YouTube Livestream 8

Alexander

Who would win in a fight: Sadeas or Amaram?

Brandon Sanderson

I am going to say Sadeas, at his prime. And this is because Sadeas at his prime was more aware of his weaknesses than Amaram was, if that makes sense. And Sadeas was more aware of his strengths and his weaknesses. Where Sadeas runs into problems is: Sadeas did not have the help and the sort of beginnings of cosmere awareness that Amaram had. Amaram had access to way more resources and way more... he was in a better position than Sadeas was because of the allies and friends that he had. Sadeas's vision was too myopic in the series, while Amaram's vision was bigger, but he, himself, did not have quite the capacity.

Adam Horne

This next one is from Paleo. They want to know what's your opinion on the term Cytoverse for the Skyward universe? 

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I like that.

Adam Horne

They were hoping to have a dedicated term for it, and I thought that was a pretty good one.

Brandon Sanderson

I'll go with it. Thumbs up. Cytoverse I'm on board. Good job. I can totally buy that.

Tony Irene

Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration of Wayne, and if that was perhaps based off someone you know?

Brandon Sanderson

The fun story about Wayne, the beginnings of Alloy of Law were a short story that I wrote where Wayne was the protagonist, and MeLaan was his trusty steed in a horse's body. It was a guy who put on different hats to change personalities, riding into a small town in the Roughs, talking to his horse. Who, then, at the end of the first scene, talked back to him. It was a fun scene. It was way too weird. After I finished that scene, I'm like, "This guy is great. But this guy needs someone else to play off of. And it can't be his talking horse, because this story is just too out there."

Why did I start writing that story? The initial idea is a person who changes personalities based on hats. You put on a hat, and it lets you kind of have a focus for your acting, to get into a role and become someone. That was really fun to me. In fact, in the original story, he was a hatmaker. He was a haberdasher. And he understood people by the headgear that they like.

Which, if gonna be honest and trace it back, probably goes back to Thrawn. I love Thrawn, from the original Star Wars books by Timothy Zahn. And Thrawn was somebody who would look at the art that a culture produces and use that to come to understand them in ways that he could then use to conquer them. Which was just always so cool to me. Like, that's one of the coolest villain concepts, is this art appreciation villain who really gets to know a culture by studying their art, and then crushes them and dominates them. Just wonderful.  I'm always kind of looking for characters who see the world in an interesting way. That's probably it. I don't think I was thinking that when I came up with Wayne.

But then, Wayne needed someone to bounce off against. Wayne needed a straight man, so to speak. And he just wasn't working. So that's when I started plotting Alloy of Law, the actual novel. The short story did not become the novel. The short story taught me that there was enough there that I was interested in that I really wanted to tell a story in this era. And it told me that there's something about this character that's gonna work if I can find the right vehicle to include them in a story.

That's our origins of Wayne. I think I can probably also look at the Sherlock Holmes dynamic, Sherlock and Watson. Any time I'm building a mystery duo or team, there's a bit of Sherlock and Watson going around in the back of my head.

Ken Fagan

You mentioned in a previous stream that you envision the three Era 1 books as a movie, TV series, and another movie, respectively. Do you have an idea for what subsequent eras would look like in another medium?

Brandon Sanderson

Wax and Wayne is a television show. Straight-up, that's how I envisioned it. I've only started to think of Era 1 as movie/television show/movie as I've worked on the screenplay and seen that the second book, pacing-wise, works so much better as a television show. So that's how I started to envision that. I've always envisioned Wax and Wayne as a television show.

Era 3. I have to write. I have to see how Era 3 turns out. As I've told you before, I envisioned them as Mistborn spy thrillers. Mistborn Tom Clancy, Mistborn Mission Impossible kind of mashup sort of things. So, they're probably going to be paced and plotted more cinematically, which would mean features.

I know a lot of people talk about animation, and that's totally on our radar for some of these things. There's cool things happening in animation right now. I actually was talking with my people and saying, "Do you think we can get anyone on board for the idea of a Reckoners animated show?" Because I think that would be awesome. So, it's totally on our radar. It's things we're thinking about doing. And I imagine it will happen for some of our properties going forward.

A lot of people ask me about video games. We tried for years on Mistborn with a really great group of people who I still really like, Little Orbit and Matt Scott. Just top-notch folks. They treated me great, they treated the property great. But it just didn't come together. Video games are such a hard world.

Questioner

Can you talk a little bit about why you changed Khriss's personality so much between the White Sand prose and the White Sand graphic novel?

Brandon Sanderson

I felt that the biggest weakness to a lot of my early writing (this encompasses White Sand, Dragonsteel, and Elantris) is that my worldbuilding was really working, my magic systems were really coming together, and my characters were flat and kind of boring. And this early work of mine, I look at and there's a lot of external conflict to characters.

And it works in Elantris. Raoden is a bit boring, compared to some of my other characters. But he has an enormous external conflict to deal with, and that actually kind of works. There are lots of movies, I mentioned Mission Impossible earlier. Like Tom Cruise's character in those: not the most interesting character. But he doesn't have to be, because in fact it would probably make the movies worse if you spent a lot of time on that. That's not what those movies are about. So if you have lots of tension and lots of external conflict, then you can have a character who doesn't change as much, who doesn't go through big character arcs and things. And it's not just fine; it's a selling point of the story. It's just a different type of story.

But the problem with mine is, they were all kind of the same person. They're all kind of the same level of boring in a lot of my early works. And so, when we approached the graphic novel version, one of the things I wanted to do was see if I can liven up the characters a little, if I can make them more like I would write them now. And that's what happened with basically all the changes in White Sand were attempts to do that: make the story more like I write right now. And I'm pleased with those changes.

The only thing I don't like about White Sand is, as we were new into doing this, we did not get the worldbuilding across in a visual medium the way we wanted to. I don't think that the worldbuilding made the leap. And we're trying to fix that with future things that we're doing. We're hoping that we can play to the strengths of graphic novels and not have them lose some of the coolness. Some of the things that were working in the White Sand prose didn't make the jump to the graphic novel as well as we wanted them to.

Questioner

Did you do any research into the Knights Templar when you were preparing to write about the Radiants?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. I find the Knights Templar fascinating, and I've often read about them and been interested in them. When I was coming up with the Knights Radiant, the origins of them didn't have... I didn't even call them the Knights Radiant in the first draft, the first version of Way of Kings. So some of these connections that now seem pretty clear with the ancient order that has fallen away and is being restored, and even the titling, didn't really exist in the early ones. I would say they're there in the back of my brain, certainly, and would be an unconscious influence. But a lot of the things that you might say, "Hey, these came from the Knights Templar," didn't. But were more of a parallel evolution sort of thing as I figured out what I wanted the Knights Radiant to be.

Questioner

A question for SanderMom. Which character of Brandon's do you think is most like you?

Brandon Sanderson

I would guess that Navani is a combination of you and Emily. And Navani is very like you. Very pragmatic, very "I'm gonna see things get done." There's probably a bit of you in Navani, I would say, for sure.

Any time an accountant shows up in my books, you can guess where that came from. People have pointed out there a suspicious number of accountants in my books.