Recent entries

    Calamity release party ()
    #11207 Copy

    Questioner

    How much older is Wax than Wayne?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh... 17... 20 years... Something like that. No, no, no, not quite that much. It's more like 10 years isn't it?

    Isaac Stewart

    Which one?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let's see, I'm trying to remember how-- Wax is 40s... Wayne... Yeah, it's about 10 years.

    Calamity release party ()
    #11208 Copy

    Questioner

    I was wondering if you know, like, exactly how tall Kaladin is?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Um... Kaladin? 6'-4". But you've got to remember... People on Roshar are taller than people here. So like 6'-4" compared to someone else in Roshar. But it's a low gravity, high oxygen environment which means that he's probably more like 6'-8", or something like that. Like you're gonna see... But it-- that's only-- you know, like for instance their year is different than ours too, and things like that. If you just want to imagine him at 6'-4" that's fine.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    What five books do you think helped you understand leadership the best?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well Art of War is definitely part of that. I would say that The Prince is important for understanding leadership, even though I don't agree with every point he's making. By the way he is not as-- Even though it is Machiavelli writing it, he is not as machiavellian as we think he is in that book… So The Prince--  Hmmm, a lot of Plato surprisingly, is where I pull some of my ideas. King Benjamin's speech from the Book of Mormon, in Mosiah, if you haven't read that, is definitely part of it. Ummm... What else--

    Questioner

    Like where do you get your-- because you obviously have experience because that's how leadership works.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is interviews, it is personal experience, it is talking to my friends who are in the military and asking them "Does this sound right? Does this feel right? Tell me what it feels like to obey. Tell me what it feels like to be in command." And things like that. Just lots of practice and interviews and things is where most of it is coming from.

    Questioner

    So it’s less like personal experience and more you're really good at researching it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, a writer has to be able to do that because for a book like this the amount of psychology and medicine, battlefield tactics, leadership, and all these other things you need to know, you can't know them all. You can't do them all personally. You've got to be able to experience it, you've got to be able to write it as best as you can, and then go to experts. Like the medicine in this I went to a field surgeon and I said "Will you read over my Kaladin scenes and tell me where I'm going wrong." Like I was able to get myself 80% of the way there with research and then the 20% is me going to an expert and saying "Tell me what I'm doing wrong."

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    So there’s the scene of Kaladin standing alone in /Words of Radiance/. He’s lost his spren, everything is gone, and he's just standing there, and he still fights no matter what. Did that scene come first? Or did the rest of the book?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That was the pivotal scene for the book. That was the thing I felt he needed to learn and the person he needed to be. So I have several focus scenes for each book and that was one of them for this one.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    I was just wondering if you were going to continue the mirroring as the Elantris and Warbreaker series continue...

    Brandon Sanderson

    They are probably not going to continue that way. There will be some things, like there will be some tonal things. Part of the reason I wrote Warbreaker was this idea that I'm like "I wrote this whole book about the city of the gods but I didn't actually get to deal with people living as gods". So I came back to the topic because of that reason but the second one is probably going to be a little bit more like my unpublished book Aether of Night. I'm going to fold in some of those ideas.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    So when are you going to tell us who Gaidal Cain is reincarnated as?

    Brandon Sanderson

    *laughs* One of the prevailing theories online is true.

    Questioner

    One of 18?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Most of the-- It's not Olver for instance. People thought that for years but Robert Jordan said it wasn't. I think there are two or three leading theories and it is one of those.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    I've been trying to brainstorm what Stormlight characters would have jumped into the other books so far. You told me they had at one point.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, they have but you've got to remember that The Stormlight Archive you are seeing right now, what's happening in it is like late cosmere era, does that make sense? So there are lots of people from the world that have been to other worlds but the people you know--this is happening just before Alloy of Law era-- So does that make sense? That's the first time you'd be able to see anyone here and by that era the bleed over is a lot less because we have the whole Odium trapped and things like that. There's a lot less-- There are a lot fewer people traveling in and out of Roshar than there once were.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    I know you went on mission in Korea, as did I, did anything come from that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, quite a number of things have been influenced by it. I'd say the biggest influence is Elantris, the writing system is based on the idea of Korean and Chinese mixed together. But Asian philosophy, like the kami and things like that are also common in Korea, that belief that everything has a soul. So yeah it's had a huge influence on me, just the way I worldbuild-- I mean just the fact, I don't know if you've read The Way of Kings… I don't know if you know but everyone's Asian, right? Like Szeth, the white dude, is the one that looks weird them. And that's just because-- It was partially influenced by that.

    Ben McSweeney AMA ()
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    MetalRuk

    Hi, Mr Sweeney!

    I'm sorry if my question might be complicated and/or badly articulated.

    When you are reading something and are trying to picture that world and those characters in your mind to later draw them, more often do you do your final work based on your first impression or the first picture you imagine, or do you try to imagine what you read in the most diferent ways you can?

    Thank you for the AMA!

    Ben McSweeney

    Often times I'll try and imagine a couple variations, just to be certain I've explored the idea. Sometimes my first idea turns out to be the best one, but not often! It helps to go ahead and articulate that first idea just to get it out in the air, and then look for ways to do something new with it, or think of an alternative altogether.

    Calamity release party ()
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    Questioner

    Which ear does Vin wear her earring in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't know... Oh, man. I can't <answer> this one because I can't remember it. They know it on the 17th Shard, you can go ask them. I can't remember. Now if I told you I'd get it wrong.

    Questioner

    Okay. What-- What's your instinct? Off the top of your head?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My instinct? I'm a robot. I work by programming.

    Calamity release party ()
    #11219 Copy

    Questioner

    So if someone is storing weight-- Feruchemy-- Can you store enough that you can actually float like a balloon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh, your clothing and stuff will still have weight.

    Questioner

    If you were, like, completely naked and just *unintelligible* your hand up a wall, you will?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. You will-- You could float, yeah. That's-- I mean, you could get your weight so low that it's basically like being in microgravity, which is...q

    Questioner

    Like 99%? Like a vacuum balloon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.

    Calamity release party ()
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    Questioner

    So in Scadrial we know that Allomancy is end-positive, and Hemalurgy end-negative, and Feruchemy is neutral, right? Is there such a concept on Sel, with the magics?

    Brandon Sanderson

    All of the magics on Sel, every one of them, is end-positive.

    Questioner

    Okay. And what fuel-- well, it's not a fuel. What focuses it? It's-- no, not that too.

    Brandon Sanderson

    They all draw power from the Dor. None of it's coming from the people. That's what this refers to, right?

    Calamity release party ()
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    Questioner

    You do the [Stormlight Archive chapter header] arches too right?

    Isaac Stewart

    I did do the arches as well, yeah.

    Questioner

    Is there like a pattern <though>? 'Cause I'm trying to find a consistent one. Like certain characters or...

    Isaac Stewart

    You know, the pattern to those is... Peter reads the chapter and then he decides which faces to put on the chapter heading.

    Questioner

    So it isn't just like whose point of view it's from it could be...

    Isaac Stewart

    It can be-- It can be more thematic. I'm not sure of all of the things that Peter takes into consideration. That would be a good question to ask him sometime.

    Firefight release party ()
    #11222 Copy

    Questioner

    I want to know how long it took you to write your first book.

    Brandon Sanderson

    First book took about three years.

    Questioner

    Three years?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I got a lot faster after that.

    Questioner

    <How did you do that?>

    Brandon Sanderson

    Practice. Know-- Confidence, knowing what I was doing. Finishing a book you're like "Wow I can actually do this" and after that like-- It was like, this is a weird metaphor, but it's like the first time I got a girlfriend, had a relationship for a while, "Why was I so stressed about getting a girlfriend? That was actually-- I can do that!" and after that I dated a lot. You know what I mean?

    Firefight release party ()
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    Shadow Guardian

    <At one point it says> that there were 99 Desolations before the Final Desolation, in the Prelude. Was there actually 99?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Nope, there were not actually 99. That is a mythological relic. Like the 40 days and 40 nights may well be a metaphor for "a lot" ...Good question.

    Firefight release party ()
    #11224 Copy

    Questioner

    What is it like for you when you end a characters life? Like how is it for you emotionally?

    Brandon Sanderson

    How is it for me emotionally--

    Questioner

    Like when I lost a character in Mistborn, I couldn't read. I was done.

    Brandon Sanderson

    ...The thing about it is I am a planner as a writer. So I have usually prepared a great deal. That means that I am prepared and ready for the character's passing. And the way that I usually build in character death is that it is more the characters demanding it than I'm killing them. It is them saying "This is the risk I demand to take" and me as the narrator saying "Well that risk has certain consequences and sometimes I will protect you from those consequences, sometimes I won't" The narrator will decide when I should and when I shouldn't, but the character decides when they make those risks, if that makes sense? It's kind of this pseudo-organic process, talking about characters is the one that is most organic to me-- Plots and worlds I can talk a lot about the nuts and bolts, with characters it's a feeling and an instinct of what they would do. And then I have to decide what I do with the consequences to that. But usually I've planned it out quite a bit ahead of time, it doesn't happen off the cuff for me and so I'm ready for it. I do apologize but I feel that it makes a stronger story.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    You've talked about all these awesome ideas, do you ever get to the point when you are writing where you're like "This isn't awesome, this is stupid."

    Brandon Sanderson

    Do I ever get to the point where I'm writing where this isn't awesome, this is stupid. Yeah. Yeah it happens, and then I just set that aside or I go talk to someone and "is this awesome or is this stupid?" My writing group is helpful for that. But it does happen, to everybody. There are ideas that are just so lame. You think they are cool, you are excited about them-- Mostly they happen at night where you're going to bed and thinking and you're "This is the coolest idea, I'm going to write this book" and the next you are like "What was I thinking?! This is not a cool book."

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    Do you have any plans to release Death by Pizza?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Do I have any plans to release Death by Pizza?  When I was getting ready for what I should do my readings on for this I was like "Oh I could read them Death by Pizza" and I opened it up and read the first chapter again and was like "No I can't read--" *laughter* Someday if I have time to fix it, I will. It was mostly-- A lot of what you see me doing is experimenting in other genres so I can practice that genre and incorporate it into my mainline epic fantasies. I think that great writing, particularly in a big book like those, means that you draw on a lot of different traditions so that the different plot lines and characters feel like different types. So I'm practicing urban fantasy, I'm practicing-- Things like Legion is me practicing a detective novel so I can use that later on. That one just didn't turn out good enough to release. It was good practice for me.

    Firefight release party ()
    #11227 Copy

    Questioner

    Is Mistborn ever going to be made into a movie?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Is Mistborn going to be made into a movie. I recently read the treatments by the guy who has the movie rights and I like them a lot. They are doing good work with the treatments. We sold the rights. Whether they'll get made or not is still kind of a crapshoot because this is how Hollywood works, right? So we will see, but the treatments are good. Peter can back me up on that. The first one we like a lot… So yes there is motion but I don't know how long it will take us, okay?

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    Where did you get the idea of gloryspren and fearspren showing up when people feel certain emotions?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So spren in The Way of Kings where did I come up with these ideas for things that physically manifest people's emotions. So I honestly think the earliest seed of this, years and years ago, was reading Perrin in The Wheel of Time where he can smell people's emotion and I thought that having an actual different sense to recognize emotion was so cool I think that is what planted the seed in the back of my brain. The other thing that that is mashing-up with though is kind of Shinto ideas, because I was relying a lot on some Eastern philosophy when I was building Roshar and The Way of Kings. And the Shinto believe that everything has a soul and a spirit, a kami as they call it, and things like this and wanting to expand that into not just the rock but your emotions have a soul and they manifest and things like that. And then I was working in the cosmere and all this stuff but in the end I think it is a mash-up of those two concepts. Wanting a cool way, a different way, a way that changes society that emotions play out mixed with this idea of the kami and the Shinto beliefs.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    So when it comes to the superhero genre and female characters, I feel you have the two types. You have the damsel or the super sexualized black widow that is awesome. How has that been a worry for you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So she's talking about the-- In superheroes you usually have the damsel, so you have the Mary Jane that needs to be rescued, or you have the black widow, hypersexualized thing like this, and the question is has that been a worry for me. It is something that is in the back of my brain, it's not  just a problem in superhero fiction, it's one of the ones that it is most manifest in. You will find the problem in most genres of speculative fiction, especially action genres. There's also what they call the-- There's the archetype of the Mother and the Crone. Those are your archetypes that women get to play. And it's been in the forefront of my brain a lot, in my writing, because I think as a writer the further you go as a writer the more you need to be aware of when you are falling into a cliche and when you're not. So yes it is something I've thought about quite a bit, particularly when I was writing Firefight "How am I going to deal with Megan as a character? And how am I going to deal with Mizzy as a character? And how they differ." So it was something I was thinking about very consciously as I working about on these books.

    I think one regret I have a little bit is that I feel Mistborn I did a great job with Vin, but there's not very much of a female supporting cast in those books. It's kind of the archetype  that there's one girl in the whole city and then everyone else. And you kind of run into this and things like that and I was a little less conscious as a writer in those days. But it is something that I think all writers need to be aware of. The thing is that we talk a lot about feminist theory because it tends to be most manifest when men are writing, but when women write there is also one that they do that is they tend to make the guy like this perfect guy and what happens is the guy has no personality he's just perfection and the girl is either a klutz or a doofus or she can't do anything right and the guys are all these perfect ideals. And that's when women write, when men write it's like the girl exists to be saved or to be lusted after. You just have to be aware as a writer these are going to be very natural to you because of our society or whatever we've seen a lot in storytelling, and you just have to become aware of them. And as soon as you become aware of them you can start working on them.

    The easiest way of getting away from doing this is to avoid tokenism, meaning if you are going to put someone in who is a certain ethnicity or is different from yourself or one thing like that, if you force yourself to put two in you then suddenly can't make them the stereotype because otherwise they are the same character and that forces you to really think about that and is one very easy way. I can go on for hours about that so take my class and ask me and we can talk about it.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    So, your Legion series, where the guy has multiple hallucinations and everything like that-- Where did you come up with your idea? Was it just hanging out--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Where was the idea for Legion, which if you are not familiar with it Legion is this weird  thing where I have a guy who's a genius, he can study any topic and learn that topic and become an expert in it very quickly but the information appears as a hallucination who can coach him in that information. So it's like he's a schizophrenic but instead of the voices telling him to kill people they tell him how to hack computers or things like that.

    The idea came because I was actually working in a writing group with my friend Dan who was working on a book called The Hollow City which is about a real schizophrenic, not a super-powered schizophrenic in a weird Brandon-world. And I'm like "Oooh this would be so cool, what if his hallucinations helped him? What if--" and he's like "That's not my book, I don't want to write that book" and I'm like "But it's so cool!" and he's like "Then you write it!" So I did. And that's where it came from. A lot of time being a writer is realizing "Oh I wish someone would do this, HEY! I know someone who can do that, ME!" and then I write the books.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    What has been your best motivation for writing/What would you advise to aspiring writers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay so what has been my best motivation in writing and what would I advise a new writer. So motivation is a tricky thing because it is very individual. For me, a big part of my motivation was wanting to tell these stories. Just having these stories in my head and wanting to find a way to make these books make people feel the way I feel by the books that I love. Like when I was reading Anne McCaffrey books and they had this powerful effect on me "I've gotta learn how to do that." It was just something that was in me. Mixed with the increasing knowledge as I went to school that I was preparing myself for something that as Oscar Wilde would put it, basically useless. And then if I didn't end up making it as a writer-- It's like I imagined, I say sometimes, that it was like a phantom cubicle chasing me and if it caught me I had to become an insurance actuary or something. I'm sorry if there's an insurance actuary, I'm glad we have you. *laughter* I'm glad we have Erics who love math... But anyway I felt if I didn't give it the best shot I could that I would never have another shot at it. So that worked for me. You are going to have to find your own motivation.

    The number one thing I would tell a new writer is to treat learning to write like you would treat learning to draw or play a musical instrument, in that it's a creative process not an event. Writing a book is a process, and so your job as a writer is to train yourself to be someone who writes great books not someone who wrote one good book. That means you have time to practice, you've got to sit and-- like you do your scales, you have to spend time at it. I would also say take my class at BYU, or watch the versions online, and Writing Excuses, my podcast for writers. We started something brand new starting today where we are doing a master class in writing where every month we are going to take one topic and drill down very deeply into it.  It will be a great place to start.  Just go to WritingExcuses.com and click play and listen to our episode, okay?

    Footnote: Brandon is referring to Season Ten of Writing Excuses here.
    #writing advice
    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    So you have a lot of emotional times in your books where you feel something really strong, do you feel that when you are writing or do you think "I need to have an emotional point--"

    Brandon Sanderson

    The question is, I have a lot of emotional times in my book, do I feel that when I'm writing or do I just sit there and say "I need an emotional time right now". There's a little of both, as a storyteller you get a good feel for when you need certain beats in storytelling. One of the things I like about stories though, and this will tell you a little about me, I am not a very emotional person. My friends will tell you and kind of reinforce this, I am basically, kind of the opposite of an emotional person. When I saw that movie Unbreakable, I know that there are people who are broken so there must be people who can't be broken at all. I know people who are bi-polar with huge mood swings, I'm kind of the opposite of that. If you have a 0 to 100 emotional scale I get between a 65 and 75 every day. Doesn't change. I feel the same way every day when I wake up, but stories make me feel powerful emotion. They are one of the things that just tweak that needle in me and make it go crazy up and down. Which is one of the reasons why I think I fell in love with books and storytelling is because of that powerful emotion. So yes I do, and at the same time part of me is "I need something here. What do I need right here?" and my instincts say "Oh you need a pow. What's our pow?" and you work on it for a while until it comes together for you.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    Where did the idea to split The Way of Kings and to make it take place in multiple places come from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The Way of Kings taking place with the different timelines? So Way of Kings I wrote, the very first version of it--in its contemporary form, I wrote the first book about Dalinar when I was a teenager--but the very first book called The Way of Kings I wrote in 2002 and I tried to cram way too much into that book. The big failing of that book was I tried to do everyone's story at once. And so when I re-wrote it in 2009, or whenever it was, I decided I would take the characters and spread them out across the 10 book series and I would focus on a certain set of them early on and then transition into other ones. But in order to maintain some of the complexity I like in my books, particularly big epic fantasies, I added in the flashback sequence, one per character per book as a means to adding some depth and complexity but using it to build up a character you already knew, rather than doing someone completely different. And so this kind of allowed me to tell the story the way I wanted to, by doing-- That did mean I still had to have two separate timelines because I needed to do Shallan and I needed to do Kaladin, 'cause I knew they were going to be important, interacting together for the next few books. Which did put me in two different places but that was much better than the six different places the original had. And it's just because I like complexity, I like a book that everything comes together at once.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    Have you ever justified the law of conservation of mass in the regeneration of shardplate?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, law of conservation of mass and the regeneration of shardplate. So conservation of energy and mass in the cosmere, you have to understand we are working on the Three Realms, Spiritual, Cognitive, and Physical and there is a lot of dense energy on the Spiritual plane. Most of the magics are working and creating a conduit to the Spiritual plane, pulling something through or sticking it back in. And so everything's conserved, but we have a dump of energy up there that we are kind of using as a dump of energy that we are pulling things back and forth with.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    First of all thank you for creating your own justified physics laws for your magic systems. Coming from a scientist I appreciate that, even though--

    Brandon Sanderson

    My pleasure. I like to have-- You know I was a chemist for one year in college, one year until I washed out. No really what it was… In high school chemistry is about blowing stuff up and doing cool experiments. They use that to trick you. *laughter* Because then you go to college and their like "Great! Now you are doing math equations, all day" And while I loved-- Oh, Eric's over here, he's like "Yes! That's what I love, math equations. Give me more!" I really did enjoy a lot of the concepts, I just did not enjoy the busy work so that's why I jumped ship. But I like my magic to make sense. Don't get me wrong, when I say "Err on the side of awesome" I don't mean "Write your stories in such a way that they don't make sense" but I will often start with "This is a cool image, I want to have work. How can I work out the logistics of that?" That's the difference between me and a science fiction writer. Science fiction writer extrapolates forward to what would happen with technology. I start with something cool and extrapolate backward.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    Is there ever going to be a mash-up where different magic systems are actually going to collide and--

    Brandon Sanderson

    The question is is there going to be a mash-up where different magics, from my books, collide. Yes, there will be. I came up with the concept of what I call the cosmere… Long ago, it was about 20 years ago now, when I wrote my very first story that was about a guy traveling between different planets in a magical universe. Where he would go to the planet, try to figure out how the magic worked, then just get it working, then see if it was something he wanted to learn about and know. And that grew over 20 years into what I call the cosmere, which is a collection of planets in a fantasy universe, in which all of the magics are interacting in interesting ways. And we will eventually have some cool crossover books but right now the series I am writing are about the series themselves and so we won't have crossover yet but it will happen eventually.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    What has been your best writing experience?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What has been my best writing experience? There's a lot of them, I don't know if I can pick a best one. It's just the thing I love is, I spent ten years writing books kind of by myself alone at night working a graveyard shift at a hotel and the fact that I get to do this full time and I don't have to answer the phone and bring people laundry in the middle of writing a cool scene about shardblades. That's really nice. That I don't have to be-- I'm writing the climax and "Ah you would like a wake up call?" and then back to my climax. So being able to share the stories with people, having people who want to read them and support me is really fun.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    How did you think of your powers with Alcatraz?

    Brandon Sanderson

    How did I think of the powers in Alcatraz. So if you aren't familiar with the Alcatraz books, they are books about a family who all have a magical talent and they are all based on stupid things that I do. *laughter* I am really good at breaking things. This is my phone. *shows phone, laughter ensues* This is my tablet, it only looks this nice because the last time I dropped it I have a nice assistant who took it to the store to fix it last month. So that'll last a few months. So Alcatraz's magical powers is that he is able to magically break things. I'm always late. I wasn't late today because we came up early to have dinner, but I was late to dinner. I'm late to everything So I have another character in that who has the superpower of magically arrive late to things, but he'll arrive late to things like bullets and tax day. They turn into superpowers. It started as me wanting the goofy things I do to become superpowers and extrapolated out from there.

    Firefight release party ()
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    Questioner

    What inspired you to write that series [Mistborn]? It's amazing.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh good question, what inspired me to write Mistborn… A couple of things have to come together for me to write a book. Usually it is not one idea. Usually one idea is kind of the sparking point but then I file it in the back of my brain and wait until other ideas stick to it and work in really cool ways. Mistborn is a conglomeration of several things. First off it was watching-- I guess it was reading-- reading Harry Potter and being like "Wow these Dark Lords sure get a tough time of it. They're always beaten by these dopey kids." Right? *laughter* Like Sauron, there's this little furry-footed British dude who's like-- destroys your whole empire or things like this. And I was like "These poor guys, what if we had a book where the Dark Lord won? Where-- What if Frodo got to the end and the Dark Lord was like 'Oh thanks for bringing my ring back.' and then killed him and took over the world." It was really, I'm a fan of The Wheel of Time and thinking what if Rand got to the end of The Wheel of Time and the Dark One is like "Okay, I'm all powerful, you're not, end." And he won. Oh the Pattern just broke.

    As an aside for Wheel of Time fans, I actually wrote that scenes for my own catharsis. I actually wrote a scene, I never let anyone else see it, where Rand lost *laughter* and it's actually like this dramatic moment and he's like "I could just destroy the world right now" And I just wrote "And so he did, The end." *laughter* I had a good laugh over it and then deleted it.

    So, what if the Dark Lord won, but I figured that would be a downer of a story so I filed that in the back of my head and it melded with my love of heist stories. You'll notice Steelheart is also a heist story. It's one of my favorite archetypes, the gang who all have their individual talents and they get together to do cool things like-- I think one of my favorite movies in recent times was actually Inception which was a heist story using people's brains. So cool, such a great concept. But one of my classic favorite movies is Sneakers, if you haven't seen that. It's so good! So that genre made me want to write a heist novel in a fantasy world so I developed that independently. Allomancy and Feruchemy were developed independently as cool magic systems, that eventually started interacting in interesting ways. And then Kelsier was the other kind of linchpin, him as a character, wanting to tell this story about a guy who had been an upper-class thief, a con-man who then got motivation to go "No I'm going to do something good with my life. I'm going to change the world. It's kind of hard to explain.

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    Questioner

    I have a question about [Tia]. I think she might-- and I *unintelligible* finished this, so I'm not sure-- but I think [Tia] might be an Epic and that her weakness might be cola. *Brandon and Isaac laugh* And so she stops it by drinking so much cola. And she stops it. But that's the only reason I can figure out why she drinks so much cola. 

    Brandon Sanderson

    You haven't known very many adults who like their cola, have you?

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    Questioner

    What is your favorite book besides the ones that you wrote?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What is my favorite book besides the ones that I wrote. That is an excellent question. I would say my favorite classic... is Les Miserables. It is fantastic. I love how Victor Hugo writes character. My favorite fantasy novel is a book called Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, because it is the book that I read when I was a teenager that made me fall in love with books and become a writer.

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    Questioner

    Did Lopen bond a spren or is he a squire?

    Brandon Sanderson

    As of right now, Lopen is a squire.

    Questioner

    Okay, as of right now. So it's a potential RAFO.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh, I answered your question exactly. *questioner laughs* That's not a RAFO, that's an exact answer to the question you asked.

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    Questioner

    What would have happened if Vin had actually met up with Hoid in Mistborn-- er-- Hero of Ages?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Eh... Have you read Secret History?

    Questioner

    I-- I have never heard of Secret-- I'm kind of new to the cosmere.

    Brandon Sanderson

    There is a short-- or a novella called Mistborn: Secret History that you should read that has a little bit to do with this. It doesn't answer that question exactly, but read it and then ask again, okay?