Found 78 entries in 0.481 seconds.
For the White Sand graphic novel, is it going to be a book for each novel?
It’s actually three books for the first one. Because graphic novel--turns out my longwindedness, even trimmed down, takes a lot of pages. So once we finish those three, if people like them, we’ll do the second.
You are releasing a graphic novel version of White Sand, which one is going to be canon to the Cosmere, the graphic novel or the novel you originally wrote?
Oh definitely the graphic novel. The book I originally wrote has its problems, and I never released it. The books don't become canon until I release them. This will be the canon release of White Sand. I don't think-- If the graphic novel does well we are not going to write novels, I'm going to do the second one as a graphic novel original. That's just how we are going to do it-- is my plan right now. There are things when we went back to it that we tweaked, for instance Hoid's appearance in the original novel was only a reference. He was mentioned by, what did I end up calling him, Eis? Ais, I had both names for a while, it was only a reference to one of his old cases, that's his only appearance. And we're like "Ehh people are going to expect more now". So we are writing in a better appearance for him. Stuff like that, I feel Khriss' character needs better development than the novel had, so we are working on that. Stuff, you know. Things you would do in a major revision.
Re: Cyberpunk Mistborn for /u/GalvusGalvoid. I think this is more likely than not, but I don't want to absolutely promise it until we get further along.
Re: White sand for /u/Wubdor, /u/snoogle20, and others. Also very likely in the next few years, as I'm confident after my review that I can make it work as a solid cosmere book of current quality. However, I did have trouble forcing myself to revise it at speed after such a long, demanding revision process on Stormlight. So I'm not committing to a date yet. I perhaps should have said that.
Re: Brandon needs to be edited more. (/u/mattykingkillah92 mentioned this with a very helpfully constructive tone, and it's an idea I see popping up elsewhere.) I assure you, I'm edited more now than I ever have been--so I don't believe editing isn't the issue some people are having. Tress and Sunlit, for example, were written not long ago, and are both quite tight as a narrative. Both were edited less than Stormlight 5. Writing speed isn't the problem either, as the fastest I've ever been required to write was during the Gathering Storm / Way of Kings era, and those are books that are generally (by comparison) not talked about the same way as (say) Rhythm of War.
The issue is story scope expansion--Stormlight in particular has a LOT going on. I can see some people wishing for the tighter narratives of the first two books, but there are things I can do with this kind of story I couldn't do with those. I like a variety, and this IS the story I want to tell here, despite being capable of doing it other ways. Every scene was one I wanted in the book, and sometimes I like to do different things, for different readers. I got the same complaints about the way I did the Bridge Four individual viewpoints in Oathbringer, for example. There were lots of suggestions I cut them during editorial and early reads, and I refused not because there is no validity to these ideas, but because this was the story I legitimately wanted to tell.
That said, we DID lose Moshe as an editor, largely, and he WAS excellent at line editing in particular. I see a complaint about Wind and Truth having more than average "Show then Tell" moments (which is my term for when you repeat the idea too many times, not for reinforcement, but to write your way into a concept--and do it weakly as you're discovering it, so your subconscious has you do it again a few paragraphs or pages later and do it well, then you forget to cut the first one) and this is something I'll have to look at. Plus, I feel that we have been rushed as a team ever SINCE Gathering Storm. That's a long time to be in semi-crisis mode in getting books ready the last few months before publication. We largely, as a company, do a good job of avoiding crunch time for everyone except a little during the year, depending on the department. (The convention, for example, is going to be stressful for the events time, while Christmas for the shipping team, and I don't know that Peter or I could ever not stress and overwork a little at the lead-up to a book turn in.) However, part of the reason I wanted to slow things down a little is to give everyone a little more time--and hopefully less stress--so I can't completely discount all of these comments out-of-hand, and I do appreciate the conversation.
Re: Someone else buying Mistborn film rights and all materials, as /u/TalnOnBraize suggested, then putting it back into production. This is not impossible, and is one thing I do intend to explore, but it's a long shot. One of the issues with Hollywood tends to be that whenever someone takes over on a project, they throw away everything that came before, because they want to do it their way. This is understandable, to an extent, but it causes HUGE budget inflation. So for this to work, you'd need an executive team AND director who both want to keep the material AS IS and not start over. Tough to find in Hollywood, though it is something I would like to do, if the right partner were willing. I think a lot of the work we did was excellent...though our Vin (still not telling you) is now in her mid 20's, not her late teens, as we spent five years in development. So...yeah, tough, but not impossible, to make work.
Re: Isles of the Emberdark shipping next fall by /u/Regula96. While this was explained during the campaign, let me explain a little further. Normally, from finishing editing to a book being out on shelves, publishing likes to have two years. That's what they did during the early parts of my career for me, but as soon as publishing a Sanderson book made the bottom line go BING, they took every project of mine in the line and pushed it out as soon as they could.
This moved us from two years+ to prepare, to often the final draft being turned in mere months before publication. (Reference earlier in this reply, where I talked about this.) Shadows of Self and Bands were an example of this mentality--I wrote one by surprise, and turned them both in, thinking my team would get a break by me getting ahead for them. Then, Tor published them three months apart, instead of waiting a year between.
Peter, Isaac, and I (who mostly work on this kind of production) have been all together trying to resist this the last...well, decade or so, and are finally making headway. Isles of the Emberdark, for example, has given the editorial team a non-stressful deadline. Still challenging, but workable without a single bit of overtime. That meant that me turning it in this July has it ready early next year sometime to be sent out for printing, which these days can take as long as eight months.
So...we'll see how long it takes to get back to us, and ship as soon as we have them. There could be an argument for an earlier ebook release, but I'd personally rather wait until we have print books soon, so that people who prefer to read in print aren't in danger of being spoiled--and also, so we can manage release schedules better.
Re: Horneater. I didn't mention a publication date in my list at the end of the article, but I'm tentatively guessing summer 2027. My schedule has third draft late 2026, and six months should be plenty to get it ready after that. With that, as a novella, we'd be more likely to push out an ebook and audiobook first, with a print version to follow for those who want it. But it could also end up in one of our crowdfunding campaigns.
I’m going to write the rest of my question knowing you understandably can’t directly respond (if at all) given NDA’s (and you have way more experience and inside baseball knowledge than me and most of us on here about the greenlight process)—but given the current state of the movie side of the entertainment industry and how new unadapted IP is actively being stalled and slashed, would an episodic television adaptation of Mistborn be more favorable/realistic to you (and producers) at this point? The large ensemble cast, scope of world building, multiple important story set pieces, etc I just cannot shake the feeling that a 3 hour movie run time would be rushing from point to point trying to cover as much ground as possible while trimming away important story and character moments/development that made Mistborn—well, Mistborn.
I can tell you that it would be much easier to get a Mistborn television show off the ground than a film. But here's my problem: what television properties, especially on premium cable, have made lasting impact on popular culture? Take a popular and well made show like Shadow and Bone, and compare it to an okay film series like, say, Maze Runner. Do a google trends search on that right now, if you want.
The audience of streamers is so fragmented, and people double-screen so often, that things just don't get traction very often. You can even take something fantastic like arcane, and ask if your grandparents/parents would watch it. My mother would never be interested--but she went to the Lord of the Rings films because they were EVENTS.
Beyond that, budgets there are getting slashed in streaming too. Do we really want to make a Mistborn series on a budget, to just be held up beside other shows getting five times the budget?
It's a tough position. Plus, I think Mistborn is the only one of my my mainline books that could be adapted to a feature.
But this could change for me at any moment. I've given serious thought to it over the years. I will say our plan for what we were doing was hybrid: a giant, big budget, first film followed by a season of television covering the year between books one and two which would include all the cut content from film one that is in the books. Movie two would follow book two, then a season between.
Key actors were signed for both film and television season. But alas, we just could not get the greenlight. We picked the absolutely wrong time to be pitching a big, new, expensive IP to Hollywood. Hopefully, with things looking up this year, it will go better moving forward.
For those of us waiting on the novelization of White Sand, could you give us a brief recap that could help us in this upcoming book? The magic system in White Sand?
The magic system in White Sand is not terribly relevant in most ways, except for the fact that the sand responds to Investiture; it’s how it gets recharged. So the sand gets used up and has cool magical effects, but then it needs to recharge. The sun on Taldain (or the sunlight, or something about the atmosphere) provides Investiture for that. Stormlight works the same, as does uses of magic nearby. But you don’t even need to know any of that. All you need to know is: there is some stuff that turns from black to white if people are using magical powers. And as far as the people who are using it, it’s just a substance you can get that does that. You don’t even need to know anything about another planet; it just is a substance that reacts that way. Now, if you really like the cosmere stuff, you can dig in deeply and find out why; but it’s not necessary.
Does White Sand take place before the Way of Kings Kalak Prelude?
Not in the current timeline, but most of that isn't in the books explicitly yet, so we allow it to remain fluid until canonized by in-book events.
So, you know the White Sand graphic novel you made? Did you only sign, like, 250 of those? How many did you sign of those?
I'm not sure how many. I sign them when people bring them by, but I'm don't know how many numbers there were.
No, when you first printed it.
Yeah, the numbered edition. I'm not sure. There aren't that many.
I'm like, 199.
Yeah, there's 200 or something like that.
I was in the hospital and someone read White Sand [Volume 1] while I was there, and I didn't know-- Is the comic series going to continue on after the end of the book, that kind of seems like a very unfinished story, or if that's just a story that will probably remain unfinished?
If people really like the comic we will continue.
Oh cool!
If they don't, I am probably going to do a book in the world eventually. It will be after the last-- like-- a different group of characters, but it will reference what happened, so you can kind of figure it out.
The original White Sand was the first of a trilogy so i was wondering what is your plan for the other two books? Writing them as books, graphic novels, or are you just to busy to actually do anything about it right now?
We'll decide when the graphic novel is done and out. Basically, we have to gauge fan response. If sales are good, and fans want more, we'll likely do them as graphic novels.
When I write more in Taldain, I intend to construct a new story, taking place after the events of the trilogy. (Whether or not we actually do graphic novels of the other two originals.)
Just wondering, I read the old version and it was great, but will I miss out on continuity if I skip the graphic novel release? Also was Hoid in this novel? I dont remember finding him.
Hoid is referenced in the novel, but it's like Emperor's Soul or a few of the others, where he's only mentioned. We beefed up his presence for the graphic novel, though he'll equate to still just a cameo, because of certain cosmere timeline issues.
I don't plan to change continuity dramatically from the novel to graphic novel--just tell the same story, better. I hope that people will still read and enjoy it, but I also don't want you feeling left out if you don't get around to it.
One other question, what is the name of the planet that Elantris is on?
Elantris: Sel
Warbreaker: Nalthis
Mistborn: Scadrial
Way of Kings: Roshar
White Sand: Taldain
Dragonsteel: Yolen
There are others, but I haven't talked much about those yet, so I'll leave them off for now.
Will we see any Shardholders beyond the three already at work? Specifically, will we see Bavadin?
You will see other Shards. Bavadin is on the planet Taldain, where White Sand takes place.
In the White Sand graphic novel, quite a few of the elements of the environment (e.g. rocks, clouds) look like faces (link). I find it hard to believe this is just a quirk of the artist, so can you tell us anything about why Taldain seems positively riddled with faces?
The faces are intentional. (Though they turned out more blatant in places than I'd have liked.)
So assuming that the other novels in the White Sand trilogy were meant to be the same length, that means White Sand will take about nine years to finish?
Well, there's a big "IF" in there. We don't know how the book will be received in the first place. If it IS well received, and people want more, I will sit down with the person who adapted my book and see if we can take my notes and do them justice in an adaptation for another graphic novel.
We'll see how things go. I'm hoping they come out faster than one a year, but I can't promise anything, as I really don't have much experience with this. My only mandate to the publisher was that we do them as graphic novel collections, instead of individual comics, as I didn't want to risk a repeat of the Wheel of Time comic situation (where one issue came out, and then a LONG delay came before the second appeared.)
Hah! As one of the people who've had the fortune to read a copy of the White Sand manuscript you sent, I have to say I find the likelihood of it not being a hit close to zero.
So we're getting at least 3 graphic novels, with a possibility of more depending on reception right?
Yes, that's correct.
Hold on, so there are 3 GN books being made from the 1 manuscript? nice!
Yes. The book is long enough, that the script turned out to be quite long. I don't know if they're planning an omnibus eventually or not.
All of the females in your books seem to be very independent, strong women; do you believe that you write them that way from your perspective, or is that your experience, or...?
There's a couple of things behind that. The first is that my mother graduated first in her class in Accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the entire Accounting department. That was in an era where that wasn't something that a lot of women did, and so I've had quite the role model in my life. But beyond that, it's kind of an interesting story. I discovered fantasy with a book I mentioned earlier, Dragonsbane. Wheel of Time was my *inaudible*, but I discovered Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, and my teacher got me to read this, and I came back to my teacher, and said, "People write books about dragons?" She's like, "Yeah, there's a lot of books about dragons; go read them."
And so I went to the card catalog, which we had back then in the Stone Age [laughter], and I flipped to the next title in the card catalog, and it was Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery. And so I'm like, "Well, this has dragons; maybe this is good." And it was fantastic! If you've ever read Dragonflight, it's amazing! So I read through all of those in the school library, and I'm like, "Well, what else is there?" The next title in line was Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, and so I read through all of those, which are also fantastic books, and one of the best magic systems in fantasy, in Melanie Rawn's Sunrunner books.
And so I got done with those, and at that point, a friend came to me, who'd heard I discovered fantasy, and said, "Here, you'll like this book." It was by David Eddings. And I told him, "I don't think guys can write fantasy." [laughter] That was—honest to goodness—that's what I told him. I'm like, "I don't know if I want to read a guy writer; I don't think they can get it down." And so, I did end up reading Eddings, and enjoying Eddings, but my introduction to fantasy was through three women who have at times been called feminist writers—all three of them have worn that mantle—and that's still with me as part of what makes a good fantasy book, and I think that's just an influence.
My very first novel that I tried, which was not Elantris—White Sand—the female character turned out really bland, and I was really disappointed in myself, and I thought, "the book is terrible." And it took me a long time to figure out—like, several books of work—what I was doing wrong. And what I was doing wrong, and I find this in a lot of new writers across the spectrum, is I was writing people specifically "the Other"; people who are different from myself, I was putting them in their role, rather than making them a character, right? And this is an easy thing to do—like, you get into the head of your main character. They're often pretty much like you, you can write them, they're full of life, they've got lots of passions, and then, the woman is like the love interest, and the minority is the sidekick, right? Because that's...you know, how you do that. And you stick these people in these roles, and then they only kind of march through their roles, and so while it's not insulting, the characters don't feel alive. It's like one person in a room full of cardboard cut-outs, like "Stereotypes Monthly" magazine. [laughter] And then your main character.
And women are just as bad at doing this as men, just doing the men in that way. And so it's just something, as a writer, you need to practice, is saying, "What would this character be doing if the plot hadn't gotten in their way?" Remember, they think they're the most important character in the story. They're the hero of their own story. What are their passions and desires aside from the plot? And how is this going to make them a real person? And you start asking yourselves questions like that, and suddenly the characters start to come alive, and start to not fill the role. And you ask yourself, "Why can't they be in the role they're in?" And that makes a better character, always, than "Why should they be?"
Flop roles, too, if you find yourself falling into this, you say, "Okay, I've stuck—" You know, Robert Jordan kind of did this. The natural thing to do is to put the wise old man into the mentor—you know, the Obi Wan Kenobi, the Gandalf—role, and instead, Robert Jordan put a woman in that role, with Moiraine, and took the wise old man and made him a juggler. [laughter] And these two...you know, and suddenly by forcing these both into different roles, you've got... they're much more interesting characters. And you know, Thom is named after Merlin; he could have very easily been in that role, and instead he wasn't. And so, it made even the first Wheel of Time book so much better by making characters not be the standard stereotypical roles that you would expect for them to be in. So, there you go.
Also, stay away from tokenism. If you force yourself to put two people in from the same culture in your book, that will force you to make them more realistic as characters, because if you only put one in, you can be like, "All right, their whole race and culture is defined by this person." And putting in multiples can help you to say, "Look, now they can't both just be defined by that." Anyway, I went off on a long diatribe about that; I'm sorry.
Can you talk a little bit about why you changed Khriss's personality so much between the White Sand prose and the White Sand graphic novel?
I felt that the biggest weakness to a lot of my early writing (this encompasses White Sand, Dragonsteel, and Elantris) is that my worldbuilding was really working, my magic systems were really coming together, and my characters were flat and kind of boring. And this early work of mine, I look at and there's a lot of external conflict to characters.
And it works in Elantris. Raoden is a bit boring, compared to some of my other characters. But he has an enormous external conflict to deal with, and that actually kind of works. There are lots of movies, I mentioned Mission Impossible earlier. Like Tom Cruise's character in those: not the most interesting character. But he doesn't have to be, because in fact it would probably make the movies worse if you spent a lot of time on that. That's not what those movies are about. So if you have lots of tension and lots of external conflict, then you can have a character who doesn't change as much, who doesn't go through big character arcs and things. And it's not just fine; it's a selling point of the story. It's just a different type of story.
But the problem with mine is, they were all kind of the same person. They're all kind of the same level of boring in a lot of my early works. And so, when we approached the graphic novel version, one of the things I wanted to do was see if I can liven up the characters a little, if I can make them more like I would write them now. And that's what happened with basically all the changes in White Sand were attempts to do that: make the story more like I write right now. And I'm pleased with those changes.
The only thing I don't like about White Sand is, as we were new into doing this, we did not get the worldbuilding across in a visual medium the way we wanted to. I don't think that the worldbuilding made the leap. And we're trying to fix that with future things that we're doing. We're hoping that we can play to the strengths of graphic novels and not have them lose some of the coolness. Some of the things that were working in the White Sand prose didn't make the jump to the graphic novel as well as we wanted them to.
About Hoid...
Yes.
Is he a sand master?
Hoid? You will have to read and find out in White Sand! I'm not gonna answer that.
Can you expand on why silver is effective at nullifying Shades and Spores? And does it work because silver is used on Earth as an antibacterial and antifungal?
I love that connection, but I would be lying if I told you that's where I came up with it. I don't want to sound more clever than I am.
Silver is like that because I wanted a... There's a place in White Sand novel where we see that people are able to interfere with flows of sand mastery holding people up by mixing in... Like, you stick their arms in there, the Investiture whacks things out. It's like, it needs a straight connection down to the ground, and when something gets muddled in that, you can knock a sand master down. I wanted something that could do that for basically all magic systems, something that wasn't just inert, that was destructive. Silver is what I came up with, and the main reason I picked silver is I had not used it as an Allomantic metal. It's just what it is. Was not an Allomantic metal, and I wanted a metal that did that. There we are.
What's your release schedule for volumes two and three?
I think they are one a year.
One a year?
Yeah, I'm sorry... They take so much time. It's possible they can go a little bit faster cause they did the whole script up front.
Are they still drawing 'em and coloring 'em?
They are still drawing them and coloring 'em, yeah. We basically released this one as soon as we had it done. I told them they couldn't release it by little issues, cause I wanted people to have more of a promise they would get the whole thing so I said "You have to wait until you have at least a third of it done", but yeah. I think they are counting on this one paying for them to keep doing what they are already doing, so.
White Sand
The graphic novel adaptation of this Cosmere book is coming along very well. The first volume's script adaptation is finished, and pencils for the first chapter are done. We should have pages to show you before too long. Expect a lot of talk about this on the blog come 2015.
White Sand Information
- His goal for it was a fantasy desert ecology that wasn't Dune.
- [White Sand] was his best unpublished book he wrote between Elantris and Mistborn.
- He didn't want a graphic novel to be a 1:1 adaptation of one of his existing books because it gives nothing to the old readers. He wanted to make sure it's something that new readers will like as well as his existing fans.
- [White Sand] needed a heavy edit and he worked with a script writer and talked a little bit about the process of that.
Have you ever considered doing graphic novels?
I have! Good question... So, yes I have. We're working on one of my unpublished novels, that is one of those thirteen. I think it is a good book, but not good enough to publish. But I think if we can rewrite it as a graphic novel I can cut out stuff that was bad. Because what was bad about it was like 100 thousand words of plot smashed across 200 thousand words of story. I think condensing is going to work really well. So we are going to do that. We actually got pages from that and things, and it's looking very nice. So we should have a graphic novel, and it is cosmere. It is part of the main continuity. So hopefully people will enjoy that.
Can you tell us more about Khriss?
- She has a cameo in Bands of Mourning
- She's the main character of White Sand, basically said just read White Sand to get more information since it comes out soon.
- Nahz is basically her grumpy secret agent she sends out to go retrieve artifacts for her.
Do we see Hoid in this [White Sand Volume 1]?
Yes. *inaudible*
Aw! Is he Hoid though or is he hidden?
He's hidden, but the further the book progresses the more obvious it will be that it's him.
Cool.
I don't know if he's done the obvious things yet. I can't remember where this one cut off. I'll have to go back and look because you won't be the only one who asks that.
Do you have any plans <for, like, having any of your novels made into graphic novels>?
"Would I like to have any of my novels made into graphic novels?" We're actually doing one right now. I've hit-- I've kept away from doing this for a while because I didn't want to just give people the same story. So <I kept thinking>, "Oh, I'll write a side story for something." But then that requires so much time for me, that if I were going to do that I'd just release it as a novel. So we <caught> this kind of weird place where I wasn't sure what to do. But then my agent pitched taking one of my books that was unpublished during my days that I was trying to break in, that was pretty good, and had a good magic system, but needed a lot of editing. And said, "Why don't we do that? Because we can edit it during the same time that we're preparing the graphic novel, and then do a graphic novel version." And that turned out really well. We got another writer to help me and do the writing-- someone who knew comic books. And the script turned out fantastic, so we sent it in as being turned in. They've done 5 out of 6 issues. And it will be 18 issues, but they'll issue them in 6-issue clumps. They actually will only be graphic novels, there won't be-- And there will be three of those. So the first of those should come out next year. The first six. It's called White Sand. If you want to read the book, I do send that book out to people who just write to me. Because I don't think the book as it stands is good enough to charge you for. So be aware that if-- But it was written about the same time as Elantris, and it's just a little worse than Elantris.
Current status of the White Sand graphic novel?
We have chosen a writer and the writing is quite good. We are very pleased with it, the person who's adapting the story. We have not chosen the artist yet, we have had several that have been sent to us. Each of them are doing an application with their art and we are now choosing among them. So if there's-- We are looking for professional comic book and graphic novel illustrators and so if there happened to be one of you out there who has done professional work in this field and has done--you have to be willing to commit to doing a lot of work and you have to work with Dynamite and things like this. Then you are more than welcome to contact us, but I think we are close to picking somebody.
I had a question about White Sand, we both read the draft of it, it's going to graphic novel. What's your involvement with that? Are you kind of passing over the draft?
We passed the book to the writer, the writer is sending us scripts, and we are commenting on them and things like that. There are a few big changes I've made to the story, that it needed, and things like that. But we are letting the script writer write the scripts and then we are reading them over.
So the difference between the White Sand novel and the White Sand graphic novels, what was the thought behind changing Ais's gender?
There were a couple thoughts. The main one was, I just thought the character was more interesting. A lot of my early books, you'll notice I did a thing where I'm like "I want to make sure that I'm doing the female character really well." And you can see the problem in that sentence, and that is really how I approached it, I'd say "Well I want to make sure I do the female character really well." And I think I did do the female character pretty well in some of those early books. But you'll see a consistency to them, and this is just coming aware of your biases.
Now, there is nothing wrong with writing a book intentionally and saying, "You know what? Because of the way I want to write this book in this world, I'm going to make the cast almost all one gender or the other." I don't think there's a problem with that. It's when you're doing it consistently on accident, that there's a problem. And I had to kind of sit down and say, "Did I do this because I thought it was best for the character, or did I do this because I love Inspector Javert and I just wanna have to have Inspector Javert in my book?" And that's where the character came from, quite obviously.
And I sat down and said, "If I were going to build this character from the ground up to be my own character and I were trying to throw away all biases, what would be the best for the character?" And Ais being female was not a "I need more women in the book," it was more of, "If I'm throwing away these biases and building the characters, what works the best?" and I just really liked how that character came out when I was rebuilding. Yeah, anyway, we'll go with that.
Would you tell me the intent of Bavadin's Shard?
Hmm… Are we ready to release that?
I don't know-- well we haven't-- We haven't written it into the scripts yet, but we've only done so many of the scripts so-- I don't know if that would be better place for us to reveal it or not...
If you're confident that you like what we're doing with it then we can release it now.
Great. Well we had that big discussion and it sounded like that’s what we wanted to do.
Okay, we're going to have Isaac write it. He's in charge of White Sand now. And you can choose whether to share this with people or not because it's not on the recording.
Oh it isn't?
No, I talked around it on purpose.
*writes* Autonomy.
So this is the question about White Sand. Why did this text become the basis of a comic - this one particular text - and how was the work going on converting White Sand into a graphic novel?
So White Sand was the very first book that I ever wrote, or at least a bad version of White Sand was the first book I ever wrote. I started it in 1994 and it was terrible. But I liked some of the ideas so years later I gave it another try. And it became my 7th or 8th book; I can never remember which came first: White Sand or Dragonsteel. And it was much better but still not quite where I wanted it to be. So I never ended up publishing it.
When a comic book company in America came to me and asked if I was interested in doing a comic book, it <immediately> sprung to mind. Because they wanted to do an adaptation of one of my books except I didn’t want to do a book that was already published, I wanted something for readers that was new. And I’ve always felt that White Sand was close to being good enough, it was just too long, it needed an edit. So the primary process for adapting it with Rick, who is a UK graphic novel writer involved him taking my text and cutting it way down to just the dialogue and the actions. And he did a fantastic job, we’re very pleased with that, but he did most of the work on that.
You said thirteen failures, right, with The Way of Kings being the thirteenth?
Yes. My thirteenth.
Are there any other [unpublished books] that you had-- that turned into published books?
Any others that ended up being published? Yes. White Sand, which was my first book, I rewrote as book number seven or eight and I eventually turned it into a graphic novel. Big chunks of book nine turned into Warbreaker, and books eleven and twelve - one was called The Final Empire and one was called Mistborn. Remember how I told you about two ideas mashing together and what made the story finally work? The best parts of those books turned into a new book, the magic system of one merging with the lore of the other is how it worked out. So, um, I did not publish any of those books as they were written except for Elantris. The Way of Kings I started from scratch when I rewrote it, and Mistborn I started from scratch when I rewrote it. But certainly ideas that were part of that ended up in those books.
What’s the status on White Sand graphic novel?
It’s going very well, we have pages of it turned in, I don’t know I think it’s still a year away, but it’s, it’s looking really good.
Mraize's Basement Emporium. Is that more like a trophy room or a "In case of emergencies" room?
Or a bank vault?
Or a weapon's vault?
Or both?
So, yes...
I mean, he can't use the aether, right? ...He can't use the aether, he doesn't have an aether. But the sand, the sand does stuff. So a handful of sand is a really useful amount of sand to have if you're not a sand master. Because sand reacts to Investiture. So if you let it fade and you take it somewhere, as soon as Investiture goes kinetic, it'll turn white again. So you'll be able to use it to tell who's using Inve-- it works just like a Seeker, like bronze pulses...
So having white sand, having sand around is really good. If you can keep the little beasties that are growing on the sand around, they will react to basically the Investiture equivalent of radiation. So that's handy.
With White Sand, you’ve expanded into a more visual medium with a new storyline. There’s always talk of when there’ll be an adaptation to the screen. Now, when that comes, will you be interested in doing an adaptation for the screen? Or write a new story for the Cosmere universe that is just solely either television or movie?
It’s an excellent question. It is one I’ve given a lot of thought to, and I’ve eventually settled on: the first thing that I do needs to be an adaptation of a work. This is because, for Hollywood to invest the kind of money we’re asking for, they are going to need it to be proven. One of the reasons they go to books so often is because they’re looking for the things that have already been successful in one medium. Not a guarantee they’ll be able to adapt it; in fact, it’s a really big challenge. But at least it’s a way to go to the money people and be like, “Yes, we want $300 million.” And they’re like, “Oh, really. Why?” And we can be like, “Well, this thing has sold a lot of copies.” It is a proof of concept.
I will eventually get into, I think, doing things (if this is successful) that haven’t had a book adaptation, but we’ve gotta start with a book adaptation. Just a nature of the way business works.
White Sand has an interesting background. Many of you know that it was the sixth novel Brandon wrote–Elantris–that was picked up by Tor and published as his first novel, but by the time Tor released Elantris in 2005, Brandon had written more than thirteen novels. Mistborn, which came out a year later in 2006, was Brandon's fourteenth.
But White Sand was Brandon's first novel. His third novel–Lord Mastrell–was a sequel to it. When Brandon wrote his eighth novel, right after the infamous Dragonsteel, he went back to White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell and rewrote them both from the beginning, combining them into the White Sand we now give away for those who sign up for the mailing list. I believe this was also the novel that got his agent Joshua's attention, and while Joshua didn't offer representation just yet, he did offer some suggestions for a revision. Brandon also had a list of things he wanted to accomplish were he ever to have the chance to return to White Sand and revise it. But when Elantris came out, turning around and revising an old novel was just not in the cards.
When Dynamite proposed a three-part graphic novel several years ago, Brandon met with Team Dragonsteel and laid out his vision for White Sand. We pulled out his revision notes along with Joshua's commentary from so long ago. We re-read White Sand and made our own notes, and together as a team we fleshed out what Brandon would have liked to have done were he to revise White Sand today without the luxury of rewriting the book from the beginning. We clarified character motivations, we strengthened character arcs, we changed the gender of one of the main characters, and we brought in stronger elements from the cosmere at large. Together, under Brandon's direction, and with Dynamite's help, we crafted this into the canonical version of White Sand.
I'm a new teacher; my students are really quick to jump on me when I make mistakes. I was wondering if there's any inconsistencies or characters or any of the aspects of the magic systems you made that you could go back--
Absolutely. Every book. Every book, there are things that I would want to change. And it ranges-- there's a huge gamut of different things.
For instance, in the White Sand books, my first book that I wrote, that we eventually turned into graphic novels. I had a really cool magic system that was about manipulating sand with your mind, and things like this. And then I added in a weird thing where you could transform sand into water for no good reason whatsoever. It doesn't match the rest of the magic system. Because I wanted to write myself out of a hole. And as a newer writer, I did that a lot more. It ended up kind of getting canonized, and when we went back, I didn't fix it that fast, and so it ended up in the first graphic novel, and I'm like, "We need to fix this." So, the third graphic novel-- we've given ourselves enough wiggle room, fortunately, that I can be like, "And that's not what people thought it was." Because I want it to be more consistent. So you get that third graphic novel, and you're like, "Wow, they can't do this anymore?" No one ever did it onscreen, so they were just wrong. 'Cause that totally just does not belong in that magic system.
The Mistborn books, the original trilogy, I worked very hard to make sure I had an interesting, tough, but also compelling female protagonist. But then I defaulted to guys for the rest of the crew. And this is-- If you want to write a story about that, doing it intentionally, that's a different conversation entirely. But when you just kind of do it accidentally, like, I did, I look back and I'm like, "Mmm, I didn't really want to do that". But I did anyway, because of just the way that every story I'd seen I was defaulting to (like Ocean's Eleven, and things like this), where my models were, and I didn't take enough time to think about it, where I think it would have actually been a better story if I would have thought a little bit more about that. Like, there are things like that all across the board.
I did get into a little-- trouble's the wrong term. But in Words of Radiance, I reverted it-- from the paperback, when it came out, I reverted to a previous version that I had written for part of the ending. And that caused all kinds of confusion among the fans, what is canon? And so I'm like, "Oh, I can't do that anymore." But I had gone back and forth on how a part of the ending was to play out. A pretty small element, but a part of the ending. And I had settled on one. And then immediately, as soon as we pushed print, felt that it was the wrong one. But you just gotta go with it.
I don't know. I don't think there's a strict answer on how much you can change, and how much you can't. Grandpa Tolkien went back and changed The Hobbit so it would match Lord of the Rings. And I think I'm glad he did. Even if I would have been annoyed if I'd had the first version that doesn't have the connection. When I read it, it had the connection, and it was so much cooler. I don't know if I have answers on that. But every book, there is something I would want to change.
So a lot of your books are very cinematic in nature and lend themselves very well to other forms of media and I was wondering if you had to choose what would you do-- video games...
I would want to do all of those.
All of the things?
Yes, I would love to do a big cross-media sort of deal. Whatever I can get away with, right? So we're doing a White Sand comic book right now, you probably know about that. White Sand, my unpublished novel, we're doing a graphic novel of that. I'm working hard to get the movies made, I will do anything I can get made. Just because I love storytelling in all its different weird varieties.
There's the Mistborn dice game, do you know of anything for The Stormlight Archive? If they're ever going to do something with that?
I think the thing we are going to do with Stormlight Archive-- We're going to try a chasm assault board game. Where you put together chasms and bridges and things like that. That's what we think would work really well. We have a developer-- well game designer who wants to do one of those so we're going to work with them and try to get it made.
Hey Brandon, may I ask if the red-haired woman on the Dayside map is a kind of depiction of one of Bavadin's personas?
She is not. Isaac designed that border without any explicit instructions from me, so while he might have an idea of who it is, it isn't someone specifically relevant to large-scale cosmere workings.
And so we had a brainstorming meeting and said, okay, "Ais should be a woman rather than a man. We need more gender balance in the story."
And one thing that a couple of us thought about and talked about ahead of time was the very ending, because the conflict between Kenton and Drile was: are we gonna sell our services as mercenaries and betray our independence? Or are we gonna keep going the way we always did?
And over the course of the book, Kenton says, "Okay, we're going to sell you ourr services and we're going to sell you our services, and we're going to sell you our services." And so by the end, when he realizes that Drile is not the bad guy, having him die in that battle just seemed wrong. So that's why we had him survive and had Kenton say, "Okay, you had a good idea, and I didn't like the way you went about it, but having your input in that can be a very valuable thing."
That was that was one of the big changes that got made. And when we talked to Brandon about it in that meeting, he was like, "Oh yeah, you guys are totally right. Over time, you guys got better story instincts than I had when I wrote it in the first place."
Some of those big changes were kind of a group brainstorming thing. And that was a fun process to do.
I asked about the cultural importance of Ais' gender-swap.
He talked about how part of the reason for the change, was he felt that he had already covered the strong patriarchal society and the oppression of women some of his other works, such as Elantris and Stormlight.
I'm not planning a 'regular' novel edition of White Sand, though I do still send the old (unedited and not-quite-canon-version) to people who write through my website form and ask for it.
I fully intend to do some stories set in this world, in prose form, eventually. However, I won't retell the story of the graphic novel. I'll make them their own thing. However, there's so much on my plate that I can't promise when (or even if) I will actually do that.
In the new novella for the Stormlight Archive. <Edgedancer.>
Mhm?
When she gets the cart over the edge of the ledge, it mentions that there was black sand on the ground? Was that Hoid, or...?
That was not Hoid.
Was that due to what she did, or...?
That was Wyndle.
Okay, he left black sand?
Well, his, uh-- he decayed into dust.
Okay.
And so...
Okay. Wondering if it was related to White Sand.
There's something going on there. But no, it is not the white-- it is not sand. I should be careful about use the word sand, particularly black sand. But I was just thinking of Wyndle with that one.
Okay, okay.
That is a false positive on the cosmere connection.
I wanted to ask, at the beginning you mentioned that you had twelve books written before your first book was published, can you tell us, or are you allowed to tell us how many have actually been published?
Yeah, I can actually go down the list for you. It is somewhat interesting, I think, for people. My very first book was a book called White Sand, and it was basically kind of a Dune rip-off. Your first book is always a rip-off, right, of somebody, as a new writer? And that doesn't count the one in high school, which was a SUPER rip-off, like a major rip-off, it was basically a Tad Williams meets Dragonlance. Full blown with elves and things-- Yeah it was totally--
White Sand is the first one I finished, and I actually then went and wrote a science fiction book called Star's End. And then I wrote the second half of White Sand, because I just stopped and said "This is long enough to be a novel" and then I wrote the rest of it and called that book two, that's actually the only sequel in there I wrote. And then I wrote a comedy, where a lot of the thesis of that comedy came out in Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians ten years later, so that one's kind of half been published. White Sand and Star's End are not any good, they have not been published. And then I wrote something called The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, which was really weird and sci-fi-y and stuff, and that one hasn't been published because it's really bad too. And then book number six was Elantris which was pretty good. Book number 7 was Dragonsteel, which became my honor's thesis as an undergraduate and half of that book ended up in the contemporary Way of Kings, the Bridge Four sequence was all from Dragonsteel and I ripped that out when I re-did Way of Kings.
After that was a re-write of White Sand, with better writing nowadays, and that one we're turning into a graphic novel, that one's good enough to read-- The biggest problem it has is its a little too bloated. The story-- It's like 300,000 words with 150,000 words of story. And so we are going to condense it-- into a graphic novel, so you will eventually see that one. The next one was called Aether of Night, that one didn't get published, it's really two decent books that don't work well together, like one half is a Shakespearean farce about a guy who takes his brother's place on the throne, they're twins, it's mistaken identify, yadda yadda; the other half is this dark brutal war book with an invasion going on, and the two halves never really translate well. People read this and they're like, that chapter is hilarious and fun, and OH MY GOODNESS, and yeah, so-- Maybe someday I'll do something with that.
After that I wrote a book named Mythwalker which became Warbreaker. I ripped out the good parts of that and wrote Warbreaker later on. Then I wrote a book called Final Empire, which is not Mistborn: The Final Empire, because then I wrote a book called Mistborn, and neither of those books were working very well. And then I wrote a book called Way of Kings and then I sold Elantris and I said "I want to take these two books that weren't working very well, and I think if I combine them--" because Mistborn had a cool magic system and the Final Empire had this whole thing about the Hero who failed and the Dark Lord took over and mixing these too ideas turned into a great book and that became Mistborn: The Final Empire.
And basically everything from then I've published, Warbreaker came next which was a re-write of Mythwalker. The Way of Kings, the one you hold, is a complete rebuild, I started from scratch, and added the Bridge Four sequence from Dragonsteel and some of these things... The only good one in there, that wasn't published, is White Sand I think, and I think it is going to make a really nice graphic novel because the story is really solid, the characters are really solid. I just wasn't a good enough writer to know how to condense where I needed to.
Are you planning to release White Sand as a graphic novel exclusively, or will the story be published as a regular novel further down the line?
The plan is graphic novel right now. We'll see how the reception is, but I think it would be awesome if this entry into the cosmere story were always in a graphic form.
Chronology question: Coppermind says White Sand probably after Elantris. I thought considerably earlier. Anything canon yet?
Not yet, but I suspect it's after Elantris.
*responding to an unknown written question* ...This is one of the planets. Khriss has appeared in other books, she's a scholar of the magics across the various different worlds. It ties in, you'll see more and more references. The problem is, there are weird things going on with this planet after the events of this story.
The graphic novel we are working on right now is White Sand, which is one of my early unpublished novels. We felt we could adapt that to take the poorly written stuff out and leave the awesome stuff.
Do you have any updates for the progress of that?
Yeah, it's going really well. We just got a sample of the cover art for the first volume. I think they are collecting 6 chapters in a book, and there will be 18 chapters total. So three volumes, and I think we are almost done with the first six. One of the things that I told them is that I really want to be far along in this project before we release anything. Because The Wheel of Time fans got burned on their comic.
I think that there have been enough instances of things like that, so I want to be able to produce something complete and say, "Look, we've got this much of it done and this much more to do. We've at least got the first 6 chapters, a complete book you can read."
Or it's like, we've got all this and it's only six months to the last one, it's not 2, 3, maybe 4 years.
I was just wondering--I'm a big Hoid fan--and I was just wondering if he's in this [White Sand Volume 1] and if I will recognize him as Hoid.
He is, yes. So...
And is that how he actually looks, or is that just like...
Nah, that-- it-- he disguises himself a little bit, but in this book he doesn't have to go to magical extremes. So if you is wearing a wig or something it's still kind of how he looks. I don't think we even disguised him at all. We did change it from how he was originally, because he had such a small part. I'm like, people like him more. So we beefed up his part.
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 something I've noticed in the fantasy genre that I love is that my 2 favorite authors (Sanderson and Rothfuss) don't use the traditional fantasy medieval setting (that I love) of castles, knights, feudalism etc. Now there are plenty of great authors that do (GRRMartin comes to mind as one that does it right), BUT the truth is, a good story eclipses all minor details like setting. An example I always give is that Patrick Rothfuss could write about brushing your teeth and it would make a fascinating read, and Sanderson would make an intriguing plot with amazing characterization throughout the dental hygiene experience. But I digress.
My question (If Brandon would be so kind as to show up, and if not, if anyone has any insight) is why; why doesn't the cosmere have any traditional medieval fantasy settings? Mistborn has keeps, but the society is not the traditional technology and setting of the medieval time period, nor do any of the other worlds given us.
There are both in-world reasons and writing reasons.
The writing reasons are obvious. I grew up on a steady diet of fantasy in a faux-medieval setting. I felt that some of these stories were really good, and enjoyed them--but at the same time, I felt the genre had been there and done that. In some ways, GRRM doing fantasy with the eye of a true medievalist provided a capstone to this era of fantasy.
When I sat down to write, didn't want to write what I was tired of reading. Dragonsteel (which never got published) was bronze age, White Sand was industrial, and Elantris was (kind of) Renaissance. (As you noticed, Mistborn is somewhere around 1820's. I modeled a lot of the society around the fascinating culture/industry of canals as shipping lanes that happened in England right before railroads took over.)
The other big reason, writing wise, is that I feel some of the magics that I enjoy dealing with in my settings need a certain near-industrial mindset to be interesting. The stories I want to tell are about people applying scientific principles to magic--and about the commodification and the economics of magic. Those are early-modern era stories.
The in-world reasoning I have is that on some of these planets, those eras existed--but the books are taking place when the stories of the worlds start smashing into one another. In addition, however, the Shards have an influence on this, because of things they saw happen on their own home planet.
I’ve got a question about Terken from White Sand. I was wondering if a Shardblade could cut through it, or if it would stop it?
I’m going to RAFO that for now. Answers will come. I’m gonna say probably a Shardblade would cut it, but I’m gonna look at that more closely, because you’ve got a really good argument that it wouldn’t. So, we’ll see.
