on multiple worlds.

#10 Copy

Questioner

What was the reason for choosing the base form of Shardblades as blades, why not another form? Was it because of the spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Why was the base form of Shardblades chosen to as blades, as swords? It is because the Shardblades were devised... They were devised as imitations of the Honorblades, which were created and given to the Heralds. And so since the original pattern was the Honorblades, they were built to feel like the Honorblades.

#11 Copy

Questioner

How much more do you want to write about Stephen Leeds?

Brandon Sanderson

How much more do I want to write about Stephen Leeds, from Legion? I want to write a decent amount more. I have finished Legion 2, which you may have noticed, which is called Legion: Skin Deep. I had a really great name for a title, but I don't know if I can use it because Skin Deep is a reference to beauty, right? But I thought a great title would be Legion: Lies of the Beholder. I like the pun on that but that is also "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" so I can't make them all puns off of beauty. The original concept with Legion was to do a short that would--I imagine being a television show, it's how I imagined it and I wanted to do future episodes, so to speak. I particularly love the episode format they are doing for Sherlock on the BBC, if you guys have seen that, where your season is three hour-and-a-half long mini movies basically. And I love that format for a television show, I wish we could get more television shows doing that. I would rather sink my teeth into an hour-and-a-half long episode that has character growth, real growth and development, progress and the next one doesn't just hit the reset button and say, another adventure. It is progressing the characters further. I'd rather get three of those in a season than a twenty-two episode where of those episodes eighteen are just yet another adventure with no progress. And so--anyway that's how I imagine that.

Questioner

When Legion came out there was talk Hollywood was already interested.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, we sold the rights and then they let them lapse. They kept the rights for two years and they let them lapse.

#13 Copy

WeiryWriter

Current status of the White Sand graphic novel?

Brandon Sanderson

We have chosen a writer and the writing is quite good. We are very pleased with it, the person who's adapting the story. We have not chosen the artist yet, we have had several that have been sent to us. Each of them are doing an application with their art and we are now choosing among them. So if there's-- We are looking for professional comic book and graphic novel illustrators and so if there happened to be one of you out there who has done professional work in this field and has done--you have to be willing to commit to doing a lot of work and you have to work with Dynamite and things like this. Then you are more than welcome to contact us, but I think we are close to picking somebody.

#14 Copy

Questioner

When will second book of Legion be out on Audible?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably, I think November 1st is the scheduled release date and I think Audible--I can't promise this--but I think we are going to do the same thing we did with the first one, which is it will be free on Audible for like the first two months because they are short enough that charging a full credit for them is kind of, you know, they are one-third of a book, right? But you can't really split a credit into one-third credits. So if you do want to go buy Legion off of Audible, the Audible version is very nice and I think they sell it for five bucks or something, don't use a credit just go spend five bucks on it. And the second one--we did that one free for the first few months, and I think we may do the second one free for the first few months also.

Questioner

Are they planning to go that for Infinity Blade, like for an Audible release?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think there are plans right now, but the fact that you are interested makes me think maybe we should ask if they are interested.

#16 Copy

Questioner

When will we see a Hoid book?

Brandon Sanderson

You will see a Hoid book-- You will not see a Hoid book until I finish the first five books of Stormlight and the next Mistborn trilogy at the earliest. More likely it's after Stormlight is done.

#17 Copy

Questioner

From the moment you begin worldbuilding Roshar how long did it take you before it really resembled what we read in The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance?

Brandon Sanderson

Resembled? I would say about a year. But I started worldbuilding it in 2001, if you read the version I wrote in 2002 you would say, "This feels like Roshar" but the spren weren't in it yet.

#18 Copy

Questioner

Are we going to see any chapters that are expressly Hoid now that he is becoming more and more important?

Brandon Sanderson

You have seen two. Are you going to see more? Yes. I would say that if you look at the structure of the first two Stormlight books, you will find several themes and those themes are likely to be repeated in future books. And Hoid does like having the last word. *laughter*

#20 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid waxes poetic on the idea that the more people expect, the more difficult it becomes for the artist. This is more the critic in me having noticed that my own expectations for a piece play dramatically into how much I enjoy it. Some of my best experiences at the cinema have been films where I had no idea what to expect. The Sixth Sense was like this for me. I had never heard of the film, my friends dragged me to it, they said it's a horror and I said "I'm not sure if I want to watch a slasher pic, but I think it's going to be terrible but whatever." And I watched it and it was a great movie and I came out of it saying, "Wow, I did not expect that." And yet something like The Dark Knight Returns, which is a fantastic film, well done. Yet the second film was so good that I went into the third film and it wasn't quite as good as the second film and I came out and said, "Eh." Where it is a great film and yet my expectations-- It's unfair to the artist but it is the way I think a lot of us work. That our expectations do play a lot into how our experience is for the story. A lot of things when I go into things like that, I'm not trying to let the author speak so much as I'm trying to say what would someone who analyzes art like a critic in my analyzes art what would be an observation they would make. Hoid is not me and he does not voice necessarily my personal opinions, but he is an artist and a critic and so he notices some of the things I notice.  

#21 Copy

Questioner

Did Ben or Isaac design the glyphs in The Stormlight Archive?

Isaac Stewart

I did. So here's an interesting thing the-- no I'm not going to tell you that. *lots of laughter* I think it would be a spoiler for Book 3. Bridge Four in Alethi, you guys ready? Vev Gesheh. Vev is the number four, Gesheh is bridge... When I design the glyphs, I always make sure I know how to say it in Alethi before I design the glyph.

Ben McSweeney

Is there a reason for that?

Isaac Stewart

There is a reason for that.

Ben McSweeney

Are you going to tell us what that reason is?

Isaac Stewart

Nope. The glyph writing system is just a-- You are supposed to be able to look at it and say "Hey that's--that means bridge" but it could be elongated, it could be changed, it could be--but the same shapes are in there and that means "bridge" or whatever else that is.

#22 Copy

Isaac Stewart

The glyphs don't really relate to pronunciation. You learn them by seeing the glyph and knowing what the word is for that. But the people, the people who create the glyphs have a different process from ones who read them.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Isaac Stewart

It can be pretty challenging to draw the glyphs. We usually go through several different iterations of different looks of things before we come up with something that we like.

#23 Copy

Questioner

Lift stands outside Kredik Shaw, her goal is to eat the Lord Ruler's lunch, can she get away with it?

Brandon Sanderson

I think she totally can. She's Lift, she'll just get him while he's sleeping.

#25 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

With Lift part of the inspiration was-- Boy, what was the inspiration for Lift? When I was building The Stormlight Archive I said, "I want the Knights Radiant to run the gamut of different character styles, ages, and types of story." And when you say "knight"--when I say knight you imagine one thing. What you don't imagine is a thirteen-year-old Hispanic girl, right? And I said "I want to have the people that are in the Knights Radiant to not be the standard what you think of." They are the entire world's cultures having different people. And so I said "Well, what is somebody who does not fit that mold?" That you would say is not a knight. Lift was partially developed out of me wanting to build a character who was awesome but was so different from what everyone would think of. 'Cause you say knight and they think of white dude in armor, and I wanted something very different from that. And that's where she came from. It also came partially from my wife reading a lot of fantasy and complaining that she's like, "you know the Asians show up in fantasy a lot, Asian culture inspires a lot. European culture of course does. You see a lot of these things but where are the Hispanics?"

*audience laughs*

...Yeah there's one. So she challenged me to put a Hispanic culture in my books because I had never done it before, and so Lift is an outgrowth of that, so are the Herdazians. They are meant to be sort of in the same way that the Alethi are inspired by Korean culture, mashed up with this sort of concept of medieval knights. The same way Shallan is based a little off of Western American/Europe culture. The Herdazians are launching off some of the original Hispanic concepts. So the thing is, you want every culture to be new and original but you are working from somewhere. And the problem is we all work from the same stories for so long that is part of the reason why fantasy is starting to feel so stale.

#27 Copy

Questioner

Where did you get the idea of the Elantris magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

The drawing glyphs is based on Korean and Chinese writing systems. I'm Mormon, I served a mission in Korea for two years, loved the writing system and the language. It was part of what inspired me to do that. There is this really cool thing where in Korea they used Chinese characters to write for a long time and they are very difficult to learn because you just have to memorize them and there was a great king, named Sejong, who said, "My people are being mostly illiterate because this is so hard and we don't even speak Chinese, we are not Chinese. We use their characters, can we develop a language, a writing system that will allow us to do this" and his scholars got together and devised Korean which is a way to phonetically write Chinese characters kind of? It's their own thing. You write them in little groups to make little Chinese characters, it's the coolest thing ever. But you can write most Korean things, not everything, most you can write as a Chinese character or as a phonetic Korean construction of three letters that create that Chinese character sound and I liked that idea and it spun me into the idea of the Aons and the Aonic language and things like that.

#28 Copy

Questioner

Concerning everything on Roshar, is it safe to say The Stormlight Archive will become the backbone series of the story of the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

There are three backbone series: Dragonsteel, Mistborn, and The Stormlight Archive. And Mistborn is past, present, future, Stormlight is the center, and Dragonsteel is the beginning. So really it goes: Dragonsteel, Mistborn, Stormlight, Mistborn, Stormlight, Mistborn is basically how this backbone sequence goes.

#30 Copy

Questioner

What's it looking like for the book series of The Rithmatist?

Brandon Sanderson

I am writing the second one right now, it is my current project. It is going to be a trilogy. The second one should be out next summer. And they are going to go to South America. It's going to be fun.

#33 Copy

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Suppose you had a Feruchemist that was also skilled in Forgery. If they Soulstamped themselves, would they normally be able to still use Feruchemy, and if they were able to use Feruchemy after a Soulstamp would they be able to access their own metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You could do so, but it would require jerry-rigging in order to make it work, since the Soulstamp overwrites the current Spiritual aspect of a person. He then said that the accessing the metalminds would also require some amount of jerry-rigging. 

#35 Copy

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

If a Feruchemist using an aluminum metalmind stored their Identity to zero, then filled a coppermind with all of their knowledge, would another Feruchemist with an identity set to zero be able to access the first Feruchemist's coppermind?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I'm not going to tell you a definite yes or no, this is something that needs to be saved for future books, but you are thinking along the correct lines about how Identity works regarding Feruchemists.

Event details
Name
Name JordanCon 2014
Date
Date April 11, 2014
Location
Location Roswell, GA
Entries
Entries 39
Upload sources