Recent entries

The Stories That Matter

Was Honor capable of influencing or controlling the Radiants like Ruin is to anyone spiked?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

The Stories That Matter

As of where Stormlight is in the timeline, has Virtuosity been Splintered yet?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO you there. We're gonna release that timeline pretty soon, here.

The Stories That Matter

Would Taravangian be opposed to taking up any additional Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

That speaks into how much he knows about all of this yet, which I don't want to get into.

The Stories That Matter

Would Sja-anat be any more willing to help the new Odium than the last one?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Not a whole lot more.

The Stories That Matter

Would Sja-anat be able to corrupt a deadeye spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Theoretically possible.

Questioner

Do you have anything in the works with Magic: The Gathering?

Brandon Sanderson

They gave me, like 4 years ago, right when they were doing new [sets] and said "Hey do you wanna do a Cosmere one?" And I'm like "Yes please!" And then I think they did that to a whole bunch of people at once and I think that the people that came back to them, they weren't expecting [to hear back from.] Like Final Fantasy and Doctor Who. And so the fact that I said yes... They probably put me on the shelf at the lower end of the pile because I haven't heard back from them even though I'm like "Hey I'm still here. I'm still interested."

Forger (paraphrased)

In Stormlight 5, we know they are looking for Ba-Ado-Mishram and some of it will take place in the Spiritual Realm, where we know that time is odd and somewhat condensed. Does that mean that we could have an interaction with Lopen and Wayne?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It could be possible. But it would be an imitation, like a puppet. That'd be a bad idea, crossing the streams like that.

Forger (paraphrased)

So the same with someone like Elend?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yeah, so the Spiritual Realm would be trying to create them. Making them what they should be, but it wouldn't be them. Like the visions. You could interact with them, but it wouldn't be them.

Forger (paraphrased)

So the SR is using raw investiture to create them?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yep.

Forger (paraphrased)

So since they are like the visions, could one replay them over and over?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They could.

Forger (paraphrased)

Is Nightblood and Azure's sword made of the same material?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not anymore.

Forger (paraphrased)

Is Nightblood made of a normal metal?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It is not.

Forger (paraphrased)

Is he made of Dragonsteel?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Good question. He is not.

Questioner

As an aspiring author I know how your own characters can surprise you while writing. My question for you was, especially during Stormlight but for any of your books, which characters have surprised you the most by the direction they went, how they affected the plot, etc?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question! So the way I view this as an author is, I'm a heavy outliner. But I always give the characters volition. I don't know a character until I've seen through their eyes, and as I write things change. I would say Adolin is the most surprising. Adolin was not meant to be a main character. He did not have any viewpoints as I was originally planning The Stormlight Archive, and, as you can see from the books, he has a lot of them. And so Adolin is the big surprise of Stormlight.

I will say, oftentimes, I was actually talking about this to some people in the line just recently, characters will reach a point of decision. And at that point the outline usually will say "have them do this." But I will have written them for months at that point to be who they are at that point and I give them the opportunity to make different decisions. And someone at the end of Wind and Truth made the opposite decision. It's not magical where I'm like "oh the character is alive", no, it's just that who I wrote them to be and how the themes of the plot progressed I realized that at that point they can't make this decision. And so I rewrote their part and revised it to have the opposite decision get made. Once Wind and Truth is out I can tell you what that is. But you will have to read it and see if you can guess who, in the outline, was making a very different decision.

Brandon Sanderson

Baxil trod the streets of Azimir unseen. Every inch of him, save his eyes, was wrapped in tight crimson cloths, the tied-up tails of which sometimes escaped his cloak and waved in the wind of an unknown current. Hand on his katar, slid into a sheath to the side, he watched for anyone in the crowd who could notice him. Nothing so far. Good. 

This was a city haphazardly prepared for war. Baxil strode through the camp, which had taken the place of the grand market. The soldiers camped in concentric rings that he was certain they thought were evenly spaced with smooth curves.

Not a soul saw him. These days, people could only see Baxil if they were looking for him, and he could only touch them if they were trying to kill him. He left the camp, and for old times' sake, whispered prayer to the Prime Kadasix. "If you could see that I could get what I deserve, I would appreciate it. Thanks."

Azimir was famed for its tea shops, which filled the same niche that winehouses did in the east. By this point, Baxil had sampled a wide variety of both, and had his favorites. Here in Azimir, one shop in particular was known for its discretion. They had instructions to watch for him, so as he entered, the bouncer by the door leapt to his feet.

"Master Crimson!" he said. "We got your note."

"As well you did," Baxil said, "or we might not be able to have this conversation. He's here?"

"He is, master," the bouncer said, ushering him in further. "And he's an odd one."

"You don't know the half of it, <Ulam>," Baxil said, tipping him a few spheres which became real as he dropped them. "See that we're not interrupted." Baxil entered the private room, separated from the rest by hanging beads, and walked through an invisible cloud of incense. He approached the luxurious table, one of the most exclusive in the city.

There, Axies the Collector was seated, passing time by hitting his hand with a small hammer.

"Surely you've had painspren by now," Baxil said, sliding into the booth across from the Aimian. Axies preferred to wear little in the way of clothing, in part because he kept his notes on his skin in the form of tattoos. An entire book, secure in the place where he could never lose it. Like all of his kind, he could change the color of any part of his skin at will.

"I have painspren, yes, of course," Axies said. "I've had them for millennia, Crimson Memory. But you see, we're in the builder's quarter of the city, where men frequently hammer. There's a curious report from a hundred and fifty-two years ago of a peculiar spren drawn to the pain of many who've hit their fingers with a hammer while aiming for a nail. If one were to search for that specific spren, this would be the place."

"And you believe this report?" Baxil asked.

"Hardly," Axies said. "It was almost certainly a joke." He then hit his hand with the hammer. He winced, tears leaking from he corners of his eyes.

"Tell me honestly," Baxil said, leaning forward. "You enjoy the punishment, don't you?"

"What kind of deviant would enjoy this?" Axies said. Then hit the thumb square on with the hammer.

"Then why?"

"Pain is fleeting. The thrill of accomplishment is eternal." Smack. "Yes, almost certainly a joke."

"If the Prime Kadasix should allow," Baxil said, relaxing on his bench, resting one arm across the top, "I should someday like to understand you."

"At least I," Axies said, as the cups arrived, "can taste my tea." He took a sip from his, then eyed Baxil from over the brim.

Baxil sighed, but did as expected. He held his out over the tea, feeling the heat of the steam, and imagined. People throughout the teahouse enjoyed their drinks, especially the stark black <gerimon> tea as they provided for him. Bitter. Sharp. Like drinking the venom of something aggressive. This was tea that fought back.

Such things have a life of sorts. Not the individual cups so much as the concept of tea. With this many people thinking about it, savoring it, contemplating it, Baxil could taste it, and remember what it had been like to drink. During a time that seemed so distant, yet so familiar all at once, before his blessing, and before his curse. Today, a great number of people thinking about the same thing let him feel the bitter tea on his tongue as he sat with his hand over the cup.

"You're sure you're not a spren?" Axies asked. "I'm putting you in the appendix regardless, you understand."

Baxil smiled. "You brought my bandages?"

Axies placed them on the tabletop. Red wrapped, prepared in the most special of ways as Baxil needed. The key to his survival. In turn, he placed a gemstone on the table. He was not a spren, but they did find him fascinating.

Axies snatched it up and peered at the little spren inside. "Better to find them in the wild," he mumbled, "but this will have to do. Little friend, how elusive you've proven."

Baxil took advantage and slid them off his cloak, then rose from his seat.

"She's here in Azimir, by the way," Axies noted.

"'She'?"

"Your old employer. The Herald."

Shalash. He'd known her only as 'Mistress' during another life. Had been rather infatuated with her, and maybe had never stopped. "How?" he asked. "I'd thought she was at the tower city."

"No, she went with the Alethi army on campaign," Axies said, still inspecting his gemstone prize. "I think their king wanted to interview her. At least, that's the impression I got when I checked with her. They took the other one too, the big fellow. To the fight for Emul. They're back now though, tucked away in the nation's hospital. I believe her king has mostly forgotten about her."

Here? In the hospital? He could go see her. Baxil pulled his cloak tight. No. Not like this. "Best get out of the city, Axies," he said. "I think dark times are coming to Azimir in the days ahead."

"Yes," Axies said. "I concur." Axies would stay, of course, hunting the rare spren of the raised passions during war. Well, the Aimian had proven resilient, while Baxil himself always felt like he was one calm breeze away from dissipating. Like smoke from a dead fire.

So, one hand on his katar, he left a few spheres on the table as payment and and continued on his quest, hoping that someday, he might be able to enjoy the simple pleasure of sipping tea once again.

Questioner

As we know, many characters in Stormlight have gone through ups and downs, but there's one character that has kind of progressed one way. Is there any good thing you can say there is next book about Moash?

Brandon Sanderson

What can I say about Moash? I can say Moash makes an appearance. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but he does make an appearance.

Questioner

Are the dragons in the Cosmere compatible with the current Investiture systems you've introduced? Or would they even care to use them?

Brandon Sanderson

So, when you talk about dragons in the Cosmere there's generally two branches. The dragons from Yolen are kind of... you can imagine their inspirations as being a little bit along the lines of Tolkien elves—they predate humans, they are very long-lived, and they act like deities to people. People actually pray to them and they can respond through the bond by sending something very equivalent to a Soothing or a Rioting to those who follow them, to bolster them, give them courage, or to take away their fear, or things like that.  They are one style of dragon, you will find dragons that are on other planets that have been created in their image, so to speak, that don't have some of those deific powers.

And so it really depends, is the answer. The Yolen dragons are not really interested in other Investiture, they're highly Invested themselves and most of the magic systems, they wouldn't be able to use, in the same way that trying to Push or Pull on a Shardblade wouldn't do anything because of the high levels of Investiture. They just are already so full that they would not be able to use most of them. What you might call the "lesser dragons", they could theoretically.

Questioner

Can Marsh bond a spren?

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible, but it would require a little bit of a dance, but not a huge one. He could do it. I think Marsh could figure it out without too much trouble.

Questioner

Which one?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, that would depend on which one's willing! I could fit Marsh into several different orders, depending on how things went with him. I'll give you a RAFO card for that, it's a half RAFO.

Questioner

Did Vasher ever have a sibling who was a scholar or was notable in any way?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!

Questioner

How many different types of Investiture can somebody use simultaneously? Because we know there are characters that are gathering different Investitures.

Brandon Sanderson

So, how many different kinds of Investiture can a person theoretically use? Well, Adonalsium used them all at once, so it's theoretically possible to use them all. They interfere with each other and it becomes increasingly difficult the more you add, and that's all I'll say right now.

R'Shara (paraphrased)

Would Szeth, Wax, and Taravangian be considered fully alive, or are they considered Cognitive Shadows?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They would be considered alive.

R'Shara (paraphrased)

Even with what happened when Taravangian Ascended?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, he still counts as a fully alive person holding the Shard. He won't have the same trouble as a Cognitive Shadow holding a Shard.

Questioner

What is this stuff that is coming out of the wall on the cover of Oathbringer?

Brandon Sanderson

Have you read Oathbringer?

Questioner

I'm on page three hundred and...

Brandon Sanderson

Okay. It will make sense probably when you get to the ending, where that scene takes place. If it doesn't you can ask me, but you should get that answered.

Questioner

What would happen if <he> were *inaudible*?

Brandon Sanderson

Humans have tried doing that and it hasn't worked. And Hoid is— I would categorize him [as] human. Kind of.

Questioner

Are you gonna come out with this map as a poster someday? *shows map*

Isaac Stewart

We will do a poster eventually. We need to run out of the ones we already have, but we will eventually.

Questioner

I actually *inaudible*

Isaac Stewart

The other one is almost exactly the same. It's the underlying part that's different, because that one is part digital, part oil painting cause I'm still trying to finish it.

Questioner

Is this all yours too? *shows something*

Isaac Stewart

That's not mine, that's— Dan dos Santos are those and the ones on the back are Howard Lyon.

Questioner

Who would win in a fight, Odium or Harmony?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, why don't we RAFO that and you'll see.

Dragonsteel Employee

Mister Brandon has two Questions for Janci:

The first is: Were the three novels [from Skyward Flight] always going to focus on FM, Alanik, and Jorgen - if not, who were the runner ups?

Janci Patterson

I was given a list when we first started to talk about doing this and it was basically all living members of Skyward Flight except Spensa and Jorgen.

And I took the list and I went and read the books, 'cause I was behind - Brandon writes faster than I read - so I had to go read the books and I was so happy because they're so amazing. But as I read them I was keeping my eye on Jorgen because he is my favorite and he wasn't on my list and I was like "There's got to be a reason he's not on my list" and I got to the end and I didn't find a reason why he wasn't on my list. And also I was really exited of doing an alien point of view, that sounded really challenging. These are the things I say when I'm pre writing that I then hate myself for later. I'm like: "That sounds so awesome!"

When we then got together to start brainstorming, I was like: "So, could I write about Alanik?". I started with that one cause that's the one I wanted less and Branon's like "Sure." and I was like "So, can I have Jorgen?" and I got a yes, that made me really super happy.

Brandon Sanderson

The reason Jorgen wasn't on the list is I had a lot of things I was planning for Jorgen and so what that meant is the Jorgen Novella needed a lot more me influencing and talking about where I want Jorgen to go. The other two characters, I did not have plans for where I was going to go with there characters going forward and so I just thought, I give Janci the blank slates, but she was really interested in Jorgen. It actually worked better, that you did pick Jorgen, because shoehorning all of that into Defiant would have been very hard and now basically we were able to do part of his arch in his own novella and that helped out a lot.

Janci Patterson

And then the difference between them was: With Jorgen, it was like "This is were his story goes, this is how it ends." and than I had to take that and figure out how to make that work, which I love. That's my favorite thing: It's to take constraints and then riff off of them and sort of figure out why and how. So that made me really happy.

Brandon Sanderson

My projects for the next six months are: finish revisions on Isles of the Emberdark, which is Secret Project Five. I haven't outlined a finish date for that yet; I'll keep you up to date on that. I've just been taking a few days off, so I haven't even started on that yet.

Do a canon prose version of White Sand from my original draft, which was one of the books I wrote right around when I wrote Elantris. That, I still don't know how much work that's gonna take. I've never done that before. But the core of that book is good, it just needs some updates to the writing and some of these things. So, we will see.

And then, I wanna make sure that we have a collection of my non-Cosmere short fiction all together. There might be... there's a few stories I would like to get into that, that aren't good enough shape yet, that I haven't released.

So, I would like to get all those things done by January 1st. With the goal being on January 1st (oh, and I need to outline Era 3), and January 1st, I start on Era 3 of Mistborn.

Peter Ahlstrom

Tor gave us a page count. I estimated a word count and chapter count based on the number of illustrations and average number of words per chapter, which was 489k words and 160 chapters. Brandon brought it in at 491k and very close to 160 chapters, if not right on. When we put it into the book it actually was 1364 pages, but we managed to squeeze it to 1344 by moving some illustrations around and squeezing chapters that had only a small number of lines on their last page.

Brandon didn’t cut any interludes he had already written, but he didn’t write a few he had been considering putting in.

rogueOptimist

Are there any plans to present them in a future book or even outside the book as bonus content?

Peter Ahlstrom

Brandon would have to decide to write them. Right now he has other things to write.

Peter Ahlstrom

When Brandon writes Dragonsteel, it will at least somewhat a narration to an audience, and he knows what audience that will be.

Dan Wells

Still plugging away on Dark One, though I've also been doing a lot of worldbuilding for my new Cosmere series. I want to dip into a bit of conlang (constructed language) for it--not at the level of Klingon or Quenya, but something fun and nerdy that we haven't really seen in the Cosmere before.

Polygon

When Brandon Sanderson began working with Brotherwise Games on the first adventure for The Stormlight Roleplaying Game, he considered how it could help him fix holes in the narrative of his bestselling fantasy series. He settled on a mystery from the first Stormlight Archive book, The Way of Kings, that will have big implications for the fifth book in the series, Wind and Truth, which will be released in December.

The Stormlight Archive is set on the planet Roshar, where 10 heroes known as Heralds spent millenia protecting humanity with the help of highly magical swords dubbed Honorblades. All of them abandoned their duties except Taln, the Herald of the Common Man. Despite Taln’s best efforts, the forces of the vengeful god Odium have returned. Taln was left maddened by his ordeal and soon after he first appears in the books, his Honorblade goes missing. Its whereabouts remain unknown.

“The adventure is answering that question,” Sanderson told Polygon. “What happened? Where did it go? What’s going on? And you get to be part of the story. We were looking for an adventure you could do that would intersect with the canon of the books in an interesting way, and allow you to fill in a hole yourself.”

The Kickstarter for the d20-based game goes live on Aug. 6 along with a beta preview of the rules and a first level adventure meant to walk players and game masters through the setting and core mechanics. The hardcover Stonewalkers Adventure, where players encounter Taln and learn what happened to his honorblade, will be released in 2025 along with the Stormlight Roleplaying Game Handbook and World Guide.

...

The PCs can meet major antagonists from the books, including the twisted Herald of Justice Nale and the traitorous General Meridas Amaram, and learn how the talking sword Nightblood first featured in Sanderson’s 2009 book Warbreaker wound up on Roshar.

Jofwu

When this came out 2 years ago you noted that you had found a continuity error in the Rhythm of War prologue while working on this one. Any chance you remember what that was, or whether it was retroactively fixed?

Someone did a really cool job stitching all of the prologues together in order and that came to mind... 

Brandon Sanderson

It has to do with the very detailed timing of things. Nale, Gavilar, Eshonai, and making certain all the meetings happen in the order that they need to--with time to get between them and to do the things happening off-screen. Karen worked her magic, and did manage to make it all fit without changing any previous books, but it required some additional lines and tweaks to the prologue here in order to give the right indications to the readers who like to track such movements. You SHOULD be able to piece it all together now, if you really want to, but it didn't work in my first stab.

Brandon Sanderson

Wind and Truth Prologue

Some cool comments here, and some great theories. It's fun that, in this case, you can compare an early draft to a finished one--which has come following many rounds of beta reader interaction, along with general shaping of the book.

Here's some thoughts for you, partially in response to what some of you have said in the thread. I decided to mention Vasher by name because of the "Gorilla in a Phone Booth" principle. (Named such by a friend of mine from grad school.) You can hear me talk about it more in my lectures, but here's the idea. Mentioning a phantom, unknown scholar helping Gavilar raises questions that can be distracting. Wait. Who is this? What's going on?

Saying who it is raises questions too, of course, maybe more of them. However, because you have a little context, it helps a lot of readers file the information away to think about later and move on. Sometimes, too much of a mystery can interrupt a scene, and distract from the words on the page--where the right explanations can both leave a mystery, but also leave the reader comfortable moving on for now. I feel this scene benefits from this reveal, rather than leaving it hanging, as there's really no reason to do so--and it both reads better, is more interesting, AND will help readers to have the context to file it away for later consideration.

As for Gavilar himself, one of the things I came across again and again while researching for this book all those years ago was how many of the "Great Men" from history (the conquerors, like Genghis Khan, and Caesar--and even more respected figures like Kamehameha the First and Alexander the Great) had a great deal of blood on their hands. This is obvious, of course, but we often talk about them in such revered terms during history classes--we quote them, and admire them for their accomplishments. But the more you learn about a lot of them, the less you like them, even if your awareness of their prowess increases.

I wanted to simulate this experience in the books. You began, in book one, with a more Kamehameha or Alexander view on Gavilar, but the more you learned about him and the conquest he initiated the more Caesar, then Genghis, then Ivan the Terrible I wanted him to become in your mind. Until, here, that giant reputation had shrunken and withered, and feels wrongly attached to the petty, mistaken man you find here.

He's both of them. He did have grand vision, and managed to do some legitimately great things--but there was more accident involved with his success than people realize, and in the end, I feel that most men who spent their lives struggling and striving only for power were more like he is. Mistaken, petty, and missing much of what they could have had--because they lost their better sight. If they ever had it in the first place.

Questioner

My question has to do with the Dragonsteel project. Are you thinking about Utah county? Davis County? Salt Lake County?

Brandon Sanderson

We have some land that we have... It's in Utah County. It's close to us.

Questioner

Hi, in the Cytoverse you introduced 2 slugs that you didn't really go into and I would really like to know what they do.

Brandon Sanderson

So one of them is an illusion slug. Is that one of the ones we've already talked about?

Questioner

I knew that one a little bit because you listed it with the plushies. You just said "grey slug."

Brandon Sanderson

Grey slug! You will find out what the grey slug does in the sequel series that I just finished reading and editing the first book of. That's a RAFO you can have a card, but I promise it's coming.

Brandon Sanderson

What am I gonna work on after I finish Stormlight 5? Well, Stormlight 5 is at about 90% finished. I have less than one month to finish the rough draft. That's supposed to go in on December 15, and then I will be deep in revisions on that until June. I am feeling really good about it, everything is going really well. In June I will turn that in, and then I will need something different to work on. The plan for me right now is to do a prose version of White Sand, the graphic novel. Now you might have read an older prose version of that. I am going to, I think I can get that into my current writing skill level. And so I am going to do my best to get that revised and ready for you and things like that. So, there is that. After that, my main project is going to be Mistborn Era 3: Ghostbloods. And my plan is to sit down and write Ghostbloods 1, 2, and 3 before we release the first one of them. So it's going to take me a little time. And I actually plan to write Elantris 2 and 3 in the middle of those. This does, say… where do you Warbreaker fans getting your sequel? Ummm… someday. Someday. But that's my next kind of mainline chunk of the cosmere, is gonna be that. And then we'll jump back for Stormlight 6, alright? So, you know, no big deal, I just have, like, the next five to eight years of my life planned for that. So that's what we're gonna do.

Dan Wells

What's Dan Writing? Today I am just finishing the post-formatting revisions for a cool secret project for Dragonsteel Nexus (the new name for the annual Dragonsteel convention). We still have some final proofing to do, but it is mostly out of my hands and with my amazing editor, Kristy Gilbert. Once that's done, I am back to my standard answer of "I'm working on the Dark One novel." That's what I say on every month, I know, but writing novels takes a long time.

Questioner

What is your call sign, and if you were Returned, what would your Returned name be?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, boy. Well, my call sign I've been saying is Zellion because I've just always picked that when I'm doing video games and have for years and years. I won't be able to get away with that anymore because now people will pick it before I can get it. I can't be Mistborn, I can't be Dalinar, now I can't even be Zellion. But, what would my... oh, I came up with a Returned name once. It would probably be something like Storyteller or something like that, right? That's what I would hope, at least.

Questioner

Hollywood comes to you, says, alright, we've got whatever budget you need, we give you full creative control.

Brandon Sanderson

Woah. Ooh. Oooh. Ooh, you're speaking my language.

Questioner

One thing, it has to be a musical. *all laugh* What do you pick?

Brandon Sanderson

I go get the director of RRR, and I say, alright, you made a musical awesome action movie, show me how to do it. India's really good at that. So, so we do something like that.

Questioner

Which book, or anything, would you...?

Brandon Sanderson

I mean, it feels like you could do any of them. Like, how much of the singing done by the singers counts as musical, right? But the truth is, Stormlight can't be a traditional film. It's got to be a long-form, right? So, we're down to a few options if we want to do an actual, in theaters, traditional theatrical release. That would depend, right? Are we making television show or not? If we're making, like, a premium cable sort of thing, then we can go Stormlight. If we're not, then we basically got to go with Mistborn. Mistborn is the thing that can be contained in a two to two-and-a-half hour film. And so, yeah. Warbreaker: The Musical though, huh? Yeah, mhm.

Questioner

Do you have plans to self-produce your books into movies or TV shows? If Taylor Swift can do it, you can.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh right, yeah, Taylor Swift. Let's point out, there's a little bit of a difference between a 45 million dollar Kickstarter and a 1.6 billion dollar tour. So, we've talked about this, and I've come to the conclusion that for right now I don't want to try it. There are a couple of reasons for this.

Reason number one is that I like my Kickstarters to have a ton of value in them, right? I always tell my team, I'm like, we have to be giving a lot of value to people on the stuff that they do with our crowdfunding or our Kickstarters. And that means that, of that 45 million dollars, we don't make a lot of that. We're putting most of that into the product, and into the shipping, and into the team, and into the company. And so, if we were to do a crowdfunded movie, we need like a 200 million dollar budget, 150 at the lowest, to do a film. And if I'm going to do that, I would want to be giving people a ton of value which means we'd probably have to raise 450 million, which is just a ridiculous amount to do on a crowdfunding, right? So that's number one.

Number two is, a lot of times, these sort of outsider projects don't work as well in Hollywood as you would hope they would. Taylor Swift was able to do a thing and put it directly in the theaters and whatnot, but what we want is a partner over a long period of time. I want someone like Universal, or Disney, or Warner Brothers, who has a long established reputation to buy in on the cosmere, and make things with me for twenty years, right? I don't want to just do one off, I want to build something over time and I feel like I need a really good partner in the industry to do that.

And you know, reason number three is, a fool and their money is soon parted. I've known too many people who think, yeah I can make a movie. And let's just say that there's a reason why The Room isn't that great, and it's because being good in one area doesn't mean you're good in another. I am really good at narrative. I'm getting good at screenplays, right? I'm getting to the point where I feel confident I could do the screenplays myself. But I can't direct, I can't cinematographize, I don't even know how to make that a verb, right? I can't do casting, I can't do all of these things that experts in their field, and yes, I could start hiring them, but I feel like, never having run a movie before, it would just be a disaster. So you would donate all this money, I would waste it all, because I wouldn't know what I'm doing, and this is how Kickstarters go bad real fast, right? I've only done these things when I know I can deliver, and I do not know I can deliver this for you.

So, for the mean time, I'm going to keep trying to use the standard mechanisms. I feel like, you know like, this year we got frighteningly close. Well, frightening is the wrong term. The frightening part is it didn't work out. But we got really, really close. I saw people on stage, in mistcloaks, acting and reading my lines, okay? Yeah. And then it all fell apart, and it's all dead, right? We got really close, but we're getting closer and closer. And Hollywood is really interested in the Cosmere. They recognize the value of my stories. They've been, for years, saying, we know this is going to come, break out, and it's going to be big someday. But it's all about figuring out how to make it work, and beyond that, Hollywood is kind of on fire right now. And so we're waiting for it to, for someone to put it out. So, regardless, the answer is, I've considered it, and I've discarded it for those reasons, but it's still possibly on the table. It is something that, you know, the awareness of the possibility is in the back of my mind, okay?

Questioner

What does Nightblood look like in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. Read and Find Out.

Questioner

I was just wondering, would you ever do like a full-blown horror novel set in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that's on the table. Right, I mean, I don't think The Night Brigade is going to be full-blown horror but it's going to be, you know, epic fantasy horror sort of thing. I don't know if I would try full-blown horror without just working with Dan and having Dan write it. Right? Like he's so good at that. But I could totally see that happening.

Brandon Sanderson

We're working on Lux in print. It's low down the list but we are planning to hopefully do that at some point.

Ben McSweeney

[The Pattern running sketch] was originally a joke doodle that was meant to be replaced, but Brandon had me keep it. They did make me lose the bit of silly poetry in there, because I was riffing on Gelett Burgess and the purple cow...

I've never seen a Cryptic running,And I hope to never see one,For if I saw a Cryptic running,I would dearly fear the reason.

Ben McSweeney

Only the domestic chull has a smooth, shaved shell. The wild chull's shell naturally grows in clusters of fibonacci spirals like a Romanesco cauliflower, which provides both superior protection and fertile ground for rockbuds which the chull groom off of each other.

(your only canon clue to this is a single thumbnail sketch on one of Shallan's pages)

wingardiumlevi-no-sa

Dragonsteel Prime - is the released version much changed from the original?

Peter Ahlstrom

There was a tiny bit of typo fixing, but the biggest substantive change was probably fixing when a character name changed twice in a four-page interlude. This was pointed out by Kate Reading, haha.

Peter Ahlstrom

Leatherbounds won't necessarily be 10-year anniversary editions in the future. They could come more quickly.

eskaver

Dragons are quite the mystery. We now have five dragon names (Frost, Xisis, Koravellium, Starling and Vambrakastram (?)) and I’m not sure what the pattern is.

Peter Ahlstrom

Frost and Starling are nicknames. And Xisis's full name is Xisisrefliel.

Unnecessary_Eagle

So... is the original SotD going to be not entirely canon now? Because I would not be okay with that.

Peter Ahlstrom

almost entirely canon. Basically a couple details will be added to set up things later in the book.

Brandon Sanderson

Speaking of the convention. I named this convention Dragonsteel years ago. I was the one that came up with that. But we always knew it would need something a little bit more. Our company is named Dragonsteel, right? It gets a little bit confusing. We wanted to take our time, and I'm actually going to announce our rebrand today. We've finally, all of our team, gotten together and have figured out what we want to call it. Because, you see, there's this place in the Cosmere that I have named, and it turns out that part of that name, there are no major conventions named this.

I'm going to announce the name of our convention going forward. And it's going to be: Dragonsteel Nexus. And you will find out what the Nexus means as you read further in the Cosmere, but we really liked the idea of bringing people together, and things like this. And so, we are going to be calling it Dragonsteel Nexus, or Nexus 2024, if you want to call it that.

We spent a lot of time on this, so I hope you guys will enjoy that. It's gonna just work a little bit better.

Brandon Sanderson

We needed to come up with a name that is a little bit different than just Dragonsteel [for the convention], and we spent forever arguing. We finally landed on something; it does have Cosmere applications. We're just gonna call it Dragonsteel Nexus. There's no big convention named Nexus in fantasy/science fiction. We realized that, and it's also... (Secret!) It's the name of the perpendicularity at Silverlight; it's the Silverlight Nexus.

ant_tree (paraphrased)

Can you give me a fun fact about Sigzil?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He knows how to read Alethi women's script. He learned it in school.

Questioner (paraphrased)

With the bridge runs, how can they push the bridges across the chasms without the bridges falling in from the uneven weight distribution?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There are new diagrams in the latest edition of The Way of Kings that show there are ropes tied to the front that people pull from the back and a weight system to change the center of balance as it is being push across.

Selkier (paraphrased)

Do the Tones of Roshar have a form as light—as in light waves—besides just sound waves?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I think you could make a machine that could measure it, yes, as in it has physical properties

Selkier (paraphrased)

Has Marsh made a grilled cheese?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, I would say he has … Although they would probably call it a croquette.