Date: 2015-01-07
Type: Paraphrased
Location: Seattle, WA
Reporter: WeiryWriter, Ian M.
I’m a video game developer and the one thing that was running through my mind after reading the Stormlight Archive was “I want to make that” […] video games[…]
Excellent question. So, other media. I like video games a lot. I remember (you’re going to get a lot of stories tonight, this is what happens, I’m a storyteller) I was 11 years old, my father shipped me off to visit my uncle for the first time on my own. Got put on an airplane and everything, went to Utah from Nebraska. My father gave me two hundreds, two one hundred dollar bills, he said “Pay for your food” and things like this. (You’re laughing you know what happens) I just got my uncle to pay for everything and at the end of it my conscience had gotten to me and I said “Uncle [???] my dad gave me money, I should give this to you to pay for the food”. He just laughed and said “No you’re not going to do that. We’re going to the mall right now. We’re going to spend that money because if you don’t your dad will take it back” And I bought a Nintendo, original NES, with my two hundred dollars at KB Toys. And I came back with it and my dad said “Where did you get that?” I love video games and I want to be involved, some of you may have noticed I did these novellas for Infinity Blade, which you can read online but if you don’t play the games they won’t make any sense. I’m just going to warn you right there. We have sold the rights to Mistborn but we have entered some development problems, the video game industry is almost as bad as the movie industry when it comes to delays. Studios fall through, get divided, things like this. I’m still hoping but the deal was I got to write the story and all the dialogue for the video game. It’s going to be (we are going to do it) an action RPG, the model I told them I wanted to use was Infamous, which was one of my favorites from lately, in the Mistborn world. If we can get that working then I bet we can get a Stormlight book turned into a video game. As movies go, movies are even harder. I was on the phone with movie producers right before I came here. I got a phone call, and we’re doing a lot of that, a lot of discussion, we’ve sold a lot of rights, we’ve seen a lot of […] So right now we have Legion, Emperor’s Soul, Mistborn, and Steelheart all have significant motion but far from actually done. And the Wheel of Time is kind of off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again with adaptations.
I want to know what process you go through for building vocabulary. Also, do you use a thesaurus?
My vocabulary development comes through reading other people’s books and seeing what cool words they use and writing them down. And I can often pinpoint who I learned which word from. Like miasma I learned from Anne McCaffrey. Just seeing the words they use and looking them up when i don’t know them. Do I use a thesaurus? I do use a thesaurus but only to come up with a word I know I should be using. There’s two times I use it. One, when I come to a word and I know there’s a word there but I don’t know what it is yet. The other time I use a thesaurus, which is really useful, is when I’m naming something. Like when I was naming the Reckoners, I need a cool word for this team. One that Marvel or DC hasn’t used yet *fake exasperated* They used everything *end fake exasperated* So I may use a thesaurus, but using a thesaurus is dangerous. It’s a good tool but it’s a dangerous tool for a writer. Because you don’t want to use a word because it sounds cool, usually you want to use the right word. That can be difficult to balance.
We hear a lot in The Final Empire about various titles and such in the Steel Ministry. Can you give a little as to their actual structure and what they do?
Yeah I can talk about this. [They only thing you can’t is the ranks] So the Steel Ministry, in the Mistborn books. The interesting thing I considered when I was writing was “What is the purpose of the priesthood when god is there in the palace and everyone knows it? And if you disobey you just get your head cut off.” So I made the Steel Ministry more government, like the post office is run by priests. A lot of what priests do is witness official business, take your money in doing so and give you a stamp that “Yes I witnessed this” but they also run all the public works. It’s not like they’re cleaning the sewers themselves but overseeing the sewers, overseeing engineers, most of the engineers who designed the cities would be obligators. Which by the way you named didn’t you? There he is [???] who was in my writing group for many years. We were driving to writing group once and I wanted a cool word for a priest, because I was just using priests in the original version of Mistborn. I’m like “I need a great word” and he–
How did you come up with that word?
You really want to know?
Yeah.
Thesaurus. So you can congratulate [Nate?] for coming up with obligator, and was it you that came up with Conventicle or was that Peter? It was Peter.
Brandon on writing
Question about Brandon’s outlining process.
Oh good question… You picked the hardest one to outline, by far. Normally the outlining process for me, I sit down and write Plot, Setting, Character in a new sheet. […] And then I put all the things that I have been thinking in my head for a while, that I’ve been brainstorming with friends or– Every book that I write I spent a long time planning it out, it’s when ideas connect together that you know you have a great book. One idea is not enough, multiple ideas that influence each other in cool ways is a book to me. So I write all this down and start looking for structure and what are people’s plots. Now the way I outline I’m goal-based. Say I want to have an interesting relationship between these two characters, how can I achieve that? What is the result at the end and what are the steps to getting there? […] Somebody wants to learn to use the magic, what’s my end goal, what are my steps to get there, what cool scenes will there be. Those are all separate in my outline, it’s not like in my outline there’s “Chapter one: this, this, this, and this”. It’s Goal and how to achieve, Goal and how to achieve, Goal and how to achieve. Now the Stormlight Archives is a strange beast, it is plotted as ten books, each focusing on a character, and for that what I did was sit down and lay out more in prose form by vision for the whole series and then I wrote a paragraph for each book. Then I did what I just told you for the first book, then I wrote the first book. Then I went back and did a bigger, much more detailed outline for the rest of the series. The interesting thing about the Stormlight books is that I actually plot each one like I plot a trilogy. So for instance, Words of Radiance you can find breakpoints between quote-unquote books, that this volume is actually written as three books with a short story collection as the interludes woven between. That’s how I approach those books. My publisher has a love/hate relationship with the Stormlight Archive because they feel they could publish them as four volumes and make four times as much money but I won’t let them. But they don’t want me to write other things because they really want more Stormlight because Stormlight is the one that sells the best out of everything. So they are like “Write more Stormlight, but can we split it please?” and I say “No you can’t split it” and they go *arghhh* […]
What’s your favorite magic system?
If I could pick anything I’d probably be an Allomancer, just because there is so much metal around us in our daily lives that I think it would be a lot of fun. That may not be the smart choice but it is the choice I would make.
So I know your kids are probably too young to have read your books but are they familiar with your characters and if so do they have favorites?
They’re not familiar with my characters, 7, 5, and 2. The seven-year-old is getting old enough that I could read him books, but I don’t want to read him my books first. I want him to read stuff like Dragon’s Blood by Jane Yolen or something. We’ll let him read my books if he wants to. I remember I was reading an interview with Tad Williams once and he said “People ask, you’re a famous author, how do you stay humble” and he said “Well the other day we all went out as a family because I finished a book. And my son said ‘What’s the celebration?’ and I said ‘Well I finished my book’ and my son said ‘That’s a good job, finishing reading a book.’”
Are some of the [interlude] characters going to be making re-appearances?
Yes some of them will, I’m seeding characters who will become main characters later in the series by what I’m doing in that book, in those interludes. Not all of them will be. I have ten characters that are forming the spine for this series– and like Lift is one of the ones who is going to be in the back five books which will take place– After Book 5 of Stormlight we will have a break, in-world, for about fifteen years. Not out of the world, not in our world, but we will have a break and when we come back fifteen years or so will have passed and we will start on the back five characters.
I really like Alloy of Law, do you see yourself making anymore of those in-universe novellas? […]
Yes I do see myself doing many more novellas. I enjoy the process, it helps me get stories out of my brain that are itching at me without having to start another 7 book series or whatever. What I reading to you tonight is from a novella but it is not cosmere. Though I do have several more cosmere novellas going. [discussion on currently released novellas and where to find them] I’m planning to do many more, I really enjoy it. I think short fiction is fun and exciting– short for me.
Do you know what’s wrong with Stephen Leeds?
Yes I do know what’s wrong with Stephen Leeds… Legion is another novella I’ve done that’s got a fun story behind it. I was in a writing group with a mutual friend Dan Wells, he writes twisted books about people who are messed up, and he was doing a book about schizophrenia. He was deep into a schizophrenic’s mind, he put in lot of research into these things and meanwhile I’m over here being me and I’m like “Oh this would make a great magic system” and like “No, no, no, really if you had a schizophrenic and what if they heard voices and saw hallucinations, but the hallucinations helped them. Like there superpower was seeing hallucinations. You should write this” and I tried to convince him to write it and tried until finally he said “Brandon, write the dumb book, it’s not my book it’s yours” So I wrote it and it’s called Legion. [explains a little about the concept of Legion]
So is he getting worse?
*hesitates* Over the course of the series he is getting worse and worse, despite what he says.
Legion
Are you going to write a sequel to Sixth of the Dusk?
I’m not planning to write a sequel to it, though you may see people from that world, or even Sixth himself, in other books if you keep your eyes open.
Can you talk a little about flash fiction?
I think flash fiction, micro fiction, is awesome. I’m terrible at it. I’ve tried it a couple times. I’ve got a good friend, Eric James Stone, he’s one a Nebula Award, and his business cards have a story on the back. That’s the coolest thing ever. I want to steal that and use it but every one I come up with is junk. It takes like eight pages to write a name, so…
This is one you probably aren’t going to answer, but how old is Hoid?
Hoid is older than [???] He is very old.
Can you talk a little about your editing process? In your acknowledgements there’s this huge team of people that have been pouring over this thing.
Here’s my drafting process. First draft I just write straight through, I don’t stop, if there is something major I need to change I just change it in the chapter and keep going forward. And then I can change it back later, like two chapters later if I think “No that was the wrong thing”. So there will be a new character sometimes in my book that will just pop up for three chapters and everyone acts like they’ve always been there and then they vanish and no one talks about them not being there anymore. That’s just so I can keep momentum and see what works. Draft number 2 I fix all of those things. Draft number 3, polishing draft. Line by line trying to cut 10%, get rid of the passive voice, make descriptions more active, and that I’m finding the right words and things like that. So Draft 4 is where it turns into true drafting, and by that point I’ve given it to my editor and my alpha readers which are basically my assistants, my good friends, people like that. They read it and they come back with comments for me and I’ve been thinking about the book, working in my writing group with it and I make a goal-based document, where it’s like “Here are the major issues. Here are the medium level issues. Here are the little things I need to fix.” And I start on page one, read through with this [document] on the screen next to the book when I’m working on it and I try– It’s almost like a bug report for programmings, I”m trying to clear things off the list. Major things I have to re-write the whole way through so I can’t clear them off until the end. Medium issues are things I can put in two or three times to fix a few chapters where they are wrong and then clear it. Little things are just fix this one little thing and it’s easy to clear off the list. I do that, I don’t get to everything. […] Then I send the book out to beta readers, who are gathered by my assistant, he handles this Peter Ahlstrom. Then they do a thing with us on a Google Doc, where it’s chapter by chapter there is a document for each chapter and they all put their comments and interact with each other. It’s like having a very large focus group, with like 15 people who are all reading the book at the same time and working on it. Once that is done and I’ve heard back from my editor on the new draft I will then make another draft. I will do this as many times as necessary to make the book good. Last draft is proofreading and those people are often drawn from fandom, my assistant picks them off forums and things like that and people we’ve used before. At that point we can’t change anything bigger than a line or two. They are looking for continuity and things like that. But my process is that goal-based “I want to fix /this/ let’s see if I can do a draft where I fix this.” And I”ll do a couple more polishing drafts as I go along.
Question about preferred reading formats for Brandon’s books.
He doesn’t care, whatever people like whether it’s borrowing from cousin bobby or audible or ebook.
Did you like to write as a child?
Actually no, I did not like to write as a child. I’m one of the few people who are a writer who was not a kid writer, I didn’t like books when I was young. It was a teacher who taught me to like books when I was in eighth grade, Ms. Reader, that’s her real name. She just emailed me a few weeks back, I’m still in touch with her. Ms. Reader, she’s now a professor taught me to love fantasy books, she gave me the book Dragonsbane by Barbara Hamley and I became a reader.
Favorite video games?
The Dark Souls series, I started on Demon Souls when it was actually hard, but I like them all. I like the level design, I like that they’re not coddling you. I’ve always loved the Civilization games, I play those quite extensively. In fact when I was in college I spent many a long night in my friends room playing Civilization, until he was like “Go to bed”. I just played Skyrim, i tend to wait a few years on those games so I can get mods and things l like. I thought Skyrim was the best of the Elder Scrolls games, I’ve played them all since Daggerfall and they fixed a lot of the problems like the leveling was always bad and some of the dungeon designs were so repetitive. This one they fixed all that and I had a blast.
My first question is about Shallan and whether what she does with her drawings and the deserters in Words of Radiance, kind of changing them, at all similar to what Shai does in The Emperor’s Soul?
Umm, that’s a good question. There are similarities, but only in that The Emperor’s Soul is cosmere and is relying on the same foundation of magic. But good question. […] somebody do it before. So you have seen what she does before, but that is not what I was pointing at. No one is going to expect it.
My other question is about the phrase “Shadows of Self”. It’s mentioned in the last Mistborn book […] so are we ever going to see the shadows in Shadows of Self?
We are not going– Well yes and no. What it is referencing in this book is the different roles that each person plays in their life. That is the core meaning of Shadows of Self. But there is also, there is a kandra involved, which they change shape and become different people, so “who are you?” and identity is a big thing.
And my last one, Obliteration, the Epic, is based on an author.
He is based on an author. Q: It’s Jim Butcher, right? B: I couldn’t say if it were, with these handsome locks and wearing a trenchcoat, and the goatee. Q: It’s totally Jim Butcher. B: Well Jim Butcher doesn’t have hair like this anymore. He cut his hair.
Will we find out soon where Shardplate comes from?
You will eventually, but it is not the next book.
So my friend wanted me to ask you, after we both read Firefight, is there anything you can say about Instabam? Powers or anything.
See facetiously in my head I had Instabam have power over instant potatoes, but I’m probably not going to do that. But that is what I had in my head when I wrote that name. Yeah, instant potatoes “Poom” can cook food at the snap of fingers. I don’t know what their powers are. I didn’t work that out. You can say instant potatoes if you want.
Also is there any reason why you are looking at doing Mistborn in the 40’s?
Just because I want to see– It’s where I feel excited by a story and if I go all the way to the 80’s, which I’m going to do eventually, we lose the Age of Exploration, my last shots at it. I think in the 40’s we could still have a shot at Age of exploration even though it’s well past that, you know what I mean? […] but by 80’s they’re launching satellites, right? The world is known. So if I want to do one more thing before then I could do– The thing about the Mistborn world is that it is mostly uninhabited. It’s like an Earth-sized planet but most of the continents have no people. that’s really exciting from a storytelling aspect.
What do you want to know about Frost? Everything.
I’m not going to tell you everything about Frost. He’s still alive. He can be killed, he’s just functionally immortal, he just doesn’t age. He was born as one. It is a race.
Is Investiture universal? By that I mean, if an Allomancer got Stormlight somehow could they use that to fuel Allomancy?
That is always possible, so yes. But in some case it requires some quote-unquote hacking, like an AC vs a DC current or we’ve got a 120 Volt and they’ve got 240. […] I guess hacking is the wrong term, adapters.
So with the cosmere, do you come up with stories and see if they fit? Or does the cosmere lend itself to stories already?
It’s mostly the first. […] When I come up with a story I’ll ask, “Does this fit the cosmere?” and if not […] I don’t want to be doing far-future science fiction stuff in the cosmere, yet […] Or the Rithmatist which I bounced back and forth with, I eventually decided it just didn’t fit the story. If things do fit, I put them in.
Is that a really exciting moment[when things fit]? Or…
)No, it’s just nice. I like all my stories. The cosmere– Part of my rules for myself is “The cosmere is not my entire body of work” because then I would try to shoehorn more things in and I’ve found sometimes when authors create a multiverse they shoehorn everything in. Stephen King did this, [Asimov] it doesn’t work. I think if it is a deliberate thing I’m intentionally doing, then it gains more cooler than if I tried to make everything connected.
Brandon on writing
Is Cultivation the same thing as the Nightwatcher?
No, they are related but it is more like the similarity between the Stormfather and Honor.
Do Allomantic Pushes and Pulls generate friction?
So… *sigh* I’ve had to ask myself this because if they didn’t generate friction certain things that I do in the books wouldn’t happen. I assume if you’ve seen the physics of it you’ve noticed. I have to go with– Yes but the physics of it I’m a little wishy-washy on. I mean it’s pretty obvious from the way I do things that they do. You have? You’ve seen the science of it, you Push things up in midair. If they didn’t two Allomancers couldn’t both push on a coin and hold it in place, but it does get held in place. I do have to say that Peter is going to break his brain trying to figure out how that works. But it’s canon, I put it in the books so it’s not like we can just ignore the fact.
Questioner’s comment: Yes, I’ve won a 17 page argument.
What about the theory that if you’re really good at iron and steel you can Push and Pull on something in the same space?
Yes you can.
What is a sparkflicker and what is it used for?
Oh good question, are you 17th Shard as well? You’ll be interested in this. Sparkflickers are […] Herdazians, their fingernails are stone. A sparkflicker is so they can start fires. They’re actually flint-and-steel-ing. So it’s a fire-maker using their actual fingernails.
So they don’t have a martial application?
Not really [… males yes if your fingernails are rough]. but there is a deep implication to that that I don’t think people have picked out yet.
Herdazian ,
sparkflickers
Could someone bond with two spren and wield two swords?
It is theoretically possible, but the spren aren’t going to like it. So you won’t see it very often.
Is Hoid a dragon?
Oh I will give you a RAFO card. Have you read Dragonsteel? Don’t read it, it’s bad. He is one of the oldest people in the cosmere, but he is not the oldest. The person he is writing a letter to is indeed older than he is.
[references the conversation between Hoid and Dalinar where he says he would watch Roshar burn if it got him what he wanted] Has he seen any worlds die?
Yes, he has.
Is the guy he took his name from related? Blood related. (talking about Hoid)
I’m going to RAFO that.
So I heard that one of the worlds, Yolen, has disease related magic. How does that work?
It’s not Yolen, it’s Ashyn. Viruses and bacteria, various strains of them, evolved in-line with the investiture of the world to grant you magical abilities when you catch the disease, because they want you to stay alive long enough to– To transmit it. So it becomes a transmission vector. So you can fly when you have the common cold, but when you get over it, you can’t anymore.
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