Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Came for the ass kicking, left cause of ass kissing.

JRANDOMHACKER172342

...You do realize that Brandon wrote this?

THE_MARCH_HARE

Sadly yes, I heard about him writing it last week, was extremely hype for it. And all for this, something that reads like mediocre fan-fiction. With great expectations comes great disappointment.

In that direction lay a trap.

Because the nature of the whole things is so ridiculous to me, I couldn't possibly play it straight. And if I did, the effort required to make it work would distract me from other projects&madsh;and I would have to write both characters out of character to the point that it would just come off as lame.

And so, you get a silly conversation. That was really my only option here, I'm afraid.

This is in reference to the Suvudu cage match between Kelsier and Moiraine.

Writing an epic series over many years will surely gather you many fans and many haters. In the case of Robert Jordan, it seems like bad reviews and fan backlash mounted up with each new volume as the series went on. Is that something you are concerned about? Do you try to figure out why people responded that way to that series and work to avoid a similar situation with your own, or do you just disregard the naysayers in general?

Of these things that you've asked me questions on, this is the one that I've spent the most time thinking about. It is an interesting phenomenon. Each Wheel of Time book sold more copies than the one before it, yet each one up through book ten got more and more negative reviews. They start out strong, then a few of the books have balanced numbers of reviews, and then they start to take a nosedive—even as the sales of the books go up and up.

The same thing has happened with my own books—as they have grown more popular, they've gotten worse and worse reviews. It's very interesting. You can watch a book like Elantris, which when it came out had more or less universal acclaim, partially I think based on expectations. People read it thinking, hey, there's this brand new author, it probably isn't that good—hey, this book isn't half bad! And then they go and write reviews on Amazon. There are a number of early reviews there that say, wow, this wasn't half bad! This new guy is someone to watch!

As you gain a reputation, more and more people pick you up by reputation—simply hearing "This is a great book" and picking it up, rather than looking into the book and deciding it's a book they will like. That's going to lead to more people picking up the book who it's just not a good match for. I think that certainly is part of it.

I do also think that there is epic series sprawl; there's a legitimate complaint against these series like the Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire. I think the fans still like the books, but they have complaints about how they're happening. George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan are really doing some new and unique things. Robert Jordan didn't get to read any ten-book epic fantasy series of that nature; he had to do it on his own without a model to follow. I think that as we go forward in the genre, hopefully we're picking up on things—we're standing on the shoulders of giants, and hopefully we will figure out how we can do this without necessarily sprawling quite so much, which I think is part of the problem. There's this push and pull in epic fantasy where we read epic fantasy because we love the depth of characterization and world building, and yet if the author does too much of that in every book, then we lose the ability to move forward in a central plot. That can be very frustrating.

I will say that when I was able to read the Wheel of Time from start to finish, having the complete story, that feeling that it wasn't going anywhere in places just wasn't there. That feeling came because you would wait two years for a book, and then when you finished it you'd have to wait two more years for the next book, and because of the nature of the epic series you're just getting a little tiny sliver of the story. So that part of it is just the nature of the beast, but I think we can do things to mitigate that, and I will certainly try.

How does it feel to finish a series of which you are such a fan?

Bittersweet. Definitely bittersweet. I followed this for so many years that it’s been a big part of my life for many, many years, so ending it is really, really weird. I can remember picking up that first Wheel of Time book when it came out in 1990: this is after I’d spent a summer discovering fantasy novels. The first paperback of the Wheel of Time was that Fall I believe, and it’s been with me ever since.

It’s really the only series I’ve followed all the way along, so it’s really weird. On the one hand I’m like stepfather to millions of people. On the other hand it’s just me the fan trying to make sure that this thing is as wonderful as I want it to be as a fan. All those things together are a huge amount of pressure.

I heard you were supposed to write one book but it turned into three.

Yeah. The length of what of I was writing hasn’t changed. Robert Jordan was saying that the last book would be so big that they’d need a wheelbarrow to get it out of bookstores. I just wrote it at that length. The publisher and Robert Jordan’s widow decided that it should be three books and so we did split it. But the whole time I’ve just been riding along on the outline as I developed it and as I was given it. There is really not much of a story there, it’s just that they decided to slice it and I said go ahead.

That leads beautifully into the next reader question: are you worried that fans will want to throw you into Shayol Ghul for the Dark One to feast upon?

[laughter] Yes and no. The ending of the actual book Robert Jordan wrote himself, so I can at least depend on that, being, you know—

Nalini Haynes

True to the original.

Brandon Sanderson

True to the original. Years ago now, when I first read the end, I felt very satisfied by it as a fan. I think that ending is good. My job is to get us there without screwing up in between. Hopefully they won’t want to throw me in. I mean, this is the last battle and there are some casualties...Even so I’m hoping that doesn’t cause them to want to throw me into the pit. I do the best I can, and hope.

I have been told that Way of Kings has been set in the same universe as Mistborn?

It is. All of my epic fantasies have been set in the same universe.

Nalini Haynes

Are they on different planets?

Brandon Sanderson

They are different planets, but there is a character who is in every one of them. The same character is in Warbreaker and in Mistborn. There are other characters who appear here and there and cross between the books.

Nalini Haynes

Who is the character?

Brandon Sanderson

In Warbreaker he is the storyteller, Hoid, with the dust, and he’s the King’s Wit from Way of Kings. If you read Mistborn, he is named Hoid in each of those as well. In Alloy of Law and Well of Ascension, he is not named but is only there to be picked out by description, but in the others he’s named. I did this because, during those early days writing books, I wrote thirteen, as I said earlier.

I love the big epics. You can’t be a Wheel of Time fan without loving big epics. I wanted to tell a big epic, but early on it seemed to me that writing a whole bunch of books in the same series was a bad way to break in. If an editor rejects the first one, you can’t really send in the second one.

So, while hunting editors, I wrote thirteen books that were all different worlds, different settings. I started having characters sneakily move between them, to be building, setting the stage for a grand epic that I would tell later on, behind the scenes. So from the get go, from Elantris, this was all planned because this is something I been doing in my books since then.