Kids in Stormlight; we have Oroden, we have Gavinor, we have Sah’s daughter Vai, we have Taravangian’s grandkids, plus the little orphan that Kheni and Cob have. How old are these kids going to be at the end of Stormlight 10?
RAFO.
At the end of Oathbringer there is an agreement between Odium and Taravangian.
"If you help me, I will save your family. Anyone within two generations of you."
Taravangian says "Not enough."
"Then we have no deal"
And so then they go on and they make the deal that says "The city itself, and any humans who have been born into it, along with their spouses."
Was the grandchildren included in that? -- or was it meant to be ambiguous?
Depends on where they were born.
And then, Grandchildren. There are three listed of Taravangian's: Gvori, Karavangia, and Ruli. There is also the one that Shallan drew the picture of which I think is a different one. Is that right?
*nods head in agreement*
So far we have four granddaughters. Karavangia is obviously named after her grandfather, Right?
*nods head in agreement*
Does he have more grandchildren named after him?
*shakes head no*
Why are you asking?
I was wondering if Tarah was somehow related to Taravangian.
Good question, no.
In several instances of the highstorms, several characters mention seeing large creatures walking in the highstorms; they don't seem to be super fazed by this. Do they know these creatures exist, is it part of their lore?
Yes. But you've got to also remember that people who are out in highstorms, they expect it to be... they expect to see odd things. When you're out in a highstorm, it does not faze you in the same way that if you go to a horror movie, you expect something horrific to happen.
Do they have a name for said creatures?
There are names in various parts of the lore, but there is no one name.
Could you give us one of them?
No.
If a coppercloud was near an Awakener, would they dampen the effect of the colors being deepened around them?
I haven't thought about that. Yes. That one is a tenuous yes, though, I would have to think about it.
Can you confirm that Shallan is the biological child of her dad, Lin Davar?
*evil laugh* Should I confirm that? Yeah, I'll confirm that, she is.
As I was reading about nightmaws, I thought that nightmaws were like dinosaurs. Is that...?
Yes, but they are feathered.
Like a pterodactyl?
More like a giant...
Chicken!
Giant chicken. We're looking at a giant evil bird.
What would your name be in Sixth of Dusk?
What time of the day were you born?
It is not always that way. I would be, probably, First of the Early Morning.
I dressed up as Kokerlii from Sixth of Dusk. I want to know, red and green are in the book are these [rainbow-colored array of feathers] appropriate, or not?
Kokerlii I had not imagined as fully rainbow colored.
So red and green, were there other colors?
I was imaging red on green.
What about the green Aviar? If I wanted to make a green aviar costume? Green and white?
Yes that would work.
Is it just those two colors? Are there different shades of green?
There are aviar that are like this *gestures to JoyBlu's costume*, full parrot. Totally legit. But There are a lot of breeds of aviar.
*inaudible* What would be the best <pattern>?
Solid colored feathers *inaudible*
Is [Hemalurgy] going to be introduced in other worlds and has Hoid ever used it?
It will be introduced in other worlds; but RAFO on the other one.
Would it be capable for a non-human to become an Elantrian?
Yes, this is theoretically possible. It wouldn't be that hard, the ways you are thinking of it happening would probably work.
Would an Aviar be capable of a spren bond?
What they do is the same thing, by cosmere terms. It is not as powerful; because of that it is easier to shift between people. What you gain is not as strong, but you also gain flexibility. But it would be, cosmerologically, considered the same thing.
What happens if you eat an Aviar?
Normal things happen; you would not gain the powers. You would be a cruel person because Aviar are not of animal intelligence. You would not gain the powers
Can Breath be taken or withdrawn from a sentient object that's not a person?
I will RAFO that.
If Vin had not killed the Lord Ruler. I would think that the Lord Ruler would take up the Well of Ascension a year later. Would he have just fixed the world to be what it was pre-...?
I think there are various theories of where this could have gone. Some, it would have been okay. I think that assuming things would turn out the way the Lord Ruler thought he was capable of doing would be assuming a lot, for what his state was at the time that he was *inaudible*. It is possible that things would have gotten much much worse. I'll just say that. I'm not gonna canonize either way, but I think there's a good argument in both directions.
How do the spren in Shadesmar feel about fabrials? Are they mad that people are trapping spren?
Let's say there's a wide variety of emotions, but the general response would not be favorable.
There are honorspren and cultivationspren on Roshar. The other spren that are tied to orders of Knights Radiant, do they have any relationships with any other Shards?
They are all going to be a mix of the Shards on Roshar. Some weight a little further one direction or the other. They are not off-world Shards. Good question.
Could you tell me whose books are the next few Stormlight?
Yes. Eshonai, book four. (Even though, you know...) Szeth is book five. Six is Lift. Seven is Renarin. Eight is Ash. Nine is Taln. Ten is Jasnah.
Do you have it planned out to a final ending?
I do. It's interesting how the outlines work. The further you get in a given series, the middle books have the least, and the last books have the most. It's the same for the Cosmere. Last books of Era 4 have a lot more than the first book of Era 4 does.
Is there a point where you foresee basically ending the Cosmere and moving away from writing the Cosmere, start doing prequels?
The fact that I will probably not finish this until, like, my 60s if we're lucky. I feel like that point, I could do more jumping around, but that will be an endpoint. I like things to end. So I won't write off doing some other things in the Cosmere, but that will be an endpoint.
What made you want to write Skyward?
Skyward is a weird book in that it is a science fiction book based on a fantasy idea. Some of my favorite books when I was growing up were stories about a boy who finds a dragon egg or a dragon, and raises the dragon and then flies on the dragon, all sorts of fun stuff happens. And I've always wanted to do one of these stories. One of the very first books I ever read in fantasy was Dragonsblood by Jane Yolen, which I just reread so I could write a little review of it. And it's great. One of my favorite books of all time is The White Dragon, by Anne McCaffrey. And you'll find some Anne McCaffrey references in this book, you won't have to look that hard. But the idea was I wanted to do one of these books, but I never felt like I could give a good spin to it. And it is when I combined it with some other worldbuilding I had done in a science fiction universe and changed it from "a boy and his dragon" to "a girl and her spaceship" that the story really started to connect, because the worldbuilding that I had built for this galactic science fiction really clicked with this story. And that was kind of the breakthrough that I made, was combining these two things together.
So, Skyward came from me wanting to write a story about a dragon. It just turns out the dragon is a spaceship with a really weird AI.
Do you have any updates on the Dark One TV series?
It's got an interesting history. Dark One is one I've been working on for a long time, and I actually wrote out a big pitch for it when I pitched Apocalypse Guard to Random House, and I said, "Here's one of the other ideas I'm gonna write someday." They're like, "Woo. We'll keep this in our binder." And that binder made its way to their TV department, who read the pitch and was like, "We have to have this!" and came to me and said "Can we buy this?" I'm like, "Well, I haven't written the books yet." They're like, "We don't care. We want this pitch." And the pitch, the idea is that a young man in our world, a knight shows up to assassinate him, and he finds out that there's kind of a Narnia-esque fantasy world that his father visited when he was a kid and screwed up, and they are super mad. And they have prophecies that this kid is gonna be the next Dark One, and so they're gonna assassinate him before the whole epic-fantasy-thing can happen, and the Dark One tries to conquer the world. They're just gonna take him out first. And so it's kind of this twisting the story on its head idea. And it's a really fun pitch.
So they bought it from me. I expanded it to a 30-page outline, sent it to them. I can't tell you who they got, but they've got somebody very big attached to it, which I'm very excited about, someone who I was excited about that my assistant Peter just about fell over dead when he heard the person attached. And we should be flying out to do pitches to studios and places early part of next year. We wanted to be doing it now, but I have a book launch, and they want me there with them.
It's going really well. It's been a wonderful experience. I'm very hopeful with that, I think it will be a very interesting story if it happens.
What would it take for a member of the Seventeenth Shard Shard to convert over to a member of the Ghostbloods?
Oh, the Ghostbloods would actively recruit from them. So, I think it would not be terribly difficult. It 's gonna depend on which kind of Seventeenth Sharder. Because there are a lot of non-field-agent Seventeenth Sharders, which would be less interesting. Field agents, they would actively recruit.
If you were a Smedry, what would your talent be?
I base most of the talents of the people in the Alcatraz Books off dumb things that I do. So I am famously bad at dancing. Famously. So I would definitely have that one. I am always late; that came from me. (Though really, secretly, it came from my mom; 'cause she is even more late that I am.) Most everything thing in there is me. But I would say probably "bad at dancing", that would probably be my best, because I am just really bad at dancing. It's not even in a funny way, it's just in a boring way.
When will you clear up the things at the end of Bands of Mourning?
That is mostly setup for Era 3 of Mistborn. You can find some answers in Arcanum Unbounded; if you haven't read that, I would recommend that. If you get the the end of Bands of Mourning and you're like "huuuuh?" there are some answers in Arcanum Unbounded, but mostly I'm doing stuff that is Era 3 of Mistborn, which will be written after Stormlight 5. There will be a Wax & Wayne 4. Wax & Wayne 4 will touch on these, but it's not the central theme of the Wax & Wayne books; it's the central theme of Era 3.
Will we ever find out more about Vessel of Ruin?
Yes. I will eventually write Dragonsteel, which is Hoid's backstory; you will find out about all the various Vessels of the Shards of Adonalsium then. It is a little ways off; I'm going to finish all of Stormlight before I do that. It will be the the next thing after Stormlight 10.
What was the inspiration for Sazed's spiritual turmoil?
He came from several ideas. One idea was the missionary for all religions. Which was that the cool concept, that originated his story, was someone who tried to fit a religion to someone like you fit shoes to somebody. "Let's find the right one to fit them." When I was developing that character and working on it in the outlining process, and after I tried a few scenes and knew that I liked who he was, the question that followed up is, "What does he really believe?" As I developed the character, I settled on "He doesn't know," because that's not what he does, he tried to suit to other people. I knew that the story had to put him in a crisis of deciding what does he actually believe, and what is his belief system, because that is who he is. The inspiration of that was simply growing out of who the character was as I saw this character, and trying to create a crisis that would force him down that path, to make the hard decisions.
Who is going to be the antagonist for Stormlight Archive 4?
I can't answer that without giving spoilers, so you get a RAFO.
You see, in a few places, Shards that can read people's minds, or send thoughts to people's minds. What, in other settings, would be called telepathy. Do we have, in any Shardworlds, a magic system where ordinary people have telepathy?
I've actually designed one that I think is interesting, whether I will make that work or not, I'm not sure. But there is a very interesting world, one that i have right now in the Cosmere, that we will see. I try not to canonize these things till I actually write the story. As happened with Silence Divine, where people have been for six years, "When are you going to write this story?" Because I wrote one chapter of it.
But yes, I do have something that works that way.
How old is Taravangian?
Taravangian is in his 80's, I believe. He is not immortal, he has not lived an extra long time. He might be 70's local time.
How many kids does he have? If he has all these granddaughters running around.
He has a number of children, but I have not defined it.
Were they all with the same wife?
No. That, I have defined.
Were they all by a wife?
A better question. RAFO.
Was he as much of a stud as Spook?
RAFO.
A long time ago, where you said that Pailiah was the elderly ardent in Kharbranth that Shallan saw, is that right?
Yes? If you say I said that, then I did.
Does that mean it is still true?
Let's just say there is a Herald in close proximity to Taravangian.
It was in a signed book but we never got a picture of it.
There is a Herald in close proximity to Taravangian. I'm not being sneaky about that.
Is there more than one?
There have been in the past, but there is only one that you would call influencing him right now. But there have been others in the past.
But then [Hoid] has to have a flute [to Lightweave], I don't think he had to have the flute? He thought he had to have help [Lightweaving], so he found other things instead of spren. Is that right Brandon?
[Asking for clairification on question not contained in audio]
In Way of Kings?
*Makes RAFO face*
Where you *inaudible* Hoid as a Lightweaver in Era 2?
Hoid was a Lightweaver in Dragonsteel.
I mean a spren Lightweaver. Unless the timeline's still, really--
Meaning was I planning for him to become a Lightweaver?
Before Era 2 since we thought Era 2 was going to be Era 3.
Hoid has never quite stopped being a Lightweaver. He is very happy to be fully empowered with things.
Does that mean he was not fully a Lightweaver?
You will find out someday. His magic was not fully functional, but he was Lightweaving in Way of Kings
Hoid and Vasher, can they recognize each other?
It depends on what Hoid looks like at the moment. He is very good at making himself unrecognizable.
So on Ashyn, was the magic system always diseased based?
That was the diseased based magic.
Yeah, before-
I'll RAFO that. It isn't exactly the same as it was.
Hoid and Vasher/Zahel, they haven't been seen on screen together. Have they been together? Have they met?
Yes.
Are they aware they are both worldhoppers?
I wouldn't necessarily go that far.
Both Tien and Kaladin are Radiant, you talked about how that wasn't hereditary, and how that was more because of where they were with association. Was it because they were associated with the same person, or the same place?
Yes, Connection influences spren.
Right, but was the Connection to a person that they were around?
Connection to people.
So not necessarily the place where they were?
Right.
Because my way of thinking it might be with the people is because, like with the Purelake on the Cognitive Realm there would be more spren hanging out there because that was more land, right; so if you spent more time on that you would have more spren around you. So if you're closer to more water, you're closer to more spren.
That is not an irrelevant observation.
You said in a previous question and answer that there was Cultivationlight, possibly. Since Lift is aligned to Cultivation, does she actually use Stormlight?
That's a RAFO. You know I'm staying away from this.
How many spren would it take to make a Shardtrebuchet?
A Shardtrebuchet? Oh, trebuchet memes. But it could be done with one spren if it were the right spren.
Can a bracelet created by Navani be used to detect emotional Allomancy?
This is possible.
You pulled Apocalypse Guard, will it ever come back?
I sat down with Apocalypse Guard and looked it over and since I couldn't decide what was wrong with it, I actually gave it to Dan Wells, who's a friend of mine, and I said, "Dan, can you figure out what's wrong with this?" We broke in together, we've been in writing groups together for a long time, and he read through it and he's like, "Yeah, I've got some ideas." So I actually, you know, wanted to work with him, so he actually jumped in to try and do a draft of it himself, and he fixed a lot of the problems, but he didn't fix the biggest problem, which is that the worldbuilding doesn't work.
Which is a really weird thing for a Brandon Sanderson book, but it's part of the reason we can't release it. I can't release a book with bad worldbuilding. I just can't. So while he fixed the characters, I still need to fix the worldbuilding. If I can, we will release it. If I can't, I'm sure even if I don't ever release it, I'll find a way to put it on my website or something like that. So you would be able to read it, and if we do release it, I'll make sure to release it in the failed version too for those who are interested so you can compare. So I think it's really illustrative to see how a professional fails.
Is a Herald being able to sense where the other Honorblades are still canon?
No. It's possible I will decide to canonize it, but right now it is not.
Is Spensa's race left intentionally vague in Skyward?
Yes, it is.
So how do you feel about the new US cover, which depicts Spensa as white?
That's something the publisher decides, it's out of our hands.
What happens when you flare copper?
What happens when you flare copper? Various different things can happen when you flare copper. I'll RAFO that for now. [...] I'll delve into that more, I don't want to delve into it too much right now, you'll find out, probably in Era 3, some of the things that can happen with copper.
What's next for you with this series and in general?
My outline for Skyward calls for four books. The sequel will come out a year from this November. Starting in January, I plan to work on the fourth [book] in The Stormlight Archive, and that'll take about 18 months. I split my time between that series and other projects to prevent myself from getting burned out. When I finish a big epic fantasy, I need something different to get excited about for a while. So I'll jump back into this series after the next Stormlight.
There’s a climactic moment near the end involving Spensa and M-Bot, which felt rather cinematic. How did it feel to write that scene?
I love those ending moments. I outline my books backwards, starting with the moment I want to earn, and then the whole goal of writing the book is to earn those moments.
Are there any particular messages that you hope readers will take away from this book?
I don't really go into books with a message. I like to explore the characters and their passions, and the theme, without any overt agenda. I just want readers to be able to see through the eyes of people who are different from them, to see that our biases do affect how we perceive the world—and that's both a good and bad thing. I just want them to come out of the story saying, "That was great, let me think about this some more."
Something noteworthy about your work is the massive interconnectivity. Is Skyward connected to any of your universes or continuities?
It's connected to a novella I wrote, which explored an interesting premise in faster-than-light travel. I prefer not to publicize which one, because the spoiler at the end of that story related to a twist near the end of Skyward. This isn't connected to my big epic fantasy universe, the Cosmere, for several reasons. First, the way space travel is possible here doesn't work with that setting. Also, this incorporates lore from Earth, and I try to keep Earth and the Cosmere very distinct and separated.
What kind of research did you do?
Mainly, it was about fighter pilots and what they go through, what g-force feels like, stuff like that. I'm indebted to a couple of real-life fighter pilots for helping me to get it right. Also, I had to research what it's like to live in societies where the machine of war grinds people up out of necessity to keep the country alive, what it does to them. I took inspiration from real-world regimes to create an amalgamation, which still doesn't go as far as it could have. I just included subtle markers to the reader to suggest the sort of stress they live under.
One thing we tend to expect in YA is the presence of romance. There's no real sign of it in Skyward, though. Was this your intention from the start, or did the characters just not work out that way?
It was more the characters. In my first draft, I tried to shoehorn a romance in. I like romance; you'll find them in my adult books. But here, it didn’t fit the characters or the theme, and it felt inappropriate. This is a very traumatic time for Spensa, who's focused in every way on becoming a pilot and finding out the secrets of her past, and romance just didn't work. So I revised in the direction the characters demanded.
The obvious pairing was Spensa and Jerkface. That’s where I was trying to go, but it felt like a cheesy romance in the middle of an action-adventure story about finding out who you really are, and about going into battle, and all of that stress and pressure. Maybe someday I'll release the deleted scenes and people can see how poorly it worked.
Spensa comes across as overconfident and bombastic at times, while her AI sidekick, M-Bot, is both comic and tragic. What else can you tell us about developing characters?
They really play off one another. With M-Bot, I needed both a friend and a foil for Spensa, since there's a lot of conversation between them. I also needed an outside perspective. Spensa's culture has problems. Humankind crashed on this planet decades ago, and has been subject to these alien invasions and air raids for so long, that their entire society is built around the machine of war to protect themselves. The technology and temperament revolve around getting pilots into the air at all costs, and it’s skewed everything as a result. I needed an outside voice to ask questions and raise concerns, even if it's through humor.
Because Spensa is such an extreme character, one of the challenges was to depict that a person who's spent most of her life alone, hunting rats, while imagining herself to be a great warrior, is going to have a warped perspective on what it means to be a fighter pilot, weirder than the rest of the society might.
In a way, she's a stand-in for someone like me, who enjoys larger-than-life action movies but has never experienced real violence. She’s like the person in the seat with the popcorn, who’s confronted by the reality and discovers it’s not what she imagined.
What was your inspiration for Skyward?
Ever since I was young, I’ve loved the quintessential "boy and his dragon story." My favorite is Jane Yolen’s Dragon’s Blood. It was one of the very first fantasy books I ever read, and it left a lasting impression on me. But there was also Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, and the How to Train Your Dragon film series. I love this archetype of story, and I’ve always wanted to do one, but I held off until I could find a new direction in which to approach it. Eventually, it drifted away from "a boy and his dragon" towards "a girl and her spaceship."
About four years ago, I hit on this idea, but I only had the framework. I still needed setting, characters, things that would really make me excited about the entire story. As a writer, it’s always about digging down deep into what I love about certain stories—what are the essential elements, what are the concepts that thrill me, and can I build those back up into something new? The more I built this back up, the more excited I became.
For most things, like worldbuilding and plots, I do outlines. But characters develop by instinct, as their voices emerge. The character of Spensa came to me almost fully formed. I was intrigued and enthralled by the idea of this girl who had been raised on stories from our world, the myths and legends, even ones we know are fiction like Conan the Barbarian. She sees herself as the latest in a long line of warriors, except her actual job is hunting rats and selling them for meat on the street. She has this idea of who she should be, what her destiny is, but in real life she’s just barely getting by. Characters come out of conflict, and hers is the contrast between what her life is like and what she thinks it should be, the difference between perception and experience.
