You have been noted specifically for your creative magic systems, such as Allomancy and Biochroma. When in your creative process do you usually find yourself fleshing these out?
It depends on the book. Sometimes I have the magic system first; sometimes I have the characters first. I always start fleshing them out in my outline, when I sit down to pre-write the book. I do a lot of outlining. I like to outline. It helps me, as a writer, to create the works that I do. I will always be looking for a couple of things for the magic system. One is interesting limitations. And interesting limitations are better than an interesting power. Also, I will be looking for an interesting way to make it work visually or audibly, just for a sensory use to the magic.
Some magic only happens in the characters’ heads as they are facing off. You know, these two wizards just kind of staring at each other and one wins. That sort of thing is boring. I don’t want it to be all abstract. I want it to have some relationship to the world. So I am always looking for that. And I am looking for ways to tie it to the setting and the plot so that it isn’t just there in a vacuum. The magic needs to influence the plot and the setting. Frank Herbert did a great job with Dune and the spice. Yeah, it isn’t magic—it’s technology—but it’s the same sort of thing. The spice is related to the economy which influences the government which influences the warfare of all the noble houses, and it is all interconnected, and that is what I am aiming for.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.