Brandon Sanderson's Blog, page 25

Weekly Update

Adam here. In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode,

Signed books in Orem and Sugarhouse (Salt Lake City)

If you’ve been following my website or social media you will already know that I had two signings this past week. One at the Sugarhouse (Salt Lake City) Barnes & Noble and another last night at the Orem Barnes & Noble–they even had a little Oathbringer Christmas tree which was fun to see. I was able to leave quite a few signed books at both locations so if you’re looking for a last minute gift you should be able to find some signed goodies there. I’m afraid it’s probably too late to ship in time for Christmas but you can always blame a highstorm for the delay.

Here is a small sampling of some of the excellent cosplay and fanart–even an Oathbringer Christmas tree–from these two signings.

Oathbringer and Edgedancer trees

Toothless of Shinovar by Sarah Wessman

Mistborn and Kaladin – Orem B&N

Mistborn – Orem B&N

Spook – Sugarhouse B&N

Shallan – Sugarhouse B&N

State of the Sanderson 2017

Introduction

Welcome and happy Koloss Head Munching Day! It is time for my yearly update on projects! Strap in for a long post. (If you want to compare, here is a link to last year’s post.)

It has been a busy month for us, here at Dragonsteel Headquarters. The leatherbound edition of Mistborn 2, which was supposed to get here in November, was delivered the day I flew home from the UK, ending my tour. (And the Mistborn 1 second printing came the next day.) So I’ve been doing a lot of sitting and listening to podcasts while I sign stacks and stacks of books. (If you’re curious, I’ve been listening to Hardcore History.)

My Year
Main Projects Updates
Secondary Projects Updates
Minor Projects Updates
Potential Projects Updates
Movie/Television Updates
Updates Conclusion
Projected Schedule
Conclusion

My Year

January–June: Oathbringer Revisions

I spent most of this year doing revisions for Oathbringer. I did several exhaustive drafts during the January–June months, and did the final handoff to Peter (for copyediting and proofreading) right at the end of June.

June–Mid September: The Apocalypse Guard

Then, for the first time in what felt like forever (it was really only about sixteen months), I got a chance to work on something that wasn’t Oathbringer or Edgedancer. I launched right into The Apocalypse Guard, the follow-up to The Reckoners…and it didn’t work. I spent July, August, and part of September writing that. (I finished the last chapter sometime in early September, and turned in the second draft a few weeks later.)

September–October: Legion 3

I was already feeling a little discouraged by that book not quite coming together, though at that point I assumed I’d be able to fix it in revisions. (Well, I still think I can do that–I just think it will take more time.) Mid-September, I launched into Legion Three: Lies of the Beholder. That took around a month to finish, bringing us to mid-October. By then, I knew something was seriously wrong with The Apocalypse Guard, as my revision attempts were fruitless. So, I called Random House and pulled the book–then launched into Skyward.

October–November: Skyward

I have been writing on that book ever since, and you can read the blog post yesterday about that.

November–December: Oathbringer Tour

The tour was wonderful–somehow both exhausting and energizing at the same time. Here are some of the fan costumes that showed up this year. Thank you all for coming out to see me!

Szeth – Anderson’s Bookshop

Shallan, a mistborn, and Lift – BYU Release Party

Veil – Anderson’s Bookshop

Adolin and Shallan – Murder by the Book

Incredibly detailed book covers – Borderlands Books

A family of Shardbearers – BYU Release Party

Great Thaylen cosplay – BYU Release Party

Kaladin and Syl – Borderlands Books

December so far: Skyward

Unfortunately, and I know you guys know to watch for them, there are no hidden or secret novellas or books for this year. I have been running around feeling behind all year, first on Oathbringer, and then trying to find a replacement for The Apocalypse Guard.

Updates on Main Projects

Stormlight

It’s time to take a little breather. I’ve begun working on the outline for book four, which is kind of a mess right now because of things I’ve been moving around between books as I write. My goal this year for Stormlight will be to have rock-solid outlines for books four and five done by December 2018.

My current projection is that I’ll spend half of my time writing Stormlight, and half of it doing other things. (I spoke last year about just how big an undertaking a Stormlight book is–and why I can’t write them back to back.) I realize that many of you would prefer to have only Stormlight, but that would drive me insane–and drive the series into the ground.

I think this is a realistic schedule. So, I’m giving myself 2018 to work on Skyward (hopefully a trilogy) and other projects. Then on January 1st, 2019, I go back to Stormlight refreshed and excited to be back in Roshar, and I write on book four until it’s done. (With a 2020 or 2021 release, depending on how the writing goes.) I do hope to find time for a novella, like Edgedancer, that we can put out between books. This one is tentatively called Wandersail.

For those who don’t know, the Stormlight Archive is a ten-book series composed of two five-book arcs.

Status: Writing outline for book four.

Mistborn

Wax and Wayne 4 is on the slate next after I finish Skyward. (Though if it’s going well, I may do the entire trilogy for Skyward first.) I need four or five months at least to do Wax and Wayne, so rain or shine, my plan is to get into this on September 1st at the latest. Hopefully a little earlier.

This will wrap up the second era of Mistborn books. (And yes, I’ve settled—at long last—on just calling it that. All the other terms I tried were just too confusing.) Once the Wax and Wayne books are done, I’ll look to do something else for a little while before coming back for Era Three. (1980s spy thriller Mistborn.)

Status: To be written in 2018.

Skyward

Current main project. Yesterday’s blog post talks about it in depth–but so far, so good!

Status: To be written in 2018.

Updates on Secondary Projects

Legion

The third Stephen Leeds/Legion story (which is roughly the same length as the second one) is finished! Titled Lies of the Beholder, this is the story that delves into Stephen’s backstory, his interactions with Sandra, and the nature of his aspects. Good stuff! It’s done, and it’s weird. But good weird.

Right now, the goal is to collect all three Legion stories and release them in hardcover sometime around September 2018. That means there probably won’t be a standalone release of Lies of the Beholder until a year or so later, like we plan with Edgedancer. However, for those who like cohesion on their bookshelves, I’ve mandated that Subterranean Press be allowed to do a leatherbound like they did with the first two. So you can have books that match. This should happen right around the release of the collection.

In the UK, there should be a small-format version of the story on its own rather than a collection. (Again, for matching purposes. In the US, the small-format hardcovers have been published by my own company, Dragonsteel, as we waited for enough stories to do a collection.) We should eventually do a small-format Dragonsteel edition for people who really want one of those to match, but I’d suggest that the best way to support the stories is to buy the collection. And if you haven’t ever tried them out, you’ll be able to get them all at once!

This marks the end of the Stephen Leeds stories, though we’re in talks for another television deal—so maybe that will happen.

Status: Series finished! Publication in late 2018.

Alcatraz

Contrary to last year’s State of the Sanderson (where I didn’t expect movement on this series this year) there have been developments. I have tried working on the sixth and final book (which will be from Bastille’s viewpoint) and have found that I didn’t like the test chapters I did.

The story went the wrong direction, and beyond that, I didn’t feel like I had Bastille’s voice down. In some attempts, the book just sounded too much like the previous ones—but when I exaggerated her voice, she felt a bit Flanderized. I’ve been toying with how to make it work, and I’ve come up with a somewhat outside-the-box solution. My long-standing friend and former student, Janci Patterson, is also a big fan of the series. She’s been offering feedback since I wrote the first book back in…2006, was it? I’ve gone to her and asked if she’d be willing to collaborate on it.

The goal is that by bringing in another author to write it with me, I’ll be able to get the book to work—to have it feel different enough from the others, yet still be in the same theme and spirit. The goal is to do an outline in early February once I have book one of Skyward done, then hand that off to Janci and let her toy with it a while before sending it back to me.

So you can watch for that, and I’ll post updates.

Status: Outline to be written in 2018.

Elantris and Warbreaker

No change on either one from last year. The plan has always been to look back at Sel and Nalthis once the Wax and Wayne books are done. That’s still my intention.

Status: Keep waiting. (Sorry.)

White Sand

Graphic Novel 1 was a huge success, and Graphic Novel 2 is finished and off to the printers. Expected publication date is February 2018. It will be the second of three.

The prose version is still available to be read. If you sign up for my mailing list, we auto-send you a link to it.

Status: Graphic novel 2 coming in early 2018.

The Rithmatist

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.

Status: Not yet. We’ll see.

Updates on Minor Projects

The Reckoners

The Apocalypse Guard was in this universe, and we’ll see what happens there, but for now I’m leaving this series alone. There might be a Mizzy book that I end up doing, but no promises.

Status: Trilogy complete. Series done, for now.

Adamant

This space opera novella series is in same place it was last year, I’m afraid. (One novella done, no more written on the rest.) I took a little time to work on the outline, but didn’t find a chance to write the second novella. It will be awesome when I do it, and I got really close to moving this to the front burner several times, but it didn’t end up working.

Status: Still possible in the near future.

Dark One

My eternal “like Harry Potter from Voldemort’s viewpoint” fantasy sequence is still hanging out, buzzing at the sides of my brain. I wrote a really spectacular outline for it this summer, one I love quite a bit, and it got both television graphic novel interest—but these are deals still very much in the works, so I can’t talk about them yet.

I’m pleased with what I have though, and feel this series has moved for the first time in a long while. Note that I did end up pulling it out of the Cosmere, as it ended up working better as a dark secondary world fantasy than it did as a Cosmere YA series. It went both older, and more twisted, in the current outline. Hopefully, by next year’s State of the Sanderson we’ll have something more solid to announce.

Status: Exciting developments in the works!

Death by Pizza

Pizza delivery man becomes a necromancer. On my perpetual list of things to do—but no movement.

Status: No movement.

Soulburner

Random space opera thing I worked on for a while.

Status: No movement.

Potential Cosmere Stories List

Here are things that at one point I’ve had in the works, and probably someday plan to do, in the Cosmere:

Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel. (Hoid’s origin story, to be written sometime after Stormlight is done.)
Sixth of the Dusk sequel. (I had a pretty cool idea for this last year. Nothing more than that.)
Untitled Silverlight novella. (What it says on the tin.)
Threnody novel. (An expedition back to confront the Evil that destroyed the old world.)
Aether of Night. (Still in the Cosmere, and you can see the odd remnant of an Aether popping up here and there. Bound to be drastically different from the unpublished novel, which I allow the 17th Shard to give out to people who request it on their forums. Basically, the only thing from it that is canon is the magic system.)
Silence Divine. (Disease magic novella set on Ashyn.)

Movie/Television Updates

Mistborn and Stormlight Films

These rights are held by DMG Entertainment, and they’ve been very good at working with me and showing me things. They have scripts for both Mistborn and The Way of Kings, which they are actively trying to make happen in Hollywood.

One way they’re approaching this is to do a Stormlight VR experience, which we’ve talked about before. This is less about making a video game, and more about making something to show off to studios to kind of immerse them in the setting of the books. As I determined early on, this is an interesting but weird world, and having visuals (like the art in the books themselves) helps a lot with bringing people around to understanding.

They do plan to release the VR experience to fans on Steam, for those with VR headsets. It’s not intended to be a full game, as I said, more a demo of the Shattered Plains—you’ll get to personally experience the Shattered Plains from the novels and interact with the characters and creatures that inhabit them. We’ll do some posts on it in coming months as it gears up to be released, and I’ve invited the developers to do some guest posts on my blog.

Regardless of what happens on the film and television front here, at the very least you have that to look forward to!

The Reckoners

Still held by Fox, with 21 Laps producing. They renewed their option this summer, so they are still interested in the property, though I haven’t had any specific updates in a while. I have no idea how the Disney acquisition might affect things.

Snapshot

If you missed my weird, cyberpunkish detective story, you can now get a copy of it in our Dragonsteel Edition bundled with another of my stories. The ebook is still around too. MGM snatched this up almost before it was published—it was very hot in Hollywood in the months leading up to publication.

The screenwriter they attached to it had another project delaying him for the bulk of this year, but they’ve said he’ll turn his full attention to it staring sometime just after the holidays.

Other Properties

Legion and Dark One are currently in negotiations. The rest of the Cosmere is covered by the DMG deal, as we want one company working on that at a time. We have a small deal for Defending Elysium that has it under option with a screenwriter, and the first draft screenplay is good. That leaves Alcatraz, The Rithmatist, and a couple of shorts (Dreamer, Perfect State, Firstborn) with no options right now.

Updates Conclusion

There we go—everything I’ve talked about should be on that list. I have a few other little stories bouncing around in my head that I haven’t talked about yet. (Well, probably there are hundreds, but only a few that are relatively close to seeing the light of day.) We’ll see what happens.

Projected Schedule

My projected publication schedule looking forward swaps The Apocalypse Guard out for Skyward and moves the Legion collection into the place of Wax and Wayne 4, reflecting what I actually wrote this year. (Note, these are always very speculative. And Peter is probably already worried about Stormlight 4.)

September 2018: Stephen Leeds/Legion Collection

November 2018: Skyward

Fall 2019: Wax and Wayne 4

Sometime 2019: Skyward 2

Sometime 2020: Stormlight 4

Sometime 2020: Skyward 3

Conclusion: Birthday!

Last year, I tried out something where—in response to people asking me if they could send me birthday gifts—I suggested sending me a magic card from a specific set, with a signature and note on the back.

This was a little experiment that people had a lot of fun with, and this year I want to post the results! That means a lot of photos, as I wanted to show the notes people wrote on the cards. Many of you included touching letters to me as well, which I read and appreciate—though those tended to be a little more personal in nature, so I’m not going to post them.

Some of you will be completely uninterested in this, so we’ve collected the images in a gallery rather than posting them all here. Have fun browsing through them! And thank you so much to everyone. It was a lot of fun to see the little notes that you’d all sent in.

I’m forty-two today, which is an auspicious number in science fiction fandom. It’s going to be tough to top these last few months and the reception to Oathbringer.

The fact that I get to do this crazy thing for a living continues to be the best gift of them all.

Brandon Sanderson

December 2017

Officially Announcing: Skyward

Hey! I’m back from tour, and let me say, it was quite the experience. I knew you all were excited for Oathbringer—but I didn’t understand just how excited you were. Oathbringer, as of this writing, is still the #1 most read book on Amazon’s “what are people reading” chart. (I guess the length might have something to do with that…)

My signings were two to three times the size of previous ones, and you all kept my hand very busy with your books! Thank you to everyone who came out to see me, and I apologize again for long waits to get what amounted to a very brief interaction. We outgrew our venues and sold out of books at almost every stop—to the point that I’ve said that all future signings are going to have to be off-site in a theater or something, so at the least people have chairs to sit in while they wait. I’ll also be trimming and shortening the signing protocol to get people through faster. (Look for a post about that later this week.)

These are awesome problems to be having, I must say. It wasn’t that long ago when I’d do a signing or reading where the only people to show up were those who knew me.

On tour, I did a reading from what up until now was listed as “Mystery Project” on my website. If you missed the newsletter explanation, I’ve pulled the book I was going to release next year (The Apocalypse Guard) because it needs more work. Instead, I’ve turned my attention to something else—and after a furious bout of writing, I’m confident in where it’s going. So it’s time to announce Skyward.

Like Steelheart and its sequels, this is a kind of borderline YA/Adult project. In the US, it will be published by Delacorte Press (publisher of Steelheart) in the Young Adult section of bookstores, while in the UK it will be published by Gollancz (publisher of almost all my books) in my main line, shelved in the science fiction/fantasy section of bookstores.

I’ve mentioned Skyward before in summaries of stories I’m working on, but haven’t said much about it. I started noodling with the ideas in 2012, I believe. (The year that the Write About Dragons recordings of my lectures happened, where I mentioned it briefly—but not by name.) The first outline thoughts are dated summer 2013. It’s a book I’ve been wanting to write for a long time, and it finally came together this year.

It has its roots in some of the very first books I ever read as a young man getting into fantasy. Like many young readers, I was captured by books about dragons, specifically books about boys who find dragons and learn to fly them. These have been staples of the fantasy genre for some fifty years. For me, it was The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey and Dragon’s Blood by Jane Yolen. For others, the “boy and his dragon” story that captured them was Eragon, or How to Train Your Dragon.

I’ve always loved this story archetype, but I’ve never written anything using it. This is in part because…well, it’s a familiar story. Too familiar. I wasn’t certain I could add anything new to it. So I left it alone, letting ideas simmer, until in 2012 something struck me. Could I mash this together with a flight school story like Top Gun or Ender’s Game, and do something that wasn’t “a boy and his dragon,” but was instead “a girl and her starfighter”?

Skyward was born, much like Mistborn, with me taking two ideas and mashing them together to see where they went. And they went someplace incredible—I grew increasingly excited about the project, as I saw in it a chance to both play in a space I loved, and do some very interesting things with story and theme. It wasn’t until this year that I got the personalities of the characters right, but I really got excited when I found a place for this in the lore of stories I’d been creating.

The official pitch is this: Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped on a planet that is constantly attacked by mysterious alien starfighters. Spensa, a teenage girl living among them, longs to be a pilot. When she discovers the wreckage of an ancient ship, she realizes this dream might be possible—assuming she can repair the ship, navigate flight school, and (perhaps most importantly) persuade the strange machine to help her. Because this ship, uniquely, appears to have a soul.

As I’ve played with Skyward over the years, I tried to pull it into the Cosmere, then found it didn’t work there. However, it is in the continuity of something I’ve written before. Something that isn’t the Cosmere, and isn’t the Reckoners. And no, I won’t say anything more for now. However, you can listen to me read the prologue as part of my presentation for this year while on tour. (The reading is in part two.)

Part One:

Part Two:

Thanks to the fan who recorded this! I really should have asked someone to record the speech as I finished giving it late in the UK tour, as I figured out some things and made it come together better to say what I wanted to.

The goal right now is to have Skyward done in time for a publication date of November 6, 2018. We’ll see if I can meet that deadline! I’m optimistic. As always, you can follow along on the progress bar on my website. Look for a cover reveal and chance to pre-order soon!

For other books, we’ll be doing the State of the Sanderson post tomorrow.

Best,

Brandon

Words of Radiance Ikraa Interlude

Brandon abandoned this interlude and instead decided to introduce Lift, who he had been building as a character for years, via the Azish emperor situation. Also, the concept of the emperor whose every action was public is something else Brandon had been planning for years, originally for a non-Cosmere novel.

Ikraa, Prime of the Holy Azish empire, awoke to an audience. He knew to expect that. He’d read about it, after all. The prime—the emperor or king, as he’d be known in other realms—belonged to the people, and his every action was public. It was strange nonetheless. He figured he’d grow accustomed to it eventually.

Today was, after all, his first day on the job.

He sat up in the lavish bed, half as wide as the room—and it was a big room, to fit that audience. There must have been at least fifty people over there, standing just off the carpet, crowded along the wall and watching him. All Azish, like Ikraa himself. Modest of height with dark brown skin, those of appropriate rank—men and women who had taken the tests for government service—wore loose coats with wide sleeves, the complex patterns representing their duties, station, and specialties. The caps were representative of family relationships.

Only a half dozen or so of those watching wore the coats. He’d expected more viziers, scions, and arbiters—and if not them, lower functionaries, like clerks and clerics. The majority of his visitors, however, were

 

He knew every pattern, of course, and could read a wealth of information from each individual.

Annotation The Way of Kings Chapter 11

And now comes the redemption chapter.

This is the sort of thing that I write books to do. It’s the sort of chapter that I really hope to be able to pull off. That may seem strange to some of you, as it’s not the climatic ending or the like—but it’s the turning point of the story. Probably the most important one in the book.

I’ve said before that I feel Epic Fantasy is about return on investment. We often demand a lot of readers in terms of worldbuilding. There’s a lot to catch up on and follow in a book like this. The goal, then, is to be able to deliver powerful scenes that make use of the investment.

The reward for the early chapters is this chapter. It lays a foundation for the entire book. I’ve brought Kaladin as low as I could bring him, and now we get to experience the scramble upward.

Perhaps I think about these things too much. However, this was exactly what was missing from Prime when I wrote it. I was baffled, at the time, as to why the book just didn’t work. It had all of the elements of a good epic, and yet the book felt hollow somehow. There were fun adventures to be had, but no real impact. What it needed was this sequence, which has a lot of motion (and hopefully heart) to it.

This chapter makes the book for me.

Words of Radiance Chapter Climax 1

This is a discarded draft of Shallan finishing the Shattered Plains drawing in chapter 81.

Shallan moved her fingers along the map, measuring distances with the back of her pen, making sure that the four quadrants of the map were equal. The paper was relatively dry, despite that omnipresent rain, even if she felt wet. It was the Weeping. Everything felt wet.

It was day, hard as that was to tell, two weeks since their departure onto the Shattered Plains–and the time when they’d have to turn about and return to the warcamps was approaching, lest they wanted to risk being out here when the highstorms returned.

That was looking less and less necessary. Shallan drew in the final plateau in the left bottom quadrant of the map. There were still enormous swaths of emptiness, of course, but the army—at her direction—had been able to pinpoint the center and strike for it. They were close. Very close.

She nodded to herself, then passed the map to some of Navani’s scribes for copying. “All right,” Shallan said. “Show me.”

Rushu nodded. The ardent was a short woman—a few inches shorter than Shallan, which was rare for an Alethi—with absolutely unfair features. Really, Ardents didn’t deserve eyelashes like that. The woman’s shaved head only seemed to highlight how beautiful her features were, as if to keep something silly like a hairstyle from distracting from perfection.

Together, they left the pavilion and raised umbrellas. Guards in raincloaks fell in around them. The Parshendi had been spotted often during the incursion, but so far, no major clashes had occurred. Dalinar seemed to think that their presence indicated that armies were indeed getting close.

The Well of Ascension leatherbound edition is here!

I have some exciting news for you: after months of waiting, our special leatherbound edition of The Well of Ascension has finally shipped from the printer. Huzzah!

Like our edition of Elantris, and Mistborn: The Final Empire the Dragonsteel edition of The Well of Ascension is bound in premium bonded leather, and the pages are smyth-sewn, not glued like most regular books. Mistborn is printed in black and red inks on quality, acid-free paper, includes a bound-in satin-ribbon bookmark, full-color endpapers by Howard Lyon, gilded pages, and two-color foiling on the cover. A 24-page art gallery starts off the edition and features never-before-seen artwork, a feruchemical chart, and three maps of the Final Empire. The Dragonsteel Leather edition of Mistborn: The Well of Ascension is 797 pages.

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Endpapers by Howard Lyon

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Vin vs. Koloss (left) by Charles Tan. Heir of the Survivor (right) by Miranda Meeks.

A few things you should know: These are going to be put on my store today at 12:00 (MST). If you’re wanting signed, numbered, and personalized copies we probably won’t be able to get them out in time for Christmas, but I’ll do my best. If you just want the book itself, we should be able to get that to you in time for Christmas with priority shipping.

Along with being able to order it from my store, we’re also sending it to several independent bookstores around the country where you may be able to acquire one.

Murder by the Book
BYU Bookstore
Mysterious Galaxy
Borderlands Books
The King’s English
Weller Book Works
Subterranean Books

For those of you who have been waiting to get your hands on the first leatherbound volume, Mistborn: The Final Empire, we also just received the second printing of these and will add them to our website at the same time we add The Well of Ascension.

Words of Radiance Chapter Adolin 3-3

This discarded scene section would have taken place in chapter 51 as Adolin went to meet Eshonai in Dalinar’s place.

“So,” Shallan said from the palanquin being carried beside him. “Why me?”

Kaladin and his bridgemen, in the disguise of porters, held the poles to her palanquin. Adolin had expected an objection from them. Instead, Kaladin had nodded, saying, “Good plan. Keeps us close, perhaps ignored, if the Assassin does come.”

“Shouldn’t Navani be here?” Shallan continued. “If you’re imitating Dalinar?”

“We need someone on both ends of the spanreed that we trust,” Adolin said. “Father wanted Navani nearby, so he could consult with her on the right answers to send me. That meant she had to stay, and I needed a different scribe.”

“So you trust me,” Shallan said.

“Of course.”

Nearby, carrying the front of the palanquin, Kaladin eyed him. Go suck on a rock, bridgeman, Adolin thought. He had spent his life in politics; he knew when someone was trustworthy.

“So, the plan,” Shallan said.

“We go out,” Adolin replied, “listen to what the Parshendi have to say. You send the words back to my father and aunt, and we reply to the Parshendi according to the instructions we receive.”

“And we watch for the assassin,” Kaladin said.

The scouts returned with an all clear, and so Adolin could finally climb down from ***. He patted the horse on the neck. “Thanks,” he whispered.

The Ryshadium turned inscrutable eyes toward Adolin, then snorted out softly.

Adolin crossed over the mobile bridge, Shallan joining him on foot. “You

Annotation The Way of Kings Chapter 10

Kal helps his father work on a young girl’s hand

For years I had been wanting to do a full-blown flashback-sequence book. Flashbacks (or non-linear storytelling) can be a powerful narrative device, but they’re also dangerous. They can make a book harder to get into (nothing new for this book) and can create frustration in readers who want to be progressing the story and not dwelling in the past.

The payoff, in my estimation, is a stronger piece of art. For example, as Kaladin is slowly being destroyed in the bridges we can show a flashback for contrast. The juxtaposition between the naive Kal wanting to go to war and the harsh realities of the Kaladin from years later suffering in war might be a little heavy-handed, but I feel that if the reader is on board with the character, this will be powerful instead of boring.

I often talk about how books grow out of separate ideas that buzz around in my head. One of those ideas was to create a character who was a surgeon in a fantasy world. A person who believed in science during an era where it was slowly seeping through the educated, but who had to fight against the ignorance around him.

Back when Kaladin was called Merin, he didn’t work well as a character. He was too much the standard “farmboy who becomes a nobleman” from fantasy genre cliché. I struggled for years with different concepts for him, and it was when I combined him with the idea for this surgeon that things really started rolling. It’s interesting, then, that he didn’t actually become that surgeon character. In the final draft of the book, that character became his father—not a main character as I’d always intended—and Kaladin became the son of the character I’d developed in my head to take a lead role.