Concerns over Dan joining Cosmere

[Firesong she/her]

I mostly just want to vent, and also to have some people try and like, find WoBs or such that can comfort a lot of my worries, as it is very hard to find any on it on Arcanum. As for some reason there aren't tags for this, despite how very important the topic is, to the extent that they should 100% be grouped together under a tag. And I have no clue at all why they aren't.  

I am very concerned over more people joining into the cosmere, as I worry a lot about it becoming something like Star Wars or Warhammer where you have so many writers working on separate books that it not only leads to the rise of ten thousand contradictions and retcons per book, but also leads to it losing a lot of soul. As I feel Cosmere has a lot of soul in how it is Brandon's  life-work, not a property for anyone to jump on and write for, where all integrity is dropped for the sake of just pumping out works to drain us of all our money without any care being given towards quality of cohesiveness. It is a constant worry I have been having, lately.  

This isn't helped by how one of the first WoBs on him being the VP talked about them co-writing a bunch of books, and it leaves me really worried. 

I know that they are doing a lot of stuff to make sure the book he is writing now fits perfectly into the cosmere. But I worry that it would slacken more over time and it would begin to lead to mistakes. And I also don't want too much to be written that isn't by Brandon's hand. Especially as I have absolutely no connection to Dan as a writer as I have never read a book by him and have no interest in reading books by him. To me, he is just some random dude that happens to be friends with Brandon. So I just don't trust him to join in on writing, very different from my thoughts on Isaac who has been a very big part in the writing for a while (but even with him it puts me a bit on edge).  

The stress and anxiety and worry over this actually makes me feel rather sick to my stomach (and I do mean this literally, it actually makes me feel physically sick). I don't want the cosmere to become some over-corporatized, incoherent mess. I don't want quantity, I want quality and heart, and to see Brandon's vision unfold. I don't care if that means a lower quantity, if it means that we are able to see the cosmere, as his vision, be told by his hand. It is one reason why I have absolutely zero interest in cosmere fanfiction (or any fanfic for that matter), because it isn't just the world I find interest in, it is the unfolding of an artist's vision. And I fear that that is all Dan's books will feel like, some weird fanfic that won't fit into the wider vision, and at worst, actively break the vision by contradicting mechanics or the timeline in a destructive manner, bringing a sledgehammer against the intricate house of cards; and with every book that is written, the chances of that sledge being swung, and the level of destruction it can wreck, increases exponentially (less exponentiation and more like pentation or hexation or duodecation or quetta-ation or TREE(3)-ation (that last one is a joke)). And even if it doesn't, I don't even feel like I would care about it as it would just feel wrong for books in the cosmere to not be written by Brandon. 

And of course they are being very secretive about it all, which means I have to continue being on edge about it until they decide to be open. It isn't some looking forward to something with excitement like information about SA5, this is just waiting in dread for more information on something I am deeply concerned about. GAD and Depression are a terrible combination, and leads me to worrying so much over things like this.  

 

 

Sorry for the rant, I just, want to get it off my chest, and see if maybe people have information that would be able to calm me down about this whole situation, at least to an extent.                                                                                                                                           

Edited August 28, 2023 by Firesong

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 minutes ago, Firesong said:

I mostly just want to vent, and also to have some people try and like, find WoBs or such that can comfort a lot of my worries, as it is very hard to find any on it on Arcanum. As for some reason there aren't tags for this, despite how very important the topic is, to the extent that they should 100% be grouped together under a tag. And I have no clue at all why they aren't.  

I am very concerned over more people joining into the cosmere, as I worry a lot about it becoming something like Star Wars or Warhammer where you have so many writers working on separate books that it not only leads to the rise of ten thousand contradictions and retcons per book, but also leads to it losing a lot of soul. As I feel Cosmere has a lot of soul in how it is Brandon's  life-work, not a property for anyone to jump on and write for, where all integrity is dropped for the sake of just pumping out works to drain us of all our money without any care being given towards quality of cohesiveness. It is a constant worry I have been having, lately.  

This isn't helped by how one of the first WoBs on him being the VP talked about them co-writing a bunch of books, and it leaves me really worried. 

I know that they are doing a lot of stuff to make sure the book he is writing now fits perfectly into the cosmere. But I worry that it would slacken more over time and it would begin to lead to mistakes. And I also don't want too much to be written that isn't by Brandon's hand. Especially as I have absolutely no connection to Dan as a writer as I have never read a book by him and have no interest in reading books by him. To me, he is just some random dude that happens to be friends with Brandon. So I just don't trust him to join in on writing, very different from my thoughts on Isaac who has been a very big part in the writing for a while (but even with him it puts me a bit on edge).  

The stress and anxiety and worry over this actually makes me feel rather sick to my stomach (and I do mean this literally, it actually makes me feel physically sick). I don't want the cosmere to become some over-corporatized, incoherent mess. I don't want quantity, I want quality and heart, and to see Brandon's vision unfold. I don't care if that means a lower quantity, if it means that we are able to see the cosmere, as his vision, be told by his hand. It is one reason why I have absolutely zero interest in cosmere fanfiction, because it isn't just the world I find interest in, it is the unfolding of an artist's vision. And I fear that that is all Dan's books will feel like, some weird fanfic that won't fit into the wider vision, and at worst, actively break the vision by contradicting mechanics or the timeline in a destructive manner, bringing a sledgehammer against the intricate house of cards; and with every book that is written, the chances of that sledge being swung, and the level of destruction it can wreck, increases exponentially (less exponentiation and more like pentation or hexation or duodecation or quetta-ation or TREE(3)-ation (that last one is a joke)). And even if it doesn't, I don't even feel like I would care about it as it would just feel wrong for books in the cosmere to not be written by Brandon. 

And of course they are being very secretive about it all, which means I have to continue being on edge about it until they decide to be open. It isn't some looking forward to something with excitement like information about SA5, this is just waiting in dread for more information on something I am deeply concerned about. GAD and Depression are a terrible combination, and leads me to worrying so much over things like this.  

 

 

Sorry for the rant, I just, want to get it off my chest, and see if maybe people have information that would be able to calm me down about this whole situation, at least to an extent.                                                                                                                                           

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from.

Personally, I'm not too worried because I feel that Brandon knows what he's doing. I also happen to be intimately familiar with the feeling of worrying yourself sick, so I can empathize- it will be all right friend 

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

Personally, here's how I see it;

First, the core of the Cosmere, the main overlying story he wants to tell, that will always be his. Whatever climax all of the big series' are building to, Stormlight, Mistborn, Elantris - the story of Hoid and the Shards, what happened at the beginning with Adonalsium, whatever will happen at the end; that will always be his. Nothing will change that. Brandon Sanderson has the entire epic in his mind, from beginning to end, and he's not going to let anyone else write that.

Second, Brandon Sanderson knows what he's doing. This universe is very important to him, and I don't think he'd let anyone else write anything in it unless he trusted them and had a say in what they were writing. I'm guessing he's going to have final veto power over everything Dan writes. Also, he and Dan are very close friends, and so I think Brandon Sanderson knows him well enough to know that he isn't going to ruin the Cosmere.

Third, universes are big. Part of why I love franchises like Star Wars is because there is so much; it's a universe so big that there's always room for more stories, and even room for you to imagine your own in. Like I said above, the core worlds, and the core stories, those will always be Sanderson's. But being able to see more planets, more people, more magics and stories, even if they're written by others, that's something I'd enjoy. I'd imagine them to be books like Tress or Yumi; not incredibly relevant to the overarching epic, but wonderful stories in their own right. As long as Brandon gives the okay, and they aren't interfering with the main arc, then I'm happy to see as many of those worlds as I can, as long as they're written by someone who does a good job. I love the Cosmere, so the more I can see of it, the better.

That's just how I see it. It might not really assuage your worries, but it's the conclusion I've come to. 

[Firesong she/her]

Sorry for going quiet for a bit, that rant led me into a particularly bad depressive episode. (don't worry, I didn't do anything rash, just felt awful.)

Still feel terrible, but need to say this so I get it out and stop thinking about it. That way I can cheer up a bit by getting it off my mind, as I am the kind of person that, when something is on my mind, I tend to think about it constantly until I can get it off my chest. 

@The Bookwyrm

Quote

Third, universes are big. Part of why I love franchises like Star Wars is because there is so much; it's a universe so big that there's always room for more stories, and even room for you to imagine your own in.

The thing is, I personally completely and utterly despise the way that Star Wars works with all the EU books. I see it as a massive middle-finger to any ideas of artistic integrity or vision. As it simply comes down to milking the idea by making it so you don't just have one person to make money off the works of, but can spread it to multiple, so that you have like 100 people pumping things out. And it also absolutely destroys internal consistency and proper interconnectedness, as making a good world doesn't matter to them, it is just money, money, money. It doesn't care about anything else, it is why Star Wars is such a low-quality and incoherent mess, as it is just so completely and utterly corporatized on every single level, that it is not longer treated as a work of art, but as nothing more than a soulless product to be mass produced.  I am happy that you enjoy it, it is just that I can't. 

It is the same reason I have a lot of difficulty getting into Marvel and DC comics, as it is just like, 200+ different writers making their own things, ultimately leading to the verse as a whole falling into such absolute incoherence and self-contradiction they have to keep pushing reset on the whole thing. Then they repeat the same mistakes that led to that being necessary in the first place, and it becomes necessary again, so they do another reset, then make the same mistakes once again! As they can't learn from their mistakes. 

I don't care about seeing every single corner of a verse filled by whatever author comes along. I see verses as a massive work of art made by a person, wherein they have a vision, and they paint it down by weaving together words. Think about it like this, would Sunday on La Grande Jatte be the same if Georges Seurat didn't do it all, if like, all of a sudden, that family and their dog near the front are done by Bob Smith, those trees are done by Kevin, those boats in the background are done by Jane Doe, etc, except that it isn't identical to what we see, but is rather their own concept in general which doesn't match with the larger vision, it was an idea borne out of their mind. No matter how closely it resembles the vision of Seurat, it will always look wrong as it is ultimately the work of a different artist just patched into his masterpiece. That is how I view the idea of a multiple writers making entries to the same verse, it is like a painting being torn apart and having new pieces stitched onto it, all while people claim "It is the same thing, this is the painting that you so love, this is The Church at Auvers." though half be but a hollow facsimile, mere forgeries wrought by unfamiliar hands. And those ideas that are new, while beautiful on their own, clash with the palette and raise their fist in indignation at the greater vision of the artist, cursing them. 

This is effectively how I see it, I only want to see every corner filled if the creator themselves fills them, as I am following their vision, not simply the world itself. I want to see that vision of theirs grow and mature, ab incunabulis ad sepulcrum et en absente alius. If they don't, then that's okay, we need not all things from sea to sea and star to star, especially if it requires bringing on more authors, as it brings to mind a question, cui bono? I don't want to see another person brought in to fill it, so long as Brandon's heart beats true and his mind remains sharp. I don't want the broth to be spoiled. 

I don't follow the cosmere simply because it exists, so I will not be happy with anything just because it has the brand stamped on. 

I also don't care about the worldbuilding done by some randos. I care about Brandon's vision, and one of the reasons I love the cosmere so much is that it is untarnished, it is still his vision. The only things not written by him are some of the Broadsheet entries, otherwise, it is all him. Anything else would simply feel inherently lesser. It is a large interconnected literary universe which doesn't have countless cooks.  Entries also have ramifications, so I worry about how it would effect everything on a deeper level.

I know the cosmere will never reach the same extent of tampering as something like Star Wars or Marvel/DC, especially with how much him and Isaac are going over every aspect of his ideas to make sure they work, weekly meetings and all. But any tampering still leaves me fearful and worried. 

[alder24]

13 hours ago, Firesong said:

Sorry for the rant, I just, want to get it off my chest, and see if maybe people have information that would be able to calm me down about this whole situation, at least to an extent.                                                                                                                                           

I don't know what to think about it. I've never read any of Dan's books, so I can't judge how good of the writer he is. I'm a bit worried that his Cosmere books won't be as good as Brandon's books, that they would lack something important which I can't specify, but ultimately I will give him and Isaac a shot. I trust Brandon, and if he trusts them both, that's good for me - he knows Dan better than I ever could. 

I'm not worried about contradictions and retcons - there is a whole team in Dragonsteel that's responsible for making sure books are true to Cosmere, its timeline and its mechanics - that isn't something with which Brandon works alone.

As far as I understand, both Dan and Isaac will be writing some side stories, nothing that big. Brandon will still work on his main books, and Brandon will still work and coauthor with them, and have a decisive world over their creation, so he could filter what is or isn't fit for Cosmere. They will work together on those books, not alone. I'm not worried that Cosmere will turn into some kind of big commercialized franchise, with a bunch of different authors writing in it - that won't happen, as they will write for and with Brandon, and Brandon will allow only the best of the best to join him, and only those he could find time to work with. Brandon is cautious about people he employs and certainly has very high standards for those writing in his universe. They don't take on the mantle over Cosmere, they're just side characters, writing side stories. While I'm concerned a bit, I'm still hopeful and intrigued by their involvement.

If it won't work, then this kind of cooperation will be ceased, and we will get only Brandon's books in Cosmere.

Spoiler

Mateo Fileti

Do you have any plans of writing coauthored stories for the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, my coauthorship slate is full, right now. I've found about where I can handle it, and it's about three people. Right now, it's Steven Bohls, Janci, and the Dan Wells projects we're working on. That's about all I can handle, where I can get back to people at a reasonable time, and things like that.

That said, I have left one asterisk on there. Well, I guess I'm gonna put two asterisks. Two different, separate asterisks. Number one is that if this is successful and people like it, then probably. There's a reason I'm trying this out, that the first one I did was not connected to any of my worlds, at all. (That was The Original, with Mary Robinette.) And then eased into picking up a series that I was planning just not to be able to get back to. The finally easing into one I'm actively working on. And I kind of eased into that, just to see what people are enjoying. And they seem to be enjoying the active, working-on one the most, of all of those. Which is a plus for doing Cosmere-related things. But, again, it's kinda gonna be: do people like this?

The other askerisk is: I have told Isaac Stewart he is welcome to write, in the Cosmere, anything he would like to, and I will coauthor it with him. I will work on it to make sure. Because Isaac was there from almost the beginning. Peter was the person who was working with me before the Cosmere was released, but I met Isaac in 2004, and Isaac started working with me on Mistborn art right then in 2004. I've told Isaac he can do whatever he wants; he's got a blank slate to be involved in the Cosmere in any way he would like.

Janci Patterson

There's one he's had kicking around for a long time that I really hope he writes sometime.

Brandon Sanderson

We're trying to find time for him to be able to do that.

I would say that there's a good chance you get some Cosmere stuff in the future, but it's not near-future. Near-future, I want to make sure that I'm supporting the things that I'm doing. It would be very easy, I think, to go all James Patterson, where suddenly I'm not writing anymore, I'm only doing this. And I don't think I would enjoy that. Not a dig against Patterson, but I don't want to go that direction.

YouTube Livestream 36 (Oct. 7, 2021)

[hassanizhar he/him]

I understand that your concerns about the future direction of the Cosmere are causing you significant distress and anxiety. It's clear that the Cosmere is a deeply cherished creation for you, and you worry that additional writers joining the project could potentially lead to a dilution of its unique vision and cohesiveness. You value the creative integrity and soul that Brandon Sanderson has poured into the Cosmere, and you're concerned that increased involvement from other writers might compromise that. It's important to acknowledge your emotional connection to the series and how its potential evolution affects you. While I can't offer specific reassurances about the future, I can empathize with the emotions you're experiencing. If this ongoing uncertainty and anxiety are impacting your well-being, it might be helpful to find support through friends, family, or a mental health professional who can offer guidance on managing these feelings. Remember that your passion for the Cosmere is a testament to how much it means to you, and it's okay to express your worries and seek understanding from the community.

[Frustration]

On 8/27/2023 at 6:47 PM, Firesong said:

And I also don't want too much to be written that isn't by Brandon's hand. Especially as I have absolutely no connection to Dan as a writer as I have never read a book by him and have no interest in reading books by him. To me, he is just some random dude that happens to be friends with Brandon. So I just don't trust him to join in on writing, very different from my thoughts on Isaac who has been a very big part in the writing for a while (but even with him it puts me a bit on edge).  

The thing is this is the exact complaint the WoT fandom had when Brandon took over.

On 8/27/2023 at 6:47 PM, Firesong said:

I know that they are doing a lot of stuff to make sure the book he is writing now fits perfectly into the cosmere. But I worry that it would slacken more over time and it would begin to lead to mistakes.

I think this worry is sprung from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Cosmere is written.

Brandon himself has an entire team of people dedicated to double checking everything he writes to the point that they have the layout of rooms worked out, and match character descriptions in order to maintain consistency.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

In Hero of Ages, I have a room that is both looking at the sunset, and looking north, in different scenes. In one scene, someone walks in, they can see the sunset, and in another scene, they see the army, that's to the north, through the window? And they were like, "Ahhhh!"

So I said, "Oh! Let's make it a corner room, and put two windows." So there's a solution, but it was not...

Questioner

But it wasn't intended that way.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Idaho Falls signing (July 21, 2018)

Questioner

What is the biggest continuity error you've caught?

Karen Ahlstrom

If he puts in somebody that's dead...

Brandon Sanderson

Once in a while, it usually happens with Bridge Four characters, the side characters. One of them, I had accidentally get resurrected.

Peter Ahlstrom

Karen came to me yesterday, and she's like, "This guy is dead!" I'm like, "No no no, it's a different guy, it's okay."

Karen Ahlstrom

They didn't write his name. But there is a character with that exact description that is dead, and Peter convinced me it could have been a relative of theirs. So I'll give it to you.

YouTube Livestream 12 (July 16, 2020)

They even put a list of all events and what times they take place together for every book

Spoiler

Karen Ahlstrom

I knew I'd have to deal with it sometime, and it finally caught up with me today. My Master Cosmere Timeline spreadsheet has far too many relative dates, and not enough absolutes.

Roshar's date system

The biggest reason I have put it off is that the date system Brandon made up is both supremely logical and at the same time totally crazy. A year has five hundred days, but there's also a thousand-day cycle with different highstorms around the new year. In each year there are ten months of fifty days each. The months are broken into ten five-day weeks. The date indicates what year, month, week of the month, and day of the week it is and looks like this: 1173.8.4.3. It is impossible for me to do the math in my head to decide what the date would be 37 days ago, so I don't use the dates in my reckoning, and only calculate them as an afterthought. This dating system is also a hassle because two weeks in our world is almost three weeks there, and a month there is almost two of ours, and when writing Brandon doesn't even pretend to pay attention to those differences.

Day numbers in The Way of Kings

But then we have to talk about my relative date system. The timeline of The Way of Kings is a mess. The story for Shallan starts more than 100 days earlier than Dalinar's storyline. And Kaladin is roughly 50 days different from that. So for that book I had to pick a day when I knew there was crossover between the viewpoints and work forward and back from there. So a date in The Way of Kings might be marked on my spreadsheet as D 23 or K-57.

Day numbers in Words of Radiance and Oathbringer

For Words of Radiance I started over at day 1 for that book. Those numbers count up until the new year which is day 71. Oathbringer starts just after the new year, so I used the day of the year for my book-specific day number. Of course switching systems at the start of each book made it hard for me to calculate just how many days there were between events in WOR and OB. So I put in another column which indicated a relative number of days counting before and after the arbitrary date of the end of WOR.

Flashback dates

The next problem I dealt with were the line items that say something like "five years ago" for their date. With more than a year of onscreen time from the first chapters of The Way of Kings to the end of Oathbringer, it's really necessary to note that it's five years before what event with a solid date. Once I have a date to assign to it, I also have to decide how exact the date is. When I come back three years from now I will need to know whether this date is firm, or if it would be okay to put it three or four months on either side.

Putting it all together

When Peter found an error in the spreadsheet one day, I decided to match a serial number to each date after the year 1160 (which makes for easy calculating), and make that my absolute day number from here until forever (though I'll probably still make a book relative date, since it's a useful way to talk about things with the rest of the team). To find the Roshar dates from the serial numbers I made another spreadsheet with a vlookup table for the dates and serial numbers, then translated all the dates from the three books into that single new system (finding several more errors as I went).

 

Brandon's Blog 2017 (Nov. 1, 2017)

Karen Ahlstrom

I just finished the timeline for Oathbringer, and thought you might like to hear about the process. (Spoiler warning: There may be tidbits of information in this article about the plot of Oathbringer, but I have specifically made up many of the examples I use, so you can't count on any of it as fact.)

I know that some of you think, "Brandon posted that he had finished writing Oathbringer months ago. Why do we have to wait until November before it's on the shelf at the bookstore?" This is a natural question. I asked it myself years ago when I heard similar news about a Harry Potter book. The timeline is one small part of the reason, but it will give you a small glimpse of what is going on at a frantic pace here at Dragonsteel trying to get the book ready to go to press.

You may know that I'm Brandon's continuity editor. I keep records of every character, place, spren, and piece of clothing to name just a few. The next time a person appears, I make sure they have the right eye color and eat the right kind of food. There's so much more to it than that, but it gives you an idea of the level of detail I try to be on top of.

Another thing I track is the timeline of each book. I have a massive spreadsheet called the Master Cosmere Timeline (I can hear some of you salivating right now, and no, I won't let you peek at certain corners of it).

In some of Brandon's books, there are a few main characters who spend most of their time together in the same place. For those books, the timeline is simple. Take The Bands of Mourning for instance. It's about four days long. Nobody goes off on a side quest. The timeline only takes up 32 lines in the spreadsheet because there are that many chapters. On the other hand, the current spreadsheet for the Stormlight books has over 1100 lines.

Here's a sample of the timeline spreadsheet. The white columns are the dates, which I have an entirely separate post about. In column F we have an event that happens in the book. Column E tells how long it has been since the last event. Then I have the quote from the book that I used to justify the timing, the chapter the quote appears in, and whether the event happened on the day of the chapter, or sometime in the past or future.

The timeline for Oathbringer starts on day 4 of the new year, and ends on day 100. (Which, for those of you who keep track of such things, makes the date 1174.2.10.5). My day count could change by a day or two here and there, but I'm pretty happy with how I got the different groups of people to all end up in the same place at the same time.

Why bother? Well, sometimes Brandon writes a flashback and someone is looking at a cute baby. It's important to tell Brandon that this particular kid wasn't born for another four years. A character might think to themselves, "It's been a month and a half since I was there," and though it has been 45 days, a month on Roshar is 50 days long, so it hasn't even been a single month. Brandon often glosses over those conversions in early drafts.

The most important purpose, though, comes when two groups of characters are apart for some length of time. Let's take Kaladin and Dalinar in The Way of Kings. Kaladin was running bridges for battles where Dalinar and Sadeas cooperated. Were there the same number of days in Kaladin's viewpoint between those battles as there were in Dalinar's viewpoint? The answer is no. I was assigned this job after that book was finished, and as much as we squashed and fudged, there is still a day or two unaccounted for. An interesting tidbit from The Way of Kings‘ timeline is that Kaladin's timeline has 50 days in it before Dalinar's starts. Chapter 40, when Kaladin recovers from being strung up in the storm, is the same day as the chasmfiend hunt in Chapter 12.

Going back to Oathbringer, sometimes I'm amazed at the power I have. As I go through the manuscript, I can take a sentence like, "He spent four days recovering," and simply replace the word four with two. Brandon gives me a general idea of how long he wants things to take, and I tell him what it needs to be to fit. It's a big responsibility, and sometimes I worry that I'll mess the whole thing up.

Oathbringer is the first book in the Stormlight series where I worked with a list of the storms from the start. Peter tried on Words of Radiance, but Brandon wrote what the story needed and expected us to fit the storms in around that (A perfectly reasonable process, even if it makes my job trickier). In Oathbringer though, the Everstorm and highstorm are each on a much stricter schedule. We need such exact timing in some scenes that Peter (with help from beta reader Ross Newberry) made me a calculator to track the hour and minute the storms would hit any given city.

Yet another thing we needed to calculate is travel time. How fast can a Windrunner fly? How many days does it take to march an army from here to there? Kaladin might be able to do a forced march for a week, but what about Shallan or Navani? How long could they manage 30 miles a day?

Hopefully now you can see why we've needed months of work to get this far, and will need months more to get it finished in time. At some point, we're just going to have to call it good and turn the book over to the printer, but even though you think you want to get your hands on it now, it will be a much better read after we have the kinks worked out.

Brandon's Blog 2017 (Oct. 27, 2017)

 

Basically there will be no easing of the revision process, Brandon himself is forced to keep to it.

[Firesong she/her]

I have calmed down a lot about it now, I was just in a really bad mood, was in a pretty long depressive episode. I am a lot better now, so don't worry.  (If you are still concerned, I do go to therapy and everything, I am all good. Just have episodes from time to time)

But this one WoB does worry me again due to my irrationality:

Quote

Questioner

Do you have an end goal that's going to be... everything's gonna converge to something? Or is there going to be a direction that everything in the Cosmere is moving towards?

Brandon Sanderson

The answer is "yes." My goal is, after I finish Stormlight Five, to kind of sit down (now that I have a whole team) and be like, "All right, here is the outline for the rest of the Cosmere, so that you have it," and work on that for a while. I always say I'm gonna do this, and I haven't done it yet, but I'm really planning, after Stormlight Five, now to do this. Now that I've got a full editorial team and a full creative development team and one narrative guy, that we'll sit down and we will talk over this, and things like that. I do have an end goal in mind. I like to start with an ending; this is how I do things

As it just makes me think they are going to cut off a lot. But that is doubtful as the main books he is going to write (Stormlight 6-10 and Mistborn Era 3 and 4 and Dragonsteel) definitely can't be cut off. Those I don't really have much concern about. 

But it does make me worry for things like Nightblood, Aether of Night and the Threnody Sequel. Which are far less necessary and thus could be removed from the plans. Which does concern me as I really want to see those written. Especially Nightblood and the Threnody Sequel. But I do also feel it would be silly to get rid of either of those two due to how much Nightblood has been requested for so long, and due to how he talks a lot about the Threnody Sequel and how it would establish a very important group for the Era 4 plot. So it is ultimately just Aether of Night that I am concerned about. 

But my worry isn't as bad as that one spiral I went down. Heck it doesn't even explicitly say that they would be dropping anything. I just feel it kind of implies that. But it could just be about saying like, the order that things would be worked on, which is especially relevant with how he is going to be writing Era 3 and Elantris. As even he was a bit iffy on how he is going to write them both. 

Addition: Also, it is interesting with how it seems that the Dan book is going to either be about the Sleepless or Dawnshards. As he gave a teaser that Dawnshard is going to be pretty relevant to what he is writing. So that is rather intriguing. The "unlike anything done in fantasy before" part doesn't intrigue me much, as claims like that are pretty common and rarely follow through, but hey, it could be accurate. 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Firesong

[alder24]

15 hours ago, Firesong said:

I have calmed down a lot about it now, I was just in a really bad mood, was in a pretty long depressive episode. I am a lot better now, so don't worry.  (If you are still concerned, I do go to therapy and everything, I am all good. Just have episodes from time to time)

Good to hear that. Strength before weakness!

15 hours ago, Firesong said:

As it just makes me think they are going to cut off a lot. But that is doubtful as the main books he is going to write (Stormlight 6-10 and Mistborn Era 3 and 4 and Dragonsteel) definitely can't be cut off. Those I don't really have much concern about. 

But it does make me worry for things like Nightblood, Aether of Night and the Threnody Sequel. Which are far less necessary and thus could be removed from the plans. Which does concern me as I really want to see those written. Especially Nightblood and the Threnody Sequel. But I do also feel it would be silly to get rid of either of those two due to how much Nightblood has been requested for so long, and due to how he talks a lot about the Threnody Sequel and how it would establish a very important group for the Era 4 plot. So it is ultimately just Aether of Night that I am concerned about. 

But my worry isn't as bad as that one spiral I went down. Heck it doesn't even explicitly say that they would be dropping anything. I just feel it kind of implies that. But it could just be about saying like, the order that things would be worked on, which is especially relevant with how he is going to be writing Era 3 and Elantris. As even he was a bit iffy on how he is going to write them both. 

I don't really see how you reach that conclusion. What this WoB says is that Brandon doesn't have outlines for the future of Cosmere. They will sit down and do them, to know where characters are heading, how certain events will play out, they will finally do a proper timeline of Cosmere and stuff like that. They won't drop anything, especially something like Nightblood, which is a vital link between SA and Warbreaker, explaining far more complicated Awakening processes, origins of Nightblood and Vasher - and we know that Awakening will play a big role in the future of Cosmere, this book is necessary. 

Writing some smaller novellas like Threnody 2 will only depend if he will find time for that. We know he wants to write SA 1.5 for a while but can't really find time for that. The worse possibility will be that he will coauthor this with somebody else, but he was able to write 5 books in secret so I'm not worried about that.

I highly doubt that Brandon will cut books that were already teased to us. I think they will rather realize "we're introducing a new fraction here, we need to explain their origins, we need a book for that" or something like that - more books rather than less. That's basically what Brandon did with Mistborn era 2. 

15 hours ago, Firesong said:

Addition: Also, it is interesting with how it seems that the Dan book is going to either be about the Sleepless or Dawnshards. As he gave a teaser that Dawnshard is going to be pretty relevant to what he is writing. So that is rather intriguing. The "unlike anything done in fantasy before" part doesn't intrigue me much, as claims like that are pretty common and rarely follow through, but hey, it could be accurate. 

Dan writes horrors (as far as I know) so a book about Sleepless written by Dan can be really good. This one scene from SA with them was a quite good horror scene and presenting them like that can be really interesting. 

[Firesong she/her]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

 

I don't really see how you reach that conclusion. What this WoB says is that Brandon doesn't have outlines for the future of Cosmere. They will sit down and do them, to know where characters are heading, how certain events will play out, they will finally do a proper timeline of Cosmere and stuff like that. They won't drop anything, especially something like Nightblood, which is a vital link between SA and Warbreaker, explaining far more complicated Awakening processes, origins of Nightblood and Vasher - and we know that Awakening will play a big role in the future of Cosmere, this book is necessary. 

Oh I know, as I said, it is mostly paranoia as he didn't really even say that. I know logically that it is a pretty unsubstantiated concern. We are nigh-100% still getting things like Nightblood. I am calmer now about it. 

And on Threnody, I wouldn't really call it smaller as he has said repeatedly it would be about a very important group in later cosmere. The Night Brigade and such, and iirc his current plans are for it to be a novel. I would consider smaller novellas to be things like the Silverlight Novella, Stormlight 1.5, or Kingmaker. 

Not fully related, but I wish that Brandon wasn't not a fan of prequels. As it would be so neat to see novels or novellas for like, Pre-Lord Ruler Scadrial, or the Manywar, or the War of Loss, etc. But I feel in the Lord Ruler part, it makes thematic sense for us to not learn more, as a big theme in the series is the loss of history due to intense censorship and destruction of historical events and peoples, so it could be seen as against the point to make a story taking place in that era. 

 

[Rorzikel]

I don't mind if other authors write some small little pieces here and there like if someone wanted to write out the fictionalized accounts of Allomancer Jak or the going ons of a minor planet somewhere that had no shards or major magics, but I have zero interest in having to read another author's works in order to understand the main events of the Cosmere or get some reference. So I feel you on this one.

[alder24]

6 minutes ago, Firesong said:

And on Threnody, I wouldn't really call it smaller as he has said repeatedly it would be about a very important group in later cosmere. The Night Brigade and such, and iirc his current plans are for it to be a novel. I would consider smaller novellas to be things like the Silverlight Novella, Stormlight 1.5, or Kingmaker. 

Oh I'm not denying that Night Brigade isn't important, but I'm talking about the potential volume of the book - I doubt it would be like Warbreaker. You can still introduce important groups and concepts in a relatively small novel - Dawnshard for example.

8 minutes ago, Firesong said:

Not fully related, but I wish that Brandon wasn't not a fan of prequels. As it would be so neat to see novels or novellas for like, Pre-Lord Ruler Scadrial, or the Manywar, or the War of Loss, etc. But I feel in the Lord Ruler part, it makes thematic sense for us to not learn more, as a big theme in the series is the loss of history due to intense censorship and destruction of historical events and peoples, so it could be seen as against the point to make a story taking place in that era. 

True, I wish there was a Rashek novela or something like that. But you have to be careful with those sorts of things - I don't want to have books for every backstory, as some serve better as obscure and forgotten in history. Then we run into a problem of making a backstory for a backstory, and even writing those sorts of stories is challenging, as we all know how it ends and where it's going - it isn't as engaging as a fresh story. 

[+Child of Hodor]

I think Brandon has got so many ideas and has so many different interests he wants to pursue that it comes down to either someone else writes these books with Brandon's supervision and the support of Dragonsteel or these books don't get written. 

I've made peace with it by choosing to only care about Stormlight 5 and view everything else as a little bonus, but I know that won't work for everyone. 

[Saxsoon]

I am going to be painfully blunt. I feel the exact opposite, I am excited. Brandon needs help to finish the Cosmere in the future. Having people like Dan let's us explore other world's while Brandon gets to keep more focus on the larger arcs of the cosmere. We can get different tones, different characters than one man could write, even at his prodigious speeds.

 

Also Brandon doesn't write in a silo. He has a whole company and fans WHO FACT CHECK HIM on every book he writes. This isn't going to change with someone else.

[The Sibling she/her]

I kind of agree with both sides of this argument. On the one hand, I am really scared of the Cosmere becoming this mess of different books with minimal structure and connections. I can kind of see what happened to Star Wars happening to the Cosmere. If there's just too much stuff without purpose it feels impossible to keep up with everything, and I'm not sure it will work all too well.

On the other hand, I trust Brandon, I trust Dan, and I'm just hoping that they've got this. There is a way that this can be done well, and there are a lot of books left in the Cosmere. Maybe Brandon could use some help? Although I thought Dan would be writing stuff that Brandon hadn't already planned to write, so this doesn't actually help with that.

I guess I will reserve judgement until I have actually read whatever Dan's written and see how it fits in to the greater Cosmere. 

[EyeKon]

Several good points that I will attempt to echo:

I'll start of by saying that after they started doing Intentionally Blank I decided to pick up Dan Wells first publication "I am not a serial killer." It was not my particular cup of tea, and while I Brandon's has commented that his down writing has improved since Elantris I am sure Dan's has as well. However, I did not feel the need to try another one of his novels.  On that note, when I first heard he was writing new books in the Cosmere I too was initially worried.  

I have come around to a wait and see attitude. Brandon has mentioned a few times that the aim to have Dan start writing cosmere novels were to write ideas that Brandon himself would not get to, and books that would have a different style and flavor then Brandon's on purpose.  This idea scares me slightly; but like I said, wait and see.  I have listened to The Original, which was a collaboration between Brandon and Mary Ann Robinette and I thoroughly enjoyed that despite it having a different feel.  Was it cosmere? No, that's valid.  That might be why I was able to enjoy it.