You said earlier... putting back splinters. Was the Oath breaking part of that?
Oath breaking? Oh, the Oathpact. The abandoning of the Oathpact we will talk a lot more about in the future, so I'm gonna RAFO that for now.
In the Alcatraz series, Alcatraz is very worried about letting down so many people. Is this semi-autobiographical and perhaps speak to your fears of letting down the WoT fans? (maybe it's subconscious!)
If it is, it's subconscious. Remember, I wrote the first Alcatraz book in 2005, before even Mistborn was published. The only one that I wrote after the Wheel of Time decision was made was book four. The previous ones had been written already. So there probably is a subconscious fear of letting down my readers, but it wouldn't be specifically related to the Wheel of Time in those books.
Could Nightblood theoretically be turned into a Hemalurgic spike?
The problem with that is that Nightblood is already invested, so it depends on your version of ' Hemalurgic spikes'. Piercing someone's body with Invested metal can have weird effects all through the Cosmere, but ripping off a piece of a person's soul using an un-Invested spike to Invest it and create one is different... we're talking about two different things, right. So there's the.... so what is a Hemalurgic spike? For instance if you've got a spike that's Invested and you stick it into a Kandra on Scadrial it will still work as an Invested Hemalurgic spike. Making a new Invested spike by ripping off a person's soul, that's a different process and a little more difficult to accomplish and requires some specialized knowledge.
Is there a limit to the size of a Hemalurgic spike?
Technically no. To be functional yes, but technically no.
What happens when you break a Hemalurgic spike or metalmind? What happens to that power?
Hemalurgic power can be split among multiple spikes and reforged, but remember that the longer a spike is outside of a person, the more the power is going to decay. Things like splitting it will decay it even further. Metalminds can also be broken and still be accessed
Can you both Feruchemically charge and Hemalurgically invest in the same piece of metal?
Yes.
What would happen if you burned the Feruchemically charged and Hemalurgically invested metal?
RAFO.
What happens when you burn a Hemalurgic spike?
Burning a Hemalurgic spike would have the effect of splicing your spiritual DNA to that of the person's that is in the spike, which would have some very strange consequences.
What would an atium-electrum alloy do in Allomancy?
The alloys of atium have various temporal effects.
What does aluminum do in Feruchemy? What does malatium do in Hemalurgy?
RAFO. We'll be releasing a chart eventually that includes all of the powers. I don't want to speak until I have everything nailed down exactly the way I want.
Are any secondary The Way of Kings characters likely to become more major in the next book?
Jasnah, Navani, and Taln all have expanded parts in the series to come. I won't say specifically in which books, but all three of those characters will have larger roles. Several of the members of Bridge Four have larger roles; they will basically remain secondary characters, but may have expanded viewpoints
I heard that in one of your books two people from the actual 17th Shard got married as members of the 17th Shard in your book.
Yes, shes right there. That's Mi'chelle, she's a beta reader. She and her husband met at a signing at a Barnes & Noble of mine. So they met at one of my signings, and they eventually got engaged at my class in BYU so I put their wedding in a book.
What's the general time line on Stormlight Archive releases? Do you plan any major gaps in the series, or will books 2-10 likely be your main projects for the next few years?
I wrote a blog post on this back in October.
After I finish A Memory of Light, my major novel publishing schedule will be Stormlight Archive books two years in a row, followed by something else the next year. This pattern should continue until the series is finished. That doesn't count shorter exploratory side projects like Alcatraz or The Rithmatist (formerly called Scribbler), which comes out in 2012. I'll do one or two of those every year when I take a break after finishing a major novel, and not all of them will get polished to publication standards. Those deviations are largely to keep me from burning out.
Is the Nightwatcher Cultivation.
I have not answered that. Have I answered that? I mean, I know I've talked to fans about this before.
Its generally kind of inferred.
Nightwatcher! Does he or she specifically have any favorites or people that she just likes.
Yes, Nightwatcher has a personality and is more fond or interested in some people than others.
I saw an interview of you talking about Way of Kings before it came out/before I read it. In the interview you mentioned the ten knights and each book will focus/be about one of the knights. After reading book one I can honestly say, I have no idea which Knight was supposed to be in book one. Is this by design? Or did I miss the point?
I'm not sure what the question means. Do you mean the Heralds? Or the ten orders of the Knights Radiant? The symbol stamped into the front of the first hardcover represents the Windrunners because of Kaladin's awakening as a Windrunner. Also because of Szeth, but mostly because of Kaladin.
Can Kandra blessings be any spikes or just the four.
They were created specifically to do what they do.
So you couldn't have a Kandra with, for instance, Allomantic powers?
I wouldn't go that far, I will say the Kandra spikes are specifically created to do what they do and the Kandra don't know how to make ones that do other things.
I was wondering if the Tranquiline halls, if that's in the spiritual, the physical, or the Cognitive?
So... that's a big fat RAFO, because that's actually a false dilemma, there are other options than those three. One of which just being that it is a mythological piece from their theology and not an actual location.
So it's not an actual place?
That's a fourth option for the three, does that makes sense? So its a bigger RAFO even than that, it's a RAFO in that I'm not going to confirm that its one of those three. Good question.
If you were to make an alloy of atium and lerasium, what would happen.
You have... and a lot of people have theorized it, I haven't confirmed one hundred per cent yet. You have probably seen one already. You have probably seen it. People think you have seen it already.
I want to know if Taravangian, the Ghostbloods, Amaram, is there any kind of like connecting... are they working together or anything like that?
Taravangian, so the Diagram, the Ghostbloods, is that the two you mentioned? Amaram is Sons of Honor; Amaram and Gavilar are Sons of Honor. These are three different groups who are aware of what is happening and have different philosophies on how to deal with what is coming. They have opposed views, for example, the Sons of Honor are trying to bring back Voidbringers because they believe it will return the heralds as well. Where as the diagram has his plan... y'know, I wont give them away. Some of the are hinted at, you can read. He talks about it, but you can see what he's doing. The Ghostbloods, they have not talked about their motives very much. They have different motives. The Sons of Honor are the easiest to figure out and they are also the most wrong, right. If you read what Taravangian says you can probably see what the Diagram is trying to do.
Any chance of any new Wheel of Time materials?
Not likely... not definitive, it's up to Harriet. I'm worried that he wouldn't want us to do anymore.
<Yeah, that's the thing>
And so, I have told her that I don't think I would want to do anymore, but if Harriet came out and said "I really feel we should do the prequels", then they could happen, I think it's very unlikely, but...
The prequels were <written> by Jordan?
Yes, he did, he has a little bit about them, not very much but a little bit. He did want them to come out sometime, so it’s possible.
In plotting an epic like The Way of Kings, to what extent do you outline the whole story? How does that compare with the outline and notes provided by Robert Jordan for the remaining volumes of WoT?
Robert Jordan and I plot differently. In the notes he tends to talk about scenes that he's working on at the time, whereas I tend to plot out everything, kind of in reverse order. His outlines do end up looking like my outlines in some ways, in that he talks about important moments and I tend to plot backwards, starting from those important moments and moving backward from them. He seemed to be much more of a "I work on this scene because I'm passionate about it" writer, where I am a "I build a framework for the entire book and then start writing" writer.
I have a question about Nightblood. What are all the powers the sword has and how much is he going to be involved in the next few books.
Those are total RAFOs. I mean, I could tell you the powers you have seen him have on screen so far, I'm not going to tell you he has others. What you have seen on-screen that he can do is he absorbs Investiture completely and he will rip it out of any object he touches, and everything has Investiture, leaving behind basically... how you see it is he turns everything he touches into black mist, it just disintegrates everything. He also has the power that people who see him, he has an emotional effect on them, one of several emotional effects depending on how they would want to use him. If you watch for when he is seeing people you will see how it is.
All fighting over him.
That's not the only effect he has though, he has other effects.
Does he bestow any effects on his wielder? Like Szeth's original Shardblade gave him the same powers as Kaladin.
Nightblood... that's a RAFO but Nightblood was created on a different planet, so.
In The Way of Kings, the [epigraphs] indicate that the year is 1174 (or thereabouts). In the Prelude, the date is indicated as 3000 years ago. What mechanism is used to delineate the epochs? Obviously in the Prelude they wouldn't refer to their date as -2174. In other words, what are the B.C./A.D./BCE equivalents for that series?
I'm going to have to RAFO that
Was the symbol of the Ghostbloods the same symbol that you used to move between different scenes in The Way of Kings' chapters (the three diamonds in a triangle pattern)?
The Ghostbloods' symbol has interconnected diamonds. I didn't ask Tor for a specific scene break character; that was a design decision on their part.
Why, in your books, are your characters so often, per se -- before they get the powers they become broken first.
There is a narrative reason and there's an in-world reason. The narrative reason is characters in pain are more interesting to write about. This is just a rule of thumb for writing. Find the person who's in the most trouble, things are going the worst for and that's gonna be generally your easiest character. In the stories, the actual cosmere, the mechanics of the magic finds, this is one way to describe it -- it's not the only way -- may not even be one hundred percent accurate but it's an easy metaphor -- cracks in the soul allow the magic to seep in and that's how you end up with a lot of the different magic systems.
Is the fact that The Way of Kings and rest of the books in the series are going to focus each one on a different character connected in any way to the fact that both The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight focused each one on a pair of characters?
No, not really. Most of my plans for The Stormlight Archive go back years and years to before I was working on The Wheel of Time. I would say that the The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight character split happened because of the book split, less than any real planning on my part. I had the character arcs and decided which ones would fit well together if I was only going to be releasing one batch of them at a time.
So the answer is no, but with the caveat that with the way my mind works, it may have been working in the same way in both cases.
So you said that different Investitures from different worlds can fuel different Investitures, right? Would that mean that you could potentially use Stormlight for Allomancy and/or Feruchemy?
Yes, a little harder with the Metallic Arts than, for instance, Nightblood is the easiest example. He can just feed on whatever Investiture is around.
Could he feed on the Dor from...
He could totally feed on the Dor.
Would you need to have a special sheath to do that or?
No, what you would have to do for him on Elantris is you would have to open some conduit to the Dor that's persistent, like a light or something, and he will suck through that, he would probably end up sucking the whole aon.
City of Elantris itself?
City of Elantris itself would work, yeah, but you're gonna be in trouble if he sucks up the whole thing and destroys it, which is totally possible.
So is there an opposing force to Adonalsium.
Good question, which has been asked before and i haven't answered it so I'm going to RAFO you as well.
I think that I have occasionally said 'yes' with the caveat that, obviously somebody opposed him because he was Shattered. I haven't confirmed if there is like a 'Devil' or something like that if that's what you're looking for.
*inaudible* with the spren, like, with the *inaudible* would it have infinite ink?
The way it works in my head canon right now, which I haven't written it so if it changes, no. The other thing is getting complex systems is going to be harder for a lot of Spren. There are legends that reference that they were able to do bows in the past, which includes a string. Everyone is like "but they're not metal, how does that work." Complex structures, even the mechanics of a pen is not something that we have proof that they could even do. If they did do it, they wouldn't have infinite ink, you would fill them up with ink.
Could a splintered Shard ever be reunited?
RAFO, good question.
Is there any specific relation between Kelsier and Kaladin, and the fact that Kelsier was killed with a spear and Kaladin used a spear. They seem like almost exact opposites.
Not really an intentional one, though I do intend their personalities to be opposed. I like how they are opposing philosophies as protagonists, but the spear thing is completely coincidental. They are very opposite styles of hero, the big pitch for myself was "Kelsier would the villain if he were in the wrong story." This is a guy where you could easily imagine that this guy could be the antagonist. He gets channeled towards good things and becomes the protagonist. There is no way Kaladin would ever be the antagonist, or if he did it would rip him apart, right. It's not in his nature.
If you held out Nightblood in the mists on Scadrial what would happen?
Nightblood would probably start feeding on the mists on Scadrial.
Would it pick up the Shard?
No, that's not how that works.
How many Allomantic metals are there? Does each god have their own set of sixteen and does harmony have his own set of sixteen?
That is a big ol' RAFO.
Are Shards aware of the movement of worldhoppers who hop in and out of worlds?
Not necessarily.
Do people in The Way of Kings have Biochromatic Breath and if not, how will Nightblood function?
Spoilers! No they don't, but Investitures from the various magics can power magics from other systems.
Do you ever reach a point where you've got your outline done, but you've got an impasse where you can't figure out how to get from A to B?
Yes.
Do you just start writing and hope for the best?
Yeah, you've got your outline, but you don't know how to get from Point A to Point B. What do you do? I just start writing. I find that the number one thing that helps me get me past problems in my stories is writing. Even if I take what I've written-- And this is very hard for some newer writers, is to know what your writing is gonna be set aside and not end up in the final product. But if you can change your mind over to you being the product, not the book-- Again, it's much easier to say "I'm gonna write today, and it's exploration that is not gonna end up in the book." And doing that will help you explore; you can try three different ones of those, and it will get you further faster than sitting and staring at the page, worrying that each paragraph has to be the right direction that you're going, that you're gonna to screw something up. Writer's block, the easiest way to get over writer's block I've found is to write anyway, even if you just have ninjas attack. In a world where no ninjas exist. *laughter* Like, you're writing a Regency romance and ninjas show up. Writing anything will get your mind working on the problems you've had and help you get past it. Another good thing to try is jumping to other viewpoints, or to-- setting the scene in a different location, to just kind of jar yourself out of that.
It's an honor to meet you.
Are you planning to work on any more graphic novels?
There will be two more in the series and if people really like it we’ll do other things.
How would you pronounce Rock's full name?
I usually get this wrong. *apprehensively chants the name* I think, but there might be something in there. It actually means... in Horneater you don't have to use a pronoun at the beginning, which is one of the weird things, you usually start with a verb. It means something along the lines of "I saw a beautiful wet stone that no one is paying attention to, but it was really cool because of the water pattern on it." Right, like, that's what his name means, and it kinda just means "Hey, appreciate the beauty of nature." Its kind of a little Horneater, their version of the haiku. The meaning is "Nature is beautiful, don't walk past the beauty of nature and ignore it." But his name actually kinda means "lonely, or forgotten rock". But "I saw a beautiful rock washed by rainwater that everyone is ignoring." Anyway, it doesn't translate all that well, I'm using a bunch of weird Asian and Indo-European language structures for this so it's not real easy to translate to English.
Have you ever tried to write, not a novel, but for a comic or try a script to pitch yourself for an original story?
Have I ever tried doing some writing that is not novels? So, screenwriting or comic strip or things like that? Yeah, I've done a little bit of everything. Not with the intent that I'm going to pitch myself, but just so I can be familiar with it. And so I have written a screenplay, never gonna let anyone see it. It was so that I would know what it takes to write a screenplay so I can advise better on mine, because I don't intend to do it. I mean, the difference between writing novels and writing screenplays is probably as different as playing basketball and playing baseball. And we know how that worked out for Michael Jordan. He was decent at the second one, but it takes a lot of work to get good at something like this, and I would rather have really great screenwriters be writing my things. But I did want to know enough about the process to be able to talk intelligently.
When you write your stories, do you plot them by outline, or do you start with the first thing--
Good question. Do I plot with an outline or not? I am an outliner. I like start with a really good outline, though I outline backward. I start with the climax and what I want to have happen, and then I work forward, working out what's gonna work to lay the groundwork for the ending that I want to have happen. But then I write forward, I start with the first page and go.
Have you thought about what all the Atium alloys do?
Yes, but I have not canonized most of them. Even in my notes.
If a mistwraith eats a Koloss will it [?].
If a Mistwraith eats a Koloss, you're asking "will it become it", um, "will it gain sapience because it now has Feruchemical* spikes?" Any Feruchemical* spike is not necessarily enough to make the creature we call 'Kandra', but there may be very weird side effects to what you just described.
Welcome Brandon Sanderson here, and Angela, thank you all for coming. I will just turn the time over to him, he talks about himself way better than I am. It sounded like he's full of himself, but hes not.
*laughter*
A little! At Pheonix Comic Con last week me and Dan were on a panel together with a bunch of other panelists and at one point Dan said, pointing at me, "He was like this even before he got famous." So at least I'm the same person, I'm the same gregarious, somewhat... at times larger than life person.
He commented that he thinks it is a mistake to have Vin burn the mist in the end of Mistborn 1, because it feels too much like a deus ex machina. That, confusing tin with silver, and confusing clubs with another character are the three mistakes he think he's made there. Nothing really new, but some may not have heard of that.
Then I asked him about Jasnah in Shadesmar.
He said that he still is not sure whether to include it in the book or not, but he most likely won't. The reason is that he fears it will lessen the impact of something that will need to happen later in the book. so, it implies some characters will visit Shadesmar and have some important adventures there, which Jasnah's story may spoil. he is looking forward to showing Shadesmar on Roshar; we saw it on Scadrial, but on Scadrial it is mostly uninhabited, while in Roshar there are all the Spren.
The lord ruler moved Scadrial closer to the sun, and orbital dynamics dictate that so its time of revolution would also become shorter. how did that impact the ages of the characters, and how did it impact the 1024 years of refilling of the well?
He said that Arcanum unbounded will contain all the calendars and that peter made actual orbital calculations. Brandon also confirmed that the characters ages were really earth ages, and that the lord ruler kept the old calendar in the final empire, even though it did not fit with the length of the year. That sounded very strange to me, but then I remembered that we already have the Islamic calendar who doesn't follow the year, so a calendar not coinciding with the year is something never seen before. he also confirmed that modern Scadrial has an earth-like year duration, which we already knew. he said that people only started asking that in the last year and he was surprised it took that long to ask about that.
He was asked if Joel could be a new type of Rithmatist.
He said that it was possible. But when he saw that I put that in my notes, he said "no, he's not. I just didn't want to say it outright. Joel is not a new kind of rithmatist". He may have denied that Joel could be a Rithmatist at all, but I don't remember the exact wording, so I cannot confirm.
He was asked if Adolin had been broken in a way that could make him become a radiant.
He RAFOed this.
I asked about how Syl was invented, I don't even know if this is already known information, I'm not that knowledgeable in Cosmere lore.
He said that originally he thought about the idea of wind coming alive, which remained. Initially he wanted to have only four wind spren, one for each cardinal direction, and Syl was supposed to be the wind of East. Then things changed, but this was the initial concept.
If Waxillium will become a Vessel, would the godmetal created by him, be... the waxillium?
He laughed and said it will be right in that way.
