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STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE

I’ve offered Dan Mintz to do treatments for this myself, and he’s been very amenable. He and I have been working more closely together lately to see if we can make this happen.

 

Concerning. He's mentioned not wanting to "Lucas it up" about revisiting the setting of Emperor's Soul and making the original worse. Can he not Martin it up too?

It is very selfish of me, but I don't want him to become a hands on TV writer / producer because that could subsume his other work.

I guess Stephen King's production never slowed much and he's had a million movies made from his books. Although, I will say the more involved King was in the production of the movie the worse it was usually. He hated The Shining movie and that's the best one. 

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14 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

Concerning. He's mentioned not wanting to "Lucas it up" about revisiting the setting of Emperor's Soul and making the original worse. Can he not Martin it up too?

It is very selfish of me, but I don't want him to become a hands on TV writer / producer because that could subsume his other work.

I guess Stephen King's production never slowed much and he's had a million movies made from his books. Although, I will say the more involved King was in the production of the movie the worse it was usually. He hated The Shining movie and that's the best one. 

While I can see why this is concerning, I think (and hope) that if Brandon ever does get one of his works adapted, especially cosmere, he'll return to an offhand approach and not focus on TV adaptations as much. I get why he is doing this because it feels like something should be happening adaptation-wise for him considering he's one of the most popular fantasy authors, and there's a high demand for fantasy adaptations with the new wave coming after GoT ended. It just hasn't worked out, and I think he's excited about the possibility, and hoping that a little bit of extra involvement could be the catalyst that gets something greenlit. So I'm not too worried as long as he backs off more once something gets rolling. 

Also, another thing to consider is that writing side projects have slowed Brandon down a lot over the last few years, but he's hoping to finish up all these loose ended series. Worst comes to worst, involvement with TV adaptations will basically replace these side projects as he wraps a lot of them up (though knowing Brandon, he'll come up with more). Honestly, though, I can't see how TV adaptions can take more of his time away from the cosmere than Skyward, White Sand, and everything else he has going on. He's looking ahead to ensure he can finish the cosmere in a timely manner too, which also makes me more confident. Hopefully my rambling has alleviated a little of your fear. 

TLDR; I don't think Brandon is going to become the Stephen King of TV adaptations by a long shot.

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My early reactions to State of the Sanderson 2019:

-Dark One looks really good, much better than White Sand. I'm hyped.

-The "Cosmere Sequence" is amazing. It's so ambitious it even dwarfs the Stormlight Archive as a series.

-Wax and Wayne 4 in 2022 is not that bad when you look at the bigger picture.

-It looks Brandon's hopes for adaptations had a setback this year. I am sad for him but I also worry about how time-consuming this adaptations could become.

-I am both a metal and a Sanderson fan, so I am already anticipating the Songs of the Dead book.

 

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Here are some of my various comments and observations, ordered chronologically:

 

Cosmere Symbol:

An interesting modification to the cosmere symbol in the header:

state-of-the-sanderson-site.jpg

The ring with sixteen suns around the outside is new. (Well, the ones we can see are spaced such that there should be sixteen. It gets a little transparent in the bottom-left.)  I suspect those sixteen represent the Shards, and the centermost one represents Adonalsium. But I had thought that the sixteen points represented the sixteen Shards; why do each of the outermost ones have sixteen points, as well, if each of those represents one of the "points"? I'm also unsure as to the remainder of the design elements. I think the four-pointed star is the Spiritual Realm (from which Investiture comes), entering and passing through the single circle of the Cognitive Realm (which is all connected), moving toward the four arcs that represent distinct planets in the Physical Realm (not particular planets, necessarily, but the concept of there being separation).

 

Way of Kings Kickstarter:

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Some things might not be available in the later printing, however, depending on what incentives we offer for the Kickstarter. For example, we will possibly offer a slipcase as part of the Kickstarter incentives—but (depending on the size of future print runs) we might not be able to offer that with the later editions we sell in the store. In short, the book will totally be there for you to buy later—but any stretch goal achievements and swag associated with the Kickstarter would have to come from that campaign. (With one exception mentioned below.)

...

We haven’t settled on anything yet. I haven’t even written the novella, so it’s possible that won’t even happen. However, it’s likely that we’ll be letting you choose an order of Knights Radiant (and we’ll post full descriptions of all ten orders, including information not yet in the books) and receive rewards based on your preference (i.e. physical rewards with that order’s symbols on them).

Looking forward to the descriptions. It makes me think of the small companion book we got before Oathbringer, which had some interesting tidbits that hadn't been otherwise confirmed up until that point. I do hope they have an easy way to let you get all ten tiers of the Order-specific goodies; signing up for eight new burner accounts is going to be a little time-consuming.

 

Signing Changes

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Brandon (with maybe Isaac coming too) speaks and presents for around THREE hours. Everyone gets a signed copy of the new book, pre-signed by Brandon before the event. Event is held in a theater or other location with seating (rather than a bookstore) with your ticket including the signed book and a guaranteed seat. Additional seats for family members or friends available at a much cheaper price, though these wouldn’t include a book.

Brandon (with maybe Isaac coming too) speaks and presents for around TWO hours. Everyone gets a signed copy of the new book, pre-signed by Brandon before the event. Event is held in a theater or other location with seating (rather than a bookstore) with your ticket including the signed book and a guaranteed seat. Additional seats for family members or friends available at a much cheaper price, without a signed book included. 100 people are chosen randomly before the event (with notification coming to you early if you’re chosen.) These 100 can come up afterward and meet Brandon, get a picture, and have their book (and one other) personalized. If you are chosen, you may bring one other person with you, and may give one of your two personalizations to them. You may also bring your other books and get them signed, but not personalized.

Brandon does no presentation, and just signs, with no seating. Likely held at the bookstore itself. No personalizations, pictures, or questions. But also no limit on number of books to get signed. Very quick, with staff keeping you moving, so everyone gets done in four or five hours. (Instead of the normal seven or eight.)

If these are the only options, I’d probably choose not to come to the signing. (No offense.)

End of an era. I'd be saddened by the loss of the signing line - that's been one of my favorite parts of the fandom, and something that makes us unique. I'm torn between gambling that I'd be able to get in the lottery (or have a friend who could get me in), and wanting to see the signing line gone entirely in the hopes that Brandon is more amenable to people staying afterwards to ask some more questions. (At all of the signings he's been at, he's been too tired to offer any second-rounds. But if it gets done at 11:00 instead of 2:00, that could change things.)

Either way, it's going to make Reddit AMAs that much sweeter. (And there's been rumors that one could be coming once Brandon finishes up Stormlight, so keep your eyes open over the next few months.) That format is actually a little better for detailed cosmere questions anyways; there's much less time pressure in answering. Back in 2015, Brandon kept going back to an AMA for six months (right until the date the thread got locked, pretty much) answering more questions.

Reddit itself could probably be used better to leverage AMAs. Questions get posted day of, and Brandon basically sorts by "new" in answering. But using upvotes to push questions that more people want to see to the top, and having Brandon sort by "hot" or "best," could make them run even better and minimize repeated questions or stuff that's already been answered. (You hear that, @Jofwu? Might be worth trying.)

 

White Sand

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We’ve learned a lot doing our first graphic novel series. Again, there were some growing pains. (We aren’t thrilled, for example, by how often we ended up needing to change artists.) The good news is that we really enjoy doing these, and so we are planning to do another graphic novel series set on Taldain, visiting darkside and dealing with Khriss and her adventures there. So if you are one of those people who read the prose version years ago, and have been waiting for some resolution, Isaac and I are outlining a sequel series right now.

STATUS: Trilogy complete, likely to do a collection of all three in coming years. Sequel series being outlined.

Well.. it's better than nothing, I guess. I'm not a fan of the pacing of comics in general, but these seem to be working.

 

Future Cosmere Plans

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Untitled Threnody Novel, Sixth of the Dusk sequel, another story with Shai, and The Silence Divine persist as “maybe” stories that someday I might write. They are joined by a Secret Standalone Cosmere Book, that wacky YA Cosmere Book with Magic Kites, Untitled First of the Sun YA novel (not involving Sixth), and a few others as Cosmere novels that might someday make it to the front burner. (Once Skyward is done, I think it would be good to do a YA book in the Cosmere, so I’ve begun working on possible ideas.) Aether of Night also is still hanging around, maybe needing a novel. So we’ll see. I’ll talk a little more about the Cosmere in a future section, after we get to the film stuff.

If I write a novella to go with the Stormlight Kickstarter, it has about an equal chance of being Wandersail (a Rysn novella), Horneater (a Rock novella), or a sequel to Sixth of the Dusk (which is tricky because it reveals maybe a little too much about Space Age Cosmere politics).

...

A publisher Isaac has worked with doing picture books asked if maybe we could do an adaptation of “the girl who looked up” story that Shallan and Wit tell in Oathbringer. We thought this was a pretty cool idea, and so Isaac is working on the adaptation. If we do this right, it could come out around the same time as Book Four.

This is the first I've heard of the First of the Sun YA novel. I must say, I'm not a fan of YA books. The parts of the cosmere I dislike the most are the characters who feel like they're out of YA novels (Lift, Lopen, and Wayne). Girl Who Looked up is fine, but that's not really something for Brandon to work on, either; that'll be more like the Leatherbounds, where it's his team.

The Secret Standalone Cosmere book is interesting. Based on history, Secret Projects tend to get a lot of momentum really quickly and get pushed to the front of the writing queue. (Alcatraz, Skyward, and Children of the Nameless all started as Secret Projects.) So, one one hand, if Wax and Wayne get pushed back again, it would be nice to at least have something in the cosmere be released in their place. But on the other hand, what could it possibly be? Is this a new world? Or is it a Secret History style piece, something that fits in on an existing planet? Brandon made no mention of Mistborn: Secret History 2 or Stormlight: Secret History, both possibilities he's floated before. Could this be a Hoid: Secret History book? But those wouldn't be very much of a "standalone," if they were entries to existing series.

Here are some WoBs where Brandon has talked about other things before:

Also, the Silverlight novella has disappeared from this list. Was it an accidental exclusion? Or has that become the Secret Standalone? https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=silverlight+novella&ordering=rank

 

Film/TV

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However, the biggest news here is that I’ve decided to try taking a more active role in getting some of these made. To that end, I’ve most specifically been working closer with Dan Mintz, the producer who is trying to get some Cosmere things made.

Stormlight Archive

I’ve offered Dan Mintz to do treatments for this myself, and he’s been very amenable. He and I have been working more closely together lately to see if we can make this happen.

Mistborn

Considering maybe writing the screenplay on this myself. After speaking with Dan Mintz, we decided he would focus on spearheading Stormlight, and I would focus on spearheading Mistborn. So we’ll see what I decide to do.

Uh oh. This has the potential to be a huge time sink. I'll selfishly hope this fizzles out like Apocalypse Guard did.

 

Release Schedule

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  • The Original audio novella: 2020
  • Stormlight Four: Fall 2020
  • Skyward Three: Summer(?) 2021
  • Wax and Wayne Four: Fall(?) 2021
  • Alcatraz 6: 2021–2022
  • Dark One Graphic Novel: 2021–2022
  • Skyward Four (final book): 2022
  • Stormlight Five: Fall 2023

Well, this is a first. Compare to last year's:

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Starsight (Skyward Two): November 2019
White Sand Three: Sometime 2019–2020
Stormlight Four: Fall 2020
Skyward Three: 2021
Wax and Wayne Four: Sometime 2020 or 2021

This is the first time nothing has moved back. Is Brandon finally being conservative enough in his estimates? Or is that more due to the fact that he's been working on the same book the whole year, with no opportunities to revise his plans? Looking forward to next year, to see if we get two in a row.

 

Big Cosmere Plans

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For what it’s worth, here is what I have as the current Cosmere sequence, not counting potential YA books or the occasional novella. Finished books are in bold. This isn’t an exact chronology of when I’ll write them either.

  • Elantris 1
  • Elantris 2
  • Elantris 3
  • Mistborn Era 1: Book One
  • Mistborn Era 1: Book Two
  • Mistborn Era 1: Book Three
  • Stormlight One
  • Stormlight Two
  • Stormlight Three
  • Stormlight Four
  • Stormlight Five
  • Mistborn Era 2: Book One
  • Mistborn Era 2: Book Two
  • Mistborn Era 2: Book Three
  • Mistborn Era 2: Book Four
  • Warbreaker 1
  • Warbreaker 2
  • Mistborn Era 3: Book One
  • Mistborn Era 3: Book Two
  • Mistborn Era 3: Book Three
  • Stormlight Six
  • Stormlight Seven
  • Stormlight Eight
  • Stormlight Nine
  • Stormlight Ten
  • Dragonsteel Book One
  • Dragonsteel Book Two
  • Dragonsteel Book Three
  • Untitled Threnody Novel
  • Untitled Aether Book One
  • Untitled Aether Book Two
  • Untitled Aether Book Three
  • Mistborn Era 4: Book One
  • Mistborn Era 4: Book Two
  • Mistborn Era 4: Book Three

...

The original outline didn’t name the Threnody novel as such; that slot was filled by a standalone where I planned to do some of the things I’ll now accomplish. In the original outline I had White Sand, but that became a graphic novel series. This, plus my uncertainty at the start if there would be other standalone novels, indicates why I had a 32–36-book series in mind at the start, but now have 35 “mainline” Cosmere books. (Another point I’ve wavered on is where Aether fits into this.)

That makes eleven books in the Cosmere finished in the last 15 years, less than a third of the full Cosmere sequence. This means, at this speed, I’ve got at least another thirty years of writing to do—putting me optimistically at age seventy-four when I finish. (Assuming I don’t add anything else, like a Mistborn cyberpunk between eras three and four—or a standalone or two, which I’d really like to be doing more.)

Original Cosmere Outline for reference:

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Original Cosmere sequence (from around 2003 or so.)

Core books:

Dragonsteel (7 books)

Mistborn (9 books)

Stormlight (10 books)

Elantris (3 books.)

Secondary stories

Unnamed Vasher prequel (1 book)

White Sand (3 books)

Unnamed Threnody novel. (1 book.)

Aether of Night. (1 book.)

Silence Divine (1 book.)

This version was after I decided I'd trim back Aether of Night, but felt confident that Dragonsteel would be coming out soon. (I tried a rebuilt version of it in 2007.)

By 2011, some things had changed. First, I'd rewritten Stormlight, and had sucked Bridge Four off of Yolen, following Dalinar (who had been moved to Roshar for the first draft of TWOK.) Warbreaker had been given a sequel. Dragonsteel, having lost the entire bridge four sequence, refocused to be more about Hoid and shrunk from seven books to between 3 and five, depending on what I decided needed to go there. Silverlight had grown from just a place I referenced to a place I wanted to do a complete story for. And, of course, Mistborn got another era. (Dark One also moved to the cosmere somewhere in here.)

General Reddit 2016 (Dec. 21, 2016)

I've also done some number crunching on Brandon's writing speed. He's seeing 30 years, and I'm seeing 35; that's largely due to his book-by-book approach, whereas I looked at a word-by-word approach, so his will be skewed by the prevalence of shorter stuff earlier on.

I think he's selling White Sand short - if we count each graphic novel trilogy as a single "novel," then we're at one more completed, and one more to go. So 12 out of 37, which improves his percentage a bit.

The Aether trilogy is new. I had seen it as 1 book in the outline, as Aether of Night. But Brandon had done some working on a larger series (where Syl originally started, as a matter of fact):

Threnody novel being the replacement for another cosmere novel is... also interesting. It appeared in Brandon's list from 2003, which had an untitled Warbreaker as a single book.

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(Assuming I don’t add anything else, like a Mistborn cyberpunk between eras three and four—or a standalone or two, which I’d really like to be doing more.)

Like I said above. I would not be surprised if the new Secret Project bumps out Wax and Wayne again. He wants to do standalones, and the only brand-new project on this list is this Secret Standalone.

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Dark One comic

OMG this looks SO GOOD

The Original

Audio only?  Aw.  But yay on imminent release.

Alcatraz

Basically done?  Why 2-3 years for release? :<  He was collaborating on this book too, wasn't he?  Curious that the SotS didn't say anything about that.

Signings

My thoughts on this will probably make some people angry, but I've never liked seeing authors or actors sitting for hours scribbling the same thing over and over again so that everyone can have their own prestigious object to show off.  I would feel selfish to expect that of someone I admired.  Seeing the video he posted a while back of stacks of thousands of books he signed in his office, I just thought that was awful.  Someone once argued with me that Brandon likes giving to his fans, but really, I'm sure he'd rather be writing ... the signing and travelling and all that are surely things the publishers push for promoting visibility in order to generate sales.  I have no doubt that he enjoys interacting with fans, answering questions and all that, but the signings ... just ... ugh.  If he MUST continue to satisfy the stupid demand for personalised things, it would be great if he could get something less RSI-inducing to do like use a stamp (maybe Emperor's Soul themed) or get some special stickers printed up that he can speed-apply with a sticker machine.

Expectations on authors these days *grumblegrumble*.

(one of my novels-that-will-never-be-written is about an author who employs someone else to pretend to be them for public appearances ... must be such an appealing idea for some of these guys!)

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Thank you @Pagerunner for all of thoughts. I wasn't really thinking that much about the state of the Sanderson and then I read your post and now I have opinions on it as well.

Thoughts on the state of the Sanderson.

when I started reading it I though it said the final state of the Sanderson and I was worried that for some reason He wasn't going to update on his books anymore,

How much time does it take to write this post. IN one hand there are many many many words in the post. On the other hand

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No updates from last year, I’m afraid. There was no intention to make progress on these this year. Once Alcatraz is wrapped up, I’ll turn my attention back to The Rithmatist as the last looming series that needs a wrapup that hasn’t gotten one. Elantris and Warbreaker sequels aren’t to be expected until Stormlight Five and Wax and Wayne Four are done.

I know a lot of you keep waiting on Rithmatist news, and I feel bad having to give you the same news every year. (Yes, that paragraph above is the same one I put in the State of the Sanderson last year.) But the truth is, I really can’t work on this until at the very least Alcatraz is finished.

He doesn't even have to update his post. I could have written the state of the Sanderson. you just take what what he wrote last year and then change it slightly.

Cosmere sequence. It seems like Brandon realized that his secret stash of bendalloy wasn't going to be enough for him to finish all the books. Question for some very smart sharder. How much bendalloy would Brandon need in order to finish a normal cosmere book? How much would it cost for the 17 shard to band together to buy enough bendalloy for him to finish a book that we want him to?

Not joking though I am actually worried about Brandon. I like all of his books but he will get burned out eventually. Also it seems like he wants to finish the cosmere definitely like he should but what do if he wants to do other things as well. Even though it seems like he has plans for limiting non cosmere books what will happen if he ends up still taking up a lot of time on movies or other non cosmere works.

I'm glad that there can be films and movies for his books. but it seems like this takes up a lot of time. if it takes up a significant chunk of Brandon's time then they shouldn't be done.

And this thread I seems to be "The State of The State of the Sanderson" AKA the posts that talk about in what state the state of the sanderson is in. I personally think the state of the sanderson is in fine condition

Edited by spren of destruction
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Rather than updates on projects it seems this was about updates on the way he works, which is probably good, doing things the same way wasn't going to work all his life. The fact that he's taking pages from Gaiman and Martin says a lot about how much his circumstances have changed over the years.

I'm really excited about the leatherbound for WoK but getting $200+ by summer this year is going to be difficult, but well, can't hurt to try.

By the way, has anyone else wondered how he's going to wrap up the Cosmere in three books? I feel like it's a big plot for a trilogy.

Also, is anyone else excited about Call to Adventure: Stormlight? The original game is insanely fun and taking it to Roshar is going to be great. Besides, I knew it was going to be Stormlight themed, but if every card will depict a scene from the books, you could make a picture book with the end result, it's looking pretty great.

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Any chance someone could link to where he's talked about The Original? Based on light research on Will Smith movies I think I have a general idea, but I'd like to see what he's said about it.

Super excited about Call to Adventure, especially since it's standalone now. I haven't gotten any of the board games yet, but I'm still planning to eventually, and this might be my first depending.

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1 hour ago, Ookla the Procrastinator said:

Any chance someone could link to where he's talked about The Original? Based on light research on Will Smith movies I think I have a general idea, but I'd like to see what he's said about it.

Super excited about Call to Adventure, especially since it's standalone now. I haven't gotten any of the board games yet, but I'm still planning to eventually, and this might be my first depending.

From SoS 2018:

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Brandon Sanderson

Updates on Secondary Projects

The Original

I'm moving this novella (which I don't think I've mentioned before in a State of the Sanderson) into the Secondary Projects section. A while ago I had an idea for a story about a world where, if you committed a crime and went on the run for it, the government could create a clone of you (with your memories and personality) to hunt you down. After all, who better to hunt a criminal than a copy of that criminal? The copy would have strict controls in place so they could be killed by the government with the press of a button, but would be given the promise that they could take their Original's place if they succeeded in hunting them down and killing them.

Earlier this year, the idea developed into a full-fledged outline, which I wrote out during time when I needed a break from other things. It worked out well, and so you might see progress on this in future years. Right now, I like the idea of doing it as an audio original, perhaps with a coauthor who is more experienced in audio or voice acting. So watch for updates here.

Status: Outlined.

State of the Sanderson 2018 (Dec. 19, 2018)

 

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Its sad to hear about the signings, but it is what it is. The most important thing is that Brandon doesnt get too much on his plate, and is burned out. 
 

Looking forward to The Original, and SA4 of course. Hopefully the editing of that goes smooth, and Brandon can write W&W4. Dark One is cool as well. Not too excited for the Hard Rock story though. Not a fan of rock music (unless you count Imagine Dragons as rock, which you dont). 
 

I am also sad that Apocalypse Guard is looking less and less likely. Really want to see the combined wierdness of Brandon and Dan. 

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ultimately there wasn't anything to hype for, and some sad news. i'm glad that brandon considered timing issues, though. we've been concerned for a while about his capacity to finish the cosmere within his lifetime, and now that he himself acknowledged that, and he's taking precautions to avoid it.

also sad about the lines, but unfortunately there's only one brandon and his fandom is ever growing. it was inevitable. i voted to randomize someone to have an old style signing, because i believe it's better to preserve something beautiful for someone else than to lose it entirely

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18 hours ago, Eluvianii said:

By the way, has anyone else wondered how he's going to wrap up the Cosmere in three books? I feel like it's a big plot for a trilogy.

Each book will be Stormlight-sized, so it's more like 6 Mistborn books. He said this in a pretty recent Reddit post (this month I think), but I can't find it right now.

EDIT: Found it - 

 

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I would anticipate Era Four going Stormlight Length. (Though Era Three should be regular Mistborn length, I think.)

 

Edited by ChickenLiberty
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