Recent entries

    Supanova 2017 - Sydney ()
    #8051 Copy

    R.E. (paraphrased)

    Does Vasher have a different way of getting access to Stormlight than everyone else? Given that he has no spren, no honorblade and he isn't a squire?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Yes. He can use Stormlight to stay alive, but it doesn't let him Surgebind.

    R.E. (paraphrased)

    Could Szeth get access to this method?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Yes

    R.E. (paraphrased)

    And use it to fuel Nightblood?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Yes he could.

    R.E. (paraphrased)

    Can you tell me what that method is?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    *smiles*

    Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
    #8056 Copy

    Questioner

    Could you give any insights as to what the Dawnshards are?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um......(long pause)...

    Questioner

    Am I gonna get a RAFO?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nyeaaa it's it's..nyeaa I dunno, do you think? You know what the Dawnshards are right? We haven't talked about that? Ok, I thought we had. Um. We'll RAFO it for now. But good question.

    Other person

    It's an excellent question. And we have not yet talked about that. I was like...answer that, answer that!

    Questioner

    I was trying to think of questions that could get me very close to being RAFO'd, but not quite RAFO'd.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that was a good one, you were close to not getting RAFO'd, on that. Coz I do want to talk about it at some point.

    Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
    #8057 Copy

    Questioner

    The thing I wanted to ask you about was in White Sand, it's actually on the map, it is...(pointing at map) is this Autonomy, or Bavadin?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Hehehe, that is a very good guess.....that is very very sharply guessed...

    Questioner

    Yeah, coz, I really, I just like kind of the idea of the Shards and stuff, and I guess I want to learn more about what they look like and, kind of their personalities and stuff.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Bavadin's a hard one, because what does Bavadin look like? Bavadin looks like what she feels like looking like, or what he feels like looking like, depending upon the day.

    Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
    #8058 Copy

    Questioner

    Is there one magic system that is, like, the one that would win all the battles?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, the thing is, they have their strengths and weaknesses. All of the surgebinders are really hard to kill while they have access to Stormlight and that's a huge advantage. But a mistborn is way more versatile, they have access to more powers, and things like that. So it really depends how much of each do you have, how many times does the mistborn have to kill the Bondsmith; a Bondsmith's not going to do a great job in a fight because...I mean Dalinar would coz he's Dalinar, but the powers do not lend themselves to combat in the same way that windrunning does, and things like that, so...

    Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
    #8059 Copy

    Questioner

    If two of your characters from two different worlds were to duel, which would be the most interesting and exciting to watch, which two characters.

    Brandon Sanderson

    If they were to duel, like in a "we're not going to kill each other, we're just going to duel", because...I would say that a Vin / Kaladin duel would be the most interesting visually. You gotta pick two different magics, but that can go toe to toe with each other.

    Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing ()
    #8061 Copy

    Questioner

    Was Sadeas involved with Gavilar's death?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, good question. He legitimately thought that Gavilar was a good king and so he legitimately wanted him to live. Sadeas had...his disagreements with Dalinar, he was way more ruthless, and things like this. But at the end of the day he really did want the kingdom to succeed and he did not want to be king.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8068 Copy

    leinton (paraphrased)

    Is crem made out of calcium carbonate?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    No, that it was a darker material, and wouldn’t directly correlate to any rocks on Earth

    leinton (paraphrased)

    Where does it come from?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    That’s one of the greater mysteries. Far in the future, scientists on Roshar will start asking that same question.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8069 Copy

    Questioner

    Any advice for finding a good, constructive writing group?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Writing groups, your best bet is to find somewhere, like, at a convention, that's doing writing critiques, and get in on one of the group critiques that happen there, usually led by, like, an author or somebody, and see who's giving good critiques. And then approach them and see if you can start something up. I would say that's the best. University classes, you can get into one of those, some sort of writing class where you can kind of get a preview for how people critique and things like that. That's your best bet, conventions, or writing classes.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8070 Copy

    Questioner

    With regards to Legion, are you planning on writing another short story?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am planning a third Legion short story, and then I will probably let that one lay fallow for a while. I don't know when I'll do that, it might be next year. I usually do a novella every year. And so, we'll see, it might be Legion next year to kind of wrap that up, not that it's really gonna be an ending because those are kind of episodic, but it will be the end of writing those for a while.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8071 Copy

    Questioner

    So, the game Mistborn: Birthright, it's been two years now.

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...I love the guys who were working on it, but I, if I were you, would consider it vaporware until you hear more. They've had some real troubles with their funding. They're great people who have just not been able to get the game going. They make a lot of easy, quick games for movie tie-ins, this one is *inaudible*, so it's just been a lot harder for them to get going. Again, they're fantastic people, and I hope that they'll get something going about it eventually, but I'm not gonna talk much about it until they do.

    So, someone's gonna ask, the movie thing. So, Shawn Levy, owns The Reckoners, optioned that in June. He did Real Steel, the Richard Matheson story. If you haven't seen that movie, it turned out really well, with Wolverine in it. He also did the Night at the Museum films. And they're working on a screenplay. DMG owns The Emperor's Soul. They were producers on the latest two Iron Man films. They're a Chinese company, they really liked Emperor's Soul, so they came and optioned that from me. The Mistborn books are with the people who have the video game rights. We've combined those together into one right, I gave them a year to work on that. They've been very encouraging on how they're working on that, but it's Hollywood, so who knows what will happen. Legion just lapsed, so if you're uncle makes movies, tell him to make Legion, from Brandon. Stormlight is under contract, but I can't say with who yet. So, I think everything novel-wise except for Rithmatist, probably-- Yeah, 'cause somebody optioned the Cosmere. Minus Mistborn. They got really excited by this whole, "Wow, it's a shard universe" thing, which is really hot in Hollywood right now. They're a really good company, but they came to me like, "We can do Marvel with Fantasy," and I'm like, "I'm not gonna say no!" We'll see how it turns out, but that's where we are.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8072 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Will there be a follow-up to The Rithmatist? Let's go down the list.

    So, I am writing Stormlight 3 right now. So, Stormlight 3, our goal is for next fall. You can follow along on my website, the projection right now is for, like, April, which is gonna be really tight for next fall. If I can get it done before April, then we can get it out in November. Otherwise, they would probably wait until January. Usually they skip December, 'cause it's just so crazy for bookstores, you don't want to be sending new books to them in December. So, if that happens, then it will be another January release, or something like that.

    I have Bands of Mourning, the next Mistborn book, in the queue.

    I have Calamity, the next Reckoners book, in the queue.

    And I have the fifth book of the Alcatraz series in the queue. We got the rights back, and we can start publishing the Alcatraz books again in January, so we will be rereleasing the first four with new cover art. It's really cool, we're trying something out with these books, as an aside. We did this really cool full-color map, and we're putting it on the inside of the jacket flap thing. So you can take off the jacket while you're reading the book and see the map, and if this works, we're gonna try it with Stormlight, where you can take off the jacket and see the map, it's just printed in full color on the back, but we wanna make sure it looks nice, that everything's gonna work with it... And then the fifth book will be in June.

    By the way, as an aside, those books I just listed, are all collectively shorter than a Stormlight book. You can add the word counts, two Mistborn books, one Reckoners book, and Alcatraz, plus a novella, all were written last year. And this year I've only been writing Stormlight, and I'm still-- yeah, anyway.

    Once I finish Stormlight, the next project will be the new new YA series from Random House, following Reckoners. It will be a new thing. I will write one of those, I will probably write Rithmatist 2, I will probably write the last Wax & Wayne book, and then I will go to Stormlight 4. Those will be the three projects I do in between.

    So, if the book you're waiting on a sequel to wasn't on that list, I will get to it eventually, but that's, like, the list for the next couple of years.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8073 Copy

    Questioner

    Of all the characters that you've written, which one do you think is the most like you, and is there one you want to be like?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Understand that there are none that are specifically "most like me." There's a piece of me in every one of them, it's been very hard for me to determine. If I had one that I think the best of is probably Sazed, maybe Dalinar. But I sure wouldn't mind being as clever as some of them are. You laugh, because, like, "You wrote them, Brandon." *laughter* The thing about being clever-- and I have some clever friends, I lived with a a guy named Ken Jennings for many years in college, and his brother's just as smart as him, and our mutual friend Earl, they were all on Quiz Bowl in college together, and he [Ken] won the Jeopardy thing, like 80 in a row. And Ken, and people like this, what really makes them smart is the speed of thought. They just snap off a retort, just like that, and you get them together, it's this weird thing, where, like, spacetime seems to warp around them and they start one-upping each other with references and cultural jokes and things like that, and you just step back, and, like, they're their own power source. Of random 80's inside jokes just going at each other. And that's what really makes someone witty, is the ability to pop it off. That's not smart, that's witty, in a book. Now they're also very smart. But in a book, you can emulate that, by giving yourself three hours to think of what the perfect comeback, and then writing it in the book. And they just came up with it, and everyone thinks you're brilliant, when you're just habitually that person who's like, "That would have been smart! That's what I should have said!"

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8074 Copy

    Questioner

    So, there's not a lot a lot of Western books coming out these days. Is there anything in particular that made you decide to set Alloy of Law and the other books in that time period; and any challenges moving into that time period?

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...It's hard to say, you know, to reach back into my "cultural archive," so to speak, in my head. I did watch a lot of spaghetti westerns during that era. I think they're cool. But I really think it was more wanting to deal with something in the early 1900s. Because, I love that era. That era, in our world, was, like, this era of scientific discoveries-- there was this revolution that happened, right around that time, with the coming of electric lights and the coming of motorcars where, for the first time, science is a thing for everybody. Like, before, science was a thing that somebody rich got to do, and then it became something-- like, I remember reading an essay that was written in, like, 1910, about a scientist who had gone and studied ditch-digging, and gone in there with the ditch-diggers. And he taught them, he figured out the science of what makes ditch-digging easier on their bodies and on their health and faster, and basically he 'scienced' ditch-digging for the ditch-diggers. And they loved that. It made their jobs much easier. It was a time where science was like that, it was the first time that science was like that... That time period really fascinates me, because you've got this whole-- my career is based around taking cool things and superstition, and to have, like, one foot over there and one foot in science, and kind of bringing those two things together. And that fascinates me, and that was a time period where we were transitioning from superstition toward science. That's really cool to me. So, I wanted to do something in that time period, and the Western aspect was just a fun part of it. The whole pitch of "Clint Eastwood has to move to big-city New York and take over his house politics" was really interesting to me.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8075 Copy

    Questioner

    Do you write non-fiction books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...I have not written any full non-fiction books yet. My nonfiction is my class and my podcast. Maybe someday I'll do a writing book. We did do one called Shadows Beneath... my friends and I each wrote a story, and then we wrote about why we did that story the way we did. So all of my nonfiction is, like, articles about writing. So, maybe someday, we'll do something else, but that's kinda where I am right now.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8076 Copy

    halo6819

    What planet did humans originate on? Or did they originate on Scadrial when Preservation and Ruin got together?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Humans did not originate on Scadrial, because they were on Yolen, which is a planet before Adonalsium-- the story that takes place before Adonalsium was Shattered. They may have been on other planets, but they-- the very first ones you would care about are probably on Yolen.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8077 Copy

    leinton

    Does Roshar experience storms outside of the highstorms and the Weepings? And if so, how often would Shinovar get them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, the weather patterns are dominated by the highstorms. Non-highstorm storms are rare but do occur. The further to the west you get, the harder it is to tell the difference between a highstorm and a regular storm. Like, in Shinovar, a highstorm is just kind of like-- it feels like what a storm you might get here, or even weaker. But they do happen. They're gonna happen, most often you're going to notice them in the quote-unquote "summers," when the highstorms are further apart.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8078 Copy

    Questioner

    ...How and when do you manage to sleep? *laughter* You read and write and have a family.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, I'm not allowed to talk about the clones *laughter* writing my books.

    I set a strict schedule, and what I do is, I get up at noon, because I'm a writer! And I'll write from noon until 5:00. 5:00 until 8:30 or 9:00 is family time, and that's just-- that's sacrosanct. I don't do anything else during that time except hang out with family, I play video games with the kids, if you've got a seven or eight year old, Terraria, great for kids, you can get it on tablets and sit next to them. It's like an easier Minecraft. We play games, I go out with my wife, we do stuff like that. And then, at about 9:00, the kids are in bed, we're usually back, and then I go back to work. And I work from about 9:00 until as long as I need to work to get my work done that night. And when I'm home, that schedule works very well. It can get me up to twelve hours of writing time in a day if I'm really crunching on something. Since I don't have a commute, it actually-- I get that extra time in my day. And when I don't have a time crunch, then I can be done by, like, 2:00 AM and play some video games or something. I have a very-- My mental health is good. You don't have to worry about me not sleeping, and things like that. On tour? All bets are off. These things usually get done about midnight or 1:00 AM, and I often have a flight the next morning at 8:00. So, on tours, I just don't sleep. And I usually don't eat, either...

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8079 Copy

    Questioner

    Is there anything you've read recently that you are championing, like--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, yeah, some stuff that I really like recently. If you haven't read Naomi Novik's book Uprooted, it's delightful. Like a dark fairy tale written for an adult audience. We get a lot of fairy tale retellings that are kinda YA or middle grade targeted. This one's-- she's got Polish descent, she kinda picks-- there's no specific fairy tales, she just kinda came up with her own. And it's wonderful. It's a little romance-y, but some fun magic and it's kinda dark, but highly recommended.

    Brian McClellan, my old student, Promise of Blood, he writes fantastic stuff, and I'm jealous of his magic system, it's really good.

    Nora [N.K.] Jemison's new book, I mentioned that, if you like literary style stuff... The Fifth Season. And, it's got a character whose viewpoint in the second person, and it works. So, it's the only thing I've ever read in second person that works. It is so good. There's a few for you.

    Some of my classic favorites, if you haven't read them, are Fire Upon the Deep by Vernon Vinge. It's the closest thing to reading Dune again that you will ever have. It's got that same epic worldbuilding, really cool epic scope in a science fiction novel, and I love that book.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8080 Copy

    Questioner

    What was your favorite character to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My favorite character to write is whoever I'm writing at the moment. I don't usually pick a favorite... I don't have a favorite character... and I don't usually have a favorite book. People ask that a lot. It's like choosing your favorite child.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8081 Copy

    Questioner

    When building out your magic in your books, what process do you go through, they're certainly intricate compared to a lot of others.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Good question! ...I could give you three lectures on this, and I have done it before. Fortunately, I wrote it all down. So, I've got a couple resources for you, this goes for anyone who's interested in writing. My website... there are three resources on there. The first are my essays on magic systems. I've done three essays so far, my speech last years was my fourth, you'll have to find that online somewhere. Sanderson's Zeroth Law. I named them after myself, because, I mean, Asimov did it. *laughter* I don't think he actually named them after himself, but-- So, those are gonna talk about magic systems, how I develop them in-depth.

    The other resource I have for you is Writing Excuses, my podcast. Fifteen minutes of writing advice every week. Start with January of this year. I think they get better and better as we've gone along, so this year's are better, and we started kind of a new thing.

    And the last thing is, if you're hardcore, and you're kind of masochistic, you can watch my university lectures, which are a little more boring and dry, they're an hour and a half long, there's thirteen of them, they're linked on my website. And I made the university let me record them and post them online as part of having me in there to teach...

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8082 Copy

    Questioner

    Of all your books... who is your favorite audiobook narrator who has narrated your novels?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is Michael Kramer. And that's a bias of mine because, having listened to a lot of the Wheel of Time books in the early years, I fell in love with Michael and Kate's reading styles, so I've asked for them specifically on several of my projects. I sometimes like to have somebody different for different books just to have some variety in case there are people who don't like that, but they will continue probably to do Mistborn and Stormlight because they're my favorite readers.

    A Memory of Light Chicago signing ()
    #8083 Copy

    Questioner

    How did this [Wheel of Time] help prepare you to write Stormlight Archive?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There's actually a good story there because Way of Kings, the first Stormlight Archive, is the book I was writing when I first sold Elantris. Elantris was my first published but it wasn't my first written, it was my sixth novel. It was the first one that was actually somewhat decent, but I was writing number thirteen when I got the offer on it. You'll find that's very common among authors. It doesn't happen to all of us, but a lot of us, we write for a long time before we get it done. And I just finished Way of Kings and it was not right yet. In fact when I sold Elantris, Tor wanted to buy two books from me, and my editor asked, "send me what I was working on right now". And I sent him Way of Kings and he said, "wow this is awesome, but number one, it's enormous. I'm not sure if we can publish this, at least in one volume, from a new author." Later on I was able to convince them it should be one volume, but that's when I had a little more clout and they could print more copies, which drives prices down for printing them. But also it just wasn't right yet. The book was not right. And I said to my editor, "I'm okay not publishing it now, because I don't know what's wrong with it. As a writer, I think it was just too ambitious for me at the time. I just couldn't do it yet."

    It wasn't until I had written Gathering Storm in its entirety that I started to figure out what I'd been doing wrong. It was actually managing viewpoints was one of the things. During the reread of Robert Jordan's entire series, I noticed how he gathered the viewpoints together. You start writing a big epic fantasy series, and you feel like, they have so many characters and I want to start with that. In the original draft of Way of Kings I started them all over the world. I had all these viewpoints and things like this and the book was kind of a trainwreck because of it. Where if you read Eye of the World, Robert Jordan starts with them all together and then slowly builds complexity. Even in the later books, he's grouping the characters together. Even though they have individual storylines going on, they are in the same place and they can interact with each other, and there's clusters of them in different places. That was one thing. Working on Gathering Storm, I've learnt how to make my characters, also how to use viewpoints the way he did, how to manage subtlety--he was so subtle with a lot of his writing. Just some of these things, it all started to click in my head.

    And I actually called my agent and said, "I need to do Way of Kings right now." And he's like, "Are you sure? Because you kind of have a lot on your plate." "I need to do it, it's going be fast, because I know how to do it now." So I actually took time off between Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight and rewrote Way of Kings from scratch. It took me about six months, which is amazingly fast for a book that length. And then showed it to my editor and it was right this time. It's hard to explain many of the specifics. It's like, how do you know you can lift this weight after you've been lifting these other weights? It's when you've worked hard enough that you've gained the muscle mass to do it. And writing The Wheel of Time was heavy lifting. That's how it happened. I do apologize the sequel is taking so long. But after that deviation to do the first one which I could do very quickly, I couldn't stop to write the second one after Towers of Midnight because the second one would take too long and delay the last book too long. I am getting back to Stormlight now, and I am working on the second book, but I had other obligations first that were very important.

    A Memory of Light Chicago signing ()
    #8085 Copy

    Ted Pick (paraphrased)

    In Mistborn, why is it that an Allomancer either has just one metal, or is Mistborn and has all? Why aren't there any that have just two, or three?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Originally he had planned so that people would only have one metal, period. No Mistborns. And then as he went along with the writing he liked this idea, but he really wanted to make some more powerful Allomancers, which is why he created the Mistborn. He did say though that if you are playing the RPG, you are more than welcome to have an Allomancer that can burn two metals without Hemalurgy.

    A Memory of Light Portland signing ()
    #8087 Copy

    Brent Weeks

    So I hear the Stormlight Archive is supposed to be ten books. So does that mean 15 or 20? *audience laughs*

    Brandon Sanderson

    Stormlight Archive is supposed to be ten books. I'm hoping it will be ten books. It is two sequences of five, so you can ask me after the first five-book sequence where I am in my original outline. It should stay pretty close to that, I hope. I don't know. I used to be able to say everything stayed the same length I wanted it to be, but then my Wheel of Time book got split into three, so I can't say that any more.

    Brent Weeks

    Two years between books?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, two years between books. They're very thick and involved, and I want to be doing other things as well. I like to jump projects--it's what keeps me fresh. It's what allows me to keep on doing this productively, and if I get stuck in one thing, no matter how much I love it, I find that I get less and less excited about it as time passes. But if I finish one book and skip to something else--like an Alcatraz book--for a little while and then jump back, I find my enthusiasm has come back to the beginning, where it was. And so I do a lot of jumping between projects.

    A Memory of Light Portland signing ()
    #8088 Copy

    Questioner

    How much of your own books were you consciously looking at books like Jordan and saying, "I like that kind of world," and trying to create that kind of world in your own stuff?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I spent most of my early career, as I kind of implied earlier, reacting against books that I had really liked. The main purpose for this being that I felt that Robert Jordan and various other authors really covered that type of story and that type of world really well. And so I said, "Well, what other room is there to explore?" And so you see me reacting against.

    For instance, Mistborn is a direct reaction to the Wheel of Time. Mistborn began as the question, "What if Rand were to fail?" That's what spun me into creating that entire book series: what if the prophesied hero were not able to accomplish what they were supposed to accomplish? And that became the foundation of that book series. So you can see where I was going and things like that. A lot of times I will read something, and if it's done very well I'll react against it, and if it’s done very poorly then I’ll say, "Oh, I want to try and do this the right way". And both of those are kind of an interesting style of reaction to storytelling. So I would say I was deeply influenced, but it's more in the realm of, "Hey what have they done? What have they covered really well, and where can I go to explore new ground?"

    A Memory of Light Portland signing ()
    #8089 Copy

    Questioner

    Are you planning on continuing to the fifth book of the Alcatraz series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Am I planning to continue to the fifth book of the Alcatraz series, which are my middle grade and young adult wacky fantasy books? The answer is yes. I did not like what the publisher [Scholastic] was doing with the Alcatraz series, so I actually bought the rights back as part of agreement last year, which gave them until January to continue selling the books, and then I got the rights back in January. But they didn't want to do the fifth book for various reasons, and so I bought them all back and am now planning on how to get them back out there. I've given my UK publisher the right to distribute in the US, so they should have distribution again. And so I'll do the fifth book sometime this year. I will initially probably just put it on my website to read because you've been waiting for so long, and then we'll worry about getting it printed somehow. 

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8090 Copy

    Questioner

    Did you speak in English, and was it translated when you did that overseas trip [to Dubai]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, good question... Yes, they actually had headphones for everybody. And I spoke in English, and they had an interpreter. I got to do a speech, kinda like this. And there was a guy there who's like, "Fantasy's not real." He actually said that, and the people in charge were like, "Oh, it's okay, we're sorry, we didn't mean to offend you," and I was like, "Oh, no! I'm ready!" Which is why I gave my little speech on why fantasy is awesome. And it was super cool. They did interpret it, yep.

    GollanczFest London ()
    #8092 Copy

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    [Something about whether Elantrians are immortal or long-lived] 

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Elantrians have no physical limitations on their lifespan. The power will sustain them, but it's emotionally and mentally exhausting to be an Elantrian, so as far as immortality goes it's actually harder to be an Elantrian than other forms of immortality that exist in the cosmere.

    Shadows of Self San Diego signing ()
    #8096 Copy

    Questioner

    What is the worst writing advice you've ever gotten?

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...The thing about writing advice is, most people are giving writing advice that works for them which means it's actually good advice to try out. The only really bad advice is, "This is the way it must be done." Because different writers have very different approaches. Can you imagine Stephen King. Stephen King can't write with an outline. So he says "Don't outline." Orson Scott Card says, "I've gotta have an outline or my book stinks." Both of those can't be right. But one of them might be right for you. The truth is, most writers I know don't outline some things, do outline other things, and come up with this, like, Frankenstein of different pieces of advice that work for them.

    The absolute worst thing I that ever heard, and I'm not gonna say who said this, was they were telling my students, while I was teaching them, my students came in and said "What do you think of this," to include a glossy headshot with every submission. To get the attention of editors. And not include a SASE, a self addressed stamped envelope (back in the days, you know, where we did this all in print). If they liked it enough, they'd track you down.

    GollanczFest London ()
    #8098 Copy

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    *inaudible* [Presumably about the interval between Stormlight 5 and 6]

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    I can't tell you too much without giving you spoilers. It's not a jump like Mistborn. It's more like ten or fifteen years. It will be the same characters, but some of the main characters will fade to be more minor characters, and some of the minor characters will fade to be more major characters. For example, Lift is one of the main characters for the second part, and Jasnah, and Renarin, and such.

    GollanczFest London ()
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    Questioner (paraphrased)

    *inaudible*

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    I can't answer that yet, because I'm going to be talking a lot about how the worlds blend in later books, so I don't want to talk too much about how the magics blend now.

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    Is that something we'll be seeing in Stormlight?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    No.

    Questioner (paraphrased)

    In Hoid's trilogy?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Yep. Post-Stormlight. That's part of why I need to RAFO those questions, because they're so far off right now.