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    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
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    Brandon Sanderson

    I was reading the comment section to one of my previous updates, and someone had been a little confused about how I was writing this book. They're like, "Wait, so the entire last third of the book is all Sanderlanche?" Not quite. So, in order to explain it to you, how Wax and Wayne is progressing, this is a mostly spoiler-free visual aid that I have created for you. This is not how it will actually be published; this is how I have been writing it.

    We're gonna start at the bottom here. Part One of the book, which was roughly... The whole book is gonna be 150,000 words; Part One was roughly 30,000 words of that. I write two separate narratives with two characters each. And I wrote those together; I just alternated chapters between the four characters. (The four characters for this book being Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris. And some of those characters get more viewpoints than others; Steris gets fewer viewpoints, generally, than the others.) But the idea is that I kind of just wrote them all together, but they were in two separate storylines.

    That then, as we hit Part Two, I brought everybody together and did it as one big narrative of four different characters, and I was alternating between them. And then I wrote this through.

    And then I hit a point in the middle of the book, right about at the central point (right around 75,000 words) where I realized I was splitting the characters up again, and I wanted to go and write each narrative on its own for a while. What this gets me is: writing-wise, this is where we are, right here [in Part Three]. This is where I've taken the character groupings: one character's off by themselves, two characters are together, and one character's got a short little bit of viewpoints. (That's Steris, who's got a few viewpoints off in a third location.)

    And what's going on here is, it's much easier for to take the book and to write, for instance, all of this [one character, 30K-ish words] because this character is split off from the others and just really drill into this character's character arc and narrative arc. And then, it gets to the end and I get to have a climax section that will be at the end of the book.

    Then, I'll actually go write Steris next, which has a little mini-climactic chapter of her arc.

    And then I'll write these characters right here [two characters, 40K-ish words], which is where I'll end. I will write that all the way through to the climax of their character arcs and narrative arc.

    And then I will weave these all together. This, like I said, gets me some advantages. One is that I get to write the ending, essentially, from three different perspectives three different times, and I really like writing endings. This just makes it more engaging to me as an author. It is less oppressive for me to keep all of this stuff... like, if I were jumping between these three different narratives, it would be much more difficult to keep a tight focus on what's happening with them. This [Part Three] is how I write Stormlight books. This [Parts One and Two] is how I write Skyward books and things like that that have fewer narratives. So this book is half like one of those and half like a Stormlight book in the way I'm approaching just structurally creating the thing.

    What the disadvantage of this is is that the pacing really needs to really be looked at in that part when I then interweave all these viewpoints. Because you'll read them; they won't be split up in chunks. You will read them interwoven, where it's jumping between the different narrative plotlines. And the issue there is, I will naturally create a narrative, for instance, for this character [one character, 30K-ish words] that has its own stops and starts and slowdowns and scenes and sequels, as we sometimes talk about in writing terms. And I'll do the same thing for this one [two characters, 40K-ish words]. And then I' have to weave these together in a way that the pacing feels right. And this is a lot of what the 2.0 revision of a book like this is about, is making sure that it just feels right as you're going through these, jumping between viewpoints and what-not.

    I have just actually finished this part [one character, 30K-ish words]. I wrote the climactic moments of this sequence this week. I'm actually gonna write Steris next, and so that'll be 10K. And then I will do the last portion for the last month that I'll be working on this. We'll see if it goes long or if it goes short. The first viewpoint group ended up being just right smack where I expected it. I am pretty good these days at guessing how many words a given plot arc that I'm planning will take. For instance, Steris's might take a little less than 10K.

    Miscellaneous 2013 ()
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    LazerWulf (paraphrased)

    You've said that Seons and Skaze contain splinters of Devotion and Dominion. Were these splinters created when Odium killed the shardholders and Splintered their shards? Or are they more similar to how Endowment splinters himself (herself?) to make divine breaths? What is the difference between the two?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    First, he said that it was a very good question. Then he said that those splinters weren't supposed to be there, and they were indeed created when Odium splintered the shards. He said that the difference lies in how each magical system works. Endowment's splinters are more similar to how Preservation invested a little bit of her shard into each human on Scadrial.

    Miscellaneous 2013 ()
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    Herowannabe (paraphrased)

    We asked if a shardblade or Nightblood could be used as a hemallurgic spike (ie: two different investitures of magic).

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Brandon said that yes, in theory you could do that, but objects have a limit to how much investiture they can hold, and that it could be argued that things like Nightblood and Shardblades are already "full."

    Miscellaneous 2013 ()
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    Herowannabe (paraphrased)

    I asked him a question I had been wondering: if there was any connection between The Shattered Plains, the Chasm on Sel, the Pits of Hathsin, and/or the crater valley of the Conventical of Seran.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He said yes there was, but didn't elaborate. He let me guess though.

    Herowannabe (paraphrased)

     I guessed they were some sort of shard-impact sites.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He said that was a good guess but not it - they aren't that directly connected. As best as I can remember he said it has to do with things like the shardpools and how the shards are connected to the land (as is most obvious on Sel).

    Phoenix Comicon 2013 ()
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    Mason Wheeler (paraphrased)

    We know that Hoid has a bead of Lerasium, that he obtained during the events of The Well of Ascension.  As of the most recent Cosmere book chronologically, (The Alloy of Law, I believe,) has it been used?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Well, umm... probably not exactly in the way you're thinking...

    Mason Wheeler (paraphrased)

    OK, specifically, has it been used either by Hoid burning it or by him giving it to someone else to burn?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Well, Hoid's a very resourceful person, and he finds uses for most of the things he gets ahold of, though they're not always the expected uses.  So yeah, he's found something to do with it, but I'll have to RAFO that one, because it's going to come up in later books and I don't want to spoil things.

    Phoenix Comicon 2013 ()
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    Mason Wheeler (paraphrased)

    In Dalinar's visions, he interacted with people in ways that seemed strange and unexpected to those he was interacting with, and they responded appropriately.  Did his actions actually influence the past, or not? For example, did he help influence Nohadon to write The Way of Kings?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    No, they were just projections sent into his mind.

    Miscellaneous 2021 ()
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    Questioner: (paraphrased)

    In the past we have seen that shards that break oaths are made vulnerable by that. And in Mistborn Era 1, we see that the reason that Preservation was able to be killed was that he tried to shelter humanity against Ruin even though his agreement said that Ruin would be allowed to destroy them eventually. Did Honor have an agreement with Odium or the singers about a potential ceasefire between Desolations that was broken by the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram or other actions taken by humans between Desolations?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    RAFO, but I will say that there was not much of a continuatuion to the fighting after a Desolation. It is similar to if you look at stone age and even modern stone age people. Most of them didn't truly understand war and if they did then they almost never thought to exterminate everyone on the other side. So I don't think that it's likely given how far towards societal destruction they were pushed by each desolation.

    Miscellaneous 2021 ()
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    Questioner: (paraphrased)

    When it is said that Honor started to go crazy towards the end of the Knights Radiant, were those Knights seeing Honor as he was slowly dying, or were they interacting with a Cognitive Shadow of Honor, like how Preservation left Fuzz behind?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    RAFO

    Miscellaneous 2021 ()
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    Questioner: (paraphrased)

    In RoW was see Kaladin telling Syl that he believes that the Recreance took place not as one event such as fever stone keep, but on an individual basis. This has created many discussions in the fandom about how the spren could have been unaware that they would become deadeye's. Is this because it took people years later to discover how to summon and dismiss shards through an ornementation mishap, and deadeye's weren't seen by the other spren in shadesmar until there was no stopping anyone. 

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    The recreance wasn't something that happened over months, more like days. And the decision was made in the heat of the moment by the spren and their knights.

    Footnote: I don't have the exact wording unfortunately, but he did say 'days not months' and explained that this was something that he hoped to be totally cleared up by the end of book 5. 
    #deadeyes #kaladin #recreance #sylphrena
    Direct submission by Hexatonix
    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
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    Brandon Sanderson

    This week we just had go live the cover of Lux, which is the new Reckoners novel. This is an audio original. There will probably be a print edition at some point. But this is right now an audio original. You can only get it on Audible. We’re doing a preorder push for it right now.

    What is going on?

    Well, I sold to Audible three Reckoners novellas that I was co-writing with my friend Steven Boles. And he’s a really great writer. And we’re doing these as part of the Mainframe Project. You can read more, if you’re really interested, in the Mainframe stuff in my State of the Sanderson from last year. This is the second of these that have come up together. And while working on this, Steven and I decided just to make it a full novel. Instead of three novellas, we just did a full-blown Reckoners novel with a new crew of Reckoners.

    So you don’t have to have read any of the other books to jump into this one. It is a new jumping off point. It connects to the other books, but it is a little bit parallel with the other books and then passing them up and continuing on and continuing the story.

    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
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    Brandon Sanderson

    I have actually—I can’t tell you too much, I don’t want to give spoilers—but the last section of this [The Lost Metal], I basically am doing it in chunks, and I’m kind of doing it by character like I kind of do in a Stormlight book, because this is going to be a bit longer than the previous Wax and Wayne books. And so I have been focusing on one of the characters and writing that character all the way through, and so I’m almost to the end. And that’s kind of exciting.

    I like doing that because climactic moments invigorate me as a writer. They’re really exciting to write. I’ve been pushing toward an ending for a long time. I like to do lots of set-ups and payoffs. And this style of writing let’s me have multiple pushes toward the end, so to speak. I get to finish the book basically three or four times, depending on how many viewpoints I’m doing. Sometimes in Stormlight it’s more than that. But I’m pushing toward the ending of one of these viewpoints, which, just like I said, is very exciting. It’s a lot of fun.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Cephandrius

    Is there a reason that the last few unknown Shards were kept for the last? Or have they just not come up until now?

    Brandon Sanderson

    More that they haven't come up. If I had started a book on those planets, then I would have canonized them earlier.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Rodrigo

    What would be the difference between an aluminum and a chromium grenade, and between nicrosil and duralumin grenades?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We're talking specifically about the Bands of Mourning ones?

    *Matt affirms*

    So, what would be the difference? Aluminum would create a sort of "You can't use Allomancy in this... nearby this" most likely, yeah. Duralumin would do the opposite. You would be able to use it and then enhance someone. I haven't played with the ranges on these things yet, and so that's where we get into kind of the question mark territory. Like, right now, I haven't really given them an area of effect unless the power itself has an area of effect. Does that make sense?

    But, my intent is to get to the point where it's doing things like this, right. Where you could theoretically be an Aluminum Gnat, you could charge this thing up and throw. And hey, you know, you have... the Metalborn nearby are unable to use their talents. That's convenient, right? Like, I want more of the powers to be relevant and these grenades are a way to do that.

    You know, Marasi's power is not the most useful on the planet to have herself. For those who don't know, she can slow down time... well, speed up time? Awkward how... the phrasing of how you do that. But basically she can make a bubble around herself where everyone outside of it moves super fast. That's not terribly useful, right? Unless you want to age, you know, really slowly.

    [...]

    Not really useful in combat, to be able to be like "Yeah, I'm gonna make all my enemies move really, really fast and I can't respond to them". But, she can charge up one of those grenades and toss it, it becomes real handy. For her, the grenades are more useful than the inverse, right, because speeding up someone is useful, but slowing someone down takes someone out of the battle essentially. Or a whole globe of them... globe is the wrong term, but yeah.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Argent

    Rlain has a red and black beard whose colors match his marbled skin. Does this mean that the singer hair reflects their skin colors? Does Venli's white and red skin mean her hair strands are also white and red?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is... That's what I have right now. That actually happens very commonly in the animal kingdom, right, that the pattern is on the skin. So yes, the answer is yes. But that's not come up in the books and I don't know if it will.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Argent

    With how important or at least unique Autonomy seems in the Cosmere, are we going to see how Taldain is doing in more recent times?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeeees, you will. When? I'm not a hundred percent sure. Shouldn't be tooooo long, but it just depends on multiple things, right. Can I get the Silverlight story written? How do things go with Isaac? And he's kind of playing around with Taldain and doing things there and we're just not sure.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Matt

    Were you tempted to have Kaladin be taken by Odium?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I was tempted.

    Matt

    What is it the held you back from doing that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Kaladin, if I were going to do it, I would have done it with Dalinar. The reason being that Kaladin as a theme represents his triumph over the darker parts of his mind. And Dalinar represents that too, but he also represents in some ways, succumbing to those. Like those are both themes for Dalinar, and for Kaladin it just would not ever have worked--I don't think--reasonably well. And beyond that, Kaladin is not scary as a villain, because Kaladin's strength comes from the people he's trying to protect. Kaladin's really scary to face when he thinks you're going after somebody he's trying to keep safe, that is when Kaladin is dangerous. Or as you saw in Rhythm of War, when you've gone too far, right? But Kaladin as an overarching villain, I don't think would be scary. Dalinar would be; Dalinar would be terrifying in that situation, but I don't think it would just add very much. If I were going to have had one of them, it would have been Dalinar.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Auri

    Does a Shardbearer [Vessel] who Ascended from the same world influenced by that Shard have less control over that Shard than a bearer from another world?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do not... I'm gonna say no *pause* for now.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Jeremy

    If vast amounts of Investiture can distort time in a similar manner as a black hole, [...] does that include Shards? Would time dilation be greater on Roshar than on Nalthis?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, because the Shard is contained almost entirely in the Spiritual Realm. In the Spiritual Realm, time and distance have no meaning. So, what this means is: Large piles of Investiture that somehow make it into the Cognitive Realm or the Physical Realm are going to cause time dilation, but the Spiritual Realm—where it belongs—it's not going to do that.

    That's gonna make some exclamation points raise above the heads of some people.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Questioner

    How much should we be thinking about possible logical groupings of Shards? For instance, as pairs or groups of four.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Go ahead, knock yourselves out. This is relevant, but only in a sort of Cosmerenaut sort of way, people who like theorizing on these things and what not. It's not going to be hugely relevant to the narrative, but Dawnshard does indicate that these groupings are a place you can go.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Matt

    You'd talked in your last spoiler chat about this, which was that you had kind of gone back and forth with this idea to have [Taravangian] become Odium and basically this idea of Odium was no longer the threat that he should be or was at the time. Is this something that once you made that decision did you have to go redraw the future plotlines and such?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, because the future was drawn both ways in my head and it was which path am I going down, if that makes sense. And yeah that'll have implications when I do the detailed outlines for future books, like the detailed outline for book 5. But this has already been in the works right, and so every outline is in bad shape by the time I get to it, every outline from the beginning, right? Because things just need to change, every book big things need to change. And every book you have dividing points, where you're like, am I going to do this, am I going to do this? I talked about in the last stream also, am I going to bring Kelsier back or not? That's a branching point that changes a lot about the future of the narrative. Which of the two paths am I going to walk? So this is something that I'm just very used to in storytelling.

    There were some of those in The Wheel of Time. They weren't necessarily the same way. I won't give specifics because we're not spoiling, but there were things where I'm like, I think we'll do this, and then I got to the third one and I'm like, no we can't do that, we gotta rebuild this part from scratch because it just no longer works.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Blue Spirit Gem

    When you write the Warbreaker sequel, will it be more focused on Vivenna, Vasher, and Nightblood, and will we learn why they got separated and how Nale found Nightblood?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's the plan. It will definitely be Vivenna and Vasher. There will probably be mentions of Siri and Susebron but brief. They won't have--most likely--viewpoints. If they do it'll be like one little something, but I don't even plan that. And then yes, it will at least leave the implication of why what happened happened, if that makes sense. I may not get to the actual events but you will see, you know yeah.

    The Dusty Wheel Show ()
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    Ryan

    Do we know why Nightblood didn't take up a Shard?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nightblood didn't take up a Shard, Nightblood was not there... Oh, [they're] probably just asking why Nightblood did not absorb the entire Shard of Odium.

    Nightblood cannot hold that much Investiture. At least not at that rate, right? Like, if you drop Nightblood without his sheath... I have to do it this way, because otherwise you drop him on the planet and he would absorb the entire planet, right. This is not a power I want Nightblood to have. I do not want Nightblood... Nightblood is a very dangerous tool without also being the death star.

    I did not want... I actually was happy that I had the chance to put that scene in so I kind of put the kabosh on Nightblood being able to absorb the entire Investiture of an entire Shard. Not where I wanted... I didn't want that to be a promise people thought was coming. Now, he can absorb a lot and it's also rate of absorption is a pretty important deal.

    ...

    People are gonna quote me on this in ten years and things like that and say "but, but, but". Just, you know, understand that there are specific ways that I'm trying to phrase some of these things.

    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
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    Brandon Sanderson

    But let’s talk about Cytonic. For a long time I called this book Nowhere. Why did the title change? Well, I always had that as a working title. And in YA in particular I really like to let my publisher have a lot to say with the titles because it’s a genre that I don’t publish in as much and don’t follow quite as much. I do read a decent amount of YA, but I don’t follow the marketing trends. And one of the reasons I use a publisher is to rely upon their expertise. And they really felt that Nowhere as a title was off-putting for a certain demographic of the audience. And so we went back to the drawing board. This book is really about Spensa and her powers, and I thought, “You know what? This is going to make for a good title.” So we went with that one.

    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
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    Brandon Sanderson

    I also wanted to get back to you on the results of the poll from last week [about the complexity level of a potential Stormlight board game], which I really appreciate you guys, again, responding. This is something we had that was kind of a conundrum for us. I don’t have another poll or anything for you today. I just want to talk about this one.

    This one was tighter of a poll than the previous one we’d done. This one, our results were mid-30% being the winner for a medium-sized game. And if you want to go look at the previous post, we kind of defined what that means. So that’s what we’re going to move forward with. We’re going to be looking at companies and ideas. Again, this is a long, multi-year process, and we’re only probably going to work on one of these at a time. I don’t think that any of you want us to release five Stormlight board games in the period of a year or two and be like, “All right, now buy them all.” We’re going to start with this kind of medium-scale one.

    The other thing that we will investigate, so lowest on the list was really hardcore game, and very light game, the faster game. Most everyone wanted something kind of more in the middle. And so–. Not everybody. There definitely were people who wanted the very complicated game. And that’s not off the table some time in the future, but we aren’t going to pursue that quite yet. We want to do things right and do things well, and we want to just take these one at a time. And so legacy game and pen and paper RPG both were in the low 20s, kind of neck and neck. I think maybe legacy game won by a percentage point. However, we don’t want to have two board games in the mix at the same time. So I will probably investigate doing a pen and paper RPG also, because I think that’s distinctive enough. And so those are the two things that we’re going to start working on.

    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
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    Brandon Sanderson

    Last time I asked you what you guys were most interested in regarding art books for the Stormlight Archive. And 66% of you prefer the guidebook style. You can look last week if you want to know. This is what I thought you would say. It’s the one that I thought would be most interesting, an in-world guidebook that features a lot of art but also is kind of like a coffee table book you can put out that you can give to a friend who hasn’t read the Stormlight Archive and they’re like, “What’s it about?” Well, here is some cool artwork with some in-world descriptions.

    I kicked around some ideas with Isaac on this. We’ll probably start working on this. Again, this is probably not for four years or so. But we will start working on this. It looks like you guys are excited. We did get 20,000 responses from you, so that’s really good. And the overwhelming majority of you, 76% of you, said that we would buy all three if we put them together. And I chatted with Isaac, and right now we’re going to take the first two on this list, because we think that we can make the coffee table art book and the guidebook kind of combined into one. But what we can’t really combine in that is the encyclopedia-style book, which we’d actually want to be alphabetized, and things like that.

    And so what we’re going to do is we are going to start kind of working on these two things together but as separate books that we would sell together and sell separately. But probably do a Kickstarter for the two of them together, and then later on you can just buy them individually. So like, a larger art book/guidebook as one, and then an encyclopedia-style sort of companion book, and things like that. I really think these will work well matching the first five books, because we will probably have to do separate ones after book 10 that would cover that era of Stormlight, the 6 through 10.

    General Reddit 2021 ()
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    Turtlebots

    When I first read through the books I thought of mistcloaks like normal cloaks with strips of fabric sown into like how a normal ghillie suit is not the shredded cloak style it actually is. Did anybody else think this?

    Ben McSweeney

    There’s some variety in mistcloaks, depending on Noble House and the Era involved. They all have tassels or strips, but some are interwoven and some are layered, some start above the shoulders while others split below, sometimes they have hoods and sometimes they don’t.

    There’s room for other types.

    General Reddit 2021 ()
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    somewheretomorrow

    I was wondering why the male peak spren is built with a lot of muscles but the female isn't? Is there a specific reason for it?

    Ben McSweeney

    The appearnce of Highspren is as varied as the humans that imagine them. There can be skinny peakspren and fat peakspren as well, I think... these two are just some examples that Shallan has seen in her travels. 

    General Reddit 2021 ()
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    lepthic

    The dog and the dragon release date? I think Brandon mentioned something about turning this into it's own children book at some point. Has he mentioned when he would release it?

    astrobuckeye

    Yeah the first publisher he reached out to wanted too much creative control I think.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    This, they wanted to turn it into something Brandon wasn't comfortable with.

    General Reddit 2021 ()
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    rederel

    Now i'm morbidly curious whether u/mistborn has considered it [cadmium poisoning] while writing his books.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have, actually. Though I had to consider it for other metals first. I decided that allomancers are immune to these kinds of effects--they're just physiologically different in that regard.

    General Reddit 2021 ()
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    nreese2

    I remember a while back you mentioned providing lore and learning about writing for a game, is this [Kelsier in Fortnite] what you were referencing? If not, are we gonna hear about that within the year?

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is not actually that.

    I don't get to choose when the game I'm working on gets announced officially, I'm afraid. I don't think they even know when it will be announced, as it's not close to alpha yet. So...I can't really say.