Hello, all!  I know some of you may have been waiting for this.  It’s time for the first in a series of updates about your book!  I wanted to wait until I’d made good progress this month before I stopped to write one of these updates, and I do apologize for leaving you in the dark for so long.  I probably should have written one of these back in January, but it’s been an odd year for me, full of unpredictable timing issues. 

So, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way.  Do I have a title yet?  No.  Still thinking.  I’d like it to fit the format of KOWT or KOW, but I don’t like most of the options that have presented themselves.  It requires more thought.

When will the book come out?  I’m looking at fall 2024.  I have tried to be very forthcoming about this one—warning people for a while that 2023 might be too optimistic.  And, as I feared, I have been forced to let the date slide quite far into 2024 because of three issues.  The first is that I set myself up for a TON of revisions this year, and they’ve been taking more time than expected.  I still have two books to revise, though I’ve been spending all of August on Stormlight.  

However, that isn’t the primary reason I’ve ended up pushing back the book.  I’d planned for these revisions, and could have done those while working on Stormlight.  The second reason I pushed the book back is that I knew this book, of all the ones in the sequence, deserved a little extra time and attention.  It will likely be the longest of the series to date, and I have to be careful to juggle all the storylines properly.  I didn’t want to be rushed on it, and—though it may shock you—an 18-month production cycle wasn’t going to cut it. 

The third reason is one I haven’t been able to gauge as easily as the first two—something new to my life.  Lately, I’ve needed to dedicated more and more of my time to running a company.  I still reserve three days a week solely for writing, but that’s down from four days a week in previous years.  

The meetings take two general forms.  The first category is meetings with my team.  Things like reviewing the production of the secret projects and leatherbounds to make sure things look and feel right.  Others involve deep dives into concept art for characters and settings, so that when we create products like the upcoming Stormlight miniatures, they can fit with a canon version of the characters.  This is something I resisted for a while, feeling like it was all right if different artists interpreted the singers (for example) differently.  More and more, though, Isaac and I feel that we should have specific canon examples for continuity.  

Other meetings are editorial related, or publicity related.  Dragonsteel has kind of grown up the last few years, and I want to do it right.  That means being involved, as long as it doesn’t impact my time TOO much.  But all of that needs to be balanced with the numerous film and television meetings that have been happening lately.  Again, I want to do this right—which means being deeply involved in the projects that are moving forward.  (Announcements should be coming in the near future.)  That takes time.  So, the free time that I had during Covid to write secret projects is now being eaten up by a lot of these meetings.

I’m still finding the right balance, but this last month has seen a lot of good progress on Stormlight.  I’m sitting at 65,000 words right now as of this writing.  Roughly 16% if we assume a 400,000-word final book.  (Though this one will, as I said, likely be longer than that—so that 16% might be more like 15%.)

Unfortunately, progress is going to slow again as I have a couple of other deadlines due.  My goal right now is to do the last two revisions (Defiant and Secret Project Four) in rapid succession, in September and October, and be back to Stormlight in November.  

For a teaser, though, here is what I’m working on: I’m going to write this book in phases, straight from beginning to end, through several character groupings.  For example, the first sequence I’m writing is Szeth and Kaladin in Shinovar, including the Szeth flashbacks.  I plan to write all of their plot, from start to finish, before moving on to the next sequence of characters.

All of that 65k so far, except the prologue, has been on this plotline—and I’m loving how it’s shaping up.  I know the Szeth backstory has been a LONG time coming.  I hope it lives up to your expectations.  There are some interesting lore secrets here to reveal, and the climax is something I’ve been building to since book one—indeed, you’ll find death rattles from the first volume referencing the events here in this sequence.

I plotted this sequence at 100k.  It’s looking a lot more like 150k now that I’m neck deep in it.  The picture is related!

I know that four years is a long time to wait for a novel, and it’s been my goal in the past to keep that to 3 years.  My intention is that once this is done, we’ll have another longer-than-normal gap as I turn my attention to Mistborn Era Three (and hopefully the Elantris sequels) before diving back in to do the back five Stormlight books.  From there, I’m hoping to return to a 3-year gap between books until we push to the ending at book ten.  

A long journey, I know!  But you’ll almost certainly have television and film projects in the interim to keep you occupied alongside the other things I do.  And I continue to feel that Stormlight works best in ultra-long-form novels, rather than the (far more profitable) option my publisher would prefer of one shorter 100k Stormlight book every year.  The experience of the thick book full of interconnected plotlines and smaller interlude flourishes is part of what makes the artistic vision work for these volumes.    

As always, thank you for your patience.  My job is to make sure it’s all worth the wait, and I am striving each day to show respect for the trust you’ve put in me.  

Next update should come around the end of the year, where I’ll let you know how my November/December went.  With luck, I’ll have managed another 70k or so across the two months, and land us at around 130k, which MIGHT be the end of the first sequence.  

Happy New Year, everyone! Brandon here, with my first in a series of updates about your next book.

As mentioned in my State of the Sanderson post last month, my 2019 is dedicated to writing the fourth Stormlight book. It's a long process, likely to take around eighteen months or longer (depending on how big it gets this time...) As always, one of my goals is to be up front and forward with you about how it's going. The writing process can be a tangled one, even for simple books. And these books are anything but simple.

So, where do we stand? Well, right now, the outline is a bit of a mess. While I started with outlines for all five Stormlight books in this sequence (and some notes for each of the back five books as well) even a heavy outliner like myself changes a lot about a book during the drafting process. Each change has a ripple effect through the later outlines, which I commonly don't fix other than to note sections that will need to be change or be tweaked.

In the case of Stormlight, sequences were frequently moved between books as I decided on better places for them. (Like Dalinar and Szeth's flashback sequences in book three and five being swapped--or like Kaladin's sequence from the outline of Book Three being moved to Book Two instead.)

The further I get, then, the more messy the remaining outlines become. So the first thing I need to do is spend some time digging into the outlines of Books Four and Five, sharpening them and making them work. I need to do this now, because I don't want to get to Book Five and find it in serious trouble.

Imagine I have a big pile of legos, and I'm building five cool castles from them. I have to be careful as I use more and more of the pieces that the ones left over make a cool fifth castle--rather than just a jumble of leftovers. There are some very important and powerful sequences still to come (you all know how I like endings) but the outlines need extra special attention this time around.

My goal starting tomorrow (well, today once I wake up) is to get those outlines into shape. I anticipate this taking a month or maybe event two. I need to dig back into books one and two and make sure there aren't plot threads I'm ignoring, examine the themes of this book's flashback sequence (from Eshonai's viewpoint) and map them alongside the main themes of the major plots, then choose break points for the five parts of the story. (Along with decide who the viewpoint characters for each part will be.)

For those who don't know, I plot each Stormlight book as a trilogy written as a single novel (though in five parts) with a short story collection spliced into it. That "trilogy" then connects to the five book mini arc (in this case, the first five books) which in turn ties into ten book mega arc of the series. So, I've got a great deal of work ahead of me. Fortunately, we have an entire year for me to do it! (Though I will need to spend some of that time the next few weeks signing four thousand copies of the Hero of Ages Leatherbound, which FINALLY arrived.)

So, off I go! I'll be back here sometime February or March with another update, perhaps including a (spoiler free) visual representation of the outline like I did last time. Until then, thanks for the support! The Way of Kings passed a million copies sold in the US last year, which isn't even mentioning its significant sales around the world. I'm humbled and pleased to see so many people embracing this series, the one I started assuming it would be too long and too strange to ever sell.

I'll leave you with a random tidbit to theorize about. I'm pretty sure that at my signing last week in Idaho Falls, I was unintentionally misleading about some of the things I said about Dalinar's powers (regarding infusing of spheres.) I was trying to talk around spoilers for book four...

EDIT: As I came back to look this post over for typos, I thought I'd mention that I didn't have this thread's comments sent to my inbox. So while I might spot-reply here and there, know that there's a good chance I won't see your post on this thread. If I don't reply to a question, that is why.

All right, so most of you were probably expecting this one to appear sometime today--and here it is. The Previous Update can be found here. As I announced over social media this weekend, I have finished the final draft of Book Four. Rhythm of War is finally done. (Or, rather, my part is done. At least for the prose text of the book. See below.)

I finished the revisions on Saturday, and then today wrote the ketek and the back of the book text. (The in-world text. Tor does the marketing blurb.) The only thing I have left to do is the acknowledgements, plus the ars arcanum. The bulk of the work left to be done will be handled by Peter, my editorial director, who will oversee the copyedit (which is like a really in-depth proofread that also watches for style guide changes and things like in-book continuity) and the proofreads. In addition, Art Director Isaac will be finalizing the artwork done by himself and his artists. (Including Ben, who now works for us full time. He usually drops by the comments to say hi.)

Peter/Isaac's work will take several months to complete, and then the book will be sent separately to the US, UK, and Australian printers for English Language distribution. Excitingly, for the first time, we're hoping to do a simultaneous Spanish launch for the book, and my Spanish publisher has been putting a lot of extra effort into trying to make this happen. So if you live in Spain, and meet my team over there--translator, editor, etc--buy them a drink. They've been putting in some heroic work to try to get this beast of a novel ready in time.

I can't promise timelines for other foreign language editions; but if the Spanish experiment works, we will approach some of our other publishers to suggest trying the same thing with them.

Other random updates of note. The tour seems likely to go digital at this point because of the virus. We'll keep you in the loop. (This will likely include the release party.) Goal is to ship huge cases of books for me to sign so we can get them to partner bookstores for a signed launch, with talks/readings done digitally. Don't consider this an official confirmation of that yet, though. Tor is the one working it out, and we'll need to wait for them to figure out the details.

The kickstarter has been...well, a little crazy. We're in the process of adding new stretch goals; if you didn't see today's update over there, it has a poll of suggested new stretch goal rewards for you to mull over.

So, what's next for me? This week, I'm doing a quick revision of Songs of the Dead, the book-formely-known-as-death-by-pizza, which I'm writing with Peter Orullian. I plan this to take about a week. After that, I'm going to dive into the kickstarter novella, the official title of which I believe we'll be announcing tomorrow.

After that is done, I owe Skyward 3 to my very patient YA publisher, who has been sitting in the wings waiting for eighteen months or so for me to start it. Wax and Wayne 4 will follow, with my goal being to start it January 1st. Skyward 4 (the final book of that series) will follow starting about a year from now. After that, it will be time (already) for Stormlight 5, final book of this sequence of Stormlight novels. (Whew!) That will mark roughly the halfway point of the cosmere.

Thanks, as always, for your patience as I juggle all of these projects. Also, I'll be doing another livestream this Thursday, where I'll be chatting more about the kickstarter and this book (we keep it non-spoiler, so don't worry.)

I'll be turning off inbox replies to this thread, as usual, so I apologize if I don't see your questions here.

With that, I officially conclude my Book Four updates series. Expect to see me back in around eighteen months, January 2022, when I start updates for Book Five. (I do plan to do updates for Mistborn on that subreddit when I start the fourth Wax and Wayne. So if you're really hungry for more rambling posts about in-progress books, you can visit there.)

As always, thanks for everything. You folks are great. It's been quite the pleasure working on these books for you.

Brandon

Back in update #3, I promised to check back with you mid summer. I'm here a little early, as this felt like a good point to let you know how your book is going. Yesterday, I finished Part One of the novel, which (at 111k words) puts us at just under the 28% mark, assuming the book is 400k words total. (The first book was around that; the next two were longer, so fair warning, the % may not be entirely accurate.)

The short, TLDR version, is this: Part One is done, the book is looking good, and I'm modestly confident in a 2020 release.

Read below for a more fiddly, numbers oriented analysis of how things are going.

I gave myself 10 months to do the rough draft as a hypothetical deadline. That is a little on the quick side, but doable. That translates to about 1300 words a day, if I were writing seven days a week. (Which I don't do--I usually manage to write new fiction four days a week, with one day dedicated to email, meetings, newsletters, grading student finals, that sort of thing.) Once in a while, I sneak in a little work on Saturday, but I don't count on it.

What this really means is during those four days writing time, I need to do about 9k total words to keep pace. This wordcount number, I should warn you, is more a way for me to judge my progress rather than it is an absolute requirement. The writing process needs to remain flexible, even for someone who likes a strong outline like myself, and while guidelines for wordcounts are helpful, I'm careful not to treat them like a factory quota, to be achieved regardless of quality.

They are helpful for pace, though. In an average week, I commonly do between 8k and 15k of writing, so this is a manageable goal. With that in mind, how is it going?

Well, as talked about in the last post, I started Stormlight about a month late because of some work I decided needed to be done on Starsight. That meant I started the book at about 44k words behind in April. Steady writing through April up until May saw me making up ground. When I flew to Germany for the tour there, I was 31k behind instead, and was feeling good about the progress.

Germany was, of course, a disaster for new writing. (Tours almost always are.) I got some work done on a sequel novella to Sixth of the Dusk, but no Stormlight writing. (Really complex narrative is difficult for me to do when traveling a lot, as it requires more focus than I can often give.)

When I got back, I had slipped to 52k words behind. I dove back in, and restored the writing grove for Roshar, and have made back most of that time. As of yesterday, I'm 33k words behind, assuming I want to have the rough draft done by January 1st. (Which is pretty much a must if I want to release the book in 2020.)

As before, I do need to give the warning that if the book needs more time, I WILL take it. I recognize that is what most of you would like anyway, so we'll see what happens. Part One, however, turned out very close to my plan--and I'm pleased with it. As I said, this book follows more of a Book One style plot than a Book Two or Three style plot. The characters will be mostly isolated doing their own thing in three separate plot lines, interwoven in the narrative, but with little interaction between them. In fact, the three different arcs should (if I work it out right) hit their climaxes at three different points, giving a more sequential hit of more intimate plot moments rather than one big enormous finale, like happened in Books Two/Three. (Not that there's anything wrong with that; I just prefer some variety. Book Five, as you should be able to guess, will be more like Books Two/Three than Books One/Four.)

So my next step is to dive into a revision of Part One. This will put us a little more behind, as it will take about a week--but it will let me get the first chunk (which is book length on its own) to Moshe for editing over the next few months. That way, we can use his time in parallel to mine, as well as let Karen do continuity edits and Peter (eventually) do an editorial pass.

If that works as it should, and if I do this with each part as I finish them, I'll have 3/4 of the book waiting with editorial work done on it come January 1st. That will let me dive into a third draft immediately.

My goal after the revision of Part One is to pick one of the character clusters mentioned in the previous updates, and work on it straight through to the end. (I'll probably pick the second arc, which should be around 80k words long and follow three viewpoint characters in their distinct plot sequence.)

As always, thanks for reading and for putting up with my eccentricities as a writer. As a note, like in the other posts, I will not be sending replies to my inbox--so apologies if I miss something you say in this thread.

Hey, all. Brandon here, back for another update on your book.

January went well, and the outlining process is moving along. I've set the percentage bar perhaps a little higher than it deserves to be, considering that I plan to get the outline for Book Five done as well y the time that hits 100%, but I haven't started it yet. That said, I'm feeling very good at what I've accomplished so far. I've cracked a few tricky problems in the plotting, ones I anticipate being the toughest parts of the outline--which makes me optimistic that I'm further along than the wordcount might indicate.

I did have to stop to do a quick 3.0 revision on Starsight, the sequel to Skyward, which is coming out in November. That's finished as of around 1:00am this morning. I'll be diving back into Stormlight now, though I'm in LA this week doing pitch meetings for Dark One as a television show. (So far so good, but these are very preliminary-type meetings, so don't expect any big announcements anytime soon.)

Plan is to be finished with the outline of Book Four by March 1st. (Tentative title: The Rhythm of War, but I'm not 100% on that yet.) Then I'll dive into the book.

Writing a Stormlight book is not an easy or quick process. To finish on time, I'll need to do 40k words a month every month this year--which is a tall order. (My average is around 30k a month, though, so it's not impossible.) That would have the first draft done by January 1st, then give me six months of grueling revisions to finish the final draft by July, which would allow a Christmastime release. This isn't set in stone, though, and if I don't meet this schedule the book could slip into the beginning of 2021.

For now, I'm going to solicit a little help from you. While writing Stormlight 3, I built a specific playlist of some of my favorite epic-fantasy-feeling songs. I've posted it before, but if you missed that, find it here.

You can click on my profile to find the similar playlist I made for Skyward. I have been searching through other playlists people have made on Spotify with the right kind of music so I can build a similar playlist for Stormlight 4, but I thought I'd kick the question to you folks as well.

Do you have any suggestions? What songs in specific (songs are better than artists, as I try to keep my playlists varied with only a couple of songs from any one given artist) do you listen to while reading the Stormlight books? What songs would you suggest to me that I listen to while writing the book? (Other than the Kaladin album, of course.)

Generally, I prefer things that have an epic instrumental feel to them--though I don't mind words here and there. And I get tired of things that sound TOO trailer-esque. (Inception sound. Inception sound. Inception sound.

For reference, my favorite song on the Oathbringer playlist--and the one I play in my head at the climax--is Alive by Phil Lober. Anyway, please suggest things for me to put on my playlist. Songs that are on theme, or even songs you just think are epic for whatever reason. (Though do look through the other two playlists I've made first, to double check the song isn't on one of them. I probably won't put any repeats on this playlist.)

And as a final note, I won't be having replies from this thread sent to my inbox, and I don't know if I'll have time for many specific replies to questions. But I do plan a more involved AMA sometime in the near future, where I can answer questions. I will also hop back on the thread at some point and grab the suggested songs.

Anyway, I'll give you another update when the outline is finished. Until then, Journey before Destination.

Hey, all! Dropping in to give you another quick Stormlight Four update. (See the previous update here.) Though most of my team is gearing up for the Starsight launch in a few weeks, I’m buckling down for the final push to finish writing Stormlight Four.

I didn’t get a ton written during my tour last month, but I didn’t expect to. I did, however, have a little time--and I’ve focused lately on getting the last parts of the outline hammered together. There’s still some work to do on book five’s outline, but I’ve had the team move the outline progress bar to 100%--indicating that the book four outline is completely finished.

Right now, Parts One and Two of the book are done as well. Parts Three-Five have been finished for everything but the main, core viewpoint cluster. (So, if you’ve been following along, that means viewpoint clusters two and three are finished.) I’ve also done some work on the interludes, getting a nice chunk of those done, most notably the "through line" viewpoint for the Interludes.

Remaining to do are a handful of interludes and the core story for the second half of the book. Together, that should be around 100k words, though it’s possible I’ll go longer.

Now comes the toughest part of the push for me. I’ve got just under two months left before January first, which is the deadline by which I’ll need to have the rough draft done if we want to publish in 2020. Since the book is looking really good, and the outline is solid, I’m confident that we won’t run into any problems. By this point in a book (the 75% mark, which is where I am right now) I’m generally aware if the book will require any major edits or revisions. This one shouldn’t, which means if I do hit that deadline, we’re going to be in really good shape.

This means I need to write 100k(+) words in two months, with a book launch in the middle as well as two major holidays. So...we’ll see. I was wise enough to know ahead of time that I’d need these weeks for writing, so decided not to do a tour for Starsight. I hope everyone will support the book anyway; my publisher is really worried that by not doing a tour, we might be leaving the book without support.

I, however, am confident that the majority of my readers would rather have me working on Stormlight than traveling about trying to persuade you to buy Starsight. (I assume this is particularly true for those of you on this subreddit.) I’m not terribly worried; from the reception Skyward has gotten, the second book should do just fine. So other than the launch party (which should be quite the extravaganza) I’ll be keeping my attention on Stormlight.

As always, you can follow along via the progress bars on my website for more clarity. Also, Adam should be posting pictures there from my tour in Europe the next few weeks, along with some shots of me on the set of the Wheel of Time television show. (Assuming they ever get approved.)

I’ll try to keep you updated as the deadline approaches, but it’s likely the next big update you’ll get will come at the annual State of the Sanderson blog post on or around my birthday next month. This should also be the last reddit update until you get the "It's done" update, hopefully right before the end of the year. (And, if you'll forgive me, I'm unlikely to be answering a lot on Reddit these next few months--and likely won't be saying much in this thread either.)

As always, thanks for your support and enthusiasm. Journey before Destination!

(Bonus picture of my macaw asking how many chickens I've put in this book.)

It came down to the last hour before I head to the airport for Dragonsteel Nexus... but WE DID IT!!!

Hundreds and hundreds of hours went into creating this cosplay (building started back in March), and I have SOOOO many people to thank for their help. From teaching me to code the LEDs, to what parts to buy for the SFX. Huge shoutouts are in order to helloiambird on Instagram (inspiration), nyanosaur on Instagram (parts list for the final LED system), the rt9library makerspace staff Jessi and Brian (laser cutting and coding/debugging), Jess (woodworking for the glaive), kamuicosplay (fog machine tutorial), Mia (sowing, templating and painting), Hive76 Makerspace staff Charlie (soldering and rigging), Alex (3D printing), and my mom (last minute help rigging and inspecting).

I LOVE how it turned out!!!

Be sure to come say hi if you see me walking the floor at Nexus!

LIFE BEFORE DEATH STRENGTH BEFORE WEAKNESS JOURNEY BEFORE DESTINATION!!!

windrunnersquad 😀

P.s. I'll probably post better pictures once I get a chance 😉