Cosmere.es
So currently, the books from the cosmere are pretty different, maybe, from the things that you thought would be the cosmere, like thirty years ago when the young Brandon was starting to write, and we are curious about how, or if you expected it to be like this when you started?
Brandon Sanderson
No, I definitely didn't. Remember that when I very first started, I didn't have the cosmere, right? Back when I was writing White Sand Prime and Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, and Star's End and Knight Life, all of those early books, all I had was a desire to do a big epic. Even when I wrote Elantris, I put Hoid into it more as an Easter egg than as a thing that is going to be some big thing. It wasn't until writing Mistborn years later, not even Mistborn Prime, the actual Mistborn, that the cosmere started to take shape. And at that point, so that's 2004, at that point I outlined Era 1, what is now Era 3, and Era 4. And Era 4 was big galactic kind of space interaction between all the different worlds. So by then, I was very excited by the idea of—I had the shape of it. But even then I wasn't planning to write Sixth of the Dusk, I hadn't written Shadows for Silence, right? All I knew basically then was Sel, Scadrial, Taldain, and Roshar. And I knew those were going to be involved somehow and so I was working on the various different Shards that were on those planets, but that leaves a lot of Shards right? If you add those all up, that's what, seven or so Shards worth of people? Suddenly it's like wait, that's only seven of the sixteen, where's everybody else, right? And counting that seven of the sixteen are two dead ones. I knew that it would be more expansive but I didn't know where I would be going and what I would be doing and that sort of stuff.
Cosmere.es
We are more or less sure that, once you finish the last book from Wax and Wayne, this is going to have kind of an impact, maybe, on everything?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes and no. Wax and Wayne as a series, entirely, is more focused on the characters than the cosmere. Which is different from Era Three. Era Three, while it's very focused on characters, is more cosmere-focused. Remember, Wax and Wayne is the series I interjected. And I realized, as I was writing it, there were a lot of things I needed to do in it (that's good I started it), but they are mostly setup. You will get done with Wax and Wayne Four, you will know who Trell is. You will know what trellium is. You will know what's been happening there. But what it's not gonna do is give you definitive, cosmere-wide, large-scale changes. It is more going to be setting up and building for the big things that are coming next. So don't put too much pressure on the poor little Wax and Wayne series; they really are about Wax, Wayne, Steris, and Marasi, and kind of uncovering this stuff. You could consider it the buildup and prologue to the second large era of the Cosmere, if that makes sense. (Which, the second era of the Cosmere is basically going to be: third era Mistborn, second era Stormlight.)
Cosmere.es
We were wondering, I know that you always told us that it's not necessary to read the rest of the cosmere but after what happened in The Rhythm of War, could you still say--and potentially in Mistborn Era 3 now--could you consider that maybe there will be a moment where you might need, for the sake of enjoying the whole thing, and all the Easter eggs, and the story behind the story, maybe it's needed to have a small background?
Brandon Sanderson
If you want to enjoy the Easter eggs, then yes. But I still maintain Mistborn Era 4 marks when you are going to be completely lost if you haven't read everything else. Things that happen in Rhythm of War, I think you can understand conceptually, even if you don't know the other players. If you were telling a story about America during the Vietnam War, and you knew about the war happening in Vietnam and kind of the implications on the American citizens who didn't want to go to war and things like that, you don't necessarily have to read the book that is taking place in Vietnam to understand all of that. It would help, but if the focus is on--if you can outline what people need to know in a few sentences, I don't know how spoilery you want me to go, I'm trying to use a metaphor that's not my books.
Cosmere.es
We're trying to keep it non-spoilery.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, and so if you in this situation were to have somebody who said, "There's a war going on, it's very unpopular, and lots of people's loved ones are dying for reasons they don't think are justified and legit," you could know that and still have this whole story happen over here. That's the sort of thing that I believe is happening at the end of Rhythm of War. You're learning a few things about the cosmere yes, but you can listen off one, two, or three points, and you get those points and you understand that there is a foreign sort of thing going on that is affecting what we're doing. But you only have to know those points for its effect on the story of the Stormlight Archive. It's a little more involved than I've gone in the past, but I still maintain that could read only the Stormlight Archive and you won't be lost, you won't feel like you're not getting part of the story. You will feel, I hope, that there's a lot more to explore and understand if you read further.
Cosmere.es
Now that maybe we are going to have the [first half] from the Stormlight Archive, maybe will you have an art book for the cosmere or the Stormlight Archive, or maybe a companion? I think Rhythm of War was amazing. It has such detail and everything that happens, and all the science behind it, that it makes it feel super real. And we were thinking will we ever get as well--like you know for Discworld that you have The Science of Discworld books, maybe we'll need that in the end for the cosmere as well.
Brandon Sanderson
It's a good suggestion, that's a very good suggestion. I'm a little gun-shy, I realize, on this because Wheel of Time did the White Book. And I know that there were those--let's just say those in the community and those among who created it, that were disappointed with it, which is part of why Harriet spent so much time working on the encyclopedia. I think that made me more timid than I need to be, because the various ones for George Martin's series have been very good, and the ones for Discworld have just been fantastic.
And so you're right, it's probably something we should start putting together. Some sort of, you know here is the "first era" of the cosmere and here is your companion piece for reading it, here is a glossary of all the characters. If there's some way I could make those spoiler-free, that you could look up an entry and only you know--I wonder if it could come with those glasses that are red and and blue and so you can only read the normal entry unless you've read a certain book and then it tells you the other parts and things like that. Would that be too much of a gimmick? I'm kind of in love with that idea, so that you could read about people without being spoiled.
Cosmere.es
We know that for example we have, I think it's Horneater for the next Kickstarter about Rock. And the other question that sometimes people ask is when will be the novella between The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance and if maybe you can say who's going to be the main character or not yet.
Brandon Sanderson
Right, no I can talk a little bit about it. So, it was going to be Lopen. But in Dawnshard I did a really solid job with his character arc, the sort of things I was planning to do with him and I feel like if I went back and did a novella with him now, it actually just wouldn't land very well. I managed to get it into Dawnshard and it really works and fits. That doesn't mean I won't do one focused about him later but it means that doing one early on is probably not going to happen. I might still do the thing I've always wanted to do, if I do the novella between 1 and 2, I might still do the Lopen mini-story about him being king, because he jokes about that all the time. And so now that I know it's not Lopen, I'm kind of searching through and being like, okay who's it going to be? Very high on the list of options is Teft, and I'd have to look and see, is there really a lot I can add to his arc or will it just be things you've already known? It's tricky at that point because I don't want to do anything that--the danger is I do something that would then [have] really neat implications being addressed in future books, and then it's not because I'm writing it after the fact. And that might drive me to go further afield to somebody who's much more of a smaller character, if that makes sense. We'll see what I end up doing. There are ideas I have, but none of them are really popping out to me right now.
Cosmere.es
So they were asking, because they also know that we have the Mistborn Adventure Game, and the explanation for not having a role playing game for Stormlight is because it's not yet finished and it didn't make sense, but maybe for the moment that it's at least halfway, would you consider [it]?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I would definitely consider it at Stormlight 5. That would be a really good time to do an RPG. So it's probably time, if we haven't been talking about it, to go talk to some people and try to build one. I've been really lucky with the people we've worked with, because Call to Adventure turned out to be just great, it's a ton of fun. And the people at Crafty Games have just been delightful to work with; I really like them. We've ended up with some really great stuff.
Doing an RPG, the big question would be do we do another indie RPG, do we ask Wizards of the Coast if they want to do a D&D tie-in Stormlight? I don't know, I'd have to get some feedback from fans on what they would want, do they want us to do it in the Crafy system, which one is most interesting to people? You guys can ask around, I think I'll probably start asking that question of fans in general and trying to gather some feedback so we know.
Cosmere.es
Yeah, I think Wizards of the Coast would be closer to a Magic the Gathering cosmere game.
Brandon Sanderson
Mmhmm, yeah. Well, you know since they're doing Lord of the Rings, it's not impossible now that we could get a Stormlight magic expansion or something like that. It's probably going to depend on how things like Lord of the Rings happen and whatnot. I'm watching all that to see how fan reactions are because fans are both excited and mad, which they seem to always be every time Wizards of the Coast does anything, and I'm not sure if they're going to settle on excited or on mad. The problem is Stormlight isn't on the size-level of something like Lord of the Rings. Not impossible, I don't think, so we'll see what happens.
Cosmere.es
It's a random question, because we have chickens on Roshar, the other thing is are there cats in Shinovar?
Brandon Sanderson
So there were at least at one point cats in Shinovar. Whether cats are still there or not, you'll have to wait for book 5 to discover. But cats did make the jump. If they exist, they didn't make it past the mountains very far, but you'll have to see.
Cosmere.es
We remember that you wanted to write a sci-fi story and send it to several magazines to see what happened with that. Well, we were wondering if in the end did you manage to sell it?
Brandon Sanderson
I did not manage to sell it. Now, I'll put it in the non-cosmere collection when we put it together. It was flash fiction; it was only 500 words long. So it's very not like my normal style. I'm not apparently good enough at flash fiction to sell without my name attached, but I haven't given up hope. I still want to write some more stories under this author's name--the pseudonym-- and see if I can get them published. I don't know if you heard, last night I talked about it on the stream, one of the things we'll be doing while I'm working on Era 3 of Mistborn in a couple years here is we'll likely be releasing the non-cosmere collection. All of my basically science-fiction/horror or whatever, the stories that are not in the cosmere that also aren't Legion, the Stephen Leeds stories which were bound in their own collection. And I want to have a few new things for that, so it's not just stories that have been published before. So these are the stories that I'm like, I'm going to send this off and see if it sells, and things like that. You'll be able to see.
My flash fiction piece is super goofy, so it's not that surprising that it didn't sell, but I'm still very proud of it. Mostly I got confusion in my rejections, they're like, "We didn't get it, it didn't make sense to us." So we'll have to see if it makes sense to all you guys. 500 words is not very much to do a story based around, so we'll see. I wrote another short story to send out. Unfortunately, it's kind of mediocre; it's only kind of okay. Again, science-fiction has one cool concept executed mediocrely, so I don't think that one's going to sell. I have to write a real banger, I have to write something really great and then secretly get it published. But when I'm going to do that is the big question. I have no idea where I'm going to slip in time to write mini-stories that aren't supposed to be by me. This is partially just to get experience so I can tell my students, "Hey, it still works," or "It still is hard." And lo and behold it was still hard, it took like eight months to get through all of the markets and get replies to them and stuff, just for that little flash fiction piece.
Cosmere.es
Also we have the Death by Pizza, it's not Death by Pizza any longer, Song of the Dead?
Brandon Sanderson
Oh yeah, Song of the Dead. Yeah, that's still in revision and things, yeah. Maybe someday, well I'm hoping someday. Right now, I mean the things that are looking really good, the Reckoners novellas are done and turned in and being recorded for audio, and those turned out really well. And the first of the Skyward novellas that Janci wrote is just spectacular, I really like it. If you guys like the Skyward books, it's from FM's viewpoint. It kind of takes a character that I had done very little with and does a lot more with her. I'm really excited for those to come out, have some more expansion to some of those worlds and settings and stories. We're working on getting those going.
