Recent entries

    General Reddit 2017 ()
    #7001 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    The book [Oathbringer] did great, and I'm doing just fine. US and UK publishers are both very happy. I achieved financial independence through my writing years ago at this point, and I have plenty of money. I have enough in investments that my passive income would be enough to live for the rest of my life at my current standard of living--I write purely for artistic satisfaction. (Which has kind of been the way it's always been, but it IS far less stressful now.)

    We're generally really coy about talking numbers in the book industry, perhaps because we don't want to brag. There are a ton of authors out there who sell less than 1k books on a new release, and so flaunting my numbers...well, I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable.

    That said, remember that books and records don't sell as much as people assume they do. Taylor Swift, one of the most popular singers of our time, sold...what, 1.5 million albums the first week of her last release? Granted, album sales aren't what they used to be (it's all about streaming now), but film numbers tend to make us inflate book and album numbers in our heads. 2k book sales is enough to get on the bestseller list, many weeks of the year.

    (As an aside, when Elantris sold 400 copies its first week, and I was devastated until my agent told me that was actually really good for a new author hardcover.)

    That said, we did WAY more than 400 copies, and Oathbringer is the bestselling book I've ever had out of the gate. It's probably more like double or 2.25 the opening of Words. (When I said 3X I was forgetting that my Words of Radiance figures didn't include audio, while my Oathbringer numbers did.)

    Oathbringer will likely crest a million copies across all formats--but it will take a number of years. I'm not sure if TWOK has hit a million yet, for example. (Though if it hasn't, it's in that neighborhood.) Very few books get to 10mil without some kind of film or television franchise to propel them. I'd guess that the only single sf/f book sitting at over 10mil copies without a major adaptation is Foundation.

    Anyway, Oathbringer's success won't stop the publishers from griping just a little that the books are too long. (Bookstores complain that they don't fit on shelves very well, and take up too much space, things like that.) But the book will still sell more copies than any other new release the publisher has this year, and if they do gripe, it's mostly just habit at this point. They're actually quite pleased. They just can't help imagining a world where they could split Oathbringer into three smaller books, and make the bookstores happy while making more money.

    (And note, you shouldn't be annoyed at them for this. The publisher's job is to point out financial realities, as authors tend to be very bad at such things. They didn't try to force me to cut or split the book. They just always ask, very nicely, "Is there a way the book could be shorter?" and I reply, "Sorry. But this is how it has to be." And then they go about making it work.)

    Be warned, though, we might have to go from hardcover straight to trade paperback (skipping the mass market paperback) because of printing realities.

    alexanderwales

    One thing I've long been curious about: how much does putting out a new book in a series increase sales of the first in the series? I would assume that Oathbringer caused a bump in sales for The Way of Kings, but I'm not sure to what extent, or if that assumption actually holds true.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The assumption holds true. Bookscan for last week proves it. This is only print books recorded by retail chains, so it's only a small glimpse, but it's most of the print numbers. (As it does include Amazon and B&N.) I'll put numbers from six months ago in () after, so you can see the growth.

    TWOK: 1500 copies (700)

    WOR: 800 copies (450)

    TWOK: Trade Paperback: 650 Copies (156)

    TWOK Hardcover: 454 (123)

    Mistborn 1: 450 Copies (350)

    Mistborn Trilogy Boxed Set: 450 Copies (350)

    Words of Radiance Trade paperback: 380 copies (Not out yet)

    Words of Radiance hardcover: 270 copies. (130)

    Steelheart: 325 copies (274) Arcanum hardcover: 280 Copies (180)

    Bands of Mourning, Shadows of Self, Warbreaker, Alloy of Law: All right around 230-260 (Maybe 10% different.)

    Elantris, Firefight, Calamity, Mistborn 2, Mistborn 3: 160-200 (Same.)

    Lowly Rithmatist at the bottom with 113. (85)

    Note that some things, like the hardcovers jumping up in sales, are because bookstores ordered them special for my signings.

    Innoculi

    What about digital copies?

    Brandon Sanderson

    They tend to run 2X the print, but I don't get an email with them every week like I do print--so I don't track them as closely.

    General Reddit 2017 ()
    #7002 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't like emailing out this book [Dragonsteel Prime] because of things /u/JawKneePawLick talks about. All the good things in it have been done better in later books--there isn't a single character attribute or theme by this point that hasn't been repurposed better in Stormlight.

    You can glean some little things about the cosmere, but not much. I didn't start canonizing real cosmere elements until Mistborn. The book just isn't great, and what it does contain in regards to the cosmere has either been changed or will be changed.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7003 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Conclusion: Birthday!

    Last year, I tried out something where—in response to people asking me if they could send me birthday gifts—I suggested sending me a magic card from a specific set, with a signature and note on the back.

    This was a little experiment that people had a lot of fun with, and this year I want to post the results! That means a lot of photos, as I wanted to show the notes people wrote on the cards. Many of you included touching letters to me as well, which I read and appreciate—though those tended to be a little more personal in nature, so I'm not going to post them.

    Some of you will be completely uninterested in this, so we've collected the images in a gallery rather than posting them all here. Have fun browsing through them! And thank you so much to everyone. It was a lot of fun to see the little notes that you'd all sent in.

    I'm forty-two today, which is an auspicious number in science fiction fandom. It's going to be tough to top these last few months and the reception to Oathbringer.

    The fact that I get to do this crazy thing for a living continues to be the best gift of them all.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7004 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Projected Schedule

    My projected publication schedule looking forward swaps The Apocalypse Guard out for Skyward and moves the Legion collection into the place of Wax and Wayne 4, reflecting what I actually wrote this year. (Note, these are always very speculative. And Peter is probably already worried about Stormlight 4.)

    September 2018: Stephen Leeds/Legion Collection

    November 2018: Skyward

    Fall 2019: Wax and Wayne 4

    Sometime 2019: Skyward 2

    Sometime 2020: Stormlight 4

    Sometime 2020: Skyward 3

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7006 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Movie/Television Updates

    Other Properties

    Legion and Dark One are currently in negotiations. The rest of the Cosmere is covered by the DMG deal, as we want one company working on that at a time. We have a small deal for Defending Elysium that has it under option with a screenwriter, and the first draft screenplay is good. That leaves Alcatraz, The Rithmatist, and a couple of shorts (Dreamer, Perfect State, Firstborn) with no options right now.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7007 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Movie/Television Updates

    Snapshot

    If you missed my weird, cyberpunkish detective story, you can now get a copy of it in our Dragonsteel Edition bundled with another of my stories. The ebook is still around too. MGM snatched this up almost before it was published—it was very hot in Hollywood in the months leading up to publication.

    The screenwriter they attached to it had another project delaying him for the bulk of this year, but they've said he'll turn his full attention to it staring sometime just after the holidays.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7009 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Movie/Television Updates

    Mistborn and Stormlight Films

    These rights are held by DMG Entertainment, and they've been very good at working with me and showing me things. They have scripts for both Mistborn and The Way of Kings, which they are actively trying to make happen in Hollywood.

    One way they're approaching this is to do a Stormlight VR experience, which we've talked about before. This is less about making a video game, and more about making something to show off to studios to kind of immerse them in the setting of the books. As I determined early on, this is an interesting but weird world, and having visuals (like the art in the books themselves) helps a lot with bringing people around to understanding.

    They do plan to release the VR experience to fans on Steam, for those with VR headsets. It's not intended to be a full game, as I said, more a demo of the Shattered Plains—you'll get to personally experience the Shattered Plains from the novels and interact with the characters and creatures that inhabit them. We'll do some posts on it in coming months as it gears up to be released, and I've invited the developers to do some guest posts on my blog.

    Regardless of what happens on the film and television front here, at the very least you have that to look forward to!

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7010 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Potential Cosmere Stories List

    Here are things that at one point I've had in the works, and probably someday plan to do, in the 'osmere:

    • Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel. (Hoid's origin story, to be written sometime after Stormlight is done.)
    • Sixth of the Dusk sequel. (I had a pretty cool idea for this last year. Nothing more than that.)
    • Untitled Silverlight novella. (What it says on the tin.)
    • Threnody novel. (An expedition back to confront the Evil that destroyed the old world.)
    • Aether of Night. (Still in the cosmere, and you can see the odd remnant of an Aether popping up here and there. Bound to be drastically different from the unpublished novel, which I allow the 17th Shard to give out to people who request it on their forums. Basically, the only thing from it that is canon is the magic system.)
    • Silence Divine. (Disease magic novella set on Ashyn.)
    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7013 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Minor Projects

    Dark One

    My eternal "like Harry Potter from Voldemort's viewpoint" fantasy sequence is still hanging out, buzzing at the sides of my brain. I wrote a really spectacular outline for it this summer, one I love quite a bit, and it got both television graphic novel interest—but these are deals still very much in the works, so I can't talk about them yet.

    I'm pleased with what I have though, and feel this series has moved for the first time in a long while. Note that I did end up pulling it out of the cosmere, as it ended up working better as a dark secondary world fantasy than it did as a Cosmere YA series. It went both older, and more twisted, in the current outline. Hopefully, by next year's State of the Sanderson we'll have something more solid to announce.

    Status: Exciting developments in the works!

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7014 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Minor Projects

    Adamant

    This space opera novella series is in same place it was last year, I'm afraid. (One novella done, no more written on the rest.) I took a little time to work on the outline, but didn't find a chance to write the second novella. It will be awesome when I do it, and I got really close to moving this to the front burner several times, but it didn't end up working.

    Status: Still possible in the near future.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7016 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Secondary Projects

    The Rithmatist

    This continues to be the single most-requested sequel among people who email me or contact me on social media. It is something I want to do, and still intend to, but it has a couple of weird aspects to it—completely unrelated to its popularity—that continue to work as roadblocks.

    The first problem is that it's an odd relic in my writing career. I wrote it as a diversion from a book that wasn't working (Liar of Partinel, my second attempt at doing a novel on Yolen, after the unpublished novel Dragonsteel). It went really well—but it also was something I had to set aside when the Wheel of Time came along.

    I eventually published it years later, but my life and my writing has moved in a very different direction from the point when I wrote this. These days, I try very hard to make stories like this work as novellas or standalone stories, rather than promising sequels. I feel I did promise a sequel for this one, and I have grand plans for it, but the time just never seems to be right.

    The other issue is that writing about that era in America—even in an alternate universe—involves touching on some very sensitive topics. Ones that, despite my best efforts, I feel that I didn't handle as sensitively as I could have. I do want to come back to the world and do a good job of it, but doing an Aztec viewpoint character—as I'd like to do as one of the viewpoints in book two—in an alternate Earth…well, it's a challenge that takes a lot of investment in research time.

    And for one reason or another, I keep ending up in crisis mode—first with Stormlight 3 taking longer than I wanted, and now with The Apocalypse Guard not turning out like I wanted. So someday I will get to this, but it's going to require some alignment of several factors.

    Status: Not yet. We'll see.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7017 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Secondary Projects

    White Sand

    Graphic Novel 1 was a huge success, and Graphic Novel 2 is finished and off to the printers. Expected publication date is February 2018. It will be the second of three.

    The prose version is still available to be read. If you sign up for my mailing list, we auto-send you a link to it.

    Status: Graphic novel 2 coming in early 2018.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7019 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Secondary Projects

    Alcatraz

    Contrary to last year's State of the Sanderson (where I didn't expect movement on this series this year) there have been developments. I have tried working on the sixth and final book (which will be from Bastille's viewpoint) and have found that I didn't like the test chapters I did.

    The story went the wrong direction, and beyond that, I didn't feel like I had Bastille's voice down. In some attempts, the book just sounded too much like the previous ones—but when I exaggerated her voice, she felt a bit Flanderized. I've been toying with how to make it work, and I've come up with a somewhat outside-the-box solution. My long-standing friend and former student, Janci Patterson, is also a big fan of the series. She's been offering feedback since I wrote the first book back in…2006, was it? I've gone to her and asked if she'd be willing to collaborate on it.

    The goal is that by bringing in another author to write it with me, I'll be able to get the book to work—to have it feel different enough from the others, yet still be in the same theme and spirit. The goal is to do an outline in early February once I have book one of Skyward done, then hand that off to Janci and let her toy with it a while before sending it back to me.

    So you can watch for that, and I'll post updates.

    Status: Outline to be written in 2018.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7020 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Secondary Projects

    Legion

    The third Stephen Leeds/Legion story (which is roughly the same length as the second one) is finished! Titled Lies of the Beholder, this is the story that delves into Stephen's backstory, his interactions with Sandra, and the nature of his aspects. Good stuff! It's done, and it's weird. But good weird.

    Right now, the goal is to collect all three Legion stories and release them in hardcover sometime around September 2018. That means there probably won't be a standalone release of Lies of the Beholder until a year or so later, like we plan with Edgedancer. However, for those who like cohesion on their bookshelves, I've mandated that Subterranean Press be allowed to do a leatherbound like they did with the first two. So you can have books that match. This should happen right around the release of the collection.

    In the UK, there should be a small-format version of the story on its own rather than a collection. (Again, for matching purposes. In the US, the small-format hardcovers have been published by my own company, Dragonsteel, as we waited for enough stories to do a collection.) We should eventually do a small-format Dragonsteel edition for people who really want one of those to match, but I'd suggest that the best way to support the stories is to buy the collection. And if you haven't ever tried them out, you'll be able to get them all at once!

    This marks the end of the Stephen Leeds stories, though we're in talks for another television deal—so maybe that will happen.

    Status: Series finished! Publication in late 2018.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7022 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Main Projects

    Mistborn

    Wax and Wayne 4 is on the slate next after I finish Skyward. (Though if it's going well, I may do the entire trilogy for Skyward first.) I need four or five months at least to do Wax and Wayne, so rain or shine, my plan is to get into this on September 1st at the latest. Hopefully a little earlier.

    This will wrap up the second era of Mistborn books. (And yes, I've settled—at long last—on just calling it that. All the other terms I tried were just too confusing.) Once the Wax and Wayne books are done, I'll look to do something else for a little while before coming back for Era Three. (1980s spy thriller Mistborn.)

    Status: To be written in 2018.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7023 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Updates on Main Projects

    Stormlight

    It's time to take a little breather. I've begun working on the outline for book four, which is kind of a mess right now because of things I've been moving around between books as I write. My goal this year for Stormlight will be to have rock-solid outlines for books four and five done by December 2018.

    My current projection is that I'll spend half of my time writing Stormlight, and half of it doing other things. (I spoke last year about just how big an undertaking a Stormlight book is–and why I can't write them back to back.) I realize that many of you would prefer to have only Stormlight, but that would drive me insane–and drive the series into the ground.

    I think this is a realistic schedule. So, I'm giving myself 2018 to work on Skyward (hopefully a trilogy) and other projects. Then on January 1st, 2019, I go back to Stormlight refreshed and excited to be back in Roshar, and I write on book four until it's done. (With a 2020 or 2021 release, depending on how the writing goes.) I do hope to find time for a novella, like Edgedancer, that we can put out between books. This one is tentatively called Wandersail.

    For those who don't know, The Stormlight Archive is a ten-book series composed of two five-book arcs.

    Status: Writing outline for book four.

    State of the Sanderson 2017 ()
    #7024 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    My Year

    January–June: Oathbringer Revisions

    I spent most of this year doing revisions for Oathbringer. I did several exhaustive drafts during the January–June months, and did the final handoff to Peter (for copyediting and proofreading) right at the end of June.

    June–Mid September: The Apocalypse Guard

    Then, for the first time in what felt like forever (it was really only about sixteen months), I got a chance to work on something that wasn't Oathbringer or Edgedancer. I launched right into The Apocalypse Guard, the follow-up to The Reckoners…and it didn't work. I spent July, August, and part of September writing that. (I finished the last chapter sometime in early September, and turned in the second draft a few weeks later.)

    September–October: Legion 3

    I was already feeling a little discouraged by that book not quite coming together, though at that point I assumed I'd be able to fix it in revisions. (Well, I still think I can do that–I just think it will take more time.) Mid-September, I launched into Legion Three: Lies of the Beholder. That took around a month to finish, bringing us to mid-October. By then, I knew something was seriously wrong with The Apocalypse Guard, as my revision attempts were fruitless. So, I called Random House and pulled the book–then launched into Skyward.

    October–November: Skyward

    I have been writing on that book ever since, and you can read the blog post yesterday about that.

    November–December: Oathbringer Tour

    The tour was wonderful–somehow both exhausting and energizing at the same time. Here are some of the fan costumes that showed up this year. Thank you all for coming out to see me!

    December so far: Skyward

    Unfortunately, and I know you guys know to watch for them, there are no hidden or secret novellas or books for this year. I have been running around feeling behind all year, first on Oathbringer, and then trying to find a replacement for The Apocalypse Guard.

    General Reddit 2017 ()
    #7025 Copy

    Windrunner

    /u/Mistborn (Brandon) said that Eshonai will be the flashback character in Book 4. (source), which would indicate that she's probably still alive in some form.

    But we'll see. He could've changed it or that could've been a diversion from Venli being the actual flashback character.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Eshonai is the flashback character--but she is dead in the present. I've warned people multiple times that we WILL have flashbacks to the viewpoints of characters who have died.

    General Reddit 2017 ()
    #7026 Copy
    Houston OB Clarification.PNG

    Pagerunner

    I was at the Houston signing, and Brandon referred me to you on a few technical questions that I was asking him, since he he was quite "brain dead."

    First was what Surges the Bondsmiths have. Based on the ordering in the Ars Arcanum in WoR and OB, they should have Tension. But the application of the shared Surge we saw for both Stonewards and Bondsmiths in OB looks to line up more with Brandon's previous description of Cohesion from the Words of Radiance tour. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/223/#e6061, although he did identify it as a Willshaper Surge there.) Brandon believed it was an error in the Ars Arcanum, and that Bondsmiths do have Cohesion, but he told me to confirm that with you.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    What power did you see in the book that Bondsmiths and Stonewards share?

    Pagerunner

    In Chapter 38:

    The Shardbearer pressed his hand against the incline leading up to the Voidbringer, and again the stone seemed to writhe. Steps formed in the rock, as if it were made of wax that could flow and be shaped.

    ...

    "And that Shardbearer I saw? A Herald?"

    No. Merely a Stoneward. The Surge that changed the stone is the other you may learn, though it may serve you differently.

    Which seems to align with how Brandon has previously described Cohesion in the past, as opposed to Tension.

    I assume this Surge is what Dalinar used to repair the temple of Talenel in Chapter 59, but that's not actually essential to the point.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    I think this has to be an error in the text.

    Pagerunner

    Sorry, which do you think is the error? The order of Surges in the Ars Arcanum? Or the Stormfather's statement to Dalinar?

    Peter Ahlstrom

    The Stormfather's statement.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    I have verified with Brandon that what the Stormfather said here is wrong and will be corrected in the future.

    Miscellaneous 2015 ()
    #7027 Copy

    Argent

    One thing I can't figure out - Newcago's name is obviously a short of New Chicago. So is there anything Babilar stands for? The "Babyl-" part is obviously from Babylon, but I can't think of anything for "-ar"... Babylon Restored > Babylo-R > Babylor > Babylar kind of makes sense, but it doesn't make me happy.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    Babyl-R (say the letter name).

    Firefight San Francisco signing ()
    #7029 Copy

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    The Shardblade that Dalinar had at the end of Words of Radiance, was that the Honorblade?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    The Shardblade that Dalinar had at the end of Words of Radiance that he gave up?

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    Yeah, that he gave up.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    No, it was not.

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    It was not? So what happened to the Honorblade that the Herald had?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Nobody kno - Well, somebody knows, but it is not known to the main characters.

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    Can I ask if Hoid-

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    If Hoid knows?

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    Yeah.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Hoid did not take it, but I’m not answering whether he knows.

    Footnote: This was transcribed from a recording, so it should be close to verbatim. However, the audio file has been taken down, so it cannot be verified exactly.
    Sources: 17th Shard - Original Transcript
    TWG Posts ()
    #7031 Copy

    Elladan259

    I have a questions. I read in the book that under the Lord Ruler, the Steel Inquisitors had 9 spikes. So they had 8 spikes for the normal Allomantic abilities, and only one left. But they needed one more. One would be a Feruchemical spike which granted the user healing abilities. And the other one would be an atium spike. In the book they burned it often, but how? But then, how could they burn atium? They would have needed an atium spike (extremely expensive) and an Mistborn (because atium Mistings weren't discovered).

    Somehow, the number of the spike just don't make sense. There should be 10. Do you have some ideas, or is it just an mistake by Brandon Sanderson? 

    Peter Ahlstrom

    The official answer is that the number varies depending on how many Mistings they can find and sacrifice. Not all Inquisitors will have all the same powers.

    Steelheart release party ()
    #7038 Copy

    Questioner

    Do you spend a lot of time on Google when you don’t know, like, distances?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I do. Or at least, I used to. Nowadays, I'll write into my manuscript, "Peter, find the answer to this", and then I’ll just let it go. He’s my assistant, and when he does his read-through afterward he’ll be like, "Oh great", and he’ll go do all the research for me. It's wonderful. For little things like that, I can get him to do it.

    Steelheart release party ()
    #7039 Copy

    Questioner

    How much influence do you have on the story of the Infinity Blade games?

    Second Questioner

    They tell you what to write and you flesh it out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, when I came on they said, "We don't have a story. Can you come up with one?". That was part of the reason I was interested in doing it. Basically, the whole story of games two and three, and the in between, have been my stories. I didn't write the games. I went over the dialogue and told them where it was really bad. I was focused on the novellas. The dialogue in the games, not quite as awesome as I would want it to be. But the basic story, it was me and the creators of the game brainstorming, talking about it. All the characters are ones I came up with.

    Questioner

    Because, really, in the first one there weren't exactly characters.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Though it had it's own little fun narrative, which I liked the idea of. But when I sat down with them I'm like, "If you're going to have a series, you can't have a series with no characters ever. You have fifty protagonists that die each time. You've gotta build the mechanism for this. So let's go this direction." They loved it.

    Questioner

    And that was why Siris wound up being a Deathless?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Mhmm.

    Steelheart release party ()
    #7040 Copy

    Questioner

    Will [Hoid] be making a reappearance in Words of Radiance?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes.

    Questioner

    I also heard he was part of your unpublished Dragonsteel series.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He is.

    Questioner

    Is that a series that you're going to be publishing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I will eventually rewrite it; it's not up to my current standards. I consider the events that happened in it basically to be canon, with some exceptions. For instance, when I originally wrote Dragonsteel, the Shattered Plains were there and Dalinar was there, and when I split off Way of Kings into its own book, I took half of what had been Dragonsteel and made it The Stormlight Archive and I split half of it off into a separate planet. If you were to read it, half of it will be a less good version of the Shattered Plains sequence, the bridge crews and things, from Way of Kings and the other half is Hoid’s story. And Hoid’s story stuff is still kind of canon, but the rest of it got moved.

    Steelheart release party ()
    #7042 Copy

    Questioner

    At the end of the trilogy, Sazed communicates with Kelsier, so they exist in the afterlife, of some sort. You've got some concept of an afterlife. Is it uniform across the cosmere?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What is happening there is not actually technically an afterlife, though it kind of is. It's what we call a cognitive shadow. It's when your spirit is not moving on yet. So there is a Beyond, but there is a -- basically that's what we would call in our world a ghost, and there are actually magic systems based around that. In fact, the story I have coming out in George R.R. Martin’s next anthology is a ghost story involving this same -- it is cosmere based. Yes, that would be consistent. They don’t all have the same mythology regarding it, but it would be consistent. What happened to Kelsier could have happened on any of the planets.

    Steelheart release party ()
    #7043 Copy

    Questioner

    Why is The Rithmatist in our world but not in our world?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wanted to do something a little more whimsical when I wrote it. I just wanted something purely imaginative. And I said, if I weren’t bound by anything, where would I go? I designed this really strange alternate version of our world, without forcing myself to have explanations and rationale. That’s just a different process sometimes than other books I write.

    Steelheart release party ()
    #7045 Copy

    Questioner

    The last book, which turned into three books for The Wheel of Time, how much of that was yours and how much was notes from Jordan?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He left about a hundred written pages and about a hundred pages more of notes specifically for the last book. It really depends on the given scene. In Gathering Storm, if it was Egwene, it was either written by him or from his notes, and if it was Rand, it was mostly me. In Towers of Midnight, if it was Mat it was probably from his notes or written by him. He wrote the whole Tower of Ghenjei sequence, for instance. But if it was Perrin, it was me. He had nothing for Perrin, other than leaving Malden and then the Last Battle, so I had to fill in everything in between. In the final book, the meeting at the Fields of Merrilor was him and the very last chapter, which became the epilogue, was him, and a lot of the rest was me.

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    Questioner

    At the end of The Way of Kings, was Wit the actual Herald or was it somebody else *inaudible*

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Herald's the guy who collapsed to the ground all shaggy-haired holding a Shardblade. He claimed to be Talenel, who is the one they talked about in the Prelude. Whether or not he actually is is yet to be seen.

    Questioner

    Did he just collapse or did he form out of the air?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, he walked up and fell down.

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    Questioner

    When we get to the [interlude] in The Way of Kings, where we see the Shinovar merchant, he talks about his guards being different from Truthless. What makes the distinction?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You will find that out in Book 3 which has Szeth’s flashback sequences and show him becoming Truthless.

    Footnote: Brandon decided to have Dalinar's flashbacks in Book 3 instead, so this question will likely now be answered in Book 5.
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    Questioner

    In [Rithmatics], how can you tell that a circle is two-starred, four-starred, or nine-starred?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s by where you start crossing the lines. Where you cross the circle will determine what points it is.  For example, if you draw a line here, there are only a certain number of places where you can draw another line that'll fit. It’s just by where you start your first line intersecting it, the first line intersecting it determines where you can draw other lines and keep its stability.