Recent entries

Kaymyth

So, in one of Szeth's flashbacks, he's seen praying to a stone which gives him the impression it's foreign to Roshar, and I'm going to read a couple of descriptions.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay.

Kaymyth

"...brilliant stone: two feet across with a crystal vein running through the center. It opened at one side like a mouth, the crystal forming teeth." (Wind and Truth)

"At the direct middle of the circular pattern, the crystals curved inward, following a pocketlike hollow in the wall. Here, the crystals grew long, each one having a jagged, sharp edge. Like teeth lining the maw of a stone beast." (The Final Empire)

The descriptions bear a striking resemblance to each other. Is Szeth praying to an atium crystal?

Brandon Sanderson

Hm! Excellent question.

Windrunner

According to the epigraphs in The Way of Kings, the Palanaeum is suggested to not be the first iteration of this library; it's mentioned that there was a "firing of the original Palanaeum." Some of our close readers were wondering is this related to the Hierocracy and Vorinism's desire to get rid of historical records, like the Knights Radiant and the Voidbringers, or is it related to something else?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that for now.

Kaymyth

Taln tried to kill Cultivation for unknown reasons, with a weapon he got from Kalak. How close did he get to killing her and what sort of weapon was this?

Brandon Sanderson

*a few seconds of incredulous silence*

You think I'm gonna answer that? Wait for Taln's flashbacks!

Kaymyth

We are obviously fishing for whether or not Taln got his hands on a Dawnshard! *questioners laugh*

Brandon Sanderson

Wait for Taln's flashbacks! Maybe I'll answer then, maybe I won’t.

Paleo

We are hoping you will.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! I'm glad you asked it. RAFO.

Paleo

So Hoid claims that Retribution's Ascension was pretty unlikely to happen and basically didn't see it happening. But we see some other characters like Moelach and the Death Rattles sort of predicting it, Renarin sees it happening basically. Does that mean that Hoid is just worse at seeing the future than he thinks he is, or...?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, yes, he definitely is worse at seeing the future than he thinks he is. But also, the future is...finicky. And things like that, so yes. Hoid is very good at getting where he needs to be. He's much worse at actually reading the future and you will see this with him. There are other point where you can see this with him. He is very good at play acting, but yeah.

Windrunner

One character dynamic that featured a little more heavily in the early books was the realization that Kaladin and Shallan have, independently, that Kaladin has killed Helaran, you know? That's kind of a very big deal. But it's not something that the characters have ever really gotten around to discussing, at least on-screen, and so is there a reason that you feel like they weren't ready to get to that and is it something you foresee that they'll ever get to or is that not an angle you're interested in exploring?

Brandon Sanderson

I still have that on my list of things that we could get to, but this is character stuff and so I don't force it. And part of the reason that I haven't forced it is Shallan doesn't confront problems and Kaladin has been breaking. And it's just another thing to deal with, and I don't think either of them want to deal with it.

Will they? Keep in mind these sort of things I try to treat very naturally like people do and sometimes you just don't talk about it. Sometimes you do. It'd be good for them to talk about it. Will it happen? It's really going to depend on if I find the right situation that it feels like the characters would do it. This is where the Brandon the outliner goes out the window and Brandon the write it by the vibe comes in. This is just one of those things that's kind of looming over them and they both kind of know it.

Kaymyth

So, Kalak comments that Shallan is able to draw on Fortune because she has two Nahel bonds. Is this truly what's going on or is it instead because she is the daughter of a Herald or is it maybe a mixture of both? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, definitely some mixture going on there and some unique Resonances going on with Shallan. I would say anyone who is trying to theorize in world about what is going on with Shallan, they don't like, it's a pretty unique case and they are spitballing, maybe poorly. Whether it's Hoid or anyone else. Weird stuff is going on with Shallans spiritweb and it is causing all sorts of fun for me.

Kaymyth

A lot of people were disappointed when Cultivation just yeeted herself off Roshar and fled. Is what happened what she expected to happen, or was this like her Plan C, her Plan F, Plan Z, like how many layers were there?

Brandon Sanderson

So, Cultivation does have more plans, but let's just say if Cultivation were as capable of handling Odium as she thought, we wouldn't need a book series.

Kaymyth

Oh my.

Brandon Sanderson

That's one thing to keep in mind, right? If Honor and Cultivation could handle Rayse, could handle Odium really, the power behind Rayse, The Stormlight Archive wouldn't need to be written. And so, I wouldn't count Cultivation out entirely, but I would say that Cultivation is part of the problem, not the solution, and that's how you should be looking at Cultivation. I mean, there's some good reasons that some members of the Heralds did not get along with her. And, you know, this is one of the problems that I run into in writing this book series is I want the viewpoint characters to be the ones that are solving problems, not necessarily the people who we can't really grasp and understand. And so, from the get-go, Cultivation I would, as I said, I consider Cultivation, you know she's part of the solution, but I also consider her part of the problem. So, there you are, I'll leave you with that. You are very much allowed to be disappointed in her and you should be.

Kaymyth

Wind and Truth ends with "The Postlude to the Stormlight Archive". What prelude does Stormlight 6 begin with?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm calling it The Voidlight Archive, but I know it's not--it's technically like Warlight or something like that, but in my head all along, it's been The Stormlight Archive and The Voidlight Archive. That's not a title that will be on Book 6. Book 6 will not be "Book 1 of The Voidlight Archive". But internally, I've always viewed them as The Stormlight Archive and The Voidlight Archive.

Kaymyth, Paleo

Interesting.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Peter hates this. Peter's like, "This is just confusing, Brandon. Why--what are you doing?" But I'm like, "I got a prelude to Stormlight, I got a postlude, and then we get one prelude to The Voidlight Archive and a postlude to The Voidlight Archive. It works!" And he's like, "But it will be book 6 of The Stormlight Archive!" Like yeah, that's the series name, y'know. So, we'll see if they let me get away with it, meaning kind of editors, beta readers, when they see that, they're just like, "this is too weird, Brandon". But that's what I named the two five-book arcs in my head. 'Cause we don't have Stormlight anymore, so...

Kaymyth

But is there any specific thing in that book [Wind and Truth] that you would change if you had had a little more time?

Brandon Sanderson

The problem is, time wouldn't really do it, right? Like, part of the thing that's gets me to-- revision for me works best when I have feedback and I'm like, ohhh, and that feedback can send me. There are a few things that I would revise if I could magically have-- like, for instance, I think that the Blackthorn reborn would be better as something that appears in book 6 as a mystery with the same foreshadowing for what happened here, where you could pick up book 6 and you're like, "Wait, Dalinar died, what is this Blackthorn thing?" That would have worked better if I had sliced out that little scene with Taravangian. That's probably the main one that I would revise if I had the chance. That was a pretty late addition and so maybe if there had been like another six months to do another round of beta reads, somebody would have said something that sparked that for me, though I'm not sure I would have revised that.

Knowing the feedback I probably would have taken another pass at some of the modern language; I know that's bothering people. Just some of the things like "dating" instead-- I didn't think it was in me when I wrote it, and getting the initial feedback, any more so than normal for me, but I bet unconsciously my language had been drifting more modern because of writing Skyward and some of the future cosmere stuff like Sunlit Man and because of that I've been drifting more modern kind of unconsciously. And so knowing that that's a stumbling block for some readers I definitely would have looked at that and been like, "alright, where am I going too modern in some of the language," so I would revise that.

Is there anything else I would revise? I might, I think I said this on Reddit, I might have brought out a little bit more of Jasnah's trauma in her sequence. I just don't want to get into that too much, because I need it for the back five. And once again, if I do too much early on then it ruins story arcs for later on, because yeah. And so I've been, you can tell, very delicate with talking about Jasnah's trauma and who she is and her flashback sequence and things like that because if I talk too much about it then we have a Venli problem where we get to the book where the flashback sequence and you already know all the stuff and so the flashbacks just aren't as interesting because they don't have the kind of mystery reveal along with the kind of character arc stuff and they just don't hit as powerfully. But I might have brought out the trauma a little bit more, because that really helps explain what's going on with Jasnah.

So yeah, there's three for you. They're always these subtle things, these subtle tweaks, right, that after the fact, like with Words of Radiance when I'm like "Oh, I bet it would work better if I did it this way" and things like that. But "art is never finished, it's only abandoned," alright, the famous quote goes, you know. I wonder if Lucas hadn't ruined it for us if going through and doing a kind of director's cut revision after thirty years would be a thing that people liked, but we're all so wary of it and we-- you know I did that experiment with Words of Radiance and I'm like "no, I don't like this, people don't know what is canon and what isn't, it's too confusing."

Kaymyth

Though the gap between Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth had been the longest gap of Stormlight books so far, the pace of writing and revision was pretty breakneck. Considering that we wanted to know some of your thoughts on what you are most proud of in the book.

Brandon Sanderson

Most proud of in the book, interesting. Yeah, the writing was breakneck, though it is similar to all the previous ones, right? It was longer cause I took the extra year to work on the, to getting the Year of Sanderson ready. And that is really what delayed us on that one. What am I most proud of in Wind and Truth? I am really in general proud of how well I can get the foreshadowing to work across fifteen years. There are stumbles when you are doing something across fifteen years. But I feel like, particularly if you compare to a lot of my contemporaries, I am pretty good at that. And maybe for the people of this podcast a little too good at it. Though there are lots of things for the back five that you haven’t picked out yet, so at least those secrets are still safe.

I am pretty proud across the entire five books of what I did with Kaladin. Kaladin’s arc across the five books is when I was building it--you know you are never quite sure when something is going to work. And I am like: is it right, like, if i am going to have Kaladin in book four be PTSD Kaladin and book five be recovery Kaladin, is that actually giving it a work in the book? You only get a couple of books of Kaladin being on his A-game before it crushes him and as a writer, the way the arc looks and comes together and having a book where he is dealing with it and recovering, was really satisfying to write. You don’t get to do that as a writer very often. You usually have to have someone go through an arc in a book and then kinda come to a catharsis by the end of the book and that is their arc. What you don’t get to do is spend fifteen years, you know, cracking a person and then having them figure out how to put themselves back together and it is something I have never really done before. I got to do it a little bit in The Wheel of Time with Rand and so I am really satisfied with that. What else am I very proud of specifically with this book? I mean I could go on for a while, it is one of my babies.

I do like how the pacing doesn’t feel like pacing of any other book I’ve done. And I know that is controversial, for some in the community. They don’t love the pacing. Again, kind of as an artist I am like: I have done all these other types. Can I do something like this? And I feel really pleased and proud of how that all came together. And you know, the themes, I am very proud of how the themes of The Stormlight Archive developed over the fifteen years and finally kind of came together and came to a head. It was quite a book to write. From kind of an artistic standpoint.

Windrunner

Kind of keeping in a similar theme with branching paths and decision making, one of my favorite things is when you talk about kind of your processes, when you hit those big decision points where you're like "okay, I could go down this path or I could go down this path." And one of those that you've talked about is whether you wanted Taravangian to become Odium or whether you wanted Rayse to stick around as the villain. And we know that Rayse always had this kind of prohibition in his mind against picking up a second Shard, because he did not want to risk kind of adulterating himself; he wanted to be just of Odium. And we see now that kind of the way that this book resolved kind of required Retribution to form. If Rayse had remained Odium, would Retribution have been the direction you had gone or would he have done something else?

Brandon Sanderson

He would have done something else.

Windrunner

Okay. Can you elaborate at all?

Brandon Sanderson

You guys theorize on that, what would have happened. Let's just say Rayse remaining Odium was always--how should I say this, it wasn't always--it very quickly became the underdog of what I would do as I wrote Taravangian more and more. Be aware that Taravangian in The Way of Kings Prime, the character I wrote, didn't work as well as new Taravangian. I felt like the old Taravangian was too gimmick--I can't remember what I called him--was too gimmick, too little actual character. And the option to keep Rayse around was really there in case Taravangian didn't develop the way I wanted him to. But he did. And the other thing that I was checking for was a mood check of "has Odium lost his bite, now that he tried to convert Dalinar and he tried to convert Kaladin?" And the answer that I came up with was yes. Dalinar effectively defeated Rayse in Oathbringer and then in Rhythm of War Kaladin put the nail in that coffin. His ideology, his way of being had been summarily rejected by the heroes, to the point that he was just not a threat. When someone who wasn't willing to take the other Shards could not be a threat on the level that I needed him to be and so that option disappeared quickly, shall we say, by the time Oathbringer was happening. But it was an option, it was an option as I was writing Rhythm of War that I could have gone with.

Paleo

Going off you mentioning the Blackthorn, how are you thinking about balancing this idea of the Blackthorn continuing to exist or exist again with the risk of undercutting the meaning or significance of death in the cosmere? Like, we should think of Dalinar as being dead now, right?

Brandon Sanderson

The Blackthorn is not Dalinar and it'll be very quickly obvious what I'm planning to do with him. If I were you, and again I don't want to give too many spoilers; this is about a book-- if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about the Blackthorn's place in the story. The Blackthorn has some very specific things I'm planning to have done and I think when it's all said and done, you will not have had to worry about that. The Blackthorn's not Dalinar, any more than two twins are the same person, if that makes sense, and even more, in a lot of ways, divided off. The Blackthorn is an idea, this Blackthorn is a spren and not a person, and lets me do some things. But again, would have been stronger, I think, if you just saw this mysterious thing show up in book 6 and you're like "wait, what?" because then you would see the implications and what I do with it at the same time. So yeah, oh well.

Windrunner

That's totally fair.

Brandon Sanderson

Don't stress about the Blackthorn is what I'd say to the fans.

Windrunner

One of my favorite moments in Stormlight 5 was the interlude with Cusicesh where we see the Iriali leave, which was a really kind of cool way to tie back to Way of Kings, I thought. But one of the things that we were curious about with Cusicesh: It seems like he's serving as a guide to wherever they're going next, maybe Lumar, maybe somewhere else, and is he the guide for just this leg of their journey or was he with them when they came to Roshar and he is kind of leading them on?

Brandon Sanderson

So, he is the guide for this leg of their journey, but he is not actually a spren.

Windrunner

Not actually a spren, okay. I guess Axies gets some things wrong sometimes.

Brandon Sanderson

Axies would have to categorize him correctly as a spren-adjacent entity, which is how he's categorized seons when he's met them.

LadyLameness (paraphrased)

In Rhythm of War it is noted that the honorspren have a large container given to them by the Ire, in which they store Stormlight. Does it actually contain Stormlight, unkeyed investiture, or something else?

Karen Ahlstrom (paraphrased) (paraphrased)

Karen said it is likely Stormlight in the container but wouldn’t be surprised if there is also unkeyed investiture in the room. 

LadyLameness (paraphrased)

If it is Stormlight in the container, would it have been affected by Retribution removing all Stormlight? Would perfect gemstones have been affected?

Karen Ahlstrom (paraphrased) (paraphrased)

*very long pause* Karen said she did not know in terms of the Ire machine and KAFO'd the question about the perfect gemstones. Regarding the perfect gems, she did add that if Brandon asked her whether he could have them interact differently with Retribution's removal of Stormlight, she would not say no. 

#1 Nuclear Salt Watergun Enjoyer

Chat, I am trying to figure out if the slugs from skyward can pass the harkness test

Janci Patterson

I had this conversation this weekend. I say no.

Janci Patterson

I don't think they have equal to adult human intelligence.

Brandon Sanderson

My plan was for Renarin to be gay when I wrote Way of Kings Prime in 2002. 

WaitUntilTheHighway

I feel like Rock was one of the best characters in Kaladin's world, and it seems like he was 'sent off' for literally no plot-relevant reason. It's like it's a TV show and the actor died so they had to get rid of the character. I'm bummed because I'm almost done with RoW now and there's just no more fun camaraderie among bridge four, largely thanks to Rock being gone. He was one of my faves.

Brandon Sanderson

As others have said, Rock will get his own novella--but that's not why I sent him off. Even if there had been no time for a novella, or no plot-relevant things for him to do, he would have left.

I need Bridge Four to be alive. Their time together, as a cohesive unit, was a powerful moment in time--and you can always reread the first few books to experience it again. However, in life, nothing remains the same, and time draws people apart. Rock has a family, a people, and responsibilities. He has to be about those, now that he's free from Alethi slavery.

Bridge Four, as it stood in books one and two, had to eventually evolve, and some members had to go their own way. That's life. For all Kaladin wanted to grasp for it, hold it together by force, he couldn't--just as we can't keep rigidly hold of the friends and family we love. Time inevitably divides us.

Each book of the Stormlight Archive must be something new. New tone, new feeling, evolved from the previous volume. They are too big, too weighty, to be allowed to repeat the same plot cycles, same emotional beats, or to allow the characters to stagnate into repetitive playacting of the people they were in the first few volumes. As readers travel through the series, I intend for them to realize this, though it may take a while for it to really click.

grandpa_fathom

As I’ve read Brandon’s books, I smile every time I come across allusions, borrowings, and references to real-world influences. I’m hoping the community can help me flush out this list (speculation welcome).

• Kelsier as a Christ figure resurrected & starting a religion
• Dalinar as Genghis Kahn
• Shards as the Greek (or insert your favorite) pantheon
• Wit as a Shakespearean fool
• Chana & Shallan as Abraham & Isaac
• Nohadon as King Benjamin
• translation lenses (Alcatraz) as urim & thummim
• Iriali exodus as the Mosaic exodus

Brandon Sanderson

• Kelsier as a Christ figure resurrected & starting a religion (More that he is trying deliberately to ape off of similar stories from Sazeds myths. Then ended up living, kind of, and now has to work with what he did.)

• Dalinar as Genghis Kahn (More Subutai in military strategy and position. But I did intentionally include one Genghis myth for the history lovers in Dalinar's backstory. This is because one inspiration for the Alethi is the Yuan Dynasty, where the Mongols had to learn to rule China.)

• Shards as the Greek (or insert your favorite) pantheon (Kind of, kind of not. More uplifted humans in over their heads. I wasnt looking at panthons here as they don’t really involve one another.)

• Wit as a Shakespearean fool (Yup. See Lear and 12th night)

• Chana & Shallan as Abraham & Isaac (Not intentional, but I can see it might be unconscious.)

• Nohadon as King Benjamin (I doubt he was as silly, but this is an influence and a concious one.)

• translation lenses (Alcatraz) as urim & thummim (Also not intentional. When I think about powers, I just wish I could speak and read all languages. But maybe there is something unconscious here? For all this looks like a slam dunk, I really think it was just me thinking of powers I wanted, and relating them to wearing glasses.)

• Iriali exodus as the Mosaic exodus (Also not deliberately done...but you probably have something here. This is almost certain part of the inspiration.)

Brandon Sanderson

Lisa started awake. In bed. Her bed. Alone. Had it been a dream? Hand to her head, she sat up, then glanced through gossamer drapes at the rising sun. Clock on the nightstand said 6:37. Three minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She flipped off the alarm and meandered toward the bathroom, memories of one last investigation with Dane before he got a job in another city. Gunshots, a white light? The device is on a timer.

(aside to audience) That was a quote by the way.

(back to reading) She waited for it to fade as dreams always did. She'd fallen asleep in her clothing though, because of the long night spent working to make up for ditching the others? But if so, how had she gotten home? She didn't remember, but in her morning daze that didn't bother her very much.

She showered and got ready. By the sounds of the plates thumping below, <Nova?> was already up and making breakfast. That was odd, as Nova was not a morning person, but maybe that was changing now she was 14 and heading to high school. She'd gotten up on her own a few days ago too.

Lisa walked down the steps, feeling an ethereal sense of displacement. That dream hadn't faded. She remembered it, as if it were real. She emerged in the kitchen where Nova was scrambling eggs at the stove, dressed in her plaid school uniform. The girl wore her black hair straight and long, like her mother. She had a ready dimpled grin for Lisa, though she turned too quickly to show off. Her eggs, still in their pan. Her elbow knocked a box of cereal off the counter, just like she had a few days ago. Puff cereal scattered across the floor and some rolled up to Lisa's feet. She stared at it, dumbfounded, remembering --

"Oh, shi -- I mean, shoot. Sorry, mom." (aside to audience) That's in quotes, or italics.

"Oh, shi --" Nova said, "I mean shoot. Sorry, mom." She put down the pan and scrambled for the broom. 

This had happened already. On Monday. 

"Nova," Lisa said, "is this some kind of prank?"

"No, didn't mean to, I'm nervous about practice, sorry, sorry." She moved to clean but Lisa took her by the shoulders, looking her in the eyes. The girl tugged against the grip. Eyes to the side, fingers twitching, as if trying to go through sweeping motions.

"Nova?" Lisa asked, feeling legitimate horror. That look on her daughter's face was so unnatural. It was as if she didn't even see Lisa. "Nova!"

Nova focused on her just for a second. Then her body started jerking again, and her head turned. As soon as Lisa released her, the girl jumped to clean up in a flurry before gobbling up the eggs.

"Sorry mom," Nova said, "I left you some though. Early morning practice for the recital, remember?" Nova beamed, back to her normal self, then took Lisa's hands. "You're going to come, right? Even if work is busy?"

"Coming? I already went." It was distinct in her mind, the sounds, scents, smells of the auditorium. Jazz piano echoing through the hall fading to applause. Could she have dreamed that?

"Not just the practice," Nova said. "The actual recital."

"Which is..."

"On Wednesday!"

"And today is..."

"Monday!" Nova rolled her eyes. "As if you don't have every minute of your life scheduled."

"You... flub the ending of Amazing Blue."

"I won't flub anything!" Nova said, letting goand grabbing her backpack. Then she paused before digging in her pocket and pulling out a red coral bracelet. Lisa's hand went to her wrist, and the identical one she was already wearing.

"Here," Nova said, giving her the new one. "I made this for you." Then she bit her lip, getting out a second. "I made one for Dane too. Will you give it to him, to help him think about us?" Nova glanced down, holding them both out.

"Nova," Lisa said, holding up her hand with the bracelet she was already wearing. "Nova."

"I know, mom," the girl said with a sigh. "I know that you two... but please just give it to him. It's important that I try."

"Nova, look at my arm." She tapped the bracelet, and Nova looked at it for a moment, cocked her head, then shook herself like from a dream.

"I know," the girl said, with the exact same sign and following intonation, "I know, mom. I know that you two... but please just give it to him. It's important that I try." Then she withdrew her hand, dropping the bracelets, letting them drop on the floor. "Thanks!" She said, as if Lisa had taken them. "You don't think Dad will come this year, will he?" Lisa stood, feeling stunned. "That's good," Nova said after a moment. "Bye!" She scampered out.

Lisa sank into her chair, feet disturbing cereal puffs that Nova hadn't fully cleaned up. How... how had Lisa gotten home last night? With a frown she called Dane, but it went immediately to voicemail because of his stupid smartphone with its anorexic battery. She started a text but as she did, one came from Noah's father. I suppose it said, "I'll live with that." She frowned until she remembered texting him a few days ago, promising to record the recital for him, but suggesting it would be a bad idea for him to come in person. She scrolled up and found the exact text he'd just sent, dated 5:52, Monday. Just like this one was. Same date, same time. 

Heart beginning to beat more rapidly, she ran upstairs and checked the bed and then the floor next to it. There, Dane's gun on the floor, the one he'd given her out of the back of his car. She'd been holding it during the explosion. Shaking, she scrambled downstairs and made a furious drive to headquarters, arriving around 7:30, having beaten most of the traffic. She burst in, hurrying to her office, rushing up to <Rona> who was early. Something she never did on Tuesdays or Thursdays, when she dropped off carpool for her kids.

If she was there... "Rona?" Lisa said. Rona kept typing. "Rona!" Lisa said, feeling something in her start to crack. "Please!" The woman shook, then glanced at Lisa, and started.

"Director! You should know better than to sneak up on an armed woman like that." She said it with a smile, but Lisa's nerves were fraying, and Rona frowned soon after. "Director? The... <Goffrey> case. We're close," Rona said. "Just need one of the Kim brothers to take the plea. I'll have a testimony on your desk the moment it happens. You'll have to talk to the DA though. Good luck with that, Director."

Lisa stood up, feeling a cold down her bones. Nearby, none of the officers passing were even looking at her. It was as if she were invisible. Even Rona went back to her typing absently and started again when she turned and saw Lisa there, as if she'd forgotten. Davis walked in with coffee for his team. Monday was his day. Whiteboard had a perfect replica of Lisa's notes from Saturday, the one she'd raced on Tuesday night to outline their battle plan for the actual arrest. She glanced at her office. Glass was cracked in the door. They'd replaced that on Monday.

Oh, heck. "Dane," she whispered. She put a hand on Rona's shoulder, who was startled again. 

"Director, you still worried about the case?"

"Dane. Is he in?"

"Director, it's before noon. What do you think?" 

Lisa began walking out faster with each step until something even more unnerving happened. People started turning toward her and, noticing her, smiling and waving, suddenly saying, "Good morning!" because... because it was 7:48. That was around when she normally arrived at the office. Probably the exact time she'd arrived on Monday, the... other Monday. Now that she was supposed to be here, people suddenly began interacting with her, like normal. But this was anything but normal. She fled.

Back to her car. She drove to Dane's apartment, which wasn't too far, but there was more traffic on the road now and people kept almost hitting her. It happened five times. After the fifth car swerved away and honked, Lisa parked and walked the rest of the way. She had to try twice to get Tim, the bean pole of a doorman, to notice her.

"Ah, Ms. Lisa," he eventually said.

"Dane," she said, sweating, "has he come out today?"

"Nope, Ms. Lisa," Tim said, "after all, it's before noon."

"Yes, I know." She rushed past the broken elevator -- the thing had been out of service for years -- and rushed up the steps to the second floor. Breathing deeply, she there forced herself to adopt a semblance of calm. Something had happened to that house with the device. Something incredible. Something mind-breakingly strange. Either that, or she was going insane. It it had happened to Dane too, would Tim have even noticed him leaving? She used the spare key -- she kept meaning to give it back -- to get in. The place smelled of a distinct scent. Call it l'eau de bachelor. Mingling orders of leftover chinese, beer cans in the recycling, and dirty clothing piled in the tiny laundry room. Dane wasn't slovenly. In her beat days, she'd seen slovenly and beyond. He was average, at least for people who lived on their own and didn't often have visitors.

She pushed open the bedroom door, and... he wasn't there. Bed was messy, but that didn't mean much. His phone, however, was on the stand. He'd forgotten to plug it in, and she got a dead battery sign when she tried to turn it on. She couldn't imagine him going out and forgetting it, but maybe... if he was confused, like she'd been when first waking? Only his sidearm, sidearm precinct deputy weapon FN-509, hung in a holster from a peg by his bed. He only locked it away when someone was staying over, and he'd never leave without it.

Feeling confused, exhausted, and overwhelmed, Lisa sat down quietly on the corner of his bed. Somehow, impossibly, that white light had sent her 3 days in the past, but where or when had it sent Dane?

[uncompleted, pick up at 9:21]

Brandon Sanderson

I built Moonbreaker so that the cultures were not factions, necessarily. Meaning if you're Methedori. Your captain is Methedori. Yes, they're space Romans kind of, but their army contains people from every culture, right? It's not like you'll -- and I feel like when I was building Moonbreaker, one of my things I said was that, "Look, there's lots of different ways to build cultures. I want to pick a distinct time in Earth's history and kind of draw inspiration intentionally from a group of Earth cultures." The reason for this being is -- we do this kind of unconsciously a lot, and I wanted to own our influences rather than be accidental at it. Because if you're being accidental at it, that's one step for being insensitive, right?

But if you're being conscious about it, you're like, "This is where my inspiration is coming in." And they are not -- like, the Methedori aren't just space Romans. They have their own thing, but the concept behind them started there. But in the real world, there was a whole lot of -- even in the time range I was using to start my inspiration which is about 500 BC to about 500 AD -- where cultures were a lot more multicultural, or cities were a lot more multicultural than we think that they were. I wanted to [make a world so that] if you're playing Methedori, you can have anybody on your team, even if it were a straight up Methedori. Now you may want to paint them Methedori colors instead, because they're all a Methedori team led by a Methedori captain. But one other thing you have to remember is the captains themselves are not -- they're built to all be basically solo. They're not representing a government. [If] You may have a Methedori captain, you might want to have a team that uses Methedori discipline, so you're going to paint them all using Methedori colorings regardless of which culture they're from. But, you also more likely are going to be like, "Hey, I hired this crew right from around the Reaches, and this crew --

So your crew each represents their own individualism, or you might be like, "Let's build them all together." But the idea is you're a captain. You are an independent captain going out here, collecting Cinder, and going on adventures. That's who you are. You get to decide for your crew what that represents, and what that means, and you should paint them appropriately. I don't think there's any intention ever to be like, "You know this piece that is the Cholek support piece? We will create a different version of it that was the Methedori support piece, so they can all be Methedori. It has the same powers." I don't think there's a plan to do that.

Bart Thomas

How did the idea of Soulburner turn into Moonbreaker? How did the change from an outline to a game work?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll talk just a little bit about that, though. Remember that Soulburner was a setting. I never had a story for Soulburner. It was all this concept for something. Basically, if I hadn't built the Cosmere, I could have built something like this, a self-contained [world]. One of the things I love about Firefly - actually, it's something shared by Firefly and The Expanse and Cowboy Bebop, which is they worked very hard to make one solar system -- our solar system, I think, in all three cases -- be expansive and interesting, rather than going the big massive universe that you see in something like Star Wars or Star Trek.

Both have their advantages, but not having FTL and by making it all take place in one solar system, you get a few things. You don't have FTL as an escape, and that just makes narrative so much easier in a lot of ways, because you don't have that option. Beyond that, it's very hard to do, in a giant universal 3D escape with FTL, any sort of terrain. Planets being close to each other doesn't matter so much when you're working in terms of Light Years, but when you're working in a single solar system scope, which ones are closer to each other becomes much more relevant. That allows for certain politics in interesting ways and economics and trading. So when I hit on this idea for this one sun with 50 moons, and it's got all sorts of cool aspects to it, right? Like it only rains on one side of the moon, it's because they're all tidally locked. And stuff like that. You only get light on one side of the moons because they're all tidally locked. You have a rainy side, a rainy dark side, and you have a bright side, but it's pointed toward this massive red giant of a star.

So the visuals and the concepting and all the stuff is so cool, but it did not fit in the Cosmere at all. So I had all of this but I didn't -- I mean, I only had 5000 words of it, and I ended up turning in something like a 50,000 word document or more for the worldbuilding. Really it was a matter of taking that concept and expanding it after talking to Charlie about some of the tonal things he wanted and things like that. But there was no outline for a story, that's not what Soulburner was.

Mybrainisnotworking_

I remember Sanderson saying to ask him what he wrote on a specific date, because that was a segment that he was particularly proud of. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact date he mentioned, but what do you all think he might be referring to?

-Ninety-

According to u/PeterAhlstrom it was chapter 143.

Peter Ahlstrom

The Dalinar section of chapter 143. But he ended the day writing the Taravangian section of chapter 145. Anyway it was the end of the Dalinar sequence, starting as early as the Dalinar section of chapter 137 but possibly a couple chapters after that.

Adam Horne

Phillip Denny from the chat says, "What was the storytelling purpose for not allowing the protagonist to regain his armor by the end of the book?"

Brandon Sanderson

Good question. Excellent question. You might guess that as I started working on it, I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is just a thing that will happen. He'll get his armor back." And the more I wrote, particularly as I did heavy revisions on the character, the more I realized that the whole armor, the platings thing was a huge crutch for him, because who he was is this person who kept trying these things and never giving them his all and relying on the trappings of a job. Like, "I want to be a cop because being a cop is like my friend does and that's cool." But then getting into it and not really giving it his all. And I realized by the end of this book he needs to give it his all, and he can't be relying on basically anything. Not even the crutch that is in most Sanderson book [where] you would have this moment where he gets his armor back and goes all awesome. And I love scenes like that, don't get me wrong, but it felt really wrong for this book, because it just didn't match it.

I don't want to fall in a rut of doing things the way that I do them just because they're the way I do them. One of the last revisions I made of the book was cutting [him] getting any of his armor back at all, really. The original intention [was] a bit [for] him to get it, and I cut that. I did a big revision to make that work, and I love that revision. Leaving him without -- leaving him just completely exposed and having him go forward anyway, was the thing he needed as a character to really fulfill his character arc.

It's one of the last tweaks I made, and the tweak and revision that I'm most pleased with.

Adam Horne

And last question from jamcdonald120. "How does travelling up the dimension stream give the Wights actual magic? Shouldn't they be less powerful than they were in the original dimension, not more powerful?"

Brandon Sanderson

This just depends on a lot of factors that I'm going to RAFO for now. We'll end with a nice good ol' fashioned RAFO. I hinted earlier, but we'll give this one a full straight-on RAFO. If we do Titanic 2: Sink Harder, we will try to explore some of this some more.

Adam Horne

This one is from heavyraines17. "What history meta-joke was your favorite to write, and why was it 'What is a zero?'"

Brandon Sanderson

It was "what is a zero?" I've always been fascinated by-- how could people not have a concept of zero? I can get negative numbers not really making sense, but having no concept of zero as a mathematical concept was really interesting to me. That joke was a lot of fun. Otherwise, it's less -- the jokes I had the most fun with were the 'marketingspeak' jokes in the Interludes. The stuff historically that I had the most fun with were was bringing out some of the things I'd gotten through my research that have been there, present, in the back of my head for a long time.

The fact that people in olden days did not have mouths full of teeth rotting out, which a lot of people assume they did. They wouldn't have straight teeth, but generally our archeological record shows that you might lose a few teeth, but maybe not, because you're not eating a lot of foods that destroy your teeth. Colors and dyes and paints being really vibrant is another things that we often get wrong, particularly when you see a depiction. If you go watch a depiction of any Anglo-Saxon or Viking sort of era thing, what are you gonna see? You're gonna see dark, gritty. You're gonna see lots of browns. You're not gonna see orange. You're not gonna see some of these things that they legit had, and you're not gonna see really good hygiene. A lot of the Vikings in particular had really great hygiene and were not these -- not like we depict them. They were brutal, you did not want to be where a Viking ship can get to you, but there's all these sorts of things that over time, you pick up reading historians' accounts and things like that.

It was really fun to bring some of this into the story.

Adam Horne

This next one is from Fakjbf. "In Frugal Wizard, which magic system did you enjoy developing more: the wights', the gods', or the augmentations?"

Brandon Sanderson

I would say that it was the Wights for me, because I was able to dig in some actual Anglo-Saxon kind of mythology and play with that. The Gods are kind of barely there in the rune system, but the rune system's the Wights. Just reading up and really enjoying that time period and seeing what they believed. One of my favorite things to do with fantasy is be like, "Okay. What if mythology or lore or folk magic really did work, and worked in a way that works with my storytelling sensitivities?" This is where the Warbreaker magic came from, and that's where this magic came from. And I had a lot of fun looking at the historical record, reading what landswights [Land Wights] were like. Looking at mythology and trying to build something out of it. That was probably my favorite part of the book, doing that. Big surprise, the magic system was my favorite part of the book.

SprigLeaf

What are the Reaches? And are there any media outlets in-universe?

Brandon Sanderson

So, the Reaches. This kind of comes when Charlie came to me. What he said is, "I want something that is science-fantasy," and if you don't know what science-fantasy is, Dune is my favourite science-fantasy. It's a science-fiction [story] with a bit of a fantastical element to it. Dune, Star Wars, anything where you've got space ships with psychics. I mean, Skyward is a space fantasy -- a science fantasy. That's what they were looking for, and the other thing he said is, "I want it to be more hopeful, more optimistic." Meaning, a lot of gaming miniatures live in the grimdark future where there is only war. Not throwing any shade, that's awesome. But it's been done so much. If you're gonna find a voice for yourself, you look at what is dominant and you say, "Alright, let's do something different."

Meanwhile, I had this idea for a universe. It was called Soulburner. You can probably go back many years in my State of the Sandersons and see me mentioning something called Soulburner from before I met Charlie. The basic concept was for a science-fantasy world, universe, where it was one giant, red-giant type star, right? Dimmer than a star, but brighter than, say, Jupiter; surrounded by dozens and dozens of moons, set up in a really complicated oribt that requires some maintenance, some mystical maintenance to keep it all going. It's this really intricate machine of all these moons spinniong around and moving past one another, and what I loved about this, as a setting, was little city-states, right? 

We're not talking Little Prince-style moons, but kind of like that. Smaller than our moon, one-city, two-city sized moons that were spinning around. Sometimes they would come in close contact with an enemy or your trade routes would be different, and the other weird thing that I decided for this is [that] I wanted air in space. 

Star Wars does this weird thing where half the time there's air in space, and half the time there isn't. If you go out in space in Star Wars you'll suffocate, but ships bank, right? They use fluid dynamics and aerodynamics and things like this for flying. In Star Wars, there's sometimes gravity in space. Sometimes not. When Princess Leia gets sucked out into space, there's no gravity, but when a ship turns, everyone falls sideways. I don't like this halfway.

We could do better. So what I said is, it's a feature. There's actually air in space. You can get in a ship that doesn't have a canopy and you can sail, or fly, between two of these moons. You can use -- you can get on a giant pterodactyl thing, and you can fly very slowly between moons. They are close enough that you could do it. It would take you months, but you can do it, and you can breathe in space. While there's artificial gravity, the sun provides the main source of gravity. So you don't need artificial gravity for your ship. You can stay on top of your little -- you build yourself a barge and you can stay on top of it. And as long as it's between you and the thing [sun?] and you've got Cinder to keep you anti-gravved up, you're fine. I built this whole cool complex system. I had like 5000 words of work on it before I realized this could just not fit in the Cosmere. There was no way I could get this to go in the Cosmere. So I shelved it, and I'm like, "I will find something to do with this."

I didn't even really build it first for a book. I built it more as just a world and a concept that was really fun for me. I had it sit there. I explored maybe doing some sort of movie with it for a while, and then when you came to me and you were talking about what you wanted, I'm like, "I've got this thing! It's called Soulburner. Let's talk about it." And I pitched it to you.

Charlie Cleveland

You had another pitch too, but I guess we didn't -- wasn't a good fit.

Brandon Sanderson

I had two pitches for you. One was codenamed Brink. One was codenamed Soulburner. Brink was small-scale, because I knew you were doing a squad-based miniatures thing. I said, "Here's the two options. One is more expansive, is more difficult, but it gets you more of the Star Wars universe you want. You're gonna have to deal with the fact that there'll be dozens of moons, with potentially dozens of different species and cultures and things like that. Or you could take this other one that's more narrowed focus." And you immediately wanted the big, expansive one. So this setting is really big. There's a whole lot going on. There's a whole lot behind the scenes. There is a giant, interesting cool plot that we're not even gonna talk about, probably for a year.

You [Charlie] gotta build all the characters, and then we'll start talking about what the actual plot is, and you'll [the player] discover it through the audio dramas, what's going on and things like that. So this is what we're doing. The Reaches is my word for all of this together. Basically, it could replace the universe. It is all of these moons and the sun and all the space between them, is the Reaches.

Brandon Sanderson

So, Extilior's thing -- since I said what the other two's thing is -- is, Extilior is a giant death robot who recently became self-aware, and is looking for purpose, and has latched onto noble codes from the past as something to give him a guiding light of how you be, you know, created for destruction and death, but try to find some purpose.

But he's still a death robot, you know? He's not gonna right his wrongs by going and making a farm, right? He's not gonna go, the Choleki bots, they're gonna have their farms and things like that. He just can't do that. But he can be like, "Alright, maybe there's a way to walk this balance between what I was created to do, and what I want to be."

Brandon Sanderson

Astra's whole thing is she's the daughter of one of the greatest generals and military minds in history, and I won't give you spoilers on her story, but it's hard to not live in the shadow, shall we say? Of such a great parent, and that's kind of her base concept.

Colin Harvey

Did Brandon have any direct contributions to the mechanics of the game? Is there anything that is solely a game mechanic because of his input?

Charlie Cleveland (from Unknown Worlds)

Cinder is the closest one, right?

Brandon Sanderson

I mean, yeah. I know that a lot of the powers of the units came because I designed a culture, and you're like, "Oh! Explain to me this culture," and I'd be like, "Well, they are warding and protecting, and they revere life." And you're like, "Alright. I'm gonna design some units that just use that power set, derive powers from the adjectives you given." There was a whole bunch of that.

Zax is a good example, right? In my initial pitch, one of my very first pitches [was] for a somewhat roguish character. You see these a lot -- we want to do a space fantasy, you see this style of character a lot. And I'm like, "They always get out of the scraps, they always survive." Well, this one didn't. He died.

Charlie Cleveland

And he's a Han Solo character, he's still mouthing off about how cool he is..

Brandon Sanderson

He's gonna mouth off how cool he is, but the whole joke is he actually died. He's not that cool. And you [Charlie] built the powers for him around the idea of, "Oh, he's a hologram. And he's going to --" I designed all these captains and you built them to do their things.

There is only one captain I designed that you have trouble building powers for. It's the one we took out and replaced with another one.

Questioner

So, can I -- any problem with me selling spheres?

Brandon Sanderson

You can sell spheres without a license, as long as you don't actually reference us or use our art. [If] they're just fantasy spheres --

Questioner

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

-- with gemstones that glow inside, I don't own a trademark on that or anything like that. For anything that says, "licensed spheres from the Stormlight Archive or Brandon Sanderson", you would need a license which would have to go through my licensing team and all of these things, which is a super big hassle. You really don't want to have to do that. So as long as they're your own thing, then you're fine. We have a fan art thing on my FAQ which explains how this works. We are happy for people to create things and sell them, and things like that. But you can't use our art and you can't imply a relationship between yourself and me.

Questioner

Okay. 

Brandon Sanderson

Does that make sense?

Questioner

Yeah.

Questioner 2

So you go to faq.brandonsanderson.com

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you just got the word of mouth version. [The FAQ's] version is what our lawyer drew up.

ado-will-rem-our-plight-ev

In the Frugal Wizard preview you released last year, Runian was a fish-hater. Now he's a fish seizer, why the drastic rise in his fish affinity?

Brandon Sanderson

[A] couple reasons: One of the reasons was that early feedback I got when I did beta reads and things like that is I wanted to make sure that the tone promise at the start of Frugal Wizard was correct. And it was a difficult needle to thread because it is a humorous book but not a comedy. And I was getting feedback that made it feel like the opening chapters were just a little too ridiculous, and that was giving a wrong sense of the tone of the entire book. So I looked at those first few chapters and said: "Alright. Can I pull back on non-sequiturs, just ease back on them? Can I focus a little less on things that are just, you know, silly is the wrong term, but things that were non-sequiturs", and as I re-read those opening l go way to much on this fish idea—it's not relevant to the book, it's just giving the wrong promise—and so that was a tweak I made to try and ease that back a little bit, and the hating fish was a casualty of that. Anyway, I feel like I got that tone better. I'm not sure if I 100% nailed it, but yeah.

Questioner

She was worried about the f-bomb 

Brandon Sanderson

It is not their version of the f-bomb. It's more their version of a mild swear-word.

Adam Horne

The next one is from LewsTherinTelescope.

Brandon Sanderson

Hey! Our old friend.

Adam Horne

"Is there a sequel planned to Frugal Wizard? The main character's stories seem wrapped up, but that epilogue."

Brandon Sanderson

If there is a sequel to Frugal Wizard, it will almost assuredly be Titanic 2: Sink Harder, as we've talked about on the podcast, and we would find a way to work in some nods to what's happening in the Greater Universe there. Seeing as how Frugal Wizard is in the same universe as A Night of Blacker Darkness by Dan Wells, and in the same world as Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians -- the same universe -- by me, all connected by Cecil [G. Bagsworth the Third] who's in all three of them. Dan and I have that shared character that we've both been using for decades. It would probably be Titanic 2: Sink Harder. I love that title. That title just cracks me up. It's probably too much of a joke, right? Like, do you go into the bookstore and see a book that says Titanic 2: Sink Harder, and think that that's a real book that you want to buy and read? But, anyway. 

Adam Horne

This next question is from our good friend Katie Payne.

Brandon Sanderson

Ooh! Yes.

Adam Horne

She says, "I really want to ask Brandon about John's low self-esteem. What was [Brandon] thinking about for the source of that?"

Brandon Sanderson

It was a character attribute that I hadn't delved into, that I found matched him really well. It made him feel distinctive. He, again, is not your standard Sanderson protagonist, and I like how that worked. It gives a different feel and tone to who he is and to his voice and to the storytelling. But, Katie, [for] almost all of my characters, it's a natural outgrowth of as I'm writing and exploring who they are, I lean into certain things. Sometimes I pull those back and revise them out, and other times that leaning into works. And this is one I leaned into that ended up really working for him.

Cosmere.es

With Dan, you are also expanding other books and characters. For example, it's not been yet published in Spanish, Dark One, but I read the graphic novel and I really enjoyed Mirandus. The world is super cool. You are working now on the novelization of the graphic novel. But, my question is, is this like the novelization of the whole [story], or just the first of the graphic novels, or would it be the three of them?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, the graphic novel turned out really nicely, but it deviated a lot from my timeline and it kind of went off in its own direction. So, I went to Dan and I'm like, "I really like my outline. I want a version of Dark One that is much closer to what I envisioned." He and I chatted about that, and that's what we're writing. We're going back to my original outline, which is the one I gave to the graphic novel [producers].

We are looking more at, it's not really a novelization of the graphic novel. It's more like we're going back to roots and doing a novel with the same outline.

Cosmere.es

And if it turns [out] well, because the world and the story is really nice, do you think that we will have more than one book on Mirandus?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I think that it's likely we will have more than one book. We will see how it goes, but Dan's got one draft ready. I feel very good about it. It follows the outline pretty closely. We're gonna go and pitch that to my publisher in the U.S., and see what they think of it.

Cosmere.es

At the beginning, I thought you were the one just writing in [Moonbreaker], but the other day I saw Dan's newsletter and I think I saw he also kind of collaborated?

Brandon Sanderson

So what happened is I created the world and the characters, and then we were doing these audio dramas. I had never -- from the beginning, I told them I didn't have time to write the audio dramas. And I was expecting them to find somebody to write them. They had real trouble, so I said, "Hey I know someone who's really good at audio. Do you want to meet Dan?" So I introduced them to Dan, and he's been taking my outlines, writing these audio dramas. If you listen to the story of Moonbreaker, it's my outline and Dan's words.

Cosmere.es

And what is from Moonbreaker? What is the thing that you enjoyed the most?

Brandon Sanderson

I enjoyed being able to just worldbuild, and not have to worry about writing a story with it. That's a lot of fun to me. I like writing the stories too, don't get me wrong, but writing stories is a bit more work than worldbuilding is. Worldbuilding's a bit more relaxing. I got to put on that hat and be like a GM again. Back when I was a gamemaster, I didn't have to worry about stories so much. I had to worry about making a cool world for my adventurers to play in. And that was the hat I was wearing.

Cosmere.es

I remember that in the beginning the idea was the same thing that we had for Cytonic. That somewhere between Cytonic and Defiant, we'll have a new series of novellas. So I'm not sure if we are keeping this still in mind?

Brandon Sanderson

What happened is over time, there's not a time jump between Cytonic and Defiant. I just jump right into it. And there wasn't as much time in the course of the book for novellas to happen. Those slowly transformed into a trilogy of novels to take place after Defiant. So that's what we're planning right now.

Cosmere.es

It will still be published before, or after, then?

Brandon Sanderson

It will be published after. I will come, and then we will have a trilogy with Janci and me. Kind of expanding on a lot of the characters she delved into in the novellas.

Steve Argyle

And that's a question for Brandon. Do the runestones do anything? Do they have power in themselves, or are they just markers, or... [fade to black]

Brandon Sanderson

So Steve, runestones. This is a real thing, a thing we have in the historical record. We think they were mostly used for trade and things like that. Maybe they're historical markers, also, but they're a real thing. I of course wanted to incorporate them into the magic system, so yes, in the book these have legitimate magical power. They're basically making the land's wights a little more pliable, so to speak. This is what makes them more willing to work with people. It soothes them. Consider it the magical version of the stuff that my wife plugs in that's supposed to smell good to cats and make them not want to fight with each other.

Katie Payne

I did have a question for Brandon, and it was when I was reading the book, I remembered in the preface that Brandon, you said that you had your friend Dr. Michael Livingston. Because he's an expert on medieval history, and he had you read a book. And as I'm reading this book, there were so many moments where I stop and I google something like, "What is an Earl?", "What is Woden?" Oh, it's Odin. You know? And then I read it, and it's actually historical. These are historical things and like Brandon said in the book, you might think these people don't have teeth, but they do. And that's probably something he learned in this book and I want to know what the book was that he read.

Brandon Sanderson

So, one of the main reasons I picked this time period as opposed to the Titanic or something else, which I was considering, is I'm pretty familiar with this here period already. I wouldn't call myself an Anglo-Saxon scholar, but it is an area of armchair interest to me that I've read on and studied for many many years. I'm not sure if I can point to one book. I mean, if you want to read something that's from this period, The Saxon Tales are quite excellent. But more it's that whenever an article comes up, whenever I see something interesting, I kind of focus in on this and file it away.

I needed this book to be the thing that kept my momentum in writing these secret projects, so I needed something that I already knew. That doesn't mean, like I said, that I am a 100% expert in this. I am not. But, because I knew I potentially had some help from Michael Livingston in my back pocket, I wrote the book and then I went to Dr. Livingston and said, "Help fix this. What did I get wrong?" And I didn't get that much wrong. I was quite pleased. He had a couple comments per chapter about things I could do better. But none of it was major structural stuff. It was just little hints here and there, so I was quite pleased that I was able to get that mostly right on my own!

Matt Hatch

Is this one of our questions for Brandon? When are we getting the Handbook. Is that something we need to ask? Everyone out there is watching. Do you want the Handbook? We need to send Brandon a note.

Brandon Sanderson

[fade to black] So, I hope this does not become the new version of, "When are we getting the in-world book [The] Way of Kings, written by Nohadon, which I get asked all the time. Or, "When are we going to get the full writings of Alendi from Mistborn?" You are never going to get the actual Frugal Wizard's Handbook written by Cecil G. Bagsworth the Third. That is not a thing I'm going to spend a lot of time doing. I am very, very sorry Matt.

Katie Payne

But Brandon spent so much time structuring his magic systems for his Cosmere books that that's part of why this book was refreshing. Because it had a little bit of -- well, I wonder if Brandon would debate that. (imitating Brandon) "No it's not!" [Wren laughs] But it felt a tiny dash of Harry Potter magic, where I didn't have to fully [understand], it didn't have to fully, fully, fully make sense.

Joshua Bilmes

Maybe that's a question for Brandon. (laughs)

Katie Payne

Yeah. Is it Harry Potter magic, a little bit, or no? (laughs)

Brandon Sanderson

[Fade to black] So Katie, I wouldn't consider this a Harry Potter-style soft magic system. The trick about this is this is a magic system, as some of mine are, but more so than others, that depends on the volition of entities involved. The wights have choice in this matter, and because of that it's going to be naturally softer than some harder magic [systems] because you might end up with a wight that is really pliable and willing to work with you, or one's that's really hostile or things like that. So the magic system I wouldn't consider a soft magic system, but it is viewed softly by the people in the world, if that makes sense. They can't account for everything that might or might not happen because they don't have as much control as people generally have in some of my other settings like in Mistborn or something like that. It's a hard magic system that is presented softly.

Matt Hatch

Because I love these chapter headers. The runestones.

Steve Argyle

And people deciphered, people in the audience, have you deciphered what all of those are?

Matt Hatch

Ooh, good question.

Steve Argyle

Because each one is relevant to the question.

Joshua Bilmes

If I had had more time, I know I could -- [panel laughs]

Katie Payne

I looked at them really closely, and I know that they correlate to the story. But, do the shapes correlate to the story, like the rock shapes?

Steve Argyle

Mhm.

Katie Payne

Oh, they do?

Matt Hatch

What don't we know that we should know, Steve?

Katie Payne

Tell me why did they correlate?

Steve Argyle

Some of them are more obvious than others.

Katie Payne

Because I figured out [based on] how this number system was created, that you had a visual language system that you were creating, like this one means 'person', this one means 'lightning', <indecipherable sidetalk from Wren> I don't know what that means, but what do the shapes mean?

Steve Argyle

Some of them are obvious, like you've got one where -- do I not?

Wren Weichman

You're talking about the chapter headers, right?

Steve Argyle

Yes.

Katie Payne

[Gestures to book] These things. Yeah.

Steve Argyle

So I think this is the one where the -- it's too late for it to be the boats -- like here's the Vikings. Now, the boat's pretty obvious, right? But there are three boats, and so there are three stones. That one's simple. But they all have some connection, like when he's healing Ealstan, there's a large strong rock, and one that's leaning against, crumbling. And then the line work connects the two, so it's him transferring his healing nanites. 

Katie Payne

With the rock shapes?

Steve Argyle

With the rock shapes.

Katie Payne

Okay, I gotta see this.

Matt Hatch

Gotcha. Oh my gosh.

Steve Argyle

There's one where it's just a tall square and an oval, and they're leaning together. That's the happily ever after for John and Sefawynn. So some of them are more obvious than others, and some of them might have just been, "This is a cool shape and I'll try and figure what it -- how it relates later."

Katie Payne

What it can mean, yeah.

Matt Hatch

This is probably gonna hurt people watching right now, because they're gonna say, "Yes! Steve could probably tell you exactly what all these mean." All the people that are really curious about those.

Brandon Sanderson

So I can't quite finish that chapter. But very soon after, Dane finds out it's only been three days in his timeline as well. So what is the premise of this story? One gets sent back three days. One gets sent forward three days. And they have to figure out what happened and try to stop it. And that was the idea that really made me want to write this. Three days back, three days forward. Why is his three days in the future and it feels like a post apocalypse? What is happening to her, and why can't anybody notice her? And how can they solve what happened in those chapters, that unfortunately you didn't see, which have the mystery of what's going on? And then kind of try to make it a nice puzzle story, approaching it from two directions. So that's Moment Zero, moment zero being the moment where the explosion happened. 

Brandon Sanderson

Alright? So I'm going to give you a quick primer of what happened and then after the reading I'll kind of explain what the premise was that made me want to write this story. So, [the] story's about two cops. Right? Cop 1, the guy named Dane is kind of annoyed that his partner is moving into a desk job, and they don't ever go out on the street anymore. His partner Lisa is like, "I want to be a desk jockey. It's a much better job. I have political aspirations. But that doesn't mean I've lost my edge." And they're kind of arguing about this stuff. He's like, "For old time's sake, let's go out on this -- I got this call." She's like, "We're not beat cops anymore. Why are we doing this?" He's like, "Well, we're detectives. We can still go do this." So they go out on this call, and shenanigans happen, and there is a giant explosion that neither of them are expecting. And then this happens next. Alright? 

Questioner

Going back to Alcatraz, one of my favourite series--would be a great TV series.

Brandon Sanderson

I think so as well. [audience briefly cheers]

Questioner

I heard a story, and I don't know if this is true, that you were given a challenge and they gave you three random items, and you had to make it into a book. Is that how Alcatraz came to be?

Brandon Sanderson

So it's not quite, but it's close. Nobody gave me them, but I was enjoying watching Whose Line is it Anyway? at the time [audience cheers] and I thought, "Can I do this myself?" and I somewhere found--I went to my writing group, it was, and said, "Alright, throw things at me, to be the items that I need to use for this given book." I can't remember which one it was, it was like two or three. And they just threw things at me, and I wrote them down, and I used them all, just like a Whose Line sort of thing. That was one of the books. I think it was number two because the "I am a fish" thing came from that. Yeah. Good question, thank you.

Questioner

Thank you for being here, obviously.

Brandon Sanderson

My pleasure.

Questioner

I was wondering with how much research you've done into mental illness, and how much it's affected The Stormlight Archive, to even memes like people saying, "If I was in that world, I would definitely be a Radiant." [crowd mildly laughs]. How much has that affected the relationships that you have with the people around you, having that better understanding?

Brandon Sanderson

I sure hope that it has been helpful, right? More what it does is it puts pressure on me. One of my children has depression and I'm like, "I have to be the dad who understands this and does it well, because if I'm not, then there are millions of fans that would get on my case." In some ways, it's really helpful, but in other ways, I'm like, "oh, now I have to put these things that I have learned and talked about into application." And that's actually kind of terrifying, where it's like, I'm not a licensed therapist, I don't try to be. But I'm a dad, and I want to be understanding and want to be helpful. You also have to go to school, so how do you balance that as a dad and make sure, and these sorts of things? I think it has been [helpful], that would really be a question one of my family members. Like, "does he do a better job?" I want to understand people. That's one of the main reasons I became a writer, because I want to understand what it is to be outside of my head, and that's the real sort of challenge for me, is understanding. I hope it helps me, but I don't get to say if I'm good at it or not. I just get to say, "I'm trying."

Questioner

I was wondering, as a writer have you ever doubted yourself, and if so, what did you do?

Brandon Sanderson

What an excellent question. The answer is yes. I think every writer has, right? I've had it multiple times. Every time a book comes out, there is a part of you that says, "Well, this is the one that's gonna end your career, Sanderson." [crowd laughs] "No one's gonna like this one." And there is some reinforcement of that. I'm in entertainment, right? Sometimes that happens. It hasn't happened yet, but there's nothing I can do about that, right?

I have to follow what I want, the stories I want to tell, and hope that it continues to work. There is a time... The bigger moments of doubt were when I was unpublished. I had written 12 novels and I hadn't sold any, and I was getting a lot of questions about "What are you going to do with your life? 10 years writing books and no one's buying them. Maybe that's a hint?"

I've told this story before, I won't go on at length, but the thing that really changed my mindset then was realizing I wasn't writing the books necessarily because I wanted to be a famous author. I was writing the books because I had stories I needed to tell. I realized that if I reached my deathbed, and I had finished writing a hundred novels, and I loved doing it, then that was a success. And that's the bigger bar of success. There is another bar to becoming a pro and then becoming a bestseller, but the biggest hurdle is doing it. I felt like if I did that, I was successful, and I made that decision. It took a whole bunch of weight off of me, and you can see, I think that's been one of my sort of superpowers as a writer, is that I got to make that decision before I sold anything. I have friends who sold books and hadn't yet had that decision process. So suddenly, being out there having to write while published was super difficult for them because they hadn't already kind of gotten over this idea of "What happens if people don't like my books?" I had that "You know, if it happens, it happens. I'm still going to write." [moment] and that's been really helpful to me. I hope that you'll be able to find some moment [like that] yourself.

Questioner

If you could have Alcatraz Smedry's Breaking Talent, what would you do first?

Brandon Sanderson

What would I do first if I had Alcatraz's Breaking Talent? Uh, I've never been asked that before, that's an excellent question. What would I do first? What can I break that would be really, really, really cool to break? I would do something really weird, like I try to break the water in a cup and see if I could get hydrogen and oxygen out of it. That might be really cool. I'd try to do that. I'd see how far I could push the Talent, and how far I could bust it. If it really is Alcatraz's power, I would accidentally break everything I don't want to break, and I wouldn't be able to break the thing that I want, so it probably wouldn't go well for me. First I'd try to see if I could pull off nuclear fission. At that point, I might be scared of what I could potentially accomplish.

Adam Horne

AutoDidact17 says, "I'm curious about the UrDail's connection to Tolkien's Elves. I love the idea of Tolkien being Cytonic or being visited by aliens, but wasn't there a period of several hundred years before the human years when no humans were in touch with ReDawn, Evershore, etc.?" I guess that's the question.

Janci Patterson

So when I'm working on a book, I get excited about dumb little stuff. When we were working on ReDawn, I was like, "Yeah the plot, sure, whatever". I need this thing where Tolkien was Cytonic and the UrDail are his Elves, this is really important, and Brandon was like, "Okay. Let's talk about the plot."

Brandon Sanderson

So, he was, in this lore, didn't know he was Cytonic, right? 

Janci Patterson

Yeah. My explanation was actually not that he was Cytonic, but that he knew Cytonics.

Brandon Sanderson

He knew Cytonics, okay.

Janci Patterson

...And so he had met UrDail who had travelled to Earth, not that he was Cytonic. But it's not canonized, right? It's not in the book, we don't know in the book. So it could be whatever.

Brandon Sanderson

Could be. You get to pick the canon version for these things.

Janci Patterson

Awesome. So that's my headcanon anyway. To me, nothing is canon until it's on the page, though. Because even in my headcanon, I might later be like, "But it makes more sense if it works this way but differently."

Brandon Sanderson

Well, I do the same thing. "Words of Brandon", which is what they call them, are not as high in the hierarchy of canon as what I end up putting in the books, and I've warned people of that.

Janci Patterson

Yeah. I'm on the Coppermind now. There's a "Words of Janci". *laughs*

Brandon Sanderson

*starts and stops a few times* The Cytonics not being kind of official doesn't mean there wasn't some connection, something's happening. And so yeah.