Recent entries

Benjamin Moldovan

Isn't Straff and his mistresses the same thing that got the Lord Prelan executed? Why wasn't he?

Peter Ahlstrom

His mistresses are not Skaa, but minor nobles.

Pagerunner

Let's use a time machine and change the past. Let's say you aren't asked to finish the Wheel of Time, and instead fix Liar of Partinel. How do you think the Cosmere fan experience would have been different if mysteries like Hoid and the Shattering had been explored earlier?

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, this is an excellent question, and it's hypothetical enough that I can ignore my cheeky answer to time machine questions, [which] is always, "Don't go back in the past. I've seen that story too much."

In this case... Liar of Partinel. Liar of Partinel did not work. I had already abandoned it and started working on The Rithmatist. So, if I had not been asked to finish The Wheel of Time, most likely I would have thrown myself into The Rithmatist more. And then, the question becomes, would have I decided to do Way of Kings? Or would I have gone and taken another stab at Liar of Partinel? And for your hypothesis, I will say that I did that. I don't think I actually would have. I think that I was disappointed enough in Liar of Partinel and realizing that this wasn't the right time, that I would have gone a different direction.

But, for the hypothetical, let's say I did. What would it have changed? Certainly, I don't know that I would have gotten all the way through the Hoid series before starting Way of Kings. More likely, I would have done Liar of Partinel as a standalone, then done something else, and eventually released Book Two of that. Because, remember, back then, I had envisioned this as a seven-book series. I was looking for a big epic to do, and I thought, "Let's do the Dragonsteel series. And I'll do several books about Hoid. And then I'll do the full story of Bridge Four," which was then on Yolen, not on Roshar. So, you would have gotten that story on Yolen instead, and then, who knows where that would have gone. When I release Dragonsteel itself (which won't be too much longer), you guys will be able to read the earliest version of Bridge Four, back before Kaladin was involved, and it was on Yolen. So, I think, at that point, we would have learned more about Hoid, but we probably wouldn't have pushed all the way to the Shattering, I don't think.

But, hypothetically, let's say I do. I don't know how much of a change that makes, honestly, over Stormlight. Knowing the personalities of the three Shards involved and a little bit more on Hoid certainly would change your perspective on them, but Stormlight, assuming... I mean, it's so hard to go into these hypotheticals, because if I write Dragonsteel with Bridge Four, then Bridge Four isn't in Stormlight. It's very hard to imagine where Stormlight goes. It's possible that I make it completely Taln's story, and Stormlight becomes a five-book series, which focuses on what's going to be the back five. That would be my best guess of where that would go. So, instead of ten books, you get five books, and we focus on Taln as a main character. And Kaladin just vanishes. We don't have Kaladin as a character. He's replaced by whoever takes the lead in Dragonsteel. But, of course, the flip-flopping, what actually happened is, Dragonsteel shrunk to three books that focus on Hoid, 'cause I realized I was doing in Stormlight all the things that I intended to do in Dragonsteel, and they were working better in Stormlight, and I no longer needed that Bridge Four sequence in Dragonsteel because it worked so well in Stormlight.

So, it is hard to say what exactly would go on. You would know the personalities of the Shards, how about that? You would definitely know who they are. You would know a lot more about Hoid.

Joe ST

When Brandon says Scadrial's life is at its poles, does he mean hemispheres?

Peter Ahlstrom

It's the magnetic poles, which are not close to the geographic poles.

Jennifer Graham

I was re-reading Alloy of Law and wondering...was naming them Wax and Wayne by accident, or is there a higher purpose?

Peter Ahlstrom

It was an accident, and Brandon almost changed their names when he realized it, but they were too solid in his head by then.

JazzyKandra

I've been wondering about Cosmere holidays and feast days, specifically for Mistborn. I'm wondering, does Era 2 Scadrial have a Christmas-like or Easter-like holiday, and is it called Maremas?

Brandon Sanderson

No, this is something I think about and then don't have as much time ever to work in as I want to. They have quite a few holidays and feast days in Era 2 Mistborn, partially because Era 2 Mistborn was founded by a bunch of people who didn't get a lot of holidays during their life and then suffered through quite a bit in their lives, and then found themselves in a situation where, perhaps, hard manual labor, while important, was not as necessary as it might be in some other situations. So yeah, there are quite a bit; they are good at taking time off. Probably the best of all of the cultures depicted in the book... I don't know. They're gonna have a lot of feast days on Nalthis also.

Yes, but I would have to go to my notes. I'll try to do a better job of getting more of those in the books. 'Cause it's a place that I feel like I don't do enough. I don't talk enough about sports, I don't talk enough about feast days. Everything is about the plots of the stories, and sometimes I wonder if this just presents an inaccurate representation of the society. But of course, when our viewpoint character is someone like Wax, who looks askance at holidays, then I get a little bit more leeway on that.

Hossmobile

If you could have a beer with one of your characters, which would it be?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, since I don't drink, I would have a root beer. I would like to go hang out with Sazed. That would be my choice. I think Sazed is more wise than I was able to write him being and would have lots of good advice for me.

Questioner

Is there a character based off of Emily [Sanderson]?

Brandon Sanderson

Not really... she asked me not to put her in the books as a cameo sort of thing. Some of my friends are in the books as cameos, and some are in the books as more than cameos, like Skar [from Bridge Four] is based on my friend Skar.

Emily Sanderson

And in that case, he looks like him, he acts like him.

Brandon Sanderson

Because Skar is one of the few people I know who is in the military, so I'm like, "I'm gonna use you as a character, because you act like a military person, and I think that's a good thing." He's like, "Yeah, I'm totally on board with that." Most of them are just cameos and things like that.

Emily Sanderson

In most cases, when Brandon puts someone in a book, it's not the whole person. It's a character trait, or a physical trait, or a personality trait, or something like that. Sometimes I'll see characters who say things that I've said.

Brandon Sanderson

Syl says "I'm intelligent and articulate"... that came from when you were... three?

Emily Sanderson

That's a quote from when I was three, and my dad taught me to say... no, I was younger than that, I was like eighteen months old, and I could speak really clearly, and he taught me to say "I am intelligent and articulate". Brandon heard that story from my dad and put that in.

Brandon Sanderson

The character that I would say owes the most to Emily - even though it's not based on Emily - is Navani, because being able to have a wonderful wife has helped me to write a wonderful wife. They're very different people, but there's definitely some...

Emily Sanderson

I can relate with Navani in a lot of ways, in certain roles that she has.

Brandon Sanderson

The prologue to this new book [Stormlight Four] is Navani, and it owes some very specific things to Emily.

Blake Bouza

Do you ever need a reminder of what your own magic systems can do, or is it all laid out pretty perfectly in your mind?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I need reminders on the kind of subtle things. Mostly terminology and what decisions I made, because in a book sometimes you'll make decisions on the fly where you're like, "I think this isn't working, I'm gonna change it to this," or things like that. Like, I still forget that I swapped tin for silver. And I still forget exactly what terminology I came up for Szeth using the Lashings, and some stuff like that. And sometimes I need a, "Hey, does this feel like it works for the magic system?" Because the further we get in the Cosmere, the less simple the rules are, and the more complicated and - like real world physics, where you're building things that work like complicated engineering devices, right? Like, building some of the ways that magic is working on Scadrial with the mechanical elements, and the medallions, and stuff like that is getting really complicated, and I had to write it out and I had to go back and reference that. Because yes, I can remember what metal does what and what the rules are here, but the actual how-they-all-interact-and-come-together gets kinda complicated! So yeah, definitely need reminders on my own magic systems.

Grant Willis

Are there any clues or easter eggs in Roshar/the cosmere that have not been discovered yet?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, but they're not ones that you should be able to discover. They'll just be things that you'll able to look back at. We embed some things here and there in the art, like the lastclap that was in foreshadowed in the margins of one of the art pieces in the first book, with someone catching a Shardblade. For instance, a lot of the little circles for characters at the start of the stories represent things that will happen much later in the series, but most of them are intentionally zoomed in of what the shot would be so that you can't tell right now, because these are not things that you're supposed to be able to figure out. Most things that I intended for you to figure out, you did, and some that I didn't intend you to figure out, you also did. So people can feel very proud of that. Yes, there are a bunch of easter eggs, there are a ton of them, but there is no way you can figure out what they are.

Kim Jenson

Does Hoid have any rules, self-imposed or otherwise, about how much he can interfere with what is going on on whatever planet he is currently on? And why does he take such an active part on Roshar, compared to the other planets he has visited?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid has a few rules of thumb, but he does not have the same rules that the Shards have to follow, which is basically one of the big points that makes Hoid do what he does. He has to watch out, because drawing their attention at the wrong time can be very dangerous. But that's not necessarily a rule, it's more of a "be careful." He's defined by the fact that he doesn't have to follow the rules. And he's also defined by the fact that he intervenes when a lot of others think that one should not intervene, as made evident by the chastisement he receives from Frost. So, I would say, no and yes. There are some weird limitations on him related to things in his past that you will find out about eventually, but those are not really about intervening.

Why Roshar more than others? There are a couple of reasons for this. One is: the way he is intervening on Roshar is something that is directly involving the main characters of the book I'm writing. He actually has done a lot on other planets as well, you just haven't seen it because he hasn't been as involved with the main characters. Why is he involved with the main characters? Well, he is trying to get to be a Knight Radiant, and he wants to be involved with the people who are becoming Knights Radiant, because he wants to figure out how that magic works and specifically how you can get off-world with it, which is the real trick on Roshar. So he, in this specific instance, is really involved with those characters because of that reason. A lot of the other places he will go, the magic is already extant, and it's not like Roshar, where the magic has not been around for a while. So he is kind of by necessity more involved in the plot.

Brandon Sanderson

Brandon here, with another progress update on your book. Previous update can be read here. You might have heard about my marathon write to push to the finish last week--but if you didn't, you can glance through my facebook page to see the hourly updates. Short version: the book is done! (Kind of.)

So where do we go from here? Well, I generally do five drafts of a book these days. The rough draft, which I finished last week, is only the first of these five--and each one takes roughly a month to do. So I've still got five months of work ahead of me, plus a little time between edits to do something else, before we're finished with this behemoth of a book.

I'll be doing the second draft starting next week. Fortunately, I've already done a 2.0 on several of the early parts--squeezing those in early so my editorial team could start working on them. This should make the 2.0 take less time than a normal revisions, perhaps two weeks instead of four or five. You can follow along, as always, on my website.

A 2.0 draft is me going through and fixing all the things I know are broken (and there are always a lot of those) while doing the initial polish of the language. Once done, I'll need to roll straight in to work on the 3.0 (the draft where I put in my editor/agent/writing group comments.) We've been workshopping this book in writing group since early last year, so I've got a lot of feedback already.

After the 3.0 draft, we'll start sending the book to beta readers and I'll (hopefully) take a short break to write a novella. (Rysn, potentially, involving the history and current lore of Aimia, the Sleepless, and some intriguing things like that.)

4.0 is the draft I'll do incorporating beta reader comments, along with any other editorial comments from the team at Tor. 5.0 will be my final polish, and 10% trim, where I try to make the book read better.

Goal is to turn that in July 1st. After that, it's into the hands of the copyeditors and proofreaders for several months.

The book is looking really good, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. That's relieving because at the end of Oathbringer, I had real concerns about Book Four. By this point in the process of a series, I've often reworked the outlines so many times that the last books are in a messy state--but the outlining work I did whipped this one into shape, and also organized Book Five in a lot of exciting ways.

Everything is looking great for the final book in this sequence 2023. Thanks as always for your patience. I'll drop by for another update in a few months or so to let you know how the novella went (if it got written) and how editing is progressing.

Questioner

When will the second Rithmatist book come out?

Brandon Sanderson

So here's the deal with the Rithmatist. Rithmatist was the book I wrote right before the Wheel of Time hit me like a train going very fast. I was not expecting this in my life. The books I was working on at the time were the Liar of Partinel, which is Hoid's backstory, and the Rithmatist and both of these books got derailed to one extent or another by me dropping everything and working on the Wheel of Time. When I sat back down to write the Rithmatist 2, I had been derailed for so long and so much had happened in my life that the outline that I had just did not work. I wasn't pleased with it. It is one of things that I considered a mandate that I must do. I will finish it, but it's gonna take me a little bit more time. I've been trying to write things, like novellas, that don't promise sequels as much and finish off the things that did promise sequels. So I finished off Legion. The last Alcatraz book is basically done. It is called Bastille Versus the Evil Librarians or subtitle "Alcatraz Versus His Own Dumb Self." We're actually sending that off for artwork and things, so that should happen pretty soon. There's like one little scene that needs to be revised and then Rithmatist will be on the list of things to do. So, I promise it someday but I'm just not sure when. Stormlight 4 is going to take all my time for the next 7 months still, most likely. I won't be done with that until July 1st and then I really need to get the next Wax and Wayne book done and there are 2 more books of Skyward that I need to write. So, we'll see. My biggest goal is to not, whatever I do, let myself slip behind on Stormlight books because these kind of form the backbone currently of the cosmere sequence. So those can't come out less frequently than about once every 3 years. Once every 3 years is about as fast as I can do them. They take about 18 months and I need about 18 months off between them, otherwise I'll get burned out. There's an answer that's not a full answer for you. I'm sorry. It will happen. I'm not sure when.

ElephantEarwax

Would tapping Feruchemical speed cause you to burn metals faster as your whole body speeds up?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I think it probably would. I don't know if we've gotten to that interaction yet, but it probably would. Good question. If it's speeding up... Yeah, I think it would. Good question. If you're in a speed bubble and doing it, it's totally going to do it, and there's some analogies there.

ElephantEarwax

Could Kaladin rip limbs from people using Lashings?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. This is theoretically possible.

ElephantEarwax

If Taravangian became a Vessel, would he still have smart and stupid days?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO

Questioner

I remember there being something mentioned, the Thousand Eyes of Trell, somewhere in Mistborn, is that a real thing?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

There's something behind that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

This is a line in Way of Kings where it kind of sounds like my homeboy Nephi. Was that on purpose?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm not sure if that one's on purpose. You'd have to tell me which quote it is.

Questioner

Taravangian who's like "better for one man to sin than a whole nation perish?"

Brandon Sanderson

That is probably unintentional. I don't know if that was intentional or not.

Questioner

Are there intentional ones in there?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. The Nohadon Way of Kings is directly influenced by king Benjamin's speech and Mosiah. That one is intentional. Most others will probably be unintentional though, of course, what I read a lot and what is important to me ends up in the books one way or another.

Questioner

Do you plan on writing Stormlight Archive where you have to be Cosmere aware?

Brandon Sanderson

I intend Stormlight to always be its own story. The Cosmere will start influencing a little more here and there, but I never intend you to have to know anything about the Cosmere. Who knows how I'll be at the later books if I'll change my mind, but I intend it to be no more than it's really been now.

Questioner

Hemalurgy. If I stab someone with an icicle but it had iron traces in it, would that still work?

Brandon Sanderson

That iron would not hold much of a charge, so it's probably not going to work. You're probably just not going to be able to get enough iron there to really charge it.

But it's plausible that you could make it work. Like, you could get enough iron in there theoretically. I'm going to say most of the time, no. Plus, the structure of it's going to disintegrate so fast that you're just not going to be able to make any use of it.

Questioner

Is the current Shin societal structure based on whatever caused the fall of the Shin invasions?

Brandon Sanderson

Not 100 percent. Certainly it was influenced, but it's not a direct one-to-one correlation. 

Questioner

In the Cosmere, are we going to get any more worlds or is like what we have enough?

Brandon Sanderson

No. If I can get myself to do it, I have some other worlds that we'll show. They'll be short story stuff though. They are not major players in the actual Cosmere other than Yolen which you haven't seen yet but that's where Hoid's from and that's where the Shattering happened. That's a major one but yeah.

Questioner

Do you actually have a potted plant named Count Dooku??

Brandon Sanderson

I used to but the joke was it was actually not in a pot; it was in a glass jar.

Questioner

Was it an air plant?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. It had water but it was like one of those air plants. That was the joke. They were supposed to put the picture in the original ones of Count Dooku, my plant, and they refused with that picture as the picture of me. So the joke didn't work. And then by the time we did the new ones, I didn't have Count Dooku anymore. Count Dooku had died. So we just put in a regular potted plant but that was supposed to be the joke that you would be like "wait a minute, that's not a potted plant." But Scholastic, they wouldn't deal with it. They didn't want me to be that goofy.

TearablePuns

How do Lashings affect fluids like water or air?

Brandon Sanderson

Hard to Lash a fluid. It works poorly. How about that?

You can make it work best with the Reverse Lashing which would make sense I assume, but you can't Full Lash onto air or really a liquid. And a Gravitational Lashing, you could maybe do it on a liquid but it would disrupt real fast.

Questioner

If they made a movie out of Mistborn, if they were making it rated R, would you have a say to that? Would it bother you? What would you do?

Brandon Sanderson

I would have a say over some and I could get it in contracts for some. It depends on the contract. There are some we've had were we don't have that in the contract. I'm not powerful enough to get that in a lot of things but the more powerful we get, the more we can get things like that to be able to say no. Mostly, we try to pick people that we don't think would do that but the end of the day, no movie people give authors say over their movies because a movie costs 200 million dollars to make and it's just... Basically, when you sign rights away, you just have to see what they do. I would prefer that they not.

Questioner 1

My friend and I always argue. He's like, "Amaram and Jasnah are the same age." Are they really?

Brandon Sanderson

Amaram is a little older, I believe, but they are around the same age.

Questioner 2

Like 24ish?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, no. Jasnah's like in her mid to late thirties. Mid thirties. I get it mixed up which one's Earth age and which one's Rosharan age. Whatever I say in there, it's about 10 percent more for our age. But yeah, Jasnah's not...

Questioner 2

She's not a spring chicken.

Brandon Sanderson

She's not a spring chicken. 

Questioner 2

But Amaram's older?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I think Amaram's like a year or two older, but they're around the same age.

Questioner

I know you served a mission in Korea. So, how much of a Korean influence...

Brandon Sanderson

There's a bunch.

Questioner

I noticed in Mistborn, I think of some Korean influence. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. In Elantris, the idea of the language is based on the relationship between Korean and Chinese. So, it's not the sounds or anything, it's the idea of there being the Chinese characters that have Korean back... you know you can write them in Korean or in Chinese. All of that stuff. The Chinese characters, the Korean grammar around them, and stuff like that, it was a big influence on me designing that writing system.

Questioner

If Nightblood was to attack one [a Shard] and decided it was evil, could he destroy enough of that Shard to seriously weaken it compared to other Shards or not really?

Brandon Sanderson

I mean it would be such a drop in the bucket. To actually weaken the Shard. Like, there is so much out there. This would be hard to do. I won't completely nix it, but let's just say there's a lot that Nightblood would have to...

Questioner

Any advice for integrating realistic battle tactics with a magic system when writing a book?

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, it's tough. It depends on how much the magic going to get used and if you can find a real-world analogue or not. If you can find a real-world analogue, it can be handy to be like, "this magic is basically like adding an air force, let's see how that happens." If you can't find a real-world analogue, and it's very common, enough that it'll shape-change battle, then you need to make the sure the battlefield, you're controlling it and make it about the magic, so that no one can say "oh, you got the tactics wrong" because you're controlling it and you're controlling the narrative. 

Questioner

Basically make the magic the more important part?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. There's lots of ways to do this but that's a good way to do that. That would be my recommendation.

Questioner

A while back I asked about, have you developed your equivalency system for Breath to... 

Brandon Sanderson

No. We're still working on that. I actually have some people. I just got some physicists and mathematicians and said, "I'm gonna have you guys do this, and then you'll keep me honest." That's where we are right now.

And they're like, "It is such a big job." And I'm like, "I know. That's why I'm paying you to do this, so that I don't have to do it. So do your best, it's okay."

Questioner

What was the name of a Shard that you choose not to use? Like the Shardic intent you decided not to use?

Brandon Sanderson

I can't confirm those because I still might use them. Mostly, the things I've discarded are names that are too simple, or too on the nose. 

Maybe I'm not not... People are like "oh they're just synonyms, hatred and odium are synonyms" but I see more nuance to Odium. So like it feels more deep. 

Questioner

Yeah. If it's got a different history as a word.

Brandon Sanderson

But I haven't 100 percent eliminated any of them. Like, some of them are similar enough that at the end of the day, I might be like "you know what, this is better as this name instead of this name" and that would change the intents.

Questioner

So you have...

Brandon Sanderson

I have a list of all 16 but I haven't settled on the actual name for each of them.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh! I decided not to do the Shard Levity. I did move away from that completely.

Questioner

Your languages in Stormlight, do you have a way you do names and such?

Brandon Sanderson

Usually there's two different ways that I approach it. If I'm going to spend a lot of time in the linguistics, I'll look for linguistic themes like in Stormlight it's names that are symmetrical or things like that. If I need to shortcut, I'm going to look for an Earth culture and I'm going to use the language kind of based on more themes from that culture and the sounds they have and try to replicate that but not using the actual words from that culture.

Questioner

Are you still planning on Death by Pizza after...

Brandon Sanderson

So Death by Pizza is now called Death without Pizza. It's actually called Songs of the Dead. I've been working on that with Peter Orullian who's a singer in a metal band. Some parts of it are really working, some parts aren't, so we're doing another draft. Basically, I did the outline and the world, he's writing the book. The first revision, there were some things that needed to be done in the first draft. So, we'll see how it goes. It's an experiment for both of us. Neither of us have co-written a book before.

Questioner

Was Adolin and Shallan always the endgame, or did you ever shift to Kaladin?

Brandon Sanderson

I did shift, back and forth. So, what I do with a lot of my relationships is, I don't usually plan them out. A lot of characterization, I have to leave the characters kind of their own volition. So I write my way into relationships and I write my way into the character elements. I plot my world, my setting, and my plot out ahead of time but I let the characters go where they're going to go. I know some people would rather she made a different decision, but that is the decision that felt right to me going forward.

I've just validated all the Shallarin people on the internet saying, "Aw, he changed his mind!"

Questioner

How do you prevent yourself from becoming a victim of your own success?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't figured that out yet. I've watched it happen to other authors, so if I figure it out, I'll tell you. It is something I worry about. Particularly with how the new J.K. Rowling screenplays feel like they're just missing the mark.

Questioner

I feel like she needed someone to tell her when her bad ideas are bad. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Exactly. But, we'll see. Well hopefully Peter and Isaac and Kara and Karen will tell me when my bad ideas are bad.

Questioner

Does gender play a role in how a spren chooses a Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson

It does but it is not a strict... It's just spren are going to have preferences like people have preferences and that does play into it but there's not really any sort of strict...

If you want to know narratively, behind the scenes, it tends to work to pair opposite genders together, because it just makes for better conversations and things like that. And it makes the cast fill out a little bit better with a little more variety. So that's why you see the writer side of me doing it, but in-world my kind of explanation is they have preferences.

Questioner

I have a question about Shadesmar. What inspired the beads where everything in the actual reality is a bead in Shadesmar?

Brandon Sanderson

If I were being truthful, it probably goes all the way back to a Michael Whelan painting I saw when I was a teenager. But at the end of the day, I thought it was a really interesting image and a good reflection. I want things to reflect the real world—the Physical Realm—but in a different sort of way. So I like the kind of crystalline nature of it and things like that.

Questioner

You've talked a little bit about scripture readings contributing to your writing earlier today. How do you keep that separate from the worlds you're creating?

Brandon Sanderson

I've really never had a problem with that. It's easier than keeping myself separate from other fantasy writers' things and that I've had to learn to put a line in place where I'm like "Ooh, this is a cool idea. Remember that this was someone else's cool idea." Because I consider the scriptures history, I don't mind if they influence me. Like, history does a lot. In Roshar you'll find the Mongolian invasion being a big basis for where the characters for the Alethi come from and in the same way, King Benjamin's speech is a bit of an inspiration for Nohadon's Way of Kings. I don't mind getting inspired by history.

Sparkle

In Stormlight Archive, how are they paying for the wars before the one on the Great Plains? How was Dalinar funding his armies?

Brandon Sanderson

Usually they have an almost feudal system on Roshar where the city lord's in charge of collecting taxes and sending them in but a lot of the taxes from out around are going to be goods. It's going to be basically feeding the armies and things like that. The people who are living in like Hearthstone and stuff like that aren't paying any taxes other than in grain. But in the cities, they are and you can also see the more important the lighteyes, the better of a city they will get with a higher population because they get a percentage of those taxes. Like Roshone doesn't really get anything. He's basically taking care of someone else's lands.

Sparkle

Now is that like on a property tax basis or is it more of a sales tax?

Brandon Sanderson

More of an income tax.

Questioner

I'm an aspiring writer and I really relate to one of your characters that has really smart days and really stupid days. I feel like I've had maybe a handful of really smart days and every other day, I just feel like an idiot and I don't know what I'm doing. I wonder if that's you maybe writing some of yourself into the story or into that character...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. 

Questioner

...and how have you gotten over those stupid days. 

Brandon Sanderson

I actually got it… Howard Taylor, who's a cartoonist friend of mine, one time was talking about, on our podcast, how some days he just feels dumb. And I'm like, I feel like that sometimes too. Sometimes, it's not working. It's not flowing. What I've found with writing is—now your mileage may vary—readers can't generally tell which of the two it was. It's more in your mind and more about your mood than it is about the actual quality of what you're writing. What's happening is on some days, you're just upbeat and you see what you're doing is working. And on other days, you're doing basically the same thing but you're a little bit down and your minds like "Oh, this is terrible. You are crap. No one's ever going to want to read this" and the truth is that it's actually still pretty good. The other thing that causes that a lot is… particularly if I'm reading something really good, like I go read a Terry Pratchett novel… and then I go to write and I'm like, "What am I even doing?" What you're doing there is you're comparing your first draft to published, final drafts by authors who've been doing this for 40 years and that's just not a fair comparison to you. If you want to go read my terrible first story that I wrote, the one that won the award, you can read that be like, "This is what Sanderson was writing? I'm better than this!", and you probably are. In fact, I hope you are. I would recommend trying to silence that voice as opposed to trying to reach for the smart days or not because the truth is, you're probably just as smart on both days; you're just feeling down. And instead, try to look for some of the things I talked earlier. The idea of creating good habits. Knowing the things that you can do that put you in the mood to actually do what you want to do. Listening to music will do it for me. Going on a walk, if I'm having trouble while listening to that music and if it's the right epic music. My playlists are on Spotify by the way, the stuff that I do this with. Just look for "Stormlight 3 writing soundtrack" and I have on for Skyward, too, that I think I posted. Just listen to whatever works for you. But you have to find out what tricks yourself like I talked about earlier. Every writer feels this, you are not alone, and that part of your brain is probably wrong.

Questioner

What criticism of your work do you feel is the most apt?

Brandon Sanderson

There's a bunch of them. I would say that the criticisms of my handling of Mat in the Gathering Storm are pretty on point. I actually had an inkling before I released the book that they were because some of the beta readers had told me. But, I didn't know how to do it better yet. Generally, my weakest part of my books is probably going to be the prose. I strive for what we call Orwellian prose which is Windowpane prose where the prose is transparent and you can see the story happening on the other side. But, a lot of times, if you come to some of my prose, I repeat too many words, too often. We try to watch for those and things. But you're not going to go to a Brandon Sanderson novel and very often get the really beautiful prose that you're going to get like from a Pat Rothfuss book or something like that. It's partially a stylistic choice on my part but it's a stylistic choice because I know where my strengths lie, if that makes sense. So, I think that's a pretty valid criticism. The other thing would probably be that Stormlight is really hard to get into. That's by—not by design, in that I don't want a book that's hard to get into. But the story I wanted to tell was one that was hard to get into. If that make sense. It's kind of like a drawback of the story that I didn't want to change because it would make it a different story. But it's totally a legit drawback to getting into Stormlight. There's a lot of stuff to track. I wanted to be upfront with it because the whole series was going to involve a lot to track but there are people for whom Stormlight is just not the book for them.

Questioner

Are accretion disks [acclivity rings] common technology in the universe?

Brandon Sanderson

They are commonly used in the universe. Yes.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

Probably next year. We're probably going to release Way of Kings Prime, where we have a whole sequence of Vasher training Merin, who's the original version of Kaladin, in the sword and stuff like that. It's lot of fun. It just didn't work so it's... But yeah.

Questioner

Do you get some perverse pleasure keeping secrets from people.

Brandon Sanderson

I do. Because I'm a showman, right?. I want you to get that moment where it all comes together, and if I don't keep the secrets, I can't do as many of those. If I could get away with it, I would say nothing, because I would let the books stand for themselves. But I have been a part of fandom for long enough to know people really enjoy this, and so I let them pull things out of me. But it's always my intent to never say anything. 

Questioner

One more question about the Girl Who Looked Up. It says she wears a long pack, so would this be a long pack or no. *gestures to pack*

Brandon Sanderson

That is not long enough.

Questioner

So would said large pack hold a Shardblade or an Honorblade?

Brandon Sanderson

You'll have to see.

Questioner

Perhaps.

Brandon Sanderson

Perhaps. 

We might be doing a picture book of it.

Questioner

Somebody whispered that to me earlier. Would it be illustrated?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Are we gonna see any more Marsh in the future?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's likely you will see some more Marsh.

Questioner

Do you think book 4? Or next trilogy?

Brandon Sanderson

No. He's more the next trilogy. You might see him in book 4, but I would not hold my breath.

Questioner

Okay. But he's my main man so I just want to make sure.

Brandon Sanderson

Marsh has been through a lot and he has weathered it well, so...

Firerust

Heralds. did they become immortal when they became Heralds? Or were they already before then?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that.

Good question. Good question.

Questioner

If you could do a fourth Allomantic [Metallic Arts] magic system. Have you thought about that?

Brandon Sanderson

I actually hadn't even thought about it. You'd think I would have but I haven't. Those three interlock so well. I'd have to think about it. I really don't know that I have one. I'm sure I could come up with something but I'll put that in the back of my brain. They interlock so well that I've never even considered what I'd do for a fourth.

Questioner

It's known you're a big fan of Magic the Gathering and that you like house Dimir and you wrote Davriel Cane's planeswalker. Are you ever going to work with Wizards of the Coast again? And then things about Magic. It's known you play some, where would we find information on that?

Brandon Sanderson

Will I every work with Magic again? I probably will. I usually can't leave well enough alone. But the thing is, I wrote that story (which you guys can read, it's called Children of the Nameless, it's free online), I wrote that instead of doing other stuff I was kind of supposed to be doing. It is what has put me behind like on Wax and Wayne, which I wanted to have done before the next Stormlight. So, it's not likely that I will do it anytime soon. I need to catch up on things. What I would really like to do is, sometime, kind of go in at the planning stage for a plane. Like, right at the beginning, and maybe even write a book and be like, "This is set on a plane, let's use this to build the mythology of a plane," or something like that, and kind of be in from the ground up on it. But I would probably have to move to Seattle for, like, 6 months for that. So that's far off in the future.

If you want to play Magic with me, once in a while, I play at local game stores. I go to Game Grid now and then. Mostly I like to draft or to cube draft. You can watch me cube drafting online. The latest newsletter has a link to a place, some people I went and drafted with. It has been harder and harder. Early in my career, when nobody knew who I was, it was great because the signings, I would get there at 7, and they'd get done at like 8:30. And then I'd be like, "Hey! Who wants to play Magic?" and there would usually be some people who went like, "Yeah! Let's go play Magic!" We'd go to like the hotel and sit in the lobby and play Magic and stuff. Nowadays, my signings get done at like 4am. So yeah, that just doesn't happen as much anymore. Sorry about that.

Questioner

What character have you written that you felt is most inspired by your own personality?

Brandon Sanderson

My mom says it's Alcatraz, my middle grade series, is most like me so I trust her. Other than that, it's hard for me to say. You have to go to my friends and things. I feel like ever character's part of me and every character's not. Stephen Leeds, from the Legion series, has a lot of writer-ish stuff in it. Particularly the last of the three if you've ever read that one. That was kind of a very personal book and it was getting into kind of the way... So maybe Stephen Leeds as a middle manager. I feel like a person who's controlling all of these characters. Rather than this person having the adventures, I'm keeping them organized.

HungryAntman

Assuming I don’t add anything else, like a Mistborn cyberpunk between eras three and four

I didn't know how much I needed this in my life until you mentioned it. Even if it was just a small one off. This would be peak awesome.

Brandon Sanderson

We'll have to see. I would like to do something here, but it's going to depend on a lot of different factors.

Stay_Beautiful_

Even just a short story or novella to provide a little window into that era to bridge the gap before Era 4 would make me unbelievably happy

Brandon Sanderson

I'm sure we will need something. A novella at the least makes sense.