Live Q&A With Brandon Sanderson | New York Comic Con 2022

thank you guys for coming out to see me I really appreciate it um so what we're going to do here today is we're going to do primarily a Q&A um but I also have a reading for you I'm going to read to you from Stormlight 5 um yeah now there might be PE people here who haven't read Stormlight 1 through 4 you don't have to worry too much because this is a flashback sequence I'll be reading the one of the zth flashback sequences so this takes place before the first book started um this is a handy thing for readings because each book I'm able to read some of these flashbacks which don't give too many enormous spoilers for the rest of the series um and so you don't have to stress there won't be Major Spoilers in there uh so what we'll probably do is we will probably do Q&A for around an hour and then a reading for around a half hour and we'll do the reading at the end uh just because sometimes people do like to slip out for that part if they haven't read the books even though it's not spoiler and things like that so I'm going to let you start lining up I will warn you I have longwinded answers to questions it is an occupational hazard um if you uh if if you've read my books you know that long-windedness is kind of a thing uh I have a couple requests for you for the questions number one is try not to give spoilers of major plot points right it's not a spoiler to ask like some magic system question even though they may not know the magic but it is a spoiler to ask about uh someone's character Arc or a major plot point so if you have one of those I recommend asking me in person at like a signing or something not o over the microphone to spoil the books for other people um the other thing is that I will request that you keep the questions somewhat short and kind of um then also keep it to one question for per person we have a lot of people wanting to ask questions so choose your question wisely uh and I will do my best to answer if I don't want to answer I might raffle you uh Becky do you have RAF rafo cards where is Becky uh Becky has rafo cards so uh I'm gonna start off just telling you a story um about rafo and then we'll get to the questions what is rafo well years ago Robert Jordan started attending these conventions right uh and Robert Jordan uh started getting very detailed questions about the books or about future books and he came up with a phrase I don't even know where he got it uh he came up with the phrase read and find out um right which he then shortened over time to rafo uh I was very familiar with the rafo the infamous rafo people would be like I got rafo it became a verb uh and things like this uh when I took over The Wheel of Time it was really cool because the first day I went there to um to meet Harriet his wife after he' passed away she had something for me h a fan had made a bracelet for Robert Jordan uh that said rafo on it in little beads and she said uh we I had this I found this in these things I am bequeathing to you the rafo uh the physical object that also represents the rafo the rafo is now yours you are now the bearer of the rafo use it wisely Brandon uh it was almost like you know I was getting handed this power um and so I kept the the the the rafo um and I had little cards printed so that people wouldn't feel so bad if they got their answer got raoed because it is kind of kind of Kurt you come up with this really cool question you spend all this time thinking then you're like ask it to me and I'm like oh yeah rafo uh but uh it has become a mark of Pride and so if you do get raoed Becky will provide a card for you she's in the back right over there you may go get one uh and then you have at least your card for me not answering your question all right we're going to alternate between these two and we're going to start over here uh hi so with white stand you with white sand you've uh expanded into a more visual medium with a new story line uh there's always you know talk of when there will be an adaptation to the screen now when that comes would you be interested in doing adaptation to the screen or write a new storyline for the cosm universe that is just solely either television or movie so the question is um if I am going to do um film or television adaptation do I want to adapt one of my works or come up with something new for the media uh it's an excellent question uh it is one I've given a lot of thought to uh and I've eventually settled on the first thing that I do needs to be an adaptation of a of work this is because for Hollywood to invest the kind of money we're asking for um then they are going to need it to be proven one of the reasons they go to books so often is because they're looking for the things that have already been successful in one medium not a guarantee they'll be able to adapt it in fact it's a really big challenge but at least as a way to go to the money people and be like yes we want $300 million and they're like oh really why we're like we can be like well this thing has sold a lot of copies it is a proof of concept uh I will eventually get into I think doing things uh if this is successful that haven't had a book adaptation but we got to start with a book adaptation just the nature of the way the business Works excellent question over here yeah so my question is more focused on your writing style than a specific story uh we know you great story lines we know you're have great world building but I feel like something you do really well is your characters each one feels really unique and has super like incredible depth to it how do you go about making a new character and avoiding like having them feel flat or just like an archetype in yeah what a wonderful question uh excellent question so how do I write my characters uh without having them come out like a flat character or an archetype or something like this so uh it is difficult right this is actually one of the things I had more trouble with if you go back and you read my unpublished works you will find the characters are more rigid and flat um and uh I came to a few kind of Revelations uh one is easy and piy to say but uh it really there's more backstory to it which in this larger Forum with more time I can talk about I often say what I realized is to start stop writing people to an archetype start writing them to a motivation uh and so an archetype is where you're like this character is the wise Mentor therefore they will do the wise Mentor things uh and uh and writing to a motivation saying this character lost their previous Protege to you know a uh to to being you know they what they uh they they delve too far and their previous Protege mimick them and then got themselves killed and so they are extra hesitant now to ever do that again and so it is uh it is driving them right like that's the difference between having a motivation and an archetype uh and I started to ask myself you know if a character um is um if the character weren't involved in the plot what would they be doing what would their life be like asking yourself what are the things they want most what do they fear most why can't they have what they want most these sort of things become driving forces for a character um part of the more in-depth answer is also because I am an outliner I like having a a strict rigid out well not rigid a I like having an involved outline but what I've learned is I can't make it too strict or rigid and Adam I think I can do without the the wireless I'm I'm moving pretty well here I'm not tripping so if I need it I'll ask for it um um but being able to be flexible in your outline is something that took me a while to learn uh those 12 unpublished novels I did some of them are too rigid uh and this is one of the things I learned is you know an outline needs to be able to breathe you need to be able to have that uh that versatility that uh spontaneity uh we talk about and I I talk about people either being outliners or what we call pancers which is a false dichotomy right people are in between and they use different tools at different times and really the truth is every writer is a pancer it's just how much are they pancing at once an outliner you're not going to have an outline that is long as your novel so your outline is going to maybe have bullet points or a sentence describing what a chapter does but you still have to pants how to fulfill what that is and so learning to be spontaneous and this is why you have uh generally more pancers than outliners because every author is a pancer truly and once you get really good at that skill you may not need the outline anymore I still find that for the longer works that I'm doing making the uh the emotional payoffs I want in many much later books I need this outline in order to make sure I'm hitting the touchstones early on for it but I learned that I can't outline my characters I can create a a list of motivations and then I can try writing that character's personality into the storyline I've created and I can see uh if it if it works and if it develops sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't uh I've talked about this a lot before with mistborn I tried three different versions of Vin until I ran uh until I found one with the right mix of motivations um and backstory to create a character that was Jing with the plot that i' come up with sometimes you just throw the plot out and you rebuild your outline after you've discovered who the character is and so being flexible is really important even if you are a heavy outliner I I think both tools get you something uh What uh being able to pants gets you is generally characters that feel less flat thank you yeah yeah I'm going to grab this water set it up here yeah go ahead all right Bridge four for Life by the way yeah uh but I just wanted to ask I was at the Wheel of Time panel uh and Mr Jud Judkins said that he actually reaches out to you sometimes on some of his ideas he's uh he's working on and uh that's pretty cool and I heard you were also there for the filming of episode 2 by the bridge yes so uh two-part question one how was that and is that helping you think of your own adaptation when you're working on the next one yeah yeah uh excellent question so yes I was there um for uh the filming of episode 2 uh it was really cool it's my first time on an actual movie set um they took very good care of me uh and I got to see how it goes you know I got to see like 30 takes of uh of Morin saying the same thing over and over again with slightly different in inflection uh and things like that it really taught me how uh movies and television shows are really made in the editing room because if you have 30 takes with a slightly different emotional range for each of them you have to decide which of them to take and rosmond was a champ she just like you know she just every one of these takes I'm like that's the one no that's the one then that's the one I'm glad I don't have to do that part of it um but it was um a lot of fun um Rafe does reach out to me uh Rafe is great uh Rafe uh Rafe I don't know how he does his jobs because he has so many people giving feedback and every time he he comes to me uh so I read the scripts ahead of time and write him feedback uh and I will admit a large part of my feedback is this is why it worked so well in the books maybe you should do that right um right like that's I I see myself as an advocate on that side it's his choice to decide where to go and I fully support him in making those decisions but kind of feel like um I'm the person whose job is to say this is why I think Robert Jordan did what he did uh and things like that so here's an earful for from me about here's what's you know and he knows what's in the books and things like that but I you know that's my job right my job uh is come from the book side and be like uh do this and he is he is honestly a saint for putting up with uh some of the things Cu uh I think he's doing a great job but you know some of the stuff I famously said I didn't really like a lot of things they were doing doing with pin paren in season 1 and he got screeds like like 20 pages long on some of these things um for me and he just he is he is absolutely Saint he puts up with it he uh he engages he explains his motivations and reasons for what he's doing what he's doing uh and it has taught me a ton uh he has taught me a ton about adaptation and things like that uh and I definitely don't uh envy him being in the place he's in with all the different influen is coming at him and I think he's done a remarkable job thank you go ahead so I have a mechanics question yeah um Can Transportation based fabrial be used to achieve Physical Realm FTL faster than light uh can transport oh oh okay yeah this is theoretically possible yes thank you um so yeah um basically I am pushing toward competing methods of in the space age uh and rosar is one of the ones uh that has access to being potentially able to do that thank you Soh hello yep go ahead during the pandemic to keep saying I wrote a bunch of stories one was a short one that I'm trying to get published and another one was one that probably is multiple books at this point and my question is have you ever for a story was worried that if you cut something out it would a porn prop missing but worried it's too long and okay yeah what do you do you're worried you're going to cut something out that's important but you're also worried it's too long um so too long can mean one of two things one is more a bigger deal than the other too long can be your beta readers are reading it and it's moving at a sluggish Pace right they just aren't feeling it um or things like this or a a separate ident of that sometimes you add a plot cycle in that feels like a distraction to them from the main plot line this happens a lot uh if you're getting feedback that it feels too slow um it the the ways to fix this are generally a to try to trim every chapter by 10 to 20% without actually cutting any scenes and see what that does um and B is to watch for extraneous plot elements um or extraneous info dumps or extr extraneous like where you go for three chapters uh to a casino planet uh and no one understands why you're there um and now we like to joke about the Last Jedi and I have enormous amount of respect uh for Ryan Johnson because he was doing a lot of new and different things with Star Wars which you know is difficult to do um I have run into the almost exact same things in my books where people will read in the beta readers and be like why are we on this side quest uh and you have to remember that a lot of the psychology of readers will be if they don't understand why the side quest is happening particularly if the characters have indicated to them that they don't want to be there for instance if you have Finn saying my plot Arch is I need to find my friend Ry and help her and then the story says no you're going to go do this other thing it's going to be implanted in the reader's brain so watch my lecture on on promises progress and payoff um because a lot of times you haven't set up the right promises uh you have uh you've done something and the reader then feels like the whole thing is spinning Wheels to get back to a main storyline and that's another version of slowness there is a completely different genre of this book is too long and that is the it's too long by what the market economics say a book should be which is generally 50,000 words for a middle grade 70 to 990,000 words for a ya 80 to 100,000 words for a science fiction around 120 uh th000 words for um an Epic Fantasy going up to 150 and your's my be 200 a launchess was 250 uh the answer to you on that is if you've done the other things and you are confident in the pacing of your story um and things like that then you say well I am an exception to this rule with this story and I am just going to believe in my story because uh at this point the this is the pacing I want you try the first first uh in fact I think almost every writer can benefit from cutting 10 to 20% of every chapter forcing yourself because you'll start to find the passive way voice you'll start to find where you repeat yourself you'll start to find where you go off on a tangent and you're like no this isn't relevant and it'll teach you so much the only people I found that that won't help are the people who started as short story writers learn to do it already and then they get to novels and they have no idea how to fill 80,000 words they get done at 35,000 they're like wow this is so long this is huge uh and it's only you know a half of what I need to have um and so for you guys I feel for you go talk to the short story writers not the Epic f writer they can give you advice um so thank you best of luck to you go ahead so um I would like to firstly say thank you to like Dragon steel for you know keeping everything managed like really well and like organized has been they do a fantastic job let's let's clap for them we've got it's been a great three days we've got quite the uh the team we have Adam up here and octavus is running around and then we have Taylor back there and we have Cara we have we have 22 people here at the convention this is partially because it's New York we brought extra parts of the executive team in to go do meetings at tour and random house and stuff like that but they they are a good crew so yeah yeah for sure um and also just bridge for shadow Bri Bo um so I have a like a mini question that's just like kind of fun um what was your favorite scene to write and like have you ever felt like in a scene that like you've written that like it's like really epic and like you feel good about it and you're like getting Goosebumps from it yourself like have you ever felt like that yes so the second one is yes uh I get the this is great Goosebumps mostly it's on those scenes I've planned for a long time that I finally get to write because I've gone over them just like a hundred or 200 times in my head uh the uh like the ending scene um on Earth e uh in um rhythm of war is one of those things um not to give any spoilers but there there are moments like that um and those those are the moments I write for right that's why I'm a writer it's for these moments when everything converges um uh and what was the first question um just like your favorite scene like favorite scene so I don't pick favorites here's the thing Robert Jordan very wisely once answered if you ask for favorite character favorite book favorite scene he would answer it is whatever I'm working on now because the character or scene or book you're working on at the moment has to be your favorite in that moment otherwise why is it in the book right uh and so I generally default to that answer he was a smart dude uh and so I just I just steal that answer with the rafo um be like whatever I'm working on now is my favorite so there you go thank you go ahead hey um Miss Boron was one of my favorite endings of all time excellent um I was curious how how much of the those endings are your outline or how much of it is like deviation so uh how much of the my endings so my endings I would say are around 75% outline 25% deviation the deviation though for me um if I know if I start to deviate I rebuild the outline right so when I say deviation it um here's how I here's how I work for outlines if you don't know um I almost always do an outline backward to front meaning I start with the moments I want to have occur and then I build up uh I build bullet points underneath about how to earn those cool moments right um and then I organize those into something of an outline but mostly my outline is still a bunch of emotional moments and the ways to earn them I usually do that for a first book with very little on the later books because I want to have to then lay down the characters right and I have to often cast new characters and roles and things like that as I'm starting out so it's really hard to like outline you know 10 books when you haven't written the first one yet so then I generally write the first book I get all the character arcs down and I really get to know the characters and then I say all right now I can sit down and I can outline you know a major arc which for Stormlight is a five book Arc right so I outlined then I sat down and outlined two through five um and then I gave myself about a paragraph for six through 10 uh I know what's happening there and then 10 has more right 10 has a longer thing is where I'm shooting for and then my focus is on these first five and when I go to a book to write I take this outline which is at that point only a couple of pages it's like you know two to five pages and then I expand it to usually an outline for me is about 10,000 words for every 100,000 words of finished product there's less than that on a Stormlight book because a lot of that is World building which is in my Stormlight Wiki at this point right so I don't have to do as much World building in the outline uh as I would for something like Skyward where I don't have all that already done in the wiki um and so then I take this outline and I start working on it but as I write you know connections are made I'm like no no no or you get to a point you're like this is not going to be good enough I need something stronger here I need you know or this character is is just not going to do what I have them ploted to do I step back and I rebuild my outline so my outline is like a floating outline it is always me saying here is the target how am I earning that am I moving the target if so what are The Dominoes I need to change in order to get to that um but I would say that as Stormlight in particular has played out uh each of those end moments um I would say is been mostly from the outlines and so I have hit those targets uh just some of the context around them has changed thank you mhm um hi there I just want to say you've been a massive inspiration to me oh well thank you um but I also want to ask uh how do you approach Your World building and how do you sort of inform your readers over time rather than doing a massive lower dump or Exposition dump yeah excellent question so um a lot of authors will talk about how you want to have a giant Iceberg uh right for World building meaning you have this this this uh all the stuff you see and then underneath the water you know the iceberg is bigger than it is on top the idea being that you have done all this work as Foundation um for it I find that you can't possibly do all the World building you need tolken tried and it took him 20 years and there's still holes right there's very few holes in tolken but there's still stuff he didn't get to um that he would have wanted to spend time World building and because of that I don't think you can realistically ever World build an entire world so I tell people and this is what I do to focus on what is relevant to your characters and plot most everything else give kind of a loose sketch to but what are your characters going to be passionate about and you might not know this until you start writing but as a character passion develops like you know as you start develop someone like kaladan who is uh very informed about field medicine well you need to know then the tech level of the uh of the medicine right and things like that much more in depth than say something like um like um a story where you might have magical healing where it doesn't really matter you know do they have antiseptics where do they get their antiseptics how well do they work right like those sorts of things you can do differently right uh and so I I ask myself what are the what are the characters need what does the world need um and it also it depends on how big the series is I still recommend write that first book first I do think that's really handy you do not need all of your world building done when you write your first book if you are planning a very large series like The Stormlight Archive it will behoove you to after you have that first book then do a little extra work building more of that uh Iceberg so to speak so that you have some of this foundation so you can layer it in in revisions to the first book and then make use of it later but the death nail for all of this is if you start doing the info dump and this is kind of what you're asking about um infodump is where you deviate from character or plot to give us setting elements uh and you have to do this to some extent with every book not even those that aren't Science Fiction and Fantasy uh because you need this context you need this larger world you need to be feeding people these little pieces of things that they need um but if you're if you're slowing down the narrative for it you're going to lose the readers and so there's this balance to make and it depends on your sub genre you can they'll they'll take more in Epic Fantasy than they will in like a middle grade uh you know contemporary right obviously um but you want to kind of control that and use it and my best advice to you is Do It Through The Eyes of the characters uh if you want to have an excuse to World build something make the character passionate about it and relevant to their storyline and do try to keep it shorter keep it to their descriptions and the way they see the world if they see something they like oh you know um it's really important for whatever reason the architecture to your world will make sure your character is interested they' be like oh yeah those archways mean that this is an old you know uh Elven Village or whatever it is you're doing leave it at that but then it tells us as much about the character as it does about the world and anytime you can do that that's when you're doing it right tell us as much about the character as you will about the world all right thank you so much yes go ahead hi um I've published a couple of science fiction novels myself mostly small following but not much awesome my question thank you what's your name Brian Benson I publish under Bradley Woods is my pen name sweet we have a couple novels I published um but my question is you know there's like millions and millions of authors right there even if you have a small Indie press they don't really have the resources to handle marketing getting your name out there nobody does anymore exactly and so as someone who's trying to get my books out there read I have some reviews some people published in five countries kind of thing they'll publish but how do I actually like get that out there on a broader scale how do I get my name known how do I get find myself in the sea of millions of other people like me oh man you are asking the hardest question in publishing right now um right asking it um and it's it's good I'll try to give you a few tips but the real answer that I have to give you which is uh unfortunate is you need to be talking to the authors who are breaking in right now not the ones that already have a following right asking me I can I try really hard to watch this so I can advise students and new Authors but really I I am so deeply rooted in when I broke in um and you're going to find this if you ask authors how do you break in some of them will still tell you oh you do this and this and this that worked 20 years ago right um and so I try very hard not to do that but at the same time I can't I can't separate myself from that so here's what I'm hearing from people who are breaking in right now um so number one is generally as you have heard many times before making sure that you're being consistent on your next book is generally the best thing you can do for your career long term and so you shouldn't stop writing to do um publicity unless you are able to be consistent uh and consisteny depends on your sub genre and if you're Indie published or not indie publishing generally requires faster book releases than traditional publishing does um that's just the method that they use um a lot of people are still using the try to get the first one for free or 99 Cents uh and then get them into the rest of uh your series uh and to do this it's kind of marketing tactics I don't know how how good your keywords are and your Links at the end of your books but giving out the first one and having good links this is what people tell me for Indie publishing makes a big difference on the larger scale during the 2010s we saw a lot of people that were able to break in as platform writers um and I don't know this really depends on having specific skill set I was not a platform Rider a platform riter is someone who has a really interesting life experience or skill set that they are able to create a Persona around on one of the social media sites uh a good example of this would be Cory Doo who is really interested in Freedom of Information um and things like this and he was part of a big blog called boing boing um and things like this and he was able to really make a Persona because he was really expert in this he's also a really nice guy um and able to be like I talk about Freedom of Information and I write fiction books that deal with these aspects of pop culture and Freedom of Information and interesting ways and so making Fame for himself in one area let him sell his books you see a lot of this on uh on YouTube and on uh on Tik Tok and things like that uh in you have to kind of become an influencer the problem is becoming an influencer is as hard as publishing or maybe even more hard nowadays this is why it's changed right uh becoming a platform writer is still viable but you know it's no longer the golden ticket it once was when some of these people were breaking uh I mean the uh the you know making sure you know how to do your advertising right and spending advertising unfortunately Amazon forces you to have to do this um the answer is the only real other answer I can give you is uh make sure you have a mailing list make sure that the fans that you do have you are treating really well maintaining giving consistent information to and hoping that they're going to spread the word thank you so much yeah hello would you like to destroy evil today I would like to destroy some evil today um so my thank you thank you um so I'm not a writer but uh my brother and I were watching the new ob1 show and there's a few scenes where uh Vader kind of lets Obi-Wan go and I've heard people defend this by saying oh uh you know Vader's kind of being arrogant and uh it's kind of one of his weaknesses so I I dis agree I I personally don't think that villain should really have all that many weaknesses so I guess my question to you is do you think the best villains only really have like one weakness that is the ones that the heroes use to defeat them or should they be more I guess uh diverse and have maybe more weaknesses uh so the answer to this like everything in writing and storytelling is it depends um so it depends on what role the villain IS F filling in the narrative uh how many viewpoints in a book we're giving them uh and how uh sympathetic their motivations are right it's really good for Sauron to have like one weakness which is you know he uh is so focused on these giant armies that he doesn't pay any attention to the hobbits because who would right like that is a good weakness for this giant powerful villain and that's really for the Lord of the Rings at least the movies all we need to know about saon um right but it's good for Gollum to have a multitude of different weaknesses um and different rounding because we're going to be spending a lot of time with him and he represents in the narrative um who Frodo could become and we want to see lots of then weaknesses and things like that uh in Gollum and so what's the role um a lot of it also comes down to like if if you are feeling that the The Narrative something like Obi-Wan isn't working for you uh you're not wrong right because you're the audience for that uh you get to say you know doesn't matter if everyone else likes it if you don't then you can kind of analyze that and say well why don't I and you know come up with the answer with that being you know it's probably just it's unsatisfying right it uh anytime the hand of the author or Creator is visible to you it kind of ruins the story a little bit unless it's something like Deadpool right um where it's a selling point instead uh you know Emperor's New Groove the whole how did we beat him here crk I don't know it doesn't make sense it becomes a joke then and it's fun but in most stories um if you see the hand of the author and I would guess that what's happening here with you is you're seeing the hand of the author well we can't kill Obi-Wan because um Vader is stronger than him we can't kill him we know he survives until this and so what it's saying in your brain it's saying oh I can no longer suspend my disbelief and enjoy Obi-Wan being in danger because now I've been reminded that he can't die so the stakes are gone and if the stakes are gone then suddenly I see all the you know the the magic going away um the fact that we can go to a stage play right and we can we can suspend our disbelief for a stage play and imagine uh all these weird things says we're capable of a ton if the as long as the author uh doesn't expose their hand too much narratively uh and so the problem I would say there is you know coming up with a variety of reasons um or maybe not writing yourself into Corners where Vader should have killed again and again and again is the proper answer um because we don't want to expose the hand of the author thank you MH so I have not watched Obi-Wan yet um uh you know I feel like I should but I don't know where I am as a Star Wars fan anymore right like it's so weird um no really like I'm sure some of you feel this like I grew up loving the original trilogy uh it was foundational to my childhood right yeah um people ask me for my favorite and everyone else says Empire um but I always say Return of the Jedi uh even though it has huge flaws right I am all about that powerful moment coming together and the moment of Luke inv Vader is done so well uh that whole sequence gives me chills every time that it overrides all the good writing and other ones which are objectively better the first two movies but those moments are powerful enough and if you know from reading my books that's the thing that I live for that that one becomes my favorite uh and so um but I feel like you know spending all those years watching the prequels and being like ah these aren't bad are they oh they kind of are um right followed by oh we're gonna we're going to have this new Trilogy and then it kind of being erratic in its quality um across different uh things and mostly I don't blame any of the filmmakers or first spec especially not the actors who did a fantastic job it just didn't come together for those moments for me right I didn't feel like it was building to anything uh but then the Mandalorian is really awesome and so I really enjoyed that uh but then you know Obi-Wan comes out I'm like h ah do I want there's so many things to watch and I just ended up watching Arcane instead um right yeah um and so I don't know maybe I will get to it um maybe I won't there's just there a lot of good media now and so you know if something isn't quite working for me I don't know isn't it weird that Star Wars is the one where I'm like H you know like uh that's that that's strange to me anyway go ahead um hi um I want just want to start off by saying that I really really appreciate and have grown quite attached to The Stormlight Archive characters oh well thank you I appreciate that yeah and so that takes me to the question uh we all know that Stormlight can get quite emotional and there's a lot of impact scenes were you ever writing and you got affected yourself and you like had to take take a step back right have I ever been writing Stormlight and had to take a step back uh because the impactful scenes you know I have um I am not a very emotional person I talk about this a lot but one of the things that can do it to me is fiction uh and um other people's fiction like Terry said on our panel before often affects me more this is because it's very natural because I have a long time to prepare for these things they're all in the outline and I working on them and things like that but still that moment where everything comes together or where you know a a character has a big moment or sometimes a sad moment those will get to me because um it's the result of many many years of work usually but also because I'm I'm very close to the characters every character in my books is partially me partially not me something I want to explore and something I bring in expertise to right like that's how I build characters add something that I know really well and something want to learn really well uh and so the answer to you is yes um and uh I think that's one of the things that makes fiction so great is because in a lot of ways it's like telepathy right what I'm feeling and thinking I put on this page and then someone you know many miles away uh you know sometimes decades later reads it and feels that same thing that I was feeling that's pretty cool and that's what I love about fiction hi thank you very much about seven or eight years ago my wife and I moved to New York and took very stressful leadership jobs uh during that time for our downtime we had The Stormlight Archive the first two books back then and both of us independently while reading it said to each other wow this is like a how-to manual for how to be a great leader especially in the characters of C uh kaledin and dinar was that intentional on your part because it really felt like it and by the way I was using this in my job all the time and if so where in your life or in your experience as you draw these I think very insightful leadership skills from well thank you I appreciate that um so this was intentional uh I talked at length about this two days ago in a panel that'll uh we post on my YouTube channel so I don't want to go too much in depth but what uh but I'll go in depth in a different way um but the thing I mentioned before is I knew in writing this book that I'm dealing with a monarchy right uh and like I don't want people to walk out of The Stormlight Archive and be like Brandon says monarchies are awesome you know I'm an American I believe very strongly in the idea of a representational government right uh Epic Fantasy tends to deal with time periods where there weren't a lot of representational governments um and um you'll notice kind of themes in my books pushing toward that and talking about it but I knew I was going to be dealing with the monarchy and the honest truth is monarchies and systems like that make for really convenient narrative structures because you can have the this decision power Consolidated into the hands of a few people which allows you to tell a story about people who can get things done uh which is dangerous and terrifying at the same time right and so I knew that I wanted to be dealing with the nature of leadership so that I could be getting across to the readers these themes of look it's not about monarchies being great but leadership is interesting and powerful and what makes a good leader and a bad leader is really important to me um the original concept the very first seed for The Stormlight arave was for the relationship with between dinar and elar where your nephew has inherited the throne your nephew is a bad King what do you do as someone who knows they would be a better King what is your duty to your nation what is your duty to your family in that situation you love your nephew but he's doing a bad job and ignores your advice right do you take over the throne or not basically um in my original concept it was a uh it was like a kid who had uh who had in herited right and uh and things like that and a kid was making bad decisions I realized soon after it was a much better story if it were just a legitimate bad King uh and so I felt like in order to tell this story I really needed to delve into what makes someone a good leader because of the main Arc about dinar is my nephew's a bad leader I think I do a better job I have to be realistically showing what makes a good leader um and so I spend a lot of time reading uh biographies uh studying military structure and really what I would talk to is uh the other day I mentioned Scar from bridge 4 who is a friend of mine uh Ethan Scar stad and he is an enlisted man uh in the uh the military and I would talk to him and be like all right what makes a good leader in your eyes right I don't want to know what the lieutenants think is a good leader I want to know what the sergeant thinks is a good leader and he would talk to me and he's in my writing group and give me lots of good feedback but lots of reading lots of reading um if any of you are member of uh my church uh King Benjamin's speech on leadership is uh influential in me um that's just a chapter in The Book of Mormon that talks about the nature of leadership um reading all those different things kind of congealed together into my philosophy on what makes a good leader and hopefully I am right so well my my wife actually LED this city through covid-19 oh wow and uh she can thank you in some small part for the lessons you helped teach wow that is awesome wow hello uh as a fan of tabletop role playing games I was really excited by the news that The Stormlight Archive is in the works for an RPG yeah and I was wondering at what point that idea came about I don't know if that was something you had in mind or if you were approached about it and what that process has been looking like excellent question thank you for that um so oh I should not brush this microphone um so I am a longtime tabletop gamer uh I started actually with TMNT anyone else here starting the TMNT role playing game am I like the only one oh that's cool uh this is uh this is the padian system which is um which was back in the day a legit competitor to D and D before D and modernized and just kind of retook over everything over but there was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role playing game this is before the TV show back when T Mutant Ninja Turtles Was An edgy kind of self-referential comic book uh actually the turtle started because there was like this goo that turned uh turned uh Daredevil into Daredevil that like you know made him uh that blinded him and in this the joke is that goo got on some turtles and turned them into into Mutant Ninjas um but it was a parody comic a little bit but they took it really seriously and then someone you know um made a comic a tabletop RPG that was my first time because what you got to do in this one is you're like roll for what kind of animal you are you're like ooo and then it's like I was an armadillo I'm like woo an armadillo they're like all right now you have all these points by powers and they're all armadillo themed I'm like I I'll have armor and I can roll and all this stuff it was really cool right um and that was my first role playing experience we just basically built the characters we didn't actually do any role playing because we didn't know how to we're like 11 um uh but I've been a role player ever since I've played a lot of different systems I really like role playing um the thing is I don't do as much of it now as I used to in fact I do very little what I found is that role playing was uh was actually really good exercise for my imaginative brain for storytelling but once I started writing full-time I would do that all day and then I would go to role playing sessions uh at Dan's house if you guys know Dan uh who is my my podcast co-host and he would be uh we would go to his house to role play and be like I just did this all day um my brain is exhausted uh which is why I I shifted kind of intentionally my focus to Magic of the Gathering which uses a different part of my brain in order to relax so I don't role playay as much anymore but I'm very very fond of role playing and so I've always wanted to do a role playing uh system and so when crafty came to me about mbor I was just very on board and in the same way um when uh we were exploring a partnership with brotherwise the first thing I said to them is that is I want a Stormlight RPG can we do this it was this time I was saying to them they like yes we can do this we will make it the way you want it to be so we're going to be spending a few years building that and uh my philosophy on uh on role playing will probably come out quite a bit in the role playing system thank you I'm looking forward to it yeah hello um first off the storm arcave uh mbor elant warbreaker all have been just really uh influential books in my life and I want to say thank you my pleasure secondly uh stormline archive kaladin dinar teft Shalon are all characters that have very real mental illnesses and struggle with very real issues and while reading those characters I couldn't help but feel very much seen and very much heard and I was just curious what is your kind of method to make sure that your characters are authentic and real and that are kind of carried off that way excellent question um and so um my method is I think really the only valid method uh maybe there's another one out there but it is to listen to primary sources right uh and so when I'm exploring someone who is dealing with a mental health issue or something like that um what I will do is I will go I will start my research um usually in uh blogs and things like that where people have uh talked about what it's like to live with this uh uh reading what uh family members also say is usually pretty helpful uh to kind of get a grasp of the breath of it right because no person is a monolith if you're just like this is what it's like to to have did well no that's what it's like for one person to have the idea and if you don't have like breadth of reading about a bunch of different people's experiences then you will you will probably default into some kind of particularly you know what you want to avoid is the pop culture representations of a lot of mental illness because uh somewhere in the 80s people realized that you know you could make a really sexy version of most mental ill illnesses and uh and and then took some narrative shortcuts that have been pretty damaging to most people and we all um particularly my era you're uh the younger Generations probably uh not have this as much but my era internalized a lot of those if you read aess my treatment of autism is very much one of these pop culture uh versions of autism uh and uh you know I got it wrong uh um it's not like there are no people that uh that act autistic like Maan does but but you know that is like such a extreme version of something that a whole host of people deal with that they are kind of tired of seeing that one representation um and um so going to the primary sources um and then after that I will probably go to the DSM right and just kind of look at some of the clinical sides of it uh and then from there I will do my best and then I will get beta readers early readers who um who will help me um um to get things right you know with certain characters I've gone to someone I knew who was in jail um because of drug rated crimes with Heroin right um with some characters I will uh specifically solicit like you know we I solicited fighter pilots which is not a a mental health thing but it's like what does it feel like to be a fighter pilot um and getting people um you know I had three different readers with did for um for rhythm of war and so the idea being that I want to make make sure that if I'm doing something that doesn't work with one of their life experiences I'm doing it intentionally usually it's because again people aren't a monolith and I can you once you get a handle on this you can you can say all right this is how it works for this person for my character and it is going to be different from some people's experience but it needs to be authentic to a portion of people's experience if that makes sense um and it's really this idea this commitment that you kind of have to make to yourself to be like I'm going to be authentic rather than pop culture and I'm going to make the difficult narrative decisions to be true to people's life experience rather than letting these things be easy shortcuts for drama um and making those kind of decisions leads you I think to better stories in the long run because you have anytime you have to do something hard your story generally gets better um but it does mean you can't take some of these shortcuts thank you so much now yes yesterday I had a Q&A um where there were like a a handful of people who didn't get to ask their questions did you guys get in line here was there anyone there yesterday specifically okay good so we they either got their questions um or they aren't here today so uh go ahead I just want to make sure that I because IID mentioned them I might let them uh cut in line yeah no I was going to ask um you said you were talking earlier at this panel and the previous one about moments that you're really emotional about that you're really excited for that you were working towards and I'm wondering if there any moments like that that you found that you've aimed for this moment but you've missed it and it doesn't work anymore and how do you give that up yeah um so does this happen this does happen uh it very it hasn't happened so far in The Stormlight Archive It generally doesn't happen in once I'm deep into a series because by that point I know the characters and the plot arcs really well where it generally happens is when I'm trying a new book and I don't know the characters quite as well and I'm writing my way through that first book uh again it still doesn't happen that often but once in a while it still does um and when that happens it's a matter of kind of going back to basics what were this character's motivations why is this not connecting why isn't working with readers uh and it usually comes down to a couple of things uh number one the motivations don't make sense uh and if you can make those motivations make sense then things can come together better number two it's a promises are wrong um you have made a promise you know we talked about uh this thing uh with Kanto bite I had a similar thing to that in oathbringer where I was uh to not give spoilers some characters were going to shadesmar a place that uh was a brand new interesting place that was pointing towards some really cool events later in the uh in the book uh and this sequence with my uh Alpha readers just did not land at all uh and I realized it was a matter of promises uh it was where I I sent them into shadar the people who are going there and I said they need to get to this place and then secretly I needed knew they needed to go somewhere else so I just kind of have the narrative take them out of their place and so what happens in the reader's brain when you're doing that is you've promised me they're going here they're heading the wrong way therefore this is um a side quest this is not important I I I have trouble paying attention until they start pointing toward the goal that you have given them and in that case it's a reassess the goal given to them up front and then you start heading toward and then people can enjoy the book um it's really frustrating uh as a reader to feel like you're not making progress uh to feel like this sequence isn't doing anything for the story and that's all generally about the promises once in a while you just have to C cut the whole sequence but sometimes it's about how do I make sure that the promises upfront work and so uh it's a it's a variety of things that could solve this problem and each individual one needs to be diagnosed in a different way mhm hey Brandon I I know you also enjoy playing video games which one of your properties uh would you most like to see in a video game and which video game do you think would sort of be the best to represent it or for it to emulate something right uh so I would still probably pick mistborn um I think it uh you know the scope of mistborn and the way that the magic Works would uh adapt very well to a video game uh for years do you guys remember the old game Infamous um yeah I thought Infamous was a pretty good model for how to do a mistborn game because there were a lot of movement mechanics which I love movement mechanics in video games I like when your character feels fluid and you feel like you're going places and Infamous just mastered that right uh it took place in one city and I think a mistborn story really should take place in one city uh with lots of interesting architecture and things to visit um and um I just really like kind of the power set how it played out in Infamous uh so it would be my model I know a lot of people think assassin ass Creed would be a good model and I would agree with you in some regards um but it depends on which version of Assassin's Creed you're talking about because that you say Assassin's Creed and it's like seven different games at this point so awesome thanks let's make it happen yeah I want to make it happen I you know you just have to you have to find a 100 million dollars to make those things these days so um yeah hello um I just want to thank you for all these insights into your books into into writing in general it's great and uh on top of that say I'm sorry for this is a little bit more of a super official question oh that's totally fine everyone's asked some great questions um I was curious as far as the kickstarter that you had done recently yes um it went well it congratulations um but I was curious as far and I understand you may not have an answer for this question um if there's any plans as far as like production and getting out to like Barnes & Nobles or just on Amazon right right right good question so this is for the four secret projects uh that we had the kickstarter early in the year how can you get these if you weren't part of it so um we will so here's the plan currently um we need to make sure that people who back the kickstarter have the books before we sell them to other people right this is like one of the this is one of the fundamental tenants I believe of Kickstarter is make sure that the people who backed your Kickstarter don't go to the bookstore and find the book there for sale before theirs has come to them right uh just um now we've got a hedge on this because we are going to be sending out the ebook an audio book day one right uh on January 1st those who back the kickstarter will get if they bought an ebook everyone gets an ebook if you back the kickstarter so you'll get an ebook and those who wanted a um an audiobook get the audiobook as well so I at least know it's in your hands but we're still going to wait a few days I think it's going to be 10 days I can't remember Peter um knows what these numbers are before we release the ebook and the audiobook on other sites and they will be released on other websites uh at that point we're going to be shipping out the physical product uh now the way that today Supply chains work we have been pushing really hard to get these books in by November so we can start boxing them and be ready to ship them out come December I will keep you all in the loop about what happens then but we are going to and we can't you know we have actually a 100,000 of these to ship out um right and so shipping out 100,000 books it's not a thing you do in one day uh I have a large team for an author but I still uh only have like we have a team of uh of 40 right now at Dragon steel um and about half of those are in the warehouse they're going to be shipping them out in uh in uh kind of shipments um their waves right they'll just be sending them out uh and it might take we don't we don't have any idea we'll be able to tell you better so you'll get Yu ebook uh and uh some of you your audio book then your print book will talk about the waves of them that are coming and how they're coming out um once that is done once every book have been shipped out then we will have the dragon Steel editions will probably go up for sale tour and gance my UK publisher and my us publisher have both agreed to publish print editions as well um those are probably going to be a couple of months after the um after the thing just because again I don't want anyone walking to the bookstore and having that awful experience our Focus needs to be in getting the uh the kickstarter books out uh but by April I would say April 1st is the latest that might be the date they even picked those will go into bookstores um a tour and glance Edition and around the same time by then at least we will sell the rest of our Dragon steel editions uh so you can have kind of the the less expensive tour Edition or SL galance Edition that'll kind of match your other tour or galance books or you can get the dragon steel Edition which will have um have all the artwork and things in it um but we will make sure that you can do that it's just going to be a lag of just a couple of months all right great thank you so much yeah all right we have 31 minutes left so I'm going to warn you all this is probably the last question if it's not then this will be the last question so you go ahead and hang out there just in case um the rest of you I'm sorry I do want to be able to do the reading uh so you go ahead uh and then we'll probably jump over here I'll probably try to squeeze you in well hello hi uh so I wanted to ask a bit about like influences and Inspirations a bit I you know we're sort of approaching a a golden age of accessibility for and popularity for you know non-english media whether that's literature with three body problem or film with parasite I wanted to ask you know is there any non-english media that you felt has been particularly influential and inspiration to know to you or but it kind of doesn't count it's lay Miz as probably the most not influential um uh piece of media um or it is uh you know very like cowboy bbop uh and things like that right um I would say the two single most influential non-english media but I I don't know you know like three body problem is awesome but I read it pretty late in my uh my career and things like that um looking toward other things you know you're probably not going to find outside of the classics or outside of uh Japanese uh you know video games and manga and films like you know I love kosala right I'm uh and things like that but uh PR do if you look at those foundational years when I was back in the '90s up to the 2000s basically the only media that got to me um would be Japanese media with you know some Hong Kong uh Kung Fu flicks uh mixed in there some Jackie chanon things uh and I would say those were an influence you can definitely see the Japanese influence on me I did spend two years in Korea um and that also had an influence on me right but uh didn't you know not a lot of media I did come back and study Korean and took uh and watched a bunch of Korean classical movies and things like this um but I would say that uh that bbop was just a bigger influence I I really like how they constructed bbop uh and obviously lame like kind of taught me how to make characters that you love and are anguished about at the same time so thank you so much uh I'm going to riate my question a bit uh so this is a mechanics question uh so in Don chard we see a mural of Aden alium being shattered it's like a circle that splits into four Parts and four parts also split into four parts yes um so I'm wondering if there's a way to group shards in terms of theme or uh uh you uh I would encourage people to be trying to figure this out is that a rafo that is a rafo you can have our first rafo

Channel: Brandon Sanderson

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Id: 1ejUQz1QG2o

Length: 59min 47sec (3587 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024