Recent entries

Pontus Hallén

Regarding the Ire: did they set out into the Cosmere pre- or post-Reod?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! :)

AndrewStirlingMacDonald

Can you tell us the name of factory from which Tia gets her Cola pouches? And perhaps the city?

Brandon Sanderson

Factory is one that doesn't exist in our world, but I believe I have it in Chattanooga.

Nick Silverdime

How hard was it for you to get your first manuscript published? Did you send multiple copies?

Brandon Sanderson

It took me ten years of work to become an author who wrote books that were of professional quality.

Once I hit that point, my chances improved. Elantris was rejected half a dozen times over four years before selling.

Zander Hatch

Could you Awaken an Honorblade?

Brandon Sanderson

It would take a Looooooot of power. (A near impossible amount.)

John Lee

Any updates on movie/tv/video game adaptions?

Brandon Sanderson

Nothing big. Steelheart has a script. It's the only one so far to hit that stage.

Wayne McCutcheon

Any new information about the Steelheart movie? So excited about it! Will you be involved in making it?

Brandon Sanderson

Last I heard, they had a script they liked, and were sending it out for a polish. I will be as involved as they will allow!

Drew McCaffrey

I'm assuming they met in White Sand, if Hoid is who I think he is in that one ;) but more how well does she know his agenda?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm not sure if you're thinking this, but Nazh and Hoid are separate people.

Garrett

Other than Hoid, which character have you had the most fun writing?

Brandon Sanderson

Wayne.

Maria Goulet‏

Why isn't Alcatraz part of the Cosmere?The lenses seem like they could be investiture-related.

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't want Alcatraz to have to follow Cosmere continuity and rules. Yes, the magic could work in the cosmere

Rock Chef

Is Edgli going to make an appearance (or be mentioned in) another book? I want to know more about Edgli!

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this will be answered eventually.

Avi Dobkin

Hoid, Wayne, Kelsier and Wax are playing cards. How many aces are there?

Brandon Sanderson

Only Wayne and Hoid are likely to cheat, and they'd be in cahoots.

Dustin Warf

If Kelsier had visited Roshar, what spren would have been attracted to his character?

Brandon Sanderson

Gloryspren because he pretty much always feels like he's done something awesome. :)

Cloud of the Ghar

Was atium truly one of the 16 metals, or can it be used by anyone just like lerasium?

Brandon Sanderson

Atium has some screwy things going on. It's not one of the 16, but not just anybody could use it.

Bernardo Hasenlechne

What's the book you've enjoyed the most writing?

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm.... Probably one of the Alcatraz books.

L Cress

Do you think pantsers grow up to be planners? Or, are pantsers forever pantsers, & planners forever planners?

Brandon Sanderson

I think that both pantsers and planners generally learn to use the tools of the others side on occasion.

And some do swap, particularly for given books. But neither is the other in embryo.

Anna

Epigraphs in Mistborn & Stormlight: did you wrote them before, during or after writing the rest of the book?

Brandon Sanderson

Almost always after the book is done, with notes before certain chapters of what to include above that one.

Mike Zentz

Who/what was the inspiration for Wayne's character? He's the best!

Brandon Sanderson

Really, it started with the hats and went crazy from there.

Yata

Is "Galladon" Galladon's true name ?

Brandon Sanderson

It is his birth name, if that's what you're asking.

Yata

Yes, I had this crazy idea about "people need to have an Aon in the name to be chosen by the Shaod" and Galladon hasn't it.

Brandon Sanderson

Ah, that's an excellent guess. But no, that isn't the case. It's more about Connection.

Hazuki

Are there any characters that were particularly difficult for you to work with?

Brandon Sanderson

Cadsuane from the WoT was the one that comes to mind.

Discar

How big is the Roshar supercontinent?

Brandon Sanderson

[Peter Ahlstrom] or [Isaac Stewart], can give you a specific on that, if you need one. I don't have the scale map handy.

Isaac Stewart

Roughly 4000 miles East to West.

Peter Ahlstrom

I can't remember if that is right, per my globe.

Isaac Stewart

True. Things might've changed since the globe experiment.

Discar

Can you give us an Oath that hasn't been revealed in the story yet?

Brandon Sanderson

No. You'll have to wait for the stories to get those.

John DiLillo

The finale of Hero of Ages is incredibly ballsy. Were you at all concerned about backlash?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I was. As was my editor. We both agreed it was the right ending, though, and so I didn't have to do much convincing.

Chris White

Could a sentient Invested object take up a Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

Highly unlikely, probably impossible--but impossibility is hard to judge.

Thomas

What author would you want to finish The Stormlight Archive or Mistborn books if you were unable to?

Brandon Sanderson

I'd probably want Brian T. McClellan or Brent Weeks, though I don't know if either would have the time.

Herowithamnesia

When did you first start playing around with the idea of Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

Sometime in 98-99.

Sarah Celiann

Any advice for creating an editing plan, especially if a novel needs big changes?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2/Part 3)

Organize your list of changes by importance, and try fixing only the most important ones in your next draft.

Once you have the big things fixed, you can move on to smaller issues. Be goal based in your revisions.

Zmann966

Is the metal on Scadrial specially Invested? Can an Allomancer use metals from other planets?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2)

Metal is a key, not the source of power itself. Most is not specially Invested. It glows because of the power seeking to come through it, not because of the power within it.

Mitchell Knox

Have you considered writing a book explaining the cosmere and worldbuilding?

Brandon Sanderson

Some day, we will probably do this. But I want more of the different worlds fleshed out first.

John Lee

Will you ever do a crossover novel with different characters/worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I will. The final Mistborn books will have this. There's already some in novellas like Secret History and Sixth of the Dusk.

Drew McCaffrey

Is there are metal that can grant Feruchemy, a la lerasium/Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

Another RAFO. (Sorry.)

Saugesicht

Hoid has never drawn his sword on Roshar, which looks similar to Nightblood. Is Hoid's sword also Awakened?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO, I'm afraid!

ajrula

A being with a lot of Investiture worldhops, then dies. What happens to the Investiture that was part of them?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, it returns to the Spiritual Realm, where all places are one, and where you were is irrelevant.

elektrotal

Why did Mat never meet up with the [Band of the Red Hand] again?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2)

[Robert Jordan]'s notes had them going on separate paths, specifically because he wanted Mat to go to Seanchan.

But after events of A Memory of Light, you can assume he dropped in to check on them.

Mailliw73

Can you tell us anything about Night's Sorrow?

Brandon Sanderson

Almost nobody has ever seen Night's Sorrow.

Mailliw73

Did Elend or Vin ever consider parenthood, or was that never a priority for them?

Brandon Sanderson

Not a priority at all, considering their situation. Neither really gave it much thought.

Alexandra P.

What inspired you to write about immortality in Elantris?

Brandon Sanderson

Honestly, it was zombie stories. I wondered what it would actually feel like.

lpf & yurisses

Just to be sure. Wax is wrong, and jumped on conclusions about how Excisors work. Right?

Brandon Sanderson

He did jump to some conclusions. Whether he's right or not will have to wait for future books.

Averi Clements

If you could bring one of your characters off the page and into the real world, which would it be and why?

Brandon Sanderson

Sazed. I think he could teach me a thing or two.

Mailliw73

Did any of Tindwyl's daughter's survive the Catacendre? Did Sazed ever meet any of them, after his Ascension?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. And RAFO. :)

Ted Herman

Did Trell ever have any pre-[Ascension of the Lord Ruler] Terris worshipers?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes

David Candland

At what point did you determine Spook's ultimate place in the Mistborn universe? Was it planned up front?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2)

Spook was the big surprise in the series. Everything else was planned from the get go, but I grew to like him a great deal.

Questioner

You have a couple of fantastic running jokes, such as the High Imperial.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

How do you think of those things and when do you decide to commit to a great joke like that?

Brandon Sanderson

When do I decide to commit to a running joke. See Spook doesn't consider that a joke, he thinks it's awesome. So with this, I love-- I'm kind of going to expand this to not just jokes-- Which, definitely-- It's the sort of insider things. I love, in series that i have read a lot of books on, when there is something you will only get if you have been invested in the series. I love this stuff. It is part of the seed of the Cosmere, this idea that if people are reading my books they will start to see and make these connections. It's important to me that it never becomes the forefront, at least until I'm very clear to people that this is-- now you have to have the background of all of the books. That hasn't happened. There will be series that I do that with but I want you to be able to read Stormlight and not feel like you have to know a thousand pages of the wiki behind-the-scenes stuff before you can appreciate it. But I do like these inside references and things like that, and so it comes very natural to me. Some of it's planned out, some of it is something that I think of as I'm working on the story. Some of it's seeded, some of it just works. So you do it as it works. I wouldn't say that I-- With like High Imperial. High Imperial I knew about the time when I decided Spook was going to be a larger character in the series. But if you know Mistborn, my original-- I wrote the first book, did a quick outline of the second two, and then wrote the second two and Spook was the big discovery written surprise. He wasn't intended to be the main character that he became in the later books. And so once he-- I was writing the third book, I'm like "Oh, I know what's going to happen here. I know where this is going." And High Imperial grew out of that.

Questioner

I have a question about process. When you start writing on a series how much of it do you have mapped out in advance and at what point does something that you're writing make you change direction completely?

Brandon Sanderson

What an awesome question. So how much do we have mapped out and how much-- before we start a series in specific-- and how often to we do something that makes us change, to do something else, or whatnot...

...See I had an advantage over Jason in that, when I was writing Mistborn I had just gotten married and my wife had a very lucrative job as a middle school English teacher *laughter* and so I quit my job, which was working at the front desk at a hotel and was able to write full time almost from the get-go. You can thank Emily for that. That she believed in the fiction, she took care of me while I did this work. And so I was able to write all of Mistborn before I had to turn in the first book. Just so that I could make sure that I could make these connections.

These days what I do-- Because I can't do that anymore-- I usually write the first book of a series just-- I write an outline for it and I write the first book without any sort of feeling for the rest of the series. This isn't quite what happened with Stormlight, that's the outlier, but for most things. Like The Reckoners, or the Wax and Wayne books, and stuff like that. Write one book and then with the book in hand and knowing the characters very well I can more accurately feel out what their arcs can be and things like this. Like the problem with being a planner-- I'm very much a planner-- is that if you over-plan your books, your characters feel stale, right? They feel wooden. And so, write that first book, let the characters have a lot of freedom to become who they need to be. And then I outline the rest of the series in great detail, so I can put into the first book any references that I'm going to need for future books in the series. Just so that I can know where things are going. I'll re-write the characters a little bit, so their arcs now match the over-arching arc they will have for the series, and things like this. So most books, it's "Finish the book, then write five pages about each book in the series, and then revise the first book and write the rest of the series."

With Stormlight I spent a lot of time planning the series. It's the one where I have the most time on. It's a different beast entirely. I went into Stormlight knowing what Dalinar's arc was, knowing what Kaladin's arc was, for the whole series and things like this. But I still did a lot...

ailavyn-siniyash

The fact that Vorinism was partially inspired by Judaism and [???] means a lot to me, as a Jew, especially because there's not that much [???] other than dwarves. So thanks for that. I wanted to know if you could elaborate a little on some of the specific Judaism had on Vorinism.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, sure. Specific influences of Judaism on Vorinism. There are a couple of things. And I can go on this one for a while. I will pick Numerology which-- Jewish Numerology is really cool, particularly if you go back-- Like we always focus on alchemy and astrology as kind of the pseudosciences that were really interesting to scientists back in the day. If you don't know, Newton thought that alchemy was real and he could figure out how to make it work. I love these things that people approach scientifically but have supernat-- superstitious roots. And Jewish Numerology is really cool because the letters and numbers are basically the same thing, so a name can actually mean numbers, and vice-versa, and stuff like that. Which leads to some really cool and interesting attempts to understand the world by taking things from the Torah and transferring them back and forth between numbers and things. That sort of thing is very prevalent in the Vorin religion. To the point that it was really important to them, and then got forbidden. Because they were spending too much time on it. And you will find out roots about that. But that was an inspiration for Vorinism. Of course the Sephir, from the Tree of Life, were an inspiration for the Double Eye of the Almighty, and the idea behind all the different connections and philosophy going in that. The language. Kholin is actually pronounced Kholin, and things like this--

ailavyn-siniyash

Was that-- Sorry... Was Kholin supposed to be kind of close to kohen? Because--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, mmhmm.

ailavyn-siniyash

Okay, cool.

Brandon Sanderson

So yeah, you're going to find all kinds of things like that in linguistic roots. And there is of course more but I will move on from that because I can talk too long on that. But yeah, there's some very fun stuff.

Questioner

Alright, who would win in a fight: Rand al'Thor or Vin?

Brandon Sanderson

Who would win in a fight, Rand al'Thor or Vin. I'm going to go with the person who's a pseudo-diety and held the powers of creation. Which is gonna be-- Yeah. I'm gunna say Rand on that one, pretty safely. With the caveat of "You have to pick when". If Vin where able to get to Rand while he's still on a farm, I think she'll do a better job than the Trollocs did. If you replace Narg with Vin, Rand is in trouble. If at the ends of their respective series, I still think Rand would win, even when Vin is at her most powerful., because he is able to bend reality. But I don't know, Jason?

Jason Denzel

Oh I definitely agree, but I'm a little bit biased here. But yeah it really does depend on the time. Like if you take Vin at the last few pages of Mistborn, I don't know because she's--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, certain spoiler-rific things happen there. So she could give him a fight at that point, but I'm going to side with Rand on this. I'm going to side with Rand versus any character in most pieces of fiction.

Questioner

On the nature of shardblades, to an extent, can a live blade be split without harming it's source, so to speak?

Brandon Sanderson

Can a live blade split? What do you mean, split?

Questioner

Make itself into two weapons.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, can a blade be forged into two weapons. A shardblade.

Questioner

Does it absolutely need a connection, or can it become two?

Brandon Sanderson

So, shardblades becoming two shardblades would require slicing in half a soul, which would not be very fun for the spren. Okay?

Questioner

So it's possible. *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

So it's technically possible to take hydrogen and to turn it into plutonium with our current technology. It would cost more money than, like, the budget of NASA to do it for, y'know, one atom. So there are things that are possible, but-- Yes it is possible. This is not something that would be easy or very useful to do.

Questioner

I was just wondering, is Joel going to become a Rithmatist?

Brandon Sanderson

Is Joel going to become a Rithmatist. You get a card too! *laughter* For those who don't know The Rithmatist, my Young Adult book, the pitch for it, to myself, was "A Muggle at Hogwarts". It is the story of the son of the cleaning lady, who gets free tuition to the magic school, but doesn't-- has no talent-- He just doesn't have the ability himself. So he gets to go to this school, but can't use the magic. So you will have to see what happens in future books, and how it plays out.

Farnsworth

Is-- Would you consider Szeth an official Skybreaker? And will he have spren or will he just use Nightblood as one?

Brandon Sanderson

So, would I consider Szeth to be a Skybreaker. That is definitely also a RAFO for the next Stormlight book.

Farnsworth

Why was Hoid drinking perfume when he met Wax [in The Bands of Mourning]? And where did he get it?

Brandon Sanderson

Why was Hoid drinking perfume when he met Wax and where did he get it. This is an answer-- You are getting RAFO'd-- But this is one I do intend to talk about eventually. There are lots of seeds of things in the Mistborn series that I can't promise I'm going to be able to get to, that I hope I'll be able to get to. Secret History, which is in the Arcanum Unbounded that hopefully many of you have. If you haven't read through to the end of the released Mistborn books, don't look at that story, because it's a behind-the-scenes story of things that are happening, that I put seeds in the original trilogy for. That's another seed, and it might be one I can take up. I might just have to explain it someday.

Questioner 1

What is, specifically, with regards to media that's based on novels, like television based on writing like Game of Thrones-- or something based on your works. What is the talos of that?

Brandon Sanderson

So what is the talos of media based on books. I actually think I can answer this. Because my whole, kind of, thought process that led me through this was that-- the idea of "art as springboard for more art", right? That is-- That is really what I think the purpose of art is. It's to inspire people and make them create more art. I am a writer because I read great books by Anne McCaffrey and Robert Jordan and Barbara Hambly. And they springboarded me into perpetuating this. And so I think that the talos of the films is to be a new piece with some seeds of inspiration from the old piece. I don't think that a film should be a one-to-one recreation. You can see this in the Harry Potter films, right? I think the best ones are the ones they adapted. The third movie is the first one where they really had to take some liberties to fit it into a film, and it's a stronger film the the previous two were. The previous two were scene-by-scene reproductions, so they were very faithful, they just made worse films than when the director said "I'm kind of going to do my own thing". And I think that it makes for a stronger film. I think that the Peter Jackson movies, you can-- It's okay to dislike his interpretation of The Lord of the Rings, but you can't deny that he did something cool taking The Lord of the Rings as a script-work. And I know that, like, Christopher Tolkien doesn't like what he did. I like what he did because I'm accepting that this is a different piece of art from the books. This is not simply the books translated into film, this is the books taken to a different medium into a transformative, different work. So there you go. There's my philosophy...

Questioner 2

...The talos of art can also be a very active thing, like, for example, it can result in the sail or a boat, or attendants at a service or something like that. It can be a thing to produce behavior. So that's a very concrete thing. In a way very measurable, demonstrable thing that art can do.

Brandon Sanderson

And I do think the hard thing about talking about art is, is you can't boil it down to one thing. Because each individual piece of art could be created with a different talos, right? And in fact, each individual piece of art can have a different talos to the different people. This is where talos breaks down. Where that chair I described, that you can't sit on but is a magnificent work of art-- It's okay to have a chair whose talos is not for people to sit on it. I think. It's where this idea breaks down, but it's a fun one to talk about.