artiestroke

By mass, I wouldn’t doubt it. Those audiobook files are absolutely massive X,D I literally had to take a break at the halfway mark of Way of Kings because it was just so long. Finished up a bunch of the short stories, like Sixth of Dusk and Shadows for Silence, as well as the three Wax and Wayne books before coming back to it. Kaladin has it... particularly rough. And Shallan’s life choices so far leave me in a state of second-hand embarrassment a good chunk of the time. Kinda drains my emotions a little. I really enjoy the Dalinar/Adolin chapters tho.

The “Religious Country who thinks Magic is Evil” is the first one that really jumped at me- personally, I’m not a big fan of it, but sometimes it can still be done well and surprise me (Elantris being a prime example) I WOULD be cautious about making the antagonistic religious country also a mercantile state, as it could be taken as unintentionally anti-Semitic. Tread carefully, and just remember that no one culture is 100% homogenous. ATLA did a great job of having a whole country as an antagonistic force and still showing that individuals in the Fire Nation were still individuals, and not all of them happy with what’s going on. Alright that makes sense- then is there a sort of subsidized income for the general populace? If you have to give your money back to the government to recharge it every, let’s say month, that would make it pretty darn impossible to actually save it up. Which ALSO has an interesting effect on our thieving crew here- they’ve got a serious time limit on how long that money is valuable to them before it becomes a liability- unless one of them can recharge it. Being able to recharge your own money in this setting feels almost vaguely like a parallel to counterfeiting, which could be interesting. Do you mean that as in a three-act structure in one book, or three, separate stories that tie together? I’m assuming more the latter due to you saying short stories. Trade within a country is a given, for sure- just keep in mind what exactly it is that each city has and lacks. Maybe something the country as a whole lacks which would motivate them to either find allies not working with Tavarean to trade, or also try to conquer some territory that has what they need.

The ideas in the worldbuilding are interesting, if a bit tropey. I think where this really shines is in the characters and potential plot- so, the part that matters most in storytelling, I'd say. It's definitely an engaging, classical thieving crew- each person with a specialty to bring to the table, a regular Ocean's 8. I do have a question about the money, though- if it's only valuable because it holds a magical spark, and that spark fades out or is used, what happens to the coin afterward? Do you have to pay to get them refilled? Is it a Stormlight kind of situation where they'll still take it but give you dirty looks? Back to the plot itself, what's the crew's big score? Their plan, the core part of this story? The characters are interesting, I want to know what exactly they're up to- is it more of a serialized thing, like Lupin III and Zenigata or Sly Cooper and Carmelita Fox? Or is this a standalone, one-time, one-shot, big-time heist? There's a lot of info in the worldbuilding, but most of it seems to be stuff happening leagues away from the core of this particular story- this is fine, but seems less important since the focus seems to be on Urial. It's like- in the original Mistborn, there were other cities offhandedly mentioned, sure, and we later find out more about the world in Era 2- but it's not quite relevant to the story of Kelsier robbing the Lord Ruler, so there wasn't much of a need to focus on it at the time. I'd definitely say focus on developing Urial and Uriu itself. Keep in mind certain things as to why countries form like they do- capital cities, more often than not, end up that way due to being a central location for trade/have easy access to quicker methods of travel, like rivers and coasts. If a city is big and relatively modern enough, it's going to need a lot of resources pouring in to feed the populace. At least one valuable the city produces (things like mines, lumber, wool, etc) for trade and one staple local food resource (arable farmland, sea life, rice fields, etc) would be a good start to creating a basis for the working culture there- bring it to it's logical conclusion.

I think I’ve finally settle on Scripturgy as the name of the magic, and Scripturgist as a practitioner- Latin is so useful

I haven’t yet- I’m hoping to catch up on the rest of Stormlight before tackling other works- but I’ll definitely be checking all of those out eventually! I’m thinking of reading Skyward next, sci-fi pilot stuff is my jam!

Mostly because, due to the loss of the verbal component, the magic really only “works” in one way- find a valid phrase (kind of like awakening except written), carve it onto an item, channel ambient energy either through yourself (dangerous) or through a stored battery (safer) to produce the spell effect. I’m just looking for a name that carries the concept of “writing down magic words” in a more elegant package. Figuring out one name is hard enough X,D

Honestly, all of this. I remember Brandon saying somewhere (I think it was a Writing Excuses episode) that most of his in-universe magic system words came from combining two descriptor words, so that's also a good place to start- though my first thought was combining physics with magician to make "physician" so it might do to put more thought into it XD

So, you've got yourself a wand, yeah? Nice magically reactive wood for the main "barrel" of it, with a fine metal chamber housing gems with various spells programmed into them. You spin the chamber to the spell you want, thumb the activation rune on top of the grip, and fire. Maybe have a finger ring mounted on the bottom to help prevent disarming. Personally, I'd probably load it up with some kind of energy blasting spell, point-and-click teleportation, a conjurable blade attachment for when I've got to mix it up in melee, a force shield, lighter attachment, and a flashlight spell. Mostly I just love the aesthetic of "wands wielded like pistols"

Man, that definitely feels like something that fits thematically with "math as a magic system"- something something, chaos theory?

So, I've got a kind of "Fallout except in a world of magic" type of story going on, where magic is done via a language who's pronunciation has been lost but the symbols are still known and effective for casting spells- with the main magic users being people who study the grammar of this language to figure out how to combine the correct combination of words to make the magic go. Very much a "magic as a computer coding language" type system. Brandon's made some very excellent names for his magic systems and magic users, and his talk of "taking two words and mashing them together" has definite merit- the three metallic arts, biochroma, shard-whatevers. I just can't for the life of me figure out a combination that actually LOOKS good- some kind of combination of coder or scribe with glyph or rune? Maybe use enchantment as a base word? I'm just stumped.

Hello! I was introduced to Sandon Branderson's works around November last year, and since then have absolutely torn through almost all the Cosmere stuff I could get my hands on (mostly audiobooks) and the Reckoners series, with only really half of The Way of Kings and the rest of Stormlight left for me to get through. Brandon's works have HUGELY inspired the way I've been looking at my own writing now, and hopefully I can take that energy and actually get something to a first draft for once XD