Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

EWOT: Prophecies

At one point, RJ raised his voice to scold his wife, "No! No hints! They can figure it out!" She was grinning, apparently not chagrined at all. But she did stop saying any more at that point. This leads me to believe that Mr. Jordan enjoys immensely weaving the puzzle, as much as writing the book.

He repeatedly reassured us that we have all the clues we need to figure out who killed Asmodean.

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Halima is a man in a woman's body. I got Jordan to 'fess up to this one when he was talking about the new books-on-tape that will be coming out soon. He said that a male voice will read the parts that are from a man's point of view and a female voice will read the parts that are from a female character's point of view. "So, which one will read the passage from Halima's point of view?" I asked. Jordan sighed and said, "Halima's just weird." He went on to confirm that he/she is a male spirit inside a female body and suggested that he/she will change personality over time since the body affects the spirit (and vice-versa).

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The VOICE At Tarwin's Gap (The Eye of the World)

Since the Creator cannot or will not act in creation, we can reasonably surmise that it wasn't the Creator's voice Rand heard when chasing Ishamael (I had hoped it was). So, then whose was it? The Dark One's "voice" is written in all caps in Lord of Chaos, but the voice in The Eye of the World is caps and italics. This may just be a change in how RJ wrote the Dark One's voice, but it may signify a different speaker.

The Path of Daggers was finished August 25th, and published in less than 60 days.

The usual "at least three more books" was mentioned several times in an increasingly loud voice.

Yesterday (Monday 30th August) Robert Jordan appeared at the Independent Theatre in Sydney. Here's how it went.

FOOTNOTE

A verbatim account of this Q&A session can be found here.

SASTAN

After about half and hour of wine and finger food we filed in to the theatre. When Robert Jordan appeared, I, and a number of people were shocked; we had passed by him a number of times in the hallway without recognising him; he's much larger than I expected him, and at first I mistook him for an Irishman.

RJ, and two other people were on the stage, while the rest of us down below at our seats. RJ was the only person who did not use a microphone—he has a large booming voice that carried well across the theatre.

Anyway, the Independent Bookstore rep introduced RJ and allowed him to speak a little about how glad he was to be there etc. Then he began reading from The Path of Daggers, part of the prologue. We were all bored, and at the end of that, he gave us the option of continuing to listen to him read, or he could leave (he really did). So he next chose The Dragon Reborn, and spent about 10 minutes on that. At the end of that we all dutifully clapped.

The rep then told us about RJ, details about his tour of duties, what medals he was awarded, and other details that we only had a basic knowledge of before (I did not record it, so I can't recall what exactly they were).

Then question time.

I'm going to post the transcript as soon as I've done it (won't be till next week). I don't think it would be right to post any of his voice, although maybe just a couple of the Forsaken names would be okay?

Any suggestions? (post=on web page :0)

Hmmm, I think that's all. Oh, and I got a number of really cool posters. One side has the cover of The Path of Daggers (full spread), the other has all the book covers and the WoT logo. Very cool.

Cheers, Joel

Question

Robert Jordan

Mr. Jordan entered Kepler's Books, an independent local book store, at about 5:45 PM on Saturday, January 11th. I was perusing the bookstore when I recognized his voice as he walked from the entrance to the employee only area (I had just heard it via the recent interview referred to on dragonmount.com). After about 75 chairs, a signing table, and a Kepler's speaker podium were set up, Mr. Jordan was introduced at 6:25 PM.

Limping slightly to the front with his cane and recognizable hat (is that Mat Cauthon's?), he pausing momentarily for effect, and suddenly burst into "Are you ready to rrrrrrumble? It's smack down Menlo Park!!" A few moments later, "First off...its Nynaeve. [laughter from the audience] Egwene. Seanchan. Cyndane. Saidin. Saidar..." etc., the normal pronunciations.

He then took several questions from the audience for approximately 25 minutes. I did not bring a tape recorder so my summary of his answers and any quotations here are not verbatim, and only include points of interest that I remember.

Freaks, geeks and nerds, oh my! I must say, I felt right at home.

Yes, it's true. LitN and myself were mere feet from one another without ever realizing it. I suppose I should have posted a profile pic, or better yet, been paying closer attention late Wednesday night when John NB me that he would be in San Diego on Thursday. As it was, I didn't get the NB until I was almost ready to leave on Thurs, and thus missed the opportunity to arrange a meeting. Getting to spend some real-life time with someone that I've come to consider a close friend at Wotmania would have made the Comic-Con that much more memorable, and I can only pledge to make more of an effort to work out such a meeting in the future. Perhaps RJ will do a book signing in So Cal after Knife of Dreams is released.

In any case, it was thrilling to meet RJ in person on Thursday during the autograph session, and I returned to Comic-Con on Friday to witness the Q&A session. I'm a little surprised at how nervous I was in actually asking RJ a few questions. Pounding heart, sweaty palms, a slight shake in the voice, and all that. He's only a guy that writes a few books here and there, right? What's so tough about asking a question or three?

Anyway, on Thursday, I steeled myself enough to ask one question while he signed my hardcover copy of New Spring.

At the book signing, I was kinda paranoid that I'd get kicked out cause I didn't have a badge, but really, nobody checked. Tam and I were about 5 people behind WSB, and Isabel was late. When she finally did show up, she cut into the line and stood with WSB. It was funny, though, everyone knew Isabel. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. But I had this little superior feeling (i dunno why) because she was with US and not with THEM, if that makes sense. She was a Theorylander, and everyone knew her. That was cool, I thought.

Finally, the line started moving, and WSB and Isabel were going over that huge list of questions that everyone submitted, trying to figure out which ones to ask and which ones had already been answered, and which ones were answered that might spawn new questions. I dunno, I didn't really care, I just wanted my books signed. I think it took maybe 30 minutes for me and Tam to get to the front. Isabel and WSB hadn't left after they got theirs signed, so they were standing around waiting to hear the answers to Tam's and my questions. Tamyrlin asked some weird question about cords and stuff, and I was just kinda speechless, cause, I mean, here I am, standing in front of the man who has dominated my literary reading for the past 7-8 years. I was kinda speechless. So he's signing my books, and I'm just standing there, and Isabel elbows me sharply in the ribs, and says "Ask him a question!" in a low voice.

Camel: "Oh, right, I get a question."
Camel: "Yeah, wheres your hat, in your little, in your picture, I was really looking forward to seeing the hat."

"I didnt bring the black one this time, I brought a brown one. I thought it might get rained on a lot."

CAMEL

Camel: "I was really looking forward to the hat."

Isabel was furious. She got over it though. It must be the Camel charm, you know.

So then Tam and I decided to go find him something to eat, since he was starving, and it was now about 5:00, so my lunch had been fully digested and my stomach was growling. But first we had to go get my car from the parking lot and take it to the hotel. So we got there, and apparently I owed a 15 dollar fine or something. I paid it and we went back to the hotel. And I feel that I must point out that Tamyrlin suggested a route back to the hotel, which led us in circles for half an hour before I decided to stop listening to the Lord of the Board and find the place on my own. We got there two minutes later. That's what you get for listening to Tam, folks. Then we started walking to find some food. The Quiznos was closed, so we went to McDonald's instead. Then we went back to where the bakery was, sat down, and got on Theoryland and posted again. Tam and I then returned to the hotel, and he began typing up the transcripts.

In a word, boring.

However, at some point we were listening to the transcript, and Tam made the comment that RJ had just pretty much flat out stated that Nynaeve was a Learner. Isabel was furious! She threw this cute little hissy fit and screamed "NO! NO! NO!" at the top of her lungs, jumped up and down on the bed, and tried to tell us RJ was wrong. Tamyrlin was sitting there, jaw on the floor, and then he says:

Tamyrlin: "Isabel, I'm just quoting what RJ said, I'm not putting my spin on this!"
Isabel: "He's wrong!" (ack!) "Now, you need to write that he's wrong on there!"
Tamyrlin: "This is a transcript, Isabel, not a commentary!"

Isabel then proceeded to grab the tape recorder and refused to give it back until she finished her tirade. Actually, at one point she sat down on the bed and ticked off all of the reasons why Nynaeve was a sparker. She even got her book out and found quotes. When she grabbed the book, I grabbed the tape recorder and gave it back to Tam, lol. This was quite possibly the funniest moment of the entire weekend.

Well, that and RJ's comment about Tam's theories and the "Nice try, Jack!" line.

Anyway, later I fell asleep. About an hour later, I wake up to Isabel practically sitting on my feet, and WSB and Tam arguing about something on the transcript. *yawn* I turned on the TV and watched something, I forget what. Anyway, around 9:00, the following conversation ensues:

Tamyrlin: "Hey Camel, pizza?"
Camel: "Sure."
Tamyrlin (tossing a $20 to Camel): "Order it."
Camel: "Now?"
Tamyrlin: "Sure, why not?"
Camel: "What do you want on it?"
Tamyrlin: "What do you like?"
Camel: "I like everything, so whatever you want."
Tamyrlin: "Sausage and onions?"

I must have made a face, cause he laughed.

Tamyrlin: "You don't like sausage and onions?"
Camel: "I like them.. I've just never had JUST sausage and onions."
Tamyrlin: "Oh. Well, we can split it half and half. Get whatever you want on your half."

So I go out to the lobby and get a flyer for the local pizza place, and order the pizza. I got one half sausage and onion and the other half pepperoni and mushrooms. I went back to the room and turned on the TV again. Flipping through the channels, I discovered that "Iron Chef America" was on. It was better than watching "Walker, Texas Ranger", so I watched that, while Tam typed up transcripts and WSB looked at something (porn? nah) on his computer.

For those of you who haven't watched "Iron Chef" on the Food Network, it's basically a cook off contest between two chefs. They have an hour to prepare so many dishes based around a specified secret ingredient. Tonight's ingredient was mushrooms. It was a cool battle. About halfway through, the phone rings. Pizza's here! So I go out there and grab the pizza and bread sticks and come back to the room.

I open the breadsticks box and have one of those, while Tam reaches into the pizza, and grabs a slice of pizza. We're eating and watching Iron Chef, and then I reach into the pizza box, and there are only two slices of PEPPERONI AND MUSHROOM left, and there are FOUR SAUSAGE AND ONION slices.

Camel: "Whoa, Tam, you're eating my pizza."
Tamyrlin: "No, I'm not, I'm eating mine."
Camel: "Dude, you're eating pepperoni and mushroom."
Tamyrlin: "OH NO! I'm so sorry, Camel!"
Camel: "It's okay, don't worry about it."

He kept apologizing. After my slices were gone, I tried one of his sausage and onion pizzas. Again, I must have made a face, 'cause he said "Don't like it?" I shook my head and ate some more bread sticks.

Then Isabel came in and everyone argued about WoT stuff. Then we went to sleep. I got the bed this time.

We got all four of our books signed then left. All in all it was a very satisfying and enjoyable experience, BUT, it's not over yet!

We decided since we were in the lovely city of Santa Cruz to walk around their downtown area and take in the sights. Katie and I were giddy, chatting about the signing when out of nowhere Katie says, "You're Harriet!" and stops dead. I look and sure enough Robert Jordan's wife Harriet is standing there looking surprised.

Jordan plans to live another 30 years—long enough, he says to finish all the books that are in his head right now. That will require a large dose of luck, and so far, his luck has been mixed. The new drug he's taking seems to be working well. Still, he can write for two hours a day at most, compared with eight or nine hours in healthier times. At this rate, he'll submit the final book in 2008 for publication in 2009, says Tom Doherty, president of Tor Books, Jordan's publisher.

If he gets better, he'll write faster. No one wants to talk about the alternative. If he dies, could someone else finish the series? Authors like V.C. Andrews and Mario Puzo have posthumously passed along their series to other writers. Still, some fans worry that another author, even Harriet, wouldn't be true to Jordan's voice. Jordan, however, is open to the idea.

"I'm getting out notes, so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end," he says. "But I hope to be around to actually finish it myself."

Hannah Clark

The decision, Jordan says, will be left to Harriet and Doherty, who has been a close friend and colleague for years. But Doherty isn't ready to address that possibility.

Tom Doherty

"I'm not prepared to concede that that's going to happen," Doherty says. "I'm working on the belief that he's going to beat this thing. Who else can tell this story?"

He reads your posts. I read them. All of them. You are all great for your caring and support. Thanks from the recesses of my soul. All of you WOT'ers are like extended family. But as family, I've got to ask that you allow RJ the time to heal. He's been extremely forthcoming with his status, and will continue to be regardless the news. But unless you've seen someone in a similar fight, you really have no idea how much of a struggle he's in. Thank God he's a stubborn ole cuss. Without that he could have easily said this is too difficult long ago and the game would have been lost.

Not that we shouldn't still be concerned about his health, because we should. But he's as fine as is possible. At the moment, he is very, very tired. Rehab is hard work. The medicines he is on can have dreadful side effects and have to monitored constantly. A slight imbalance causes all manner of issues. In his writing to you, he has glibbed over them as simply "rough patches". Rough? As fans of his writing, you'll not believe it, but he does have a talent for the understatement. Rough? I'd hate to see something Really Rough. Those who have been through something similar know what it does to you. It zaps all of your strength. That's where he is right now. His words, "I'm as weak as a kitten". The great news is that the LLC production is in check, not officially in remission, simply in check. But, his system still has to shed those that were deposited in his heart, which will take time, lots of it. Waiting is hard work too. Patience is not something that either he or I possess in great quantities. His doctors told him 6 months, maybe a year till he feels himself somewhat back to normal. We chat frequently and laugh through it as best we can. That's a big part of my job in this journey, making him smile. I found myself doing the same with our beloved Harriet this past week. She's one of the two strongest ladies I know, still the load gets heavy. Thank you for always including Harriet in your well wishes. (FYI: The other woman of strength is my other mother, aka mother in law, who is a real lady and a tiger. Wouldn't want her in the other guy's corner.) Janet and I will be with Harriet and my Brother/Cousin next weekend, and all involved can hardly wait. We haven't seen them since Labor Day, too long.

Physically he's a long way from being the man that many of you have met at events. But were you to speak to him via telephone, you'd not know that anything was going on. The voice on the phone is strong and resolute. Lord I love him for that, among many other things. But, he has to follow the advise of his doctors, do as Harriet says (we all answer to someone) and be patient, and careful to allow for his recovery to continue. Thus, we'll need you to be patient too. Hang in there gang. The Dragon is tired and may be dragging, but he is winning.

Wilson Brother/Cousin 4th of 3

Thank you for all your support. James Oliver Rigney was a remarkable man. I am proud to have known him, to have been raised by him and to know him as a father.

I wrote the following 2 days after he passed away. It seemed to me that some readers might like to know some of the following. Thanks again for your support.

The death of Jim is undeniable. His absence is undeniable.

His presence is absent from my life like a mountain might be over time, but with Jim, it was in three hours.

I arrived 10am, my cousin Mary somehow pulled strings at airport. She was able to park Jim's car at the curb of the terminal building and then get to the gate to meet me so that we could get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

I took turns with others and sat with him on and off for 4 or 5 hours. He was incapable of speech. Somehow he had developed a fever but it was unclear what the reason was. They gave him every test to determine the reason. Tom Jones called. I put him on speakerfone and held the phone to Jim's ear. TJ told him that he loved him and wished he was there. Jim definitely responded as though he recognized Tom's voice. He smiled and closed his eyes, and I think he felt Tom's love.

This fever, on top of myriad critical breakdowns, was killing him. Occasionally, he trembled as though extremely alarmed. I think he was having nightmares.

I kept wiping his forehead with a damp cool towel. I held his hand. I encouraged him to rest easy. I told him I loved him.

In a little while his breathing began to slow.

There were many of us there, his family. Only two people were allowed at a time as visitors to see him. Will [Wilson] and my mother were with Jim—I had been asleep in the waiting room. They woke and got me. He had died.

His breathing had kept slowing. He had begun to die and he did die very peacefully. His breathing simply stopped.

It was obvious when I saw his body. He was gone. This tremendous man had moved on. I knew that this body on the bed had been Jim. I knew that the fire which moved him, which was Jim, was no longer in that body.

I knew that the loss of the fire of his life was who I mourned. His presence. His force.

What a wild ! and ferocious spirit. What a fire.

James Oliver Rigney was a great man of mind and heart. He loved learning and he loved spinning yarns. He was extremely playful and would become a cast of different characters. He occasionally became the character of the drunken Irish butler who was contractually bound to live under the stairs. The one who had to confess he had been watering the whisky, but only moderately, and never on the Sabbath. He had an immaculate Irish accent. His singing voice was beautiful. He loved to sing sea-chantys and anything else. He sang loud and strong and clear. On holidays and dinner parties he would sing for hours.

He was a very funny man. And what I think I loved most about his sense of humor was how funny He thought his jokes were. Not that he was a bad joke teller! He could spin some of the most absurd stories, which might begin quite casually and matter-of-factly. Upon delivery of the punch line or if he realized that my adolescent gullibility had waned, sometimes his face would turn bright red and he would laugh intensely, and silently, as though the mirth in it, if given voice, would knock out the walls of the house. His belly bouncing.

He would tell me the sad stories of the Nauga. I was 11 or 12. He spoke about "the huge numbers of those doomed rodents—all slaughtered to make so many couches and chairs." That was a perennial favorite of his. Explaining where naugahyde came from. That, and his suggestions that the "barrel-method" was optimal for rearing children. "It's quite simple, you see. You deposit the child in the barrel when he remains, if a boy, until his 35th birthday." She-children, of course, released upon their 18th birthday. He used to smoke a custom blend of tobacco in a pipe, one of hundreds of pipes he had collected. He was clear with his strategy for health as a result of smoking. "You see," he began, "I intend to become as though a creosote log, coated in tar and hence impregnable to nature's wear and tear." In short he would finish that of this he "was certain." Under the brim of his dark fedora I could see the light in his eye and it was a playful light. I can see him now. I love you Jim.

Other than that, my life has been rather serene lately. My job (so to speak) for these few weeks is to read books—and not just any books, but ones I have loved since I was a youth. That's rather remarkable to me still. It has been a very peaceful experience, though the stress of trying to finish a book that millions of people are waiting to read looms back there inside of me as well. Completing this work is going to be like no other project of which I've been a part. Always, writing and reading were similar—yet separated—activities for me. While writing, I am fully in "creation" mode. While reading, I'm in "experience" mode. Yet here, with the task of writing Book Twelve laid before me, creating and experiencing become muddled. For once, when I read a work and think "oh, I wish that this would happen" it is possible to MAKE it happen. However, I know that I must hold myself to the rigors of character and story, doing only what is functionally appropriate for the story. Still, there is hope. If I want a face-to-face meeting between certain characters, there is a chance that it will fit with the plot. If I wish for a certain world aspect to get a little more explanation, then there is opportunity for that.

This project is not 'mine' for it is much larger than me. And yet, I've always said that the strength of novels as an entertainment medium—as opposed to movies or other forms of expression—is that a novel can better reflect the vision of a single person. That can be good or it can be bad. However, in no other popular entertainment form can one person reasonably be in charge of every aspect and piece to the degree that one finds in novels. This leads to a completeness of vision in the medium, I think. My job in this case isn't to create that vision, but to 'catch' the same vision that Mr. Jordan had, then shepherd the final project so that it best reflects what he would have wished of the book. I feel that it's very important for the integrity of the book that it not have a schizophrenic vision—mine voice must blend with Mr. Jordan's, so that different passages will not fight with one another or stand out. The story comes first, the experience that the reader has.

So, I read and find myself saying "I wonder if I could make this particular thing happen?" That is followed with "is that what Mr. Jordan would do?" Finally, I come around to "What is best for the story?" And I think that last one stands the most tall.

Question Continued

Brandon Sanderson

Last year I explained the theory; now I can talk about what it's actually like. I think the blend I discussed is going very well. I'm writing through this draft as I would normally, with a focus on making the characters sound right. That's most important to me right now, followed closely by making certain the plot flows well.

In revisions I'm being careful to enhance my descriptiveness and write the book in a way that feels correct for the Wheel of Time. This is going to take a lot of drafting—let me warn you readers, when you see that progress bar hit 100%, we're still nowhere close to being finished.

However, I'm extremely pleased with how the book is going. I think the blend of my style with that of Mr. Jordan is proceeding very nicely. It's going to be a fantastic book.

A Memory of Light revision work is moving right along. I'm afraid there's not much that is interesting to report. What I'm doing right now is probably the most boring part of a revision—line editing. I'm going line by line, trimming the fat, making it more readable, cutting the passive voice, making the scenes more visual, trying to cut out redundancy. There is a LOT of material here that I'm working with. It shouldn't be long before I'm back to writing new scenes, however. Probably next week or the week after.

Tor is readying a press release about the release date of the book. I suspect you'll see that next week as well. Watch Tor.com and Dragonmount; I'll link it here when it goes live as well.

Melhay

Brandon Sanderson

Melhay

Brandon Sanderson

Melhay

Brandon Sanderson

Melhay

Brandon Sanderson

Now this one will probably be RAFO'd: I know you already said that there are four Shards outside of Ati and Leras in your other books. Could you tell us the numbers per book? Is just a standard two per book? Or do some have more than others?

Zas678

Brandon Sanderson

Is Adonalsium going to be mentioned by name in Warbreaker and The Way of Kings or is he going to be an underlining "God"(I don't know what to call him yet) idea? I am curious now, so I will have to keep my eyes open for him.

Adonalsium (Ahy-doe-Nahl-see-um) will be mentioned by name again. Ruin and Preservation were what have been called Shards of Adonalsium. (The Voice from Warbreaker is another Shard.)

His notes about Lews Therin, I would say are about middle extensive, comparatively of different things that he has notes on. Less than some, more than others. They were extensive enough that I know enough things you don't know to make me excited, but not so extensive that you know, you are ever going to see a book about Lews Therin or anything like that.

Question

As a followup question, are the notes about Lews Therin the same notes about the voice of Lews Therin's?

Brandon Sanderson

You know I think that's enough of a spoiler because there is still confusion or not confusion, wondering from people whether or not Lews Therin is the voice, I mean, of course Semirhage said that it is...Robert Jordan never really made that explicit himself. What I think and what you think may be different and so we'll just leave it. There are things about this in the book.

GeekDad

Brandon Sanderson

Footnote—Terez

I commented on the Dragonmount forums when I found this interview that it seemed that Brandon had accidentally confirmed construct theory in this interview, and that I suspected someone on Team Jordan had said something to him about it, resulting in the vaguer answers that followed on the book tour. Luckers emailed Brandon and got this response:

Brandon Sanderson

James,

Feel free to post this response from me.

"I stand by everything I said in those interviews; I did not make any miss-steps. However, there is one big misinterpretation. Terez says that I was asked by Team Jordan to be more secretive. That's not the case. There was one time when Harriet asked me to be more secretive, but that was in regards to spoilers about Towers of Midnight when I was working on it, and she felt (rightly) that I was hinting about too many things that would come in the book.

I have not settled, and do not intend to settle, this debate except in regard to the things placed specifically in the books. The Geekdad interview response is primarily talking about my own reactions as a reader the first time I read specific scenes, long before I saw what was in the notes. At that point, as a fan, my view of the books shifted.

Those views may have shifted again while looking at the notes. I have not said, and will continue not to say, what was in them on this point. There are clues in the text. That is always the way it has been, and I think that is sufficient for this conversation. However, I can explicitly say there was no "Team Jordan order of silence" on this particular point. In fact, there have been few (or none) of those except in regards to spoiling surprises for the books not yet in print. I prefer to keep it that way, which is why I generally ask interviewers to run my interviews past Team Jordan for clarification, and so that they know what I'm saying and can steer me if I do happen to stray into areas best left quiet."

Best,
Brandon

Footnote—Terez

Of course, the bolded bits (emphasis mine) are still telling, and there must have been some reason why he decided to be less open about his feelings after this point.

Brandon's assistant Peter here again. Brandon is still out on the road; at this moment he's at the Joseph-Beth bookstore in Lexington KY, hopefully with a fully recovered voice. Tomorrow he'll be in my old stomping grounds at Books&Co. near Dayton OH. (I used to ride my bike 12 miles to their original store location almost every Saturday, though I still haven't been to their new location. Some of my family members may show up to bother Brandon tomorrow. If you see them, say hi for me.)

A note about the Atlanta signings on Friday: There are actually two separate signings, one in Clarkston at 3:30 p.m. and one in Norcross at 7:00 p.m. Right now we only have details for the Norcross signing here on the site, but you can see the details for the Clarkston signing at Macmillan's tour page.

Harriet McDougal Rigney

First off, Towers of Midnight. The progress bar has been stopped at 82% for about two months now. Why is that? Well, mid-to-late December, two things happened. First, I decided that I couldn't work any further on new material for Towers until I did some substantial rewrites to the book. This happens frequently with my novels; it's not something to worry about. I did this twice on Hero of Ages. The more complex the book and the series, the more often I find myself doing midbook refining drafts like this one, making certain I've got the voice, motivations, and plot sequences right.

Towers of Midnight is going very well. I'm very pleased with how it's turning out, and I'm confident it will be ready in time for a release later this year as promised. It will be longer than The Gathering Storm, which is another reason the progress bar stopped. I'm just not sure how long the book will end up being, so a percentage is harder to judge right now. The actual length of the book right now—after putting together all the pieces I've been working on over the last six months—comes to 291,294 words. The Gathering Storm was around 300,000 words. I estimate this one at around 320,000 or so after revisions and edits. (It might get as high as 350,000, then get sliced back down. I always trim a lot off books in later drafts when I tighten up the language.)

I figured that since I was doing revisions, and since getting to "100%" at 300,000 words would give the wrong impression, I'd just let the progress bar sit for a time. As long as I turn in the book by this summer, it will still be ready for a late fall release. So there's no need for anyone to panic yet.

I'm afraid I can't say much about what I'm working on in the book. Out of respect for Harriet's wishes, I need to remain tight-lipped. I know it's not very satisfying to hear, "All is well, please keep waiting." But . . . all is well, please keep waiting.

My job has constantly evolved. First there was fanmail and filing. Then the audiobook project got underway, and someone had to go through and mark all of the changes in point of view so that Michael Kramer could read the male POVs and Kate Reading could read the female ones. Jim decided that I could do that, so, much to my delight, I was getting paid to read The Wheel of Time. I was in hog heaven, of course. At that time, Jim was finishing up A Crown of Swords, and when the proofs came in, Harriet suggested that I assist in going through them, but Jim said no, he didn't want to spoil me. I was crushed. Over the next year or so, though, my job broadened. He gave me the in-house glossary to tidy up, and some of his notes to consolidate. He also would give me lists of questions like "Has character A ever met Character B?" and "Give me three examples of character C's speech" and "Find me all of the information you can on what a baby feels as he's being born." By the time he had The Path of Daggers ready to give to Harriet for editing, I had convinced him that I could help with maintaining our house glossary going forward, and he decided that I would get the pages at the same time Harriet did. Harriet encouraged me to edit as well, and I would do that and pass the pages on to her. I don't know if any of my edits made it into the final book, but Harriet did begin recommending me for freelance editing.

I did other things as well. Jim had a massive personal library, and mentioned that he would love for it to be cataloged; I cobbled together a classification system, using WordPerfect mail merge. I also cataloged his music collection, and kept the existing catalog of movies updated. I did shopping for him, arranged appointments, worked on the Wizards of the Coast RPG and the New Spring comics. When the new cat went missing, I made and put up posters in the neighborhood (we found her hiding under the house, eventually); when cranes and herons started stealing goldfish, I was given fox urine to spread around the pond to discourage them (Jim did encourage me to delegate; I managed to pass that one on to someone else. It smelled so bad that that idea was soon abandoned and we covered the fish pond with a net. I still sometimes find huge birds staring hungrily at the fish when I walk out there). Eventually I took over the bookkeeping as well. He took to calling me his right arm. Over time, I picked up assistants, two of whom are still with me: Marcia Warnock, who took over the book catalog, spread the fox urine, keeps me in office supplies, handles all the annoying phone calls, and keeps me on schedule; and Alan Romanczuk, who took over the questions and research, became our IT specialist, and assists with the bookkeeping, among many other things.

Then, after the Knife of Dreams tour, Jim was diagnosed with amyloidosis. Our focus changed somewhat; we all worked to help him and Harriet as much as we could. After the night that Jim told the ending to Wilson and Harriet, I would sit and talk with him about the end of the series, with a tape recorder running. The last thing that we did together was select the winners of the calendar art contest. Note: I didn't select, I just gave him the art and took notes, and then emailed the winning names to Tor. That was two days before his death.

The significant thing that has changed about my job since then is that Jim isn't here. It's quieter—there is no big, booming voice calling "Maria!" or singing as he comes in the office. There's no one explaining military stuff to me and making it really clear and interesting. There's no one sitting at his desk wearing a silly hat. What I do at my job hasn't changed that much. Now I work directly for Harriet, who is as wonderful a boss as Jim was. When Brandon has questions about the books, I work on finding answers, as does Alan. When Brandon sends us a book, I go through it looking for continuity errors, just as I did with Jim, and suggesting other changes, just as before. I still do the bookkeeping with Alan's help, and other banal stuff. I know a lot more fans now, of course; I went to JordanCon, DragonCon, and the Charleston and New York booksignings for The Gathering Storm. I can hardly wait until JordanCon 2, which as I type is 11 weeks and 1 day away.

Richard Fife

Harriet McDougal Rigney

The Wheel of Time fans are very vocal and some diehards were resistant to reading a new book with a different authorial voice. But the tone and characters were so consistent with the early novels that the response was generally positive.

"I don't think you can find a fan reception about anything that is all positive," Sanderson reflects. "I've certainly never seen one. Not everyone liked the book, but not everyone liked Jim's books. Heck, not everyone likes Hamlet. That's just the way we are as people. There is no way to please everyone."

The writer knows it's important to listen to the fans. "There are some one-star reviews out there, [but feedback] has been overwhelmingly positive. I very much appreciate hearing that I'm on the right course. I hope I can make the next two books turn out as well."

Now, remember how I said the title was a metaphor, implying that some "Towering Midnight" would be present, too? Well, the panel was hit by a bubble of evil, in particular, located directly in the left inside pocket of my coat where the voice recorder for my interviews was sitting. I had been casual with handling it all weekend, keeping it in my jeans pocket or tossing it into my laptop bag, and yet as it sat in a fairly spacious pocket in my coat all by itself, it decided to erase ALL of the interviews as well as my voice-notes on what had happened in the con. I noticed this a few minutes before the panel ended as I felt suddenly compelled to pull it out and look at it. I left. I panicked. I raged. I spiraled into depression. The Dark One's evil had found the most efficient way for a voice recorder to kill me.

After I rushed to my room to try futilely to type out anything I could remember from the interviews, I gave up and went down to the ball which was now starting. I saw Alan and his wife and told them what happened, and word started to get around. When I told Harriet, she asked if I wanted to re-do the interview, but I was so bummed that I declined, saying I'd just email Maria with the questions and she could send them out. I then got a wild hair and walked over to the silent auction. There were two major things on the block: one was an Advanced Bound Manuscript of The Way of Kings, and the other was Robert Jordan's dragon-carved walking cane/staff. I call it a cane/staff because for him it was probably just a tall cane. For many people, it would be a staff. The book was tempting, but the cane/staff called to me. It took some back-of-the-room murmuring and talking between me and another fellow that was interested, but yes, I have a new friend. Say hello to Oliver, named by Wilson's suggestion.

Going for the cane/staff must have been good karma, too, because I then chatted with an old acquaintance of Jordan's, Marcia, who works in radio and broadcasting and gave me some very encouraging words. Something about what she said perked me back up, and I made the rounds and secured interview promises for the next day.

After this wonderful panel, we had an amazing treat. As many of us know, before Robert Jordan died, he spent one evening and the better part of the next day telling his close family/friends exactly how A Memory of Light goes, and they captured it on tape. Alan, being the computer whiz he is, cleaned up the first 17 minutes of audio, and we got to listen to it. Aside from Robert Jordan's preamble that he would be talking mostly out of order as things came to him, he said "but I will start with the prologue." We then were treated to the Great Bard himself telling us the first scene of The Gathering Storm.

Now, I know exactly what people are hoping for here, and I am going to say: no. Aside from the fact that no recording devices were allowed in the room for legal reasons, I know that I myself could not do justice to what I heard. It would be a cruel parody and fall short. I trust Brandon will have translated the scene description we heard into wonderful prose, but what we heard was exactly that, a description of action and scene, not the text we will all see soon enough, and that should only ever be in Robert Jordan's voice. So, sorry guys and gals, you had to be there.

But, I will tell you this: our reaction. When it was finished, the room gave a standing ovation. This, of course, was expected and not spectacular from us. What was, though, was that when the clapping stopped, we all sat down, and dead silence filled the room, even though we knew the reading/panel was done, and even still after Harriet and Alan said "that's it." We did not know what to do with ourselves, our brains were churning and wheeling and grinding over what we heard, and many people left with tears in their eyes. I still get goose-bumps just thinking and writing about it.

Harriet in particular was very up front about a topic that I imagine they thought to be a bit sensitive, though obvious if you think about it. Which was the... hm, not sure what word to use here. Caution? Admonition? Caveat? Not sure. Let's go with "forewarning"—forewarning that Book 12 (and 13, and 14) are not "Robert Jordan" books. They are "Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson" books.

As Brandon put it, if they had wanted someone to slavishly imitate Jordan's prose and style and try to make it seem like it was actually Jordan writing, they could have done that (or tried, as Brandon was of the opinion that not even a skilled ghostwriter would have been really successful at mimicking Jordan's voice), but that was not what Harriet and Tom wanted. They wanted (and I'm paraphrasing here a little) to finish the series in a way that honored Jordan's vision without insulting his memory by, essentially, pretending he hadn't passed on. Which is something that I personally can completely get behind; the "ghostwriter" option strikes me as nothing less than ghoulish, so good on Team Jordan for not going that route. Brandon's aim in writing, therefore, has been to capture the feel of the Wheel of Time (and keeping everything that Jordan actually wrote before he died intact) while still bringing his own experience and voice to the table. In other words, he's in there too.

Which I imagine is going to anger some people, and I'm telling those people right now: deal. Of course ideally we would have preferred to have the finale of the Wheel of Time as written by Robert Jordan and Robert Jordan alone, but we can't have that, and that's no one's fault, least of all Harriet et al. I can't encapsulate everything they said at this panel about it without going on for a hundred years (and this is thing is already frighteningly long), but if you want my take on it, after hearing what they had to say (and having read Brandon's previously published novels) I am at the very least deeply curious to see the result. Take it for what it's worth, but I think it's going to be pretty damn cool. You can think I drank the Koolaid or whatever, and there's certainly the possibility that I am wrong, and that's fine, but if you insist on pissing and moaning about something that for all intents and purposes was unavoidable (not to mention the best solution available anyway), I really have no sympathy. Put up or shut up.

(Well, come on, I couldn't have a whole blog post go by without saying something incendiary!)

Immediately after this was what was billed in the program as "A Reading from A Memory of Light", and the panelists listed were Harriet—and Robert Jordan. I may have been the last person to clue into what this meant. I had assumed that Harriet was going to read something from the book that Jordan had written.

What I got was quite different.

Wilson was there, too, and got up and told us how, a few weeks before Mr. Rigney died, Wilson was sitting with him when Mr. Rigney suddenly began to talk. He was describing a scene, and as soon as Wilson realized what he was hearing he jumped up and ran into the next room and got Harriet and Maria, so they could take notes, and dashed to Wal-Mart to buy audio recording equipment. Because Robert Jordan was telling them the end of the story.

I don't mind telling you, when I realized they were going to play some of the audio recording for us, I got chills.

Wilson told us that what we were about to hear was recorded twenty days before Mr. Rigney passed, and is a description of a scene in the Prologue of A Memory of Light. I'm not sure, but it may be the very first scene in the book. You could have heard a pin drop in the room when he sat down next to Harriet and started the recording.

I can't claim that I specifically remember what Mr. Rigney's voice sounded like when I met him five years ago, but I would have remembered if it had sounded any different from what a big, self-assured man generally sounds like, so hearing what he had sounded like near the end was something of a shock. The voice on the tape was hoarse and cracked and exhausted and determined, and altogether... I hesitate to use the word "eerie", for fear it seems disrespectful, but, well, I can't think of another way to describe it. Combined with the scene he was actually describing, which was entirely for the purpose of creating a sense of ominous foreboding, the effect was... I don't know what it was.

The scene was simple, with largely nameless characters who are unlikely to appear in the larger narrative, starting with a farmer sitting on his porch, watching a cloud bank in the distance, one which is behaving in a manner unlike any clouds the farmer had ever seen before. I won't go into more detail (though it may be that others will), because we were asked beforehand not to employ recording devices, and though a written summary is certainly not breaking that rule, I feel that I should adhere to the spirit of the request. And besides, a written summary wouldn't do it justice.

The thing I remember most was the repeated phrase: "The storm is coming. The storm is coming." He said that over and over again.

I had choked up the moment the recording started, and by the time it was over, I was unabashedly in tears. This may seem like a rather strong reaction, but perhaps it is a little explained when I tell you that by entirely random coincidence, Mr. Rigney had died barely a month before my own father did; my father was only a year older than Mr. Rigney, too.

Meaningless coincidence this may be, but grief doesn't truck much with logic, and... and I don't have much more to say on that topic. Let's just say it struck a raw place, and leave it at that.

All other considerations aside, whatever else I felt at that moment, I also feel privileged to have been there for it.

Fortunately for this con-goer, there was a ball later that evening. With a bar.

For my part, I mostly stood around and ogled people's costumes. There were lots of Aes Sedai outfits, naturally, some of which were stunning in their elaborateness, and most of the men who dressed up chose to be Asha'man, though there was a Cairhienin lord and lady (complete with stripes of rank and foot-high hairdo), a bare-chested guy who had real raven-and-tower Seanchan tattoos (holy crap), another guy who was dressed in an exact replica of the outfit Rand is wearing on the cover of The Fires of Heaven, and my personal favorite, a girl dressed as one of Elayne's Queen's Guards, complete with breastplate, sash, hat and plume. Awesome.

The preponderance of Asha'man costumes led to some interesting (and hilarious) results: Jason (Denzel) hadn't brought a costume either, and elected to simply wear a suit and tie, but in the spirit of things he pinned either lapel with the Dedicated sword pin and Asha'man Dragon pin being sold at the con. A little while later he wandered up to me and Trisha and told us in a bemused voice that he had just gotten kudos on his clever costume idea: "A modern-day Asha'man, how original!"

I may have giggled about this, a lot. Ha!

(I wish I had remembered to buy some of Badali's stuff while I was there; I may order something from the Mistborn or Elantris collection later. It was really neat.)

For one thing, I hired an assistant—because Maria and Alan were so wonderful to have and to work with, I realized I needed that myself. In fact, my assistant is recording these answers from me on his iPhone, and then will transcribe them, and that's what you're reading right now.

What else has changed? I have gotten much better at dealing with epic scope, continuity, and large numbers of viewpoint characters. And, you know, I've had to be much more focused. In the past, I would often jump back and forth and do little side projects here and there. These past few years, I haven't had nearly as much time for that sort of thing. That's been both good and bad, because it has taught me to be more focused, but I also miss the days when I could jump over and do a random steampunk story, then jump back to whatever I was working on.

I think I'm getting better at description and prose, which has always been the weakest part of my novels (I feel). And I've learned a lot about character voice and how to manipulate it.

In other news, I've posted a couple more annotations for Warbreaker. First I talk about the God King's arrival at the Court of Gods. Then I discuss the life-sense aspect of the magic system.

We've got two new things up for you on the Writing Excuses podcast site. First is the newest episode on creating suspense. Next Dan, Howard, and I recorded an acceptance speech for our Parsec Award. Once again we missed the awards ceremony, though Dan and I were both there at Dragon*Con . . . (And don't worry about the way I sound; my voice has since recovered.)

I have gotten very good at this over the years. For instance, during many years I would be working on something like one of the Mistborn books alongside one of the Alcatraz books. If you read those two, the tones are extremely different. One of the ways I keep things separate is that I generally only write new material for one project at a time. I can edit and revise one project, by taking what it needs to be and making it better, at the same time as I write new material for another project. One of the things you should keep in mind is that when I'm writing Wheel of Time books, the struggle is always—even if I'm not working on something else at the same time—to make sure that I'm remaining true to Robert Jordan's vision of the characters rather than interpreting them myself. Which means that when it comes time to write a scene from a character's viewpoint, before I write anything that day I generally read a chapter of Robert Jordan's work from that character's viewpoint, and I try to ingrain that in my head and get a resonance going, so that when I sit down to write I can keep the character's voice straight.

Your question is a little bit like asking an artist, "How can you paint an impressionist painting one day, and then switch to realism the next day?" Well, they're slightly different arts. Each expresses a painting in its own unique way, and it's just what you do as an artist. It's the same difficulty a writer has jumping between characters in a single book. How do I write Shallan in The Way of Kings and then jump and write Kaladin, and keep them from sounding like one another? It's something you have to learn to do as a writer. Otherwise, your character voices will all blend together.

Brandon stated he is not trying to imitate Robert Jordan's voice, but rather adapt his own voice to the Wheel of Time to write descriptions, "untrustworthy" character viewpoints, etc., to feel right for WOT. Tor did not want a ghost writer/imitator to write the last book (at the time it was still one volume). He wants to release a companion volume showing what RJ wrote and what Brandon wrote or changed.

He mentioned that RJ wrote the ending first, then the prologue, then middle parts of A Memory of Light.

Harriet McDougal Rigney

While majoring in English at college, Sanderson took a job as a hotel receptionist, working the graveyard shift.

The managers didn't mind if he wrote on the job. "In fact, they were happy if I did, because that meant I wasn't falling asleep like the previous person they'd hired. So I wrote—oh gosh, it must have been nine or 10 novels over the course of five years."

Sanderson was living one of the standard writer-learns-the-ropes stories—turning out book after book after book, finding his voice, finding the stories that mattered to him, and finding the self-belief to swallow the rejection letters. There were a lot of rejection letters. He made his way through the forest of fantasy and science fiction sub-genres, one at a time. "I did a post-apocalyptic book, I did an epic fantasy, I did a comic fantasy, I did some cerebral science fiction, I did a short action adventure fantasy..."

No one wanted any of them. In frustration he tried to figure out what kind of books publishers were looking for, so he could write one.

"We call this chasing the market and it's a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea and I did it anyway. The next two books I wrote were the two worst I'd done. I mean, I'd learned something from all those unsold novels and technically they were okay, but they didn't have any soul, they were just dreadful books. I didn't even send them out."

Instead he sat down and deliberately wrote something profligately, ridiculously unpublishable. "I had to say okay, I'm a writer, I love it, this is what I do. Getting published is not the aim. Writing is the aim. So okay. I'm going to ignore what everybody's been telling me in these rejection letters. I'm going to write the biggest, coolest, baddest, most awesome fantasy epic I can. All these ideas that I've told myself are too big, that I'm going to have to put off using, I'm not going to put off any more. And I sat down and I wrote The Way of Kings. I sank everything into it. I created this awesome beast of a novel, and to be perfectly honest, my skill wasn't up to doing it justice at that point, but I gave it everything I had."

Alan Romanczuk

That's a very writerly question. This is from a writer himself. [Brandon asks if question needs repeating.] Jason's just wondering, since the characters have now changed through Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, when I'm now writing them, how much do I rely on who they were in the previous books and how much do I rely on who they are now? This is actually a very good question, probably a better question than most of you know. It comes at it from a writer's perspective, because this is something I consciously have had to think about. Because as I was writing Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, characters need a character progression. And I actually had to make the decision early on, if I'm actually going to progress these characters, they're going to have to evolve from being what they were. And that was scary to me, because who they were are who Robert Jordan meant them to be, and yet he would have evolved them. And if we didn't evolve them and they remained static, then it would've felt wrong. It would have been safer, but it would have felt wrong. The books would not have been slam dunks because Robert Jordan had them on arcs and they would have suddenly flatlined. And as a writer when I was working, I realized that this was going to have to happen.

And I'm not even sure if I can answer how I'm approaching it because it's such a complex swirl of things in my head. Part of it is, a person will change but their voice doesn't change dramatically. Their voice remains the same but their maturity and their experiences change, and so maybe how they react to something may change, but who they are at their core doesn't. I can still read the previous Wheel of Times and get their voice in mind, but I now have to incorporate for some of them major changes and moments that have happened in their lives. Fortunately, I have a large base of material to work from, and these characters have been in different emotional states at different times. It's like you can build . . . they're on a gradual swing of an arc, but everybody's more like this because that's how characters are. You're up one moment, down the next, up, down, and hopefully you're going on this nice character arc where you've got basic overarching growth. But, at the same time, you're going to be dipping sometimes, and regressing sometimes, and sometimes you're going to be on highs. And so I can look at the characters at their highs to see what has now become the baseline, so to speak, and I can look at them as sometimes who they were for the troughs. Everybody is in a lot of different places a lot of different times. That's part of it. But part of it is I really feel that I know the soul of these characters now. Growing up reading them, then working on them as a writer. . . I've said this before, I am much more of a gardener when it comes to character. I don't plan my characters nearly as much because I don't know who a character is till I write through their eyes, till I write through their viewpoint and see through their eyes and see who they are, and at that point I can't describe to people, I just know them. It's an instinctive thing. For me with a plot, I can construct a plot and tell you exactly how I'm constructing a plot, and how I'm building in climaxes, and how I'm building in foreshadowing, and all of this stuff. I can talk about worldbuilding. But when it comes to characters, it's that glimmer, that glowing piece that is their soul, that I can't describe but I just know when I see it. And that's what I rely upon.

I'm not just filling in holes. At the same time, I'm trying hard to keep anything RJ said in mind, and trying to make the book fit his vision.

It's a tough balance. There is a lot of work to be done, depending on the character in question. For example, for The Gathering Storm, he left a lot on Egwene, but less on Rand. In Towers of Midnight, a lot on Mat, less on Perrin. He left a lot of notes on how everyone should end up after the Last Battle, but often didn't say how they'd get there.

One of the things I've been impressed by is this: Harriet and Tor could have hired a ghost writer and pretended that RJ finished the book before he died. People would have believed them. However, while a ghost writer could have imitated RJ's voice, Harriet felt she wanted a fantasy novelist to do it. First, to be honest to the fans. Second, because there was enough work to be done that the person couldn't just connect dots, but would actually have to build parts of the story.

She gave me complete creative freedom to do what needed to be done, with the understanding that she would edit. (If you don't know, Harriet is one of the 'greats' in sf/f editing. She edited Ender's Game, for example, and may of the big fantasy and sf authors during the 70s and 80s. She discovered RJ, edited him, then married him.)

So, when I go wrong, she is there to push me the right direction. It's hard to answer a question of how much is me, and how much is RJ. His fingers are on every scene, as I'm trying to match the character voices (but not his writing style exactly) and get them right. Most scenes come from at least a comment in the notes here or there, and for some, he left a paragraph or two explanation. For others, he wrote the entire thing.

For some, I'm building it from the ground up, taking where the character was at the end of Knife of Dreams and giving them a story that earns them the ending RJ mentioned for them.

Question

Brandon Sanderson

I'd say it's split between a couple of things. First: Keeping track of all of the characters. (Like remembering which Aes Sedai are with which main character, and which members of the Black Tower are which rank.) Got one of those wrong in the book, by the way. Second: Making sure everyone's voice (the characters) is correct. That's the most important thing, and I spent a lot of time on it.

MAGICKALMAN

Brandon, is the hardest part of writing the WoT keeping up with the 12,000 and some odd major and minor characters?

BRANDON SANDERSON

You got it exactly. That is TOUGH. Obviously, I can keep track of the mains. But those minor characters...It takes a LOT of work to make sure I'm getting them all.

MAGICKALMAN

It shows, I guess the best compliment I can give is that half way through The Gathering Storm I forgot that Jordan hadn't written it.

BRANDON SANDERSON

I take it as a great compliment when people say that, while reading The Gathering Storm, they forgot Mr. Jordan hadn't written it.

EAST COAST GIRL

I find it EXTREMELY humorous that there are at LEAST two separate charaters (maybe three I think) that have my given name or a variant thereof. :P

BRANDON SANDERSON

What is it?

This is a transcript of the Science and Society Podcast, an interview with Brandon Sanderson on November 30, 2009.

And I gotta say that (1) there is nothing to do with the so-called "mission" of the society in the interview, and (2) this interviewer's voice and mannerisms are really kinda annoying.

David Lenberg

Brandon Sanderson

Is Adonalsium going to be mentioned by name in Warbreaker and The Way of Kings or is he going to be an underlining "God"(I don't know what to call him yet) idea? I am curious now, so I will have to keep my eyes open for him.

Melhay

Brandon Sanderson

Melhay

Brandon Sanderson

You mentioned in an earlier answer that learning to revise was one of the biggest factors in making your work publishable.

Would you give us an idea of the process you go through when you revise?

Thanks!

--Isaac

Thanks for the question, Isaac! (Isaac, by the way, is the person who introduced me to my wife and set us up on our first blind date.)

I view working on a book in the same way a sculptor might view working on a block of wood. The first draft is generally focused on getting things in place so I can work on them. In essence, I cut out the crude features of the sculpture—but when it's done, there is still a lot of work to be done. Readers who see the book in this stage can tell what the basic arcs and characters will be, but the emotional impact is lessened by the crude edges and unfinished lines.

Here's my process in a nutshell:

Draft one: Write the book in draft form.

Draft two: Read through the entire book, fixing the major problems. Often, I'll change character personalities halfway through the first draft as I search to figure out how I want the character to sound. I don't go back then and revise, as I need to try out this personality for a while before I decide to actually use it. Similarly, often I'll drop in new characters out of the blue, pretending that they've been there all along. In the second draft, I settle on how I want things to really look, feel, and work.

Draft three: Language draft. Here I'm seeking to cut the book down by 10%. I write with a lot of extra words, knowing I'll need a trim. This will make the prose more vibrant, and will make the pacing work better.

In a perfect world, this is where I writing group the piece and/or send it to my editor. (For lack of time, my writing group is getting Draft Two of The Way of Kings. Hopefully, I'll be able to do draft three by the end of the year.)

I let readers read the book, and I take some time off of it. I begin collecting things I want to change in the book in a separate file, called "Revision notes for ***", listing the name of the book. I organize these by character and by importance and/or pervasiveness. For instance, a need to rewrite a character's motivations will be at the top. Fixing one specific scene so that it has proper foreshadowing will be near the bottom.

Once this is all done, and I've gotten feedback and had time to think, I read through the book again with my revision notes file open beside the book file itself. I actively look for places to change, kind of like a sculptor looking over the statue and seeking places to knock off jagged chunks and smooth out the sculpture’s features.

I'll do this process several times, usually. In-between, I'll often do line-edit drafts, like the language draft above, where I'm focused on getting rid of the passive voice and adding more concrete details.

I'm not English and I hope you won't mind too much the grammar and spelling errors left here and there.

malpighien

Brandon Sanderson

Theoryland

Aah. RAFO!

WETLANDERNW

(The exclamation point, and a smile, was clear in his voice and in his eyes. He liked that question and was pleased to have it asked. We will apparently find out soon! Loialson—I'm sorry, I should have gotten you a RAFO card too. I only actually asked the first question—since it got the RAFO, I figured there was no point in asking the rest.)

This entry is a collection of tweets by Brandon announcing the names of the fans who won the charity contest to get their names in Towers of Midnight. Also named in the book were Matt Hatch, webmaster of Theoryland (innkeeper at The Dusty Wheel); Melissa Craib, webmaster of Tar Valon (innkeeper at The Seven-Striped Lass); and Jason Denzel, webmaster of Dragonmount (innkeeper at The Happy Throng). Also included were Kate Nepveu, an old rasfwrj fan and blogger for Tor.com, and Anthony Aziz of TarValon.net, who won the JordanCon 2010 auction. According to Linda's article on the subject, Padra was named after Tricia Erikson, a JordanCon publicist who passed away recently from cancer.

I missed these tweets by Brandon (date unknown), but Linda kindly shared them with me:

BRANDON SANDERSON

Oh, one more. Joel Derby, you're dead too.

Also, Nick Okamoto, I used your name in Towers of Midnight this morning. Congrats.

Need to name two men who die gruesome deaths in Towers of Midnight. Tim Riddell, William Reeves, RIP.

Also, John Sloan, you survive.

BRANDON SANDERSON

BRANDON SANDERSON

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BRANDON SANDERSON (29 SEPTEMBER)

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BRANDON SANDERSON (6 OCTOBER)

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BRANDON SANDERSON (7 DECEMBER)

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BRANDON SANDERSON (1 MARCH 2010)

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BRANDON SANDERSON

BRANDON SANDERSON (11 AUGUST)

Should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. [yeah, uh huh...] Ok, we know that. But he also said that we should know based on where everyone was, what they were thinking, what they were doing. Duh, right? But he made a point of mentioning where. For people thinking it was a Traveller, would 'where' be important? Dunno...

His list of candidates included the Aes Sedai, Nynaeve, Aviendha, Bela, and God knows who else.

And you know why he won't tell us? Because he likes to see us SQUIRM. He said it in a friendly voice, but you could tell he meant it.

Which brings me actually to...well, that was one of the questions I was going to ask later on; I thought I'd pick a different tangent rather than ter'angreal and the Horn of uh…call it vuh-LEAR.

VIRGINIA

Please correct our pronunciations, too, you guys, whenever you run across them; that's one of the big things we want to pin down is, how we should pronounce some of these things so if you hear us say something and you don't think it's what RJ would have wanted, then please just break in and say 'no'.

[in her sweet little girl voice] Okay.

MARIA SIMONS

Valere (rhyming with vuh-LEAR) was the way he pronounced it.

MARK

Yay, I got it right!

VIRGINIA

Who's keeping score?

MARK

Well, I'm almost never right, so it's good to be able to say I was right for once.

MARIA SIMONS

I used to be wrong about a lot of pronunciations when I first started working for him, because that was about the time of A Crown of Swords, and I would say something, and say it wrong, and he would give me this look, like 'What are you saying?' and correct me, so I got most of them down over time.

VIRGINIA

I can see that look perfectly, because I actually have a very short video clip from one of the book signings where somebody tried to pronounce 'the Shaido', and he just gave them 'the look', and said, 'It's not Shy-doh. It's not Shadow. It's Shah-EE-doh. Everybody kind of went, [in a small, apologetic voice] 'O-kie.' [laughter] He could quell an entire room with one look. It was amazing.

JENNIFER LIANG

The first time I met Jordan at a signing, the first thing he said to me was correcting my pronunciation of something. I was like, 'Awww, I ruined it! He'll never talk to me again now!'

MARIA SIMONS

He wouldn't hold it against you. I—

JENNIFER LIANG

Oh, yeah. Well clearly he didn't because he did eventually come to DragonCon, so...

Mkay.

MARK

Will we ever find out whose voice it was at the end of The Eye of the World?

MARIA SIMONS

[pause] [in a sing-song voice] RAFO! (ray-foe)

JENNIFER LIANG

Yeah, that's a RAFO. (raffo)

MARIA SIMONS

Score!

MARK

I figured, but I had to ask.

MARIA SIMONS

I wondered how long it would take.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Maria and I have spent some time trying to figure out different ways to say 'read and find out', so we're going to be trying out some of them today, and we'll see how it goes.

VIRGINIA

Oh, great.

SPENCER POWELL

Oh, this will be fun. Let me see if I can get you another trial run here. Um...Asmodean? [laughter]

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Who's he?

MARIA SIMONS

Yeah. Who's that guy?

VIRGINIA

He's toast, that's who he is.

SPENCER POWELL

No, Sammael's toast.

ANDREW GELOS

Yeah, I was going to say.

VIRGINIA

Well, I think he is too.

MARIA SIMONS

Um, if anybody sees the back of my car, they will see that I killed Asmodean. That's all I'm gonna say. [laughter]

MARK

I thought it was Bela!

JENNIFER LIANG

I do like the 'Bela killed him' theory. That one is just insane enough to be true.

MARIA SIMONS

I like that Bela is the Neigh'blis. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

Yeah.

JENNIFER LIANG

Terrible puns are always a good thing.

VIRGINIA

I love it.

MARIA SIMONS

And the master of the terrible pun is on this call.

VIRGINIA

Ahh.

MARIA SIMONS

In Jim's office.

JENNIFER LIANG

Ahhhh.

VIRGINIA

Well feel free. [laugher]

ALAN ROMANCZUK

I am, I am.

VIRGINIA

Pun away. Well, we've got two...you pronounce it 'raffo', right? Not 'rayfo'?

MARIA SIMONS

I say 'rayfo'. I don't know that there's a real pronunciation for that one.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

She says 'raffo', I say 'rayfo', so let's call the whole thing off.

VIRGINIA

Yeah, well we got two right off the bat. I don't know what else we're going to....well, probably everything.

During the era when I was trying to find my voice and find out what I was going to do as a writer, I felt that Robert Jordan had really captured the story of the hero's journey, the monomyth type epic fantasy, and done it about as well as it could be done. And so I started to look for things that I could add. This was very good for me to be doing, to be spending this time thinking about, not just retreading what had gone before, but really doing what some of the greats in the past had done.

One of the reasons I love the Wheel of Time is because I felt that when it came out, it best blended what was familiar about fantasy with a lot of new concepts. A lot of the books that were coming out were using the old familiar tropes: elves, even if they called them a different name, and dwarves, and even dragons, and these sorts of things. And then you came along to the Wheel of Time, which didn't use any of those things, or if it did, it twisted them completely on their head. No one knew what a dragon was, and a dragon was a person. And you know, the magic system having a logical approach to it rather than just being something that happened. And he really took the genre in a different direction. And I said, I have to do something like this. Not that I ever wanted to, or intend to, or think that I could be revolutionary in the genre in the way he was, but I wanted to add something. I wanted to take a step forward rather than taking the same steps that people had taken.

And so I began to ask myself what hadn't been done. And so you end up with me, Brandon, who...sometimes I look at myself as a postmodern fantasy writer. If you read the Mistborn trilogy, it's very much a postmodern fantasy epic. It's the fantasy epic for someone who's read all these great fantasy epics. And the story's kind of aware of all of those. It's the story of what happens if the dark lord wins? What happens if the prophecies are lies? What happens if all the things we assume about the standard fantasy epic all go horribly wrong?

I don't want to simply be someone. . . to be postmodern, you have to be a little bit deconstructionalist, which means you're relying on the very things that you're tearing apart. I think there's a level beyond that, which is actually adding something new, not just giving commentary on what's come before. But I do love the whole postmodern aspect. I love delving into that. It's something that I think can be unique to my generation because we've grown up reading all these epics, where the generation before us didn't.

Like many of you, I was shocked when he passed away. I'd been following the blog, and he'd been very optimistic on his blog. He had this force of will, force of optimism. You know, even though he had a terrible disease, I was sure he would make it. And then he was gone. And it was a very strange moment for me to realize that because when he died, it was like my high school friends had all died at once. And I wondered and felt that that might be the end of it all. Um, yeah. . . little did I know.

About three weeks later, I got up in the morning at the bright hour of noon. I picked up my cell phone to check my voice mail, which is usually the first thing I do in the mornings. And I was just groggily. . . I turned it on and there's a voice mail from a number I don't recognize, and the voice comes on and says, and this is an exact quote:

"Hello, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet McDougal Rigney. I'm Robert Jordan's widow. I would like you to call me back. There's something I want to talk to you about."

I just about fell out of the couch, which is kind of hard to do, because. . . you know. . . yeah. I mean, I listened to that voice message three times in a row, and then nervously dialed the number back, and it rang, and it rang, and she didn't answer. So I nervously called my editor, and he didn't answer. And I nervously called my agent, who always answers, and he didn't answer. I eventually got smart and called up Tor, and got a hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who said, with kind of a smug tone, "Oh, that. Yeah, it's probably what you think it is. I'll have her call you back." And I'm sitting here thinking, "What do I think it is, Patrick? Tell me something!" And he wouldn't. And so, eventually Harriet called me and said, "Well, I'm putting together a short list of people. And I was wondering if you would be interested in completing the Wheel of Time."

That night after I'd said yes, I laid in bed that night unable to sleep because I was terrified by what I had just done in saying yes to this. Particularly because that night I came to realize something. Something very, very frightening. And what I realized was that I could not write as good a book as Robert Jordan would have written for the ending. I realized that nobody could. I couldn't replace him, and no one could. We should have had him to finish this series. And by saying yes, I had agreed to in small part to something at which I would fail, at least in part, because no one can replace Robert Jordan. As a fan and as a professional writer, I realized that the next best thing for me in having Robert Jordan complete the book was to do it myself because then I could know that it would not get screwed up. I realized that if I said no, and then someone else did it and did a poor job, it would be partially my fault. And that in taking up this project, I could bring them back. Robert Jordan had passed away, but that didn't mean that Rand and Egwene and Mat and Perrin and Avi and Cadsuane and everybody had to be gone. I could at least bring them back for everyone else. And I realized with a really powerful emotion that I needed to do this book. I had to do this book, because of all the people in the world, I would screw it up the least.

I need to learn Old Tongue for 'Read And Find Out'. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

I'm still waiting for 'May the Light illumine you'! [laughs] I was hoping somebody'd pop up with that for the podcast, and that's how I try to close each episode, so that's why I asked Brandon for it. I'm just gonna have to hound him.

I really loved the character Lightsong, he was my favorite and probably one of the most interesting characters I've ever read about. Did you have anyone in particular in mind when you came up with him? How did go about developing him as a character?

Rupert Everett was sitting in the back of my mind.

Actually, in order to develop Lightsong's character well, I didn't want to imitate any one voice. That's something we always stay away from. But I had been wanting to work on writing humor in a different way from what I'd previously used. I spent a lot of time watching and analyzing the movie The Thin Man, the old comedy/mystery/crime film with an emphasis on very witty characters making wisecracks as they investigate a murder. If you haven't seen it, it's delightful. Along with An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, those were my three sources of inspiration. I was trying for a blend of those two styles—and then of course added my own sense of humor.

I'd like to ask what led to this decadence in the Iridescent Tones, what were the social causes? It started out as the Cult of the Returned, and a simple faith in caring for the Returned so they'd live long enough to fulfill their purpose. And I assume the Voice even sends them back without memories exactly to foster this faith and hope in people, so that mortals can be part of their salvation instead of just getting divine hand-outs. That sounds really nice. But by the time we reach the events in Warbreaker, a lot of corruption and cynicism has found its way in, no?

Yes, it has. Part of it is something that Lightsong points out. Their religion encourages the best of the Returned to give up their lives for their people, and they hit a patch where a lot of the best of them have already given up their lives. The rest have their needs and wants seen to. Beyond that, remember this is a society in which they're living in a very temperate climate where there isn't very much harsh weather at all; they're very sheltered, they have an extremely rich resource, and they have a lot of leisure time. So we're mixing leisure time with a somewhat selfish batch of Returned in control, and we're mixing that with a religion that focuses on art and beauty and that sort of thing.

I think one of the dangers this society would have to be worried about would be for this decadence to creep in as has happened at various points in various cultures around the world. The society certainly isn't irredeemable at all, but it is going through a patch of these three concepts aligning in some of the worst sorts of ways. But there are some better Returned than we focus on in the book, and there have been much better Returned in the past.

What do the Pahn Kahl believe in? All we seem to know is that they are similar to the Iridescent Tones. Any more info?

I was going to get into this more in the sequel, because we would have some more Pahn Kahl people. Anytime I'm saving something for a sequel, I feel like I shouldn't say too much because I don't want to lock myself in. Let's say that it's like the Iridescent Tones, but without the god—worship of the Returned. More worship in the concepts, and more of a focus on the voice itself.

One thing to remember about the Pahn Kahl is that they've kind of lost a lot of it. By letting themselves get so focused on the enemy that conquered them, they've actually ended up losing much of who they were. Not everything, of course, but substantial portions of who they were have gotten swept under the rug and consumed in their desire to get their freedom. Which is an important thing, but they've let it consume them to pretty extreme levels.

Michael Stackpole

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, yeah. A lot of people are curious about how I ended up writing these books. It's actually...I'm a little bit curious myself, to be perfectly honest. The first I heard that I was being considered for it was when I received a phone call. I got up in the morning, I went downstairs and checked my voice mail. Out of the blue, there was a voice mail from someone who said, "Hi, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I want you to call me back. There's something I want to talk to you about." Which...I mean, I assumed had to be a joke from my friends, right? I mean, I'd been reading the Wheel of Time books since I was a kid. I picked up the first one when I was fifteen. First week of its publication I had a copy of that and had been reading them ever since.

And when Robert Jordan passed away, I was grief stricken like everyone else. We thought he was doing fine. His most recent blog post which I'd read was...you know, he was very optimistic he was going to pull through. And then when we found out that he'd passed away, we weren't sure how to react. And now here was his wife calling me. I hadn't applied for this or anything. I later found out that she had read some words I'd posted on my web site about what Robert Jordan had meant to me. And she had really been touched by those, and had asked for a copy of one my books, Mistborn, from Tom Doherty, the publisher at Tor. And he'd sent her one and she'd read that. And based off of that, that's why she wanted to talk to me.

So I called her back and actually, she didn't answer—she was out getting a massage. So, I'm kind of at my wit's end going crazy, what's going on. I called my agent, who also didn't answer, which is very rare for him, so it was quite the odd coincidence. So I called my editor, and he didn't answer—not so rare for him, but... So nobody—my wife wasn't there, I didn't know what was going on. Finally, I got a hold of someone at Tor, who then got a hold of Tom, who got a hold a Harriet, who called me back. And indeed, it was just her asking if I was interested in finishing the Wheel of Time, taking the materials that Robert Jordan left behind and making the last book out of it.

I was dumbfounded, honestly, when I was talking to her. I was unable to even pronounce words because I was so shocked. I actually...I wrote her a letter the next day, sent it via Tor, an email which said, "Dear Harriet, I'm not an idiot, I promise," because I really just stuttered and slurred. But of course, I really was excited. I wanted to do this. I mean, for an author...I got into writing partially because of Robert Jordan, by reading his books when I was young. I actually studied his novels to learn how to write a book. I considered him a mentor in many ways, even though I'd never met him. I mean, I'd seen him. I'd gone to events where he'd been, but I never even talked to him. And so, the next best thing to having him be able to finish this, in my mind, was for me to be able to work on it because I knew and loved the series.

And the characters from these books are like old friends. You know, I was one of these kind of quiet reading kids when I was in high school. I did have some friends, but my closest friends were the friends that I had in my books that I read. And Mat and Perrin and Nynaeve, Egwene, these people, these are my friends from childhood that I grew up. These are my high school buddies in many ways. Being able to go back to this as the writer...I couldn't even express how daunting, yet exciting, that felt to me. And so afterward, I did write Harriet a letter. She took about a month making a decision, thinking about me and thinking about other authors. And then, she called me back—this would be November of 2007—she called me back and said, "I really want you to do it." And by December, we had a contract, and I was in Charleston picking up the notes and materials. And that's what I've been doing ever since, is working on this.

To attempt an exact copy of his style would, I think, be the wrong move. If I did it poorly, it would feel like an awkward parody. Yet, at the same time, there are some very important reasons people love these books. Depth of setting, detailed descriptions, and complex and lengthy characterizations are all hallmarks of Mr. Jordan's style.

So, I think it will need to be a balance. I intend to be more detailed in my descriptions and linger a little bit longer on side characters than I do in my own work. However, I am not Robert Jordan, and the fans know that. Every author is different, and I think that my style will indeed influence how the text and ideas are presented.

Tor could have hired a ghost writer to do this book, and then could have released it under Mr. Jordan's name only, pretending that the book was nearly finished by the time of Mr. Jordan's death. I think it is to their credit that they didn't. Readers deserve to know what they are getting. My goal will be to stay true to the themes, characters, concepts, and general stylistic choices that made these books so successful without trying to mimic the smaller details of his style.

Yeah. One of the functions of getting published like I did—taking as long as I did, and working how I did—when I was trying to break in—and even in those early years when I didn't know about breaking in—one of the things I did was pop frequently from project to project. I didn't write sequels. In fact, I haven't brought this up before, but when I sold Elantris, I was actually on my thirteenth novel. That's how far along I was in the process. Mistborn is my fourteenth, so you can read my sixth and my fourteenth. I felt that if I just sat and wrote sequels in the same world unpublished, number one it would be bad for me professionally because I can't really send book two to a bunch of editors, and say "Hey, look at this!" I can only send book one, so if I wrote six books and only had the first one as something that I could try and entice editors with, then I think it would have been to my detriment. Instead I wanted to have six different books—standalones, and beginnings of series—that I could be sending out, and if[?] I could immediately send them something else, and say "Hey, if there's something you liked in that one, maybe you'll look at this one and see that I'm getting better," or "Maybe you'll like this one better," things like that. That was my philosophy. So I got used to always writing a new setting, a new world, and a new magic each time I wrote a book.

Partially, also, though, as a writer, this wasn't just market-field, it was because I wanted to develop something that was my own. I mentioned it before—I think that writers should add to the genre, and I myself was a little bit annoyed with the genre in the late '90s and early 2000s. Maybe I've overstated some of the impact that the children's book had because of that, but I don't know. I was one of those that was like, "Really? Do I really need to read yet another book that is about a guy who lives out in the rural woods and discovers that he is the lost king and needs to go find this magical artifact so that he can save the world. Do I really need to read that again?" I mean, Tolkien did a great job of that, and you know what, Robert Jordan did a really good job of that, and you've got Terry Goodkind with...I mean, with so many people telling this story, do we really need another one? And I think the late 90s, at least for me, is when I finally got tired of it, and I'd read Robert Jordan, and I said, "Look, I don't think this can be done better. How can you tell me you can do it better than he's doing it? Why am I going to read your book?" And that influenced me a lot as a writer. When I was trying to break in, I actually tried writing a story like that, cause I felt like that's what everyone wrote, that's what got published, and I got a little ways into it and said, "I just...I can't feel it. What am I doing that's new? What am I adding?"

And so I was trying a lot of different things. I was trying to explore. Those first six novels of mine, in fact, were—well, the first five in particular—were very different. I wrote several science-fiction novels. I tried a cyberpunk, I tried a social science-fiction, I tried a comedy—I tried lots of different things, trying to find my voice, and at the end, when the dust settled, after doing that, I realized what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was kind of the postmodern epic, so to speak. The child of the 80s and 90s who is aware of what happened with the monomyth and all this stuff in science fiction and fantasy, and say "Yeah, what's next? What happens next? And how can I do something different? How can I do something new? Where can we take this genre?" New magic systems, different styles of plot. That's partially where Mistborn came from. Mistborn is the [?] which really doesn't work for books like it does for movies, so realize this isn't the only thing the book's about, but one of the big influences in me writing the book was the idea of me telling the story where the monomyth had happened. The monomyth meaning Joseph Campbell is here with the thousand vases, you know—young hero goes on a quest to defeat the great evil, and what if he failed? What if the Dark Lord won? What if Voldemort at the end of Harry Potter had said, "You're just a stupid kid!" and killed him, and taken over the world? What if Frodo had kept the ring, or Aragorn had kept the ring, or even Sauron had just gotten it back? What happens next? And that's where that trilogy came from.

Alcatraz is an interesting story because...Mistborn is the first book that I wrote knowing that it was going to get published. It was my fourteenth novel. Always before then, I'd always written just whatever I had felt like next, and it was the first time I had to consider, "Wow. Elantris is getting published. How do I follow it up? What do I do next?" Originally I'd planned to release next a book called The Way of Kings, which was number thirteen—the book I wrote right before Mistborn—and as I was revising Way of Kings, I had this deep-seated feeling that I wasn't ready for Way of Kings. I'd written the first book, and it didn't do yet what I wanted it to do. It was a massive war epic, and was very intricate, enormous world, and thirty magic systems...I mean, it was actually beyond my skill level at the time. And I said, "I need practice writing sequels before I start a massive epic like this." I'd never written a sequel before.

And that's when I sat down and outlined the Mistborn trilogy, wanting to write an entire trilogy straight through so that I could have beginning, middle and end done by the time the first one came out. And I actually was able to achieve that, as a side note; I had written Hero of Ages by the time The Final Empire, the first book, needed to be in for its final draft, and so I was able to—I think it comes through in the trilogy—I was able to make it completely internally consistent. You don't have the problems in that where you have...in some series where you get a little ways into it and then realize the author's just making stuff up, and trying to...and being self-contradictory, and things like that; I didn't want that to happen, and I think I needed to practice doing that with the training wheels, so to speak, of having them all done before the first one came out—before I tried launching into something where I would just have to trust my outline in order to do that, if that makes any sense at all.

So, I sat down and wrote the first two Mistborn books back-to-back. First draft done of Mistborn 1, sent off; started the first draft of Mistborn 2, and was revising Mistborn 1 as I was finishing Mistborn 2. I got done with Mistborn 2, and it was the hardest book I've ever written, partially because of the grueling hours I set for myself—I wanted to get these all done—but mostly because I'd never written a sequel before, and I was so used to doing something new with every book that I wrote, and so I had to train myself into writing sequels. And after I got done with Mistborn 2, and was trying to write Mistborn 3, I realized I need, just for my own creative process—the way I've trained myself—I have to do something completely different now. I have to take a break for a little while and just do something off-the-wall in order to reset all of those tumblers in my head, get back, and write the third Mistborn book, because otherwise I felt that I wouldn't be approaching it fresh enough. I wouldn't be approaching it having enough passion for it. I felt I would started it burned out, or at least burn out to the middle of it.

And so because of that, I sat down with that writing prompt: a one-sentence line that had come to me one time, just when I was hanging out with some friends, and I hurriedly typed into my phone, and said, "Huh, I should write that story one day." And the line was: "So, there I was, tied to an altar made from out-dated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians." And I wanted to do what—I sat down with this—I wanted to do something very different from the Mistborn books. Number one, I wanted to do something humorous. Number two, I wanted to play off of the very things that were in danger of becoming clichés to myself, if that makes sense, to keep myself fresh, to say "I need to go completely different directions so that I don't just become a cliché of myself". And so I wanted to do something very wacky with the magic system that I could never do in an epic fantasy book, because I want those to all feel consistent and scientific. And I wanted to do a first-person narrative instead of a third-person narrative, to do something different again, and I wanted to write for a younger audience. Mostly though, I just wanted to write something off-the-cuff, which was more like a stand-up routine version, or...not a stand-up routine. More like an improv. You know, it's not just joke after joke, but it's an improv story, starting with a kid who discovers that librarians secretly rule the world.

Partially, at this time, I'd also been reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, which has some fascinating aspects and some very annoying ones, the annoying aspects being, I don't like a lot of the cheap tricks he uses narratively to just pull you through the story, cause they get a little old, but beyond that, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that the Catholic Church, or anyone, has these secret cabals. I mean, they make for great stories, but I don't think that it's there, and so I wanted to tell a silly conspiracy theory book, and so I picked librarians ruling the world. And so what Alcatraz became was a short—for me; 50,000 words—novel that talks about fiction in general. There's a lot of Alcatraz, the narrator, addressing the audience and talking about what literature does, and what authors do. There's a point where he goes off about how authors are sadists—because we want to put you through all these terrible emotions—and explains and talks about it in what is hopefully a humorous way, but kind of digs at the roots of what makes someone want to tell stories.

And there is a goofy magic system. Everyone in the books who belongs to the Smedry family—he's Alcatraz Smedry; it's a—anyway, they're the Freedom Fighters who resist the Librarians. They all have really dumb magic powers. It's kind of like a Mystery Man sort of thing, if you've seen that movie. Alcatraz's grandfather, who introduces himself near the beginning of the book, has the super-power...um, his super-magical power is that he can arrive late to appointments. Alcatraz in the book meets someone in the book who is really magically good—his power is that he's magically good at tripping. Another guy who is magically good at speaking gibberish. Alcatraz himself has the super-power of breaking things—he's really good at breaking stuff—and I just based these magic powers on silly, goofy things that me or my family do—being late to something is what my Mom always said—and then trying to twist them on their heads. You know, later in the book, Grandpa Smedry will arrive late to a bullet when someone shoots it at him, so it just barely misses him. You know...fun stuff like this, where I take preconceptions and turn them on their heads.

And that's where Alcatraz came from. I didn't write it saying "I'm going to publish this." I wrote it saying "I need [to write] this." I finished it; I sent it off to my agent, and said, "Surprise, I wrote a different book than you were expecting me to." And he wrote back, and said, "Wow, this is actually pretty good! You wrote it really fast—I can tell; it needs a lot of revision—but I think I could sell this, if you want to put the time into revising it." So over the next year or so, I did some revisions and some drafts and some work on it, and we sent it out, and lo and behold, it had nine publishers want it. Four of them got in a bidding war, and it went sky-high and turned out to be this wonderful thing that Dreamworks Animation actually optioned it before it even came out. And so, yeah. It took on this entire life of its own.

I sold to Scholastic four novels in a series. I have just finished the fourth one. There may be subsequent volumes, depending on things—particularly depending on if...um, when things calm down for me; the amount of work I have to do right now prohibitive for me entering into another Alcatraz contract; my attention really needs to be on the Wheel of Time at the moment—but, the third one is coming out in October; sometimes they appear on shelves a little bit early. They're a little bit tougher to find in hardcover than my other books because—I've been told, and maybe...I dunno—it seems that children's books...Scholastic likes to market directly to the schools and libraries, and that's their main method of doing it, at least with my books. They've sold as many that way as they have in bookstores, and the bookstores are kind of hit-or-miss on having a copy. Only about half of them get copies in, and so Amazon might be your best bet, or going to your local independent and asking them to order you a copy, and the paperbacks are generally easy to find, but the hardcovers are a little bit tough to find, but the first few chapters are on my website. If you're looking for something that's lighthearted—that's not ridiculous, but it's lighthearted—has some comedy to it, but really has me looking at the novels in the fantasy genre, in specific, from a postmodern view, just trying to break it down and see what it does, and telling a story with it, then you might enjoy the Alcatraz books.

BILL CUNNINGHAM

Cool.

CHRISTIAN LINDKE

Well, thank you for that answer.

The relationship between artist and critic/fan is a curious one in this regard. On one hand, I do think feedback is important, particularly on a project like this (where, as I've stated, I feel that the project rightly belongs more to the fans than it does to me.) However, a writer must keep their artistic integrity. Allowing yourself to get pulled in too many directions by fan requests can be a disaster for an artist. Basically, you can't try to please everyone—if you do, you risk ending up with either a completely schizophrenic project, or one that is so bland it lacks emotional depth or power.

So, like I said, fine line. I looked at fan responses on The Gathering Storm very cautiously and carefully, trying to keep in the same mindset that I use when getting feedback from my critique group. Basically, that mindset is this: "I will do what I feel is best for the story, regardless of what other people think. Even if I'm the only one who feels that way. But if someone raises a complaint that either strikes a cord within me, or which gains a lot of support from others, I WILL look into it and try to approach it objectively."

That's a mouthful. Basically, what it means is keeping an open mind for ideas that will make the story a better version of what I want it to be. On The Gathering Storm, there were two basic areas I felt fans were right about that I could and should fix. The first had to do with some voice issues in Mat's narrative. (I've spoken of that elsewhere.) The second had to do with continuity errors. I am not nearly as good at dealing with those as Robert Jordan was—I know he made mistakes, but I felt I made more. So for this project, I enlisted the help of some very detail-oriented members of the fan community as beta readers in an attempt to keep myself honest and catch mistakes before they went to press.

There are things in this book, like in any book I've written, that I fully suspect will draw complaints. In some cases, I know exactly what they are—and I did them that way because I felt it was best for the story and the best way to remain true to Robert Jordan's vision. It's the ones that I DON'T expect, but which ring true, that I want to find and correct.

Ask him if the manner of the Aiel service to the Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends was just Singing, or if it was also domestic.

TEREZ

As a follow-up you could ask him if female Voices were also used in non-Earthy scenarios, i.e. to enhance saidar in particular?

TEREZ

And ask him if non-Aiel could really have the Voice (assuming the type that enhances channeling) or if Lews Therin was just confused.

PRK

Lews Therin was confused about time and place, but what he was saying was possible.

PRK

There was more than just singing, but Brandon wasn't willing to go into it. Unsure if that was RAFO or irrelevance.

PRK

Brandon said he wasn't willing to talk much about the Voice things. I got the sense it was a subtle RAFO.

Something which just occurred to me was that, other than editors, advance reviewers, etc. the first people who will get their hands on the conclusion to The Wheel of Time will be the audiobook narrators—including Kramer, who has been a constant voice in the series. You've written that the final words in the series are Robert Jordan's—can you give away whether the final voice on the audiobook might be Kramer's?

Ha! I can't give you something like that. I'm sorry. Nice try, though.

Michael Kramer is, other than Elantris (Jack Garrett), Warbreaker (James Yaegashi), and the Alcatraz series (Ramon de Ocampo), "the voice of Brandon Sanderson" when it comes to audiobooks, handling narration on The Wheel of Time, the Mistborn trilogy, The Way of Kings, and now The Alloy of Law. What makes him such a well-suited narrator for your books?

I feel there's a fine line to walk between performing too much and not enough. When I like to listen to an audiobook, I don't want to hear just a dry read. I like a subtle shift in character voice and tone when someone is speaking, so that you can get a sense of it. But I don't like it performed so much—particularly for my own works—that it takes you out of the story. Having listened to the Wheel of Time audiobooks, as that is one of the main series I've listened to in my life, I really wanted Michael Kramer for some of my works. So I asked for him by name.

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Folks, we're able to keep Brandon Sanderson for another segment and I'm delighted, Brandon. I want to thank you for accommodating us with some extra time.

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Tags

How much influence did you have over the prose—voice and tone—at the time of The Eye of the World?

Some, but not major. The first book of his that was published was The Fallon Blood, and it was enormous, and for some reason, it had to be cut. It was going to be published at Ace, and I guess they were just blanching at production costs, and I said, "Well can't we get rid of some of these battles?" And he said, "Harriet, I wounded Michael Fallon, and sent him off to Georgia to recuperate to get rid of a hundred battles. I mean, we really can't; there's no way we can take out any of them." I went, "Oh." So, I said, "There's nothing for it, then; we'll have to take out three lines on every page." And that's what we did.

Matt Hatch

And did you work together on those lines?

Harriet McDougal

Yeah. And a friend asked me to go out to dinner with her and the guy she was dating, although her divorce wasn't final—she wanted me to be a "beard", if you've heard the expression—and I said, "If you help with the snopake!" So we're all on there doing this...but Jim said my nature as an editor...he said, "Harriet, if you were editing Charles Dickens, you would have said, 'Now Charles, you can have "bah", or you can have "humbug", but you can't have both!'" (laughter) And I think it's pretty true.

Matt Hatch

Did that relationship of editing go on through the entire Wheel of Time? In other words, were there all these times you would sit down in The Shadow Rising, and say, "Jim...okay, three lines; we gotta cut three lines out of these."

Harriet McDougal

He'd pretty much learned to do it himself by then, and certainly in The Eye, I would say, "Well, this can go," and he'd say, "Well Harriet, in the fourth book, um..." (laughter) I didn't really realize what I was up against. (whine) "But Harriet, in the third book...in the fifth book...these things have got to be there." (meek voice) "Okay, okay." And he'd learned...he was tightening up his prose by then, a lot. And actually, as the series went on, it got to be...I did almost no pencil-work, and I thought, "Well, man, he's learned everything I had to teach him. He probably needs a new editor now who could put him through new hoops!"

Matt Hatch

What is one major thing you taught Jim about prose, and something you think that helped him become a better writer?

Harriet McDougal

Tight. Write tight. Tighten up. And I think, even editing The Fallon Blood was very good for his prose. It was a vicious small-scale kind of cut, cut, cut. Don't use two adjectives where one will do, and if you can do without any adjectives at all, it's best. Nouns and verbs are where the strength in the writing is.

Shuden's comments on marriage early in this chapter have often earned me smiles and jibes from my friends. An author puts a little of himself into every character he crafts, and sometimes we find a particular character being our voice in one way or another. I'll admit, the way marriage is treated in this book does have a little bit of a connection to my own personal thoughts on the subject. It isn't that I'm avoiding the institution. . .I just find the formalities leading up to it to be a dreadful pain.

I had a bit of trouble in this book devising personalities for all of the noblemen who would be hanging around Sarene. Some of them, such as Shuden, don't get very much screen time, and so it was a challenge to make them interesting and distinctive. In the end, however—after several drafts—I had their characters down so well that when my agent suggested cutting one of them, I just couldn't do it. So, perhaps there are a few too many names—but this is a political intrigue book. Lots of people to keep track of is a good thing.

As you can probably deduce from what I've said before, this Telrii scene is a late addition. It's not one of my favorites between Hrathen and Telrii—re-reading it, it makes me feel like Telrii is simply there to be persuaded. While the intention of these scenes is, indeed, so show Hrathen as a stronger character, their secondary purpose is simply to let him voice outloud some of the thoughts he's been mulling over. If you have trouble characterizing or motivating one of your characters in a book you're writing, try giving them someone—either friend or foe—to talk to.

Anyway, this particular scene is a little weak, and I suppose I could cut it without too much loss. It is a good idea to keep people thinking about Telrii, however, since he will be important later in the story. Also, there is his warning to Hrathen about not being a pawn, which is some good foreshadowing for what happens later, when he casts Hrathen off and tries to become a Gyorn himself.

As I've said before, I worried about the Sarene-Raoden plot falling too much into 'romantic comedy' stereotypes, so I took measures to try and make them act more honestly. In this chapter, Raoden tries to push Sarene away—but, of course, she doesn't believe him. Honestly, I think people in a lot of such plots TRY to find ways to misunderstand each other. That's the only explanation I can give for why such ridiculous things occur.

In cutting the Mad Prince, this section in the Sarene/Raoden chapters was one of the things I was sad to change. As I mentioned in a previous annotation, in the Mad Prince version of the book, Sarene thought that Raoden had returned with an army to try and take the city. I started this chapter out with a scene of Raoden thinking about the problems Sarene's realization caused. I'll just stick it in here:

One side effect of her mistaken supposition was that she hesitated in regards to their own relationship. He could see the conflict within he—the two of them had grown very close over the last five days, acting on the feelings they had both been forced to hold back during the weeks of Sarene's food distribution. Yet, now, Sarene thought that her husband might actually be alive and, a truly devout daughter of political necessity, she felt that getting any closer to Raoden would betray her vows. With surprise, Raoden realized that he was competing with himself—and losing.

I really hate to lose that last line. I always struck me as ironically clever. However, there was another loss that was even tougher to lose. It comes in where Raoden and Sarene are at the city gates:

Raoden fell still. He wanted her to stay—he longed for her to stay. But, at the same time, he knew he had to do whatever it took to get her out of Adonis. The city was death. As much as it pained him to think of her leaving, it pained him more to think of her staying.

"He will be there," Raoden said enticingly, his voice suddenly growing quiet. "Raoden. The man you love."

Sarene's hand grew slack, and she waved uncertain eyes towards the Elantris city gate. "No," she finally said. "That's not what I want any more."

I think the reason I hated to lose this scene is obvious. Right here, Sarene gets to choose 'Spirit' over the images she has in her head of the perfect Prince Raoden. It's an opportunity for her to show that she really does love him, despite what he is, despite what the other options might be. It's love offered against logic and against wished-for dreams. In other words, it's realistic love. Of all the scenes I had to cut, these few paragraphs make me the saddest to lose, I think.

-first- Rumors: he said that rumors are just rumors. About Trolloc attacks, specifically, he said that "Trollocs have been attacking, or invading in various places for months" and that rumors abound in all sorts of forms about them.

With regard to the White Tower attack—I prompted this one a little, and he said that they are simply rumors which have coalesced from multiple rumors together, nothing related specifically to the real attack adding that "in the Wheel of Time rumors sometimes have a tendency to double back on themselves" turning into truth eventually.

As for the horse riding in Caemlyn, I asked him specifically about Rand seeing Mat and Thom on horses in Caemlyn, but Mat in Chapter 8 was not taking his horse into the city, and he responded by saying that Rand didn't see Mat in this specific scene and assured me that all that would work out in the rest of the book.

He did admit that there has been one "hitch" found in The Gathering Storm as per chronology that will be changed in upcoming editions. If I remember correctly he said Mat is roughly two weeks behind where he was meant to be and explained that Mat's position in time at the end of The Gathering Storm was supposed to be two weeks earlier than it was portrayed as being.

Matt Hatch

Well—this is something I'd like to understand better—and hear it verbatim. I'm not sure I understand what is being said by the reporter.

Peter Ahlstrom

This means that something currently in The Gathering Storm needed to be retconned to get the timeline to work and will be changed in future editions of The Gathering Storm. Unfortunately, there wasn't time to get it changed in the paperback that's coming out this month. I'm guessing the change will affect only a sentence or two.

Retconning was a last resort that they really didn't want to have to take, but it was unavoidable.

Team Jordan has a very detailed chronology that looks in many respects similar to Steven Cooper's chronology, but Steven's is a bit off in a few areas. Certain beta readers helped verify it was nailed down.

And Terez: It doesn't have to do with Sulin. Actually, they decided Sulin needed to be retconned earlier. You can find out in the paperback of The Gathering Storm how that was worked out.

I think I've noted that my viewpoints tend to speed up as I approach the endings of books. Well, ELANTRIS is a perfect example. We're hopping viewpoints like a crazed body-snatcher. At the risk of sounding redundant, I did this to increase pacing and tension. Quick-rotating viewpoints give a cinematic feel to the story, in my opinion—kind of like cameras changing angles. This keeps things quick and snappy, and keeps the reader reading.

It should be noted that writing and filmmaking are two completely different arts. What works in one doesn't work in the other—action sequences, for instance, have to be written completely differently in a novel than they would be displayed on screen. However, both storytelling forms try to evoke similar feelings in their audiences. So, you can't do the same things in writing as you can in filmmaking—but you can get a similar effect by using different tools. Here, I use viewpoint shifts, which is something a filmmaker can't really access without first-person voice-overs. Viewpoint is, in my opinion, one of the prime unique tools that we have as writers. That's why I think it's important to understand, and to manipulate.

If you're paying attention to such things, we actually get two complete—and well-rotated—viewpoint triads in this chapter. Again, this is to increase the sense of urgency and pacing.

Another question commonly asked is whether Michael Kramer and Kate Reading will return to voice the audiobook for A Memory of Light. The answer is yes, and the audiobook will definitely be released the same day as the hardcover.

I stuck around for a little while longer and got a voice recording of him explaining this, amongst a few other things, which I'll throw on the web in the near future. I didn't get much chance to record anything else, as I had to drive straight back home to drop my brother off for a hockey game.

[something about the prequels and fanfiction]

Jennifer Liang

Fan fiction has never really taken off in the Wheel of Time fandom. Partly the reason for that is because Robert Jordan did not like fanfic—he didn't like other people playing in his sandbox—and so when me and Jason became aware that he didn't like fanfic, we pretty much killed it on Dragonmount, and because we killed it on Dragonmount, that meant everybody else killed it too, because people pretty much follow our lead, so there's never really been a lot of fanfic in the Wheel of Time. There is some out there—if you look around you can find some like on fanfic.net—but it's never really taken off for whatever reason. And I think it's partly because we killed it very quickly, but I think it's also partly because a lot of what is special about the Wheel of Time is the unique voice of Robert Jordan, and for the most part other people writing in that universe, it's crap. Even if they're a really good writer, it's...[Brandon] is really the only person I like writing in the Wheel of Time universe other than Jim, so...I think that's another reason why it doesn't take off, because it's pretty obvious it's not Robert Jordan.

Right, the Wheel of Time is about Robert Jordan's voice in a lot of ways, and the reason we're all still reading this is because we like that voice. And there are books that are slower than other books, and those of us who just love his voice, love those books.

Jennifer Liang

It doesn't matter, I really like Crossroads of Twilight. I'm sorry!

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, because that's what we're reading the books for. I mean, of course it's the characters also, but time with Jim and the characters is what these books are about, and as much as we like the epic battles and things, at their core it's Jim and the characters.

Jennifer Liang

Yeah, and it's his prose, and it's his writing style, and just the way he presents everything. And so, fanfic can't capture that.

Joe O'Hara

I think there's a real loyalty to him as an author as well when you find out, as a fan, that he doesn't like that kind of fanfiction, then you don't even feel inclined to do it.

Brandon Sanderson

He was very—I mean, if you guys read the interviews—it was only like the last minutes that he changed his mind on even having the series finished by someone else. For years, he was gonna...what was it, burn his hard drives, and things like that...

Jennifer Liang

...and salt the earth, yeah...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. There was going to be no ending. It was only like the last month or two that he said, "No, go ahead and find somebody and have it finished." So, yeah.

Joe O'Hara

We're all really glad that he said that.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you almost didn't have this.

Audience

[something about hunting the guy down and taking his kneecaps]

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Jennifer Liang

So, watch out for those kneecaps.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay. If my kneecaps float off mysteriously...

Joe O'Hara

That is mysterious.

Brandon Sanderson

...and you see a shadow with the hat and a cane, and maybe a pipe... (laughter)

Yes. Right. I could barely say the names right back then, and half the time I didn't say them right...

Jennifer Liang

You were so cute. (laughter)

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I was very, very scared of the Wheel of Time fandom...

Jennifer Liang

We were very scared of you; we didn't know what was gonna happen.

Question

...so, the interesting thing is at the time, I think you said the first thing you did was you wanted to find out who killed Asmodean, and that got the whole room laughing at the time, and you talked about how you briefed yourself on all the material that was left, and [?] and everything, and you said Jim wanted one final novel, but you didn't see any way. You made an estimate of the number of words, hundreds of thousands of words...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. 800,000 was my initial estimate.

Question

And what did it end up being? I'm just curious.

Brandon Sanderson

It ended up being around, let's see...around nine, maybe ten...so, a hundred—or a million words, right around.

Question

It grew!

Brandon Sanderson

It grew a bit, yeah. And part of that is the fact of cutting it gave me a little more space to do that, and part of it was, you know, little touches here and there. You never can guess really exactly. It didn't grow by enormous amounts—it grew by maybe ten or twenty percent, which is within a reasonable threshold when I guesstimate a book length—but yeah, it did grow a bit, and after the books are all out, I'll tell you some of the things that grew, some of the things that got added. There were things that weren't in the initial outline that I decided needed to be in the books as I was writing them, and that happens with every book that you're going to be doing.

The process for writing this book, for those who haven't heard: When I walked in there and I was given this, I was given a stack of about two hundred pages. I don't know how much I've talked about this at this con so far; I talked about this recently somewhere. Oh, it was on the interview I did, first day. It's gonna go up on the air somewhere. So, about two hundred pages. I can release that number because Tom Doherty released it at DragonCon, I believe it was. [It was at WorldCon 2008.] He got up and said, "This is how much we had." And, Robert Jordan was what we call a 'discovery writer'; George R. R. Martin calls it a 'gardener'. He would not write chronologically; he would write on whatever occurred to him at the moment. He would 'discover' his way through a book. He usually had an ending in mind, and things like that, and important scenes he was gonna write, but he would very much just feel it out as he went. This is very common among writers; it’s one of the main archetypes of writers there are out there. Stephen King does it this way too. Neil Gaiman says he does it a lot this way too. You kind of feel your way through.

But what it means is that what was handed to me, they had been arranged by Alan, one of the members of Team Jordan, into an order that he kind of thought they might go in, but there was really no indication from Jim [as to] the order of these scenes. They were just a list of scenes. And where those had come from are scenes that he had worked on, which a large number of them were half-complete, because he would just write on what he felt like at the time, get a few pages in, then set it aside and then think about it some more while he’d work on something else. So there were a lot of fragmentary scenes. There are a lot of scenes you’ll be reading in these three books where it’s like three pages of Robert Jordan and like three pages of me making up a scene, or a page or Robert Jordan, two pages of me and then another page of Robert Jordan, or things like that. A lot of those, there are places here and there where I’ve grabbed a paragraph of his, because the rest wasn’t finished, it was just a paragraph where he said, “It’s going to do this, and then here’s this paragraph of this great sequence.” And so a lot of it was like that.

A lot of it was interviews. During the last months, his cousin Wilson and members of Team Jordan would be talking to him and Jim would start talking about scenes. There’s a famous one, “There’s a ______ in the Blight,” which is a quote from Wilson. That was a time when Jim told him—you’ll have to have him tell that story some time, it’s awesome—but Jim just started going off—Jim is Robert Jordan, for those who didn’t know—Jim would go off on...he just talked through this entire scene. And that’s one of the ones that we had the most understanding of, in a lot of ways, some of these scenes where he would talk about them.

For instance, the first scene in The Gathering Storm, there’s a prologue with an old farmer sitting on his front porch. This scene was dictated by Jim, and we actually had the recording of that, it got played at JordanCon I. And the interesting thing, if you were to have listened to that or if I can just describe it to you. It’s all in present tense. It’s like, “There’s this farmer, and he’s sitting on the porch and he looks up and he sees the clouds. These are black and silver clouds, and he’s never seen black and silver clouds before; they’re very striking.” And Jim goes through this whole narrative like that. Well, that’s very complete as a scene, he does the whole thing. And yet it’s in present tense, without a lot of the language turned into written language; it’s talked through.

Jennifer Liang

Right, there’s one point where he describes a sound as sounding like a freight train. Well, you can’t say it sounds like a freight train in the Wheel of Time, that doesn’t make any sense.

Brandon Sanderson

Exactly. There’s that scene, so I had several of those scenes, where basically I can keep Jim’s voice intact and just tweak the words a little bit to make them fit and add in a few sentences of description here and there, and we had several of those scenes. Then there were the Q&A scenes, which were Maria saying “So what happens to this character?” “Well, let me tell you what happens to this character.” And then Jim would talk. And so because of those Q&As, we knew a lot about the ending—a whole ton—and he did write the last scene himself and he talked through where everyone ends up and things, and so the bulk, and I’ve said all along, the weight of what we had from him was about that ending, where he would go and say “Here’s what happens to this character,” and it’s really talking about here’s what happens to this character in the Last Battle and then after the Last Battle, assuming there is an after the Last Battle, this is where this character would go. And so we have that basically for everybody.

Jennifer Liang

You and Harriet had a great way of describing it at one of the book signings for The Gathering Storm. You said that you had a map of the United States and you knew that at the end of the book that Perrin ends up in Chicago, but he starts off in like Orlando, and you know that he has to go to Los Angeles before he can get to Chicago, but you don’t know all the other steps in between and why he’s going to Los Angeles, so they had to figure out all the in-between parts.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, there are great things where there’s just like a line from his notes. “And then Perrin is here doing this.” And you’re like “What? Perrin’s in Malden, how is he gonna get there? And he’s going to do what? And then he’s got to be up here to do what?” And then we know the ending, what he’s doing there. So, there was a lot of that. So, this all became the book, where I built an outline out of this, I took the scenes that he had said. The thing about the notes is that a lot of the notes were to him, and so he would say things like “I’m going to do this or this” and they’re polar opposites. And so there are sequences like that, where I decide what we’re going to do, and stuff like that. And this all is what became the trilogy that you’re now reading.

I'd just like to point out that Sazed heard Kelsier approaching before Vin did. That should mean something to you. This is also the first time we get Vin wanting to ignore Reen's voice in her head. That is, in my way, an acknowledgement to the progress she's achieved during the last few months.

The mists and Allomancy feeling right to Vin have something to do with the ending, where she draws upon the mists for an extra burst of power. I'm afraid I can't say more until we get to future books.

Hi all,

I just got back from the signing at the B&N store in Warwick, RI.

My wife and I arrived at about 11:45am, about 45 minutes before the signing, we were the fifth people in line. The booksellers had some minor issues setting up a sound system after about 15 minutes of playing with the feedback machine one made the comment that they hoped he had a "booming" voice.

They announced him and he came in and before sitting down ran through a brief pronunciation guide. He had a wry smile on his face as he went through the litany.

While the booksellers said only hardcovers, the person in front of me had the comic and when Mr. Jordan saw it he turned and said, "I am going to need a sharpie for this." One was produced and after signing the cover he informed the person to let it dry otherwise it would smear. He was also adding small personalization if the person wanted.

But it was more likely something deeper. Tolkien had a great mastery over the world in which his characters lived. Indeed, that was why he wrote his stories at all. As a master linguist who was utterly fascinated by ancient British and Norse mythology, his goal was to create a separate world. He even created a language to go along with it—Elvish—which anyone with a great deal of time and inclination can learn.

Jordan, too, has created a new world, but his world is a byproduct of his story.

"The beginnings of the story came first, then the world began to grow." he says.

"I was rather shocked by the write-up in the New York Times comparing me to Tolkien. We have totally different backgrounds. He has an English voice and drew strongly from English and Norse traditions. I have a Southern voice. He had two women of note—Arwen and Eowyn. In my world's mythology, women tell half the story. I grew up around strong women. Women killed and ate the meek men in my world," he says.

A Battle at Last!

Oh, good, I wondered how many bombs I'd have to throw before we started a real debate. *grin*

First, you're misrepresenting or misunderstood what I said. I've read all those authors, but not all their books—several do multiple trilogies, which obviously doesn't fall under my definition. Admittedly, a few I haven't read since I was a kid. (I loved all the Zelazny books, but I was 14 and don't remember them flawlessly, plus all of the Amber books together would have had a wordcount of less than one of the monsters we've been talking about, so apples, meet oranges.) And of course, some of those authors may have tackled the problems successfully in series I haven't read of theirs. I never claimed encyclopedic knowledge.

I never claimed they all had the same greatest strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't make sense. The point was purely logical: If X is your greatest strength, and you write a novel without X, you're writing a novel without your greatest strength.

Come on, you have to agree with that.

Not all writers are equally great at all parts of writing: Grisham does dynamite tension, but his characters aren't deep, someone else will have the opposite strength and problem. The same applies to fantasy writers. Surely you can agree with that, too?

So, going from the fact that readers score subsequent books in really long series lower, the question is why? Either fantasy readers are vindictive and ignorant of the difficulties of the form, or "there have been stumbles," as you put it. (In the passive voice, lest you say who stumbled.)

I don't think the main mass of readers are vindictive. I think they know quality, and I think they read enough books to know when an author is giving them great stuff, and when they're not. So this is where you and I stand apart from each other. You blame the form, I blame the writers.

And, since you put me on the spot, sure, I'll say it: Robert Jordan stumbled. For multiple books. Were there reasons stumbling was easy? Yep. Did he get good things out of the tradeoffs he made by writing too many books? Sure. Is he still one of my favorite writers? Absolutely. Was his writing magical? Yes. With Robert Jordan, I could read a whole book and not realize until it was over that nothing had happened. I owe the man a huge debt, but that doesn't mean I can't learn from his mistakes.

(I didn't post at all about magic here, so I'll take the next post on Monday, Brandon—but I'm on the road and had to dash this off.)

Mat's voice really changed from The Gathering Storm to Towers of Midnight. In The Gathering Storm he seemed almost a parody of himself, while in Towers of Midnight he eased back on his roguish nature and felt much more real. Why do you think Mat came across that way in The Gathering Storm, and were you specifically motivated to correct it in Towers of Midnight or did that happen naturally?

necrosxiaoban

So how long is the series going to be? RJ's answers from 95–06

Friend of mine posted this on Dragonmount and I got a kick out of it, a timeline of RJ's estimates on just how many books the series was going to be:

1993

He still isn't sure how long WoT will go on for, saying probably seven books but adding that when The Eye of the World first came out he saw the series as four books.

"At present I am indeed hoping to complete the cycle in either seven or eight books. I am 90% confident that I can do it in seven, 95% confident that I can by eight. The thing is, as a famous manager of an American baseball team once said: 'It ain't over till it's over.'"

1994

"It will last several more books, until I reach the last scene, which has been in my head since the very beginning."

"I do hope there will not be ten books all told. I'm planning for eight, at present, and hope very strongly that I can wrap it all up in that length."

He said he writes as the ideas come and he has no clue as to how long the series will be!

"I knew from the start that I was writing something that would be multiple books. I just never knew how many, exactly."

Not only did he decline to set the number of future WoT books, but he denied ever setting a number and says he never planned it to be only a trilogy. But he seemed to indicate he was planning 9-10 books total. When faced with the prospect of about twelve books, his wife threatened to divorce him and his editor began to make jokes about the Irish Mafia.

"Several. Some. A few. I'm not even speculating now on how many books I hope it will take, because every time I do mention a number I hope I can finish it in, it turns out to take longer. It will be at least eight, because I've signed the contracts for books seven and eight."

"I've stopped saying how many more books there will be."

"At one time, I did hope for eight; now I don't think so. I certainly hope (Please, God!) it doesn't go to ten books, but I have stopped saying anything except that I will write until I reach the last scene of the last book, which scene has been in my head from the beginning."

1996

"There will be a few more books, some, not a lot, hopefully fewer than seven more."

"It will be at least ten books, yes. There will be some more books, not too many, and please God, not so many as I've already written. I am, in truth, writing as fast as I can. I want to maintain the pace of the story until I reach the final scene, which has been in my head since before I started writing The Eye of the World."

1997

"There will be at least three more books. I'm not saying that there will be ONLY three. I'm saying that I can't finish in fewer than three."

1998

"I believe—believe!—there will be three more books. I am trying to finish up as soon as possible, but I cannot see how to do it in fewer than three books. That isn't a guarantee, mind! In the beginning, I thought that there would be three or perhaps four books total, but it might go to five, or even six, though I really didn't believe it would take that long. It wasn't a matter of the story growing or expanding, but rather that I miscalculated—brother, did I!—how long it would take to get from the beginning to the end. I've known the last scene of the last book literally from the beginning. That was the first scene that occurred to me. Had I written it out 10 years ago, and then did so again today, the wording might be different, but not what happens. It has just taken me longer to get there than I thought."

"When I finished A Crown of Swords, I said it would take me at least three books more to finish. Now that I have completed The Path of Daggers, it looks like it will take me at least three more books to finish. Believe me, guys, I'm trying as hard as I can to get there as fast as I can."

"I don't have a set amount of books planned. I believe it will take at least three more books to reach the ending that I have known for more than 15 years."

"Remember, after A Crown of Swords I said at least three more books....the same thing I say now."

The usual "at least three more books" was mentioned several times in an increasingly loud voice.

"I am only asked that question by about 300 people a day. The answer is that there will be at least three more books. At least. As I said earlier, I know everything that I want to happen and I have known the last scene of the last book for fifteen years. I also know that I cannot get everything that I want to happen into less than three more books. So that's where we stand at the moment."

1999

Firstly, RJ said three more books "at least" and that he'd try to do it in three if he could, but he couldn't promise it would be only three. And he said he thought it would take "at least five years".

2000

"Sigh! At least three more. I know I've said that before, but it's still the case."

"It still sits at three more books to finish, but I've always said from the time I began using the three books that it would be AT LEAST three books—that I'd try to finish in at least three books, but I couldn't promise. I know that I couldn't possibly finish in fewer than three. If I can finish in three, I will. But that's what I'm hoping for, what I'm trying for. NOT a promise."

"There is no set number. It takes as much space as it takes."

2001

The next book will be out very soon after he's finished writing it. He don't know how many more books there'll be. At least three. If he can finish it in three, he will.

There will be no more than five, but also no less than another three books to be expected to appear in The Wheel of Time series.

"There will be at least three more books. The next book will be in bookstores very shortly after I finish writing it, and Michael Jordan is my kid brother whom I taught to play basketball."

2002

"After Crossroads of Twilight, there will be two more books, knock wood, God willing and the creek don't rise. I never intended The Wheel of Time to be this long. The story is progressing the way I planned, but from the beginning I believed I could tell it in many fewer words, many fewer volumes."

"I think twelve."—Harriet

2003

When asked "how many more books?", which of course met great laughter, he responded that he had started the process intending to have only five or six. Now on book 10, he remarked that he would complete the series in two more books if at all possible. If not, then three.

Jordan showed up around 7, and gave a little speech. He said there will be at least two books, and that he will not write a word more than he has to.

"How many more books will there be? There will be at least two more books. I apologize for that. I cannot finish it in fewer books. I will try to finish it in two more. I have known the last scene of the last book since 1984. I know where I'm going. The problem is...[my tape is once again inaudible and this was one of the few parts of his speech I could not hear, sorry gang]. That's about it."

"I really hope—knock wood, spit over your shoulder, and sacrifice to the gods—that I can finish up in twelve books total. We shall see."

"No, at least two more books, I'm afraid....I've had some people say they'd like five or ten, but I generally throw something at them."

2004

"I hope—please God, are you listening?—that there will be only two more books in the main sequence."

"I very much hope to finish in two more main sequence books. It's not an absolute promise, but I'm very much hoping for it and I think I can do it."

"I sincerely hope it will be possible to tie everything up in two books."

2005

There is only one book left in the series but it will be a doozy. He will fight to prevent it from being "George R.R. Martined," or split for publication.

"I am committed it is going to be 12 books, even if it is fifteen hundred pages long and it requires you to bring a luggage cart to get it out of the store. Bring your knapsack, you may need it, because no matter what the case that is going to be it."

"One more—the twelfth book. That will be so even if that book has to be 2000 pages in hardcover, and require a luggage cart and shoulder strap to get it out of the store."

"I have said it before and will say it again. There will be one more book. Even if it has to be a 1500 page book. It will be the last book even if you have to use a luggage cart to move it."

"For Segovia, my intention is finish with twelve books, and that may mean that the last book will be VERY long, but I really can't say how long it will take me to write. My publisher is always trying to get me to commit to a time frame. I just do a little sand dance until he goes away. I carry a small bottle of sand with me in New York for exactly that purpose."

Book Twelve will end the main sequence if he has to personally go to New York and beat the publishers at Tor, even if it runs two thousand pages and they have to invent a new way to bind the books (shudder). There will be two more prequels a la New Spring, and there might—very big MIGHT—be another trilogy in the same universe.

First, "the next book will be out very shortly after I'm done writing it." Next, "the next book will be the last book, even if it's 2000 pages, and you need a luggage cart to carry it out of the bookstore."

"Can we all say it together? One more book. I don't care if it has to be 2000 pages and you have to wheel it out the door. One more book."

2006

"After Knife of Dreams, there's going to be one more main-sequence Wheel of Time novel, working title A Memory of Light. It may be a 2,000-page hardcover that you'll need a luggage cart and a back brace to get out of the store. (I think I could get Tor to issue them with a shoulder strap embossed with the Tor logo, since I've already forced them to expand the edges of paperback technology to nearly a thousand pages!) Well, it probably won't be that long, but if I'm going to make it a coherent novel it's all got to be in one volume."

archaeonaga

Brandon Sanderson

archaeonaga (January 2013)

Brandon Sanderson

archaeonaga

Brandon Sanderson

All right, let's see...

San Diego signing, Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, Feb. 6.
Both Brandon and Harriet attended.

My mom and I got there fairly early (just after 5:30 PM), and there were already a large number of people there—I'll say around 50—and chairs were quickly disappearing, but we snagged a couple. Freelancer was already there, of course (being a Memory Keeper), and after I waved him over and we started chatting, s'rEDIT, who was sitting right behind us, introduced herself, and we talked for a long while.

Around 6 PM or so, Free announced that he had some wonderful crossword puzzles for us (courtesy of Wetlandernw) to pass the time, and they certainly did. (Of the 79 clues, I was able to answer 64 of them correctly, though I did misspell several (i.e., wrong vowel). The other 15 I was unable to answer, and researched them when we got home. Thanks, Wetlander!)

I first noticed Brandon and Harriet in the store at around 6:30 (though they must have arrived earlier, because Free claims to have had a private Q&A session, which I will leave to him to disclose). At 7 PM Brandon and Harriet were introduced, and Brandon went over how the night was going to proceed. The Memory Keepers then got set up for the Q&A (Free had a video camera, and many had voice recorders).

Sometime during the shuffle (or possibly before 7PM? I can't recall), Harriet noted the photo of RJ that is on the wall behind the counter. She remembered that it was taken at Mysterious Galaxy during RJ's last tour (for Knife of Dreams, in 2005), and asked us if anyone knew who took the photo—at which point Mom and I both put our hands up, and told her. Our good friend Jeanne (who lived near us until she moved to the Bay Area) took this photo at the bookstore during the 2005 signing; it now adorns RJ's Wikipedia page, and she made the letter-size print for the MG store. In gratitude (for Harriet is very appreciative of the photo), she gave us a DVD of photos from that signing, including the one linked above, to send to Jeanne. It was a touching moment for us.

The Q&A went splendidly; as there were to be no spoilers for the book, most of the questions were the usual kind, like asking Brandon and Harriet how Brandon was selected, and how he thought about it; what the most difficult character was for him to write; what his favorite of Rand's three girls was; that sort of thing. And most of those were fairly long-winded answers, with plenty of good humor mixed in from both of them. One daring fellow asked Brandon (tongue-in- cheek, undoubtedly) who killed Asmodean; Harriet insisted on answering, and him (loosely paraphrased) that it was an exercise in being able to read the Glossary, and we all laughed. One question was asked about the "River of Souls" story in the Unfettered anthology; this was the first I'd heard of it being a deleted scene from A Memory of Light, so that was kind of neat. A question was asked about one of Brandon's other books (one which I haven't read, so it didn't make any sense to me).

It wasn't until about 7:45 or so that he finally called an end to the Q&A, and had Harriet do a very short reading from the book, which I will probably never forget, because the paragraph she read was the one used in each of the 14 volumes of TWoT: the wind scene. When she got to "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time", she paused, and let us recite with her, "But it was a beginning."

Mom and I were second in the signing line, so we had plenty of time to get a group photo:

Sorry for the poor image quality; it was taken with my iPod touch, as I had neglected to bring a better camera. (And, indeed, I forgot to take any more pictures of anyone that night, which I regret a little.)

After we got our books signed, we went to get some fresh air, stretch our legs (imagine standing up after sitting on a hard folding chair for two hours, and you'll know what it felt like getting up), and get some dinner at the McDonald's. s'rEDIT was also there (her number was far enough in the line that she could wait a while), and we talked with her for almost an hour, and with another group from the signing (several of whom were sporting very nice outfits, including a Blue Aes Sedai and an Asha'man).

After dinner, we walked back to the bookstore and had another chat with Free out front. Mom and I elected not to stay for personalizations or additional questions; it was late and she was tired, so we said good-bye and left.

So... that turned out rather wordy, didn't it! Shame on me. Looking forward to Free's report.

Bzzz™.

The Dark One seems to be conscious and aware of the events in the world. Is the Creator also conscious of world events?

Brandon said that's left up to the reader. He then said that many people think the voice in all caps in The Eye of the World is the Creator, which might indicate the Creator was, but stated it really wasn't known even in-world.

The evening ran very late—the event was scheduled from 2:00-5:00 and the signing portion started at 3:00; we made it through the line around 6:15, and there must have been at least 50-60 people still waiting behind us. The theater could seat 460, and I estimate that the crowd reached somewhere in the neighborhood of 375-400. Poor Brandon was definitely feeling under the weather, and his voice was pretty rough, but he was incredibly warm & gracious with his time regardless. My husband got some nice pictures, but I can't quite figure out how to post them into the thread. :(

All in all, a very memorable day!

And what was the biggest challenge of keeping your own voice in the mix, while staying consistent with Jordan's voice from the books before?

Yeah, that was a big challenge. Fortunately, I had Harriet for that. Harriet was the editor on all of the Wheel of Time books, and was able to point out all those inconsistencies, along with a lot of line-editing to smooth over the issues between what I had written and what Robert Jordan had written, things like that. One of the reasons why this project was even feasible was because Harriet was involved.

Brandon and Harriet arrived after their dinner with the library staff to rousing applause.

Brandon apologized for his voice because he'd be sucking on cough drops because, well, he's been touring. He recounted the story of his introduction to The Wheel of Time and fantasy in general. Brandon told the story (which I'm sure he's recounted at many of these signings and many interviews) of how Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly (a terrific novel recently re-released by Open Road Media in eBook) was gently forced upon him by his teacher named Mrs. Reader and Brandon was hooked on fantasy. Realizing he liked big books, he found The Eye of the World at his local comic/book/Magic store and was happy to finally have a series that was 'his' to share with his friends who were always sharing 'their' series with him. When Brandon mentioned submitting his novels for publication, the one novel he submitted directly to Tor rather than through his agent was the first published novel Elantris. Brandon recounted how he didn't let Joshua do his job and negotiate because he wanted to be published by Tor, specifically because they published The Wheel of Time. In 2005 Elantris was published.

On January 8th, 2013, Tarmon Gai'don arrived for Wheel of Time fans in the form of A Memory of Light. Some of you have been waiting for that day for decades; others, like myself, considerably less time but with just as much anticipation. We survived the release of the final book, but the journey hasn't ended yet. On February 18th, the book tour featuring Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal made its way to Hanover, Maryland, and for many fans we got to say one final goodbye to the series that is Robert Jordan's legacy. We even had the special privilege of getting a live demonstration from the audiobook readers, Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, turning the event into a once in a lifetime experience that won't soon be forgotten.

I journeyed for some two and a half hours to make it to this signing, joining my fellow Memory Keepers for a few rounds of Magic and lunch in the mall before we all made our way to the bookstore to begin preparations for the signing. We handed out goodies to the early birds, giving away everything from Wheel of Time bookbags and iPhone covers to paperback copies of The Way of Kings. In what seemed like no time at all, people were crowding the area where Brandon, Harriet, Michael, and Kate would be doing the Q&A, and soon after that they all arrived and took their places. Because this was such a large event—over 500 people, the second largest crowd ever for a signing at that BAM!—the Q&A was short, but fans were treated to the reading of several passages from A Memory of Light by our beloved audiobook readers.

Within half an hour numbers began to be called over the PA for people to line up and have their books signed, and what a line it was! After every number was called it snaked through every aisle along the back wall, out of BAM all the way to the entrance to the mall. In the interest of ensuring everyone was able to have their books signed by both Brandon and Harriet, personalizations were only given to people who got back in line for a second round of signings. Even with that caveat it took from 8 o'clock until nearly midnight to get the first round of books signed! Harriet, the Light bless her, stayed until every last person from the first line had gone, and Brandon made sure the die-hard fans who wanted personalizations were rewarded for their patience.

To keep everyone busy while the signing took place, the Memory Keepers walked through the crowd and asked trivia questions. For every correct answer small prizes were given away along with a raffle ticket for the night's grand prize—a handmade bracelet featuring charms related to Mat Cauthon's character, which ended up in the lucky hands of Mara F., our big winner of the night. Those who stayed really late were treated to some of the extra goodies we had been giving away earlier in the day. All told, the night ended at 12:30 when Brandon personalized the last Memory Keeper's book and left for some much deserved rest. I myself didn't get home until nearly 3 o'clock in the morning, but to be able to take part in such a historic event was well worth one night of lost sleep. For me, February 18th will never again be President's Day; instead, I will always remember it as the last time so many fans were gathered in one place for a single cause.

There are no beginnings or endings to the Wheel of Time, just the next turn of the page before we read the series again.

Favorite memories from the Memory Keepers:
—Michael Kramer bringing to life the voice of Loial.
—Harriet telling a fan whose book had coffee spilled on it, "the great thing about books is they dry out. Kindles do not."
—Brandon downplaying his status as a famous author when a couple introduced him to their young daughter.
—A Sbarro pizza box being signed by Brandon, Harriet, Michael, and Kate.
—Harriet asking, "Is the Dark One in this mic?" when reverb kept interrupting her answers.
—Getting to hear about some of the notes Robert Jordan left behind regarding what happens to different characters that was not revealed in A Memory of Light—sorry, no spoilers!
—When Robert was asked to describe the Wheel of Time in 6 words, he said: "Cultures crumble, ages fall, cope. There, that's only 5 words, but I didn't want to be wordy."

The five-word summary that RJ gave of the series was actually, "Cultures clash, worlds change; cope."

Do you think that there will be post AMoL books that follow Rand or his children at any point in time, or is the Wheel of Time series done for good?

Edit: Actually more like the Wheel of Time universe, since the series that lead to the last battle is completed.

Edit2: Also sorry if you mentioned that you were or weren't going to continue with that universe already, but I had to ask. I just finished the book today at 3:30 am and I just don't want to move on... :(

Sorry for the slow reply. Haven't been around much lately. I figured you'd still want some sort of response, however.

There is no more. I'm sorry. I understand not wanting to move on (I still hope for some good video games or films that will let you explore the world more) but I don't feel comfortable going forward in the world any more. I'm confident Robert Jordan wouldn't have wanted it. He didn't leave enough notes for future books that I feel they would be able to be true to his voice.

I'm sad about this too, honestly. I love the world and the characters. But all good things must end, and it is for the strength of the work as a whole that I think we must allow this one to conclude.

rohittee1

Um...did you notice...(in a louder voice)...has everybody standing around me read the book?

Okay, spoiler! Just warning you.

Terez

Spoilers! Okay, did you notice any good foreshadowings for Egwene's death aside from Guinevere and the Year of the Four Amyrlins?

Brandon Sanderson

Um...(laughs, looks at Jenn)....those are very good. I mean, it's mostly, you know, the Guinevere myth and things like that, but there's...(to Jenn)...there's others, aren't there?

Terez

The Year of the Four Amyrlins is the only, like, really nice one that I've latched on to, you know? Because it's like, she's talking about, "It's almost like now..." and it's like, "Everybody came to grief in the end...." And it's like...yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

Mmmhmm.

Terez

(laughs)

Did you have a method for keeping the voice of the characters the same as the previous book?

I did, and that method was to read the last scene of that character before I wrote the new one. That became tougher as I wrote more and more on the last three books as I went along and the characters changed. Reading Rand from Book 11 didn't help a lot with Book 14, but it did help with Book 12.

Did the Creator ever manifest in the books? And I don't mean the VOICES IN CAPS.

RAFO!

Question

Did the Creator speak in ALL CAPS at least once or twice?

Brandon Sanderson

The same voice spoke in all caps in the series.

This is the last stop of the tour for Memory of Light. How do you feel?

How do we feel? The last hurrah, the last stop on the Memory of Light tour. It's really kind of, honestly, a weird experience for me, because after today, I basically set down, you know, the mantle, right, that was handed to me five years ago. This is my last official event involved in the Wheel of Time.

Now I will be involved for the rest of my life. I will go to JordanCon every year, which is only over in Atlanta, so you should all go. I just drove there today, from Atlanta, I know how easy a drive it is. I will be going to JordanCon, I will always be willing to sign these books, and talk about the Wheel of Time, but after today I take a big step toward fan, and away from author.

And so it's a really . . . It's the culmination of a bittersweet experience, it has been five years of bitter-sweetness. It started with reading his last scene, that he'd written, and it comes up to here. Where after five years of a lot of hard work, I put down that burden and, I move on to other things, which is really, really sad. You know, it's kind of weird, because every other series that I put down, there's been that voice in the back of my head that said, well you could return to this, if you want to. In this one I can't.

That's been made off limits to me by myself from the beginning. You know, Harriet and I, on one of the very first times in Charleston, we had this conversation about the other books and we both were very adamant about the idea of them not happening. And so, it's not, you know, it's not Harriet saying, no, it's me saying no too. I would not do these if the opportunity were even offered. And so, it's strange, because these characters I can never do more with. Everyone else I can. So it's a final farewell to Robert Jordan, and it's sad, but it's also awesome because the last book has been well received. I think it turned out very well. And the experience has been amazing.

Having been so involved in these books over the last five years, and as an author with your own projects in the works, how hard is it to separate the heart and soul of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time from your own stuff?

You know, this is something you just learn as a writer. To juggle projects. And writing is my passion, and I don't usually have trouble mixing up projects. Now that said, I do sometimes get influenced by certain projects, or end up repeating myself, and that's something you have to really watch out for as a writer. Where you've got to be careful not to let the same themes and ideas make you do the same thing over and over again. But that's a different question. Separating myself from the Wheel of Time was not as hard as you might think, because it's something I had to learn to do when I first started writing. Because the Wheel of Time was a dominant force in my writing from the beginning, I had to say let's write something that doesn't just copy the Wheel of Time. And I think every writer learns to separate themselves from their influences. Our first stories are usually derivative. And we learn over time, hey here's how to express my own voice. My first novel, the first one I finished, I went back to it years later, just a couple of years ago. I went back and I dug it out and looked at it. And it started with the wind scene, it started with an omniscient view of the wind blowing across something. I'm like, oh I've totally lifted that from RJ. But, you know, that's okay on your first novel. It's something you learn.

It's kind of neat sitting here in this office, looking across Madison Square at the building where we first worked together at Tempo, back in the olden days, 1970. We started together there. I was Publisher, Harriet was Editor-in-Chief, and we had a lot of fun. We began doing fantasy and science fiction in that line, and Harriet was of course the one doing it. We did so well that Grosset bought [SFF imprint] Ace for us to play with. Harriet became the editorial director of Ace, and we experienced tremendous growth there.

Harriet McDougal

Tremendous growth. I remember when you went to your first science fiction convention, all happy you had a nice company, planning to do wonders for science fiction—as in fact you have. When you said hello to the first people you saw in the lobby, they stood up and said: "Hi, we're the Science Fiction Writers of America grievance committee, and we're going to audit your books."

Tom Doherty

Oh, I remember that so well.

Harriet McDougal

I think you came up clean.

Tom Doherty

Actually, we did come up clean. We'd just bought Ace that week. We were behind because Ace was behind. Our editor in charge of science fiction back then, Pat LoBrutto, understated the situation. He said to me: "You know, we've got a little bit of an image problem. It would really help if you would come out to the World Science Fiction Convention." It was in Kansas City, so I said, "Sure, Pat, if it'll help, obviously, I'll come."

As soon as we came in, these two guys recognized Pat. They didn't recognize me yet. One of them said: "I'm Andy Offutt, I'm president of the Science Fiction Writers of America." The other one said, in a very loud voice: "And I'm Jerry Pournelle. I'm chair of the grievance committee, and we want to audit your books."

Well, Jerry had been in the field artillery. His hearing was bad, and he talked loud enough to hear himself. That meant everybody in the whole lobby could hear. Everyone kind of turned en masse to look at us. One person in the group of fans pointed at me and said: "That must be Ace. They're the people who screwed Andre Norton."

Now, we loved Andre Norton. Harriet had already bought her books at Tempo. We had published her there. But Ace had been in financial trouble, and they were behind on their royalties. What a way to be introduced to the World Science Fiction Convention.

Harriet McDougal

I was so glad I wasn't there.

Tom Doherty

I came home and went to Grosset immediately. I said "Boy, the first thing we do is pay all these royalties," and we did. That kind of annoyed Jerry Pournelle, because by the time he got there and did his audit, we didn't owe him anything, so he couldn't charge us for the cost of the audit. It's a long time ago, and Jerry may remember it a little differently, but I remember it pretty clearly, and that's how I remember it.

Harriet McDougal

It was an interesting time.

I get this question on occasion, and always feel the best thing for me to do is emphasize that I prefer you to buy the format that makes you the most happy. That way, you are encouraged to keep reading, and that is really what is best for me.

Most authors makes something around the following:

Hardcover, 15% of cover. (Regardless of store, unless it's a bargain book.)

Paperback, 8% of cover. (Regardless of venue.)

Ebook, 17.5% of the list price. (Unless they are self-published, and then it's usually 65-70% of list price.)

So, the best way to get money to an author is to buy the hardcover, preferably during launch week. (That influences how high the book gets on bestseller lists and how much in-store support it gets.)

However, I don't think that is something a reader needs to worry too much about. To be honest, rather than thinking about this, I think most authors would say that the best thing you can do for us is just read the books. Second best is to loan your copies to a friend so they can enjoy the books too.

firsthour

With these percentages, were you then sharing/splitting it with the Robert Jordan estate for the Wheel of Time books?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

deadlycrate

Can I just send you money?

Brandon Sanderson

I suppose you could—but I'd rather you buy a copy of one of my books and give it to someone. If I have you send me money, then we work around all of the people who deserve their share for helping me out. (Like my agent and editor.)

stave

Risky question time! How do you feel about those of us that buy your hardcover, then go and pirate the ebook?
* This comment is not an admission of guilt.

Brandon Sanderson

Risky answer time. I've got no problem with it. I wish I could actively give away the ebook to everyone who bought the hardcover. I can actually do this on books like Legion and The Emperor's Soul, where I retain rights to the ebook. (So I do.)

I'm not encouraging this, mind you. But I'm also not going to complain or make anyone feel guilty. If you've paid for the content once, I feel you should have access to it into the future, whenever you want, in any format you want. (With the exception being audiobook, where the voice actors deserve to be paid for their work above and beyond me getting paid for the writing.)

oditogre

What about with audiobooks? I subscribe to Audible and I can't help notice the price I pay for my subscription makes the books I get a steal compared to buying them without subscription or buying actual discs. How does that work out for the authors?

Brandon Sanderson

Audible has done wonderful things for the audiobook market, helping the format gain a lot of popularity. But their prices ARE rock bottom. I don't know off-hand how much we make. I don't mind, however, because audiobooks in the past were so horribly expensive.

For an architect, should a book be written as a complete work, which you then break into chapters? Or should I be focusing on writing chapter by chapter from the start?

Also, what order should revision be done in, what do you work on first? Punctuation and grammar, trimming, pacing, characters? What do you find usually gives the biggest pay-off first?

1) Both methods have worked for me in the past, so I don't know if there is a "Should" here. I think that early on, visualizing the book as a sequence of chapters which achieve certain goals is a useful way to finish your first few novels. It helps with the step-by-step method of getting it done. I use something more organic now, however.

2) My method is this:

Revision One: Fix continuity, big problems.

Revision Two: Make the language more active, get rid of repetition.

Revision Three: Fix problems mentioned by alpha readers (so long as I agree with them.)

Revision Four: Cut 15%

Revisions 5-7: Beta reader issues, more editorial fixes, more of all above.

However, in those early chapters, the biggest payoff is going to come from making certain character voice is solid and that the language isn't dull. (Trim info-dumps, get rid of passive constructions, that sort of thing.)

The question is, can you read it (the Alethi alphabet)?

I can’t read it, Isaac can.

JOSH

Isaac can’t read it.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Can’t he?

Josh

No.

BRANDON SANDERSON

He came up with it!

I told you where it came from, the writing system, right? That I told Isaac, “I want it to look like waveforms,” and he developed it to look like waveforms on the little thing when you speak voice- and things like that, and that was my goal for the [writing] system was something that was a line with waveforms across it. And he developed it then.

It's a really interesting thing. When I got to college, I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I started reading the books that I loved as a youth and studying them and trying to figure out how to do writing. Because . . . I love my professors, but writing teachers don't actually teach you how to write. I don't know if any of you guys have taken writing classes, but they're like well, let's explore your inner voice. And I'm like, you're telling me I have to hear voices? Well, I already do but they're not telling me how to write. How do I write? How do I make a character cool? And teachers aren't really big on teaching you how to make characters cool. They like to teach you how to develop your style.

And so I started reading books, and I was actually very very disappointed because some of authors that I read—I won't mention names—but some of authors I read as a youth did not hold up when I was an adult. And they were perfect for me at the age, but as I tried to inspect them as an adult writer trying to develop my style, I didn't find the depth that I wanted to dig into that I thought would teach me how to write. Robert Jordan still did. In fact, Robert Jordan was the one that I would dig into and find how much I'd missed. I constantly tell a story about as a 15 year old reading these books, you know, there's this character Moiraine who's just like always keeping the boys down and not letting them . . . She's always giving them orders, and I was always like, Moiraine, just leave them alone, they need to go off and do cool things! And then I read the books as an adult and I'm studying them and I'm like, you stupid kids, listen to Moiraine!

[laughter]

There's this depth to Wheel of Time books that the various characters are all expressed on very different levels. And Moiraine has an entire story going on behind the scenes that you don't see because you don't see through her viewpoints. And there's a little subtlety and detail. I mean, maybe I'm dense, but I didn't get the whole thing with it being our world, and there . . . and who was it? Not Buzz Aldrin, um—

Harriet McDougal

John Glenn.

Brandon Sanderson

John Glenn being in the book referenced, and America and Russia and the Cold War being referenced in legend. I didn't get that stuff till I was in college, and I'm like how did it miss that? You know, it's like a smack to the face, right, the first time you realize that Egwene is Egwene al'Vere, which is Guinevere. And you know, I didn't get this as a kid, and building these things out and understanding them and seeing the depth of writing that he was capable of—the really wonderful sentences that evoke so much feeling, emotion, and description.

I started studying the Wheel of Time to learn how to write. It became my primary model, just on a prose level, of how to do this thing that no one could teach me how to do. I spent the next . . . I decided I wanted to be a writer—actually, I was serving mission for the LDS church in Korea. The reason is I . . . I really wanted to be a writer before then, but my mother convinced me that writers don't get scholarships, and that I should be a doctor instead. And so I actually applied to BYU—I grew up in Nebraska—to go be a chemistry major, because that got scholarships. And then I got into college and realized what they do to all those people who just said they want to be chemistry majors to get a scholarship, is they put them in a really hard chemistry class that other people don't have to take their freshman year to show you what chemistry is like.

And I then went to Korea and was so happy to be on a different continent from chemistry. I did not enjoy that freshman year, but I did spend a lot of that time writing. And I decided I missed writing so much, but I didn't miss chemistry, that I had made the wrong choice, and I decided to start writing a book on my days off during my missionary work, and I just started writing in a notebook. And I completely fell in love with the process. I'd known since a kid this is what I wanted to do, but that's the first time that it clicked for me, that what I loved to do should be my job, right? That I could spend eight hours working on a story and come out of it feeling awesome and have not missed that time at all. I get the same thing from a lot of my friends who are code monkeys. It kind of scratches the same itch—that you get into it, and you're creating something, and it's working, and it's clicking. And yes, it can be hard but you love it at the same time. That's what I wanted to do.

Over the course of the next eight years I wrote 13 novels, trying to break in. And I eventually sold Elantris, my sixth book. And I sold it to Tor books. And when I got an offer from Tor . . . It was funny, I called up my agent. He said, well, I want to take this and I want to shop it, because usually you can get a better offer if you have one offer from somebody. This is basic business philosophy, right? And you go to everyone else and say, well, we got this offer from this company, will you beat it? And I said no, you can't do that. And he's like, but we can get more money. And I said, Tor is Robert Jordan's publisher. [laughter] We're not going anywhere else. When you have an offer from the top you just take it, and I did. And he, to this . . . not to this day, because things have kind of changed in my career, but there were many years where he would say to me, you know, I still wish you'd let me taken that, I bet we could have, you know, got a bigger launch, and yada yada yada. And when I did start working on the Wheel of Time, I actually called him and I said, so do you still wish? And he's like ah, you know, ah . . .

Harriet McDougal

[laughter]

So, at the end of The Eye of the World, the all caps voice? Will we ever find out who it was, or what they were looking for?

The all caps voice at the end of Eye of the World makes an appearance in A Memory of Light.

Question

What about what wasn't there?

Brandon Sanderson

What's that?

Question

What about what wasn't there?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you mean, what wasn't there?

Harriet McDougal

[laughter]

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe it'll be in the encyclopedia. I can still RAFO things, Harriet is working on an encyclopedia of The Wheel of Time, which is coming out maybe in two years or so.

Harriet McDougal

Yeah.

I've got a non-Brandon-specific question. I just happened to think about one thing about authors: When do you decide if the character is male or female?

1. Did it happen to one of your characters that you changed the gender pretty late?

2. What is important when choosing the gender?

3. So why did you make Vin female and not male, for example? Is it much easier to write a male character as a male?

Personally, I don't like books where a woman is very physically strong. I don't know, I'm strange. gotta admit I stopped reading Mistborn after the first book due to it. As I said, I'm strange...Still love your books and I never was looking forward to a book as much as I am looking for followup of Way of Kings. (Not even Harry Potter LOL!)

1. Vin, in Mistborn, started as a boy. I wrote about one chapter of Mistborn with her as a guy, then changed. However, another character by that name had existed in one of my unpublished books as a boy.

2. This is hard to answer, as characters are very organic things for me. I don't plan them nearly as much as I do plots or settings. I go with my gut when writing them. I can't say why some "feel" right as male and other "feel" right as female. I write it and see if it works. If their voice is right, I go with it.

3. As mentioned, Vin swapped genders. It had to do with my writing instincts, her dynamic with the other characters, her backstory, and just WHO she is. I'm sorry that I'm not being very specific. Characters are hard to explain.

Hi, I'm a male writer writing fantasy at the moment with a female perspective character. I'm having trouble with the tone whenever my character bumps up against barriers women have to deal with in my universe. I don't want to beat my audience over the head with gender issues or come off as preachy, especially as I'm still new to writing a female character.

My question is, when you were writing your female characters, especially Vin who jumped out at me as a natural but strong female protagonist in a male character dominated genre, did you find her voice came from your previous writing experience, or did you consult much with other authors and/or women you knew? I keep feeling like I should consult some female friends on how I'm writing her, but I don't want to lose my own voice in doing so.

Also, I love your novels. I find fantasy is a genre filled with characters who feel like tropes or someone's DnD character, while your characters jump off the page and walk around. If you have any general tips for writing a realistic person, that would be great. If not, just thanks for writing such great people.

I do consult with others. I think it's vital, particularly when writing 'the other' so to speak. Someone who is different from yourself in some fundamental way.

At the same time, every character should be different from yourself in some fundamental way. And, beyond that, there's a trap in thinking "My character has to think like a woman." No, your character has to think like herself. That's an important distinction to make. For every generalization, grouping, or stereotype out there, you can find many, many people who break that mold.

I actually focus on personality, wants, and needs first. Gender is a part of the character as a concept, and it informs how I write the person—but it is secondary to their passions, goals, and temperament.

I'd say write the character first, then consult with your female friends. Let them read the character in the context of her story, and get a read on it. So long as the character is strong and individual, you should be fine. Some pointers will undoubtedly help, of course.

The best way I've found to make someone realistic is to separate them from the plot and ask yourself who they are, and what they'd be doing, if the plot had never come along and swallowed them up.

Who are your favorite audio book readers (is that the correct phrase...I think voice actors sounds better) to work with, or have read your work for the audio books?

I am a big fan of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. The work Kramer does with character voices...man, it gives me shivers sometimes.

I've just been told that I get to be the first one to teach a brand new Science Fiction & Fantasy elective at my High School. I am building this class from scratch and since the students will be responsible for getting the books themselves, I have pretty much free-reign for my book choices. Great, right? Absolutely! However, I want to expand my initial book search so I wanted to enlist the Hive Mind to help with this initial salvo.

This class is an elective for 10, 11, and 12 and meets 2 or 3 times a week. I haven't even begun the process of planning the structure of the class, but I'm thinking of doing about a novel every 3 weeks or so plus one choice novel a quarter. This is a semester course and I'm thinking of doing a quarter of fantasy and a quarter of science fiction.

My wheelhouse is primarily epic, series based, high fantasy (Malazan, Recluce, Pern, SoT). I'm not that familiar with standalone fantasy novels, and since this is a short class, I would like to probably focus on single novels (or maybe individual novels of a series that can stand alone).

I'm also much more familiar with the classic Sci-Fi canon (Asimov, Bradbury, Dick, Bova) but I'm not really well versed in current Sci-Fi.

I also am not very up-to-date on YA Sci-fi/Fantasy, so any suggestions along those lines would be greatly appreciated.

My request is the following: Please suggest books that would be great to use in a High School elective. At this point I'm not really concerned about Lexile scores so much as I am about quality and length. While I would love have the kids read a book like Reamde or Name of the Wind, those 1000 page tomes are a bit out of reach for my purposes.

Thanks in advance!

JDHallowell

Don't neglect Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc.

There are a lot of great SF & F books that are either in the public domain or available for free, legal e-book download either from Project Gutenberg, the Baen Free Library, or other sites.

H. Beam Piper's books are now public domain.

Cory Doctorow's Little Brother is available to read free on his website.

Drawing as much of your curriculum as possible from free books will be a kindness to students who might otherwise not be able to afford to take your class.

I hope you have fun with it!

I agree with this, particularly about Little Brother, which would be an excellent book for OP to consider. I also think, in line with the free books, that doing some short fiction would be good for the class and the readers. In my early SF classes, I remember the impact of some really great short fiction pieces—it allows you to have something to read quickly for class and have a discussion.

If I were doing a class like this, I'd break it up by topic or subgenre. For example, these two free short stories are among the best SF I've ever read.

Wikihistory

They're Made of Meat

Both are excellent because of their use of non-standard viewpoint. One is first person epistolary, the other done only through dialogue. You could do a great job in combining these as in-class reads for a given day (both take under 5 min to read) while working on a longer work that also uses viewpoint in an interesting way. (I'd suggest The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for this, but I'm not sure if the content is acceptable for the audience. Dracula is a great fallback for a classic with an interesting use of voice—and you could contrast it with Wikihistory in some very interesting ways.)

Another example would be to do dystopian, which is very big in YA because of the Hunger Games. Have them read Harrison Bergeron (my all-time favorite piece of short fiction) or something like the lottery, then read Little Brother or Uglies (both strong dystopian novels in recent years.)

For metaphoric fiction, look up Ponies. It's another excellent, very short piece that I think your students would really get.

In the Baen Free Library posted right above, you can find a free copy of 1632, one of the foundational works of alternate history. Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" might be a good match for that, or you could match it with Amber for multi-world connections. His Majesty's Dragon and the Yiddish Policeman's Union would fit really well here, as would some steampunk stories. (Hungry City Chronicles?)

Basically, I would pick a theme for every two weeks or so, get one central novel for that theme, then have a half dozen shorts to either read in-class or as additional homework. Give yourself a topic to dig into, not just a book to read.

Also, drop me a PM. I've got a whole stack of ARCs of Legion, one of my novellas, lying around. I could send them to you for your students.

Dreamworks has acquired the film rights for The Way of Kings.

In an official PR broadcast today, Dreamworks Studios announced the acquisition of film rights for Brandon Sanderson's NYT best-selling fantasy novel, The Way of Kings.

"We're very excited to bring The Way of Kings to the screen," Dreamworks CEO April Firston says. "We're dedicated to giving this epic story the exposure it deserves, and plan on staying completely true to the book, unlike that hack Peter Jackson."

Initial reports are that the book will be split into seven 4-hour long animated movies, each to be directed by M. Night Shaylaman. Ben McSweeney, interior artist for the original book, is quoted as saying, "Well, they got the rockbuds right, so that's something, I guess." Brandon Sanderson didn't have time to comment, as he's currently working on fifteen additional tie-in novels taking place over a thousand-year time span in eight different interconnecting worlds.

Casting is still underway, but Robert Pattinson is rumored to be in talks to voice Kaladin, and Pauly Shore has expressed interest in Hoid. Eighteen musical numbers will be added, including "Why Can't I Just Die," "What the Hell Are These Symbol Headed Things?" and "Livin' La Vida Roshar."

EDIT: Obviously this was an April Fool's joke. Happy Spring everyone, and stormfather forbid what I've written above should ever come to pass. Thanks to /u/virgiliart and /u/catastrophesnail for brainstorming on ideas.

You got it wrong. I'm not busy because I'm writing other books, I'm working on the licensing deals! Cardboard shardplate! Official Bridge Four loincloths! "There's spren in my poop" toilet paper!

Rutthed

Serious question: are there poopspren, and how would they fare in indoor plumbing situations?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, it depends on how you're defining spren. In the books, they don't make a distinction, but there are several varieties. At the basic level, everything has an identity—a soul, you might say, but more than that. This is based on how it is viewed, and how long it has been viewed that way. Feces would have this, but wouldn't have a very strong cognitive identity because of its transitional nature.

Other types of spren, the type that characters see and interact with, are cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time. These are usually related to forces or emotions, and don't relate to this particular topic.

And that's far more than I ever expected to say on this...

In Well of Ascension, there are two strange "voice in the head" experiences. One of them is with Sazed and Marsh are fighting, and Sazed realizes that he can burn the metal rings that are now in his stomach. But the other one is with Elend, when a voice comes, and he’s not sure where it comes from. It says something like "If you have a dagger, the only way to win is to go in for the kill"

That one, where it came from, is – I know what you are searching for, but it’s actually just an old (something) from weapons training. He’s just dredging- he’s not sure where it came from because he never thought he would need any of it, he thought he was just going to be a scholar. But his father did have him trained in weapons, so it’s just instinct that he got from one of his old mentors in fighting.

So there’s nothing to see there, so no, he’s not (something).

ZAS

Okay. We were just wondering if it was Preservation, or Kelsier.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Nope. Unfortunately, no. I do that on occasion, but this time...

During this second Charleston visit, I sat down with Alan, Maria, and Harriet to outline my thoughts on where the last books should go. I asked for big sheets of butcher paper, and upon this I started writing down characters, plots, goals, and sequences as headings. Then, we brainstormed answers to holes. I often presented my (somewhat daring) plans for sequences Robert Jordan had not outlined. I think a lot of the things I suggested were surprising to Team Jordan—and made them worried.

My argument was this, however: Robert Jordan would not have kept the last book stale. He wouldn't have done everything as expected. He wouldn't have flatlined the character arcs, he wouldn't have stopped the worldbuilding. If we played this book safe, we'd end up with a bland climax to the series. Harriet agreed, and told me to proceed with some of these plans—but with the warning that as editor, she would read and see if I pulled off the sequences. If I did, they'd go in the books. If I didn't, we'd remove them.

This ended up working really well. It allowed me to exercise artistic freedom, driving the books in directions I felt they needed to go without limitations. Granted, I had a personal rule—I didn't contradict Robert Jordan's previous books, and if he had finished a scene in the notes, we were going to use it.

This might make it sound like I was trying to steer the books away from his vision. Nothing is further from the truth. In rereading his series, in getting close to his notes, I felt like I had a vision for the types of emotional beats Robert Jordan was striving for in the last book. These emotional beats required surprises, revelations, and transformations—I felt like I truly had the pulse of this series. My goal was to fulfill his vision. However, in order to do this, I needed to exercise my artistic muscles, as he would have exercised his own. I had to allow the creative writer in me to create, to tell stories.

It meant approaching these books as a writer, not a ghostwriter. Harriet understood this; she hired me rather than a ghostwriter because we had notes and fragments of scenes—not an almost-completed novel. However, she was also very right to tell me that she would act as a stabilizing force. Letting my creativity out of its proverbial Pandora's box meant walking a dangerous line, with things that were too "Brandon" potentially consuming the series. I didn't want to let this happen, and Harriet was the failsafe.

This is why some sequences, like the "River of Souls" sequence that became part of the Unfettered anthology, needed to be deleted from the books. It's not the only one. Others include a sequence where Perrin went into the Ways.

During the process of writing these books, all members of Team Jordan offered commentary on every aspect—but a certain specialization fell out naturally. Harriet did line edits and focused on character voice. (She famously told me, regarding one of my very early Aviendha scenes, "Brandon, you've written an almost perfect Elayne." It took me a few more tries to get that one right.) Maria would watch for continuity with other books. Alan would pin me down on timeline, troop movements, and tactics.

To be continued.

Brian McClellan (the Powder Mage trilogy) was a student of yours. Why is it that you recommend his writing so frequently?

You know, when I read his very first story—he wrote this cool thing, I hope he posted it online somewhere—it was a novella he wrote for my class the first year. You get so many authors through the class that sometimes you start forgetting them–most of the time, honestly, I get so many. But once in a while, a person comes along and their writing is just amazing. And at that point, I shift from the mode of "I'm going to help you become a better writer" to the mode of "you're already doing all the stuff I'm talking about, you just need to know the business side now." And Brian was one of those. I can't take any credit for his writing because it was already awesome.

And he wrote this wonderful story about these paragons in the world. It was our world plus, where people get chosen as paragons as like a religion . . . it was so cool. There's like an ancient Greek paragon next to a Christian paragon that's based on kind of . . . anyway, it's great. You ought to have him post on it. It was the best thing I had had come through the class in a long while. It's a mixture of a lot of things. Mostly, I talk about the grand scale of being a fantasy writer is being able to, in the first few pages, get across a sense of character and world without dumping paragraphs of thick text on us. And that is the best—if someone can learn to do that, if you can pick it up and read it, and read a few pages and feel like you're in the world and character, but you haven't been dumped on—that's what Brian was doing. Also, the premise was awesome, the premise was great. But you know, it's that character voice. And it's weird because in fantasy, right, it's our magic systems and our worldbuilding that distinguishes us. But a great magic system and terrible writing is a bad book. And a weak magic system with great writing is a great book. And so even though this is what it's about, the skill that a writer really needs to learn is not the magic systems or not the worldbuilding—that's great. The skill is telling a powerful character in a different world from ourselves without making you feel like you're reading a history textbook. And Brian did that.

So, there you go . . . so you guys should read the book. I just finished it—I read it late. This is what a bad teacher I am, right? He gets published, I read the book a year later. It came out in April and I finished it in June, but he gave it to me . . . It's really just good, it's fun, it's great. So, I should have read that earlier. But Brent Weeks was on the ball, and he got a cover blurb. So yeah, Brent took care of us.

The Mormon church told her to take down this video or face consequences. She's now re-posted it and this time it's not coming down.

Negative_Gravitas

"I know my church has good intentions in this legal debate." Sorry Melanie, but no, they do not. YOU have good intentions and want to believe the best of others, especially those you have known and trusted all your life . . . but no. Their intentions are far, far from good.

I'm not sure I want to stumble into this one. These discussions turn out to be a mess, a lot of the time.

However, I've found that Reddit is often populated by those curious about both sides of an argument. For the record, here are some official statements from the Church regarding Gay Marriage.

Link One Link Two Link Three

Some highlights: "We join our voice with others in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty, or attempts to belittle or mock any group or individual that is different—whether those differences arise from race, religion, mental challenges, social status, sexual orientation, or for any other reason. Such actions simply have no place in our society.

This church has felt the bitter sting of persecution and marginalization early in our history, when we were too few in numbers to adequately protect ourselves and when society's leaders often seemed disinclined to help. Our parents, our young adults, teens and children should therefore, of all people, be especially sensitive to the vulnerable in society and be willing to speak out against bullying or intimidation whenever it occurs, including unkindness towards those who are attracted to others of the same sex. This is particularly so in our own Latter-day Saint congregations. Each Latter-day Saint family and individual should carefully consider whether their attitudes and actions to others properly reflect Jesus Christ's second great commandment—to love one another."

And also: "This is much bigger than just a question of whether or not society should be more tolerant of the homosexual lifestyle. Over past years we have seen unrelenting pressure from advocates of that lifestyle to accept as normal what is not normal, and to characterize those who disagree as narrow-minded, bigoted and unreasonable. Such advocates are quick to demand freedom of speech and thought for themselves, but equally quick to criticize those with a different view and, if possible, to silence them by applying labels like "homophobic". In at least one country where homosexual activists have won major concessions, we have even seen a church pastor threatened with prison for preaching from the pulpit that homosexual behavior is sinful. Given these trends, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must take a stand on doctrine and principle. This is more than a social issue—ultimately it may be a test of our most basic religious freedoms to teach what we know our Father in Heaven wants us to teach."

[Impish grin]

Herowannabe

Can I make some guesses?

Brandon Sanderson

Sure.

Herowannabe

Is it Kelsier?

Brandon Sanderson

[Impish grin]

Herowannable

What does that mean?

Brandon Sanderson

That means I'm not going to answer that.

Are there themes you don't yet feel you can tackle for whatever reason?

There are indeed. There are things I've shied away from—more because I haven't found the right character voice that I would want to tackle them with yet—things that are very far removed from my own experience. Writing a transgendered person, for instance, is something that is so far removed and so different from what I've done, that it's something that I've intentionally not tackled. If I find the right character, the right story, and the right resources, then perhaps I'll tackle it. But writing the other, someone who is very different from yourself, is not something to approach lightly. I don't think it's something that you should absolutely avoid, or absolutely be afraid of, because otherwise some voices are just not going to get as much visibility as they probably deserve. But I might be the wrong person to do it, or it might just be the wrong time in my life.

To Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom as a Whole

I have spent some time reading responses to the Hugo nominations, and wanted to reach out to you. I find it unfortunate that some of you, including prominent voices in fandom, are responding with anger or frustration about the Wheel of Time nomination. Some don't like a series being nominated for the novel Hugo. Some don't like WoT fandom reaching in and participating in the award. And others downright dislike the Wheel of Time as a work of art.

I would like to address some of these concerns that I see recurring in the discussions.

On the Wheel of Time Being Nominated as a Single Novel

On the first point, I wish to emphasize that the Hugo rules were intentionally designed to allow works like this to be nominated. Serials are such a part of our collective culture in sf fandom, and I promise you that the Wheel of Time is indeed a serial. It focuses on a single group of characters, a single plot and narrative, and the books each pick up exactly where the previous one left off. Yes, it took a long time to complete. Yes, it is large. However, Robert Jordan always considered—and spoke of—the Wheel of Time as a single story. The length of time it took to write that story is irrelevant as far as the Hugos are concerned.

A Game of Thrones season could be nominated collectively as a single entry into the dramatic presentation category. Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear could be nominated as a single work, though broken into two volumes. Indeed, this is similar to how Dragonflight and Ender's Game could both garner short fiction nominations for their original forms, then be nominated for best novel in a later year once the story was expanded.

The Wheel of Time is eligible. These are your awards, however, and if this aspect of them is bothersome to you it’s quite possible to get this changed by participating in Worldcon and the Hugo Awards as a whole, making your voice known and advocating a revision. Your passion, therefore, should be directed at making that happen, rather than against the work that was nominated.

Attend Worldcon. Go to the WSFS Business Meeting. Blog about it. Bring your friends. We need people involved at this level of fandom.

On Wheel of Time Fandom

This brings us to the second two points, which I feel are the more important ones in most of these discussions. In regard to Wheel of Time fans participating, I want to tell wider fandom that I vouch for these fans. I offered words of caution to them above because I think they need reminders as they are new to core sf/f fandom, but I feel that you need to know that Wheel of Time fans are our people.

They have organized much as the fans back in the 1930s did, holding conventions and starting fanzines/websites. They attend Worldcons and their local literary conventions, though many of them have only started doing so in the last four or five years as they've realized the richness and scope of established fandom.

I charge you: do not reject their enthusiasm. I spoke honestly with them, and I wish to speak honestly with you. I have yet to attend a Worldcon where someone—either on panels or at the parties—didn't ask what could be done to bring new blood into our fannish community. For years, we have worried about what to do. Now, as fandoms like that dedicated to the Wheel of Time have begun to discover both Worldcon and the Hugos, I feel we stand at an important confluence.

Welcome the Wheel of Time fans into our community. Welcome the next group of fans in too. Give whatever it is they're passionate about a try. You might like it, and if not, you'll still probably like them.

On the Wheel of Time as Literature

I understand that you may not personally enjoy the Wheel of Time. There is nothing wrong with that—it is the nature of art that some will disdain what others love. However, as I've read bloggers and fannish personalities speaking of a Wheel of Time nomination, some have unfortunately called it "shameful" or "embarrassing." Worse, some of them have attacked the fanbase, calling into question its intelligence for daring to nominate the Wheel of Time—in essence, for daring to have different taste from the blogger posting.

You can't beg people to come and participate in fandom, then tell them not to vote on your awards because you don't like their preference in books. Indeed, attacking the fans of a work rather than criticizing the work itself is crossing a very big, and important, line.

For many years, we in fandom have had to suffer these kinds of dismissive, hurtful, and destructive attitudes from those who attack us because we like science fiction. Do not side with the bullies. Do not hold your own opinion in such high regard that you dismiss all others.

It is not shameful to like the Wheel of Time. No more than it should be shameful to be the kid who read Dune in middle school while others snickered. We should never have to feel embarrassed for honestly expressing our taste in fiction. No more than we should have to feel embarrassed to be the one at work who attends an sf con, much to the amusement of your co-workers.

If you have said these kinds of things about the Wheel of Time or its fandom in the past few days, I challenge you to take a long, hard look at your tone and what you’re implying. Ask yourself if you really want to belong to a world where only one kind of opinion is valid, where only your taste is acceptable.

Because in my experience, these are the sorts of attitudes that science fiction and fantasy fiction have spent their history combatting. So if you don’t think the Wheel of Time should win, vote for something else. But while you're doing it, be kind. Treat these fans the way you want to be treated as a fan—and as a human being.

Brandon Sanderson 4/21/2014

No, it was not.

Question

Spook? Sounds like Spook's voice.

Brandon Sanderson

(smiling) It certainly doesn't sound like Marsh.

I wasn't planning on Elend getting as big a part in this book as he ended up having. However, the more I wrote scenes with him, the more interested I became in him as a character. He doesn't exist just to provide a romantic interest for Vin—he exists to show the human side of the nobility. I knew that I needed at least one nobleman who was presented favorably, otherwise Kelsier's harshness wouldn't have the contrast it needed. So, I designed a young man that Vin could meet at the balls.

Yet, when I started writing the scenes with Elend, I found them flowing very easily. I really liked his voice and his relaxed affability. MISTBORN, being about such a harsh world an society, threatened to become too dark. I needed another character like Elend to provide moments that were more lighthearted. He also gives us scenes that are interesting in a more thoughtful way, rather than a dark way. He turned out much better than I'd hoped, and is probably the biggest and most pleasant surprise of the novel.

And here we come to the final scene of the book.

This one is important for several reasons. I intentionally made it focus around Reen's voice in her head, since the very first chapter of the book where we see Vin, she's dealing with those same whispers from Reen.

Here, I wanted to show the progress Vin has made in one final moment. I don't think of my books as romances, but they certainly have romantic elements. The Vin/Elend relationship was actually one of the parts of the book that was less planned (as I think I've mentioned). I knew I wanted her to get involved with a man of the court, but I wasn't sure where I'd take it, or how it would end.

I think my books have happy endings. Ominous ones, sometimes—and bittersweet ones, definitely. But they're happy, at least for me. I'm an incurable romantic, and I like it when two people find each other.

Of course, this isn't the end. Vin and Elend don't really have a relationship yet, they have the budding beginning of one. We'll deal with the more... testing elements of relationships in the second book. For now, however, they get to be happy. That's a rare enough thing in the Mistborn world that it's worth noting.

A very short Sazed chapter. Mostly, this was just here because I had to remind the readers that Sazed was doing things. Getting to the Conventical is going to take enough time that, if I hadn't thrown in a small chapter like this, you would have gone a long time without seeing Sazed.

The things he mulls over here, then, are reinforcement of his character and his conflicts. It's also helping establish Marsh. Not because of what is said, but simply because you see them both again, and are therefore reminded of the things I talked about last time I was with him.

I wrote Mistborn One mostly chronologically, regardless of viewpoint. I did that with this book for the most part too, but I did write a lot of these Sazed chapters together, in bulk, so that I could keep the tone and voice right. I knew how many chapters from his viewpoint I needed, and I knew where they had to go, so I divided up what needed to happen and went from there.

You may be interested to know that I planned a prologue for this book, originally, with Sazed seeing the mists during the day. He was going to ride past a valley, see it creeping along inside, then rush down and find it gone by the time he arrived. That's when he was to hear the rumors of people killed by it, then rush off, and eventually get lucky enough to find a person killed just a day before.

I never wrote that prologue. I just didn't feel that I needed it, and didn't want to start with that scene—I wanted something more active, rather than something mysterious, for the opening. As I revised the book and tried to focus the reader more and more on the politics and warfare, rather than the mists (particularly at the beginning) I decided that a prologue that dealt with the mists would be out of place.

The scene where Sazed walks along inside the Conventical and talks to himself, speaking into the coppermind, is what really appeals to me about this chapter. It isn't often that, as a writer, I get to do something like this—switch up the narrative style, let myself do a monologue in first person present tense. The tense shift is, I think, what lets these scenes be so creepy. You get to feel, I hope, like you're with Sazed, walking along in the near dark, listening to a quiet voice-over that doesn't dispel the gloom, but just echoes back to you even more creepily.

This was one of my editor's favorite scenes in the book as well. The part where Sazed describes where Inquisitors are made, and where he walks the corridors, with minimal narrative interjections by me gave this chapter a tone unlike anything else I've ever written.

Hey Brandon, long time reader and avid fan. When I found out you were taking over The Wheel of Time, I waited until you'd finished it and then read it straight through for the first time ever. I started in May 2013 and finished in December 2014 - and I absolutely loved it. I especially appreciated that you maintained the "character" of the characters. I laughed at Mat's quips as easily in A Memory of Light as in any of the earlier books, and honestly, you may have injected a bit more humor than Jordan was capable of. I seem to remember laughing a lot (and tearing up) through the first Mistborn as well.

How do you manage the personalities of all of your characters? And how do you go about creating and "enlivening" these characters whose personalities are necessarily so very different from your own?

Keep doing great work! <3

Thanks! I do think I finally started to get Mat right in AMOL.

I manage character personalities with a careful mix of notes, instinct, and free writes in their voice. For the WoT, many of the characters were easy, as I'd been reading about them since I was a young man. They were like my high school buddies. They WERE different from my own, but in part because I created my characters as reactions against these characters--I didn't want to do what RJ had already done.

A lot of what I do with character, however, is very instinctive. It is the one big part of my writing process that is difficult to explain, as I often go with my gut.

Question

Let me ask a parallel to that. Does the NW perceive those as the same boon or two parallel boons?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!!! (big grin in his voice)

Audience

laughter