[paraphrased] Your magic systems are all very detailed and internally consistent. To what extent do you come up with the world and then write a story within it, versus building the world to fit the story?
The answer is, “Yes.” Which is one of those unsatisfying authorly answers. It depends on the story. Like for instance with the Wax and Wayne books, I already had the world built, so in that I’m building a story around a setting that already existed. With the Reckoners, what happened is I had the idea for people who gained superpowers all going evil, and that concept spun me into building a story about it. So that’s more of an idea that spins a story rather than a setting. Sometimes I’ve had a character I’ve really wanted to tell a story about, like Raoden or something like this, and then I build magic to match. It happens all different ways, and really it’s a give and a take. Once you start with a character, you start building a story around them, and then you stop and you work on the magic for a while, then you go back to the character and then you go back to the magic and then you go to the setting and then you go to the plot. As you build an outline you weave all these things together. You’re not just spending time on one till it’s done and then the next until it’s done. It’s happened all different ways for me.
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