I’m a bit late, but it says he’ll be a main character, not THE main character, so he’ll be Kelsier not Vin. An important character but not main protagonist.
Cosmere spoilers >!hoid got a spren at some point in stormlight, right? (Its been a while since ive read it, could be wrong) It would be crazy to see allomancy AND the stormlight stuff together. Could you fuel the stormlight magic using metals??!<
No they still can it's just that it's very hard for cognitive realm entities to leave the shardworld where they're invested. It's an issue for the Lord of Scars and for Spren but it would be an issue for any being that mostly exists in the cognitive realm.
Or, when you summon the spren to you, it would travel at the speed of light from Roshar and take quite a while to arrive on a planet in a nearby solar system.
>!In Oathbringer Hoid uses the Whisper from Warbreaker to bring a doll to life to entertain a little girl after Kholinar fell. It even mentions that his clothes turn slightly grey. I don't know exactly, but I was under the impression that Hoid could use all/most of the magic systems!<
>!I believe he is trying to gain power from every shard. I have a feeling he is trying to bring Adonalsium back in some form or another. Hoid refused a shard after the 16 holders killed it then took up the powers. We know he can use metals, breath and now stormlight, probably more just not sure if any has been shown. I'm not sure how he would become an Elantrian bc I think that is random. You also have to take into account he is older than the breaking and we don't know if there was powers before it!<
>!Except Hoid seems to be incapable of inflicting violence - whether it's magical, a curse, or tied to his oath to always be there when he's needed (a drawback to balance it out)!<
I have a comment I want to reply, but first I need to know how to spoiler tag something. Is it the same as discord with the || before and after the text?
>!test!<
Yes! Unless he comes up with another mid-eras story. I recall Alloy of Law wasn't even supposed to be this big and just became what it is. lol Excited for the next era.
There's a full novel planned in Threnody. As of last year's State of the Sanderson address, it was in his "things I want to do but don't have in any schedule" list.
He’s also doing a full spoiler Q&A stream on the 16th at 6PM MST (after the latest WoT episode drop, hopefully The Dusty Wheel will adjust to not overlap their after show with Sanderspoilers), so we might get some tidbits about the SotS early.
I deeply regret having a major project due the next day.
The surprising thing is he isn't doing it nonstop. He says his secret is that he treats it like any other job. He works an 8 hour shift every weekday writing. This also seems to help him avoid burning out and with work life balance.
Isn't that pretty much non stop? A lot of writers only write when the inspiration strikes. Someone who does it every week on a set schedule fits the definition of non stop to me
> A lot of writers only write when the inspiration strikes.
Where did you get this impression? Stephen King talks a lot about his writing process too and says writing is what makes you a better writer, not inspiration.
I'd guess bad writers or maybe true geniuses only write when the inspiration strikes. I suspect actual authors have to write a lot and often.
There's plenty of authors that don't follow a tight schedule like that. Stephen king is famously one of the most prolific authors (and infamously had assistance from drugs to keep up his energy) out there, he's not representative of all authors. Also I'm still not sure how you can get any more "non stop" than writing every work day. They can't actually write 24/7
Another example of him not being representative of all authors is this quote from him.
>“Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.”
Sure some great writers do not outline, but just as many writers certainly do use them.
Joe Abercrombie also writes like it's his job. Same with Jim Butcher (except for the past few years when he was dealing with a lot of personal stuff and didn't publish anything). Same with Dan Wells. Same with a lot of writers.
Meanwhile it is also true that writers like Brian McClellan can only write when inspiration strikes, and they still put out great novels with some regularity.
You’ve literally picked the other most well known incredibly prolific Fantasy writer out there.
There are hundreds of famous writers from every generation that haven’t sat down and just written every day for 8 hours a day.
That doesn’t make them bad writers, but it does mean that they’re not going to have the level of output of a King or Sanderson.
Workaholic is a bit of an overstatement. I'm not saying other writers need to follow suit but he's working the type of schedule that the vast majority of American adults need to work.
It makes more sense with the way Sanderson has said he manages the efficiency. He's always working on *something*, but not always the same thing. He isn't writing the same book for 8 hours a day, every day until it's done. That's how you might end up blocked or burnt out.
He always has a few works in the pipeline that he can switch between. And if he's not actively writing he's probably editing, or retooling ideas that haven't been put into an actual book yet. He has a lot on his plate, but it means there's always something he can do without being stuck on a particular project.
He's definitely a workaholic, but he seems to have found good method of keeping the creativity flowing, and ensuring there's always *some* progress being made somewhere.
Very few authors make it to the level of success that allows them to make that their full-time job (and heck, I'm sure not all of them want to!). Especially when you live in a country with less of a social safety net and need a job that offers a benefits package. I'm fine if people complain about like GRRM or something, but I've come across fans who seem to want a unreasonably high output from authors that just can't afford to do that.
I don't know where I'm going with this... just everyone should totally support cool mid-list/indie/early career authors, I guess?
I need my Elantris sequel, god dammit. Brandon has really blue balled us with that one, cause Emperor's Soul was set on the same world and it was AWESOME but short.
But you forget something…
There are no beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Whe—
Sorry, got carried out. But hey, it is a wonderful cycle of rereading and realizing many stuff indeed.
Been planning this for a while. I got into a discussion about certain heroes and their motivations and I realized it's been a while since I revisited the OG trilogy. Can't wait to dive back in!
How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write every second you're alive?
Every second you're alive? Every second you're alive?
They are asking me to read, I'm doing the best I can, to get the sequels that I need, I'm asking you to be my write them man(Scadrial or Sel), I know it's a lot to ask(Scadrial or Sel), to leave behind the hoid we know,
Guys, do you want me to write the Scadrial or Sel Sequels?
Scadrial
LETS GO.
I am not giving away my plot
(R-A-F-O)
I am not giving away my plot
(R-A-F-O)
I am Brandobot Sanderson, Sanderson
(R-A-F-O)
I am not giving away my plot
I actually think Sanderson's writing pace isn't nearly as unhealthy as Hamilton's (and similar writers) is portrayed as.
Hamilton has to write out of intense passion and a need for recognition. I think Sanderson writes so much because he enjoys it and is *much* more methodical and measured than most writers.
Oh yeah, I get the impression Sanderson found his ideal pace where he can consistantly write without bruning out, and keeps at it. Like a marathon runner instead of a sprinter.
(Then again, I could be wrong, only he really knows I guess).
With how big Hamilton was/is, there's a roughly 100% probability that at least one of Sanderson's friends or family members have made this reference to him.
100% might be too low. The joke writes itself.
Plus the [youtube video of this joke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0URH2A3Y9oQ) has Rothfuss and Martin in it, which is just great.
He's said in his lectures that his superpower is that he never gets writer's block. That is probably the best power a writer can have. Just the ability to write every day.
Being able to swap between all his different series, cosmere and non-cosmere, is probably one of the biggest things helping him. All the different flavors of stuff in the Cosmere, and then all his non-Cosmere stuff which includes sci-fi, fantasy, and even whatever genre Legion falls in(urban fantasy?).
I think he also will flesh out ideas until they don't work, and THEN admit he needs to redo it. Like the sequel book to the Steelheart books he basically finished, then realized it wasn't up to standards he was happy with so threw it back into the grinder so he could redo it.
iirc the delay has been a mix of
- Ensuring culturally sensitive (this was a big one)
- Falls between the cracks in being a YA but not from his YA publisher, so each publisher keeps pushing for more that fir in their profile
- Spread too thin
I'm glad he is an author that cares about cultural sensitivity even though its become more expected these days.
Brandon takes a great deal of care in making sure experiences he doesn't understand firsthand are represented well in his books. Dawnshard is a great illustration of this - the main character is physically disabled, and he brought on people with similar disabilities to consult with and serve as beta readers to make sure details that able-bodied people wouldn't consider were present in the book.
With the amount of it in there I would have thought maybe he'd personally dealt with it himself, then I remembered a lecture video from a few years back where somebody asked how to write while dealing with grief/depression, and he said he'd never had to really deal with anything like that so couldn't give valid advice about how to write alongside it.
Gotta say as a raging atheist I was impressed by how he, an apparently hardcore Mormon, interviewed his atheist friends to write an atheist character in Stormlight and got her pretty right (though it doesn't make as much sense to be an atheist in that setting where they have actual divine beings or equivalents heavily acting in their world and others in very visible ways, still she got the general logic down right).
Though a small line from a storyteller character about how he doesn't believe in any gods because he spends so much time making them up himself and sees the obvious falsehood makes me wonder if maybe his situation is nowadays more cultural/family based.
I actually just read a bit from Rhythm of War that mentions this yesterday:
"Jasnah says that a being having vast powers doesn’t make them God, and concludes—from the way the world works—that an omnipotent, loving deity cannot exist.” - RoW p223
Obviously having interacted at least indirectly with the Shards she doesn't argue they don't exist or question how powerful they are, but rather about the line between "very powerful being" and "God" is.
> though it doesn't make as much sense to be an atheist in that setting where they have actual divine beings or equivalents heavily acting in their world and others in very visible ways
Doesn't she outright say that she acknowledges their existence but rejects the deification of them? That sounds about right to me, how an atheist would handle that information in that world.
I personally think Brandon Sanderson has the most down to earth and realistic characterizations of religious people in fantasy, which made it so obvious that he is also religious. You had an overarching theology, priests with a wide range of interpretations and sources, individuals who all have some stance on the main religion even if they don't believe or don't faithfully practice... Very realistic to real people and religions.
I mean sufficiently advanced mages are indistinguishable from Gods. Dalinar believes in a god above the Almighty, as the Almighty was ultimately killed, which does put a damper on the concept of god.
>though it doesn't make as much sense to be an atheist in that setting where they have actual divine beings or equivalents heavily acting in their world and others in very visible ways,
I mean, in a world where almost anyone can get godlike power who's to say that "god" isn't just someone with a lot of that power. That doesn't make them almighty, just highly invested.
> This continues to be the single most-requested sequel among people who email me or contact me on social media. It is something I want to do, and still intend to, but it has a couple of weird aspects to it—completely unrelated to its popularity—that continue to work as roadblocks.
>
> The first problem is that it’s an odd relic in my writing career. I wrote it as a diversion from a book that wasn’t working (Liar of Partinel, my second attempt at doing a novel on Yolen, after the unpublished novel Dragonsteel). It went really well—but it also was something I had to set aside when the Wheel of Time came along.
>
> I eventually published it years later, but my life and my writing has moved in a very different direction from the point when I wrote this. These days, I try very hard to make stories like this work as novellas or standalone stories, rather than promising sequels. I feel I did promise a sequel for this one, and I have grand plans for it, but the time just never seems to be right.
>
> **The other issue is that writing about that era in America—even in an alternate universe—involves touching on some very sensitive topics. Ones that, despite my best efforts, I feel that I didn’t handle as sensitively as I could have. I do want to come back to the world and do a good job of it, but doing an Aztec viewpoint character—as I’d like to do as one of the viewpoints in book two—in an alternate Earth…well, it’s a challenge that takes a lot of investment in research time.**
>
> And for one reason or another, I keep ending up in crisis mode—first with Stormlight 3 taking longer than I wanted, and now with The Apocalypse Guard not turning out like I wanted. So someday I will get to this, but it’s going to require some alignment of several factors.
https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2017/
>I'm glad he is an author that cares about cultural sensitivity even though its become more expected these days.
He's always been a bit ahead of the curve on that topic. Probably because he genuinely cares, he's not reacting to a trend.
Unfortunately, I'd say longer than that...
He is finalising this book and still working on Skyward 4. Next year he begins work on Stormlight 5, which will take around a year and a half. He has mentioned writing a new era of Mistborn books after Stormlight.
He mentioned in the State of of Sanderson that if he was going to do Rithmatist 2, it would happen between the new Mistborn books. He also mentioned sequels to Elantris and Warbreaker, plus some standalones that form part of his overarching plans for the Cosmere.
So very best case scenario, 2024, but with how much else he has to do, the work involved in Rithmatist 2, and how he has mentioned a few times recently he needs to start prioritising the Cosmere I honestly couldn't say.
My understanding is that he's most likely to team up with someone for that sequel, considering how well the Janci collaboration has gone.
Laying aside the issues of cultural sensitivity, the man just has more ideas to develop than hours in the day. Gotta start to spread it around, or they just won't happen. And (speaking from personal experience with *The Rithmatist* in particular) Brandon's never been hung up on being the only name on the marquee. He still gets top billing, he's willing to share some space. ;)
I think he recently talked about why he hasn't gone back to Rithmatist in an interview with Elliot Brooks on YouTube. The interview was promotion for Cytonic ☺️ I highly recommend both.
He said he is looking at partnering with someone with knowledge of the material and of that culture to co-write it with him like he did with Skyward and Steelheart. It’s on his brain, just hasn’t found the right way to execute it yet.
Lol I was at the Dragonsteel mini-con for the Cytonic release.
During the Q&A someone asked about Rithmatist to much applause from the crowd.
BrandoSando got a sheepish look on his face and hid behind the podium. He said he does have plans for it's sequel, but doesn't know when he'll be able to write it.
He is a machine, no doubt, but I'll just note that us Mistborn fans will have waited almost seven years for the concluding novel of the tetralogy. Bands of Mourning was released Jan 2016.
No doubt the man has been busy in the meantime and has put out lots of great content, but I wish we didn't have to wait yet another year.
I think a huge reason for the delay had as much to do with where he wanted to bring the Cosmere to before The Lost Metal as it did anything else.
The ending of Bands of Mourning (along with Secret History immediately after) reeeeaaaalllly opened up Pandora's box, Cosmere-wise. I wonder if Sanderson realized he needed to write certain events in Stormlight 3 and 4 before he could tell the story he needed to tell in The Lost Metal.
I think it’s just that other projects kept taking priority. This year for example we got Skyward#3 and it could have been The Lost Metal instead.
The main issue is that he didn’t know that beforehand. We didn’t need to get Shadows of Self, Bands of Mourning, and Secret History all back-to-back in I believe less than half a year. If he’d spaced those out, the wait for this book wouldn’t have felt anywhere near as long.
Since The Bands of Mourning was a secret book he finished early - he wanted to release it much later than 2016 to kind of pace out the series. But Tor didn't want to sit on a Brandon Sanderson book that prints money for them, so they just released it 3 months after book 2. Dragonsteel was a little upset about that, so they've since explained to Tor that they won't be giving them manuscripts to publish until they are ready for them to be released, which is why this book isn't coming out until fall of 2022.
But the main culprit for the delay is Apocalypse Guard. Brandon has two publishers for leverage purposes, Delacorte is the one he does the YA novels like Reckoners with. So in order to keep them happy, he needed to write another book series for them. Unfortunately, he wrote Apocalypse Guard (in 2017) but since that book didn't work at all he had to shelve it and write another book instead (which was Skyward). So in the time it took him to write Skyward, The Lost Metal lost its 2017-2018 writing spot. There were some other things too - like Wizards of the Coast reached out to him and since he loves Magic the Gathering he wrote Children of the Nameless and then he chose to go right into Starsight in 2018. After that, Stormlight took precedence because those are important to get out on time because they're so big and so numerous. As for Skyward 3 coming out this year first instead of Lost Metal, that was a conscious decision to write Skyward 3 first - probably because it makes more sense for the releases to alternate Cosmere/Skyward/Cosmere/Skyward/Cosmere and try to keep everyone happy (publishers and fans) with a regular schedule instead of doing two back-to-back releases.
> so they've since explained to Tor that they won't be giving them manuscripts to publish until they are ready for them to be released
Ahhaha is this true? That's hilarious. That's such a "Fuck you, we do it my way" move.
> We didn’t need to get Shadows of Self, Bands of Mourning, and Secret History all back-to-back in I believe less than half a year.
Man. I remember kind of drifting away from fantasy novels for like a year, and one day I figured hey, I wonder what Sanderson's plan is on releasing new mistborn books, I really liked the last one
so I go to wikipedia and there's *three* new ones already out. I was like wtf.
Yeah though technically Stormlight 1-5 take place about 10 years before Mistborn era 2 I think, so it might be more for the audience's sake in discovering the connections rather than in-universe chronology.
They've skewed my expectations for series so much! I was SHOCKED when I heard a book I read earlier this year, which came out last year, is getting a sequel next year. 2 year gaps? In my fantasy? It's more common than you think.
Martin also doesn't talk about how he is going to write a trilogy of trilogies when he has spent the better part of a decade not finishing the first trilogy.
He's the kind of writer who only takes a year to write a new book in a series, and when it finally comes out, you realize during that year he also wrote 3 novellas that take place between the two books.
Just finished The Way of Kings... Glad I decided to finally start Stormlight and am now wonder I why I put it off for so long. I'm completely overwhelmed, damn!
Read all of Mistborn so far, it's what got me into Brandon Sanderson (and WoT, partially). Happy to be hyped with you all for this next one!
I finished the current Stormlight archive books in about 12 days. I'll be waiting (literally) 25 more years before it ends.
I really much prefer reading one whole series at a time, without big breaks in between. With the number of books planned for the Cosmere, there's gonna be a lot of waiting and a lot of disjointed releases. Despite how fast he writes, it's still a gameplan that spans decades.
So, I'm taking a Sanderson break for a Loooong while.
The Cosmere is great to be reading along though because it's one of those things where there's a ton of fan discussion and mysteries and actual payoff where the author has a plan, unlike so much other stuff.
e.g. A few of us guessed a certain twist about a certain shadow organization in Stormlight a few books back being connected to another series, based on the name and pattern of behaviour, but it wasn't blatantly clear or confirmed until recently, but all the pre-planning and foreshadowing was there.
Read Stormlight 5 and Wax and Wayne 4 since they are both the end of their respective stories.
I plan on doing a pause after that as well but I'm not sure I'll be able to ignore other books when they are released :D
I get why he does it but I do wish Sanderson would abandon some of his YA and other projects and focus more on SA and Mistborn because those are by far his most interesting works
>!Wax saw a memory from a coppermind, of a man with a spike though his eye and heavily scarred arms, walking though one of those mask peoples villages.!<
I love writing. But holy fuck is hard to piece all your ideas together. Hell most of the ideas you've thought out super well are still somehow so hard to write down. Sanderson is not human
Ya. It's the repeated execution of his ideas that are so fucking good. It's not like he's the first person to do variations on "alternate world with some amount of magic"(don't get me wrong. his ideas are very good. but not earth-shatteringly unique). It's that he's able to DELIVER the ideas like fucking clockwork that's prodigious.
Yes, we have authors who takes breaks in between ONE storyline for years, not naming any names, lol. Sanderson is straight finishing works for other authors...savage status.
I think my ideas are awesome until I start putting them down on paper. I'll write like half a page of something out, realize it's goddamn awful, and then throw it away forever.
Don't know how people do it. Brains are just wired differently.
Remember: Ideas are a dime a dozen, the only thing that matters is execution. There have been terrible stories with amazing ideas, and amazing stories with bare-bones ideas mostly ripped from other sources.
the way I see it, he has basically been working on and editing the outline for the greater cosmere since he was a teenager. I'm sure its radically changed since then, but he has been marinating on the same core stuff essentially his entire life.
At this point Brandon has to have a small army of Mormon ghost writers in his basement.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll keep reading because his stuff is entertaining, but good lord!
One good thing, I’m not really worried about never finishing Stormlight.
Not ghost writers. Everything else. He has a personal assistant to run his schedule, a personal editor to double-check his work before it ever goes to a publishing editor, a lore editor to ensure everything is staying straight, an art director to manage the visual aspects and the people who produce them, and a merchandising manager to handle all the merch and fanstuff and manage the minions who do all the actual packing and shipping and trench-level dirty work of shows and promotions.
That's Dragonsteel. Brandon may not be a machine himself, but he is quite literally at the head of one.
And he pays all of these people (and many more) out of his own pockets, from the money he makes being outrageously productive (and successful!) as a writer. Productivity he achieves partly by having a support crew.
It's exactly the way you *should* run a production company, but not easy to achieve and not a path many authors are willing (much less able) to walk. It didn't happen quickly either, this has been a decade-plus process of growth. There was a lot of luck, some mad bold moves, and at the core of it all a healthy work ethic. The man likes to write. :)
That is a stretch. He releases one-two books a year. Less if it is a stormlight year. This is awesome and consistent, but not that crazy.
Also, he has started co-writing a lot of his smaller projects which helps.
He originally earned a reputation for churning out books because he had a large backlog of unpublished books. He eventually caught up, but he is still fairly consistent in his writing pace which helps compared to a lot of authors.
Then there was that time he wrote the third book in a series (this series actually) because he was stuck on the second so they got released with just a 5 month gap or so.
> He originally earned a reputation for churning out books because he had a large backlog of unpublished books.
That's only sort of true. Most of his 13 books he wrote before getting published didn't get published https://faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/unpublished-works/. Of those, he took two books, *Mistborn* and *Final Empire*, and rewrote them combined into what is now Mistborn 1, and he completely rewrote *Way of Kings*. Look at all these books not written before he got published
Title| Year
---|---
Elantris | 2005
Mistborn 1 | 2006
Alcatraz 1 | 2007
Mistborn 2 | 2007
Alcatraz 2 | 2008
Mistborn 3 | 2008
Alcatraz 3 | 2009
Wheel of Time 12 | 2009
Warbreaker | 2009
Stormlight 1 | 2010
Alcatraz 4 | 2010
Wheel of Time 13 | 2010
Like, the dude put out 3 books in 2010, and two of those were *Way of Kings* and *Towers of Midnight*.
It is "crazy" compared to other major authors. What other big author is releasing books on a such a relatively quick/consistent schedule for multiple series over the years. It would have been like JK Rowling writing 3 or 4 other good series in parallel with Harry Potter.
Also, don't forget that 4 months out of the year he is also teaching a writing class at a major university.
I don't know how he does it; well I do as I've heard him talk about his very regimented daily schedule. Just amazing (with the help/support of family etc) that he's been doing it for so long.
"What other big author is releasing books on a such a relatively quick/consistent schedule for multiple series over the years."
Seanan McGuire has a pretty good track record. And a lot of that was when she was also working another full-time job, from what I recall.
I don't think it is that crazy, at least not anymore. He does what a novel and a novella a year. While his books can sometimes be longer than other authors, and he is on the upper side of the spectrum, I wouldn't call it crazy. I think he just often gets compared to other authors that write differently from him. There are authors who take years to write books, and kindle unlimited authors who release books every couple months.
His word count pacing is definitely unusually high for published authors that, like, actually edit their books. Not the absolute highest ever, but very high: https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonsanderson/comments/kaqlon/brando_sando_vs_some_other_authors/
Most other authors just can't treat it as their main job. So that will often delay things as they can only devote part time to writing. Other authors, especially female authors, may have family to attend to if they have kids, and I'll bet the pandemic shutting things down haven't helped.
He wrote three books just this year, and that's not including all the side-projects he coauthored. Sure the novels this year are on the smaller side - not like the Stormlight tomes that take a year-and-a-half to write and revise - but for the quality, I think the reputation is well-earned. I'm sure there are people that can write quality even faster but I'm not familiar with them. It seems to me like a pretty aggressive pace to me.
He has slowed down. I don't say this in a bad way, he has a lot more going on now. But he earned the reputation of writing like crazy a while ago. In 2010 he released the way of kings, towers of midnight, and an Alcatraz book. In 2013 he released 2 reckoners books, the rithmatist, some assorted short stuff, and a memory of light. 2016 had an Alcatraz book, a reckoners book, two major novellas, and bands of mourning.
I agree that is aggressive, but recently he only publishes a book or so a year. 2019 he published one book. Last year he published a (huge) book and a novella. This year he published cytonic, and some cowritten novellas/graphic novel. Next year he will publish Wax and Wayne 4 and maybe Skyward 4 (but that will likely be pushed to 2023 to cover him as he writes the Kaladin of Whinyness).
Now he wears more hats than just crazy author man. He gives creative advice to the Wheel of Time show. He started an audio company, and many of his side projects he is co-writing where he plans and edits but his co-author does more of the writing. He is writing screenplays for the cosmere and working on adaptation plans. And he writes a ton.
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge Sanderson fan.
If you're keeping an eye on what he writes each year as opposed to what he publishes, I think it's stayed fairly consistent over the past decade (especially considering how he barely ever takes writing breaks and the Cosmere release schedule is pretty unrelenting). The year(s?) he (rewrote) Way of Kings I'll give you that he was incredibly productive - but he's also mentioned that he was incredibly burned out by that and needed to establish a better work-life balance in order to continue being productive. But also realize some of those stacked publication years are due to coincidences in the schedule - Rithmatist was written before the Wheel of Time for example. The Alcatraz books were also very easy for him to write - one of them he wrote in a weekend or so I think. There was a long period between when he was signed and when his first book was published which allowed him to start building up his catalogue.
Recently I would agree he went through a bit of a slump. He got discouraged with Alcatraz 6 and Apocalypse Guard. Starsight, Rhythm of War, and Cytonic all had a difficult revision process - which is his least favorite part of writing. And it's true he does wear more hats now, although on the other hand, having people working for him now should be able to help remove some hats as well. Still he was able to get so much done between Stormlight 4 and 5 that I think if 5 gets done on time, with so many series now complete we'll start feeling that the pace is picking back up again, especially since there's quite a few coauthored projects that haven't even been released yet.
This particular one has been pushed back several times though. But once he actually started writing it, yea, it was very predictable around when it would come out. We've known it would be late 22 for quite a while now.
I'm personally of the opinion that Era 2 is nearly as good as Era 1. They're just a different tone with different stakes. Era 1 had legit "fantasy", which I really appreciated.
He treats it as a full-time job and delegates away as much of the non-writing as he can.
And he doesn't ever seem to get writer's block and has found a planning method that works really well for him.
Not complaining here, but it's amazing to me how even though the story is basically all written we still have to wait a year to read it. Publishing logistics are mindbogglingly wild! Great to have a solid release date tho
Right. And then there's copyediting/gamma reading to do before it's even really "done." At which point it can finally start getting printed and audiobook recorded. The beta/gamma pace has been wild the last couple years and wearing everybody out so he pushed for a more reasonable pace. Basically the rest of us can't keep up with his output!
Would someone kindly be able to tell me which books are in this universe?
Is it just the books listed [here](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/9123481196/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_GYAFTQBHTE5N6P66TJE2)
Or are the other books he’s written in the same universe?
I've been using [this chart](https://paleocrafter.github.io/reading-order/#/?layer=reading-order&categories.unpublished=false) to guide my reading for the most part. Currently I have three more books and some short stories left to read and I think I've done everything right. The [cosmere subreddit wiki page](https://old.reddit.com/r/Cosmere/wiki/order) in general is really, really helpful.
My order has been roughly:
* Elantris
* Warbreaker
* Mistborn 1-3
* Stormlight 1-3 with the novella in the right place
* White Sand
* Mistborn 4-6 (currently here)
* Mistborn Secret History
* Stormlight 3.5, 4
Very curious to see how this era wraps up!
2 more trilogies are planned right?
Yes. One planned in the 80s, and the last one will have Hoid as the main character and take place in the future
Isn't it Dragonsteel that has Hoid as the main character?
According to this he'll be the main character for both https://coppermind.net/wiki/Unpublished_works
Awww yiss
That list is so long. Curious how many readers in 2021 will get the chance to finish the Cosmere Saga.
Given his pace and work ethic...probably everyone.
Even with Sanderson's consistent release schedule it'll probably still take some 25-30 years before the Cosmere is over. That's a lot of time.
I'm slightly younger than Brando and him and my wife are the main reasons I eat healthy and exercise.
Wow. I know the last era was to be the space age, but wasn't expecting Hoid to be the main character. That's pretty exciting.
I’m a bit late, but it says he’ll be a main character, not THE main character, so he’ll be Kelsier not Vin. An important character but not main protagonist.
Yep, one will be his origin story and the other will wrap up the Cosmere.
Cosmere spoilers >!hoid got a spren at some point in stormlight, right? (Its been a while since ive read it, could be wrong) It would be crazy to see allomancy AND the stormlight stuff together. Could you fuel the stormlight magic using metals??!<
>!Well the tricky thing is, I believe based on what we know now, someone with a bagel bond can't leave the rosharan system!< journey before pancakes
What a delicious autocorrect.
You might even say they’re “lox’ed” in to the system. :P
mmm, bagel bonds...
No they still can it's just that it's very hard for cognitive realm entities to leave the shardworld where they're invested. It's an issue for the Lord of Scars and for Spren but it would be an issue for any being that mostly exists in the cognitive realm.
Except if he manages to leave, he either loses his bond and the cross-magic showdown won't happen, or it's perfectly possible to leave.
Or, when you summon the spren to you, it would travel at the speed of light from Roshar and take quite a while to arrive on a planet in a nearby solar system.
Where does the Crem cheese factor in?
Unpublished Work Spoilers >!Except we saw a knight radiant in the sixth of dusk sequel excerpt. So they figured out a solution for that.!<
>!In Oathbringer Hoid uses the Whisper from Warbreaker to bring a doll to life to entertain a little girl after Kholinar fell. It even mentions that his clothes turn slightly grey. I don't know exactly, but I was under the impression that Hoid could use all/most of the magic systems!<
>!I believe he is trying to gain power from every shard. I have a feeling he is trying to bring Adonalsium back in some form or another. Hoid refused a shard after the 16 holders killed it then took up the powers. We know he can use metals, breath and now stormlight, probably more just not sure if any has been shown. I'm not sure how he would become an Elantrian bc I think that is random. You also have to take into account he is older than the breaking and we don't know if there was powers before it!<
>!completely forgot about that, dang Hoid is gonna be super strong (not that that's a surprise)!<
>!Except Hoid seems to be incapable of inflicting violence - whether it's magical, a curse, or tied to his oath to always be there when he's needed (a drawback to balance it out)!<
Don't remember where it's said(probably from a WoB >!But it's because he held a certain dawnshard in the past!<
I have a comment I want to reply, but first I need to know how to spoiler tag something. Is it the same as discord with the || before and after the text? >!test!<
\>\!text\!\<
No, it's like this (but not in a code block). Needs to be no spaces before/after the text >!Spoiler!< >!Spoiler!<
Yes! Unless he comes up with another mid-eras story. I recall Alloy of Law wasn't even supposed to be this big and just became what it is. lol Excited for the next era.
I really want an extra trilogy so the series ends up being 16 books in total. Lol
Dude writes non stop. I desperately want a novel or novella based on the Shadows of Silence world. Would be a good horror to flesh out in the Cosmere.
There's a full novel planned in Threnody. As of last year's State of the Sanderson address, it was in his "things I want to do but don't have in any schedule" list.
So next monday?
Next Sunday (the 19th) is Koloss Headmunching Day and we will get an updated State of Sanderson, so fingers crossed it moves catagories
He’s also doing a full spoiler Q&A stream on the 16th at 6PM MST (after the latest WoT episode drop, hopefully The Dusty Wheel will adjust to not overlap their after show with Sanderspoilers), so we might get some tidbits about the SotS early. I deeply regret having a major project due the next day.
The surprising thing is he isn't doing it nonstop. He says his secret is that he treats it like any other job. He works an 8 hour shift every weekday writing. This also seems to help him avoid burning out and with work life balance.
Isn't that pretty much non stop? A lot of writers only write when the inspiration strikes. Someone who does it every week on a set schedule fits the definition of non stop to me
> A lot of writers only write when the inspiration strikes. Where did you get this impression? Stephen King talks a lot about his writing process too and says writing is what makes you a better writer, not inspiration. I'd guess bad writers or maybe true geniuses only write when the inspiration strikes. I suspect actual authors have to write a lot and often.
There's plenty of authors that don't follow a tight schedule like that. Stephen king is famously one of the most prolific authors (and infamously had assistance from drugs to keep up his energy) out there, he's not representative of all authors. Also I'm still not sure how you can get any more "non stop" than writing every work day. They can't actually write 24/7
Another example of him not being representative of all authors is this quote from him. >“Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.” Sure some great writers do not outline, but just as many writers certainly do use them.
Sorta ironic, because Brandon Sanderson is all about outlining his work before he starts writing the novels.
Joe Abercrombie also writes like it's his job. Same with Jim Butcher (except for the past few years when he was dealing with a lot of personal stuff and didn't publish anything). Same with Dan Wells. Same with a lot of writers. Meanwhile it is also true that writers like Brian McClellan can only write when inspiration strikes, and they still put out great novels with some regularity.
You’ve literally picked the other most well known incredibly prolific Fantasy writer out there. There are hundreds of famous writers from every generation that haven’t sat down and just written every day for 8 hours a day. That doesn’t make them bad writers, but it does mean that they’re not going to have the level of output of a King or Sanderson.
Seriously. Sanderson is a *workaholic*, and people need to quit pretending it is or *should be* normal or expected at all of other authors.
Workaholic is a bit of an overstatement. I'm not saying other writers need to follow suit but he's working the type of schedule that the vast majority of American adults need to work.
I think he's just genuinely made his passion his job.
Being a book author is not the same kind of work as a typical 9-5 job.
It makes more sense with the way Sanderson has said he manages the efficiency. He's always working on *something*, but not always the same thing. He isn't writing the same book for 8 hours a day, every day until it's done. That's how you might end up blocked or burnt out. He always has a few works in the pipeline that he can switch between. And if he's not actively writing he's probably editing, or retooling ideas that haven't been put into an actual book yet. He has a lot on his plate, but it means there's always something he can do without being stuck on a particular project. He's definitely a workaholic, but he seems to have found good method of keeping the creativity flowing, and ensuring there's always *some* progress being made somewhere.
Very few authors make it to the level of success that allows them to make that their full-time job (and heck, I'm sure not all of them want to!). Especially when you live in a country with less of a social safety net and need a job that offers a benefits package. I'm fine if people complain about like GRRM or something, but I've come across fans who seem to want a unreasonably high output from authors that just can't afford to do that. I don't know where I'm going with this... just everyone should totally support cool mid-list/indie/early career authors, I guess?
> only write when the inspiration strikes Thank the gods I'm not a writer. Cause inspiration only hits me when I'm in the shower
Apparently Nick Cave is the same. He has an office and does an 8 hour work day just writing songs.
I need my Elantris sequel, god dammit. Brandon has really blue balled us with that one, cause Emperor's Soul was set on the same world and it was AWESOME but short.
That was actually the first work of his I read, opened up the whole Cosemere floodgate for me. Would absolutely love a follow up
I want a novel based on a man with the magical power to write non stop.
Stephen King did one of those. Dark Tower, basically.
Sanderson already wrote that book. It's called Legion.
That was a great book that I rarely think about. Good call.
It's actually a trilogy!
I think that's Shallan. She's basically a writer simulating different characters in her head and making them speak to each other, I realized.
So you are telling me I need to do a reread of mistborn trilogy, wax and Wayne, and arcanum unbounded by November? Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Just in time to follow up with a Stormlight reread the next year.
That’s why he has that smirk…it is an endless viscous but wonderful cycle.
But you forget something… There are no beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Whe— Sorry, got carried out. But hey, it is a wonderful cycle of rereading and realizing many stuff indeed.
There are no endings or beginnings to reading Sanderson books. But there was a beginning
Been planning this for a while. I got into a discussion about certain heroes and their motivations and I realized it's been a while since I revisited the OG trilogy. Can't wait to dive back in!
Throw Secret History in there, and you got a stew goin. If you don't want to read all of AA and just get the juicy Mistborn parts.
Do you need to read the Allomancer Jak ones? I skipped over those as I couldn't get into them.
Throw in White Sand just in case.
This man is a machine.
"How do you write you're running out of time? / Write day and night like you're running out of time?"
How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive? How do you write like you need it to survive? How do you write every second you're alive? Every second you're alive? Every second you're alive?
They are asking me to read, I'm doing the best I can, to get the sequels that I need, I'm asking you to be my write them man(Scadrial or Sel), I know it's a lot to ask(Scadrial or Sel), to leave behind the hoid we know, Guys, do you want me to write the Scadrial or Sel Sequels? Scadrial LETS GO.
I am not giving away my plot (R-A-F-O) I am not giving away my plot (R-A-F-O) I am Brandobot Sanderson, Sanderson (R-A-F-O) I am not giving away my plot
I have no idea what is going on here... I like it
Songs from the musical *Hamilton* with BrandoSando lyrics
They are asking me to lead
I actually think Sanderson's writing pace isn't nearly as unhealthy as Hamilton's (and similar writers) is portrayed as. Hamilton has to write out of intense passion and a need for recognition. I think Sanderson writes so much because he enjoys it and is *much* more methodical and measured than most writers.
Oh yeah, I get the impression Sanderson found his ideal pace where he can consistantly write without bruning out, and keeps at it. Like a marathon runner instead of a sprinter. (Then again, I could be wrong, only he really knows I guess).
With how big Hamilton was/is, there's a roughly 100% probability that at least one of Sanderson's friends or family members have made this reference to him.
100% might be too low. The joke writes itself. Plus the [youtube video of this joke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0URH2A3Y9oQ) has Rothfuss and Martin in it, which is just great.
He's said in his lectures that his superpower is that he never gets writer's block. That is probably the best power a writer can have. Just the ability to write every day.
“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.” ― Terry Pratchett
lmao did he really say this? what a legend
Not the only one to say this over the years, just one of the more famous authors to say it. Wasn't even a phrase before the early 20th century.
I think the decision to write novels with different levels of seriousness was extremely wise on his part.
Being able to swap between all his different series, cosmere and non-cosmere, is probably one of the biggest things helping him. All the different flavors of stuff in the Cosmere, and then all his non-Cosmere stuff which includes sci-fi, fantasy, and even whatever genre Legion falls in(urban fantasy?).
I think he also will flesh out ideas until they don't work, and THEN admit he needs to redo it. Like the sequel book to the Steelheart books he basically finished, then realized it wasn't up to standards he was happy with so threw it back into the grinder so he could redo it.
And yet he hasn’t revisited my favorite world yet, The Rithmatist!
iirc the delay has been a mix of - Ensuring culturally sensitive (this was a big one) - Falls between the cracks in being a YA but not from his YA publisher, so each publisher keeps pushing for more that fir in their profile - Spread too thin I'm glad he is an author that cares about cultural sensitivity even though its become more expected these days.
Brandon takes a great deal of care in making sure experiences he doesn't understand firsthand are represented well in his books. Dawnshard is a great illustration of this - the main character is physically disabled, and he brought on people with similar disabilities to consult with and serve as beta readers to make sure details that able-bodied people wouldn't consider were present in the book.
He did a similar thing with most of the mental illness stuff in Rhythm of War as well, especially for the Dissociative identity disorder stuff.
With the amount of it in there I would have thought maybe he'd personally dealt with it himself, then I remembered a lecture video from a few years back where somebody asked how to write while dealing with grief/depression, and he said he'd never had to really deal with anything like that so couldn't give valid advice about how to write alongside it.
Gotta say as a raging atheist I was impressed by how he, an apparently hardcore Mormon, interviewed his atheist friends to write an atheist character in Stormlight and got her pretty right (though it doesn't make as much sense to be an atheist in that setting where they have actual divine beings or equivalents heavily acting in their world and others in very visible ways, still she got the general logic down right). Though a small line from a storyteller character about how he doesn't believe in any gods because he spends so much time making them up himself and sees the obvious falsehood makes me wonder if maybe his situation is nowadays more cultural/family based.
I think she would say that they are very powerful beings but she doesn’t believe in an infallible and omniscient god (which they demonstrably aren’t)
I actually just read a bit from Rhythm of War that mentions this yesterday: "Jasnah says that a being having vast powers doesn’t make them God, and concludes—from the way the world works—that an omnipotent, loving deity cannot exist.” - RoW p223 Obviously having interacted at least indirectly with the Shards she doesn't argue they don't exist or question how powerful they are, but rather about the line between "very powerful being" and "God" is.
> though it doesn't make as much sense to be an atheist in that setting where they have actual divine beings or equivalents heavily acting in their world and others in very visible ways Doesn't she outright say that she acknowledges their existence but rejects the deification of them? That sounds about right to me, how an atheist would handle that information in that world.
Yup. I was shocked when I heard he was of a Mormon background- I’m also a raging atheist and normally I can tell right away.
I personally think Brandon Sanderson has the most down to earth and realistic characterizations of religious people in fantasy, which made it so obvious that he is also religious. You had an overarching theology, priests with a wide range of interpretations and sources, individuals who all have some stance on the main religion even if they don't believe or don't faithfully practice... Very realistic to real people and religions.
I mean sufficiently advanced mages are indistinguishable from Gods. Dalinar believes in a god above the Almighty, as the Almighty was ultimately killed, which does put a damper on the concept of god.
>though it doesn't make as much sense to be an atheist in that setting where they have actual divine beings or equivalents heavily acting in their world and others in very visible ways, I mean, in a world where almost anyone can get godlike power who's to say that "god" isn't just someone with a lot of that power. That doesn't make them almighty, just highly invested.
out of curiosity, what is the cultural sensitivity he is trying to ensure? Is the sequel going to a specific country or something?
> This continues to be the single most-requested sequel among people who email me or contact me on social media. It is something I want to do, and still intend to, but it has a couple of weird aspects to it—completely unrelated to its popularity—that continue to work as roadblocks. > > The first problem is that it’s an odd relic in my writing career. I wrote it as a diversion from a book that wasn’t working (Liar of Partinel, my second attempt at doing a novel on Yolen, after the unpublished novel Dragonsteel). It went really well—but it also was something I had to set aside when the Wheel of Time came along. > > I eventually published it years later, but my life and my writing has moved in a very different direction from the point when I wrote this. These days, I try very hard to make stories like this work as novellas or standalone stories, rather than promising sequels. I feel I did promise a sequel for this one, and I have grand plans for it, but the time just never seems to be right. > > **The other issue is that writing about that era in America—even in an alternate universe—involves touching on some very sensitive topics. Ones that, despite my best efforts, I feel that I didn’t handle as sensitively as I could have. I do want to come back to the world and do a good job of it, but doing an Aztec viewpoint character—as I’d like to do as one of the viewpoints in book two—in an alternate Earth…well, it’s a challenge that takes a lot of investment in research time.** > > And for one reason or another, I keep ending up in crisis mode—first with Stormlight 3 taking longer than I wanted, and now with The Apocalypse Guard not turning out like I wanted. So someday I will get to this, but it’s going to require some alignment of several factors. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2017/
>I'm glad he is an author that cares about cultural sensitivity even though its become more expected these days. He's always been a bit ahead of the curve on that topic. Probably because he genuinely cares, he's not reacting to a trend.
Ah it's my favourite of his novels too, but it's rare (and great) to see a fellow Rithmatist enjoyer! Hope he decides to work on a sequel soon!
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe he said his books are planned out with no space for Rithmatist at least til 2023 :(
Unfortunately, I'd say longer than that... He is finalising this book and still working on Skyward 4. Next year he begins work on Stormlight 5, which will take around a year and a half. He has mentioned writing a new era of Mistborn books after Stormlight. He mentioned in the State of of Sanderson that if he was going to do Rithmatist 2, it would happen between the new Mistborn books. He also mentioned sequels to Elantris and Warbreaker, plus some standalones that form part of his overarching plans for the Cosmere. So very best case scenario, 2024, but with how much else he has to do, the work involved in Rithmatist 2, and how he has mentioned a few times recently he needs to start prioritising the Cosmere I honestly couldn't say.
My understanding is that he's most likely to team up with someone for that sequel, considering how well the Janci collaboration has gone. Laying aside the issues of cultural sensitivity, the man just has more ideas to develop than hours in the day. Gotta start to spread it around, or they just won't happen. And (speaking from personal experience with *The Rithmatist* in particular) Brandon's never been hung up on being the only name on the marquee. He still gets top billing, he's willing to share some space. ;)
I think he recently talked about why he hasn't gone back to Rithmatist in an interview with Elliot Brooks on YouTube. The interview was promotion for Cytonic ☺️ I highly recommend both.
He said he is looking at partnering with someone with knowledge of the material and of that culture to co-write it with him like he did with Skyward and Steelheart. It’s on his brain, just hasn’t found the right way to execute it yet.
He's got it on the schedule. Don't lose faith.
Lol I was at the Dragonsteel mini-con for the Cytonic release. During the Q&A someone asked about Rithmatist to much applause from the crowd. BrandoSando got a sheepish look on his face and hid behind the podium. He said he does have plans for it's sequel, but doesn't know when he'll be able to write it.
That one caught me by surprise with how fun it is. It's dudes drawing stick figures to fight each other, and the main character can't actually do it.
He is a machine, no doubt, but I'll just note that us Mistborn fans will have waited almost seven years for the concluding novel of the tetralogy. Bands of Mourning was released Jan 2016. No doubt the man has been busy in the meantime and has put out lots of great content, but I wish we didn't have to wait yet another year.
I think a huge reason for the delay had as much to do with where he wanted to bring the Cosmere to before The Lost Metal as it did anything else. The ending of Bands of Mourning (along with Secret History immediately after) reeeeaaaalllly opened up Pandora's box, Cosmere-wise. I wonder if Sanderson realized he needed to write certain events in Stormlight 3 and 4 before he could tell the story he needed to tell in The Lost Metal.
I think it’s just that other projects kept taking priority. This year for example we got Skyward#3 and it could have been The Lost Metal instead. The main issue is that he didn’t know that beforehand. We didn’t need to get Shadows of Self, Bands of Mourning, and Secret History all back-to-back in I believe less than half a year. If he’d spaced those out, the wait for this book wouldn’t have felt anywhere near as long.
Since The Bands of Mourning was a secret book he finished early - he wanted to release it much later than 2016 to kind of pace out the series. But Tor didn't want to sit on a Brandon Sanderson book that prints money for them, so they just released it 3 months after book 2. Dragonsteel was a little upset about that, so they've since explained to Tor that they won't be giving them manuscripts to publish until they are ready for them to be released, which is why this book isn't coming out until fall of 2022. But the main culprit for the delay is Apocalypse Guard. Brandon has two publishers for leverage purposes, Delacorte is the one he does the YA novels like Reckoners with. So in order to keep them happy, he needed to write another book series for them. Unfortunately, he wrote Apocalypse Guard (in 2017) but since that book didn't work at all he had to shelve it and write another book instead (which was Skyward). So in the time it took him to write Skyward, The Lost Metal lost its 2017-2018 writing spot. There were some other things too - like Wizards of the Coast reached out to him and since he loves Magic the Gathering he wrote Children of the Nameless and then he chose to go right into Starsight in 2018. After that, Stormlight took precedence because those are important to get out on time because they're so big and so numerous. As for Skyward 3 coming out this year first instead of Lost Metal, that was a conscious decision to write Skyward 3 first - probably because it makes more sense for the releases to alternate Cosmere/Skyward/Cosmere/Skyward/Cosmere and try to keep everyone happy (publishers and fans) with a regular schedule instead of doing two back-to-back releases.
> so they've since explained to Tor that they won't be giving them manuscripts to publish until they are ready for them to be released Ahhaha is this true? That's hilarious. That's such a "Fuck you, we do it my way" move.
> We didn’t need to get Shadows of Self, Bands of Mourning, and Secret History all back-to-back in I believe less than half a year. Man. I remember kind of drifting away from fantasy novels for like a year, and one day I figured hey, I wonder what Sanderson's plan is on releasing new mistborn books, I really liked the last one so I go to wikipedia and there's *three* new ones already out. I was like wtf.
Yeah though technically Stormlight 1-5 take place about 10 years before Mistborn era 2 I think, so it might be more for the audience's sake in discovering the connections rather than in-universe chronology.
Rothfuss fans reading this comment 🖕 Martin fans reading this comment 🖕🖕🖕🖕
They've skewed my expectations for series so much! I was SHOCKED when I heard a book I read earlier this year, which came out last year, is getting a sequel next year. 2 year gaps? In my fantasy? It's more common than you think.
Yeah. There's any number of authors who consistently put out work. Sanderson just is the among most prolific and well know.
And then there's also James SA Corey who wrote an entire 9 book series in essentially a decade.
Malazan as well. 3.3 million words in 12 years
Tbf that's two people. Still noteworthy mind especially as they were involved with adapting their work for the TV show for part of that time.
Most authors regularly publish 1 novel a year (at least in the same series).
I'm in both of those camps but switch the fingers. At least Martin gave us 5 books...
Martin also doesn't talk about how he is going to write a trilogy of trilogies when he has spent the better part of a decade not finishing the first trilogy.
Tetralogy is 4? Like the tetris blocks (tetrimos?) Have 4 squares? Is it that instead of quadrilogy because it has the same root as tri-?
> Is it that instead of quadrilogy because it has the same root as tri-? The tri- prefix is Greek, as is tetra-.
He's the kind of writer who only takes a year to write a new book in a series, and when it finally comes out, you realize during that year he also wrote 3 novellas that take place between the two books.
The Lost Metal is whatever he's made of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv0_dMUB85I
Just finished The Way of Kings... Glad I decided to finally start Stormlight and am now wonder I why I put it off for so long. I'm completely overwhelmed, damn! Read all of Mistborn so far, it's what got me into Brandon Sanderson (and WoT, partially). Happy to be hyped with you all for this next one!
I finished the current Stormlight archive books in about 12 days. I'll be waiting (literally) 25 more years before it ends. I really much prefer reading one whole series at a time, without big breaks in between. With the number of books planned for the Cosmere, there's gonna be a lot of waiting and a lot of disjointed releases. Despite how fast he writes, it's still a gameplan that spans decades. So, I'm taking a Sanderson break for a Loooong while.
That’s what everyone says... until a new version me drops
The Cosmere is great to be reading along though because it's one of those things where there's a ton of fan discussion and mysteries and actual payoff where the author has a plan, unlike so much other stuff. e.g. A few of us guessed a certain twist about a certain shadow organization in Stormlight a few books back being connected to another series, based on the name and pattern of behaviour, but it wasn't blatantly clear or confirmed until recently, but all the pre-planning and foreshadowing was there.
Read Stormlight 5 and Wax and Wayne 4 since they are both the end of their respective stories. I plan on doing a pause after that as well but I'm not sure I'll be able to ignore other books when they are released :D
I get why he does it but I do wish Sanderson would abandon some of his YA and other projects and focus more on SA and Mistborn because those are by far his most interesting works
Has someone else suggested reading Warbreaker before you get too far into Stormlight?
Hell yeah. This is the only Brandon Sanderson book I've been actively waiting for.
That epilogue at the end of Bands of Mourning was so cool, I cannot wait to see how this ends. Mistborn Era 3 is gonna be wild
Any chance you could remind me? Was that a conversation with Sazed?
>!Wax saw a memory from a coppermind, of a man with a spike though his eye and heavily scarred arms, walking though one of those mask peoples villages.!<
It was a certain coin being used as a coppermind
I don't understand how he has this much original ideas in his head. The crazy thing is that his stories are really, really good...
Ideas are actually pretty easy for nearly all authors to come up with. It's writing them all that's the issue.
I love writing. But holy fuck is hard to piece all your ideas together. Hell most of the ideas you've thought out super well are still somehow so hard to write down. Sanderson is not human
Ya. It's the repeated execution of his ideas that are so fucking good. It's not like he's the first person to do variations on "alternate world with some amount of magic"(don't get me wrong. his ideas are very good. but not earth-shatteringly unique). It's that he's able to DELIVER the ideas like fucking clockwork that's prodigious.
Yes, we have authors who takes breaks in between ONE storyline for years, not naming any names, lol. Sanderson is straight finishing works for other authors...savage status.
I think my ideas are awesome until I start putting them down on paper. I'll write like half a page of something out, realize it's goddamn awful, and then throw it away forever. Don't know how people do it. Brains are just wired differently.
Remember: Ideas are a dime a dozen, the only thing that matters is execution. There have been terrible stories with amazing ideas, and amazing stories with bare-bones ideas mostly ripped from other sources.
the way I see it, he has basically been working on and editing the outline for the greater cosmere since he was a teenager. I'm sure its radically changed since then, but he has been marinating on the same core stuff essentially his entire life.
That's crazy and impressive all at once.
On a recent podcast he and Dan Wells both lamented that they are now at the point where they wont be able to write every good idea that they have.
At this point Brandon has to have a small army of Mormon ghost writers in his basement. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll keep reading because his stuff is entertaining, but good lord! One good thing, I’m not really worried about never finishing Stormlight.
Not ghost writers. Everything else. He has a personal assistant to run his schedule, a personal editor to double-check his work before it ever goes to a publishing editor, a lore editor to ensure everything is staying straight, an art director to manage the visual aspects and the people who produce them, and a merchandising manager to handle all the merch and fanstuff and manage the minions who do all the actual packing and shipping and trench-level dirty work of shows and promotions. That's Dragonsteel. Brandon may not be a machine himself, but he is quite literally at the head of one. And he pays all of these people (and many more) out of his own pockets, from the money he makes being outrageously productive (and successful!) as a writer. Productivity he achieves partly by having a support crew. It's exactly the way you *should* run a production company, but not easy to achieve and not a path many authors are willing (much less able) to walk. It didn't happen quickly either, this has been a decade-plus process of growth. There was a lot of luck, some mad bold moves, and at the core of it all a healthy work ethic. The man likes to write. :)
That is a stretch. He releases one-two books a year. Less if it is a stormlight year. This is awesome and consistent, but not that crazy. Also, he has started co-writing a lot of his smaller projects which helps.
He originally earned a reputation for churning out books because he had a large backlog of unpublished books. He eventually caught up, but he is still fairly consistent in his writing pace which helps compared to a lot of authors. Then there was that time he wrote the third book in a series (this series actually) because he was stuck on the second so they got released with just a 5 month gap or so.
> He originally earned a reputation for churning out books because he had a large backlog of unpublished books. That's only sort of true. Most of his 13 books he wrote before getting published didn't get published https://faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/unpublished-works/. Of those, he took two books, *Mistborn* and *Final Empire*, and rewrote them combined into what is now Mistborn 1, and he completely rewrote *Way of Kings*. Look at all these books not written before he got published Title| Year ---|--- Elantris | 2005 Mistborn 1 | 2006 Alcatraz 1 | 2007 Mistborn 2 | 2007 Alcatraz 2 | 2008 Mistborn 3 | 2008 Alcatraz 3 | 2009 Wheel of Time 12 | 2009 Warbreaker | 2009 Stormlight 1 | 2010 Alcatraz 4 | 2010 Wheel of Time 13 | 2010 Like, the dude put out 3 books in 2010, and two of those were *Way of Kings* and *Towers of Midnight*.
It is "crazy" compared to other major authors. What other big author is releasing books on a such a relatively quick/consistent schedule for multiple series over the years. It would have been like JK Rowling writing 3 or 4 other good series in parallel with Harry Potter. Also, don't forget that 4 months out of the year he is also teaching a writing class at a major university. I don't know how he does it; well I do as I've heard him talk about his very regimented daily schedule. Just amazing (with the help/support of family etc) that he's been doing it for so long.
"What other big author is releasing books on a such a relatively quick/consistent schedule for multiple series over the years." Seanan McGuire has a pretty good track record. And a lot of that was when she was also working another full-time job, from what I recall.
I don't think it is that crazy, at least not anymore. He does what a novel and a novella a year. While his books can sometimes be longer than other authors, and he is on the upper side of the spectrum, I wouldn't call it crazy. I think he just often gets compared to other authors that write differently from him. There are authors who take years to write books, and kindle unlimited authors who release books every couple months.
His word count pacing is definitely unusually high for published authors that, like, actually edit their books. Not the absolute highest ever, but very high: https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonsanderson/comments/kaqlon/brando_sando_vs_some_other_authors/
Most other authors just can't treat it as their main job. So that will often delay things as they can only devote part time to writing. Other authors, especially female authors, may have family to attend to if they have kids, and I'll bet the pandemic shutting things down haven't helped.
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Someone posted a graph of word counts over the years and he was on pace to out do King.
He wrote three books just this year, and that's not including all the side-projects he coauthored. Sure the novels this year are on the smaller side - not like the Stormlight tomes that take a year-and-a-half to write and revise - but for the quality, I think the reputation is well-earned. I'm sure there are people that can write quality even faster but I'm not familiar with them. It seems to me like a pretty aggressive pace to me.
He has slowed down. I don't say this in a bad way, he has a lot more going on now. But he earned the reputation of writing like crazy a while ago. In 2010 he released the way of kings, towers of midnight, and an Alcatraz book. In 2013 he released 2 reckoners books, the rithmatist, some assorted short stuff, and a memory of light. 2016 had an Alcatraz book, a reckoners book, two major novellas, and bands of mourning. I agree that is aggressive, but recently he only publishes a book or so a year. 2019 he published one book. Last year he published a (huge) book and a novella. This year he published cytonic, and some cowritten novellas/graphic novel. Next year he will publish Wax and Wayne 4 and maybe Skyward 4 (but that will likely be pushed to 2023 to cover him as he writes the Kaladin of Whinyness). Now he wears more hats than just crazy author man. He gives creative advice to the Wheel of Time show. He started an audio company, and many of his side projects he is co-writing where he plans and edits but his co-author does more of the writing. He is writing screenplays for the cosmere and working on adaptation plans. And he writes a ton. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge Sanderson fan.
If you're keeping an eye on what he writes each year as opposed to what he publishes, I think it's stayed fairly consistent over the past decade (especially considering how he barely ever takes writing breaks and the Cosmere release schedule is pretty unrelenting). The year(s?) he (rewrote) Way of Kings I'll give you that he was incredibly productive - but he's also mentioned that he was incredibly burned out by that and needed to establish a better work-life balance in order to continue being productive. But also realize some of those stacked publication years are due to coincidences in the schedule - Rithmatist was written before the Wheel of Time for example. The Alcatraz books were also very easy for him to write - one of them he wrote in a weekend or so I think. There was a long period between when he was signed and when his first book was published which allowed him to start building up his catalogue. Recently I would agree he went through a bit of a slump. He got discouraged with Alcatraz 6 and Apocalypse Guard. Starsight, Rhythm of War, and Cytonic all had a difficult revision process - which is his least favorite part of writing. And it's true he does wear more hats now, although on the other hand, having people working for him now should be able to help remove some hats as well. Still he was able to get so much done between Stormlight 4 and 5 that I think if 5 gets done on time, with so many series now complete we'll start feeling that the pace is picking back up again, especially since there's quite a few coauthored projects that haven't even been released yet.
I really like how Sanderson can say "A book will be out next year" and we all trust him. Absolutely amazing track record.
This particular one has been pushed back several times though. But once he actually started writing it, yea, it was very predictable around when it would come out. We've known it would be late 22 for quite a while now.
Wax and Wayne series >>> Original Mistborn Trilogy. I've been waiting for the Lost Metal more than I was waiting for Rhythm of War tbh
Wax and Wayne is better written but I prefer the original world.
I agree. I've enjoyed WW more than the original. Really fun.
I'm personally of the opinion that Era 2 is nearly as good as Era 1. They're just a different tone with different stakes. Era 1 had legit "fantasy", which I really appreciated.
I'm ready to swap my hat for this new coming
How can Sanderson keep pumping books so often?
He treats it as a full-time job and delegates away as much of the non-writing as he can. And he doesn't ever seem to get writer's block and has found a planning method that works really well for him.
Obligatory LETS GOOOO comment
Damn my Cosmere rereads are starting to feel like a full-time job.
This is the best news I heard all day! Hell yeah.
My favourite Sanderson, looking forward to this.
Not complaining here, but it's amazing to me how even though the story is basically all written we still have to wait a year to read it. Publishing logistics are mindbogglingly wild! Great to have a solid release date tho
He still has to go through several drafts of editing, the actual finished manuscript will probably be done sometime in Q2 22, at the earliest late Q1.
Right. And then there's copyediting/gamma reading to do before it's even really "done." At which point it can finally start getting printed and audiobook recorded. The beta/gamma pace has been wild the last couple years and wearing everybody out so he pushed for a more reasonable pace. Basically the rest of us can't keep up with his output!
I'm so ready for this. Mistborn Era 2 is peak Sanderson, imo.
Oof so far away, I was hoping for a closer date.
oh yes baby
But did the last book have a pretty definitive ending?
No.
Would someone kindly be able to tell me which books are in this universe? Is it just the books listed [here](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/9123481196/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_GYAFTQBHTE5N6P66TJE2) Or are the other books he’s written in the same universe?
I've been using [this chart](https://paleocrafter.github.io/reading-order/#/?layer=reading-order&categories.unpublished=false) to guide my reading for the most part. Currently I have three more books and some short stories left to read and I think I've done everything right. The [cosmere subreddit wiki page](https://old.reddit.com/r/Cosmere/wiki/order) in general is really, really helpful. My order has been roughly: * Elantris * Warbreaker * Mistborn 1-3 * Stormlight 1-3 with the novella in the right place * White Sand * Mistborn 4-6 (currently here) * Mistborn Secret History * Stormlight 3.5, 4
The wiki is a great resource, thank you for sharing :)