Recent entries

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11154 Copy

    Questioner

    I know that Silence was written as a short story. It was one of my favorite stories. She's amazing. And I love the world. And I know that you told me it was *inaudible*, but...

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is a book on Threnody scheduled for the cosmere, for me to do. The book, right now as I have it, is a fleet trying to sail back and reclaim the Homeland from the Evil... So, that's the plan right now. We'll see if it changes over time.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11155 Copy

    Questioner

    How do you fool your writer's block?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I write a bad chapter. Usually, writer's block, what's stopping me is I that know the chapter's not gonna work, or something's wrong. I write it anyway. And then I think about it for a few days, and then rewrite it over. It works almost every time. Once in a while, it's a bigger problem that's stopping me. And those cases, often it takes, like, a big extensive rewrite to get the book going in a different direction. But nine times out of ten, I'm just having a funk on one chapter; changing the perspective or writing it poorly in a sitting and letting myself think about it works very well.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11156 Copy

    Questioner

    What was the best Steel Inquisitor cosplay that you've seen?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Probably, there was one I saw in Boston, where they had gone all out and done the spikes, with the reflective sunglasses on them. They actually looked down a spike at these sunglass things, and that looked really sharp.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11160 Copy

    Questioner

    How many sharpies do you go through in one of these things?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, it's not as many as you think. It's maybe three. I go through them really fast when I have big stacks to sign, for the publisher or something. But a sharpie is good for about 200, 300 signatures for me. And a line like this is maybe 500 people, each with maybe three books.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11161 Copy

    Questioner

    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?

    Brandon Sanderson

    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.

    Questioner

    No, when you first printed it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, the numbered edition. I'm not sure. There aren't that many.

    Questioner

    I'm like, 199.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, there's 200 or something like that.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11165 Copy

    Questioner

    You're writing so many stories at once with so many different characters. Does it ever get confusing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Once in a while. But the way my brain chemistry works, it's good for me to be always thinking about something new and jumping around a little bit, it helps me a ton. Different writers are very different. They don't want to do that at all, and it's just fine. There's no one right way to do it. I don't usually have trouble. It's the excitement of keeping track of it all that's fun for me.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11167 Copy

    Questioner

    Any advice you would give to a second grader learning to write?

    Brandon Sanderson

    For second graders? Until about high school, my recommendation is just to encourage them to write whatever they feel like writing. Not imposing too much structure, it's just about momentum. Just "Go go go" will be my recommendation.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11171 Copy

    Questioner

    What inspired you to start writing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was the books I was reading. I wanted to learn to do what they had done. Anne McCaffrey was a big part of it. But I was reading it, I was like, these books have had such a profound effect on me, I want to learn to do that for other people.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11173 Copy

    Questioner

    I have been telling people you're my favorite writer for two reasons: ...your quality of writing is fantastic, and your quantity is high. That's very rare to get both of them in the same author.

    Brandon Sanderson

    You know, it's this weird thing where I have found that the more I keep up my momentum, the better I write. The worst things I write are the things where I take a long break in between. And it's sort of this thing like, if you stop playing baseball or a while, you're gonna start missing the ball. And I found, just for me, that if I do stuff that keeps me going, so I use a lot of these novellas and things to make sure I'm keeping momentum. And it's hard sometimes, because books take a lot of revision, and you can't just write them and send them out. So you have to do, like, six or seven drafts sometimes. Just keep that momentum.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11175 Copy

    Questioner

    How can I get on the waiting list for the leatherbound of The Way of Kings. Because, I know, when it comes out...

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't think we're gonna be doing the waiting list for leatherbound Way of Kings.

    Questioner

    So I'll just have to keep up on it? Keep looking at the website?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. We'll try to make sure that we get enough of them, maybe order a few extra of that one.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11180 Copy

    Brightlord Maelstrom

    Forged items. If it's one of those where it's permanent or it's not going to die after a couple of hours, can you move it off-world or would it transform once you moved it too far from its location?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Forgery requires a constant little stream of power to keep it going so yeah if you moved it off-world the Forgery's going to collapse.

    Manchester signing ()
    #11181 Copy

    Questioner

    Hi, I was wondering, in your books you have a lot of mentions of gods, and spirits and I was just wondering what your opinion on religion is?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question, excellent question. And oh sure the microphone works for you. So I'm religious, I'm Mormon. Yes, I am.  And I've grown up religious, I'm a religious person and I'm fascinated by religion in all its different aspects. One of the things I love about being a writer is the ability that you have to jump into the heads of various different people who are very different from yourself and explore. Like that character coming alive thing, it's really a fun aspect. I feel that, since I am a fascinated by religion, my passion-- and if you are writers you will know this yourself-- whatever you are passionate about translates usually to good fiction, as long as you are willing to approach it from all directions. Where fiction goes wrong is when you allow your perspective to color everything too much and you end up with a story where everybody thinks the same. However if you can allow something you are really interested in to have five or six different characters on different sides of an argument. Because there aren't two sides, there are as many sides as there are people in the world on these sorts of issues. You can show a lot of those different sides and show the way they kind of-- the rough edges bump into one another, then what you are going to be doing is you are going to start exploring what it means to be human and what it means to have faith, or whatever it is you are fascinated by. I find that this is where I find your fiction can get really good.

    I love reading fiction, I love science fiction and fantasy I think sometimes-- I do love the escapist aspect of it, getting out of the world and going someplace imaginative, but I think sometimes because we have this escapism-- which is a lot of fun and there are a lot of fun aspects to this-- we miss out on the importance of what fiction does. I think fiction allows you to see through the eyes of someone very different from yourself and experience their life and their role. And when you get done with fiction-- A good piece of fiction I feel it's harder to hate the people because you've lived in someone else's shoes for a while. Maybe that's a very lofty opinion that I have of what my job is where really it is telling stories about magic and knights hitting each other with swords. But that's the soul of what I think is very noble about fiction and I think it was very Tolkien. You get done reading Tolkien and you're like "I can see how these different races in this world, the hobbits and the kings, and dwarves and the elves and I can see how they all view the world differently." I think that does something for us, something wonderful.

    One of my favorite books of all time is Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly this is the book that got me into reading. I was a 14-year-old boy, who was not a reader and my teacher handed me this book. This book should not have worked, this book is about a middle-aged woman who is trying to choose between her career and her family, that's basically what the book is because she's been told she could be the greatest magic-user ever by her teacher if she would just focus but she the reason she can't focus because she's got these two crazy little boys who distract her and a husband and things like this. And I read this book and its about the last living dragonslayer who has to go and kill a dragon, except he goes and does it with crossbows ballista instead of a noble ride up with a sword because who does that its stupid. It's great, its from her perspective. I get done with this and I'm like "this was amazing.  I loved this book, why did I love it so much?" At the same time my mother had graduated first in her class in accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the accounting program and had been offered a really prestigious scholarship to go along with her education, instead she had me. She felt it was important to stay home with me while I was young. She took care of me and as a teenage boy knowing this I was like "Of course she did, I'm awesome of course that's the right thing to do". And I was reading this book about dragons and I understand my mother better. That's what we can do with this, and I'm kind of going off in weird directions. That's what I love about fiction, that's what I love about science fiction and fantasy.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11182 Copy

    Brightlord Maelstrom

    When a Dakhor monk leaves his homeland do his bones still give him his abilities? Is it only the creation that's location-dependent or is it also the ability that's location-dependent?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The further you get away, the weaker the power the bones will give you will get. It's way better than Elantris at bringing the power with you. That's where it is in the notes right now, I have not written the second book, I could totally change that.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11185 Copy

    Questioner

    I've got a Mistborn question for you. So, Identity? Can you store, like-- is your physical appearance part of your Identity?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is to some people. To most people, it's a part of it, yes.... I don't know the answer-- don't take that as "You can store that." and things like that. It's involved. There are certain things you can do. But it's not as simple as it might have sounded, what I just implied.

    Questioner

    So, does that apply to your Identity, if you're in the Cognitive Realm? Or the Physical Realm? Can you store that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The reason you look like you do in the Cognitive Realm is because it's Identity, things like that. I'm not gonna talk about specifically how storing that works really. Although there is the idea that your soul is the key to Investiture and stuff like that.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11186 Copy

    Questioner

    With the Heralds we know that there's only one left... one Herald that's still bound to the Oathpact--

    Brandon Sanderson

    OK, only one Herald was about, was abandoned-- You'll find out the mechanics of that in the next book.

    Questioner

    So are we going to see more of Taln...

    Brandon Sanderson

    You will see more of-- the Oathpact is not completely broken, the others are still bound to the Oathpact.

    Questioner

    Even though they kind of sort of said they were abandoning it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, so there's still connection there, so you'll find out more about all of this and how it works.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11187 Copy

    Questioner

    So I have a question about the cosmere. I recently read The Stormlight Archive books and I love them, and then I reread Warbreaker and I noticed something. When Siri was teaching the God King how to read, she says one of the letters is called shash and this is the name of one of Kaladin's slave brands. I was wondering why.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was just a coincidence, that one's been asked of me before, yeah it's just a coincidence.

    Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 ()
    #11189 Copy

    Questioner

    What's the relationship between the Knights Radiant and their opposite gender spren? Is that important or not?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Ah it is slightly important.

    Questioner

    I have to RAFO it though?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's more important narratively than it is in the world. It happens more often but it doesn't mean anything when it doesn't happen, does that makes sense? So it's slightly important, partialy it's a narrative trick. I want to keep some gender balance and it's a lot easier to play off someone different than yourself, and things like that so I naturally do that. It doesn't necessarily mean anything when I don't. It depends on the personality of the spren.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #11194 Copy

    controlled_slide

    Aluminum, when you burn aluminum, does it actually destroy the metals or just take away their power?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It destroys the metals.

    controlled_slide

    Same with chromium?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.

    controlled_slide

    So it actually gets rid of the metals?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It actually trans--  It does a--  matter, energy, investiture are the same things in the cosmere.  You have some sort of transfer happening relating to those things.

    controlled_slide

    The question sort of relates to metal poisoning--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, you would not get metal poisoning after that.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #11196 Copy

    controlled_slide

    So nicrosil.  Wax couldn’t use a blank gold metalmind because he’s not a gold ferring, why can he use a blank nicrosil metalmind?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So this will all come out eventually but the idea is there are certain ways to connect yourself to magic, to hack the magic and make it think you have the Spiritual DNA that you don’t actually have.  And this is one of the ways.

    controlled_slide

    So then the people who made this medallion have this thing that a regular nicrosil Ferring couldn’t--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, you’re picking up on it. We’ll dig deeper into it as the series progresses.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #11199 Copy

    Questioner

    When you are burning a Compounded metal are you getting the metal’s effect and the stored power? Can you explain, I’m unclear on the Compounding.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Compounding is a way to hack the magic system so you can get a Feruchemical attribute out of-- basically powering Feruchemy with Allomancy.  If that makes sense.

    Questioner

    So you’re not actually burning the metalmind?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Kind of? There’s a big explanation on Reddit, if you send me an email I can link you to it, that steps you through exactly, easier than explaining it here