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Do you intend to create a novel (or series) to go along with or to follow this game?
I'm not intending that right now. There's a chance we'll do a graphic novel, but I feel like this story that I'm building matches the game, and I want it to be for the game.
Are either the blue-skinned Natans or blue-veined Babatharnams human-Aimian hybrids?
Yes.
I really like your idea with the whole Mistborn series, taking it further in history and we are both PhD physicists.
Oh sweet.
I always think about that and I was wondering if you were worried about going that sci-fi fantasy route? Like for instance--
I'm not worried about it, I'm just excited... In my mind all of my books are sci-fi as well as fantasy because I'm making weird new branches of physics and trying to adhere to as many of the laws as I can.
Yeah that's one of things I love about how well thought out the magic systems are.
Like I-- You are actually not the first physicists to come through another one came through earlier tonight and talking about the quantum mechanics that are in The Way of King.
Brandon: I'd like to ask your opinion of the current state of the fantasy genre....
Fantasy has always been a "series-powered" genre but it seems that lately several authors (or publishers) just don't know when to suitably end a long-running saga... Drawing out a series for the sake of more installments, it seems.
And there seems to be fewer and fewer standalone novels like Warbreaker and Elantris. (I love standalone novels, by the way, and am hoping that that "format" makes a return!)
Any comments on this from your perspective? Thanks!
It's a good question, Paul. One I've been considering, actually, for a long time. Certainly, there's an economic piece to it.
When a stand-alone comes out, it tends to gather praise from both readers and reviewers. Then proceeds to sell far fewer copies than a series book does. The Wheel of Time didn't hit #1 on the New York Times list until book eight or nine, I believe, and I don't think Sword of Truth hit #1 until book ten. Series tend to sell better. Even as readers complain about them. And so I think publishers do push for them.
But why do they sell better? Well, I think this is partially the learning curve factor. We like fantasy for the same reason that fantasy is hard to read: the learning curve. Starting a fantasy book can be tough because of how many new names, concepts, societies, religions, and laws of physics you have to learn and get used to. Epics, with their dozens upon dozens of characters, are even tougher in this regard. And so, after investing so much energy into becoming an expert in the world, we want to get a good payoff and be able to USE that expertise.
Beyond that, I think that fantasy is character driven—and when we fall in love with characters, we want to read more about them. Fantasy, particularly the epic series, allows us to follow characters across sweeping, life changing events. Fantasy (like historicals) give us lots of pages and time to know these characters. So we want more from them.
But the very thing that we love about fantasy in this regard also tends to present problems. We want lots of characters, but eventually this large cast gets overwhelms us and makes the books seem to drag. Personally, I think these complaints will be much lessened when some of these great series are done, and you don't have to wait years and years between volumes.
Anyway, Terry Brooks talks a lot about this in his biographical work Sometimes the Magic Works. (Bet you can find it here on BN.com, and I highly suggest the book as a quick, interesting, engaging read.) He mentions how, when he left Shannara to write other things, the fans begged and begged him for more. Until finally he broke down and gave them more books in the world.
A lot of authors I know tend to live in this state of perpetual wonder and amazement that, finally, people are actually enjoying and reading their works. (After all the years of failure trying to break in, I know that I feel this way a lot.) When someone comes to you and talks about how much they love one of your works, asking you to write more...well, we're storytellers. If people want a story, we want to give it to them. It's hard to say no. (Though so far I have.)
I intend to keep writing stand-alone novels. But I do so knowing that 1) they will not sell as well as series books and 2) readers will ask me for more, and so each stand alone will only increase the number of requests for future books that I can't write. I'm in the fortunate place that I can write, and publish, what I want—whether it be series or stand alone—and no longer have to worry about the money.
But, in my heart, I've got a strong desire to write a big epic. I grew up reading them. I want to see if I can do one, my way, and add something new to the genre. So maybe that's the reason. Looking through Robert Jordan's notes, reading interviews, I don't think he ever artificially inflated the length of his series because of publisher desire or money reasons. I think he loved the long-form epic, and wanted to tell the story his way, no matter how long it took. And as he added more characters, it took longer and longer.
In a way, being free from the worry of finances gives creators a chance to really explore their vision the way they want to. And...well, we’re fantasy writers, so we can get a little long winded.
Kind of like this response, eh? ;) Thanks for the question.
Why aren't the Shattered Plains symmetrical? This upsets me.
[On the Oathbringer map] The Shattered Plains are entirely covered up by the words "Shattered Plains." They're not visible on this map at all.
So we've seen three different cultures of people on Scadrial. Is Harmony involved… well, we can probably assume there's probably more cultures, but there are…
There are more, yes.
Is Harmony involved in all of them, or is he-- Does he pretty much keep his attention on the main one.
Harmony considers himself the god of all of them.
What is your favorite/most satisfying scene in Oathbringer?
The sequence that begins with Renarin and Jasnah at the ending.
So, there's not a lot a lot of Western books coming out these days. Is there anything in particular that made you decide to set Alloy of Law and the other books in that time period; and any challenges moving into that time period?
...It's hard to say, you know, to reach back into my "cultural archive," so to speak, in my head. I did watch a lot of spaghetti westerns during that era. I think they're cool. But I really think it was more wanting to deal with something in the early 1900s. Because, I love that era. That era, in our world, was, like, this era of scientific discoveries-- there was this revolution that happened, right around that time, with the coming of electric lights and the coming of motorcars where, for the first time, science is a thing for everybody. Like, before, science was a thing that somebody rich got to do, and then it became something-- like, I remember reading an essay that was written in, like, 1910, about a scientist who had gone and studied ditch-digging, and gone in there with the ditch-diggers. And he taught them, he figured out the science of what makes ditch-digging easier on their bodies and on their health and faster, and basically he 'scienced' ditch-digging for the ditch-diggers. And they loved that. It made their jobs much easier. It was a time where science was like that, it was the first time that science was like that... That time period really fascinates me, because you've got this whole-- my career is based around taking cool things and superstition, and to have, like, one foot over there and one foot in science, and kind of bringing those two things together. And that fascinates me, and that was a time period where we were transitioning from superstition toward science. That's really cool to me. So, I wanted to do something in that time period, and the Western aspect was just a fun part of it. The whole pitch of "Clint Eastwood has to move to big-city New York and take over his house politics" was really interesting to me.
Do all three Metallic Arts still exist after the events of the book? Are Allomancy and Hemalurgy slightly degenerated now that Ruin and Preservation are dead, or does Allomancy still draw upon Preservation's power (just held with Sazed now)?
Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy all work as they once did. However, now they are more directly affected by the presence or absence of the mists, which will slowly return to the world but not be of the extent they once were. (The mists are now an extent of Sazed's power, and where they roam, he is better able to influence things. There will also be two kinds of mists.) Note that in the future, Feruchemy powers will start to fracture and split, creating Feruchemical "Mistings."
Yes, this means that in the future series, it will be possible for a person to have one Allomantic power and one Feruchemical power. It will create for some very interesting mixing of powers.
What's your process for writing Rosharan Myths such as Fleet's race? They are always my favorite parts of the Stormlight novels.
I love folklore, and spend a lot of time looking into the folk myths and stories for various cultures. I try to make the various myths, particularly those shared by Wit, have a different "Voice" from my normal narrative voice, as I want them to feel like legitimate ephemera from the world.
You mentioned that the Heralds could sense each other's location--
Only in that version of the story... In that version of the story he actually gets his sword and it lets him sense and it leads him, not to the other Heralds, but the other Honorblades. He was mistaken even about that power because they have never separated from them before. And so, he thinks that he's going to find the other Heralds and he just finds their abandoned Blades.
It was very cool in the context of that book. But of course, where the other Honorblades are now is not necessarily a mystery anymore. It doesn't kinda work in the current continuity.
Dalinar had two really weird visions. Was that Connection-y stuff like he did with Kaladin and Tien?
Which ones are you talking about?
End of Words of Radiance, and in Oathbringer with Nohadon.
Yes, that would be the same sort of weirdness that's happening with Tien. Yes, so you have basically multiple different ways of interpreting this. One is just--what Dalinar wants is directly... he is starting to change the visions specifically, and some might argue he is pulling from the Beyond. Others would argue that what Dalinar wants, feels things in his past, he is actually enforcing upon the vision, and is changing and altering the visions. And that is absolutely going on. It's whether the other thing is happening or not, depends on your personal religious beliefs. But Dalinar is starting, the Bondsmithing is starting to shape the visions.
I know the Fourth Mistborn Era is to be sci-fi and FTL... but would we get some cyberpunk Scadrial at all? Because from what I gather it sounds like only space faring and travelling to other worlds.
I've toyed with a cyberpunk era Mistborn. It will depend on how quickly I move getting through the series.
I do have Karen [Ahlstrom] here. Karen is my continuity editor. She has the wiki up here open on the computer. The wiki began as a big notebook, like, a 3-ring-binder, that I typed a whole bunch of stuff on on the computer at work. For those who don't know, I started my career writing books overnight on the graveyard shift at a hotel. This is how I managed to go to school full-time and work full-time and write all-time all at once. It was my cool life hack that was really great, except for that whole minimum wage part. So I sat at that desktop computer at the front desk working on stories and writing books, and the wiki for The Stormlight Archive started there as just a big file of things that I wanted to do for the worldbuilding. Eventually, when it came time to write the books for real, I hand-- did you put this all in the wiki?
No, somebody else did. Maybe Peter...
...I may have done it myself. I took this thing, which was around 300,000 words, which is about the length of The Way of Kings, and I dumped it into a personal wiki. Wikidpad, it's an open source wiki software. And then eventually it got too big for me to take care of, so I handed it off to Karen. And now, I just kind of ask her things. So, you may ask questions, and I'm just like, "Karen, what do you think? Let's look it up!"
Duladen, Jindoeese, Svordish
Duladen is a language purely of tonal convenience. My only rule for this language was to use that which ‘sounded right.’ It seemed wrong, in a way, to force any firm linguistic constructions on the Dulas. In addition, Galladon’s use of Dula slang was to become a major mood element of the book. I didn’t have enough time in the book to develop the language in detail, but I needed its sounds to give atmosphere.
Duladen implies a laid-back, loose culture. Its words flow smoothly, and even have a hint of ridiculousness to our English-accustomed ears. Even the Dula word for Hell, ‘Doloken,’ has a kind of rhythmic nonchalance about it. Ironically, the part of the Dula language I was most unsatisfied with was its lead character’s name. I eventually changed it from “Galerion” to “Galladon” to make it fit better.
JinDo is probably the least original of the languages in the book. It is an unabashed rip-off of Chinese, as can easily be distinguished. I did this with some hesitance. I worried that I had too much of a ‘learning curve’ in the setting of the book already, especially with the strange circumstances Raoden was going to be forced to endure. When it came to the JinDo language and culture, I feared that stuffing too much development into such a minor part of the book would make it unwieldy.
JinDo is most important for the philosophers it spawned, three men who eventually became the religious foundations of the continent. I chose an Oriental culture to mimic in this case because of the mystical way in which most western cultures regard Asian-sounding names. Simply by calling something “JinDo” gave it an instant sense of foreign-ness.
I went, perhaps, too far by making the adjectival reference for the nation ‘Jindoeese.’ I probably should have gone with simply “JinDo” as both noun and adjective. Other than that, I am satisfied with the culture, despite its lack of original sounds.
The final language, Svordish, was almost an afterthought. I wanted to make it a dialect of Fjordell, something I could point out to show that all of the nations beyond the mountains weren’t just one big stereotype. By giving Svorden a minor identity of its own—with a side character and the ‘sv’ pattern of sounds—I hoped to give a bit of roundness to the unseen Fjordell empire.
Is Harmony only able to see and watch over Scadrial or will he be able to see the potential of other parts of the cosmere?
We'll talk about that in an upcoming story. You'll get more clues about that very soon.
Very soon?
Very soon.
Like before the end of the night?
Poten-- Well not-- Potentially before the end of the night, yes.
The Alethkar culture, being competitive and all that. Is that [like a forethought of] capitalism and stuff like that?
Yeah, I wouldn't say that it is specifically. That could be in there in the back of my mind. There were very competitive cultures long before capitalism was around. They would certainly like capitalism, but there are other influences causing this in Alethi culture.
In Mistborn: Secret History... The Ire--are they Elantrians?
They are.
They are.
Mhm.
And how-- what is their history with Ruin and the other [Vessels]?
So, these are some very old people, who are cosmere-aware.
Are they... that wasn't mine... Do they predate the Elantrian story?
I haven't answered that, and people have asked it. So I'll RAFO that.
Oh, great.
But let's just say they're very old, and the Shardpool in Elantris, if you go back and read about the lore surrounding it in the book Elantris, you will see that they were aware of what was happening with it before the fall of Elantris.
Did they-- were they affected by the cataclysm?
That is a RAFO!
Are spren able to visit other planets than Roshar?
So, spren are, because of the nature of their Investiture, connected too strongly to the planet to normally get off. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but I will just say, normally no.
So the Cognitive Realm, or whatever that sort of like-- is that different on other planets?
Yes. It looks different on each planet, partially based on perception.
What is the favorite character you have written?
What is the favorite character that I have written? I would say Perrin, from The Wheel of Time. Because I can't pick my own characters, because they don't feel like I'm-- They are my favorite while I'm writing them, whoever they are. But Perrin was my favorite Wheel of Time character and when I got to finish The Wheel of Time he was the character that Robert Jordan left the least amount of notes on. In fact there was one sentence, for three books-worth, about him. And so I got to take him and-- Really Perrin was the one I had the most influence on through the course of those three books and it was very special to me him being my favorite character and being able to do that.
Can I get the Hoid sense of humor question real quick?
Yeah, where'd he get his sense of humor?
Yeah, because he doesn't really have one in like Mistborn.
You will find that eventually. It depends on the character he's playing. He had it in Mistborn, he just was not playing a character that was conducive to that.
Fair enough, 'cause he's very different in--
Yeah. In Elantris too.
Will the character of Stick ever make a reappearance?
Stick is unlikely to make a reappearance.
Aww. You wrote an essay about it
Yes, I know. I know people really like Stick.
It was a good essay. It was a good essay.
Nightform seems to be a form capable of powers but doesnt seem like it destroys the original [singer] and replaces it with a Fused like other forms of power, at least based on what they have said in the Listener songs and its surrounding historical context. Am I right here?
Yes.
If I enter a Shardpool, could i use it to fully enter the Cognitive Realm?
I have been wondering...what would happen if all of the seons in Elantris entered Devotion's Shardpool.
RAFO
Why did you choose the political system in Elantris, just based on an economic system, I thought that was fascinating.
I wanted to explore, this was just an idea for a story I had: what if an MLM were in charge of a monarchy? And it obviously didn't go straight that direction, but that was my pitch to myself. I feel like sometimes fantasy books just take everything as assumed. And you end up with these-- And sometimes it's okay, right? But in every book I write, I'm like, let's look and see if there's something different, not taking all of our assumptions for granted. And with Elantris it was that--MLM runs a monarchy, go. And that's where my worldbuilding went. You can probably blame Dune a bit for this, because Dune's worldbuilding and economy are so wrapped up together that ever since I read that, almost everything I've built has had an economic component to the worldbuilding.
You recently announced in your blog post a new Cosmere short story called Skyward. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit?
Skyward is the working title. I've talked a little about it before in my class, so if you watch my videos, I talk about it a little bit in there. It will be a teen novel in the cosmere. It is science fiction era.
Chull toes is good, but you're missing the hollow spaces in the boulder portion of the shell, that the chull tucks its legs into when at rest.
Pixels are murder on long lines, but I'm missing those antennae. They grow in pace with the shell, so that the chull can sense out spaces to determine if they're large enough to pass through (much like a cat's whiskers).
That’s super cool! I feel like chulls could do with some more in-book world building lol, though i cant see it fitting in anywhere. That one page describing chull breeding is probably my favorite piece of art in the SA xD
I do draw quite a lot of things with antennae. I still haven’t found a way to draw them well, i wanna work on it though.
Really thought the legs were more like spikes like a crab or spider has. Guess I better go look back at the depictions of them in the book.
Nope, big flat trunk feet like an elephant. You can see in some of the early development sketches that we started out with spiky crab feet, and Brandon vetoed those specifically in favor of something heavier.
Was it Syl or was it Kaladin himself that made things stick to his hands in the beginning? Are honorspren able to use a rudimentary form of the adhesion surge?
Yes, they are. Windspren are too!
Projects in Development
Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel
This is Hoid's origin story, a prequel to the entire Cosmere. The time is not right. It's going to happen eventually, but I feel that I shouldn't dig into this until Stormlight is completely done. (All ten books.) So don't hold your breath on this one.
Status: Loooong way off
*after reading a personalization request* Expansion of the soul, what do you mean by that?
There was something in Secret History...it had to do with Kelsier expanding his soul. And then Hoid also says something about it.
So what do you mean by "Does worldhopping involve the expansion of a soul">?
Well Hoid... kind of was like...
I'm just trying to get you to be a little more specific. But I'm going to say "Sometimes".
That was the whole point. You get a "Maaaaybe".
You get a Sometimes.
[Urithiru] looks like Minis Tirith
There's a few things we did to help make the two cities less similar when compared side by side, but the likeness was always on our minds. It's hard to avoid, WETA did such a distinctive job with it.
Urithiru is way bigger though.
Please don't kill Dalinar! No questions, just please don't kill Dalinar.
*very seriously* You will enjoy this next book!
But… ehhh… it's gonna be painful.
In a previous question you said that when Pattern talks he makes vibrations in the air that can be picked up by a recorder. When Syl talks to just Kaladin, and is only appearing to just Kaladin, could that audio be recorded?
RAFO.
Are Truthspren originally sentient, or do they gain/regain sentience from a bond, like Syl?
RAFO for Words of Radiance, where a lot of these questions will find answers.
I've been plugging away on the book, slowly but surely. Part Two went longer than I wanted. (Big surprise.) I finished it last week, though, and the full book current wordcount is at 247k. (400k is the goal. Note that of that 247, some 20k or so is for Parts Three and Four, as I wrote the flashback sequences for Dalinar all straight through.)
I wanted to be further by the arrival of July, but was slowed down by two things. First, touring in February and March. Writing while on tour is killer, and I tend to be very slow during high-travel times. After that, I spent most of May writing Edgedancer, the Stormlight novella that is going in the Cosmere Collection this fall. (I consider it an apology for not having Stormlight Three out this year.)
Everything is still looking good for an Oathbringer release next year. I don't have any major touring until I go to Europe in October/November, and there are no other projects like Edgedancer on my plate. So at my current rate of 10k a week, without any interruptions planned, I should be finishing up right around the middle of October.
Part Two turned out well, though it's a slower, more lore-and-character focused section. (It includes some viewpoint chapters I think you'll find unexpected and interesting, though it has less action than other sections of Stormlight.)
If you look at the visual outline from the second update, I've finished everything for Part Two. My next task is to do a quick revision of Edgedancer to be turned in this week, and then do a revision of Part Two. I'm doing an unusual thing (for me) in revising each part after I finish it, then sending it to my team for continuity and editing. We discovered that a big slow-down in getting Word of Radiance ready was me waiting for the team to get back with increasingly-complex and detailed continuity notations.
This means when I finish the first draft of this book, it will actually be the second draft, which will speed up revisions a ton. (I should be able to move right into them, and do the third draft right away.)
The biggest challenge for the book will be making sure I don't go TOO long, as (like other Stormlight books) it's important to me that the book be read as a single volume, instead of as separate books published in a split-up way. (I can't prevent this in some markets, though.)
As always, thanks for reading.
Axies the Collector, is he a kandra-like species? Are they common throughout the whole cosmere?
So, the Aimians reside on Roshar right now. They are... I would not say kandra-like, in that the other species of Aimian has more kandra-like qualities. There's two that used to live there, before it was Scoured. But they are a different species; they are not human.
*inaudible*
Shapeshifters, there are multiple types of shapeshifters, but... even, you would call the Royal Locks a type of shapeshifting. So, shapeshifting is a common thing in the cosmere. Having the ability... Once you know how the magic works, you will see why. So, there are other, kind of, species of shapeshifter.
When you reach the end of the Cosmere will there be something else? Or do you feel this will take most of your writing career to achieve?
Yah, I think this kind of the Story of my writing career. Now, who knows. As I plotted it, right around mid-Mistborn series time, I came out with thirty-six books, of which I've done what five or six? More than that--
Three, four, five, six, seven?
Seven. I think there is plenty of time so ask me in thirty years.
This one's kind of similar here: When or if you reach the end of that, were you planning on expanding more or were you going to get done with what you had planned and be done with it, or--
That's really a "ask me in thirty years" sort of thing. I want to see if I can get this whole thing done. I want to do it in— There's this sort of tension to it, in that I view this as— The arc is my life's work. But at the same time I don't want to be belaboring it. There are cool things going on that I want to get to and I want to tell people about. And so there's this push and pull inside of me, wanting to do this. We will see.
If a spike was covered in blood - stopping the Hemalurgic decay - and then split into smaller spikes, would there be power loss or not?
Let's say the splitting took place in a bathtub full of blood, so that the spikes would be covered in blood at all times.
The split should work.
Is the Seventeenth Shard a fairly recent organization (in relation to the published books), or have they been around for a while?
RAFO
Your work is often praised for unique magic systems with interesting limitations, like the application of the laws of physics to the abilities of a Coinshot in the Mistborn series. What kinds of limitations do you think have the most potential?
There are lots of ways to go with this answer. It depends on how creative you are with your storytelling. I like to found my magics with certain rules so that I can force myself and my characters to be more creative in their application. I think that a good magic system is going to have some of this. Granted that my way is not the only way; there are a lot of great stories that don't do magic the way I do it. But if you're trying to tell a story where the way the magic works is a very big part of the story, then limitations are vital. I would say the best limitations are ones where creativity is forced on the part of the characters.
I don't like limitations such as kryptonite—this one thing negates the magic, which focuses the story around having it or not having it. I like limitations that are intrinsic to the magic and have a logical sense. When I can, I like the limitations to be bounded by the laws of physics—what requirements will physics put upon this magic that will make the characters have to use it in a more natural way.
The other big thing is that I split out costs and limitations in my head. A limitation is just what the magic can or cannot do, just like we have limits in our own world to what a physical body can achieve. Costs are what you pay for the magic, and these can add an economic component to a book and a magic system; they can add a lot of ties into the setting, and a great magic, I think, has a lot of ties into the setting.
In Oathbringer, Dalinar thinks to himself "He couldn't write to them of course, but he could flip the reed on and off to send signals, an old generals trick for when you lacked a scribe." But I thought spanreeds were a relatively new invention? Thoughts?
"Old" is relative.
My question was, have you ever written a scene and had it published and then wanted to change one of your scenes?
Yes, I have. There have been a couple of them. There's one at the end of Words of Radiance, when it came time for the paperback I reverted to a previous version of the scene. So yeah you guys will see that when the paperback comes out. One of the ending scenes-- It's a very minor tweak but I had done like four different drafts of this scene and I didn't like the one we ended up with. Even immediately after we sent it in I was like "No that's the wrong one". So we reverted.
Will you post that online?
Yeah, I'll post that online when the book comes out. I'll be like "By the way guys, Warning. There's a change here."
The internet will freak out.
Yeah. The other thing is the ending of Elantris, the spatial-ness of it, and things, I got some of the math wrong. I didn't have Peter back then. And so now that we are doing a 10th anniversary edition I actually had Peter and Isaac, who does all the maps, get together, work out the actual math. The size of the city, the size of the continent, and all this stuff and Isaac's doing a new map and we are changing the text to now match that map. So for instance where it says something is in the original text it will actually move now that we have an actual real map, rather than my MS Paint thing that I was using 'cause you know me and maps. So yeah you nodded, there are a lot of mathematical-- just problems. We've got the new map now and it all works. So I'm glad that it all actually works, once you get the math right. But like the number of steps is way off at the end of that one for instance.
*To Argent/Kurkistan* Have you guys figured that out? Like it makes the size of the planet stupidly big.
When is that coming out by the way?
I'm not sure, we just have to see when we turn it in. I think maybe later this year. Maybe early next year. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to get it out with one of the Mistborn books, at around the same time.
BTW, thank you for your Terry Pratchett recommendation. I have read almost all of them and love them.
The man's a genius. Pure and simple. It took him a little while to convert me, but now that he has, I’m a big fan.
Bronze Allomancy and tones. Normally you can only hear Allomancy--they haven't figured to use Feruchemy. Is that because they need to learn to listen on a different pure tone?
Not necessarily, but I like the way you're theorizing.
Is Khriss planned to be a major character in the future of the Cosmere, or will she be more of a behind-the-scenes source of knowledge?
I do plan some more--some actual Khriss stories. I mentioned I had a Silverlight story in the back of my head--she would have been one of the viewpoint characters of that if I ever get to write it. She will be in the background of most everything, but I do plan a few stories, that will have her. She will come the forefront the more the cosmere comes to the forefront, and more interaction between them.
For those who were curious, my plan for the Cosmere all along has been - now that I have something to point to, people say is it like the MCU? And, yes and no. I'm not developing specific characters to bring forward, some of them will of course will still be be around. My whole goal with the Cosmere is to push toward something a little bit more like Star Trek or Star Wars, in that lots of different cultures, lots of different things--more Star Trek I guess - interspace situation, the conflicts that come between cultures and ideals and things like that, is what I'm pushing for. Rather than taking like the champions of each book and having them. So the characters are important, certainly, but when you're reading a given book series, that's where your characters are important. If you're thinking about the future of the Cosmere, think more about the clash of cultures, is where I'm pushing that.
Can you tell us who the main interlude character is for this book? Like Szeth for TWoK and Eshonai for WoR.
RAFO.
We know that the recurring interlude character is typically one who plays an important role in events, but is currently not interacting directly with the other characters. My guess is that it's Jasnah this time, as she slowly makes her way back to civilization, or explores Shadesmar.
You are correct in that it's someone important, but generally unconnected. It's also, generally, going to be someone who hasn't had a large number of viewpoints so far. It does give a spoiler if I say who it is for this book, though.
Because it's someone we believe to be dead / somewhere else / something along those lines? Kind of like giving away the protagonist of Secret History is a spoiler in and of itself?
It's not as big a spoiler as that; it will just set you wondering about something else that IS a spoiler. This will make sense when the book is out. (Feel free to ask my rationale when it's out.)
Is it Tezim, the god-priest of the Tukari? I'd love to see an interlude focused on him. There have been many hints that there is something really unusual happening there.
RAFO. :)
Now that Scadrial is on a better orbit, are there landmasses between the poles that are inhabitable?
Yes, indeed there are.
If Marasi could burn duralumin, would that make time go faster or her bubble get bigger?
This is on tape so I have to make sure I do this right.
It is less about the size of the bubble and more about speeds. You can expand the size and change the size of the bubble, so it's possible that you could use duralumin for either one if you knew what you were doing, but the speed is the more relevant part. So, I just wanted to say that correctly.
Something I've always noticed is missing from your State of the Sanderson updates is any mention of a sequel to The Emperor's Soul. Is that something you might eventually get around to (after the Elantris sequel for example), or do you feel that story has been told?
TES is easily my favorite of your stories, with a depth of character and theme which really surprised me. Would love to read more - especially if it were more novella-length works!
I've been hesitant to do a sequel, as I don't want to "George Lucas" the story. Emperor's Soul is one of those stories that turned out very well on its own, and I worry that doing another story could take away from how well it works on its own now. I might have Shai do cameos in other stories, though.
So, the Synod in Elendel in Era 2. How much political control or guidance do they have over the other Terris enclaves? Do they have some sort of central government that makes decision for everyone? Or are they all--
Excellent question. No... I would say... let's see if I can find a real-world example. I'm not sure off the top of my head. I'm gonna say, they do not have any official control. They are well-regarded and respected, and sometimes ignored. And different groups regard this differently, the authority that they have. They would claim to have more than they do, how about that.
