Recent entries

Paleo

How did lerasium get its symbol when it was already in use as "A" during the Final Empire? Similarly, who decided in-world what symbol harmonium gets?

Isaac Stewart

I imagine, like with a lot of symbols, these things grow organically in the world. With the alphabet... at some point, probably, what happened is: they had all of these symbols for the metals. And they started using them as an alphabet. And somebody along the line, probably under the Lord Ruler's watchful eye, assigned symbols for the different letters. And then as new metals are discovered, they just assigned symbols that hadn't been used for a metal.

So, probably what they did is, they said, "Okay, we know there are this many metals. We'll assign these symbols to letters. But hey, we have a lot more letters than we know of Allomantic metals, so we'll make more symbols." So they did. And then, as they found more Allomantically charged metals, then they would assign them the next one in line.

So, I imagine if we see more metals in the future in the books, that the letters that don't have metals associated with them will get assigned to metals. But that's what happened with lerasium.

Gamerati

What's going on with the "diya, tiya, niya, siya" at the bottom [of a prototype Steel Alphabet chart] there?

Isaac Stewart

This was based originally, the sounds, and we kind of diverted from this direction... So, I was a missionary in the Philippines, and I speak Tagalog, and I was really interested in the way that old Tagalog has this symbol system, where they would put marks in different places, depending on which vowels and things. So those are Tagalog sounds right there, that they use in their language, and I just threw those in there as extra letters. I didn't know what we were gonna do yet.

The "diya" actually is a "J" sound. Tiya is a "CH" sound. "Ñ," we find that in Spanish, we find that in Tagalog. And then "Sh." But we didn't really go down that path completely. That was more experimentation. You can see here there's a letter "NG," which is another very common letter in Tagalog.

Gamerati

Have you ever considered making [the Steel Alphabet] into a TrueType font so people could just type in symbology?

Isaac Stewart

So... we have one. We just haven't released it yet. And it's actually the Alloy era that we have in the font, because we needed it for the broadsheets that we do in those books. So we actually have that as a TrueType font that we use internally, but we haven't gone through all the things that we need to do to make it work nicely.

Gamerati

Do you have a "look bible" [for collaborating artists]? Or do you literally give them the stuff that you've already produced? Do you say, "This is my map of X," or "This is the way the Lord Ruler works," or do you kind of go, "Hey, here's what Vin has been for the last ten years, but these are the things you can't change"? Do you have guidance like that that you give people?

Isaac Stewart

Usually the guidance we give them is the words in the book. We sometimes give pictures and things, reference. We did that for the cover for Oathbringer, where we provided reference of, "Here are some pictures of people who look kind of like Jasnah that might work."  We're doing that more and more, but at this point...

I know that Magic: The Gathering has these big look bibles that they share with their artists, and those are really cool. And then they wind up turning them into these gorgeous art books that they've been putting out, using a lot of the same stuff from there. And we haven't gotten quite to that point where it's like, "You know what? This person has to look this particular way." We're moving that direction, slowly, but that's because we're based on books. We want people to be able to imagine the characters as they would.

We hesitate sometimes, when it's like, "Okay, here's the look of what this person is." Even with the Heralds, that we were putting at the endpapers of the Stormlight books, we are careful to say that those paintings are somebody's interpretation. We like ot think of these as in-world interpretations, and each of the artists who are painting them for us are maybe artists actually on Roshar, and they've painted these paintings that are hanging somewhere in some prince's palace or queen's palace, and they've got all of these pictures of the Heralds. So we treat these as in-world artifacts. However, they were not painted from the real people that the Heralds are, so it's more of the tradition of what this Herald looks like.

Gamerati

It's very interesting you say that, because you even said that, when you showed us your early sketches of Vin, looked very much like what [fan artists] made. So, the words are descriptive enough that they're fairly clear.

Isaac Stewart

I mean, there are some thing that we have to canonize later, like, "Which ear is Vin's earring in?" Well, it's not mentioned. It's not mentioned until we got to the leatherbound books, and we said, "We have to figure this out!" And then we made a few notes in the leatherbound books, "This is her left ear." But there are things we run into like that. And the more secondary the character is, usually the less words that are written about them, so there's more wiggle room on how to define them.

Paleo

Was Nazh married? Do you know how to pronounce the full name?

Brandon Sanderson

We call him Nazh (næz), and his name is Nazrilof (ˈnæzɹɪlɔf).

We're not ready to reveal whether he was married yet, or not. Or if he still is married. A lot of questions there. However, this is something that we are actively working on, is Nazh's backstory and Khriss's backstory right now. Actively working on them.

Gamerati

What's interesting about the difference between the classic era Allomancy symbols and the Alloy of Law era ones is, when you get to Alloy of Law, the rusty nails become railroad spikes almost, right?

Isaac Stewart

Yep, they do. We codified that, we decided, "Okay, now they're turning these things into typefaces, they're turning them into fonts." We even have some that hopefully we'll use later in the 1980s era trilogy, Era 3, where we've made them really thick. They're just different font, too, we've been playing with different ideas of, "How would they use the Allomantic symbols as typefaces?"

Isaac Stewart

Those dots [in Allomancy symbols] can move around. They are an alphabet, so you can use these as an alphabet to write things. And the placement of the dot will tell you where the vowel is that comes after it.

So, if you do tin and duralumin... tin is the "I." (It looked like an "I," so I assigned "I" to it. Plus, I thought it was cool. My name starts with an "I," and I wanted it). Duralumin is the letter for "S." And the ones that are not vowels, you can move the dot around for different things.

I think you can throw the dot outside of it, and it will make a different sound, and I can't remember. Like, it might go from "Sah" to "Say." And if you don't change it, then it just acts...

I think, on the Badali [rings], they're just transliterating it one-to-one.

Herowannabe

I've always wondered if there was any rhyme or reason to the designs of the original Allomancy symbols. Do the number of spikes signify anything? The direction they're point? In, out, the number of dots, etc.

Isaac Stewart

No. For the most part. If I remember right, some of them have the dot inside the circle, some of them have the dot outside of the circle. And that signifies whether they're a Pushing metal or a Pulling metal.

Isaac Stewart

At one point, we were going to do little sketches in Mistborn, and then we decided on just symbols. But there were going to be little sketches in front of the parts.

Gamerati

So how did you move away from sketches into the current symbology that we have?

Isaac Stewart

I honestly think that I just wasn't good enough an artist at the time (maybe not even now) to pull off this sort of illustrative thing that we wanted to do, so it kind of morphed into symbols instead.

Gamerati

How did you meet Brandon?

Isaac Stewart

Kind of in a roundabout way. We were both at a magazine at BYU called The Leading Edge. I didn't go as often. He was the editor; I met him once or twice. He didn't remember me, but I met a lot of other people that worked at the magazine who, now, some of them are my coworkers here at Dragonsteel. But I stopped going to the magazine at some point, finished my schooling, went on to start working, and decided that I needed to go back to school for optometry. I just didn't know if there was going to be a future in art for me, so I went back to school for optometry. I already had a lot of the prerequisites because I had tried a stint at dentistry for a few years before going into animation.

So I went back to school, decided to take the science fiction writing class again at BYU. By this time, Brandon was teaching it. He and I were closer in age than the other students there. This was, like, his second year teaching it. And we just clicked. We became friends. One night at dinner (because we would go out after the class and eat on those nights), I was drawing on the tablecloth at a Macaroni Grill (where they give you the crayons and things), and he said, "Oh, I didn't know you were an artist." 'Cause I was going to school for optometry at the time, I wasn't really advertising that I was an artist. So, doodling on the tablecloth, he said, "Hey, wanna do maps for my next book?" By this time, Elantris wasn't out yet, but it was about to come out. So I said, "Sure, I'll do your maps." He didn't know that I'd been doing fantasy maps on the side just for fun for quite a while, so it was kind of serendipitous.

Ben McSweeney

i do have a rough design for this, because we had Dalinar's bridges appearing on the endpaper illustration that I helped Michael with. We ended up making them veeeeerrry small in the final, but a design was roughed out for 'em nevertheless.

I should warn it's even less canon than my sketches for Sadeas bridges. But I'll see what I can dig up.

-EDIT-

Threw this together out of some loose stuff I had laying around. In the corner is part of the original sketch I had sent to Michael. Then I added some step-by-step sketches and filled out the remaining space with miscellaneous unseen stuff.

I must emphasize once again, these are not Brandon-approved concepts. Half of it isn't even that well thought-out, it's just a draft so I could wrap my head around the idea for the purposes of background details. I am also not an engineer.

http://i.imgur.com/WNRJsS8.jpg

Anyhow, I had the idea that the hinge is the weak point, but it also doubles the length you can extend, so I added two large posts that would extend to counterweight the bridge during operation and then push the other way to support the surface of the bridge during the crossover of the tower. Not only does the raised bridge shield your troops from fire up to the drop point, you can station archers in the upper portions to rain fire down upon the enemy that defends your landing position.

The downside to all of this, of course, is that it's sllloooowwww... and of course, these big towers with their support crews and complex engineering are a lot more costly than throwing thirty or forty slaves under a wedge of timber and forcing them to run, drop, lift, run, drop, lift, run, drop, die. Dalinar's crews have a decent chance of actually surviving their runs. Dalinar's bridges can also cross slightly wider chasms than Sadeas's (I don't recall if that's from the books or just me trying to give this design a bit of an advantage).

There's probably a smarter way to handle the hinge and counterweight issue than those long posts, but I haven't given it much thought.

Ben McSweeney

I've done most of the illustrations for The Mistborn Adventure Game. It's the licensed tabletop RPG for the series.

Lots of different cane designs in there, and a few that carried into the sourcebooks for Alloy of Law. I've tried out several designs, just about every variation I could think of... there's no single "correct" design for dueling canes. It depends a lot on the style of the duelist and the fashion of the period. For instance, the jitte design suggests a dueling style that traps the opponent's cane. Reversing the guard might suggest a more aggressive style that protects the fingers when the duelist is open after a swing or a thrust. And then there's canes with even hilts, or no hilts, or hilts that follow different shapes.

Questioner

Are the Sleepless Invested? And if so, is that in every hordeling or is it like the hive mind is an Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

I will RAFO that. All things are Invested. So-

Questioner

Un-Innate Investiture, like extra...

Brandon Sanderson

Extra? I will RAFO that.

Questioner

What was your inspiration for Syl?

Brandon Sanderson

Syl started as an incarnation of the wind. And I'd always wanted to tell a story about a warrior and the wind. That goes back into mythology the wind being a character. It's in Chinese mythology, it's in Greek mythology and that sort of thing. And that was years ago, before it eventually morphed into Kaladin and Syl. So it was really the idea of the wind being a person. She eventually ended up not being a windspren, but that's how things happen, you have original ideas and then you spend a lot of time refining them until they end up working.

Questioner

What would happen if you released Nightblood in a highstorm?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that for now. It's an intriguing question though, I approve of that question.

Questioner

How come on Sel and Scadrial the people get their powers like in a rush either overnight or by snapping, while on Roshar it's very slow and subtle.

Brandon Sanderson

On Roshar there is another participant involved, since you're making a bond with a spren, and that has a big effect on it. You also have some very odd things happening on Sel that are causing a lot of oddity in the way that the magic works. I would call it mostly just a flavor of the different styles of magic and what's going on, but the way that flavor works involves the spren and involves how the Dor is on Sel.

Questioner

What's the technological level of Nalthis by the time of Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that also.

Questioner

If Nightblood were out of its scabbard and then you hit someone who is wearing a Shardplate, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

You will find that out in the books eventually, so that's a RAFO.

Questioner

Where did you get the inspiration for the <pilot unit> in Skyward, because you get the culture of the piloting program in Israel very well!

Brandon Sanderson

I actually went to a lot of pilots and asked them to be my beta readers and talked to them and they gave me a bunch of feedback.

Questioner

I love the concept of the hair changing colors, how did you think of that? How did you get the idea?

Brandon Sanderson

So with Warbreaker I knew I wanted color to be a big theme, and so I wanted a way it manifests in some of the characters, if that makes sense. So that's where it began. I eventually settled on the color, because I knew that I was going [to be having some of the characters change shapes,] because the Returned change and transform, and so I used that kind of hair as a metaphor for that.

Questioner

I admire your imagination and I wanted to know when you first thought about your first book. I meant what is the earliest book you thought of and what age?

Brandon Sanderson

I was fifteen or sixteen, and it was Dalinar, the character. So he eventually became Stormlight Archive, although back then it was a book called Dragonsteel.

Questioner

Was it similar?

Brandon Sanderson

No, just vaguely similar. It was about a man who was the brother of the king who had to take over when the king was assassinated, so that part is the same. But the personality changed a lot over the twenty years before thinking that and writing it.

Questioner

So, at the end The Bands of Mourning, I kind of noticed what seemed to me like a massive implied spoiler for Stormlight 5.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, what is that?

Questioner

Red mist, not in the Roshar system.

Brandon Sanderson

Right.

Questioner

So, I wanted to ask you, how do you handle interlacing stories without, like, giving spoilers on the one hand and being faithful to the logic of the world on the other?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's actually been a bit of a challenge and I just had to be aware that people might read your books in any order and things like this. So, when I'm doing stuff like that, I'm usually being a bit more coy than I look I'm being. That seems like a very, very big spoiler, but...

Questioner

But I assumed that it could be like Autonomy or Ambition...

Brandon Sanderson

So, there's more going on there, but yeah, I do take care. The real trouble has been wanting to do short stories in the future, like Sixth of the Dusk, and I had to be really careful with Sixth of the Dusk, not giving away too many things about the main stories.

Questioner

Yeah, like, who are these people...

Brandon Sanderson

So, I'm more coy than I look like I'm being, how about that?

Halel

Is the time that women are pregnant in Roshar, is it different? Is it nine months, because nine is a bad number?

Brandon Sanderson

It is a bad number and also, the months and years on Roshar are a little different, so it wouldn't be... it wouldn't map exactly one-to-one to our world. So, usually, it's about 10% different, a year on Roshar is about 10% longer than one of our years, but the months are about 50 days, so I'd have to run the math, but it's not going to come out exactly.

Questioner

How do you see the metal, burning metals in corresponding to film?

Brandon Sanderson

So I've always thought that they would make the metal glow blue once you start burning it rather than the lines. The lines I don't think will look as good on film as they work in the books so that is what I've always kind of thought it would do. You start burning it, all sources of metal start turning blue and then you can you know shove on them and things.

Questioner

I have a question about Mistborn. Is it possible for a spike to steal powers from other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

It is possible, yes.

Questioner

And, by extension, Feruchemical storage... in the metalmind...

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, in the metalmind, if they had the other power, could they store the power...

Questioner

If there is the Feruchemist, like the...

Brandon Sanderson

So that is theoretically possible, but it would take a lot of finagling. Yeah, theoretically possible.

TomereK

So Shardblades. When they cut off the victims, the eyes burn up. And deadeyes have their eyes scratched out in Shadesmar. Is there any relation between them?

Brandon Sanderson

There is indeed a connection there.

TomereK

Is it RAFO?

Brandon Sanderson

It's a RAFO, but there is a connection. You got something out of me there.

Questioner

Is there going to be another Wax and Wayne book?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there will be one more.

Questioner

Yes? And when's it coming out?

Brandon Sanderson

I have it scheduled to be one of the things right after Stormlight 4 but before Stormlight 5. So i have to get Stormlight 4 done, that will take another couple months writing and about six months of editing. So you watch sometime around July on my website we should start seeing the Wax and Wayne progress bar pop up or the Skyward 3 progress bar. Those are the two things I need to write.

Brandon Sanderson

And your name is Topaz, huh?

Questioner

Yes, it is.

Brandon Sanderson

Topaz is a great name in the cosmere, because.. I if you know Wit/Hoid? Topaz is one of his aliases. It was the first name I came up for with him, when I was a teenager. I named him Topaz.

Questioner

It seems like [Nightblood] takes Breaths at kind of an exponential rate. So, if you were trying to draw Nightblood in a perpendicularity, would it collapse at some point?

Brandon Sanderson

That is RAFO... that is a RAFO, but yes, it's a good question to be asking.

Questioner

Who gave the Lord Ruler the name "Sliver of Infinity?" Because he's kind of secretive about his past, and that seems like a very descriptive nickname.

Brandon Sanderson

"Sliver" is a cosmere term used by Arcanists, and it would've come from there. They knew what he was, even if a lot of people on the world did not.

Questioner

So they sort of spread the...?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it just entered the... people talking about it and it eventually spread, and things like that.

Questioner

They're called "Wax and Wayne." Is that something to do with the moon or is that just...

Brandon Sanderson

It's a pun, it's just a pun on my part.

Questioner

So you did it on purpose but it's nothing in the book?

Brandon Sanderson

I did. Yeah, Scadrial doesn't have a moon so they wouldn't really... The words "wax" and "wane" still mean what they mean, but it's not part of common vernacular the way it is over here. So it's me being goofy and loving the pun way too much.

Questioner

During the lecture the other day, you talked about the books that you never published, the thirteen books. You mentioned something you called the unspeakable, terrible book number nine. What is that about?

Brandon Sanderson

Parts of it ended up as Warbreaker. It was called Mythwalker and I never finished it - it's the only one out of all those I gave up on. It had a magic system that didn't end up working. So, that's pretty bad for one of my books. I had an intriguing concept, but it never worked.

Questioner

And do you have another one from the thirteen that you still intend on adapting, changing and then maybe publishing?

Brandon Sanderson

Aether of Night will probably end up in some form or another, and Dragonsteel will probably end up in some form or another.

Questioner

If you will say you're the MCU, to compare you, we're at, I think, the Winter Soldier period?

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe, yeah. The comparison to the MCU doesn't quite work. It is the closest thing. The thing that I warn people is that the convergence of the Cosmere books is more about the clash of the different cultures of the Cosmere worlds, and it's less about uniting a group of heroes. The MCU works because your title character, your title character, your title character, and your title character are going to team up, which is really cool. For the Cosmere, don't imagine that that's where I'm going, though some of those characters will show up. The idea is that I am building Star Trek one planet at a time, and I'm then going to deal with the intergalactic politics of it all, and it's the clash of all these different societies and their different magics and their way of seeing the world is what I'm pushing toward, rather than a big team-up event.

Questioner

I think everybody would like to know, what is the Infinity War of the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

The equivalent would be the last Mistborn trilogy.

Questioner

Let's say we are twenty years in the future. You've finished the Cosmere books. What do you think you'll write next? I don't think you'll ever stop writing!

Brandon Sanderson

No, I won't. Let's get me there, first. Because, for me to finish the Cosmere, I need Warbreaker 2. I need to do Elantris 2 and 3. I need to do the Threnody novel. I have two other standalones that are not planets you know yet. I need to finish six more Stormlight books. I need to finish the last Wax and Wayne book and two more eras of Mistborn. And I need to do the prequel Hoid story, the Dragonsteel books. I mean, the Cosmere, I don't know the count on there, but the Cosmere is, like, fifteen books so far. And I have more than that left to write, and it's been fifteen years. So we're averaging one book a year, so 20 years, hopefully, I'll be approaching. But let's get me there, first.

Questioner

I also read that you went to visit the United Arab Emirates, and you wrote the Alloy of Law while you were on the plane.

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't write the whole book.

Questioner

What did you write on the way here?

Brandon Sanderson

I wrote Stormlight Four on the way here. Let's see if I can give you a non-spoiler version of the scene, so you can know when you get there. In the scene, the person who's a Bondsmith is being flown about by Windrunners who are not the Windrunner who is the main character. So when you get to a scene that this character's being flown about by Windrunners and moving to a different part of the world, you will know that scene was written on the flight here.

Questioner

What was the moment that you finally understood that you were an international success?

Brandon Sanderson

The first moment that happened was actually before the Wheel of Time. Things were really starting to take off. Hero of Ages was where it started to really just hit. And I can still remember... my agent, one of their jobs is to go around the world and sell all my books in all the different languages. And they're very, very good at this. Most of the languages you sell the books in, the population of fantasy readers is such that they aren't big checks. We don't do it for the big checks for a lot of these countries. It's just more about how science fiction/fantasy fandom is a big community, and we like having the books. And a lot of the smaller countries, the agent doesn't really earn their money back, but it's still cool to do, so we do it. And I'm used to getting these checks for 50 bucks, or things like this. "Here's your Bulgarian rights at 50 bucks," and you're like "Yes!"

And I opened a check from Taiwan, and I was expecting 50 bucks. And it was 50 grand. So I called the agent, and I'm like, "Hey, you moved the decimal." I legitimately just thought it was a bank error. When you're expecting 50, and it's 50 grand, that's... you know. And my agent said, "Guess what... Turns out Mistborn is a massive bestseller in Taiwan."

Questioner

So you're almost big in Japan?

Brandon Sanderson

Most fantasy authors aren't big in Japan, by the way. Japan's one of the places that's very hard to sell fantasy. The local writing traditions are so strong that they have their own... the anime and manga and light novels and litrpg that traditional Western fantasy just doesn't do very well in Japan. (Which is totally fine. They have lots of cool stuff; I read their stuff.)

But when I got that, and then the other countries started coming in. And instead of being 50 dollars, they'd be 5 grand, or things like this. And you're like, "Oh, something is happening." And my agent's like, "Yeah, something's happening." That's when we first got the inkling.

Brandon Sanderson

Well, we're going to read Rhythm of War. Rhythm of War is the working title, most likely the final title, of Stormlight Four. There are not that many things I can actually read for you that won't spoil the first book. There are a few. For those who haven't read the Stormlight books, all of the prologues take place on the same day, and the books before, they always flash back to a different prologue from a different character viewpoint on the same day that the king was assassinated. (And that's not a spoiler because the first line of the book, of the prologue, is a character thinking about how they're there to assassinate the king.)

So, the thing I'm gonna warn you about here is that my continuity editor has not been through this yet. And these prologues get really tricky to intertwine because of where everybody is at certain times. So whenever I turn in one of these prologues, it's a lot of work to make sure that each of the characters can be where they need to be, so that the prologues don't go out of continuity with each other. So, do be warned, this is first draft. But this is Navani's prologue.

Questioner

Where are all the [movie] rights?

Brandon Sanderson

Mostly, at this point, I'm keeping a lot of these rights close to my heart and not selling them off as easily as I did earlier in my career. I just don't need the money anymore. So I'm being a little more discerning, being a little slower to sign deals.

So, we have the Reckoners at Fox, with Sean Levy. I did sell Legion for a television show. That's under option right now. And we likely will sell Alcatraz here very soon for an animated show.

A lot of people ask if I will make animated Mistborn or Stormlight. That's on the table. It will depend on where some of these animation projects like the Castlevania adaptation and things like that, if this continues to be a good, viable method of storytelling. So, it's certainly not off the table, but neither are live action television shows. I really wanna see how The Witcher does. I wanna see how Wheel of Time does. I'm a producer on that. We'll see how the new Lord of the Rings at Amazon does. I wanna see how they're doing with fantasy in this sort of post-Game of Thrones world. So, we'll see. Hopefully, we'll get a really good Rothfuss adaptation out of Showtime. There's a lot of cool things happening.

So, we will see. Right now, most of the Cosmere is not under contract to anyone anymore, and I'm just kind of holding onto it. There's a company, DMG, that I've been working with on some of them. They still are involved, I still like them, but we are moving slowly, right now. We're just kind of keeping our eyes open.

Questioner

Are there any cool powers or mechanics that you really liked but had to cut out of your work?

Brandon Sanderson

I went through a lot of cool powers for Allomancy that I thought were nifty that I didn't end up using. So, yes, there's some there. You would ask me to list a few, and I would just have to get out the notes to remind myself, because it's been fifteen years. So, I'm not sure what they are. But I know I went through a whole list of abilities before I settled on the ones I was gonna use.

I cut a really fun character from Elantris; you can read deleted scenes on my website. There's a really fun antagonist who showed up in the story at the wrong place. It was a big distraction. I cut that out.

Every book has some things that get trimmed or cut out. Usually, they're not really big elements. Book Three of Stormlight was supposed to have a Syl viewpoint. It didn't get in there, but we'll get it in in another book, don't worry. It just didn't fit. We had even a little symbol drawn up for her, so hopefully we'll be able to use it in the next book.

There's just things that happen that just don't end up working, and they end up on the cutting room floor. You're like, "Don't cut any of it, Brandon! Just leave it!" Trust me; it's better. The first draft of Oathbringer was 540,000 words long, and the final cut was 460,000 words. So, we cut 80,000 words, which is an entire novel, out of that book. But the book is way stronger for having done that. And you wouldn't enjoy it as much.

It's like, I try to get it down so the soda tastes right. And if it's watered down too much, you're like, "I get two cups of Coke instead of one!" But both of them taste half as good. I would rather give you one really good cup of Coke.

Questioner

In The Reckoners, you mostly focused on the USA. I'm assuming that it happened across the world. So my question is: what happened to Israel?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, man. I'm barely figuring out what happened in Europe. You're gonna make me stretch. I'll RAFO that for now. It'll be a bug in my ear until I figure it out, how about that.

Brandon Sanderson

But no I'm really excited for the Darkside stories. We've got some great ideas for those. Now I think we're going to make sure that they have a consistent artist, that's our goal. That's our big goal, consistent artist.

Paleo

Will you do it with Dynamite again?

Brandon Sanderson

We will see. Dynamite we liked as a company. The biggest thing we didn't like was the switching artists too much and so we'll go to them and say can you guarantee us a single artist and the book sold really well so I think they can afford to pay better and get somebody. Like, you know the artists were all great but it was obvious they didn't want to stay on it because it was too much work for the pay I think.

Questioner

What's the Dark One right now... like the film?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah Dark One is looking great. So we have the television show that they announced so I can talk about it. I didn't leak this--with Joe Michael Straczynski, right. Yeah, they already leaked that. And Joe will write the pilot of that some time this fall or this winter. But we have the graphic novel, it's going full steam ahead and then we'll be doing some audiobook versions so they'll be like the graphic novel or an audiobook and you can just kind of choose. There won't be like a traditional novel for it probably, it will be audio or.

Questioner

Will the story be the same?

Brandon Sanderson

It will be from the same outline but there might be small deviations based on how the graphic novel but we're trying to keep it close together. The television show? No idea. Alright, because we have a really great show runner involved and they know television, they might do. But the audiobook and the graphic novel, the audiobook should be prose narrative so not just the quotes, so... and this should be graphic novel, both from the same outline we'll see how it goes.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Before the Shattering, was Worldhopping from Yolen possible to other worlds like Roshar, etc.?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

I'm gonna say yes, it was possible--but it was a lot more difficult to pull off. Not nearly as frequently as now.

Isaac Stewart

And I've got, we'll do two more of the fashion pieces.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep, we got two fashion plates in the work also. Cause I love how those looks.

Paleo

The Thaylen one with *inaudible* is good.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, the Thaylen one looks great.

Isaac Stewart

We're still deciding on what we're doing.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep.

Brandon Sanderson

The next were going to have all the Spren from Shadesmar like-

Paleo

All the Radiant spren.

Brandon Sanderson

All the Radiant spren, you know well nine of the Orders we're going to get all nine in. 

Isaac Stewart

We're going to do yeah, we talked about the tenth. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, we're probably not going to do the tenth.

Isaac Stewart

We're going to have to wait until after the book is done to decide.

Brandon Sanderson

But they'll be nine of them at least. They're looking very cool, I'm very pleased with how those are. They're very like these natural history illustrations and so.

Isaac Stewart

They do look nice.

Paleo

The Dark One graphic novel is coming out I think next year sometime? Did you also... Were you also involved there or was it more...

Isaac Stewart

So, Dark One, we are less involved with the actual...

Brandon Sanderson

We're giving them a lot more freedom because it's not Cosmere which means that their interpretation of Dark One we can let a lot more things slide because there's not a continuity happening to get in that way.

Isaac Stewart

So... Dark One is looking fantastic. They are so far doing a really amazing job. I think people are really going to like it.

Paleo

Yeah, the cover already looks fantastic.

Brandon Sanderson

What we're trying to do is to do a graphic novel where we give people a little more freedom and so my outline is pretty solid but for art direction things go with more what you feel. They send us their impressions and we give them responses but were not being nearly as, with the Cosmere we have to try do the detailing.

Isaac Stewart

And if they were to send us something we didn't like we would let them know but so far they just, the art is, I love the art in it.

Paleo

And like I said the cover already looks pretty amazing.

Brandon Sanderson

The art is amazing. The interior art like, and it's really fun because I can see exactly how my outline is turning into their scenes and things in a really fun way. I'm really hopeful. I don't know whats going to happen with the television show. That's honestly more up to Joe [Joseph Michael Straczynski] then it is to me. I mean I should be there for the writing room meetings and things like that but really we're letting Joe go and...

Paleo

How far has it progressed since it was announced that Joe would run the show?

Brandon Sanderson

How's the progress? He's finishing up a pilot for something else and then he's working on this. I don't know how far... if he's gotten to our pilot yet or not. I haven't received it yet so it's not done. Yeah, that's what I heard back in September he was finishing up another pilot so sometime soon he should be working on a pilot for this.

Questioner

Your magic systems are very structured, and specific rules that dominate them. But are there any universal laws that apply to all of the magic systems in the cosmere together?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there's several of them. Basically, the most important one and relevant to people who enjoy real physics is that I consider something called Investiture to be a third state of matter and energy. So, instead of e=mc^2, we have a third thing, Investiture, in there. And you can change Investiture to matter or to energy. And so, because of that, that law that you can do this, is where we see a lot of the cosmere magics living.

We also have a kind of rule that beings all exist, everything exists on three different levels. The Physical, the Spiritual, and the Cognitive. And, like we have DNA for our Physical self, we also have Mental DNA and Spiritual DNA, and all three influence one another. For instance, you couldn't test an Allomancer's blood and find the Allomancy gene, because it is in a different set of their DNA. You just have three sets. You could compose a test that could test it on the Spiritual Realm, but you're gonna have to use a different branch of physics to do that and determine who was an Allomancer. And so they all work on this kind of fundamental rules of: your Identity, your Connection, and being part of your soul, and the magics working through those things.

So there's some fundamental rules about this, about changing forms from energy to matter, and you having this Identity, Investiture, and Connection stored in your Spiritual DNA that are really relevant to everything.

Questioner

What would you say are one or two aspects in the fantasy genre that are not well-appreciated by the masses?

Brandon Sanderson

I've already mentioned it, but I think that truly great humorous fantasy is not appreciated for the difficulty that writing good humorous fantasy that also has good plot and worldbuilding... I'm speaking of Sir Terry again. Writing really good comedic fantasy is as hard as writing regular fantasy, plus more difficult for that extra layer. So I don't think that's appreciated.

But in a general term, anything we do that's not about our prose is generally not appreciated. Because we have a tradition that has grown up, and it's actually fairly recent (because novels are fairly recent) in the last hundred years or so, that elevates one type of storytelling above all others. That type of storytelling is still pretty cool, right? I can read something that got a Nobel Prize and be like, "Wow, this is pretty awesome. I love what they're doing with this." But it's basically like awards only ever being given to one flavor of ice cream. So, if you have the Best Ice Cream of the Year Award, but Rocky Road and its various incarnations always win, and a fruit sorbet never wins. And that's kind of how it feels, that a lot of the book awards go, where it's only one type of art that's seen as valid. Whereas when I look at something that's really intricately plotted that I'm amazed by, and no one cares in the awards committee, that kind of bothers me. 'Cause I'm like, "Don't you see that there's lots of different types of art that create great stories?" And I would love to see more awards given to someone who is able to create a really cool world and integrate it really well, because I think that's as hard as writing pretty prose.

Granted, you get some people who can do it all, and they make me angry. Pat Rothfuss. But, you know.

Avivsm

Stormlight is very similar to Atium. Are they belong to the same category, like Investiture manifested near a Shardpool?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they belong to the same category for sure.

Avivsm

The Lord Ruler write in metal important stuff. Should we need similar protections on "The Diagram" the book? Against Shardic alterations.

Brandon Sanderson

No for a very distinct reason and I will get into it eventually