If you weren't a writer, what would you be?
A professor.
Really?
Yeah, my second love is teach. I like teaching, I like speaking, I like being in front of a crowd. its enjoyable to me and so I'm pretty sure that's where I would have ended up. If I hadn't found myself in another art, which is entirely possible.
I was reading Shadows of Self and I think his name is Douglas Venture, how does that work out? I'm not quite sure. I know, so, Elend is not around anymore, and I know his dad wasn't the nicest of people, so is he like a direct descendant?
He is not a direct descendant of Elend. The Ventures were an entire house, so there would have been dozens and dozens of them.
Did you have inspiration for Wit? I just think he's totally funny.
Yeah, it's just hard because Wit started, I started thinking about Wit when I was like fifteen or sixteen. He evolved over all that time. Every time I've laughed a piece of that became Wit, if that makes any sense.
How do you schedule your time?
These days its based on deadlines, so for instance Rithmatist is a side project, I don't have a contract for that. I just write them, give them to the publisher, and say "its time to publish this". Steelheart i sign a three book deal that has dates in it: when i have to turn them in, if that makes sense. So when I have extra time I do something like this, when i don't, you know, when the contract comes through I've given my obligation to the publisher that i'll do certain things, so i write those. That's how it is these days. It used to be more along the lines of whatever i felt like at the time. You know, its now my job when then it wasn't my job, and as my job there are certain things I need to do.
I have an "all the Shards" question. Is how they obtain the Shards the first time affect what kind of magic their Investiture affects?
That's gonna be a RAFO.
Does [Iyatil] use the Shardpools to get between various worlds?
The Shardpools are the primary method that most people use to get between worlds.
I have a question about Iyatil, can you tell me what world she is from originally.
Originally? That is a question i can dodge pretty easily im afraid. Iyatil is not from a world you have seen.
How do you keep motivation for writing in general, because i always have a lot of trouble with that.
Yeah, well that depends on what part of my career you are talking about. Early on I envisioned this cubicle chasing me and if it caught me i'd have to get a normal, boring desk job. That was actually a big motivation to me, because it was like I only had a certain amount of time to do this thing that I loved and if I didnt actually sit down and do it I was gonna have to be a real boy. After i got published and it got a bit hard I started using the carrot philosophy; i would let myself open up a new pack of magic cards if I hit a certain word limit every day.
Oh, thats really cool!
Yeah, and that worked really well during the hard years when I was trying to get through the Wheel of Time. They were great books but they were so hard to write cause they were way harder than writing my own fiction. Now I don't really need that anymore, now its kinda become this thing where I have all these fans who are waiting for things and I have to make good on the promises I've made to them. Now its more like a "i need to do this", so yeah.
Should all the Shardworlds have radios and the like, and progress in that...
Should they? Not yet.
Could they?
Could they? Yes.
You’ve spoken before how DNA exists on multiple different levels in your magic systems. I was curious about something else that I think I read that that the Hemalurgy system actually splices something into the DNA - so what does that imply for heritability of those?
So, it is not inheritable when it's Hemalurgic because it's splicing. It's basically ripping off a piece of the soul and spiking it on someone else's. So, it would not transfer.
The metals used in Allomancy are they naturally occurring on Roshar?
They do.
And all the alloys as well?
Yes, the magics would...oh, all the alloys in Roshar naturally occurring… The magic of Mistborn is related to the actual metals' structure being the key. So, you can use metals from other worlds, there's no actual power in the metal. The metal is like a password.
Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs test?
I have. That's the one that's like the letters. I am whatever the Mastermind is.
INTJ?
Yeah.
[Is OreSeur...] she wanted to know if there's a worldjumper who's the same species?
Yes, there are and several of them have, but they tend to be homebodies, but there are some who have gone off.
*inaudible*...Wit and Hoid are two different people and one is just going by the other's name.
Oh. Okay. There have been other people named Hoid, before, in the past, but you have never met them.
If you could ditch the entire Cosmere, *laughter* what would you write about?
Start fresh?
Twilight fanfiction.
Yeah, there you go, Twilight fanfic. That's...
Brandon Fifty Shades of Grey would be much tamer. *laughter*
The problem is, I don't think my Fifty Shades of Grey would hit quite the same demographic.
You'd have a great magic system, though. *laughter*
Yeah, it would. It would just be a magic system based on different colors of grey and what they do. *laughter*
Sorta like Warbreaker.
I have no idea what I would do, I'm sure I could find something, but it would probably turn into another cosmere.
What happens if you burn atium at the same time as cadmium or bendalloy?
That would be really cool to see. *laughter* Here you go, you can have a RAFO card.
In Stormlight, are there lovespren?
Lot of people've been asking about this. There are passionspren. Lovespren, I haven’t really talked about much...
Does Tia know Professor’s weakness?
Yes. Tia does know Professor's weakness.
Could you tell me when the Ghostbloods were founded?
Yeah. I’m gonna RAFO that.
My question is about Jasnah, and why she tried to assassinate Elhokar’s wife?
Well, you’re going to need to get to know Elhokar’s wife a little better before you get an answer for that. But understand that Jasnah is very deliberate in her choices, and protecting her family is one of her most important personal mandates.
Would you ever want to write an episode for Doctor Who?
I would consider it. But I don’t have enough screenplay writing background right now, I'd have to work with someone else. Does that make sense? If they had a good screenwriter who could work with me, then yeah.
I know you mentioned online in a couple places that Kelsier is still around meddling, are you planning on having him meddle in a little more overt manner any time soon?
That’s a RAFO. A big, big RAFO.
On the coppermind it states specifically that Nightblood is fueled by Investiture, would that mean that an Allomancer burning, say, steel, could then [draw] Nightblood and fuel it off of that?
Yes, Nightblood would feed off that Kinetic Investiture, you could make that work. You would have to keep that portal open, and he would eat the power instead of whatever you were planning to do with it, and when you ran out of metal he’d kill you.
Would that also work with say...whatever you have in a Coppermind or metalmind?
Yes, yes, theoretically you could make that work too. That’s an excellent question, you’re the first to ask that.
What’s your most terrifying character, and why is it Nightblood?
Ha. Nightblood is pretty terrifying… You know, an object created to destroy evil but doesn’t know what it is?
When you brought it back...I had <to like shut the book> a little bit and like, scary.
I wanted you to think that Nightblood in the hands of Szeth should be one of the most terrifying things that you have ever contemplated.
Regarding Hemalurgy and its basis in the Pits of Hathsin being Ruin’s body, my theory is that Kelsier gained his Mistborn powers from being in the Pits of Hathsin.
It’s a good theory. I’m not going to confirm or deny it. It is a very good theory.
Do you just get all the small little bits and pieces from just the way people talk about him as the Survivor, so *inaudible* theory... Are we ever going to see it confirmed or denied?
It is possible that you will, but you will see...I’ve got somethings that I want to write about Kelsier.
Please, that would be amazing.
You have not seen the last of that man, I want to write some stuff that happened.
Is there meant to be a direct connection between the efficiency for transferring Breaths and the stamp magic from The Emperor’s Soul?
There's not meant to be a direct correlation only in that the magics both work on the same fundamental rules, like all of them do.
Okay.
I wasn't specifically linking those two in any way in my head when I was working on them.
Okay, because I was just wondering with the fact that the stamps work better with what there supposed to be like...and the Breath work better--
Yeah. That's just a fundamental of the Cosmere, the whole idea of perception, what you're thinking, how much something matches what you're doing, and how well you're able to visualize what you want to have happen. This is all related in the cognitive aspects of the magic, basically, and the spiritual, I suppose.
In the <third Stormlight book>, are we going to learn more about the Ghostbloods, and about the organization Mraize is in?
Yes, and yes.
So, you know when Feruchemists increase their weight or strength, something like that, [...] like when they're increasing their strength their muscles literally grow bigger, why does that not happen with Allomancy?
So, the idea with Feruchemy, in Feruchemy you're storing like your own physical strength. So, when you're filling the metalmind, you kind of shrink *inaudible* and you get it back. With Allomancy, you are drawing on the strength magically from something else and so the power and strength you're getting is actually not related to your muscles, it's related to the magical power, you're pulling directly from another place. So, that's why.
I remember in, I believe it was Hero of the Ages, when Sazed was helping TenSoon escape. When he had fallen on the guard, he said that, by increasing his weight he also increases his density so he doesn't <hurt> himself. Then in The Alloy of Law, it also says that when Wax increases his weight he said that he didn't.
So, Sazed is just making a mistake. He's mistaking the fact when he increases his weight his musculature changes to be able to handle the new weight and that was what he was talking about. Strength and muscle tone and things like that. I might have just gotten it wrong in the original one [scene], I can't honestly remember, but this is what we kinda decided it needs to be.
In Elantris, so, if the people are dead they don't have any pulse, right?
They do not have a pulse.
So, wouldn't all the blood just go straight to their legs?
You know, I worked out a few things on this. In order to make what I was doing work I didn’t want to zombify them too much, and so I would give them like a blood pump, like a pulse of the heart, very softly, like every couple of minutes or something like that, and remember they’re being sustained directly by the magic so I was able to fudge some of the stuff. There’s some other things that would happen, like the gas would cause them to expand and... I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t want them to go all the way to zombie, and so I made some basic metabolic processes happen, but more magically caused than physically.
How are beta readers chosen?How are beta readers chosen?
Mostly off 17th Shard and my Facebook page, Peter watches for people making comments and being involved.
In The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, you covered the relationship between Shardblades and spren...you never get around to Shardplate.
I’m saving that one on purpose, it’s a gun on the mantle, or armor on the mantle. So, you will eventually find out what’s going on there, okay?
So, Metalminds: if you store weight, how does that work, do you decrease your mass or...?
So, storing weight actually plays with your mass, because if you look at how we do the physics of it… This one is really screwy, because we are changing mass and playing with it. You watch, like with Wax decreases his weight while he's in motion he'll speed up, and if he increases it, he'll slow down. The conservation of momentum and things like that, but we'll doing really weird stuff. It's like, how can you store your mass… Well, in the magic system it works, but it’s one of the weirdest things we do. *pauses to sign book* We kind of play loose and free with the physics sometimes. Like the example that I often use is Wayne doing a speed bubble, the light that is trapped in the speed bubble...like if he turns on a flashlight would actually radiate because of the redshift, and you could just kill everybody by flashing that. So, we make the speed bubbles not cause a redshift for that reason. We kind of work with what is good storytelling first, and then work the physics around it, but we have to put in all these little breaks and things like that in there regularity in order to actually have the story.
If you had to pick one character to have dinner with, who would it be?
I’d pick Sazed. It would not be Kelsier, cause he’s kind of scary, and it would not be Hoid cause he would make fun of me.
I almost have a little bit of trouble understanding the difference between the Lighteyed and the darker...How did you come up with it?
I wanted to have some kind of racism in the books that was removed from the racism we have in our world, so I could talk about it in a more isolated way related to the books; and so, having it based on eye color made sense because the Voidbringers have these glowing red eyes and the Heralds have these bright eyes. So, this idea of eye color being related to your level of nobility, which is not true, but it entered the culture and became the form of racism and prejudice that they use.
Was it a deliberate move on your part to make it such that on Scadrial, people who wear aluminum foil hats actually are safe from mind control?
Yeah, yeah that was a big inside joke. *laughter* When I realized it would work, I had to put it in. *pause* I’m doing some fun things. The gun thing is another one I’m very fond of.
I was one of your beta readers. So, I wanted to know whether Lord Harms ever got off the roof?
Lord Harms. Yes, I did because people were so--*grumbling* 'Lords Harms Lord Harms'. Alright. Fine. So, I mentioned Wax saying, "go get Lord Harms back," or something like that. I did put it in at some point.
Is the key to the [Oathgates] dead spren?
*dry laughter* That’s an excellent question, you will actually find out a lot more about the Oathgates when you see them from the cognitive side.
If Kelsier had been born on Roshar, would he have become a Knight Radiant and if so...?
I think there’s a possibility that some of the orders might want him, but it really depends on what period he was born in, and what he’s up to, because Kelsier's got this dark edge to him where he could go villain very easily, depending on what’s going on with him. *pause* That’s kind of how I view Kelsier’s defining attribute, if channeled correctly he’s a great force for good, but he’s like right on the line.
How did Marsh survive for so three hundred years and *inaudible*?
Compounding atium. He got a little pouch that one of the kandra gets sent out with if you watch, and then Marsh shows up and he has the pouch.
<When is that>?
Go look for the little pouch of atium.
In Well of Ascension, Zane: how and when did he get spiked?
That is an excellent question. That someday I will answer, but not right now.
I was wondering if you were planning on writing anything else in the Elantris world?
Yes. There will be some more [clipped off]. Yeah. I'm going to do some more full books. I'd like to get Shai into things a little bit more, but I don't wanna ruin The Emperor's Soul by writing a bad sequel. Mmhmm, you know, it just turned out so well.
Calamity, it is just, because it talks about it always being in the sky. Is it hovering above North America or is that a global thing?
You will find out in the next book.
I was wondering if there was any update on the movies, similar to video games?
The movies are moving along better. They're taking some time, but they are moving along better. I think, right now the farthest along are going to be Steelheart and Emperor's Soul.
Okay. Are they like in production right now?
No. They are in screenplays. So, yeah, nothing's really gotten done.
Are you writing the screenplays?
I'm writing the treatments.
Okay.
I don't want to write the screenplays but I can do the treatments.
Thing about Stormlight, are you kinda writing a series about the nature of abstraction?
Kinda yeah see…*recording paused* journey before destination.
Yeah, that is my favorite, so far. I mean I don’t know all the orders yet. Because that is...I’m looking forward to the rest of it.
It is, the nature of abstraction and that sort of stuff is a very big part of it.
Are Steelpush and Ironpull strictly momentum conserving
I believe they are, Peter has the math, but I believe that they are. You are not losing anything to the cognitive and spiritual realms, if that’s you are asking. You are pulling energy from those places, but only to cause the push/pull.
There is quantitative difference in Allomancy (e.g. Elend is stronger than Vin), there is skill difference (e.g. Breeze is better than Vin with zinc), but is there a qualitative difference too?
That’s the scale of what we call savant. Wax can do more with less. It’s not just skill, the burning for long, using for so long, will actually adapt your soul to the power.
So can bronze savants pierce copperclouds?
Yes, a bronze savant should be able to pierce copperclouds. It depends on the strengths of the coppercloud and the strength of the savant, but yes.
So Elend could theoretically learn to pierce copperclouds?
Weaker ones, yeah, totally. He can learn how to do it by brute force.
Is aluminum shielding from emotional Allomancy strictly line of sight? So, can someone in the basement bypass somebody’s aluminum hat on the first floor
No, they could not. You just put enough aluminum there and it disrupts.
So it disrupts like a field.
Yep.
Navani’s emotion fabrial, are those correspondent to the Thaylen Passions in any way?
Yes, but the Thaylen Passions would’ve come second to some of this.
So through a cultural filter?
Yes. There is no magic to the Thaylen Passions, they are a religion but with no magical component. Sometimes a religion is just a religion.
Is crem something like spren poop? Or similar, because I know poop is important.
It's more like... Yes, but it’s more like... Shard poop?
