If you follow the drafts, I think you can see the evolution of what became of the Lifeless army. Originally I had planned for the statues to simply have been placed there so that you could Awaken them—just in my original concepts, before I started the writing—and then that became…
How could Vasher become Drab? Wouldn’t he have to give up his Big Breath to do so? The Divine Breath can be hidden. Essentially, you have to view yourself NOT as a god at all, using a very specific bit of mental gymnastics. As a Returned, your body changes based…
It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I’m simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn’t Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others? The “You must give up…
For Warbreaker, I was looking back a little further, shooting for a more Renaissance-era feel. And so, I extrapolated from the early beliefs that similarities created bonds. In other words, you could affect an object (in this case, bring an object to life) by creating a bond between it and…
I do plan to write a sequel to WARBREAKER. I want to do a book that deals more with the Lifeless and Nightblood, following Vasher and Vivenna a little further. I’m not sure when I will be able to do so, with all of the projects I have right now…
I knew that some people would just read it online and not buy it and that’s all right. I would hope that those who really enjoyed the book will pick up copies, but you know, I don’t mind if they just read it and don’t pick up a copy—I mean,…
Warbreaker came from a lot of sourcres. Siri and Vivenna were side characters in a book I never finished. Vasher came from the line that starts the book. No space to post it here, but give it a read. Color magic in came from watching b/w movies. Nightblood came because…well,…
Like many of my early books, I wrote one version, which I refer to as _________ Prime, then rewrote it later. When I wrote White Sand Prime (the first novel I ever finished writing), there was too much material for a single novel, so I split it roughly in the…
For those who don’t know, White Sand is a book I wrote around the same time as Elantris—but which I didn’t ever sell. Once I was published, I considered releasing it, but felt it needed a solid revision before I could do so. Well, that revision was delayed time and…
Bastille says they’re speaking Melerandian in book 1 and Nalhallan from book 2 on. When I originally wrote Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians, I put that in there partially as a throwaway joke. Melerand is one of the main kingdoms in Dragonsteel, and I thought it would be amusing for…