Quoth

So I think maybe I misunderstood the ending. On my first couple of readings, I thought that Stephen was using journaling to reform his aspects anew. However, looking at people's responses it sounds like the shadow of Tobias was merely echoes in his head, prompting him to write fanfic about his aspects? Did anyone else think he was reforming his aspects?

Yeah I really loved the scene between Shai and Hoid, and while I think it makes sense not to start with it, I do think it could make for a good "after credits scene" in the film. That's actually why I have Hoid in a jester mask in the screenplay, so that we could have a face reveal in the after credits.

I see what you're trying to do And yes, Moash sucks. However I think my favorite villain to hate is still Tonk Fa since Warbreaker was one of my first Sanderson books and the fact he had been torturing animals the whole time totally caught me by surprise.

Having worked on a screenplay adaptation of this story, I've spent a lot of time with it - which tends to make both its good qualities and its flaws stand out more to me. However in my opinion, the books attributes definitely outweigh its issues. Oh, and before you read more... spoiler alert. The biggest flaw for me is the fact that despite Shai arguing at the start that the project is essentially impossible, we don't really feel her struggling to complete her work on time. While it could definitely be argued that that isn't what the story is really about, I do feel like it still results in a slight lack of forward momentum and tension. I also find that people tend to complain that the primary antagonists - Frava, the Bloodsealer, and Zu - feel rather flat (though I personally love the Bloodsealer), and while the Bloodsealer and Zu do get their showdowns at the end, Frava and her counter-forger unfortunately just sort of fade into the background without ever really becoming true threats. Those issues all presented interesting challenges when trying to adapt the story. However, one of the advantages of stretching a novella to fill a full 2 hours is that it lets you take time to flesh things out, letting me do things like flesh out the Arbiters and the Emperor a bit and try to add more urgency to the constructing of the Emperor's soulstamp. I also realized early on that the story also lends itself to being told in an interesting non-linear style, which was a blast to write! As to whether the story is "Good" or "Amazing". I don't know what exactly the qualifiers are for either status, but in my opinion The Emperor's Soul stands as one of Brandon's masterpieces and definitely worthy of standing with the original Mistborn trilogy and TWOK. The deftness with which he weaves its unique themes and magic system are deeply compelling and makes it a great tour de force of what Brandon can do when he's bringing his "A" game. And as a sucker for plot design, I really love how beautiful the story's symmetry is, with lots of powerful moments like Shai's burning of the painting being mirrored by Gaotona's burning of her journal. So I guess that makes it "Amazing" in my book.

Just thought I'd mention here that I posted my attempt at a screenplay adaptation over in the fanfic section and would love to get people's feedback. Especially lore related critiques, as I'm not as deep into all of that as some on here, and would like to try and keep things consistent with Brandon's universe.

Last year I wrote a screenplay adaptation of "The Emperor's Soul" which is one of my favorite novellas. I got lots of feedback during the writing process and then ran the final draft past the reviewers on The Black List, which initially gave it a very positive review of 8/10. Follow up reviews dropped the overall score however, and it ended at a 7/10. This year I want to give the project another pass with my focus not only on addressing story related feedback, but also to make sure that whatever changes the adaptation introduces don't mess with the lore too much. Adaptation can be a fiddly business, especially when you are expanding or reducing the story a lot from its initial form, but I still want to try to stay fairly true to the original. Anyway, I'd love to get people's feedback! Feel free to get deep into what doesn't fit the lore or spirit of the story as well as what does or doesn't work about this adaptation as a whole. (Update: I've removed the link to the file, since I realized that sharing a fan work that contains that much of Brandon's original work might be a copyright problem. I'm still open to sharing it if you PM me, but I just request that you've read the original book first as the screenplay has all of the spoilers.)

Thanks Robin! By the way, are there any rules against sharing pdfs when you're still new? I was thinking of sharing some of my work over on the fanfic subforum.

Hi Everyone! I'm a screenwriter, programmer, and long time Sanderson fan. Not sure why I haven't joined this forum before, as I've used your resources on past Cosmere related projects. Better late than never though! Looking forward to geeking out with you all and picking people's brains with lore related questions!