Is there any basis in reality from where you get your magic systems at all?
A lot of different.... I mean, they're usually several steps removed. But Stormlight started with the idea of the fundamental forces in physics, and it kind of just extrapolated in weird directions after that.
Can you tell me anything about Steris and what she's up to in Book 4?
In Book 4? Steris is working hard on getting Wax to care about politics, since it's his job. And she's doing a pretty good job.
How much does your wife influence your work?
Quite a bit. She's usually the first person who ever reads my books. And we tend to talk a lot together about books and movies and things like that, so I'd say she's a pretty big influence. She won't let me base a character on her, though. I asked her if I could, she said no. She can't be in the books.
If you got an actual Feruchemist who was as battle-minded as the Mistborn were in their heyday, and they met a Mistborn, which one would have the advantage in battle?
In a short battle, a Feruchemist. In a long battle, a Mistborn. That'd be my guess.
If you could get someone that works on VR to make something, what would you have them make?
I would love to do a Mistborn game where you can jump around and do perspective and things like that.
We've noticed some very unique parallels in some of your stories with historical events. Are you pulling some inspiration?
Always. Some of those are coincidental, but a lot of them are... I mean, Oathbringer has the famous story from Genghis Khan getting hit by an arrow and recruiting the archer.
We saw some interesting parallels during Mistborn between some of the Dark Ages stuff.
French Revolution was definitely part of that. There's a whole bunch. So you'll see me pulling from all over the place. I mean, I've used Agincourt as a battle. I flipped it upside down so people wouldn't tell. Stuff like that.
The Rithmatist. Is there another one close to coming out?
Rithmatist, I've had real troubles with for a couple of reasons. Once I get Alcatraz, like, finished finished, my next thing to do will be to get Rithmatist taken care of. 'Cause I finished Legion, last one's coming out in a couple weeks. But I'll finish Alcatraz, and that means fewer series hanging and looming over me. And then Rithmatist will be the only one that hasn't gotten...
Have you ever thought about making any of your books or ideas into movies or TVs?
I have tried. It's bigger than one person can do. So really, with movies and TV, you have to find someone you trust and hope they can get it done. But funding and things is so hard. We've had some decent scripts. We have a really good script for Snapshot, which is one of my shorts, right now. So far, I have no news on anything other than "We're working on it," but I would like to.
Are we ever going to get Hoid's story?
Yes.
Does... <Roial?> make it to one of the other books?
I-- That-- I have to RAFO that... Hoid's backstory is coming. It's going to be a while, but you're going to get it.
Was Taldain one of the planets of the Iriali Long Trail? Was Scadrial?
RAFO
I asked what would happen if you burned lerasium or atium near ettmetal.
RAFO! :)
I'm Brandon Sanderson, I write epic fantasy and young adult books of various stripes. Justin told me to tell you why I go to cons. My story goes back to actually I was in high school. I was in my English class, my high school English course, and the teacher walked by and put a flyer on my desk, and he said, "I think this is for you." It had just come through his things, it was "Local Science Fiction Convention, with a student writing competition." And I had never shared my writing with anyone at that point. Never shown it to anyone. In fact, I would type stories and hide them behind the painting in my room so my mom wouldn't find them. Other high school boys are hiding other things, and I'm hiding my writing. Because I'm too embarrassed that my mom would find it.
But my teacher's like, "You should try this." "This is for you," is exactly what he said. So I submitted, and I went to my first science fiction convention. Downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. And I entered their writing convention, which I won, the student writing competition. Even though I stapled my story backward when I handed it in. Yeah, they said, "First, we thought you were trying to do some sort of avant-garde literary thing, then we realized you just stapled it backwards." Because it came out of the printer that way. But I won the student competition.
And beyond that, there-- I'd always been a nerdy kid, kind of felt alone. And I went to the con, and I found a whole bunch of my people. I came home to that con. And I've been going to cons ever since. And I think they're an important part of the science fiction community. I like how much we participate in these. My editor said, "Now that you're a big author, don't get a big head. You need to go to these things, because we can't let the comic cons be the only cons. Comic cons are fine, but at comic cons you're an observer, and at a sci-fi con you're a participant." And that is what it's about, it's about building a community. So I am here because I believe that cons build a very important community, not just for young writers, but for young nerds everywhere.
We do have my cameos. They're not contractually written in, but it's understood, that in each movie, I get killed. *laughter* If these things ever get made, my cameo is they have to put me in a crowd scene or have me die on-screen in an interesting way in every film... I don't necessarily have to have lines, but they have to work me in somewhere... Yeah, Wilhelm Scream, they've gotta Wilhelm Scream me. Maybe I'll work up to getting, like, how Peter Jackson died in Lord of the Rings. If you guys know, Peter Jackson gets killed in the third movie. He's one of the people from the north, or whatever. They're on the boats, and there's a bunch of arrows, and he's like *yelling sounds* and *dying sounds*. It's really cool; he's got a great death scene.
Are you worried if DC goes into a more gritty antihero sort of thing, it will edge out the place for Steelheart?
Nah. I'm not even sure Steelheart has a place. Superheroes are so played out. I don't think I would fund a Steelheart movie right now. It was really fun to write because of my superhero background; doing a superhero deconstruction like that was a lot of fun. But, I mean, I don't know if I would go see it if someone else had made it as a movie. There's so much superhero fatigue right now.
I'm not worried about that. I would rather them just make great movies. I don't need my movies to get made. I'll be excited if we ever do get some made. I mean, I'm doing my thing. I'm really having fun doing my thing, right? I don't need my thing to necessarily get to the big or small screen for it to--
In my dream of dreams, I get to be Stan Lee. I get to make something that people really love and that comes together in a really cool way later on... I don't necessarily want to wait as long as Stan Lee had to wait.
Any of those people that you learned with, did you relate any of them with characters in some of your stories?
Yes, actually. But most of the times, I take one aspect of somebody. Like, I had a good friend named Annie who was a six-foot-one woman. And I had never thought about the problems being six foot one in our society as a woman could cause. And she talked about it a lot, it's not all who she was, but it was something that was a conflict that I had never seen. So when I wrote Elantris, I'm like, "I'm gonna use this, because it feels real, it's really interesting, it's something I'd never heard about from someone else. Plus I have a reader who can read it and tell me if I get it right." So it's not like Sarene is based on Annie. But Sarene has that one aspect of Annie that I used. And that's usually how you normally see me using people in books.
Bridge Four are all my friends, though. All of the non-main Bridge Four members who keep surviving and not getting killed, those are just my friends. Skar and Drehy and Leyten, and Peet is Peter my assistant. All my friends ended up in Bridge Four, except for Ben, who's still in my writing group, who said "No, you can't put me in."
Because that actually happened during Mistborn. I said, "Hey, Micah," who was my roommate at the time, "Your last name is DeMoux, that's a cool French-sounding name. Can I use it in a book?" He's like, "Sure. But I have to get a girl. And I have to not die. It doesn't have to be the girl. I have to be successful in my romantic inclinations." And I'm like, "Alright." So Captain Demoux got put in. Meanwhile, Ben was walking by, who was my roommate at the time, and he's like, "Put me in, but kill me in a really, really terrible way." So I did. I put him in Mistborn and killed him in a terrible way. Then he read the book, and he's like, "No, you can't use me like that." It's okay, it became a guy who dumped my sister-in-law. *laughter* But there's a very gruesome death in Mistborn 2 that happens in a very-- shall we say, someone who does not do well for themselves, let's just say that. And that was Ben. But he made me take him out. And then I was putting people in Stormlight, I'm like, "You don't want to be in?" He's like, "No, don't use me." I finally got away with slipping him into the Wax and Wayne books under his online name Rick Stranger.
Warbreaker. When it talks about the God King, the way he sees the world, and he talks about even a little blemish on someone's skin is so beautiful. To me, it sounds like, if you think about the love of God for Christ, that is how they would see us. Is that kind of what you were going for?
Sure, absolutely. I mean, I don't think I was thinking that when I was writing it, but certainly my Christian upbringing is going to make those things pop out in my fiction, so I would say "Yes, that's a valid interpretation." But you kind of have to look at that as reader response interpretation. Rather than "This is what the author intending," it's "This is what the author was unintentionally drawing upon." Reader response is the wrong term. Whatever the correct literary-- I would have known it in college... Because reader response is that author intent does not matter. If you respond to it a certain way, that's a valid interpretation. And there's a certain thing that's like, the author's upbringing informing how they write their text. Like, it's not deconstructionalism. Historicism.
That reminds me of a question someone asked you on the forum about memespren.
Yes, there would totally be memespren, absolutely... I'm probably not gonna go there.
Who's your favorite planeswalker?
Probably Elspeth. When Elspeth is dressed in armor appropriate for her personality. I have a thing about that. But I really like-- I mean, it's me. I like the questing knight searching for answers who thought she found them and then they turned-- the moral axis was upended. That was a really cool story, to me.
Would you ever write any planeswalker stories?
If I were asked by Wizards of the Coast to write a story, I would probably say yes... I've told them this, as well, that if they asked me to write a story, I would probably say yes.
So that's not Secret Project, either.
I didn't say that.
Do you ever feel like it can be bad if you have too many characters that have really politically or socially unhealthy perspectives?
That is dangerous, yeah. Particularly in the hands of an inexperienced writer. It's not a reason to not do it, but I'm reminded of Save the Pearls. So, this is a well-meaning young woman who is obviously writing from a position of privilege who wrote a book about reverse racism where the black people are racist against white people. And the black people are called Coals, and the white people are called Pearls. And it is really heavy-handed and poorly done, and really... is bad for the whole discussion. It is horribly, horribly racist in the way it treats black people in the book that's supposed to be about how bad racism is. And her intent was good, it's like, "Hey, let's let white people experience how it would be to be racist against people," but it just-- in her hands, it's just terrible. It is dangerous to not be part of the conversation and try to say something about the conversation. To not do your leg work, and things like that.
But at the same time, as an artist, I don't feel like you should not try to have things to say. But you should maybe research a little more, things like that. What if you want to write a book where main characters are racist? They hold unpopular and unhelpful opinions, they are dead-out wrong. How can you write this without contributing to the problem? And people have different answers to this. I would go research online and see what people have said about it. I mean, Stormlight is about a bunch of racist people who don't know they're racist. They just don't know. And this is me tackling that really dangerous problem, and it is a place you can get burned by doing.
But again, I think you should do it. I think we should be having these discussions, but make sure to read first. And there are ways to go about it where you indicate, "Hey, this is part of life. And it sucks." But it is part of life, so if we pretend it's not there, then it's also doing a disservice to the discussion. So, yeah, it is something to worry about. It's definitely something to think about. It's definitely something that should inform the way you approach your writing. But be careful.
What do you feel about the role of allegory? The whole debate between Lewis and Tolkien. But connected to that, the other side of it, how do you feel about the duty of fiction to say something good, or send a message...
So, where I fall on that is, I fall on Tolkien's side. In my own fiction, I do not want my fiction to be an allegory of anything other than "Here is how some people see the world." And I think that that is a powerful thing that fiction does, is it shows different perspectives on the same issues. I stole a quote that I swear was from Robert Jordan. I hope someone finds it one day, where said he wrote his stories to give people interesting questions. He didn't write his stories to give them answers. And I put that as a quote from one of my characters in one of my books. I haven't been able to find where Robert Jordan said that, but I swear he said it at some point. That the idea is, that I think fiction is about questions and not answers. But that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy reading Phillip Pullman, who's like, "This is an allegory for my life experience." I enjoy reading C.S. Lewis. I don't enjoy certain authors, we won't extrapolate further along that path. But there are lots of authors that have written books as allegory that I think are great books. A Christmas Carol is an allegory. It's a great allegory, it's fun, but that's not how I generally write. I generally write by saying, "Who is this person? What are they passionate about?" I will look for theme in what the characters are struggling with and bring that theme out as a manifestation of the characters, but I won't go in saying "I'm gonna teach people about the nature of honor." But maybe one of the characters is really interested in the nature of honor, and so they'll talk about it.
This isn't so much a question as just something I noticed... When I first read a summary of the Deadpool movie... to trigger his powers, they basically tortured him. And as soon as I read that, I was like, "They Snapped him!"
Now, I can't claim ownership of this. I think you will find the idea of "anguish brings powers" reaching back to the early days of the Golden Age superhero comics. And to a lot of the early 70s and 80s fantasy that I was reading and absorbing during those formative years. So, I can't take credit for that. I think it's a very common trope. And so I would not suggest that the writers of Deadpool have anything to do with it... I wouldn't think that they had read-- Just because it's part of the general understanding. I mean, I bet there's a TVTropes page for it, right? ...They'll probably have some pithy name for it or something, "Traumatic Power Inception" or something like that, they'll have some page for it. And you can go find all the places where it came from.
Yeah, the Patji stuff [from the OB London signing]. I mean, I maybe didn't word it the right way, but it was all right. Like, people flipped out about the wording a little too much, I think.
I'm just surprised you offered it up.
Yeah, that's a good time to get me, because I will just start talking. But it might not be continuity... The Patji stuff-- I mean, the thing is, the chances that I get to write more Sixth of the Dusk are just so slim.
I thought you were gonna do a sequel?
I mean, I've got a sequel plotted, but I've got a sequel plotted to everything, right?
Do you ever find yourself writing so much of your own work that you actually go back and look and realize you've forgotten pieces?
Oh, I have to reread, particularly in Stormlight. Yeah, absolutely. It's hardest when I get hit with questions like this, there are sometimes I get hit with a question, I'm just like, "What?" I usually just RAFO it. But it is particularly bad-- If you wanna read bad answers by me, go get any of the ones where I first start answering questions in London after an 8-hour time jump. Like, I get off a plane, they set me in front of a crowd, they say "Go." Imagine signing and writing things in books while people ask you questions about complicated fiscal policy. And you have to keep writing and answer them. And those questions just-- Every time I'm in London, I get back and people are like, "You said this!" I'm like, "What?" Any time I'm in Europe. The first signing, particularly, in Europe, you can find delightful questions... It took me a few hours, the last one. I did get, eventually, into the zone, and start answering questions. But that was a miserable signing all around because it was the winter in London, and it was a particularly cold winter, and they decided to put the line outside. And they'd never done this to me before at this bookstore, but the line was so big that they're like, "We're gonna run them around the block." It was a very long line, but I'm sitting here trying to answer these questions, while at the same time I'm worried, I'm like, "These fans are outside in the cold. This is not right!" And so I was stressed and jet-lagged, so some of my questions were just off the walls.
After I finished Elantris, I went back, and I wrote a book called Dragonsteel. Which was to start off the Cosmere. That was kind of it's goal, I'm like, "I'm gonna start something off." Dragonsteel is really interesting, it's a Bronze Age epic fantasy, which is fun. And it was supposed to kind of be the starting point for something. But then I couldn't sell that, I tried for years.
Have you seen the boombox?
The boombox?
In White Sand volume 1, when Kenton wakes up, there's definitely a boombox in the background, it's really funny. In the middle of the desert. I'll find it for you.
Really?
There's also a ceiling fan and horse in volume 2.
Huh. Really? Why is there a boombox?
...Isaac talked about it at JordanCon... He approved the line work, but the colorist thought it looked like a boombox, and the didn't have enough time to--
*upon seeing the panel in question* Wow, it does look like a-- not a radio, it looks more like a sound deck... It makes me wanna-- See, I don't think anyone during White Sand continuity would be far enough along, otherwise that could be a cool cosmere thing, yeah.
Well, there you are. There's a boombox. That's not canon.
The closest we ever got [to a movie] was Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians, which was at Dreamworks Animation. And they had a really good screenplay, and they had not greenlit it, but they'd done a lot of storyboarding, they'd gotten a lot of good talent attached. And then, they decided to make The Croods instead. So, The Croods was not a bad film, I enjoyed that film, but if it could have been Alcatraz--
You can find the Alcatraz art and stuff in the Dreamworks anthology they put out, the coffee table book. There's a page on a never-materialized Brandon Sanderson movie in there.
Any updates on movies?
So... Hollywood is Hollywood, right? We've sold Mistborn three times now to three different groups. We've sold Legion twice.
So here's how we stand right now: the Steelheart books are still owned by Fox. Sean Levy's company, he did the Night at the Museum films, but their option lapses in July, on July 1st. They've renewed the option multiple times, to the fact that this is their last option month, and we haven't seen a screenplay. Which is not a good sign. So, I would not hold my breath that, in a month, they're going to greenlight a movie. They had a screenplay, they discarded a screenplay, they have not commissioned another screenplay. They have one month left. They could just come out and be like, "Here's a bunch of money, Brandon!" They're not gonna do that. It'll lapse in a month, most likely.
Legion has been recently purchased a couple of weeks ago. Couple months ago, actually, but by a place called Cineflix, in Canada. Legion was really hot for a while. Then Marvel made a TV show called Legion, and all the interest dried up. And then the Marvel show just kind of went away; I don't think they're doing it any more. And now suddenly everyone wants to buy Legion again... If they make a TV show, they would change the name. The Legion collection is coming out in the fall, and we still have Legion on the title, but it's called The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds as a subtitle.
Snapshot, my novella, came out last year, it's optioned by MGM. They have put a screenwriter on it who is doing a really good job. I'm very impressed with the work the screenwriter's doing. I'm very optimistic about that project. It's looking really good.
The Cosmere is optioned by a group called DMG. They are a primarily Chinese company who-- What they do is, they finance American movies in exchange for getting the Chinese rights. So, they did this on Iron Man 3, and a couple of other films. And they have the rights until next spring. I really like DMG, it's why I sold them the Cosmere. They have been going through some changes lately, the studio exec that was on it has left the company and started a new company. And that's always a little bit of a setback. They have a screenplay for Stormlight. It came out at 250 pages, which is a 3-hour movie. Which they're like "Eh, this is too long." And it still cut out a ton, so they're now looking at television. They wanted to try the thing first, but the fact that everyone's gobbling up the television rights for fantasy properties now makes them say "Ooh, maybe we should actually do a television show on this." So, really, it's gonna depend on, how does the Wheel of Time show go? How does the Witcher show go? How does the new Lord of the Rings show go? And things like that will have a big influence. Amazon's doing a prequel Lord of the Rings series about Aragorn as a ranger. The Witcher is on Netflix. It's been greenlit for about a year, so it's actually moving. And then the Wheel of Time show, just got announced, didn't it? Who has that? I don't know if I can tell you, I don't know if it's been announced. The television show has been announced, I don't know if they've announced who's doing it yet. But somebody is doing a Wheel of Time television show. It's not been greenlit, but it's had a lot of good rumblings. It looks good. I can't say who it is, unless it's been announced, but I've done calls with their showrunner, who I like. They seem to be treating the property with respect. I think there's a decent chance you'll get a good Wheel of Time show now. Decent-- in Hollywood, decent's still a 10% chance, right? But that's higher of a chance than any of my things look like right now, except potentially Snapshot, which I wouldn't give as high percentage, even, because it's not as far along. But I'm very impressed by how it's going.
So, there you go...
Have you accidentally written any [books] yet?
I haven't accidentally-- I've been consumed by Secret Project, which I can't tell you about. But Secret Project is what I'm working on right now, it's on my website as Secret Project. I will be able to tell you eventually.
Weren't you gonna write Skyward sequels?
Skyward sequel will be my next project. Secret Project should be finished in a week or two. Then Skyward sequels. Then Wax and Wayne 4. And then Stormlight Four. That's my writing schedule.
So, when you were plotting out Mistborn, did you do the whole trilogy, kind of thing?
I did nine books when I did the plot for Mistborn. Normally how I approach plotting is: first book, I do with minimal outlining for the rest of the series. So there's-- I'll do a pretty good outline for the first book. And then I will write that first book (and of course everything changes from the outline as you're writing it) and then I sit down and I outline the series, whatever the series is going to be, with about a page on each book. And then when it's time to write that one, I sit down and I kind of attack that outline. Usually, I'm looking for about-- roughly, outline is 10,000 words for every 100,000 words of book. So, a lot of my YA outlines are 10,000 to 20,000. 15,000 words, something like that. For something big like Stormlight, we're looking at a lot more.
With Mistborn, I finished the first book, and I went to my outline and I created the spine of the three eras. (Which became four! Because I'm an epic fantasy writer.) And then I called my editor, I'm like, "Hey, this is what I want to do." And he's like, "Wow, you're ambitious."
Are you going to complete 'em eventually?
Yeah, I will. We're getting really close to doing the next era. So, Mistborn, if you haven't read them, there's an era of epic fantasy, there's an era of urban fantasy. (It's more like steampunk, there's a steampunk era). Then we're gonna go to a true urban fantasy, kind of 1980s level of technology. Which is gonna be really fun.
The fun thing (have I told people this before)? In the second era books, we did these newspapers, these broadsheets that we put in as art. And I always like to have some art in my books. It's gotten more and more over the years, as I've had the resources to do more and more. What I want to do for Era 3, as our art things, are comics of Wax and Wayne from the-- *crowd laughs* Like, they've become characters-- So, you might wanna do a Golden Age (you comic book fans will love this), a Silver Age, and then a new dark gritty reboot. You'll have, like, a Golden Age classic-Superman sort of thing. And you'll have Silver Age, where it's just bizarre. The giant monkeys attack the city. Silver Age comics, they liked monkeys for some reason, they always put them on the covers. Then we'll do this, like, Frank Miller sort of, "Here's the reboot of the Wax and Wayne comics that happened." It's gonna be a blast, 'cause it'll be three books.
Sure it won't be four books?
I don't know...
You once said Nightblood can do some really freaky things when he is fully consuming Investiture, have we seen Nightblood do that yet?
That is a RAFO. But you will find out...
I was wondering if you could elaborate on a past wob. You said that Hoid and Frost are two of the oldest beings in the Cosmere. Does that include the vessels? Are the original 16 vessels younger than Hoid and Frost?
In the current outline, Hoid predates the others by a bit--he'd already started aging oddly before the Shattering. But that's not strict canon yet. (You can find evidence of it in Dragonsteel.)
Is it just a coincidence that the surgeon names his son Tien when the Aon for healing is Aon Ien?
Yes, coincidence. Well, mostly coincidence.
On the tv show front the Wax and Wayne series would especially interest me. The mix of western and industrial age mixed with the feruchal and metal powers is just amazing.
Getting W&W to the screen is one of my main goals. That series is the one I believe in the least out of them all (when starting it.) I began it on a lark, and then, it ended up being one of the biggest surprises (even for me) in how it turned out.
What's the word count in Skyward?
137,293.
Do you ever base characters on people you know?
I often do - but it's usually just one aspect of them, taken and spun into a different character.
How long have you had the idea for Skyward?
The first ideas - about Spensa's character - started around 2012. It wasn't until I decided to put her in this setting that it came together.
Which character was the hardest to write and to which one do you relate the most?
They're the same person. There's a character named Jorgen who was both the hardest to get right, but also the most like me, which may sound a bit odd!
What inspired Skyward?
It might seem strange for a sci-fi story, but my major inspirations were dragon stories like How to Train Your Dragon, Dragonflight, and Eragon.
Please tell me, is there a romance [in Skyward]!?
There is a LITTLE romance, but that's not the main thing on Spensa's mind in this book.
What made you choose the title "Skyward" for your book?
I loved the idea of what it implied about looking up toward the sky and reaching for the stars.
What's your favorite part about writing Skyward?
Spensa's character. She's a blast to write, and I have a lot of fun being in her viewpoint.
Is there anything in particular that majorly influenced the path that Skyward took at any point?
There's a big reveal at the ending that, once I came up with it, made me really excited to write the book - but you'll have to read it to find out.
Hey u/mistborn I have a couple questions about Magic: the gathering.
What colors/kind of deck do you play in magic?
What colors are the known shards?
What colors are the various orders of the knights Radiant?
And finally, have you ever thought of doing the story for Wizards Of The Coast on one of their mtg blocks?
Any combo-style deck I can draft--or esper if I'm constructed.
Ruin: Black. Odium: Red. Honor: White. Preservation: White. Cultivation: Green. Devotion: Green/red. Dominion: Black/White. Autonomy: It's complicated.
(Also, question 3 is way too large for me to commit to right now. And for 4, if the right opportunity came along and they were interested, I could see myself doing this.)
What about Endowment and Ambition?
Ambition is mono-black, and endowment is probably mono-green. Some of the blue shards are ones we haven't seen as much from yet.
I'm assuming RAFO but [Brandon] any words of wisdom for us on Nightblood's ability to learn?
The only clues I'm willing to give on this right now are the ones that are in Oathbringer.
How much of a Mistborn prequel would the game have been? Are we talking; post pit Kelsier, or more of a Lord Ruler's first days taking over the other nations? Something in the middle?
It was set early in the Final Empire's existence--second or third century, I believe. So a pretty deep in the past prequel.
I know I'm a bit late to this thread but I recently learned about you being Mormon. I find this really interesting because I grew up and live in an area with very heavy Mormon influences, and have had generally very positive interactions with them. My question is how has your religion affected your writing, and vice versa. Your portrayal of religion is mistborn particularly is completely unique, and one of my favorite parts of the book.
It's okay if you don't want to share anything about this, I understand that religion can be a bit of a personal topic.
I actually get this question a lot! It's also one that's hard for me to answer, as I think people looking in from outside are likely better at spotting my own unconscious influences better than I am. I know that being religious myself has made me very interested in religion, and how various people interact with it. I find myself trying to approach it from as many different directions as possible--because it's fun for me to explore belief systems and the people who do, or don't, follow them.
I wonder if anything could be done [for videogames] with the other short stories like Elantris... Or somehow all of them...
One company pitched a really cool VR game to me about Emperor's Soul, where you played a Myst style puzzle game in a mansion where you could rewrite the history of objects to change them into different things. I wish we'd gotten that one off the ground.
A small question, if you don't mind, how do you come up with fantasy names? I mean, is there an onomatology you draw from?
It varies from book to book--really from series to series. Generally, there are three general ideas. The first is the hard way--building the linguistics from the ground up. I'm not the best at this, but I can hold my own when I really want to. The second is easier--picking a linguistic trick (like names with repeated vowel sounds or names that are symmetrical, both ideas I've used) and using those as markers that a certain name is from a certain culture. The last is the easiest, which is picking an Earth culture and making names that feel like they could fit. I generally do this in books where language barriers aren't going to be relevant to the characters, and I want to shortcut the linguistics to use my worldbuilding time other places.
If you were presented with the 3 options:
Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to AAA videogames.
Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to Blockbuster Movies.
Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to HBO/Netflix production level tv shows
Assuming these would each do the series the justice they deserve, which would you take? I would think that going on a series by series basis would be best (i.e. like a movie for Elantris or Warbreaker, a videogame for Mistborn or a TV show for Stormlight), but let's say whoever is offering wants the rights to the whole of the Cosmere.
You know, I've never been asked that question--and I've not given it huge amounts of thought. But I think it's a great question.
I think...perfect world...I'd go with the television series. I think that in a perfect world, 20-season of magically-somehow-all-awesome episodes would be the best way to approach doing the stories I tell.
You guys forgot anime! I have this feeling these stories could be told so much better through animation
I wouldn't say no if the right anime studio came to me.
What commander would Spensa pilot in EDH?
She'd be some kind of ruthless R/B deck like Vial Smasher or Kaervek.
