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WoT Interview Search

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Your search for the tag 'clue stick' yielded 9 results

  • 1

    Interview: Oct, 1994

    Dave Slusher

    Now, let's talk a little about when you first started writing this series. Did you have any indication that it would be as popular and take off the way it has?

    Robert Jordan

    Of course not. Look, I hoped that the series would be successful. Nobody writes a book and hopes it's going to be a flop. But as far as this—no, I had no notion, no notion at all.

    Dave Slusher

    And I'm sure that you're aware of it. For example, on the internet there's a very large group devoted to your work. Very in-depth discussion. Does this flatter you, that people are so willing to discuss in very, very fine detail?

    Robert Jordan

    It's a wonderful ego stroking. And it's also astonishing. I've known it about it for some time, and I'm not certain I'm over it yet, really. It does sort of make me want to drop my jaw. I find it astonishing. And, as I say, it's very very flattering, very flattering.

    Dave Slusher

    Do you find that people's interpretations of the book, do they match up with what you intend? Or do people sometimes bring to you an interpretation that you hadn't thought of yourself?

    Robert Jordan

    Well, more often they're trying to work out details of what I'm intending to do, and what I have meant by things that I've already written. I've been sent in some cases sheets of Frequently Asked Questions and the answers that have been deduced. The only thing is, they're right between 20 percent, and oh, 33 percent of the time. They're almost right maybe another 20 percent of the time, 25 percent. And the rest of the time, they've gotten off into an incredibly wild tangent that makes me wonder if I ought to re-read the books to figure out how they came up with this.

    I do look at what they have said. And by that, I mean I look at it when somebody sends me a print-out. I'm not on the 'nets, normally. But sometimes people will send me a print-out of a couple of days of discussion, or a Frequently Asked Questions list, as I said. And I'll look at that, and it does give me some feedback.

    There are things in the books that I have tried to bury very deeply. And if, from the discussion or from the questions, I can see that they're beginning to get close to something I want to keep buried, I know that I have to be more subtle from now on, that I haven't been subtle enough. Or, on the other hand, there are some times when I realize that they're spending a lot of time discussing something that I was certainly not trying to make obscure that I thought was perfectly obvious. Then it becomes plain to me that I've gone the opposite way. I didn't say enough about it for them to understand. So then I have to maybe reiterate a little bit.

    But I certainly—I don't change the plots or anything like that. I'm certainly not going to alter the fates of major characters or anything of that sort, whether someone has figured out what that's going to be or not. I must say, they've not figured out very much of that accurately, but it's fun to see.

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  • 2

    Interview: Oct 12th, 1996

    Robert Jordan

    Someone asked Jordan about the 'gars, and mentioned that he'd seen theories that Lanfear was one of the 'gars. I was expecting a RAFO, but RJ gave the guy a disgusted look, and said that "No, Osan'gar and Aran'gar are Aginor and Balthamel." The guy said (I'm paraphrasing here), "You're confirming this, and not hinting about it?" RJ replied (more paraphrasing), "I'm confirming. After all, it's pretty obvious in the books that it's those two. After all, that's what Aginor thought was so funny; Balthamel, the lecher, was stuck in a female body." Jordan then went on to give the standard disclaimer that a lot of the clues are already in the books, and reasonably intelligent people should be able to figure a lot of this out. His job, he said, was to make sure you're still guessing about some stuff at the end of the story.

    It's fairly safe to say that this was Jordan's version of thwacking the guy with a clue stick...

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  • 3

    Interview: Apr 5th, 2001

    Question

    Does he use books to fix things from earlier books? (Clearly asking about the Shaido's attack at Dumai's Wells, although I'm not sure Jordan realized this.)

    Robert Jordan

    No, he doesn't. He sometimes tries to clear up misconceptions that people have gotten. (He does admit that there have been times that he has made mistakes [put down a wrong eye-color (probably a reference to the Faile/Moiraine gaze at Perrin in The Dragon Reborn) / blinked and missed an editor's typo], but this is not what he's talking about.)

    But he does try to use things that have been there a long time, and he likes to plant seeds, so that things don't fall out of the blue sky (the major reason I love WoT so much). Giving us the little tidbits of information that don't mean anything now, but that in three books will come around again. The question about how many of these seeds there are got RAFOd.

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  • 4

    Interview: Oct 2nd, 2005

    Robert Jordan

    For kcf, I think I would like fans to walk away with the following. If the answer is easy, consider the possibility that you asked the wrong question.

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  • 5

    Interview: Oct 24th, 2005

    Jarrod

    Eventually Mr. Jordan turned to his quest of finding females that wanted some questions answered and got a good one when a lady asked why the most powerful women in the world get their power in a pale, white shaft (the White Tower).

    Robert Jordan

    The answer was, "If you can't grasp the symbolism, my dear... Because I thought about having them have their center of power be a hole in the ground and I thought it wasn't really going to be as significant. It wasn't going to stand out and have people say 'Wow, Gee...look at that on the horizon'. You sorta have to walk to the edge and say, 'Welp, don't wanna fall off into that, now do you?'"

    Footnote

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  • 6

    Interview: Aug 29th, 2011

    Literatopia

    Is there a character whose development in the course of the series was surprising to you?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Most surprising, honestly—and this is a minor character—was probably Gawyn. I remember as a kid reading the books and expecting, "Oh, Gawyn, he's obviously going to be this super cool main character." I felt all sorts of things about him, and then they just never materialized. Which is not unexpected if you look at the literary roots that Robert Jordan was using for Gawyn's character, but it was surprising to me as a young kid because you read certain tropes in fiction and you expect them to be used always the same way. You know, the young, handsome, charming prince doesn't usually turn into what Gawyn turned into.

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  • 7

    Interview: Oct 25th, 1994

    Edward Liu

    Oh yes, this is interesting. I asked him if what he has read on the net has ever affected what he writes.

    Robert Jordan

    He said if many people correctly theorize what will happen latter on, he tries to put less clues of what will happen in the future. Also he said that if he finds out that too many people have a totally wrong idea of something, he occasionally tries to put in a clue hinting to what is actually right.

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  • 8

    Interview: 2012

    Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)

    Felix (24 January 2012)

    For a normally verbal and talkative individual at book signings, @BrandSanderson goes silent about Valan Luca.

    Brandon Sanderson (25 January 2012)

    Ha. Well, honestly, I don't want to answer too many questions about things like this.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For some of them, it would require me to deviate from the work I need to do by reading deeply in the notes.

    BRANDON SANDERSON

    For others, I think RJ himself would have stayed quiet, so I stay quiet myself.

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