Questioner
Is Spensa mechanically savvy enough to repair the starfighter alone?
Brandon Sanderson
Nope, she's not. That's going to prove some problems for her...
Is Spensa mechanically savvy enough to repair the starfighter alone?
Nope, she's not. That's going to prove some problems for her...
Where were you when you looked up at the sky and were just amazed?
Every time I fly in an airplane! I was traveling a lot when writing this book, and I think that must have had an influence.
Are Spensa's purple eyes important?
Only in that it's distinctive. I chose purple for her as a theme and the artist ran with that.
Was there a scene that you had in your head from the beginning?
There were two. One is where Spensa sees the ship for the first time - you can read that in the excerpt. The other is a spoiler!
Do we get more Captain Cobb background?
Yes, we do. Quite a bit!
What is your favorite thing about writing new characters?
I love seeing the world through the eyes of a new character, particularly when they describe something common in a very different way.
Is Skyward going to be part of the cosmere at all?
It is unrelated to the cosmere - since Earth is part of its history, and because certain elements of space travel are done differently.
What is your process?
I am a slow and steady writer, not a particularly fast one. I write a little each day, with a goal of around 2000 words.
The original character from Final Empire Prime that the Lord Ruler was based on was a man who was haunted by grief over the suicide of his love a thousand before (or was it just hundreds?). I don't know if Rashek ever had any kind of love life, though.
The question is about the Lord Ruler's death. He is basically killed because Vin was able to remove his Feruchemy storage bracelets thus depriving him of his stored youth and strength correct? Once he didn't have access to these she could simply kill him like a normal man.Now on page 627 about the 3rd paragraph down the Lord Ruler states " I've survived burning and beheadings. I've been stabbed and sliced, crushed and dismembered." (I also think this is also reference somewhere else in the book that I could not locate)If all it took to drain the Lord Ruler of his power was to remove access to his Feruchemy items wouldn't he have died if he was dismembered? Remove the storage devices from the trunk of the body and he would die?
I asked Brandon about this once, and I'm pretty sure he said the beheading survival part was a lie/exaggeration. I'd have to go back and check my notes.
The Lord Ruler would have reason to want people to believe he had survived beheadings and being burned to ash.
I am glad Dragonsteel will not be on the front of the book, because Tage tells me there aren't really any dragons. If I picked up a book called Dragonsteel and then realized there weren't really any dragons (in the classical sense) I would feel extremely cheated and never read it just because of my anger.
There was one dragon in the original book, of whom Brandon added more appearances in the later drafts. He was almost completely exciseable from the plot of that book (at least, in a simple, non-spoiler explanation), though he was clearly important to the universe as a whole and the series' overall arc.
Okay, just for my amusement, here's an analysis of your books so far (the ones I have):
White Sand I 1.0 - 0.49 pptt (pause per ten thousand words)
Star's End 1.0 - 0.34 pptt
Lord Mastrel 1.0 - 0.83 pptt
Knight Life 3.0 - 0.40 pptt
The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora 1.0 - 1.48 pptt
Elantris 6.0 - 3.51 ppttElantris 8.6 - 4.16 pptt
Dragonsteel 7.0 - 5.70 pptt
White Sand II 2.7 - 6.11 pptt
Mythwalker 0.6 - 10.2 pptt
Mistborn Prime 4.0 - 9.63 pptt
Aether of Night 3.0 - 11.99 pptt
Final Empire Prime 1.0 - 9.65 pptt
Way of Kings 2.1 - 8.1 pptt
Mistborn Final Empire 2.0 - 10.97 pptt
Mistborn Final Empire 3.1 - 11.56 pptt
Mistborn Well of Ascension 3.0 - 13.25 pptt
Alcatraz Initiated 4.0 - 8.71 pptt
Mistborn Hero of Ages 3.0 - 9.68 pptt
Warbreaker Parts 1-2 1.2/1.0 - 11.5 pptt
Star's End and Knight Life only have 3 pauses each! Anyway, there's an upward trend, and then it more or less levels off. :) It took reading the book out loud for me to notice it. I have no idea how this compares with other writers. Well, the book I just rewrote has 2.47 pptt.Make of that what you will.
I was re-reading the original Mistborn trilogy, and I was struck by how devoutly Demoux believes in the divine nature of Kelsier. And I just had to wonder, what must it have been like for him when he later became a Worldhopper and got a peek behind the curtain?
Yeah, that's a very interesting aspect of his character, for specifically that reason, and I am going to write about it and explore it more deeply at a later point.
What's the most RAFOd question that you're asked?
These days, it's about probably the sphere that Gavilar gave Szeth. That's probably the most commonly RAFOd one. But I'm not 100% sure. No, no, it's names of Shards that I haven't named yet. That's gotta be it.
*inaudible*
Technically, Marsh shows up onscreen. I guess he's not technically... I guess you would have to argue whether or not he counts.
Will you ever consider writing more in the Legion world?
So, if I do any more Legion, they will be television scripts or audio originals. This is it for the books. But it's a springboard.
Back closer to the release of Rithmatist, you were talking about it being two to three books. Is it pretty much two books now?
It's still three books in the outline. But if I can make that second book have a satisfying ending, so that it doesn't have a cliffhanger like the first one, I will be very much more happy. Even though the outline's still for three books. But, I just have to... getting Legion cleared off my list is a big step forward. Getting Alcatraz off my list would be another big step forward. Rithmatist is the most popular of those three. But it's also the one that I had the most trouble getting the sequel done with. But things are looking better and better as I clear other things off my list.
If you had to pick three topics to learn and you have an aspect like Stephen?
Great question. I would love to have an interpreter with me who can interpret all languages. Maybe... because there's no one aspect who does all of that. It might be too big of an aspect. But I would love to be able to go on tour and be able to do that. So that would be definitely number one. Probably a writer, to look over my shoulder and improve my books. Speed up the editing process, and things like that. And then I would pick something probably like physics or chemistry. Something I know a little bit about, enough to know that I really don't know what I'm doing. Because I have to rely sometimes on Peter and people on physics questions and things like that, and it would be nice to just have it.
Do you have [Stormlight] Four and Five <plotted out> already?
Yeah, but the outlines are such a mess. I mean, you could do it, you could take those outlines. But by February, they'll be in really good shape. Because now at this point, what's happened is, as I've written the books, I've moved things. And so, the outlines got to be bigger and bigger messes as I moved things around. But after I outline Four, Five by nature kind of reorganizes itself, because all the pieces that get left over, I have to make sure fit before I can write Four. So our outline should be in really good shape come February. Right now, they're a mess.
Does it get harder, or does it get easier, to write the Stormlight Archive books?
Stormlight Archives get progressively harder. The more to keep track of, the more difficult. Each one's been a little harder than the one before.
Is the concept of the King's Wit inspired by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?
Yes, a lot of Shakespeare's fools. But the fool in Twelfth Night, and the fool (for a different reason) in King Lear, both are inspirations. And I think you would find that as a blanket truth for a lot of us writers. I haven't asked Robin Hobb this, but I'm willing to bet that there's some Shakespeare's fool characters in that. Twelfth Night is my favorite of his fools. In fact, in the very first versions that I wrote of him, he was way more jester-like than he ended up being in the published version of the Cosmere. But if anyone reads Dragonsteel, the one at BYU, he'll feel even more like a jester.
Would you have someone do what you did for Robert Jordan?
Yeah. I would be one of the biggest hypocrites in the universe if I didn't, I think. And earlier in my career, I said the books just weren't... there hadn't been enough of them. But I'm getting to the point where I think that they could be. There's still so many to write. But I would at least have someone finish four and five of Stormlight if I got hit by a car, and four of the Wax and Wayne books. Whether it would be reasonable to have someone finish the entire Cosmere, I don't know. But at least the ones I haven't finished of main sequences, yes.
Have we seen Adolin at his prime yet, at his best?
I would guess... that depends on your point of view.
Do you think you'd have more creativity with ironpulling?
Yeah, you do. I really want to do something with ironpulling as a main character to show all the creativity, and stuff. But, I just feel like it'd be easier. There's so much metal around, bouncing off of stuff would be so much fun.
How do you decide what perspective you put it in? First person, third person?
A lot of it depends on the number of viewpoints I'm gonna have for a book. It's a pretty easy thing, but if I'm gonna have one viewpoint, I'll put it almost always in first. Not always, but almost always, because I can use the tools. Genre influences it also. First person's more prevalent in YA than it is in adult. And kind of, like, what tone do I want for it? Like, the first person book I'll do in the Cosmere, I probably won't do one until I do Hoid's book. Because he's the storyteller telling you the story. And the other ones, I want to be trustworthy, like the narration of which, even if a specific viewpoint is untrustworthy, the narration is trustworthy.
The natural sarcasm in Wit, is that just purely natural? Or do you have inspiration for all of those sarcastic comments?
I often, if I have to write a lot of the character, will look for a similar humor style, and see if I can channel it. If I'm writing Wit, for instance, I'll go to somebody more biting. Some modern comedians, or occasionally Oscar Wilde. If I'm writing Shallan, I'll try to look for something softer and more wordplay-ish, like Jane Austen. And just kind of read a bunch of it, and try to get the feel. It just depends. If I'm writing Lopen, I will try to look for the kind of uplifting humor, self-effacing style. Like, I just kind of have a different style for each type, and I try to find a person or writing in the real world that has that type of humor and try to use it.
In Secret History, Fuzz mentions having buried something. That's the atium, right?
RAFO.
So, I was just thinking, if it's something of greater import, I'll just leave it to that it's not the atium. But it's something else, I think. But, I was just thinking, if he wanted to hide something, he could build a planet around it? Because he built a planet. I'm guessing, if I asked a question about that...
You would get RAFOd. Excellent question.
Do you think when the Alcatraz series is done, you can make a short story where they have a Smedry family reunion?
Ooh, what a great idea. I'll have to think about that. I like that idea a lot. If I write it, you can take credit for it, if I forget to credit you.
What is your favorite kind of Lens?
I would like to be able to speak all languages. So the Lens of Rashid, I would say, because that would be really cool.
I was wondering, where did you get the idea for <crystals>?
It came from the crystal sword, and just grew out of that. Most of the things in the Alcatraz books, I start with an idea, and then I grow it outward. Which is the reverse process of how I normally write books, where it's where I outline and then build according to the outline. The Alcatraz books are me practicing the other style of writing, which we call discovery writing. Because I think writers need to know how to do both.
If his name wasn't Stephen Leeds, what would it be? Did you have an alternate name?
No, I didn't have an alternate name. If I were naming it now, I would think of something that works really well as a one-word title, because Legion is just too fraught with too many other different properties. And the name Leeds works okay, but not great. It's not as good, and so I would need a name like that, that works as a last name, but also works as a title. Like, when they did Castle. That works really well as both a title and as a name. And so it needs something along those lines. Monk was another good one. Like, this genre tends to do that. And so I wasn't thinking of Leeds. I was thinking of Leeds as a small internal pun, because he's the middle management of his own brain. But I don't think it works as well as its own in a title. So it would still probably be Stephen, but I would find another word there.
I wondered how silver would differ from aluminum when it comes to interacting with Shades?
That one's a RAFO for now.
And finally, media properties.
As for non-sequel, original projects, here’s what might be coming in the future, as they stand now.
What does this mean for future projects? Well, let me go down the list of sequels in order of current urgency.
During July, I took time off from major projects to have a breather. If you aren’t aware, I prefer to do smaller projects between big epics as a means of helping me stay fresh. This month’s “breather” stories include a novelette (9k words) piece set in the Steelheart world, which should be published as an e-original around Christmastime. I also did some work in the Infinity Blade world. (More on that later. If you aren’t aware, this is a video game that friends of mine make. I’ve enjoyed being involved to practice my video-game writing chops, with an eye toward doing Mistborn video game writing.)
My next major writing project will be the sequel to Steelheart, which is called Firefight. (And if you haven’t seen the trailer, Prologue, or teaser chapters for Steelheart, please go give them a look! We’re hoping for big things from this novel.) As you might be aware, I will often be preparing for/writing one piece while I do revisions on another. I generally can only do new prose on one piece at a time, but I like to be revising and writing on two different things at once. So, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be writing Firefight and revising Words of Radiance.
First off, of course, is Words of Radiance. If you weren’t watching, I finished the rough draft of this book (the second book of the Stormlight Archive, and sequel to The Way of Kings) late June. I sent it off to my agent and editor for commentary and advice. I got back my editor’s notes last week, my agent’s notes today, and Peter just finished assembling everything together and doing a tight, continuity-focused copyedit of the entire manuscript. At 360k words, it’s roughly the length of A Memory of Light.
Obviously, there’s a lot left to do here. Tor keeps talking about January as a publication month, and I’d like to meet that, if at all possible. That’s going to require me to do several drafts of the novel over the next two months. More updates as we progress, but I’m pleased with the book. It has only a few large flaws, and I think they can be fixed fairly quickly.
Can someone using a medallion store Feruchemical traits in a separate metalmind (e.g. not the medallion itself)?
Can Inquisitors store Feruchemical traits in separate metalminds (excluding their spikes)?
Yes and yes.
What are the Deepest Ones? ...The quote is "God Beyond protect them if the fighting had drawn one of the Deepest Ones" from Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell.
You will find out if I ever write the next book... the next book set on Threnody.
Where is Hoid's Cryptic during Era 2? Did he have to leave it behind?
RAFO
What do you think about Arcanum (the website)?
Very cool! I am happy to see this sort of thing happening, and different directions going, it can be a little intimidating.
Cosmere is a dwarf galaxy. Does Investiture exist in other galaxies? Do those galaxies have their own Adonalsiums?
That is beyond the scope... that's a RAFO, but not a RAFO I'm going to answer, that is a RAFO that we are concerned only with the cosmere.
Can you give away a Divine Breath to another human? If so would they have the same powers as a Returned or would they just 'store' it like an inanimate object that Breath is stored in when not Awakened? Does a human require a 'crack' in their spirit web to receive a divine Breath?
So, a Divine Breath-- you're kind of going along the wrong direction on that line of reasoning. Divine Breaths cannot be transferred. When they are used they immediately become kinetic Investiture and are activated. This manifests normally as healing the person, both body, mind, and soul, but you can't give it up, transfer it in the same way you can regular Breaths.
You've said that Nalthians without Breath have something missing (are less invested) than other humans. Was this the case before Endowment invested on Nalthis? Would a non-Nalthian given Breath, who then gives up that Breath, be less invested than before they got the Breath? Would there be something missing in their spiritweb compared to their original state?
So, no. If someone from Sel went to Nalthis and got a Breath and then gave it up, would it give up more, the answer would be no, they would be who they were before.
Will we know why Dalinar has a "warm feeling" sometimes? More specifically, in Oathbringer Hoid calls (covertly) Adonalsium's Power a "God's Light". Is it the same Light Dalinar senses?
RAFO
Dalinar had two non-Stormfather visions. First at the end of Words of Radiance, and second with Nohadon in Oathbringer. I'm curious if these two are related or they come from different sources?
So, by even answering that, this is one of those questions I tend to RAFO because by answering it I'm implying that your postulations are correct, which I am not even willing to do. It's more of a RAFO in that... let's just say I'm not even willing to confirm the postulations.
Do either kind of chalklings experience emotion?
Yes.
Do Smedry Talents transferring between marriage have to do with whether the couple sees themselves as married, or the spouse seeing themselves as a Smedry?
Excellent question! I am going to go with... whether the... I've thought a lot about this one. And I keep thinking and wanting to distinguish it from cosmere magics, which are all perception based. So I want this to kind of be more about the oath sworn, that the magic kind of seals, which also has a cosmere-ish sort of feel to it but not quite as much. When you have sworn the vows, so to speak, that's what the magic cares about.
What do Harrier's Lenses from Alcatraz do?
RAFO. That's a RAFO because I am not in that brainspace right now.