Last month, we interviewed fantasy author Brandon Sanderson about his work, including many stories set in his interconnected fictional universe known as the Cosmere. That full interview is now available, so you can read or watch to hear him talk all about books like Wind and Truth, his upcoming third Mistborn series Ghostbloods, or the non-Cosmere short fiction collection Tailored Realities.
During our interview, Sanderson dropped an interesting tidbit about his Hugo Award-winning novella The Emperor's Soul, which is set on the same world as his 2005 debut novel Elantris. It turns out this is the latest book Sanderson is considering adapting for the screen.
Brandon Sanderson has written a new screenplay for The Emperor's Soul
Sanderson has talked at length in recent years about his struggles with getting one of his books adapted by Hollywood. For a long time, he was trying to get the original Mistborn trilogy turned into a television show and movie series. But that didn't pan out; by the end of 2025, Sanderson told fans in his yearly State of the Sanderson blog post that he was "back to square one" on Cosmere screen adaptations.
But you know Sanderson; he's always working on something. After finishing his fifth Stormlight Archive novel Wind and Truth in mid-2025, he decided to spend the next six months blowing off steam by working on whatever projects he wanted without any deadlines. "A big chunk of that became the novella forTailored Realities, 50,000 words," Sanderson explained. "And part of that became going back to White Sand and fiddling on that, part of it became a screenplay for The Emperor's Soul that I'm very proud of."
Both Elantris and The Emperor's Soul take place on the world of Sel, a planet Sanderson called one of the "backbones" for his overall plan for the Cosmere. They're also both standalone stories, with The Emperor's Soul in particular serving as a short, poignant piece that follows a young woman specializing in magical forgery who is forced to try and create a new soul for a desperate ruler. For Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul was a perfect place to hone his screenplay writing while he plans how to bring his work to the screen.
"I need more screenplay practice," he said. "Like, I envy [George R.R. Martin] so much, him having worked in television for so many years, and then coming to it and suddenly being able to have a great influence on the first seasons of Game of Thrones because he had been, you know, working in television. I envy him that experience. And so this is like my fifth or so screenplay. So I'm getting to where I feel comfortable writing them and offering feedback on them, but I still need more experience. So I decided, 'Hey, I'm gonna write a screenplay on Emperor's Soul' and stuff like that."
It's true that Martin worked in television for many years on shows like Beauty and the Beast and The Twilight Zone before Game of Thrones was picked up by HBO, and this allowed him to have a greater influence on the series than authors normally do when their works are adapted. He was part of the writers room and wrote one episode per season for the first four seasons of the series, including the absolute banger "The Lion and the Rose," where Joffrey Baratheon is poisoned to death at his own wedding.
It's a credit to Sanderson that he recognizes how Martin's experience in TV informed his time on Thrones, and that he's working on upping his own screenwriting skills by drafting screenplays for works like The Emperor's Soul.
Brandon Sanderson and his agent look back on the legacy of Elantris
Elsewhere in Sel, last month marked the 20-year anniversary of Elantris, Sanderson's very first published novel which came out all the way back on April 21, 2005. To commemorate the occasion, he released a video this week where he sat down with his agent, Joshua Bilmes, to discuss his unusual road to publication.
Oftentimes, authors submit their books to an agent, who then takes those books and submits them to editors at publishing houses in hopes that one will buy the story. In Sanderson's case, he spent a lot of time going to conventions, where he crossed paths with Moshe Feder, an editor at Tor Books. Feder told Sanderson to send him his latest book, Elantris. Around 18 months later, Feder finally got back in touch with Sanderson and said he wanted to buy Elantris. Tracking Sanderson down was quite an ordeal, as he'd graduated from college and moved in the interim.
The one catch was that Sanderson didn't have an agent, and agents fill a crucial role during contract negotiations by looking out for an author's best interests. Sanderson reached out to Bilmes, who had passed on representing several of Sanderson's previous books but expressed an interest in seeing more from him in the future. Sanderson told Bilmes he had an offer on the table and needed representation, Bilmes asked to read the book and agreed to take Sanderson on as a client, and the rest is history.
Sanderson and Bilmes break down all this and more in this hour-long retrospective video. If you're interested in Elantris or Sanderson's writing career, it's very much worth a watch. With two Elantris sequels on the horizon, it's never been a better time to visit Sel and see where the Cosmere began.
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