Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)

Any chance you could clear up Sulin in The Gathering Storm? Was her appearance a typo or deliberate (Varied answers exist on the web)?

BRANDON SANDERSON

BRANDON SANDERSON

sulin, errors, maria, the gathering storm,

TGS Signing Report - Matoyak (Paraphrased)

[note from Mato: had some trouble hearing this next question, take its answer as just a generic "RAFO, not a typo. There were other typos. < insert example >"]

Was Sulin really with Rand or—?

Random Storm Leader

Brandon Sanderson

the gathering storm, errors, sulin,

TGS Signing Report - Freelancer (Paraphrased)

It has been noted that Sulin is incorrectly referred to in a scene with Rand's group in Arad Doman. Who should have been named in the text there?

Sulin.

rand, sulin, errors, the gathering storm,

TGS Signing Report - Aubree Pham (Paraphrased)

Sulin appearing with Rand's group was NOT an error. Perrin is approximately a month behind everyone else in the timeline and will play major catchup in Towers of Midnight.

Brandon clarified later; this was an error.

errors, sulin, perrin, rand, the gathering storm, chronology,

MiniCon 2010 - Jennifer Liang (Paraphrased)

I asked Brandon about Sulin this evening.

He said that he had originally placed Sulin [with Rand] very intentionally, intending to do "something" with her. However, after a conversation with Maria, he became convinced that his original plans regarding this character were not workable, so Sulin will be edited out of future editions of The Gathering Storm.

sulin, errors, maria, the gathering storm,

TWOK Signing Report - rew (Paraphrased)

I said something to the effect that many on the forums have challenged (I think the exact words I used were "giving him crap") about the chronology, especially with regards to Mat. I guess it wasn't a question as much as an interrogative lilt to my voice…

He responded by saying that he has a "detailed and precise" chronology off of which he works. He admitted however that he is not the real "chronology person" on Team Jordan, but those people assure him that "I am right on" with regards to the chronology. He then addressed a number of the concerns:

-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.

chronology, errors, sulin, the gathering storm, towers of midnight, mat, rand, shadowspawn, trollocs,

LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)

So, for people who don't stalk you on the Twitter, how about you tell us how far you are right now in the revision process.

My progress bar is not updated because I'm lazy—I need to tell Peter to update that when I post. I'm 50% through—maybe more like 55% of the way through the final revision of the last book. So, the final revision, here's how the process goes for those who are curious: I turned in the book like January 1st. At that point, that was first draft. Usually, I don't do revisions from editorial revisions on the first draft. I actually go through it a second time and do a second draft, and that's what I turn in. If I can get the time, I turn in a third draft. This time I turned in a second draft, so I did first draft and I said, "Okay, wait two weeks and let me get ahead of you in the second draft," and I was just sending them chunks as I finished the second draft. There's not time on this book to do the whole thing straight through and then send it, and things, and so they then start sending back things, and I start the third draft immediately, and we keep doing that until we get to this one which is seventh draft, I think is where we are right now—somewhere in there—like I've been, some of them I would do two drafts while I was waiting for things back on theirs.

Anyway, and they just kept feeding me sixth draft sort of stuff that [had] been sitting on my computer, and they finally got the last of that to me last week which means that Maria and Alan and Harriet are all done, and it's all on me just to finish the last tweaks that they've requested in the book, and that's what this draft is, is the last tweaks. Things that they say, "Hey, we need this little thing fixed; we need to add this thing to this scene," or all that little stuff. Nothing major is happening in this one. I did add one new scene in this draft that I felt we needed but it's kind of a short one—it's only like five pages—um, but yeah, so that's where we are. My hope is, and goal is, to be able to turn it in next week some time. I dunno how viable that is. I'm probably way past 55% as I think about it, because I've been working each night. I was at 50% on like Wednesday, so I'm probably around the two-thirds mark, or something, right now, and then that will be it; it'll go to copy-edit and proofreads, all of which are handled by Team Jordan, of which I don't do anything unless they come up with a major continuity error or something like that. Somewhere in there, it will hopefully go to our lovely beta readers to make sure that I didn't put people in two places, so...that Sulin doesn't end up in two places at once. They missed that one though, so you can blame all of us on that one.

Jennifer Liang

I was like, "Whoa, a Wheel of Time book, I'm gonna just read this; I can't talk to anybody about it."

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. So, anyway, it'll go to copyedit and proofreads, and hopefully some beta reads for three months or so, and then it'll go to the printers, and that takes about...it's about a three month process, and they'll ship 'em here, and we ship 'em out to bookstores, and then that's when it comes out.

The Sulin error was in The Gathering Storm, which had fewer beta readers than Towers of Midnight (Jenn was one of them), but the latter was on a tighter schedule which led to more typos, etc.

amol:wip, brandon on writing wot, errors, sulin, the gathering storm,