Ari

I highly disagree that we have enough information to support your last comment. Way of Kings makes it clear Hoid doesn't even think Adonalsium can be reassembled into what it was before- so even if he is attempting to unite the Shards, he knows that what he'd get isn't "Adonalsium." I suspect his goals are less obvious than that, but I'll get back to you on that after new mistborn books are released outside of the USA.

Doesn't the fifth just make you immune to disease, not aging? Or was it that we never saw anyone at fifth heightening who wasn't already Returned? (At this point I quickly checked the Warbreaker AA and apparently it does stop you from aging. Whoops! Guess she just needs to accrue another thousand-and-change breaths if she wants to go worldhopping or join the 17th Shard) And Retsam: I completely agree that there's no implications of romance between Vivenna and Vasher. If they get together, it ought to be because of events in Nightblood.

Not really... unless there are any vin-era spikes still around, you're still killing or mentally/spiritually damaging them (or collaborating with someone else who did this) in order to produce a spike. That's hardly lawful evil. Besides, I doubt spiking someone with a Spren bond would transfer the oaths or the commitment to them necessarily. The person spiked would still have to commit themselves (granted, with the assistance of a very Honourable addition to their spirit web thanks to the spike) to those values. I'd say it might make someone slightly more honourable, but if they were terrible already the difference is likely to not be large enough for them to retain the bond. Most likely the Spren would leave them.

Or events in Nightblood will preclude her hopping worlds. As I understand it, she'd essentially have to Return to have enough time on her hands to do so, which presumably means she'd have to die, unless the Royal Locks make you special in some other ways.

I was talking about pain being dangerous in the cognitive realm likely being something that's unique to Roshar, not cognitive splinters specifically.

All Brandon has said about Adonalsium outside of Hoid's monologue in WoK is that it's "the power of creation."

Yep, although I haven't found it just yet. Js are pronounced in the Nordic and Germanic fashion where it's the same as an English Y.

I have a suspicion that Brandon deliberately name-drops the Intents or their synonyms from time to time in addition to the times that the words are simply the best ones to use.

Hope you enjoy White Sand in the meantime! If you want to discuss it I believe there's a PM group somewhere. If you're polite and appreciative I'm sure they'll have no problem sending out Aether to you as well, although there might well be a delay.

Keep in mind that this is something that's likely unique to Roshar. The cognitive Realm won't be exactly the same on other planets, so there might be no such danger around, say, Scadrial.

It's possibly, although it would take a bit more explaining as to how agents of "Trell" got ahold of an alien god metal than it would if "Trell" is another Shard.

Wasn't it in the text in Final Empire that they were Atium?

I think this is absolutely a character thing as a result of the recreance. Look at how he talks to Kaladin, it seems pretty obvious that this is the source of his distrust for humans. It does have a human mind, or rather, a ghost of one.

I imagine location is close to analogous in the Cognitive to the Physical in places with sentience, and compressed everywhere else. I think of it the same way mass affects space to generate gravity- when you get enough "weight" of thought in the physical realm somewhere, it stretches the cognitive space out to be similarly large.

The only functional difference from Allomancy that we're aware of is the distance modifier. (Granted, we're aware of a lot of things going on behind the scenes with Selish magic, and it has modifiers that can shape the effects to be more subtle. But those don't really stop it from being a "focus draws power" type system) We know little enough about magic systems that we really can't set any of them aside in considering how realmatics as a whole works. It also seems that Forgery and the funny dancing system both use a similar method of drawing power, and while we can't be sure, it's entirely possible that so do the Dakhor monks. Stormlight is definitely at least partially composed of Honour's equivalent to the Mists on Scadrial. (iirc there's a WoB about this, which I might you looking for) It might also have some of Cultivation's power in it, too.

Yeah, that's definitely the way I'd approach this. You could also have in-world terms for "cutting for the purpose of magic" (which you can theme as a sacrifice) and "magical cutting that is also self-harm" (which iwould presumably be something similar to a having martyr complex) and "mundane cutting that is self-harm." Having a name for these problems on its own does a lot to imply that people are thinking about them and taking it seriously. I was definitely trying to say, like Meandbooks was, that you should show someone who perhaps at one stage committed magic with no issues, but for whom it has developed into a pattern of self-harm for the sake of self-harm. This will help make the distinction clear.

Brandon's stated that Hemalurgy is very powerful and potentially dangerous. The fact that it moves investiture closer to entropy (it can't be destroyed, only moved to a state in which it's more difficult to move out of- investiture still follows thermodynamics, just an odd cosmere version) is a consequence of Ruin, not any grand conspiracy. It certainly seems that one of the more sinister Shards in the Cosmere has learned a lot about Hemalurgy, (or perhaps more accurately, decided to allow their minions to practice it) but I don't think that really has any tie to what went on with Adonalsium, because Adonalsium is barely mentioned in any of the texts. It's all just head canon and speculation.

Nope. Selish magic works the same way, although with the complication of the distance factor. It's really Awakening that's unique as far as we know in this case in *not* drawing power as well as being the focus, which seems to be because Endowment just gives the power away before you even ask in the form of breaths. This is why I get a little frustrated sometimes discussing SA because its longer format means we're taking this magic theory thing a lot slower for it and there's a lot more RAFO. All good points, I agree but as above my perspective is somewhat different on the drawing external power being more common. That may be shaped by annotations and WoBs referring to the nature of cosmere magic systems- I think Brandon referred to most systems as being "end-positive" in Mistborn terminology, which suggests some way of accessing external power, although that terminology is so messy in comparison to talking about focii that access power and focii that simply direct magic. You're totally right that I may be over-reading that and that highstorms may be the only handy way to get investiture on Roshar, at least, investiture that's compatible with Honour's powers. Aons (and stamps) are definitely doing the same thing metals are doing, we have WoB comparing the two, it's simply likely they're sourcing the power from a different realm. I'll definitely keep more of an open mind on gems. I was convinced on that until recently, but I realised I wasn't using the term focus right, which made me change my mind, and I'm a bit more stubborn about being convinced back to a theory I'd abandoned, lol. Fabrials are definitely the weak point of this theory. I don't think that stretching the bond metaphor really helps here because there IS no bond to the polestone, as fabrials encounter stress and break in their normal use a lot. This was part of why I was initially partial to the explanation of gemstones being Roshar's focus. Keep in mind that the focus can be something like gemstones while still maintaining the special nature of bonds on Roshar. (which can be down to something as simple as "honour's power manifests through bonds and that power is heavily invested in Roshar")

You outline. Even if you're a discovery writer you can outline to some extent by thinking about what you want to discover as you go along, and setting some parameters for yourself to invent within. You should experiment with how much outlining is comfortable for you before you start moving into doing your first novel. Sort out what you want to read before you start outlining anything or writing seriously. (do freewriting, (if you're not familiar, it just means complete stream of consciousness writing where all your thoughts go onto the paper/document with little or no editing) really short fiction, blog articles if you like non-fiction, etc...) Try good books from a lot of genres so you can see what you like about each of them. If there's a time when you're not writing for a while, it can even be a good exercise to pick up a bad book once you've got a decent amount of writing chops, and figure out the various reasons why it's bad and what bothers you about it both from an authorial sense and a thematic sense. Depends how in depth I need to go. A lot of my research is done because I like reading non-fiction. I can totally write political intrigue books with just some thematic research before starting. Even when writing fantasy, I do research. I have a story where transportation is by horse because there's no magical transportation, so I needed to learn things like how do you look after a horse when travelling, how often do they need to stop, etc... to avoid treating getting on a horse from being like riding a motorbike. I read several books on horse riding at the library to do this, although you can also google for a lot of things nowadays. The difficulty you have in internet research is that you have to have a strong BS filter, as everyone has an opinion and a lot more of the incorrect ones get published on the internet than make it into a library. I would recommend you know what you want to write about before you take a writing class. A writing class teaches you the how. (both the "how to write," and if the teacher is any good, there'll be some degree of the "how to sell," too) You need to figure out the why to write bit, why you're doing it and the sorts of things you want to say in general, before sitting down and drafting things. The podcasters tend to follow the comments on an episode while it's the newest, or you can head to http://www.writingexcuses.com/contact/. Keep in mind they are busy so they may just listen to what you have to say and not answer, not to mention episodes are often pre-recorded months ahead of time, so even if you have a great question they really want to answer it may not make it to a Q&A episode until way later in the year. To get started, find the genre and elements you know you love. Are you a fantasy reader? If so Fox's list will help for you. If you're more into scifi Robin had a few suggestions, to which I would add for your consideration the Dune books, (you may want to stop reading before you pick up the ones his son co-wrote) Kevin J Anderson to see if you like more near-future scifi, (He actually predicted satellites iirc?) the original Ender's Game novel by Orson Scott Card, Ian Hamilton, Terry Pratchett's scifi forays, and I think that everyone should read Foundation, but I may be biased. For fantasy, I would add that Brent Weeks is a great current author as well as Brandon and Pat Rothfuss, and there are all sorts of classics, although I tend to be quite picky about them because I don't want to read the ones that are too similar to Lord of The Rings, a story which I have read and watched over and over and don't need to see aped. While you're exploring the books you love, ask yourself about what elements about that genre excite you- and how you can put together a fresh theme, fresh elements within the bookshelf genre you love, before you start writing, because knowing that stuff will minimise the amount of words you write that aren't good enough to share.

Expanding on this: Know what to do when dialogue spans from the end of one paragraph to another. It looks like this: (Closing off the quotation marks when spanning paragraphs should only be done on the same circumstances you'd newline additional dialogue from the same person) Single or double quotes in english is down to style, really. Whichever you use, make sure to use the opposite if your characters quote other people in dialogue. You may need to reformat a little for manuscript submission- a lot of places want double-spaced courier as a standard format, but sometimes you'll run into specific requirements. If you're submitting you want to look like you've done your research and respected their time or you'll be set aside before being given serious consideration.

Yeah you shouldn't look at this as a problem that stops you from writing the story. You should look at it in a way that the outline you've come up with is challenging and requires you to relate to people who have had difficult experiences in their life that you need to reflect accurately, and with ample foreshadowing in the book of exactly how into cutting or scarring you're going to get. At most that might make you decide you should set the story aside for a bit and come back at this issue with more writing experience, but I think honestly if you've sunk anything significant into writing this story it will be best for you as a writer to muscle through. (You can also help make this less an issue with the magic as a whole by having it be normal for the magic to be practiced on less critical areas than people use to cut in real life, so it's neither as triggering nor as dangerous, and having there be similar issues of social stigma for anyone who does scar say, their wrists.) Like any case of "writing the other", if you've not experienced self-harm yourself, you need a good touchstone on this issue who doesn't mind discussing the details with you and reading multiple drafts from you, and also you need to include people who've experienced this in your beta reader list. If you're going to go in-depth on this, you may also want to explore the relationship between cutting and other types of self harm. (for instance I know there is a certain overlap between eating disorders and cutting) But avoiding glamourising it is the easy part. Show the negative consequences in a fair manner that makes it clear this isn't a great thing to do, and start dropping the foreshadowing for this before you even get into the scarring magic.

Don't be! I'm mentioning it so that people get why I changed my tune so quickly, it's much harder to write in a second language and you deserve people to give you a break if things aren't perfectly clear to them the first time. Exactly. Syl is perfectly in character knowing that the Honourblade can't be lost, not because saving Szeth isn't right, but she understands intuitively how wrong it is for anyone not bound by an oath to be using an honourblade, and gets that anyone else possessing it will be about as bad as Szeth having it. Kaladin doesn't know and has no reason to leave Szeth to die. He's the one out of character. The difference here is that Rock is asking if Kaladin killed the assassin, which can't be answered as simply. Dalinar just wants to know if he's dealt with. I'm pretty sure Kaladin is assuming he's dead in both pieces of the new version. Other than the thematic and character issues that having Kaladin leave Szeth to die caused, the new edits are very good.

Oh, I understood the difference, I just didn't appreciate as obvious the parallels between Stormlight and the mists that you were making. Not condescending at all, and useful for clarifying each of our assumptions, thanks. The thing that bothers me the most about this is why do you also (at least sometimes) need Stormlight for the soulcasting? If the gemstone is the focus, it should presumably allow you to access power directly from Honour and/or Cultivation without using the Stormlight. (otherwise Mistborn wouldn't be able to use allomancy inside) Or has Shallan been doing an end-run around the gem requirement entirely to date in using Stormlight? And wouldn't we see KRs in other orders using gemstones as opposed to stormlight for their powers? It makes sense that Stormlight would be analogous to the mists, as both seem to follow the same pattern of investiture mimicking weather phenomenon, and thus you'd be able to simply use your own will in the place of a focus. Are you arguing that all KRs can simply use gems instead but they simply don't know how? It's hard to argue that directly from the text because we know as per Kaladin that you can breathe in Stormlight subtly enough to not be noticed as carrying it, so we need an actual viewpoint from a Soulcaster not using stormlight to be sure, which we don't have yet iirc. I'm not yet convinced, although you've certainly got an internally consistent structure there. At the very least, we would expect to see cracked sphere more often around radiants if gemstones are the focus, so I suppose we could look for that as confirming evidence.

I feel like you're kinda missing the point of that particular cosmere history lesson. It was the fact that they were so opposite and thus have such broad abilities when working together that they could create life together from scratch. They don't "agree" on creation being against their intents, (If anything, they disagree on which half of the job is "forbidden," for lack of a better word) rather, they're each against doing half of the job that creation requires, thus when working together they could do it. Their intents are in fact so cleanly opposite that the gaps in their powers and the powers of the other shard are complementary. This is precisely what you would expect from an opposed pair that co-operated by necessity. If pairing is a part of the structure of there being 16 shards we would expect to find at least two, if not four or eight, opposing pairs. (Brandon has ruled out 8 however in an earlier WoB, so you'd be looking for a maximum of four opposing pairs)

Nice. Good signing question fodder here, especially given that this is potentially a worldhopper with an agenda to help Shallan and Dalinar find Urithiru.