Recent entries

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13055 Copy

    Questioner

    I like how you made it so [Hoid] doesn't know everything. Before Words of Radiance, his mind, he wasn't familiar with this world. Like, other people who live in that world, they were familiar with the animals. I like how you did that.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Thank you. I'm glad you noticed that. Did you notice, in the first book, he's the only person in the book who uses the word "coin"? Everyone else is used to spheres, he's used to coins. So, a little teaser about Hoid. He'll slip up in his terminology.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13057 Copy

    Questioner

    Have you ever considered doing a pronunciation guide for your characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I should do that, shouldn’t I?

    Questioner

    It would help so much...

    Brandon Sanderson

    The thing about that is I’m kind of of the philosophy that however you do it in your head is the right version in your version of the story.  Because the characters won’t look the same to everyone.  Everyone imagines them differently, might as well say the names differently...

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13058 Copy

    Questioner

    Have you played the Mistborn board game? Are you involved in that at all?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My assistant loves board games. I play Magic: The Gathering. Not necessarily board games. So I've just been *inaudible* to him. They have been very involved, my team has been. When they do a CCG, I will be involved.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13059 Copy

    Questioner

    At the end of Hero of Ages, there’s the--I forget what it’s called, when the kandra all remove their Hemalurgic nails--and then I forget which character wakes up and just sees the blobs everywhere, and then after what everything that happens I don’t really know what happened to the kandra after that.

    Brandon Sanderson

    They returned their spikes but that left them with holes in their memory.

    Questioner

    Who did?  The survivors?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, the survivors.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13060 Copy

    Questioner

    The worldjumpers in [Secret History] are they ones that have shown up in other books? And we just don’t know their names?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, they’re only tangential in the other books.  I think one of them has only shown up on screen once.  The other one’s shown up a couple of times but mostly in certain annotations and things like that.  In the books, like on the maps.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13061 Copy

    Questioner

    The visitors in the Sixth of the Dusk, do I know who they are?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I haven’t answered this for sure, but I have told people that it takes place in the future and is related to the rest of the cosmere…

    Questioner

    Do we know how soon we’ll find out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It’s a little ways off.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13062 Copy

    Questioner

    So, one of the things I know, you have your own universe that you've produced, and it's fantastic. what's the series you're gonna create or have created that's the cornerstone, that will have the largest impact on the universe.

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say Mistborn going all the way through is probably the most impact. Stormlight is gonna have a decent one, so is the Elantris world.

    Questioner

    Is there gonna be a union book or series?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, the final Mistborn series.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13063 Copy

    Questioner

    What’s the upper limit of Lashing, is it Stormlight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, it’s--  Well define for me what you mean by upper limit?

    Questioner

    Like, um, a mountain?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That would take a lot of Stormlight.

    Questioner

    So it’s something about the Stormlight?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah. Definitely.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13064 Copy

    Questioner

    What happens when you Lash water, or a body of water?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Excellent question, it’s going to have some hard time gripping on--

    Questioner

    Would it have a gravity well going on?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah it would have a gravity well, it think-- yeah.  You are the first person to ask about that, I don’t think even my assistant has asked about that.  So that’s your tentative answer until I think about it some more, but I think it would.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13065 Copy

    Questioner

    In Secret History we learned a little about how the Cognitive Realm...could bleed into the Physical if the person was slightly broken.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Broken as Kelsier’s term is not right, and he realizes that over the course of the book, but yeah.

    Questioner

    My thoughts were on Wayne, so he seems to notice--and it might just be kleptomania--a connection between items that makes him feel as if he’s not stealing, just trading things for equal value.  And I’m wondering if he’s noticing something in the Cognitive-- in one of the other Realms that is actually noteworthy.

    Brandon Sanderson

    He’s just goofy.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13066 Copy

    Questioner

    It feels like Roshar is-- has an essence, where it’s like a prism, you can see all the rest of them, due to the nature of the Cognitive Realm and the spren’s ideas, Cognitive things coming to light.  Have I spent too much time looking at the Shard?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, you are on the right path.  Of all the things you noted, that one is the one that is perhaps the most important.

    Questioner

    The prism idea.

    Brandon Sanderson

    The idea that Roshar is special and a key on Shadesmar.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13069 Copy

    Questioner

    All right, gibberish. Hoid speaks gibberish. He says he cuts off words and splices them back together. Gibberish can be spliced to Shardblade. Which is interesting. Is a Shardblade a cut up concept, or a thought created by the original...

    Brandon Sanderson

    A Shardblade...

    Questioner

    Is a spren, but the original idea it was based off of. Is it a concept made real?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, you could say that. They're really just pieces of Honor's soul.

    Footnote: "Balderdash" is the anagram of Shardblade that Hoid uses.
    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13070 Copy

    Questioner

    How is a new Feruchemist made?

    Brandon Sanderson

    What do you mean?

    Questioner

    Well you can make a new Mistborn by lerasium--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, okay.  Other than through birth? That’s a RAFO, good question though.  Right now, as far as anyone knows, it’s by birth only.  But--  Well we’ll leave it there.  You know that the extra Preservation instead of Ruin had some effects on people on Scadrial.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13071 Copy

    Questioner

    Are you planning to write any trans characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Am I planning to write any trans characters? I am, but it's a very... like, I need to have some people who can read who are themselves trans, and can talk me through it. I kind of dabbled in it with, like, MeLaan, but that's not a true trans character. So, I'm kinda trying to dabble my toes in it. But I really will need some good readers who can tell me, because it's one of those things that'd be so easy to get wrong.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13072 Copy

    Questioner

    How did you think of the idea for some who could, like, pull alternate realities through?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was looking for a different type of illusionist, because in the Stormlight Archive I did illusionists straight-up. So I wanted to do somebody who did something similar, but had a different origin for those powers.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13073 Copy

    Questioner

    Who is the Lord Ruler’s child/children?

    Brandon Sanderson

    People are searching a little too hard for this, he had several, they mixed with the population.  There might be specific individuals who claim heirship and things like that but it’s not like there’s one hidden person among the population, does that make sense?  Even those who claim heirship may not have any more blood than a lot of other people.  I think this is one where fans have latched onto it a little too strongly and I need to let them know they can back off, there’s not a big secret for them to be hunting.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13079 Copy

    Questioner

    What happened with Abraham’s court martial?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So that is backstory that is a RAFO.  Why Abraham was there is not something he necessarily likes to talk about, not that he’s shy, but at the same time it’s not something he easily talks about.  And so I will not talk about it, I will let him, someday perhaps, talk about it.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13081 Copy

    rani

    Hoid uses the term subastral, is that the term for a region of the Cognitive Realm, like Shadesmar is?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.  It’s like planet but--  That’s his term for the different--  Because Shadesmar is all like one plane.

    rani

    So wait you’re saying subastral is different?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No subastral is a region of Shadesmar.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13082 Copy

    rani

    Any kind of Investiture to make a Shardblade?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not any but there are multiple methods.  Some work better than others.

    rani

    Can you Forge a Shardblade?

    Brandon Sanderson

    To Forge a Shardblade, meaning make a regular sword through Forgery into a Shardblade, would require so much Investiture it’s like asking if we can make lead into gold using a particle accelerator.  Yes but it's horribly, horribly, horribly inefficient.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13083 Copy

    Questioner

    Kaladin. I've heard before that authors, when they write characters, particularly heroic characters, they try to put traits that they like about themselves or that they aspire to in these characters. And when I read about Kaladin, he was everything I've aspired to. But he also had this reluctance to it, almost depression. What were you thinking when you wrote Kaladin? What traits did you have in him?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Well, one thing is that he does have depression. That's just an aspect of his personality. I was looking at Kaladin as kind of... extremely loyal, almost to a fault. He's got a bit of this, what we call a superhero complex, where he takes responsibility for things that other people have done. And that can be really advantageous when he's on your side, but it can also be kind of soul-crushing. That's a big aspect of him. The other big aspect of Kaladin is his training as a surgeon, and then discovering that he's really good at killing people. And that contrasted side of him creates a big part of the mix of who he is, the pull from my father versus the pull from my spirit.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13084 Copy

    Questioner

    Do you backstock on neat characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do have some characters I haven't found places for yet.

    Questioner

    Is it just kind of like a mix/match? Do you find a world for them or...

    Brandon Sanderson

    So characters are the hardest one for me to define. Because I need to discover who they are by writing through their viewpoint for a while. And it's an exploration. Other things, I can plot, I can outline, I can plan ahead. Characters, I can't. I need to explore them. So, really, what I have are seeds, conflicts. They could grow into a character. And I'll sometimes try them out, and they won't work, and I'll send that seed back.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13090 Copy

    Questioner

    With The Reckoners you had to make the decision not to put it into your cosmere cosmology, was that a difficult one?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was not difficult once I realized I did not want Earth to be part of everything else.

    Questioner

    If it had been would Calamity have been a Shard of Adonalsium?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That’s an interesting question.  Maybe.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13092 Copy

    Questioner

    Did you worry with Secret History that it was a bit too meta for people who had no idea…

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, that’s why all the warnings are there.  It’s kind of intended for the people who want something, does that make sense?  Like it isn’t really-- it is a story, but it's not a real story, it’s got weird narrative and things to it.  It is there for those who really want to know.

    Questioner

    And I’m one of those people, I just have to wonder if you had no idea you’d be really confused through at least the first half.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes you would.  But that’s why all the warnings are there.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13094 Copy

    Questioner

    How many worlds does [the cosmere] have in it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A couple hundred. A couple hundred stars.

    Questioner

    How many planets are your books going to use?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Habitable worlds, in Goldilocks zones? There's probably 20 or 30, maybe a few more. Maybe up to 50, but you'll only really... there'll be like, ten or so core planets that you'll see stories from.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13095 Copy

    Questioner

    Is Calamity actually a worldhopper?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Calamity, I didn't write this as a part of the cosmere. The main distinction is I didn't want Earth to be in the cosmere, I want it to be distinct. Once I stick Earth in, the cosmology and things doesn't work. The cosmere is a dwarf cluster, and it's a dwarf galaxy, it's a cluster of stars. It's a specific place, and Earth's not part of it.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13097 Copy

    Questioner

    Well you answered my question about Allomancers being able to burn metals in other realms. Is that because the Shards are sort of…  My impression from the book was that the Shards were, in the Mistborn books, specifically in that area but is it because the universe is formed across all of them that that is why the metals...

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, most of the magics are not region-dependent, because the Spiritual Realm-- in the Spiritual Realm space doesn’t exist.  All things are the same distance from one another.

    Questioner

    Okay, so when Kelsier is in the-- Which Realm is he in?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He’s in the Cognitive Realm.

    Questioner

    Is he seeing people from other worlds or is he--

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, he meets some people who are traveling but Cognitive Realm is location dependent.  He is on the Cognitive Realm on Scadrial and the people he runs into there-- until he kind of travels off into space, which is where he finds the fortress.

    Questioner

    So even though he’s tied to Scadrial could he go to the Cognitive Realm of other worlds?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He would have trouble getting to another planet, being a Cognitive shadow like he was.

    Questioner

    So is there some particular thing that somebody would need to have to be able to move between the realms?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A body is helpful. Depends on what their ties are and things like that.  Not always, but yeah.

    Calamity Seattle signing ()
    #13098 Copy

    Questioner

    So, when you were coming up with superhero names, did you have to look them up to make sure somebody hadn't done it already?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I had to make sure that they weren't... impossible-to-use names that somebody hasn't done, I just had to make sure they weren't super popular. And some I was able to find that people hadn't done. But some, I'm like, "I have to use this name anyways." But, like, my first three names, like Nightwielder, people had used. I eventually found one that hadn't been used.

    Questioner

    Was that frustrating?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Uh, it's kinda like the "Simpsons did it" thing. People complain that every plotline's been done by the Simpsons. Superhero powers have all been done, superhero names have all been done; but stories have all been told before. So, it's "What can you add to it?" that you ask yourself.

    Questioner

    So, of the ones that you came up with, how many would you say you looked up and were like "aaaah..."

    Brandon Sanderson

    I would say about half.