YouTube Livestream 22

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Name YouTube Livestream 22
Date
Date Nov. 12, 2020
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Entries 5
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#1 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

I assign one day a week to not do writing things and just do other stuff. That day, recently, a lot of that time (Thursdays) has been dedicated to a video game project, which I'm not at liberty to say what it is yet, I'm sorry. But that I've been working on for the last year. Some day that'll get announced.

#2 Copy

Todd

You've mentioned that Rhythm of War has a sequence that you've had in your head for a long time. Any other scenes (without spoilers) from Stormlight Archive that you are excited to have in the story?

Brandon Sanderson

There is a scene in Book Two that is one of these other foundational scenes, but I can't say it without giving spoilers about Book Two. Happens near the end of Book Two. There's a lot of them. So, the thing is, most of these are gonna be in Stormlight because Stormlight Archive is the book I started planning and then had in my head, the series, for ten years without being able to write it. Mistborn, I designed, outlined, and then wrote. And I'm really excited by how Mistborn turned out. But the original Mistborn, they don't have any scenes that I was planning for a decade, because I basically came up with the story and executed it. (Though I had done the magic system in a previous book, Mistborn Prime, which we'll someday release.)

So, a lot of these are in Stormlight. They're sprinkled all across Stormlight. There's one in Book Five, there's one in Book Ten, there's one in Book Eight. And these are just things when I originally conceived the Stormlight Archive that I was really excited to get to, and now have had to wait twenty years to write these scenes. So it's very fulfilling to finally be able to write some of these things. Because I wrote Way of Kings Prime, and then had to stop and not write Stormlight for seven years. So it built in my head with all of these things that I wanted to do.

There are some really cool scenes for Era Three of Mistborn that I've been waiting now probably for over a decade at this point to be able to share with you. So once I'll be able to get to that, then that'll be really exciting. But there aren't any from Wax and Wayne, because I conceived and executed Wax and Wayne. I thought of it and then wrote it, rather than having these decade-long waits to finally get the story written.

#3 Copy

Cassian

Is the in-world The Way of Kings meant to be the exact opposite of The Prince by Machiavelli?

Brandon Sanderson

No. That is because, if you read The Prince by Machiavelli, it doesn't deserve quite the reputation it has. But it is meant to be an opposite, in many ways, to the "ends justify the means" philosophy that we kind of cliff-notes put upon The Prince. The Prince has got a lot more depth to that discussion that at least I thought before I read The Prince. But it is supposed to be a counterpoint to that idea, the ends justify the means. A counterpoint to that concept is, "What if the means are the point? Then the end will not justify them, because the means are more important in many ways than the point." So it is yes, but it's also no.

#4 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

And they're kind of just for me. Because they're the paintings of the Heralds, which are characters that I know and have been telling stories in my head about for twenty years. But you don't know 'em very well. (You know Nale a little bit.) But most of the Heralds, you're like, "Who are these people? Why do you have these awesome pictures of people that aren't in the books?" Well, that's because they will be in the books, and they are the people that I wanted paintings of. Selfish.

#5 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

All right, I'm gonna pull upon the cloud here, and I'm gonna go to my archive, and let's see what I can find in here that I have outlines for that I haven't written.

There's one I know of for sure. I'm not gonna tell you what that one is. It's a secret project. One that I haven't talked about.

I don't know if we count Death By Pizza. I have a full outline for that. But that's a book I didn't write, and then I passed the worldbuilding off to Peter Orullian, who was writing a book based on it. Not using my outline, because the outline had some problems. But that would probably be number two.

Dark One became a graphic novel. So I don't know if you count that. That's, like, half of one.

Starburner would be number four-ish. That's the first full outline that doesn't have a book attached to it right now.

Don't know if you count Stormlight Five. The outline for Stormlight Five is very detailed. Six through Ten is less detailed; I do have them, but they're more like a paragraph or two about each book, so I wouldn't count them as a full outline.

Five in my "Novels to Write Someday" one. Which, most of them, you guys haven't heard about. One's the magic that uses kites; I've talked about that before.

I've got "Totally Not A Rewrite Of Episode I" that I wrote nine years ago. I just could not help it.

I have the five I mentioned earlier. In addition, in their own folders, I have I Hate Dragons. (Which I actually outlined the whole I Hate Dragons book, but I only wrote the little piece of it that was a writing exercise.) I have... six.

Six plus five, so eleven outlines in my Novels to Write Someday. And then two half ones that I passed on to someone else. And then all the Stormlight and Mistborn and things like that that don't quite count. So there you go, eleven. It's eleven only, right now. That's not very many. I would say that I've got at least that many in my head, maybe a few more.

Oh, and Secret Project, so that's twelve. And all of those are Secret Projects in a way, I guess. You've heard about some of them. One of them is The Lurker, which became Adamant, which I wrote one novella of, but I have the outlines for the rest.

Event details
Name
Name YouTube Livestream 22
Date
Date Nov. 12, 2020
Entries
Entries 5
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