So should we *not* read into the colors [on the Warbreaker leatherbound Nalthis symbol]? Or are Tears of Edgli purple and yellow? (and some black?)
Oh wait, they come in several colors of course. Nevermind.
Yeah, don't read into the colors of the symbol. :) That's just what looks good on the leatherbound.
Are we gonna see an accompanying Khriss essay [for Nalthis] anytime soon?
I suspect it will be awhile. Sorry.
Hey, all! Dropping in to give you another quick Stormlight Four update. (See the previous update here.) Though most of my team is gearing up for the Starsight launch in a few weeks, I’m buckling down for the final push to finish writing Stormlight Four.
I didn’t get a ton written during my tour last month, but I didn’t expect to. I did, however, have a little time--and I’ve focused lately on getting the last parts of the outline hammered together. There’s still some work to do on book five’s outline, but I’ve had the team move the outline progress bar to 100%--indicating that the book four outline is completely finished.
Right now, Parts One and Two of the book are done as well. Parts Three-Five have been finished for everything but the main, core viewpoint cluster. (So, if you’ve been following along, that means viewpoint clusters two and three are finished.) I’ve also done some work on the interludes, getting a nice chunk of those done, most notably the "through line" viewpoint for the Interludes.
Remaining to do are a handful of interludes and the core story for the second half of the book. Together, that should be around 100k words, though it’s possible I’ll go longer.
Now comes the toughest part of the push for me. I’ve got just under two months left before January first, which is the deadline by which I’ll need to have the rough draft done if we want to publish in 2020. Since the book is looking really good, and the outline is solid, I’m confident that we won’t run into any problems. By this point in a book (the 75% mark, which is where I am right now) I’m generally aware if the book will require any major edits or revisions. This one shouldn’t, which means if I do hit that deadline, we’re going to be in really good shape.
This means I need to write 100k(+) words in two months, with a book launch in the middle as well as two major holidays. So...we’ll see. I was wise enough to know ahead of time that I’d need these weeks for writing, so decided not to do a tour for Starsight. I hope everyone will support the book anyway; my publisher is really worried that by not doing a tour, we might be leaving the book without support.
I, however, am confident that the majority of my readers would rather have me working on Stormlight than traveling about trying to persuade you to buy Starsight. (I assume this is particularly true for those of you on this subreddit.) I’m not terribly worried; from the reception Skyward has gotten, the second book should do just fine. So other than the launch party (which should be quite the extravaganza) I’ll be keeping my attention on Stormlight.
As always, you can follow along via the progress bars on my website for more clarity. Also, Adam should be posting pictures there from my tour in Europe the next few weeks, along with some shots of me on the set of the Wheel of Time television show. (Assuming they ever get approved.)
I’ll try to keep you updated as the deadline approaches, but it’s likely the next big update you’ll get will come at the annual State of the Sanderson blog post on or around my birthday next month. This should also be the last reddit update until you get the "It's done" update, hopefully right before the end of the year. (And, if you'll forgive me, I'm unlikely to be answering a lot on Reddit these next few months--and likely won't be saying much in this thread either.)
As always, thanks for your support and enthusiasm. Journey before Destination!
The major mandate for the entire Rosharan environment is "coral reefs above water". We leaned into it hardest in the first book, partly 'cause we were still working out what's what and partly 'cause Brandon wanted to put that design theme up front.
So the luckspren and windspren are evocative of fish and schools. The prickletac rockbuds are actually shaped like branch coral, and the leaves of the stumpweight trees are seawead. Markel trees gots clamshell leaves. Axehounds are turtle-faced lobster-dogs, chull are giant hermit crabs, skyeels are so Moray they even got pharyngeal jaws.
I’ve read the books several times and still can’t imagine what grass not in Shinovar is like.
it looks like a tall, terrestrial grass, shades of green to gold depending on the variety and life cycle... grass which suddenly whips down into the ground whenever anyone gets too close (probably sensing ground vibrations).
The actual plant is a sort of shallowly burrowed seed pod with room enough inside to hold moisture and for the long leaf to coil up... any excess leaf will get trimmed by exposure. Pretty sure it tops out around 3 feet, but if it grows longer some critter will eat it. Seeds emerge from the leaf tip to be either consumed and then redeposited in faeces, or blown away and redeposited by the winds.
My book [Starsight] has the epilogue in between chapters 44 and 45. But the page numbers aren’t wrong. Anyone else have this issue with their copy?
This is intentional.
What is the difference between a person's Spiritweb and their spiritual DNA? Is there a difference?
Soul, generally used in the cosmere, is a spiritual or philosophical term. It refers to the part of a person that continues to exist after death, or to the "being" of the person in a philosophical term.
A Spiritweb is a measurable, quantifiable thing in the cosmere. (Granted, it's not easy to do either to one, but it can be done.) It is a scientific term, though because the cosmere hasn't reached modern scientific understandings yet, there is a lot of overlap between science, philosophy, and spirituality.
This way, acknowledging that a person has a Spiritweb does not require an atheist/humanist to affirm religious ideas or concepts--like acknowledging that the Vessels/Shards exist does not require also affirming that a capital G God exists.
The separation of the two is necessary to allow people like Jasnah to not be undermined by the text. It wouldn't be right of me to work for having representatives of viewpoints contrary to my own if the very foundation of the magic systems and physics proved them wrong.
So, in short, you can measure a Spiritweb. Whether a person actually has a soul or not (even in the cosmere) is subject to your own personal philosophy on the idea. Even ghosts and other persisting personalities after death, like certain individuals who shall remain unnamed, have a very real and rational magic system explanation for their existence.
Is a Cognitive Shadow essentially Investiture filling in the molded pattern of a Spiritweb to the point where it resembles the initial person?
I'm interested in the implications with respect to personal identity--the "soul" would be one of the competing answers for the question "what am I," but some argue for psychological continuity and others for biological continuity. A Cognitive Shadow seems like it might better fit the Psychological Criterion, since it seems like Investiture replaces the biological body as the source of living and experiencing things.
You're getting into things that are subject to debate among people in the cosmere. Most shadows would insist that they're the same person. Others would dispute this, saying they're essentially a spren--a bit of the power that came alive like you said, taking on the personality of the person when the person themselves died.
Like uploading a brain to a computer. Made of Investiture.
A fitting analogy.
Does it matter what kind of power it was that filled the gaps? Like, if you were a normal human and made a Cognitive Shadow fueled by AonDor, would you be more able to "possess" a modern computer than if you were made a Cognitive Shadow by - say - Odium?
This can matter. Shades from Threnody, for example, work differently from Returned, who are different from Heralds. But all are Shadows.
Have I gone crazy or did he misspell Kal's mom's name twice [in the Stormlight Four preview chapter]? It's Hesina, is it not? But its listed as Hessica twice.
Yeah, I always write her name the way it was in 1.0 of the first book, not the place one I changed it (to be more in line with Alethi naming conventions.) So Karen or Peter always have to go through and change it several times for me.
At least I've stopped writing tin as silver these days. Whatever I do in the first draft tends to get embedded into my muscle memory as far as names.
Ha! I figured it was something like that, but started getting paranoid that I completely misremembered anyway. Besides, I imagine that, especially writing at the speed you do, it's easy to overlook the smaller details.
It's also something about the way my brain works. I still have trouble writing Galladon instead of Galarion, which was his original name. Often, near the end of a book, I'm making tweaks to get the languages and naming more consistent--and some names just don't fit any longer. But my brain rarely wants to accept the changes. (Notably, though, I took easily to Kaladin--who was originally named something else, but a name I never really liked.)
Huh! Sorry if you’ve answered this before, but what was Kaladin’s original name?
Merin. I know. In my defense, it fit the linguistics at the time.
A while ago I was talking with my friend about the presence of isotopes in Mistborn, and we thought surely the metals have ions and isotopes like they do in the real world, otherwise how else would they exist on an atomic level? We wondered if there were radioactive isotopes on Scadrial or even in the Cosmere as a whole, else they would never discover nuclear weaponry and fuels. None of the non-god metals in Mistborn have radioactive components, but that isn't to say that radioactive metals don't exist in the cosmere. Radioactive elements such as uranium (a necessary discovery for the 3rd and 4th Eras of Mistborn if they want to have long term fuel sources/weapons) and radium (necessary discovery in the field of medicine) seem necessary to the advancement of civilization. This also raises the question of where would the god metals, lerasium, atium, and harmonium, fit on the Periodic Table, and would all of their isotopes be stable, would they perhaps have radioactive isotopes that can somehow affect their Allomantic properties?
These are things we'll start answering in the modern day Mistborn novels, so RAFO for now.
I'm sure others have spotted this already, but I just noticed that the titles of the first 5 Stormlight Archive books are on track to form a palindrome.
WoK.WoR.O.RoW...
This is really cool! Whether coincidence or deliberate, I hope that Sanderson continues the trend.
Let's just say that abandoning the title of book two way back when let me rebuild the title sequence to do something I hadn't been able to make work in my original series draft. Stones Unhallowed isn't likely to be the last book's title any longer.
Children of the Nameless sequel, when?
Sequel someday. But not until after I've caught up on Stormlight and Mistborn.
Catch up as in finish or catch up as in get up to date on release windows? Cause I can't spend like 10 years waiting to see what happened to that girl after she disappeared, even if I get some radical Stormlight books while I wait
I put off writing Wax and Wayne 4 to do Children of the Nameless, and so I need to make sure I've finished that at the very least--and it has to come after Stormlight 4.
Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor, his nickname. Its Rock. And do ya know what he does? He cooks. THE ROCK COOKS. Adonalsium damn you Sanderson! Why would you do this to me, WHY? Why would you make a character just to have an IN UNIVERSE "what the Rock is cooking?" joke? why?
Would you believe me if I told you this was actually a coincidence? I DID notice it, though, when writing the first book way back when.
If something is heavily Invested, it's harder for a Shardblade to go through it, right?
Kind of. It depends on the kind of Investiture and things that are going on. But yes. If you want to block a Shardblade... Like a metalmind would be a good thing to use to fight a Shardblade.
A person with a lot of Breath, like the God-King, would you be able to chop them with a Shardblade or no?
It's going to get very tricky on that, so I'll RAFO that for now. Let's just say that there are things. For instance, a Shardblade excising someone who's been Hemalurgically spiked is a theoretical possibility.
Is there a metal form of the Dor?
There is a metal form of the Dor.
*Written* How many people are intentionally killed in the process of creating a typical medallion?
*Written* Not as many as you think.
So the white hair. Did she have white hair or did Shallan just imagine that she had white hair?
That is another RAFO.
There are a lot of RAFO's about The Girl Who Looked Up.
There are a lot of RAFO's.
So, the girl who looked up, could her hair change like the royal locks?
RAFO.
Was her hair long or short? Or does it not matter?
It is long.
Why are there no spren in the prelude chapters for Way of Kings?
No specific reason. There's nothing happening there. Mostly, what happens is I write the initial write-through without very many spren and then they have Karen go through and say, "this would be a good place." Just kind of like special effects for a movie. It might just be that I've already released those and read those so much she doesn't want to add as many.
Is Kelsier evil?
Kelsier has evil leanings. I would not say evil but he's on the line.
Can a mistcloak be infused with Breath?
Yes.
Warbreaker Returned. We know that some of them have been Returned. Has anyone ever been Returned twice?
RAFO.
Is it possible?
RAFO.
In Scadrial, there were cans that were food *inaudible*, what type of metal were they made of?
Tin cans. Just like here.
But you say tin, but was it aluminum?
No. They're probably actual tin.
Do you approve of the fanonization of ‘Bavatar’?
*laughs* That’s pretty funny, I haven’t heard that before. Yes, I approve.
How do you prevent yourself from becoming a victim of your own success?
I haven't figured that out yet. I've watched it happen to other authors, so if I figure it out, I'll tell you. It is something I worry about. Particularly with how the new J.K. Rowling screenplays feel like they're just missing the mark.
I feel like she needed someone to tell her when her bad ideas are bad.
Yeah. Exactly. But, we'll see. Well hopefully Peter and Isaac and Kara and Karen will tell me when my bad ideas are bad.
In the characters of Stormlight, who's the most enjoyable to write about?
I like them all for different reasons. I really have been enjoying writing Navani lately, so she's been the most enjoyable. But it changes.
Do we have a tentative working title for Stormlight Four?
Yeah, it's called Rhythm of War, most likely. But I have to work that in as an in-world book. And if it doesn't work, then... And I have the place that I'm going to work it in, but when I get there, if it doesn't work, then I'm gonna have to go back to the drawing board. Which is why I haven't said for sure that that's what it is, yet.
If you bond with a spren, can you turn it into an instrument like a trumpet and play it?
This is possible. Yes.
So all of the Vessels of the Shards were, if not mortal, at least physical beings at some point, right?
Yes.
Are there any living descendants of any of them still in the Cosmere?
Yes.
The combination of a Shard and its Vessel leads to sapient mind with access to a virtually infinite pool of Investiture. Are avatars the product of a similar combination of a mind and a pool of Investiture, only on a smaller scale, with less power?
I would say that is an accurate representation of what an avatar is. It’s not the only way, but it is an accurate... some avatars are that. I would say that’s the standard.
Was the Blackthorn... Is that a reference to Tad Williams' character Camaris and the sword Thorn that's black?
Not intentionally but I've read those books.
Do you see the connection?
I totally see the connection. I mean I've read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, so totally could be there in the back of my head.
Do rainbows come after a highstorm?
Rainbows occasionally will come after a highstorm but not always.
Are there rainbowspren?
Yes. There are rainbowspren.
Has anyone, Shard or otherwise, tried to leave the cosmere and will we see that on screen?
So far... yes, and I think yes, it's likely.
Where do gemhearts come from?
They grow naturally, just like your fingernails grow.
Where do they get the resources?
The rain that falls on Roshar is [hard] water, full of crem that crystalizes. If you drink that water, it gives you the nutrients that you need to make gemhearts.
Will we ever see Lift fight with a Shardfork?
RAFO.
You’ve said that you would call Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and fabrials the three magics on Roshar. Would it be more accurate to say that Surgebinding followed and emulated fabrials and/orthe possibility of fabrials or vice versa?
Vice versa. Fabrials are... generally, Surgebinders first, fabrials second.
So you couldn’t have done fabrials when it was just Adonalsium.
Oh, before the [Shattering]? *deep in thought mmming*
Would the spren have still been able to do Surges then?
I would say... no. No, Adonalsium probably would not have let that happen. You could theoretically do it, if Adonalsium allowed it.
He had boundaries against it.
Yes. So, I would say no.
So, at the beginning of Way of Kings, Kaladin's in the slave wagon. He sees an unusual cremling after the highstorm.
*enthusiastic* He does!
Is that one that can see that he is a budding Radiant?
Let's just say that that cremling is more than it appears.
I'll give you a RAFO card, because I didn't fully answer, but you got kind of an answer. You'll be able to... Keep your eyes out for people saying, "That cremling looks odd."
Do you ever listen to the Kaladin soundtrack?
I do. In fact, I have some of the Kaladin soundtrack on my writing playlist for Stormlight 4. I'm glad that we've finally worked out all the issues with the movie people to get it back online.
What is the single most interesting thing in the debris field around Detritus? Either in the ground or in the shells.
In the shells? Probably the slugs.
What's the inspiration for Lift? Because she's super crazy and unique.
The absolute first was when I was designing the Knights Radiant, I said: I need to have a variety - I need to have older Knights Radiant and I need to have younger Knights Radiant. She grew - like a lot of my characters - out of me naturally trying some viewpoints, practicing different characters, and seeing where it goes, eventually landing on what I thought worked. And I really wanted her to be different, so.
So, you wanted her to be a gremlin?
Yes.
You have mentioned that the Shards... they did not make an oath to have only one per planet, although the suggestion was made. Have any of the Shards made an oath that has bound themselves, expecting the others to follow suit?
Yes. Oaths have been made, that have been unwise oaths. You have even seen one of those - the oath between Ruin and Preservation. But that's not the only example of oaths being used in ways that bind the Shards in ways they weren't expecting.
So, Sel: Investiture has been pushed into the Cognitive Realm. Threnody: Has it seen something similar?
It has not seen... Okay. Yes, something similar. It would count. Something similar, yes.
If that's the case, what would happen if you were to push Investiture into the Physical Realm?
It generally manifests either as a solid, liquid, or gas
I thought about that. I was like, "We've seen that," but it seemed like a concentrated form. What if you did for like a whole Shard?
That would probably have disastrous effects.
That's why I was thinking for Threnody, but if it hasn't been that, then something else happened.
It hasn't been that. Something else happened.
In the Stormlight Archive series, we have not yet seen Vasher or Vivenna Awakening.
You have seen Vivenna Awaken stuff, technically. She is Awakening part of her... what's she doing, she's got her cloak out and stuff. You see <very> glimpses of it in the [third] book, so you technically have seen her. You've also seen Hoid Awakening in the epilogue. So yes, you can Awaken on Roshar, it's just been really subtle so far.
So, does the Investiture just feed off of the...
You can make a Returned feed off of Stormlight very easily. You can't use Stormlight to power Awakening very easily, but if you still have those Breaths, you can use them and reclaim them.
I was wondering if there were any more Doomslugs or if it's the last of its kind.
There are more Doomslugs. Read more and you'll find out about them.
In Vol. 2 of White Sand, there is a character named Trell. Is that intentional?
Yes, that is intentional, but the connections are a little more obtuse than you may be expecting.
So Bavadin's avatars, right; Autonomy's avatars.
One of Bavadin's avatars.
Of those avatars, are some or all of them actual Splinters of Autonomy?
The terminology gets kind of sticky here. In Cosmere terms, some would say that counts as Splinters, some would say not. The avatars aren't necessarily aware but Bavadin always is. A lot of people in Cosmere would call that a Splinter.
My follow up to that would be, is it possible for a person to Ascend and become a Vessel of one of those Splinters?
That is plausible. Yes. It could happen. It would be tough because they will have personalities of their own and so something would need to happen... but yeah.
Does Hoid pay taxes?
Hoid does not pay many taxes at all. If he pays taxes, it comes in the form of something you wouldn't want to get from him. He pays taxes like cats pay taxes.
I'm an aspiring writer and I really relate to one of your characters that has really smart days and really stupid days. I feel like I've had maybe a handful of really smart days and every other day, I just feel like an idiot and I don't know what I'm doing. I wonder if that's you maybe writing some of yourself into the story or into that character...
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
...and how have you gotten over those stupid days.
I actually got it… Howard Taylor, who's a cartoonist friend of mine, one time was talking about, on our podcast, how some days he just feels dumb. And I'm like, I feel like that sometimes too. Sometimes, it's not working. It's not flowing. What I've found with writing is—now your mileage may vary—readers can't generally tell which of the two it was. It's more in your mind and more about your mood than it is about the actual quality of what you're writing. What's happening is on some days, you're just upbeat and you see what you're doing is working. And on other days, you're doing basically the same thing but you're a little bit down and your minds like "Oh, this is terrible. You are crap. No one's ever going to want to read this" and the truth is that it's actually still pretty good. The other thing that causes that a lot is… particularly if I'm reading something really good, like I go read a Terry Pratchett novel… and then I go to write and I'm like, "What am I even doing?" What you're doing there is you're comparing your first draft to published, final drafts by authors who've been doing this for 40 years and that's just not a fair comparison to you. If you want to go read my terrible first story that I wrote, the one that won the award, you can read that be like, "This is what Sanderson was writing? I'm better than this!", and you probably are. In fact, I hope you are. I would recommend trying to silence that voice as opposed to trying to reach for the smart days or not because the truth is, you're probably just as smart on both days; you're just feeling down. And instead, try to look for some of the things I talked earlier. The idea of creating good habits. Knowing the things that you can do that put you in the mood to actually do what you want to do. Listening to music will do it for me. Going on a walk, if I'm having trouble while listening to that music and if it's the right epic music. My playlists are on Spotify by the way, the stuff that I do this with. Just look for "Stormlight 3 writing soundtrack" and I have on for Skyward, too, that I think I posted. Just listen to whatever works for you. But you have to find out what tricks yourself like I talked about earlier. Every writer feels this, you are not alone, and that part of your brain is probably wrong.
What criticism of your work do you feel is the most apt?
There's a bunch of them. I would say that the criticisms of my handling of Mat in the Gathering Storm are pretty on point. I actually had an inkling before I released the book that they were because some of the beta readers had told me. But, I didn't know how to do it better yet. Generally, my weakest part of my books is probably going to be the prose. I strive for what we call Orwellian prose which is Windowpane prose where the prose is transparent and you can see the story happening on the other side. But, a lot of times, if you come to some of my prose, I repeat too many words, too often. We try to watch for those and things. But you're not going to go to a Brandon Sanderson novel and very often get the really beautiful prose that you're going to get like from a Pat Rothfuss book or something like that. It's partially a stylistic choice on my part but it's a stylistic choice because I know where my strengths lie, if that makes sense. So, I think that's a pretty valid criticism. The other thing would probably be that Stormlight is really hard to get into. That's by—not by design, in that I don't want a book that's hard to get into. But the story I wanted to tell was one that was hard to get into. If that make sense. It's kind of like a drawback of the story that I didn't want to change because it would make it a different story. But it's totally a legit drawback to getting into Stormlight. There's a lot of stuff to track. I wanted to be upfront with it because the whole series was going to involve a lot to track but there are people for whom Stormlight is just not the book for them.
It's known you're a big fan of Magic the Gathering and that you like house Dimir and you wrote Davriel Cane's planeswalker. Are you ever going to work with Wizards of the Coast again? And then things about Magic. It's known you play some, where would we find information on that?
Will I every work with Magic again? I probably will. I usually can't leave well enough alone. But the thing is, I wrote that story (which you guys can read, it's called Children of the Nameless, it's free online), I wrote that instead of doing other stuff I was kind of supposed to be doing. It is what has put me behind like on Wax and Wayne, which I wanted to have done before the next Stormlight. So, it's not likely that I will do it anytime soon. I need to catch up on things. What I would really like to do is, sometime, kind of go in at the planning stage for a plane. Like, right at the beginning, and maybe even write a book and be like, "This is set on a plane, let's use this to build the mythology of a plane," or something like that, and kind of be in from the ground up on it. But I would probably have to move to Seattle for, like, 6 months for that. So that's far off in the future.
If you want to play Magic with me, once in a while, I play at local game stores. I go to Game Grid now and then. Mostly I like to draft or to cube draft. You can watch me cube drafting online. The latest newsletter has a link to a place, some people I went and drafted with. It has been harder and harder. Early in my career, when nobody knew who I was, it was great because the signings, I would get there at 7, and they'd get done at like 8:30. And then I'd be like, "Hey! Who wants to play Magic?" and there would usually be some people who went like, "Yeah! Let's go play Magic!" We'd go to like the hotel and sit in the lobby and play Magic and stuff. Nowadays, my signings get done at like 4am. So yeah, that just doesn't happen as much anymore. Sorry about that.
Is it true that there's a mural of the cosmere in your basement?
There is not a mural of the cosmere in my basement. Isaac is painting a mural of the Stormlight Archive Roshar map, but that's not in my basement. There will probably be a mural in my basement as we're finishing the office but it's probably going to be a Van Gogh.
Is M-Bot your ideal own pet dragon, essentially?
Yeah, M-Bot's pretty close. I've mentioned before that M-Bot came from me basically writing a dragon story but with a spaceship instead.
