Why did [Alcatraz] set the kitchen on fire?
He didn't intend to. It just kind of happened. That sort of thing just kind of happens sometimes. It's based off of my cousin, who accidentally set the kitchen on fire making a burrito. He started his kitchen on fire because of a flaming burrito. Be careful about-- when you're cooking your burritos.
Why didn't Spensa just go home to get food, instead of just having to hunt?
Well, there's a couple of reasons. Number one, she's kind of independent and strong-headed, and doesn't want to admit that she can't do it. And number two, she needed that time to work on M-Bot. If she were going down and coming back up, she wouldn't have the time. But she would set snares for rats, which she could check in the off-time, which meant that it saved her a lot of time eating only rats.
If I were to alloy atium and lerasium, would I get harmonium? Or is harmonium different after the Shards combined?
It's different after the Shards combined.
If I was to take harmonium and separate it out through distillation, would I get lerasium and atium or something that functions similarly?
No, you would-- It actually has become a different--
Can't be split?
Yeah. I mean, you could find a way, but you're not going to get it through normal, mechanical means.
Is it possible for a Returned with sufficient knowledge, to sacrifice themselves to mend the Oathpact?
No, not without work. It just wouldn't work naturally that way. So no, I mean technically any Investiture-- with that amount of Investiture, there's like, a chance they could do something like you want to do. But I'm going to say, kind of, would be no...
Is there any chance we're ever going to get a conversation between Wayne and Lopen?
Maybe in a non-canon entry.
Is the kandra that is on Roshar, Navani?
No.
Is Navani an Envisager?
RAFO.
If a person had the power of Mistborn and other powers like Surges, could he use duralumin to power the Surges?
This is possible.
Previously you were asked if Hoid could have been using the lerasium to alloy with other metals to change his spiritweb, and you answered it was technically possible. Does that mean you’re finally admitting that Hoid did not digest the bead?
I am not admitting that. It was possible for him to do that, but he did not.
In Secret History, outside of Fadrex City, Kelsier was in the Cognitive and Hoid was in the Physical. Kelsier touched Hoid and got hurt. How did that happen and was it intentional?
RAFO.
We know that Hoid was offered a Shard and turned it down. Was he offered a specific Shard?
He was. There is one of the Shards that he would've-- yeah.
Would he have been the 17th person or did someone take his place?
No. Someone took his place.
Can you explain how the Well of Ascension worked? How it actually held him and why releasing the power released Ruin?
That is the sort of thing that I can't explain in a brief amount of time, but hit me with an email, all right? Say that I promised to answer this, keep pushing me and eventually we'll get an answer written out for that one.
Did you always envision the way that Legion ended?
No, I did not. That is one I worked out-- I didn't have an ending in mind for Legion when I started. So when I sat down and said, "What ending am I going to write?" This is the one that evolved out of that, but that one was more-- I outlined the story, but it was more of a discovery written ending.
It was fascinating. I loved it, but I was really surprised.
It is perhaps one of the oddest things I've done.
I wanted to ask have you ever considered making any of your books into an animated series?
I would! If the right people approached me, I would certainly not turn that away. I think there are more people wanting to get series made than there are people making good ones, but I would jump on it if the right people came along.
Is the lake where the Aviar get their powers from Survival's perpendicularity?
RAFO. Sorry.
Sadeas' murder. Do you consider that arc pretty much wrapped?
That is not wrapped, but there are lots of--
Okay. Because I was writing-- I want more of that.
There is a-- Let's just say that there is a convergence of moral philosophies happening in the Kholin household and that it is not done by far.
How close is the enslavement of the parshmen to the Recreance, timeline-wise?
Um, fairly close, as timeline issues go, but still many decades.
Did it play any kind of factor in the decision?
Absolutely. But we're not talking about it happening next year. But it was a factor, how about that?
If I have Investiture in me from one place, does it change how it is if I travel between worlds?
No, it will stay. In most cases.
Zane got his spike through an odd sequence of events. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to reveal yet. I hope to get that out eventually.
A lot of filmmakers and authors that have ended up producing not-great work, a lot of times, they'll cite the publishing house, they'll cite the studios, things like that, and they pressure that they get to release earlier than they initially wanted to. How have you managed that relationship with your publishers to effectively make sure that all of your books have met at least your criteria for excellence? And certainly your fans seem to enjoy them. How do you work that?
It is a balancing, because there is a business side to this. Writers don't get as much push as filmmakers do, because no one has invested $200 million into me making a book, right? And recently, I have moved my contracts away from advances and more to kind of just being a cooperative publishing deal with the publisher, kind of with the understanding that they don't get to give me deadlines. I write the book and I turn it in. And I'm able to do this because they trust me to actually write the books and turn them in.
And so, it is a balancing act, though, in a different way. I've never really felt pressure from the publisher. But at the same time, there's that famous quote, "Art is never finished; it's only ever abandoned." You can always do another revision. And where to stop your revision is something that I think each author kind of has to come to terms with. Because if the book were released a year later, it would be a different book. It may not be better; it might be better. It may just be different. So learning to balance that, to know when you're done with revisions and things like this, I think is certainly a part of it. It isn't a big problem for me.
Words of Radiance is the closest it came to being a problem. Because we had the publication date set, and then the revisions just took longer than we expected. And my core assistant, who was doing copyedits, was spending way too long on those copyedits. We've tried to learn to balance that. But it's something that authors have to learn to balance, so good question. I'm not sure I have a straight answer for you on it, though.
When writing, do you ever encounter a problem where you're building a world or writing a book is very similar to other things going on in popular culture, something like that? How do you build your world to be different from those, so it doesn't feel similar?
Artists and writers are more afraid, in my experience, of being thought derivative than they generally should be. A lot of times what you'll see is, people who have a similar sort of background and are reading the same sort of things will start to create things that are similar. There's a reason Brent Weeks and I both released color-based magic system books within a year of each other. And it's not because we were talking; we didn't even know each other then. But we both grew up reading the same sort of things and were exploring magic in the same ways.
I don't think you need to stress this nearly as much as you do. At least as much as you probably do. My experience has been that the only thing that's really gonna be original about your story is you. And you are going to add things to this story. Look at the number of people who have told Beauty and the Beast in different ways. Or Cinderella. We had a Cinderella book become one of the biggest books of the year just a few years back, in Cinder. You are going to be able to add things. If you have early readers say, "This feels derivative." You can always change that, or you can always write something else. Don't stress it. Write the book you want to write, and train yourself to be a writer, and it really isn't gonna be as big a problem as you might think it is. It wouldn't matter, for instance, if you released a book the same year as Mistborn that had a metal-based magic system. Like, X-Men has a character with a metal-based magic, and it was the biggest movie of the year a couple a years before Mistborn came out, and people don't read Mistborn and be like, "Wow, that's just Magneto, only lamer." *laughter* Thankfully, they don't say that. So, don't worry about this as much as you might.
I could be completely wrong, but I believe a skill is something that you pick up after years of being beaten in a school system, and talent is something that you're born with. If you've ever been out on a karaoke night, you know the difference between a skill and a talent. Is writing a skill or a talent?
What a wonderful question! ...I think writing draws on both. And I think writers need both. And to explain the difference, the skill of writing is learning plot structures. Learning how different plots play out. Learning what types of words to use in what situations. But the art of writing, the talent of writing, comes in bringing it all together to something that is somehow bigger than the sum of its parts. And figuring out that balance, and how to take something that you've constructed out of pieces that you've learned and turn it into something that is a little more magical (no pun intended) is the art of writing, and that's the part that I can't explain. I can teach you the skill of writing, and I can teach you maybe to train yourself to express the art. But at the end, the talent is something that can't be defined.
So in one of your State of the Sanderson posts you said that the "Wax and Wayne" series was going to come out in late 2019, but then you decided to write another trilogy that lasted two years, so--
So Wax & Wayne 4. Abandoning Apocalypse Guard has put me a little on the rocks for when I'm going to do that. Right now I'm planning Wax & Wayne 4 to be a book I use as a break from doing revisions on Stormlight 4. Stormlight 4 I have to start in January if I'm going to meet my stated goal of having them come out every three years, which I realize is a long time between books, but remember that they're four times longer than a normal book! *laughter*. You're laughing, but Oathbringer was 450,000 words, Skyward is 110,000. So Oathbringer is longer than four Skywards. I do have Skyward 2 done, and am going through the editing process right now. *applause* So Wax & Wayne 4 is very much on my radar-- I wrote the first one taking a break from Towers of Midnight, so the chances are good I'll need a break from Stormlight 4 and write it there. I don't know if it'll be out next year or the following summer. Stormlight 4 we're shooting for the fall of 2020, and I should be able to get it right around that time if I start in January, so that's the plan.
I know FOX bought the rights to Steelheart. Do you know if there is anything coming out of that? An update?
Alright. Big update on media properties based on Sanderson things. We'll start with Reckoners since you started there.
FOX owns the rights to the Reckoners, they have been bought by Disney. We don't know what that's going to do to it, but FOX has always been very excited about Steelheart so we will see what happens. We do have the Reckoners board game that came out and is shipping to backers. It's not for sale yet to people who haven't been backing it but it will be eventually. Let's see-- let's go down some of the smaller projects.
Legion is owned by a company out of Canada called Cineflix, and they are working very hard to make a television show out of that. They just bought the rights last summer, but last I heard they had a showrunner interested, so maybe some announcements about that.
The closest to being published-- the closest to being a movie is probably Snapshot. You probably don't know what that is. It's one of my novellas, it's like a mix between The Matrix and the movie SE7EN, so it's very different from a lot of my stuff. It's very close, they have a script and the screenplay's really good, they have someone attached to direct but they haven't announced it yet so I can't announce it. That one is probably the most close, which is going to be weird when my first movie is a serial killer thriller, but y'know, whatever.
The Cosmere books are owned by DMG Entertainment. They are a Chinese company that funded some of the Marvel films. They've moved into making their own films. They have been a wonderful partner. They are trying very hard to make Stormlight a television show and Mistborn as a movie. It's very hard to get epic fantasy things off the ground but they're making good progress, but there's nothing to announce yet. I think that is everything.
Do you have a favorite Smedry Talent?
Yes. I took a lot of these from things my mom does. Which are things that maybe I do also, like being late to everything, and being bad at dancing. Probably mine is being bad at dancing. But probably my true talent is the ability to use a lot of words to say nothing. *laughter*
Which of your characters are most like you and which would you most aspire to be like?
You know, this is a really interesting question. All of my characters are part me and part-not me, so you can point at every character and say, "Oh, that's Brandon!" Alcatraz, my mother says is most like me. *laughter* I don't know what that's saying, but those are really goofy middle-grade books about a character who can't take anything seriously. I aspire to be a little more like Sazed I think, is where I'd put that. But every character is a bit like me, and every character is something different than me that I want to explore.
What's your favorite Alcatraz book?
What's my favorite Alcatraz book? They're all my favorites! *laughter* Because they're all like my children. But I would say that the one I get the most amused by is probably book two.
What's Kaladin's last name?
Kaladin doesn't have a last name because, in Alethkar, your last name is your House name. He is vacillating on what his House name would be, everyone just calls him Kaladin Stormblessed. There's a realistic expectation that if he wanted to be a Kholin, he could be a Kholin, if he wanted to adopt that as his own House name instead of having a different one.
But right now he's just called Kaladin Stormblessed.
To get into the mind of Bleeder, was that hard?
Yes, to get into the mind of Bleeder, who is an antagonist in Shadows of Self, is probably the darkest I've gone in one of my books, and yeah. It was, but it was also somewhere I hadn't explored before, and so it was really interesting to me.
It's my favorite character so far.
You will like, if I ever write the Threnody novel, you will like that one. Which is the Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, that book. I do have a book in the Cosmere sequence planned in that world, but it doesn't have that character.
Is Emperor's Soul going to show up in the Elantris sequel?
You will find references to Emperor's Soul in Elantris sequels, yeah. I don't promise a sequel to Emperor's Soul itself, though.
So, you've mentioned-- you have an idea of how the Cosmere's going to go. The ending of the Cosmere, considering you have seven more Stormlight books to write and years to go, does the ending of the Cosmere hang over your head?
Does the ending of the Cosmere hang over my head 'cause I've got a ways to go-- Yeah, it's starting to loom a bit! You know, when I was in my twenties and thirties doing this, "Ah! I can write every story, I've got plenty of time!", but now that I'm in my forties I'm-- let's make sure we focus and keep going on this. So one of my goals has been to try to learn to write novellas so that the random ideas that pop in my head became novellas and not novels, because the way I work, I can't stay on one thing between books I find that it burns me out really fast if I don't have something new to work on, but if that new thing to work on can be a novella like one of the Legion books, or like Perfect State, or Snapshot or something like that and then I can jump back on the kind of mainline book I can reset myself quickly. And that why you see me practice that and things like that.
My goal is kind of closing things off faster than I open them. This is why Legion got finished this year, why Alcatraz will probably get finished next year. Those of you waiting for a Rithmatist sequel *sighs* eventually. I need to get those other two closed off first. For those of you waiting for Reckoners, I consider Reckoners to be done. If I eventually fix and release Apocalypse Guard, that might answer some of the questions you have about the end of that series. Elantris and Warbreaker are both part of the Cosmere arc, what I'll probably do is I'll write Stormlight 4 and 5 and the last Wax & Wayne book over the next few years-- five years, next five years probably. *laughter* And then I'll probably stop and do Mistborn Era 3, which is the 1980s Mistborn, and maybe some Elantris sequels. And then I'll come back and do Stormlight 6-10 which take place about 10 years in-world after Stormlight 5. Same characters, at least the ones that survive. *eruption of laughter* That might be all of them! No spoilers there. But Stormlight is ten books. The way Stormlight will go is Book 4 is Eshonai, Book 5 is Szeth, 6 is Lift, 7 is Renarin, 8 is Ash, 9 is Taln and 10 is Jasnah. That doesn't mean that the person survives, it means that it's a flashback sequence. *nervous laughter* Just keep that in mind. So if your sequel wasn't on that list then don't hold your breath.
You said thirteen failures, right, with The Way of Kings being the thirteenth?
Yes. My thirteenth.
Are there any other [unpublished books] that you had-- that turned into published books?
Any others that ended up being published? Yes. White Sand, which was my first book, I rewrote as book number seven or eight and I eventually turned it into a graphic novel. Big chunks of book nine turned into Warbreaker, and books eleven and twelve - one was called The Final Empire and one was called Mistborn. Remember how I told you about two ideas mashing together and what made the story finally work? The best parts of those books turned into a new book, the magic system of one merging with the lore of the other is how it worked out. So, um, I did not publish any of those books as they were written except for Elantris. The Way of Kings I started from scratch when I rewrote it, and Mistborn I started from scratch when I rewrote it. But certainly ideas that were part of that ended up in those books.
Is the cosmere, the thread connecting several of your series, something that came from the beginning, or something that kind of grew?
What a great question! So the cosmere, which is the thread connects a lot of my books together. All of my epic fantasies are connected in this world called the cosmere. Was that from the beginning, or was it something that grew?
So I had, I often point to the fact that I had those years not getting published as a big advantage, because while I was working on those books, I didn't write the first ones as a connected shared universe. It was after I had done a number of them, that I'm like, "Hey, there's something here! There's a thread that I can weave together." But by the time I got published, I knew all of that right?
And so, like when I wrote Mistborn, which was my, the first book I wrote knowing it would get published. Elantris was my first published, it was number 6 in those years. I sat down specifically with Mistborn and built the cosmere, using some of these unpublished books as the history of what had happened. So from the get-go of reading it, it was all interconnected. Elantris got retrofitted a little bit, to fit in with this. From Mistborn is where it all kind of starts working together and things like that.
I was inspired to do this by authors I had read who did this really well, that I liked. Stephen King did it. Michael Moorcock did it. It really kind of blew my mind when Asimov connected the Robots and the Foundation books. Of course, you know, comics have been doing it forever. But when I saw authors doing it is what made me really excited. I would count those as inspiration.
I read on your website that, to come to your class, you have to submit a manuscript or something, that you read. Has anybody in your classes published works that you would recommend?
The way my class works-- By the way, if you can't take the class, which is kind of hard to do since it's in Provo, Utah. I do record my lectures periodically. There's three years of them online. I don't record it every year, but every three years or so I record the lectures and just post them on YouTube. A lot of my students have gone on to write books I would recommend.
Let's see if I can name a few. Jed and the Junkyard War. Which is a really cool middle grade about a kid who goes to a world that's completely a junkyard, and everyone scavenges out of that. It has some really good worldbuilding. That's a good book. Like I said, middle grade targeted, so if you know someone who's, like, eleven or twelve and they want a good one book, that one's great. Charlie [Holmberg] writes great books. I just read Chris Husberg's new book. If you like the epic fantasy stuff, he does a very good job with epic fantasy that deals with religion and politics and things like that. I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody. There are a lot of students who go on to publish things. Janci [Patterson] ...writes teen books with a lot of emotion and problems and messed up lives, trying to sort out messed up lives, short books, and they are fantastic.
A question in general with your writing process. Do you learn a lot from your students that have gone on to become authors in their own right? Do you come back looking at their works and maybe saying "I can incorporate this kind of style into my writing?"
I would say I tend to learn more from the writers who were with me when I was breaking in who are around my age, 'cause we're all kind of going through the same things. So people like Dan Wells or Mary Robinette Kowal that are kind of my group that broke in around the same time, I try to talk to them a lot about writing. This is where my writing podcast came from, Writing Excuses. It was me just wanting to ask them how they fix thing, how they deal with this thing, how they deal with that. Certainly, some of my students have gone on to do really great stuff that is inspiring. Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books are great. Charlie Holmberg, who writes the Paper Magician, the Glass Magician books are great. Lot of really great writers. I don't know how much credit I can take from them. But I am inspired a lot by a lot of the books that I read. But I wouldn't say that group specifically. Though working with new writers is kind of inspiring in its own way. Less about the things they're writing, and more just remembering what it was like, and the passion you have when you're a brand new writer. That kind of fresh-faced innocence is handy for someone, the longer you go.
You were saying you were a professor? So it sounds like your writing process, that's a full-time job. Is it your full-time job, or has--
How do I balance all of these things? I am the least amount a professor a person can be and still claim the title. I teach one class one semester a year that is an evening class for three hours. I gave up all the other classes that I taught, once the writing took off. And it's really quite helpful for me to have that one night a week where I just go out and work with new writers. Because I think if you don't do that, if you don't see what new writers are doing, and things like this, then it's too easy to get crusted over in your little sanctuary and not pay attention to the outside world. But the professor part of Professor Sanderson has become very much less professorial over the years. Writing is my full-time job, and has been since I went full-time in, like, 2006 or so. So I really only had two years or so being a real professor before I became a fake one. But they still call me one, they claim me.
If I recall rightly (it's in my notes somewhere) the height is 15' per level. Only a variance of 3', but it adds up. I feel like 17S did this same math a while back but it's probably buried by now. Could be worth digging up to compare notes though.
We do have numbers, I went to some pains to try and get the drawing to represent them correctly. Your estimates are a little high I think, and you might be discounting the amount of internal space given to non-residential function (giant elevator atrium, for instance), but I think you're in the right zone.
Are there any plants that can eat Investiture that can naturally develop?
Yes. Good question!
If an Awakener with Perfect Invocation turns something white, can they or another Awakener then use the white thing back to gray, back to white.
I actually thought about this. My answer ended up being a no.
Can you give a little explanation why?
I will delve into it more as I delve into the nature of color and why it's relevant to multiple magics in the cosmere. So it's a RAFO.
Are there any different effects on a larkin depending on what kind of Investiture it eats?
Yes, but they are not enormous.
You have said the fandom puts too much emphasis on the Lord Ruler's children. Is that because the Lord Ruler suppressed his ability to pass on his abilities to them?
No.
Brandon, that makes no sense. What? Now I'm even more upset. It's actually my fault, 'cause I keep telling people that the Lord Ruler's kids should be important, so you can blame me.
People can be important and not be cosmere-relevant.
Yeah, but they'd be like super-powerful Mistborn!
Yes, who died nine hundred years ago!
But he spent so much time getting Feruchemy away from Allomancy!
Yeah, that's true.
In the Death Rattle, "In the storm I awaken, falling, spinning, grieving," have we seen it on screen?
Not yet.
How about something related to Emperor's Soul?
I had a really good idea for a sequel earlier this year, but I don't know if I'll ever do it. I don't want to Lucas it. I don't want to take something that works so well on its own, and then make something that makes it not work as well on its own. I might do it, I might not.
I've heard this theory passed around, and I just want to see if you'll confirm it or not. Are you actually a bunch of tiny writers in a coat, or--
No, no, no, I'm a bunch of robots programmed to create books. The "tiny writers" one is completely false.
Do you know the value of a heliodor and a smokestone and all that, the relative values?
Peter does. I wrote it out once and now I have him just fact-check it for me when I write the books. So I will often say, "Worth about this much, give me the right money and change". So I made the original guide that they follow, but nowadays I don't have to use that; I can just bracket and say, "Something worth about this much".
In Shadesmar, the solid and liquid phases are inverted. So, in the Spiritual Realm, is it something to do with solid and gas phases, or is it not the same at all?
It is not quite where you're going, but I like the way you're thinking.
So then what's the reason that they can't travel to the Spiritual Realm?
The Spiritual Realm is not a place.
How was Vin able to use the mists against the Lord Ruler even though they hadn't been keyed to her?
That-- You are making an assumption there, and so tell him he might be making the wrong assumption.
Has Jasnah come up with her armor? Because there's a part where they say that geometric shapes were kind of disappearing and it wasn't like someone changing like they normally would.
I will RAFO that for now.
How do you think Kelsier really feels when it's revealed that the skaa really are different from the other ruling--
So-- *pause* I would call it still a matter of debate whether they are or aren't. Whether they were is a different matter of debate, right? But I would say that a lot of the things that were claimed about skaa were not accurate. Some of the things claimed about them were, and that is part of what makes it subject to debate. And Kelsier is very good at not accepting answers he doesn't like.
Any idea when we'll learn more about The Lost Metal?
Yeah, probably middle next year you'll know more about it. It's going to depend on how working on Stormlight 4 goes.
Are the humans who arrived on Roshar at the first Desolation refugees from the Evil on Threnody?
No. Good question. Excellent question.
