Hello Mr. Stewart. Isaac? Lord Ruler?! Well, anyway, I am very excited to hear that you are working on a Mistborn book! Can you give us any updates on your progress? Hope you are well!
Very kind of you to ask! I just passed 100k words and am very excited by how it's all coming together.
For a theoretical Stormlight live action adaptation, it seems like it would be difficult to accomplish filming outdoor scenes while eliminating any signs of plant life that would be completely out of place on Roshar. Would you be open to changing elements of Roshar's ecology to make adaptation easier?
I would not have to do that, considering the budgets that we have been regularly offered. We can digitally remove plants. The real answer to that is, we digitally remove plants; and that's expensive, but that's what we do. There's some places in southern Utah that we can film that are gonna look real good for the Shattered Plains. And then the other places that we would have to film, we can do volume stages for, or things like that. I don't think it's as hard to do as you say
The bigger issue we have discussed, when some people have been pitching on Stormlight live action, is the spren. How many spren do you put into a scene? Those are pretty expensive (as these things go) effects, and how much are we gonna use, and how do you adapt that? And how do you not make the spren look like Looney Tunes, with someone getting hit on the head and stars spinning around their head, right? We all imagine them not being that, but you gotta make sure that it works. A lot of what's happening with spren is pretty surreal. How do you adapt that and and what's our budget for that? Those are questions that have come up.
Just out of curiosity, what's your current plan on potentially writing other books while you write [Mistborn] Era Three? You've mentioned in the past potentially squeezing in other books between those three books.
Still thinking I might do that. Tor wanted me to set out my schedule, 'cause we're getting ready to sign the contacts for Era Three with Tor. (Our contracts are weird, let's just say. Sometimes we just hand them books, sometimes we do it ahead of time. But this time we're doing it ahead of time.) And they wanted delivery dates, and I said, "I am writing the whole trilogy before I release the first book." It's what I've wanted to do ever since I wrote Era One, I wanted to do this again. So Era Three is going to be a trilogy, written, that won't get released. And I know I'm going to need a break between books to do other things. And so I'm still thinking that I'll do some of these books that I've been promising people in between, and then release them in some order. It's possible I could write these books, and they could be released while I'm finishing Era Three.
But it's looking like Era Three... it's gonna be a little while. We are pretty sure Stormlight Five is 2024 now. I do apologize on that; though I have been writing on that. These weeks, I only get three and a half days to write, a lot of times. There's so many other things that I need to be doing. Stormlight Five is moving along, but there's too many things going on with it, and I had too many movie things happen this year, it slowed me down, and so we are sure it's 2024 at this point. And then that means, where do we put Era Three? I want to write all three books, I want to have a little time in between each one to write something else. I want the Era Three books to be around two hundred thousand words like Era One was, not a hundred thousand words like Era Two; just feels like the right length. They could get longer than that; they could end up at two fifty or even three hundred thousand. So that's gonna take me a couple of years of writing before I even get them done and ready to go out.
So, you're gonna get an ending to Era Two. And then you're gonna get an ending to Skyward. And then you're gonna get an ending to Stormlight. Where, there are still things going on in those settings and worlds, but you're gonna get three pretty sizeable endings in a row. And then, we're probably going to be doing other interesting things for a while before you end up getting into Era Two of Stormlight and Era Three of Mistborn. Interesting things such as: a prose version of White Sand that is actually revised and looking good, a non-Cosmere collection of fiction. Dark One, the novelization, is another thing that you can look forward to; my original outline, I'm working on it with Dan Wells, with turning it into a novel, and I'm very pleased with how that's going. These things are gonna have to fill the void while Brandon works on Era Three. And potentially Nightblood and potentially Elantris sequels.
Do you have concerns about constraints on your time over the next twenty years? What books do you plan to write between Stormlight Six and Ten?
That's a good question. I have concerns; I absolutely have concerns. This is definitely the biggest challenge of my career, is fitting everything in. What do I plan to write then? That's a good time for Dragonsteel. Whether I can do Dragonsteel concurrent, because Dragonsteel is so involved (this is the Hoid origin series), whether I can do that concurrent or not is a big question. I might need something a little lighter, meaning fewer viewpoints, shorter novels in between. Which would lend itself toward another era of Mistborn, as I've told people.
But there's also the possibility that I write other interesting things. For those following the Secret Projects, there is definitely... two of them are related in an interesting way. And another one of them implies lots more, and I won't promise that I'm going to, but these are all things that maybe I will end up doing more of. Consider them all finished, and you can't ask me "when are you gonna do this?" because there are no promises. But who knows what will pop out of the brain.
Would you ever consider using the medium of film or TV to tell a Cosmere story that's not based on a book already published, but you write the screenplay for instead?
Yes, I would consider that. As a fan of cinema and of the modern era of television (which is just very long movies, which I just love how that's become the thing that people do now), then I can absolutely see myself doing this. I want to get more experience with it before I would try that, but the original pitch for Dark One (that is a graphic novel, and which we are now writing as a novel) was written as... not scripts, but an outline for a television series. That's how I originally, just... I was starting to work on it, I'm like, "This works so much better this way, this way, this way." So I outlined it that way. So I've kind of done it before. It wasn't Cosmere, and it didn't ever get made, and it wasn't a script, but it was a step that direction. So, absolutely can see that.
And, you know, there's other things. For instance, I would like to make an Emperor's Soul movie, if the Cosmere ever takes off to the point that people are wanting something other than Mistborn and Stormlight. (Which, I totally understand why people want Mistborn and Stormlight first.) When they have done that and are like, "All right; what else do we have here?" I would like to do an Emperor's Soul. But I'm probably not gonna do Emperor's Soul as the same piece (and I've told people this before) where it is one person in a room the entire time. I would turn it into something that preserves the spirit of that, but is in a lot of different sets, a lot of different locations, with a larger cast, and turn it into something that feels cinemated. That's the one that I would adapt the heaviest, if I were doing that. There's thing like that that I would also like to do that are based on something, but basically I'd say, "What did I love about the piece I wrote? How can I make this for a new medium?" And I would start over with a new script.
Back in 2014, you mentioned you'd already written the epilogue to Stormlight Five.
I have.
Do you still plan to use what you wrote back then? Or have you had to scrap that version because of changes to the plan?
I have come up with some better ideas for how I want that to play out. So I don't know if that actual epilogue will end up in there or not.
Now, the epilogue is different from the [postlude]. We have the prelude; in Stormlight Five, you will have a [postlude], as well. That will be different from the epilogue, just like the prologue was different than the prelude.
I think that you will be the one who might write the story [for The Arcanist]. Will you be shaping it like a novel? Or more like thinking, because you have all of the experience with the graphic novel, into something that is going to be translated into a graphic novel, as well?
I don't know yet what we will be doing with that. I have a lot of notes for what we're calling The Arcanist, but it might wind up having a title that has echoes of White Sand so that it feels like a duology. But also, we want people to be able to pick up The Arcanist and be able to say, "You can read this one without reading White Sand, if you want to."
We've batted around several different ideas of: do we do it in a graphic novel? Do we do it as a novel and a graphic novel that comes out at the same time? And I don't know if we've really landed on anything that we're going to do at this point, for that. I would like to write it as a novel, and see what happens. There's also something fun about the idea of developing it as a novel and a graphic novel simultaneously; I know that there will be people who have read the graphic novel who would like to continue that story in graphic novel form. So, I wouldn't be surprised, if we get to this one, if it winds up being in both forms. But I don't know exactly at this point what we will do with that.
The process of me coming to write more in the Cosmere is very organic. I've been in writing groups with Brandon since probably 2005, off and on. I was there reading Mistborn from very early on to be able to make the maps, but also giving feedback on the manuscripts and giving Brandon ideas on how to expand the world visually. So I've been kind of part of the creation process. I don't want to take more credit than credit is due, but designing Luthadel (the map), designing symbols for that world, and working really closely with Brandon on that.
When I started working at Dragonsteel, we hit a point with Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning where there wasn't enough time to finish the broadsheets for that. And I saw, with all of the projects, that was a very busy year for us with Shadows of Self coming out three months before Bands of Mourning. I saw that I needed to step up and do the broadsheet, possibly. So I started putting it together, talked to Brandon, he's like, "Yeah, why don't you try. Give it a shot." I sat down and I wrote an Allomancer Jak short, Gentleman Jak in the City of Fountains. And I thought it turned out really fun; I think I was able to capture the voice of Allomancer Jak. It was a little bit wacky, which I always infuse my stories with a little bit of wackiness. And it was a lot of fun, and so Brandon was like, "Yeah, this turned out great. Let's do the next broadsheet." So I started really kind of writing in the Mistborn world with the broadsheets, so it's just kind of grown organically over time.
I've had a bunch of stories in my head that I'd wanted to tell for a really long time, and I realize that a lot of the underpinnings of magic and things that are in my stories are similar, or maybe have been influenced by Brandon. Because at this point in my life, my fantasy writing is just influenced by what Brandon has already done because I'm just exposed to it all the time. So we started talking about the idea of porting some of the ideas that I had into Cosmere worlds. And one of these was Boatload of Mummies, which was actually inspired by a Lego set. I had this big giant ship that my brother and sister-in-law had given me one year for Christmas, and that sort of spurred me on to starting to get more Lego sets again, because I loved them when I was a child. But somehow, we also had all of these Egyptian Lego sets, and I had tons of mummies. And I'm like, "What am I gonna do with these mummies?" So I put them all on the boat, fighting the British Empire on this boat. And I'm like, "Huh, this is really interesting. I kinda want to see what that story is. It's kind of like Snakes on a Plane, but it's Mummies on a Boat." So that inspired that, and I started writing that set in our world. And I didn't get very far before I had to do other things; I usually am always working on a fiction project, and that's probably about the time that I was working on Jacob's Journal of Doom, and some of these other things. So I put it on the back burner. But Brandon and I decided that that story was a lot of fun, and how could that work in the Cosmere? And so we started brainstorming some ideas. We already had this character, Nicelle Sauvage (which Allomancer Jack calls Nicki Savage.) I already had this character that I had sort of started developing in the Mistborn world, and we'd seen her through the broadsheets. And so we thought, "What if she was the main character of Boatload of Mummies?" And then, where would this book be set time-wise, and what are the events, the Cosmere underpinnings that are going on there?
...
Atfer I finished that [the White Sand omnibus], I'm like, "Okay, Boatload of Mummies. Let's do that, now." So that's where we're at right now. How do we make a mummy in the cosmere? That's a question, right? What are they doing, why are they there? All these questions come together, and we're forming a story around that. I'm about 90,000 words into it. I massively overwrite, so it'll probably be a fairly long book that we'll then trim down to around 100,000 words. And then we'll see; we'll run it through betas, we'll run it through groups here at work. We'll see if it's something that's good enough to publish. I'm interested in seeing if I can whip it into shape.
I should also mention that one other step in between there [Isaac's Mistborn stories] was working on the White Sand omnibus, which was a huge undertaking. I went back and I read all of Brandon's earlier works set on White Sand. His first novel was White Sand; we call that one White Sand Prime. His third novel was a continuation of that called Lord Mastrell. And then his seventh or eighth novel was also White Sand (which is out in the world as an unedited manuscript), which is what the graphic novel's based on. So I went back to all three of those, reread them, created a giant database of names, what happened, what the differences are, things like that. And then I reread the graphic novel with all of this information at my side, and then decided, "Okay, what do we need to do with the Cosmere graphic novel to really update it and bring it really cohesively into the Cosmere?"
At that point, that's when I wrote about thirty-eight new pages of material. Some of that's based on what was in the manuscript. And some of that are new scenes that I added because I felt like we needed a friendlier introduction to certain characters. Like Kenton, I wanted him to be really sympathetic from the get-go, which is something Brandon would have done (as I talked with him) if he were to revise that manuscript. So I developed a scene that I added at the beginning to try to develop him a little bit more. Adapting another scene with Khriss and Baon to develop her as a character a little bit more, and then be able to carry these scenes in the prologue through to the ending.
So, in addition, we have fourteen new Ars Arcanum pages from Khriss that I wrote and ran through beta groups, ran through the company. So I'm working on writing in the Cosmere already.
Will we ever see Marsh world hopping?
RAFO, but good question.
I’d love to see a book with Marsh in Roshar. Any chance of it happening?
There is a chance, but I'll have to RAFO for now.
This question concerns Mistborn Era 2. Aluminum at this time is supremely rare and quite expensive, and Wax is seen lamenting his profound lack of aluminum guns and bullets fairly often. However, couldn't he fashion a "Poor Man's Aluminum" of sorts by coating his guns (and potentially bullets) in a thin veneer of iron, then Feruchemically charging it? You've noted that metalminds can still be pushed, but much less than un-Invested metal. This could help him, in the absence of aluminum. So, is there a reason he has not done that?
The layer you would get by just that little coat would be so small that it'd have very little effect. Now, there's a pretty good argument for putting it into bullets. The problem there is: are the alloys that make good bullets going to work very well? Now, granted, aluminum doesn’t make for great bullets either. But any aluminum alloy kind of gets the property of aluminum. Where any iron alloy does not necessarily get the property of being able to allomantically or feruchemically interact with it in the right way. Can you get there? It's an excellent question that I perhaps should explore. I like this idea. But it's harder than you make it out to be. It is a good idea, though; it's a pretty good idea.
In regards to the perpendicularities in the cosmere, were you at all inspired by the pools in the Wood between the Worlds in C.S. Lewis’ “The Magicians Nephew”?
So it's gotta be back there in the back of my brain, but I so vaguely remember the Magician's Nephew that I didn't even remember these exist, when you're saying that. So the answer is a solid “maybe.”It might be there in the back of my head.
I wrote the pool into Elantris not even knowing what it did, because the cosmere had not been constructed at that point. And then when I was building the cosmere, I was writing Mistborn, I'm like, "All right, I know I want it to be some sort of portal." (I actually did know that, because I had put iconography in about it being a portal.) I'm like, "Where does it leave? All right, I'm going to build out the whole cosmere. I now know what these are." I had a pool like this in Aether of Night that I had as kind of a receptacle for a certain cosmereological things (or what became a certain cosmereological thing). I solidified that, but it's not like the pool that I wrote into Elantris when I put it there. Aether of Night was after Elantris; I just put it in there. "It's a portal to something" I had not built the cosmere yet. It is the first book where I started to think about that sort of stuff. Basically, you have a Hoid appearance, and that's it that was intentional; everything else was retrofitted onto Elantris.
Which of your worlds would you most and least want to live in?
Whenever I get this question, I say, “Can I go write quickly a short story in a really nice world where nothing is wrong, they have the internet, and authors can make a professional living as a novelist? Can I do that? I'll go quickly write one up and go live there." Because I don't really want to live in any of the worlds. I like air conditioning. Air conditioning isn't a thing in basically any of the cosmere worlds. You can make it work with various magic systems, but in most cases, to make it work with those various magic systems, you're going to have to be pretty high up in the social structure. Because most of these worlds have not gotten equality and things down, even to the level that we have. These worlds are not necessarily great places to live. And then beyond that is, generally there is some world ending event and/or disaster coming that I wouldn't want to be around for.
If I have to pick, I usually say Scadrial because they are closest to the tech level I want. But they are also the most commonly subject to world-ending things, because there's gonna be four series, at least, in the Mistborn world. Maybe Nalthis would be better, because the fewer books I write about a place, probably the less likely the world is to end anytime soon.
It is definitely not Threnody. We'll just say that.
In my country (Chile), rural folks use the word "gancho" in exactly the same way The Lopen uses it. Did you know about it and put it into Stormlight? Or was it a coincidence?
It's an absolute coincidence. This is like when I found out that Elend and Straff... I built them using morphemes out of Germanic, not knowing that they're actually words in German (or close to words). No, I just built it out of the morphemes that I was looking for in Spanish, 'cause Herdazians, I'm using Spanish (particularly South American hispanic culture) as kind of an origin, a little bit of Mexican in there, to build them. And I just built the words using the sound morphemes, not even the meaning morphemes. And I guess I did a good job.
After reading Mistborn, Elantris, and Warbreaker, I couldn't help but notice some recurring themes. What is it that entices you so much about the concept of living gods?
The idea of the Cosmere, the fundamental idea of the Cosmere, was: power of deity put in the hands of ordinary people. That is the Shattering of Adonalsium; that is the origin of the Shards. So when I built the Cosmere, that became one of the key themes of the Cosmere. And so, to tie all of these different books together (that are happening on different planets with different themes and characters and plots), I wanted some few things to link together. And that big linking connective tissue is: what do people do when they have the power of a god? Or even just a little fraction of it. What do they do with it? What happens? How do we explore that? And that theme is a connective tissue binding the Cosmere together, which is why you see me coming back to it time and time again.
When is Kelsier coming back to Fortnite
Kelsier will return. I can't promise when, but Kelsier will return.
Why DIDN'T the Rithmatists in Nebrask create a moat of acid?
A moat of acid around such a large perimeter proved too difficult to maintain. Acid loses its, well, acidity when it becomes adulterated with other materials--like rain. A moat of acid is just super hard; harder than water. They do, in places, have at least things like that. However, manpower and battle lines have proven the most efficient method to them so far.
There are problems with this, and they're learning that they have underestimated their enemies. But the moat idea proved untenable, though it was discussed and tried in microcosm.
Will there ever be a TV show for the way of kings?
Eventually, it is likely to happen. I entertained several offers on it this year. I don't feel the time is right, however.
If you could invite another author in to contribute to the Cosmere, who would it be or who would be on your shortlist?
To write in the Cosmere, I would have to pick someone I know very well. Isaac is at the top of the list, he knows Cosmere almost as well as I do. After that I would probably look towards my friends, like Dan Wells would be high on the list. It would be nice to have all these amazing authors write in it but I feel I need more of a solid base than what I have right now. Meaning more expansion, more experience of people who are not me writing in the Cosmere and guidelines on how to make a good Cosmere story. It would be very hard to go to some of the great Sci-fi authors and ask them to write in the Cosmere, like “you only have to read 15 novels!”
You've teased that we might get movie/television news before too long...
With so much of the cosmere left to write, are you concerned about movies/shows catching up to you? Would you make them hold off on a Stormlight Archive show until you finish, or are you comfortable letting adaptations get ahead of you?
It depends on how comfortable I get with the television and movie format. When Stormlight happens as a television show, I want to be deeply involved. I want to write some of the episodes, I want to be co-creator--and I am just not ready for that yet.
If that is the place where we are (me being that deeply involved) then getting ahead of me is not that big of a deal. If it is not, if I'm not so deeply involved, I think I would resist letting people get ahead of me. This is tied up with some intricacies of how I am creating the cosmere--which lets me play with this a little. For example, we aren’t calling the first 5 Stormlight books era 1, but there is a 10 year time jump between books 5 and 6. So if I were to sell Stormlight, I could conceivably sell the first five--which will be finished fairly soon. (Knock on wood.) Then we will see how things go with the back five, afterward. (If I'm done with them, for example, or if we need to wait between the two series.)
Regardles, jofwu, I am worried about this; it is something on my radar.
How much of Roshar, its history and its magic system did you have developed before even writing the first book? I’ve seen so many inconsistencies from other authors when developing worlds over multiple books, but I can’t fault yours. How do you maintain that consistency when writing?
I actually did make some problems with timeline issues. That is a problem when you have multiple flashbacks, it’s like Tetris, a very complicated game of Tetris. Getting all these events in people’s pasts to line up with the time needed to get them where they are today is a big issue when telling this kind of story. For me, Stormlight is a different beast from my other books, my friends and I have an inside joke we call worldbuilder’s disease. It’s where an author spends so much time building their world that they don’t write the story. If you don’t sit down and write you won’t learn what the needs of the book are. Generally, your worldbuilding should be done in service of the story* (*: if that is fun to you). Generally you want to ask, what are the themes of my book and how is the worldbuilding going to help me. I tell you all this to say that I made an exception to Stormlight, I sat down for 6 months and wrote an extensive lore book which is now an internal wiki which we use. The only reason that this worked the way it did was that I brought on a great team quickly. Karen and Peter are the unsung heroes of this, they are able to spot these mistakes before they reach print. You’ll see in the next book that I have brought on people whom I am calling Arcanists. These are fans who I have asked to check over specifically world building. This is very important to me because epic fantasy is about making you believe that it is real while you are reading. I don’t want to be one of those people where this is an inconsistency and breaks like William Shatner on SNL.
If you were to write Mistborn now, as an experienced author rather than as your first published series, what differences would you have made to the story/world/characters?
A couple things. There are 3 regrets, well maybe 4. I really wanted to write the first book about Vin and have a female protagonist and do a good job with that. It's something I'd done poorly in the past (during my unpublished years) and I really wanted to do a good job on this one. But then, I made her the only woman on the cast, really. So I would fill out the cast with more women.
I got tunnel vision and because all the stories I was using as blueprints (Ocean’s 11, Sneakers, the Sting, etc) had overwhelming male casts, I defaulted to that. This is the problem with bias--you end up perpetuating problems, just kind of going along with them because that's what you've always seen done.
That is not to say that having an all male cast is bad. In some cases, chosen deliberately, it makes sense. I would not change Bridge 4; as bridgemen, it makes sense to have an all male group. (At least at the start.) But with Mistborn, I was actively using Vin as a way to show that with the metallic arts evening out things, the difference between male and female strength was minuscule. By having no other women on the team, I undermined my own message.
Another one is that I think that I broke Sanderson’s first law. I used un-foreshadowed power in the ending and it led to a less satisfying conclusion than I would have liked. This is actually what taught me I needed to better with this, and if you watch my lectures on Sanderson's Laws, I lay it out more clearly.
Third, in the first half of Hero of Ages, I don't like quite how much traveling there is. I don’t think it gets across the feel that I want. I would have set more in Luthadel. It feels out of place in retrospect because that story (the story of Mistborn) is sort of the story of that city. I could had the same book, but set it in a fortress within Luthadel. That would make the city's "character" remain in the third book, and let you see the progress (or in this case, the opposite) of the world through the way the city looks.
When I make a film of Mistborn 3, I think I would move much of the action to the city.
Some very successful authors have difficulty in delivering books to wrap up the series. Why do you think this happens, and what is the best attitude and healthy behaviours die hard fans should use to encourage authors to deliver the books they are hanging out for?
Anytime you get into “should”, that is dangerous ground. I am a creator and I do not think I should be dictating fan behavior. That’s your world as a community to decide upon; I prefer to let the community do it's thing.
I do not think there is one good answer to this. (IE, why other authors are sometimes slow.) One common answer is that it has been a hard decade for a lot of people. Man, there are often difficult things about this last decade that have been draining to people. Then add on to that personal issues, and it is very hard for some of my colleagues to be creative in the way they have to be to write a novel.
Another big reason is that many authors tend to be “discovery writers.” Their biggest strength tends to lie in character interaction and believability in those characters. They give their characters so much volition. A discovery writer does not know their ending, they just start writing and let the characters interact. While those interactions often shine, the authors often have weaker endings. That is not to say that all discovery writers have bad endings, it just takes much more revision. It tends to be very daunting and slows them down towards the end. It is simply an outgrowth of their writing style.
Add on top of that expectations, and maybe never having finished something on this level before, and suddenly your stress is through the roof. These authors, I should remind, just started out like the rest of us. Unknown and just trying to tell a good story. To suddenly have the world watching can be extremely daunting, and there's really no way to practice for this. It can honestly be debilitating.
I think all the various fan reactions are understandable and in some ways they are necessary to the fandom’s psychology. I do not visit the places that exist to complain about me, to complain about my style and tropes. But those places existing is healthy. It is healthy to have a place to talk to people with similar opinions to you or to just post some memes and have some lols.
It can be unhealthy when it becomes harassing behavior. One thing I do not like is how our society treats people who like things. If you speak about liking something online, people will try to rip that away from you. This rubs me absolutely the wrong way. This isn't to say all criticism and disagreement should be done away with. I like is interesting conversations between people who disagree. I disagree wildly with Peter (this is Peter Ahlstrom, my VP of editorial at my company) about Into the Spiderverse. He could not stand it, while it is one of my favorite movies. (He didn't like the framerate of the animation; it drove him crazy.)
Fan criticism also becomes toxic when it becomes harassment to the creator. I do not know where these lines are, though. It's a tough one, because simply posting your opinion online shouldn't constitute harassment.
If you want my opinion, if an author says they are working on a book, they are. I know these people; they want to be done as much as you want them to be done. But there are mental, emotional, and sometimes physical difficulties preventing it. At this point, there really isn't much you can do. And I bet that the harassment of these creators has slowed the release of these books.
With everything else you guys are doing next year, what is the plan for the Stormlight 4.5 novella?
Still on my list to do when I finish Stormlight 5. I think it needs to be written; I am excited by it. We will see what happens, because Stormlight 5 is almost assuredly 2024 now. And that's partially the Secret Projects, but not as much as you guys probably would assume.
The main reason has been movie and television stuff. As jofwu anticipated in the first question, I still can't say anything. This is the year the Hollywood came calling, and came calling in a very big way, even before the Kickstarter. They saw that, basically - all of Hollywood was watching and seeing that fantasy can work that is not Game of Thrones. The Witcher, and Shadow and Bone, and plenty of other excellent properties. I mean, Arcane is fantastic; another fantastic example. They're like "Oh, people like these and it can be done if it's not George R.R. Martin". And every one of those studio execs has had someone say "Well, get us one of these," or "get us more of these."
And every one of them went to BookScan, which is the ratings for how books sell. And every one of them sorted the BookScan and said, "Alright, what authors are there out there that have not had anything made?" And, far as I can tell, I am definitely the best selling science fiction and fantasy writer who's never had an adaptation. I might be the best selling author in the world who's never had an adaptation. That's hard for me to say, because it's harder to penetrate different subgenres and figure out where their sales factors are. And, you know, it depends what you count as adaptation.
Basically, they all arrived at the same name, and then the Kickstarter happened. They were already calling, and then they started calling more. And so this is the year where I've had to take numerous meetings with all of the streaming services and a large number of the various studios and producers and things. And that takes time. Just takes a lot of time to be on all of those meetings.
We will bear fruit from this eventually. But I'm being very careful. In fact, when I did my call with Netflix, I led off by saying to them, "I am both very fortunate and very unfortunate. Very unfortunate in that I've never actually had anything made. I've sold tons and tons of things, and nobody was able to get one off the ground. That's unfortunate because I'm an unproven quality in Hollywood, and I understand that. I am also very fortunate in that none of those things actually got made. So nothing bad got made." And all the rights have come back to me, basically. And here I'm sitting in a world where everyone wants fantasy and I have my rights and I can say yes or no. That puts me in a very good position also. Which lets... you know, then I don't need the money. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with people that don't need their money. It's very bizarre to them. So we get to be very discerning and picky with what we want to do.
I have a question about Shadesmar, is the Cognitive Realm round? How are landmasses "projected" here? Could I walk in a straight line and end where I started or would I end up in another place entirely?
If you walk in a straight line, you're going to MOSTLY follow the land mass on the other side. With some weird space-time deviations in places. You would not ever end up where you started, though, which is one of the things that is most disjointed about the experience. I realize that's very strange, and it's something I'll delve into in the stories eventually.
These [film studio proposals] are not sure things; nothing is a sure thing in Hollywood. But I would be surprised if we aren't on set doing things [for an adaptation] in this time next year. I would be shocked if we aren't.
Expect, in the next few months, some announcements that you might find exciting. I'm gonna let the people with whom I'm working handle that, because they like to do PR their way.
I think even a dwarf galaxy is larger than what the Cosmere is envisioned to be.
It’s basically the size of an open cluster.
My other question is about the phrase "Shadows of Self". It's mentioned in the last Mistborn book. Is it a specific shadow? Are we going to see if that shadow's in Shadows of Self?
We are not going-- Well yes and no. What it is referencing in this book is the different roles that each person plays in their life. That is the core meaning of Shadows of Self. But then, there is also, there is a kandra involved, which they change shape and become different people, so "who are you?" and identity is a big thing.
At the end of the first Mistborn trilogy it's really significant that 1/16th of the soldiers who got really sick are now atium Mistings.
Yes.
But we know that there's more than sixteen metals. Wh--
Yes. Sixteen that he-- when Preservation set that all up. He, number one, was not all there. But he was trying to create sixteen as a symbol to say, "Hey, catch this. I've given you a clue-- uh-- help." And so it was devised specifically for that. "*inaudible* Something's going on here."
So were there-- were 1/16th of the rest of them just *inaudible* just not significant?
No, no, they would have been Mistings of other types as well.
Did he bump one of the other types then to make it sixteen?
Yeah.
Chromium.
Okay. Do you have in your head *inaudible*?
Yes, that's right. It would probably have been one of the metals that was difficult to get at that level of technology. It would have been chromium - chromium would be hard gather at that time. Actually, no, it would have been aluminum. *about a minute later, while signing someone else's book* Hold on, there's a caveat to that last answer. Let me finish signing this and expand on that. *pause* So, it would still have been aluminum, but not for the reason you're thinking. It would have been aluminum, but there's an asterisk next to that answer.
Chromium?
Okay. Interesting.
Hard to get chromium.
I've been thinking about--
Oh no! He bumped aluminum. Yeah, he bumped aluminum. Sorry I had to-- I changed my mind.
Oh!
*a moment later*
Okay, Chad? I have a <qualification> for you. I'll do this and then we'll...
*a moment later*
So...
On the sixteen or the *inaudible*...
The sixteen. So the answer is "yes," but it's not something-- it's not what you're thinking it is.
Okay.
Alright, there's an asterisk on it, okay? There's an asterisk on it, it's not what you're thinking. Uh, you're making-- you're making assumptions.
What might happen if you gave a parshman a breath (or breaths?) Would they develop a form for it, or might it generally help them think more clearly?
You're actually the first to ask this. And yes, it would work.
Would a parshman who received multiple breaths, or any other type of Investiture, be able to gain sentience or become more like listener-- Kind of like mistwraith/kandra?
That would require some Identity changes and transformations.
So it's not just a dump of--
It's not just a dump. It's a biological thing for them, they've adapted. So they've evolved to the point where this sort of thing-- It would be like trying to power DC with AC current or the wrong voltage or something like that... I mean once you figure it out it could be an easy hack but finding out that hack it's like-- You know it's like going back to people in the 1800's and being like "Why don't you guys have electricity?" *laughter*
I asked about how Syl was invented, I don't even know if this is already known information, I'm not that knowledgeable in Cosmere lore.
He said that originally he thought about the idea of wind coming alive, which remained. Initially he wanted to have only four wind spren, one for each cardinal direction, and Syl was supposed to be the wind of East. Then things changed, but this was the initial concept.
We're studying King Lear in English, and I noticed that the character of The Fool is very much like Wit. I was wondering if you've ever read King Lear, and did you write Wit to be like him?
Yeah, Wit comes from The Fool from King Lear, and Twelfth Night also has one. The jester character in Shakespeare is a direct inspiration for Wit. I love them. Particulary, the fool in Lear. Lear is one of my favorite stories, and even to this day, maybe The Fool... it might be Kent who says it, says "See better, Lear." That line is one of those succinct, beautiful, powerful lines that's burned into the back of my brain that I read way back when I was in high school, and I have since experienced King Lear. Usually, I like to go to Shakespeare, rather than read Shakespeare, for obvious reasons.
I would say, though, I was already writing Wit at the time, the fact that Robin Hobb did such a fantastic fool character in The Assassins books, that fool definitely had an influence on my as well. One of the things I always wanted to do with Wit was to make sure that he felt different from just another court jester, because I'm assuming I'm not the only one inspired by Shakespeare to create a character similar. And I spent a lot of time early in my career, in the unpublished days, saying "What's gonna make Wit, what's gonna make Hoid different from just another jester?" And I spent a lot of time on that. And when I publish, eventually, I'll let you guys read Dragonsteel. He reads way more like a Shakespearean fool in Dragonsteel than he eventually became in the later Cosmere books, once I was getting published.
Were the Surges used by humans, the ones that destroyed their previous home, the same as the ones that the Radiants are using.
Yes, same basic principles. Magic system slightly different. Same basic principles.
Do the Lenses at the start of each chapter [of the Alcatraz books] correlate to the contents of the chapter in any way? Or just whatever's fun?
I always tried to pick ones that loosely have something to do with things, whether it's a chapter where they are used or introduced, or something thematically that happens in the chapter. Sometimes there's no correlation, we just needed to pick one.
Before the Shattering, the original 16 Vessels, how Cosmere-aware were they and were any of them worldhoppers?
In the current continuity, they were not worldhoppers. Well... the dragons were the most Cosmere-aware. They might have been off-world. Might have.
Can an Honorblade activate an Oathgate?
They could. Whether they still can is debatable.
I sincerely hope that you've figured out that the logbook Sazed is translating is the source of the epigraph/bumps at the beginnings of the chapters. I found this a very interesting way to use the epigraphs–almost every one of my alpha readers spent a lot of time trying to guess who wrote them, and where they came from. That kind of anticipation makes for strong storytelling, and so I'm very pleased with the way the bumps start to come together and make more sense once the book gets found.
Is there an established chart that correlates to carat size for each denomination?
Broam: 2 carats.
Mark: 1/2 carat.
Chip: 1/10 carat.
Hoid can regrow his head, so can the Lord Ruler, what would happen if you cut them both off and switched them?
That's really weird.
How was Jasnah able to teleport into the [Cognitive] Realm when she didn't seem to have any Stormlight in her in Words of Radiance?
She had enough.
She had enough.
Yeah.
And is it just teleportation-- *interrupted*
Let's say... Jasnah's figured out some things that others haven't figured out, for one thing. *brief interruption* And, let's say that. But also, there's a little scene from it I wrote from her viewpoint just to know what was happening that's never going in the books. If you Google "Jasnah deleted scene Words of Radiance" you can read it. It talks about how she did what she did.
Oh good.
So that is out there. Just-- It was my reference for writing the scene. But-- One of her powers is called Elsecalling, which is basically popping in and out of Shadesmar more easily. It's hard for everyone else to do that.
My other question is, so when Shallan was on the land she was in the sea in Shadesmar.
Yes.
Is it exactly opposite?
Yeah, it's mirrored... Um... It's mirrored, yeah.
So any land is on sea. So she would have actually landed on land on the ocean.
Yeah... so... yes...
She kind of *inaudible*
Well that's, no for Jasnah that's... *interrupted*
Oh yeah yeah, Jasnah... In that scene where you see? She pops out in Shadesmar on the land.
So, was the scene at the end right as soon as that happened?
What the-- no, no, no. She spent months trying to get back out.
Oh, because she doesn't have the power to get back out.
Much harder to get back out.
*inaudible* trying to get back out, because she doesn't have any more Stormlight.
Yep. Much harder to get back out than it is to get back in even if you have Stormlight, and she is out of Stormlight, so...
Is there any significant relationship between the twelve types of aethers and the ten essences on Roshar, even just in a sense of recurring cosmere-wide patterns?
I would say yes, but it's tenuous.
If the only variable we change, during the creation of Nightblood, is to use a different Allomantically-viable metal (say, iron or bronze instead of steel), but keep everything else constant (the same Breaths, same people doing the same visualization, and whatever other factors were involved), would it have manifested different powers/capabilities?
Yes. Most likely.
You've said before that a lot of the magics we see across the cosmere come from an interaction of Shards and their Investiture with the planets they Invest in. What does this mean practically? If Scadrial explodes tomorrow, will Hemalurgy stop working across the cosmere?
Hemalurgy wouldn't stop working, most likely, but it could. There are ways that you could make it stop working. I kind of mean that the Shards are an innate part of physics in the cosmere, and the magics that arise are an innate part of physics because of that. Like atium seeped out into the Pits of Hathsin, in the same way, these magics are just gonna leak out, and different places are going to affect them. You'll see Lightweaving happening in different places, and the way the Shard is interacting with the local... The way the Shard is is going to affect how Lightweaving is administrated in the various magics, but it's still gonna be there. Hemalurgy is kind of a similar thing to that. You will see Midnight Essence, you will see some of these recurring ideas popping up, and these are like natural parts of the physics, but they're influenced by the Shards on the local planets.
I don't know if that answer, that's gonna be a really fun one for them to transcribe into the Q&A thing, because I go around in circles on that question a ton. Put this part in when you do it.
Would it be possible to use an aluminum spike to permanently kill a spren?
No, that's not gonna work. Silver, on the other hand, there's some possibility.
There's bridge designs coming down the line, much like the Sadeas page I did for the WoK LBs. Dalinar's are more like a siege tower with a folding ground-level drawbridge.
My good friend Dan Wells and I are writing a book together. It's based on Dark One, my original outline that became a graphic novel. We wanted to do a novelization, because the graphic novel (while I love it) has a lot of the graphic novel creator's vision to it, and we thought we would do a novel version going kind of back to my original outline.
He has finished a draft, and so I am doing a draft on that. I'm only 10% of the way through that, but I hope to breeze through that because I'm very excited by this project, and I hope that you guys will all be able to experience it before too much longer.
The problem is not that the covers [for Mistborn Era 2] are bland. The problem is that book series take a long time to write.
When we repackaged Mistborn in 2007, this was the hot style. (When we picked this same style but with a different artist for elantris in 2005, it was right at the revolutionary point where these photo-realistic covers were hugely striking on the shelf.) You might not have liked it even then, but trust me when I say it was a very trendy and original style.
However, visual art tends change far faster than literary trends. So covers of a series grow outdated fast. In 2010, when we we're covering Alloy, this style was still hot enough. But then it became so hot it grew stale.
This leaves us with a problem.
Do we change mid series to newer covers, and leave fans with an unmatching set of hardcovers? Or do we continue with an outdated style, and then recover when the series is done? I'm perfectly happy to change our method if people want, but so far, we've erred on the side of staying consistent. (And yes, paperback recovers are already being designed.)
None of this is to say the artist is anything other than excellent. He is wonderful, and could give us something else if we asked. But again, then the books wouldn't match.
One of the issues here is that the U.S. market prefers visually eye popping styles that are more illustrative, but then get outdated faster. While more iconographic styles like the UK uses tend to last longer but never be as dynamic. I know a lot of you prefer those styles, but they can get very bland. (If safe and stable. See the UK wheel of time covers.)
There's a middle ground of course and all kinds of shades in the middle.
Let me know your thoughts! I'll glance back at this thread over the weekend. Would you rather we repackage mid series and give you more interesting covers but not have the series match?
EDIT: I did check back, and found what I expected. (Though it's good to have confirmation.) Keeping the books consistent across a format is how I'll still proceed, though I AM going to try to get some of our newer covers to try different things to see what you all think. And a I mentioned, if this cover style isn't for you, there's a repackage coming for the whole series (original trilogy and W&W) likely in trade paperback (the oversized paperbacks) coming sometime in the near future.
What Command did Vivenna use to Awaken her blade?
RAFO.
Does Vivenna's Blade have a name and if so what?
RAFO. It's intentionally not mentioned. Not an accident.
What is the Command of Vivenna's sword?
Uhhhhh... RAFO.
