Funnily enough, watching Brandon's lectures on writing and listening to his podcast has made it much easier to get kicked out of his stories while reading. It sometimes becomes too obvious what he's trying to accomplish with a particular scene
I appreciate y'all calling out the anglocentric opinion on accent marks. I had the pleasure of working with indigenous Maya people in Guatemala last year. As they try to preserve their language and culture they have translated their language into the Latin alphabet but use accent marks. An example of this is their use of the comma as a glottal stop (imagine how you pronounce "uh oh" or "ok" with the punctuation of "uh'oh" and "o'k") as in their word B'atz which in Kaqchikel Mayan means howler monkey and a few other things. Now that I have had that experience of uses of punctuation and accent marks I don't think I could be so easily kicked out of the story if I saw it again in a book.
It hurts so much that the in-world book matches but the title doesn't. I could have accepted it much easier if the in-world book had been Wind and Truth, but why did it have to be breaking both patterns?
@@shughes5778 Because it means that to anyone that cares about the symmetry, you can just tell yourself the full title is "Knights of Wind and Truth" and it works. For anyone that doesn't know or care about the symmetry, that's a ridiculous mouthful and a terrible title. It's also not a real mirror of "The Way of Kings" anyway because it has to sneak the "and" in so it was never going to fully work regardless. If Brandon had been planning the mirrored titles from the start, he probably wouldn't have ended the title with "Kings" because there's very few useable words that start with K, and that is extremely limiting.
@@robbybevard8034 I don't think it's that much of a mouthful, especially as there's such a trend for longer names at the moment. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. A Court of Thorns and Roses. Personally I prefer KoW&T - it just feels complete in a way W&T doesn't to me - but at the end of the day it's just a title. Whatever feels right to Brandon is right.
I was just thinking that to me (a Hungarian) scratches above letters is the norm, then he hit me with that :D For referenc, this is almost a real word: árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép
@@csernobillahun The big problem with being inspired by Hungarian is that very few people (outside Hungary obviously and possibly the Volga basin/far North) have a good reference for what those sounds are like. I had always assumed that Hungarian 'sz' is a 'sh' (like the Polish 'sz') only to find out I was wrong when Liverpool signed Szoboszlai ;) I now question every other thing you guys use: is 'á' a long 'ah' like it would be in, say, Czech or is it pronounced 'boom'? Hungarian culture, including language, has some of the lowest awareness even among well-read and linguistically/culturally curious Europeans like me given how influential it actually was/is in terms of cultural and scientific achievement and its historic influence in the Habsburg era. It's probably the hardest inspiration to pull off in fiction if you're writing in a European language - it doesn't appear cognate with anything derived from PIE (obviously, despite some borrowings) and even onomatopoeia doesn't appear to 'work' to a PIE-descendant speaker. So very difficult to convey emotion via phonetics.
There's a scene in The Batman where he visits Catwoman's apartment. I have no idea what they talk about because the refrigerator door is open the entire time and it's so distracting!
That varies by location and season - sometimes letting the heat out (or in!) is intended; other occasions, there's little difference between indoor and outdoor conditions. Obviously, if there's snow on the ground, or other indicators of extreme conditions outside, you want to keep the door shut as much as possible, but if you don't have those signs that the conditions on either side of the door are that different, leaving it open is no big deal.
I love Christopher Walken, and I thought he did a good job, but he took me out of dune 2 every scene he was in. Every time it was, "Oh look, Christopher Walken!"
Agreed, Walken was a horrible casting choice. Another reason I disliked him in Dune 2 so much was that in the books, the Emperor is described as appearing as an attractive middle-aged despite being so much older in reality. Walken definitely looked old in the movie.
@@CarlosBronze clearly Dan gets enjoyment out of riling people up. You know like a troll. Except instead of the general public it’s his friends fans which is worse.
I don't know if Dan will ever see this, but he could always create a token in place of the character as he's writing. For example, if he wants to write â, he could just write a^ and later use find-replace to change all a^ to â.
Regarding time and distance, I love the way Malazan handled it. Time is measured in heartbeats, breaths, and Bells(which ring every hour) and distance is measured in paces or in days of travel.
Haha I think it’s gotten a lot less in your face compared to his earlier books. I don’t remember really noticing it much during Rhythm of War, while early on with every book I’d be like, “okay, what has he replaced ‘fuck’ with now”. Rust! Storm! Sparks! Colors!
Oh man I love maladroitly, haha! Every single one of his books I look for it and cheer when I see it. Does it "bring me out" of the story? Sure, but I still like it. Makes me feel like I'm reading a sanderson novel :)
Reminded me of something I noticed because of the audiobooks for Sanderson. He will often use "Bah!" When trying to have someone dismiss the conversation and change topics. Not something that ruins the work, but now it's started to pull me out and think of all the other times he has used it
9:16 This happened to me, too. It's actually a large part of why I like audiobooks... It tempers the hypercritical part of my brain. It rarely shuts up completely, but I'm able to enjoy stories a lot more on their terms when I'm listening to them rather than visually reading them. Whenever I delve too deep into music composition and mastering, for a while when I listen to music all I can focus on are the individual tracks, their balancing, and what the artists must have intended. It is enjoyable in its own right, but can often hamper my enjoyment if I just want to listen to music to relax.
As per Dan's comment about the Green Bone Saga, I fervently disagree. I listened to the first book and some of the second, and could never be swept into it. I found the characters overt stereotypes whose almost every decision was unsurprising, the story played out and uninteresting, and many habits of the author irritating. She had a distinct habit of showing then telling, ruining any of the potentially interesting scenes by then explaining the obvious subtext.
I listened to the Harry Potter books for the first time last year (long time movie fan), and for me it was JK’s use of describing something as “emerald green” that pulled me out of it 😂 it happened so frequently that I kept taking mental notes as I listened to all seven books over the span of a few months
The near perfect palindrome still kinda works though-isn’t that a thing in the world of storm light where they name their kids near perfect palindromes to respect the divine or something?
Galodan's "Kolo" and Sezed's "-, I think." felt like great touches for their characters. made them feel unique. For me at least though its overly flowery prose that pulls me out because i have to focus to figure out what they mean. As for the Stormlight Ketek. what we are getting works because, if i recall correctly how you made the Alethi naming conventions, while you want it to be symmetrical, you don't want it too symmetrical or it's heretical or heresy. again, if i am remembering correctly.
What drives me NUTS on the screen is when the characters order drinks / food, it sits there as the ambiance for a brief dialogue or altercation, and then they just leave it without finishing it. Like, come on. Who does that??? One of the worst offenders I've ever watched is Gilmore Girls!! 😬😂
You haven't seen Maigret with Bruno Cremer then. They drink everywhere, all the time, and take one sip maximum. They even have beer brought in by waiters into interrogations, which no one then drinks. Quelle horreur!
12:36 Localizing is the difference between an alright translation and an excellent translation. It's weird how words can sometimes mean less than the emotions they provoke.
If you are always aware that you are watching a film or reading a book, and can not get lost in that universe for a short period of time, I feel very sorry for that person, because they are missing out on one of the pure joys of life.
Everything that Brandon articulated about the name for Wind and Truth is definitely right and correct and completely valid (and yes, it is definitely a stronger title)… but at the same time it will irk me to NO END that we got SO CLOSE to a symmetrical set of abbreviations for Stormlight 1-5.
While reading I, Claudius, I kept getting kicked out every time someone would mention "the corn." I kept thinking, god, this book generally feels so meticulous, how does he keep making such a basic mistake? That's when I learned that in the UK "corn" just means any kind of grain... Point being, sometimes the things that kick people out are entirely unreasonable and there's nothing you can do about it 😂
Dan, you should definitely try to include diacritics! The keyboard issue can be worked around-install a Hungarian keyboard on your device, create shortcuts for adding diacritical marks, customizing your autocorrect settings, even doing a find-and-replace after writing change every instance you wrote “Da:n” to become “Dän”… Just try a few strategies to figure out what works. You’d be surprised at how typing diacritics can become as natural as using the shift key to capitalize once you get used to it 😊
Honestly, I'm really delighted about the conversation around diacritics! I actually also struggle with the ease of keyboard usage with them, so I actually keep a separate document open when I write my novel. It has all the common names and the accented letters so I can quickly copy and paste... glad to know i'm not in need of a terribly drastic orthographic overhaul.
AutoHotKey is a free utility that with relatively simple scripting can ‘capture’ a given string of characters, such as “zoe” and replace it with whatever you want, like “Zoë”.
I had a friend who ran D&D campaigns for years. And one of the beings who would frequently show up in his campaigns was a being who had been around for a long time, was somehow turned into an athropomorphic rabbit, and was completely insane, and yet, over time and experience had become almost god-like in power. And when this being showed up things would be said that would be hilarious, but which in no way fit into the world which we were exploring. The explanation of the entire phenomenon was that this insane being operated in multiple dimensions at once, and when he commented on something that would be nonsense in the D&D world, anyone who heard him also received the background information required to understand what he was saying. People would interact with this character in the hopes of receiving some powerful magical item, but it was also kind of dangerous, because he *was* very powerful, and if he got annoyed with you, he could do you serious (yet also very funny) damage on a whim. So one character was trying to get himself a powerful item and somehow managed to annoy the being, who suddenly lisped in a cartoon voice something along the lines of "Oh no you don't, I can see right through you ..." at which point I tried to save the party member by jumping in with "That is soooo cool! I wish *I* could see through people!" He instantly opened my body up like a sarcophagus, rummaged inside for a few moments, and handed me a pair of x-ray goggles, which would, indeed, allow me to see the skeletons inside of people, and do nothing else. And since I'd distracted him, things just continued on. Of course the DM later pulled me aside and reminded me "he *is* insane. You could have simply said speaking of X, and changed the subject to anything else, anyway." But then, I wouldn't have x-ray goggles!
In terms of language it's interesting what kicks people out and what doesn't. Because I think if anyone really tries to avoid things like this you would quickly realize a lot of the language falls apart. English as a language is a combination of latin, german, with some french added in later and a handful of other words from all over. So if you don't have a language in the book that has a similar history it wouldn't form the same way. And you will always have words like Thug which Sanderson uses and doesn't get people kicked out which is from a Hindi origin, and about the same length of time in english as the hat trick, but one people assume is more normal. And you get other words that feel modern like swag that goes back to Shakespeare. I don't know what the good solution is but it is interesting to look at how different things feel wrong to people which doesn't always match the language roots. But regardless of the real roots, it kicked people out and worsened their experience so that matters more than anything else does.
You also start to realize how many words come from religions or cultures or events very specific to our development on Earth. If you were to write that an army was decimated, I don't know if that would kick anyone out. But decimation was a Roman term that we have borrowed, and if you don't have a Roman Empire in your world (you probably don't), where does it actually come from? This is to say nothing about how people swear in fantasy, some of the more common options of which have their roots in terms for religions that don't exist in the fantasy worlds.
Its especially immersion breaking for me when characters who are close to each other don't say goodbye at the end of phone calls in movies/tv. Or if they just had a super emotional conversation, and they just hang up. Its so abrupt and feels angry, and I just cringe every time haha
Gotta say, I like how FFXIV fixed the measurements translation. They use imperial terms but alter them. An ilm is an inch, a fulm is a foot, a yalm is a yard, and a malm is a mile. They even measure this way in the tooltips though it's abbreviated 10y instead of 10 yalms, but everyone gets it, and it's roughly correct with a meter/yard ingame so you can eyeball it.
Famously Robert Jordan in Wheel of Time had Nynaeve tugging on her braid constantly. She actually only does it ~60 times over the course of the entire series, but TWENTY of those times are in a single book (The Dragon Reborn) so it stood out and made it into a joke that people then took note of every time it happened from then on. Also whenever a woman "Folded her arms beneath her breasts" (or a similar variant). If he just said "folded her arms" and left out the "beneath her breasts" probably no one would have noticed the ~120 times it occurs over thousands of pages and a dozen books. But that second part just draws attention and made people notice some variation of "beneath the breasts" phrase appeared like 67 times. (Brandon added to the total some but was presumably just following the joke, he did it way, way less)
@@ChandrewsArt Firstly, no one cares about their pecs. Secondly, 'pecs' is very anachronistic. Thirdly, women folding their arms beneath their breasts vs across is very much a significant distinction.
I find the 555 discussion so fascinating. Ive been so socialized to expect 555 that if I saw a real phone number on the screen, I'd get pulled away as I feel immediately compelled to call it. The 555 concession is so standard to me, it's similar to what you mentioned about "being here to see a movie." I often joke internally about seeing it used, but it would be so disruptive to see a real-world phone number in the fiction.
@@jaysemitchells497 Kind of confirmed in the same scene since he explicitly mentioned some of the other cameos. A little awkward since some of the cameos make zero sense being the same and the movies are years or galaxies apart but.... he's obviously a unique being.
a fun term I love comes from the game Final Fantasy XIV, where they wanted their own units of measurements, but didn't want to use Yards and Miles, their solution? just call them Yalms and Malms. If I asked someone what the sentence "it's about 30 yalms away" means without any additional context, they could probably make that leap, but it still doesn't kick you out for using our own world's units because it doesn't take that much brain load to replace the two because it'll always remind you of the real version.
Reminds me of an NPC in a video game handing an item the the player character and the hands and items are obscured, so the result is just the characters leaning forward and shuffling around a bit.
Brando, I was having a chat with my brother recently. He works in upper management in the video games industry. He says the audience has become political, and many game designers coming into the industry to push their politics and are driving customers away. As sales collapse and people are getting laid off these game designers are deeply regretting their career choices. You can ignore the politicaztion of the general audience because you're too big to fail. Or are you?
25:28 My GF is Malaysian, they have a few end of sentence sounds. “La” is the biggest one. It’s a word that sort of emphasizes things. ie. “I’m hungry La”. “It’s so hot outside La”
As soon as they talked about word choice that kicks people out, I knew Brandon would mention “maladroitly”. All authors, published or not, have that one word. (: It can be kind of fun in your own writing group, you get to see that and tease your other writer friends about their pet words.
I would still love a deluxe set with symmetrical abbreviations despite the official title being “Wind and Truth” I feel like deluxe editions are special enough that we can break the rules a little.
The Sun Eaters series by Christopher Ruocchio starts with: Being the account of the Sun Eater, Hadrian Marlowe of the War between Mankind and the Cielcin. Translated into Classical English by Tor Paulos of Nov Belgaer on Colchis.
One thing that i hate that takes me out of books. I read a lot of sci-fi, often of the "hard" variety. One classic element of sci-fi fandom is certain arguments about the "right" way for space stuff to work, such as complaints about star trek and star wars having pressurized ships in space combat, and that being a liability. I don't mind that different authors go different ways on this, its when these things come up in a book and the way they tell you about it is clearly written as that author making their argument for why it's the "correct" way rather than just relating that that's the way it works in this universe. it can be a tricky line to define, but you know it when you read it.
The kolo's definitely took me out of Elantris, and I still struggle reading that book today because of it. I'm glad you're conscious of it as you move towards the sequels.
It's the Klingon and Vulcan names for me. B'Ellana, T'Pol, Qo'noS for example. I used to read the books and it was probably even more common for various alien side characters the authors cooked up.
A lot of Tress kicks me out, but I think mainly because I binge your BYU lectures and this podcast. I love the book but every time I see a note on the use of language by Hoid or a commentary on the irony of a part of living our lives, I think "Aha! Hi, Brandon!" and then continue enjoying the book, because it is a great read.
Honestly I love the kolo’s because it came off as a character tic of galadon and we don’t really see any more duladens so it doesn’t become annoying. Now it would have been insufferable if there were more duladens and they ALL said it.
Abercrombie loves the words clicked and grimaced. Whenever a new chapter would start in the original trilogy I would always hike to myself about how long it would be before he used those two words.
Love the serial killer books, Dan! Bought them shortly after discovering this podcast. There's an embalming scene in book 2 where the main character uses the "jugular artery" and its one of those wierd nitpicky things that kicked me out. (There is no jugular artery, it's jugular vein and carotid artery). I even told myself the main character was smart but not a doctor so it may have been a purposeful decision on your part, but it was still jarring. I constantly recommend your books though!
The only thing I can think of that kicks me out of brandons stories is when he gives characters catchphrases, every time they say their token line I can just imagine echoing laughtracks like its a sitcom.
I felt very jarred by the mental health descriptions and explanations Kaladin used in the latest preview chapters, because it sounded like a lot of insight and specific terms which shouldn't exist in-world according to previous books and the state of psychological knowledge.
@@markvonneumann4 Rosharan scholars have had incredible insight into psychological ailments since Way of Kings - I suspect some of it is due to old advice from the times of the Knights Radiant informing more recent research. This example is from WoR though, as I was just reading it: Kaladin has very modern knowledge of Renarin's epilepsy, including specific subcatagorization of it based on symptoms and when it developed. The whole "first therapist" thing seems silly to me, in this light.
In Mostly Harmless, the 4th book in Hitchhiker's Guide series, there is an amazing scene which I so much Arthur is confronted by Trillian about something and with her is Random Dent, Arthur and Trillian's Daughter. In this scene Addams does a large aside to explain why he WILL NOT explain this daughter and how unimportant it is to the story to the point that it would have been shorter to just actually explain it. But it was so important how unimportant it is to be explained that Addams did that instead... and that, Agrajag's relationship to Arthur, and Arthur and his new GF taking Marvin to God's last message to his creation were some of the best things ever.
@@robbybevard8034 I think that was the exact point where Addams was making the argument that you don't need to know everything going on in a character's life.
Totally agree that Channing Taum showing up in Bullettrain but it is not JUST worth watching. Its REALLY good! A really "fun time" of a movie. You need to watch that movie Brandon.😊
Everybody in Sanderson books affectionately calls young men “Lad” and if I could have one wish, it would be for him to switch to “kid” “boy” “child” “young man”. Many thanks.
I totally missed the hat-trick reference in Mistborn. But I did do a double take when reading a Forgotten Realms novel where they mentioned Spanish moss. Great discussion!
What gets me is when a Proper Noun from our world shows up (French Toast or Ottoman). I feel they can either be replaced with a different descriptor (padded footrest) or else an in-universe proper noun (Thaylen Toast)
Regarding filler words and such.. from what I remember early Naruto translations did this a lot where Naruto ended many sentences with "You know?!", when in japanese it's kind of a handoff word that can be skipped, or translated indirectly.
It’s because his mouth kept moving in the anime too. He ends his sentences with “dattebayo,” which in Japanese makes him sound uneducated instead of just ending with “yo.” The English dub also translated the extra mouth movements as “Believe it!” when Naruto never actually says that in Japanese 😂 “Dattebayo” and “yo” at the end of the sentence show excitement like an exclamation point
I haven't really noticed the noodle boxes in film/TV but what I do notice is that they very rarely eat/drink anything during a scene where food is involved. They will just hold it etc. I'm guessing this is mostly because people eating isn't very interesting to watch but it could also be for continuity.
I don't know if it's something that people notice so much, but one thing that i absolutly hate about movies and series that totally throw me out and make me realize that i'm watching one, it's that every time a character lights up a cigarrete, they give it two or three puffs and THROW THE ENTIRE CIGARRETE AWAY. EVERY. DAMN. TIME. I understand that it's because the actors can't smoke a full cigarrete every time they make a shot, and they do a lot of them, but man... what a way to remind you that you're watching something fake. I hope that now everybody notices this and gets super mad.
When I know a work is a translation, I give it waaaay more leeway in word choice or weird sentence structure than something written in English. Same with subtitles; I watch tons of Chinese and Korean media, and there are certain almost conventions in subtitles that arise just from those languages functioning the way they do that sound really weird in English, but it doesn't kick me out, where as if it was the actual line in an English language movie or show, I would be completely thrown out by it.
Those paper coffee cups always take me out when watching shows or movies. Actors always handle them and wave their hands all over the place. I can tell they’re completely empty, because otherwise their hand would move slower and take more care about how they move it. Drives me nuts!
I read a book series where at the start of book 3 the characters are on a train and one of the interesting side character just goes "-and that's how my story happened" And I was like: well why dont you tell me author? Then I found out there was another book not in the main series that was all about that guy story and it pulled me out of the book so fast I never picked it up again. I mean if it's interesting put it in the main series, dont force me to read a book from another author I dont know just so I can know the informations. I was almost pulled out of the last Skyward book the same way, when a character gets back home and is being told all the amazing exciting things that happened when she was gone. Then I find out I have to read a whole series from another author I dont know and dont have to time to give a chance if they know how to write or not. Forced myself to continue reading but for an hundred pages was pissed man.
I gotta say, the only way 'Wind and Truth' is worth abandoning a meta slam dunk, is if Kaladin and Szeth are literally removed from all conceptual realities during the plot
I LOVED the Bullet Train book the movie was based on way better. Reading a book before watching the movie pulls me out of enjoying the film sometimes if they do it differently than I had been imagining it.
With 555 numbers I have the exact opposite issue from Dan. If I hear a non 555 my brain goes "oh they put a shity easter egg or arg here," And it rips me right out.
Stormlight 5 could be called stormlight and spaghetti and I'm buying it regardless
“You could be linguine?”
“I am a stick.”
@@jonnystoffelbut you could be fettuccine
Knights of Vongole and Tagliatelle
@Chuck9852 Silly troll, he's buying it because he enjoyed the previous ones and he's excited to see how this series ends.
@@Chuck9852 my brother in damnation your name is Chuck! Wtf are you complaining about the name of a book for? Sort yourself out chucky
Dan with movement is crazy to see. Technology has come so far.
It seems like just last week we were watching a picture of him looking like he was having fun
Funnily enough, watching Brandon's lectures on writing and listening to his podcast has made it much easier to get kicked out of his stories while reading. It sometimes becomes too obvious what he's trying to accomplish with a particular scene
He's the magician that teaches you how to perform the trick then demonstrates. His transparency is refreshing, wish it were contagious.
“That’s a lot of Koloss.” -Elend
“That’s a lot of ‘kolo’s.’” -Moshe
That one is good!
I appreciate y'all calling out the anglocentric opinion on accent marks. I had the pleasure of working with indigenous Maya people in Guatemala last year. As they try to preserve their language and culture they have translated their language into the Latin alphabet but use accent marks. An example of this is their use of the comma as a glottal stop (imagine how you pronounce "uh oh" or "ok" with the punctuation of "uh'oh" and "o'k") as in their word B'atz which in Kaqchikel Mayan means howler monkey and a few other things. Now that I have had that experience of uses of punctuation and accent marks I don't think I could be so easily kicked out of the story if I saw it again in a book.
The Wilhelm scream is about the only thing that gets me every time.
Me too but in a fun way, like look they did the thing
@@rachelmontgomery44 yeah it's a very DiCaprio meme moment.
I really dislike the Wilhem scream. It takes me out, and, worse, it doesn't sound right.
Same. I also don't like the "Kids Laughing" stock sound. Pulls me out every time. Get some new kids
@@jdreedrnget some new kids 😭
Separating the title of the real book and the in fiction book is an excellent solution
Yeah it’s kinda impressive because I’d never be able to resist completing the gimmick
It hurts so much that the in-world book matches but the title doesn't. I could have accepted it much easier if the in-world book had been Wind and Truth, but why did it have to be breaking both patterns?
@@shughes5778 Because it means that to anyone that cares about the symmetry, you can just tell yourself the full title is "Knights of Wind and Truth" and it works.
For anyone that doesn't know or care about the symmetry, that's a ridiculous mouthful and a terrible title.
It's also not a real mirror of "The Way of Kings" anyway because it has to sneak the "and" in so it was never going to fully work regardless.
If Brandon had been planning the mirrored titles from the start, he probably wouldn't have ended the title with "Kings" because there's very few useable words that start with K, and that is extremely limiting.
@@robbybevard8034 I don't think it's that much of a mouthful, especially as there's such a trend for longer names at the moment. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. A Court of Thorns and Roses. Personally I prefer KoW&T - it just feels complete in a way W&T doesn't to me - but at the end of the day it's just a title. Whatever feels right to Brandon is right.
What is it? Could you explain the difference to me?
“I’m not trying to be fancy, I’m trying to be Hungarian” Dan Wells, 2024
I was just thinking that to me (a Hungarian) scratches above letters is the norm, then he hit me with that :D
For referenc, this is almost a real word: árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép
@@csernobillahun The big problem with being inspired by Hungarian is that very few people (outside Hungary obviously and possibly the Volga basin/far North) have a good reference for what those sounds are like. I had always assumed that Hungarian 'sz' is a 'sh' (like the Polish 'sz') only to find out I was wrong when Liverpool signed Szoboszlai ;) I now question every other thing you guys use: is 'á' a long 'ah' like it would be in, say, Czech or is it pronounced 'boom'? Hungarian culture, including language, has some of the lowest awareness even among well-read and linguistically/culturally curious Europeans like me given how influential it actually was/is in terms of cultural and scientific achievement and its historic influence in the Habsburg era. It's probably the hardest inspiration to pull off in fiction if you're writing in a European language - it doesn't appear cognate with anything derived from PIE (obviously, despite some borrowings) and even onomatopoeia doesn't appear to 'work' to a PIE-descendant speaker. So very difficult to convey emotion via phonetics.
For me, it's people in movies entering somewhere and NOT CLOSING THE DAMN DOOR BEHIND THEM THE HEAT IS GOING TO GET OUT AAAHHHHHH
There's a scene in The Batman where he visits Catwoman's apartment. I have no idea what they talk about because the refrigerator door is open the entire time and it's so distracting!
I never noticed this but I feel like I will now lol
That varies by location and season - sometimes letting the heat out (or in!) is intended; other occasions, there's little difference between indoor and outdoor conditions. Obviously, if there's snow on the ground, or other indicators of extreme conditions outside, you want to keep the door shut as much as possible, but if you don't have those signs that the conditions on either side of the door are that different, leaving it open is no big deal.
I love Christopher Walken, and I thought he did a good job, but he took me out of dune 2 every scene he was in. Every time it was, "Oh look, Christopher Walken!"
Especially when the Fremen bumped into him and he said "Hey I'm Walken here"
Then proceeded to take a lot of spice. I mean WAY too much spice
I’ve never seen a single movie with him in it until Dune 2, so I just thought he was a good actor and I liked him in it 😂
Or Zendaya. Is she gonna frown in this scene or frown in this scene? I wonder which she'll choose?
Agreed, Walken was a horrible casting choice. Another reason I disliked him in Dune 2 so much was that in the books, the Emperor is described as appearing as an attractive middle-aged despite being so much older in reality. Walken definitely looked old in the movie.
Brandon, do not change. I still use "You've gone kayana sule" a lot in my daily life and my gf too! Elantris untranslated words are a joy.
The ‘I ❤ Moash’ sticker is literal trolling
i read that and just... WTF?
@@CarlosBronze clearly Dan gets enjoyment out of riling people up. You know like a troll. Except instead of the general public it’s his friends fans which is worse.
I don't know if Dan will ever see this, but he could always create a token in place of the character as he's writing. For example, if he wants to write â, he could just write a^ and later use find-replace to change all a^ to â.
I will forever call the fifth stormlight book, knights of wind and truth now, no matter what.
That symmetry is just too cool.
Regarding time and distance, I love the way Malazan handled it. Time is measured in heartbeats, breaths, and Bells(which ring every hour) and distance is measured in paces or in days of travel.
I forgot about the homicidal hat trick in Mistborn.
Spoilers.
It's wild that Vin despite being Elend's wife has killed most of his family.
Sounds like the perfect wife to me, considering his family.
"Storm" as an expletive stills throws me off and I love every Stormlight book
Well, storm you too then! 😂
@@jonathankey6444 it works most of the time for me. Some uses of it seem unfitting.
Haha I think it’s gotten a lot less in your face compared to his earlier books. I don’t remember really noticing it much during Rhythm of War, while early on with every book I’d be like, “okay, what has he replaced ‘fuck’ with now”. Rust! Storm! Sparks! Colors!
"Storms" for the humans, "Songs" for the Singers, and "Shards" for the spren
I never caught on to "maladroitly", but "tempest" is the one that comes to mind for Brandon.
Haha I sure did! By Hero of Ages I started looking for it!
Undulate
Oh man I love maladroitly, haha! Every single one of his books I look for it and cheer when I see it. Does it "bring me out" of the story? Sure, but I still like it. Makes me feel like I'm reading a sanderson novel :)
Reminded me of something I noticed because of the audiobooks for Sanderson. He will often use "Bah!" When trying to have someone dismiss the conversation and change topics. Not something that ruins the work, but now it's started to pull me out and think of all the other times he has used it
0:10 Petition for all spoken percentages to be preceded by a "bing" from now on thanks!
9:16 This happened to me, too. It's actually a large part of why I like audiobooks... It tempers the hypercritical part of my brain. It rarely shuts up completely, but I'm able to enjoy stories a lot more on their terms when I'm listening to them rather than visually reading them.
Whenever I delve too deep into music composition and mastering, for a while when I listen to music all I can focus on are the individual tracks, their balancing, and what the artists must have intended. It is enjoyable in its own right, but can often hamper my enjoyment if I just want to listen to music to relax.
As per Dan's comment about the Green Bone Saga, I fervently disagree. I listened to the first book and some of the second, and could never be swept into it. I found the characters overt stereotypes whose almost every decision was unsurprising, the story played out and uninteresting, and many habits of the author irritating. She had a distinct habit of showing then telling, ruining any of the potentially interesting scenes by then explaining the obvious subtext.
23:52 OH MY GOD YES I definitely took note of the overuse of "maladroitly". Everyone was landing maladroitly in those books haha
Yup!
I listened to the Harry Potter books for the first time last year (long time movie fan), and for me it was JK’s use of describing something as “emerald green” that pulled me out of it 😂 it happened so frequently that I kept taking mental notes as I listened to all seven books over the span of a few months
I just noticed yesterday rereading Elantris that he said "Maladroit" at one point early on
The near perfect palindrome still kinda works though-isn’t that a thing in the world of storm light where they name their kids near perfect palindromes to respect the divine or something?
Yeah, a perfect palindrome would be too prideful so they purposely screw it up by one letter.
Yup, like Shalash and Shalan. Just like Brandon to actually accomplish what he meant to, on accident.
Came here to say that! Way to show humility!
Galodan's "Kolo" and Sezed's "-, I think." felt like great touches for their characters. made them feel unique.
For me at least though its overly flowery prose that pulls me out because i have to focus to figure out what they mean.
As for the Stormlight Ketek. what we are getting works because, if i recall correctly how you made the Alethi naming conventions, while you want it to be symmetrical, you don't want it too symmetrical or it's heretical or heresy. again, if i am remembering correctly.
“Kolo” and “I think” are definitely inspired from Brandon’s time in Korea and I find that really cool and exciting as a Korean learner.
What drives me NUTS on the screen is when the characters order drinks / food, it sits there as the ambiance for a brief dialogue or altercation, and then they just leave it without finishing it. Like, come on. Who does that??? One of the worst offenders I've ever watched is Gilmore Girls!! 😬😂
This one always catches my attention 😭
You haven't seen Maigret with Bruno Cremer then. They drink everywhere, all the time, and take one sip maximum. They even have beer brought in by waiters into interrogations, which no one then drinks. Quelle horreur!
Wind and Truth being a buddy cop movie in book form is my jam
12:36 Localizing is the difference between an alright translation and an excellent translation. It's weird how words can sometimes mean less than the emotions they provoke.
If you are always aware that you are watching a film or reading a book, and can not get lost in that universe for a short period of time, I feel very sorry for that person, because they are missing out on one of the pure joys of life.
Everything that Brandon articulated about the name for Wind and Truth is definitely right and correct and completely valid (and yes, it is definitely a stronger title)… but at the same time it will irk me to NO END that we got SO CLOSE to a symmetrical set of abbreviations for Stormlight 1-5.
But it would be arrogant of him to presume his books were so holy as to approach godly symmetry 😉
As if being a broken palindrome isn't _also_ important in-universe.
While reading I, Claudius, I kept getting kicked out every time someone would mention "the corn." I kept thinking, god, this book generally feels so meticulous, how does he keep making such a basic mistake?
That's when I learned that in the UK "corn" just means any kind of grain...
Point being, sometimes the things that kick people out are entirely unreasonable and there's nothing you can do about it 😂
my favorite episodes are the ones that start of with a genuine greeting “Hey.” “Hey!” “What’s up?” “Finishing these.”
Hearing Dan say "háčeks" brought a smile to my face, I appreciate the recognition of diacritics.
Dan, you should definitely try to include diacritics! The keyboard issue can be worked around-install a Hungarian keyboard on your device, create shortcuts for adding diacritical marks, customizing your autocorrect settings, even doing a find-and-replace after writing change every instance you wrote “Da:n” to become “Dän”… Just try a few strategies to figure out what works. You’d be surprised at how typing diacritics can become as natural as using the shift key to capitalize once you get used to it 😊
These are some of my favorite episodes of this podcast, where you go into some of the background stuff of writing and or telling stories in general.
Honestly, I'm really delighted about the conversation around diacritics!
I actually also struggle with the ease of keyboard usage with them, so I actually keep a separate document open when I write my novel. It has all the common names and the accented letters so I can quickly copy and paste... glad to know i'm not in need of a terribly drastic orthographic overhaul.
I'm going with "Eh, I'm going to fix it in the editing phase, search-and-replace is my friend".
AutoHotKey is a free utility that with relatively simple scripting can ‘capture’ a given string of characters, such as “zoe” and replace it with whatever you want, like “Zoë”.
I had a friend who ran D&D campaigns for years. And one of the beings who would frequently show up in his campaigns was a being who had been around for a long time, was somehow turned into an athropomorphic rabbit, and was completely insane, and yet, over time and experience had become almost god-like in power. And when this being showed up things would be said that would be hilarious, but which in no way fit into the world which we were exploring. The explanation of the entire phenomenon was that this insane being operated in multiple dimensions at once, and when he commented on something that would be nonsense in the D&D world, anyone who heard him also received the background information required to understand what he was saying.
People would interact with this character in the hopes of receiving some powerful magical item, but it was also kind of dangerous, because he *was* very powerful, and if he got annoyed with you, he could do you serious (yet also very funny) damage on a whim. So one character was trying to get himself a powerful item and somehow managed to annoy the being, who suddenly lisped in a cartoon voice something along the lines of "Oh no you don't, I can see right through you ..." at which point I tried to save the party member by jumping in with "That is soooo cool! I wish *I* could see through people!" He instantly opened my body up like a sarcophagus, rummaged inside for a few moments, and handed me a pair of x-ray goggles, which would, indeed, allow me to see the skeletons inside of people, and do nothing else. And since I'd distracted him, things just continued on. Of course the DM later pulled me aside and reminded me "he *is* insane. You could have simply said speaking of X, and changed the subject to anything else, anyway." But then, I wouldn't have x-ray goggles!
Hmm yes, I will indeed be stealing this concept for my campaign.
@6:00 that's the reason my dad liked Oppenheimer lol, every scene there's four new "wait I know that guy" moments
In terms of language it's interesting what kicks people out and what doesn't. Because I think if anyone really tries to avoid things like this you would quickly realize a lot of the language falls apart. English as a language is a combination of latin, german, with some french added in later and a handful of other words from all over. So if you don't have a language in the book that has a similar history it wouldn't form the same way. And you will always have words like Thug which Sanderson uses and doesn't get people kicked out which is from a Hindi origin, and about the same length of time in english as the hat trick, but one people assume is more normal. And you get other words that feel modern like swag that goes back to Shakespeare. I don't know what the good solution is but it is interesting to look at how different things feel wrong to people which doesn't always match the language roots. But regardless of the real roots, it kicked people out and worsened their experience so that matters more than anything else does.
You also start to realize how many words come from religions or cultures or events very specific to our development on Earth. If you were to write that an army was decimated, I don't know if that would kick anyone out. But decimation was a Roman term that we have borrowed, and if you don't have a Roman Empire in your world (you probably don't), where does it actually come from? This is to say nothing about how people swear in fantasy, some of the more common options of which have their roots in terms for religions that don't exist in the fantasy worlds.
Its especially immersion breaking for me when characters who are close to each other don't say goodbye at the end of phone calls in movies/tv. Or if they just had a super emotional conversation, and they just hang up. Its so abrupt and feels angry, and I just cringe every time haha
Thank you for producing this content. I feel fortunate to have this opportunity to learn from accomplished authors!
Words of Radiance Shallan asking how to poop in armor yanked me out of the story so hard my neck still hurts.
Dan and the heavy eye contact into the camera, "I hope everyone." LMAO
I love the "the wandering inn" answer to exotic foods question, which is, "Yes, yes there is a fantasy south america"
Gotta say, I like how FFXIV fixed the measurements translation. They use imperial terms but alter them. An ilm is an inch, a fulm is a foot, a yalm is a yard, and a malm is a mile. They even measure this way in the tooltips though it's abbreviated 10y instead of 10 yalms, but everyone gets it, and it's roughly correct with a meter/yard ingame so you can eyeball it.
Famously Robert Jordan in Wheel of Time had Nynaeve tugging on her braid constantly. She actually only does it ~60 times over the course of the entire series, but TWENTY of those times are in a single book (The Dragon Reborn) so it stood out and made it into a joke that people then took note of every time it happened from then on.
Also whenever a woman "Folded her arms beneath her breasts" (or a similar variant).
If he just said "folded her arms" and left out the "beneath her breasts" probably no one would have noticed the ~120 times it occurs over thousands of pages and a dozen books. But that second part just draws attention and made people notice some variation of "beneath the breasts" phrase appeared like 67 times.
(Brandon added to the total some but was presumably just following the joke, he did it way, way less)
For some reason, the men never folded their arms "beneath their pecs."
@@ChandrewsArt Firstly, no one cares about their pecs. Secondly, 'pecs' is very anachronistic. Thirdly, women folding their arms beneath their breasts vs across is very much a significant distinction.
I find the 555 discussion so fascinating. Ive been so socialized to expect 555 that if I saw a real phone number on the screen, I'd get pulled away as I feel immediately compelled to call it. The 555 concession is so standard to me, it's similar to what you mentioned about "being here to see a movie." I often joke internally about seeing it used, but it would be so disruptive to see a real-world phone number in the fiction.
“A Lot of Kolos” is a great name for a podcast
Whoa! Dan's back and he's MOVING!
The homicidal hat trick was a chefs kiss dark joke. I enjoyed it immensely!
Stan Lee was shown in one of the movies to be an agent of the Watchers, so it makes sense in universe
I mean kinda but he's not a good informant and it raises the question, is he all the same guy ?
@@jaysemitchells497 Kind of confirmed in the same scene since he explicitly mentioned some of the other cameos.
A little awkward since some of the cameos make zero sense being the same and the movies are years or galaxies apart but.... he's obviously a unique being.
a fun term I love comes from the game Final Fantasy XIV, where they wanted their own units of measurements, but didn't want to use Yards and Miles, their solution? just call them Yalms and Malms.
If I asked someone what the sentence "it's about 30 yalms away" means without any additional context, they could probably make that leap, but it still doesn't kick you out for using our own world's units because it doesn't take that much brain load to replace the two because it'll always remind you of the real version.
Reminds me of an NPC in a video game handing an item the the player character and the hands and items are obscured, so the result is just the characters leaning forward and shuffling around a bit.
Brando, I was having a chat with my brother recently. He works in upper management in the video games industry. He says the audience has become political, and many game designers coming into the industry to push their politics and are driving customers away. As sales collapse and people are getting laid off these game designers are deeply regretting their career choices.
You can ignore the politicaztion of the general audience because you're too big to fail. Or are you?
25:28 My GF is Malaysian, they have a few end of sentence sounds. “La” is the biggest one. It’s a word that sort of emphasizes things. ie. “I’m hungry La”. “It’s so hot outside La”
As soon as they talked about word choice that kicks people out, I knew Brandon would mention “maladroitly”.
All authors, published or not, have that one word. (: It can be kind of fun in your own writing group, you get to see that and tease your other writer friends about their pet words.
I would still love a deluxe set with symmetrical abbreviations despite the official title being “Wind and Truth”
I feel like deluxe editions are special enough that we can break the rules a little.
You know, Minnesotans love the ending phrase for sentences. How else would people know the sentence is over? Don't you know?
You betcha!!
What takes me out of Brandon's books are the "snorts" and "growls".
There was a book that used "a million miles a minute" multiple times a chapter. The whole book. It was torture.
The Sun Eaters series by Christopher Ruocchio starts with:
Being the account of the Sun Eater, Hadrian Marlowe of the War between Mankind and the Cielcin. Translated into Classical English by Tor Paulos of Nov Belgaer on Colchis.
I learn so much from these podcasts
One thing that i hate that takes me out of books. I read a lot of sci-fi, often of the "hard" variety. One classic element of sci-fi fandom is certain arguments about the "right" way for space stuff to work, such as complaints about star trek and star wars having pressurized ships in space combat, and that being a liability. I don't mind that different authors go different ways on this, its when these things come up in a book and the way they tell you about it is clearly written as that author making their argument for why it's the "correct" way rather than just relating that that's the way it works in this universe. it can be a tricky line to define, but you know it when you read it.
The kolo's definitely took me out of Elantris, and I still struggle reading that book today because of it. I'm glad you're conscious of it as you move towards the sequels.
yay dan's back. i feel like it's been a while
Two of the names that first come to me are : Teal'c and D'Hara. And both these names/sounds I love
It's the Klingon and Vulcan names for me. B'Ellana, T'Pol, Qo'noS for example. I used to read the books and it was probably even more common for various alien side characters the authors cooked up.
Kree!
A lot of Tress kicks me out, but I think mainly because I binge your BYU lectures and this podcast. I love the book but every time I see a note on the use of language by Hoid or a commentary on the irony of a part of living our lives, I think "Aha! Hi, Brandon!" and then continue enjoying the book, because it is a great read.
Honestly I love the kolo’s because it came off as a character tic of galadon and we don’t really see any more duladens so it doesn’t become annoying. Now it would have been insufferable if there were more duladens and they ALL said it.
In the same vein as the eating in movies and tv. Every coffee cup is empty. Every opaque takeout cup is empty.
Abercrombie loves the words clicked and grimaced. Whenever a new chapter would start in the original trilogy I would always hike to myself about how long it would be before he used those two words.
I like when Steve pacey says "grimaced"
Love the serial killer books, Dan! Bought them shortly after discovering this podcast. There's an embalming scene in book 2 where the main character uses the "jugular artery" and its one of those wierd nitpicky things that kicked me out. (There is no jugular artery, it's jugular vein and carotid artery). I even told myself the main character was smart but not a doctor so it may have been a purposeful decision on your part, but it was still jarring. I constantly recommend your books though!
For me it was filibuster in Mistborn, I was like "that concept wouldn't exist in this society" and edited my e-book to replace that with "delayed".
I was actually thinking about this today while rereading The Lost Metal. Scadriel has mercury and giraffes! Cool!
Dan, if keystrokes are a problem, you can set words to autocorrect to add them for things you type many times.
The only thing I can think of that kicks me out of brandons stories is when he gives characters catchphrases, every time they say their token line I can just imagine echoing laughtracks like its a sitcom.
I felt very jarred by the mental health descriptions and explanations Kaladin used in the latest preview chapters, because it sounded like a lot of insight and specific terms which shouldn't exist in-world according to previous books and the state of psychological knowledge.
@@markvonneumann4 Rosharan scholars have had incredible insight into psychological ailments since Way of Kings - I suspect some of it is due to old advice from the times of the Knights Radiant informing more recent research. This example is from WoR though, as I was just reading it: Kaladin has very modern knowledge of Renarin's epilepsy, including specific subcatagorization of it based on symptoms and when it developed.
The whole "first therapist" thing seems silly to me, in this light.
To be fair it is Hoid saying that though so him using words that shouldn’t exist in alethi is a little more excusable
In Mostly Harmless, the 4th book in Hitchhiker's Guide series, there is an amazing scene which I so much Arthur is confronted by Trillian about something and with her is Random Dent, Arthur and Trillian's Daughter. In this scene Addams does a large aside to explain why he WILL NOT explain this daughter and how unimportant it is to the story to the point that it would have been shorter to just actually explain it. But it was so important how unimportant it is to be explained that Addams did that instead... and that, Agrajag's relationship to Arthur, and Arthur and his new GF taking Marvin to God's last message to his creation were some of the best things ever.
Wasn't that also the book where he spent an entire chapter describing in ridiculous detail how Arthur makes a sandwich?
@@robbybevard8034 I think that was the exact point where Addams was making the argument that you don't need to know everything going on in a character's life.
Totally agree that Channing Taum showing up in Bullettrain but it is not JUST worth watching. Its REALLY good! A really "fun time" of a movie.
You need to watch that movie Brandon.😊
Adonalsium will remember who was first to comment on this video eventually
Everybody in Sanderson books affectionately calls young men “Lad” and if I could have one wish, it would be for him to switch to “kid” “boy” “child” “young man”. Many thanks.
I totally missed the hat-trick reference in Mistborn. But I did do a double take when reading a Forgotten Realms novel where they mentioned Spanish moss. Great discussion!
Spanish moss? More like “Forgot Which Realm” amirite
Neal Stephenson’s Anathem had such a disclaimer at the beginning of the story that the story has been translated.
The hat-trick naming reminds me the Tiffany Problem
What gets me is when a Proper Noun from our world shows up (French Toast or Ottoman). I feel they can either be replaced with a different descriptor (padded footrest) or else an in-universe proper noun (Thaylen Toast)
The word thaylen toast makes me smile for some reason
23:00 "Can't see the food, can you Russ?"
Bullet train is one of my favorite non-serious movies.
Now I’m terrified I’m just going to see the word “maladroitly” everywhere in Mistborn.
I would have just dropped the "the" from the acronym, then it can match with Knights of Wind
Regarding filler words and such.. from what I remember early Naruto translations did this a lot where Naruto ended many sentences with "You know?!", when in japanese it's kind of a handoff word that can be skipped, or translated indirectly.
It’s because his mouth kept moving in the anime too. He ends his sentences with “dattebayo,” which in Japanese makes him sound uneducated instead of just ending with “yo.” The English dub also translated the extra mouth movements as “Believe it!” when Naruto never actually says that in Japanese 😂
“Dattebayo” and “yo” at the end of the sentence show excitement like an exclamation point
Just be happy they didn't localise it into the USian "know what I'm sayin', yo!"
The telephone thing! Yes 😂 never a goodbye
I haven't really noticed the noodle boxes in film/TV but what I do notice is that they very rarely eat/drink anything during a scene where food is involved. They will just hold it etc. I'm guessing this is mostly because people eating isn't very interesting to watch but it could also be for continuity.
I don't know if it's something that people notice so much, but one thing that i absolutly hate about movies and series that totally throw me out and make me realize that i'm watching one, it's that every time a character lights up a cigarrete, they give it two or three puffs and THROW THE ENTIRE CIGARRETE AWAY.
EVERY. DAMN. TIME.
I understand that it's because the actors can't smoke a full cigarrete every time they make a shot, and they do a lot of them, but man... what a way to remind you that you're watching something fake.
I hope that now everybody notices this and gets super mad.
And if someone pours them a cup of coffee, where you can see the liquid, they never drink it.
What pulls me out of a book is when the writer describes something and I think oh you just googled “1600’s tavern” and used the second image.
When I know a work is a translation, I give it waaaay more leeway in word choice or weird sentence structure than something written in English. Same with subtitles; I watch tons of Chinese and Korean media, and there are certain almost conventions in subtitles that arise just from those languages functioning the way they do that sound really weird in English, but it doesn't kick me out, where as if it was the actual line in an English language movie or show, I would be completely thrown out by it.
Those paper coffee cups always take me out when watching shows or movies. Actors always handle them and wave their hands all over the place. I can tell they’re completely empty, because otherwise their hand would move slower and take more care about how they move it. Drives me nuts!
I read a book series where at the start of book 3 the characters are on a train and one of the interesting side character just goes "-and that's how my story happened" And I was like: well why dont you tell me author? Then I found out there was another book not in the main series that was all about that guy story and it pulled me out of the book so fast I never picked it up again. I mean if it's interesting put it in the main series, dont force me to read a book from another author I dont know just so I can know the informations.
I was almost pulled out of the last Skyward book the same way, when a character gets back home and is being told all the amazing exciting things that happened when she was gone. Then I find out I have to read a whole series from another author I dont know and dont have to time to give a chance if they know how to write or not. Forced myself to continue reading but for an hundred pages was pissed man.
I gotta say, the only way 'Wind and Truth' is worth abandoning a meta slam dunk, is if Kaladin and Szeth are literally removed from all conceptual realities during the plot
I LOVED the Bullet Train book the movie was based on way better.
Reading a book before watching the movie pulls me out of enjoying the film sometimes if they do it differently than I had been imagining it.
With 555 numbers I have the exact opposite issue from Dan. If I hear a non 555 my brain goes "oh they put a shity easter egg or arg here," And it rips me right out.
Now we can finally see how the Snackaderms t-shirt ended up