Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

There will be a similar number, with a small expansion. At this point I believe you have met every one of the major viewpoint characters for the series. I don't want it to spiral out of control. I think too many viewpoint characters is a danger to epic fantasy, putting a writer in difficult predicaments for subsequent books—whether to leave some characters out, or whether to show a little bit of each of them without getting any major plot arcs for any of them.

So you've seen pretty much everybody. Now, at this point there are several who are major viewpoint characters for the series who we have not had many or any viewpoints from yet—Jasnah is one, a character who shows up in the epilogue is another, and there are a few others—but there are in my mind essentially eight or ten major characters in this series, and it will stick to that.

The interludes will continue to be what they are, which is that those characters may show up again, but it's unlikely that there will be many more viewpoints from them. The interludes are there because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too—I wanted to have the big sprawling epic with a lot of major viewpoints that we spend a lot of time on like Robert Jordan did, but I also wanted to have the quick jumps around that George R. R. Martin does, and they're two masters of the genre. And so I decided on the interludes as a way to jump around and show the world, to give depth and to give rounding to what's happening—give you little glimpses into important aspects of the world—but those characters are not people you have to remember and follow. Each of the interludes will have one character that you need to pay attention to, but you can take the interludes and read them and without having to focus too much on remembering and keeping track of what their plot is. Then you can jump back into the main characters. And that's always going to be the case in the books to come.

Each book will also have one character who has flashbacks throughout that book—we'll stick to one per book, and you will find out how they ended up where they are as we dig back into their past.

What Jasnah is trying to do in this book becomes very important to the next two books. That's a very big teaser. The second book will delve much more deeply into the magic; particularly, Shadesmar will be much more of an important aspect. I don't want to give spoilers.

A lot more magic. I'm telling the story about the awakening of an Age of Legends-style world of mechanical magic, and you can look forward to seeing a lot more of that. We only hint at it here. A very important discovery was made by some characters in a random interlude that will have long-lasting ramifications.

In your gut instinct, who would win in a fight, Marsh (no atium, limited feruchemy) or Szeth? (Or maybe we could go Zane & Szeth since I see a lot of similarities in their characters. They also happen to be my favorites from their respective series)

One of the interesting things I really liked about the book was Jasnah's lack of faith. It seems like during a lot of the scenes where that is an issue, you give her the upper hand. She makes some argument or point and the other characters leave it unchallenged. For instance the line where she says something like "Religion looks for super natural explanations to natural phenomena, science looks for natural explanations to super natural phenomena." That side of her seemed incredibly well written and genuine. Was it hard to do? Where did you get her arguments/points from? I swear a lot of what she says could of been ripped from comments of /r/atheism.

Lastly, I've been rereading the Mistborn series again after reading The Way of Kings twice in a row so I could decide which I liked more. So far...it's still a tie. I'm really liking getting back into the Mistborn world though. That has me super excited for Alloy of Law. Once it get's a bit more polished would it be possible to get an early copy? :)

First question: It's always hard to answer these questions, since there are so many factors. Do the combatants start at a distance? If so, Marsh/Zane have a huge advantage; they have the ability to fling coins.

Does Szeth have metal on him? Szeth's Shardblade would be mostly immune to Pushing and Pulling, as it's an Invested object. But he'd still have trouble getting to them if he had a clasp on his shoes, for example. He doesn't carry a lot of metal, but he might have some.

Overall, I'd say that a full-blown Mistborn would be tougher than Szeth in most cases.

Also, send me a PM with your Email, Phaz. I can't find your email in my address book. I remember that it's not something I expect it to be, so I'm having trouble looking it up.

Most of the main POV characters have been introduced. Each book will take one major character (Kaladin, Dalinar, Adolin, Jasnah, Shallan, Navani, Szeth, Taln) and give them 'flashback' sequences in the same way Kaladin got flashbacks in the first book. There are some open spots for which I'm toying with other characters being used.

Other characters will get viewpoints now and then, but I feel that one of the ways that big series get off track is by changing the focus to side characters. (Note that I will continue doing the Interludes to give some other voices and perspectives screen time. Few of these will be main characters.)

oditogre

This problem, more than any other thing, 'broke' 3 of the biggest fantasy series for me (you can probably guess which ones)—I gave up on each of them partway through.

I liked Mistborn, but honestly I hadn't planned on even giving Stormlight Archive a chance because I assumed it would do the same type of thing as those other series. Knowing what you said above, I'm going to have to pick up that first book, now.

BRANDON SANDERSON

I'm hoping it will work. If I can do it right, and each main character gets a book of their own, it should keep me on track.

The sprawl gets reduced, in theory, as each book has its own specific focus. You get a little of each main character in each book, but one takes center stage and you get a full story with them. (Flashbacks to their past, getting them to the first book, and a depth of story for their narrative in the novel.)

If you do read the book, one of the things I do to try to keep this all from going out of control is I write what are called "Interludes." Most of these (all but the ones about a character named Szeth) are essentially short stories in the world, about characters you don't have to remember or learn. They add depth, expand the plot, but are set off as their own thing with a specific sort of "This won't be on the final" sort of feel.

Who’s going to be the focus for the next Way of Kings?

I spent a long time deliberating this, and eventually, in my plotting, I came upon one of those moments where you’re “Ah, this is what I need to do”, so it is going to be Shallan. So the focus for the next book is Shallan, and half of you want it to be Dalinar, and half of you want it to be Shallan, Dalinar will get his book, Shallan will get her book, but there’s a funny story here. In my original outline, I named many of the books, like Dalinar’s is named Highprince of War. Shallan’s book was actually named after the book that Jasnah gives her, which is very thematically important to her. But then I started telling it to people, and they started laughing, because the book that Jasnah gave her is called the Book of Endless Pages (laughter).

So, I thought that was a really cool title, but apparently, that’s going to give the reviewers too much fuel. (laughter) So you can pretend in your head that it’s called that, but I’ll come up with a different name.

I really like the dialogs between Jasnah and Shallon, convering sometimes atheism, god, blind faith, etc.

Are you going to expand on these philosophical topics? Will it play a larger part in the plot?

I really enjoyed these moments and hope to see more of them

I'm glad you liked them. These questions are very important to Shallan and Jasnah and to an extent other characters such as Dalinar, so you will indeed see much more of this. I wouldn't include it if it weren't very important to the characters. And what's important to the characters has a strong influence on what's important to the plot.

If what happens at the end of Part Five with Dalinar is to be believed, then there is a very interesting theological conundrum to this world. Something claiming to be God claims also that it has been killed. Which then in some ways leaves someone who is atheist right, and yet at the same time wrong. When Jasnah and Dalinar meet, you can expect some discussion of what it means to be atheist if there was a God and God is now dead. Or will she say that obviously wasn't God? Those circles of thought are very fascinating to me and to the characters.

Someone asked if it were hard to write Jasnah, an atheist character, for a devout Christian.

Brandon said he read a lot of atheist message boards for inspiration. Also, it sounded like he'd had the character in his head for a while, but hadn't found the right book to put it in—e.g. he said it would make no sense to put an atheist in a world where gods walk around (i.e. Warbreaker).

You have met almost all of them. Let me do a count... Let's see. The main characters in the book are�in the series�Kaladin, and Dalinar, Adolin, Jasnah, Shallan, and Navani, whom you all met in this book and most of them had viewpoints. Szeth, Taravangian, and Taln. And one of the other Heralds; I'm not going to tell you who that is. But I think you've met...you have, I'm sure, met that person; I know he's in there. And so, I think you've met them all, basically. Taln is the person who shows up in the epilogue.

Marc Aplin

Excellent.

Now I stroll back into my workshop and find that a little bit of dust has gathered. Out of necessity, the Stormlight Archive has been neglected. I am pleased I made the choice to work on A Memory of Light instead of Stormlight 2. However, it is time to pick up that story again and make this series all of the awesome things I've dreamed of it being for some twenty years.

The stories of Mat, Rand, Egwene, and Perrin are now done. Returning to the stories of Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah, and Dalinar will be my next major project. You'll also see me doing revisions on both The Rithmatist and Steelheart this fall—as I've made arrangements for both to be published next year or the year after. You'll probably hear more about them in the days to come. And yes, I WILL be doing a sequel to The Alloy of Law.

Well, it would be tough—I'd have to decide if I wanted the party to be crazy, interesting, or low risk.

For example, inviting Hoid and Kelsier to the same party could result in murdering. Having Sazed around with someone like Jasnah would lead to some great discussions of philosophy.

In the end, I'd probably pick the core WoT cast, just because they've been my friends for so long. Longer than anyone other than Wit and Dalinar, actually. So Perrin, Rand, Mat, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Thom. Fourth book era.

ngu_ns

Wait—are you implying Hoid and Kelsier would want to murder each other, or that they would team up to murder other people?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid and Kelsier do not get along. At all.

I finally got to ask a question about the Stormlight Archive that Windrunner17 and Chaos helped me with which was: "Why Can Kaladin Surgebind with any gem type but Jasnah and Shallan need specific types?"

A lot of that will be explained as the series comes along. It is really the difference between Soulcasting and the other forms of Surgebinding. It's more a quirk of Soulcasting than it is something that is different about about Kaladin. So you've kind of got it reversed a little bit though; Soulcasting has this additional restriction that the other ones don't.

I found some really good atheist forums. Not the 'hate on religion' type atheist forums, but the kind with some serious depth. People asking one another about morality, talking about how they felt when people reacted to them being an atheist, and expressing their philosophy. I gained a great deal of respect for them during these readings.

From there, I went and chatted with some atheists I know to gauge if I had a good handle on things. It was important that I get this right, as it's different enough from my own worldview that if it went wrong, it would have gone VERY wrong and I'd have ended up with something insulting.

Hay Brandon, Huge fan! Finished A Memory of Light, Re-read all 3 Mistborn for the 2nd time, re-read Way of Kings for the 4th time and am currently listening to Alloy of Law while I toil away at work. Also recently listened to all of season one of Writing Excuses, very cool stuff please keep doing it, maybe a live podcast from SDCC this year?

I also wanted to mention I met you last year at SDCC on preview night and I'm working on that Memento. http://i.imgur.com/tve4Xqv.jpg

To the questions...I believe I've heard you mention more than once that you weren't happy with Way of Kings, could you explain a bit exactly what you would change or love to do-over with it or expand on your comments?

Also, any teasers for the new Stormlight archive?

The problem with doing something live like that at SDCC is that it's really hard to get the space or work out the logistics. We keep talking about it, but have trouble making it happen. Everyone is just so BUSY there. But maybe!

The original draft of The Way of Kings had some big issues. One of the largest ones was that I was trying to do too many characters with too many separate plots. (Jasnah and Taln both had full sequences with as much complexity as the three main characters in the current draft.) Beyond that, Kaladin's character (he had a different name there) was bland and never worked. I needed to rebuild him from the start.

I'll post more explanations of this in the Kings annotations, which I'm working on right now. As for teasers for the second book, one of the interludes is from Taln's viewpoint. (He's the guy who shows up in the epilogue of the previous book.)

Is the city that the Parshendi are in Urithiru?

In the Way of Kings, Jasnah tells Shallan that Urithiru is not on the Shattered Plains. So either Jasnah is incorrect or that is not Urithiru.

QUESTION

In other words, you’re not going to tell me?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I’m just clarifying for you so that you have all the information you need in order to make judgements and ask questions.

Brandon pronounced Urithiru like "You-rith-ir-oo".

It is. She's on the back five.

How deep are you going into Shadesmar in WoR?

Not terribly deep in WoR. We're going to have to wait until Jasnah or Shallan are exploring it more.

Yes, she is.

Argent

Why does she take so long to come back?

Brandon Sanderson

Because Elsecalling is not precise even if you know what you are doing, which she doesn't.

There is something supernatural about those. Each Order... Well, how about this. If you look at scholars' interpretations, there are some scholars who think that these things are not supernatural, and some who think that they are. But, if you look, many Lightweavers had powerful mnemonic abilities.

Argent

So it's definitely tied to the Orders?

Brandon Sanderson

It's tied to the Orders. Now, I am not going to say that you've got them all 100% correct, but each Order, there are things that come with Order, things that do not add up from simple the "you get this power plus this power," there is something else going on. And I would say that for Windrunners, watch the number of squires and the power of the squires... these are abnormal for the Windrunners.

Argent

And each Order's squires are somehow different from the other Orders'?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeeeaaaa... some Orders do not have them.

Argent

But some have more?

Brandon Sanderson

Yea.

I would say that what Adolin did was less dark, personally. I would say that what Adolin did was something that needed to be done, that no one else was capable of doing.

Question

Will it have any ramifications for him down the line? With how it was handled?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, there are definitely ramifications. How it's handled, there's lots of ramifications. And there are certain characters who would think that what he did is totally, totally, totally wrong.

They do say that--well let's just say that some books exist in translation over the centuries with the primary text having been lost, or things like this.

EHyde

But you're not going to say if the translation is guaranteed to be accurate.

Brandon Sanderson

I am not going to say that.

Thanks a lot for doing this, Brandon. You're my favourite author, and I have a million things I want to ask you, but since I'm not the only one asking questions, I'll ask the ones most important to me.

1. I'm fairly invested in the pairings of The Stormlight Archive, with my favourite being Jasnah/Szeth. Do either of these two have any romance planned in their future?
2. In The Hero of Ages, Demoux gets together with a woman named Aslydin. He's then seen on Roshar in The Way of Kings. Knowing how loyal Demoux is, he wouldn't just leave Aslydin behind like that. Is she connected to his reasons for becoming a member of the Seventeenth Shard?
3. I'm pretty interested in the integration of magic and sport, like in Harry Potter and The Legend of Korra. Will we be seeing any allomantic sports in the second Mistborn trilogy?
4. Was the guy Dalinar met in his flashback really Nohadon?
5. Will Lift get a Shardfork?
6. Finally, can you tell us what Regalia's weakness is? We never did find that out.

Again, thanks a ton for doing this.

Hey Brandon! So glad you are doing another AMA!

1. Could you explain a little more about Cognitive shadows? When you first mentioned the name and gave the examples of Kelsier and the Shades from Threnody you kind of gave the impression that they were kind of like ghosts. But this past December at the Orem signing you mentioned that the Stormfather and the mist were also Cognitive shadows. The first makes sense to me, I had an entire theory about that (although I argued he was specifically Tanavast's and not Honor's). The second however really doesn't make sense to me, unless it was actually the mist spirit that is the shadow and that got missed in the report (it wasn't verbatim), but even still Preservation is still alive at that point so how can he have a "ghost"? (Unless him sacrificing his mind to form Ruin's prison counts as "death" in this situation?)

The rest of these feel free to pick and choose which ones you want to answer (I'm finding it difficult to narrow things down, so I figure I'll leave it to you to decide which ones you want answered).

2. Are the Unmade Splinters of Odium?
3. Is the Well of Ascension Preservation's Perpendicularity? Or at least related to it (i.e. one is in the Physical Realm but the other is in the Cognitive but are still essentially different aspects of the same "thing")?
4. What if the Throne of Idris passed to someone who was not the child of the monarch? Like if they were the niece or nephew of the previous monarch. Their parent would not have passed on the Royal Locks to them, but if they gained the throne would they spontaneously manifest the Royal Locks? Would their children if they were born before?
5. Does hair that is still attached to a person's head get cut if a Shardblade passes through it? If not, if that person had the Royal Locks could they change the color of the hair "below" the cut?
6. You've mentioned there is a big Hint in Elantris, and later clarified that the hint is an Aon that Raoden mis-interprets. Is Aon Rao the Aon that Raoden mis-interprets? Is its true meaning something closer to "Investiture"?
7. According to Peter, Mraize is from Thaylenah, does Shallan just never mention his eyebrows or is he not ethnically Thaylen?
8. What are your current plans with regards to the Jasnah novella you wrote last summer?
9. Honorspren and windspren have been described as "cousins"; do Cryptics share a similar relationship with creationspren?

Anyway, thank you so much for answering any of my questions!

On the first question, I did not say the mists themselves were a cognitive shadow. That must have been a misunderstanding. The Stormfather totally is, though. Cognitive shadows are basically ghosts, which can take a lot of different forms in the Cosmere, but follow general rules.

2. Yes. Good guess.
3. You're on the right track.
4. This will be discussed in the Warbreaker sequel, most likely.
5. Yes, hair gets cut. It counts as dead in my mind--but not to someone who has the Royal Locks. They could only change below, as you state, and wouldn't get their hair chopped off. (I'm not 100% sure on this, but I Think I've mentioned in Stormlight before that you can cut things like shells on living animals with a Shardblade, but then it doesn't cut the flesh.)

Lots of questions here. More to come, if I find time.

I try hard to make sure things like this are well foreshadowed, but it's always a concern as a writer. Basically every book you write, in an action/adventure world, will contain fake outs like this.

There's certainly a balance. Gandalf coming back in LOTR worked, and Anakin turning out to be alive Empire Strikes back is a powerful moment--but I feel RJ, for example, may have brought people back too often.

Not sure where this balance is for me yet. I know the story I want to tell, though, and I try to leave clues when something like this is going to happen so that it feels less like a fake out and more like an "Aha. I knew it."

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