In Elantris and Mistborn it felt more like the world was there to support the story and characters, but outside the locales the characters were in little was revealed about them. The Way of Kings feels much more expansive, with a vast continent packed with different cultures, races, religions and so on. Was this simply a natural development of needing a world that could support ten long novels, or was there some other motive in making Roshar so much more detailed?
I’m going to reverse-engineer your question. When I wrote Elantris and Mistborn, I intentionally kept the world more sparse. The goal particularly of Mistborn was, “I’m going to take an epic fantasy story and condense it into three novels.” The focus for me in those novels was plot. Of course I wanted to have great characters and great magic, but there was more of a plot focus, and I didn’t want the world to distract. It was a conscious decision in Mistborn.
When I sat down and wrote The Way of Kings , the plan from the start to do ten books influenced how I approached the world. But really, the world of Roshar is such a big part of the story, and of the history and the mysteries of the series, that I wanted it to be full and immersive. Immersion was one of my main driving forces. With Mistborn, one of my main driving forces was to keep it moving. I hope The Way of Kings still feels fast-paced, but it’s a thousand pages long, twice as long as Mistborn. A lot of that extra space is dedicated to fleshing out the world and making it feel like a real place, because that’s very important for the series. When I write a book, I look at what the book needs and what is required by the story I’m trying to achieve. Another valid element is that when I wrote Mistborn, I was a newer writer. Writing The Way of Kings , I’m more experienced. I think I’m better at making this sort of decision now, and I felt I could tackle in this book the sorts of things that I couldn’t achieve in Mistborn.
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