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Questioner

I'm really inspired by a lot of the worldbuilding you do and especially some of the amazing planets such as Roshar and Teldain and especially how different they are from our own planet. So how do you come up with these sorts of planets and where do you draw inspiration from to make these amazing other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

When I'm worldbuilding there's a few core principles that I follow. One is this idea that a setting should be like a character, full of quirks and flaws and advantages and all these sorts of things, you should almost have a personality for a setting. But at the same time I'm always looking for something this is going to influence the story in interesting way. What are the great visuals, what are the great conflicts that this inspires. Conflicts are the soul of all storytelling, so looking for great conflicts. But at the end of the day it's also just things I've seen, things I've experienced, like Roshar came from a mix of growing up Nebraska with these really powerful rainstorms. I remember sitting on my front porch once and the rain was blowing the right direction, so it didn't hit me and just watching this rain blow sideways. Like that's an amazing experience with lightning crashing every couple of seconds, and then visiting southern Utah and seeing the great slot canyons, things like the Zion Narrows and things like that and Little Wild Horse and just how beautiful and awe inspiring it was to be in this sort of crack in the earth and looking up and the sky seemed so distant, and those inspired Roshar. So I'm always looking, on of my guiding principles is, I talked about it a little bit earlier, fantasy, I think, should be the most imaginative genre. When I started to sell, when my books came out, I made kind of a, sort of a goal to myself that if I was going to be remembered for one thing I wanted to be remembered as someone who pushed the genre forward into different spaces and in one of places I thought I could do that was in some one the worldbuilding. You know we been kind of lock into the medieval-year-up fantast for a long time, there's a lot of fantastic stories told there. I'm like can we push other directions and can we use a little bit more of the science-fiction world-building that you from a lot of the great science-fiction stories but apply it to fantasy, because we can break the laws of physics in ways that they can't, so that is where it came from.

Questioner

They say a lot of writing is autobiographical, are there any of your characters that are very close to being you but in a fantasy world?

Brandon Sanderson

I have never like put me into a book, not in the same way that Clive Cussler does and Steven King does and I'd never put anyone that is particularly close to me. I often say that the characters that I empathize with is a mix between Sazed and Jasnah. But I don't know, every character has an equal amount of me and an equal amount of not me. Every character is a blend something I want to explore that is not like myself and something that is very like me. I actually have slightly different answer also, Stephen Leeds is very close to me in that sort of middle manager of a whole bunch of voices in my head, and my son is pointing out and my mother would like me to note this, that Alcatraz uses my voice in humor and so she says she reads Alcatraz and is like "Oh, I hear you!", I think I should be afraid of that.

Questioner

I really loved the Skyward series and now the we know that's wrapping up I want to know, is there more stand-alone science-fiction on the way?

Brandon Sanderson

Is there more stand-alone science-fiction on the way, alright. So the answer is there will almost certainly, if fact there better be because we signed for them, be more books in the Skyward Universe that I'm writing with Janci, yes. And that is for the forseable future my project in that kinda YA/new adult space that I been playing with The Reckoner and Skyward, that's the plan for there. That is the only plan for non-Cosmere books other than Dark One that we are doing right now. So anything else that I would plan would be tied to the Cosmere, but you never can tell, like I was not planning one of the Secret Projects, I wasn't planning any of the Secret Projects but one of them is, [Secret Project] Two is a stand-alone science-fictiony sort of thing. So you can never tell what will pop out, I have no current plans other than what we announced but it's me, so who know.

Dan Wells

Can you talk about the person you were pitching with, or is that secret? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I can. It was Joe Michael Straczynski. So Joe attached to it. Super cool guy.

Dan Wells

He is the guy that did Babylon 5, among other things.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, he attached to it and he and I went and pitched it together, and it got picked up. But then Joe really got excited by certain aspects of the story, not really by my outline. He really loved the idea of this—he had an idea, he wanted to do something that was very close to Castle, where there is an author in the real world writing books. We would write these fantasy novels and the show would be the fantasy novels. The author was like a character who was channeling and releasing them. Some of this was from the original pitch, but it was a video game in the pitch.

He was really into this and so much of it changed that I called him up and I was like, "Joe this is nothing like my pitch". And he was like, "yeah I know, I got really really excited". I was like "ughh" and he was like "ughh" and I'm like "what if we just separated them" and he said "that's a great idea". So we just hand shook on, he can take his pitch and sell it, he just took Dark One off it 'cause it was changed so much, and mine just went back into the thing. I don't know if he ever got his made. He was very easy to work with, I'll say that. Very very classy in when I called him and said "this is nothing like my pitch", he was like "yeah I know, I'm sorry, I got really excited".

Dan Wells

Well and that’s what happens, that’s what happens in Hollywood. It is such a collaborative industry and a collaborative medium that, you know, whoever has the money and/or authority is the one that is most likely to see their vision made. Which is rarely the author!

Brandon Sanderson

It got picked up. They commissioned a pilot from him on that thing. Basically, I said "go do your thing, if this takes off come back to me and I can maybe write the fantasy novels in the real world". I'm totally cool with your concept here, we will just take Dark One's name off of it. Obviously it didn't get picked up, because the show never got made—

Dan Wells

Yeah, because we have never seen it.

Brandon Sanderson

—and he never came back. Anyway, that was Dark One, was my television pitch. It was multimedia in that I planned a couple of epic fantasy novels to tie in, but that was kind of like the television show was the thing.

LewsTherinTelescope

Are the aethers the moons? Or just on the moons?

Brandon Sanderson

On the moons, good question. They are on the moons. The moons are not 100% aether.

Madness Lemon

What exactly do the humans that serve Xisis do? He promises that they would have engaging work. But would that just entail maintaining his home beneath the spores? Or assisting in his research?

Brandon Sanderson

There were select individuals who assist with the research. And he is studying the water cycle and the decomposition of the spores at the bottom of the ocean and is very, very interested in that. And some of those who work with him are allowed into that work, as well. Some just take care of things. Certain individuals may not be of a temperament to ever do more than that.

Madness Lemon

How honest can we assume he was being when talking about how his slaves are treated?

Brandon Sanderson

Pretty honest. Dragons on Yolen are deities, and they view themselves as deities. They are generally quite trustworthy in the way that they say things, but they are also quite imperious, as a general rule. Because you are an immortal being that is worshiped as a god, and that gets in your head and does things to you.

Lotus

If you looked at a spore under a microscope, what would it look like? Would it be like an Earth's fungus spore? Or would they look totally different?

Brandon Sanderson

I have imagined, depending on the spore, them being different. We'll go with this as a non-canon answer right now. But I've imagined verdant looking a lot like a fungal spore that you would see. Some of the weird bacteria shapes and virus shapes, but larger (obviously) than that. But others, I imagine looking like sand, like pieces of sand. And yet others being more, like, perfect little sphere beads. Like, the Midnight Essence ones, just little tiny perfect dots, and things like that. So it really depends on the spore. They all, I think, will be different.

Escovar

The Iriali left at least three hundred years prior to Tress's story. Xisis was said to have been on Lumar for at least three hundred years, by Crow's book. Is the arrival of Xisis and departure of the Iriali significantly related?

Brandon Sanderson

I did that intentionally, yes.

Howard Lyon

At what point when you were writing it [Tress] did you know that you were going to release it?

Brandon Sanderson

I wasn't sure. I wrote it; I didn't know I was gonna do any others, at this point. All I knew is: I had this really great idea, I wanted to practice Hoid's voice, and I wanted to make a gift for my wife. So I did it, not knowing that there would be any others or anything to it. And not knowing if I would release it in ten years or the next year.

I had an instinct that I would eventually release it, but only if Emily wanted to. This was a gift for her; I told her, "You can keep this forever and never have it be released, if that's what you would like. Or you can have it as one copy that you only lend to your friends that is bound in one single volume." And she didn't want to do any of those. She did want to share it. But I had no idea when I was writing it.

It was Secret Project Four that I'm like, "No, this is something I want to do." That was when I'm thinking, "Maybe I'll do a Kickstarter, or something like that." And Secret Project Four, then, was written for the fans, rather than... One and Three are basically the real gifts to my wife. One and Three are ones that are written specifically because of things she said, for her as a person. Two was written a little more for me, even though I gave it to her as a gift, because it's just like, "I wanna do this goofy thing. It's just a thing I wanna do."

And then Four was written for the fans. Four was, I'm like, "If I'm gonna do a year of Sanderson, I want to have one of the books be a legitimate moving forward of the Cosmere involving some things that they will want to know about," because it's setting up important stuff for later on. I thought a long time about that one. The others were kind of just like, "This is what I feel like writing right now." And that one was, "I want to have a large piece to the puzzle, rather than a small piece to the puzzle." And so Four is for you. And Four is the one that I think is, in that regard, the least general interest. That one, I worry a little bit; it does stand on its own, but it's the only one I worry about, if you haven't read any of my other books, picking up, being like, "What is this?" The rest of them, I feel like you can just pick up and it's a great introduction work. Four, I'm not as certain on.

Questioner

Did you significantly adjust the number of Cosmere references in Tress of the Emerald Sea once your wife suggested you share this book? Was your first draft of Tress more or less Cosmere aware?

Brandon Sanderson

It was roughly exactly as it is. The later drafts of Tress fixed the ending. All the pieces were there, but it just wasn't quite clicking. So I rebuilt the ending; that's the biggest thing that I did. Tress was a little more discovery-written than a lot of my books, and if you discovery write, a lot of times your endings need some work. So I spent a lot of revision on that.

And then polishing the prose was the other thing. Because it's Hoid, writing form his viewpoint's just a little harder than writing a normal viewpoint, and required some extra work to make sure that the prose felt Hoid-ish without being so in-your-face that it ruined the book for too many people.

EogelAorist

We know that, at least as late as Stormlight Archive, Hoid can't physically hurt people. Does Riina not know that? Or did Hoid regain that ability by the time of Tress? Or does she just not want to risk it, in case he can do something to her that wouldn't technically count as harming?

Brandon Sanderson

It is the last one. Plus, Hoid's very good at doing things to people that do not involve harming them that can get around his particular brand of Torment, and she would fall into being someone that it would be easy to do some of those things to.

RShara

How does Lumar still have water if the aethers use up any of it (which seems to be most of it) that falls on the aether seas? How does water get back into the system?

Brandon Sanderson

I mentioned earlier, water cycle is the weirdest part, even more so than the moons. I will say that, as part of the decomposition of the aethers, the water reenters the system. I'll give you that much.

Some Anonymous

Back when Tress was first announced, you said that you were imagining the moons and seas as being arranged like the faces of a d12 die. Did the "scientists" who you asked about this ever figure out a way to make this work? Or are the moons something we just have to accept under the rule of cool?

Brandon Sanderson

The moons on Lumar cannot exist without magical intervention. They simply can't. And I'm okay with that; I'm okay, like I said, with some of these planets... We're gonna do other things in the Cosmere that just cannot exist without magical intervention, because otherwise I'd might as well be writing a straight hard science fiction series. And there are lots of great straight hard science fiction series out there that try to extrapolate what things would actually be like. With me, I am trying to create a really interesting environment you haven't seen before, and then ask what that does to the people, realistically, who live there, if that makes sense.

I do treat it seriously. This is canon; those moons are there. But how are the moons there? Cosmereological phenomenon that is impossible in our universe.

Some Anonymous

How high up are the moons away from the planet? Closer to hundreds of miles, like the ISS? Tens of thousands of miles, geosynchronous orbits? If you have that thought out?

Brandon Sanderson

We have discussed it, and I think I'm gonna RAFO it for now. I will say: my current impression is, definitely not as close as the ISS. But not so far, like... One of my inspirations, if you didn't pick up on it already, is obviously Anne McAffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books. Which, if you haven't read those, there are two planets that pass very close to each other, and when they do, dangerous environmental hazards pass from one planet to the other, risking extinction on the habited planet. And I've always loved that setup. And this is a little bit inspired by that. And I don't know how far apart those are, but I'm gonna say: I think it's further than the ISS. But who knows?

Adam Horne

When he [Isaac] and I were talking, and he told me that it [the planet name] was Lumar, I was like, "Oh, that's like 'lunar,' just with an 'm.'" Is that something that crossed your mind? Was that intentional? Were you okay with that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's part of why I liked it. But he has some very good rationale for the name, and I'll maybe let him tell that story at some point. But he kind of gave me the explanation.

He looks out for you guys, because I don't always name the worlds when I write stories like this, because I'm like, "They just call it the world. They don't name their world." Our world is named Earth because earth is dirt, right? Isaac always pushes me and says "all right, let's name this world. Let's name this one." I come up with them sometimes; sometimes, he comes up with them.

jofwu

What does the Cognitive Realm of Lumar look like?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna RAFO that for now. I've been playing a little bit with the Cognitive Realm on some of these planets, so I will RAFO it for now. Basically, asking, "Do we still have the same inversion going on?" And I'm gonna say it's a little weirder than normal. (And Shadesmar's often a little weird.)

Striker EZ

Is there any chance we could get a map for this world [Lumar] at some point?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a good idea. We maybe should have done that. The issue is, running that through continuity... We should do it someday. But it's gonna take a little extra work just to make sure on the continuity on that one. So yeah, there is a chance you could get a map on this.

Zabeesh

If the moons are constantly pouring out spores, how do the oceans not fill up? Do they degrade eventually, or is there another method?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they degrade eventually. I'll be perfectly frank with you: my science on this, I have not gone to all of my normal science routes. The only one of the Secret Projects that we did a lot of the scientific work on is Four, because of how tied into the rest of the Cosmere it is. I have some sort of plausible wiggle room on Book One, because Hoid is telling the story, and he can get some things wrong.

Where I am right now is: the seethe is partially involved in the way that the spores degrade. And that's part of what causes it; you've got this decomposition of a fantastical sort happening deep down, and that that is causing the seethe. But I have not run the science on this.

All of my books straddle on this continuum between fully scientific and fully fantastical. And I tend to sit over on this side [scientific], where Stormlight, I'm gonna work out all of these things. But I write fantasy, and once in a while I want to stray into the whimsical. And I purposefully did it on Tress; I'm gonna push the boundaries of what I can do and still have it be reasonable that it could exist with fantastical resources, and go kind of as far whimsical as I feel comfortable doing.

That isn't to say that you should consider this non-canon; it is absolutely canon. But what it means is, I didn't start with "what's the science of this?" I started with "what is the really interesting story I want to tell, and let's tell the story there." And if it comes down that the science just can't work; well, the answer is: "A wizard did it." I have enough access to fantastical explanations for the things that happen that I can make this work." But it is me pushing the boundaries of that.

So, know that I've got general impressions. Such as: spores are degrading. The way that they're degrading is actually causing the seethe. Much in a kind of an accelerated version of how methane comes up through decomposition, and that's what we're doing. But the water cycle is really tricky; I have some instincts on how that works, but I'm not even gonna talk about them, because I don't wanna canonize that, 'cause the water cycle's a really tricky thing on this planet, in particular.

Striker EZ

What was going on with Design during this story [Tress]? Was she affected by Hoid's curse?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. You will maybe get an answer someday. Maybe.

The Sixth Scholar

Where does Tress take place in the overall Cosmere timeline? The telling of the story, not the story itself; or both, if you want to answer.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO. My goal right now is to get you a coordinated Cosmere timeline of books by the time I start Stormlight Six. But we will see. I've promised that for years, and I keep pushing it back.

Ladder Contact 6814

What are the other six types of spores we didn't get to see in the book? Were there any that you really wanted to include, but couldn't?

Brandon Sanderson

No. When I've written books, I tend to gravitate toward a couple of the aethers that are really the most dynamic for action scenes and things like that. Some of the other aethers are there for the necessity of the future of the Cosmere. For instance: zephyr, while very useful in this for firing cannons and stuff, is really there so that we can have propellant in space by just-add-water and make yourself some extra propellant. And atmosphere; kind of a low-tech (there's better-tech ways), but a low-tech way to: "hey, we've got zephyr aether, it makes breathable air. And so, if we've got water and a barrel of this stuff, then we'll be able to breathe." So there are some of the aethers that are there for that sort of reason, so that we can have pneumatic weaponry and some easy access to emergency propellant in space, and stuff like that.

But verdant is the one that I just keep coming back to, that one and roseite, as making for the most dynamic storytelling. We'll see what I do with some of the others. I'm not gonna answer what the ones I haven't mentioned are, because I am saving them for future books to be used and to be interesting and engaging with them.

Scotch the Piper

Who is Hoid, as the narrator, telling the story [Tress] to?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO in that I believe it is evident in the books. Well... I believe some of it is evident. Not the specific individuals, but this far enough in the future of the Cosmere that I don't want to talk about individuals he might be speaking to. You can figure out the general tone; and people have. It was very clear, I think, to fans when they started posting. So you can ask on a fan forum, if you want them to give their thoughts; but I'm not gonna speak more than that.

There's stuff that is relating to all of this that I can't even talk about yet, because it gives too many spoilers. I'll be able to talk about them soon. Give me a couple years, and I can start talking more about timeline and when certain things are happening that I just can't do at the moment because of certain spoilerific reasons.

asmodeus

Is there a pattern to when the seethe stops, similar to how the highstorms on Roshar have a pattern?

Brandon Sanderson

Not one that anyone in-world through studying has been able to figure out.

Brandon Sanderson

With Lost Metal in particular, I brought in a whole thing that we haven't written a book on yet. One of the big worries is: I don't want people to ever pick up one of my books (even still) and feel like they have to have read the whole Cosmere to understand it. And with the gloves off, I still maintain that. I still maintain that if you're gonna read the Wax and Wayne series, you should be able to read and enjoy it without feeling like you're lost because of the Cosmere connections. And I feel like, as a writer, I am skilled enough to say: here is this cool thing that a person is doing, they're from another planet. And introduce it as if it's brand new in a way that's both not boring but also not confusing, and just let it happen in the book. And that's what's happening in Tress with some of the things.

The aethers are not from her planet; they are somewhere else. And dragon's not from her planet. Some of the stuff that's happening relating to Elantris, not from her planet. But I feel like it works in the context of the story, and it doesn't feel confusing. You don't feel like you're left out. Hopefully. My goal is that, when you read those other books, you're like "oh, that's where this came from," rather than reading this book and feeling lost.

Brandon Sanderson

My goal with the Secret Projects was to be like: this is a self-contained thing. I've gotten myself into trouble in the past by writing a book like Warbreaker and then promising a sequel. And so my goal with these was to write them each so they didn't demand sequels. I had various levels of success, I'll say, on that with them. While you'll probably catch references to this [Tress], I have no plans to do a sequel. I like this one self-contained as it is. And the same for Secret Project Three.

[Secret Project] Two is not Cosmere, but Dan and I have already brainstormed sequels; I don't know that we'll ever do them. It grew out of the podcast a little bit, that book did, and the whole setting.

And then Secret Project Four is more deeply tied into the Cosmere in very specific ways. It's most likely... whether there'll be a sequel or not is a question, but the characters involved are deeply involved in the rest of the Cosmere, so you will absolutely see them again.

Love That Dog

Most of your books have an Ars Arcanum at the end, but Tress didn't. Was this a deliberate choice to leave the magic/aethers more open-ended for the future? Or to fit with the fairy tale style?

Brandon Sanderson

I kind of want Tress to be a little bit of an in-world artifact. This is Hoid telling this story, and it's supposed to feel like the story that he told to some people that got recorded and written down and published for you. And Khriss (who writes the Ars Arcanums) is not involved in that. And it didn't feel appropriate for any of the Secret Projects to do that. So we replaced that with, kind of, my author's discussion of where the book came from, and things like that.

So you can kind of imagine: in most of the books, the Ars Arcanum is an in-world artifact stapled to the end of the novel, which is not. This is reversed: the novel's an in-world artifact, and you have stapled to the end something that's not in-world.

Ben McSweeney

There's more than one option out there for fletching, just as there has been historically. It's just that I expect feathers would be unusual (though not unheard of).

Questioner

We have these moons [on Lumar], they're so very large, you have the seas that look and function so differently. Is it like an atmospheric bubble they're in? How does it work when you cross from one sea to the other. The spores are touching, there's different coloring, how does that section off so distinctly?

Brandon Sanderson

So it's kind of interesting, I kind of got some of this, the way I look at these seas, from real world oceans where two wave forms meet, saltwater and non saltwater meeting. And there's actually kind of a weirdly regular line between them that gets maintained. (And obviously, then, they mix, because they're both just water.) But that line was really fascinating to me.

What's going on in my mind (and I haven't run this past the Arcanists), but the idea is that enough is falling from these spores, that as they're kind of mixing, they're also kind of going down underenath, and you've got the decomposition of the spores (which is part of what's causing the seethe) and all of these sorts of things.

They do kind of mix. The line, it would look pretty regular from someone standing up on a ship and looking at it. But if you got close, you'd see more spore mixing and even blending pretty far in. But, then those spores are getting pushed underneath by the new spores that are coming, and the new layers, and then those spores are dying off at the bottom of the ocean and things like that.

That's how I'm doing it in my head, at least how I'm justifying getting that kind of creepy line that you get, even in the real world between different bodies of water meeting. But, again, I haven't run that past the Arcanists. That's how it's working in my head.

ADHD Projects

Do we see Allomancy in this book [Tress of the Emerald Sea]?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't believe you do

Chaotic Forager

Do we see Allomancy but not Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

Potentially. This is what I was working on 3 years ago. I am on the Stormlight world right now, writing Szeth flashback scenes. But I don't believe you see any Allomancy in this book. You're talking about emotional Allomancy?

ADHD Projects

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

No? Hmm... *hems and haws for a long time*

The only question mark... So, Hoid is not using emotional Allomancy on anybody, how about that?

Brandon Sanderson

Book One was White Sand.

Book Two was Star's End.

Book Three was called Lord Mastrell. It was the sequel to White Sand.

Book Four was Knight Life.

Book Five was The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, the weird cyberpunk think that I did a reading from a while ago.

Book Six was Elantris.

Book Seven was Dragonsteel.

Book Eight was White Sand, rewritten.

Book Nine was Mythwalker, that I never finished. Fabrials came from Mythwalker. Siri and Vivenna came from Mythwalker. I threw that one to the wood chipper and took a lot of the ideas. It had a really bad magic system that some day I want to fix.

Then there was Aether of Night, which was the introduction of the aethers. Aethers are still canonical to the cosmere. They will show up.

And then there was Mistborn Prime and Final Empire Prime, which are the two "I'm gonna be George R. R. Martin for a day" books.

And then I gave up on that and I wrote Way of Kings Prime.

Dan Wells

I wrote the worst piece of Warhammer fantasy fan fiction and turned it in as a thesis and passed, and it is bound and in the BYU library.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but it did something really cool: it inspired Jasnah. Because the main character was a historian, and I thought that was so cool, to write a fantasy novel about a historian, that it planted a seed, and I'm like, "I'm gonna do that someday."

Brandon Sanderson

My second book was called Star's End. I've looked back at Star's End; it is not good. But it is the first place where it's like, "Hey, maybe this guy could be good, someday." I was really interested in supernovas at the time; I'd been researching them, I'd taken an astronomy class, I'm like, "I'm gonna write a story about a research station at the edge of a star that's about to go nova." And the idea is that they're gonna try to capture the energy. They're gonna do some weird Dyson sphere thing where they're just gonna try to get all the energy out of a supernova. That was the premise. And then there's a murder mystery that happens on the station that's monitoring this. And the main character is somebody who's sent to take over the station. He gets there, there's a murder, and he's like, "I've gotta figure out what's going on with this." So murder mystery on a space station.

It does do some weird things. Kaz, from the Alcatraz books, is a transplant from this. He showed up first in Star's End. And there is an entity that lives outside of time that is contacting the main character, a very strange spren-like being way before the sprens were happening, that doesn't really belong in the story. But I wanted a cool alien. It doesn't really fit. So the idea: this creature lives outside of time and space and can influence probability very slightly inside the realm where time and space matters. And so, has influence, so random collections of things have happened that leave messages. So you communicate with this thing by taking a panel off, and you're fixing something, and you look, and the panel, accidentally some words have been scratched in there, that the person scratching them didn't know why they were scratching. Or it's just random happenstance; it's a message from this being outside of time and space.

Brandon Sanderson

In this unpublished book, we call it Mistborn Prime now. It's basically the Mistborn magic system, fully fledged. A lot of the Mistborn worldbuilding. But, what happens is, there's this assassin guy who's, like, dark and grimdark and super darky darky-grimdarky. And he gets assigned to go to this town and find out what's up; they've got atium there, and they're not supposed to. And he's like, "Mm, where are they getting this? I've gotta go..." And his father's like, "Go find everyone and kill them and get the atium." And he goes there and he falls in with a crowd of nice people who treat him well and he doesn't know what to do with that. And has a character arc to where he goes back and defeats his father.

Brandon Sanderson

[Knight Life] had a cool ending. It had a Brandon ending. Through a wacky series of events, a character gets signed up for a gladiatorial arena, where he has to fight the champion. And this is the thing looming over him for the whole thing. (You have to suffer through a lot of really bad jokes that don't land before you get there. For some reason, I was enamored with this idea of a barbarian who used, like, a metal carrot to hit people.)

Dan Wells

Was there a pun behind that?

Brandon Sanderson

No. I mean, it's one of these things that you write and you think is an anti-joke. You're like, "What if instead of a sword, he used a carrot. Isn't that funny?"

But this is looming over the character the whole time. He ends up getting challenged by this right at the beginning. And it's the metal carrot guy; he's a barbarian. And they're like, "You can't fight this giant monster." It's like going against the Hulk or something like that. And it looms over, and they're trying to get out of it the entire thing. But then, at the end, through little clues, you find out that the champion has a heart problem. So the hero runs around in a circle around the outside of the arena for an hour until the guy dies of a heart attack. And that's the climax (I kid you not) of the story.

Brandon Sanderson

The cameo for a friend, I usually don't use very much of then. When Dan shows up in Mistborn, it's just a guy named after Dan.

Dan Wells

Sergeant Wellen, who keeps living through brutal catastrophes and spree murders. That's my whole thing.

Brandon Sanderson

In fact, Sergeant Wellen's descendant shows up in Lost Metal.

Questioner

You did, in your last Q&A, mention you weren't super big on music theory. So did you know, beforehand, when you were designing pure tones, one aligning with all the different Shards, that in your standard octave you have twelve tones, meaning that four Shards and another four are gonna be paired up? Or are you kind of departing from...

Brandon Sanderson

This is part of where I kind of got into trouble with my music theory. I'm like "what if I had a sixteen note scale?" And then I talked to all my music theory people, and they're like, "Well, this and this and this and this." And I'm like, "Oh..." You can't just make a sixteen note scale. It doesn't actually work like that. And so, in this case, there are going to be some tweaks, some things that are there. But this is part of when I kind of talked about how it wasn't quite working the way that I'd imagined way back when, once I talked to people who knew music theory. But I do have how it's going to be going forward.

Questioner

We know that Rosharans are, more or less, taller than just about anybody else. And this makes it very easy to spot worldhoppers. Are there any people with dwarfism or some similar condition on Roshar that would make them abnormally short, compared to others?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that does exist, indeed.

Questioner

With the gloves off, if you could go back to any of your previously published works and add in a more foreground Cosmere reference, where would you do it and what would it be?

Brandon Sanderson

I think that the appearance of Hoid in Mistborn Two is super arcane, and I was super afraid of it, and I maybe didn't need to be. And I think that's the one where he was doing something relatively interesting in the scope of the entire Cosmere, and so it would be cool to be able to see... I don't know if you've read the deleted scenes, but his footprints were in the deleted scenes, but I cut that and revised it. And basically cut almost all reference out of that book. I would go back in and get him somewhere in there doing the same things he was doing in the deleted scenes, so that you could see him.

Questioner

I'm trying to understand the relationship between Hemalurgy and the Shard Ruin. Most of the Invested Arts involve inputs of energy of the Shardic Investiture that corresponds to it. That doesn't seem to be the case for Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. So I'm wondering what the relationship is between the corresponding Shards and those two Metallic Arts.

Brandon Sanderson

There's a whole lot going on here, and I'm not sure how much I can get into right here. But one of the basic concepts I built for the cosmere, way back when, was that a lot of the different magics would be showing up in different systems. And there are certain underpinning fundamental rules. And this is why you'll see Lightweaving working the same way across three different magic systems; I think you've seen it in three different ones so far. Elsecalling's gonna work the same way. Hemalurgy is a thing that is, like, part of the nature of the cosmere, that the Shard simply knew and was able to tell people how to do

So is it of that Shard? Well, yes, because you would have to be following that Shard's Intent in order to use it. But it could be discovered on other planets, as well.

Questioner

And independent of Ruin's presence, really, except for as Ruin affects the cosmere as a whole?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Exactly. You are correct.

Questioner

If you had a flow of objects on a conveyor belt or a river that went through a speed bubble, would the objects or river consistently get deflected in the same direction? Or would it seem random?

Brandon Sanderson

It would seem random to you. There is a way you might be able to figure out, because it's going to obey chaos theory sort of things. But it'll be random to the extent that you're able to tell.

Questioner

Zellion, is that name taken from the unpublished novel, The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that name is taken from that book. Zellion's appearance in the Cosmere is related to, not that book, but it's kind of the same character, reincarnated now into the Cosmere, if that makes sense.

Questioner

Overall, how many books do you think your entire Cosmere series will be?

Brandon Sanderson

My original outline for the Cosmere was somewhere between thirty-two and thirty-eight books. Emily has that; I gave that to her in 2006, 2007, somewhere around there. We're gonna dig that out and put it up for people to see; we'll probably display it.

This outline had some weird things. I had in my head that the series Dragonsteel was going to be seven books. I've reduced that to three books, because I took a big chunk of Dragonsteel and put it into Stormlight when I did the Stormlight revision in 2010. But I added an extra four books in the Wax and Wayne series that were not on that outline; Mistborn was nine books in that outline. Stormlight was ten books. And it had some other things in there. One of the things that people keep pointing out to me is, they're like, "Brandon. You know. Mistborn being sixteen books would make a lot of sense." And right now, there are planned to be thirteen books. And so, if I do the kind of cyberpunk series in between the 1980s and the science fiction series, and I do it as a trilogy... but there's only so many books I can write, guys!

That's kind of still my goal. We've got the ten Stormlight, three Elantris, two Nalthis. Then we've got the White Sand; do I do White Sand? Do I not? It was on there; we have the graphic novel. And then there's weird things, like the Threnody novel I want to write. Three of the Secret Projects are in the Cosmere; that adds three that weren't planned. So who knows. But the core of the Cosmere, I have viewed for a long time as being: nine books of Mistborn (that are now expanded), ten books of Stormlight, and three books of Elantris. That is the core Cosmere narrative.

Questioner

I am allergic to nickel, and I realize that's not one of the Allomantic things. Are there Allomancers who are allergic to their metals? How does that work?

Brandon Sanderson

There are. It is not very fun for them. It is legitimately a thing. To an extent, heavy metals are bad for all of us. And fortunately for Allomancers, they burn them away, and they kind of a have a change in their physiology that this doesn't hurt them, but it doesn't cover being allergic. And this is just a miserable experience.

Questioner

I believe you originally said that Era Two is Alloy of Law, then a trilogy. Do you still view it that way? Or has it changed over time?

Brandon Sanderson

I wrote Alloy of Law; I kind of wanted to write a standalone. I'm not very good that that. 'Cause I finished it, and I'm like, "Ooh, I know where I would go. I know what I want to do." And then I outlined a trilogy and wrote a trilogy. As I was working on this fourth book, I found a lot of places that I wanted to relate to Alloy of Law, for whatever reason. Maybe it's that sort of cyclical nature of storytelling, where where you began is often a version of where you end, and things like that. I don't view them as much as one book and a trilogy anymore, because I deeply interwove a bunch of Alloy of Law references. You'll see when you read the book that the soul of Alloy of Law is very important to this book. So it's almost an bookend, where the two in the middle are kind of in a dialogue with each other, and the first and the fourth one are kind of in a dialogue with each other.

Questioner

Do you have an end goal that's going to be... everything's gonna converge to something? Or is there going to be a direction that everything in the Cosmere is moving towards?

Brandon Sanderson

The answer is "yes." My goal is, after I finish Stormlight Five, to kind of sit down (now that I have a whole team) and be like, "All right, here is the outline for the rest of the Cosmere, so that you have it," and work on that for a while. I always say I'm gonna do this, and I haven't done it yet, but I'm really planning, after Stormlight Five, now to do this. Now that I've got a full editorial team and a full creative development team and one narrative guy, that we'll sit down and we will talk over this, and things like that. I do have an end goal in mind. I like to start with an ending; this is how I do things.

Questioner

Did Taln actually give into torture? Or was it just the collapse of the [Oathpact] in general?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. It is one I will answer eventually.

Rover678

Did the decision of adding a whole new era of books to the Mistborn saga change the plans for the plotting of the two remaining eras?

Brandon Sanderson

It did a little bit. So, basically, things that I thought I was gonna have to squeeze in to the 1980s era, I was able to get some foreshadowing in in Wax and Wayne instead. So it kind of made my job easier. It hasn't changed the actual outline that much for the story, but it has let me put in a bunch of foreshadowing ahead of time.

Padan Cain

Could you maybe trap an Unmade in one of those paintings from one of your Secret Projects?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO. It's an excellent question.

Kyracall

In a recent Intentionally Blank, you mentioned a Lift food heist book. Any chance of the novella between Stormlight Five and Six being that book?

Brandon Sanderson

There is a chance for that, yes. That is definitely something that I would consider doing.

Questioner

What would Lirin do with the trolley problem?

Brandon Sanderson

I think Lirin's pacifist nature would not let him pull the lever. So he would have the greater number of people die because he was not behind it. Which, I think, is kind of the only way that he could answer it and stay true to the things that he rationalizes and believes in.

Copeland Barney

Is Spook still alive?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!