Brandon Sanderson has released a video of his writing process for the second novel in the Stormlight Archive, the massive epic fantasy series he began with The Way of Kings. In this video we see his outlining process, hear some of his thoughts about future videos, the working title for Stormlight 2, and why that working title “is a little too ridiculous,” plus more!
(Skip to 3:05, that’s when the activity begins.)
This video shows Sanderson working on an interlude chapter, one of the short stories peppered throughout the Stormlight books. The interludes to The Way of Kings offered a number of fascinating looks into the untold stories of Roshar, developed Szeth’s storyline, and gave us a stealthy Mistborn cameo. This chapter returns to Rysn, a Thaylen trader who appeared in The Way of King: Interlude 4. In that interlude she and her mentor traveled to Shinnovar, a strangely peaceful corner of Roshar, and one that resembles Earth much more closely than the rest of the locations in the book. Sanderson says in the video that until he writes a scene in a location nothing is canon for him, and he is once again using Rysn’s viewpoint to nail down the details of a new corner of his world, this time the Reshi Isles.
He also confirms that the working title for Stormlight 2 is The Book of Endless Pages, and that this will not be the final title of the series. Sanderson explains that the title “sounded cool to me when I was doing my outlines, but since then I’ve come to realize that having thousand-page novels named The Book of Endless Pages is a little bit ridiculous.” As cool as it would be to continue his tradition of naming novels after in-universe books, this blogger at least is looking forward to a novel with a vast but finite number of pages.
Stubby the Rocket is the mascot for Tor.com. Stubby deeply appreciates the Metroid music in this video.
