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WoT Interview Search
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Your search for the tag 'wot' yielded 1342 results
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1
Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Tibur
Hi. I love your books and I was just wondering where you got your ideas for the series. It's like nothing ever published before!Robert Jordan
It all started with wondering what it was really like to be tapped on the shoulder and told that you are the savior of mankind. Ten years of thinking about that, and I began writing.Tags
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2
Interview: Apr 20th, 2004
TOR Questions of the Week Part I (Verbatim)Week 11 Question
I just started The Great Hunt and I find the religious and political aspects very interesting. I notice the dedication for The Great Hunt says, "They came to my aid when God walked across the water, and the true Eye of the World passed over my house." Has your own religion in any way helped to shape the book?Robert Jordan
Only in the sense that it helped to shape my moral and ethical beliefs. My work certainly is not religious in even the sense that J.R.R. Tolkien's was, much less the work of C.S. Lewis. That inscription, by the way, referred to Hurricane Hugo striking Charleston, where I live. The word hurricane comes from the name of a god of the Caribe Indians, who believed that the storm was that god walking across the water. Anyone who has ridden out a hurricane, and I have ridden out several, can well believe that it is. And if a hurricane isn't the Eye of the World, it's as close as we will come in this world.Tags
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3
Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - John Novak (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He has no particular real world inspiration for the One Power, at least not that he knows of. He admits that he's read a lot of stuff and at times forgets a source here and there.Tags
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4
Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - John Novak (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
While he likes Chalker's and Varley's works, he does not intend to emulate them.John Novak
"Not at all like Balthamel becoming Aran'gar?" I quipped.Robert Jordan
He retorted to the effect that was one character, not a whole host of characters.Tags
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5
Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - John Novak (Paraphrased)Question
Does the Snakes and Foxes game played in the Two Rivers have anything to do with the 'finn?Robert Jordan
RAFO.John Novak
(My answer: Duh?)Tags
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6
Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - John Novak (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He seems to have a half a dozen answers for the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" The one that tickled me was that he sends off to a mail order company from Trenton, New Jersey (I think) for some large amount of money, at three ideas per page.John Novak
I looked askance and remarked that Ellison gave the same answer, except his ideas came from a warehouse in Peoria (which I'm sure I've read somewhere. Think it was Ellison.)Robert Jordan
He shot back, "Yeah, but did you notice that mine are more expensive?"Tags
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7
Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Batlar
I have noticed some similarities to The Lord of the Rings. Was Tolkien an inspiration for for you?Robert Jordan
I suppose to the degree that he inspires any fantasy writer in the English language, certainly.Tags
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8
Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)J Cool ET
You seem to have a great grasp of history; what is your background? Do you know how the Wheel will finally turn, yet?Robert Jordan
Well, I've been reading history as a hobby since I was five or six, and yes, I do know how it will turn, and how it will end.Tags
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9
Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)MonaS
I enjoy the many nations and peoples in The Wheel of Time and how richly their societies are detailed! What was your inspiration for the Ogier?Robert Jordan
It's really impossible to say here. The Ogier came from a dozen different sources, at least.Tags
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10
Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Paendrag
Could you discuss your imagery as it relates to book of Revelation—and other sources/language use?Robert Jordan
Sorry, not in under four or five hours.Tags
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11
Interview: Jul, 2002
COT: 'Glimmers' Ebook Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How does your knowledge of physics influence your idea of channeling and the Talents involved in the books, such as Traveling, Skimming, etc? Do you have other hobbies or talents that influence your writing?Robert Jordan
My knowledge of physics influenced channeling to the extent that I have attempted to treat channeling as if it were a form of science and engineering rather than magic. You might say that the Laws of Thermodynamics apply in altered form. I expect that my reading in history has influenced the books more than my knowledge of physics or engineering. I have not tried to copy any actual historical culture or period, but a knowledge of the way things actually were done at various times has helped shape my vision of the world of The Wheel, as has the study of cultures meeting that are strange to one another, and cultures undergoing change, willingly or, as is more often the case, unwillingly. I used to spend summers working on my grandfather’s farm, a very old-fashioned set-up even then, so I have some feel for country life, and I like to hunt and fish, and spent a good part of my growing up in the woods or on the water, so I have a fair feel for the outdoors and the forests, which also helps. And of course, I can use a little of my Vietnam experience. Not for setting out the actual battles, but because I know firsthand the confusion of battle and what it is like to try to maintain some semblance or order while all around you random events are pushing everything toward chaos.Tags
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12
Interview: Jul, 2002
COT: 'Glimmers' Ebook Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Do other authors offer you advice or suggestions on how to write your books?Robert Jordan
I’m not quite sure what I would say to another writer who offered me suggestions on how to write my books. When you are first starting out, you try to learn from other people, but once you get to a certain point, learning becomes more a matter of honing your own skills, and your confidence has usually advanced by this time to the point where you no longer seek the advice of others. (HEADLINE: Mark McGwire attacks Barry Bonds with baseball bat after Bonds offers advice on swing.)Tags
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13
Interview: Jul, 2002
COT: 'Glimmers' Ebook Q&A (Verbatim)Question
What other authors have most influenced your work?Robert Jordan
Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Robert Heinlein, John D. MacDonald and Louis L'Amour.Tags
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14
Interview: Jul, 2002
COT: 'Glimmers' Ebook Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Are any of your characters or cultures designed to pay specific homage to any particular work or author?Robert Jordan
No. In the first chapters of The Eye of the World, I tried for a Tolkienesque feel without trying to copy Tolkien’s style, but that was by way of saying to the reader, okay, this is familiar, this is something you recognize, now let’s go where you haven’t been before. I like taking a familiar theme, something people think they know and know where it must be heading, then standing it on its ear or giving it a twist that subverts what you thought you knew. I must admit that I occasionally drop in a reference—for example, there’s an inn called The Nine Rings, and Loial is seen reading a book entitled To Sail Beyond the Sunset—but it isn’t a regular thing by any means.Footnote
To Sail Beyond the Sunset is a Heinlein reference, for those not familiar with his work. RJ is speaking here of references to contemporary culture; obviously the references to myth and legend are rather pervasive.Tags
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15
Interview: Nov 4th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Karana Majin (Paraphrased)Question
Are the Sea Folk marriage customs based on any real culture that you know of?Robert Jordan
No, they were made up in his head.Tags
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16
Interview: Jan, 1991
Starlog Interview (Verbatim)William B. Thompson
When Robert Jordan's parents couldn't find a babysitter, they would utilize the services of his redoubtable older brother, who read to his four-year-old sibling from a rich varied repertoire of Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and the like.
The common thread was a zestful, sometimes wry imagination. And Jordan was an exceedingly quick study.
Robert Jordan
"It was galvanizing, better than a movie. I could visualize all of it in my head. By the time I was five, I had taught myself how to read."Tags
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17
Interview: Jan, 1991
Starlog Interview (Verbatim)William B. Thompson
Since the books meld elements of Celtic, Norse, Middle Eastern and American Indian myth in a largely Medieval setting, obligatory comparisons with J.R.R. Tolkien surfaced almost immediately. Jordan accepts them with resigned good humor.Robert Jordan
"On the one hand, I'm flattered. On the other, I would have to say it's overplayed. On the third hand, Tolkien encompassed so much in The Lord of the Rings and other books that he did for fantasy what Beethoven did for music.
"For a long time, it was believed that no one did anything that did not build on Beethoven. For his part, Tolkien did provide a foundation while himself building on an existing tradition. Although it's difficult now to forge a singular place in this foundation, people like Stephen R. Donaldson are doing it. I hope I am as well."
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18
Interview: Jan, 1991
Starlog Interview (Verbatim)William B. Thompson
He doesn't see the world he elaborates as unreal. Far from it.Robert Jordan
"It exists in our past and our future. These were our legends, but because time is a wheel—according to Hindu legend—we are the seeds of their myths. Because it is a real world in my books, they have certain degrees of technology. The time in which the characters live is our future and our past. Part of what I'm exploring here is what the nature and source of our myths might be."Tags
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19
Interview: Jan, 1991
Starlog Interview (Verbatim)William B. Thompson
Jordan fantasy adventures in many respects are cinematic in tone, a legacy perhaps of his great fondness for genre films, good and bad. he says he tries to write in a way that impels readers to see the story, as well as hear, and smell and feel it.Robert Jordan
"I approach writing stories as if they were meant to be read aloud. Many books aren't done this way and still are great books, but I try for the effect of a classic story teller. Like most other writers of fantasy, I started out not only reading fantasy but going to fantasy and science fiction movies. In more recent years, I've probably see Excalibur two dozen times. Going semi-out-of-genre, Apocalypse Now certainly had an impact on me. It had almost all the detail wrong, but its fantastic elements nonetheless capture the feel of the place, the experience, the sense of the surreal, of abandonment, of being sold out."Tags
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20
Interview: Jan, 1991
Starlog Interview (Verbatim)William B. Thompson
Whether his war experiences have influenced his fantasy writing, or more, been translated directly into fiction, is difficult for Jordan to say.Robert Jordan
"I do think the military characters in my fantasy novels are more realistic in terms of how soldiers really are, how they feel about combat, about being soldiers, about civilians. Beyond that, my time in Vietnam certainly has affected a certain moral vision. Not just based on what happened to me, but on the abandonment of a people who had put everything on the line for us. It started me off on a quest for morality, both in religious and philosophical reading, and in my writing. Again one of the central themes in 'The Wheel of Time' is the struggle between the forces of good and evil. How far can one go in fighting evil before becoming like evil itself? Or do you maintain your purity at the cost of evil's victory? I'm fond of saying that if the answer is too easy, you've probably asked the wrong question."Tags
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21
Interview: Jan, 1991
Starlog Interview (Verbatim)William B. Thompson
In the realm of fantasy writing, Jordan has been less influenced than simply entertained by such works as Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series and the horror writing of Stephen King.
He never reads fantasy when he is in the midst of writing it.
Robert Jordan
"I read fantasies in between books. When writing, I make it a point to read other genres, plus philosophy, history, biography, mythology."Tags
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22
Interview: Nov, 1993
Trinity College Q&A (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He talked for a while about 'reverse engineering' various mythos, removing the culture-specific elements and combining the stories, giving the example of the Wolfbrother idea, which was derived partly from the Native American Coyote trickster/savior figure, of whom both Mat and Perrin reflect aspects.Tags
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23
Interview: Nov, 1993
Trinity College Q&A (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He raised the point that Rand's creeping insanity may manifest in much more subtle ways than the people of Randland expect...which leads one to wonder about Rand's increasing withdrawal and possible megalomania. I think he is aware of the net discussion: he expressed surprise at the amount of analysis and comparison with Tolkien, Dune etc. (I felt tempted to mention A. A. Milne) and somebody in the audience compared WoT to Atlas Shrugged, which really seemed to surprise him. His attitude is that once he has written one book (and publicized it) it is time to move on to the next...The only deliberate connection between WoT and any other modern fantasy was giving the first 100-odd pages of The Eye of the World a Lord of the Rings-esque flavor, to start people off in familiar territory.Tags
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24
Interview: Nov, 1993
Trinity College Q&A (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He also spoke for quite some time on the splitting of the One Power into male and female halves, and on the disharmony produced when they don't work together...this came across as one of the core elements in the origin of WoT. (re: Yin/Yang—leaving out the little dots in the symbol is an intentional representation of the lack of harmony between male/female Power in Randland.)Tags
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25
Interview: Mar 1st, 1994
Letter to Carolyn Fusinato (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Does evil need to be effective to be evil? And how do you define effectiveness? Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge managed to murder about 25-30% of Cambodia's population, destroy the country's agricultural and industrial base, fairly well wipe out the educated class inside the country (defined as anyone with an education beyond the ability to read; a good many of those went too, of course), and in general became so rabid that only China was willing to maintain any sort of contact with them, and that at arm's length. Their rabidity was the prime reason that they ended up losing the country. (though they are still around and still causing trouble.) In other words, they were extremely ineffective in attaining their goal, which was to seize Cambodia, remake it in the way Pol Pot wished (and still wishes), and export their brand of revolution abroad. Looking at the death toll, the cities emptied out (hospital patients were told they had one hour to leave or die; post-op patients, those still in the operating room, everybody), the murders of entire families down to infants because one member of the family was suspected of "counter-revolutionary" crimes, the mass executions (one method was for hundreds of people to be bound hand and foot, then bulldozed into graves alive; the bulldozers drove back and forth over these mass graves until attempts to dig out stopped)—given all of that, can you say that Khmer Rough's ineffectiveness made them less evil? Irrationality is more fearful than rationality (if we can use that term in this regard) because if you have brown hair and know that the serial killer out there is only killing blondes, you are safe, but if he is one of those following no easily discernible pattern, if every murder seems truly random, then it could be you who will be next. But "rationality" can have its terrors. What if that killer is only after brunettes named Carolyn? Stalin had the very rational goal (according to Communist dogma) of forcibly collectivizing all farmland in the Soviet Union. He was effective—all the land was collectivized—and to do it he murdered some thirty million small farmers who did not want to go along.
But are the Forsaken ineffective or irrational? Are they any more divided than any other group plotting to take over a country, a world, IBM? True, they plot to secure power for themselves. But I give you Stalin v. Trotsky and the entire history of the Soviet Union. I give you Thomas Jefferson v. Alexander Hamilton v. John Adams, and we will ignore such things as Jefferson's hounding of Aaron Burr (he tore up the Constitution to do it; double jeopardy, habeas corpus, the whole nine yards), or Horatio Gates' attempted military coup against Washington, with the support of a fair amount of the Continental Congress. We can also ignore Secretary of War Stanton's attempts to undermine Lincoln throughout the Civil War, the New England states' attempt to make a separate peace with England during the Revolution and their continued trading with the enemy (the British again) during the War of 1812, and... The list could go on forever, frankly, and take in every country. Human nature is to seize personal advantage, and when the situation is the one the Forsaken face (namely that one of them will be given the rule of the entire earth while the others are forever subordinate), they are going to maneuver and backstab like crazy. You yourself say "If ever there was the possibility that some alien force was going to invade this planet, half the countries would refuse to admit the problem, the other half would be fighting each other to figure out who will lead the countries into battle, etc." Even events like Rahvin or Sammael or Be'lal seizing a nation have a basis. What better way to hand over large chunks of land and people to the Dark One than to be ruler of those lands and people? The thing is that they are human. But aside from that, are you sure that you know what they are up to? All of them? Are you sure you know what the Dark One's own plans are? Now let's see about Rand and his dangers and his allies. Have you been skimming, my dear? What makes you think the Tairens, Cairhienin and Andorans are solidly behind him? They're plotting and scheming as hard as the Forsaken. Rand is the Dragon Reborn, but this is my country, and we don't need anybody, and so on. And then there are those who don't think he is the Dragon Reborn at all, just a puppet of Tar Valon. Most of the Aiel may be behind him, but the Shaido are still around, and the bleakness is still taking its toll, since not all Aiel can face up to what Rand has told them about themselves. What makes you think the Seanchan will fall in behind Rand? Have you seen any Seanchan volunteers showing up? Carolyn, half of these people are denying there is a problem, and half are trying to be big honcho themselves. Read again, Carolyn. The world Rand lives in is getting more frenzied and turbulent. Damned few are saying, "Lead, because you know best." A good many who are following are saying "Lead, because I'd rather follow you than have you call down lightning and burn me to a crisp!"
As for lack of challenge, I refer you again to the question about whether you really think you know what all the Forsaken are planning. Or what Padan Fain is up to. There is a flaw inherent in fiction, one that is overcome by suspension of disbelief. We do always know, somewhere in the back of our heads, that the hero is going to make it through as far as he needs to. After all, if Frodo buys the farm, the story is over, kids. The excitement comes in trying to figure out how he can possibly wiggle out, how he can possibly triumph.
In Rand's case, let's see what he still has stacked against him. The Cairhienin and Tairens are for the most part reluctant allies, and in many cases not even that. At the end of Fires, he has Caemlyn, but I don't see any Andoran nobles crowding around to hail him. Illian still belongs to Sammael. Pedron Niall is working to convince people Rand is a false Dragon, and the Prophet is alienating ten people for every one he convinces. Tarabon and Arad Doman are unholy messes; even if Rand manages to get in touch with all of the Dragonsworn—who are not organized beyond individual bands—he has two humongous civil wars to deal with. True, he can use the Aiel to suppress those, but he has to avoid men killing men too much; there are Trollocs waiting to spill out of the Blight eventually. We must always remember the Trollocs, Myrddraal etc; the last time they came out in force, it took over 300 years to beat them back, and the Last Battle doesn't give Rand anywhere near that. Altara and Murandy are so divided in any case that simply getting the king or queen on his side isn't going to work; remember that most people in those two countries give loyalty to a city or a local lord and only toss in their country as an afterthought. Davram Bashere thinks Tenobia will bring Saldaea to Rand, and that is possible since the Borderlands would be one place where everyone is aware of the Last Battle and the Prophecies, but even Bashere isn't willing to make any promises, not even for Saldaea much less the other Borderlands, and I haven't seen any Borderland rulers showing up to hand Rand the keys to the kingdom. Padan Fain is out there, able to feel Rand, and hating him because of what was done to him, Fain, to make him able to find Rand. The surviving Forsaken are out there and except for Sammael, nobody knows what they are up to or where they can be found. For that matter, who knows everything that Sammael is up to? Elaida, in the White Tower, thinks Rand has to be tightly controlled. The Salidar Aes Sedai are not simply ready to fall in and kiss his boots, either. Aes Sedai have been manipulating the world for more than three thousand years, guiding it, making sure it remembers the Dark One and Tarmon Gai'don as real threats, doing their best, as they see it, to prepare the world for the Dark One breaking free. Are they likely to simply step aside and hand over control to a farmboy, even if he is the Dragon Reborn? Even after Moiraine decided he had to be given his head, Siuan was reluctant, and Siuan was in Moiraine's little conspiracy from the beginning. And the Seanchan...The last we saw of their forces, they were commanded by a Darkfriend. As for the Sea Folk, do you know what their prophecy says about the Coramoor? Do you think working with them it will be any simpler than dealing with the Aiel, say?
Now, what and who does Rand have solidly in his camp? Perrin knows what is needed, but he's hardly happy about it. What he really wants is to settle down with Faile and be a blacksmith; everything else is a reluctant duty. Mat blew the Horn of Valere, but it's hidden in the Tower, and frankly, if he could figure some way to go away and spend the rest of his life carousing and chasing women, he would. He'll do what he has to do, but Light he doesn't want to. The Aiel are for Rand (less the Shaido, still a formidable force), but the Dragon Reborn and the Last Battle are no part of the Prophecy of Rhuidean. That is all wetlander stuff. Besides which, they are still suffering losses from bleakness, people throwing down their spears and leaving, people defecting to the Shaido or drifting back to the Waste because what Rand told them of their origins can't possibly be true and if it isn't then he can't be the Car'a'carn. Rand has declared an amnesty for men who can channel and is trying to gather them in; they, at least, should give their loyalty to him. But how many can he find? How much can he teach them in the time he has? How many will go mad before the Last Battle? There is still the taint on saidin, remember. For that matter, can Rand hang onto his own sanity? What effect will having a madman inside his head have? Can he stop Lews Therin from taking him over?
I know that was supposed to be a listing of what Rand has in his favor, but the fact is that he is walking the razor's edge, barely hanging onto his sanity and growing more paranoid all the time, barely hanging onto putative allies, most of whom would just as soon see him go away in the hope that then everything would be the way it was before he showed up, confronted by enemies on every side. In short he has challenges enough for ten men. I've had people write to say they can't see how Rand is going to untangle all of this and get humanity ready to face the Last Battle. What I say is, what you believe to be true is not always true. What you think is going to happen is not always going to happen. That has been demonstrated time and again in The Wheel of Time. You could call those two statements one of the themes of the books.
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26
Interview: 1994
Stories from the LOC Signing Tour (Paraphrased)Grey Culberson
Have you heard the audio tape abridgments? What are your feelings toward them?Robert Jordan
This brought a mighty harrumph from RJ. He then explained that he had not heard them but expressed his strong disapproval of the project. Apparently the publisher had acquired a portion of the rights to the series of which he was unaware, and those rights enabled them to go ahead with the project without informing or asking him. However, RJ is planning his own audio tape project which will record the books unabridged. When RJ was asked whether the voice man would be American or English, RJ expressed no opinion either way.Tags
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27
Interview: 1994
Stories from the LOC Signing Tour (Paraphrased)Grey Culberson
(question about series genesis)Robert Jordan
RJ responded that the crux of the series was based on a disbelieving boy being told he was the savior of mankind, then that youth reluctantly realizing the truth of the matter but unwilling to admit it, and finally the boy assenting to the savior role and that only left puzzling out what he would do as the savior. When asked why RJ had chosen to go into so much depth and detail so as to confuse and overburden the reader, RJ responded, "It's all right there in front of you. Surely, something I've thought about for fifteen years and written about for nine is something you can work out over a weekend."Tags
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28
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Daniel Rouk (Paraphrased)Daniel Rouk
He mentioned the height of all the characters. Erica wrote those down. Basically repeated PNH's account of why the colors of the covers are always different.Robert Jordan
The Old Tongue is a mix of Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Japanese. A lot of different sources that are not traditionally used to make up fake languages. He has only a few phrases and a few small guides on usage written down.Tags
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29
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Daniel Rouk (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
All the female characters are based on his wife. I asked if she pulls her hair, and Jordan responded: "She pulls mine."Tags
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30
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Viren R. Shah (Paraphrased)Viren R. Shah
I'm sure someone's gonna post the whole interview on here, but I caught about 8-10 minutes of it, and I'll try and write down the points I remember [I was kinda occupied at the moment, so my recollection might not be too good].Robert Jordan
RJ feels that the Arthurian legend is very obvious in WoT, so he tried his level best to hide it.Tags
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31
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Viren R. Shah (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
As regards Randland being the future/part of our world, he made a reference to the game 'Chinese Whispers'. He said that, like in the game, the happenings of our time/age will be changed/twisted [my words] into Randland's myths, and similarly the occurrences in Randland will/have become our myths.
He also mentioned the fact that he tried to 'reverse-engineer' [his word] the current myths that we have into WoT's happenings/history, and our history into WoT's myths.
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32
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Viren R. Shah (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He said that he used legends from several sources including Arthurian, Celtic, Indian, North American Indian, Oriental, [and some others which I've forgotten].
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33
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Viren R. Shah (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
There was also something mentioned about the songs that he used in the books—John Adcox asked him whether he had deliberately given the songs a Celtic slant. [I can't for the life of me remember the answer].Tags
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34
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Erica Sadun (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Red Ajah: not all lesbians—just manhaters. RJ knows non-manhating lesbians. Not based at all on Agnes Scott girls. Based on some girls he knew as a child.
All women in Randland—based on his wife. "Does she tug her hair?" "No. Mine."
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35
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Erica Sadun (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Language—It is planned. Based on Russian, Chinese and a bit of Spanish with a lot of Gaelic thrown in.
Cultures of influence—he's real big on Chinese history right now.
Why the swords?—As in Japan, gunpowder is suppressed so martial arts are developed and are based on the sword and on agricultural implements.
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36
Interview: Oct 17th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Erica Sadun (Paraphrased)Question
Are the sword forms based on reality?Robert Jordan
Sort of based on Taekwondo and Karate—but from books, not experience.Tags
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37
Interview: Oct 18th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Erica Sadun (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Mat will lose his eye and Rand a hand: yes. (Did not ask right out. Instead, "Did you deliberately make Rand like Tew/Chew, the god of war who loses his hand?" (yes) "And Mat is like Odin who loses his eye..." (yup...but the Arthur parallels are spread around many characters. Merlin is Thom Merrilin, the Amyrlin Seat, Lan, etc...)Tags
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38
Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Ben & Chris
Is stones based on GO, the Asian game of skill? It is more complex than chess...so it is appropriate if so. And what stones are used (type of stone)?Robert Jordan
Stones is based on Go, and the actual stones used can vary.Tags
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39
Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Mykael
Are any of your characters based on anyone you know?Robert Jordan
All of the women are based on my wife.Tags
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40
Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Steve W
Are your books based on any Biblical themes/characters?Robert Jordan
Not directly. Influenced by. And not wholly—there are other influences as well.Tags
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41
Interview: Oct 11th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Yhooders (Paraphrased)Question
The guy in front of me asked about what accents the Seanchan have.Robert Jordan
And RJ answered that the Seanchan have a southern accent, while the Illianers sound Dutch. He also mentioned that the Tairens have a Spanish accent.Tags
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42
Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Sat
Is the Hawkwing era and or the Seanchan based on any actual historical era and do you plan on including some more historical data about the Age of Legends and maybe a separate series?Robert Jordan
The first part of your question: no. It's based on several combined. The second part: Only insofar as it affects the story in the "here and now." In a separate series: no.Tags
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43
Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Andrew S
Did you think you were going to write only the first book without sequels? If your wife is all the female characters are you all the male ones?Robert Jordan
No, I knew from the start that I was writing something that would be multiple books. I just never knew how many, exactly. The last question: Probably, God help me. Never thought of it that way, though.Footnote
In the Starlog interview, RJ seems to have indicated that it was originally intended to be one book.Tags
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Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Lou Person
Hello all and Mr. Jordan. I am a big WOT fan and I am amazed by some of the themes, i.e. struggle between men and women. Mr. Jordan truly sheds some light on differences between men and women. There also seem to be some allusions to Native Americans, weaves of fire, air, etc. The politicking and warring of the Game of Houses and battle scenes are told with the clarity of someone who has military experience. Can you briefly state what from your background makes WOT so realistic?Robert Jordan
Forty-odd years of life. "Briefly?" It's what it boils down to.Tags
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Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Ben & Chris
There is a big influence (already mentioned) from wide ranging source materials. This is a great deal of fun, tracking down all of the various sources whilst reading. Is there a reason that the Arthur and other Avalon legends are referred to so much. Gawyn, Morgase, et al.?Robert Jordan
They really aren't referred to any more than many other legends and myths, but they're simply more recognizable to most Americans.Footnote
RJ was probably hinting that the Americans are generally the least 'cultured' and the least likely to recognize the foreign legends he drew from, Norse and Slavic mythology (very prominent), etc. The Arthur legends are probably better-known elsewhere (i.e. Britain, France).Tags
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Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Pug
Firstly, I'd like to thank you for my mother's autographed The Fires of Heaven, 10/150 and also, what inspires your deft writing?Robert Jordan
Everything!PUG
Specifically?Robert Jordan
Everything specifically!Tags
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Interview: Oct 19th, 1994
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Ami
Hi Mr. Jordan and everyone. I was wondering about Artur Hawkwing. I notice parallels to the King Arthur legends in particular... But what other stories inspired this?Robert Jordan
Too many to go into—truly too many.Tags
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Interview: Oct 20th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Delemin (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Jordan discussed several spin-offs from the books. He mentioned an "Illustrated Guide the Wheel of Time" (like the one they did for Pern). When asked about Role Playing Games he said he was in contact with Wizards of the Coast (makers of the popular Magic card game. Are we in for Daes Dae'mar: the Deckmaster Game of Games?), and he was approached with an offer for an AD&D [Advanced Dungeons and Dragons] module (this raises interesting questions). The term "module" has been replaced by "adventure" and "supplement". Did Jordan dabble in RPGs ten years ago and preserve obsolete terms, or was he approached by an old time TSR [creators of Dungeons and Dragons] rep who lapsed into the "old tongue"? Also, was the word used to mean an adventure (the most common use of module) or a full world like Darksun or Forgotten Realms?Tags
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Interview: Oct 20th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Delemin (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He sees some correlation between Randland's "magic" (a term he frowns on) and quantum physics, but he says it is not deliberate. He disbelieves 95-99% of modern physics but says it will be 50 years before it is put in the same file as phlogiston.Tags
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50
Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (30 March 2010)
Calling WoT derivative of Tolkien is like calling Tolkien derivative of Beowulf. True, but missing the point entirely.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (21 June 2010 (Facebook))
A fanmail tonight includes a request for Gawyn to die, and Egwene to hook up with Galad. At least it's not another begging for Rand + Egwene.BRANDON SANDERSON
Wow. I did not mean to start an epic Gawyn/Galad/Egwene/Rand thread on my Facebook, but I appear to have done so.BRANDON SANDERSON
Some interesting reading if you're thinking/talking about Gawyn as a character can be found here: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—Wikipedia(from the comments)
One other way to think of it is thus: The Wheel will keep on turning, and the Age that we live in (or like unto it) will someday arrive. Legends from what is happening in these books will have survived, and become the Arthur legends during our day. Or, in other cases, stories of other characters have survived in other mythologies. (Look up the Slavic god Perun sometime.)
Perrin is not a god, nor is Gawyn the knight of that story I linked. But perhaps someone who lived long ago, in another Age, gave birth to rumors about a young nobleman who made a mistake, and bore the weight of that sin for the rest of his days. And that gave birth to stories, which in turn inspired a poet to write a tale.
Footnote
The writer of the fanmail in question posted and elaborated at 13th Depository.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Matt Hagerman (1 August 2010)
Is it harder to write a novel with the amount of detailed notes Mr. Jordan left as opposed to creating the world yourself?Brandon Sanderson (2 August 2010)
Some parts are harder, some parts are easier. The notes mean lots of research before I can write some scenes.Brandon Sanderson
That slows me down a lot. But Mr. Jordan was a master worldbuilder, so—in some ways—it is easier. Hard parts have been done.Austin Moore
For WoT specifically, is it tougher to write the good guys or the bad and why?Brandon Sanderson
In WoT, I'd say the bad guys. We've seen fewer viewpoints from them, so it's tougher to research them, figure them out.Brandon King
If you could be from any nation in Randland, which one and why?
Brandon Sanderson
Malkier, I think. Though others ask me this question, and I think my answer changes. I just think the Malkieri are awesome.
Footnote
Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (10 August 2010)
@FelixPax You post some curious things. Tell me, did anyone ever ask RJ anything about Ila?BRANDON SANDERSON
Ila is a very mythological name, though. I suspect you are right about its origins.BRANDON SANDERSON
Though remember, not all of the names are intentionally from mythology. Some just felt right to him, so he chose them.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Máté Csarmasz (13 August 2010)
Does Tear's name have anything to do with the English word (tear), or is it a coincidence only?Brandon Sanderson (13 August 2010)
Robert Jordan said he got names from mythology or, sometimes, they just sounded right. It might have just sounded right.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Andrea Millhouse (13 August 2010)
Compared to the A Memory of Light note content and detail how much was left for the remaining two prequels? Were they as detailed?Brandon Sanderson (14 August 2010)
There are lots of notes for everything. But RJ did not leave any scenes written, which is a big difference.MAGGIE MELCHIOR (13 August)
Will you ever give us annotations for WoT like you did for your other books? Or would Harriet & Co. say no?BRANDON SANDERSON (14 August)
This isn't likely to happen, as I don't think Harriet would want me to do it.BRANDON SANDERSON
However, a book length work of annotations plus some of Mr. Jordan's notes might be possible. It will be up to Harriet.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (3 January 2011)
The first wind is in the Mountains of Mist; I've always assumed this was a nod to Tolkien's Misty Mountains.BRANDON SANDERSON
Look in The Way of Kings on the full map of Roshar for something similar.SHECKY X
Well, his Charlestonian background makes the "Two Rivers" the Charleston area, so the "Mountains of Mist" may be...SHECKY X
... the Smoky Mountains, upstate from his home. (FYI: the Charleston area is defined by the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.)BRANDON SANDERSON
Nice note. I'd never known that.LYNN OLIVER
Listening to WoT on audiobook, first time through series. Book one seems heavily influenced by Tolkien so far.BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, book one is very Tolkien influenced. Very. Book two less so. It's almost gone by book three.Footnote
The Way of Kings map doesn't have the Misted Mountains labeled, but they border Shinovar on the east.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (3 January 2011)
And, here we have mention of Anla the Wise Counselor. For those not in the know, there is theorizing on her: http://bit.ly/f8s2T4FELIX PAX
At least one...problem with that link...in "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" RJ refers to Robert Heinlein in The Great Hunt.BRANDON SANDERSON
Didn't know that. Thanks.SHIVAM BHATT
Will we see any more of those awesome references (Anla, Mosk and Merc, all the other tidbits) in the last book?BRANDON SANDERSON
There were some in my [WoT] books that I don't think have been caught yet.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Diana Brewster (4 January 2011)
Do you use Ideal Seek for your WoT research? http://dposey.no-ip.com/IdealSeek/Brandon Sanderson (4 January 2011)
I have my own e-copy in word format of the entire series, to empower me to use searches. I've been to Ideal Seek before, though.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (4 January 2011)
Yes, early WoT is very Tolkien influenced. But several original things really stood out to me when I was younger.BRANDON SANDERSON
1) The magic. 2) Strong female protagonists. 3) A woman 'wizard' figure who was far more human than others I'd seen. 4) Tam lives.BRANDON SANDERSON
Though I like Gandalf, Dumbledore, Belgarath, & Allanon, I prefer Moiraine as a character. (Actually, Allanon always just annoyed me.)HARRISON ISRAEL
I always liked Allanon :(BRANDON SANDERSON
It's okay. I'm fond of him. But he still annoyed me.HAMLETISDEAD
Can you share what it is about Allanon that annoyed you? I can list a few, but the main reason was his decision making...BRANDON SANDERSON
Mostly the air of mystery and withholding information. Often a problem with people in his role, but he seemed more-so.BRYCE NIELSEN
What about Polgara? :PBRANDON SANDERSON
Polgara was awesome. Belgarath was pretty cool too, but Moiraine always feels slightly more real than either one to me.BRANDON SANDERSON
But that's modern Brandon. Teenage Brandon might have thought differently.CHRIS WOOD
But which of those early wizards was your favorite? I liked Belgarath, but Eddings was one of my first series.BRANDON SANDERSON
As a youth, I often listed Eddings as my favorite author. It wasn't until I was older that WoT took over completely.CHRIS WOOD
I agree, I still read Eddings and suggest him to people who are "new" into fantasy, but it has gone down my list too.BRANDON SANDERSON
There is a perfect age to read Eddings, where he resonates best. As you age, something about his characters and plots...stiffens.JENN HOGAN
I am in agreement but I love Belgarath's humor and his devotion to family and his God and his brothers.BRANDON SANDERSON
Belgarath was interesting also in being an amalgamation of a trickster figure and a wise mentor. By far one of Eddings' most round.BRANDON SANDERSON
Both him and Polgara. They're both also more powerful than Moiraine. But there's just something about her. True wisdom.JOHN STOCKTON
I was thrown by your "when I was younger" remark until I remembered this series started 20 years ago. Wow.BRANDON SANDERSON
I started when I was 14 or 15...YELLOW
The WoT names always annoyed me because they're so close to real names. Any chance of dropping a Blixbop into A Memory of Light?BRANDON SANDERSON
Mr. Jordan did this intentionally, to hint that the WoT world was our world in the future (and the past.)BRANDON SANDERSON
It's part of the 'feel' of the world. They are close to real names because they ARE real names, just many years removed.TADBO
The females in The Wheel of Time are among the most two-dimensional in the history of fantasy.BRANDON SANDERSON
I disagree. Case in point: Tolkien's female protagonists. (Which was the comparison I was making.)BRANDON SANDERSON
But even beyond that, you have to remember, this is a society with some skewed gender relationships because of the way magic works.BRANDON SANDERSON
But Moiraine is hardly two-dimensional. Neither is Nynaeve. They can be annoying, yes, but that's not the same as two-dimensional.TADBO
They scheme, they argue, they tug on their skirts and stamp their feet, or they fall at Rand's feet. Really?BRANDON SANDERSON
Aviendha is very distinctive. Tuon is very distinctive. Min is very distinctive. Many of the Aes Sedai act as you say, but...BRANDON SANDERSON
...I see this as an intentional effect of the society they live in.ZEERAK WASEEM
Don't you get annoyed with the females in WoT? The female lead I prefer is Aviendha, the rest are full of themselves.BRANDON SANDERSON
Oh, I didn't say they didn't annoy me at times. I said they were strong, and I'll add that they are interesting.TADBO
Final note. I would argue that Jordan's female protagonists are MAIN characters, whereas Tolkien's are mainly supporting.BRANDON SANDERSON
The Tolkien point is valid. However, remember what started this conversation. I was saying things about the WoT that impressed me.BRANDON SANDERSON
One was a large cast of female main characters, something a lot of fantasy by men I'd read was lacking.TEREZ
WoT females are caricaturish, sometimes stereotypical, but not two-dimensional. (This from a female.)TADBO
Yes, caricatures. A better description than two-dimensional.BRANDON SANDERSON
Well, different people read things differently. If WoT's women didn't work for you, I understand why, though I don't feel the same.BRANDON SANDERSON
You're not the only one to feel that way.TEREZ
The fact that I see them as caricatures helps me to enjoy them as characters more. It's RJ's own type of dry humor.BRANDON SANDERSON
I view them more of products of a society where social norms are different, and women have something 'machismo'-like.BRANDON SANDERSON
It makes them act similar in places, even though when you see into their souls, there is something deeper.TEREZ
In my opinion this is also true, but the caricature part is an important aspect of accepting ALL WoT characters as they are.TEREZ
They, like the story itself, are ubertropes. There is more to them than that, just as there is more to the story.FELIX PAX
It's as if RJ's sense of humor was written for a theater company on stage. Bombastic, perhaps?TEREZ
I think the word you are looking for is 'exaggerated'. But yes, stage-acting a very good comparison.TADBO
I don't know if I ever saw it as 'dry humor'. The Aes Sedai scared the crap out of me in high school.TEREZ
Well, maybe now that you're a big boy... ;) RJ said he'd rather hunt leopards...TADBO
True enough. XDTEREZ
I mean, have you SEEN the map of Tar Valon? It's supposed to be funny, people. And serious at the same time, of course.JAMES FURLONG
Haha! Just clicked on, never noticed THAT before. Hoho!HBFFERREIRA
LOL Never noticed it before either.KAREN BASKINS
LOL! In nearly twenty years of reading WoT, I never took notice of the Tar Valon map. Thank you for the laugh. I needed that. :-)BRANDON SANDERSON
I've wondered about the map for Tar Valon. That...well, that can't be an accident. I've never asked Team Jordan, though.BRANDON SANDERSON
Needless to say, it wasn't something I noticed when I was a teen.TEREZ
Someone asked RJ about it. Sort of. His answer was hilarious.RICHARD FIFE
Ya know, for some odd reason, I never really saw the map of Tar Valon. Now I'll never unsee it...TEREZ
Indeed, it cannot be unseen. :)MATT HATCH
...wow, this really changes how I view the siege, harbor, and the iron chain becoming cuendillar.TEREZ
You are such a perv, boss.MATT HATCH
Showed my wife the map. Her immediate reaction: "Oh, Jim Rigney." Big smile.BRANDON SANDERSON
You'd never seen that before?TEREZ
He had. Was just inspired by the moment to show it to his wife. And he'd never seen the quote. :)MATT HATCH
I'd seen it...it was a while back; I remember thinking "really???" This reminded me and the quote made it hilarious.TEREZ
Could give a whole new meaning to 'Rand had daydreamed over Master al'Vere's old map...'TEREZ
'...half the boys in Emond's Field had daydreamed over it.'NICHOLAS BROWN
To the blind... what am I seeing? I see a fish or a submarine. Is there something else?BRANDON SANDERSON
Hm. How to do this without going places I don't care to go... Maybe a link will suffice. http://bit.ly/gMSLt6Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)James Powell (4 January 2011)
Does having written for the Wheel of Time change the way you engage with it as a reader now?Brandon Sanderson (4 January 2011)
Yes, a great deal. Though I don't know if I can explain it in 140-character bursts. :)Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (5 January 2011)
People (mostly my editor) complain about my capitalization of magic-related terms. (Push and Pull in Mistborn.) I learned from RJ.BRANDON SANDERSON
I'll admit, keeping track of which terms are upper case while writing these can be hard. Warder, for example, is capitalized.BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. I love @GrammarGirl. She says: "Refer your editor to the section on capitalizing Platonic ideals: http://j.mp/18T09ZBRANDON SANDERSON
When younger, I thought Rand's first Channeling was lightning in Four Kings. It wasn't until later that I caught the Bela thing.TEREZ
No, 'channeling' is NOT capitalized. :)BRANDON SANDERSON
That's the one I most think should be. We always have to search/replace it after I write a book.SHIVAM BHATT
Why did you use the word 'magic' in Towers of Midnight? It never showed up in WoT before that.BRANDON SANDERSON
RJ used the word a couple of times in the series.SHIVAM BHATT
Did he? Because I remember being jarred out of the narrative when I saw it mentioned in Towers of Midnight. Seemed really incongruous.BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah, a couple of times. Mostly in earlier books. In Aviendha's vision, though, it was supposed to be incongruous.BRANDON SANDERSON
This is (presumably) many, many years in the future. Language and usage has changed.Footnote
The word 'magic' was actually only used once (in The Eye of the World Chapter 33). Brandon used 'magics' in Towers of Midnight Chapter 48 in Aviendha's POV, but he also used 'magical' in Faile's POV in Towers of Midnight Chapter 16 (neither word appears anywhere else in the series).Tags
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Interview: Oct 25th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Tony Zbaraschuk (Paraphrased)Question
Which of the three (Elayne, Min, Aviendha) do you like best? I'm not asking which one Rand is going to get; which one is your favorite?Robert Jordan
All my female characters are based on my wife. Am I supposed to dislike something about her?Tags
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Interview: Oct 26th, 1994
Robert Jordan
Overheard early during the signing: the history of the Da'shain Aiel is based on the history of the Cheyenne Indians during their several-generation migration from east of the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains—a period in which every man's hand was raised against them.
Don Harlow
Similarity between words 'shain' and 'Cheyenne' noted by me after hearing this.Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Tom Burke (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
We talked a bit about the Aiel culture. Robert constantly referred to the Amer-Indian, Arab, and African cultures. In particular, how come they don't show signs of being malnourished? "Belly dancers live in the desert and yet, have been known to be full bodied. It is the people who have had their fields burned that might be a little malnourished."
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Austin Moore (6 January 2011)
So what exactly is different about the outline you are making this time compared to for The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight? Besides...AUSTIN MOORE
...them being different books.Brandon Sanderson (6 January 2011)
Afraid I can't answer that without giving too much away.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (6 January 2011)
First non-Rand viewpoint is Perrin, at about the 38% mark. RJ's juggling of viewpoints is something I didn't see until I was older.BRANDON SANDERSON
Many a new fantasy writer, fresh off a WoT book, plans and plots a huge epic with twenty viewpoints. That can be overwhelming to start.BRANDON SANDERSON
Both WoT and GRRM ease into it more than you realize. In most cases, it's better to build to complexity.BRANDON SANDERSON
I'd forgotten that Perrin nearly decides to drop his axe in the water as he swims. But he keeps it, almost against logic.VARGA TAMÁS
Are there actually clues in WoT that you did not find so far? That's cool.BRANDON SANDERSON
I always find new things when I reread.BRANDON SANDERSON
Good suggestion: @Terez27 says if you have a WoT question, and want to see if it's been asked before, you can direct it to her first.AARON J
Skipped your tweets when you warned against spoilers; are you on a #wotrr binge at the moment? Can I read without worry?BRANDON SANDERSON
For the next four months, I'll be doing the reread. Spoilers will be present, but hopefully vague enough to not ruin things.BRANDON SANDERSON
But I'll be posting about the reread almost every day.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Alex Lund (7 January 2011)
I was wondering what nation the Seanchan relate to in real life. I can peg the rest...Brandon Sanderson (7 January 2011)
Mix of Japan and Texas, mostly. There's no perfect correlation.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Quartzlyn (7 January 2011)
LOVING the way you write all of the WoT characters, especially Aviendha! Thank you :)Brandon Sanderson (7 January 2011)
I've been waiting for some more Aviendha in the books, and was glad for a chance to slip her in some more.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Terez (16 August 2010)
Are there many themes in WoT that will only become clear as we read the final two books? Things going back to early books?Brandon Sanderson (17 August 2010)
I think so.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (17 August 2010)
Q: When do you start A Memory of Light? (Asked with a smile, but with real curiosity too I'm sure.)BRANDON SANDERSON
A: I start it January 1st. I'm taking four months to relax my brain and work on something else, to refresh myself and keep creative.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Shivam Bhatt (8 November 2010)
Do you think you'll actually be able to wrap up the story in A Memory of Light? Seems like a lot of endgame threads still open.Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)
I have no plans to split the book again. I am 2/3 through the outline. Anything can happen, but it looks like one.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Spencer Pranger (8 November 2010)
Why is Hoid trying to restore the Pattern?Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)
Lol. Hoid has no involvement in anything WoT. :)Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Matthías Páli (8 November 2010)
How many rounds are there in the Age of Legends game sha'rah?Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)
MAFO.Maria Simons
I can't answer that MAFO off the top of my head.Maria Simons
(later) I don't know.
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brian Cayen (8 November 2010)
You've said in the past that Aviendha's voice was one the hardest for you to write....is this still the case?Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)
It still takes the longest to prepare for, but it is no longer as difficult as it was.Tags
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Interview: 2010
Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)Luke Piper (8 November 2010)
Which character kept you up at night worrying the most?Brandon Sanderson (8 November 2010)
Rand. In both books.Tags
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76
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (10 January 2011)
Pop quiz: What is the first thing that makes Perrin hate his axe? (It's something I've always found very interesting about him.)BRANDON SANDERSON
It's not Whitecloaks, though that's a good guess. Perrin thinks if the ravens attack, he'll kill Egwene & save her from a worse death.LORI ELENA MELE
Ah, I'd forgotten about that. Elyas goading him about it didn't help either, as I recall.BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, Elyas all but taunted the truth out of him.BRANDON SANDERSON
Regarding how Elyas goads Perrin in that scene: I'm sure he knew exactly what Perrin was thinking, and wanted to make him confront it.TEREZ
Well, yeah. Perrin didn't say anything about what he was thinking. Elyas said it all, exactly what he was thinking.TEREZ
Both his true motivations—choosing her death—and the motivations he feared (which were stupid, of course).BRANDON SANDERSON
No. Elyas claims that he thinks Perrin hates Egwene. Which is dead wrong, and Elyas knew it.TEREZ
Right, that's what I was saying. Both his true motivations and the stupid ones. Elyas mocks him for the latter.TEREZ
And then spells out what he really wanted: 'One clean blow of your axe, or the way the animals we saw today died?'TEREZ
It's not that Perrin was thinking he hated her. He was hating himself for wanting to help her, which was dumb.TEREZ
Which of course led to a philosophical conversation similar to Second Amendment debates. Which was ongoing, of course.TEREZ
Did the axe make Perrin more likely to kill? Than before? Than with the hammer? What about the sword, and the spear?TEREZ
I see it as Elyas very blatantly pointing out the flaw in Perrin's logic. He didn't hate her—that was exactly the flaw.TEREZ
Didn't hate her, but he hated the axe, and that was a good thing. Never stopped. (Another good cover @torbooks)Tags
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Interview: Oct 11th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Ted Herman
The second signing session of the day was local, just a short drive up a rainy, traffic filled highway. This one had a Q&A session also, same restrictions on autographs though (two hardcovers, no personalization per trip in line). RJ seemed like he wanted to get going quickly for an early trip to the next stop tomorrow, so I only went through the line once.
Robert Jordan
In the Q&A, everyone was using the same questions that are answered in just about every Q&A RJ does, or at least recently: about writing female POVs, about compiling his notes, how does he store all the info about the plots and characters, etc... He did give some new info/answers on a couple of topics. He did repeat the tidbit about writing additional side stories that was on Wotmania today. He mentioned that he hates Apple computers because the early versions were not compatible with each other :p He mentioned if a mini series is done on NBC, there might be other sequel series on showtime or sci-fi channel.
Tags
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78
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (11 January 2011)
I'm now onto the last part of The Eye of the World. I've mentioned before that I, personally, find this the roughest part of the entire series.FELIX PAX
Worse than books between Lord of Chaos and Winter's Heart? Really?BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, honestly. I've mentioned before I don't have the problem with those that others do.DOVI JOEL
Do you mean roughest as in not well written? I love that part, I find it so epic (especially when the Creator talks to him). [Note: this is Dovi Joel's assumption.]BRANDON SANDERSON
None of it is poorly written. In fact, some of the scenes—such as the Ways—are wonderful.BRANDON SANDERSON
It's just that it seems like we have a different book, with different goals, starting on us here.BRANDON SANDERSON
The climax for The Eye of the World doesn't completely click for me. I like the Ways, I like the Blight, but the entire package feels too sudden.BRANDON SANDERSON
We spend the entire book with Tar Valon as our goal and Ba'alzamon as villain. Now, the Eye is the goal and two Forsaken are villains.BRANDON SANDERSON
Personally, I think this is due to RJ planning books 1-3 as one novel, then discovering it was too much and creating a break-point.BRANDON SANDERSON
To be fair, I feel I had some of the same problems at the end of Mistborn. Powers manifest that I could have foreshadowed better.BRANDON SANDERSON
One of the great challenges as a writer, particularly in fantasy, is to learn that balance of foreshadowing vs. pacing.BONZI
And I would think, foreshadowing effectively vs. giving away too much.BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, exactly.BRANDON SANDERSON (11 JANUARY)
For those curious, I'm reasonably sure books 1-3 were one novel at first. Tom Doherty, CEO of Tor, told me in detail of RJ's WoT pitch.BRANDON SANDERSON
He pitched a trilogy, but the first book ended with Rand taking the sword (that wasn't a sword) from the Stone (that wasn't a stone.)MICHAEL REYNOLDS
The sword in the stone!!! How on Earth did I miss that? :shame:BRANDON SANDERSON
Lol. I missed it the first time too. And things like Caemlyn, Egwene, Gawyn, Galad, Merrilin. I at least got Artur Hawkwing...MICHAEL REYNOLDS
Ever feel like RJ removed any possibility of borrowing from any mythology ever again? He seemingly hit 'em all buffet-style.BRANDON SANDERSON
Actually, I've felt that very thing.JAMES POWELL
I'd heard that one reason that WOT is so long is that Tor asked RJ for "more books", and he thought they meant "more WOT".BRANDON SANDERSON
That's not actually true, from what I know. Tor never pushed RJ for more books. He was allowed to what he wanted, as he wanted.BRANDON SANDERSON
People are noting George R.R. Martin expanded A Song of Ice and Fire also. RJ and GRRM are similar types of writers: http://bit.ly/e59ox0 Search for 'gardener.'BRANDON SANDERSON
I'm am more of an architect than a gardener. I do more 'gardening' on character, but I plan world and plot very extensively.FELIX PAX
Did RJ have a cluster of concepts, themes or concepts written down in his notes? Mindmaps? To create his story's "garden"?BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, many.FELIX PAX (17 JANUARY)
What do you think of the literary method of foreshadowing by saying something is impossible to do or will not occur?BRANDON SANDERSON
I think it can work very well. RJ certainly did it quite a bit. You need to be somewhat subtle with it, though.Tags
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79
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (12 January 2011)
It's interesting to see how much Loial adds to these scenes. His personality is a balancing factor; calm, knowledgeable, not arrogant.SHIVAM BHATT
And yet, Loial disappears in the end game. Please bring him back for the finale!BRANDON SANDERSON
The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills, and I do as I must.KYLE WEST
Is it hard for you to still enjoy the series now that you are "behind the scenes"?BRANDON SANDERSON
I think I enjoy it more, now, actually. Though I am a little sad not to be able to read new WoT books when everyone else does.Tags
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80
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Thomas Grossnickle (12 January 2011)
What philosophies have influenced WoT? I feelt a bit of the Hindu Creator, Preserver, & Destroyer ...THOMAS GROSSNICKLE
...with Lews Therin an avatar of preservation and Rand the Destroyer...THOMAS GROSSNICKLE
Who destroys the world when it is beyond preserving, only to create it anew.Brandon Sanderson (12 January 2011)
I see a lot of that too. I'm convinced RJ blended something from most major philosophies and mythologies into the books.Tags
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81
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brian LePoidevin (17 January 2011)
Pardon me if this has been asked a million times but what did you find heartbreaking to write in Towers of Midnight? Noal? Aiel future?Brandon Sanderson (17 January 2011)
Aiel future, all the way. And the death of a certain character related to Perrin.JEFF EDDE
Possibly a RAFO, but will you find A Memory of Light to be even more heartbreaking to write?BRANDON SANDERSON
It WILL be heartbreaking, if only because it's the last. I can't say if it will be heartbreaking for similar reasons or not.Tags
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82
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Emil Schuffhausen (17 January 2011)
I have six chapters left in The Eye of the World, should catch up by tonight. What scene are you most looking forward to in The Great Hunt?Brandon Sanderson (17 January 2011)
I love the ending. Probably that.TJ
While doing your #wotrr, notice the metaphors. Loved RJ's style there. Not noticed in new book. Great though. Halfway so far.BRANDON SANDERSON
Every time I try to do a Jordan-esque metaphor, I fail, so I remove it. It's an aspect of his style I can't imitate, I'm afraid.TJ
Aw man, I believe you're not giving yourself enough credit, but I'll respect it. Thanks again!BRANDON SANDERSON
I'll keep an eye on it. Maybe I'll figure it out. But often it's better to do things in my style rather than to poorly imitate RJ.JAN CARRICK
Will you attempt to move closer to RJ's descriptive style in A Memory of Light? You were close in The Gathering Storm, but departed from that in Towers of Midnight.BRANDON SANDERSON
I'm afraid I knew from the beginning that I couldn't imitate RJ's style. I try in some ways, but I am not him.BRANDON SANDERSON
I will write the book the best way I know how, but will not be trying to imitate RJ. I WILL strive for character voice accuracy.JAN CARRICK
Well, the descriptive style is a central feature of WoT. I don't think being more descriptive would constitute imitation.JAN CARRICK
I'm asking because your narrative style was much closer to RJ in The Gathering Storm. I was surprised to see you move away from that in Towers of Midnight.BRANDON SANDERSON
Oh, I see. You don't mean "Describe in the way RJ did." You mean "Please describe more."CHRIS B.
Do you take notes, besides twittering, during #wotrr?BRANDON SANDERSON
Many.MATT H.
Can you put all of your notes online somewhere? Come on, that's easy...right?BRANDON SANDERSON
Lol. Those would have so many spoilers in them it would cause several people's heads to explode.Tags
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83
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)David Hager (20 January 2011)
To write, "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass..." for the final time—any thoughts?Brandon Sanderson (20 January 2011)
I'll try to do a post when I do it.Tags
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84
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)John Anderson (24 February 2011)
Given how RJ went to great length in an attempt to synchronize his plotlines before the finale, don't you feel that you had...JOHN ANDERSON
...an obligation not to destabilize the chronology the way you ended up doing? With all due respect, I think time has shown...JOHN ANDERSON
...that it was a massive mistake structuring The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight the way you did. Which is a shame, since your WoT-writing is GOOD.Brandon Sanderson (25 February 2011)
BRANDON SANDERSON
I realize there may be disagreement, and am not offended by it. But I maintain that the structure of The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight is the right one.BRANDON SANDERSON
I only had two choices with The Gathering Storm. Have a book more like Crossroads of Twilight with lots of slices of all characters, but without complete arcs for any...BRANDON SANDERSON
Or do what I did, and make a Rand/Egwene book and a Mat/Perrin book with some time jumping.BRANDON SANDERSON
Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem if it would have been possible to do a single, 600k word volume.JOHN ANDERSON (26 FEBRUARY)
No, but the books showed that RJ was trying to synchronize the plotlines for the finale—sometimes at the reader's expense.JOHN ANDERSON
This, combined with RJ's statements that the finale would need to be one book, suggests to me that he had a very strong wish...JOHN ANDERSON
...to tell the final part of the story in a more traditional chronological manner. Of course, this couldn't be published in...JOHN ANDERSON
...one volume, but the story still could've been told the way RJ wanted it to be told. The story just loses so much due to...JOHN ANDERSON
...this division. Take Rand and Perrin's scene at Dragonmount, for example. I feel these scenes were MEANT to be told in parallel.JOHN ANDERSON
...as opposed to one year and 500 pages apart.JOHN ANDERSON
I believe that a slow The Gathering Storm and fast-paced Towers of Midnight would've been by far the best choice from a literary point of view.JOHN ANDERSON
This would also lead to fewer continuity errors and better coherence in terms of both themes and action.JOHN ANDERSON
The biggest mistake, for me, was the insistence on publishing before you had the full overview, i.e. before you had written...JOHN ANDERSON
...the whole part of the story that needed to be divided. The result is a structural mess far worse than Crossroads of Twilight. No offense.:)JOHN ANDERSON
What annoys me is that you write WoT so well that this could've been a spectacular ending if told the way I feel RJ wanted.JOHN ANDERSON
I would very much like to hear what you think about this. I'm disappointed at the way this was done, but mean no offense.BRANDON SANDERSON (28 FEBRUARY)
No offense taken. You have some points. For the Hardcore breaking the book mid-story may have been better.BRANDON SANDERSON
However, the average WoT fan would have found those books a much less rewarding experience.BRANDON SANDERSON
In a perfect world, we could have delayed another year and just released them one after another, two months apart.BRANDON SANDERSON
Then I could have cut the books as you suggest. That wasn't viable, however, because of the constraints placed upon me.BRANDON SANDERSON
One of those constraints is that The Gathering Storm HAD to be a homerun. It had to be extremely powerful, not slow.BRANDON SANDERSON
It had been years since a WoT book, and with a new writer working on it...well, we just couldn't have a slow half-book.COLIN WILSON (26 FEBRUARY)
I agree with having complete arcs in The Gathering Storm but why interweave chapters in Towers of Midnight? Why not catch up first? (interested, not cross)BRANDON SANDERSON
I tried to do so, but the book was feeling 'off' by sticking Perrin's narrative all at the front. Beyond that, chapter one had to be Rand.JAN CARRICK
Why did Rand have to be in chapter one? To me, knowing he was alright pretty much killed the suspension of the other characters' threads.BRANDON SANDERSON (28 FEBRUARY)
Hard to explain. It was simply the place that scene had to go.HBFFERREIRA (27 FEBRUARY)
Both novels gave us closure for some plots, instead of The Gathering Storm giving us none. For what it's worth, I think you did great.BRANDON SANDERSON (28 FEBRUARY)
Thanks. I didn't think it was that hard to follow. The only potential problem is Tam.Footnote
Tam was the biggest problem for the more casual fans, but the hard core fans tended to have a bigger problem with the separation between Rand's and Perrin's points of view at Dragonmount. But you had something similar with several groups experiencing the cleansing of saidin, in one way or another, in Crossroads of Twilight.Tags
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85
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)James Powell (27 February 2011)
Kaladin's situation in Bridge Four reminded me a lot of Egwene's in The Gathering Storm—did you think of this at all writing either?Brandon Sanderson (28 February 2011)
Though the Bridge Four situation was written first many years ago, and the Egwene situation was RJ's and not mine, I DID notice.Tags
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86
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (11 March 2011)
The scene of Perrin at the forge in Tear is one of my outright favorites. People often ask if killing characters is tough...BRANDON SANDERSON
...Yes it is. But writing the Towers of Midnight scene with Perrin and the hammer he got here in Tear was more emotional for me than most deaths.BRANDON SANDERSON (12 MARCH)
I have finished The Dragon Reborn (finally) on my re-read. Next up, my favorite of the books. The Shadow Rising.Tags
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87
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (18 March 2011)
This Thom scene in The Shadow Rising chapter 17 is an absolute gem of writing. Wonderful characterizations, excellent motion, powerful reversals.BRANDON SANDERSON
Guys, when I talk about how to write a great scene, THIS is what I mean.BRANDON SANDERSON
Notice that the Siuan mentions that the Blight is retreating in this chapter. Hmmm... Wonder why...BRANDON SANDERSON
I remember reading somewhere that some think this was an effect of the Eye of the World's usage. Hmm...FOOTNOTE—TEREZ
Brandon is probably hinting here that it rather has something to do with the Fisher King prophecies.BRANDON SANDERSON
Thom, speaking of how future ages may see him: "Not a gleeman—but what? Not eating fire, but hurling it about like an Aes Sedai..."BRANDON SANDERSON
Will you believe that, in my youth, it wasn't until around that moment that I caught the Thom/Merlin connection?OWENSMTO
Don't feel too bad. I didn't catch the Mat/Odin connection until very recently. And Perrin is Thor, it seems. heh.BRANDON SANDERSON
I believe there's actually a Slavic god of the forge named "Perun" or something along those lines.NATHAN ANDRUS
Thom/Merlin connection? I don't see it.BRANDON SANDERSON
Look really closely at Thom's last name.Tags
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88
Interview: Oct 30th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Matthew Hunter (Paraphrased)Question
About skill comparisons between main character swordsmen:
Robert Jordan
"Read the book." About the forms used: I was curious, so I asked if he had studied the sword fighting arts or just researched. It's research, and the forms come from Japanese sword fighting and some European fencing, before the advent of well-designed and well-made guns made swords obsolete. He mentioned one book in particular, but I can't remember the title... :(
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89
Interview: Oct 30th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Matthew Hunter (Paraphrased)Question
Physics/Math background and how it affected his writing:
Robert Jordan
—only marginally useful
—structure
—Schrödinger's Cat and other Quantum Physics stuff helps with conceptualization of fantasy structure.
—His editor (also his wife) said that the physics and math was more important than he gave it credit for. ;)
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90
Interview: Oct 31st, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Judy Ghirardelli (Paraphrased)Judy Ghirardelli
Next time through (for my next 3 books): Is the Tower of Ghenjei based on the dark tower from the story of Childe Roland?Robert Jordan
No.Judy Ghirardelli
(Sorry Emma—it sounded like a good idea to me...)Tags
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91
Interview: Oct, 1994
Sense of Wonder Interview (Verbatim)Sense of Wonder
From the October/November 1994 issue of Sense of Wonder, a B. Dalton publication
It's an exciting fall for fans of Robert Jordan's phenomenal series The Wheel of Time. Book Five: The Fires of Heaven, which was a New York Times best-seller, finally came out in paperback this September, and the long-awaited sixth book, Lord of Chaos, will be out in hardcover this October. Since this series has captured the imagination of so many readers, I asked Robert Jordan to talk to Sense of Wonder readers about the inspiration behind his remarkable Wheel of Time series.
Robert Jordan
The first inspiration was the thought of what it was really like to be tapped as the savior of mankind. In a lot of books that have somebody who is the "chosen one" if you will, it seems that the world quickly divides into allies who are strongly behind the "chosen one" and the evil guys. It seemed to me that if somebody is chosen to be the savior, there is going to be a good bit of resistance, both "let this cup pass from me," and a lot of people who aren't going to be that happy to have a savior show up, even if they are on his side nominally. That established, I began to think about the world.
What I'm trying to do here is rather complex. The usual thing is to either tell a sweeping story that is, in effect, the history of a nation or a people, or to tell a tighter story that is very much inside the heads of individuals themselves. I am trying to do the stories of individual people, a large number of them, at the same time as I tell the story of a world. I want to give readers an entire picture of this world—not just its current history and situation, but its past as well. That's hard to do at the same time we're so deeply involved with individual characters. The complexity of that combination is one of the reasons the darn thing has gone on as long as it has.
There are a number of themes that run through the series. There's the good old basic struggle between good and evil, with an emphasis on the difficulty in recognizing what is god and what is evil. There's also the difficulty in deciding how far you can go in fighting evil. I like to think of it as a scale. At one end you hold purely to your own ideals no matter what the cost, with the result that possibly evil wins. At the other end, you do anything and everything to win, with the result that maybe it doesn't make much difference whether you've won or evil has won. There has to be some sort of balance found in the middle, and it's very difficult to find.
Another recurring theme is lack of information, and the mutability of information. No one knows everything. Everyone has to operate on incomplete knowledge, and quite often they know they are operating on incomplete knowledge, but they still have to make decisions. The reader quite often knows that the reason why a character is doing something is totally erroneous, but it's still the best information that the character in the book has. I like to explore the changeability of knowledge, the way that, in the beginning, characters see things in one way, and as they grow and learn more, we and they find out that what they knew as the truth wasn't necessarily the whole truth. Sometimes it's hardly the truth at all. When Rand and the rest first met Moiraine, they saw her as an Aes Sedai, and they thought of her as being practically omnipotent. It's only as they go along that they begin to find out that the Aes Sedai have limits. In the beginning everyone says the White Tower makes thrones dance and kings and queens play at their command, but the characters begin to find out that, yes, the White Tower has certainly manipulated a lot of thrones, but it's hardly all-powerful. Characters learn more about the truth as time goes on, and sometimes found out that what they knew before was only the first layer of the onion. That's a major theme, really, in the whole series, that changeability—the way something starts out seeming to be one simple thing, and slowly it is revealed to have a number of very complex layers.
But for all the grand events and great hoop-la and whoop-de-do going on, the things that really interest me more than anything else are the characters themselves. How they change. How they don't change. How they relate to each other. The people fascinate me. And, of course, there are things happening that major characters sometimes don't even see, and the reader sometimes does. There's a lot going on beneath the surface that major characters don't realize, despite the fact that they do see a lot of what seems very furious activity.
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92
Interview: Oct 28th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Michael Thompson (Paraphrased)Harriet McDougal
When we got to the head of the line, Harriet was taking the books, and opening them to get them ready. I handed her a copy of Reagan O'Neal's The Fallon Blood, and asked if he would mind signing it. She exclaimed over how long it had been since she'd seen that book.Robert Jordan
He exclaimed over it too, and signed it 'Reagan O'Neal'. I asked him if Lord Valentine's Castle in any way inspired the menagerie scenes and he said, "No."Tags
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93
Interview: Nov 1st, 1994
Fast Forward Interview (Verbatim)Fast Forward
And that resonates in Perrin's fighting his way toward Rand in the climatic scene in this battle. He basically refuses to think of them as males or females, because if he thought of the person in front of him, trying to kill him, as a female—because there is a mixture of both in the group they are fighting—he wouldn't be able to proceed, and he'd end up being killed. So he has to blank that out of his mind so he can be purely reactive. So it's almost a repeat of that.Robert Jordan
Yes, in a way it is. It's something that comes out of the way they think. And it fits with the society, as well, as it's been devised. Three thousand years ago men destroyed the world. In effect, O.K. it was the male Aes Sedai, but it was MEN that did it. For three thousand years the world has been afraid of men who can channel. You have that sort of history, and women are going to have power, women are going to have influence and prestige. There is not going to be the same sort of subjugation of women you find in other cultures in our world. Given that, and given the fact that men are, quite simply, stronger than women. There's no two ways about it, on the average man is stronger than woman.Fast Forward
We're talking physically stronger.Robert Jordan
Right. Physically stronger. It's going to be, in many cases, a very strong cultural prohibition against a man using that strength against a woman. It seemed to me to fit very well with the way the cultures are set up.Tags
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94
Interview: Nov 21st, 1994
Letter to Carolyn Fusinato (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
4. I heard about the hoax. Thanks for the printout of the posting. I suppose whoever posted it thought this book—The Westing Game—had some influence on some part of my writing. I'll have to try finding it; it would help, of course, if I knew whether it was fiction or non-fiction, and who the author is. Or maybe it's part of the hoax, too. The Eddings War? The Grin Thingy War? The Lanfear Trials? Elucidate further, my dear. Sorry to hear of so many falling by the wayside.
A note: Taim, whether you mispronounce it as TAME or pronounce it correctly as tah-EEM, doesn't rhyme with the others. Isn't anyone required to write poetry in school anymore? Of course, that dates me to the Dark Ages by most peoples' view, but I can still knock off a fairly good sonnet, Elizabethan or later.
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95
Interview: Nov 21st, 1994
Letter to Carolyn Fusinato (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
5. Re: the Forsaken working together. Do some reading on Hitler's henchmen. Also Stalin's, and Mao's. There are plenty of other examples, but these are probably the easiest to find. In each case you find that the fellows were out for what they could get and just as likely to try pulling down one of their so-called compatriots, or at least undercut him, as to help if that was the route to greater power. Check out Goebbels-Goring-Himmler and Beria-Molotov-Kruschev, for examples, these are much easier to document than that Chinese tangle.
The question of what is evil is always difficult on the one hand and easy on the other. Is the sexual abuse of a child evil? I think that it is; I can see no excuse; I would offer no mercy. An octogenarian friend and I used to discuss the nature of evil, until he died. He would protest when I brought up something such as the Holocaust, say (though he was Jewish), because he wanted to keep it all on a level of purely Platonic ideals. It was always an effort for me to do that. To me, evil is real and palpable. The problem is, and always has been defining it. Harming someone without cause? Hitler had cause, a reason, [a carat and line leading to "however moral it was" in parentheses in blue ink] for murdering millions of people; so did Stalin and Mao. At the other end, how much harm? If you tell a lie that causes two people to argue, you have done harm, but was the act evil, or merely wrong? There are infinite shadings of degree, intent and effect to take into account.
Footnote
See RJ's next letter to Carolyn for more discussion on this point.Tags
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96
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (11 April 2011)
Working on a scene that RJ wrote part of. In some ways, those are the toughest ones. Most time consuming, at least.AUSTIN MOORE
How much do you usually have to change of RJ's scenes? Just the first part and the last so it fits in well or what?BRANDON SANDERSON
Depends on the scene. If I'm lucky, it's what you explained. But getting my parts to match can be a LOT of work.BRANDON SANDERSON
That's especially true if it's a new character, without a viewpoint narrative I can study except for the unfinished scene.BRANDON SANDERSON
Some of the scenes need more, as they are first drafts RJ intended to revise. I try not to change too much, but some of the scenes were ones where he was careful to lay down important things—like motivation—first, but didn't work on setting very much. (I'm working on one of those now.)DAVEJUSTDAVE
RE: reworking RJ's scenes. Ever get tired and goof? "As Rand reached for the Shardblade..er...Callandor"...BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. No, I haven't done that. Usually when writing WoT I make sure I'm very steeped in reading it at the time.BRANDON SANDERSON (12 APRIL)
Scene I worked on yesterday is done. A Memory of Light is now at 2% done. (Assuming a 300k length, or about the length of The Gathering Storm.)DAVID WILSON
How fast do you expect the % to increase? I'm not badgering, just curious :)BRANDON SANDERSON
My goal is 2-3% a week while doing the reread. Then to step it up a bit from there.FELIX
On a more serious note, which book are up to your #wotrr project?BRANDON SANDERSON
Book five. I've completed two scenes from A Memory of Light as well.Tags
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97
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (14 April 2011)
Yes, Delta has free twitter again on this flight. I will try my best to get work done. Why is it so much more tempting while flying?LUCKERS
Wanna have a detailed conversation about something? We already did sexuality in the Wheel.LUCKERS
Seriously, its 4am here, I'm feeling loopy and sad not to be at JordanCon... I'm go for anything.LUCKERS
Reverse the normal vibe. Ask me questions. :PJENNIFER LIANG
Bad Luckers. Go to sleep, let him work.LUCKERS
Hush.BRANDON SANDERSON
Well, we could get into how timid a lot of us fantasy writers are about writing black viewpoint protagonists.BRANDON SANDERSON
It is noticeable to me. I don't think it's intentional bias, and if it is, it's worry about doing something wrong.BRANDON SANDERSON
But you see a lot of black side characters (in film too) but few black leading men.LUCKERS
Interesting point actually... a form of reverse-racism. The fear that you are going to step wrong.BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes. You can read up on something called "Racefail" in the sff community from a few years back, if you want.BRANDON SANDERSON
Google it. You'll find some interesting points along these lines.LUCKERS
I did so, and yeah I see what you mean.BRANDON SANDERSON
I do wonder if it also has to do with not having racially integrated kingdoms (as makes sense) in fantasy.BRANDON SANDERSON
So, if you want to tell a story about one kingdom, it naturally follows that you end up with a lot of people of the same race.BRANDON SANDERSON
Then, you add someone else to be racially diverse—but that person you add becomes, by nature, the outsider.BRANDON SANDERSON
Which, of course, only reinforces the bias, despite attempts at being diverse. It's a tough nut to crack.LUCKERS
That does make sense—though I like RJ's futuristic blending of races. Sharan, Tairen, Seanchan—the blend has no meaning.FOOTNOTE—TEREZ
I'm not so sure this is completely true; it's probably quite significant that the Empress of Seanchan, an empire despised mostly because of slavery, is a black woman (not because it's significant in the WoT world, but because it isn't). It might also be significant that the only other known slavery of the WoT world is in Shara, which parallels Africa in many ways, including the dark-skinned natives. The dark-skinned Tairens are unique in Randland proper for their feudalistic serfdom.LUCKERS
For myself, I write fantasy set in modern times—I touch on race heavily but have avoided aboriginal issues.LUCKERS
Which wasn't intentional.JAMES POWELL
Often, when reading a book, I don't know what colour a character's skin is—it's rarely described.JAMES POWELL
I suspect this is to do with "white" = "default". The best exception I've seen is @neilhimself's Anansi Boys.LUCKERS
I don't think it's white=default so much as caution about giving offense...at least on my part.JAMES POWELL
I often wonder if having one black character (amid a load of white characters) is worse than having none.LUCKERS
It's funny, I never realised but I have no black characters in my book, and thinking about it it's likely...LUCKERS
...because I've no idea how to write an aboriginal viewpoint. I lack the insight—though that's wrong in itself...LUCKERS
...because there will be many black and aboriginal people with an upbringing similar to mine.LUCKERS
Tokenism, and the perception thereof, is an issue. Brandon's revelation of a gay character in Towers of Midnight received...LUCKERS
...some very... heated... attention based on this.JAMES POWELL
Yeah, but the revelation of a gay anything causes heated attention somewhere ;)LUCKERS
This is true. My high school graduation was no exception. :PJAMES POWELL
Oh aye? Did you ask for a Gay Diploma? ;)LUCKERS
Made out with a guy on the dance floor... it was rather dramatic, but easier than explaining.BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes. Tokenism is a real danger. And it's tough to do these things without stepping into this trap.BRANDON SANDERSON
On one side, you have GLBT readers emailing me and asking sincerely to be better represented.BRANDON SANDERSON
Then, you have RJ saying to fans "Yes, there are gay characters. It just hasn't been right to mention it yet."BRANDON SANDERSON
However, when the time is right to mention one, how do you keep it from feeling just like a token nod?LUCKERS
On the other hand, from the perspective of a minority that has only very recently received airtime...LUCKERS
...seeing anything is kind of... well, nice. I can remember being young and avidly watching Dawson's Creek...LUCKERS
...for the characters who, by today's standards, are very much tokens.LUCKERS
Avoiding a token nod: by not making it the main point. But even so, if he's the only one, he'll be seen that way.LUCKERS
For all that she's a bad guy, Galina's lesbianism was the perfect non-token introduction.LUCKERS
Lord of Chaos Chapter 53, her attentions to Erian....BRANDON SANDERSON
I'm curious. Did you ever read Rose of the Prophet? If so, what did you think of the gay character?LUCKERS
Haha... you asked me this last time—but no. It's on my list now, but hard to find in Australia.LUCKERS
She's also Mormon, no?BRANDON SANDERSON
I liked them as a teenager, but haven't read them in years. If I remember right, however, the gay character...BRANDON SANDERSON
...falls into the "safe gay friend" category that you see used so often in film, though he has a lot more depth.BRANDON SANDERSON
The gay man is a major viewpoint protagonist, but his sexuality is very subtle. [Tracy] Hickman is LDS, but not Margaret [Weis].PETER AHLSTROM
And Tracy Hickman is a guy.LUCKERS
Really? *goes red in the face* I've been referring to him as a her for YEARS.LUCKERS
Have you read R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing?BRANDON SANDERSON
I keep meaning to read it. I think I even bought a copy. But I haven't yet.LUCKERS
It's awesome. I raised it because it has a very poignant depiction character confused about his sexuality.LUCKERS
Here's a question based on 'subtlety'—like the depiction of the black character, can an overly camp character work?LUCKERS
In one of my early drafts I had a camp gay man, and I was accused of homophobia... it's kind of the same point...BRANDON SANDERSON
As an aside, I really wish "homophobia" hadn't stuck as the term of choice in these matters.BRANDON SANDERSON
I guess "homoinsensitivitia" didn't have the right ring to it.LUCKERS
Fear of singularity in sexuality. Sounds like Star Trek jargon.FOOTNOTE—TEREZ
This point came up in the flamewar that followed Brandon's revelation about the gay man on Dragonmount (referenced earlier by Luckers). I think that the connotations of the word are independent of the word itself, and would have likely stuck to whatever word we might have used instead of 'homophobia' (because 'phobia' itself doesn't always have connotations of hatred). In reality, there are many degrees of homophobia ranging from squick to hate, but those on the squick side tend to resent the word being applied to them as it implies a socially unacceptable prejudice.RI SCOTT
On the gay character question, why do you think fantasy, in general, so badly underrepresents the LGBT community?RI SCOTT
It's one thing that deeply bothers me about a genre I love so dearly.BRANDON SANDERSON
If I had to say, I'd guess it's not intentional. It has more to do with what I posted earlier—authors not wanting to do it wrong.BRANDON SANDERSON
That, mixed with the desire to create sympathetic characters—and the most simple way to do that is create someone like yourself.RI SCOTT
I always wondered if there was any marketability concern—that books would sell less with major gay characters.BRANDON SANDERSON
Maybe. But most writers/editors I know don't think that way. They write the book they want to, then figure out how to market it.LUCKERS
I've had so much fun hanging out with you tonight, but its 5:30 in the morning and I need sleep.LUCKERS
Have a blast a JordanCon. I'm really sorry I'm not there to meet you in person.BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. Good night, then. Sorry I've been a little distracted this time.BRANDON SANDERSON
Remind me again. You're over in Australia, right? If so, what city?LUCKERS
Sydney. Same as Linda.BRANDON SANDERSON
I'll be there next year, if I haven't mentioned. You, me, and Linda need to hang out when I come.LUCKERS
We will do this. I'm definitely going to be at JordanCon 2012 as well. Still, sad... have fun on my behalf.FOOTNOTE—TEREZ
It turned out that Brandon was planning on going to Australia during JordanCon 2012 (so of course Luckers changed his plans).Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (24 June 2011)
For those asking, Red Eagle IS working on WoT video games. Those are further along than the Mistborn one. Don't know when there will be news.JOHN ORESKOVICH
Who is working on the WoT games? I still remember playing the original PC version years ago.BRANDON SANDERSON
Red Eagle, who have the movie rights, are developing them. They've got several in the works.LEIGH POWER
Really? No news on the websites.BRANDON SANDERSON
Red Eagle hasn't been forthcoming on the info; they don't want to speak too soon. They are working on them, though.RAY WILLMOTT
I thought Obsidian were developing the WoT games? Are they doing that alongside Red Eagle?BRANDON SANDERSON
Red Eagle is working with Obsidian, the latter having come on to help.Tags
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Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Matt Ward (6 July 2011)
Imagine—WoT turned into a TV series such as 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. Have you ever been approached with ideas?Brandon Sanderson (6 July 2011)
Universal pictures holds rights. I think they're trying for a feature film.Tags
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Interview: Nov 21st, 1994
Letter on the Old Tongue (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Dear Bruce et al.,
Your questions are complex, or at least their answers are, and I'm afraid that the time I put into answering letters is time not put into writing, but I will try to answer you. Though I suspect not as fully as you would like. (I have 60 letters to answer today.)
What language is the Old Tongue based on? Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and some additions of my own—bridging material, if you will. Grammar and syntax are a blending of English, German and Chinese, with some influences from a set of African languages, read about long ago and all but the oddities of structure long since forgotten. There are inverted constructions, for example (as in Mordero dagain pas duente cuebiyar!—literally, "Death fear none holds my heart!") and places where the article is omitted, especially where the word is a title or has gained enough importance to now incorporate the article; the absence of article indicates that it is the important or special meaning of the word that is intended. Though even then, it is not a hard and fast rule; the same inconsistencies of English are incorporated here. I am attempting to create a language which has grown, not one which was made.
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Interview: Nov 21st, 1994
Letter on the Old Tongue (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
As for Common, Plain Chant, and High Chant: Common is ordinary speech, of course; telling a story as one man in the street might tell another. Plain Chant adds a rhythmic half-singing to poetic imagery; nothing is ever described plainly; conveying emotion is as important as conveying description. High Chant is sung, really, as though Benedictine monks had been brought up in a tradition of Chinese music; the rhythms are more precise, and emotional content is more important than mere description. High Chant can be all but unintelligible to those who are not used to it; it is a form used only by court bards and the like. I should point out that Common, Plain and High are not language names, but names used by bards for different forms of recitation.Tags
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Interview: Nov 21st, 1994
Letter on the Old Tongue (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
The world is nationalistic, jingoistic as you put it, because people have belly-buttons. They are human. Look at the conflicts between different parts of France between the fall of Rome and, say, the Sixteenth Century; they all spoke the same language, differing only in accent, but the Normans and Burgundians, among others, were ready to kill one another at the drop of a hat. For that matter, look at out own Civil War, and various regional differences before and since. We all speak the same language, yet do you believe that a perfect state as achieved totally by local vote would be the same in say, California, Oregon, Georgia and Maine? The differences might not be as large as they once were, but that is largely an effect of radio and TV homogenizing our culture.Tags
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Interview: Apr 23rd, 1995
Sci-Fi Channel Interview (Verbatim)Interviewer
Jordan, a veteran of the Vietnam war, has definitely connected with his audience, both male and female. And he has some definite thoughts as to why fantasy literature is so popular.
Robert Jordan
Two things, really, I think. One, you can talk about good and evil, right and wrong, and nobody tells you that you're being judgmental. And the other thing is, in fantasy there's always the belief that you can overcome whatever obstacles there are, that you can make tomorrow better. And not only that you can, but that you will, if you work at it.
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Interview: Apr 3rd, 1995
Letter to Carolyn Fusinato (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Majority rules, my dear? You should know that I am neither Democrat nor Republican; I am a monarchist. For the church for the laws, for the king, for the cause! For Charles, King of England, and Rupart of the Rhine! Ah, for the chance to re-fight Malvern Hill. God send this crumb well down!
Ah, me. To do evil without doing wrong. What about the law of unintended consequences? An example, partly fictive, but possible. We have passed laws protecting harp seals. The result so far, an explosion in the harp seal population, an explosion in the orca population (they feed on harp seals, among others) and a sharp decline in commercial fishing in those waters (orcas and harp seals both like to eat the same fish that people do). Nothing evil so far, just fishermen and cannery workers out of work and some fishing towns in depressions, but here is the fictive yet possible part.
Population explosions frequently result in waves of disease, quite often new and deadlier strains of something that has been around in the population with less effect for some time. As witness AIDS, Ebola, Zaire and the Devil's own litany of others, these things can be devastating. So, postulate that the explosion in harp seal population results in the appearance of a virus among the seals—call it Seal Ebola—and the next thing you know there aren't any harp seals left at all. (Some of these things do seem to come close to 100% lethality, and if you only have 90%, which is the rate among humans with Zaire, I think, you are left with 10% of the population weakened and in no shape to escape orcas or sharks and with systems weakened to where they would be easy prey for other illnesses that they usually shake off.)
Worst case. Seal Ebola does not only infect harp seals. After all, most diseases that affect one part of a species will affect the rest. So seals vanish. All of them. Or maybe it's the orca explosion, and all the whales and dolphins that are wasted. The ecology of the oceans is thrown into a tailspin from which it might never recover. Now, will future generations record what we did as evil? If they use out present manner of viewing history—holding everyone in history to the standards of our time, usually more tightly than we hold most of our own populations, holding them to account as if they had our knowledge and lived in a world with our moral views, and condemning those ancestors who fail to measure up—if thy use that method, they certainly will. Would what we did be evil? I don't know. An act taken with the purest of intentions that resulted in the death of an entire species. The result could not be called other than evil, but does that make the cause evil? Now more than ever, I regret that Robert Marks, an old friend, died some years ago. This is the kind of question that would make him want to open a bottle of good brandy and discuss it for hours.
"No man is an island, but every one a part of the main. Therefore, send not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." John Donne.
Don't worry about grinning over the fate of the poor string bean. I have heard people express the belief from the heart. Not from the brain, though; I think that they lacked that particular organ. Then there is the group of rather vocal people who believe that human beings have no more rights than any other animal ("a boy is a cat is a dog is a rat"), though they generally express it by saying that animals should have the same rights as people. To vote, perhaps? To hold elective office? We already see enough jackasses in public office.
Don't worry too greatly about how much of what you said there that you actually believe. The purpose of the sort of discourse you engaged in is not so much to express belief as to explore ideas and possibilities. you say, if this, then maybe that, and if both things, then this other should follow. None of that is saying that you necessarily believe in any of the points, though it can lead to belief in various things. It is a good way to reason out what you do believe in. Much better than simply taking someone else's word for it. That is fine for 1 + 1 = 2, but not so good on points of morality, ethics, philosophy, or whether monarchist feudalism would function better than the mish-mosh of corruption, self-interest and idiocy we are saddled with at present.
In the end, I believe that we ourselves define what is good or evil. Several hundred years ago, slavery was seen as good and right. I don't mean just black slavery; there were white slaves in Europe—and slaves in Asia, Africa and just about everywhere else—for thousands of years before the first black slave was brought to America. Helping a slave escape was theft of property at best and an abomination in the eyes of God—or the gods—at worst. Time passes, and our views alter significantly.
If an Avatar of Pure Good appeared and told us that in order for Good and Light to triumph over Evil and Darkness, the human race must be extinguished, I think we would decide that old Av was sliding us the long con. And I think we would be right to. Not only as a matter of species survival—any species that is ready to slit its collective throats for whatever cause should go ahead and do it now; it isn't up to survival in a universe that, if not malignant (I do not believe that), is certainly neither benign, compassionate nor caring—but also because I would seriously doubt the Good- and Light-hood of whoever/whatever made such a pronouncement. The Devil can quote scripture, and all that.
Footnote
See RJ's previous letter to Carolyn for the beginning of this conversation.Tags
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105
Interview: Apr 23rd, 1995
Sci-Fi Channel Interview (Verbatim)Interviewer
Do you remember when you conceived The Wheel of Time series?
Robert Jordan
The first thought that came to me was what would it be like, what would it really be like, to be tapped on the shoulder and told you were born to be the savior of mankind. And I then very quickly thought, what would happen if the savior of mankind really showed up and he was really there to save the world from impending doom, what would the real response of the world be? And after ten or twelve years of knocking around in my head, because I always give my books a long lead time, that turned into The Wheel of Time.
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106
Interview: Apr 23rd, 1995
Sci-Fi Channel Interview (Verbatim)Interviewer
Jordan's books have been called a combination of Robin Hood and Stephen King. He manages to create characters that seem real, perhaps because he uses many of his own personal experiences in the telling of these epic stories. Do you ever use your experiences in Vietnam in your stories?
Robert Jordan
Yes, indirectly. I know what it's like to have somebody trying to kill you. I know what it's like to try to kill somebody. And I know what it's like to actually kill somebody. These things I think help with writing about people being in danger, [or] especially if it's in danger of violence ... which happens occasionally in my books.
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Interview: Apr 3rd, 1995
Letter to Carolyn Fusinato (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
There is more to making the Myrddraal sword than simply quenching it in a living body. Though I am not going to go into details here, it must be a human body. Trollocs, for instance, though much easier to procure, would not work. I wonder what you would get using, say, rabbits? A blade that made your wounds break out in Easter eggs?
The piece in the game could be said to still be human—those pieces that came from humans, anyway; there were other sources too—though they are about the size of moderately large chess-pieces. They retain memories, souls, personalities, but they are part of the game now, permanently slaved to the game and part of it as surely as a cog in a clock is part of the clock. They have no personal volition, though they do have awareness. The only lives they can live are being used in the game. In the Age of Legends, these games were destroyed when found; the choice for the pieces was to remain part of the game or death, since removing them from the board/field meant death in any case. The game is all one, board and playing pieces together. And that is much as I will tell you of it. I don't want to give away what I might use later on, after all.
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108
Interview: Jun 17th, 1995
East of the Sun Interview - Helena Lofgren (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
The reason Robert Jordan chose to write fantasy was its opportunities to build cultures and experiment with them, in a way and with a freedom to comment that is unachievable with a "realistic", domestically based world.
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Interview: Jun 17th, 1995
East of the Sun Interview - Helena Lofgren (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
The interview then continued with the communication between the various characters, and Robert Jordan stated clearly that every person keeping a secret, or withholding information, has a good reason for it, even if it in many cases are very personal. He exemplified this with the relation between Birgitte, Elayne and Egwene, where everyone knew that all knew Birgitte's secret (or at least a large part of it), but due to Elayne giving her word, the situation could not be resolved. Robert Jordan also took this as an example of the very great significance on a person's word and on oaths that the people in TWoT places. A word given is something to be kept, at all costs, however the circumstances changes.
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110
Interview: May, 1995
Austin Sirkin
I recently received a letter from RJ. I'm posting all of the info I think is worthwhile. Have fun!Robert Jordan
I wrote "Jak o' the Shadows" to the tune of "Gary Owen," but I suppose anybody can put the words to what they wish.Tags
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111
Interview: May, 1995
Robert Jordan
No, I'm not opposed at all to the idea of a Wheel of Time movie.Tags
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112
Interview: May, 1995
Robert Jordan
The unabridged audio tape should be neat, nifty, and other outdated slang. It will be just what it says: every word of the books. I am talking with the audio publisher about having sections from a male point-of-view read by a man and those from a female point-of-view read by a woman. I think it will make it even better.Tags
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113
Interview: Jun 16th, 1995
East of the Sun Con - Karl-Johan Norén (Paraphrased)Karl-Johan Norén
The major theme he tried to put forward in the WoT books he saw as the nature of information:Robert Jordan
"Information changes, over time, distance and perception. Only way to see the truth is to oneself experience the event, but even then every person perceives it differently". Knowledge and information has an inherent mutability. The example he brought up was Birgitte's living of the history, apart from reading it, and the very different views it brought.
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114
Interview: Jun 16th, 1995
East of the Sun Con - Karl-Johan Norén (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
The Nine Rings Inn in The Great Hunt he readily confessed was a homage to our favorite professor—J.R.R. Tolkien.
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115
Interview: Jun 16th, 1995
East of the Sun Con - Karl-Johan Norén (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
His influence from Mark Twain, mainly Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, he said was in the dialogue. Every person was given a rather natural, personal way of speaking, separate from the "chanting" found in other fantasy or pre-20th-century novels.Tags
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Interview: Apr 5th, 1996
Balticon XXX - Bill Garrett (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
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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117
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
Hi. We're speaking with author Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series, and the newest book is Lord of Chaos. And . . . welcome to the show.Robert Jordan
Thank you for having me.Dave Slusher
And you're here on a publicity tour, and you're in Atlanta now. We're talking to you just prior to your signing at Oxford Books. Briefly, if you can—I know your series sort of defies brevity in a way—tell us a little about the series and the place of the newest book in the series. It's a very large question.Robert Jordan
It isn't really possible to tell you a little bit about it at this point. When the third book was published, I was asked to do a one-paragraph synopsis of each of the first two books. And I said that isn't possible. And then I was asked, "well then, can you do a one-page synopsis of each of the first two books to send out with the third one to reviewers?" And I said it really isn't possible. You don't realize, I'm doing War and Peace here, except that I'm doing it for an entire continent, not one nation, and I'm doing it in a fantasy world that never existed, so everything is being created. It isn't possible to do it that quickly. A bare bones outline of each of the first two books was ten to twelve pages, and that was very bare bones. Not possible to do a short outline, no.Tags
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118
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
How did the series come about when you originally started writing it? You started about eight years ago?Robert Jordan
I started writing about eight years ago. The first thought occurred to me, oh, somewhere between 18 and 20 years ago. My books always bubble around in my head a long time before anything gets on paper. Actually, yeah, I guess it is about that.
The first idea that came to me, the first thought, was what is it really like to be the savior of mankind? What's it really like to be tapped on the shoulder and told you are the savior of mankind, and oh by the way, we expect you to go mad and die in order to fulfill prophecy and save everybody. That was the genesis.
Dave Slusher
Originally, had you planned it to be as epic in scope as it has turned out to become?Robert Jordan
Not really. When I went to my publisher originally—and this was about 1986—I said I want to do this set of books, and I have no idea how many books I'm talking about. It is at least three or four, it might be five or six, I don't know. And luckily he was willing to go along with that. Most publishers would not go along with that. Most publishers would not go along with me not giving then an outline for the book, but instead giving them a twelve- or fifteen-page philosophical treatise explaining the themes of the book, and not a damn thing about what's actually going to be in the books. But Tom has always liked what I write, so he was willing to go.Tags
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119
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
Tell us a little about the origins. Basically in any type of fantastical literature, you don't have the crutch of being able to pillage our own history so much. You have to make everything from the mythology and the basis of the culture up. I would imagine this was a pretty tall task for this series.Robert Jordan
It's complicated. My degrees are mathematics and physics, but one of my hobbies has always been history. And also what now is called, I suppose, social anthropology. Those were hobbies of mine from the time I was a boy. It became relatively easy for me to create a "fake" culture simply because I had studied a good bit about how cultures came about. And I was always willing to ask the question of result. If you begin by saying: I want this, this, this, and this to be true in the culture I'm creating. But, you then say, if A is true, what else has to be true? And if B is true, what else has to be true? And more than that, if both A and B are true, what has to be true about that culture? Then you add in C and D, and you've started off with four things that you wanted to be true in this culture, and you have constructed the sort of culture in which those four things can be true—not the only culture in which they could be true necessarily, but one that holds together.Tags
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120
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
Now, when you're writing on this scope, you're writing on many levels at the same time. You've got the individual interactions. You've got the interactions of different cultures. You have the larger interactions of the good and evil, and you have the supernatural characters that are sort of pulling strings all down below them. How hard is it to balance the action through all of these different levels?Robert Jordan
Well, it's not all that hard in my head because I grew up in Charleston, which one writer once said makes Byzantium look simple. But I couldn't do it in a computer. I don't have the time to invest in that much effort on the computer simply to keep track of it.
There are a lot of layers—everything is an onion. And we're talking almost a four-dimensional onion here. Any particular point that you look at—almost any particular point—has layers to it. It's one of the interesting things to me, is how much can I layer things without making it too complicated. It's quite possible for somebody to read these books as pure adventure, and I actually have twelve-year-old fans who do that. I was surprised to find that I had twelve-year-old fans, but I do and they read it just like that. Other people spend quite a lot of time discussing the layering, and it's fun for me to do.
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121
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
Since you had mentioned the characterization of women in the books: now this book has, as opposed to some of the older fantasy of the last forty years, you have women, very strong women in positions of power, in positions of combat. Is that something that wouldn't have happened if you were writing these books in the past? Is that kind of a product of our times?Robert Jordan
No, it's a product of growing up with strong women. All of the women I knew growing up were quite strong. All of the men I knew growing up were quite strong because any of the weak men got shredded and thrown aside. So it made for a certain viewpoint, a certain outlook in life.
Aside from that, the basic premise of the books, that 3000 years before the time of the books the world was essentially destroyed. The details don't really matter in the context of this interview, except for the fact that that destruction was caused by men, members of the male sex. A world that has grown out of that has to have a great deal of power for women, especially when the world has spent the last 3000 years being afraid of any man who has the ability to channel the One Power. You have to have a world where women have power. That's the way it's going to evolve. It can't go any other way. It's only a question of how much power they have.
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122
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
Now, structured as it is around the prophecies and the circularity of your history, does that lend to the story a certain . . . obviously, it focuses where the story can head. Does it limit you in any way, when you've got characters that are acting out the prophecies?Robert Jordan
Not really. What I do is have certain main points that I know I'm going to touch on. But I am flexible in the order that I touch them, and I'm flexible in how to get from one to the next. Think of it as traveling cross country, and you know that you're going to go to mountain A, mountain B, mountain C, and mountain D. But maybe you'll go to mountain D first and mountain A second, and then you'll slide back to C. And in traveling from one mountain to another, you can take a lot of different paths.
It becomes a little bit more complex because you have to imagine this whole piece of terrain is only one layer, and you have another piece of terrain stacked above it, and another stacked above it, and another stacked above it, and another stacked above that. And which path is taken on the first level influences which path can be taken on the second level, which influences which path can be taken and which can't on the third level, and so forth on down the line. But still, the main points are fixed. It's only the paths between that flex.
Footnote
RJ might have been dropping hints here, in his special way, about Rand going to Dragonmount before going to Shayol Ghul.Tags
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123
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
In my reading of the book, it seemed to me that individual identity is one of the themes that pretty much permeates a lot of the interactions of the characters. You have various struggles. You have the struggle of Rand for his own identity. You have various people submerging their identities in either cultural bonds, or you have various bonds, the bonds between the Aes Sedai and the Warders.Robert Jordan
It is one of the themes. We like to believe in the United States that we're a nation of great individualists. And we do have occasional great individualists. By and large, we are a nation of people who bond together in groups and are generally suspicious of anybody in any other group. It's always been a struggle for Americans, it seems to me, what group to belong to and how far to submerge ourselves in that group. How far do you retain your own thoughts, and how much do you go by received wisdom? Sometimes received wisdom is true, and sometimes it's not. And it's difficult sometimes to tell the true from the false.
So, that is all part of it, that struggle, which I play out again and again. Because I'm not trying to give answers here, I'm basically trying to tell a story. And if in telling a story, I can make a few people think about this or that and ask a few questions, I'm really not that interested in what answers they come up with as long as I can get them to ask the questions.
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124
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
Now, a lot of fantasy, and yours is no exception, deals with the idea of nobility. It's a very old tradition in fantasy going back a thousand years, to have the idea of someone of common upbringing that rises up to the leadership position.Robert Jordan
Oh, further than that.Dave Slusher
And your structure is quite similar to the King Arthur structure.Robert Jordan
It's not only an ancient structure like that. It's in places like, oh, say a country that has a tradition of the common man born in the log cabin and rising to the White House. You know, anybody can be President. And in recent years, anybody has been.
It's an old tradition, and it's not just American. I've seen it in Japanese and Chinese mythology and African mythology. In Asia and Africa, more often the fellow who's the commoner who aspires to greatness gets punished for it by the gods. It is more—I should say, not exclusively—but more of a European and Middle-eastern tradition that the common man can challenge the gods, the entrenched powers, and conquer, or at least work out some sort of rapprochement.
And yeah, I work with that. I've tried to mine myths from every country and every continent. And reverse engineer them, of course. The Arthur myths, the Arthur legends, are easily recognizable in the books. I tried to hide them to some extent, but frankly Arthur is, I believe, the most recognizable legend in the United States. More people know about King Arthur than know about Paul Bunyan or Davey Crockett or anything that we have out of our own culture. But the others—myths from Africa and the Middle East, Norse mythology, Chinese mythologies—those things I could bury more deeply, more easily, because they're not very much recognized here.
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Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)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.
Tags
126
Interview: Oct, 1994
Reality Break Podcast (Verbatim)Dave Slusher
In your background, you attended The Citadel. And you're a military man, you served in Vietnam. Did that kind of help you with this head for intrigue and the Machiavellian interactions that we have in this book?Robert Jordan
Actually, all that really helped me with is that I know what it's like to have somebody trying to kill you. I know what it's like to have a lot of people trying to kill you. And I also know what's it like to kill somebody. These things come through, so I've been told by people who are veterans of whether Vietnam, or of Korea, or combat anywhere—Desert Storm; I had a lot of fan letters from guys who were there.
As far as the Machiavellian part, as I said I grew up in a family of Byzantine complexity, in a city where there has always been a great deal of Byzantine plotting. The court of Byzantium never had anything on Charleston for either plotting or blood feuds. It came as mother's milk to me.
Dave Slusher
Do you think that these books, such as they are, could only have been written by a southerner, and someone with a head for that?Robert Jordan
These particular books could have only been written by a southerner because I write in a somewhat southern voice. My major influence as a writer, I think, is Mark Twain. And, there's no denying the southern voice of the books. If someone from another part of the country had written them, they would sound entirely different.Tags
127
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (3 August 2011)
I'm currently writing "Through Lines" on A Memory of Light, meaning I'm taking one character or group and going beginning to end.BRANDON SANDERSON
I'll end up writing the ending a number of times through different eyes, each separated by a short book's number of pages. Odd experience.CHRISTOPHER SKINNER
How do you do that without diminishing the impact of the "big finish" (I mean there's denouement anyway, but the climax)?BRANDON SANDERSON
Careful planning, followed by a lot of reads-through of the entire book to smooth and enhance.NEIL MCKINNON
Did you do that with Rand/Egwene in The Gathering Storm and Mat/Perrin Towers of Midnight?BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, I did.BRANDON SANDERSON
At about 20 scenes and 50k words, the first "Through Line" of A Memory of Light is done. I can't tell you who it is, but I'm very pleased.ERIC PETERS
Why wouldn't you be able to tell us who it is? Is it a real secret who all of the characters in the book are at this point?BRANDON SANDERSON
Some people don't want any kind of spoiler. Knowing there are 50k words of someone means they don't die at the start.BRANDON SANDERSON
If you look back through my Twitter feed, you can figure out who it is. [It was Perrin.] I might do a blog post on it too, with a spoiler warning.SHARON VERNON
Do you find it easier to write "through lines" and then tie it all up together later?BRANDON SANDERSON
For a very big, complex book, it's basically the only way I can do it. Otherwise, I lose character voices.FRANK KWIATOWSKI
Is this your style, or how RJ wanted it? Just curious.BRANDON SANDERSON (4 AUGUST)
What specifically are you asking about? The writing of "Through Lines?"FRANK KWIATOWSKI
You mentioned writing the same ending multiple times. I'm taking it as the same ending being reviewed from different POVs?BRANDON SANDERSON
Different pieces of what, together, will be the ending sequences of the book.CONNOR EVERINGHAM
I'm guessing that with one through line at 50k words, A Memory of Light will be a massive book?Will chunks be taken out during editing?BRANDON SANDERSON
I always edit down, rather than up. I overwrite intentionally on first drafts. But the book will be big.PHIL
I might just be ignorant here, but what's a "Through Line"?BRANDON SANDERSON
Where you write one character's parts, all the way through the book.Tags
128
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (24 August 2011)
Update on that scene that wasn't working in A Memory of Light yesterday: tried it again today and it worked just fine.THOMAS LACHESIS
Did you try a new way in to the scene? Or, was it simply stepping away from it?BRANDON SANDERSON
Stepping away from it.BRANDON SANDERSON
Moving A Memory of Light completion bar from 40% -> 43%. Assuming the rest of the week works as well as today did, it will move quickly for a while.Tags
129
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (31 August 2011)
Dang. I just pulled off something in A Memory of Light that is GRRM-esque. I'm not certain if I should apologize, feel awesome, or go take a shower.SARAH WALTERS
Haven't read GRRM, should I? Also, I recommend feeling awesome and writing more of A Memory of Light, but I'm biased.BRANDON SANDERSON
Depends on your threshold for content. His writing is genius, but he is very brutal. I could only stomach the first one.BRANDON SANDERSON
His short stories are awesome, by the way. I've liked every one of those I've read.BRANDON SANDERSON
Also, the Minas Tirith theme is playing on Pandora. Perfect.TEREZ
Gah, now you've got me thinking Boromir/Gawyn.FOOTNOTE—TEREZ
I have no idea if Brandon saw that tweet, but his next one came after it, for what it's worth. Some more info was given on this in the reddit Q&A, and there might be another clue here.BRANDON SANDERSON
Some good mythological underpinnings and references in this scene, as I believe RJ would have done.BRANDON SANDERSON
If I ever get to write the annotations for this book as I plan, this scene will be a nice one to talk about.BRANDON SANDERSON
One of the challenges in writing these books is to get mythology right. Not too overt, with careful references. RJ left help, fortunately.JOHANN THORSSON
You mean like Rand having a wound in his side, a la Jesus on the cross?BRANDON SANDERSON
That's one of very, very many. But yes. And, you know, Rand being a sheepherder...SIMEN ISAK DITLEFSEN
RJ used a lot of mythological inspiration. But I haven't seen a lot of Greek myths used. Have you?BRANDON SANDERSON
It's there. Look where Perrin gets wounded.SIMEN ISAK DITLEFSEN
ahh... The Achilles arrow?BRANDON SANDERSON
Look up blacksmith gods. Hephaestus, Wayland. And, you know, Perun...BRANDON SANDERSON
But I felt RJ thought Greek/Roman was overdone, so stayed away from using it as much as Norse/Celtic/Native American.BRANDON SANDERSON
Okay, signing off for the night. I need to be up for my Q&A on reddit come noon my time. (I'll tweet a reminder.)BRANDON SANDERSON
Moved the A Memory of Light progress bar up to 48% complete to reflect work done so far this week. Been a good week.ELVAN
I believe you are trying to kill us by triggering extreme amounts of anticipation and excitement. Some of us don't have the heart to take it you know. Seriously though, can't wait.BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. Just trying to keep everyone involved, if only in a small way. ;)Tags
130
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Jerron Spencer (31 August 2011)
Is the long wait for A Memory of Light so it can make more sense than Towers of Midnight? I LOVE WoT, but Towers of Midnight was jumbled and super annoying.JERRON SPENCER
I don't mean to sound the jerk, but character and time references felt disjointed and it was hard to follow.JERRON SPENCER
The Gathering Storm worked well. I never felt confused or bothered. Some revelations came off as "too sudden", but it flowed nicely.JERRON SPENCER
Towers of Midnight had none of the smoothness of the previous books, and stumbled from poor integration with The Gathering Storm.Brandon Sanderson (31 August 2011)
What you're noticing has to do with two primary issues, I believe.BRANDON SANDERSON
First, the book getting split in half after I'd written much of it to go together. (I hadn't written any of the third then.)BRANDON SANDERSON
Second, RJ had been letting people get off timeline with one another for books and books. Bringing them back together was hard.Tags
131
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Austin Moore (1 September 2011)
Can you say without spoiling who the toughest character is for you to write in A Memory of Light to end the series?Brandon Sanderson (1 September 2011)
Hm... Toughest to write because of their content, or toughest because of their voice?Tags
132
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (7 September 2011)
Sometimes, it feels like cheating to have Alan and Maria (Robert Jordan's assistants) to look things up for me on these books.BRANDON SANDERSON
For example, Alan is a military history buff, and has been my personal "Great Captain" for A Memory of Light, giving valuable advice on tactics.BRANDON SANDERSON
Finished a really awesome scene today, and started one that turned out meh. I'll have to rework that one come this evening.BRANDON SANDERSON
Not counting that scene, but counting the awesome one, A Memory of Light is at 52% done now.JOHN UNDERWOOD
52%? That's great! I'm wondering though how did you come up with that number?JOHN UNDERWOOD
Do you have a specific number of pages in mind to finish the book?BRANDON SANDERSON
I've used 300k words as a rough estimate for each of these books for getting the % bar.Tags
133
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (10 September 2011)
Finished another "Through Line" of A Memory of Light. This one turned out really, really well. I'm kind of surprised, honestly.BRANDON SANDERSON
This is a character I think many readers are less excited about, but the story here is very powerful. I'm pleased.HARSH AGARWAL
When can we expect the last book to be released?BRANDON SANDERSON
Next year sometime. Spring at the earliest (I don't think it's likely) fall at the latest.BRANDON SANDERSON
Nice big jump in the progress bar today as I pull a few things I'd already been working on and place them in the book. 52% -> 56%.BRANDON SANDERSON
For those curious, I've been timing lately and looking at my historical wordcounts (I often keep lists of daily progress.)BRANDON SANDERSON
Writing a given amount of words on the Wheel of Time takes about twice as long as it does when working on non-WoT books.BRANDON SANDERSON
I think this is due to: 1) The complexity of working in such a long series. 2) Making sure character voices match those in RJ's writing.TERRY SIMPSON
Which character voice have you found it hardest to duplicate? And has that difficulty stayed consistent for each book?BRANDON SANDERSON
Mat. Yes, he has always been the toughest.CAITLIN GRANT
Love knowing progress but just remembered Tor will likely delay e-release. #frustrationBRANDON SANDERSON
Not Tor, actually. Harriet. I'm working on her, though.BRANDON SANDERSON
The delay last time was because The New York Times didn't count ebook sales for bestseller lists.BRANDON SANDERSON
A lot of people are asking about the release date for A Memory of Light, so I'll talk about it again. I just couldn't get it out for this November.BRANDON SANDERSON
My new rough-draft goal is November, with a revised book sent to Harriet January 1st. Book could be out any time between March (unlikely) and November.OSKAR KOIVUJUURI
This November? I thought it was always supposed to be released March of next year? Oh well.BRANDON SANDERSON
I was hoping March. It's theoretically possible...but Harriet thinks not. She wants more time to edit than she had for Towers of Midnight.Tags
134
Interview: 2010
Twitter: TOM Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Tragoul (29 June 2010)
Do you try to write straight through a book from start to finish or do you write random bits and then put them together?Brandon Sanderson (30 June 2010)
I usually write straight through, sometimes by plot line. But some books—like Towers of Midnight—don't let me do that.Tags
135
Interview: 2010
Twitter: TOM Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (2 July 2010)
Thank goodness for Maria and Alan. Every time I start to think I know the WoT world pretty well, they prove that I've got a long way to go.Tags
136
Interview: 2010
Twitter: TOM Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (13 August 2010)
Back to work on Towers of Midnight. Canceled Writing Group tonight to get more time. Goal for today is to get to 66%.BRANDON SANDERSON
Hm. This scene needs better description. Well, off to the Big White Book to do a little research on how the area should look...BRANDON SANDERSON
For those following along, the scene that I cut from Towers of Midnight, then found a way to add back in, is now in chapter 30.BRANDON SANDERSON
At 53% so far today. Man, I need to step it up, eh? Not sure what is causing me to go so slowly today. Only 2% so far.BRANDON SANDERSON
Okay, at 55%. Much better progress through this hour.BOB GIBSON
How do you determine that a book needs another scene, especially so late in the process?BRANDON SANDERSON
Just instincts. Something needed to be added to properly pace the narrative.BEL'SHAMHAROTH
I don't suppose you'd be willing to give us a hint on what was so important that you needed to add a new scene this late?BRANDON SANDERSON (14 AUGUST)
It's less that it was super important, and more I felt a new scene would smooth things.BRANDON SANDERSON
Oh, and at 62%. Not sure if I'll hit that 66% mark or not.BRANDON SANDERSON
Okay, 64% will have to be the end for tonight. 5am. Seems like a good time for bed.Tags
137
Interview: Apr 5th, 1996
BaltiCon XXX - Pam Korda (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He says that unabridged books-on-tape production of The Eye of the World and A Crown of Swords are forthcoming. When, I dunno; I got the impression it was still a rather nebulous plan, but Tor (or whoever) has agreed to do them. The two mentioned above will be the first released, and the intermediary books will come out on tape in due course. The idea is to get a woman to read the parts which are in a woman's POV and a man to read the parts in a man's POV. Marina Sirtis of Star Trek fame, and Ben Kingsley were mentioned as possible readers.Footnote
All of the Wheel of Time audiobooks are read by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer.Tags
138
Interview: Apr 5th, 1996
BaltiCon XXX - Pam Korda (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Background: I asked him how much of the setting, etc. was worked out before hand, and how much he does as he goes along. He said that he has a 10pp or so history of all the countries/regions, and societies. When the plot goes into a region, he fleshes out the outline.Tags
139
Interview: Jun 21st, 1996
Robert Jordan
All the women are based in part on his wife. Many women have been amazed that he was not a woman using a male pen name because he writes women so well. He just wrote them as he thought women would be if men had destroyed the world 3000 years ago. Obviously, their roles would be much different than they are in our society. The women are not based on Southern women in general, just his wife.Tags
140
Interview: Jun 21st, 1996
Robert Jordan
He made the Aiel look Irish because he thought it was kind of funny. He doesn't like the fact that hardened desert warriors are always described as looking a certain way, so he used the opposite description.Tags
141
Interview: Jun 21st, 1996
Robert Jordan
He intentionally started the series out kind of Tolkienesque, so that readers would feel like they already knew the land somewhat. Then he deliberately deviated from Tolkien so the readers would not know what to expect. He tried to avoid too much Arthurian and Celtic mythological references early on because they are so well known.Tags
142
Interview: Jun 21st, 1996
Robert Jordan
The short reign of Colavaere was not a reference to Jane Grey.Tags
143
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Searles O'Dubhain
I noticed that your other pen name is Sean O'Neal. Did you draw Mat's "Band of the Red Hand" from family stories?Robert Jordan
No. That came from my mind twisting certain mythologies that I had read, certain legends.Footnote
Tags
144
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Hopper
I find your characterization of the relationships between the male and female characters to be interesting, and amusing. Did you model Nynaeve after an older sister or other female that tortured you in your youth? :)Robert Jordan
All of the women are modeled in one way or another after the conglomerate of women I've met in my life...but every single one of them, EVERY one of them, has some element of my wife in her. I won't say what elements are in what characters, we'd get too far afield...I will say it has nothing to do with torture in that particular case.Tags
145
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Martin Reznick
How was the Dark One created, i.e. is he a fallen angel, an inherent part of the universe, etc.?Robert Jordan
I envision the Dark One as being the dark counterpart, the dark balance if you will, to the Creator...carrying on the theme, the ying yang, light dark, necessity of balance theme that has run through the books. It's somewhat Manichean I know, but I think it works.Tags
146
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Brendan T. Lavin
Mr. Jordan. I love your series, it is intricate and interesting. My favorite character (other than Rand) is Mat. People have speculated that Odin was the outline for this character. I see Chukullen (misspelled). Could you elaborate?Robert Jordan
There are a number of characters reflected, mythological characters, reflected in each of the books. Because of the basic theme, if you will, of the books, that information becomes distorted over distance or time, you cannot know the truth of an event the further you get from it. These people are supposed to be the source of a great many of our legends or myths, but what they actually did bears little resemblance to the myth. That is the conceit, that time has shifted these actions to other people, perhaps compressing two people into one or dividing one into three as far as their actions go.
So Rand has bits of Arthur and bits of Thor and bits of other characters. And so does Mat and so does Nynaeve, and so do others. And yes Mat does have some bits of Odin, but not exclusively. He has bits of Loki and bits of Coyote and of the Monkey King.
Tags
147
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Eric Ligner
I like your use of strong female characters. Was there any inspiration for this?Robert Jordan
Yes, I grew up in a family of strong women. Most of the women I knew growing up were quite strong. I very early on realized that—well, it seemed natural, this is how I saw the world. There were strong women and strong men and when weak men came along they were ridden over. But the fact that there were strong women didn't mean no strong men. Again, it's a given, there had to be a balance.Tags
148
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Lauryn
I love the song lyrics in your books. Do you write songs and music other than in the books?Robert Jordan
No, not at all I'm afraid. Some poetry to my wife now and then, that's all.Tags
149
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Dave Berenthal
Are there any particular themes that you have added since the beginning, e.g., theme or characters that you did not have in mind when you first thought up the series? Are there any items of the story that have been cut out that you would like to tell us about?Robert Jordan
In both cases, no. I have, in some cases, developed the story in ways that I did not quite intend to at first, but there has been no important character who has been deleted, there has been no necessity to add in something I did not expect to add in.Tags
150
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Martin Reznick
I am an avid reader of author Ayn Rand. A hero in her novel The Fountainhead matches Rand's physical description exactly. Coincidence?Robert Jordan
Coincidence—I'm afraid I haven't read Ayn Rand since college.Tags
151
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Ammon
Have you ever put your own personality in one of your characters, or do you liken yourself to one of your characters?Robert Jordan
Well, I expect there's a bit of me in all of the male characters. My secretary thinks that I am Mat. My wife thinks I'm Loial. Other people have said they detected me in other characters, but I think it's just a bit of me in all of the male characters. I'm not sure how I could have written them otherwise.Footnote
It's not clear whether RJ's 'secretary' is Maria or Marcia Warnock. (Marcia seems more likely as RJ generally referred to Maria as his 'assistant'. She started working for him about this time.)Tags
152
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Eric Ligner
Do you draw upon your military education for your battles or from general knowledge?Robert Jordan
From both, actually.Tags
153
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)James Tillett
Of the many themes that occur throughout your books, which do you consider the most important?Robert Jordan
I think that's for the reader to decide. I like to put things out there and let the readers absorb them as they will. One of the things that has happened that I rather enjoyed was listening to some people talk as they waited for me to sign books. They were discussing the books, then changed the subject, and, without meaning to, were discussing what I consider one of the subjects of the books...that was very gratifying.Tags
154
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Lyndon Goodacre
I've heard that there is going to be a Wheel of Time computer game. How much are you involved in this (if it's true), and how do you feel about a game based on your work?Robert Jordan
Well, it's true, it's in the works from Legend Entertainment. I'm involved to the extent that I told them I would not accept the first scenario they gave me. I told them there were certain things I wanted done in the game, such as being able to play as a female character, multiple solutions to problems, being able to get through segments without solving all the problems, and they're working on it. Apparently Glenn Dahlgren, who is designing the game, is very much in agreement with me on these things.Tags
155
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Scott Robertson
Mr Jordan, I was wondering where you came up with the "old language" and the Aiel language? Are there preset rules to them and it is a functioning language? Or do you just have a set of words that you devised and insert when needed?Robert Jordan
It's a functioning language in that I have developed a basic grammar and syntax, and have a vocabulary list which I have devised, some from Gaelic of course, but from languages less often used...Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese. I try to follow these rules that I've set up, but occasionally I realize I have to invent a new rule because I'm doing something I've never done before. But it all follows the grammar I've devised. As far as the Aiel that I've devised as a culture, they have bits of Apache, bits of Bedouin, bits that are simply mine.Footnote
The Aiel do not have their own language, but they do use some Old Tongue words that have fallen out of use on the other side of the Dragonwall.Tags
156
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Charles W. Otten
I find your style similar to Ernest Hemingway in your attention to detail. Do you consciously write this way, or do you find yourself just writing this way? I wish to write in the future after life's experiences and this would be of great assistance.Robert Jordan
I simply write the way I write. I don't try to imitate anyone. I've certainly read—and still read—Hemingway, and admire most of his books, but I think the person with the greatest influence on my style is Mark Twain. The trouble with that is that I've read a great many authors, and I can't say who has most influenced me over the years without my knowing it.Tags
157
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Gail Ann Shafton
I find it interesting that there is no formal theology in the series. Why is this?Robert Jordan
This is a world where what might be called the proofs of religion are self-evident all the time. It seemed to me there was no necessity for the trappings of religion which by and large are to reinforce us in our faith. And to convince others, if your beliefs are made concrete and manifest around you at any given time, there is not the need for that.Tags
158
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)John
Have you ever considered making the Wheel of Time into a movie?Robert Jordan
With almost every book that has come out, and certainly every one that has made the bestseller lists, there's a feeler about a movie, but it always goes away, because any one of these books would have to be a TV miniseries. There's no way that I can see to compress them into a three-hour movie or even a four-hour movie. That's not to say it won't happen, but I don't really expect it.Tags
159
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Karl Schwede
Is there any particular inspiration for the Forsaken, and the other antagonists in your series, as there are for the women characters? Demandred and how he was always an inch behind Lews Therin (in the Power, in swordsmanship etc...), for example—was there a particular inspiration for that?Robert Jordan
Well, there are—and I won't go into details because I want to keep the mythological and legendary roots hidden—I don't want to have people spending more time discussing the legends than the stories! The thing is there are several legends and myths based on such jealousy, on the man who is just a half a step short of another man. The woman who would have been the greatest of her age, but there was another who was just a bit better. That sort of jealousy leads to the worst kind of hatred. When someone can easily defeat you, there's not that kind of jealousy. But when he beats you in a photo finish every single time, that is when emotions begin to curdle and rancor sets in, and you find yourself with this festering deep inside that can turn into murderous hatred.Tags
160
Interview: Jun 26th, 1996
Compuserve Chat (Verbatim)Searles O'Dubhain
The initiation rituals for raising an Accepted to Aes Sedai seem to be based upon some sort of real-life ceremonies. Where did you get the idea for the three passes through the ter'angreal?Robert Jordan
Trinities and threes and multiples of three or seven turn up again and again in mythologies and legends throughout the world and in ceremonies throughout the world. That part is hardly original. It's something that speaks to us on some deeper level. It's so prevalent, it must. It's all pervasive.Footnote
The 'three passes through the ter'angreal' corresponds to the way in which a novice is raised to Accepted, not how an Accepted is raised Aes Sedai.Tags
161
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Belsamar
OK. Let's see if this works. Hello, RJ. Just out of curiosity, do your predictions (Foretellings and Min's viewings) have a well, Delphic quality by accident, or by choice? And did you ever think of writing a copy of The Prophecies of the Dragon?Robert Jordan
There's very little in the books that's by accident—very little...and no, I've never thought of writing out the complete Prophecies of the Dragon. As already stated in a previous book, they would comprise a volume of some 300 to 400 pages.Tags
162
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)CMore102
Since there are currently Wheel of Time card games and video games in the works, what other media will we see in the future? Comic Books? Films?Robert Jordan
I really don't know. I just take it as it comes. There will be a line of Wheel of Time fantasy clothing and jewelry. There's a company that wants to make Wheel of Time weapons—swords, etc., but nothing in the way of games that I can discuss.Tags
163
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Seraph23
First off, I'd like to say thanks Mr. Jordan for providing my family and I countless hours of reading enjoyment, and I'd like to ask you something about the Aiel, well, who are they?Robert Jordan
You're welcome. And they are the descendants of the pacifists who were in service to the Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends. If on the other hand, you mean the source of the culture...in my mind, they contain some elements of the Apache, some of the Zulu, some of the Bedouin, and some elements of my own including that I rather liked the fact of making the desert dwellers blue-eyed and fair instead of the usual dark-eyed, dark-complected desert people.Tags
164
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Sarpeshka
Mr. Jordan, how do you come up with names for characters in your stories?Robert Jordan
I have a huge list of names. Whenever I see an interesting name I jot it down. I almost never use the name as it is, though. I change it.Tags
165
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Scotty1489
Are any of the characters based on real people?Robert Jordan
No, not really, except that all of the women have something of my wife in them.Tags
166
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Argive000
Mr. Jordan, I want to inform you that a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame has just completed a thesis on the rebirth of philosophy in literature centered around your Wheel of Time series.Robert Jordan
That's very nice to know. I've had several people send my copies of their master's theses and other undergraduate theses, comparing me to Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. It's enough to swell my head. Luckily, my wife takes care of that little problem. ;)Tags
167
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)Scotty1489
Is our earth a future or past turn of the wheel?Robert Jordan
Both. The characters in the books are the source of many of our myths and legends and we are the source of many of theirs. You can look two ways along a wheel.Tags
168
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 1 (Verbatim)JJVORSmith
There's been some question about how the Aiel sustain their vast numbers east and west of the Dragonwall. How can millions of Aiel live on grubs in the Waste and why don't they scavenge the land clean in Illian, Cairhien, and Caemlyn?Robert Jordan
They can live in the same ways that the Bedouin manage to live in a desert where you or I would die, and the Apache did so. They make very efficient use of what they find. And if they stay in one place for too long in too great a number they would indeed strip the land bare. But there certainly aren't millions of them in Illian.Tags
169
Interview: Jun 27th, 1996
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Sheriam
Mr. Jordan? If I may? How did you develop the language?Robert Jordan
The words come partly from Gaelic, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese. The grammar and syntax I believe I invented myself although it's possible that another language uses the same. Of course, just as with English, I have deliberately put in some very illogical inconsistencies.Tags
170
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (28 October 2011)
I find myself thinking "It's been forever since I wrote Perrin. I'll be glad to get back to him." Then I realize his sequence is done.BRANDON SANDERSON
Note that this isn't because Perrin isn't in the book much. (He is.) It's because I wrote his chapters first.BRANDON SANDERSON
It is odd, knowing that some characters have had their stories told, that no more will be written about them. You'll feel this next year.Tags
171
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Any chance of seeing the "Wheel of Time" in other media (television, CD-ROM's, etc.)?Robert Jordan
I don't know about TV certainly, but a company called Legend Entertainment is working on a Wheel of Time role playing game that will have both strategic and tactical levels and be able to be played against your own computer or on the Web against other players. I think it should be interesting. I gave them a number of requirements which all boil down in a way to ... it should be impossible to play the same game twice.Tags
172
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
How much did your military experience influence your writing?Robert Jordan
Some, I suppose, but I don't know that it had any great influence.Tags
173
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Did you base any of the WOT characters on real life friends, or acquaintances?Robert Jordan
No, with one exception. All of the major female characters have some part of my wife in them.Tags
174
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
How much did Tolkien, or even Eddings' Belgariad chronicles influence the WOT series?Robert Jordan
Eddings certainly not at all, and as for Tolkien, only to the degree that (1) he showed that it was possible to write a very large series of books, a very large story, and (2) the fact that I purposely did the first, oh, perhaps 80 pages of The Eye of the World as an homage to Tolkien in a way, that it was set in the same sort of pastoral country that Tolkien wrote about.Tags
175
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Just curious, but what culture(s) were the Seanchan based on?Robert Jordan
A good deal of Japan, of the Shogunites, Imperial China, and in general a good many rigid hierarchical stratified societies. Too many to list really, I suppose.Tags
176
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Did you get any inspiration from Arthurian legend?Robert Jordan
Quite a bit, along with other Celtic myths and Norse myths and African and Middle-Eastern, and Hindu and Chinese and Japanese and Native American and even Australian Aboriginal. Plus some others here and there to tell you the truth.Tags
177
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Did your purposefully use Neo-Pagan and New Age influences to develop the WOT series?Robert Jordan
Not knowingly no. I don't think so.Tags
178
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Would you ever consent to a movie?Robert Jordan
Sure! But who's going to make a movie at 16 or 18 hours per book? If anybody out there actually thinks he can cut one of these books down to a two hour movie, I suspect he's been drinking something funny!Question
Well, there's always the option of a mini-series.Footnote
Tags
179
Interview: Oct 18th, 1996
AOL Chat (Verbatim)Question
Are you saying all the characters are based on various cultures around the world?Robert Jordan
Bits and pieces sometimes. Not the characters, but the nations are sometimes based on bits and pieces of actual cultures and quite often it has nothing to do with any culture that I am aware of consciously.Tags
180
Interview: Oct 9th, 1996
ACOS Signing Report - Erica Sadun (Paraphrased)Question
Is "Ogier" from "to sing Ogier"?Robert Jordan
No. It's to sound like Ogre but not be exactly the same. Name of family in Charleston.Footnote
It's also a small street not far from where RJ lived with Harriet in the historic district of Charleston.Tags
181
Interview: Oct 12th, 1996
ACOS Signing Report - Mike Lawson (Paraphrased)Mike Lawson
Also, there's another (non-FAQ-related) note concerning the pre-Bore Age of Legends...
Robert Jordan
RJ had mentioned (in response to another question) that what the characters believe does not make it so (Moiraine's statements were used as an example), so I asked whether the pre-Bore Age of Legends was the Utopia that the characters believed it to be. His reply is paraphrased below:
Compared to their current world, it certainly would be a utopia. However, that doesn't mean that it wasn't perfect. Of course, outbreaks of diseases were kept to a minimum, but it and other disasters of that ilk still occurred. Evil still existed, as well.
The Forsaken, for example, weren't exactly a stellar bunch to begin with. Semirhage, for example, was a sadist. (I'll skip his description of what a sadist is.) She went into her profession (the equivalent of a surgeon) because it provided an outlet for her sadism. (He then cited some studies that showed that there were more people with sadist tendencies in the medical profession, and surgeons in particular, to support his point.) Aginor (whom he said after some prompting had several elements of the classic mad scientist type) was a biological scientist who never considered the consequences of his actions. Aginor would say, "I wonder what would happen if I took the ebola virus and altered it to be an airborne virus." He'd go ahead and do just that, all without realizing he'd be creating a potentially unstoppable plague. All Aginor would reply to that was, "Hmm. Interesting." (Jordan then mentioned Aginor's creation of the Trollocs, their defects, "It was strong, big, tough to kill, and...... stupid," and that it was the birth of the first Myrddraal that saved the Trollocs from being a complete failure.)
Even back in the Age of Legends, regular, ordinary folks could do some pretty nasty things. He then cited a study about a small town of ordinary Germans in WWII who did some pretty horrific things (I believe he was referring to the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners").
Tags
182
Interview: Oct 12th, 1996
ACOS Signing Report - Michael Martin (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Vietnam/Rand's "No Kill Woman" Thing
RJ vividly described an experience he had in Vietnam where he killed a female Viet Cong. He said he simply spotted a figure holding a weapon and fired on it, then "acquired the next target." He then realized that he had killed a woman—the first (and I believe only) time he's done that. This provides an obvious basis for Rand's "Achilles' Heel." (I thought he should have offed both the Tower Aes Sedai in the beginning of A Crown of Swords and Lanfear earlier, but I'm rude like that.)
Tags
183
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Kaldric
I've noticed the influence of Stephen Donaldson in the Wheel of Time. Has he been a great influence?Robert Jordan
No. I'm really surprised.Tags
184
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Rand
Would you allow the series to be made into a series of movies if they were going to be as great as the books?Robert Jordan
Sure. If they were going to be as good as the books.Tags
185
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Eligar
What cultures and societies did you base Saldaea on?Robert Jordan
Saldaea is based, in part, on a number of Middle Eastern cultures and several cultures in countries surrounding the Black Sea. In part.Eligar
And *nervous grin*, is the sa'sara supposed to be a sort of belly-dance? *duck*Robert Jordan
The sa'sara, now... You'll need a certificate from your doctor, a note from your mother and a certificate of health for whoever you intend to dance it for before I can give you any more information beside the name.Tags
186
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Loial
I've noticed a bit of an influence from the Star Wars series...is there any truth to this?Robert Jordan
(lol) No. I don't read Star Wars books.Tags
187
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Mel
Do you put any of your friends or your personal character traits into your characters?Robert Jordan
No, none of my friends, none of me. There is a touch of my wife in all of the major female characters, however, and a good many of the secondary female characters. She's a very complex woman.Tags
188
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Ravens
About the upcoming (and looking really great) Wheel of Time game by Legend Entertainment. How much control over the game do you have? (I'd hate seeing it ripped for the Wheel of Time feeling.) Do you think it would be possible to move the One Power into the game, working as it is to be understood in the books, and what is your overall opinion about making a game of the books before the books are finished? (I know it's a prequel, but anyways...)Robert Jordan
I'm happy about making a game about the books before the books are finished. There have been some compromises between what I wanted in the games and what Legend wanted. At first, they told me that they couldn't do certain things until later and I said, "well, here's your money back." After which, they decided that maybe they could do those things now and, in fact, it seems that these things are part of what look to make this one of the hottest games—and maybe the hottest game—anywhere in sight.Tags
189
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)SamMaEL
I've noticed a lot of the names in your books are based on historical cultures. Which culture do you think has influenced your books the most?Robert Jordan
I think it's a toss-up between the ancient Celts, the Japanese of the Shogunites, and France of the 17th Century. But then, there are a lot of bits and pieces that have come from a great many sources. I'm not truthfully certain that the three that I gave you really ARE the greatest influences.Tags
190
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Ishamael
How much of Jesus Christ is there in Rand? We have the wounded palms, side wound, crown of swords... How representational of Jesus Christ is Rand?Robert Jordan
Rand has some elements of Jesus Christ, yes. But he is intended more to be a general "messiah figure." An archetype such as Arthur, rather than a manifestation of Jesus Christ in any way.Tags
191
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)borg
Has your background in physics and as a member of the US Army influenced your books?Robert Jordan
It could hardly help having done so.Tags
192
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Loial
What do you think has been your best book thus far? Do you like writing more action or more for the human emotions?Robert Jordan
My best book is the one that I'm working on now. My best book is ALWAYS the one I'm working on now. And, as far as I'm concerned, action is always secondary. The main part of the story is the relationships between people. Those relationships sometimes lead to god-awful troubles, battles, etc., etc., but it's the relationships that are the important things.Tags
193
Interview: Jun 28th, 1997
DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat (Verbatim)Loial
Do you think a two-hour movie could ever do the series justice? Or would it at least have to be a trilogy of some sort?Robert Jordan
I think it would take at least 18 or 20 hours of movie to do any one of the books. Which means, I suppose, that none of them will ever be done as movies.Tags
194
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Lana Trezise from Columbia, MO
A recurring motif in the Wheel of Time series is the differences between men and women. Why did you decide to make this such an important feature in your writings, and why do you take such a bipolar view on gender?Robert Jordan
I became fascinated with women at the age of three. It's a long story—too long to go into here. But I quickly realized that for everything that was the same about men and women, there seemed to be at least two or three things that were different. Once I had decided that I wanted to use the One Power in the way that I was using it—that is divided into a male half and a female half—it became obvious to me that the differences between men and women themselves should also play a part.Tags
195
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Gautam Mukunda from Harvard University
Mr. Jordan—I'm a dedicated fan of your series who's bought all of the books in hardback, and first I'd like to thank you for bringing such a wonderful world to life for us. It seems to me that your work is something relatively new in fantasy—you're exploring a situation where there is no known quest or goal to be fulfilled in order for victory to be assured. Instead it seems more like the real world—uncertain, with the heroes fighting a war without knowledge of the 'victory conditions'. Would you care to comment?Robert Jordan
I wanted to write a fantasy that reflected the real world. With characters who reflected real people—not specific people—but characters who were real people. And there are things about the real world that I wanted such as people who end up heroes very rarely set out to be heroes and heroic journeys consist mainly of sleeping rough and going hungry, wondering how you are going to pay for the next meal and wonder exactly what it is you are supposed to do and how are you going to get out of it alive.Tags
196
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Linda from Sweden
I've only had a quick look at the guide so far, but I couldn't find much additional information on Mayene. Perhaps you could tell us which, if any, cultures you have based it on and what the people are like, apart from that they don't exactly seem to suffer from excessive modesty. ;)Robert Jordan
Well Mayene is based culturally on the cities of the Hanseatic league, as well as Venice and Genoa when those cities were world commercial powers and city states in themselves. Of course, I didn't put anything into the guide that I wanted to come as a surprise in the books. You have to remember that. Which is one reason I gave quite as much as I did about the history of the world and considerably less about the "present day."Tags
197
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Nick Hersh from MVNC
Mr. Jordan, absolutely fascinating series, I love it. How much do you feel you drew from the Bible in creating the Dragon character, i.e., Moses leading the Israelites from Egypt as opposed to Rand leading the Aiel from the Waste?Robert Jordan
I drew from everything that I have read in the past 40 odd years, including the Bible. It's very hard for me to say—in most cases—exactly what the sources were in any particular instance.Tags
198
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Joel from Phoenix, AZ
You have said several times that you based many of the cultures in the Wheel of Time on cultures of history. Do you have a favorite period in history, or a favorite culture?Robert Jordan
The Enlightenment would have been a fine time to live, I think. And there are a few others. But by and large I am happy right where I am . . . and when.Tags
199
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Joar from Costa Mesa, CA
You have mentioned that you intentionally tried to recreate some of the feel of Tolkien's Middle Earth, especially in the first book. Considering many of the similar elements between the stories and the fact that time in your world is cyclical, with heroes being reborn through the ages, did you intend to imply that Middle Earth could possibly be "an Age long past, an Age yet to come"?Robert Jordan
Certainly not. In the first hundred pages of The Eye of the World I did try to invoke a Tolkienesque feel. But after that I have certainly not tried to reflect in any way Middle Earth. As a matter of fact, beginning back in that very early part of The Eye of the World, I deliberately took off in a very different direction from Tolkien and I've been running hard in that direction ever since.Tags
200
Interview: Nov 11th, 1997
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Jonathon from Nebraska
Mr. Jordan...I play a one of the best telnet games based on your books (cshadow.net port 4000). It runs as close to you books as we can get. My question is this...I play a Seanchan character and have for some time. What was your basis when creating the Seanchan race and the structure of their society? I enjoy the race completely and love the structure of its hierarchy and was just curious as to what they are created from in your mind...? Thank you!!Robert Jordan
Imperial China. Japan during the Shogunites, with strong dollups from the Persian Empire and from the Ottoman.Tags
201
Interview: Sep, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Rajiv Mote (Paraphrased)Rajiv Mote
And once the crowd had cleared out, he was willing to chat (we talked about where he got "Easing the Badger" and the related iconography). But I agree, his wife was by far the more enthusiastic and charming.Robert Jordan
Well, he didn't give a "within-WoT" story explanation. But "Easing the Badger" and the picture of the dancing badger and the man with a golden (not silver, like in his book) shovel came out of a history book RJ had read. (His wife remembered the name, but I forgot it, along with the historical period.) There was a group in England who used that name and had that iconography on a banner. He didn't know anything about the group other than that, but his wife speculated that "Easing the Badger" could be something like the "Upping of the Swans", which was the annual count of the swans living in the royal gardens.Rajiv Mote
For what it's worth, when he signed my book, he wrote "You're too young to know what 'Easing the Badger' means!"Footnote
Tags
202
Interview: Oct, 1998
Waldenbooks Interview (Verbatim)Waldenbooks
The Chicago Sun-Times calls your work "A fantasy tale seldom equaled and still more seldom surpassed in English." This is rather high praise! What does fantasy mean to you? Why would you decide to write epic fantasy?Robert Jordan
It is certainly high praise—embarrassingly high! I chose fantasy in a large part because of its flexibility. It is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face in fantasy, and while one of the themes of the books is the difficulty of telling right from wrong at times, these things are important to me. There are always shades of gray in places and slippery points—simple answers are so often wrong—but in so much "mainstream" fiction, there isn't anything except gray areas and slippery points, and there isn't 10 cents worth of moral difference between "the good guys" and "the bad guys." If, indeed, the whole point in those books isn't that there is no difference. Besides, while I read fairly widely, fantasy has been in there since the beginning. My older brother used to read to me when I was very small, and among my earliest memories are listening to him read Beowulf and Paradise Lost. I suppose some of it "took."Tags
203
Interview: Oct, 1998
Waldenbooks Interview (Verbatim)Waldenbooks
As a man who served tours of duty in Vietnam, how does your epic reflect your own personal experiences with war, and how difficult is this for you to write about?Robert Jordan
It really doesn't reflect any of my own experiences, except that I know what it is like to have someone wanting to kill you. I don't try to write about Vietnam; I thought I would, once, but now, I don't believe I could make myself. But I know the confusion, uncertainty and out-right ignorance of anything you can't see that exists once the fighting starts; I don't think war will ever become sufficiently high-tech to completely dispel "the fog of war." So I can put these sensations into my writing.Tags
204
Interview: Oct, 1998
Waldenbooks Interview (Verbatim)Waldenbooks
What do you hope readers will gain from reading your novels?Robert Jordan
I do hope that people will occasionally think about "the right thing to do," about right behavior and wrong, after reading one of my books. I certainly don't try to tell them what right behavior is, only to make them think and consider. But mainly, I just want to tell a story. In this case, about ordinary people pushed into extraordinary events and forced to grow and change whether they want to or not, sometimes in ways they never expected and certainly wouldn't have picked out given a choice. I am a storyteller, after all, and the job of a storyteller is to entertain. Anything else is icing on the cake.Tags
205
Interview: Oct, 1998
Waldenbooks Interview (Verbatim)Waldenbooks
It has been said that the elaborate and rich descriptions you use to create your worlds and characters bring your stories to life. Where do your descriptions come from? Are any of your characters based on real people?Robert Jordan
The descriptions come from years of reading history, sociology, cultural anthropology, almost anything I can put my hands on in any and every subject that caught my eye. Including religion and mythology, of course, necessities for a fantasy writer, though I went at them first simply because I wanted to. It all tumbles together in my head, and out comes what I write. I don't try to copy cultures or times, only to make cultures that are believable. I can't explain it any better than that.
I don't base characters on real people. With one exception, at least. Every major female character and some of the minor have at least a touch of my wife, Harriet. I won't tell her which bits in which women, though. After all, what if she didn't like it? She knows where I sleep.
Tags
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Interview: Oct, 1998
Waldenbooks Interview (Verbatim)Waldenbooks
What does your fan mail tell you of the chords you've struck to create such a devoted following?Robert Jordan
In large part, that I've created characters people believe in. One fairly common is that the reader knows somebody just like Mat or Nynaeve or whoever, or that they feel they could meet them around the next corner. Character is very important to me; story flows from character. Also, I suspect that the strong interweaving of mythologies from a number of cultures plays a part, too. Modern society—at least in the West—pretends that we have outgrown the need for myth and legend, but people seem to hunger for them. Where we have forgotten our myths, we create new ones, although today we don't realize what we are doing. But then, maybe people never did truly realize what they were doing in making myth; perhaps it has always been an unconscious act. The cultural trappings surrounding myth and legend vary widely by country, but if they are stripped to the bare core you find among the same stories repeated over and over around the world. However different their cultures, custom and mores, people share many of the same needs, hopes and fears. Anyway, I believe there is a strong echo of myth and legend in my writing, and I think people feel that.Tags
207
Interview: Oct 19th, 1998
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Andrew Wooster from Pomona College
Do you feel that the fantasy genre of literature has any importance in society, and if so, what is its importance?Robert Jordan
Well, I think it has too many levels of importance to go into all of them here, but the one that is very clear to me is the human need for myth. We have tried to scrape away, carve away, all the myths in our lives, but we do have that need. It can be demonstrated as simply as by looking at the rise of urban legends. Humans have a deep need for myth, and fantasy literature helps to provide that, I think. Or at least to provide an outlet for that need.Tags
208
Interview: Oct 19th, 1998
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Shawn from t_voice@bellsouth.net
What are the chances of seeing any adaptations either film or television of any characters from the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
I really don't know. I occasionally have gotten approaches in the past, but the books are all so long and involved that I think it would take a 16-hour movie to do any one of the books. We'll see what happens.Tags
209
Interview: Oct 19th, 1998
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Joey from Arizona
Mr. Jordan, my favorite character is Mat, and I was wondering, do you find it ironic that a Hero of the Wheel, who does not know that he is a Hero of the Wheel, blew the Horn of Valere? Also, where did you get the idea for Mat?Robert Jordan
Oh, Mat is a lot of guys. Mat is Coyote and Trickster and a lot of other characters out of myth and legend. He's the reluctant hero, he's a lot of things. He's the bad boy on the Harley. He's a lot of legends.Tags
210
Interview: Oct, 1998
Sense of Wonder Interview (Verbatim)Sense of Wonder
In a field where J.R.R. Tolkien has been used as a yardstick that leaves most authors far behind, the notoriously discriminating New York Times says you have come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal. As your Wheel of Time series has grown, the richness and compelling nature of your creation has also been favorably compared with that of other great masters in creative fields, including the Brothers Grimm, Aldous Huxley, Stephen King, Michael Moorcock, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, and Beethoven! You are part of a distinguished heritage. What do you feel is most distinctive about your work?Robert Jordan
Well, I believe I write with a distinctly American voice, and a distinctly Southern one to boot. There is a great story-telling tradition in the South. My grandfather, father, and uncles were all raconteurs, and I grew up listening to their stories, as well as those of other men. There's a touch of oral tradition in my writing. Maybe that's where Beethoven comes in. A spoken story must flow musically, in words and in structure. I believe that my fiction reads as if it were meant to be read aloud. It certainly goes well in the unabridged audiotape versions. In short, it is a matter of time and place and experience. I grew up in a different place and in a different way from any of those men, and lived a different life. I am none of those men, could not be, and don't want to be. I am myself.Tags
211
Interview: Oct, 1998
Sense of Wonder Interview (Verbatim)Sense of Wonder
Speaking of coming from a different time and place, it has often been said that your military experience leaves a clear mark on your work. It's a matter of record that you served two tours of duty in Vietnam and your decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star with "V," and two Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry. How would you say your military experience is reflected in your Wheel of Time series?Robert Jordan
My writing doesn't really reflect any of my own personal war experiences, except that I know how it feels to have someone trying to kill you. I don't try to write about Vietnam; I thought I would, once, but now, I don't think I'd be able to. However, I know the feeling of confusion, doubt, and plain ignorance of anything you can't see that exists once fighting starts. I don't think war will ever become so technologically advanced as to completely dispel "the fog of war," so I put those feelings into my writing.Tags
212
Interview: Oct, 1998
Sense of Wonder Interview (Verbatim)Sense of Wonder
You are a strong support of literacy programs, such as Reading is Fundamental (RIF), and your novels have been praised by the American Library Association, VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) and Library Journal. Do you hope your work will be used to further literacy?Robert Jordan
I hope so, and I also hope that people will occasionally think about "the right thing to do," about right behavior and wrong, after reading one of my books. I don't try to tell them what is right or wrong, only to make them think and consider. But primarily, I am a storyteller, and the job of a storyteller is to entertain. In the case of the Wheel of Time, I tell a story about ordinary people pushed into extraordinary events and forced to grow and change whether they want to or not, sometime in ways they never expected.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Kayleigh
Who is your greatest inspiration?? Your greatest influence?Robert Jordan
I really have to list five authors I believe are the greatest influence on me. Louis L'Amour...Jane Austen...John D. MacDonald...Charles Dickens...and Mark Twain.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)DrewofWotism
I am curious to find out why there are no male Dreamwalkers mentioned since according to the Wise Ones it is not connected to the One Power.Robert Jordan
Simply because it's a talent that appears very rarely among men. The Wise Ones are doubtful that there actually can be a male Dreamwalker. One of the themes of the book is that no one knows everything there is to know. Another is that just because you believe something to be true, doesn't mean that it is true.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 1998
MSN eFriends Interview (Verbatim)Tijamilism
I love all the similarities between Frank Herbert's Dune and WOT. Was this intended? If so, are you a fan of his?Robert Jordan
No, there was no intention to make any similarities between Dune and my writings. And I am certainly a big fan of the original Dune novel. Although I doubt if I've read it since it first came out!Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 1998
MSN eFriends Interview (Verbatim)Jimbo3
How did you get the idea for the the Wheel of Time series?Robert Jordan
Well...the first thing I thought of was what would it REALLY be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told that you had been born to save mankind. And somehow or other I suspect it wouldn't be very much like anyone had said it was so far...and about the same time, I was wondering about the sources of myth. And why there are so many myths and legends that show striking similarities when they're paired with cultural references. Those two things are as clear to a starting point as I can show you. And they bounced around in the back of my head along with 40 odd years of reading everything I can get my hands on. History, Biography, Myth, Legend, Comparative Religion, Social Anthro, whatever I found. And out eventually came the Wheel of Time...but not until a number of years thinking about it.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 1998
MSN eFriends Interview (Verbatim)Slayer
I noticed how there are many similarities between the WOT and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Is this on purpose, or do great minds just think alike?Robert Jordan
Well, it's not on purpose, though I don't know about great minds. Lord of the Rings has more dissimilarities than similarities to my series. I have no elves, no unicorns, no dragons. Tolkien wrote from a distinctly English viewpoint and voice about myths and legends that came from England. I write in an American voice, in fact a distinctly southern voice, about myths and legends that come from every country represented by the population of the US. And then there's the role played by women...there are only two women in Lord of the Rings....women tell half the story in WOT! There are other differences, and I sometimes find it hard to see the similarities.Footnote
RJ stated in other interviews that he wrote the first part of The Eye of the World to be somewhat reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, as a sort of homage to Tolkien.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Matthew Hunter (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
The Aiel were based on bits of the Apache, Zulu, Bedouin, and Arab(?) cultures.Matthew Hunter
Nothing startling here, but I don't think we've had this one answered as a complete list before. It was fired off really fast, so I may have missed some...Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Matthew Hunter (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
I grew up around strong women; weak men were pickled and salted. The women wouldn't waste time raising a weak boy.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Matthew Hunter (Paraphrased)Matthew Hunter
Where did ideas come from?Robert Jordan
What if you were tapped on the shoulder and told you had to save the world?
What are the sources of myths? "Reverse-engineered" legends.
The game of "telephone". (He calls it "whisper").
Proud of the little things that slip up on you, like Callandor being "the Sword in the Stone."
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Interview: Nov 14th, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Matthew Hunter (Paraphrased)Matthew Hunter
When China Ruled the Seas
Evidently, China was a real behemoth in the Middle Ages, right on the track to world domination, until they decided they didn't really want to rule the world. The following is a summary from hastily scribbled notes on a subject about which I am relatively ignorant; if I fuck up, it means I can't read my notes.
Robert Jordan
1484
In the time before Columbus...
China had a huge fleet of ships (3000 of them, half-million crew), printing presses, generally huge technological advantage over everywhere else. The fleet is commanded by a name that translates as "Three-Jeweled Eunuch" (although he was evidently not a eunuch??). The fleet had superior logistics (well, something about logistics right about here) and had reached Madagascar. They were planning to round the Cape of Good Hope and see what they found.
1490
The year they would have reached Europe...and overwhelmed it.
Unfortunately, bad things happened. The current Emperor died and was succeeded by his son, who was young and had self-confidence problems. The palace eunuchs (evidently a powerful political force) grew concerned over the changes caused by outside influences, believing them to be corrupting Chinese culture. They convinced the Emperor to shut China off from the rest of the world by burning seafaring boats (including that huge fleet!), restricting foreigners to certain cities and killing them if they were caught outside, and killing Chinese who left to see the world and then returned.
It seems the Japanese also did this—twice, in fact.
Matthew Hunter
This was a very long spiel coming from the nonfiction military history books he recommended. There was a lot more detail than I managed to capture, but one thing that stood out in my mind was that he had just told us the origins of Shara and the Seanchan. Or some of them, at least.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Drollick
I liked the Conan book you did. On your listed mention of authors who most influenced you, you did not list Robert E. Howard. Is there a reason?Robert Jordan
He didn't influence me, that's why. I enjoyed reading the stories when I was a boy and I enjoyed writing the Conan novels, but Howard was never an influence on my style.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Moderator (Call)
What's his favorite sci-fi movie?Robert Jordan
Actually...I think I have to go all the way back to Forbidden Planet. My favorite fantasy movie would have to be Excalibur. There are a lot of good science fiction movies out there, from Bladerunner to The Day The Earth Stood Still to The Terminator, but nothing can touch Excalibur.Footnote
RJ referenced Terminator 2: Judgment Day rather blatantly with the 'new breed' of Darkhounds first encountered by Rand in Rhuidean, to the point that the fans often refer to them as T2 Darkhounds. There are two Excalibur parallels in WoT: Callandor and Justice.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)ilrudy
Do you see a movie coming in the future? [Moderator: From your books, I bet ilrudy means.]Robert Jordan
Not unless someone wants to make an 18 hour film. That's how long any one of these books would take, I believe.Moderator
A miniseries? (Moderator smiles)Robert Jordan
And no one is doing miniseries any more. Of course, "New Spring" has just been released but no one has come sniffing around yet. Boorman would be the guy...Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Strider71
What do you think of the parallels drawn between you and Tolkien?Robert Jordan
I assume the questioner means the parallels drawn by [Edward] Rothstein of The New York Times. I find them interesting...I was not aware there were quite so many.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)TGofWotism
Will there be a Wheel of Time Role Playing Game?Robert Jordan
There is a computer game coming from Legend Entertainment to be released next spring. I am told it was the absolute hit of the #e show this past summer. (E3) And if I can believe the things that various computer gaming magazines said, it will be one of the best or perhaps even the best game to be released in years.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Joni
You mention different accents, like the Taraboner and Murandian, as well as the slurred speech of the Seanchan. Are any of these accents and dialects at all comparable to those in this world, and if so, which ones sound like which?Robert Jordan
To some degree, some of them are like accents from this world. It would be a bit much to go into here to discuss which ones are like which. Let your mind go free.Tags
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Interview: Nov 1st, 1998
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)dancer
I'm impressed by the scene details, especially the towns; what were your best research resources?Robert Jordan
Too many to go into...forty odd years of reading and studying and traveling... really, too many to go into.Tags
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Interview: Aug 27th, 1999
Melbourne Film Festival - Mark Erikson (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan (28 August 1999)
The other really interesting thing he said was that ABC have bought the rights to make a WOT mini-series. It doesn't mean they will, but they've got the guy who wrote 'Merlin' working on a script.
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Interview: Aug 27th, 1999
Melbourne Film Festival - Mark Erikson (Paraphrased)Mark Erikson (28 August 1999)
And there is something else that keeps nagging at my memory, but I can't put my finger on it. I'll post again when it comes back to me.
Robert Jordan (31 August 1999)
Now I have it, although it's fairly mundane. It's about the WOT game by Legend Entertainment. He said that he asked them to have a female character, and they were initially against it, but he pressed the issue and they conceded. Then Tomb Raider became big, there were some design changes and suddenly there was sex appeal.
He also asked for a replayable game, and they told him it could not be done.
So he came up with the idea of having a massive library of ter'angreal in the game, and at the start of each game, the computer randomly selects some, and they're the weapons you have to use in the game, allowing for many different strategies, depending on which weapons you have and which you don't.
He also said that Legend has done such a good job on WOT that they've been contracted to do the sequel to Unreal. (I'm no big fan of Unreal, but I don't think that he means Unreal Tournament.)
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Interview: Aug 30th, 1999
Sydney Independent Theatre Q&A (Verbatim)Question
I'm just wondering, for the Age of Legends, will you be following up or going back to that or maybe endorsing a movie on the Age of Legends?Robert Jordan
No. I'm waiting for some contracts to catch up with me which are an option by NBC to do a mini series based on The Eye of the World with the screen writer who did NBC's Merlin. Now that's an option. It might happen, it might not happen. That's the only movie or TV activity going on. As far as the Age of Legends is concerned and going back to them, when I reach the last scene of this book I would have told the story that I wanted to tell in this world. I would have said what I wanted to say in this world. And my intention at that point is to go onto a different universe, a different world, a different set of rules, different cultures. I've been thinking about it for about five or six years now.Question
With the same characters?Robert Jordan
No, certainly not. If I've done it, why do it again? That's the trap that sometimes you guys push the writer into. You say, "You know, I really liked what you've done before. Do it again." And he does. And pretty soon he's doing the same thing over and over again. Now I'll hope you'll stick with me because I've done this. When I finish it I will have done it and I will try to go on something else that is not exactly the same. I hope you'll like it.Question
Wouldn't be based around your physics by any chance?Robert Jordan
Not in particular. Not to any greater degree than this is.Tags
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Interview: Aug 30th, 1999
Sydney Independent Theatre Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Where do you come up with all the names for the cities? Do you just pick them out of your head?Robert Jordan
Ahh, yeah. And I admit to making lists. I read fairly widely and...Newspapers, foreign newspapers, foreign to me, to the States. The Economist and other magazines that have stories about other countries' news stories. And I'll see a name that it isn't the name that I want but I realize if I twist it and turn it inside out and tie it into a knot, it's a name that sounds very nice. It's the name I want. The same way names out of myth and legend that in some cases are twisted or turned or changed and others aren't. I figure that most of you are far enough along that you read, that you know Rand al'Thor, al'Thor, yes he is an Arthur analog. He is also a Thor analog. Some of you might not have picked that one up yet. And Artur Hawkwing is also an Arthur analog. Because what I've tried to do is not give you any sort of retelling of myths or legends but to reverse engineer every one of them so that I can give you some version of what might have happened and then have been changed by telling and retelling and retelling and retelling into the myths and legends we have today.Question
On that point, the cultures from the books, would you say you've used cultures from today's society as a base for the cultures from the books?Robert Jordan
Not a great deal from today's society, no. Not really. The Whitecloaks are based on any number of groups who knew the truth, who know the truth and they want you to believe the truth. They want you to know the truth too. And if you don't know the truth, if you don't believe the truth they'll kill ya. There's been a lot of them, all over the world. They're the basis for the Whitecloaks. The Aiel, for instance, bits of the Bedouin, bits of the Yaqui Indians, the Apaches, bits of Zulu, bits of the Northern Cheyenne, a lot of bits of my own. Some pieces out of Japan, some bits out of China. And then structure it together how these things have all...If all these things were true, all of these bits I wanted to have, and that culture lived in the middle of the desert, a very inhospitable desert, what else has to be true about these people. And thus I get the Aiel culture.Tags
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Interview: Aug 30th, 1999
Sydney Independent Theatre Report - Paul Colquhoun (Paraphrased)Paul Colquhoun
I have just returned home from a talk/booksigning here in Sydney.FOOTNOTE
There is a verbatim transcript of this Q&A here.Robert Jordan
RJ did say that the rights to a mini-series of the The Eye of the World has been sold, and that the scriptwriter from Merlin was involved. He also said there was no guarantee that anything would come of this.Tags
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Interview: Sep 20th, 1999
Brisbane Signing Report - Joel Gilmore (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
I asked about Ishamael's bit in the book 8 prologue, but got two RAFOs so we won't know whether it is set before hand, or (the first question I asked) if the nine mentioned were all Forsaken.Tags
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Interview: Sep 20th, 1999
Brisbane Signing Report - Joel Gilmore (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
We found out his favourite authors. Yes, there is a cardgame on the way, similar to Magic: the Gathering. At least three more books...He's disappointed about our failure to find who killed Asmodean...A couple of other stories...There was a drunk guy there who kept interrupting and shouting (almost abusing) RJ (Aggghhh!!!)Tags
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Interview: Sep 20th, 1999
Brisbane Signing Report - Willum (Paraphrased)RJ confirmed that a WoT (or, more correctly, a The Eye of the World) miniseries has been signed, and the creator of the Merlin miniseries is at the helm, but there are no other details as of yet.Tags
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Interview: Sep 20th, 1999
Brisbane Signing Report - Willum (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
There is a collectible WoT card game, a la "Magic: The Gathering" on the way. He considers all proper approaches for WoT merchandise, mainly because he enjoys playing around with it. This means that there may be WoT jewelry and the like in the future, if the right people approach RJ about it.Tags
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Robert Jordan
There are things I am saying, things I am talking about, but I try not to make them obtrusive. The necessity to struggle against evil, the difficulty of identifying evil, how easy it is to go astray, are very simple questions. In modern mainstream fiction, if you discuss good and evil, you're castigated for being judgmental or for being old-fashioned. Originally this was a way of deciding which was the greater wrong—'It is wrong to steal, but my child is starving to death. Obviously, in that situation it is better to steal than to let my child die of hunger.' But today that has been transmogrified into a belief that anything goes, it's what you can get by with, and there is no real morality, no right, no wrong—it's simply what produces the Platonic definition of evil: 'a temporary disadvantage for the one perceiving evil.'
In fantasy, we can talk about right and wrong, and good and evil, and do it with a straight face. We can discuss morality or ethics, and believe that these things are important, where you cannot in mainstream fiction. It's part of the reason why I believe fantasy is perhaps the oldest form of literature in the world, at least in the western canon. You go back not simply to Beowulf but The Epic of Gilgamesh.
And it survives pervasively today. People in the field of science fiction and fantasy are willing to accept that the magic realists are fantasy writers, but to the world at large, 'Oh no, that's not fantasy, that's literature.' Yes it is fantasy. And a lot of other things, that are published as mainstream, really are fantasy but not identified as such. We really have quite a pervasive influence.
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Question
How are the plans for the tele-movie version of Eye of the World coming along?
Robert Jordan
So far, the contracts have been signed, and I know no more. NBC has purchased an option, and while I hope the series will be made, many more options are purchased than shows see the light of day.
Question
Have any actors been cast yet?Robert Jordan
Not that I know of.Question
I read a two year old interview on the web which had you say you could not see your series turn into movies; what changed your mind?Robert Jordan
The words "mini-series" and "at least four hours and possibly six." I still don’t see any way that one of the books could be pared down enough to fit into the usual two-hour theatrical release, but four or six hours makes a difference.Question
When are you hoping this project will be broadcast in the U.S. and will it be released on video/DVD?Robert Jordan
I could wish for next week, but if wishes were wings, pigs would fly. I really have no idea as to the answer of either question.Tags
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Question
Where did the idea of the Wheel of Time come from?
If you mean simply the concept of time as a wheel, that comes from the Hindu religion, though many cultures have or had a cyclical view of the nature of time. If you mean the books, then the idea came from many things. From wondering what it really would be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told, "You were born to save mankind. And, by the way, you’re supposed to die in the end, it seems." I wondered what a world might be like where the feminist movement was never necessary simply because no one is surprised to see a woman as a judge or ruler, a wagon driver or a dock hand. There’s still some surprise at a woman as a soldier—a matter of upper body strength, and weapons that need upper body strength—but by and large, the question of a woman not being able to do a job just doesn’t arise. I wondered what it wold be like if the "wise outsider" arrived in a village and said, "You must follow me on a great quest," and the people there reacted the way people really react when a stranger shows up and offers to sell them beachfront property at incredibly low prices. I wondered about the source of legends, about how events are distorted by distance—either spatial or temporal—about how any real events that might have led to legends would probably be completely unrecognizable to us. This is getting entirely too involved, so let’s just say that the books grew out of forty-odd years of reading everything I could get my hands on in any and every subject that caught my interest.
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Question
If and when you start another series of books after the Wheel of Time series will you use some of the characters from that series?
Robert Jordan
No. Absolutely, positively, never under heaven! I have no plans ever to return to this universe once I reach the end. If I have such a compelling idea one day that I simply must go back, then I’ll shift the story so far in time that it might as will be a different universe. Anything else would be doing the same thing over again. For the next set of books, I will be in a completely different universe with different rules, different cultures, different people. I expect I will examine some of the same issues—the clash of cultures, the tide of change, the difficulty men and women alike have in figuring out the rules of the game—but I certainly don’t expect to chew my cud twice.
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Question
Have any writers influenced you?
Robert Jordan
Yes, I think so. I believe that the major influences on my writing are Jane Austen, John D. MacDonald, Mark Twain, Louis L'Amour and Charles Dickens.
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Letter to Paul Ward (Verbatim)Paul Ward
Possible question: Languages/accents?Robert Jordan
Seanchan -> Texas accent. Two Rivers -> Irish/English accent. Illianers -> Dutch. Aiel -> somewhat Slavic. Tairen -> Spanish. Domani -> Indian. Saldaean -> Egyptian/North African.Tags
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Letter to Paul Ward (Verbatim)Paul Ward
Possible question: Someone found a "Master Knifemaker" Herron. Was he the inspiration for heron-mark blades?Robert Jordan
No... I am not familiar with him at all.Tags
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Interview: Oct, 2000
Orbit Interview (Verbatim)Orbit Books
What inspired you to write in the fantasy genre?Robert Jordan
Some stories need to be told in certain genres, and fantasy allows the writer to explore good and evil, right and wrong, honour and duty without having to bow to the mainstream belief that all of these things are merely two sides of a coin. Good and evil exist, so do right and wrong. It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference, just as it can be difficult to know what is the proper thing to do, but it is worth making the effort.Tags
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Interview: Oct, 2000
Orbit Interview (Verbatim)Orbit Books
Was there a single idea that inspired the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
Not a single idea, but many, large and small, which coalesced. I wondered what it would really be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told that you had been born to carry out a great mission, that this was your inevitable destiny no matter what you yourself wished. I was thinking about the source of legends, about how come must be real events distorted by the passage of time, and also about how similar many legends are between different and often distant cultures. There were many other things involved in this, but eventually they began to come together in my mind, and I saw the possibility of the story.Tags
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Interview: Oct, 2000
Orbit Interview (Verbatim)Orbit Books
Would you like to see the Wheel of Time made into a movie—or movies? If so, who would you like to see play Rand?Robert Jordan
I would very much like to see the Wheel of Time made into a miniseries for television, perhaps by someone like HBO. They do very good work, and there would be no commercial interruptions. I don't think I would let one of the books be made into a movie. Such a movie would have to be at least five or six hours long, perhaps longer, just for one book, to maintain the coherence of the story, and movies of that sort aren't being made by anyone I know of. As to who should play Rand, I really don't know. How many good, young actors are there who happen to be six feet five inches tall?Tags
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Interview: Mar, 2000
Question
Do the events of the outside world (i.e. current affairs, politics and the like) affect what you write in your books?
Robert Jordan
They must filter in, to varying degrees. I follow the world news assiduously, and I can’t see how I could keep events in the world from affecting events in the books. But it happens when and as I choose. Refugees in Kosovo, ethnic cleansing, famine in Africa, civil wars, upheavals, floods, whatever—you might say I use those events to give authenticity to similar events in the books. I don’t like preaching, but I always hope my readers will think a little beyond the story, and I think that acquired authenticity helps.
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2000
WH Signing Report - Hawk (Paraphrased)Question
Have you ever seen "Army of Darkness"? There's a scene in there where Ash (the protagonist) smashes the mirror and mini dopplegangers come out of each shard.Robert Jordan
No. When did the movie come out?Footnote
Army of Darkness was released on October 9, 1992...and The Shadow Rising was released on September 15, 1992. Looks like both parties are innocent (not that most fans of WoT would have minded if RJ had referenced the movie).Tags
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2000
WH Signing Report - Hawk (Paraphrased)Question
There were a lot of fans upset at your decision to sell the Prologue to S&S as an ebook, and there were other people upset at your "special introduction", thinking that you were mocking your fans. What was your intent/how did this come about?Robert Jordan
People who got upset about the "special introduction" need to "take a break and get a milkshake." The introduction was definitely about mocking ebooks and how it really did feel like selling your soul. S&S came to him and begged for something—anything—to sell from Winter's Heart as an ebook. He didn't go to them at all.Question
Do you think you'll ever put the books out in electronic format?Robert Jordan
When there's a reader that he can "drop in the water, dry with a hair dryer, and then read" he'll move over to ebooks. He's also waiting for the industry to hash out its standards. He expects that to take another 5 years or so.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Ken Wimer from Vallejo, CA
Mr. Jordan, it is a such a pleasure to converse with you like this. (Unfortunately, I am at work, so I must submit this without knowing if it will actually get answered, being 10 AM PST!) My question: It is apparent that the majority of the "World" is and has been greatly influenced, if not outright controlled by females. As we all know, females and males must work together (as in a circle) so as to defeat the Dark One. Will we be seeing more of a "work together attitude" between men and women in your future novels, or more of the "women should control all while looking down their nose at men" theme?Robert Jordan
Both. I'm not certain that I have a women-looking-down-their-nose at men theme; I simply have women that consider themselves competent in and of themselves.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Cathy from Bigfork, Montana
From the Message to the Reader at the beginning of "Snow", you seemed to have mixed feelings about the e-book format. Being from a rural area, with few bookstores, I love it. How do you feel about this new format as an author and part of the publishing industry?Robert Jordan
I feel that it's a very new format, and that we have at present no idea whatsoever in what direction it is going to develop, or how widely it will be accepted. At the moment, relatively few people buy ebooks, unless they are by Stephen King, say, or if they are self-help or business. Even then, the numbers are not very big as compared to actual books on paper.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Lars-Remi (Kagato) from Norway
Is there any chance whatsoever that you could explain to us the full set of rules for the game 'Snakes and Foxes'? I would really like to try playing it.Robert Jordan
(laughs) Not tonight! There's a fair description in one of the books, though—perhaps someday I'll put it down in print somewhere. Really, it is a child's game.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Rune from Dragonmount
Do you have a Languages education? Where did you get the idea for the Old Tongue?Robert Jordan
Well, I got the idea for the Old Tongue simply because the core beginnings of this story lie 3000 years in the past—and I've never heard of a language remaining unchanged over that length of time. We could not understand the English spoken by an Englishman from 1000 years ago, and we'd have difficulty understanding him from 500 years ago, and the same holds true for a Frenchman with his language or a German with his.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)E.S. from Denver
How did Kierkegard and Sartre influence your portrayal of Bela and can you discuss how the equus/superequus dichotomy played out in the whole Asmodean murder scene?Robert Jordan
(laughs) No, no, neither Sartre or Kierkegard influenced me in the slightest, nor did they influence the development of Bela. My wife thinks that they did influence the development of Bela, but I don't and I'm the one who did it, so there.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Dayn S from California
What is going on with the NBC The Eye of the World mini-series?Robert Jordan
To the best of my knowledge, nothing whatsoever. I have been told that the people who were key in making the deal in the first place have all left NBC now. So I'm afraid that nothing is going to happen there.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Davidexx from Philadelphia
First, thanks for such a wonderful series. Your unsurpassed character development, such an important part of fiction writing, makes this series stand head and shoulders above similar-themed works. My question is about balance. Obviously your world is driven by pattern and balance (male and female, light and dark, etc). Why is it that as many of your major and minor characters find their complement (i.e. significant other), Rand has three, ehh, girlfriends. Is this simply because he's the "big cheese", or does this obvious imbalance represent the Wheel weaving what is necessary for the final resolution of the story?Robert Jordan
Read and find out. Sorry about that!Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Doug Carlson from Urbana, IL
What would happen if the Dark One was victorious? And why can the Dark One act on the world but it seems the Creator cannot?Robert Jordan
Read and find out. It's a good question, and an important theme—but read and find out.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Yanmin from Singapore
What inspired the Forsaken?Robert Jordan
A great many things—but in large part, people who are willing to do anything at all for their personal aggrandizement.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Natalie Fylith from Dragonmount
Did you get inspiration for Be'lal's name from Paradise Lost? (i.e., the fallen angel Belial)Robert Jordan
Among other places, yes.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Clayton from Hutchinson
First, I thoroughly enjoy the Wheel of Time series. Is there an actual form of martial arts that inspired the "sword forms", and are the forms you mention in the books part of this art or are they you own creation?Robert Jordan
The sword forms described in the book are my own creation, but they are based in part on the Japanese art of the sword, and also on fencing as it developed, when it was well on its way to becoming a martial art as we define them today (when it was developing in the Renaissance).Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Laure from Montreal, QC
You said earlier that Mat would get 'stuck' with someone and you mentioned Pink Ribbons. Eighteenth century condoms were attached with such ribbons...is it linked?Robert Jordan
No.Tags
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Interview: Nov 11th, 2000
Barnes and Noble Chat (Verbatim)Jacob from California
First off, major compliments for sharing your beautiful creation with us. Second off, how do you come up with your characters'/cities' names? Most of the names do not sound like traditional fantasy names, did you do this conciously in order to create a work that was not like the 'norm'?Robert Jordan
Yes. I didn't want to simply copy what's gone before. There are some things that are reminiscent, certainly, and I can't say that every name is unlike what might be called "traditional fantasy names," but I definitely wanted names that were different.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Kell
What are your feelings about the card game and upcoming role-playing game based on WoT?Robert Jordan
So far I've heard only good things. I don't know how much I'll be involved.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Mathew-E
Sir, I truly enjoy reading the sword fighting scenes, could you give us some background information on where you got the names for the various forms used?Robert Jordan
The names are creations of my own, but they're based on Japanese and Chinese techniques and European techniques pre-gunpowder.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)samugi
The Wheel of Time series is very popular and I believe the PC game using the unreal engine has done very well. Have there been any plans to branch into other media such as film or tv?Robert Jordan
Well, NBC has an option for a miniseries, but I understand the option is unlikely to be renewed. I guess you can write to the network.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)phoenix1356
Mr. Jordan, as a witch I would like to thank and compliment you on your explanation of the elemental powers.Robert Jordan
I've been reading about elemental powers for years; glad you like it.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Shawnyve
An odd question, What exactly does it mean when you describe the clothing in the Wheel of Time as being 'blue slashed with cream'? Is there any historical dress in that still to get a more accurate picture of how you describe it?Robert Jordan
Yes. There is a historical dress much like it. A gap that can close or open. It's been used throughout European history.Tags
269
Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Fetch
Did you draw on folklore and mythologies for your books? Specifically, Mat as a parallel to Odin, with his spear that has Thought and Memory on it (Odin's ravens) and the distinct possibility that he's gonna lose an eye sometime soon?Robert Jordan
I've tried to reverse engineer myths and legends. As if this was a game of whispers. By the time the whisper travels around the room it changes. The legends of the world today are what the last child said. I'm trying to remember what was on the original paper. Yes, Odin, yes Rand has Arthur in him. But the stories have changed so... So the legends are ultimately not at all alike.Tags
270
Interview: Nov 14th, 2000
SciFi.com Chat (Verbatim)Star
What religions have influenced your creation of the Creator and the Dark One?Robert Jordan
Christianity. Islam. Judaism. And bits of heretical writing within those faiths. I hasten to add I'm not endorsing anything. I'm just a writer. I tell stories.Tags
271
Interview: Dec, 2000
Orbit Interview (Verbatim)Orbit
What attracted you to writing fantasy?Robert Jordan
I think that, in large part, I was led to fantasy because in fantasy it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In so much else of literature, everything has begun to be rendered in shades of gray. It isn't that I don't believe there are gray areas, morally and ethically, but not everything is murky.Tags
272
Interview: Dec, 2000
Orbit Interview (Verbatim)Orbit
What started you down the road that led to writing The Eye of the World?Robert Jordan
A number of idle speculations that percolated around in the back of my head. I thought about what it really would be like—really—to be tapped on the shoulder and told that you had been born to save humanity. Even if the danger was real and imminent and everyone knew that someone was...scheduled, you might say...to show up and take care of matters, how would they react when that someone stood up and said here I am? I was thinking about the distortion of information over distance, whether distance in space or in time, and how that applied to both history and legends. The further you are from an event, the less likely you are to know what really happened. I was thinking about what the world would be like if there had never been any need for a struggle for women's rights, or if that struggle had taken place so long ago that it just wasn't relevant any longer. No one thinks it's odd to see women as high ranking politicians, or working on the docks. No one ever thinks that something is or isn't a suitable job for a woman. There were fifty or more lines of thought, and suddenly I saw, in rough form, what turned out to be the final scene of the last book of the Wheel. When I realized that that was what it was, a conclusion, all I had to do was figure out where to start from and how to get from A to Z.Tags
273
Interview: Dec, 2000
Orbit Interview (Verbatim)Orbit
If you had to describe the series in six words, what would they be?Robert Jordan
Sheesh! I've written a few million words so far, and you want me to summarize in six? Well, here goes. Cultures clash, worlds change; cope. I know; only five. But I hate to be wordy.Tags
274
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)Moderator
How did you develop the idea for the Wheel of Time saga, and where did you get the name?Robert Jordan
The name comes out of Hindu mythology, where there is a belief that time is a wheel. Many older cultures believe that time is cyclic, that it repeats. In fact, I believe the best thing the ancient Greeks gave us was (the idea) that time was linear and change was possible.Tags
275
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)Moderator
Were you influenced by the Bible book of Revelation? Your works seem to have many scriptural allusions.Robert Jordan
There are a number of influences from the Bible, but from other sources as well. My work is not overtly religious in any way.Tags
276
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)RawShock
What got you into writing fantasy?Robert Jordan
Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing. I think quite often it's hard to tell the difference. I think that quite often you can only find a choice between bad and worse. But I think it's worth making the effort and I like to expose my characters to that sort of situation.Tags
277
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)E_Tej
I see that many of the story lines are derived (from) mythology around the world. Which culture do you draw from more?Robert Jordan
I'm not certain that I draw from any one culture more than others. Many myths and legends of many different cultures are really the same story when you get to the heart of it. They are often cultural cautionary tales about how we should behave and how we should live.Tags
278
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)Uno
Has there been any serious discussion about making a WoT movie?Robert Jordan
Yes. Not a movie as such, but a miniseries. NBC has purchased an option to do a miniseries of The Eye of the World. Most options are not exercised, however. If you want NBC to make the miniseries, write to them and say "make the miniseries of The Eye of the World."Tags
279
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)Rodynus
Was the name of Far Madding a literary allusion to 'An Elegy in a Country Churchyard'?Robert Jordan
No. That straight-out answer shocked you, didn't it?Tags
280
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)MengLor
Where do you come up with the original spelling of the names of the characters?Robert Jordan
Some of them come out of myths and legends. And others come because the sound is somewhat familiar, or because I like the sound of the name.Tags
281
Interview: Dec 12th, 2000
CNN Chat (Verbatim)Sil7ver
Is it true that many of your characters are based on Norse mythos?Robert Jordan
Not many. Some. And no character is purely based on one myth or one legend.Tags
282
Interview: Jan, 2001
Science Fiction Book Club Interview (Verbatim)SFBC
I've read your Conan books. I've read The Wheel of Time series, all of it to date. I'm almost finished with your last one, Winter's Heart. How do you do it? How did you come up with such a huge project?Robert Jordan
I had a lot of different ideas perking in the back of my head about the distortion of information. Whether you are distant from an event in time or in space, it doesn't matter. The further you are from the event, the less likely you are to know it actually happened.
At the same time, I was thinking about the source of legends, that some of them must be connected to actual events, actual people, but of course, would be distorted in that way by being passed orally for generations perhaps, before they were written down. Perhaps for hundreds of years.
I was thinking about what it would really be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told you were born to be the salvation of mankind, and oh, by the way, you'll probably have to die in the end...There's no rule book, kid, and you can't get out of the game. You've been drafted so get in there and win one for the Gipper.
And there were a lot of things perking around. The only odd point is, I guess, is that really at the same time, I thought of what had come to be the last scene of the last book and it seemed to me that it was very interesting, and I wanted to figure out how I could get to that last scene. After a number of years of poking this around in my head, I had a rough outline of The Wheel of Time.
Tags
283
Interview: Jan, 2001
Science Fiction Book Club Interview (Verbatim)SFBC
What subjects interest you the most?Robert Jordan
Oh, Lord. Almost anything. Half the books I read are nonfiction and it can be about anything under the sun. I'm just finishing up a book called Strange Victory, which is about the German defeat of France in 1940. What's fascinating about that is why it happened, because as the author points out, any time computers are allowed to run that scenario—the German invasion, the French defense—the French always win. The French had more tanks and the tanks were just as good. They had more men and the men were just as well trained. They had as many airplanes. Their airplanes were as good.
But what happened was, the French did a couple of things that were very wrong. One, they had a high dependence on advanced technology and the arrogance, if you will, that comes from that, that says that technology will win for us.
SFBC
And they were relying on that?Robert Jordan
They relied on that, and the second thing that happened was that because they had suffered tremendous casualties in World War I, they were very reluctant to suffer casualties again. The politicians were and the country was. And the third thing was that because of the reluctance to suffer casualties, they made all of the decisions be reviewed in Paris. So they had a slow decision-making cycle. If you put those together, does it give you an image of anybody else in the world right now, maybe?
Anyway, the next book up is called The Code Book, and it's about development of codes and ciphers throughout history. As I said, I read about anything and everything... Whatever catches my eye.
SFBC
Does this wide range of interest also help in the development of your cultures and the incredible texture of the history in your books?Robert Jordan
I think it does. History fascinates me. I read a lot of history, and I suppose what you might call cultural anthropology, also fascinates me. I like to read about other cultures. Specifically, not just about cultures now, but historically. You find surprising things.SFBC
Past kingdoms?Robert Jordan
Well, it's that, and more. Well, I'm reading a travel book about China that was written in the 1870s. Travel books at that time often told you everything about a culture that the writer could find out. I discovered that block watches, public self-confession, are very old traditions. If you were accused of something, you were expected to come forward and make a confession before your neighbors of what you had done wrong. And the large character wall posters, things that we think of as being modern and part of the Communist regime, are really very old.Tags
284
Interview: Jan, 2001
Science Fiction Book Club Interview (Verbatim)SFBC
Considering some of the cultures that you've come up with in your books, like the Seanchan, or the Aiel, even the building up of their history, are there any real world equivalents to them?Robert Jordan
Not one-to-one. Not for any given cultures. Well, the Aiel for instance, there are bits of Berber and Bedouin cultures. Zulu. Some things from the Japanese historical cultures. From the Apache Indians. Also from the Cheyenne. I put these things together and added in some things that I also wanted to be true about the culture beyond these real cultures.
Then I began to figure out if these things were true, what else had to be true and what things could not be true. That can be very simple. If you have a culture living in a land where water is scarce, well, obviously they value water. It's necessary for human survival. On the other hand, if they live in the middle of a waterless waste, dealing with crossing rivers or lakes is going to be difficult for them. They don't know how.
SFBC
It makes perfect sense.ROBERT JORDAN
Those are two very simple and obvious points, but you put together a lot of things like that and you begin to get an image of what the culture is like.SFBC
Even the way you have these characters talking about people who live with a lot of water, calling them "wetlanders" and so forth is very interesting. The concept of the "World of Dreams," Tel'aran'rhiod—when did you dream that up?ROBERT JORDAN
I'm not sure of when that exactly came to me. I'm not certain if I could point to a source, because I cannot remember anything of that sort. It's quite possible that I read about something, some myth or legend somewhere that included this, but by the time I began writing, I had the concept of Tel'aran'rhiod quite solidified, you might say.SFBC
And the concept of the Source and the True Source, the male half, the female half—when did you come up with that?ROBERT JORDAN
Again, I can't point ... I thought about what I was going to write for quite a long time. The first thoughts that would turn into The Wheel of Time, I had perhaps ten years before I began writing. And after the ten years, I realized I had a story.Tags
285
Interview: Jan, 2001
Science Fiction Book Club Interview (Verbatim)SFBC
I read somewhere that The Wheel of Time series has been described as Tolkien-esque ...was this intentional?Robert Jordan
In the beginning, I wanted a little bit—at the beginning of The Eye of the World, I wanted a little bit of a Tolkien-esque feel. For perhaps the first 100 pages, I wanted to have that feel simply to establish that this is the foundation. Tolkien began so much of modern fantasy. Not all of it comes from him certainly, but The Lord of the Rings is this huge mountain casting a shadow over everything. Then, having said this is what you expect and this is the familiar ground, now, kiddies, we're going someplace else.SFBC
You'd better believe it. I was expecting a certain thing in The Eye of the World, and then you started showing the way people use magic, something Tolkien never did. You blew our minds with even Rand destroying cities....Do you see these things in your head? Do you envision them?Robert Jordan
I do. I assume everybody has a large visual component of their thoughts, where you visualize a scene or how things are working out. Our thoughts are not like reading a page. We don't see words in our heads to describe a scene. We see the scene and describe what we're seeing.Tags
286
Interview: Apr 4th, 2001
Leiden Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
Is that also where you get your inspiration?Robert Jordan
I don't know, I dont know where the inspiration came from. My favorite authors are ah... Bearly Whitespread [shame on me, this probably isn't the name, but it's the best I can make of it, not recognizing the name], Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John D. MacDonald, Louis L'Amour. Ah, these are not people you pick up as eh... inspiration for writing science fiction or fantasy, although John D. MacDonald wrote eh, ...was best known for his travel [???] fiction, and did write a book called The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything which is a hilarious science fiction novel.Tags
287
Interview: Apr 4th, 2001
Leiden Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
You're a scientist, you have a degree in physics I saw.Robert Jordan
Eh, yes. I'm not sure I'd call myself a scientist, but, my degree is in physics, yes.Question
It'd be logical for a physicist to write science fiction, and not fantasy. How did you come to fantasy and not science fiction?Robert Jordan
Because I write what I want to write, really, but I'm not certain I'd say that it would be logical for a physicist to write science fiction. Are you aware of the paradigm [and now I finally know how to correctly pronounce that English word] called Schrödinger's Cat?Questioner
No.Aan'allein
[This guy just lost all respect I could possibly have for him, and it's getting worse.]Robert Jordan
It's a mind test in a way, really. If you can wrap your mind around it in the right way, believe it, then you are ready for higher physics. Imagine a cat, sealed in a lead box, and there's no way to look into the box. Inside the box there is a flask of cyanide gas. Attached to the flask of cyanide gas is a Geiger counter. The Geiger counter is pointed at an atom. The atom has a 50-50 chance, in any given second, of decay. Now tell me, is the cat alive, or is the cat dead?Questioner
He's fifty-fifty.Robert Jordan
No, no, no, is the cat alive, or is the cat dead? I'm not asking you to give me odds. Is the cat alive, or is the cat dead?Questioner
Ah, he's alive.Robert Jordan
No.Question
Why not?Robert Jordan
If you're an engineer...If you have an engineering mindset, you'll say that the only way to do it is to open the box and check. If you have the mindset that could take you into higher physics, you're willing to accept that the cat is alive and dead, both, and will be fixed in one state or the other when the box is opened. But until the box is opened, the cat is alive, and it is dead, simultaneously.Questioner
Yeah, that's fifty-fifty.Robert Jordan
No, it's not a fifty-fifty chance. A fifty-fifty chance says that it's fifty percent chance that the cat is one way, and fifty percent that it's the other way.Questioner
So it's either way.Robert Jordan
No, the cat is not either way; it is both. It is 100% alive, and 100% that the cat is dead, and both things are true. And must be acceptable as true. If you cannot accept this as true, then you are not ready for quantum...for the most basic quantum physics, much less getting into anything beyond.
But the thing is that if you can wrap your mind around Schrödinger's cat, you can also wrap your mind around fantasy. As a matter of fact, the thing that I find very interesting is that...I don't really follow theoretical physics to any degree now, and haven't for more than twenty years. But when I find myself talking to a theoretical physicist, I sometimes get stuck on panels with theoretical physicists. I'm always afraid that I'm going to be left way behind because I haven't kept up in the area, but I find that I can keep up quite nicely. As long as...while they're discussing theoretical physics, I discuss theology. And ah, I find myself able to keep up quite nicely, talking about the same thing.
Tags
288
Interview: May, 2001
Marcon Report - Sorilea (Paraphrased)Question
At one point in the story we see Ishamael talking to Rand, and telling him that they have fought countless times in the past, but this is the final time. Is there anything about his Age that makes it special?Robert Jordan
"No...every Age is repeated, there is nothing that makes this age any different from any other turnings of the Wheel. The Wheel is endless."SORILEA
This leads me to believe that this will not be the LAST BATTLE ever. It probably just comes about every turning of the Wheel, and since it has been such a long time ago, no one ever remembers it.ROBERT JORDAN
RJ explained that that is what a lot of the WOT is about, the source of Legends, and how some legends are based in such a small bit of real history, that no one really knows where they came from. If they are real, or just made up.Tags
289
Interview: Apr 4th, 2001
Leiden Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Aan'allein
(And then the first half of my tape was gone, and I decided to save most of the rest for the audience questions.)
Jordan mentioned all the different cultures and myths he used in WoT. That he'd mined everything from Europe and Asia and Africa etc...
Robert Jordan
[first sentence paraphrased...only started taping again halfway through this] I don't know how it is in other places, but the best known legend for the American audience, that I had in mind ... when I wrote this for ... that legend is King Arthur. I would imagine that more people know the complete story of King Arthur and Guenever and the round table and the whole nine yards than know any other myth or legend, or perhaps more than know all the other myths put together. Now there are Arthurian elements in these books, but I had to try to bury them, for that reason, make them not so readily apparent. And while I had a particular part of the Arthurian legend mentioned from the first book, it was not until the third book that people began to realize what it was. In fact my editor, who is my wife, and who is a very very sharp woman, uhm, had edited the book and was writing the first version of the flap copy for the book, when she suddenly shouted down the stairs to me (if you're young, forgive me):
[loud] You son of a bitch, you've done it it to me again! [laughter]
Because she had suddenly spotted, not until reaching this... not until reaching the cover flap, she suddenly spotted by a... chance connection of words, this one particular Arthurian thing. [Jordan never mentioned what this was, but the logical option is of course Callandor.] And that you see, to me it's very obvious that the Arthur legend and all of the others are in there. If you spend time on the net, you find sites where they discuss these legends. [People sitting around me knowingly chuckle] I have to tell you that if you visit any of these FAQs... I haven't seen one in a couple of years, but the last time I was sent copies, I've read the printout of the FAQ, and when I was through it. And about a third of the answers in there were correct.
Aan'allein
[Turned the memo off here, this is well known. I did like the way he phrased the other two points here though. Something about "the second part was going in the right direction, but somewhere along the way they spotted something pretty which they followed and never arrived at drawing the conclusions they should have. As to the third part, I think it was written by people who didn't read my books at all."]Tags
290
Interview: Apr 4th, 2001
Leiden Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
There was a question about the Tolkien movie and if anything similar would be done with WoT. Jordan mentioned the NBC miniseries, and the option to take options on the other parts. Also that each book deserved at least a miniseries. Perhaps New Spring could be done in a three-hour feature length movie. "I'm not saying that it will be done, but it could."
He also said that his editor was telling him that perhaps it was "time to start shopping this around again. I didn't have to go to him to say 'hey you think anybody would be interested?'"
Another point he mentioned was that if nothing would happen he wouldn't mind it too much, he never set out to write movies.
Tags
291
Interview: Apr 4th, 2001
Leiden Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
A question about how Jordan came up with his names.Robert Jordan
Nynaeve is the name of the nymph who in some versions of the Arthur Legend, imprisoned Merlin. Amyrlin is of course a play on Merlin, as is Thom Merrilin, a play on Merlin, and Rand al'Thor is a play on Arthur, as well as on Thor, but then so is Arthur Hawkwing a play on Arthur, because as I said before it's not a retelling of the myths... As things are done by in the myth, in the legend, if things were done by one man, were actually in both done by several perhaps and had become inflated in time.
But the names come from everywhere. I read the ... in the New York Times, or the London Times, or something mis-seen on the street, I see, I catch a sign from the corner of my eye, and I misread a word on the sign because I only see it out of the corner of my eyes. And I jot it down, because it sounded like a good name.
Tags
292
Interview: Apr 5th, 2001
Amsterdam Signing Report - Karin (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Another question involved the Wheel of Time computer game: yes, he was involved in the making of it and has played it—but not very often. He would have liked better and more extensive features like having the characters interact more with the player.
There were also questions about the language used in the book; he also wanted people to know about the card game etc. etc.
Tags
293
Interview: Apr 5th, 2001
Amsterdam Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
Are Whitecloaks based on the Ku Klux Klan?Robert Jordan
Amongst others. Any group that believes to know the Truth with a capital T and want you to believe the same. Mostly it's based on groups like the Teutonic Knights, however, since they don't hide behind anything. The Church in the early Christian days, like the Taliban now, are people who know the Truth, and they will kill you if you don't believe the truth.
He did not pick up bits and pieces of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but the Whitecloaks are simply that, a group of people who know the truth, Veritas.
Tags
294
Interview: Dec 9th, 2002
Question
By far the most common question asked: What are your feelings on a movie version of your books? You've said that, to you, only the books really matter. Do you feel that a movie would do them justice though? Or do you think it might be too complex for the screen and even hurt their reputation? What about making a movie that focuses on a different time from the story you've told?
Robert Jordan
My feelings about the possibility of a movie are ambivalent. It would be very nice if a movie or movies, or a series on HBO or whatever were made, but that really would be something extra. I write books. If a movie is made, good. If not, I won't cry.
I don't think that a bad movie would do the books any damage, but with any movie, the writer of the book has to give up control to someone else and trust that other person to interpret the writer's vision. (God, that sounds pompous!) I used to think that it might be impossible for a movie to really encompass any of the books, but since seeing The Lord of the Rings, I've changed my mind. In any case, Harriet says (and Plato agrees with her) that the only thing to do when you sell a book to Hollywood is to take the money, walk away very fast before they can take it back, and never, ever go to see the movie. Of course, any movie depends on someone making an offer for an option and then following through to exercise the option, and so far, that hasn't happened. The option bit did, true, but not the rest. We are now waiting, as they say. But not very anxiously.
Tags
295
Interview: Dec 9th, 2002
Question
Do current events and world politics, such as the tragedy on September 11th, ever end up influencing the events within the books? If so, what are some examples?
Robert Jordan
Only by accident. Any writing is always filtered through the writer, and whatever the writer lives through always changes the filters, but I don't consciously set out to mirror current events in any way.
Tags
296
Interview: Dec 9th, 2002
Question
How accurate is the information in the WoT RPG? For instance, it says that Taim was captured by Black Ajah. In your books, though, you seem to leave this issue open to debate. Does your official approval of the game extend to its plot interpretations?
Robert Jordan
I didn't consult with them on interpretations at all, really. I was trying to let them set up situations where the game could be played parallel to to the story arc, or perhaps outside it. I did try to find anything that contradicted the books, or what I intended in future books, and I caught a few errors when going over their galley proofs. I would have asked them to remove this, had I caught it.
Tags
297
Interview: Apr 6th, 2001
Rotterdam Signing Report - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
The first specific question for Jordan was asked why he chose to write a fantasy series, instead of going for historical novels.Robert Jordan
Well, in terms of history, I see some similarity to the writing of a fantasy novel and the writing of a history novel. In both cases you are presenting a world that is totally strange and alien to the reader. And if you don't believe that, read a good novel set three hundred years ago, one that really describes the life and you'll find very little recognizable in it.
So there is a great deal of similarity there. The major difference is that if you're writing a good historical novel you must place the historical events where they actually happened, not shift them about at your own convenience. In a fantasy novel you can shift history for your own convenience. It's a great...a great aid.
Question
And that's attracted you because you felt your hands free to...Robert Jordan
That's, that's a part of it. Another part of it is that I felt I could discuss things writing fantasy that I couldn't discuss writing in other genres, things that I would have to...sidestep.
There's a great deal of the struggle between good and evil. I'm trying to decide what is good, and what is evil, what's right, what is wrong, am I doing the right thing? Not by preaching; simply the characters keeping face with a situation or they're gonna make a decision; they don't know enough, don't have enough information, and they don't know what the results are going to be; oh they know what the results are gonna be and they're wrong. We'll give them that. At least wrong a lot of the times. And they have to blunder on and blunder through anyway, cause that's all there is to do.
But if I wrote about that, if I tried to say that there is a right, there is a wrong, there is good, there is evil, it's tough to tell the difference, but you really have to make the try. ... It's worth the effort to try. If I said that in a mainstream novel, it would be laughed out of town.
Tags
298
Interview: Apr 6th, 2001
Dromen and Demonen Chat (Verbatim)Rand
At what age did you start to think that you were going to write books and where did you get your inspiration?Robert Jordan
I knew from the age of five that I was going to write books one day and the inspirations were actually Jules Verne and Mark Twain.Tags
299
Interview: Apr 6th, 2001
Dromen and Demonen Chat (Verbatim)aec
Where do you get your inspiration from?Robert Jordan
I get my inspiration from almost fifty years of reading everything I can get my hands on and thinking of everything I read.Tags
300
Interview: Nov 6th, 1998
Amazon.com Interview (Verbatim)Therese Littleton
There are a lot of battles, wars, and great conflicts in your books. Did your military experiences influence that part of your writing?
Robert Jordan
To some extent, but mainly the thing that comes out of my experiences in the military is that I know what it's like when someone is trying to kill you. And I know that being in a battle is confusion. You know what you can see; you don't know what is happening beyond your sight. That's what comes from the military. To tell you the truth, the battles aren't nearly as interesting as the people. I like the interactions of the people—the character development, the way people play off one another.
Tags
301
Interview: Nov 6th, 1998
Amazon.com Interview (Verbatim)Therese Littleton
Are there particular historical eras that influence your stories?
Robert Jordan
Well, to give you an example of the way these things work... the Aiel. They have some bits of Japanese in them. Also some bits of the Zulu, the Berbers, the Bedouin, the Northern Cheyenne, the Apache, and some things that I added in myself. They are in no way a copy of any of these cultures, because what I do is say, "If A is true, what else has to be true about this culture? If B is true, what else has to be true?" And so forth.
In this way I begin to construct a logic tree, and I begin to get out of this first set of maybe 10, maybe 30 things that I want to be true about this culture. I begin to get around an image of this culture, out of just this set of things, because these other things have to be true. Then you reach the interesting part, because this thing right here has to be true, because of these things up here. But, this thing right here has to be false, because of those things up there. Now, which way does it go, and why? You've just gotten one of the interesting things about the culture, one of the really interesting little quirks.
To me, that in itself is a fascinating thing—the design of a culture. So that's how the Aiel came about. There are no cultures that are a simple lift of Renaissance Italy or 9th-century Persia or anything else. All of them are constructs.
Tags
302
Interview: Nov 6th, 1998
Amazon.com Interview (Verbatim)Therese Littleton
Are there any characters in the books that are based on historical figures?
Robert Jordan
No. The groups are sometimes in ways based on historical organizations. The Whitecloaks have a lot of, say, Teutonic Knights. The Aes Sedai organization comes from the way convents were organized between A.D. 1000 and 1800, a time when there was real political power behind convents.
There is one real-life individual who has contributed a lot. My wife has given me, involuntarily, at least one major character trait for all of the major female characters in the books. I'm very mean to her, I won't tell her which character traits I have taken.
Therese Littleton
That's probably wise.Robert Jordan
As she has pointed out to me, she knows where I sleep! So I consider it wise not to upset her, if I can avoid it.Tags
303
Interview: Nov 6th, 1998
Amazon.com Interview (Verbatim)Therese Littleton
The women characters in your books are really interesting, not at all the cardboard cutouts that appear so often in fantasy. Did you do that consciously?
Robert Jordan
In part. In this world, given the history that divides this world, women had to have real political power. But on the other hand, I simply consider women to be more interesting if there's more about them to be interesting. A real live Barbie might be a lot of fun for a weekend if you're 22, but after that there's not much to it. Empty calories.
They are complex women, strong women, the sort of women I've always found interesting. As my grandfather said, "Boy, would you rather hunt rabbits or leopards?" No choice there.
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Interview: Apr 6th, 2001
Dromen and Demonen Chat (Verbatim)Genoveva
Mr. Jordan, do you weave (existing) mythology or archetypes in your books?Robert Jordan
Yes, I weave existing mythology into my books but I reverse engineer it rather than simply retell.Tags
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Interview: Apr 7th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Fantasy is the literature of hope. In fantasy there is a belief that you can make a difference. Today may be bleak, but you can live through today. And tomorrow will be better. And maybe there'll be a different darkness tomorrow, but you can live through that, too, and you can make the light come, and the darkness go away. It doesn't matter how many times the darkness comes. There is always hope for something better. I think that that is the central core running through fantasy. And having said that...I have to apologize, by the way, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I'm a bit groggy, a bit punchy. And I'm trying very hard to hold on to my thoughts and to my line of reasoning and not go off on strange and awful tangents. I think what I'm going to do now is ask who would like to ask me a question.Tags
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Interview: Apr 7th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
How much are you like the major characters?Robert Jordan
I don't really think that any of the major characters are very much like me, although there's some bits in Mat that remind me of me when I was younger.
Followed by the regular "I think of myself as Lan; my wife says I'm Loial."
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Interview: Apr 7th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
Are the parallels between cultures conscious?Robert Jordan
Well, the parallels are conscious, but I've taken, I've tried to take come care that there's no exact duplication. There are bits from this culture and this historical period, and this sort of other culture and other historical period, fitted together to make this culture or that culture. You cannot look at the Sea Folk for instance and say, "Oh yes, ah well, that's from India. That is the culture of Japan, or India, or China, or England, or whatever." Because there is no single culture in that way. The Aiel (eye-eel) for example have bits of Zulu, and bits of Apache, and bits of Cheyenne Indians, and bits of Bedouin and bits of Japanese cultures, and also some things that I simply thought would be neat. ... So I could fit them into the culture.Question
Which cultures are in the Seanchan? (based on things in the Guide)Robert Jordan
The Seanchan also are the melting of things that have come from many different human cultures to make their culture. There have been many rigid stratified, rigidly hierarchical cultures. It's a very human thing. The concept of being able to climb above your station is a relatively new one in human culture. You were born where you were born for a reason, and that is the place you will stay, that has been the norm for human culture, for most of history.
I mean, even the groups...the Whitecloaks are the people who know the truth. Not just truth, they know Truth, they know Veritas, they know Truth with a capital T, they're the Taliban, the Ku Klux Klan, they're the people who know the truth and you must believe their truth or they will kill you. but they're not the Taliban, they're not the Teutonic Knights, they're not the Ku Klux Klan. They are simply that concept.
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Interview: Apr 7th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
A question about a WoT movie.Robert Jordan
A Japanese company contacted me about doing an animated movie. I told them no, because they wanted to do a movie based on two or three books, and I said, "no, I won't do that".
Aan'allein
Then he talked about NBC acquiring an option about doing a miniseries based on the first book and options to buy options on the other books, and that there was quite some progress made by the people involved and then, "those people promptly left NBC," and NBC has let the option lapse.Robert Jordan
It's a chancey thing. I would not support anyone doing a feature film of, say, The Eye of the World. I do not think it could be compressed into three hours. Certainly not into two. That would make it incomprehensible. But... [end of this side of the tape] ... the screenwriter makes further changes, because, although it's a collaborative effort, if the director says I don't like this, do it some other way, do it this way, and the screenwriter does that. And if the screenwriter doesn't do that, they'll get another screenwriter. And then the actor says, "I don't believe this character would say this." And the actress says I don't want to do that, see, I want to do it this way, so they change the dialogue, and they change the scene. And the director, again, comes up and says, "I think it should be done in this fashion," and he shapes it.Question
Which actors and actresses would you cast if a movie were made, and you had that power?Robert Jordan
That power is never given to a writer of a book, believe me. I know that there are websites, more than one, that have sections or they have posts that this actor or that actress for this role or that role. I don't think I've ever really thought about it. To me a movie is something that would be nice if it happened. A miniseries...if Thom should be Sean Connery or Patrick Stewart. I'm sorry, I simply have never thought about that.Tags
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Interview: Apr 7th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
How much influence did you have on the WoT computer game, what is your feeling about the game, and what is your opinion about the community? And, within the community it is well known that a lot of readers got into the game, but the other way around as well: a lot of gamers tried the books, the Wheel of Time books and liked them, and what is your opinion about that?Robert Jordan
I saw the computer game as a way to attract people to the books. That's why I agreed, when I was approached by gaming companies, who started wanting the rights. But I also wanted it to be something that was going to be decent. So when I signed the first contract, I made sure there was a particular clause in the contract. And they brought me the plans for the game, now, they'd showed me a couple of games that they'd done previously. When they brought in the plans for the game. What they had done with that was file away the numbers off the previous games, took the files' serial numbers off, and put some whiteout over the names, and blacked out the names for my book into the ... over their old games. And I said no. I don't like that. I would like you to do this, and this, and this. I would like this to be possible, and that to be possible. And they said, "well, we can't really do that." And I said, "well, ah I guess...well, there is this paragraph 24, subparagraph z, and I'm invoking that now, and here's a check, that's the money you gave me, goodbye."
...go away. Here, I'm giving you back the money, go away. So they were shocked. And they came to me and said, "look, no, we'd really like to do this, and we'll do the things that you'd like to do". Well, they did. Took them over two-and-a-half years. They had to sell their company to a bigger company to get the money to finance it, [laughter] but that was okay. And I liked the fact that one review said that they'd used the Unreal Engine better than Unreal did. I liked the fact that they were hired based on my game, the game based on my books, that they were hired to write the next Unreal game, the sequel to Unreal.
I like the fact that although the Unreal Engine turned out to be incapable of doing some of the things that I wanted them to do, because they knew about these things that I wanted them to do, they were hired to rewrite the Unreal Engine so that it could do the things that I wanted it to do that previously it could not.
What is going to happen, I don't know... [asked Mike Verdu about this] ...to do more computer games. But then a French company bought Legend GTI and Mike said, "they've told us, we must go into a new direction," and I asked, "what is this new direction?" And he said, "I don't know, they won't tell us. They say we're supposed to wander around until we find it." So I don't know what's going to happen there. I think maybe there's been too much wine before the meeting but I have no idea what will happen there.
I think the game is visually beautiful, but I've never played it, because I don't play that type of game. When I'm on a computer and I'm not working, which is not very often, I play chess, or perhaps a strategic simulation of a battle. Free-fight games for every war, that sort of thing.
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Interview: Apr 7th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
A question about what interests Jordan most in his books:Robert Jordan
In many ways I think of these books, I spy myself in any of these books as being a sort of Jane Austen, but I've added everything, all that stuff about battles and politics and what not more and the Dark One, and what's really fascinating me, what's really interesting is the people. Working on one another, and reacting to one another.Tags
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Interview: Apr 8th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
A question about influences in his writing...Robert Jordan
When I started writing I did not think of anybody as being an influence or an inspiration, in any way. There were simply stories I wanted to tell. Long before the Wheel of Time. I now believe I can see writers among my favorite writers, having certain influences on me, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, John D. MacDonald, Louis L'Amour. They certainly influenced me, but again not inspiration.Tags
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Interview: Apr 8th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
[Question about reading, research, sources, influences.]Robert Jordan
It's hard really for a figure that I've been researching for the Wheel of Time. I see things, I notice things. I realize, "I can use this." An example I've used to you before, but it's a good one, is that [after leaving Tanchico, Nynaeve and Elayne needed] traveling companions. I wanted them to travel with some people, rather than by themselves. I wasn't too sure exactly what sort of group I was going to use. And I happened to go to the circus. And the circus happened to have a lot of acts that... (were) from Asia. I don't know why they seemed to have such a disproportionate number of acts from Asia. They were much different than most European circus acts and American circus acts, which are very similar to European circus acts. And when I went to my desk the next morning, I realized I knew exactly how Elayne and Nynaeve were going to travel. With Valan Luca's show.
I have read for close on to fifty years, everything I could get my hands on. Various bits and pieces have been stuck in my head. And I use them. And sometimes...and if I see anything that's interesting, and a lot of things interest me, cultural anthropology, development of cities, how a windmill works, how does a waterwheel work? these things interest me, as much as how a modern day skyscraper is built, or how do you go about building a base on the moon?, or how do you go about building an industrial facility in an L5-point? Sometimes I do research and then... Well, I know nothing about blacksmithing really...[followed by that story you've heard before] No matter what you know, if you're an expert blacksmith, I want you to read right past that blacksmith scene, and believe it. And of course very few people will be expert blacksmiths, but that's fine. Because no matter what the scene is, I want you to believe it. No matter what your own knowledge is.
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Interview: Apr 8th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
How closely are you involved in the role-playing game of the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
I assume you mean the work of Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragon type game?Questioner
Yeah.Robert Jordan
Uhm, I really don't know how closely involved I am, to tell you the truth. I told them I want to be, I want to have approval. I want to be involved from the earliest stages and beyond. As near as I can tell, so far that's resulted in me being sent a table of contents. I haven't seen anything else. We'll see what happens, I don't know.Tags
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Interview: Apr 8th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
Ah yes, somebody asked about him comparing Randland with 17th century earth as it would have been without gunpowder, but said that there was gunpowder in Randland.Robert Jordan
Jordan explained that the development of something like gunpowder is not as natural as it might seem to us. They had fireworks for a thousand years in China before thinking of using it as a weapon (and then they only threw fireworks over the walls because they'd run out of rocks). Steel was invented time and again with never becoming widely known. Things like that. There's no reason for Randlanders to connect 'wanting to do things Aes Sedai do, but without using the Power' with fireworks. There are currently only a handful of people thinking about possible uses of fireworks as a weapon, and that only because they were around to learn about the damage of a Chapterhouse blowing up or something similar. Besides this, Randlanders aren't thinking about making weapons when dealing with fireworks, they're thinking about making money with it, because it's a luxury good. It's just as if caviar could be used as a weapon.Tags
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Interview: Apr 8th, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair - Aan'allein (Verbatim)Question
A question about how autobiographical the books are.Robert Jordan
There is nothing in my books that I can point to and say, "that happened to me," but everything I write is talking about who I am. And who I am is a creation of all the things that have happened to me in my life. So you could say that everything I write was first shaped by my life's experiences. It's a rather tenuous connection, but that's the only one I can find for you, sorry.Tags
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Interview: 2012
Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)JD (4 January 2012)
I played on older computer GSM the other day and came across The Green Man exactly as described by Jordan. Licensed?Brandon Sanderson (4 January 2012)
Probably not, more RJ was drawing on mythology for the Green Man so they did as well.Tags
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Interview: 2002
Bookstream Bookwrap Interview (Verbatim)The Wheel of Time sagaRobert Jordan
The Wheel of Time is a story of a world in change, and of people in change. These are ordinary people who find themselves thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Their world is altering, their society is altering, quite often in ways they don't like. And they are learning that some of these things they can change the direction of, or stop the changes, but they can't stop everything. Change happens, no matter what you want to happen, change is going to happen. And they are changing as well. By Crossroads of Twilight, if you followed from The Eye of the World, you'd realize that they are the same people they were in the beginning, but you also realize they're very different people. They have been changed by their world changing and by their experiences, just as much as their world has changed.Tags
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Interview: 2002
Bookstream Bookwrap Interview (Verbatim)My Childhood InfluencesRobert Jordan
Three books: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, From the Earth to the Moon. I was five years old; I started reading early. I set those books up on a table on end, and I sat in a chair with my feet in the chair, and my chin on my knees—I was a little skinnier then. And I stared at those books and I said, "I'm going to do this one day. I'm gonna make stories like this one day." I can make a living writing books. This is wonderful, this is great. Yes, I love to write. It's sort of like finding out you can make a living eating chocolate.Tags
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Interview: 2002
Bookstream Bookwrap Interview (Verbatim)Nothing Stays the SameRobert Jordan
I come from Charleston, South Carolina, which is a city that has undergone tremendous changes. The time of the American Revolution, it was the wealthiest city in North America. It was also the site of the Secession Convention that started the Civil War, and as a result of that, it was written out of the histories. You learn, growing up under those circumstances, that nothing stays the same. Even when you look around you and see all of these old houses, and what tourists think of as a stable old culture, it's changed a hundred times in the last two hundred years. You realize that things that people think of as permanent, such as history, are mutable. They are changed by the observer. And what is remembered of history often becomes more important than what actually happened.Tags
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Interview: Jan 11th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Dan Olin (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
One audience participant queried if he wrote down ideas that interested him for possible inclusion in future books, and where did he find all of his character names. He responded that he used to keep a journal of ideas for future projects, but stopped a number of years ago because to cover all of his current ideas along, he would have to live to be age 350. He bases his character names often on myth, giving the examples of "Al'Thor" and "Artur Hawkwing" being based on King Arthur of Arthurian legend. Other times he sees a name in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal that sounds intriguing when pronounced, and he merely changes the spelling slightly to incorporate that sound.Tags
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Interview: Jan 14th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Matthew Julius (Paraphrased)Matthew Julius
We get close up in line and I can start hearing things, but nothing of importance. A lady—clearly a fan—in front of me must have asked him about the female characters in his books:
Robert Jordan
His reply is that his whole family is filled with very strong women...
"All of the men in my family are strong, because the women in my family would kill and eat the weak ones."
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Interview: Jan 15th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Bradley Staples (Verbatim)Question
Are there any correlations between the One Power and the philosophy of chi?Robert Jordan
No. Sorry.Tags
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Interview: Jan 15th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Bradley Staples (Verbatim)Question
Is Rand al'Thor meant to be a Jesus figure?Robert Jordan
Um, if you consider King Arthur to be a Jesus figure—the king who must die. [more, indistinct]
Bradley Staples
[I'm not positive on the exact wording of that question. It's indistinct.]
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Interview: Jan 16th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Tim Kington (Paraphrased)Question
Is Olver Gaidal Cain?Robert Jordan
No. I didn't really think that this would last as long as it has. The timing is wrong. He has another reason for being there besides being a red herring, though.QUESTION
He's too old.ROBERT JORDAN
Yes. Time in Tel'aran'rhiod and the real world run at different rates, but it never runs backwards. You may spend an hour in Tel'aran'rhiod, and a day has passed when you get back, or you may spend a day, and an hour has passed when you get back, but you'll never go in on Tuesday and come back on Monday.QUESTION
Is the difference in time constant?ROBERT JORDAN
No. It's fairly random. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes the same as real time.QUESTION
It's different for different people, then?ROBERT JORDAN
Yes. Unless they're together in Tel'aran'rhiod. Then the same amount of time passes for them obviously.Tags
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Interview: Jan 18th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Daniel G (Paraphrased)Question
Who do you base your female characters on?
Robert Jordan
I take some of the characteristics from my wife, and I distribute them through all of the female characters. I am, however, being very mean and I won't tell her which characteristics those are.
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Interview: Jan 18th, 2003
COT Signing Report - Daniel G (Paraphrased)Question
How do you create the names for the characters?
Robert Jordan
(He said a really long answer, and I will summarize it. He basically takes names from legends and twists them, mainly King Arthur. The two characters that are based after King Arthur are Artur Hawkwing, obviously, and Rand. For example, the "sword in the stone." He says that the Wheel of Time could kind of be known as the basis of where all of the legends and myths come from. He said he tried to bury King Arthur very deeply, because if people thought that The Eye of the World was just another King Arthur book, nobody would buy it.)
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Interview: Jan 22nd, 2003
USA Today Article (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Fantasy—"fiction based on the unreal"—is his true calling, however. "It touches on dreams and hope. No matter how dire the situation...there is a presumption of things coming out all right."USA Today
There are an estimated 65,000 fan Web sites devoted to Jordan's work. But The Wheel of Time series has not been made into a film or miniseries. (In the 1980s, Jordan wrote a series about Conan the Destroyer of film fame. The character was first created in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard.) Jordan promises that he will write "at least" two more novels in The Wheel of Time series.
"What makes Jordan so popular, I think, is that everything he writes makes perfect sense," notes Swedish high school teacher Lars Jacobsson, 27, from Malmö. He has been a fan since 1995. "In most other fantasy books, there's always a point where you go, 'I don't buy that, that doesn't seem right.' In The Wheel of Time, that point has yet to come."
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Interview: Jan 21st, 2003
SFRevu Interview (Verbatim)Ernest Lilley
When did you start in as a full-time writer?Robert Jordan
That was about twenty-five years ago. I was working as an engineer for the government and I was injured. I had to have my knee rebuilt, and there were complications from the surgery. A blood clot broke up in my lungs and kept me in the hospital for a month. Some sort of infection that gave me a fever. They tell me I almost died, and I decided that life was too short. I had always thought I'd write one day, but I decided that it was time to put up or shut up.Ernest Lilley
When did you first start thinking you'd write?Robert Jordan
When I was five. I learned to read very early. At five I was reading Jules Verne and Mark Twain. I had read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and From the Earth to the Moon, those were the last three books I had read and I propped them up on a table an looked at them and I remember thinking that someday I would make stories like this.Tags
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Interview: Jan 21st, 2003
SFRevu Interview (Verbatim)Ernest Lilley
I'm principally an SF reader, though I enjoy some fantasy. I think that one of the things I like about SF is that it tackles some big questions...but you write fantasy for the same reason.Robert Jordan
Yes, it seems to me that the SF you like, as do I, so often the "ta-pocketa-pocketa" if you remember the old Walter Mitty movie, the ta-pocketa-pocketa takes over and the characters are just there to see that it happens at the right time. The best SF goes much beyond that and there certainly a lot of flaws in a lot of Fantasy as well, but perhaps that's the reason I decided to go with Fantasy instead of SF.
Also, SF has absorbed something from mainstream literature, and that is something I think of as a moral ambivalence, which is the erroneous application of situational ethics. There really isn't anything that's right or wrong, there is no good or evil, it all depends on the circumstances.
Ernest Lilley
Post-Modern ethics for a Post-Human culture.Robert Jordan
And I look at this and say, no, no. There is right and there is wrong and there is good and there is evil, and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. But it's worth to try to tell the difference...you don't just flip a coin.Ernest Lilley
Do you think that people are getting tired of this moral relativism?Robert Jordan
I think so. Not to one value system. There are lots of value systems in this country. But I think that a lot of people want to believe in something, and they want a set of rules in life, or guidelines for life and behavior for what's right to do, or what's wrong to do and they may argue among themselves about whether this or that is right or wrong, but they want to believe in those things.Ernest Lilley
Tolerance is good, but being not caring is a bad thing.Robert Jordan
Yes, there is a difference between being tolerant and being a sponge.Ernest Lilley
So, fantasy allows you to deal with moral issues, while SF focuses you on the technology though it grapples with them somewhat, it is a setting based genre rather than a character based one.Robert Jordan
And the technology is very often much more important than the issues, it seems to me.
I say this as someone who likes Neil Stephenson. I like Greg Bear. I reread Heinlein periodically...I love Science Fiction.
Ernest Lilley
Do you reread the Heinlein juveniles?Robert Jordan
Absolutely. I hate what they did with Starship Troopers. I kept waiting for Heinlein to come out of his grave and beat them all over the head. They made it very blatant that we were going to have a Nazi future there...and it was clear that the people who made it had no understanding of Robert Heinlein, or what made him tick, or what he was writing about.Ernest Lilley
Aside from mucking up the concept, and with all the CGI they used, I really hated that they omitted the central technology in the film, the powered suit.Robert Jordan
Ah, yes. I didn't quite understand why they left that out. I looked at the whole movie and decided I didn't want to buy the DVD on this one.Tags
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Interview: Jan 23rd, 2003
COT Signing Report - Neill Smith (Paraphrased)Neill Smith
I went through the line twice. My first question to him concerned the status of the unabridged audiobooks. I told him that I had tried to buy them from Books on Tape and had found out that they had lost the rights to them. He said that he hadn't known that, and that he would check in to the matter. I also mentioned that The Eye of The World had been listed by Amazon as being released by The Publishing Mills in October, but I never got my copy before they changed the listing to "out of print".Robert Jordan
He said that the original company with the audiobooks rights had been sold to another company, and that "it was a big mess". He said Books on Tape had been sold, but I think that it is The Publishing Mills that has been sold to New Millenium Publishing. He reiterated that he would find out what was going on. I asked how I could find out what the status was after he found out, and he said he didn't know of any way to manage that. I then suggested maybe he could send a message to Dragonmount after he had checked into matters, and he said that yes he might send an answer to Jason (??). [Editor's note: Woo hoo! That's me!] So Jason (??, I hope I got the name right) maybe you could remind him to check into this, or maybe you can find out what is going on through your WoT-related contacts. He did say that the audiobook publisher of Crossroads of Twilight is a Tor company, so I guess The Publishing Mills only had rights to the first 8 or 9 books.Tags
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Interview: Jan 23rd, 2003
COT Signing Report - Neill Smith (Paraphrased)Neill Smith
My second question to him concerned the various songs that he has scattered throughout the books. I asked him if he had a particular tune in mind for each song, thinking that I would get an answer like "Jack o' Shadows is based on an old English drinking song ...", etc.Robert Jordan
Instead, he said that he had tunes for each of the songs but that they existed only in his head right now. I asked if he ever planned to let us know what those tunes were, and he said maybe if he ever found time to put them down on paper.Tags
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Interview: Jan 23rd, 2003
COT Signing Report - Zeynep Dilli (Paraphrased)Question
[Will there be] a WoT movie?Robert Jordan
"I don't know. If you know Peter Jackson or Spielberg, you can always ask them to give me a call..." No objections to a movie as long as the people coming to him with an offer have both the means and the knowledge to pull it off. That might be a tougher proposition than even Lord of the Rings, in my opinion, due to sheer length and number of characters involved.Tags
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Interview: Jan 23rd, 2003
COT Signing Report - Zeynep Dilli (Paraphrased)Zeynep Dilli
I also asked about what sorts of music he hears in his mind's ear, as it were, while he's writing about the different musical styles in Randland.Robert Jordan
For example, the Tinker music is (obviously) gypsy music, tziganes and similar. Thom chanting the tales is quite like troubadour music of the Middle Ages in continental Europe. As for others—dance music, general folk—he mentioned Irish folk music (gigs and reels, I guess, and ballads), Appalachian Hill music, and bluegrass.Zeynep Dilli
I don't quite know where that last comes from, but oh well.
Overall, it was fun.
Zeynep Dilli
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Interview: Feb 9th, 2003
Charleston.net Interview (Verbatim)Bill Thompson
Given the respect and artistry accorded "The Lord of the Rings" movies by director Peter Jackson, does Jordan feel that a film version of "The Wheel of Time" is now more feasible?Robert Jordan
"I do not know whether it could be done in that way. I have just had an option offered from a production company called Manetheren Films, which was spawned for the purpose of producing the books as a miniseries or a series of miniseries on some place like HBO or the SciFi Channel. We'll see how it goes. It won't be the first time that someone has bought an option. NBC bought an option, then all the people involved in buying it went elsewhere. But the check cleared."Tags
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Interview: Mar 29th, 2004
SciFi Weekly Interview (Verbatim)Sci Fi Weekly
Talking about movies, will any of your works be making the jump to the big or small screen? Any Wheel of Time movies or TV shows in development?Robert Jordan
There is no development going on right now, but we'll see what happens. There is some interest, some sniffing around.Tags
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Interview: Mar 29th, 2004
SciFi Weekly Interview (Verbatim)Sci Fi Weekly
There is a lot of magic in your writing. Do you believe in any form of magic? How much of your spirituality is reflected in your writing?Robert Jordan
No, I don't believe in magic, which is one of the reasons I structured the One Power very much as if it is a science. In fact, the technology of the preceding age was based on the use of the One Power.
As for how much of my spirituality is in my books, I leave it to anybody else to say whether I have any spirituality. I think I'm pretty grounded.
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)Tulsa, OK
With the success of the Lord of the Rings movies, are there any plans to make Wheel of Time movies?Robert Jordan
Well, that depends entirely on Hollywood. If someone comes to me and wants to do a movie, I'm totally open about it, but so far nobody has come to me in a major way.Tags
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)San Diego, CA
I've noticed that many names, items, etc. are similar, if not the same, as what could be found in material relating to the Holy Grail and other subject matter relating to Catholicism, the Crusades, etc. Is this coincidence or intentional?Robert Jordan
It's intentional. I have intended from the beginning that these books should be a sort of source for all of our legends and myths. That is the conceit that I'm playing with here.Tags
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)Delmar, NY
Besides your incredibly structured magic system, how would you say that your physics education has influenced your writing? Do you regret at all not taking English and writing classes in college instead?Robert Jordan
No, I don't have any regrets about not taking college English courses. If you major in English, I believe you're well trained to teach English but not necessarily to use it. And my physics background also gave me a view of structure that I think has been very useful in writing.Tags
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)Carbondale, IL
Are there any plans for a video game made about the WoT that would do the series justice as in a RPG?Robert Jordan
Well, there is a computer game out from Legend GTI, but there are no plans for PlayStation or Gameboy or those things. If I were approached by somebody who does that sort of thing, I would be amenable to doing a contract for that.Tags
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)Storrs, Connecticut
Did you get the name Robert Jordan from the novel For Whom The Bell Tolls? If so, Why?Robert Jordan
No, I got the name Robert Jordan from making lists of names using my real initials and taking one name from one list and one from the other list. I took a pen name because I wanted to keep the sorts of books I wrote separate, and I wanted to write a novel about my experiences in Vietnam and I was going to put my real name on that.Tags
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)Laurel, MS
If Hollywood made a movie of WoT, who would you like to play Rand and the others?Robert Jordan
I don't have a clue. I don't think I've ever even thought of that myself. I know other people have, but I have not.Tags
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)NYC, NY
Why are the women in your series very obnoxious? Does Harriet play a role in the characters of your women?Robert Jordan
No, the women in my books are not obnoxious. The women in my books are strong. I grew up in a family where all of the men were strong, and the reason is the women in my family killed and ate the weak ones.
When I was a boy, just old enough to be starting to date in a fumbling way, I complained something about girls. And my father said to me, "Would you rather hunt leopards or would you rather hunt rabbits? Which is going to be more fun?" And I decided I'd rather hunt leopards.
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2004
USA Today Interview (Verbatim)Detroit, Michigan
Have you been approached to allow your books to be turned into any animated (Anime?) format?Robert Jordan
No. No one has approached me about that.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2003
Budapest Q&A (Verbatim)Rhynn
Are there any religions in the world of the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
No. No religions, no churches: that will change in the next set of books, not in this, but where religion becomes in some ways preeminent, but...Mort
[interrupts] Oh, is that a spoiler?? No, no!Robert Jordan
No, that's not for the Wheel of Time at all, and may change somewhat, as these things do. But the reason is this: I've always believed that our religious rituals our attendance at temples, or churches, or whatever is, in part, a reaffirmation of our faith, and a reaffirmation of our belief, a strengthening of our belief in something that we cannot see. And we do these things in order to strengthen our belief in what we cannot see. God, Allah, whatever...but, in this world, it is a world that...as if we had...prophets walking around...performing miracles. The One Power can be channeled. Occasionally men show up channeling the One Power; the Aes Sedai have been there for 3000 years.Question
But the Creator does not interfere!Robert Jordan
The Creator does not interfere, but there is clear evidence of the theological doctrine.Question
Of the unseen.Robert Jordan
Of the unseen. As far as it is believed, of the existence of the Creator: Here is the One Power. Here is evidence of everything we believe. There is therefore no need for anyone to undergo rituals to reaffirm or strengthen their belief because it is manifest every day. If we really had prophets walking among us, performing miracles and healing people and raising the dead—and this was a matter of every day that somebody might walk down the street and say 'In the name of...' and lay their hand on you. 'In the name of God be healed,' and your wounds are healed. Or, 'In the name of God rise up and walk,' and your dead brother, just died of cholera or whatever rises up and walks—I believe that organized religion would vanish within a generation, or at least become a fringe within a generation, because there would no longer be a need for most people to reaffirm their belief in God, or to strengthen their belief in God, or Allah, or whatever else their religious belief is. It would be manifest in every day life.Wood Sun
And how about the Whitecloaks? I mean they look like some sort of religious sect.Robert Jordan
Which?Question
(two girls in unison) The Whitecloaks!Robert Jordan
The Whitecloaks? Well, they're meant to look as a religious sect. They began as, an ascetic organization dedicated to preaching against Darkfriends, trying to convince people by example that they should not become Darkfriends. And during the War of the Hundred Years they became a military organization. They are patterned on the Teutonic Knights, a touch of the German SS, and...Wood Sun
[interrupts] And the Spanish Inquisition?Robert Jordan
A touch of the Spanish Inquisition. (laughter) They are in short anyone who believes that they know the Truth—the Truth with a capital T. They know the Truth so well, and its so clear to them that if you don't believe that truth, then it becomes obvious that you are evil.Tags
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Interview: Apr 27th, 2004
Wotmania Interview (Verbatim)Wotmania
Do you ever let compassion for a character affect or influence plot development?Robert Jordan
Never in life. I like writing books where good triumphs, though seldom as completely as some would wish, but sometimes bad things do happen to good people. That is the touch of realism in the fantasy that helps make it feel real. One of them, anyway.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2003
Budapest Q&A (Verbatim)Question
There is a widespread debate on the internet: you mentioned some tales of times like Mosk and Merk...does it have any connection with America and Moscow?Robert Jordan
Yes. I thought that one was very obvious.Question
(various mumblings about Anla)Harriet McDougal
Anla, the Wise Counselor, she was the most popular advice columnist in the United States. Do you know Abby and Ann[?]? You write to the paper with a problem, you know, "What shall I do?", and she tells you. But her name was Ann Landers.Robert Jordan
And she was the most widely distributed advice columnist for what? 40 years? In the United States, and syndicated in newspapers all over the country. Anla the Wise Counselor was Ann Landers.Question
We would never have guessed it.Robert Jordan
No, but I try not to throw in everything that that people are going to guess immediately.Harriet McDougal
And Salya?Robert Jordan
No, let's not talk about Salya. [Q confused.] Salya, who walked among the stars? Lenn, who went to the moon in the belly of a fire eagle? Yes? And his daughter Salya who walked among the stars? [much mumbling] No, she didn't—she wasn't on the Challenger. Sally Ride was the first female American astronaut. So, that's Salya, who in this thing has become the daughter of Lenn, who was John Glenn, who did not go to the moon in an eagle, but flies to the moon in the belly of a "fire eagle"...Harriet McDougal
[interrupts] And his relationship to Salya. That's how it works.Robert Jordan
But that's the whole thing, in these books: it's giving you hints, really, and it was the way it was giving you hints, clearly, as to the way things are working in the books, that these are the source of legends, but it's not in any way a straightforward retelling. What two or three men have done will be compressed to make one story, or what one man has done may be split up into two different men—this part's given to somebody else, and that part's given to that one—and he himself is completely forgotten. I put these things there in a way as a clue, a hint to you: this is the way things are working in these books, this is what has come of things that are somewhat recognizable from our time. What myths have risen out of them? So, you see how the distortion has happened. What myths are going to arise out of the events of these books? It's not going to be just another telling of what happens in these books—it's all going to be twisted and woven together in ways that nobody who was there at the events would ever recognize.Tags
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2004
ComicCon Wrap-Up - Jason Denzel (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
We asked about folk songs in The Wheel of Time.Robert Jordan
Robert said that he always has a tune in mind for each song.Jason Denzel
We immediately asked about "Jak o' the Shadows".Robert Jordan
According to RJ, "Jak o' the Shadows" should be sung to the Garryowen, which is the official march of the US 7th Cavalry.
Here are the lyrics:
Jak o' the Shadows (Band of the Red Hand version)
We'll drink the wine till the cup is dry, and kiss the girls so they'll not cry, and toss the dice until we fly to dance with Jak o' the Shadows.
We'll dance all night while the moon runs free, and dandle the lasses upon our knee, and then you'll ride along with me, to dance with Jak o' the Shadows.
We'll sing all night, and drink all day, and on the girls we'll spend our pay, and when it's gone, then we'll away, to dance with Jak o' the Shadows.
There're some delight in ale and wine, and some in girls with ankles fine but my delight, yes, always mine, is to dance with Jak o' the Shadows.
We'll toss the dice however they fall, and snuggle the girls be they short or tall, then follow young Mat whenever he calls, to dance with Jak o' the Shadows.
Jason Denzel
Although he didn't sing Jak o' the Shadows for us (not that we didn't try to get him to do it), he did belt out some "Heartbreak Hotel" for us when we asked. We laughed. Harriet applauded.Tags
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2004
ComicCon Wrap-Up - Jason Denzel (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
One unique subject discussed over dinner was the metaphysical basis for the underlying spiritual topography of the WoT. Specifically, one member of the dinner party asked RJ whether he had intentionally woven core elements of the world's various spiritual/mystical traditions into his work, or whether those ideas were in fact manifesting THROUGH him as pure art.Robert Jordan
His answer was a description of his bookshelf at home, which begins at the left side with the Christian Bible, continues into more Judeo-Christian texts, then picks up with the Quran, with books on Hindusim (I got the sense he was referring to the Bhagavad-Gita, but would need to check with him to be sure), Buddhist texts, and then what he called various "discourses" on world religion and spiritual philosophy.
Jason Denzel
In short—RJ is a student of world relgion, which explains much of the religious diversity of his work, not just in terms of the many cultures of his world but in terms of the underlying metaphysical structure of his universe.
By the way, Robert Jordan also sent me an email recently further describing his book collection.
Robert Jordan
The bookshelf I spoke of is one bookcase that holds my books on religion. There are a couple of others for mythology, and a great many covering nonfiction and fiction. At present, the total collection is around thirteen thousand volumes in my study. That's the carriage house behind what is colloquially called "the big house" in Charleston, the main dwelling, whether it is all that big or not; books in the big house aren't part of this total since most of them are Harriet's, and she doesn't catalog her books. I'm trying to pare that number down because I don't have enough room. Unfortunately, as fast as I can give books away, I buy more. Oh, well.
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2004
ComicCon Wrap-Up - Jason Denzel (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
During the course of the meal, we eventually got on the topic of his time in Vietnam. What he revealed to us was deeply personal, disturbing, and moving. Although I will not comment on the specifics (it's his story to tell, not mine), I can say that it was the first time ever that I truly saw and felt the very essence of his books before me. In the days to come Melissa and Brad and I would talk about how it was during these stories that we saw Perrin, and Mat, and Rand in his eyes. We understood where their sad reluctance for war comes from. Their sense of duty.
A few years ago, Robert Jordan talked about some of these same topics in an interview that he did with Dragonmount and Wotmania. Go here to read it. The part about Vietnam is about halfway down. It's one thing to read it and a whole other thing to hear him tell it. I think war in general is like that. I wouldn't know, because I have never served time in the military. But I have the deepest respect for those who do.
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Interview: 2005
Bookstream Bookwrap Interview (Verbatim)Experiences as a soldierRobert Jordan
I'm not certain that my background in the military has informed my writing at all really. My experiences in Vietnam certainly did, because anything that you live through really has some effect on who you are and how you write. I know what being in a battle is like. I know what it is like to have somebody trying to kill me personally. I know what it's like to kill somebody. And I know what it's like to believe that you are going to die in the next two minutes. These things are very useful when you're writing high fantasy. Your characters know what it is like to experience these things; you can put that into those characters.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Reports (Paraphrased)Question
Any updates on a Wheel of Time movie?Robert Jordan
He's currently meeting with Red Eagle Entertainment. There is no script yet. As of now Red Eagle has the option on The Eye of the World.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Reports (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Countries—all are bits and pieces of others. None is a direct translation of a specific country.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Reports (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Blademasters vary by style. The most famous Japanese sword fighter developed his form in the Philippines fighting what he considered the deadliest fighters in the world, Spanish fighting with rapier and dagger.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Reports (Paraphrased)Question
What about the Legend/GT Interactive computer game?Robert Jordan
There are no future plans. Their first pass was a clone of their previous games. RJ said that won't work, it needs to do this and that. They said their current engine couldn't do what he wanted so they were going they way they wanted. He pointed to the clause in his contract giving him creative control and handed them back their advance check! After that, they went back and developed a whole new engine to do what he wanted. They were delighted with the final product and were planning more, but they were bought out by another company that went a different direction and that was that.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Reports (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
Character names—they come from all sorts of places. Some come from historical and mythological references, e.g., Rand al'Thor comes partly from Arthur and Thor. Artur Hawkwing is also from Arthur. Nynaeve is also a direct mythological name if you know the right version of the right myth. Other names are tweaks of foreign names he's seen that piqued his interest.
Cool moment from the book signing. An artist brought in a drawing of a Maiden of the Spear and asked RJ to name her! He thought for a few moments, then wrote "Ahrmin" on the print.
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Reports (Paraphrased)Question
Someone remarked for Cheyenne Raiders how much they resemble the Aiel.Robert Jordan
The Cheyenne were originally farmers in eastern central North America. They were attacked again and again by more ferocious tribes from the east and pushed farther and farther west. They eventually lost the art of farming and became nomads. In a tribal council they decided to become warriors and defend themselves and they eventually became the finest light cavalry in the world—a pacifist society forced by circumstance to become warriors. The Aiel also include facets of Apache, Zulu, Bedouin and Japanese.Tags
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Bradinator1
My question for Brandon would be:
What kind of mental "retooling" does it take for him to work on an already established world/storyline like Wheel of Time since this is someone else's work?Also, were there there a lot of notes or material left by Mr. Jordan to work from?
Brandon Sanderson
I thought about this quite a lot during the months when I was reading the Wheel of Time again straight through, trying to figure out how I would approach writing the final book. Obviously, this project wasn't going to be like anything I'd done before. I couldn't just approach it as I did one of my solo novels. And yet, it felt like trying to match Robert Jordan's style exactly would have made me lapse into parody.
A lot of the mental 'retooling' I did focused on getting inside the characters' heads. I decided that if I could make the characters sound right, the book would FEEL right, even if some of the writing itself was different. I also decided that I would adapt my style to fit the project. I became more descriptive, for one, and wrote viewpoint with the more intimate, in-head narrative style that Mr. Jordan used. Neither of these were attempts to match how he wrote exactly, but more me trying to match my style to The Wheel of Time, if that makes any sense.
In answer to the second question, he left LOTS of notes behind. He wrote complete scenes in places, dictated other scenes, left piles of notes and materials. The prologue was almost all completed by him (that will be split half in this book, half in the next.) The ending scenes were written by him as well. In the middle, there are a lot of scene outlines as well.
That's not to say there wasn't A LOT of work to do. The actual number of completed scenes was low, and in some places, there was no direction at all what to do. But his fingerprints are all over this novel. My goal was not to write a Brandon Sanderson book, but a Wheel of Time book. I want this novel (well, these three novels, now) to be his, not mine.
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Interview: Sep 7th, 2005
Jennifer Liang
The Dabel brothers (the producers of the Wheel of Time: New Spring comic book) were on-hand to get some issues of New Spring signed for the Tor internet hunt and to get Jordan's approval on some sketches for some computer wallpaper they are producing.
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Report - Diomedes (Paraphrased)Question
Another gentlemen asked about a WoT movie.Robert Jordan
RJ said that he had a meeting scheduled with Red Eagle that night (Friday night) and the following day (today, Saturday) to discuss that very thing. He hasn't seen any script (perhaps it hasn't even been written yet) and that Red Eagle had an option for The Eye of the World only. He seemed to have a wait and see attitude about the whole thing, and he provided no definitive information about the how or when a movie would be in the offing. It seemed to me that this is still in the very early stages.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Report - Diomedes (Paraphrased)Question
RJ was also asked about the WoT video game that Legend GTI produced a few years ago, and if there would be another video game in the future.Robert Jordan
RJ said that Legend GTI approached him about doing a video game, and RJ gave them a list of conditions that he wanted addressed. At one point, representatives from Legend GTI had a meeting with RJ in Charleston, and said we can't do everything that you want us to do, here's what we can do. RJ was not satisfied, and said they basically wanted to repackage their last game with the WoT logo on it. When he threatened to give Legend GTI their money back, something RJ doesn't believe anyone ever does in that business, Legend decided to attempt and meet RJ's criteria. RJ apparently believes that this gave them the impetus to research new software engines for gaming (he mentioned the Quake engine, though I don't know enough about the details of gaming software to fully understand the reference) and they eventually provided the type of game that RJ was looking for.
Some time after the WoT game was published, Legend GTI told RJ they were fairly excited and wanted to do some sequels, or do a modular publication. After some time with no more follow up, RJ got in touch with Legend himself. He was informed that the company had been bought by a French interest that wanted to take Legend GTI in different directions and he never heard back from them. RJ's not even sure if Legend GTI still exists, and that their license for WoT games has expired in any case. He also basically threw out an invitation for anyone that wanted to do a WoT game, so all you software engineer wotmaniacs, get busy!
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Report - Diomedes (Paraphrased)Question
RJ was asked a few questions about swords and fighting styles.Robert Jordan
Lan and Rand's swords are loosely based on the katana, and another style of sword I had never heard of before (sooba? something like that anyway. SilverWarder might know) and that others were based on medieval European styles. He said that blademasters don't follow one particular historical style of fighting, but that different blademasters have different styles depending on their culture of origin.
At this point he went off on a little tangent about Miyamoto Musashi, a reknowned Japanese swordsman that developed a two-sword style of fighting that was revolutionary at the time. He related that Musashi developed his fighting style after fighting in the Philippines against fighters (Dutch? Portuguese? I didn't write their nationality down, but somebody here might know) that were using swords and dirks in a two-handed fighting style. In any case, I think his point was to demonstrate how fighting styles, like other knowledge, disseminates from culture to culture, but is changed and adapted into something unique in each locale.
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Report - Diomedes (Paraphrased)Question
Another question asked about the fighting style of Far Dareis Mai, and the questioner referenced a particular form of martial art that I had never heard of.Robert Jordan
RJ responded that the Maidens fight with something that could be considered a cross between Tae Kwan Do and a third style that I had never heard of. It's a style that emphasizes the use of feet, legs and hips over the use of the upper body for obvious reasons. RJ felt that an all-female community of fighters would naturally discover such a style since it focuses on a women's relative strengths and would help them overcome their relative weaknesses.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2005
ComicCon Report - Diomedes (Paraphrased)Question
One person asked, rather impertinently I thought, if RJ had ripped off Tolkien's Middle-Earth map when he created his own.Robert Jordan
Of course, RJ denied that, and said that after he had handed in The Eye of the World, he was asked to provide a map. "Why do you need a map?" RJ asked, and he was told, "Tom Doherty likes maps." So, RJ slapped a couple pieces of paper together and drew in the mountains, then scattered the countries around, added some cities rivers and other geographical features and sent it off to Tor. Tor revised it a number of times until Elise Mitchell produced the version that became part of The Eye of the World. RJ also stated that if you look at a map of southwestern Saudi Arabia you'll see two mountain ranges that intersect at right angles.
When asked how aware of geography he was while writing, RJ said that he created the city maps whole, but only roughed out the larger ones. The bigger ones were then polished by the people at Tor before being printed in the books. I took it to mean that he wasn't all that concerned with larger geographic features, which might explain some of the geographic discrepencies in the story.
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Interview: Sep 3rd, 2005
DragonCon Report - Isabel (Verbatim)Question
When you first starting thinking about the series and thinking about writing it: when you were naming things, and places and people, did you have any sort of process or did you say, hey that sounds cool?Robert Jordan
Well, I don't know, it is a combination of things. I gave this recently, so it is probably already on the net. How did I come up with the division of the One Power, the male and female half? I had seen a novel, there are a lot now, but this was the first I had seen like this. Young woman wants to be whatever it was, a magician, whatever, but she can't because she is a woman, and women aren't allowed to do that so she is going to struggle through it.
I thought it was interesting, one of the earlier novels of the feminist struggle, and all that. I put it back, because it didn't seem something I cared to read, but I thought about it because the thought that occurred to me is okay, that's real easy, women aren't allowed to do this, it is historically based or grounded at least, what if it was men who couldn't, now how would that be, as my wife points out to me, we have the upper body strength, and she is convinced all of the inequities in the world vis a vis gender, are subject to the fact that we have all the upper body strength, and I am sorry about that baby, I ain't giving it up. So, how could there be a situation where men were not allowed to do this, and it does not somehow get itself reversed over time, add into this I wanted a near gender equal world as I could, and how could I have a situation where women could maintain gender equality?
Okay, now I split men and women, have different sources of power and the male source of power is tainted. Okay, you've gotta stop men and at the same time, out of this beginning came the division of the One Power, the White Tower existing as the political center of power for three thousand years, false dragon, the destruction of the world by men, false dragons arising periodically to remind humanity exactly why men can't be allowed to channel and why the White Tower must remain the center of political power. A lot of stuff came out of that one notion.
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Interview: Sep 3rd, 2005
DragonCon Report - Isabel (Verbatim)Question
I have a question regarding the RPG based on the Wheel of Time. And that is, can someone who can channel and create gateways control the orientation of it? For example if you are falling off a cliff, you open a gateway directly beneath you, and the orientation throws you up so you reduce all of your velocity. Do you die on impact?Robert Jordan
I really don't want to get involved in the game. But I have to tell you something, if I had someone falling off a cliff that could channel, I think I would have him use any number of ways that are a lot simpler, such as grabbing hold of the cliff face with flows of air. The other way sounds like a good way to end up jello.Tags
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Interview: Sep 2nd, 2005
DragonCon Report - Isabel (Paraphrased)Question
A question about if Jordan has been approached by movie makers and directors, etc., and if he sat down with them.Robert Jordan
There is a company called Red Eagle that has the options for The Eye of the World to make the movie. I am waiting to see the outline from the screenwriters. Hmm, which is in effect telling me what of the book they want to keep and what they want to leave out of the book. Since you are not going to get the whole book into movie.
But if it's actually going to be made, even now I can't say. Some years ago NBC optioned The Eye of the World to make a six hour mini-series. Less than two years after we had signed the contracts, they came with the screenwriter, who did the miniseries 'Merlin'. Then two years after the contracts were signed, all the people who brought the project together had left NBC.
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Interview: Sep 2nd, 2005
DragonCon Report - Isabel (Paraphrased)Question
Do you have more hope that the movie is going to be made and is the movie going to be a miniseries or a movie?Robert Jordan
Actually, I have to tell you, I don't really care. It would be nice, but if it doesn't happen...it doesn't happen. I am not a moviemaker. I write books. I will just write more books.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
As a feminist, one part, the Children of the Light get my goat, make me angry. What are the Children of the Light in the story for? (paraphrased)Robert Jordan
The Children of the Light are all of those people who say I know the truth, my truth is the only truth, you must believe my truth. You must believe my truth, if you refuse to believe my truth I will kill you. I wanted them in there because there are always people like that in any world, and they have a tendency to organize and start killing people that don't believe what they believe, so it is really their similitude. I don't think there can be a world without the haters. Haters exist.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Isabel
When Mat had the dagger, Verin and Moiraine thought he would contaminate other people with the evil of Shadar Logoth, and they would contaminate other people. Fain does seem to be influencing without contaminating people. Is it as dangerous as it seems, could also normal people become evil and would they also contaminate other people?Robert Jordan
No. Fain can contaminate people because he has the dagger; it is the dagger. What Verin and Moiraine thought was incorrect; they were extending it too far. It is the one of things you may have noted in the books. Aes Sedai often believe they know more than they actually know. In other words, a lot of people believe they know more than they actually know. One of the themes I have running through the books is that whatever you think you know, some of it is almost certainly wrong, and it may even be the most crucial bit that is wrong. But even when you are aware that some of your information may be wrong you still have to go ahead and make a decision. You...you cannot afford the luxury of saying, well I don't know everything and some of what I know may be wrong, so I am not going to do anything, I am just going to sit here and wait and see if I can find out some more, because that only leads to sitting still forever.Footnote
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
In the Wheel of Time there is focus on events occurring again and again throughout history. Is it just history which is circular, or is it time itself which is in a loop?Robert Jordan
If you think of history being in a loop, then time must be in a loop. The Greeks were the first, as far as we know, to think of time being linear which allows for change. Almost every culture prior to them had believed in circular time, that time was a wheel. If time is a wheel there is no possibility of change. Whatever I change now, whatever injustices I correct, the wheel will inevitably turn, and those injustices with return, the inequities will return, there is no possibility for change, therefore there is no impetus to change. So time and history are both in a loop in this world, a large enough loop that it's, well it's really quite immense.Question
The sun will run out, will never go nova, will never die?Robert Jordan
In this universe, no.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
How did your background in physics influence how you structured the world of the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
Largely it was to make things realistic, as realistic as I can. Background in physics and engineering; I also tried to structure channeling as if it were a science or technology. No eye of newt, hair of dog. There are real limits, there are rules, there are technological structures to channeling which I think are fairly obvious to anyone who looks at it. That was the major influence.
Plus making sure that I see that everything is real. Well if I bring about a blacksmith, well I don't know anything about blacksmithing, but I was able to get some nineteenth century books on blacksmithing, and once I had written the scenes I sent them to a woman I met that was a blacksmith and farrier, and she said you need to do this and you need to do that, but otherwise it is okay.
Harriet McDougal Rigney
This woman was at the time the only woman blacksmith on the high council of American smithing. She made a lot of the stuff at Billy Graham's in North Carolina, but she wrote wonderful comments back and said, if you want Perrin to ever have children, you must have a leather apron, which was among her other good bits.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
I was interested in the physics like with the Mirror Worlds, the Worlds of If?Robert Jordan
The Mirror Worlds of course come right out of physics, and the possibility of (mumble) universes and all of the rest of it. But frankly while I don't follow the literature, I haven't for a number of years, I occasionally get stuck on panels with physicists and I am supposed to discuss physics, which I am twenty-five years out of date. But I find that I can hold my own, although I do not have a doctorate or did I ever intend to get one, I went to work instead. I can hold my own with the PhDs in physics when they are talking theoretical physics if I stop talking physics, at least from my point of view, and start talking theology, and this troubles me.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Matt Hatch
Skipped [transcription of] question to Harriet about how Jordan may have tricked her in the past, as he has done to his readers about where he was going with something or another.Harriet McDougal Rigney
She focused on two incidents when he tricked her with the books. She made a point about the 'Sword in the Stone' coming to her after having read the entire book. She didn't make the connection to Arthurian legend until she was writing the flap cover [of The Dragon Reborn].Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
I was wondering, can you talk about how your lead character would have not one but three true loves, and how does your wife feel about that?Robert Jordan
Um, when I was much younger, before I met Harriet, I had two girlfriends simultaneously, who arranged my dating schedule between them, who was going to date me on which night. They chipped in together to buy me birthday presents and Christmas presents. You know, they just sort of shared me between them, you know. And they had been friends before, and I am not quite sure whether or not they made the decision they were both going to date me or not, on their own, before they first met me, it just came about. But I figured if I could manage two, surely Rand could manage three. Besides there are mythological reasons to have these three women involved with him.
As far as my view on this, with Harriet, I have many more than three women, there are so many facets to her personality she quite often makes me dizzy, I am quite satisfied there. About how she feels about this, I suspect you want her answer, I seem to remember her saying to me, you do remember this is fantasy right? And I think it was an accident she was holding a carving knife to my throat, just coincidence, but I am not sure.
Harriet McDougal Rigney
In four short words, I am not for it. Four and a half words.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
Going back to mythology and the way that you reference everything from the western European triple goddess through Arthur to the oriental warrior ethos and everything in between. I was wondering if you could speak to what drew you to any of those particular aspects that you synthesized into this universe, and was this kind of synthesis something you deliberately set out to do?Robert Jordan
Yes, I found them all interesting, is what directed me to them. There are many books which are based upon one myth, or perhaps I should say one country's myths. There are many Arthurian novels, there are many novels based on one continent or another, one nation or another. A few, I don't know too many based on Chinese or Japanese mythologies, but there are some. It seemed to me within the borders of the United States, I could find representatives of almost every culture of the world, not just one or two, I could find perhaps communities, and given that, it seemed to me a truly American fantasy would be based on the myths of every possible culture that could be included, so I went gathering. As I say, I was fascinated by many of these myths beforehand, but, myths and legends, and I went hunting for what I could use.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
While reading the whole series of books, I find myself seeing some aspects of Mat, Rand, and Perrin. I was wondering as you were creating these characters, what parts of yourself did you see in these three characters and then what parts of yourself does your wife see in these characters that you have created?Robert Jordan
Well, I dont know, as I like to point out, Lan was the guy I grew up wanting to emulate. Mat is the side of me that at fourteen was passing myself off at twenty and picking up college girls in bars on North Market St. Perrin is the side of me who knew I was bigger than kids of my own age, so I did not have a fight with any single person, there were some times where kids of my own age decided since I was too big to fight one-on-one, it was quite alright to come at me with five or six together, but the only fights I had one-on-one until I got into the army were with kids who were three to six years older than I was, because I was going to hurt the other guys, I was afraid of [hurting] kids of my own age, I would walk away from a fight with kid of my own age because I was bigger than he was, I was going to hurt him, there was that out of me in Perrin. And in Rand, I don't know, I don't know what there is of Rand in me, except that I always felt like an outsider, even when I was an insider, I felt like an outsider.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2005
DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)Question
Can you make music using just the One Power?Robert Jordan
Yes, you could.Tags
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Interview: Sep 28th, 2005
Robert Jordan
It seems to me that you've put up a lot of comments given the few days that has been possible. I think I'll address a few of them.
I see that someone—anonymous—uses the audio book pronunciations for a guide.
In the very beginning, the actors doing the reading got in touch with me about pronunciations, but they stopped halfway through reading The Eye of the World, and I haven't heard from them since. So I wouldn't go too much by what they use.
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Interview: Sep 25th, 2005
Robert Jordan
I see a number of posts about that, and I find them a little surprising. Anybody out there ever read about the internal workings of the Third Reich or the reasons why the Nazis made some of their major, and often disastrous decisions? It was a zoo. A madhouse! Just for an example, even in the last days, they were sidelining trains carrying desperately needed supplies to the front in order to use the engines to transport more people to the death camps! And yet they came within a whisker or two of winning. There are hundreds of counterfactuals—the historian's name for alternate histories—showing how the Nazis could have won outright as late as Normandy, at least to the extent of hanging onto Germany and quite possibly France, or pulled out a tie as late as the Battle of the Bulge. The internal workings of the Soviet Union under Lenin, Stalin (even more so) and most of their successors often made the Nazis look almost sensible, yet Stalin did manage to defeat the Nazis, though largely with the inadvertent help of the Nazis themselves. And his successors, frequently making decisions in nearly buffoon-like fashion, came very close to pulling out a victory over the Western democracies. Henry Kissinger actually saw his position as negotiating the best second-place position he could for the United States vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and the inevitable triumph of communism. True fact. You can look it up. Both Kissinger's feelings and the view of many intelligent people on this side of the Iron Curtain that we were fighting a losing battle are a matter of record. I lived through a lot of that, took part in some of the skirmishing, and I'll tell you, it was a damned close run thing.
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Interview: Sep 25th, 2005
Robert Jordan
The Forsaken are a group of power hungry people who don't like one another and vie with one another for power as much as they vie with the forces of the Light. Much like the internal politicking in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But look at the situation in the world as it actually stands, from the White Tower divided to crop failures caused by a too-long winter and a too-long summer and people fleeing their farms because the Dragon Reborn has broken all bonds, meaning still less food, and that spoiling at a fearsome rate, from chaos in Arad Doman to a large part of the Borderland armies out of position, from the arrival of the Seanchan focusing too many eyes on them instead of the Shadow to the strongest single nation, Andor, riven by civil war in all but name and Tear split by open warfare, from.... Well, take your pick. There are lots more to chose from. Take a step back and look at what the forces of the Shadow have wrought. The world and the forces of the Light are in bad shape. At this point, boys and girls, the Shadow is winning. There are glimmers of hope, but only glimmers, and they MUST pay off for the Light to win. All the Shadow needs for victory is for matters to keep on as they have been going thus far and one or two of those glimmers to fade or be extinguished. The forces of the Light are on the ropes, and they don't even know everything the Dark One has up his sleeve.
Think of it this way. The bell is about to ring for the fifteenth round, and the Light is so far behind on points the only way to win is a knockout. Our boy is game, but he's wobbly on his legs and bleeding from cuts over his eyes. Now he has three minutes to pull out his best stuff and deliver the punch of his life. The Dark One has taken a few shots, but nothing that has really damaged him. He's still dancing on his toes and talking trash. His head shots can fracture a skull, and his body punches can break ribs. And now he's ready to unveil his surprises. You didn't think all it would take is for Rand to show up at the Last Battle, did you? According to the Prophecies, the Light has no chance without him, but his presence doesn't ensure victory, just that the Light has a chance. Gotta stiffen your legs and blink the blood out of your eyes. Gotta suck it up and find that punch. Three minutes to go, and you gotta find that knockout. That's your only chance.
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Interview: Sep 30th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Rohit and Mand680, Robert Jordan doesn't come out of Hemingway. In fact, when I first made the connection, I had already written three books under the name. My pen names have all been chosen from three lists of names using my real initials. It has been a matter of one from column A and one from column B, or maybe column C. One pen name actually managed to contain all three initials in a first name and a surname.
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Interview: Oct 2nd, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Children of the Light, the Whitecloaks were inspired by the Inquisition, the SS, the Teutonic Knights and others. In fact, they were inspired by all those groups who say, "We know the truth. It is the only truth. You will believe it, or we will kill you."
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Interview: Oct 2nd, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Cooner 1987, I don't think there is any similarity between Hobbits and the Two Rivers folk. The Two Rivers people are based on a lot of country people I have known, and among whom I did a lot of my growing up. I did try to make the first roughly 100 pages of Eye seem somewhat Tolkienesque. I wanted to say, "This is the place you know, guys. Now we're going somewhere else." And then the Trolloc kicked in the farmhouse door. But I didn't take it to the point of trying to make the Two Rivers folk seem like Hobbits. I mean, I love The Lord of the Rings and have read it at least a dozen times, but when you have too many Hobbits together, they can be so bloody cute that I need a stiff drink.Tags
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Interview: Oct 4th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Infested Templar, I had little to do with the RPG. Mainly my role was limited to telling them that they could not have paladins, ninjas, clerics, shuriken, etc. I had to put so much time into that fighting that I washed my hands of the rest, I'm afraid. I could see that trying to make them actually adapt the books was going to be Valmy Ridge all over again. At least I managed to stop them from putting in a ter'angreal that could bring on the Last Battle in some unspecified manner and also some other really terrible ideas. I wish I had been able to do more, but I had a book to write.
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Interview: Oct 4th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Child of Lir, until I recently learned that there is a fern called leatherleaf, I thought that I had made the name up out of thin air. In any case, mine is a tree. Several of the trees I have named have been, I thought, my inventions. I am surprised that that they actually exist.
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Interview: Oct 4th, 2005
Robert Jordan
Also for Mr Mashadar, I think, my favorite fantasy novel is The Lord of the Rings, hands down. The largest effect that it had on my writing was a desire to be the flip side of the coin, to take the comfortable old tropes and put a different spin on them. Also, the creation of paradox is one source of balefire's danger. Remember that in the War of the Shadow, even the forces of the Shadow gave up using it because of the fear that reality itself might unravel.
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Interview: Oct 4th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Krassos, yes, a channeler could still channel wearing Mat's amulet. Cadsuane has one much like it. And I think that I will complete "Trust" eventually. I think about doing so every now and then.
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Interview: Oct 4th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Paetram, the game of Stones is very much like Go. No, I don't play go myself, only go-moku. It is remarkably hard to learn the game when you have no one to play against. I would love to find a computer game to practice against, but I haven't been able to find one. I probably haven't looked hard enough. There must be one out there.
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Interview: Oct 5th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Child of Lir, peaches being poisonous in the world of tWoT is one of the things I did to make the world different. Though peach pits do contain small amounts of cyanide, which was once manufactured through processing peach pits. Several other fruits with pits, such as apricots, also have trace amounts of cyanide in the pits. And almonds may be the first genetically engineered plant since humans bred the deadly, to humans, cyanide levels out them to make them edible for people.
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2003
Fine Print Interview (Verbatim)Rick Kleffel
Now, one thing that I find quite interesting about the Wheel of Time...to me it has an almost science-fictional feel. The prime driving force for the world is the ability that many characters possess to channel the One Power. Could you describe your hierarchy of psychic powers and talk about how you've developed it almost as a technology?Robert Jordan
Well, I did think of it as a technology. One of the worst things that any writer who is writing about magic or some non-magic method of doing things—some non-scientific method of doing things, I should say—the worst mistake that those writers could make is to think that everything goes, anything goes. There are always rules; there are always limits; there are always prices to pay; there are always trade-offs. Asimov may have been right that, uh...no, actually it wasn't Asimov, it was Campbell? It was...Rick Kleffel
Arthur C. Clarke.Robert Jordan
Arthur C. Clarke; you're right! "Any sufficiently advanced science will seem to be magic."Rick Kleffel
Exactly.Robert Jordan
But it only seems to be magic to you and me; to the people whose science it is, it is actually going to be science, and they will be very well aware of the limits and the constraints and so forth. So I designed this as if it were a technology; I said that the world had been previously powered by this technology; the technology of the Age before the Breaking of the World was based on the use of the One Power. Their machinery used the One Power; their flying machines used the One Power; their toasters used the One Power. The One Power was how they operated their society, their civilization.Rick Kleffel
And yet, of course as the technology in these books has spread to those beyond the select—the Aes Sedai—the old social hierarchies of this world start to crumble.Robert Jordan
Well of course; that always happens. I'm writing about a world at a time of change. Change is uncomfortable, and there are two sorts of people: there are people who don't want change, and there are people who do want change. Both of these people are going to be disappointed. The people who don't want change are going to be disappointed because the change is going to come no matter what. The people who do want change are going to be disappointed because the change is almost never going to be anything like what they want. And what I am writing about is a world where the changes are coming to their society, to their world—changes have been coming now for some time—and the characters have to live through it, ride these changes, and make the best of it they can.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2003
Fine Print Interview (Verbatim)Rick Kleffel
Now, you have a neat solution to one of the old problems of fantasy, for me at least, which is the 'Why don't they have guns?' question. Could you talk about the society of Illuminators, and how that technology has played into your narrative thus far, and maybe give us an idea of how it will play out as the series progresses?Robert Jordan
Well, I'm not going to give you any idea of how it plays out. If you spend any time on the net—at least, on any of the several hundred if not several thousand websites that discuss my books—you will have run into the acronym 'RAFO'. R-A-F-O. 'RAFO' means 'Read And Find Out'. Now, I postulated a world where gunpowder is the secret of a guild: the Guild of Illuminators, people who make fireworks. Nobody else knows how to make fireworks—knows how to make gunpowder—except this guild, and they have managed to preserve their secret for quite a long time. And I think part of the reason why I thought that this could happen were two things that I came across in separate places.One was evidence of discovery of steel, the first manufacturer of steel, which was discovered—we found countless places where the first smith discovered how to make steel, or at least a smith discovered how to make steel, and by all the evidence, no one else in that area had known how to make steel before him—but of course when he could make steel, his weapons were much better than anybody else's. He had provided steel swords to use against bronze, or iron, and...wow, he had sort of a magic sword here, didn't he? And he sure as hell didn't teach anybody else how to do it, so from the time that men began discovering steel, and the secret began dying with them, to the time when steel began to be manufactured semi-widely, was about a thousand years.
The first time that gunpowder—that we can find evidence of gunpowder being used as a weapon—was in China, when the inhabitants of a besieged city made huge fireworks and dropped them over the wall onto soldiers trying to climb ladders, siege ladders up over the walls of the Chinese city. It's not a very efficient way to use gunpowder, but what's interesting is that it was something over a thousand years after gunpowder, by the evidence, had been discovered in China, and for all of that time, it had been used for nothing more than making fireworks, firecrackers, just...that was it. That was the whole use. So, we have a world where there are no guns because nobody knows how to make gunpowder, except for this guild, and they're not going to put the secret around.
Rick Kleffel
That's very clever.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2003
Fine Print Interview (Verbatim)Rick Kleffel
A large portion of this series involves complex battles and wars fought for a number of reasons. How does your experience of war in the real world feed your portrayal of war in the world you've created?Robert Jordan
Primarily because I know the state of confusion that exists in battle. If people are actually trying to kill you, and you are actively trying to kill them, because that's the way it works, then you usually don't know a great deal except what is right in front of your face. Everything else, even fifty yards away, can become a total mystery, and that total mystery fifty yards away might kill you. But then, that doesn't change.Footnote
It may be that RJ's last comment (which is very clear in the audio) was hinting at the fact that he has no more experience than any modern soldier when it comes to classic warfare. He is often asked this question, and his answers are always along the same lines, suggesting that, because this aspect of battle does not change, it has influenced his depiction of battle, but everything else he has had to research.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2003
Fine Print Interview (Verbatim)Rick Kleffel
Now, the Wheel of Time also describes a world in which there is a spectrum of slavery. Could you tell us how you created this range of relationships?Robert Jordan
Well, when you're talking about a spectrum of slavery...the entire concept of slavery is unknown to the inhabitants of the world in...the central nations where we've met our primary characters. The later appearance by Seanchan—people from over the ocean—bring in complexes of slavery, and I've lifted a number of these out of history in various ways, and various places. There have been many times in which slaves rose to political power, in which entire bureaucracies of civil servants consisted totally of slaves, and of course there have been slave armies, the Janissaries being the most famous and perhaps the fiercest.Tags
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Interview: Oct 6th, 2005
Robert Jordan
For Anonymous-George, long ago I saw one of the first, I believe, novels about a young woman who wasn't allowed to use magic or whatever because she was a woman, and the thought occurred to me as to how it might go if men were the ones who were denied the right to do magic. Or whatever. I hate using the word magic. From that long ago thought grew the One Power divided into saidin and saidar with the male half tainted and the reasons for and results of it being tainted. Now in most of these societies—Far Madding is the obvious exception—I did not and do not view them as matriarchal. I attempted to design societies that were as near gender balanced as to rights, responsibilities and power as I could manage. It doesn't all work perfectly. People have bellybuttons. If you want to see someone who always behaves logically, never tells small lies or conceals the truth in order to put the best face for themselves on events, and never, ever tries to take advantage of any situation whatsoever, then look for somebody without a bellybutton. The real surprise to me was that while I was designing these gender balanced societies, people were seeing matriarchies.
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2003
Fine Print Interview (Verbatim)Rick Kleffel
Now, how would you bring someone who has never read your books—and indeed might only have become aware of the high potential of the fantasy genre with the recent motion picture adaptations of The Lord of the Rings—to start the Wheel of Time? What would you tell them?Robert Jordan
Well, if they liked The Lord of the Rings, I'd tell them The New York Times claims I'm the American heir to The Lord of the Rings—to Tolkien! The American heir to Tolkien; that's what Ed Rothstein said in The New York Times. But you would have to imagine Tolkien with no elves, no dwarves, no unicorns, no dragons, no hobbits—just people, written with an American sensibility instead of an English sensibility, and where Tolkien drew on the myths and legends of the English countryside and Norse myths and legends, I have drawn on the myths and legends of every country in the world based largely on the fact that we're a melting pot, and there are very few nations in the world that do not have people from the nation living here in the United States.Rick Kleffel
That's great; the Wheel of Time is the melting pot fantasy!Robert Jordan
Yes, you might put it that way.Tags
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Interview: Oct 11th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - NaClH2O (Paraphrased)Question
The next questions were about possible movies, and we got the same answers.Robert Jordan
The rights have been granted but that's where it sits now. He speculated that IF (the capitals were heard) it ever gets produced it will be The Eye of the World only and that it will probably be two or three movies or a miniseries.Tags
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Interview: Oct 13th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Allen Bryan (Paraphrased)Allen Bryan
Introducer gave a five-minute laudatory speech, empathizing with the long suffering of the fans and making reference to Hemingway's character and the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia as other famous Robert Jordans.Robert Jordan
RJ himself thanked him ("the check is in the mail") and stated that the name was generated so that he could have different names in different genres. All the names were generated from his initials; his real name is reserved for contemporary fiction, originally for a novel on Vietnam that he will now never write. (Everything that needed to be said about Vietnam has now been said many times, he said.)Tags
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Interview: Oct 13th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Allen Bryan (Paraphrased)Allen Bryan
Dyelin is like Cincinnatus of Rome. True or false?Robert Jordan
True, pretty much, except Dyelin was never really offered power; she had it for a little while as Elayne's not-quite-authorized regent, but otherwise wasn't really called upon to save Andor the way Cincinnatus was called upon to save Rome. Otherwise, yes.Allen Bryan
(Be'lal, whoever you are, I win a cookie.)Tags
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Interview: Sep, 2005
Radio Dead Air Interview (Verbatim)Glas Durboraw
What influences you and your writing? Can you pinpoint anything in particular?Robert Jordan
I believe the major influences on my writing style were Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Louis L'Amour, Robert Heinlein, and John D. MacDonald. They also happen to be my favorite authors of all time, but I believe they probably had the biggest influences.Glas Durboraw
Sounds like very notable influences.Tags
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Interview: Sep, 2005
Radio Dead Air Interview (Verbatim)Glas Durboraw
What sort of influences do you find—not just in fiction and things like that—but, as you do your research, what sort of things influence what you write?Robert Jordan
All sorts of things. Quite fascinating, I read a book called Salt, which was an actual history of salt. Fascinating book; a subject that I would not have thought would have been fascinating, but it was interesting enough that I picked up the book and read it in a night and a half, and a salt town appeared in one of the books. It was interesting enough that I said, "I'm going to have this salt town, and this next town you come to is going to be that."Glas Durboraw
Isn't that in book ten?Robert Jordan
Yes. Crossroads of Twilight includes a visit to a town where salt is produced. And other things pop in. I needed a way for some characters to get from one place to another sort of stealthily; I wanted them to be able to move without being noticed much. And I just happened to go to a thing called the Circus Flora, which was a recreation of a 19th Century American traveling circus, a small one-ring circus. And I was fascinated by it, and as a result of going to that show, Valan Luca's traveling show appeared, the original version, which was in effect a small-time circus. It became something much larger later as he earned money and built it up, but in the start, it was a small-time circus with a few acts and a few animals, and it was a way for these characters to be able to move from one place to another because nobody noticed them; they were looking at the show.Glas Durboraw
I do like it when influences like that make their way in. And can you point to it and say, "Oh, maybe it's squeezed out of history," or something like that, or you see something similar in a favorite author, and it's like, "Oh, that's very cool to see that sort of thing brought in."Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Tim Kington (Paraphrased)Question
Will there be a WOT movie?Robert Jordan
There may be. Right now RJ has on his desk some kind of outline, which is one of the first steps in developing a screenplay. Red Eagle Entertainment has the rights.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Tim Kington (Paraphrased)Question
Were the Kin inspired by some real-life group?Robert Jordan
No, as far as I know, I made them up.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Tim Kington (Paraphrased)Question
Was Mat's use of crossbows in Knife of Dreams based on the way crossbows were really used?Robert Jordan
The thing that made crossbows better than longbows was that you could train someone to use a crossbow much faster than you could train them to use a bow. Then when muskets came along, they were better because they didn't require much training, and the firing rate was improved.Tags
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Interview: Oct 29th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Jeremiah (Paraphrased)Question
Another guy asked about how Rand has not been in the forefront of the series for the last few books, and he asked how long RJ knew that that would happen, or if it just happened.Robert Jordan
RJ said that he knew it would happen from the beginning, because he wanted to show that the "man on the shining white horse, the man who is the only hope, he can only do what he does because of the help of ten thousand other people." He wanted to portray that Rand has to be at the Last Battle to win, but he cannot be the ONLY one there.Tags
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Interview: Nov 22nd, 2005
Robert Jordan's Blog: I'M BAAAA-AAACK (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For Son o'merc, I came up with the Almurat Mor character without benefit of the fan sites. In fact, until I saw your question, I wasn't aware that there were any particular postings about Mor.Tags
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Interview: Nov 22nd, 2005
Bridlington Today Interview (Verbatim)Question
Have you ever found yourself working on and formulating an idea ... but then read it, or something very similar, in someone's else's book and thought "damn, they got there first!"?Robert Jordan
No, I haven't.Tags
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Interview: Nov 22nd, 2005
Bridlington Today Interview (Verbatim)Question
Have your experiences in Vietnam helped to give a psychological depth to the Wheel of Time series?Robert Jordan
I think they must have. I've certainly used some things from Vietnam. I know what it is like to have someone trying to kill me. Me in particular. Not some random guy. Me. I know what it is like to kill someone. I know how the first time feels, and how that is different from the fifth, or the tenth. These things certainly went into the characters I've written. That wasn't deliberate. Who you are is constructed in large part from what you have experienced and how you reacted to those experiences. Whatever you write is filtered through who you are. So the influence has to be there.Tags
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Bluecole (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
While RJ was on the west coast, he looked over and approved an outline for the screenplay for The Eye of the World. He expects to have the script on his desk in about eight weeks.Tags
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Interview: Dec 19th, 2005
Robert Jordan's Blog: THIS AND THAT (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For Weasel, my idea of the game of stones hasn't changed, though my way of describing it may well have. I try not to describe things the same way all the time. It gets boring after a while. I mean, think of Homer, who used some of the first macros. He gestured so, and the scribe taking the story wrote, "When first dawn with rosy fingers caressed the sky," or he gestured thus and the scribe wrote, "They sat at the oars row on row and smote the wine-dark sea to foam." Okay, okay; every time and culture has its catch-phrases which haven't yet become cliches. (Though they will. For anyone who has attempted, foolishly, to connect with a son or daughter or any other young person, especially one under the age of 25, by attempting to use their speech, take heart. Remember how you talked at 25, 18, 15? Nowadays, it would be good for a laugh from the younger set, right? Well, in another 15 years, the insular speech those younglings use today will be sufficient to send them scurrying from the room. And better still, sufficient to set their kids off in attacks of giggles and/or near-terminal eye-rolling. What goes around, comes around.)Tags
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Interview: Oct 31st, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Darren (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He confirmed that he's due to start working on "Infinity of Heaven" next. The next series will be set in a different universe, with different rules. He acknowledged that it would still have his main theme: "Men and women misunderstanding each other."
He also stated that he hopes to get better. One day he's sure to make it. To this proclamation a gent up front called out "you're great", to which he replied: "Thank you, thank you, yes, I thank you and my mother thanks you."
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Interview: Oct 31st, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Darren (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
One item I hadn’t heard mentioned before, is that he's "doing lunch" (though he prefers to eat it) with Red Eagle Entertainment tomorrow (11/01/05) in Los Angeles. They've got the outline for The Eye of the World movie, what they want to keep from the book, what they don't want to use, etc., and he needs to give them an ok on it.Tags
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Interview: Dec 19th, 2005
Robert Jordan's Blog: THIS AND THAT (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
(for kcf) On the large scale, the gender relationships in the Wheel grew from the very beginnings of the books, really. I recall seeing a paperback book back in the 70s, a fantasy novel about a young woman who wasn't allowed to become a magician of whatever sort it was because she was a woman. The notion struck me as interesting, since it was the first fantasy novel with that theme that I had ever seen, but what really stuck with me was this. That novel was a simple reflection of the then-current mundane world, but what about if it were men who were not allowed to become whatever it was? Now that would be an interesting twist, and unexpected. Why would that be, and how could it be enforced? As Harriet has often pointed out, many of the world's gender inequalities stem from superior male upper body strength. (To which I usually say, "Oh, dear! Isn't that awful and unfair!" While pulling off my shirt and flexing my biceps, to be sure.) From that genesis grew the division of the One Power into a male and a female half with the male half tainted, giving a reason why men not only would not be allowed to become Aes Sedai, as they were not then called, but must not be allowed even to channel, again as it was not then called. From that, and from the history that I was even then beginning to put together for this world, though I didn't realize it then, came the result of 3000+ plus years when men who can wield the ultimate power, the One Power, are to be feared and hated above all things, when the only safety from such men comes from the one stable center of political, and other, power for those 3000+ years, a female center of power. The view I then had was a world with a sort of gender equality. Not the matriarchy that some envision—Far Madding is the only true matriarchy in the lot—but gender equality as it might work out given various things that seem to be hard-wired into male and female brains. The result is what you see.
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Interview: Dec 19th, 2005
Robert Jordan's Blog: THIS AND THAT (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
(for kcf) Now as to communications and the lack thereof, these things are not commentaries on any sort of technologies. They are a commentary on the human navel. Do you really know anybody who actually tells everything he or she knows to everybody? Even when they really need to know? Maybe especially when they really need to know. Do you really trust people who think they always know what other people really need to know? May I postulate that this person has few close friends, those quite quiet when around him or her? There are a thousand reasons why we don't tell everything to everybody, including often things that we should tell. Maybe the information puts us in a bad light, so we withhold information, or perhaps shade the truth a bit. That's one of the most common. Or maybe we think the other person must already know because it is so obvious. Which can add the factor that we don't want to appear foolish for pointing out that the sky seems to be blue today. Or maybe we just didn't bloody well think of it. It has always struck me how unrealistic, how incredibly fortuitous—you think ta'veren are centers of unrealistic coincidence? Huh!—books are where almost everybody learns everything they need to know as soon as they need to know it, where almost nobody of any note or importance ever has to make decisions based on incomplete information, information that the reader may know is at least partly wrong. Lord, even when they just learn almost everything they need to know exactly when they need to know it, matters seem just too far-fetched. No, it isn't a commentary on technology. Just people.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: IT'S BEEN AWHILE (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For Anonymous (Arctice), who wants to know why the MMORPG was canceled, I'm assuming you mean the online version of the PC game. The computer game was a victim of corporate takeovers, I'm afraid. Legend/GTI did the original game, which got extremely good reviews, and they were eager to go on to do further games and also add-in modules for the first game. Plus there were to be the online "tournament" versions, as I seem to recall them being referred to back then. In the middle of all the furor, suddenly all I was getting from Legend/GTI was silence. When I finally made contact with them again, I learned that they had been bought by a French company and told to go in a new direction. I asked what that direction was and learned that they'd been told, "You'll know it when you find it." I haven't seen a game from Legend/GTI since and my royalty statements for the game come from Nintendo now. The rights have actually reverted to me, and shortly the extended period I gave them to dispose of games in stock will also expire, so if anybody out there happens to own a gaming company....
If that isn't what Anonymous (Arctice) was talking about, I apologize. You will have to elucidate further.
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: IT'S BEEN AWHILE (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For Anonymous (The Grey Jedi), the sword forms are all my creations, but they, and their names, are patterned on sword forms used by the Japanese and Chinese. No, I am not a student of any of these sword forms. I own books illustrating a fair number of them, however.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: IT'S BEEN AWHILE (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For those of you who think the razor that Mat gave to Tuon is a zebra, it isn't. I was thinking of a horse I once saw a picture of, an American paint, which in memory seemed to fit my description (white meeting black along dead-straight lines) very closely. In fact, the memory fit so well that I decided not to check whether the actual horse looked the way I recalled it. The recollection made a terrific image.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: IT'S BEEN AWHILE (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Now, regarding knives and the use and throwing of same. For NaClH2o and File Leader both, the blade length depends. I just did a quick survey around my desk and environs, coming up with six knives that qualify if you allow the one-piece Ek with the parachute-cord wrapped hilt. The balance of it is just right. All have at least a slight protuberance demarcating the end of blade/beginning of hilt or vice versa. Blade length varies from five inches to seven inches. The protuberance is all you need to keep your hand off the blade in a fight, really, and as for blade length, you'll have be pretty thick if I can't reach all of your vitals with five inches of steel. Heart or kidneys are all that really count in the trunk. Plus which, more often than stabbing I would be going for the blood vessels on the inside of the wrist, the inside of the elbow and/or the outside of the neck. Easier and quicker and surer to reach. If it isn't a knife fight, just a killing, then you come up from behind and insert your blade, parallel to the ground, into the side of the neck below the earlobe (distance to be adjusted per size of target), and thrust clear through to the other side thus slicing through the carotids, the jugular, the windpipe and the vocal cords. Some like to sweep the blade outward, slashing open the throat, but this is overly flamboyant, allows a lot of blood to escape (you might want to hide the sucker, after all), and sometimes allows him to get out something like a loud grunt, perhaps sufficient to alert others you would just as soon remained unalerted for the moment. Some people prefer doing a Wingate, but I think it's iffy, myself. You give the guy that added split second to react. And as for getting cut, one reason for throwing a knife rather than getting in close is to avoid getting cut. That doesn't always work, of course. Witness Mat after the visit to the hell.Tags
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Interview: Mar, 2006
Steven Steinbock
Decorated Vietnam War veteran Robert Jordan began putting quill to parchment in 1977, and hasn't stopped since. Storytelling is in Jordan's blood. The South Carolina native, who taught himself to read at age 4 and began reading Jules Verne and Mark Twain at age 5, has written novels set during the American Revolution, a dozen adventures featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan, and, most notably, 12 epic novels (11 primary novels and one prequel) in his Wheel of Time fantasy series.Robert Jordan
"The spoken word is the basis for all storytelling," he told us from his 1797 home in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina. "My father and my uncles were storytellers. When we went fishing or hunting, there was always storytelling at night. I grew up with that oral tradition. I've always thought that my writing lends itself to being read aloud for that very reason."
Steven Steinbock
We asked him about the advantages of listening to a book as opposed to reading it.
Robert Jordan
"When reading an actual book," he answered, "it's possible to skip over things. You make connections in your head, and you find you're not registering every word. But when it's read to you, there's a difference. You hear every word."
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Interview: Mar, 2006
Steven Steinbock
Ten of the Wheel of Time novels are available in unabridged format from Books on Tape and Audio Renaissance. All of these are co-read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.Robert Jordan
"It was my suggestion in the first place," Jordan admitted, "that we have a male and a female actor to do this, a woman to read the female point of view and a man to read the male point of view. And we lucked out in that they both do voices as well. So it is as close as I can come to having an ensemble doing the reading."
Steven Steinbock
In addition, Jordan's Western novel, Cheyenne Raiders, available as a digital download from Books on Tape, is read by Michael Kramer.
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Interview: Mar, 2006
Steven Steinbock
Jordan believes that speaking and listening are integral to the art of storytelling.Robert Jordan
"A novel that is written as if it were being told comes across clearer and makes a deeper connection to the reader than a novel that ignores the oral tradition."Tags
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Interview: Mar, 2006
Locus Magazine Interview (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
Before I start a book I always sit down and try to think how much of the story I can put into it. The outline is in my head until I sit down and start doing what I call a ramble, which is figuring how to put in the bits and pieces. In the beginning, I thought The Wheel of Time was six books and I'd be finished in six years. I actually write quite fast. The first Conan novel I did took 24 days. (I wrote seven Conan books—for my sins—but they paid the bills for a number of years.) For my Western, I was under severe time constraints in the contract so it was 98,000 words in 21 days—a killer of a schedule, especially since I was not working on a computer then, just using an IBM Correcting Selectric!
I started The Wheel of Time knowing how it began and how it all ended. I could have written the last scene of the last book 20 years ago—the wording would be different, but what happened would be the same. When I was asked to describe the series in six words, I said, 'Cultures clash, worlds change—cope. I know it's only five, but I hate to be wordy.' What I intended to do was a reverse-engineered mythology to change the characters in the first set of scenes into the characters in the last set of scenes, a bunch of innocent country folk changed into people who are not innocent at all. I wanted these boys to be Candides as much as possible, to be full of 'Golly, gee whiz!' at everything they saw once they got out of their home village. Later they could never go back as the same person to the same place they'd known.
But I'd sit down and figure I could get so much into a story, then begin writing and realize halfway in that I wasn't even halfway through the ramble. I'd have to see how I could rework things and put off some of the story until later. It took me four years to write The Eye of the World, and I still couldn't get as much of the story into it as I wanted; same with The Great Hunt. I finally reached a point where I won't have to do that. For Knife of Dreams I thought, "I've got to get all of that into one book: it's the penultimate volume!" And I did. Well, with one exception, but that's OK. That one exception would probably have added 300 pages to the book but I see how to put it in the last volume in fewer.
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Interview: Mar, 2006
Locus Magazine Interview (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
I've been asked why there's no organized religion in my books. (My fans ask me questions about everything!) The main point of organized religion is our gathering together in one place to undergo rituals, reaffirm our own belief, and testify to others that we believe, thus strengthening their belief and our own. But in a world where miracles are a daily occurrence, where anybody walking down the street could see the Hand of God lifting up dead men from the grave, suddenly organized religion becomes less important. This manifestation of the Creator as something they may be able to see on any day at any given hour, anywhere. Still, my character Rand is a messiah figure, prophesied to save mankind and to die for it.Tags
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: NO CHAMPAGNE YET (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For a fan of rolan_dcs, no characters in my books are based on any real people, living or dead. With the possible exception of myself, anyway. And the bits I took from Harriet for various female characters.
By the by, I've seen a lot of comment, apparently from men, that my female characters are unrealistic. That's because women are, for the most part, consummate actresses who allow men to see exactly what they intend men to see. Get behind the veil sometimes, boys, and your hair will turn white. I've been there, and mine went white and didn't stop there; a great deal of it actually turned dark again, the shock to my system was so great. Believe me, I mild it down so as not to scare any males into mental breakdowns.
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Interview: Jul 14th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: NO CHAMPAGNE YET (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For those who think I have adapted some name or other from another novel or series of novels, I have not. The names come from my head, from mythology and legend, from history, from the foreign news, often with a twist I give them to make them less a reflection of reality or less familiar. But never from anyone else's novels. Never.Tags
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Interview: Nov 15th, 2006
Robert Jordan's Blog: A Small Addition (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For Kris Lorenzini, I'll remember that phrase. In the mouth of the wolf. I like it. You may see it turn up in a book some day.Tags
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Interview: Apr 26th, 2007
Robert Jordan's Blog: HI, THERE (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
For Paracelsus, I had two nicknames in 'Nam. First up was Ganesha, after the Hindu god called the Remover of Obstacles. He's the one with the elephant head. That one stuck with me, but I gained another that I didn't like so much. The Iceman. One day, we had what the Aussies called a bit of a brass-up. Just our ship alone, but we caught an NVA battalion crossing a river, and wonder of wonders, we got permission to fire before they finished. The gunner had a round explode in the chamber, jamming his 60, and the fool had left his barrel bag, with spares, back in the revetment. So while he was frantically rummaging under my seat for my barrel bag, it was over to me, young and crazy, standing on the skid, singing something by the Stones at the of my lungs with the mike keyed so the others could listen in, and Lord, Lord, I rode that 60. 3000 rounds, an empty ammo box, and a smoking barrel that I had burned out because I didn't want to take the time to change. We got ordered out right after I went dry, so the artillery could open up, and of course, the arty took credit for every body recovered, but we could count how many bodies were floating in the river when we pulled out. The next day in the orderly room an officer with a literary bent announced my entrance with "Behold, the Iceman cometh." For those of you unfamiliar with Eugene O'Neil, the Iceman was Death. I hated that name, but I couldn't shake it. And, to tell you the truth, by that time maybe it fit. I have, or used to have, a photo of a young man sitting on a log eating C-rations with a pair of chopsticks. There are three dead NVA laid out in a line just beside him. He didn't kill them. He didn't choose to sit there because of the bodies. It was just the most convenient place to sit. The bodies don't bother him. He doesn't care. They're just part of the landscape. The young man is glancing at the camera, and you know in one look that you aren't going to take this guy home to meet your parents. Back in the world, you wouldn't want him in your neighborhood, because he is cold, cold, cold. I strangled that SOB, drove a stake through his heart, and buried him face down under a crossroad outside Saigon before coming home, because I knew that guy wasn't made to survive in a civilian environment. I think he's gone. All of him. I hope so. I much prefer being remembered as Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles.Footnote
RJ told this story at Archon where he did a panel with GRRM in 2001, and there is a report from Westeros.Tags
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Interview: Aug 22nd, 2007
Robert Jordan's Blog: A VERY quick check-in (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
I hear things now and then floating out in the air. For instance, I hear that word was floating about ComicCon in San Diego that I am displeased with Red Eagle. Too true. Too very true. In a few more months that last contract they have with anyone on God's green earth that so much as mentions my name will come to an end and we can see what happens after that. You see, among other things they forgot an old dictum of LBJ back when he was just a Congressman from Texas, when he famously, or infamously, said "Don't spit in the soup. boys. We all have to eat." Worse, Red Eagle though they could tell me they spit in the soup, or pee in it, if they wanted to and there wasn't anything I could do to stop them. You can't apologize your way out of that with me, not that they tried. There isn't enough money in the world to buy your way out of it with me. Not that they tried that either. So they get no further help from me. Once they are completely out of the picture, we'll see what happens.Tags
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Interview: Dec 10th, 2007
Brandon Sanderson
Here's the news I promised you! I have been asked to finish the last book of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Press Release follows!
We'd really like news of this to get out to the fans so that they know we're working on the book. Mr. Jordan left detailed notes, and readers need not fear. The Wheel of Time will continue to turn.
There is an interview with me over at Dragonmount explaining things in more detail.
Please visit my forums for a discussion of this event and places we're getting the word out.
Also, know that my Livejournal has comments enabled, if you want to leave me a note.
——-Press Release——
Tor Books announced today that novelist Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish writing the final novel in Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time fantasy series. Jordan—described by some as Tolkien's heir—died Sept. 16 from a rare blood disease. The new novel, A Memory of Light, will be the 12th and final book in the fantasy series which has sold more than 14 million copies in North America and more than 30 million copies worldwide. The last four books in the series were all #1 New York Times bestsellers.
Harriet Popham Rigney, Jordan's widow and editor, chose Sanderson to complete A Memory of Light—which Jordan worked on almost daily for the last few months of his life—and will edit it. Rigney said some scenes from the book were completed by Jordan before his death, and some exist in draft form. "He left copious notes and hours of audio recordings," she said. He also revealed details about the end of the series to close members of his family.
Sanderson, who acknowledged Jordan as an inspiration to him as a writer, has established a loyal fan base as the author of three fantasy novels: Elantris, Mistborn and The Well of Ascension (Tor), as well as a YA novel, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Scholastic Press). Sanderson said, "I'm both extremely excited and daunted by this opportunity. There is only one man who could have done this book the way it deserved to be written, and we lost him in September. However, I promise to do my very best to remain true to Mr. Jordan's vision and produce the book we have all been waiting to read."
A Memory of Light is scheduled for publication in fall 2009.
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Interview: Dec 27th, 2007
Brandon Sanderson
I have been getting a lot of email—a LOT—these last few weeks. As I've said, I really appreciate it when people write me, and the overwhelming majority of it has been positive. I've been getting a number of questions over and over, however, and thought I'd better begin a FAQ to go in hand with the interview over at Dragonmount.
I'll will probably expand this as the months pass. I've answered some of these already, and others are obvious. My goal is to make this comprehensive (eventually). Once I have time, I will try to put this in HTML with all the questions at the top linked to answers below.
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Interview: Dec 27th, 2007
Question
So is it going to be your book or Robert Jordan's book?Brandon Sanderson
There is no question: It will be Robert Jordan's book. The notes he left behind are very detailed, particularly with regards to the most important scenes of the book. I will be following his outline with exactness, and including as much of his actual written prose as I can, changing as little as possible.Tags
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Interview: Dec 27th, 2007
Question
Is the book going to be as good as it would have been if Mr. Jordan had written it?Brandon Sanderson
I have to be honest. I'm not Mr. Jordan. He's the master, and I'm just a journeyman. He's one of the greatest fantasy authors the genre has ever known. I can't hope to write with his skill and power at this stage in my career—and I think there are very, very few writers who could.
Fortunately, I don't have to do this on my own. I have seen the notes, as I mentioned above, and I find them very reassuring. Let me put forth a metaphor for you.
Pretend you have purchased an expensive violin from a master craftsman. It probably wouldn't surprise you to discover that one of the craftsman's apprentices helped create that violin. The master may have had the apprentice sand, or apply varnish, or perhaps shape some of the less important pieces of wood. In fact, if you looked at the violin before master craftsman handed it off to his apprentice, it might just look like a pile of wood to you, and not an instrument at all.
However, the master craftsman did the most important parts. He shaped the heart of the violin, crafting the pieces which would produce the beautiful sound. He came up with the design for the violin, as well as the procedures and processes used in creating his violins. It's not surprising that some other hands were involved in the busywork of following those procedures and designs, once the most important work was done. And so, even though the apprentice helped, the violin can proudly bear the master's signature and stamp.
It's the same with this book. What I've been given may not look like a novel to you, but it excites me because I can see the book Mr. Jordan was creating. All of the important chunks are there in such detail that I feel like I've read the completed novel, and not just an outline. Yes, there is still quite a bit of work to be done. Many of the less important scenes are there only as a framework of a few sentences. However, Mr. Jordan left behind the design of this book. I am convinced that between myself, his wife (who was his editor), and his assistants, we can complete this book to be very, very close to the way he would have done.
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Interview: Dec 27th, 2007
Question
What other secrets are you going to reveal? Which plot points are you going to tie up?Brandon Sanderson
This is one of the reasons that reading the material made me feel so relieved. While there are huge chunks that I need to write, there is always an explanation of what needs to be revealed, and what needs to be left for the reader to decide on their own. I will not be making any of these decisions on my own, but will instead be following Mr. Jordan's wishes regarding the plotting.
He ties up some very important plot points. Others, he leaves without explicit explanation. That was his way, and is one of the things that makes these books so wonderful. You don't need to worry, then, that I will try to explain too much or that I will leave out too much. I will do as the master instructed.
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Interview: Jan 14th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Insomnia (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I've long been an insomniac. I think.
Insomnia is a hard one to pin down for me. I'm sure that there is an official definition somewhere in the psychologist's handbook. I just define it as "Those times when I want to sleep but I can't." However, it seems to me that a lot of those times happen when I'm trying to go to bed at what other people call a 'normal' time. I'll lie in bed for hours, just thinking or daydreaming. (Er, nightdreaming.)
Most of my life, this hasn't been much of a problem. In fact, I think it's led to a lot of the habits that turned me into a writer. Plus, if I'm having A LOT of trouble sleeping, I get up and do something else until I'm tired. That can take hours, but since I don't have a day job, I can sleep in if I want. No big deal.
The longer I've done this, the more I've realized that I rarely get insomnia if I'm consistently going to bed later at night, like around three or for am. Perhaps it's the regularity of the schedule.. Or, maybe the hour is important, and my body just likes to sleep from four to noon instead of normal hours.
The problem with this all is that it can be very difficult to get things done if get onto a schedule where you're sleeping seven to three, particularly if you have a family (which I now do.) My sickness last week (which I'm over with; thanks for all your good wishes) immediately sent me into a sleep during the day, be up at night schedule. Didn't get back on a slightly normal one again until today, when I managed to get up at 12:30. I spent most of last week either feeling really sick or feeling like I hadn't gotten anything done in FOREVER. So it was that somehow I managed to do a full-blown rewrite of ALCATRAZ 3, which was on my plate still (note the percentage bars on the website.) I'm happy to have managed to clear that away, though I do have to admit that I haven't gotten as deep into the Wheel of Time yet as I'd like to.
My worry is that, when I start A Memory of Light in the next month or two, I want to be DEEPLY entrenched in Mr. Jordan's world again. More and more lately, that's meant getting everything else taken care of completely. I want to be able to read WoT in a way that will bend my style toward Mr. Jordan's—but, with that as my goal, I don't want to be thinking about other books of mine during that time, lest I let them be influenced too much by Mr. Jordan's way of writing. (Not that it would be bad for me to learn a few things from Mr. Jordan. I just don't want to do it unintentionally. Writers have the danger of letting their styles imitate directly what they're reading at the time, and while I intend to do this on purpose with A Memory of Light, it would be wrong to do this to my other works.)
So, the second point of this whole rant? I'm about fifteen percent through a 4.0 rewrite of Warbreaker, which is the very last thing on my 'to do' list alongside writing A Memory of Light. I'm really digging the changes to the text so far, though I don't know if they're big enough for most readers to notice. Anyway, I should have 4.0 ready for download by the end of the week. Then, I'll start doing updates on my thoughts of WoT as I read it through some of the books for what I believe is the eighth or ninth time.
New Annotations tomorrow, I promise.
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Interview: Jan 16th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
Finally, what's up with stuff? Well, I'm a little over a quarter of the way through the Warbreaker 4.0 rewrite. It's going smoothly, and I'm feeling much less stressed now that I know it will be off the plate completely and done. I will have everything in order when I start A Memory of Light. That's good, because as a writer, I tend to get very focused. I like to work on one project at a time and put my all into it. I really don't like worrying about other projects while focused like that, and this way, I won't have any other obligations to publishers until next fall. Doing Warbreaker now may push my work on A Memory of Light back a few weeks, but it will mean that I can devote myself better to that book when the time comes, and that will make working on it go much more smoothly.Tags
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Interview: Jan 20th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
The latest Warbreaker revision is finished. I'm glad to have this one off my plate; I hadn't realized how anxious I was getting about this book until I sat down and worked on it. It's now been a year and a half since I finished it, and I worried that I was letting it dangle, pushing it off time and time again and not giving it the attention it deserves. This is partly due to the fact that I'm not sure if it will get a sequel anytime soon.
In the past, I've said that I was planning to write the sequel. (Tentatively titled Nightblood, though I worry that's too horror-sounding.) The problem is, I now have A Memory of Light on my plate, and it is going to need a LOT of attention. The question is, do I want to have Warbreaker come out in the spring of 2009, A Memory of Light come out in the fall of 2009, then have a sequel to a two-book series be my follow-up to that?
It seems to me that I'm in a unique position. A lot of fantasy authors dream of being able to launch something BIG. An epic series which will get a powerful marketing push and a lot of attention. It seems to make far more sense to me to launch a brand new series the year after A Memory of Light, rather than putting out an ambiguous sequel which ends a two-book series.
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Interview: Jan 22nd, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
As promised, here is the newest draft of Warbreaker; this is version 4.0. (Or, well, 4.2 since I tweaked a few things yesterday.)
If you've been waiting to read Warbreaker, I would like to note that I will—indeed—begin posting HTML pages of the chapters, making for easier reading. This will happen at a rate of one a week for about a year. Also, I soon intend to have a PDF of the entire 4.0 up for download. (Right now, all I have is the word document.) If anyone feels like making a PDF and sending it to me—or feels like sticking it into any of the various ebook formats—I'd happily include those here for download as well. As always, you can find the current and previous Warbreaker drafts in the book's portal on my website.
In this draft, I read through doing mostly medium-level fixes. Some character tweaks, some better world explanations, some pacing work. I've now sent this to my editor, who will print it off and make line-by-line notations on it as he reads through it. 5.0, then, will be the draft where I incorporate these changes. Somewhere around 6.0, I'll go through looking for smaller changes mentioned on my forums by readers. Right now, I've been making larger changes that have been suggested and that I agree with, but I haven't done many smaller, paragraph-by-paragraph edits.
This marks the turning of my full attention to A Memory of Light, and I will be doing updates relating to my read-through of the series in the coming days.
EDIT: Man, you people are fast. Here's a PDF of 4.2 provided by Speakerwiggin over on LJ. Thanks!
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Interview: Jan 24th, 2008
I'm going to start posting my impressions of the Wheel of Time books as I read through them again. This will just be me blogging my reactions as a reader and my thoughts as I approach the humbling task of finishing the Wheel of Time Book Twelve. As a reminder, I've read these books before, but it has now been some six or seven years since I've read through the entire series from the beginning. It used to be my habit to read through them all when a new one came out, but life got too busy and the series too long for me to do that with the later books.
There won't be any spoilers of Book Twelve in these, though there will be spoilers to the book I'm currently reading. So, if you're not familiar with the Wheel of Time but are planning to read the books, you might want to skip these posts.
Doing this makes me just a little wary. I like connecting with readers and offering posts like this to give you an insight into an author's mind and into the process. I feel that you, as the fans, have a great deal of ownership and stake in this project, as it is because of you that the Wheel of Time was so successful.
However, I don't want my posts to serve as a catalyst to panic regarding my handling of Book Twelve. For instance, if I write that certain character is kind of bugging me in a scene, I worry that people will think that I'm making a criticism of Mr. Jordan's writing or that I'm criticizing that character in specific. I'm not doing either. I think Mr. Jordan's writing is fantastic—even as I read through again, I'm struck by how well he was able to weave so many different ideas together. I really do have a sincere affection for all of these characters—I've grown up with them, as many of you have, and they feel like siblings to me. Just as a sibling can be annoying, I feel that a character can be annoying. It doesn't mean I intend to cut them from Book Twelve or give them any less screen time.
I thought, then, that I would make this post as an introduction. None of my posts over the next few months are intended to give any foreshadowing of book twelve. Please don't panic if I seem to be interpreting a character's motivations differently from how you view them. The materials Mr. Jordan left are quite extensive, and the final book's plot and characterizations were set by him. My goal with that book will be to as invisible as possible, and certainly don't intend to insert any of my own themes, agendas, or philosophies into it.
I will collect these blog posts in a list, and you'll be able to find them on the A Memory of Light section of my website, once we add it.
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Interview: Jan 26th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
I'm hoping to be able to do more than one post per book, but I'd already started The Eye of the World when I finally got time to write this. I'll probably only do one post for the first book, then, which is a tragedy, since it has long been one of my favorites of the series. I also feel that it will be VERY important to writing Book Twelve. The Wheel turns; ages become new again and ideas return. I feel that the last book of the series should have numerous hearkenings back to this first book; that will give a sense of closure to this section of the Pattern and fit with the motif of the Wheel's turning.
That's just my gut instinct, and I'm not promising anything specific or even referencing material from the Twelfth Book. I'm only speaking of my general feelings as a writer, but Mr. Jordan's notes are far more important than any of my instincts.
As I read through this first book again, I was shocked by how well he had foreshadowed the later books in the series. This is the first time I'm reading WHEEL OF TIME all the way through as a professional novelist. I see things differently than I once did. I know how difficult it is to foreshadow across an entire series, and am frankly astounded by how well Mr. Jordan laid the groundwork for his future books. Min's prophesies are one great example, but equally potent is Mr. Jordan's use of mythology and story as a means of preparing the reader for events such as the Great Hunt, future interactions with the Aiel (and the People's relationship with them), and the coming of the Seanchan.
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2008
Jeff VanderMeer
Was it a hard decision to finish Jordan's series? Can you tell us where you were when the offer came, and what your first thoughts were?Brandon Sanderson
The initial decision was easy. I made it in a flash, the first time Mr. Jordan's wife asked if I would be interested in this project. (That offer came over the phone via two conversations--first, a preliminary call to see if I was interested. Second, an official call about a month later to offer me the project.) Since I'm a fan of the series, my initial instincts were "OF COURSE I want to be involved in this!" It wasn't until after I hung up the phone that the doubts began to rise. Who am I to finish this, the greatest fantasy epic of my generation? I can't fill Robert Jordan's shoes. Fortunately, I've now seen the quality of the material he left behind. That has quieted most of my doubts. The story is all here. It is his book. My job is to fill in a few holes and smooth out the prose.Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2008
Jeff VanderMeer
Jordan's fans, obviously, are pretty hardcore about his work. Are you aware of any reaction from them about you taking up the reins?Brandon Sanderson
They've been very encouraging. Some few are negative, but the overwhelming majority of them are thankful that they'll be able to read the book. They seem to support Mr. Jordan's wife in her decision, even if the fans don't know me or my work. We all understand that I'm not Mr. Jordan. Nobody is claiming that I am. He's the one who should have finished this book. Unfortunately, we lost him, and there is nothing to be done besides see that his last work is completed. The goal of everyone working on this project is to do him proud.Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2008
Jeff VanderMeer
How do you think working in Jordan's universe will impact your own work? And are you at all worried that it might come to define who you are as a writer?Brandon Sanderson
I have had some small worries to this regard. I don't want my career to be that of the guy who rode Robert Jordan's success. I would prefer to make it on my own merit. But doing this project, for me, is not about my career or my book sales. (Though I think both will be influenced greatly.) This is about the unparalleled opportunity to have some small hand in an amazing series. There are some actors who, when they found out that Lucas was doing the new Star Wars movies, went out of their way to get bit parts in the films just for the sheer opportunity. They wanted to be part of something that has been so influential in their lives. While I didn't seek out this project, I feel much as those actors must. This is the defining cultural and literary phenomenon of my youth. I wasn't focused on movies, I was focused on the fantasy genre. I can think of no greater honor than to be able to help see Mr. Jordan's final vision for The Wheel of Time see publication. I don't care if this brands me in any way. This isn't the kind of opportunity you pass up.Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2008
Jeff VanderMeer
What are you currently working on, and what's your deadline for the Jordan book?Brandon Sanderson
As of very recently, I'm done with my next two books both for Tor and Scholastic. That leaves an entire year open to work on A Memory of Light. I don't know how long it will take me, but that's how long I have to write it. (My deadline is in December.) Right now, I'm focusing on re-reading the entire Wheel of Time series through again with an eye for how the characters think and speak. I should start working on the text itself sometime in February.Tags
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Interview: Feb 25th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: WoT: LORD OF CHAOS (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I've now completed my re-read of the first six WoT books. Perhaps it is my mind seeking organization where there is none, but I see these six books as having a rather interesting division. The first three each focus around a central event—the hunt for the horn, for instance, or the fall of the Stone. The second three change the direction of the series, moving to a much more complicated story. Each of these three middle books seem to contain a much larger number of plots, goals, and character motivations. These middle three, the second trilogy if you will, blend together far more than the first three did. It's like they all form one large book, with the lines between them far more blurred.
I'm not sure if this is the way Mr. Jordan plotted them, or if it's simply the way the series evolved. Perhaps I'm just seeing something where there is none. However, as a writer, this division interests me. I find that as a reader, I am much more satisfied with reading these middle books, though I didn't by any means dislike the early ones. A series this long could not have lasted by telling stories only about one or two characters. Series that do such always feel like they have flat characterization to me. You can only focus so long on one character before you have to begin recycling motivations or pushing their character development into the realm of the ridiculous. By expanding the series beyond what it appeared at first—a simple hero's journey—Mr. Jordan created something more lasting.
However, he also took a great risk in changing the series (either intentionally or by natural evolution) as he did. A great many writers do the easy thing, telling the same story over and over with different names on the front, having the same few characters go through the exact same stories over and over. That's comfortable for readers, but it does not challenge genre, and it is not the substance of greatness (in my opinion.) Instead of doing that, Mr. Jordan took a chance on expanding the plots of dozens of side characters, crafting a series that was about much more than it seemed at first. All three of these middle books blended together, but each one still felt distinct to me. The story is moving, progressing, growing—and the characters are much different people at the end than they were at the beginning.
Perhaps I should focus more on what specifically happened in Lord of Chaos that I liked, but as the one who must—however insufficiently—continue Mr. Jordan's legacy, I find myself looking more at the whole than at the minutia. That, of courses, is important as well. But I think for me to be successful in completing this final book, I need to understand—really understand—what made this series great. I might not be able to write the exact words Mr. Jordan would have, but if I can get the SOUL of the book right, then that will not matter.
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Interview: Mar 3rd, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Thoughts (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2008
Question
Will you be posting a progress update of sorts on your page? I understand there is a large refining and editing process to overcome and publishing and distribution, but I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that knowing it's finished would be a tremendous load off our shoulders. Any plans for a method to let us know about your progress?Brandon Sanderson
It's a good question. As many of you may know, I have progress bars on the front of my website showing how far I've gotten on whatever project I'm currently engaged in. I've got one now listing how far along I am in my re-read of the series. (Finished Crossroads of Twilight, by the way, and am now reading New Spring.)
Will I do this for Book 12? I'm planning to, but with a few caveats. The thing is, it's hard for me to judge how long this project will take. It's unlike any book I've ever worked on. With my own novels, I've gotten to the point where I can sit down and plot them and know roughly how long they will be before I start. (I generally shoot for about 200k words in length for my epics, 50k for Middle Grade books, 80-90k for a YA novel.)
I don't know how long A Memory of Light is going to be, though. That's going to present a problem for running a progress bar of how far along I am. (The current program we have is percentage based, and I won't know what percentage is done if I don't know how long the novel is going to end up being.)
Right now, my goal for the book is 300k minimum. Looking at the material Mr. Jordan left behind and the story that needs to be told, that's a realistic size to start with. This wouldn't make the book the shortest in the series, though it wouldn't be the longest either. It would be right in the middle.
I'm expecting it to go longer than that, to be honest. Mr. Jordan himself often said of this book that it would be as long as it had to be, even if Tor had to invent a new binding for it! From what I've seen of the material, I don't think that's going to be necessary—I think he was responding to worries of the fans that he wouldn't tie the novel up in one volume. From his outline, writings, and other work on the project it looks to me that he was planning it to be in the 300-400k range.
So, I'll probably start the progress bar assuming the book will be 300k long, then update it later when I have a better idea of its length. I will be needing to go and touch up the sections that Mr. Jordan wrote. (They are in rough draft from. As I've mentioned, I intend to leave them as pristine as is possible for the novel, with as minor editing as is possible while still maintaining the integrity of the novel.) Therefore, I'll start the bar at 0%, and once a section of pages is touched up or written by me, I'll update accordingly.
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Interview: Mar 21st, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
Whew. It's surprising how busy things are, considering that it's the slow season (my books generally come out in the falls) for me. Mixed with the fact that I'm not writing right now, just reading, one would think that I wouldn't feel so busy. The thing is, when writing, I can really only do a certain amount in a day. Like a lot of authors I know, I kind of have a cap (it's between 2k words and 4k words, depending on the day and the book.) Once I hit that, my writing reserve is low, and I have to stop for the day and let my subconscious work out how I'm going to write the next section. What that means is that I can generally get up, write for half of the day, and be done—and then have time to do email, blog posts, and other business items.
When I'm reading, though, there's nothing to stop me from just reading straight through all hours of the day, as opposed to stopping and doing other work. That, mixed with the urgency I feel to get to work on actual pages of AMoL, has made me keep reading and pushing long after I would have stopped for the day if I were writing. Ah, well.
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Interview: Mar 25th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
Anyway, I didn't intend this to be an extended defense of the book, but that's what it came out to be. It's now been over a week since I finished it, and while there is much more I could write, I think it's time to let the blog post end for now. The big news is that I'm done with my read through. In fact, I officially began writing on Book Twelve this afternoon.
There was a powerful moment there for me when I got to write those words "The Wheel of Time turns. . . ." Mr. Jordan, despite his preparations for the book, didn't actually write those words that have started each book in the series. I guess he figured he didn't need to, since they've been the same since book one. He knew that his time might come soon, so he focused on more important scenes.
That left me being able to write the opening paragraph to chapter one. (Though, of course, there will be a prologue. While those words won't start the book, I decided that they would be the way that I started work on it.)
It has begun.
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Interview: Mar 27th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Defining Surreal (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
People ask me if working on this book is surreal. Before, I always said yes, but I don't think it really hit me HOW strange this is until these last few days.
Yesterday evening, I pulled out the electronic versions of the novels that Mr. Jordan's assistant sent with me when I left Charleston. I combined them all into a single word document to use in searching. (It clocks in at 9,300 pages and about 3 million words, if you're curious.) Using Microsoft Word's search features, I can call up all sorts of useful information from the entire series at the touch of a few keys. (By the way, thanks for sending those electronic files, Alan! You thought of this a full three months before I ended up needing them. I guess that's the sign of an excellent assistant.)
In compiling this document and setting a few bookmarks at important points (mostly the beginning of each book) I hesitated at the copyright statement of A Crown of Swords. He's a book I read over ten years ago, a book by an author I idolized. A distant and unapproachable figure, a hero himself, the one spearheading the epic fantasy movement of my era. And now I have a copy of the original file he typed and I'm working on finishing his last book.
That, my friends, seems to DEFINE the word surreal to me.
I was shocked the first time the people at Tor called this a collaboration. By publishing terms, I guess that's indeed what it is—a collaboration, where two authors work on a single novel. But to me, the term just felt strange. Collaborating with Robert Jordan seemed to set me too high in the process. I'm finishing the Master's work for him, since he is unable to. I kind of feel like Sam, carrying Frodo the last few paces up the mountain. Robert Jordan did all the work; for most of these twenty years, I've only been an observer. I'm just glad I could be here to help for the last stretch when I was needed.
For those of you who wondered, I HAVE read Knife of Dreams and New Spring, but I haven't yet posted blog reactions to them. I read faster than I could keep up on the blog. (I've often noted that I'm really not that great a blogger.) I'll post reactions to these books as I go. For now, I need to get back to Book Twelve.
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Interview: Mar 30th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
We've added a new A Memory of Light Book Page on bs.com—but . . . well, it's pretty much empty right now. I'm working on combining all of the different FAQ pages for the book and my involvement in The Wheel of Time and linking them here. Eventually, we should have a Portal for the Wheel of Time like we do my other books, where we'll have links going to the various information on my site about A Memory of Light.Tags
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Interview: Apr 3rd, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
Now, a response to New Spring.
As I mentioned, I've finished reading through the entire WoT series again and have moved on to actually working on Book Twelve. (Two chapters writing are done as of right now, by the way. Neither were chapters that Mr. Jordan left any actual prose for, as I'm practicing with writing particular characters, and want to get a feel for writing them. I'm writing them and sending them to the experts in Charleston for feedback as I adapt my style to writing in the Wheel of Time world.) Anyway, I'm behind on these blog posts, and so while I read New Spring a few weeks back now, I'm only now doing a response for it.
I've said before that I think Mr. Jordan's greatest strength as a writer was his ability to do viewpoint with such power. His second-greatest strength was probably his ability to plot on the large scale, planning for things that weren't going to happen for several books, leaving foreshadowing for novels that wouldn't be written for years. As part of that, he knew what happened in the past with his characters to a far greater extent than I think most writers do.
New Spring seems to me an experiment in showing off these strengths. Here we have two characters from the main series shown many years before. I am impressed at how well Mr. Jordan was able to make these characters feel twenty years younger, yet at the same time show them being the same people. Both Moiraine and Siuan exemplified this, and it was interesting to read from a writer's viewpoint, as I was aware of how tough this must have been to pull off.
What happens itself is less interesting only in that we already know most of it. (The classic problem with prequels, after all, is that you generally already know how it will end.) While I enjoy a good prequel, the feeling is different than it is for a main-line story. Reading a book like New Spring is more of a fan experience for me, as I get to see how Lan and Moiraine met, and we get a record of the infamous river dunking. Despite what the cover says, I wouldn't say this is the "New starting point" for the Wheel of Time. That's why I read it here, when it was written, rather than when it occurred in the series chronologically. Half of the fun of this book comes from having read the other books in the series first.
It was strange to read a book from Robert Jordan that was only 120k long, though. I remember when I first saw it, years ago. I thought "Man, that's barely a short story!" 120k. Barely a short story. That would be a LONG book in many genres. Here, it's tiny. (Like many of you probably did, I can remember being annoyed at getting a prequel instead of the next novel in the series. Now I'm happy to have it, though, as it's one of our only glimpses into the world pre-Rand.)
Anyway, it was great seeing Siuan being a punk. I think her character in this added the most to my understanding of the series as a whole. Lan was pretty much Lan, and while Moiraine was interesting, I found myself liking Siuan more. Perhaps because I really enjoy her storyline in the main series.
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Interview: Apr 9th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Updates (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
As you might have noticed, things have been a tad dead here this week. That's because I've been out here in Charleston visiting Robert Jordan's house. Harriet, Alan, Maria, and I have been working on things for Book Twelve, and there was also a panel at The Citadel (where Mr. Jordan went to college) about Mr. Jordan and his effect on the fantasy genre. Harriet wanted me to be part of it, and I was very happy to do so. (David Drake also flew in to sit on the panel. I know it was video taped; I don't know if it will get posted anywhere. If it does, I'll try to get a link up here for you all.)
Regardless, it's been a busy few days. I flew out on Monday and have to be back on Thursday to teach my class. However, we've put our time to very good use, working out the outline for Book Twelve. (There were some holes in the plot and questions about characters we needed to work through.) Maria put it best with some of these holes: It's like we're putting together a jigsaw. We need to sift through Mr. Jordan's notes and figure out what he wanted to have happen, then figure out the best way to make it happen.
This, of course, is only for the sections that are more ambiguous. We're doing our best to make certain this book has as much of Mr. Jordan in it as possible.
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Interview: Apr 9th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Updates (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Just a few notes on the way out the door here. 1) I blogged about The Name of the Wind last week, thinking I'd be able to get a copy of book two this week. Looks like my information was out-dated! I was going off of the DAW catalogue I picked up at a trade show last year, and that information was reinforced by the release date of Book Two as presented by the Amazon data aggregating website I use. (Titlez.) Both said book two was out this week. Only, I forgot to watch Pat's own blog, because he admitted a few months back that the book had to be pushed back because of family issues. It's a bummer, but it looks like Pat has been through the wringer lately, and my heart certainly goes out to him. Looks like Book Two will be out next April, but that's no reason not to go grab the brand spanking new paperback of book one.
2) There's a new Writing Excuses podcast this week. It was posted on Monday, and we're continuing to do this every Monday. Just a little reminder!
3) Those of you from forums where I am occasionally known to haunt may have noticed a lack of posts from me recently. I haven't simply turned to my lurking ways, unfortunately. I'm swamped with A Memory of Light, and have had to scale back on my forum visitations. I think this is going to be a busy year, and I need every spare moment I can to work on this book and to try (ha ha) to keep up on my email. So, I'm sorry to all you wonderful folks—no offense or anything like that. Just too busy to visit. I'll try to still make appearances on my own forums, though. (Note if you haven't seen the Allomancy conversations going on there, you're missing out. Also, you guys in those discussions are crazy. Fun, but crazy.)
4) There is no number four.
I think that's everything for now. Annotations and Warbreaker should get posted on Friday after I get back and recover from Thursday. (Six hours of travel followed by a three hour class. What fun . . . )
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Interview: Apr 13th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Back! (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Well, I'm back from my trip to Charleston. We got some really good work done and I'm excited to get back to writing. Expect that percentage bar to go up a couple more points this week. Just so that you know, I've decided to use 400k as the wordcount basis for the progress bar. I'm still not sure how long the book will be—it could be longer than that, it could be shorter—but that seemed an appropriate base line. I'll be able to tell you more as the process continues.
Look for a Knife of Dreams blog post soon, as well as some regular updates. For now, a couple of links.
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Interview: May 2nd, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Knife of Dreams (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Well, after about a month of procrastination, I'm finally getting around to doing the final blog post in my series of "Wheel of Time read through" responses. Thanks to all of those who emailed me reminding me I'd never gotten around to writing a post about Book Eleven. Also, those of you at LJ, it looks like my blog-posting software skipped updating the post I did earlier in the week, so here's a link to it on my own website. You didn't miss much, just a little update explaining that I was done with the grading last week and had moved on to continuing A Memory of Light. (Also, forgive any typos in the following. I wrote it really fast, since I've still got a thousand words or so of A Memory of Light I need to get done tonight.)
I find several things curious about Knife of Dreams. First, the pacing. This is the first book I remember feeling was moving directly toward an ending of the series. We resolve Elayne's plot to a large measure, Mat and Tuon get married, and Perrin rescues his wife. Those three things all complete major, multi-book arcs and set us up for Book Twelve. I've gotten some emails from somewhat snide readers who claim that they don't believe Mr. Jordan was planning to end the series with Book Twelve, but even if I hadn't seen the notes (which DO prove this book was to be the last) I would have believed in good faith that the ending was coming. Though I enjoy the more lethargic pacing of the previous couple books, Book Eleven's more breakneck resolution of concepts was also refreshing, if only as proof that an ending WAS coming.
I'm not sure if Mr. Jordan is responding to comments on Book Ten by doing so much in Book Eleven. My instinct says that he wasn't. None of these plot resolutions felt rushed; they were simply all paced in such a way that book ten ended up being the 'middle' book in a lot of ways. It wasn't introducing new plots and it wasn't resolving them. It was, however, building for what happened in this book.
It was strange reading Knife of Dreams this time as I felt a little like it is directed specifically at me. This book was, in a metaphorical sense, the 'pitch' toward me. It's the lead-in, and it was pitched quit well, directly on line. It's my job to hit that perfect pitch and send it flying.
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Interview: May 12th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
I posted that other email I got that was somewhat negative, but the overwhelming majority are very encouraging and thoughtful. I got one piece recently from a reader named Matt which got me thinking. It relates to A Memory of Light, and so I figured I'd answer it here.
Brandon—My name is Matt, and I have been following your blog posts and website since you were announced as the writer for A Memory of Light. A question to ask occurred to me today that I don't think I ever saw in any of your interviews/posts about being selected to write the book. As a fan, is a part of you disappointed to read the ending of the story the way you did, that is through RJ's notes and not after reading an entire book?
Excellent question! My answer follows:
It was indeed a different experience to read through the outline and materials, with the holes and occasional vague sections, rather than reading a complete novel. A little bit of me is regretful. Of all the readers and fans out there, I'm one of the few who won't be able to experience this book for the first time in its complete form. Mr. Jordan's assistants and wife have probably been in that boat for years!
And yet, I am a writer, and I don't look at an outline the same way that a regular reader might. The closest approximation I can make is to origami masters. If you go and look at their websites, they will often release 'patterns' that go with a new piece of origami they've developed. The pattern is just a sheet of paper with lines on it. I look at that, and all I see are lines. But to another origami master, that pattern reveals the exact method used to create the piece. They can look at the pattern and see the finished product.
This outline was kind of like that for me, particularly since the ending was the most complete section. I could look at it, and my mind filled in the gaps, adding the foreshadowings and character climaxes that had come before, taking the hints and the outline chunks that Mr. Jordan wrote and putting them all together. It didn't feel like reading a complete book, but I felt like I could SEE that complete book as he would have written it, and that has become my guide in writing it myself.
(I might also note at the end here that one thing I forgot to include in my email to him is that while I didn't get to read the final book like you all will, I DID get to find out what happened at the end of the series a good two years ahead of anyone else!)
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Interview: Jun 26th, 2008
I got an email from a reader that I thought I'd share. (The email itself has been trimmed quite a bit.)
I personally don't care if it takes you 10 years to finish A Memory of Light, time is not really important. Finishing the book as close to RJ's vision as possible is. You seem to be spreading yourself very thin while writing one of the most important pieces of literature in modern history (that might be an exaggeration, but not to me, or many others).
I understand that this book isn't your life's work, and that you have many of your own creations that need attention, but please don't lose track of the importance of this project.
Rick
I was glad to get this email, as it gave me a chance to explain myself. I worried about June all the way back in January when I started this project—I knew that I was going to have to take several weeks off for the Writers for Young Readers and eventually do edits on Warbreaker and the Alcatraz books. (Though I was hoping to put them off a little longer.)
My response (again, cut down) was:
I just want to reassure you not to worry. I'm spread a whole lot less thin than it may seem. Actually, it's been refreshing how much time I've been able to spend writing these last few months.
One of the things you learn quickly about being an author is the more successful you become, the less time you actually have to write. You just have to take all of these things—book tours, signings, publicity—in stride. Fortunately, since I am an author full time, I can do almost all of that and still put in fifty or sixty hour weeks working. If you'll notice the percentage bar on my website, I've completed 100k of writing since I started in March. That's over 30k a month, which is an incredible clip. Most books out there are under 100k long. Now, that's only a small dent in this particular book, true, but what that should tell you is that I've had a LOT of writing time these last few months.
I've done WoT virtually exclusively for a good six months now, and it's not unexpected that I would have to take a few weeks to get some editing done on other projects. Don't worry, though, I'm treating this particular work with quite a bit of respect.
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Interview: Jun 26th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
Expanding on that idea, I think it's interesting to point out just how much of a compulsive writer I am. It's what I love to do, and I spend quite a bit of my time doing it. Pretty much my whole life revolves around what I'm writing—any spare moments focus on planning, and when I take time off to relax, I generally just spend it writing. This actually worries some people who know me, who think I might need more balance in my life. I know they might have a point. (Hence my insistence to myself that I have a hobby, such as the Magic card game.)
All of the other things—signings, conferences, writing groups—are also things I do to take time off from writing. Even if you love it as much as I do, breaks are important. Without them, you tend to rush plots and stories. Taking a week or two off after the completion of important plot sections like I just got done with in A Memory of Light actually helps the writing of the next section. Like the cracker between two tastes of cheese.
Anyway, I just wanted to assure everyone. All of the 'other' things I do aren't taking much time away from this book that we all want to see done as soon as possible. (While still maintaining the writing quality, of course.) It's good that I have these things in life. Trust me on this one. ;)
I do promise, however, that I've set aside REAL distractions. Namely, other books I want to write. (My readers know that I 'accidentally' write books that my editors aren't expecting. None of those for me this year.) Also, I haven't let myself play Halo 3 yet, since I know that will pretty much wipe out a week or two on its own. . . .
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Interview: Jul 8th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Reader Mail (Verbatim)Stephen
I'm sure you've answered this question before and/or have discussed it on your website (which is awesome by the way), but I couldn't find the answer so I thought Id ask. I was wondering who you would have liked to see complete the Wheel of Time in lieu of Robert Jordan had you not been given the opportunity?Brandon Sanderson
That's a great question, one I'd actually never been asked. So, here's my response:
Who would I have had write it? Well, I'm torn. There are a lot of great authors out there.
I think George R. R. Martin could have done it—he's probably the most skilled epic fantasy writer on the market right now. But I don't know that his style matches Mr. Jordan's very well. I'm sure he could adapt, but I think his fans would have been angry if he'd taken the project. After all, there's a long gap of time between his recent novels.
David Farland is an excellent writer of fantasy. I think he could have done it. The same goes for L.E. Modesitt Jr. Other possibilities would be Robin Hobb or Patrick Rothfuss. (Of course, those are just a list of some of my favorite fantasy authors, so maybe I'm answering the question in the wrong way.)
In the end, I'd probably have chosen Tad Williams. I think that he'd have been a great match for the series, and I'm a fan of his work.
I think I'll add this part for the blog post. It's not the same question, but some have asked similar ones, so I figured I'd get to it here.
Some think that Harriet should have just finished it herself, or perhaps published the notes as-is. I don't think either of these options would have been good ones. Harriet is one of the most well-respected editors in the business, but editing is a very different skill from writing. I think she'll have MORE of an influence on this book (making it feel like it should) by editing it, just as she edited the previous volumes.
And publishing the notes . . . well, as an author, I don't know if I can explain exactly how uncomfortable this would make me. It would be like displaying compromising pictures of a person against their will. I show my unfinished books to people, but only in controlled circumstances. To display Robert Jordan's unfinished work like that instead of the final book would, I think, have been very unfulfilling to fans and against the master's own will.
Perhaps once the finished product is out there, Harriet will decide to release the notes in some form. (Actually, I'm hoping that she will.) That will be different. People will already have been able to experience the end of the series, and Mr. Jordan's vision, in a complete way. Releasing them before—or instead of the book itself—would have been a very wrong move, I think.
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Interview: Apr, 2001
Dromen and Demonen Interview (Translated)Gerhard Hormann
Could this series have been written if The Lord of the Rings had not existed?Robert Jordan
Hard to say. The Lord of the Rings is a milestone in the genre and in a sense laid the groundwork for what we currently call fantasy. The first 100 pages of The Eye of the World are quite similar to it. In it, you’ll find the idyllic, pristine world as in the world of Tolkien. But from that moment on, the story takes a completely different turn. My series doesn’t only touch back to British folklore, but to all religions of the world. Women don’t play a secondary role, but make up at least half the story. And it doesn’t include any elves, nor unicorns, dragons, dwarves or hobbits.Tags
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Interview: Jul 28th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: A Gift (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Recently, I've been reading interviews that Mr. Jordan did before he died. (Thank you to those who have sent these to me.) I had already read some of the questions and answers, but others were fresh to me. I'm very interested in his comments as I want to make extra certain I don't miss-step and contradict anything he said in an interview, even if that information didn't appear in the books or the notes for the final volume.
I've found a lot of his answers very interesting. Among the more tragic are the ones that came when people asked him what would happen to his series if he died before it was finished. It kind of twists my heart a little bit each time I read a question like that, knowing what eventually happened.
In response to most of these situations, Mr. Jordan was joking and whimsical. Common responses were along the lines of "You'd better hope that doesn't happen, otherwise you'll never get to see that last ending I've been planning all these years!" He often indicated that he'd leave instructions to have all of his notes burned and his disc drives wiped, then reformatted six or seven times so that nobody would ever know how the story came out.
Humorous tone set aside, I see something in these responses. Inside, I think the concept of anyone else working on the Wheel of Time was very painful for Mr. Jordan. I really think that early on, he was against the idea of anyone else finishing the last book, should he die.
However, Harriet has talked to me of the last days before his death, and I also have transcripts of the final dictations he made. Transcripts that talk about what should happen, how people should end up, and how the ending should be written. The tone of these writings and of what Harriet talked about is very different from his earlier comments. It's humbling to see how he changed, instead becoming determined—insistent, even—that the last book be finished after he passed away. Harriet mentioned to me that he didn't want to select someone himself. That thought was too hard for him. I can understand why.
In the end, I see this as his last gift to all of us. As an artist, I can completely understand why he wouldn't want someone else to work on his world and his books. And if he had actually decided to leave instructions for the final book not to be completed, I am sure—very sure—that Harriet would have seen to it that his will was followed. But that wasn't what he decided. He demanded that this book be written. Even though I know that the idea brought him pain.
This was his final sacrifice and gift for you all—the decision to give us the last scenes and instructions for the book, rather than taking that knowledge to the grave with him. From what I've heard of the last months of his life, I know that he spent a surprising amount of time giving dictations, telling about places that nobody else knew existed, and explaining how the characters were to end up.
There are a fair number of people who are against this project happening in any form. They don't make up the bulk of the fan community; in fact, they seem like a very, very small percentage. There are others who aren't opposed to the book being finished in general, but who are opposed to me specifically working on it—though this group is even smaller than the first. Either way, I can sincerely understand both complaints. It seems to me that the Robert Jordan of five years ago would have been in the first group himself!
I have repeatedly acknowledged that I can't replace him. But he wanted this book done, and I'm increasingly confident that I'm the best choice for this project. There are plenty of fantasy authors out there who are better writers than I am—George Martin, Tad Williams, Neil Gaiman, and Robin Hobb all come to mind, among others—but I don't know of another author publishing in fantasy right now who has been as close to these books and these characters as I have been over the last eighteen years.
Knowing that Mr. Jordan was distressed about the concept of anyone finishing the books makes me even more determined to write a book that he would have been—that he will be—proud of. He loved you all very much. Those who complained about the time he took to finish books, or the length of the series, did not know the man at all. He did not write this series to the length he did because of money; he did not 'artificially inflate' the Wheel of Time because of any external pressures. He wrote this series the way he did because he loved it, and because he knew that we loved it.
And I think that's why he chose to have this novel completed. In the end, your good was more important to him than his own good. What grander summary could be made of a man's life than that?
This book is going to be beautiful. I promise you that.
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2008
Peter Ahlstrom
The death of Robert Jordan wasn’t an opportunity. It was a tragedy.
Elise Mattheson
Elise talks about how she saw Brandon’s blog post eulogizing Jim, and it immediately struck her that she needed to print it out. She gave it to Harriet, saying, “You have to read this.” Later that day she saw Harriet reading the post out loud to others of Jim’s friends. [I spoke with Elise right after the panel, and she added lots of fascinating details. I looked around to see if she’s shared her telling of this story anywhere online, but didn’t find anything. I hope that she will share it sometime, because it’s a great story from a fascinating woman.]
BRANDON SANDERSON
Brandon got a voicemail from Harriet that said, “Please call me back. I want to talk to you about something.” Brandon called back and couldn’t catch Harriet at home for several hours. He called Tor, and Moshe wasn’t in, but he got in touch with Patrick. Patrick said, “It’s what you probably think it is. I’ll make sure Harriet calls you back.”
Harriet did call back, and she told Brandon that she was considering several writers to finish the last book of the Wheel of Time and wanted to know if he was interested in being considered. Brandon’s first reaction was to think, “Only Robert Jordan can write this book.” His second thought was, “If somebody else is going to write it, I want it to be me.” Up until this point, Brandon had been worried about who was going to finish the series—as a lot of fans were worrying. Brandon knew that as a fan of the series, he would write it with the needs of the series in mind and not try to take it his own direction.
TOM DOHERTY
Tom [at the panel] says that the pick of who to finish the series was Harriet’s pick and no one but her should make it. But in this case he agrees with her choice of Brandon. Harriet told him that Brandon was her first choice for the job.
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon explains that he is writing the book according to viewpoint cluster. There are several groups of characters who follow their own plotlines until toward the end of the book—at the three-quarter or 80% mark—all the groups meet up. Brandon’s writing the book one viewpoint cluster at a time. The first cluster he focused on was Rand’s, with Rand, Nynaeve, Min, etc. Brandon has finished writing this viewpoint cluster from the beginning of the book up until that meet-up point. Now he’s working on the Perrin, Faile, Galad cluster. After this he’ll move on to Egwene and the White Tower, then Mat and Thom, and then he’ll work on a more unconnected cluster of viewpoints that aren’t as closely connected to each other, such as Elayne’s story and what’s going on with the Black Tower, etc. Then when all the viewpoints are all gathered together at the same place, Brandon will write the last part of the story up to and including the part that Jim wrote. For each group of characters there are detailed notes on who’s there and what secrets can be revealed.
Including what Brandon has been writing during this trip (he even wrote in the car while his wife drove), he’s written almost 200,000 words so far.
TOM DOHERTY
“200,000?” Tom breaks in. “You told me yesterday you were a third done!” Everyone in the room does the math.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Brandon says the goal is not to leave out anything that Jim has written. As much of what he has written will make it into print as physically possible. Any manuscript words that Jim has written will go in the book. If Jim said that something has to happen, it will happen.
TOM DOHERTY
Tom says, “It’s sounding more and more like two volumes.”
BRANDON SANDERSON
This was Jim Rigney’s dying request: “Take care of the fans. Find someone to finish the book.”
If the book does end up needing to get split, Brandon would prefer for the first half to be released in October 2009 and the second in November 2009, with a leatherbound special edition of the complete book.
TOM DOHERTY
Tom says, “I do not believe it’s physically possible to bind in one book.” [I’m interpreting this as a reaction to the possibility of the book being 600,000 words, and also not ruling out a special edition.]
BRANDON SANDERSON
Brandon says, “By the way, Jim was not artificially inflating the series. He was writing what he loved.”
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2008
Question
“What do you do to keep sane?”Brandon Sanderson
He writes. It relaxes him. Brandon’s wife hadn’t read the series beyond The Eye of the World, which is something that needed to be corrected! Brandon says that the response from the fan community has been generally positive—with only two death threats so far! He gets two to three dozen e-mails per day wishing him luck. A common refrain from the series is: “You will do well.” Brandon is putting in long hours working on this book. He feels like he’s a medical student working on his residency. He and his wife often sit in the same room working on different things while he writes—they’re together, but they’re in different worlds.Tags
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2008
Question
An audience member asks about Brandon’s style differences from Jim’s, and how writing this book will affect the style of his future books.Brandon Sanderson
Brandon says he tends to use more blow-by-blow action scenes, while Jim was a little closer where viewpoint was concerned—his writing was a shade closer to first person in the narration. Brandon chose in the past to be tighter and less wordy, but writing this book he’s letting it all out and being more free with the description—and he’s finding it rather refreshing. Brandon reiterates, though, that he is not writing a Robert Jordan book; Jim Rigney was the only one who could write a Robert Jordan book. He is, however, doing what he can to write a Wheel of Time book that will deliver what the fans and he himself as a fan expect from a Wheel of Time book.Tags
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2008
Peter Ahlstrom
Brandon never met Robert Jordan in life. I was at a convention with him and Dan Wells a few years back when Jim walked by, and someone turned to Brandon and said, “That’s Jim Rigney—Robert Jordan.” That was the closest Brandon ever came to meeting the master. So Robert Jordan is still very much a kind of mythical figure to him, like a hero who has gone before. Brandon can only strive to follow in his footsteps.Tags
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Interview: Sep 22nd, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: One Year (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Last week marked one year since Mr. Jordan's passing. I wrote out something to post, but I just didn't like it, so decided to scrap the idea. That was partially because I think I'd rather commemorate Mr. Jordan on a different day, such as his birthday next month or perhaps the publication date of The Eye of the World, rather than focusing too much on the day of his passing.
However, after thinking about it over the weekend while at MountainCon, I decided that I really did need to post something, if only a link back to the essay I wrote back in July about his passing. It's probably the best I could do on this topic, and what follows below is just a tangential musing, more related to me than to him. It's related to thoughts that have been tickling my mind recently.
A year ago, I assumed that Mr. Jordan had already exerted every bit of influence over my career that he was going to. During my youth, his books significantly shaped the writer I would become. Publishing with Tor became my personal holy grail, in a lot of ways, because of his presence there. His power for sales in the fantasy market (which pushed the genre with mainstream readers and also helped establish the fantasy hardcover as a viable publishing option even for midlist authors) changed how people buy books in our genre. Finally, his success at Tor allowed them to have the money to take chances on newer authors, such as myself.
When you weigh all of those things, I think you'll find that my career—even before last year's events—was dominated rather heavily by the Wheel of Time and Mr. Jordan himself. But with his passing, I assumed that no more such influence would come.
I guess you could say that I was wrong.
From this point on, I doubt more than a passing mention will be made of me any my writing without Robert Jordan's name appearing as well. Any article, essay, or encyclopedia entry about me will list my work on the Wheel of Time as one of the most important events of my career. Twenty years from now, I will be doing conventions related to the Wheel of Time. It's entirely possible that my career as a whole could end up as a footnote to that of Robert Jordan.
Does this bother me? To be honest, it doesn't. I knew all of this before I accepted the project, and if I'd worried about it, I'd just have done the book without official credit. But that wouldn't have been fair, either to myself or the fans. They deserve to know what they are getting, and deserve to understand that someone other than Mr. Jordan worked on this book. They deserve to know exactly who was involved.
Beyond that, a man could do much worse than be known as that guy who was involved in the last Wheel of Time book. A series like this one doesn't come along but once a generation, and it's humbling to be part of it.
Yes, I hope to be able to make my own mark on the genre. I hope that I can earn my own way onto the bestseller lists and into the hearts of readers. But in the end, if I'm like so many other good—but ephemeral—midlist authors, I'm not going to consider my career a failure. I'll have told the stories that I want, and I'll have worked in a job I love for my entire life. Who can really ask for more than that?
But it's nice to know that, either way, I'll have been involved in something lasting, something people will still be reading a century from now. The Wheel of Time has changed a lot of people's lives. Mine most of all. And I'm very thankful for the chance to work on this novel, and for the willingness of the readers to accept me in as one of them. So, I guess my thoughts upon the one year mark turn toward you—I've found that Mr. Jordan's greatest legacy is in the quality of fan that he inspired. You do him proud.
Annotations coming soon. Thank you all for reading.
Brandon
p.s. Plaid Ajah: Yes. (Inside joke.)
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Interview: Aug 14th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
With the announcement of the movie deal for the Wheel of Time, I had a lot of emails asking me for more of my thoughts on the matter. Specifically, do I think that the Wheel of Time books can be made into good movies?
Well, the answer is no. But I do think that a good movie can be made from the Wheel of Time books. Let me explain the distinction.
I think that books can make excellent inspirations for movies—but the best movies, particularly in fantasy, that come from books are the ones that adapt the work, rather than just trying to film it scene-by-scene. The Lord of the Rings movies are an excellent example. It would have been a miss-fire if Jackson had tried to turn the books into movies; instead, he used the books for material to make great movies.
The formats are very different. If this were a TV mini-series, then I could see The Eye of the World being adapted straight across. In a feature length film, however, there would have to be adaptation. I look at the Harry Potter movies as another example. The first film was only okay, but the third film was great. Why? Because the third film's director adapted the story, choosing the parts that were the most cinematic, and didn't just try to film the book—he tried to make a great movie, taking elements from the books.
Maybe this is blasphemy, but it's the only way I see a good movie coming from The Eye of the World. There is just too much going on, too many characters, too much weight of history, to make it into a two hour movie. However, there are stories in The Eye of the World which—if adapted—could make an excellent movie.
In the end, however, if it gets more people to read the books, then the movie has at least accomplished something. That's why I sold movie rights to Alcatraz, even though I knew that Hollywood has a good track record of making terrible movies from adapted sources. (Fortunately, I've got a lot of confidence in the team working on Alcatraz over at Dreamworks.) But if the movie ends up getting even one more person into my books, then I feel that I'm ahead.
Who knows where the Wheel of Time movies will go in the future. Maybe they'll get made. Maybe the option will just sit there gathering dust. Maybe they will turn out to be terrible, like some other recent fantasy book adaptations. Or maybe we'll get lucky, and they'll get a director who understands the books and can bring out the same FEEL of the novels while still adapting them in a way that suits the film medium.
The thing is, you never know which of those you're going to get until you try. And so, I repeat my congratulations to Harriet. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.
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Interview: Aug 13th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
People have already started emailing me about this.
My response is . . . huzzah! Congratulations Harriet! I know that things have been stalled for a long time on this front, and while she mentioned to me that something like this might be coming, I didn't think it would be so soon.
I'm afraid I'm not the one to ask about specifics, however. Even if I knew them, I wouldn't be comfortable sharing them. But I'm sure more will be coming in the future. All I will say is to remember that things like this tend to move very slowly. I hope that won't be the case here, but chances are good that it will be many years before we actually get to see the movie.
Now, back to work on Book Twelve. . . .
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2008
BookBanter Interview (Verbatim)Alex C. Telander
It's a great honor to be chosen to complete Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.Brandon Sanderson
Yes, it is.ALEX C. TELANDER
How were you chosen?BRANDON SANDERSON
How was I chosen? I got up one morning, and there was a voicemail on my phone from someone that said, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me. I have something I want to discuss with you."ALEX C. TELANDER
Had you ever met her before or anything?BRANDON SANDERSON
I'd never met her before. I had seen Robert Jordan once at a convention, been too embarrassed to go up and talk to him. I had not applied, or asked my agent to apply, or anything like this. I was known at Tor as a big fan of the series. I had also written on my web site some thoughts about what Robert Jordan's books had meant in my life. But none of it was really an attempt. . . I assumed somebody had already been chosen.ALEX C. TELANDER
Right. Do you know if you were the only one on the list?BRANDON SANDERSON
I know there were others on the list. I am not at liberty to say who they were. But, that first call was just a 'would you be willing?' And so I said, yes, of course. Well, what I actually said was, "aabbl, aabbbl, aabbbl. . ." I actually sent her an email the next day saying, "Dear Harriet, I'm not an idiot. I promise." I was just so surprised. And so, she then read Mistborn. She later told me, she said, "I got just 50 pages into it and I knew." But then she kept reading to make sure. She thought about it for about a month, she called me back. As I understand, she didn't ever look at any of the other people who were being considered, she just went with me. She really, really liked Mistborn.ALEX C. TELANDER
That's pretty great!Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2008
BookBanter Interview (Verbatim)Alex C. Telander
And then, A Memory of Light is due out next fall. You said, was it November, I think?Brandon Sanderson
November's the goal. November is the goal. Understand that there are a whole lot of different factors going into this. It will depend on how much editing it takes, how quickly I'm able to get the characters right. I'm going to work on it, I'm working on it more than full time. I'm pulling big long hours, I'm trying to get this done as soon as possible. But, it also has to be the best book.ALEX C. TELANDER
Right. So that's going to be back and forth with you and Harriet, right?BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah, back and forth with me and Harriet. I will have the rough draft done probably by December. Right now it's October. But how long it takes to get the rough draft polished and perfected, that's the uncertain quality here. And so, the goal will be November.ALEX C. TELANDER
Okay.Tags
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
As the one year anniversary of my official involvement in the Wheel of Time series came and passed last week, I thought it might be interesting to do an update of the original interview I did with Dragonmount last December. Now that I've had a chance to re-read the series and write a good chunk of the last book, have my thoughts changed? I was as curious about this as anyone, so I decided to do a quick revisit to the interview, answering the questions again in order.
Note that I wrote this rather quickly. I assume you would all rather have me working on Book Twelve, as opposed to spending hours on blog posts. So when I had a few moments in the evening, I ran through the questions again. There are bound to be typos; please forgive them. (I hope I didn't spell any character names wrong, but where my ability to spell is involved, you never can be too certain. I live and die by my spellchecker.)
This is intended to be lighthearted and informal. As always when I wrote blog posts, I did it in a conversational style. That's part of what allows me to do posts as often as I do; they don't require the same 'piece' of my writing mind that crafting novels does. I can relax, so to speak, and not worry about the lyricism of my words. Or even if I spelled them correctly. . . . ;)
Enjoy!
Footnote
The original Dragonmount interview from December 2007 has been eaten by a Trolloc and is no longer available online.Tags
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
Congratulations on receiving this landmark opportunity. How are you feeling?Brandon Sanderson
One year later, how am I feeling? Well, still a little stunned at times. It's odd. It's been a year. But even just earlier today, while at the gym, I had a moment where I stopped and thought. "Wait, how in the world did this happen? Out of all of the people who could have been chosen, did this really happen to me?"
It's like winning the lottery, only better. First off, this isn't the kind of opportunity you can buy with money. I'd trade a winning lottery ticket for the chance to work on this book. (Sounds like hyperbole, but it's true.) Secondly, I didn't get chosen at random. I was chosen, in part, because of my skill. Not to say that there aren't others with a lot of skill in the field. But I wasn't just picked out of a hat, either. I was picked because of my work. That feels great.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
The Big Question most fans probably have is: "Why Brandon Sanderson?" What are your thoughts on this?Brandon Sanderson
I've thought a lot about this over the last year. I've spoken to Harriet and considered. I've come to discover a little more about the process behind how I was chosen.
Why me? I think foremost, because Harriet liked my work. But she'd also read the thoughts I'd written on Mr. Jordan's passing. She knew I had been heavily influenced by the series that is The Wheel of Time. These aren't just books. There's something about them, something endearing and enduring. Something that draws people into fan communities and makes friends talk with friends about them. There are a lot of bestselling series out there, but there isn't a single one in my knowledge that has prompted the level of passion from the readers that these have.
The fans have been waiting for a long, long time to get this book. I've been waiting a long, long time. I was a fan from the get-go; I read The Eye of the World when it was first released. I think that in order to get this book done in a reasonable amount of time, they needed to pick someone who was already familiar with the series. Someone who knew their Aelfinn from their Eelfinn and who could explain Rand's family tree. (At least on a good day. It still makes my brain get in a knot when I think about who Slayer is and how he relates to the various characters. . . .)
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
How did you first get involved in this project? Were you approached by Tor and/or Harriet, or did you dust off your resume and send it to them for consideration?Brandon Sanderson
I don't have much to add that I didn't answer last year. No resumes. I was caught completely off guard. I will say that when I first spoke to Harriet the day she called to ask me, I was so befuddled that I couldn't speak straight. I actually sent her an email the next day which said, essentially, "Dear Harriet. I'm not an idiot. I promise. Sorry I sounded like one. . . ."Tags
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
What was your initial reaction when you read the outline Harriet put together for A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
This is a good one to answer now, since I HAVE read the outline (obviously.) Actually, there's a good story here. When I first went to visit Harriet, I recall walking in the door and—even before eating—asking if I could have two things. The ending Jim wrote (he finished the last part of the book himself) and the answer to who killed Asmodean.
I wish it were possible for me to express just how much I enjoyed reading those final written words that Mr. Jordan left behind. I was satisfied. I think that's the perfect word for it. Satisfied. It ends the way it should. Not, perhaps, the way I would have guessed—or even the way you have guessed. But it's the RIGHT ending. I was very pleased.
And it made me sleep a lot more easily once I got to see that the ending was there, and that I wouldn't have to do that part myself. I'm a 'goal driven' writer. I develop an outline for myself that generally focuses on my ending, and then my writing pushes me toward that goal. Already having the ending makes this book possible.
I guess the only other thing I'd like to note that I was feeling was this: Reverence. This is the last work of the master. It's like holding a play penned by Shakespeare himself—one that nobody else has read, and that you get to perform for the first time.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
You've inherited a world that is on the verge of destruction, and a main character who is now crippled, partially insane, and probably now blind.Brandon Sanderson
(Brandon's interjection: Yup indeed! Lots of conflict. Just the way I like it. This is the stuff that great epics are made of. It looks like Jason cut this part of the question when he did the original post. Probably for space issues.)Question Continued
You've said before in other interviews that your fantasy novels (Elantris, and the Mistborn series) were born in part by the notion of taking a typical fantasy concept and turning it on its head. For example, you said that while The Wheel of Time is about "peasants becoming kings", your Elantris book is about "Kings who become peasants." And one of the fundamental ideas behind the Mistborn series is the question: "What if the Dark One won?" Having explored those interesting ideas, what's it like to suddenly find yourself writing the ending of a massive series which in large part defined the fantasy genre that many readers are familiar with?Brandon Sanderson
I think I covered this one last year as well as I could. I'll add to my response that I think, in our hearts, every one of us fantasy authors wants to write this classic story. There's a piece of us who wants to emulate our masters, to do as they did, because they brought us such delight and emotion at reading. That's why many authors, when they first begin, tend to write works that feel heavily derivative.
Most of us never publish those novels. We move on, like a tottering child, searching for our own voice. Trying to find a way to bring those same emotions to people, but by telling our own stories. Our own way. It's the correct way of things. Telling the exact same story over and over again is an exercise in futility.
But I get the chance to actually do that, to be part of this thing that nurtured me through those years when I was a quiet fantasy reader who spent more time in his room with his books than outside with living people. I get to write on this story, I get to be part of the master's work. That's very humbling.
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Interview: Nov 12th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Tour Notes (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Also, many of you have asked if I'd gotten a response from Harriet on the pages I turned in. I have, but it's not that exciting to hear about. You see, I wanted to remained focused on finishing the book, and I know that if I start getting revision notes, it will draw my focus back to the parts I've already written. I can't afford that distraction unless the parts I've written are so terrible that we need to rethink how I'm approaching this book. So, I have asked to not get any revision notes until I've at least hit the 400k mark. All I wanted to know was "Should I keep going, or are there big troubles?" The response was an enthusiastic keep going.
This book is going to take a LOT of revision. I know ahead of time that there are going to be big swaths that will need to be rewritten. But as long as what I'm turning in is pleasing enough to be workable, it's important to keep moving forward. I'm like that in writing; I like to have a rough draft to work on, rather than turning my attention back to previous sections before finishing. I need to keep momentum up. So, honestly, you know as much as I do at this point. She's pleased, but undoubtedly has large revision requests.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
In what ways do you think you'll have to shift your writing style to match Robert Jordan's? Will you be trying to write in his "voice", or will you approach the novel with your own?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.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
We know that Robert Jordan left extensive notes, as well as some audio tapes and actual written parts for this novel. We know your intent is to tell his story. Having seen the outline, how much of the actual plot (the plot points, character arcs, intrigue, etc.) do you think you'll have to come up with on your own?Brandon Sanderson
Another one I can answer now that I couldn't before, as I hadn't seen the notes.
However, it's still a tough one to answer. How much do I have to make up? A lot in some places, very little in others. The interview mentioned an 'outline' above. That's a little bit of an understatement regarding what was left. The things mentioned in this question itself are more accurate.
My goal is to retain as much of his own writing as possible, and then fill in the blanks myself. As I've promised Harriet not to talk about these things until the book is out, I feel I can't give specifics right now. Know that there are large swaths of writing to do on my own, and yet even then I feel his hand on my shoulder. Every hole has an entry point and an exit point. I know where the characters are, and I know where they have to go. Sometimes it's my choice on how to get them there. Sometimes there are notes, sometimes there are actual chunks of writing. Sometimes there isn't anything but a quick notation in that character's file explaining their final state at the end of the book.
But this is Robert Jordan's book, not my own. I keep saying that, and I don't want the readers to think I'm approaching it any other way. It's his story, his writing, and his vision.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
Which characters or plot threads are you most looking forward to writing?Brandon Sanderson
I said Perrin last year. This year, I'm not sure I can claim that any more. Not that my affection for Perrin has waned. I've simply spent too much time writing through the characters' eyes.
One of the spectacular things about the Wheel of Time was the depth of characterization. No matter who's eyes you were seeing through, they felt real and lively. To each character, they are the most important person in their own story.
As a writer, you can't play favorites. At least not when you're actually writing. When I sit down to write Egwene, she's my favorite. When I sit down to write Rand, he's my favorite. And when I sit down to write Perrin, he's my favorite.
Through different points in the books, different characters are my 'favorite' to read about. Rand dominates my interest in books one and two, but I find myself leaning toward Perrin and then Aviendha in the next few books. Nynaeve's story in the middle end, with the rescue by Lan, is a personal favorite. Mat takes center stage after that, and Egwene is my favorite to read in Knife of Dreams.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
Are there any particular aspects of the book that you think will be especially challenging for you?Brandon Sanderson
Last year I mentioned the depth of the worldbuilding, and this really has been a challenge. I know there are some of you out there who can name every single Aes Sedai, their Ajah and relative strength in the Power. But I've never been that kind of reader. I've loved these books, and I've been through them a number of times (currently, I've read The Eye of the World nine times.) I know these characters—I know how to write them and how to think as them. But the side characters are a challenge to keep track of. I don't have a trivia mind. I forget the names of my OWN side characters sometimes. I know who they are, but I can't name them.
(Fortunately, I now know that Mr. Jordan himself had trouble sometimes keeping track of them all, which is why he had assistants to help him.)
Other than that, there have been a few characters that have been more difficult to get 'right' than other characters. The Aiel, for instance, are a challenge to make sound right. They're such an interesting people, and they see the way in such a peculiar way. I've had to spend a lot of time working on making them sound right.
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Interview: Nov 26th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: 300k (Verbatim)Question
Is writing on this book easier or harder than you expected?Brandon Sanderson
I honestly didn't know what to expect, so I have trouble answering this question, though many people ask it of me at signings. Let me tell you this: Writing this book is difficult. It's the good kind of difficult, the kind that makes you stretch and improve in leaps and bounds, but it is TOUGH. Keeping track of all of the side character and sub-plots is a real challenge, and trying to stay true to the soul of the Wheel of Time while adapting my own style to something appropriate for this book has been even more of one.
I'm loving working on it. There are many who think it might be easier to write this book than one of my own (since there is an outline and the worldbuilding is done.) However, I think that it's much, much more difficult. When it comes time to use a side character, I can't simply make up their personality and fit them into the plot—I have to research how they've thought, talked, and acted in the past, then incorporate that. I have to be careful what I add as I can't contradict the plotting from books past. And beyond that, there is a huge level of expectation and hope resting upon this novel. My own, that of Harriet, and that of all of you readers who have been waiting for almost twenty years to read.
This all makes the book tough to write. But, as I said, it's the good kind of tough. I started writing fantasy in the first place because I think it's one of the most challenging genres to write in, and the prospect of working on this book still excites me.
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
I know you probably can't go too deeply into it, but are there any questions about the story you had as a fan that you will make sure get answered in this final novel?Brandon Sanderson
I am still deeply interested in ascertaining the solution to the quandry regarding the character of Asmodean, most specifically the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his demise. ;)
I also mentioned Moiraine's fate last year as being a big question I had. She's always been a favorite of mine, and each time I read through the series, I'm left wondering about her. (Well, not any more, since I've read the notes. But you know what I mean.)
I've been surprised to discover that a lot of readers take her survival for granted, but I've never done so. The letter gives some good clues that she might still be around, but it could also be some kind of trap by the Aelfinn and Eelfinn. The answers and gifts they give are truthful, yet there's often a twisted logic to them as well, it seems.
I can't say more here, I'm afraid, since I now know too much.
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Interview: Dec 3rd, 2008
Brad Wilcox
When word of Jordan's death hit news wires, Sanderson, like many of Jordan's fans, was devastated.Brandon Sanderson
"I'll be perfectly honest: When I heard the news, my first thought was of the big loss of someone extraordinary," recalled Sanderson. "My second thought was . . . he was working on the last book, would we ever get to see it?"
BRAD WILCOX
His sentiment was echoed by many on "Wheel of Time" fan sites across the Internet, and soon Sanderson found himself becoming a topic on those sites.
BRANDON SANDERSON
"I'm relatively unknown as an author; I've only been published for a couple of years," Sanderson said. "I did not know I was being considered."
BRAD WILCOX
Indeed, the most prominent question on fan sites such as seemed to be: Who is Brandon Sanderson?
That question was met head-on by Sanderson as he began interacting with "Wheel of Time" fans both live and on the Web, and taking the time to introduce himself to those who were still new to his work.
JASON DENZEL
"Overall, I'm absolutely thrilled that Brandon is the man for the job," exclaimed Jason Denzel, site founder of Dragonmount.com. "It's as if they picked the most talented fan they could find and handed him the series to finish."
BRAD WILCOX
As confident as Denzel and the rest of the fans on his website have become in Sanderson, they admit that there remains a trickle of skepticism.
JASON DENZEL
"The thing that we haven't seen yet, and whether or not it can be pulled off, is if this book is going to feel like someone else wrote it or as if Robert Jordan wrote it himself," said Denzel. "Our biggest worry is whether or not it's going to have the feel of the rest of the series."
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Interview: Dec 3rd, 2008
Brad Wilcox
Sanderson empathizes with the fans.Brandon Sanderson
"I can't do a better job than Robert Jordan. I can't even do as good a job as Robert Jordan, I don't think," remarked Sanderson. "He's the only one that could've done it the right way."Tags
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Interview: Dec 17th, 2008
Question
Do you have a personal message for all the Wheel of Time fans?Brandon Sanderson
Thank you for your support. The response has been fantastic. I get emails each day cheering me on.
Thank you for your understanding. I can't replace the man you lost. But I'm doing my best to give you the book you've been waiting for.
And finally, thank you for your patience. I'm working hard, I promise. But this book is a HUGE undertaking, and will likely be three times the size of previous books I've written. Even considering the parts Mr. Jordan finished, there's just a lot to do, and I don't want to rush an imperfect product to production. We hope to have something for you in stores by November 2009. But if it takes longer, it takes longer.
Question
How should fans get in touch with you?Brandon Sanderson
Same as before. Through my website. As always, thanks for reading.Tags
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Interview: Dec 3rd, 2008
Brad Wilcox
For Sanderson, this project is a labor of love—love for the series he grew up reading and love for the man who created the very world he now seeks to end.Brandon Sanderson
"I think I can do a really good job because I love the series so much," said Sanderson.Tags
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Interview: Dec 10th, 2008
Brandon Sanderson
One reader emailed me, noticing that the A Memory of Light progress bar has been zipping up quite quickly lately. They were wondering if I'd hit a section where Mr. Jordan had done more writing. (I can't find the actual email right now, it's buried in the inbox.) The answer, my astute reader, is yes. I've hit a section where Mr. Jordan did more work before he passed away than he did on other sections. Much of it here is in outline form or dictation form, and so I'm having to do a lot of the physical construction of the chapters, but having a detailed outline makes the process move much more quickly. That's part of why I felt I could leave 20% to be done in December and still feel I could meet my self-imposed deadline.
We're getting much, much closer to my goal, by the way. Over 350k done so far, with less than 50k to go. Another reason it's going to well is that I was forced to spend much of the last two months doing other things. I still got some writing done, as you probably saw with the progress bar updates, but with all of the traveling I did, I had to work hard to simply get the 10k minimum goal I set for myself in a week. Now that I'm back, I'm eager to get back to work.
This is how it often happens with me. I started writing books because . . . well, I like writing books. It's what I love to do, and those who know me will tell you that I'd probably spend sixteen hours a day working on my books if life would let me. October/November is always hard for me, since the touring keeps me from writing. It's great to tour and meet the readers, and I think it's an important part of the writing business. It helps keep me grounded and in touch with those who read my works. If I DID spend sixteen hours a day writing, with no contact with the world around me, I think my writing would become more and more insular and less relatable. (Pemberly and Limebaby's jobs, in part, are to constantly remind me that there are things to write ABOUT by making me get out of my basement and experience them.)
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Interview: Jan 6th, 2009
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Award + Annotation (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
First off, here is a new Annotation from Mistborn: The Well of Ascension. Chapter Fifty-Three. There are only six or seven more of these, then I'll start posting them from Book Three. People have asked if I'll do them for A Memory of Light. The answer is that I probably will not, for the simple reason that I wouldn't feel comfortable posting them without Harriet's approval on each one, and that would be too much work to ask of her for this. However, this is why I'm hoping to be able to get her permission to write a companion book to the final WoT volume(s), talking about the process of writing the last book. The choice will be hers, but if we do that book, it will read much like the annotations but with the addition of Mr. Jordan's own notes.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Do you plan on any computer or video games based on the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
That really depends on the companies that manufacture such things. There has been some interest. We will see what we will see.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
What was your inspiration for this series? Anything specific?Robert Jordan
For First Cause: I suppose the question of what it would really be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told that you were born to be the savior of mankind. Beyond that, two or three hundred things.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Are your Arthurian legend parallels intended or were they written in and only realized afterwards?Robert Jordan
They were intended.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
From what sources did you develop the concept of Wolfbrothers and the "powers" Perrin has developed in the series?Robert Jordan
Any number of myths from Europe, North American Indians, and the Australian aborigines.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Is there any symbolism or "deeper meaning" behind this series?Robert Jordan
There are layers, certainly, but I don't know about deeper meaning.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Did you intend to have an extreme tone of Arthurian/Biblical references?Robert Jordan
Do I have an extreme tone of same? I thought it was a mild tone of same.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Am I seeing things that aren't there, or are there several references to the Arthurian Legends in the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
Yes, there are. Among many others. The Arthurian legend is the most recognizable in the United States. The others are much less so and you don't pick them out as easily.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
How did you develop the female characters in your series? They are a strength to the series, and are interesting because they seem to contain genuinely "feminine" thought patterns?Robert Jordan
I spent forty-odd years listening to women, and besides that, they're all based on my wife.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Any chance of your books becoming movies?Robert Jordan
Not under my control.Tags
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Interview: Oct 21st, 1994
AOL Chat 2 (Verbatim)Question
Was there anyone that helped you develop the characters?Robert Jordan
No.Tags
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Interview: Apr 4th, 2009
Brandon Sanderson
Now, how about some Reader Mail:
I read your post about splitting A Memory of Light and thought your reasoning was very sound. It seems obvious that you care very much about putting out something of quality. I'm concerned though, that you won't end up changing what you write based on reader's reactions to the first book. How do you make sure the book/volumes you end up writing at 800k a year or so from now isn't different from the book you would have written if you had just done the whole thing in one big chunk?
Excellent question. The answer is simple, yet may not be very satisfying. Honestly, I don't know if the book will turn out differently.
It's rarely fruitful to second-guess decisions based on what might happen in the future. Every novel I read, every review that comes out, every day spent pondering . . . these things all influence my writing. Each day we make hundreds of decisions that nudge us in this direction or that. Scenes are influenced directly by events that occur in my life.
Would Mistborn Three have been a different book if I hadn't stopped and written something else between it and Mistborn Two? Probably. Would it have been better or worse? I don't know. Will A Memory of Light Three be different because A Memory of Light One will be released before it comes out? Perhaps. Will it be better or worse? I don't know.
I can say this. The second chunk should be done before the first comes out. And the third chunk saw a lot of work by Mr. Jordan before he passed away. So the structure isn't going to change, regardless. An author also has to learn not to let reviews or reader reactions influence him/her TOO much. Writing is a very solitary art, and the writer learns to trust their instincts. One of the early lessons to learn in writing is that feedback is good, but must be held at arm's length.
If anything, knowing that there is one part out for readers to enjoy will take some of the pressure off of me and, hopefully, allow me to work more smoothly on the next two sections. Thanks for the question!
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Interview: May 15th, 2009
Dave Brendon
Moving on to the Wheel of Time, I’m sure you can remember exactly where and when you were when you first laid eyes on The Eye of the World; what, in your opinion, makes the Wheel of Time series so popular?Brandon Sanderson
I do remember exactly where and when I first laid eyes on The Eye of the World. It was right after the paperback came out, and I was at the local comic store where I bought all my fantasy books. While browsing the new paperback shelf, I saw this huge fantasy novel there. I can almost feel that moment, standing and holding the book in my hands, listening to someone play an antiquated upright of Cadash in the background. I think the cover of Eye is the best Darryl Sweet has ever done–one of the best in fantasy. I loved the cover. The feel of the troop marching along, Lan and Moiraine proud and face forward. . . . The cover screamed epic. I bought the book and loved it. I still think Eye is one of the greatest fantasy books ever written. It signifies an era, the culmination of the epic quest genre which had been brewing since Tolkien initiated it in the ’60s. The Wheel of Time dominated my reading during the ’90s, influencing heavily my first few attempts at my own fantasy novels. I think it did that to pretty much all of us; even many of the most literarily snobbish of fantasy readers were youths when I was, and read The Eye of the World when I did. Robert Jordan showed us what it was to have vision and scope in a fantasy series–he did a wonderful job giving his readers a sense of immensity to his story, while at the same time focusing on the specific lives of his characters. He did an excellent job of creating a large set of empathetic characters and keeping them straight in the reader’s mind. He’s a model writer for walking the line between familiarity (the “farmboy saves the world from an evil overlord” story) and originality (his use of magic, his political worldbuilding). The descriptiveness of his writing is great. And the prologue to The Eye of the World is hands-down one of the most interesting introductions to any series. All those factors have won readers over and cemented the Wheel of Time as one of the most popular fantasy series of all time. Nobody in the adult fantasy market today has left more of an impact on more people’s lives than Robert Jordan.Tags
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Interview: May 15th, 2009
Dave Brendon
It must have been surreal when you found out you were going to finish a series you loved and work from the notes of an author you (and many others, myself included) admire so much; does it still feel as if you’re dreaming, sometimes? Is there still that little voice telling you you’re going to wake up soon?Brandon Sanderson
I still feel a little stunned at times. It’s odd. It’s been a year and a half, but from time to time I still stop and think, “Wait, how in the world did this happen? Out of all of the people who could have been chosen, did this really happen to me?” I kind of feel like Sam, carrying Frodo the last few paces up the mountain. I’m finishing the Master’s work for him, since he is unable to. I’m just glad I could be here to help for the last stretch when I was needed.Tags
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Interview: May 15th, 2009
Dave Brendon
How has it been working so closely with Harriet? Granted, you are in different States, but you know what I mean. :-)Brandon Sanderson
Harriet is a world class editor–she really is great at what she does. I’ve had several opportunities to meet with her in person–she, and Mr. Jordan’s staff, are awesome. His two assistants, Maria and Alan, are continuity experts and went through my completed manuscript pages fact checking and giving feedback on general issues as well. I had worried that having three editors on this project would make it more difficult to work on, but so far it’s simply been a big help. There is so much going on in this book and this world that having the extra sets of eyes is very helpful.
I’ve really enjoyed the process. At the beginning, after I read all the notes and explained to the team my feelings on the various outlines for the different characters, Harriet pretty much let me call the shots when it came to the actual drafting of the novel. As an editor, she works best when I provide material to her, then she works her magic to turn it from good to excellent. When I turned manuscript pages in, and she came back to me with line edits—where she goes through and tweaks the language of the book—it quickly became obvious what a pro she is and how much she loves this series. It’s truly an honor to work with her.
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Interview: May 15th, 2009
Dave Brendon
Not only are you finishing A Memory of Light, you’re also writing your own work; how on earth to you balance and juggle everything? I s’pose it helps to be a full-time writer. :-) and what is your day like while working on A Memory of Light? Do you work according to a schedule? Are there enough hours in the day? :-)Brandon Sanderson
Let me combine the answers for these two questions. You may not be surprised to hear that I have many more ideas for books than I have time to work on them. There are several first drafts or partial drafts of novels that I’ve written that need serious revision before they ever see the light of day, but I have to prioritize according to the urgency of the project and the deadlines I’m working under. Part two of A Memory of Light (the working title is Shifting Winds, but this will ultimately change) will be getting the largest share of my attention during the next year. I also have to finish the fourth Alcatraz book in the next few months–Scholastic will probably start breathing down my neck around July or August, but my goal is to write it when I have a rough draft done for Shifting Winds. I often work on two books at once–writing new material for one book and editing another. Writing and editing take different types of attention, and I can usually only write new material for four to six hours a day, but I can revise all day long–maybe this is the difference between mental heavy lifting and mental long-distance running. I recently hired an assistant to handle a lot of the non-writing tasks associated with being self-employed; this should free up another couple hours each day during which I can work on revising The Way of Kings as I mentioned above. I generally put in an eight-hour workday, then call it quits if other things are happening. From 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. is family time, and then if nothing pressing is going on I head back to work after dinner and after my son is in bed. It works for me–most of the time, the fifty or sixty hours a week I spend writing are quite fun. As my wife says, writing is my job and my hobby. I’d generally rather be working on one of my books than sitting in front of the television.Tags
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Interview: May 15th, 2009
Dave Brendon
With Red Eagle Entertainment doing the live-action movie and the various games of the Wheel of Time, why do you think many fans have had such a strong reaction against this? I know I’d like to shout, “If Harriet’s okay with it, leave it alone!”Brandon Sanderson
Maybe they’ll get made. Maybe they won’t turn out so well, like some other recent fantasy book adaptations. Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll get a director who understands the books and can bring out the same feel of the novels while still adapting them in a way that suits the film medium. The thing is, you never know which of those you’re going to get until you try. Now that I’ve met with representatives of Red Eagle, I’m much more comfortable with them working on the project. They really impressed me with their sincere desire to do the series justice.Tags
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Interview: May 18th, 2009
Clayton Neuman
Were you ever reluctant to take on this project?Brandon Sanderson
I spent a long time thinking, "Can anyone do this?" And my answer came out "No." But if someone else can try, I wanted it to be me. My goal has been to get the characters to feel like themselves when you read them. But it's like a different director directing the same actors and using the same script. You're going to end up with two different movies.Tags
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Interview: May 18th, 2009
Clayton Neuman
Did you have to change the way you write?Brandon Sanderson
I didn't want to imitate Robert Jordan's style—I think that would turn into parody. But I needed to be more descriptive. The Wheel of Time books are lavish in their concrete sensory descriptions. And that's had a strong influence on my own writing: I just sent a couple of pages of something else to my editor, and he wrote back and said, "Wow, you've changed."Tags
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Interview: May 18th, 2009
Clayton Neuman
Did you struggle with any aspects of the series?Brandon Sanderson
The biggest struggle was the sheer weight of characters. I was working on Perrin's viewpoint at one point, and Jordan's editorial assistant sent me this file filled with dozens and dozens of names of side characters for him that had not even appeared in the book yet. It's like juggling boulders, because there's so much weight to each of them.Tags
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Interview: May 18th, 2009
Clayton Neuman
What are the biggest questions you wanted answered by the end of the series?Brandon Sanderson
I was really curious about Moiraine and her plot line. Her disappearance was so open-ended. I wanted to see some meetings: Elayne and her mother, Tam and Rand, getting Perrin and Mat back together. I can't say whether or not that happens, but I was looking at them. In some cases there were opportunities and notes for it, and in other cases... I'm not going to force it. Jim did include in his notes what happened to Asmodean, and his widow made the call on where to put it in the book.Tags
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Interview: May 18th, 2009
Clayton Neuman
Universal has optioned the series. Do you think it's possible to make a movie of this scope?Brandon Sanderson
It's a difficult project. The people who are producing it seem very focused on the series, and they've put some of my worries to ease. It seems impossible, but I would have said the same thing about The Lord of the Rings. Impossible things can come to pass. Universal wants this to be a fantasy tentpole, and if that's really the case I can see them splitting books and giving this series the attention it deserves.Tags
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Interview: Jun 1st, 2009
Book Expo America Interview (Verbatim)Damon Cap
How do you feel that writing this book changes what you would have done in your life? I know it was probably a very difficult decision, because it's such a great project. But how does this affect you as a writer?Brandon Sanderson
That's actually a great question. It was a difficult decision—it was the easiest difficult decision I've ever made. How about that? Because I made it in a snap. There's no way I was going to pass this up. But at the same time, making that decision made me realize... I knew when I was making it, that this would change my life forever. And it would change... I mean, I had to set aside a number of book projects that I've wanted to write. That just got cast aside, and I just didn't have time for it anymore. And I don't know if I will write those books; if I'll be able to write those books. It completely changed tracks—you know, you talk about a train being derailed—well, you know, I completely was thrown off-track to something completely different. It did change my career drastically.
DAMON CAP
Do you feel like—and this is going to be a difficult question—but do you feel like that it's taken away a little bit of yourself? Do you feel like you're going to be typecast as that person that wrote Jordan's last book?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I don't know. I don't think so. Partially because I plan to do this and be done. I don't plan to make a career of finishing other people's books. In fact, I would have said no to pretty much anyone else. The Wheel of Time was the foundational and formative epic fantasy series of my childhood. These were the books I was reading—Rand, and Perrin, and Mat, they were my friends that I had growing up. This wasn't something that I could say no to. Just from a kind of... I consider Robert Jordan a mentor. My hero in a lot of ways. There was no way I was going to say no. But I wouldn't have said yes to pretty much anyone else, and I don't plan to do other sorts of tie-in books. I've put my soul into this book. There is a piece of me in this. It's hard to explain. It's not like... I didn't treat it like I was given a work-for-hire project. It's not like I'm writing a Star Wars book, as fun as that would be, or something like this. I was given these notes and then essentially told by Harriet, "I want to see what you're doing, after you've done with it, but you have full license. Do what you feel you need to do to write this book." I was given essentially complete control. Now, Harriet—Robert Jordan's wife—she has complete control.
DAMON CAP
The final say.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah, she has the final say. But she's an editor. And she didn't tell me how to write the book. She gave me the notes and said, "Go. Do what you need to do to make a great book." And so, this has become... It is a collaboration. It's a true collaboration, that's what they call it; I'm collaborating. And there were big holes that I had to fill in. Now, there are a lot of notes that he left behind and there's a lot—this is mostly his book—but there's a bit of me in it. And it's not just a work-for-hire. Which actually... It's good. I don't feel like I'm, I don't know, stepping in and just doing something. It's hard to explain. I don't know if that's making any sense at all.
DAMON CAP
No, that's definitely makes sense.
BRANDON SANDERSON
But I'm putting as much or more into this as I would put into one of my own books. And I don't feel like this would typecast me any more than writing my own books typecasts me as a person who writes Brandon Sanderson books. If that makes sense. You get typecast as yourself; it's impossible to not be typecast as yourself. So...yeah.
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Interview: Jun 1st, 2009
Book Expo America Interview (Verbatim)Damon Cap
So from the standpoint of notes, because I know there were a lot of notes involved in this book, and it was funny because Ringo was talking today, you know, we were talking about e-books and things like that. If you had a say, would you have written more? I know there is some sort of, you know...We talk about the three books. And there is some sort of...From a publishing standpoint, could you have written a book that was seven books? Did he leave enough notes, and do you feel like that maybe sometimes in the standard of e-books, some would like to have seen your rough drafts of the Jordan work, would that be of interest because of that?Brandon Sanderson
I think it's unlikely to see the rough drafts. Because I know that the team working on the Wheel of Time—Harriet and those—are somewhat more...skeptical is the wrong word. Robert Jordan didn't like to show his work to people until it was on the twelfth draft. Harriet didn't see it until it'd gone through twelve drafts. He was very...Didn't like to show unfinished work to people. That was just how he was. Different authors approach things different ways. With Warbreaker, my own book, I put the first draft on my web site. I do stuff like that. I work from a different kind of angle. I don't know what it is.
But I'm going to probably push to get her to let me publish the notes, or to publish a book talking that includes part of the notes along with a discussion of how I translated the notes to book. Something like that. I would like to do something like that. The call will be Harriet's. And I probably won't even talk about it with her until the book is done. 'Till, you know, we've got the Wheel of Time done. Then I might approach her and say, "Hey, would you mind if I did something like this? Would you be interested?" Because I think the fans would really like to see it.
DAMON CAP
I think it would be definitely an interesting idea.
BRANDON SANDERSON
You mentioned the three books. And, I mean...The Wheel of Time is huge. There's lots of different places we could go. They are not places that I think we're going to go. Because we don't want to see this turn into something...Not to say anything against the media properties, that's fine, but we don't want to see the Wheel of Time become that. Robert Jordan left notes on this book, which has become three, but it's become three that are collectively of the same length as the book he was going to write. That's the thing you have to remember with the split. He was writing an 800,000 word book, I'm writing an 800,000 word book—8 to 900,000 word book—Tor has decided to slice it up and release it in three segments. It's not like I've decided to write two extra books. I'm writing the one book and I'm allowing them to split it into three. I don't really have the call on it. But that's something different.
He did leave notes on a few other things. One was called the Outriggers, which he had talked about with his fans writing. He actually had a contract with Tor. I don't know what happened with those, but that was a trilogy that he had planned to write that he had notes for. And then he also had notes for two additional prequels. He had done... He had told Tor he wanted to do three of those; he wrote one of them called New Spring. There was going to be one that was focusing on Tam's story—that's Rand's father—and he was going to do one that was essentially the sequel to New Spring, with Moiraine, how she arrived at the—how she and Lan arrived in the Two Rivers. That sort of thing. And those were planned. There's a chance you'll see those. A chance. My suggestion to Harriet has been to, you know, to be very careful. We don't want to exploit the Wheel of Time to make it go on and on and on. And so, while you may see those books—I know Tom Doherty is pushing for them a lot—we're not going to go back and do the prequel about Lews Therin. We're not going to do a prequel about Artur Hawkwing. We're not going to... You're not going to see this—
DAMON CAP
Shared world.
BRANDON SANDERSON
—shared world sort of thing. And so, if Harriet asks me to do those, I probably will. Meaning the Outriggers or the prequels. Because I don't want anyone else to do them, if that makes any sense.
DAMON CAP
Since you've taken over, it's a little bit now your baby.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah. But if we do those, there'll be years between. If that makes any sense.
DAMON CAP
I think there has to be, yeah.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I mean, I got into this because I want to write books. My own stories. And that's what I'm excited about, that's what I do, and I'm really having a blast doing that. And so...the Wheel of Time is an exception. It's a special thing, that I am really honored to be part of. But I don't want to make my career doing other people's books.
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Interview: Jun 1st, 2009
Book Expo America Interview (Verbatim)Damon Cap
And as you touch on that, your books that you've written yourself focus—let's not say heavily on religion, but your character has a religious foundation per se, and Jordan on the other end of the spectrum; there's really not that formalized sort of religion.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, there's spirituality, but not religion.
DAMON CAP
And how did you, as a writer that usually writes in that, you know… How did that make a difference for you? How did you have to approach it; did you have to make changes in the way that you write because of that?
BRANDON SANDERSON
You know, that's not one specific thing that I felt I had to change a lot about. The truth is, for any given fantasy work you're working on, there are certain things that draw a lot of your attention, that you focus on, and certain things you don't. When I wrote my kids' series, there's no religion in those. That just wasn't important for the world-building and the setting for those books. And I've written other books where religion is very important. Religion fascinates me. I'm a religious person. And because of that, I feel that the misuse of religion can be one of the greatest evils in the world. And so, you see me delving into that sort of thing and just the different approaches on religion. You know, I love to deal with different types of religion and all that sort of stuff. But I think Robert Jordan's approach is very interesting. And I've always liked his approach to it. Like I said, there's a spirituality without a religion. And...the Wheel of Time, that's not an area that's focused on a lot. And so, it was a very easy transition for me. Different books, you spend your efforts on in different places.
On Elantris, I spent a long time on the languages. On Mistborn, I didn't. Because in Mistborn, it wasn't... The world just didn't revolve around the way that languages work. We had an all-oppressive dictator God King who had forced everyone to kind of adopt the same language. Beyond that, the books were taking place at the center capital of the world where everyone spoke the same language. So there weren't even... You know, there were little dialects here and there, but I didn't focus on language there. Whereas I did in Elantris. The same thing with different books, so...
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Interview: Jun 1st, 2009
Book Expo America Interview (Verbatim)Damon Cap
As you were doing the book, the Wheel of Time stuff, and you have all your notes and everything, was there any, like...funny stories? Was there anything when you go back and forth...like, obviously you have all these notes, you're dealing with a bunch of different people, and whenever you're doing any sort of artistic endeavor... Were there any sort of, like...Brandon Sanderson
I've got a good story for you. One time, I was trying to keep track of everyone who was with the character Perrin. You guys know Perrin. So Perrin's off doing this thing, and one of the biggest challenges of writing the Wheel of Time books was the sheer number of characters. Not the main characters—I know the main characters, they're my friends, I grew up with these people, I know them just like hanging out with my high school buddies—but keeping track of all the Aes Sedai, and the Wise Ones, and you know, the Asha'man, and all these various people that are all over the place and saying, "OK. Who is with Perrin and who is with Rand, and who is..."
Anyway. I sent an email off to Team Jordan. You know, Harriet and Maria and Alan who are the... They were two editorial assistants that worked directly with Robert Jordan. Maria and Alan. I think it was Alan I sent an email to, and I said, "Do you have just like a list of everybody? I can go compile one of my own, I'm planning to do it, but if you have one already that says, 'These are the people who are with Perrin.' If you've got something like that." And he said, "I found this thing in the notes buried several files in." And things like this. "Here. I found this. Maybe this is what you want." And he sent me this, and it was called "with Perrin." I thought, "OK. Perfect." I open up this file and it's actually not what I wanted. Instead it is dozens of names of people who haven't appeared in the books yet. These are all the names of all the Two Rivers folk who are with Perrin. Like there are two hundred or so. Just names. Listed off. That have never appeared in the books. Sometimes with their profession, and a little about them, and things like that. And it just blew my mind that there was all of this detail that Robert Jordan had put into this world that nobody sees—and he wasn't planning for them to see. He's not going to have a big list of names in the final book; he wasn't planning that. He just needed to know their names so that he knew that he had them. And this is the level of detail and world-building that Robert Jordan did. I got a big chuckle out of that. Just, list of names. Then I started stealing them like a thief so I had good names that he had come up with, that I could use in the books.
DAMON CAP
Are you using them for other characters or using them for people...
BRANDON SANDERSON
I'm mostly using them where he intended them to be. Because he had other lists of names for... As the book has progressed and I've discovered these little notes files... Because the notes, there are huge, massive amounts of notes. We say there are about two hundred manuscript pages of stuff done for Gathering...for A Memory of Light. The three books. But beyond that, there are hundreds of thousands of words worth of just background notes, of world-building notes, of things like that. When we say the notes for the book, we're talking about actual specifics to A Memory of Light. But there are hundreds of thousands of other notes; there's just too much for one person to even deal with. So I let the two assistants dig through that. And so once I found out that there were lists of names, I started getting those files so I could use his names in places where we had them. So that I would have to name fewer and fewer people. Because his naming conventions are very distinctive. And, you know, I don't think... I think if you were to read, you could probably tell which names are mine and which are his, because we name things differently. And I'm trying to use his wherever I can, just to give that right feel to the book.
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Interview: Jun 1st, 2009
Book Expo America Interview (Verbatim)Damon Cap
I know that we've talked about what the Dabel Brothers are doing, the comic book adaptation...Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I just picked up a couple of them myself. They look gorgeous.
DAMON CAP
Yeah, they did look really good. Is it more of a Harriet thing? I know we're also talking about the movie itself. Are you involved in that, have they been coming to you and asking you your opinion on things, or is that more of a Harriet...
BRANDON SANDERSON
That's been mostly Maria. Maria's been handling that. Maria is the continuity expert on staff. And so she's been handling that. I suspect they will come to me when they reach these books more. But I've been so busy, that really it's been her and Jason from Dragonmount that have been consulting on those. And I've just not wanted to stick my nose into it because I've got so much on my plate already with these books. So that's mostly Maria. So if you want to ask about those, interview Maria.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Chubby_Monkey
As The Gathering Storm draws near release, there are many WOT fans that have a large worry that you will not do RJ justice and ruin his series (especially after 4 years of waiting). How big of a worry is this for you, having to fill his shoes, and what are you doing to prepare yourself?Brandon Sanderson
They are right to worry, and I don't blame them at all. They have no assurance whatsoever that I won't ruin their book—the past has proven, I think, that series get ruined more than they get saved when a new author steps in.
I hope, very sincerely, to be in the second category, the one who saves a series rather than kills it. But only November will offer any proof other than my word, and I fully expect people to worry right up until they've read the novel.
The only preparation a person could really have for something like this was to be a lifelong fan. I think this book is good. I think it is VERY good. I'm not worried any more myself, though I was quite worried when I began.
What can I offer fans right now? Only the promise that the book has had Harriet and Mr. Jordan's assistants working from the beginning to make certain I didn't screw it up. Beyond that, I've made it my first priority to stay true to his wishes and notes, and not deviate unless there is a very, very good reason.
(The only times I've 'deviated' was in to offer more explanation or depth to a scene. I haven't cut anything he wanted to be in the book, save for a few places where he contradicted himself. I.E. There were some scenes where he said "I'm thinking of doing this or this" or "I'm thinking of doing this, but I don't know." In those places, I've made the final call.)
All I can ask is this. Give me a chance. Read the book. After that, we'll talk.
(The most stressful part is probably the realization that no matter what I do, I won't be able to please everyone. Robert Jordan couldn't do that himself. So I will fail some of you. But I hope to please the vast majority of you.)
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Interview: Jul 23rd, 2009
Brandon Sanderson
Well, now that The Way of Kings rewrite is finished, I've moved on to the next thing on my plate: Alcatraz Book Four. (And if you're wondering why the heck I'm working on this instead of on WoT 13, I did a blog post warning about all this earlier in the summer.)
I was planning on putting off Alcatraz until September/October, but over the summer I realized that I needed to do it in July. It's time for a break. I've been working on the WoT straight since January 2008. Eighteen months is the longest I've ever spent on the same project, and I'm feeling that I need to step back from it for a short time and let my mind recharge. So I won't be doing any new WoT material for the next month or so. (Though I will be working on outlines and plans for the next sections.)
You can track the progress on Alcatraz via the progress bars. My goal right now is to be done with Alcatraz by the time I'm back from Worldcon, and be through with the new outlines for WoT 13 by September 1st. The book is almost 2/3 done, so things still look good for getting it in by January.
It's kind of interesting, sometimes, to step back and look at the process of how this writing thing all works for me. I think that my early years of writing have had a lot to do with how I now write. People talk about my productivity sometimes. I think a lot of it has to do with how I jump from project to project to stay fresh. The first Alcatraz book came from me needing to do something new between books two and three of Mistborn, and over the last few years, they've been wonderful opportunities to renew myself.
Perhaps I've got writing ADD. (Of course, I don't know if you can call it that, since I generally stick to a project for six or eight months before hopping to a new one.) But I think this all goes back to the fact that I wrote thirteen different books (most of them in different worlds) during my unpublished days. I always hopped to something new every few months, and that kept me excited about writing.
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Interview: Aug 20th, 2009
Brandon Sanderson
Recently, I've found myself thinking a lot about the years when I was simply another Wheel of Time fan. This is likely due to the coming release of The Gathering Storm, which will be the first WoT book that I don't get to experience with the rest of the world as it is released. That puts me in a strange position.
Actually, a lot of things about this project put me in a strange position. I've become the most direct face of the Wheel of Time, with my blogging and appearances. Because of that I find myself (by design) being an advocate for the series, rather than a commentator on the series. There's a distinction there. It's no longer my place, for instance, to offer criticism on the cover art. Perhaps some would call it two-faced of me to avoid discussion of things in the series that perhaps deserve criticism; I just feel that it is my job to stand in Mr. Jordan's place, as best I can, and be respectful of his memory and the responsibility I've been given.
Still, despite this, I do find myself remembering the days when I was just a fan. I went through all of the typical WoT fandom emotions. There were times when I tore through the books, rereading them voraciously, loving every page. And yes—though I don't now talk about it often—there were times when I was annoyed with the WoT. The speed at which the series was released, the quirks of Mr. Jordan's language, the times he focused on a side character I didn't want to read about.
There would be times when I would reread through all the books—taking months and months—in order to read a new volume that just came out. And then the next one would take just long enough to come out that I'd have forgotten the details of the books. I'd feel mentally fatigued and think, "What do I do? Do I spend all of that time reading again, or do I try to read the new one without a refresher on who is who, and perhaps lose some important threads?" During those times, I would think, "Why am I subjecting myself to this? This series is overhyped."
And then I'd read the books and remember what I'd forgotten. Not just the names and plot threads; the love and the thrill of a purely majestic epic fantasy.
The Wheel of Time is one of the few series I read a lot when I was younger that made the transition to adulthood with me. Other authors—good authors—weren't able to write for both the youthful Brandon and the adult Brandon. But Jordan could do it. There is something very special about these books. I think you'll find it again when you dig back into the Wheel of Time for what is happening in October, whether you decide to read the entire series (I suggest at least reading Knife of Dreams again) or just grab The Gathering Storm.
Still, I guess I'm posting about this to say, "I understand. I don't feel it's right for me to agree with you most of the time when you complain. But I do understand. I've been there." I understand that some are annoyed at there being three books instead of one, I understand that some are excited about getting three books, and I understand that most of you probably feel both annoyed and excited at the same time. (This series does that to people.) I understand what it's like to defend the Wheel of Time vigorously to friends, but then find yourself saying, "I think I'll wait to read the rest of them until the thing is finally done" to other friends later in the week. I've been there. I have a friend who—each time Mr. Jordan's name was mentioned—used to raise his fist to the sky and curse. Partially in jest, partially to express his fascination and frustration at the same time. I empathized with him a lot.
But I've read the ending now. It works. It fits. A journey like this one hinges a lot on the destination. And that destination turned out to be everything I wanted it to be.
Some of you haven't ever felt these feelings; you've loved the WoT the entire time, and haven't felt a bit of frustration. Some of you have only recently discovered the series, and wonder what the fuss and frustration is about in those of us who have been reading for nearly twenty years now. To you who are like I was, I just say this. Give yourself a chance to discover the books again, and you'll remember what this is all about.
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Interview: Sep 2nd, 2009
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Summer Is Over (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Anyway, I like to be very up-front with readers about what is going on. Waiting for novels can get frustrating because of how long the process takes, and because . . . well, it's an artistic endeavor that relies on the creative output of (usually) a single person. We artists can be flakey.
Or, put more appropriately, the artistic and creative process can be erratic. I don't think George R. R. Martin is flakey, for instance. An artist has to know their process, and work within its bounds. It takes him years to write a book; that's just how it goes. That's pretty good, considering the genius of his prose. If he wants quality, he has to have the freedom to work as he needs to. Writing books is not like building widgets. Forcing it doesn't work.
Coaxing it, however, can be effective. For me, taking a break to do something different—like the Alcatraz books—has proven essential. I don't think it slows down my other books; in fact, it speeds them up, as it keeps my creative process working. Other writers call me prolific. That's only because my diversions (Like Warbreaker or Alcatraz) have so far been successful as publishable projects, where taking four months off to go golfing wouldn't be. But, that's a tangent.
Anyway, I don't think forcing the process can work. However, I think being open about what is happening with readers—giving them transparency and a concrete view on what I'm doing—can be very helpful. When I take a diversion, you'll know what I'm doing, and the progress bars (hopefully) will show you exactly what I'm doing and when.
For now, A Memory of Light 2 (we'll see what it ends up being named; I've chosen what I like for the title, but the final decision isn't mine) stands at having about two hundred thousand words written. There is about 100k left to go. (A little over that.) My goal is to have that done by January 1st, to put us in the same place next year as we were this year for having a book ready by the fall.
The caveat for all of this, however, is what I mentioned above. It can't be forced, only coaxed. I won't release a WoT book just to be releasing a WoT book. This is the end of the greatest epic fantasy series of my generation. It needs to be treated very carefully. If I have to take more time on it, I will—regardless of the screaming from publisher or readers. But I don't anticipate that happening. It looks good so far.
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Interview: Sep 28th, 2009
Brandon Sanderson
Following up on Tor's release of the ebook of The Gathering Storm's prologue and their free preview of chapter one, this past Thursday Tor.com put up the audio version of the second chapter (registration required). As is standard for Egwene chapters in Wheel of Time audiobooks, it's performed by the talented Kate Reading. Give it a listen!Tags
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Interview: Oct 1st, 2009
Harriet McDougal Rigney
I had not heard of Brandon until. . . it was the week of my husband's death. A friend was visiting. She put in front of me a print-out, and it was the eulogy for Robert Jordan that Brandon had posted on his web site. Brandon's eulogy was really beautiful, and very loving. And I thought, gosh, this guy. . . he knows what the series is all about.
And I got on the phone, called Tom Doherty and said, "Send me one of Sanderson's books." And he's a bit darker than Robert Jordan, but the series, as everyone knows, is heading towards Tarmon Gai'don, which is the battle with the Dark One that will decide the fate of the world. Tom said, "Okay, I'll go for that. We'll go for Brandon."
You made it clear that you would love to do this. And that was wonderful. That's what I needed to hear.
BRANDON SANDERSON
The next thing was for me to fly to Charleston. Harriet drives me to her house. You know, I'm fanboying all of this. And you said, "Do you want some dinner?" And my response was, "No, I want the ending. I want the ending and I want to know who killed Asmodean."
And you're like, "Oh, all right. Well, here it is." And you handed me that, and kind of waved me into the den, I guess it is, or the sitting room. "Head over there, go ahead, go for it."
And so I was over there poring over the materials. And I flipped right to the ending and read because Robert Jordan had always said, "I have the ending in mind". And all the readers, all the fans had known this. And we’d listen to interviews and he'd been saying for years, "I know the ending. The last scene is in my head." And so I got to read that last scene before dinner.
Then I retreated to my cave, and crawled in.
HARRIET MCDOUGAL RIGNEY
Yes, he did. And put up a 'do not disturb' sign.BRANDON SANDERSON
And wrote furiously for a number of months.HARRIET MCDOUGAL RIGNEY
This book had taken shape, particularly for Brandon. And he said in the conference call, "Look. Here's what we're gonna do." And it made perfect sense.BRANDON SANDERSON
The amount of material he left behind is what makes this book possible.Tags
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Interview: Oct 8th, 2009
Brandon Sanderson
Finally, progress on Towers of Midnight is continuing at a fair pace. As always, there are sections that turn out beautifully and sections that don't. (The latter get thrown away and rewritten, the former get kept and rewritten. That's just how this goes.) I'm feeling very good about my deadlines on this one. It's going to be tight, but I think you'll get it next year as planned.
One of the things I felt could be improved on from The Gathering Storm is my use of names. Robert Jordan had a distinctive way of using names, and I think that some of my names for the book didn't quite hit the right mark. We're talking about very minor things—people who are named and don't appear, or maybe who speak one line or another. Anyone more major than that generally had a name already (or if they didn't, I pulled a name from one of Mr. Jordan's unused names files).
The thing is, a good epic fantasy like this uses dozens and dozens of new names in a book. I wanted to take a stab at approaching the naming in the way Mr. Jordan did. During my very first ride with Harriet, coming back from the airport two years ago to her home in Charleston, I remember her talking about some of Mr. Jordan's names. One came from a street we passed, another from a person he knew, and another from a word he saw on a sign. His goal was to hint at our world far in the future—or perhaps far in the past—by giving occasional hints to our world through legend, story, song, and name. Hence we get names like Thom or Artur, which are direct adaptations of names from our world.
Therefore, for Towers of Midnight I've been using a list of names from our world as inspiration. I chose the list of donors for the charity event that TarValon.net did last spring, and I've been posting the names on Twitter and Facebook as I choose them. So if you're curious about this, you can watch and see who gets chosen. I'm certain someone out there is keeping a list of them all as well. (I've got one here, and may post it eventually.)
I don't want to make it seem like I'm playing favorites or soliciting praise in order to get people into the Wheel of Time, and so for now I'm using this list ONLY. If we decide to do another charity event, I'll let you know. If you don't want to find out about the names, I won't post them here on the blog, but those who do wish to know can follow along. Remember, these are very small characters, often just mentioned by name but not seen. I'm adapting all the names, so the name I post is not what will appear in the book—it's just the inspiration for what will appear.
Still, I think it will make some people very happy and will allow me to try a method that Robert Jordan used in making these books. Perhaps it wasn't so conscious for him as it is for me, but one of my duties in writing these novels is to try—to the best of my abilities—to maintain the proper feel of the Wheel of Time. I think this will help. We'll see; I've got Harriet and Team Jordan backing me up, and so if any of the names stand out to them, they'll vanish and get replaced with something more appropriate.
(And, as I've said before, remember that the Wheel of Time turns, and people are constantly spun in and out of the Pattern. Those who are alive today could very well live again during the Third Age, and so it's not so odd at all for people who loved these books during our time to get pulled into Rand's ta'veren web and spun out again during the events of the Last Battle. . . .)
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2005
KOD Signing Report - Karana Majin (Paraphrased)Question
Any news on the movies of the books?Robert Jordan
He just got back from Hollywood where he was had extensive talks with the producers. It appears that they are about 8 weeks from a draft of the script. He was happy with the screenwriters and the plot summary. He had extensive input and veto/suggestion type powers, but he will not have any input into actor choices.Tags
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Theodor
Brandon, with you being a writer specialized in cool and unique magic systems, how was it to use and write with the magic system in Wheel of Time? Hard or easy? Did you have to come up with new weaves, or did Jordan already have unmentioned weaves written down somewhere? And how did it work for you to write channeling battles?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, the Wheel of Time magic system was one of those that inspired me to make magic systems the way I do. I've long loved the magic in Mr. Jordan's books, and think he does a very good job of walking the line between having it feel scientific and still feel wondrous. He does tend to go a little bit further toward wonder—as opposed to science—but that has a great number of advantages for his story.
In answer, I've come up with just a few new weaves, but mostly I wanted to use his weaves in new ways. I think there's a lot of room to explore the use of weaves and how people interact with the magic. Don't expect a LOT of this though. The focus is on the characters and the Last Battle at this point, but there were a few places where (mostly in throw-away, background moments) I was able to explore the magic a tad. I actually found it one of the easier things in the book, though I DID have to keep looking up how specific weaves were created. It gets confusing, particularly since men and women often do the weaves differently.
As for channeling battles...well, I can't really tell you if there are any of those in the book without giving anything away, now can I? So we'll have to RAFO that. ;)
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Interview: Jul, 2009
BenFoley
You have stated in your blog that Mistborn had three magic systems (Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemurology) and also that The Way of Kings will have upwards of 20. For comparison, how many magic systems would you say the Wheel of Time series has? Two (One Power and the True Power)? How do you classify other abilities (not necessarily related to the One Power or True Power) such as Dreamwalking, viewing the Pattern, Wolfbrother-hoodness, and changing 'luck' or chance? Would you classify these abilities as a magic system in and of themselves? Has your chance to see the background material Robert Jordan left changed how you view these abilities?
Brandon Sanderson
This kind of gets sticky, as it's all up to semantics. Really, you could say that Mistborn had a different magic system for each type of Misting. But at the same time, you could argue that something like X-Men—with huge numbers of powers—all falls under the same blanked 'magic system.' And take Hemalurgy in Mistborn 3—is it a new magic system, or just a reinterpretation of Allomancy and Feruchemy?
So what do I mean by twenty or thirty magic systems in Kings? Hard to say, as I don't want to give spoilers. I have groupings of abilities that have to deal with a certain theme. Transformation, Travel, Pressure and Gravity, that sort of thing. By one way of counting, there are thirty of these—though by another way of grouping them together, there are closer to ten.
Anyway, I'd say that the Wheel of Time has a fair number of Magic systems. The biggest one would be the One Power/True Power, which is more of a blanket "Large" magic system kind of like Allomancy being a blanket for sixteen powers—only the WoT magic system is far larger. I'd count what Perrin/Egwene do in Tel'aran'rhiod as a different magic system. What Mat does as something else, the Talents one can have with the Power something else. Though I'd group all of the Foretelling/Viewing powers into one.
Sounds like a topic for a paper, actually. Any of you academics out there feel like writing one?
Let's just say that The Wheel of Time has a smaller number of larger magic systems, and I tend to use a larger number of smaller magic systems. Confusing enough? ;)
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Nadine
Brandon, you are noted for your fairly concise epic novels. But I am curious about how the final volume of The Wheel of Time, which was envisioned by Robert Jordan as a final and single book, got to be so long? Not just a little longer but incredibly longer (possibly over 900,000 words).
1. Did Robert Jordan totally miscalculate the size his final book? Or didn't he get too far writing it and had no idea of how long it would be?
2. Is it including every note Jordan had on the subject because no one is sure what he really wanted to use?
3. Is it being turned into a self-contained trilogy because a lot of people (like me) haven't read the entire 11 book series (or by now have forgotten the story), and it has to include some back-story?Brandon Sanderson
I've wondered this myself, actually, in some form. As a long time reader of the series, when he began saying it would be one book, I was very curious how he'd pull it off. And then I saw the notes, and I was left scratching my head a little bit.
It's not option three—I was doing a little bit more of this, but Harriet requested that I scale it back. Her opinion (and it was Robert Jordan's opinion) is that the series is much too long to spend time recapping in every book. She was right, and I trimmed a lot of it.
#2 might have some influence here. Robert Jordan could have chosen to cut out characters and leave out scenes he had in the notes; it doesn't feel right for me to do that.
But I think, overall, it's something that you didn't mention at all. Robert Jordan knew this was going to be a BIG book. He began promising it would be the last, but also that it would be so big that readers would need a cart to get it out of the store. I think he was planning a single, massive book at 800k words or so.
But he DID want it to be one book—partially, I suspect, because he knew his time was short. He wanted to get it done. If he hadn't been sick, however, I don't think he would have started calling this the last book.
Harriet has told me on several occasions that she didn't think he would have done it in one book, if he'd been given the freedom to approach the writing how he wanted. In the end, there is SO much to do that it was going to end up like this no matter what. Unless I crammed it all in and forgot about a lot of the characters.
Would Robert Jordan have been able to do it in one book? Really? I don't know. I think that, if he'd lived, he might have worked some magic and gotten it done in one 400 or 500k volume. But I feel the need to be very careful and not ruin this series by strangulation. It's not going to go on forever, but it does need a little room to breathe.
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Interview: 2011
Patrick Rothfuss
Do you mind if I ask a question you've probably been asked a bunch of times before?
Brandon Sanderson
I'll happily respond, but as I'm responding I'm going to try to think of the most boring question I can ask you. Something you've answered a billion times, to get payback.Patrick Rothfuss
Heh. Fair enough.
When I first heard that someone was continuing Jordan's Wheel of Time, my first thought was, "Wow, that's a cool gig." Then my second thought was, "I would not want that responsibility for all the money in the world."
How did you come to grips with that? Those are big shoes to fill...
Brandon Sanderson
My thoughts were all over the place. I do legitimately love the Wheel of Time and have been reading it since I was a young man. If you look at my early unpublished books, you'll find they were deeply influenced by the Wheel of Time. Amusingly so; looking back on it now, I see things I didn't even notice that I had done. So that love of the series was part of what was bouncing around in my head.
I didn't become a writer because I wanted to write in other people's worlds. I wanted to tell my own stories, and I was making a comfortable living at my writing before this. For a lot of projects I would have said no regardless of what they offered, so it had to be about more than the money. Beyond that, there was this sense, as you expressed, of "Wow, if I screw this up, I'm in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore." I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned regarding this, or posted it somewhere, "This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him." I took all those things into consideration.
But in the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, "Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?" And the answer was that I couldn't let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
TGS Midnight Release - Matt Hatch (Verbatim)Question
How do you and Robert Jordan’s widow feel while working on Robert Jordan’s legacy?Brandon Sanderson
I would say there is a healthy amount of reverence going on. It’s a solemn experience working with these notes. In her case it’s her husband’s legacy. In my case it is my hero’s legacy. And so, we’ve been very careful and very solemn. It has been an amazing experience for me, indescribable really. It’s like walking being the first one to walk into Davinci’s workshop after he had walked out of it and left everything there. That’s what I am. I am walking into the master’s workshop and I get to see everything before even the dust is settled. As a writer and someone who has loved these books that’s surreal and awe inspiring and daunting at the same time. And there are so many weird emotions going on connected to this that it is actually hard to explain, but yeah reverence. It’s a reverent sort of thing to work on this book.Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
TGS Midnight Release - Matt Hatch (Verbatim)Question
Robert Jordan uses a great deal of mythology and lore in his books.Brandon Sanderson
My answer is, I’m doing my darndest. One thing I love and always have loved about the Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan’s use of mythology. He doesn’t use mythology in kind of almost, how should I say, the bubble gum pop version of it that you see in some other fantasy works. There is a depth and a reality to his mythology that has always amazed me. One of the greatest concepts is what he says in that first paragraph: an Age long past, an Age yet to come. I didn’t get these things the first read through, I was a fifteen-year-old kid I didn’t know what’s going on. I didn’t notice the first time I was reading it that Buzz Aldren and the Cold War are referenced as mythological events in The Eye of the World. [...] I love how he’s used mythology as his history and just how Mat in particular but a lot of them are founding myths that become our mythology. I don’t know if you guys have read up on Odin and Locke. Go read up on the mythology of Odin and Locke. They were actually thought to be one person in all of the original myths. See the things attributed to them, including things like ravens and the spear of Odin and things like this. And then see what Mat is doing. The idea is that Mat is actually founding these myths and by the time our Age comes we remember Mat but we have all of this other mythology associated with him and we’ve forgotten that he was even known as Mat. That’s just genius So, I’m doing my best to continue that. It would be very easy to over do it in fan sort of a way. I have to be very careful to not put a reference to something like that in every chapter just because it’s fun. But if you search through The Gathering Storm you should be able to find a few things that are happening. Particularly, I don’t want to give any hints, but the things happening in Hinderstap were intended as things that through a lot of mythology later on become myths in our time. There are references to writers from our world being referenced in The Gathering Storm among books people are studying.Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
TGS Midnight Release - Matt Hatch (Verbatim)Question
Are you studying up on military tactics?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, Harriet has sent me multiple large volumes of military tactics which she said Robert Jordan had been using and that I should reference, even specific battles, historical battles that he had talked about as references for battles. The answer is yes, I have a lot of reading to do, specifically for the last battle.Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
TGS Midnight Release - Matt Hatch (Verbatim)Question
How do you think working on these books will influence your future books?Brandon Sanderson
That’s a good question...It has had a couple of effects. One thing, partially Harriet’s pushing me on concrete details has helped me a lot. Harriet is very good at that as an editor. She is one of the best editors in the field. I don’t know if you guys are familiar and aware of Harriet’s history. Editors don’t get a lot of fame, it all kind of goes to the authors but she was the first person Tom Doherty hired when he founded Tor, she was his Editorial Director which means she was in charge of all of the editorial side. She edited some of the greatest books in the field over the last thirty years. She edited Ender’s Game for instance. If you have ever read that book, that was brought to us through the efforts of Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan’s wife, before she even met him (rest of the answer cut off).Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
TGS Midnight Release - Matt Hatch (Verbatim)Question
Which characters did you find the easiest to write and which ones did you find were the hardest to write?Brandon Sanderson
Easy and hard? I would say the most natural ones for me to write were Rand and Egwene. I’m not sure why. Perrin was very natural for me as well. The Two Rivers folk, the kids from Two Rivers that I’ve grown up with as my friends from high school that just feel like my buddies and think kind of...well Rand doesn’t think like I do anymore but you know what I mean. The hardest single person to write was Aviendha because Aiel are so odd and they think so strangely and getting her right I actually had to throw away two chapters. I wrote one from her perspective threw it away. Wrote another one, it wasn’t right, sent it to Charleston and said what am I doing wrong and they are like you are doing it wrong and I said I know, what am I doing wrong and Harriet gave me some pointers I tossed that one and wrote a third one and that is when it started to work. Tuon was not terribly easy either, but I had a little more practice by the time I wrote Tuon and so I got her on the first try but it was after a lot of research. So, there you go, Aviendha, hard to write, she’s crazy. She would say that she isn’t because she would say she acts the most normal of everyone.Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
BYU: TGS Midnight Release - Jennifer McBride (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
His favorite chapters to write from The Gathering Storm were the concluding chapter and also chapter 22.Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
BYU: TGS Midnight Release - Jennifer McBride (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
I don't remember if he said this during dinner or during the signings or both, but he was considering doing the outrigger and prequel novels, but that the decision was ultimately Harriet's. Jordan left notes for that as well, especially the other prequels. If Brandon writes the other books, it will be after a pause at the end of the series. He definitely doesn't want it to become 'the McWheel of Time.'Tags
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
BYU: TGS Midnight Release - Jennifer McBride (Paraphrased)Question
Do you have any books coming out between the next two Wheel of Time books?Brandon Sanderson
I have been working very hard on a book called The Way of Kings for about ten years now. It is the beginning of a large epic and I've always wanted to write one. I think it's almost ready. If the revisions work it will come out next fall. I don't think I will have one the year after that because the Wheel of Time is first priority. So, either between this one and the next one or between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light.Tags
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Interview: Nov 5th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Shannon Berndston (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Other information that we gleaned from dinner included learning that Aviendha is the favorite out of the three in Rand’s “harem.” Hopefully we’ll get to see more of Pevara being awesome, but that could possibly appear in a novella on Brandon’s web page that will fill in some missing holes. But no promises! And one last interesting fact, in order to get the Illianer and Taraboner accents right, he wrote the book then went back and did a search for all the characters of those nations and then worked on their crazy accents.
Footnote
The Pevara novella was to be about the events at the Black Tower. Brandon later decided that the novella probably wasn't going to work. He got two chapters into Towers of Midnight, and the rest into A Memory of Light.Tags
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Interview: Nov 5th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Shannon Berndston (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Some other info that we learned during the Q&A included finding out that the most rewarding part of writing The Gathering Storm for Brandon was working with Harriet. It took 18 months of 14 hour days (although that includes a chunk of Towers of Midnight) to finish the book. The Two Rivers and Andoran characters were the easiest for him to write, while the Aiel and Seanchan were the hardest.
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: #1 (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
If you didn't hear the news, we got a call on Wednesday informing us that The Gathering Storm had hit the number one spot on the New York Times hardcover Best Seller list. This was accompanied by hitting number one on the independent bookseller's list and being the bestselling hardcover fiction book at Barnes & Noble and at Borders. (And at the last one, I believe, we were the overall #1 book regardless of genre, which is impressive.) We did, in fact, knock Dan Brown out of the #1 spot—by a wide margin.
How do I feel? Relieved. When I first began this project, my largest fear by far was that I would disappoint the fans. As I have stated before, I consider this your book and not mine. That doesn't mean I'm writing it to please the fans specifically—I'm writing these novels to be the best blasted books that they can be, narratively, structurally, and characterizationally. (Is that a word?) My goal is not to produce fan moments, per se, but to produce the best story possible, if that distinction makes any sense.
Either way, the last four Wheel of Time books had all hit #1, and I worried a lot that it would be on my watch where we failed to do so. It is a testament to the beloved nature of the series, mixed with the ardor of the readers, that we have weathered a change in authors without a dip. We actually outsold Knife of Dreams' first week, which is amazing.
The thing is, I don't feel I can take much—if any—credit for this. The reason this book turned out as well as it did (and thank you all for your kind emails, posts, and reviews) was because of the work Robert Jordan did before he passed away. He literally lay on his deathbead dictating scenes for you, too weak to write. He loved his readers dearly, and those of you lucky enough to meet him know that he was a truly kind and generous man.
Beyond that, the strength of this book is directly tied to the excellent storytelling that came before it. It doesn't take much experience with construction to realize that the foundation of a building is far more important—structurally—than the roof. Robert Jordan's skill with worldbuilding, characterization, and plotting was amazing. Working on these books has only increased my respect for his abilities.
None of you ran out to get the book because of me. My job was, and continues to be, to stay out of the way and let you enjoy the story that Robert Jordan wanted you to have. I am honored and humbled that so many of you have enjoyed the book. Thank you for what you have done in giving me a chance to prove myself to you.
Somewhere, Robert Jordan is smiling.
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)Question
Are you ticked you know the ending? (The fans, Brandon, and all of us Storm Leaders laughed!)Brandon Sanderson
"I'm excited." Brandon, in having Robert Jordan's notes on the whole series, has even seen the "handwritten note of who killed Asmodean" [I didn't know Robert Jordan knew my name!] A moment with a somewhat quizzical look on his face, Brandon went on to say that he does feel a "sense of loss that I didn't get to read a new Wheel of Time book last week."Tags
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)Question
Which character's point of view is your favorite to write?Brandon Sanderson
"Whoever I'm writing at that moment", they're the most important. With some characters it was easier than others, as "Cadsuane already believes she's the most important." [I think I laughed the loudest at that remark.] He also said that the notes on Egwene were the most extensive and she was a pleasure to write. He also enjoys having more Aviendha viewpoints, as he missed her, and commented that writing Rand is both dramatic and draining.Tags
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)Question
Will we see anywhere in the world a visual representation of The Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
A video game is pretty likely. The executive option was bought for full rights as well, and screen plays are being written. Jason Denzel and Maria are consulting. If the films get made, they will be full feature films. There are also comic books put out by the Dabel brothers that are accurate, but they may not continue–the Dabel brothers have "visual genius and financial troubles." [We raffled off three of the comic books to excited fans!]Tags
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)Question
There's a lot of female influence in the Wheel of Time, was it hard to write from their perspective?Brandon Sanderson
In my early years writing, it was hard. I finally got it right in Elantris. It was harder to write from other cultures, especially Aviendha and Tuon. It took three tries to get Aviendha right..."Aiel are weird."
Brandon describes Mat dealing with Tuon leaving as Mat having his feet knocked out from under him and says that in Robert Jordan's notes it says specifically that "Mat refuses to become husbandly".
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Even Brandon had moments of "Aaaah! I knew it!" He also has had the "wait, really?" moments and often, while going through notes, has said, "Ah, that group is right!" [Referring to groups on the message boards.] He also confided that there is one thing that isn't being discussed on any of the forums yet that will blow our minds when we read it. Yay!Tags
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Brandon relates Tam to Bilbo and Rand to Frodo.Tags
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Interview: Oct 28th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Peter Binkowski (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
"There are a surprising amount of deaths in the notes, so I get to play headsman."Tags
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Interview: Oct 28th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Peter Binkowski (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
When asked about his favorite part of writing this series in specific: "The characters feel like old high school buddies."Tags
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Interview: Oct 28th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Peter Binkowski (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
On going into Robert Jordan's study: "It felt like wandering into DaVinci's workshop, seeing his unfinished work and picking up RJ's notes."Tags
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Interview: Oct 28th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Peter Binkowski (Paraphrased)Question
What's most difficult in the writing process?Brandon Sanderson
Keeping track of everyone. I was confused about who was with Perrin, so I asked Charleston for a file with every one of the Two Rivers characters, who's with them. They sent over a file of a complete list of Two Rivers folk with Perrin, most of whom hadn't even been mentioned, and it had things like their names, relations, and for most of them, what they did in the army.Tags
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Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Old (Peter) Salt (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
We will most probably not be seeing any actual dragons in the series—the naming of Aludra's cannons is not because of the shared fire breathing, but simply a general association with power.Tags
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Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
So, you've now taken over the biggest fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings. No pressure, right?Brandon Sanderson
Exactly, no pressure at all. You just described it perfectly: It's a monumental task, and a monumental amount of pressure, from millions of fans, of which I am one—the daunting task of not being "the one who screws up The Wheel of Time."Tags
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Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
Are you just lending flesh to a largely complete skeleton, or do you also have to close plot points that were still unresolved in Jordan's notes?Brandon Sanderson
It's actually not as simple as either of those options. The notes range in how detailed they are. In some places, he finished complete scenes, which is great. He finished several complete scenes, which will be scattered through the three books, including the ending itself.
In a number of places he gave dictations. Over his last few months, he spent a lot of time dictating to the family things that should happen. These are very interesting scenes in that they read kind of like a screenplay, because they transcribe the dictations. It's a lot of the dialogue, but it's him saying what should happen instead of actually writing it out. "And then, Egwene says this, and then he says this, and then this happens." And so the description isn't there, but the dialogue and the blocking all are. As I said, like a screenplay.
In other places, there are fragments of scenes, where he wrote a couple of paragraphs, and then another couple of paragraphs. And just like a shattered plate, there are pieces missing. In other places, there are sentences he's written, "and then this happens"—where "this" is a sequence of four chapters' worth of events. In other places, he left a paragraph or two, and in some places there’s just a big hole. There're characters here and there, and then there are a lot of really detailed notes for the ending, saying where everyone ends up, who lives and who dies—it's very detailed, and is where I think the bulk of the material is. But sometimes, we'll know where someone is at the end of Knife of Dreams, and then at the ending he says that person is doing something else, but the intervening space is a big hole.
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Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
So, actually, in The Gathering Storm you've had to do a fair amount of legwork to make sure that everything is prepared for the finale.Brandon Sanderson
Yes! That's one of the reasons why we felt we needed to split the books. It was partially because the outline detailed so many things for us to do, and Robert Jordan had been saying for some time that it was going to be an enormous book. And part of the reason also was that I needed some legwork—time to set up all of these things that were going to happen. If you look at the end of Knife of Dreams, you've got characters scattered to the far reaches of the world, and we know—we've all known as fans for a while—that they're going to have to gather back together for the Last Battle. It's got to come, but they're still scattered all over the place. He started to draw them back together at the end of Knife of Dreams, but we really needed a staging book to bring some of these things back together, and to accomplish some of the goals he had set forth. That's really what The Gathering Storm is: it's focusing on several of the main characters who need to be in a certain place, both spiritually and physically. As characters they need to be in a certain place mentally, in who they are, and physically they need to arrive in certain destinations, and so I focus a lot on that.
In many ways, it's a more personal book, in that it's more focused on several of the big main characters.
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Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
Anyone who knows the books at all knows that Rand al'Thor hears the voice of Lews Therin in his head—sometimes cackling like a madman, other times more helpfully. After wading through all of Robert Jordan's notes, and listening to those dictated comments, do you have a new sympathy for Rand?Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan dropped a bomb at the end of Knife of Dreams, with what Semirhage was saying about or to Rand, talking about his level of stability. I remember as a reader, going through as a kid—I think Robert Jordan blindsided me with Lews Therin, because I'd been told that "Rand will go mad, Rand will go mad," but I didn't accept that voice as Rand going mad. I accepted that as another person, inside of Rand's head, and not a delusion or anything like that. Across the course of the books, Robert Jordan brought together this thing that he'd promised: "No, look, this guy is just going crazy. Yes, he's seeing part of his past life, but he's going insane. It's the immense pressure that's doing this." In looking through the notes, and seeing what Rand has to go through, it's hard not to sympathize with the poor guy.
Robert Jordan once said in an interview, when someone tried to get him to boil down the series to its core—he first said, you can't boil down this series. I wrote it as long as I did because that's how long I needed to tell the story, and so boiling it down doesn't work. But he finally did say this: At its essence, this series is about what it's like to be told that you need to save the world, and that it's probably going to cost your life. Even all of the other characters, you could say that that is a theme for them, too. Egwene has had to give up the life that she'd assumed that she was going to live, and to adopt this other life in the name of the greater good. And that's happening to everybody. Kings and queens are being cast down, and people who thought that their lives were just going to be normal and stable, and that's all they really wanted, are being forced to take upon themselves these mantles of responsibility. And Rand is at the very heart of that. Rand is the center, the example for all of them of what they're having to go through, and it's the worst for him.
GeekDad
True—but I also meant for you as the writer finishing someone else's series: As you're writing, you surely have Robert Jordan's voice rattling around in your head.Brandon Sanderson
(Laughs.) It does kind of feel like that at times, particularly after I've spent some time reading Robert Jordan's writing and then jumping into the book. It is like I have this voice saying, "Well, do it this way," or "This is how I would approach it." Juggling Brandon and Robert Jordan and trying to make sure that this isn't a Brandon book—but it's also not going to be a Robert Jordan book—and making sure that it's a Wheel of Time book. That's been a delicate balance.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,
BrandonFootnote—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.
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555
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
You've written on your blog that as you've re-read the books, you've noticed that your sympathies for different characters evolved.Brandon Sanderson
Yes, they have. When I was a kid, I found myself resisting the oppression of Moiraine and Nynaeve, and these older people who were trying to keep the younger guys locked in. I read the series now as an adult, and I feel like one of these people, saying, "Listen to Moiraine's advice, Rand! Don't do that—you're being stupid!" I find myself empathizing with the older characters. It's a testament to Robert Jordan's skill as a writer, the ability to write so many people from so many different walks of life. As you change and become a different person, as you grow, as we all do, you'll begin to see the perspective of other people in the book. It was quite shocking to me.GeekDad
And now that you're much deeper into the writing, has that shift continued?Brandon Sanderson
Partially. One of the great tricks of being a good writer is to be able to see as a lot of different people. When I actually sit down to write, whoever I'm writing becomes the most important character in the book. Because in their mind, they're the most important person in their story. When I'm writing even the minor characters, I need to be them, and I need to see the world as they do. It's a constant shifting, depending on what I'm writing and what their feelings and beliefs are. I regard the book in a different way every time I change characters.Tags
556
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
One of the things I noticed in the book is how often, both at the beginning and again near the end, scenes and chapters are punctuated with laughter, of all different types—including the inability to laugh. What's interesting about laughter?Brandon Sanderson
It was a theme for the book. And, giving no spoilers, we have known for a while that Cadsuane and the Wise Ones have been saying that Rand needs to learn to laugh and cry again. That was their big concern. The idea of laughter as a theme was an interesting one to consider.
I mean, there's never one main theme for a book, particularly one this long. And so when you sit down to look at it, you want to have a lot of different threads, kind of like the threads in the Pattern, weaving together to make the tapestry of a story. One of those was the idea of laughter and how different people found enjoyment and amusement. We have the twisted laughter of the Forsaken and we have the genuine laughter of some of the characters, and we have one character, Rand, who can no longer laugh—he is incapable of doing it, even of laughing in wryness. And so I could approach it from those three different directions. We've got the terrible laughter and the full, joyful laughter, and poor Rand's silence in the middle. I thought that highlighting it in other people would only make his excruciating inability to feel all the more obvious, all the more of a smack in the face.
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557
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
The book opens with Rand's principled refusal to torture Semirhage, one of the Forsaken. You can't accuse a series that's twenty years in the making of direct political allegory—but surely there's a comment...Brandon Sanderson
That was in my mind, certainly. The Wheel of Time has always actually had quite an interesting relationship with political allegory. There was an article in the New York Times [I think this one—JBJ] a number of years ago talking about the Wheel of Time as a manifestation of interesting things that were happening in the world, which I think is fascinating. One of the reasons we like fantasy as writers is because fantasy is, at its very core, inherently representative. It is metaphorical. It is fantastical. It's wonderful to be able to write something that is so fantastical and use the threads of true personality, of characterization, of people that you sympathize with, to anchor it in the real world at the same time. So that was running through my mind. I didn't sit down and say, "I'm going to write a political allegory." And yet these concepts were so big in our culture at the time that they did influence me. In these scenes—it's even more interesting because I was working with direct comments from Robert Jordan in his notes mixed with things that had been said about Rand previously and trying to show both sides of the situation.
Robert Jordan had an interesting quote on this once. The interviewer asked him, "What are you trying to say with your stories? What are you trying to teach?" Robert Jordan took exception to that, and said: I am not trying specifically to teach anything. What he said, and the exact quote is something along these lines: "I love it when my books ask questions, but I don't want to give the answers. The answers are yours. My job is to ask the questions." And I see that. For many years I've thought that was a brilliant and poignant thing to say, and have used that as a guide in my own writing. I don't want to give you answers. I want to raise issues and have characters struggle with them, because that's what people do, and that's what we [as writers] do. But I'm not sitting down to say, I am going to tell you what is right and what is wrong. I'm going to show you that there are characters who have a belief in what is right and what is wrong, and you can agree or disagree with them. But, like real people, they have views on these issues. I'm not trying to say anything specific; I'm only reacting, I think, in part to what we're all saying, part of the cultural dialogue.
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558
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2009
GeekDad
I noticed that the hardcover's dust jacket specifically mentions the Wheel of Time fan community, calling out several of the most important ones by name. Why?Brandon Sanderson
Partially because I am a part of the fan community myself. And because I'm part of the newer generation of writers who're very involved online. Robert Jordan did some of these things: he posted his blog on Dragonmount, and would post other things like that. But he was part of a different generation. The very first day I got onto the internet in 1994, I found my way to rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan. I found myself there—I was on Tolkien's, and I was on the Wheel of Time one, and that was the very first day that I was on the internet. You'll find that a lot of us in fandom were like that. The internet is our community for these books, and I felt it appropriate to involve them and mention them, because that's what they’re there for.GeekDad
It's basically the air at this point.Brandon Sanderson
Right: It's like breathing. It's not like I sat down and said, "oh, I should mention the blogs." It's just what I do, because it's there—it's hard to say why or why not, because it's obvious that you should do it.
It is true that Robert Jordan was of a different age. I've tried to respect that, particularly because Harriet is of that era, too, and she's very worried about spoilers on the internet and so forth—and I think rightly so. I might be a little too open, or a little too free with some of these things. I've tried to run more of a balance, and to give fewer spoilers. To talk about the process with people, but not tell people what's going to happen, or what specifically is going on with the plot.
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559
Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Ted Herman
Maria Simons
She also answered a few questions as follows: about symbology, she said that RJ had some notes on that, and that the posts on 13th Depository are pretty accurate regarding this.Tags
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Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Book Tour, NYC Stormleader Dinner - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
States he did not see "Guys and Dolls", responding to a question about something similar in The Gathering Storm that I did not quite catch in one of the chapters with Mat. A blank die?Tags
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Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Book Tour, NYC Stormleader Dinner - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
He agrees with fans who criticize that he isn't Robert Jordan, but hopes they will get past their anger at that fact. Also feels that the series belongs to the fans. He is happy with how The Gathering Storm turned out.Tags
562
Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Book Tour, NYC Stormleader Dinner - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Brandon spoke of his creative freedom in writing, and filling in blanks or making choices that Jim left for the story, but wanted to include everything that Jim wrote as completely as possible. Instead of giving a % of how much was Brandon's, he said it was 100% Brandon and 100% Jim since they both put their all into the book, and all that Brandon wrote was inspired by the previous books, and that Jim dictated, even from his deathbed, because of his passion for the story and the fans.Ted Herman
That is just amazing to me, beyond what words can describe.Tags
563
Interview: Nov 13th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Tiffany Franklin (Paraphrased)Tiffany Franklin
I can't tell you the question, but I think the answer was insightful, so I'm editing out the spoilers to give you this:Brandon Sanderson
You'll notice that the prologues fulfill a purpose. Most of the prologues are written likean epilogue to the book before. [This Prologue] was more of an epilogue to the [end of] Knife of Dreams. Brandon believes that RJ liked giving his fans something to talk about and then answer it in the prologue of the next book. Brandon: "I can't speak for what Robert Jordan was thinking."Harriet McDougal Rigney
To which Harriet responded, "Even Robert Jordan couldn't speak for what Robert Jordan was thinking."Tags
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Interview: Nov 13th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Tiffany Franklin (Paraphrased)Question
How's Towers of Midnight coming?Brandon Sanderson
Towers of Midnight is 70% done.Harriet McDougal Rigney
Harriet's answer: "If I can quote Robert Jordan, I can assure you without fear of contradiction, that Towers of Midnight will be on the shelves very shortly after Brandon finishes writing it."Brandon Sanderson
"This is a very, very...there's a lot of work involved. People assume that when I was given the outline, I was given a point by point outline. RJ wasn't like that. He wouldn't show it to Harriet until he'd done twelve drafts. We got this in a state of incompleteness. The creative process isn't as neat and orderly. Things were in dozens of files."Harriet McDougal Rigney
Brandon would say "what order do you want it in?" and I would say "Brandon, you're the writer. It's foolish for the editor to take over the part of the writer. And vice versa."Brandon Sanderson
He dictated some and the assistants transferred it into notes, scoured their memory for anything he'd said and put that in the notes. And then all the files... "this was all handed to me and told 'ok, let's write a book.'"Tags
565
Interview: Nov 13th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Tiffany Franklin (Paraphrased)Question
Was it difficult for you to find any of the characters' voices?Brandon Sanderson
Aviendha—the Aiel way of thinking is so different and I think like Two Rivers folk. It was easy to write the Two Rivers. And when I started writing Aviendha, I was writing like a Two Rivers-er.Tags
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Interview: Nov 13th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Tiffany Franklin (Paraphrased)Question
I am struck by how alike this is to Tolkien. Have you ever talked to Chris Tolkien (since he took over for his father using his notes)?Brandon Sanderson
No, but I'd like to.
We're in a little better shape. Jim actually finished scenes. We have a lot more to work with. He wrote the end himself! He left landmarks to follow from here to the end. Not specific details, just "strong stuff" to get us to the end.
"There are no characters that we don't know how they end up."
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567
Interview: Nov 11th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Tim Kington (Paraphrased)Question
What's the status of the WoT movie?Brandon Sanderson
Universal has bought the rights for it, and they're in the process of writing a script. Maria is the official contact point for making sure they get the details right. Brandon is plenty busy writing, so he hasn't been involved.Tags
568
Interview: Nov 11th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Tim Kington (Paraphrased)Question
Is there a WoT MMORPG coming out?Brandon Sanderson
Red Eagle has the rights to create WoT video games, and they're working on some.Tags
569
Interview: Nov 15th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Katie Frey (Paraphrased)Question
What character is easiest for you to write? Which is most difficult?Brandon Sanderson
The Two Rivers folk were the easiest (Rand, Perrin, Mat, Egwene, and Nynaeve). Aviendha was the most difficult. She thinks more like an Aiel than most Aiel. But he was glad to bring her back to the forefront because he had always liked the way she thought. Tuon was not easy either.Tags
570
Interview: Nov 15th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Katie Frey (Paraphrased)Question
What myths influenced Robert Jordan the most?Brandon Sanderson
Native American and Norse mythology are featured prominently, but there are obvious influences from the Fisher King and Grail legends. Brandon also mentioned that Odin and Loki were thought to have originally been one person in the early myths, but was split into two. He noted that Odin had a spear and that Loki was pictured with ravens. Also, Brandon would sometimes ask Harriet about a particular passage and ask where Jordan got his inspiration. Harriet would pull out a book of myth, turn to a page and point it out.Tags
571
Interview: Nov 15th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Katie Frey (Paraphrased)Question
Was the passage about Cadsuane spanking Semirhage already written, or was there just information in the notes? How did you feel about writing that section?Brandon Sanderson
He was given creative freedom to do what was needed. No author can ever stick 100% to an outline, things change as they are being written, and he was given that kind of control in order to make the books work. Regarding that passage in particular, it made Brandon Sanderson cringe, but Robert Jordan wanted it in the books so it stayed.Tags
572
Interview: Nov 14th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Aubree Pham (Paraphrased)Question
What was the most difficult part of writing The Gathering Storm?Brandon Sanderson
Keeping track of everyone, due to the exhaustive detail of the books. Brandon used Encyclopaedia WoT often. It was also difficult to make the character 'voices' correct. Aviendha and Tuon were the most difficult of these, because they are from different cultures.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Aubree Pham (Paraphrased)Question
What medieval Arthurian texts were in RJ's library?Harriet McDougal Rigney
Harriet didn't remember anything specifically Arthurian, but there were a lot of books on mythology, religion, Asimov's guide to the bible, Norse, Greek, Cheyenne Indian. RJ wrote about the Cheyenne under the name Jackson O'Reilly. The Aiel are based on the Cheyenne.Tags
574
Interview: Nov 14th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Aubree Pham (Paraphrased)Question
Is there any history to the term 'blood and bloody ashes'?Harriet McDougal Rigney
No.Tags
575
Interview: Nov 14th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Aubree Pham (Paraphrased)Question
Does RJ work out things like conservation laws, since he was a physicist?Brandon Sanderson
From what I've seen, he considered it, the power that is doing all these things is coming from somewhere. They discovered the Dark One by finding the power (True Power). (They are) not aware of the source of the One Power. The Law of Conservation of Energy works, it's coming from somewhere, we're not sure where. It's not something the characters were considering, so it wasn't appropriate to include in the books.Tags
576
Interview: Nov 19th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Samadai (Paraphrased)Samadai
At 7:00 the Storm Leaders came out and Brandon followed about five minutes later. I know, that like me, many of you have followed his signings and what he talks about and probably have it memorized, but I'm telling this story. :)Brandon Sanderson
He talked about his love of reading, and mentioned going into his local bookstore and seeing The Eye of the World for the first time. He had to come back and get it a week later because he was broke. He mentioned how RJ and the WoT is the reason he chose to become a writer.
He then talked about perusing the internet one day and finding out about RJ dying, how it was like finding out all his childhood friends had died at one time. He talked about the eulogy he wrote for RJ. How he came down stairs one morning (noon) and got the message from Harriet asking to talk to him. He finally decided to write the books because he could not think of another person who was a huge fan who had studied the story as much as he has and was also a published writer. He talked about flying to meet Harriet at her house, she invited him in with an offer of food, and asked him what she could get him. He said "the ending of the book and who killed Asmodean". I too have read this many times before but the impact of hearing it was phenomenal.
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Interview: Nov 16th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - kcf (Paraphrased)Question
Please tell me all you can about the potential novella that fills in holes? What holes? Who? Where will it be published if written? Is this material that you really wanted to include in Towers of Midnight or The Gathering Storm but just couldn't fit in? How does this match up with your feeling about not writing other stuff in the WOT world?Brandon Sanderson
There are about 50,000 words of secondary plots that Sanderson wants to include in Towers of Midnight. He's just not sure all of it will get into the book. If something gets cut, he'd like to get to his fans on his website.
This lead to quite a bit of discussion about Towers of Midnight. It will be a very different book from The Gathering Storm. The Gathering Storm was very intentionally focused. Brandon felt strongly that a 'hit' wasn't good enough, that The Gathering Storm needed to be a home run. (At the table, we all thought it was a home run.) Towers of Midnight will need to catch up many plot threads and will be much less focused. This will have its problems and it will be a big struggle to find the right balance—they aren't there yet in the writing process. Brandon mentioned a few plots as examples which strongly suggests they will be in Towers of Midnight—Loial, Lan, Fain, Taim, Logain, Elayne, if Mat does what fans think he will, etc.
kcf
My impression is that the novella, will actually be a series of prologue-like scenes that just don’t make it into the final book.Brandon Sanderson
This also lead to lots of discussion on the Encyclopedia. It will include lots of spoilery stuff that doesn't make it into the books. But, there are several examples in the notes where RJ specifically says that certain plots will not be revealed. Someone asked about Merilille—the Aes Sedai in Caemlyn who ran away with a Sea Folk apprentice. It was implied that this may be a thread that goes unresolved.Footnote
The novella was to be about Pevara and the events at the Black Tower. Brandon later decided that the novella probably wasn't going to work. He got two chapters into Towers of Midnight and the rest into A Memory of Light.Tags
578
Interview: Nov 16th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - kcf (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Hinderstap is a re-imagining of the old ‘Stone Soup’ folk tale.Tags
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2010
Brandon Sanderson
The Gathering Storm was named as one of five nominees for the 2010 Audie awards in the category of science fiction/fantasy audiobook. Kudos to voice performers Michael Kramer and Kate Reading! If you haven't had a chance to give the Wheel of Time audiobooks a try, I highly recommend them.Tags
580
Interview: Feb 15th, 2010
Brandon Sanderson
In Wheel of Time news, Red Eagle has announced a partnership with Obsidian Entertainment to handle much of the development for Wheel of Time console and PC games. Read the full press release over at Dragonmount.Tags
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Interview: Mar 29th, 2010
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: KINGS final draft, THE GATHERING STORM in Audible's tournament + Updates (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook that The Gathering Storm needed votes in Audible's 2010 tournament. Last I heard, it was beating The Girl Who Played With Fire by four tenths of a percent. Voting ends today sometime—actually it may be over by the time you see this message, but go vote anyway (if you think it should win). If it gets to the next round, it will be up against the winner of Beat the Reaper vs. Always Looking Up.Tags
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Interview: Mar 19th, 2010
Interview with Maria Simons by Luckers (Verbatim)Luckers
What did you do for Robert Jordan as a part of that job, and how much as that changed since his passing?Maria Simons
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.
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Gemmell Voting, Wheel of Time Article, Audible Tournament Winner + Updates (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Voting has begun for the David Gemmell Legend Award, which I mentioned last week. It will continue through May 31st. Both Warbreaker and The Gathering Storm are among the five nominees, but if you're struggling to pick one I'd recommend The Gathering Storm since I feel it's more in the spirit of Mr. Gemmell's work.
There's a great article on Robert Jordan, Harriet, and finishing the Wheel of Time in the Charleston City Paper. I'm not sure about the print edition, but online it's listed as the cover story.
The Gathering Storm has won Audible's 3rd Annual Tournament of Audiobooks, defeating The Help in the final round. Wow! Since this is a fan-voted award, I'm honored that you decided to give it the nod. I'm sure Mr. Jordan is also pleased. Performers Michael Kramer and Kate Reading have many fans as well; if you haven't had a chance to check out the Wheel of Time series on audiobook, give it a try.
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Interview: Apr 30th, 2010
Richard Fife
Stepping back, we have just passed the twentieth anniversary of the series and The Eye of the World. Some people have gone so far as to compare The Wheel of Time to Tolkien and his influence on fantasy. How do you feel it has affected fantasy in general?Harriet McDougal Rigney
Yes, certainly The Times compared them. But, it's just damn good. That is really how it has affected it. A writer friend said he thought the thing that Jim did special was to take Tolkien at one end of the fantasy spectrum and Conan on the other end and combine them, which is interesting for its time.Richard Fife
So, a middle-ground of low, pulp fantasy and high fantasy?Harriet McDougal Rigney
Well, not low pulp, but barbarian fantasy. The muscular Cimmerian, and those books are really quite good. I am rereading them, and in Conan Chronicles number one, it is very obvious to me, looking back, that Jim was brooding about the events in Afghanistan at that time. He's got them right in there. That is not something you usually find in pulp fiction very often. Where the author is incorporating thoughts about current events into a fantasy world, and of course he has done that: Children of the Light, hello?Tags
585
Interview: Apr 30th, 2010
Richard Fife
One can take it even further with The Wheel. Even the magic system, which is very scientifically based, lends us to call it magical Sci-Fi. So perhaps some of the other concepts of Sci-Fi are there too, such as social commentaries or looking at issues from other angles.Harriet McDougal Rigney
Yes! And the big thing about fantasy is that you can address questions of good and evil without making people run for cover and thinking, "Oh my God, he's going to turn into a preacher any minute now." But, making his great theme of making decisions without enough information is so true.
And, his early fan letters, I noticed, would come from two large categories of adult: people in law enforcement and people in medicine: doctors, nurses, policemen, district attorneys. What do these groups have in common? They're making life and death decisions, every day, without enough information. The policeman, should he draw his weapon? If so, he will probably be shot at himself. The doctor, dealing with a person who is dying, and you never have enough information.
Richard Fife
And sometimes, you just have to act.Harriet McDougal Rigney
Yes, and how you do that is a major theme in the series, and how you can be expected to have to do that.Tags
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Interview: Apr 23rd, 2010
JordanCon 2010 Q&A Report - Terez (Paraphrased)Question
How do you feel about the idea of a movie—do you think they can do the series justice?Harriet McDougal Rigney
I think they can. It will be interesting to see what happens. It's a huge task to make a WoT movie work... (audio)Tags
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Charleston City Paper Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson says, "Like most fans of the series, I was just shocked and saddened that Jim Rigney wasn't going to be there to finish it himself." He adds, "About a month after his passing, I woke up one morning and found that I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it said, 'Hello, Brandon Sanderson, this is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me back. I've got something I want to talk to you about.'"
Sanderson wasn't sure how to take it at first. The author was certain that someone was playing a joke on him. Then he started to shake nervously at the thought that it might not be a prank. "When I got hold of her, I found out that she was looking at me as one of the candidates to finish The Wheel of Time. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that."
Even though Sanderson had never met Rigney, he considered him a mentor. "I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced. But I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call," recalls Sanderson. "I was absolutely stunned. I'm afraid I stammered a bit when I told her I would be honored to be considered; in fact, a while after I got off the phone I sent her an e-mail that started, 'Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot.'"
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Charleston City Paper Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time. Although he was a respected and prolific fantasy writer with a growing career, his name on a Wheel of Time book would introduce him to hordes of new readers and send him to the top of the best-seller lists for weeks. But he would have to take time off from his own ambitious epics, and he faced a huge challenge: To be true to Jordan's work while retaining his own distinctive style.
Sanderson wrestled with the question for a long time before deciding that he would concentrate on keeping the character voices authentic and consistent. "We don't want these stories to become about Brandon," he says, "but in the same way, the original Wheel of Time books ... weren't about Jim. They were about the story and the characters. As long as I can make the characters feel right and do the story the right way, I think it will turn out all right."
Sanderson made it his "prime directive" to make sure the characters sounded like their old selves. "My second rule was that if Jim said it, the default is to do it as he said, to put it in as he said. And then rule No. 3 is that I can contradict rule No. 2 if it's necessary for the storytelling."
By considering these three rules, Sanderson ensured that Rigney's story was told consistently. "I'm continually going back and reading Jim's original notes and his previous books," says the author, "balancing that with looking at what I think he was trying to do, what he said he was trying to do, and what would make the best story. In some cases I trust my instincts as a writer, and in other cases I just say, 'This is what Jim said. We're doing it.' I can't really tell you where I draw the line, when I do one or the other. Oftentimes when the situation comes up, I'll write to Harriet and her assistants and say, 'What do you think?'"
Harriet McDougal Rigney
McDougal's association had its own complications. As the book progressed, she would send her reactions to Sanderson. These didn't always equate with his own ideas or those of Simons and Romanczuk. "I've learned not to do that horrible thing to Brandon," she says. "Three different people were giving him different reactions. We weren't all on the same page."
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Charleston City Paper Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Nevertheless, Sanderson pushed on, producing hundreds of thousands of words in a matter of months. He knew that if he succeeded, he would be set for life. If he dropped the ball, he'd disappoint a legion of fans. He felt that it was his job to please as many of them as possible, because this was as much their project as his. Without their intense desire to see the saga completed, there would be no sequel.
The new novel, The Gathering Storm, follows central characters Rand al'Thor and Egwene al'Vere. Rand prepares for the Last Battle while Egwene attempts to reunite the inhabitants of the White Tower under her rule. An attack by Seanchan forces is inevitable. Both protagonists try to piece together the fragmented factions around them in preparation for the great conflict to come.
One million copies of the book were printed for its launch on Oct. 27, 2009. It shot to the top of The New York Times best-seller list, with sales encouraged by a 25-city book tour. Sanderson thought he'd feel out of place and disoriented at the first signing. Rigney's printed "autograph" was included in the book because Sanderson "felt that it would seem really strange to be signing a Wheel of Time book without his signature also there." Sanderson didn't feel as overwhelmed as he expected. "I guess that's because I had just spent 18 months to two years living in this world and living in these books."
He'd poured so much blood and sweat into The Gathering Storm that he'd earned the right to be a part of its promotion. "I still don't claim the book as my own," he says. "The book is Jim's. And yet there's a whole lot of me in there, and because of that, it felt right in a way. I didn't think that it ever would."
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Charleston City Paper Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
"Harriet's a trooper," says Sanderson. "I tried to be as respectful as was possible, letting her take the lead." At some of the signings, if McDougal was present, he would ask her to do the reading. "That was really fun," he says. "Harriet was in control, though there were some hard times for her. Most of them came during the process of working on the book. When it was time to go out and promote the book, I think she just put her best face forward, and I didn't really see any of the troubles that I'm sure she was feeling."
Sanderson acknowledges what a terrible thing it is to lose someone close to you, "yet at the same time, Jim's writing was part of what drew them together in the first place. So I think I saw her finding a bit of solace in it."
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Charleston City Paper Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
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."
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Interview: Apr 22nd, 2009
Recap of JordanCon - Richard Fife (Verbatim)Richard Fife
So, after Brandon's Panel, where he explained this, I made my goodbyes and made the drive home. Alas, it was a seven hour drive, so I missed the only other panel I was interested in with Red Eagle, where they were talking about—ready for it again?—a Wheel of Time live-action movie. I did chat with the producer some the night before, and I will tell you this: the man is a mega-fan. I have strong hopes for this.Tags
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Interview: Apr 22nd, 2009
Harriet McDougal Rigney
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!)
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Interview: May 12th, 2010
Richard Fife
That is a very impressive feat. So, it has been twenty years since The Eye of the World. Looking back, has there been anything that surprised you that the fans clued in on, similar to Asmodean's murder? Or perhaps anything they missed that you thought they should have been all over?Alan Romanczuk
One thing that strikes me is people's perception of the Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time is just a structural device: it has seven spokes which represent the seven Ages. The Wheel turns; people forget about the previous Age and a new Age is entered. It goes around seven times and it starts again from square one. Very similar patterns of events occur in each Age, but they are changed, just as two people can have very similar personalities but still be very different people in many other respects. The same way with the different Ages.
So the Wheel does not have a specific purpose. It does not have a motivation. It is not a conscious being. The Wheel is just there, operating as an organizing principle of the world. Jim played down the religious aspects of all this. There is a creator, but there is not even a notion that the creator is God. The creator, of course, is God, but it is the creator. And the creator is not given much of a personality in these books. The creator is a stand-back kind of entity, less so than the Dark One, which opposes the creator and everything the creator has created, which is mankind.
And so, that's all I'm saying: don't read too much into the Wheel of Time. I think the Wheel of Time is also drawn in part from the Buddhist concept of the Wheel of Life. The Wheel of Life is something that we are on. In creation, we are created in who knows what form, evolve through many, many lifetimes, until we no longer have to be on the wheel. We have reached our goal, which in Eastern Thought is being one with God, part of the infinite ocean. In Jim's world, it is not so cut and dried. As far as we know, individuals stay on the Wheel of Time forever.
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Interview: Jun 7th, 2010
Richard Fife
What would you say has been the most difficult part of working on the Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
I would say keeping track of all the multitude of characters and subplots. I thought the hardest part might be writing the characters, and indeed that was kind of difficult. It was definitely the most important part: making sure they felt like themselves. But there's so many different Aes Sedai, so many different Wise Ones, so many different named characters, and so many different sub-characters with smaller plots, and they all have different ways of speaking and ways of thinking, and tracking it all is a real challenge.Tags
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Interview: Jun 7th, 2010
Richard Fife
That leads me to my next question. Robert Jordan's notes are, I'm guessing, all over the place—I heard three million words worth of notes. He also did extensive writing for the last book that we get the impression was also all over the place. Has it been difficult writing that way, and is it very different from your own normal writing style?Brandon Sanderson
In some ways, and in some ways it has also been very nice. I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them. Well, in this case, a lot of those important focal scenes, Robert Jordan has outlined or written himself. So, I've actually been able to build an outline out of his notes that works very much the way that I work on outlines anyway.
The notes themselves are very interesting to work with. They are so very varied, so to speak. There is just so much there. In some cases we have scenes that he wrote. In some cases we have scenes that he talks about and his assistants wrote down what he said about them. In some cases, we have interviews that he did with his assistants through the years when he was sick, where he was just talking about the last book and they were asking questions. He dictated some scenes on his death bed. In other cases, we have things that his assistants remember him saying that they just wrote down after he passed away, everything they could remember. Other cases we have outlines that he was working from for the book. And this is just all in a big jumble that was handed to me, not in really any order, and they just said, "put this in order, do what you need to do." They gave me the tools to write the book and left me to write it, working through all of these things.
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Interview: Jun 7th, 2010
Richard Fife
And I know you are working on it very closely with Harriet, Alan, and Maria. What is it like getting the curb-side editing?Brandon Sanderson
Normally, I have a lot of alpha readers on my books. These are people that, once I finish a novel, I let them look at it and give me a reader response. In the case of the Wheel of Time books, most of those were not available to me. We have to keep it quite tightly under wraps and not show it to a lot of people. So, it is nice having multiple editors, both in the form of people who directly edit the book such as Harriet, Alan, and Maria, and also people like Tom Doherty, who has given me some good advice. My normal editor, Moshe Feder, did a read through on this book, and my agent did as well. All of them are giving advice.
I am immediately juggling Alan, Maria, and Harriet's comments. I'd send a chapter in and then be working on the next one, and that chapter would come back three times with three different sets of revisions on it. That got really challenging to juggle. There was one time when I was flying on a plane to an event for Tor, and I had three separate paper sets of a chapter printed out along with electronic commentary by them on the chapters. So, I was juggling four files and three sets of paper on the same pages, trying to get this all inputted and changed. It got . . . well, it was a juggling act.
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Interview: May 25th, 2010
Patrick
Are you pleased with the way The Gathering Storm has been received thus far?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, I'm very pleased. The fan reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. The sales on the book have been extremely good, and it seems like people are happy I did not screw it up.Patrick
Understandably, it's no surprise that reactions are not 100% positive. How closely have you been following the fan reactions that are less than positive? How do you anticipate these reactions will affect your writing of the final two volumes? Is there any specific reaction you would care to address directly?Brandon Sanderson
No, it's not surprising that the fan response has not been 100% positive—in fact, if it were, that would be kind of suspicious. Sometime, look up Hamlet on Amazon and read the one-star reviews. If people can't agree on Hamlet, they're not going to agree on my books.
As for the less-than-positive reactions, they range from completely useless to very helpful. But it's dangerous to look at reviews of any sort while I'm writing. As writers we tend to focus on the negative and ignore the positive. It's just human nature. Beyond that, a writer has to walk a very tight line between keeping an audience in mind and following their own artistic vision for a work.
Now, these books are different in that—as I've mentioned before—I feel more beholden to the fan community than I otherwise might. These books belong to them more than they do to me. But I learned early on in my writing career that if I tried to do everything for everyone, the writing process would fail. So, it's more useful for me (on things like this book) to have people close to me watch the reviews/reactions and pass issues on to me when there seems to a consensus of opinions. Those are the types of things I find it important to keep in mind when writing.
In the end, however, there is one opinion on these books that matters the most. That is Harriet's opinion. I look to her for guidance on characters, tone, and plotting. I will continue to do so. I think her hand on the book, mixed with Robert Jordan's notes, were the main reason the novel turned out so well.
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Interview: May 25th, 2010
Patrick
How difficult was/is it to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how good the last three WoT volumes turn out to be, they can never be as good as if Robert Jordan had written them?Brandon Sanderson
That was a difficult thing to get over. Actually, the time when it hit me the strongest was when I was first offered this project. I was tempted to say no for that very reason, because I knew that no matter what I did, it would not be the same as what could have been. I've said this a number of times, and I hope it doesn't come across as false modesty or anything, but I still really don't believe the books can be as good written by me as they could have written by Robert Jordan.
So that was my main consideration for potentially saying no. In the end, I decided if I did say no—and someone else got the book and screwed it up—it would be partially my fault. I honestly and sincerely believe that I am the person who can do these books the best now that Robert Jordan is gone. I would rather he be here to write them, but that isn't possible. Therefore, I want to do it myself. At least I know they're in the hands of someone who cares about the series.
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Interview: May 25th, 2010
Patrick
Many writers seem to be perfectionists at heart. Looking back on the published form of The Gathering Storm, what do you wish you could do to fine-tune that novel now that readers have started to comment on its presumed weaknesses?Brandon Sanderson
I do wish I'd had was more time to polish the book. There was no more time; that book had to come out last year. The drafting process was so quick—I did 17 drafts of that book across the space of just a short number of months. Anytime you do a draft, artifacts show up. You say the wrong thing, or you're thinking about one scene while writing another, and shift the tone the wrong direction. Or you just delete a word here or insert the wrong word.
If I have one feeling about weaknesses the book has, it's that there are a few little rough edges that I would like to have smoothed out. We're catching a lot of those for the paperback release.
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Interview: May 25th, 2010
Patrick
How much did you struggle with the need to give the fans what they wanted (i.e. Mat, Perrin and other favorite characters) with the desire to keep to the relatively tight thematic narrative with Rand and Egwene?Brandon Sanderson
I've had to balance those things, for sure. I spoke a little of this above; it's a lesson I've had to learn as a writer across my career, not just with the Wheel of Time books.
The best stories—stories the fans are going to like more in the end—are the ones where the author stays true to his or her vision. That's not always what the fans say they're going to want.
This is particularly poignant with me, because I am a fan on this series. I had to balance letting the fan inside me say, "Ooh, ooh, I want to see this, I want to see this," with what was going to make the best story. I had to preserve Robert Jordan's original vision for the books, while adding what I could add to the narrative. I couldn't, therefore, dally too much with fan satisfaction moments.
For instance, I intentionally kept cameos from minor characters to a minimum. The little voices inside my head screaming, "Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if?"—I had to be very careful about those. When the time came to divide the book, the balance of which characters got major viewpoints in this volume really came down to the narratives I felt would go well alongside one another.
Note that if there are missing characters in The Gathering Storm, you will likely find them in Towers of Midnight. I didn't think who got cut and who didn't get cut was a really large-scale issue. It just came down to what made the best story.
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Interview: May 25th, 2010
Patrick
The Gathering Storm appears to be the most thematically-oriented book in the WoT series, with several readers rhapsodizing about the parallels between Rand, Egwene, and others and how they deal with issues of pain and responsibility. Is the upcoming Towers of Midnight shaping up to have some interesting thematic parallels similar to The Gathering Storm and if so, would they be extensions of what we saw in The Gathering Storm or something completely different?Brandon Sanderson
The reason I divided the book the way I did was because of the way that I felt the themes would play well with one another. Towers of Midnight certainly has its own themes, and you will be able to notice them. There will be some carryover. But it's going to be a different book. We need to expand and look wider about the world to catch up with other characters we haven't seen for a while. And there are quite a number of them.
So, it's a yes and a no. The themes will be there, but there will be a lot more going on around them, so they'll be diluted in favor of scope. I've had to be careful not to make Towers of Midnight simply a "jump back in time and catch up" book. I don't want to do that. It does move forward.
Rand and Egwene will be there. But the themes are going to be different because of the different mix. We are going to see a lot more of Perrin, and we are going to see a lot more of Mat. And what's going on in their plotlines will influence theme in a different way.
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Interview: May 25th, 2010
Patrick
Anything else you wish to share with your fans?Brandon Sanderson
Well, for this entire interview, I've tiptoed around one issue: the fan reaction to Mat in The Gathering Storm.
You kindly didn't ask directly, though I did sense that you were trying to get at it. And your own comments about The Gathering Storm are among those I did read. I know what you've said about Mat.
It's curious. I've gotten around 1500 emails about The Gathering Storm so far. (Of those, by the way, only one person didn't like the book. I'm not arrogant enough to assume that person is the only one—I'm guessing that most who didn't like the book didn't feel the need to email me and chew me out for it.)
Of those 1500, only a handful mention Mat. However, he IS the one brought up the most often. Oddly, it's almost exactly divided between people saying, "I love how you did Mat, he's my favorite part of the book," and people saying, "I loved everything about the book, except Mat didn't feel right."
That has been very interesting to me. One thing this does for me is that it actually relieves a big burden off my back, because it means that I did everybody else right. It also means that Mat is noticeably different to a small number of people. Was this done intentionally? No, it was not. I worked on Mat like I worked on all the rest of the characters, and I feel as close to Mat as I feel to the rest of the characters. I asked Harriet, and she said, "You did Mat perfectly. Don't change him."
So...where does that leave us? I'm not sure. I do realize that my sense of humor is slightly different from Robert Jordan's sense of humor. And perhaps if I had to do it again, I wouldn't lead with the monologue from Mat that I used, because that's where the difference is most obvious. A person's sense of humor is like their thumbprint. And I'm not sure that I could ever replicate Robert Jordan's thumbprint when it comes to that, and it never has been my goal to replicate him exactly.
I think that in the narrative, though—the places aside from the monologues—Mat is still Mat. Of course, Mat had some really big things happen to him in Knife of Dreams, things that have shaken him and the way he sees the world. But at his core, he's still the same person.
However, if you were worried about him, it should help you to know that the large bulk of the Mat sequences Robert Jordan wrote are in Towers of Midnight. There is a lot more Robert Jordan Mat to come. So maybe it's not really an issue at all.
Best,
Brandon
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2010
Charleston City Paper Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Beyond meeting the expectations of readers old and new, Sanderson has his own personal reasons to roll the Wheel of Time to its conclusion. "I love this series," says the author, now 34, "and I want to see the last book written as much as any other fan. For a writer like me, the next best thing to having Jim write the novel is being able to work on it myself."Harriet McDougal Rigney
Rigney's effect on Sanderson and countless others continues to amaze McDougal. "Robert was bigger than I really understood," she realizes. "He was a bigger person on the world stage than I knew. People came up to me and said, 'These books changed my life.'"Tags
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Interview: Jun 30th, 2010
Interview With Harriet McDougal by Luckers (Verbatim)Luckers
Could you give us an insight into Jim's writing process? He was clearly quite methodical in his development, but how did he go about it? Were you involved much outside of your role as editor?Harriet McDougal Rigney
I remember that when he was beginning The Great Hunt, we spent a lunchtime discussing how the child of a Maiden of the Spear would be raised. Consider how far ahead that meant he was thinking! Beyond that, he had a magpie approach to the daily news—I was reading one of his Conans the other day, and was struck by how much it reflects the events in Afghanistan of that time.Tags
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Interview: Jun 30th, 2010
Interview With Harriet McDougal by Luckers (Verbatim)Luckers
I have this weird thing about random historical tidbits from the series (like the poisonous peaches, or the six-toed Two Rivers cats), so I was wondering if you have encountered anything like that which you could tell us? Or could you tell us why peaches are now so poisonous?Harriet McDougal Rigney
Peach PITS are poisonous here and now. They're full of—strychnine? Arsenic? I've forgotten which, but they really are bad. The flesh is not. You could look it up. But after one encounter with peach pits, a person would decide the whole thing was poison. This is on a par with the eighteenth century belief that tomatoes were poisonous—some people have an allergic reaction to them.
And in some locations, six-toed cats are common.
Footnote
The poison in peach pits is actually cyanide, and RJ commented on the peaches here.Tags
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Interview: Sep 9th, 2010
TWOK Signing Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Question
Question: about Talmanes' character and sense of humor and how Brandon has written him.Brandon Sanderson
But that's how I was reading him, and perhaps other people read him differently. And my particular biases on the character were manifest. Does that make sense? That's how I've always seen him.
But, one thing that I have to warn Wheel of Time readers... In me you get some interesting things writing the Wheel of Time book. What you get, which I hope is an advantage is someone who has read the books through multiple times, who's read The Eye of the World nine times, who is a very deep, big fan of the series. But what you're also getting hand-in-hand with that is someone who starting reading the Wheel of Time when he was fourteen...and on occasion has used his line edit privileges not for good.
Like, there are certain things that are embedded in my imagination that I have not realized until working on these books that I was wrong all along, one of which you may notice in The Gathering Storm was the length of the bridges into Tar Valon. Which, I had a conception of them, and I didn't look it up because I'm like, 'oh, I know what that looks like,' and so I started describing it and nobody called me on it, and then it comes out and fans are like, 'these are like a mile long, you can't really see the other side, you know, in the way you described it.' And I looked at it and then I read the Big White Book, I'm like, "Holy crap, these bridges are a mile long!" That's enormous! That's not how I imagined it at all. But that's how it is if you look at the maps.
These are some of these things where if I even had an inkling that it would be wrong, I would have questioned it. And in other cases, you'll get things like Talmanes, where I have always been reading him a certain way. And in my head, I'm like, this guy is way...you know, Mat's just not noticing the smirk that this man has in his eyes. That's how I've always read him, and so when I write him that comes out. Is that how Robert Jordan intended it? Well, I'll leave you to decide whether he had the line, 'he actually has a smirk inside,' or if it's just all along me reading him this way that makes me write him that way.
But does that give you some examples of understanding? This is one of the things, the issues we kind of slightly have to deal with me writing the Wheel of Time books is, you know, you can get some advantages. Mat, and Rand, and Perrin, and Egwene...these are my high school friends. I feel like I know these better than I know most of the friends I know in my life right now because I've known these people longer. Really, I mean, you know. You get that, and so hopefully their voices are very close to what Robert Jordan was writing them as, but you also get the preconceptions.
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Interview: Sep 9th, 2010
TWOK Signing Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Question
The Seanchan? How does their drawl sound?Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan actually answered how the Seanchan are supposed to sound. They are actually Texans. Really, he actually said that. He came out and said in an interview they have a Texan drawl. I don't know, you know we're used to hearing Texan accents, or deep Texan accents, and so they're just natural to us. But perhaps someone who never has before would have problems. Like, I've been in other countries before where someone who's not native to the language—slightly different example but again, linguistics fascinate me—not native to the language who's learned to speak English listening to British English speakers will have a huge amount of trouble understanding American English speakers or vice versa. I was once in Korea and there was an extremely fluent Korean speaker of English that we were talking to, and someone came over as a friend who had a Boston accent which is very soft, you know, I don't even hear it. And the Korean could not understand him. He just could not understand a single word, just with that slight addition of an accent. So if you're not familiar with an accent it can actually play havoc with your ears. Sometime when you're not expecting it, try it, I guess, you have to find someone who's fresh out of Australia, or even better Tasmania because they actually tend to have thicker accents. And get a fresh Tasmanian right over, not having been over here long enough for the accent to weaken, and try and speak with them. You will have an eye-opening experience.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2010
DragonCon 2010 Q&A Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Question
As you finish this amazing saga, did you ever wrestle with the fact between your voice in the writing versus Robert Jordan's voice in the writing?Brandon Sanderson
Did I ever wrestle between the voices? It was less of a wrestle and more of a process, but yes. I've spoken before about how I looked at the project and looked at the early notes, reread the series, and deciding if I was going to imitate Robert Jordan's voice or not. And I've talked about what I ended up doing, which I decided I would not try to imitate Robert Jordan's voice but I would adapt my voice to the Wheel of Time, which I felt would match better. And so, that worked almost universally. There are a few places that it didn't work as well as others that I then had to work on longer. It was not really a struggle. I mean, but because of what I decided to do, it was more of a "I am working to adapt my voice to make it appropriate to the Wheel of Time." And you will be able to notice words, it's going to be...it should be very easy if you actually sit down and break it down and say, "Oh here's a word that Brandon used that Robert Jordan never used." I try to actually remove as many of those as possible during the copy edit and editing stage. I don't worry about that at the beginning but then we'll say okay, if this is a word that's never appeared in the Wheel of Time before, then that's an appropriate word to just swap out and change. But at the same time you'll notice things. You'll notice things that I do that Jim didn't do. You'll notice my use of contractions is different from Jim's use of contractions. And that's just something that is going to be obvious if you look at it, but hopefully by matching the style of the Wheel of Time, not Robert Jordan, as soon as you're into it a few pages, the distinctions hopefully will fade. And that's what I was shooting for, because my goal was to make the characters sound like themselves. So I wouldn't say it was a struggle, though there were some places where it was harder than others.Tags
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2010
DragonCon 2010 Q&A Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Question
You may have been asked this before, I'm not sure, I'm just kind of curious. Dealing with the, when you were going through the process of when you decided to write this, and going through the notes and like learning the ending and everything... Working on somebody else's project, like, when you found things out as a fan who's followed it for so long, were there parts that were almost kind of hard for you to write? Like, maybe you didn't anticipate this happening? And it's like, you were like, "Holy crap!" I'm sure you wouldn't have... Were there parts that you were like, just wow, this is just really weird having to write this?Brandon Sanderson
I can talk on that for a sec here. Yes, in two different ways. There are some scenes that are very Robert Jordan scenes that are the type of scenes that I would never put...that I would just never write, just never naturally. I can only think of two scenes that were...one scene that way, and one scene that was just, I was completely not anticipating it, and so my brain had to... It wasn't hard to write when I actually got to the scene. But when I first read the notes, I'm like, "How am I going to do that?" Does that make sense?Audience
Yeah.Brandon Sanderson
The first one you've already read. It occurs in The Gathering Storm, and it involves someone's backside. Which is not, you know, it's very appropriate to the Wheel of Time, but I don't generally write spankings into my books. And so, I actually said, "I have to write a spanking scene?!?" All right, make it the best spanking scene ever!
The other scene has not come up yet so I can't tell you what it is. It was just a "wow." It was kind of that, "How did I miss that?" in part, and also a "I really need to make this really work really well." And anyway, I can tell you about that next year.
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Interview: Sep 16th, 2010
YetiStomper
How are you applying lessons learned from your work closing Robert Jordan's epic series in beginning your own?Brandon Sanderson
I've already talked about it a little bit—one of the things is learning how to approach the middle books, specifically how to use the form to enhance the novel as a whole. One of the big things I've learned from Robert Jordan recently is foreshadowing.
I used to think I was good at it until I really sat down and studied what he was doing. Another thing I think I've learned a ton about from him is viewpoint; excellent use of viewpoint is one of the ways to keep all your characters distinct. In addition, juggling so many plots, etc., all of these things have forced me to grow as a writer and have helped me quite a bit with writing The Way of Kings.
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Interview: Sep 13th, 2010
Patrick
Do you think that the process of working on The Wheel of Time and The Stormlight Archive almost simultaneously has been beneficial to your writing of the two series, with influences from one creeping into the other?Brandon Sanderson
Yes and no. I never write new material on more than one book at a time. I will be revising one while I'm writing new material for another, which really helps me keep my brain divided, if that makes any sense. It's good to be influenced by Robert Jordan's genius; it's bad to let themes and tropes from one book creep into the other. So I've tried to keep those things separate. Yet at the same time, who I am as a writer influences what themes and tropes I put into books. I do think people will be able to notice similarities in some of what I'm doing, in the same way that you can notice similarities between others of my books. Hopefully there is a larger gap because the Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan's rather than mine. I would say that there is an influence, but not an unhealthy amount.Tags
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Interview: Sep 13th, 2010
Patrick
Okay, you knew they were coming! Did you really think you could get away with not answering at least one WoT question!?! And no, you can't RAFO us! The Gathering Storm impressed through its tight thematic focus on Rand and Egwene's tribulations and what they went through to resolve them. You've said that Towers of Midnight has been a tougher book to write due to its more expansive nature and larger cast. For you (and avoiding spoilers!), what was the biggest difference in the writing process for the two books, and the biggest challenge?Brandon Sanderson
The biggest difference is that in The Gathering Storm I took two tight narratives and built them both to an enormous crescendo. In Towers of Midnight I had to make each chapter have more of an impact. In Towers of Midnight there are these amazing scenes, chapter after chapter—BAM BAM BAM, this incredible scene you've been waiting for, this other incredible scene you've been waiting for, this majestic scene you've been waiting for—but at the same time we're showing the scope around the world. Now, the book has one of those tight narratives that builds to an enormous crescendo that I'm very pleased with. But a lot of the rest of the book is this sequence and that sequence and this sequence and that sequence, so it's a very different book. Book twelve felt more like books one, two, and three to me. Book thirteen feels like books four, five, and six. This expands the vision and goes back to places we've been before.
It was a wonderful process. I actually think that Towers of Midnight is a better Wheel of Time book than The Gathering Storm was. But it made for a much more difficult write, because tying all of these elements together was a big challenge. Tying two narratives together is challenging, but then suddenly when you have eight narratives and have to make sure that they thematically work together, and all of that, is that much more of a challenge.
We'll see what readers think. In these books I am particularly beholden to the Wheel of Time fans. I feel these books are for them. So I won't really know if I've been successful until they read it. But I feel very pleased with the book.
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Interview: Sep 13th, 2010
Patrick
As the overall story arc is nearing its conclusion and a panoply of plotlines are approaching their culmination in Towers of Midnight, is there added pressure for you as A Memory of Light draws nearer and you need to close the show with a bang?Brandon Sanderson
Yes. You phrased that very well. I don't know if I can add anything more to that; you've got it. Now, the nice thing to keep in mind is that I don't have to write the ending. The BANG has already been written by Robert Jordan, and as a reader I found it extremely satisfying when I reached it. And so I feel very confident that the ending of the next book is going to be what everyone has been hoping for and wanting—without being exactly what they expect. I think the ending that Robert Jordan is just wonderful. So at least I don't have to worry about that. But I do have to make this the best book that I can possibly write, and it's going to be a challenge. It's part of why I've decided that I have to slow down, as I said earlier, and just take my time on this one.Tags
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Interview: Sep 13th, 2010
Patrick
Setting out to complete The Wheel of Time following Robert Jordan's death had to be a daunting endeavor for you. Which facet of this undertaking did you believe would be quite difficult and in the end turned out to be easier than you had envisioned? By the same token, which aspect of finishing the series turned out to be a lot harder than you ever believed it would be?Brandon Sanderson
I thought it would be much harder to get the characters' voices down. That was the part I worried about, and if you read my early interviews, I talk a lot about that. And surprisingly, it was not nearly as difficult as I thought. There are certainly a few characters I struggled with more than others. But in this book, Towers of Midnight, I think our character voices are spot-on. That actually comes from Jason from Dragonmount's interpretation of it—he said that he believes it's really just on. And that makes me feel good.
What has been harder has been keeping track of everyone. I thought I was steeped in Wheel of Time lore before I started these books. No, I wasn't. When people on tour asked me questions I realized how ignorant I am, despite having written and studied as much as I have. I know a lot—it's like I've got a Master's degree in the Wheel of Time, but there are people out there with postdoc experience who are completely showing me up at every step of the way. Keeping track of everything is a real challenge. I've described before the way I approach this. Essentially, when I get ready to write a scene from a character's viewpoint, I dump everything into my head that I need, and I try to write all of those scenes in the book for that character while maintaining all of that knowledge. Then I dump it out and get everything ready for another character. That's the only way I can do it, because there's just so much to hold on to.
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Interview: Oct 19th, 2010
John Ottinger
After releasing The Gathering Storm and getting reader responses, did you change anything about your approach to writing Towers of Midnight?Brandon Sanderson
Mat was the main thing that I spent a lot of extra time on post-reviews. With most everything else, I kept doing what I had already been doing. The tricky part with Towers of Midnight is that it was already going to feel like a very different book from The Gathering Storm. So taking what people said about The Gathering Storm and applying it to Towers of Midnight could be dangerous because of the different tone and feel to the plot cycles of the books. So I had to write it as the best book I felt it could be, though the one main area that I took a second look at was Mat.Tags
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Interview: Oct 19th, 2010
John Ottinger
You were simultaneously writing/polishing Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings, putting in 14 hour days. How were you able to keep Towers of Midnight distinct and faithful to Jordan without blending in your original work?Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Oct 26th, 2010
Luckers
With The Way of Kings out, I think it’s safe to say your other works are more than holding their own, but were you concerned in the early days about the Wheel overshadowing your other stories? Are you happy with the Wheel Fandom’s response to your other writing?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, to the last question. I am happy with the response. Though I do want to make the caveat that in my mind, the Wheel of Time fandom is not my fandom. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I mean that I don’t have any assumption that people who read the Wheel of Time books are going to like or even read my own work. I’m flattered when they give my books a chance, but people have asked me this question a lot and I do think that over the long haul there’s a pretty good chance that I’m going to stay overshadowed by the Wheel of Time. And that’s not a bad thing. In the case of something like this series—which has been a monumental influence, has sold so many copies, and is just such a dominant factor in the genre—I don’t think you can help but be overshadowed by it a bit. But I knew that when I took the project on in the first place. Being a footnote to the Wheel of Time is still a position of great honor. It’s been an honor to be involved.
I write my own books. I enjoy writing them. It’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life, and I’m flattered that they’ve had the success that they have, and that people enjoy them. I don’t sit up nights thinking, “Am I only going to be known as the guy who finished the Wheel of Time?” People are reading my stories, and beyond that I get to be a writer for a living. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. In all of those regards I’m insanely lucky. You’ve got to remember that I spent years and years and years writing books without anyone reading them other than my close friends. I wrote thirteen novels that way, and was completely satisfied. Sure, I wanted to get published, but it was telling the stories that was the most satisfying part. And if I had continued to do only that, then I still would have been completely satisfied. So anything beyond that is icing on the cake.
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Interview: Oct 19th, 2010
John Ottinger
Are there any "Easter eggs" that the well-versed Wheel of Time reader might find contained in Towers of Midnight, and can you name at least one?Brandon Sanderson
Oh boy. Well, one person's Easter egg is another person's very obvious thing. In Chapter One, "Apples First," in which a character from The Eye of the World shows up, I intended that to be more of an Easter egg and not tell people who that was. But Harriet asked for a big reminder near the end of the chapter of where the characters had met. So there are things like that, where characters return, but most of the time we have erred on the side of giving a little bit of an extra reminder of who these people are. If you look in Lan's plotline, several characters from New Spring make reappearances. The well-versed Wheel of Time reader is not even going to consider that an Easter egg, since it's going to be pretty obvious to them, but to other people I think it will be surprising. Will there be an Easter egg on the level of The Gathering Storm's reference to Plato? I'm sure that there are a few things like that embedded in there, as Robert Jordan always liked to embed references, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.Tags
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Interview: Oct 19th, 2010
John Ottinger
Since you are now one book removed from Jordan's original composition, are you finding yourself having to be more original, since it is likely that you have less Jordan prepared material to work with?Brandon Sanderson
Actually, the balance is rather similar, because of the way I developed the books. Half of the prologue scenes that Robert Jordan worked on ended up in The Gathering Storm; half ended up in Towers of Midnight. I'd say a third of the other material he worked on ended up in The Gathering Storm, and a third ended up in Towers of Midnight. In both cases I've had one character's plotline at the core of the book that was very well plotted out and worked on by Robert Jordan, and one plotline that to a greater extent I've had to add to of myself. That's been the same in both books.
Working on A Memory of Light is going to be a different experience, because the greater amount of what Robert Jordan worked on is weighted toward the end of the book rather than all along one character viewpoint. But there will still be a lot of it there, and in that case I'm writing toward it. You have to remember that the way I write these books often is to take a viewpoint cluster, a group of characters, and write them through from the beginning of the book to the end of the book. Which means that I've already, even in The Gathering Storm, had to work on viewpoint lines for which there was less from Robert Jordan to use. So it's been the same experience—it's really divided by plotlines.
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Interview: Oct 26th, 2010
Luckers
How difficult has weaving Towers of Midnight around The Gathering Storm been? Is there a large amount of inter-connectivity? Do we cross back on any events in The Gathering Storm?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, we do cross back on events in The Gathering Storm. The trickiest part was timeline. Robert Jordan had this innate ability to juggle timelines. This is not something he relied on Maria, Alan, or Harriet for; it was something he did on his own, just part of the genius of his brain. All of us are pretty new at this. I mean, I wrote Mistborn chronologically. There wasn’t any time juggling. There was time juggling to do in Elantris, but it was across the course of a single novel. It didn’t get as extensive. For the Wheel of Time, timeline things that Robert Jordan kept in his head are quite incredible, and I have to admit that I’m not as good at it as he was. Perhaps someday I will be able to get to that level, but for now I’m simply not. So working with the timeline has taken a lot of effort. I think we’ve got it so it all worked out. It took a lot of help. Maria, Alan, and others all worked together with me to get things arranged—some of our beta readers were extremely helpful in this—but there is a lot of juggling back and forth. You will see some events from different perspectives. It is not a complete jump back like book ten was. I would say that the book is mostly new material with a few glances at other things that are happening, but we’re moving forward; I’d say 60% of the book is taking place past what happened in The Gathering Storm. And then there’s one timeline in particular where we jump back and catch up—that’s Perrin’s timeline. But it was really challenging.
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Interview: Oct 26th, 2010
Luckers
I found "Veins of Gold" and "A Fount of Power" to be two of the most epic and intense climaxes in the series. In your opinion are the two climaxes of Towers of Midnight similarly epic?
Brandon Sanderson
The climaxes in the book are epic. One thing you have to remember in Towers of Midnight is that there is not as narrow a focus as there was in The Gathering Storm. So we’re dealing with more characters in many different places, which means that instead of as in the previous book where we could dedicate a good third of the pages directly to Rand—maybe even more—and build to one majestic, powerful climax, I’m not doing that as much in this book. Instead of twenty chapters from one character, you’ll get ten, and building to each climax will narratively depend on your love for the characters and your experience from the previous books. I think there are some wonderful climaxes that are a long time in coming. Are they on the level of The Gathering Storm? I’m really going to have to let people decide that for themselves.
Defining what makes something epic is so hard even for an epic fantasy writer. One definition of epic can be what we just talked about—a big, massive build across a huge number of chapters to something enormously earth-shattering. But you can also look at epic as a dozen different characters seen across a dozen different plots building toward one event—each of their pieces is smaller, yet builds to something larger. Those are both good definitions. Towers of Midnight is more like the latter definition. The Gathering Storm is more like the former definition.
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Interview: Oct 26th, 2010
Luckers
I thought Rand’s arc in The Gathering Storm was brilliant—starting to get better then—bang! Cuendillar Rand, and finally "Veins of Gold". Was it difficult to write? Can you give us some insight into how you stayed in the mind of a madman?
Brandon Sanderson
It was difficult to write. I’ve said before that I view a lot of these characters as my high school friends, people I grew up with. Facilitating Rand going through these extremely painful and sometimes revelatory moments was not easy emotionally, and yet there’s an excitement and a power to writing emotional scenes where things are coming together. So I would say it’s actually more difficult to write a character like Gawyn, who’s frustrated and struggling with not knowing what he’s doing, than someone like Rand who always has a direction—even if that direction is straight down, as it was in places. He’s always moving. So because of that, Rand was in many ways easier to write than other characters were. Yet at the same time it was painful to write. That doesn’t really answer your question, but maybe it does give some insight, as you asked.
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Interview: Oct 26th, 2010
Luckers
Following that is probably a good time to ask: Were you scared by the rabid nature of the fans? We do be crazy.
Brandon Sanderson
I was very scared. Heh heh. For one thing, I was really scared that I would pronounce things wrong and get raked over the coals for that. I also knew how passionate people are about this—and they have a right to be—so I feared I would be vilified for my faults. Because I do have faults. I’ve been very up-front with people that I don’t consider myself as good a writer as Robert Jordan, particularly at the height of his writing abilities working on these books. And so that was a real concern for me. I talked about that last year on tour quite a bit, which anyone who saw my presentation about the books would remember. Screwing this up would mean hatred on huge levels from a large number of people. So I just took that as extra motivation to not screw it up. Or at least to screw it up less than any other person could have, since Robert Jordan was no longer here to do it right.
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Interview: Oct 12th, 2010
Brandon Sanderson
PART ONE: WHEEL OF TIME BOOKS PUBLICATION TIMELINE
I posted earlier that Towers of Midnight is done, turned in, and ready for a November Second release. I'm feeling pretty good (though a little frazzled) at managing to get it in on deadline, by the promised date I gave you all in the blog post I made regarding splitting the novels. I stand by what I said there. I'm not expanding the outline left to me; I'm telling the same story I would have, even if the book hadn't been split. The order of chapters will be different in some cases, but nothing will be deleted or added.
Current projections are for the final book, A Memory of Light, to be about the length of the other two. (Around three hundred thousand words, or eight hundred pages in hardcover.) There are some who are hoping for it to be huge, the biggest in the series, but I will write it at the length it needs to be. I've finished two books, and have done two-thirds of the outline. So that gives a good indication that the final chunk will be the same length as the other two.
However, I do have to acknowledge that this is going to be the hardest chunk, for several reasons. The number of plots to be dealt with, the number of characters that need to be balanced, the sheer tactics and logistics of the Last Battle . . . there is a lot going on in this book, and it will be orders of magnitude more difficult than the previous two novels.
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Interview: Oct 29th, 2010
SciFi Now Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)James Rundle
You're midway through your concluding trilogy in Robert Jordan's The Wheel Of Time. Can you tell us a little bit about the latest novel, Towers Of Midnight?Brandon Sanderson
This is the second of the three books. What happened was, about two years back I'd planned to write the last book as just one book. And it was getting rather large, and the publisher was getting rather scared, so he talked to Harriet—Robert Jordan's widow—and they discussed it, talked to me and said 'Would there be natural break points if we were to publish this as three volumes?' We weren't expanding it at all, I was to write it in the same length, but they'd do it as three. There were actually natural break points; the first volume that we published, The Gathering Storm, was a very focused narrative—I'd written several plotlines for several of the main characters. They're very tense narratives taking them to some very important moments in their lives. It worked very well to break the book after that. What the second one does—it's actually a little more true to form for the Wheel Of Time series because we expand vision and scope in this novel. This is the novel where we reach out, and instead of having that very focused, narrow visual edge to the last book, which worked very well. But there are hundreds of characters in this series, and some of them had to—for the last book to work—the focus had to be shifted away from them. In this book, we're opening the world back up, looking at what’s going on around the world in all of these different narratives instead of having primarily two main focuses, we're looking at everybody again. This is the penultimate book. We're ramping up for the ending, essentially of the world in these books; this has everybody turning their eyes towards that and it all coming together. It's very large, it's very, I guess, epic is the word that you'd use for what's going on.Tags
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Interview: Oct 29th, 2010
SciFi Now Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)James Rundle
As you say, there are hundreds of characters; it's an intricately detailed fantasy world. How hard was it to immerse yourself in that when you came to write them, to get a handle on these characters and what's going on around them?Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, that was probably the most difficult part of this. I've read the Wheel Of Time since I was a kid, I started reading when I was 15, so I was very familiar with a lot of things in the book—I thought I was extremely familiar—but then I started working on it and realized that there's a depth to this that, in just reading it, I hadn't seen. I've read the book multiple times, I was a fan, but there are literally thousands of characters in these books. I think there are over 2,000 named characters. As a reader, you grab hold of the ones that you like, and if some come on stage that you're not so interested in, they pass and it's okay, you don't have to fixate on them very much. As the writer I have to learn all of these different voices. All the different interactions and passions and narratives, and goals and motives of all these different characters. There are a great number that I didn't have to do that with because they're small, they're named but don't influence the plot. But there are dozens of them that do influence the plot, that I had to learn. The difficult part is when I sit down to write a scene, when I write my own books I can just simply write it and do no wrong. But for these I have to do a lot of research for every scene, going back in the books and saying okay, this minor character, how do they talk? What is the voice? What do they want? All these things, it can be very demanding.Tags
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Interview: Oct 29th, 2010
SciFi Now Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)James Rundle
So how much do you have to work off from what Robert Jordan left behind?Brandon Sanderson
There's a lot of notes. It really depends on the scene. In some scenes he actually dictated or wrote complete scenes. In other places he left very detailed instructions. And in other places, he brings one character into play and then doesn't mention them for hundreds and hundreds of pages and then they're in another place having done something that he hasn't mentioned. It's because he wasn't a linear writer, he was one of these very creative types that just seized upon moments and wrote those moments. I ended up getting this massive pile of notes where certain scenes were done, and they were all over the place time-wise, whatever he'd been passionate about what he'd been working on, and other things that he just hadn't gotten to yet. But there are these huge lists of questions and answers between him and his assistants, which is really what makes this possible, because they ask him a lot of questions—what happens to this character? Okay, what's this character doing? Those sort of things that I have a lot of one-line and two-line answers to that can help me draw these things together.Tags
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Interview: Oct 29th, 2010
SciFi Now Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)James Rundle
As you said, you're a fan of the series, and there are thousands more around the world. Is there an added pressure when writing them, or do you just have to blank it out and do the best that you can?Brandon Sanderson
Certainly, I do the best that I can. There is added pressure. Again, when I write my own books, I'm not beholden to anybody. I write it, and if it doesn't work out, or if it's not my best book, that's actually okay because I like to try lots of different things. I like to be bouncing around and experimenting with things. But with the Wheel Of Time books, that's not appropriate, I am beholden to people, I am beholden to all of these fans that you've mentioned. It's not appropriate to just take this series and go wherever I feel. I have to take this series and be true to Robert Jordan's vision, while being true to myself as a writer, while also making sure that I'm being very respectful to the fans, to the all of the people who have been following the series for 20 years. They rightfully have a stake and a passion in the series, and it's a lot different from writing a standalone novel. I do feel a lot of pressure—the series belongs to the fans much more than it belongs to me.Tags
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Interview: Oct 29th, 2010
SciFi Now Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)James Rundle
Sure, but how have you found writing in the series? Being a fan, it must be quite a remarkable experience to be able to do this.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it's been wonderful. It's been amazing, and surreal. Surreal is a really good word for it because I grew up reading these books—these characters are like my high school friends. Being asked to write these books—and I didn't apply for this, I was just asked totally unexpectedly. She just called me on the phone, I hadn't met Robert Jordan and I didn't know that I was being considered. I was considered because I was both a writer in my own right, and a somewhat loudly professed fan of the series. But I hadn't ever considered it, you know? It's so weird—Robert Jordan is still this mythical figure to me. He's this magnificent, almost non-human person, a hero, a Greek god sort of figure—when I was growing up I'd say, "That is what I want to be someday". I would love to be one tenth of what Robert Jordan is, and it was a driving force for me becoming a writer, my love and respect for this amazing writer. And now I'm working on the series. Part of my brain just slips out every day, running around in circles saying, "I can't believe we're doing this! I can't believe we're doing this!" And that's partially out of fear, partially out of pure excitement. I don't know many people who get an opportunity like this, it doesn't happen. It's like Lucas asking you to direct a Star Wars movie, and the closest thing that I can think of, coming back to Tolkien, is the people who were asked to finish The Silmarillion—Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay working on that, that's the closest thing that I can think of to what I've been asked to do. It's just an amazing honor.Tags
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2008
Hero of Ages Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
He spoke about magic system creation and that he had a science background that inspired him in creating Allomancy which has a scientific basis, and elements of chemistry, biology and physics. He also mentioned a podcast he is a part of, Writing Excuses, and that one episode was about creating magic systems.
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2008
Hero of Ages Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2008
Hero of Ages Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Question
Did the ending of WOT bum you out?
Brandon Sanderson
No, it didn't, but it helped since that is how Brandon generally writes, which is to write the ending and use an outline. However, Brandon doesn't get to read A Memory of Light like a regular fan, which was a little disappointing since he is writing it (counter-balanced by the fact that he knows the ending before anyone else).
He did say that when he first went to Charleston that before eating dinner, he insisted on finding out who killed Asmodean, and how WOT ended!
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2008
Hero of Ages Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Ted Herman
Are there release dates for the two Memory of Light volumes?
Brandon Sanderson
No dates available yet, but A Memory of Light won't fit in one volume due to the binding not being able to hold the anticipated 800k words.
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2008
Hero of Ages Signing Report - Ted Herman (Paraphrased)Question
Will there be prequels or books about the Age of Legends?
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon stated he didn't want WOT to be like Star Wars with books telling scattered stories, but would like to do the prequels that RJ planned about Tam and Moiraine, and possibly the outriggers about Mat and Tuon as well (but not the other planned series, Infinity of Heaven).
He did mention the forthcoming WOT encyclopedia, and how extensive RJ's notes were—when he asked for a file on Perrin, he got notes that included 50 people from the Two Rivers who never even appeared in the books.
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2010
Brandon Sanderson
Most interesting, in my opinion, we learned more about Brandon's thoughts on writing the series in general. He told us that most important was staying true to Jordan's notes and his vision. He wanted the characters to stay the same, so that if you liked Perrin (the girls all sighed at this point) or hated Cadsuane, you would continue to do so for the same reasons, until such time as the story might bring about any changes. Some things would change as he wrote, but Brandon's conscience would not let him deviate from Jordan's true vision of the story.Tags
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Interview: Nov 6th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Robert Mee (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Someone asked about why audiobooks are so expensive, and Brandon made it clear that it was an issue of production costs...which makes sense. Harriet is not a fan of eBooks, which is why it's taken so long for the books to be converted over to that format.Tags
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2010
Question
Do you write the scenes in order?Brandon Sanderson
For very large epic fantasies, such as Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings, I actually approach it by viewpoint grouping, meaning I take all the characters who are together in the same location, or who are kind of together emotionally or things like that, and I will write them straight through until they run into people from other sequences. At that point, I'll usually stop and do the next one straight through, or I'll just skip those chapters and go on, depending on what's going on. I do it by group, and the reason for that is: juggling all of these characters in your head, and making sure I'm keeping every character true to themselves, it's kind of like I have to upload a bunch of stuff into my brain, and then wipe it clean and upload a bunch of other stuff for another sequence. So for instance, for this book, Perrin and Faile and everyone around them would have been written straight through, and then I jumped back and would've done Mat, and so forth.Tags
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2010
Question
How are decisions made about breaking up the chapters?Brandon Sanderson
Usually, that's Harriet. I break the scenes, she decides what gets grouped together into a chapter, and she will often move the chapters around. She does quite a bit of that, tweaking it to try and figure out where the best balance is. I don't generally give her an initial (order) with a bunch of them. Well, she'll get them in viewpoint chunks first, and she'll be doing edits on those while I'm writing other viewpoint chunks, and then I'll stick them together in an initial, and she'll through and say, "No, this one needs to be here, and this one needs to be here, these three need to be one chapter." That sort of thing.Harriet McDougal Rigney
And if Brandon says, "No, I just can't get behind this one," he wins! (Laughter from the crowd)Brandon Sanderson
There were a couple that I really like. There's a really, really great cliffhanger at the end of the first Mat chapter and I'm like, "Oh, that's such a great place to break a chapter; it'll make everyone turn to the next page!"Tags
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2010
Question
Are there any characters in particular you find hard to write?Brandon Sanderson
There are several that I've had more trouble with than others, and in that case, I generally work on them quite a long time. Aviendha, when I first started writing her, was probably the most difficult to get the voice right. There are characters that I write that are more difficult to write than others for different reasons. For instance, Gawyn is kind of...frustrated with himself, and when you step into a character's viewpoint, you start to feel and think like them; that's the goal. And so, him being frustrated with himself and his purpose in life makes it hard to write his scenes, because you feel frustrated and things like that, and Harriet has a great story about that.Harriet McDougal Rigney
One of the things that happens with a writer, which certainly happened with Jim (Jordan's real name, FYI), was he was often asked "what was his favorite character?" and he said, "whoever I'm writing today." Because he understood that villains don't think they're villains. They are doing what the world or the devil or something outside has forced them to do. So they think of themselves as gallant victims, generally, while they're slitting somebody's throat. But I could tell when he'd been writing somebody awful. He'd come in the kitchen door at supper time and he'd slink around the walls! I said, "You've been writing Padan Fain today, haven't you?" "How did you know?!"Tags
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Interview: Nov 6th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Tower Guards (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
One interesting tidbit overheard by Tower Guard members came when Brandon was asked about The Eye of the World movie. Apparently the script is being finalized now, so this is a lot closer to reality than a lot of us were aware.Tags
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Interview: Nov 13th, 2010
New Zealand Herald Interview with Brandon Sanderson: From chasing the market to living his fantasy (Verbatim)David Larsen
Jordan had been the big fantasy sensation of the 90s. His mega-series The Wheel Of Time began as a five-book cycle, then was expanded to a projected 12 books on the back of massive sales and critical acclaim. Each individual book was vast. The gaps between books slowly got longer and longer as Jordan struggled with gargantuan plot machinery, a cast of thousands and failing health.
He died in 2007, still working on the final volume, and McDougal, having been impressed by the Mistborn books, phoned Sanderson and asked whether he would be interested in finishing off the series from Jordan's notes.
Brandon Sanderson
"She called me out of the blue and, dumbfounded, I said yes. I mean I was a huge fan of Robert Jordan, how could I not say yes? But I was terrified. And I rightly should have been."David Larsen
Sanderson has spent much of the last three years on the Jordan project, which has involved splitting an unworkably huge manuscript—Jordan made extremely detailed notes, fortunately for worried fans of the series—into three parts, each of which will become a 300,000-word novel. The second of these is due out in New Zealand this month.Tags
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Zaela Sedai (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Brandon is trying to convince Harriet to let him do Annotations of the WoT books he co-wrote when the series is over. If he is allowed to do so it will come out in book form.Tags
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Interview: Nov 7th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Zaela Sedai (Paraphrased)Harriet McDougal Rigney
Harriet was also asked about movies/TV and said that Universal bought the rights for seven years, and two have gone by; she said “There is a twitch of life, like a frog twitching in your science lab.” The most recent information is that they have recently assigned two writers to the project.Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)Question
How is it writing from someone else's outline as opposed to your own?Brandon Sanderson
It's easier than I thought. I base my outlines off focal points and build backward to what would make that scene happen. RJ would work on scenes he found important and write them first. And so the notes that I was handed were list of important scenes without any connecting material. But in a lot of cases, the very important scenes were either indicated to me or written completely or left with a line or a paragraph or a dictation telling me what to do. And when I built this it fell very naturally into my type of outline. I have complete creative control, so long as I can convince the rest of Team Jordan.Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)Question
What have you written and what has RJ written? Will you publish the outline?Brandon Sanderson
I'd love to, but it's up to Harriet!Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)Question
RJ was able to write the fighting and military scenes so well because of his military background. How do you deal with those scenes?Brandon Sanderson
I rely a lot on Alan, and I read a lot of military history.Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)Question
Who is your favorite character to write?Brandon Sanderson
Aviendha, but she's also the hardest. I've just always liked her. Egwene was fun to write, particularly in The Gathering Storm.Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)Question
How can you keep all the details in mind?Brandon Sanderson
Part of it is how my brain works, but I also read some scenes that RJ wrote in a certain character's viewpoint before I write in their point of view.Tags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)Question
I was scared of someone else writing this, but you did a great job!Brandon Sanderson
I was scared myself! Thank you.Tags
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2010
Question
By the way, Towers of Midnight has just been released in the US. Was it easier to write this one than to write The Gathering Storm?Brandon Sanderson
In some ways it was easier, and in some ways it was harder. It was easier because I was more familiar in the world, and I was more confident, because The Gathering Storm had received quite a bit of accolade.
At the same time, Towers of Midnight is in many ways a more difficult story to write, because for The Gathering Storm, I picked several important characters and I focused on them and kept the narrative very tight and focused. For Towers of Midnight I couldn't do that; I had to get back to everyone else, I had to widen my focus. And in this case I had to juggle far more characters, which made it a much more challenging book to write, technically.
I do a lot of notes and plans; I'm what we call an outliner. George R. R. Martin talks about writers and says that you tend to be either what he calls an architect or a gardener. And an architect is one who plans out everything ahead of time for their book, whereas a gardener is one who nurtures a novel and sees where it goes. Stephen King is known as very much a gardener. I'm an architect in most ways, and I like to have a nice outline; I like to know where I'm going. Though of course as a writer, you can never stick to your outline one hundred percent. You have to have the freedom to change as the story develops, and as the characters grow, if they become people who wouldn't do what's in the outline, you have to be able to throw the outline away and build a story that follows the characters.
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2010
Question
How did you welcome the reviews? Were there different from the reviews you got for a novel which is your own a 100%?Brandon Sanderson
Right. With my own novels, it was very different in that. First of all, with the Wheel of Time, I really do feel that I'm in debt to the fans; I'm writing these books for the fans. But the series belongs to them, and the series doesn’t belong to me. With my own books, I really don't look toward what the fans are going to say; I follow my own artistic integrity and say: "I'm going to write the book that, as an artist, I feel needs to be written."
But with the Wheel of Time I felt that I needed to consider the fans more, if that makes any sense. And in a lot of ways, the reviews on The Gathering Storm are more important to me, because if I wrote something the fans didn't like, then I was failing. Whereas if I write something artistically that I know people may not like as much, that won't be as popular, but that I feel artistically for myself important to release, I can be okay with bad reviews. So, I paid a lot more attention to them, and I wanted to see what the fans thought I was doing well and what they thought I was doing poorly. And I wanted to be able to respond to that.
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - Catherine Sedai (Paraphrased)Question
Someone asked if Brandon writes the books in a jumping-around fashion or if he writes one character's story at a time, and then they get spliced together in editing.Brandon Sanderson
Brandon says he does write one character at a time, because you have to try to think like that character and feel like the character. He says to be able to write someone, it's like uploading all the information about the character, and then using it until you're done. Then you wipe your hard drive and download the next character. He goes on to say that the editing and splicing is almost entirely Harriet, but when Brandon feels strongly about something, he insists. (Brandon said one such point was at the beginning of Towers of Midnight, a cliffhanger ending to a chapter about Mat...) Harriet took the mic at this point and said that if Brandon puts his foot down, then that's it, and he gets his way. They laugh.Tags
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Interview: Dec, 2010
Tigre_azul
Since this is Robert Jordan's, how much of this does Brandon get to "play" with, to add him in it? It Appears that Brandon does a good job of reading his critics and answers questions that have been left undone. I read a lot of complaints about Mat after the last book. I don't think that will happen as much this time. The "surprises" seem to have a lot of Brandon in them. Last note. Why did it seem there were more editorial mistakes in this book than I would have expected?Brandon Sanderson
In reverse order: The editorial mistakes were basically because of the fast turnaround time between when I finished the book and when it was put out. We're working to get those fixed for the ebook and paperback editions, but really, deadlines are to blame there, which is one reason we're slowing down for the next book.
What you're seeing with the surprises, as you described them, is that not all of those are mine; I'm writing some of them that Robert Jordan left instructions on how to write, and the way I plot and reveal is going to be manifest in the way that I approach it.
In response to your first question, I'm given complete creative freedom in these books. Partially because Harriet trusts me, and partially because that's what a writer needs in order to be able to write a book like this. That said, I've mentioned before that I feel a strong compulsion to try to do the books as close to the way Robert Jordan would have as I can, taking into account my own writing style. I'm not trying to make these Brandon Sanderson books; I'm trying to make them Wheel of Time/Robert Jordan books, but I'm also not trying to imitate him since that would turn out as a bad parody. In the end, I'm allowed to do whatever I feel needs to be done to achieve the storytelling the story demands. I do have to convince Harriet, Maria, and Alan that it's the right thing to do. And in some cases that's an easy thing to do, and in some cases it's a harder thing to do. But in all cases I get to write it first and then let them read it. And if I don't manage to pull it off, then I say, "Well, let's try something different."
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Interview: Dec, 2010
Machavelli
Hi Brandon. I was really looking forward to reading about Rand after the end of The Gathering Storm, where he changes. I want to know how much he has changed since he and Lews Therin became one. He is the main character but he is barely in this book. Why is that? and will we get to read from his point of view in A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
You will get to read from his point of view in the last book. This was done intentionally, and it's something the Wheel of Time books have done all across the history of the series. Sometimes certain characters have to take a back seat while others' stories are being told. In this case, that happened to Rand. It was very important to me for narrative reasons that you see him externally before you see him internally.Tags
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2011
Tor Q&A with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jonathan Levy ()
I know it's premature to discuss this, but I am entertaining fond hopes that after you finish A Memory of Light, you will publish a WoT companion, which will include things like:
—All the notes and details and backstory which never got put into the novels.
—Deleted chapters, or longer draft versions of scenes which had to be edited down.
—An account of the writing process as you experienced it, with perhaps an outline of the books showing how much of each part was yours and how much RJ's, and the difficult decisions you had to make at each point.
—Alternative chapters or scenes which were discarded.
—Answers to any issues which are still disputed by fandom after the last book.I know this is premature, but I was hoping you could at least tell us if 1) Is this something you, personally, would be willing to do? 2) Is there any chance of it actually happening?
Brandon Sanderson ()
Excellent question. I've spoken on this a little bit before. It is something I'd be willing to do; in fact, it's something I want to do.
I don't want to say that the chances of it happening are poor, but one thing you have to understand is that Harriet is very careful and cautious with Robert Jordan's legacy, and rightly so. You may have heard, for instance, that at the first JordanCon she allowed us to play the tape of him dictating a scene from the prologue of The Gathering Storm, but she asked for it not to be recorded, and she doesn't really want it to be played again. It was just that one time for that special event. People asked her why, and her response was that she didn't want people to remember Robert Jordan in his weakest hours. I think that is a very valid point.
So the decision will be Harriet's. I haven't even approached her about this yet, because I don't think it's the appropriate time. But once the series is done and we've had some time away from it, I will ask her if it's all right if I do something like this.
It would include a lot of the things you mention. Specifically what I want to do is talk about the writing process and the difficult decisions that you mention, some of the scenes that didn't end up in the books, some of the things that Robert Jordan had written as potential scenes. I've mentioned before that in his notes he would often have comments where he says, "I will either do this, or this," and sometimes the options are very contradictory. He had not yet decided between them, and I ended up being the one who decided which one we were going to do. So I would include those and some of the actual notes.
The reason Harriet may not want this to happen is that if his final publication is unfinished notes, that might make her uncomfortable. I certainly intend to make a plea for the importance of this from a scholarly standpoint, that people might be able to have access to this, and also so that the notes are there for people who don't like my interpretation of things, so they can see exactly what Robert Jordan had to say. I'm really hoping we can do it, but let's wait until the series is done and then I'll approach Harriet about it.
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2011
Tor Q&A with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Matt Wakefield ()
Are you aware of and are there any plans in the future to adapt WoT to film or television? Would you be involved in this process at all? And is this something you would be open to doing with your own work sometime in the future?Brandon Sanderson ()
Red Eagle Entertainment currently has the rights to produce a Wheel of Time film, and I have met with them from time to time. But I'm not directly involved in the process; I'll leave movie making up to the experts. I talked a little about Wheel of Time movies here. I sold an Alcatraz movie option to DreamWorks Animation; they've finally passed on it, but a producer is shopping it around to other studios. I also sold a Mistborn movie option to Paloppa Pictures.Tags
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Interview: Feb 28th, 2011
JamesKY ()
First off, I really enjoyed The Way of Kings. I became more emotionally attached to the characters in this book than I did in Mistborn or Elantris. Dalinar and Kaladin are some of my favorite literary characters of all time.
My question is in regards to the audio book version of The Way of Kings. I think Michael Kramer and Kate Reading did a great job narrating the book and creating voices for each of the characters but I wanted to know what you thought about it. Do you feel like the characters were portrayed accurately based on your original ideas for them?
I'm also reading WoT for the first time. I just finished A Crown of Swords and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens and how you complete the series. I just hope it doesn't delay the sequel to The Way of Kings too much. ;)
Brandon Sanderson
I asked for Michael and Kate specifically, since I've liked their work on the Wheel of Time. That said, it's always an odd experience to hear the book read by someone else. In fact, I find it an odder experience than getting cover art, which is arguably a larger 'interpretation' of my work than a reading is. I think with the reading, I find myself wanting to tweak and change things, so it's kind of a nerve-wracking experience.
I think Michael and Kate did a great job, though sometimes, it's a strange experience to hear voices I associate with WoT characters being used for someone else.
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Interview: Mar 28th, 2011
Brandon Sanderson
Audible.com is once again putting on its Tournament of Audiobooks, and Towers of Midnight is one of the competitors. The first round is underway, and so far Towers is narrowly beating out American Assassin. If you want to vote, click on the Best Sellers tab. (The Gathering Storm won last year's tournament.)
Suvudu has Vin up against Jon Snow in the semifinals of this year's cage match. Since Jon Snow hails from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, he's probably going to win. Which I'm perfectly fine with, as George is a true master of a writer. Besides, I really have no interest in seeing both Vin and Perrin winning their semifinal matches (Perrin will be pitted against Quick Ben from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, who is no pushover) and facing each other in the final.
Ta'veren Tees is having a contest where customers can win free Wheel of Time shirts. See their contest rules here.
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Interview: Apr 13th, 2011
Brandon Sanderson
There are also a couple of other updates. Towers of Midnight has made it to the semifinals of Audible's Tournament of Audiobooks, but it is currently behind in votes to Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. If you liked the Towers of Midnight audiobook, consider giving it your vote. (Of course you can vote for Matterhorn instead, if you think that was a better audiobook.)
The Stormlight Archive character name auction is still going on. The local newspaper did an article on it.
I haven't linked this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode yet. Recent episodes were recorded at LTUE when I was at ConDFW, so I haven't been appearing, but this episode marks my return. Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and I talk about urban fantasy.
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Interview: Dec 23rd, 2010
Scott Wilson
How hard was it to write the last 3 books in the Robert Jordan series? Inevitably, there would be those that criticized your work no matter how good it was just because it wasn't written by Jordan.Brandon Sanderson
I've said myself that I could never replace him—Robert Jordan should have been the one to finish the series. My main goal in writing the books has been not to imitate him, but to stay true to the souls of the characters. I think of it as taking over as director for a few scenes of a movie while maintaining the same actors and script. I can be proud of my role as director, but ultimately the end result still belongs to Robert Jordan—and to his fans. Part of me is sad that now I can't just be one of them; I didn't get to rush out and buy and read a new Robert Jordan book this past November like they did.
When I was first offered the project, the fact that I could never write these books as well as Robert Jordan would have written them tempted me to decline. I knew that no matter what I did, it would not be the same as what could have been. I don't believe the books could be as good written by anyone else as they could have written by Robert Jordan. And so that was the main consideration for potentially saying no. But in the end, I decided if I did say no, and someone else got the book and screwed it up, that it would be partially my fault.
I honestly and sincerely believe that I am the person who can do these books the best now that Robert Jordan is gone. I would rather he be here to write them, but if he can't be here to write them, I want to do it myself because at least I know they're in the hands of someone who has been reading them for decades and who sincerely cares about the series.
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Interview: Dec 6th, 2010
Brandon Sanderson
Both The Way of Kings and Towers of Midnight are nominated for best fantasy book of 2010 at Goodreads. You have to be signed up with Goodreads to vote. Also, it looks like Audible listeners already voted on their favorite audiobooks of the year, and both books made the top 10 (that's out of all audiobooks, not just fantasy). The Way of Kings was also selected as a top 5 Audible.com editor's pick for sci-fi & fantasy.Tags
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Interview: Apr 16th, 2011
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Richard Fife
(More about preparation for A Memory of Light.)Alan Romanczuk
Let's see. Well, probably the most significant thing that's happened is we are all working on the same version of Word right now. We had some difficulties in the past.Maria Simons
Last year we had three.Alan Romanczuk
Three different versions.Maria Simons
And it caused some really interesting things.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. What we would do, you can see how much of a pseudo-nightmare this is. So, in order to speed things up last year, and it actually did speed things up despite the chaos, was we went all digital for edits.Harriet McDougal Rigney
Yeah.Brandon Sanderson
One of the tricks of working with this is, I basically have five editors, with Harriet at the top, and then there's Maria and Alan right below. And then Moshe my editor is giving us reads...because we can't use my normal alpha readers for this, which are my writing group, because they'd all have to be part of the NDA and that's just too many people. And so instead we brought on Moshe to just give me an alpha read, a dry alpha read. And then my agent also gives me dry alpha reads, because they all are interested professionals and part of the NDA and things like that.
But basically, even looking only at Harriet, Maria, and Alan, what would happen is on The Gathering Storm, I would send in some scenes, and then I would start working on the next ones. And I would get deep into the next ones, and then some papers would come. I'm like, oh revisions. So I'd go back and start doing revision. And then another group of papers would come from another one of them that had revisions that were different. And then another group of papers would come that were a third group of revisions. And in some cases, they've all caught the same typo, but then I have to end up searching for it three times because I can't remember if I've changed that typo or not. And then I can't find it. I'm like, oh I guess that's one I caught, but really sometimes I didn't catch it, I'm just on the wrong page or something. Anyway, I have three sets of paper all from different people making different revisions, and sometimes they disagree with one another on what should be changed, and they're not seeing each other's revisions.
Meanwhile, I'm on tour trying to fly around and carry all of these. You should have seen me on the airplane one of these days where revisions were needed the next day, and I'm flying on a six-hour flight in coach. And I'm cuddled like this between two people in the middle seat, with six hundred pages around me, trying to find all three pages that are editing the same section, and realizing that one's in my suitcase. This was absolutely a nightmare to do.
And so this time, I'm like, let's go all digital, I'll have them all on my computer, it will be so much easier. But Harriet had never done digital revisions before. None of you had, I don't think. And so the idea was we would have one person do a revision, and then they would hand the file off, and that person could go through and a revision and add their comments, and then the next person would be able to do it. And that would have been wonderful in a perfect world. Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that because we were so crunched for time. And so what would happen is they all would be working on their own machine because they all needed to be reading at the same time, they couldn't wait for the other person. And so then they would all three send me documents digitally, which is easier to work with than trying to dig out all fifty pages of each. But at the same time, then I have four documents: my document, and three documents with revisions in it, from different versions of Word or Wordperfect or Open Office or whatever it is. I basically would just send them all to Peter (Peter Ahlstrom, Brandon's assistant) and say, "Peter, meld these somehow."
Maria Simons
Peter was a real hero.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. Peter was the unsung hero in that one because he really went through, he would work for hours and then send me a document back. But this would introduce lots of typos and errors, because the different revisions were different programs and would not stack up. And so we ended up with many more—you may have noticed—many more typos in Towers of Midnight, and it's due directly to this process, where one person would change something, another person would change it slightly differently, and the computer program would get confused. And what you would end up was like a word with an extra letter on it or something like this. And we caught most of them, but it added a lot of extra editing errors for this. We didn't cut corners on the really important stuff in Towers of Midnight, but when push came to shove, getting the extra proofreads, there wasn't time for, which is why there are more errors in Towers of Midnight. It's because we took the time we needed for revision, but we didn't then have any time for proofreads. Peter, you proofread—did you even get the whole book done? You were up till 6 AM several nights proofreading.Peter Ahlstrom
After I told you I was done, I realized that I had skipped three chapters.Richard Fife
Peter, why don't you stand up and just wave, so everyone can see you?Harriet McDougal Rigney
Peter deserves kudos.
I would like to say, at the beginning of the editing process on the last book, Brandon was 7 feet, 3 inches tall.
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Interview: Apr 16th, 2011
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Question
Can you describe at this point—I hope this doesn't jump too much into spoiler territory—can you describe how you're approaching the tone of this book? I know The Gathering Storm, from the first page of The Gathering Storm, I thought, wow, this is grim. And as it goes and it goes, and as Rand goes and goes, this book goes to a dark place. And then, in Towers, from almost the first chapter, you're like, oh wow, this is a very different experience we've got, with Rand coming back down. But even the whole book just felt different. Can you describe at a top level how the tone of this next book is going to feel? Is it going to be grim? Is it going to be one of happy victory? (laughter) That's not really where I'm going. What I'm really going for, is just from the notion of as the book is going, how does the tone go?Brandon Sanderson
This is much like the other question I wasn't sure I wanted to get into, just because it's too early to be talking about that. And so I really think I'll just leave this one alone. It's a good question to ask and be thinking of, and I do do these things consciously, but I don't think it's time to talk about it yet.Tags
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Interview: Apr 16th, 2011
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Richard Fife
We know what Brandon's obviously going to do once the Wheel's done. How about the rest of you? Do you have any plans or ideas for what's going to happen once the encyclopedia is finished?Maria Simons
Well, I'm working on comics and we're just very early still in Eye of the World, so if that goes on and on I guess I will actually still be doing Wheel of Time, just a different medium.Alan Romanczuk
I've been looking into greeting at Walmart.Harriet McDougal Rigney
Well, I've been thinking, what would it really be like to be retired? Maybe I'll join you at Walmart.Tags
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Interview: Apr 16th, 2011
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
For Brandon, you've had the opportunity now to write two books completely and then some. And at first, initially I know that a lot of the emphasis was on you trying to get the voices right, mimic the voice of Mat and Nynaeve and everyone else. Now that you've had some time with these characters and progressed them through a lot of their major turning points, do you see yourself suddenly having to direct their new motives and direct their new voices? In other words, how much of the Nynaeve and the Mat and the Rand in A Memory of Light is coming from you rather than what we had left off at the end of Knife of Dreams?Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Apr 16th, 2011
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Verbatim)Richard Fife
General question, all of you can chime in on, but it's probably most impactful to Brandon here. To harp on my own themes—the Wheel changes lives. I think a lot of us have had our lives changed. How has writing it changed yours?Brandon Sanderson
Well, I can give you a show versus a tell. If you read Warbreaker and then Way of Kings, you can see directly the impact it's had on me as a writer, and that's more something that you as reader response and critics can pick out probably better than I can. That's one way to say it. I mean, it's also had a lot of philosophical effects on me. What I just talked about, I've had to grow as a writer. I've talked about this. I had to grow a whole lot in that time I was working on Gathering Storm, and it was a very difficult process. But like lifting weights, a difficult process, hopefully, you either break beneath it or you grow. I think that it has forced me to grow a lot. But then there's the philosophical sorts of things. I picked up the first book when I was fourteen. And now working on it, I learned to write by reading the Wheel of Time books, and I've talked about that before. And, you know, there is something deeply humbling about being able to give something back to Robert Jordan, that I get to do that no one else does. Does that make sense? I get to return something. These books are me saying, wow, the wise master has grown a little frail, and I get to help him across the road. Or that sort of thing, listening to the master's wisdom as he leans on my shoulder a little bit in the last years. And there's no greater honor that someone can have than that honor right there. It's changed my life like it will probably never change anyone else's life. But everyone's individual, everyone's had their lives changed in a different way, but I've got something very special and I'm very very grateful for that, and it's been a humbling experience.Tags
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Interview: May 30th, 2011
Amsterdam Pancakes and Fries Report - yks (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
About writing, he said he writes linearly per character or character group and it later gets decided how it all gets woven together in the book.Tags
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Interview: May 30th, 2011
Amsterdam Pancakes and Fries Report - jarno87 (Paraphrased)jarno87
In the train to the airport we talked about the writing process.Brandon Sanderson
Brandon said that for him writing the Perrin POV's was relatively easy because he understands Perrin, and more importantly Perrin understands himself. Mat on the other hand is much harder, as he doesn't understand himself. Furthermore Mat thinks one thing, says a second and does a third. This makes it all really confusing and hard for Brandon to write. However BS said that especially in the later books by RJ, he finds Mat the best written character.Tags
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Interview: Jun 4th, 2011
London Signing Report - Thomas C (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
A few questions covered the Wheel of Time being turned into a movie. Universal have the rights to the turn the first book, The Eye of the World, into a film. One fan asked if Sanderson would like a cameo role in the film. Sanderson said he would love a role, even if he was getting eaten by a Trolloc. I hope Universal takes note of this!Tags
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Interview: Jun 4th, 2011
London Signing Report - Thomas C (Paraphrased)Question
One fan asked what Sanderson felt was the main difference in the writing style between himself and Jordan.Sanderson felt Jordan was a better prose craftsman, which I agree with. The other difference was in the action scenes. Jordan had lived through battles as he was a Vietnam veteran, whereas Sanderson went more for a cinematic approach. I will look out for this on my next re-read!Tags
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Interview: Jun 4th, 2011
London Signing Report - Thomas C (Paraphrased)Question
Several fans wanted to know how Sanderson felt about picking up the baton and continuing the Wheel of Time series.Brandon Sanderson
He felt daunted to begin with, mainly over the fear of not doing a good enough job. He knows it isn't perfect (like how Jordan would have written it), but he has loved the challenge—and I am sure us fans do like what he has done. He was initially surprised at the hardcore nature of Wheel of Time fans. He jokingly viewed himself as a stepfather to the fans! I got the impression that Sanderson was blown away by the level of detail and research Jordan undertook for the mythologies etc behind the books. He said there were shelves and shelves of textbooks on the mythology, and Harriet was able to pick the necessary books should he need to do some background or further reading.Tags
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Interview: Jul 16th, 2011
PolarisCon Report - herid (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
He confirmed the mythology connection to Perrin being wounded in the leg in the fight with Slayer in Towers of Midnight that was suggested by Hael Me in this thread.Tags
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Interview: Jul 16th, 2011
PolarisCon Report - herid (Paraphrased)herid
I asked about Galad and his parallels with Mordred that I discussed here.Brandon Sanderson
He started nodding before I finished describing the parallels and said that yes, he was aware of those. But he of course didn't say anything specific about how exactly this might play out. He did say that he has much less freedom with Galad than with some other characters as Galad's plotline was mapped out in detail by RJ.Tags
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Interview: Aug 29th, 2011
Literatopia Interview (Verbatim)Literatopia
Tell us some of your first thoughts when asked to finish The Wheel of Time. Did it feel great to be doing this right from start or was it a bit scary at first to be continuing such a renowned series?Brandon Sanderson
My thoughts were all over the place. I do legitimately love the Wheel of Time and have been reading it since I was a young man. If you look at my early unpublished books, you'll find they were deeply influenced by the Wheel of Time. Amusingly so; looking back on it now, I see things I didn't even notice that I had done. So that love of the series was part of what was bouncing around in my head.
I didn't become a writer because I wanted to write in other people's worlds. I wanted to tell my own stories, and I was making a comfortable living at my writing before this. For a lot of projects I would have said no regardless of what they offered, so it had to be about more than the money. Beyond that, there was this sense of "Wow, if I screw this up, I'm in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore." I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned regarding this, or posted it somewhere, "This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him." I took all those things into consideration.
But in the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, "Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?" And the answer was that I couldn't let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.
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Interview: Aug 29th, 2011
Literatopia Interview (Verbatim)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.Tags
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Interview: Aug 29th, 2011
Literatopia Interview (Verbatim)Literatopia
What makes the series about the Dragon Reborn so special in your eyes? Are there some strengths and also weaknesses you want to highlight? What kind of readership would you recommend it to?Brandon Sanderson
One thing that seems to set the Wheel of Time apart from many other fantasy series is how it appeals to people across so many demographics. It has adventure to appeal to teenagers, but when you grow up you appreciate the series for different reasons. The subtlety of the character interactions and the foreshadowing, the intricacy of the plot, the strong women who don't judge themselves by their relationships to men—this series has it in spades.Tags
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Interview: Aug 29th, 2011
Literatopia Interview (Verbatim)Reader's Question
Which character in The Wheel of Time was the easiest to comprehend, which one proved to be hardest to conceive? How did it feel like to be one of the first people to know how the Wheel of Time series will end? Can/will you tell us the closing sentence of The Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
Perrin was the easiest, for the same reasons as I called him my favorite above. Mat was the hardest for me to write, because his humor is so different from my own.
The ending has already been written by Robert Jordan, and as a reader I found it extremely satisfying when I reached it. And so I feel very confident that the ending of the next book is going to be what everyone has been hoping for and wanting—without being exactly what they expect. I think the ending that Robert Jordan wrote is just wonderful. But in another respect I'm a bit sad, because I won't get to experience the ending for the first time when a new Wheel of Time book comes out in the bookstores like everyone else will.
If you do a search online you can find a few words that Robert Jordan said about the closing sentence of the Wheel of Time before he passed away. It's out there in an interview. I won't say whether it's going to stay that way or not, because essentially what he says is "This is what it would be if I wrote it right now, but it often changes" and things like that. He wrote it, not me, so I don't feel right giving a spoiler on that. But if you look around, the interview is out there where he said some words on it.
Footnote
RJ did say in a 2002 interview that if he had written the last scene in 1984, the last word of the series would have been "world". In 2002, he said it might have been "turns".Tags
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Interview: Aug 21st, 2011
WorldCon 2011 Reading - Linda Taglieri (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
What Sanderson likes most about The Wheel of Time is Jordan's ability to use third person POV viewpoints. He was wonderful at it. Jordan also had an ability to be subtle (which Matt Hatch and I were discussing the previous afternoon).Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)ShutUpElayneTrakand ()
Most people know how awesome you are and will now proceed to tell you that and beg you to give them answers to questions that they’ll eventually RAFO. I’ll leave it to the others to gush and tell you those things (because they’re true). My question is about the Wheel of Time and is pretty menial but stands solely on a personal gripe with the word—why on earth is the word “loobie” used so much to describe Rand by his ladies—especially Min? Did Mr. Jordan leave a quota for that word that must be used a certain number of times? I just...especially for a character like Min that was, in particular, stronger and much less...sheepish than Rand’s other women, to have that as her affectionate word of choice makes me cringe. I would love to see a return of strong Min vs. sheepish doe-eyed Min, but if there’s any possibility of changing her word choice...I would find some way to repay you for you will have done me a great service.Brandon Sanderson
Ha. I can't see into Mr. Jordan's mind, though I can say that he was fond of using the writer's device of character-identifying traits. You'll find that if you hang out with certain people, and listen to their linguistic patterns, often they will repeat individual words and phrases all the time. (I know one guy who uses the word "Brilliant!" every other sentence.)
This may be the case where life is more annoying than fiction should be, however. I'll keep the comment in mind. You can pay me in heaps of Magic cards, preferably from the alpha/beta era.
ShutupElayneTrakand
That's a done deal. I have a ridiculous amount of cards remaining from the alpha/beta era that have been sitting and collecting dust since I ran out of money in the 8th grade. I know that they would absolutely love a new home.
Brandon Sanderson
Ha. I was really joking. Please. Don't give me any really expensive cards. I'd feel too guilty. If you do have some, I'd at least insist on giving you fair-market value in trades for books.
natron6
Ya I also feel like the the word adroit/maladroit were used a shit ton in the Mistborn series. Maybe I just noticed it so much because I had never heard those words before reading those books.
Brandon Sanderson
Nah. I overused them. Didn't notice it until they were in print, and I added them (and some other words) to my "Be careful; you overuse these."
Every author does this, but some are better at keeping an eye on it than I am. Hence my 'kill list.'
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)keebler980 ()
How much of the ending are you creating, not just filling in the blanks per se?Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)skylatron ()
Is there any forward movement on a Wheel of Time movie, TV series, or video game?Brandon Sanderson
Movie: No movement, if you're up to date on things I've said over the summer. Those things are thus. The books have been bought (not optioned) by Universal. They are planning on doing feature films, one per book. Many of us have suggested that television would be a better venue. (Perhaps Game of Thrones will persuade them.) I have met the studio exec and writer, but have been told I cannot release names. A script is done, but needs a lot of work.
Video Games: Red eagle is working with Obsidian on video games. I have suggested a Knights of the Old Republic style RPG. I don't know yet if they will listen, though there are talks of doing an Age of Legends MMO, and of exploring various time periods in the world. No specific games have been announced or begun, I believe.
kmolleja
Do you know what kind of rating will be aimed for the movies? I would imagine a visual depiction of what happens in the books would almost require a R for violence, but that rating would cause a lot of people to stay home.
Brandon Sanderson
I strongly suspect, from what I've heard, that they would shoot for PG-13.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)sparhawk1985 ()
How did finding out the ending(s) to The Wheel of Time affect you personally? I feel like I have known these characters for so many years, and to not have something else to look forward to is going to be so weird for me.Brandon Sanderson
I felt, reading it, that Robert Jordan's ending was deeply satisfying. I liked it a lot. It is also weird to know that, to one extent, it's all over.
rahvin37
I realize this is an older thread, but I just wanted to say how pleased I am to see this comment. Before I found WoT I never thought I'd enjoy reading. I grew up with this series, and I'm so happy to hear the ending is a good one.
I am a huge fan of your work; especially Mistborn and The Way of Kings. Thanks for doing the AMA :D.
BRANDON SANDERSON
My pleasure. Thank you for reading.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)pivotal ()
You've mentioned before that RJ left pages and pages of notes, including character development for characters that we've never even seen "on screen". So my question is twofold—how great as a WoT fan was it to get to read those, and is there any chance at all that they will ever be publicly available?Brandon Sanderson
1) It was awesome. It also helped me grow a lot as a writer. 2) I would like, once this is all done, to publish a nonfiction book that includes a lot of the notes, along with explanations of what I did where and how I adapted specific notes. It will be Harriet's call. She doesn't want people's last memory of RJ to be the unfinished things he wrote, as he was very careful not to show unpolished work even to her. I can respect this.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)Axelkappa ()
You previously mentioned on twitter a GRRM-esque moment in A Memory of Light. Any more on that? In the end are you going to apologize or feel awesome?Brandon Sanderson
When the book is out, ask me about this. I'll tell you which one it was. It's something I was struggling with, trying different takes on. Finally, some things came together. I'll say more, but I'll put it in spoiler text. (It's not very spoilery, but some people don't want to know anything.) [highlight to read] It is a moment of awesomeness, but also is somewhat cruel. There is a death involved. It could be from the side of the Light, it could be from the side of the Shadow.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)Angry Caveman Lawyer ()
I am not gonna lie, before you were chosen to finish up tWoT, I had no idea who you were. After reading your first addition to that series, I now have every book you've put out. I doubt I'm the only one out there like this, do you feel like your own sales have doubled/tripled/petered-off/declined/diminished/are no more primarily due to tWOT and Jordan's untimely passing?Brandon Sanderson
It's hard to separate these days. However, I got to huge boosts. When the announcement was made, all of my books jumped up to having 'first week' sales again. Most entertainment mediums follow the same slope. Huge first week sales, then a tapering off on a steady curve. (Sleeper hits and new books by first time authors don't follow this.)
When The Gathering Storm came out, I got another big boost, which was again a kind of 'First week' sales thing—though in that case, the bigger boost came around Christmas. It seemed that people bought The Gathering Storm, read it, thought about it, then asked for one of my books for Christmas.
In the long run, it's going to be very hard—as I said—to separate how many readers tried me out because of the Wheel of Time. As books take on lives of their own (as Mistborn did) they gain a readership through word of mouth. However, how much of that 'taking on a life of its own' happened because of the initial WoT boosts?
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)rosered3791 ()
What is the hardest part of finishing someone else's work?Brandon Sanderson
Getting all of the character voices right. That, and keeping track of all of the side characters. The WoT is a big project. There's also the sense that in these books—as opposed to others I've written—that I "owe" more to the fans, if that makes any sense. With my own works, I don't think "What will the fan reaction be?" I write the best book I can. With these books, I have in the back of my mind that they don't belong to me, they belong to the readers—and I need to be aware of that.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)rand althor ()
I know Robert Jordan always answered this by saying, whichever character he was writing at the moment, but, as you were fan of WoT to start with...who are some of your favorite characters, as a fan of the series, from Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
Now: Whoever I'm writing.
Before I started: Perrin, Aviendha, Tuon, Mat, Rand, Tam.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)simenasak ()
Will Gaidal Cain be spun out as a hero of the horn of Valere should the horn be sounded again? Can a hero show up there if alive? Will a hero become a "copy" that rests within the horn until called to arms?Brandon Sanderson
As I understand, if you are 'spun out' you do not respond to the call of the Horn. So no Cain showing up if it is sounded again, as he's been spun out.
Astrogat
As you understand it? Isn't your understanding more or less canon at this point?
ilikedirigibles
No, it's not his world or book series. He can misunderstand something just as well as the next guy.
Not saying he did here, but just 'cuz he's finishing the series doesn't mean, for example, he can retcon or change anything or do "whatever he wants or thinks".
Astrogat
No of course not. But if there are two ways to understand something (that RJ has written) wouldn't it be up to Sanderson to decide which of those he believes to be right?
So if he thinks that when he's spun out he wont respond to the Horn, no one can ever prove him wrong (there are nothing in the books to contradict this), so wouldn't his understanding be the "right" one?
Brandon Sanderson
Here's the thing. There are three million+ words of notes, and RJ changed his mind about a lot of things as he wrote, explored, and made decisions. (He talked about this being his process. He saw the Wheel of Time as an organic thing.) So any time I speak on an issue like this, there's the chance that Maria (his assistant) will come to me and say "Actually, Brandon, he changed his mind on that. Look here for the revision." Half the time, it's something he mentioned in passing to her, Harriet, or Alan and isn't even written down.
So...on things I think I know, but haven't confirmed with Team Jordan yet, I usually add some wiggle room. My knowledge is far from absolute. Fortunately, everything in the books I write gets fact-checked a half dozen times. (Even then, some of my mistakes slip through.)
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Interview: Sep, 2011
Fantasy Magazine Interview - Leigh Butler (Verbatim)Leigh Butler
So let's talk about the other major epic you’re involved in, which of course is the Wheel of Time. How do you feel in general about the way the series is going? Are you pleased with the reception of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight (the twelfth and thirteenth books in the series, respectively)? Are you confident that it’s going the way you want it to go?Brandon Sanderson
Of course I'm very pleased at the reception of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, because when I first started working on this, I had visions of Wheel of Time fans burning down my house.
(Laughs.) Well, Wheel of Time fans are very hardcore! I actually received a number of very politely phrased threats, with a little smiley at the end. You know, you're just not sure how to take the "I'm very glad someone's finishing this. By the way, if you screw it up I'll burn your house down. Smile smile, wink wink, we're all behind you!" So the fans can be really daunting, and working on this was really daunting for me, since I've been reading these books since I was a kid. But I'm very pleased to not have had my house burned down.
I'm still very aware of the mistakes I make, and I'm also very aware that this is not my series; this is not me, it doesn't belong to me. And every time I make one of these mistakes, it reinforces the idea that these are Robert Jordan's books, and I'm a last-minute pinch hitter. I'm not someone who sauntered in to take it over and make it his own.
So am I pleased? Yes I am, but at the same time there's still that sense that I'm doing something that I wish didn't need to be done, which leaves it as a very weird situation still. I'm very happy that, in general, people have liked the books, and I am sad to have failed those who felt that they don't work, because there are those who my efforts are not going to be enough for. But overall, the reception has been very positive.
But I wouldn't say I'm confident; I don't think this is the sort of thing I can be confident about. Though I suppose I can be; I'm confident that I was the right choice, that if someone was going to have to do this, that I was the right one to pick. And I'm confident in the storytelling choices I made, yet at the same time I know that I don’t 100% belong here.
So it's a very hard question for me to answer for those reasons, but I hope that what I'm doing and what I'm striving to do with this last book will get the story to the closest way that Robert Jordan would have done if he were here. And I just hope we can all get the ending we want to read.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
WorldCon 2011 WoT Panel - Linda Taglieri (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson had to write a spanking scene in The Gathering Storm—the one where Cadsuane spanks Semirhage. RJ's instructions on this scene were specific.Linda Taglieri
I think Brandon would have rather it were Semirhage punishing Cadsuane.Tags
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Interview: Aug 4th, 2011
West Jordan Signing Report - 17th Shard (Verbatim)Question
The first question is cut off. Mi'chelle believes the question is: How epic is the Last Battle?Brandon Sanderson
I guess it depends on your definition of 'epic'. I mean, it feels pretty epic to me. There's a lot of stuff going on in this book. I hope people don't get lost, is what I'm worried about. I mean, everything is kind of coming to a head. I can't say much, but it's pretty epic.Question
For the Last Battle how many points of view are you doing?Brandon Sanderson
I'm using a lot of them. There's going to be all the mainstays. Rand will get viewpoints again. Perrin, Mat, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne. And there will be some Tuon, and then there will be some little shots from all over the place. The Great Captains will all be involved, so you'll be seeing from them. You'll be seeing from pretty much everybody. I'm trying to give at least one little scene from them if we've had a major perspective [from them], we'll try to do some from them. But, you know, the core is going to be the main characters. So: the Two Rivers guys and the Wonder Girls, basically, if you follow the parlance from the websites.Tags
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Interview: Aug 4th, 2011
West Jordan Signing Report - 17th Shard (Verbatim)Question
I think I saw on Facebook that you are involved with a Mistborn movie and game. Can you tell us about that?Brandon Sanderson
Ah, yes. The Mistborn movie and game. The movie rights were optioned to a production studio called Paloopa Pictures. We'll see what happens with that. I mean, they have a screenplay—if you don't know, getting a film made, there are a lot of ways that it happens; most of them seem kind of chaotic. One of the primary ways is a production company will option rights on something or option a screenplay. In my case, they optioned the rights, they write a screenplay, they do a big pitch, then they go to the studios. And the studios have to fund the thing. The production company would then become the producers on it, with the studios funding and make the film.
That's why what'll happen, often you'll see a film that'll [have] these five production studios at the start. Those are the people who did that sort of thing. So that's where we are there.
Sometimes you'll get lucky and a film will just get optioned by a studio directly. That doesn't happen as often. For instance, the Wheel of Time books got optioned to Red Eagle Entertainment, which is a production company. They did all of this, then went to Universal and got Universal to buy the rights and fund the movie... We have that. We also have some people with a video game that I can't announce yet, because I'm sure they want to announce it, but we had a nice offer on a video game that would be slated for around 2013. It will be cross-platform, so it would be on PC, Xbox, and PS3. I will probably be writing the story and the dialogue for it.
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Interview: Aug 4th, 2011
West Jordan Signing Report - 17th Shard (Verbatim)Question
Which main character is the most difficult for you to write or create?Brandon Sanderson
In the Wheel of Time or my own?Question
In the Wheel of Time.Brandon Sanderson
In the Wheel of Time, I would say getting Mat's voice right was the hardest. Because, Mat is so distinctive, and so... yeah. It's like he's funny in a specific way, though. Getting him right was probably the hardest. Second would be Aviendha.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)DanK23 ()
Once you are finished with A Memory of Light, do you think there will be any prospect of making the series into a movie? I know there was talk of it a long time ago but nothing ever came of it.Brandon Sanderson
It is still under option by Universal. (Do a search on this page for Universal to get a few more details. There aren't many to be had, unfortunately.)Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)Jonathan Entwisie ()
I was wondering whether you volunteered to finish the Wheel of Time or if you were approached and asked to finish it. Also do you find it difficult to set aside your own projects in order to complete it?Brandon Sanderson
I was approached. I didn't know I was being considered until Harriet called me on the phone. The hardest part was putting aside all of the quirky little side projects I was working on. I decided I could still go forward with some of my main projects (The Way of Kings as an example) but would set aside the smaller things. It was tough. It was worth it, but tough.
I'll still get to them someday.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)heliosbird ()
Do you find it very difficult taking over Robert Jordan's work? Harder than your own novels?Brandon Sanderson
Much harder than my own novels. I have to be very careful to keep the character voices done his way, and keeping track of all of the side characters...wow. I write about about half speed on the wot as on my own books. Part of this is the great amount of reading/research I must do before writing a scene.
heliosbird
If asked to do the same for another author, would you do it again?
Brandon Sanderson
I don't think I'd do it for anyone else. I said yes to RJ because I'd been reading the books since childhood, and was up to date on the series. I was also a good match. For example, I love Pratchett, but I'm a horrible match for his style. GRRM is a genius, but I'd be a bad match there too. Hopefully, neither author needs anyone to finish for them.
I once would have said yes to a Star Wars book. Now, I've been too displeased by (and critical of) Lucas's treatment of the prequels to ever do that.
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Interview: Jul 11th, 2010
Chat with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Milk Man
How much flack have you gotten for the deadline changes for WOT?Brandon Sanderson
Oh, a medium amount. Most were mad at the start, but my post about why we split calmed many. Reading The Gathering Storm calmed many more.
Milk Man
Glad to hear they understood!
BRANDON SANDERSON
I think, reading The Gathering Storm, people could see just how much still has to be done in these books. So they understood I couldn't fit it all in one volume.
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Interview: Jul 11th, 2010
Chat with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)beckster45
What has been the most difficult part of finishing the WOT?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?
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Interview: Jul 11th, 2010
Chat with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Hamm
While I'm sure you have greatly enjoyed finishing the WoT series, do you look forward to being finished with writing them and being able to return to a more normal writing schedule?Brandon Sanderson
Yes and no. It is a LOT of work. These books are the hardest I've ever written. So I will feel good to have them done, and to have the closure out there. But at the same time...the WoT Has been part of my life in one way or another since I was 14. It will be very sad to see it end.Tags
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Interview: Jul 11th, 2010
Chat with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Luke Chant
Will Hoid be making an appearance in any of the remaining WoT books?Brandon Sanderson
No, he will not. I feel that putting a character from one of my own books into the WoT world would be an act of arrogance. The WoT world is not mine, and I don't want to imply that my characters have any connection to it, or that it's part of 'my' cosmology. (Sorry.) There are other Easter eggs, though. The type Mr. Jordan liked to put in.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)Perene ()
I find it interesting that you as an up-and-comer in the F/SF genre have been thrust into this situation where you have taken the reins of one of the biggest and best series to date. It seems to echo one of the biggest themes of the WOT where simple people like Rand, Perrin, and Egwene wind up in places of power and influence. Have you thought of this parallel between yourself and the series before, or am I just reading too deep?Brandon Sanderson
I think about this one a lot. Actually, if you'll look, you'll see one of the characters voicing my feelings on this burden as it's often best to write from experience.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)MattSteelblade ()
Is The Eye of the World movie and a Wheel of Time video game, really, really happening? IMDB says 2013 for a movie and Red Eagle has been saying for a few years that a game is in development.Brandon Sanderson
I can only give one 'really' on either one. They are in the works, but anything coming out of Hollywood gets hesitance from me until we get a greenlight. (And there hasn't been one on the film, despite the projected release date. 2013 is possible.)
Video Games are more likely, but I haven't had any updates on those for a few months.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)galenblade ()
I know that Jordan left a lot of material behind, but have you ever run across something in that material that you've really wanted to change? Something you felt that thematically or otherwise didn't really fit?Brandon Sanderson
Because of the nature of RJ's notes and writing process, there are a lot of things I can (and was told I should) change. Harriet didn't say specifically "Change this." She told me "Jim (RJ) would not have done it exactly like this. You do what you think is best for the story first—that is your primary charge. Don't feel completely beholden to his notes, but respect his story."
That's kind of how I've done it. If the notes say something that I feel needs to change, I change it, but try to be respectful. An example is Egwene's dinner with Elaida. RJ had this planned as a single event. I split it into two chapters, separated by further discovery by Egwene and growth to earn the second half of the dinner.
There are many things like that. Places where RJ said "I'm going to do this, or maybe I'll do this, or maybe neither." I choose what fits for the story. It's usually one of the two, sometimes neither one works. I can be more specific once the last book is out.
That said, I wasn't particularly hip on writing Cadsuane spanking Semirhage. There was no good reason to change it, though. Jim had outlined the scene, and it was in line with the characters.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)Wlraider70 ()
Have you ever considered writing a book (or something) about the writing of the WoT?
I'd like to hear more about the process of compiling Jordan's notes and filling in the gaps. I'd also be really interested in seeing the manuscripts you started with from him and the final product.
Brandon Sanderson
I'd really like to do this. I have considered it, and am interested. I don't think it would work like without being able to publish the notes, however. I'd want at least part of them. So I'd only do this if Harriet agreed.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)Jezrien ()
Do you ever feel a real desire to just start on the Stormlight Archive 2? A Memory of Light must have its perks to write but do you ever just want to get stuck in to book two?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, I do feel that desire to get on to Stormlight 2. However, this is not a new feeling. In every book—at about the 50% mark or so—I want to be moving on to the next book. By then, I've already done a lot of the exciting things in worldbuilding and discovering characters, but I'm not yet to the exciting ending.
This is a challenge for a lot of writers. I know Neil Gaiman has spoken on it before. I have trained myself to remain focused on the project at hand.
Jezrien
Do you ever take breaks away from A Memory of Light and go over notes and ideas for the next installment of the Stormlight Archive?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, I do take breaks and outline other projects (specifically Stormlight.) But not for long.
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)VardaNienna ()
On your Twitter you said that the bar for A Memory of Light is around 48%; I just want to thank you for putting the effort the book deserves into it, and I was just wondering how long approximately it will take to finish writing? I just don't like guesstimating because I'm usually way off. Absolutely love your work!Brandon Sanderson
For a lot of books, I go faster and faster as I approach the ending.
My goal for this one is to be done November 8th, when I go on tour. That means doing about 5% a week, or 15k words. At six days a week, that's very doable. Assuming I don't do any more day-long reddit AMAs...
Fast speed for me is 4k a day. Slow is about 1.5k.
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Interview: Nov 30th, 2009
Science and Society Podcast (Verbatim)David Lenberg
Brandon, thank you very much for being with us. Well, we've got plenty to talk about, so let's start with The Gathering Storm. This is brand new, I think it was released last week. Can you tell us how The Gathering Storm came to be?Brandon Sanderson
Well, The Gathering Storm is the first, as you said, in the sequence of novels completing the Wheel of Time. Wheel of Time is a huge long-running wonderful fantasy series that I began reading when I was 15 years old, written by an author named Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan passed away in 2007, and at that point I was just a fan. I was devastated, like many of us. He had fought a long battle with a rare blood disease, amyloidosis. And I, like most of the fans, just worried about what would happen to the series.
I didn't apply to finish it or to work on it or anything. I simply got a phone call one morning from his widow, who was also his editor. And she was wondering if I would be interested in working on the series. She had read a eulogy I'd written for Robert Jordan, and I'd come recommended to her as an author who was a big fan of the series, but also an author in his own right. And she read my book Mistborn and wanted me to finish the series. And so, it's really been a very surreal experience, spending many years reading these books and loving these books, and becoming an author myself in part because of how much I love these books. And then, being asked to finish them, it's been very strange, but also a very reverent process, because, you know, in a lot of ways, this is my hero's legacy I'm working on. So yeah, it's been great, and it's been daunting all at the same time.
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Interview: Nov 30th, 2009
Science and Society Podcast (Verbatim)David Lenberg
Brandon, thank you. Can you tell us a bit more about the Wheel of Time series? The Gathering Storm is number twelve?Brandon Sanderson
Yes. The Wheel of Time is epic fantasy. If you're not familiar with epic fantasy, in that genre what we really try to do is, we try to tell historical novels that take place. . . we try to write historical novels that take place in worlds that don't exist, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Lord of the Rings is of course the classic example of a great epic fantasy. These are stories about the beginnings and endings of eras and ages. They're stories about people put through extreme pressures and into extreme situations. In fantasy, what we're really trying to do is, we're trying to explore the human experience by going places that regular fiction can't go because we have the freedom in this genre to ask the 'what ifs': what if this?, what if that?
And the Wheel of Time's big 'what if' is: what if you were told that you were the person who had to save the world? What if you were told that you would probably end up dying, but if you succeeded the world would continue to exist, and if you failed everything would end? And it follows one character, and then splits off from there. The first book, about the first half, is about a man named Rand, who's this person who's been told this. But it really becomes a sweeping epic that follows the lives of dozens of different characters as they're living through these experiences and dealing with them. And it's about their lives and their relationships, and really just digging down into the core of the types of emotions that people display during the most stressful moments that could possibly exist.
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Interview: Nov 30th, 2009
Science and Society Podcast (Verbatim)David Lenberg
Wow. Wow, it sounds great. Now, I know that there are 30 million copies of the Wheel of Time that have been sold worldwide, so the series itself is a massive phenomenon. What's it like to come on board? You're a well-known author in your own right. What's it like to come on board and write a sequel in a series like this?Brandon Sanderson
You know, it's really like becoming stepfather to 30 million people at the same time. The fans, number one, have been great. And they know that before Robert Jordan passed away, he asked his wife to find somebody because he wanted the series completed. And so, everyone knows that this is according to his wishes, which I think helps a whole lot. But at the same time, I feel a deep responsibility to not make these books about me, but to make them about Robert Jordan and about the Wheel of Time. I mean, I was handed a lot of very fascinating notes. In some cases, Robert Jordan had completed scenes for the books. In other cases, he had dictated on his deathbed some scenes that were to happen. He had millions of words of notes about the world and the characters and the setting, and I've been given access to all of that and asked to put together these last concluding volumes.
He'd been promising people for years and years and years that he knew the last scene of the very last book. And he actually wrote that before he passed away, and I have that in my possession. And so my goal is really to get us there without screwing it up. To step out of the way, to let the characters be themselves, and to let the world continue and the story continue as people have loved for so many years. And make sure that. . . I don't want them to see Brandon, I want them to see the Wheel of Time. And so, that's been a real challenge, to get out of the way, so to speak.
David Lenberg
Right, so it can be a seamless experience for the reader.Brandon Sanderson
That's my hope. I mean, I haven't been trying to mimic Robert Jordan's voice. I worried that if I tried to do that, it would come across as parody. You imagine a stand-up comedian getting up and doing their Jimmy Carter or whatever, and I worried that would be me doing my Robert Jordan. And so instead I've tried to adapt my style to the Wheel of Time. Having read it for so many years, I know how the Wheel of Time should feel. And so I don't sit and ask myself every sentence, what would Robert Jordan write? Because I can't do that, I can't replace him. Instead, I sit down and say, okay, how would I approach making this feel like the Wheel of Time? And so far, the response I've generally gotten from readers is, you know, if they pick up and they really study and they watch the first few pages they read, they'll say, you know, I can tell the difference. But once they get a little bit into it and start to feel the characters and the setting, and the plot takes a hold of them, they're able to just let that go and they don't notice it any more, and the rest of the book just feels right. And that's the best compliment I think I can get on this book.Tags
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Interview: Nov 30th, 2009
Science and Society Podcast (Verbatim)David Lenberg
Yep, Brandon, thank you. Is it correct that there are two more books to come and complete the series?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, Robert Jordan left. . . he'd been promising people a dramatic conclusion of around 2500 pages, which is unbindably large as one volume. And so, what we have in The Gathering Storm is me covering about a third of the notes that he left behind. It is a complete story in itself, it doesn't just stop in the middle. But I chose certain plot arcs and certain things that needed to be cleared up or needed to be dealt with before we could move on toward the ending. And I'm doing that and a volume that will hopefully come out by the end of next year called Towers of Midnight. And then there will be one concluding volume.David Lenberg
Wow. Sounds great. Now what happens to a reader and fan like myself who hasn't read any of the Wheel of Time? Can I just pick up The Gathering Storm and jump right in?Brandon Sanderson
Well, you know it's going to be a really challenging read for you if you do. I have known people who've done it. They say that the first half of the book is incredibly confusing, but by the second half they start to pick it up. I would recommend that people go to The Eye of the World, which is the first book in the series. I can wholeheartedly endorse these books, I've loved them for so long. But I think that if you're going to read mine, you probably want to start with The Eye of the World.David Lenberg
Sure, sure. So that's the first book in the series?Brandon Sanderson
It is the first book in the series, yes.Tags
712
Interview: Jul, 2009
TaurusRW
Will the material written for A Memory of Light by Jordan remain intact in the published novel or will you rewrite it to match your on style of writing?
Brandon Sanderson
I am leaving it as intact as possible. In some places, a paragraph at the beginning or end of a section has to be changed to streamline it into the rest of the narrative. In others, line edits have to be done (mostly by Harriet) to fix the language. (Nothing we have from him is in more than a rough draft form.)
But where I can, I'm not changing anything. Because of this, readers who look very closely might be able to tell where I wrote and where he wrote. But I don't think it is noticeable without detailed scrutiny.
I suggest to readers that they read the book straight through the first time without trying to pick out which piece was written by which author. I'm hoping to get permission to speak more specifically about how it was all divided once the three books are all out. Then, you can know for certain. But for now, I would prefer (and I'm certain Mr. Jordan would prefer) that you see through the prose and enjoy the story.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Nikleas
WOT question: Did you go through ALL the notes from RJ on the Wheel of Time (if that is even humanly possible) or just those related to A Memory of Light?
Brandon Sanderson
Mr. Jordan left behind notes for the series which, word-length wise, is in EXCESS of the length of the written novels. That was just too much for me to handle. I've used Mr. Jordan's assistants for fetching information from these reserves, and have focused most of my efforts on the notes specifically left for A Memory of Light. The Guide has been very helpful. But mostly, if I need to know something from the notes, I send Maria and Alan searching while I work on the actual prose.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
ErrantKnave
WOT questions: Will all three A Memory of Light books feature Rand, Mat, and Perrin?
Brandon Sanderson
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: They will all three appear in all three books, but it will not be equally balanced. Some characters will be more of a focus in some of the books, and other will be more of a focus in others. This is particularly true of the first two volumes, where I had to juggle which characters would be a focus in one, and which will be a focus in the other.
ErrantKnave
I ask because you said the prologue Robert Jordan wrote would probably be split over two books.Brandon Sanderson
Yes, it will be. I don't know yet if the third volume will have a prologue or not. The material Mr. Jordan wrote for the prologue is split, half in the prologue of The Gathering Storm, half in the prologue of the second volume.ErrantKnave
Does this mean story arcs are getting split as well?Brandon Sanderson
I tried to keep story arcs contained in a single book. We'll get glimpses from some of the characters in the first book, with a more complete story arc in the second book. And we'll get story arcs in the first book from some characters, followed by glimpses in the second.
The split actually turned out really well. I think I managed to get a balance working where characters don't vanish for entire volumes, but we still get to have complete character arcs.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
ErrantKnave
Also, who was your favorite character to write? And don't say Bela.
Brandon Sanderson
It's really, really hard for me to answer this, since when I'm in a character's head, that character is the most important in the book. They're all my favorite when I'm writing them—that's just the way it has to be as a writer.
It is also hard to answer without giving spoilers that I'm not certain I want to give. For instance, some characters were interesting to write for different reasons. In some places, I was expanding on things Mr. Jordan left behind, in other places I was trying to piece together what I think he would have done based on the momentum of the books. In some places, I was writing based mostly on my instincts as a writer. I was doing a lot of different things with a lot of different characters, getting a balance of action, drama, and fun. Which is my favorite among all of that? It depends on what I'm feeling like that day.
If really pressed on it, I'll probably say that going into this, my favorite thing that I anticipated would be finally (after all of this time) writing Rand's character through the end of the series. Like many, I was initially hooked into this all by his story, and—regardless of other favorites at different points in the series—who he is as a person is vitally important for driving these last books.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
malpighien
I'm not English and I hope you won't mind too much the grammar and spelling errors left here and there.
Brandon Sanderson
Well, I do speak English as my native language—and I'm certain I've got my fair share of errors here and there in my posts. So if you'll forgive me, I'll of course forgive you. ;)malpighien
As many, I'm a huge fan of the Wheel of Time series, I can't say why it appeals to me so much but it just feels so epic, so detailed, so grand, I wonder how can anyone not love it.
I'm also really eager to read the end of the saga, and I must say that I'm really happy with your decision to split the book in three and cover all that is left to be answered.
Knowing you will finish Robert Jordan's book I was curious to read your previous works and see if I will like or love them as I do with WoT.
I must say that I found them quite enjoying and yet, and I beg you not to be offended by my impressions, I could not find the epic feeling I love so much in WoT.
I find your characters to be very practical which is great in a way but for me it takes away the epic feeling, the unknown, the maybe, the what if.
So finally reaching my question, if it's not too silly, do you plan to make the characters react, speak and think, as they do in your books or will you follow a more Jordan's way of doing?
Brandon Sanderson
I think the thing you’re talking about is something very intentional on my part, related to the fact that I wanted my books (particularly the ones I did at the beginning of my career) to be more self contained. Elantris, Warbreaker, and even Mistborn exist (in my mind) as a kind of 'calling card' to readers. Something that says "I want to show you that I can tell a story, so that you'll trust me—eventually—when I do something much larger in scope, something where the pay-offs aren't as immediate."
I love the self-contained fantasy epic form. However, one of the things I felt that those books needed was cohesion. I had to make my magic very, very tight.
Unknowns are great, and they DO lend to the epic feel of a story. One of the things that the WoT has over my books (beyond Mr. Jordan's fantastic storytelling ability) is the sheer power of scope. The magic is far from being understood, and it's larger—and vaster—than the characters can understand. There's a vast wealth of history and world—not to mention numerous machinations by dozens of different groups and secret cabals—making the characters (particularly at the beginning) feel very small compared to it all.
I think that's the sense of what you're talking about. It has to do with the characters, and it has to do with the magic. But it also has to do with the scope. You don't always get an immediate pay-off in the WoT books. Some threads hang through books, finally getting revealed or resolved long after they were introduced.
I'm not trying to imitate Mr. Jordan. Instead, I'm trying to adapt myself to the Wheel of Time. (If that makes any sense at all.) In other words, I want to maintain this feel, and write these books appropriate to the Wheel of Time. I don't want these volumes to feel like Brandon Sanderson books; I want them to feel like Wheel of Time books.
But artists in any medium learn to work with different styles and forms. Many of the things that seem like natural voice in a novel are conscious choices we make, as we work to create a certain feel for a novel. If you read and compare my Alcatraz books to my Epics, you'll see what I mean. Even the Mistborn novels have a different feel from the stand-alones. (And Mistborn 2 and 3 have a different feel from number one.)
So, the end answer is this. Yes, I'm trying very hard to maintain what it is you love about the Wheel of Time, rather than trying to force the Wheel of Time into a different box or style.
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Interview: 2004
New Spring Audiobook Interview (Verbatim)Robert Jordan
I began writing the Wheel of Time because a great many notions had been bouncing around inside my head and they started to coalesce. I wondered what it was really like to be tapped on the shoulder and told you were born to be the savior of mankind. I didn't think it would be very much the way it is in so many books where someone pops up and says, "Hi, I was born to be the savior of mankind, and here's the prophecy," and everybody says, "Oh well, let's go then." I thought self interest would play a big part, on other peoples' parts.
And I was also wondering about the source of legends and myths. They can't all be anthropomorphizations of natural events. Some of them have to be distortions of things that actually happened, distortions by being passed down over generations. And that led into the inevitable distortion of information over distance, whether that's temporal distance or spatial distance. The further you are in time or space from the actual event, the less likely you are to know what really happened.
And then finally there was the thought about something that happens in Tolkien and a lot of other places. The wise old wizard, or whatever—the wise old fellow shows up in a small country village, and says, "You must follow me to save the world." And the villagers say, "Right then, guv, off we go!" And well, I did a lot of growing up in the country, and I've always thought that what those country folk would say is, "Oh, is that so? Look here, have another beer. Have two, on me. I'll be right back. I will, really." And then slip out the back door.
There were a lot of things that came together, and even once I started, of course, a lot of things built in, and added in, and changed.
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Interview: 1997
Audio Renaissance Interview (Verbatim)Laura Wilson
Hi, This is Laura Wilson of Audio Renaissance, and I'm speaking with Robert Jordan. How did you decide to start writing the Wheel of Time series?
Robert Jordan
I began writing the Wheel of Time because a great many notions had been bouncing around inside my head and they started to coalesce. I wondered what it was really like to be tapped on the shoulder and told you were born to be the savior of mankind. I didn't think it would be very much the way it is in so many books where someone pops up and says, "Hi, I was born to be the savior of mankind, and here's the prophecy," and everybody says, "Oh well, let's go then." I thought self interest would play a big part.
And, I was also wondering about the source of legends and myths. They can't all be anthropomorphizations of natural events. Some of them have to be distortions of things that actually happened, distortions by being passed down over generations. And that led into the distortion of information over distance, whether that's temporal distance or spatial distance. The further you are in time or space from the actual event, the less likely you are to know what really happened.
And then finally there was the thought about something that happens in Tolkien and a lot of other places. The wise old wizard shows up in a country village and says, "You must follow me to save the world." And the villagers say, "Right then, guv, off we go!" Well, I did a lot of growing up in the country, and I've always thought that what those country folk would say is, "Oh, is that so? Look here, have another beer. Have two, on me. I'll be right back. I will, really." And then slip out the back door.
There were a lot of things that came together, and even once I started, of course, a lot of things built in, and added in, and changed.
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719
Interview: 1997
Audio Renaissance Interview (Verbatim)Laura Wilson
What about this notion of time as a wheel? Is that your idea?
Robert Jordan
No. It's not mine. It is from Hindu mythology that time is a wheel. But actually, most eastern cultures believed that time was circular. The Greeks gave us the great gift of believing that time was linear. And that's a great gift because if time is circular, if everything repeats in cycles, then change is impossible. No matter what you do, it's always going to come back to what is here. But if time is linear, then change is possible. But I wanted the circularity because I wanted, again, to go into the changes by distance. So, the myths and legends and a few of the stories that these people tell, well, some of them are based on our own current events, on the present. What they are doing is based on our myths and legends. So they are the source of our myths and legends, and we are the source of theirs.
Tags
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Interview: 1997
Audio Renaissance Interview (Verbatim)Laura Wilson
So what religions or mythological traditions are your stories based on?
Robert Jordan
Different religions, different mythologies. I felt that because America is a melting pot, I had at least some right to mine the mythologies of any nation that is represented in the United States, and also religion. So there are elements that come out of religious books, and there are elements that come out of mythologies, as well. Not done in a mythological way. I try to present these things so that you feel you are in a place that is quite real, and this could actually happen.
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721
Interview: 1997
Audio Renaissance Interview (Verbatim)Laura Wilson
Are you an audiobooks listener? And if so, what sorts of books do you listen to?
Robert Jordan
I'm afraid the audiobooks I listen to are my own. I don't read my own books, but when I get the new audio tape, I listen to it because I get a different view. It is different than reading it.Laura Wilson
So are you listening for a different interpretation of your work?Robert Jordan
It's not so much the different interpretation. I want to have that one-removed to see that I actually said what I think I said. You see, that's a problem that is very difficult for any writer. It's a problem that your editor helps you solve. You know what you intended to say. You know what you meant. And the fact that you perhaps didn't put it down clearly enough for someone who doesn't know what you meant to understand, that can be a problem. My wife Harriet is my editor, and she's very very good at being able to say, "You didn't convince me here." Or, "I don't understand what you mean here. You have to do better." Because that's the point where I know what I meant, and because I know what I meant, it read fine to me. But to someone who didn't know what I meant, it didn't read fine. Well, I can also spot some of that in listening to the audio. And because I can spot it in listening to the audio, I know that, ahh, I thought I had put a bit of foreshadowing for something of the future here, and it doesn't come across clearly, I must do something about that in the next book to make sure that I do have that foreshadowing.Tags
722
Interview: Nov 15th, 2010
BookBanter Interview (Verbatim)Alex C. Telander
It's been two years since our last interview. At that time, you'd just released Hero of Ages and The Way of Kings and Wheel of Time books were in their early stages. What would you say has changed most in your life in the last two years?Brandon Sanderson
What has changed most in my life? Professionally? Because in the last two years I've had a child, which change has been quite a bit. I would say I'm more comfortable and relaxed with how things are now. 2007 and 2008 were pretty nerve-wracking years, and 2009 in particular, when I wasn't sure how people were going to respond to my work. And so I think I'm more comfortable now. The last two years have also been extremely busy, and so they kind of passed in a blur. Yeah, Harriet's smiling, because she was in that blur, too.Harriet McDougal Rigney
[laughs in background]Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it kind of turns when I hand it off to her and then she has to work furiously, and then she hands it back and then I have to work furiously.Alex C. Telander
And then, two years have passed.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, then two years have passed.Tags
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Interview: Nov 15th, 2010
BookBanter Interview (Verbatim)Alex C. Telander
So when you were kind of working on both books, did you kind of a have a set day for each book? Or how did you work through that?Brandon Sanderson
I had deadlines and I had goals. I mean, I'm very goal driven. I say I want to have this done by this date. Which, you know, I give myself plenty of time, but I spend months working on them. Generally, I can only write on one book at a time. Keeping these things in your head is such that even a given book you break into small chunks. And people say, 'how do you juggle all these things?' Well, juggling all the viewpoints in a Wheel of Time book is monumental. And at that point, I pick one viewpoint group, generally. I say, okay we're going to do all the scenes with Perrin and Faile and those who are around them. And in that case, I will go and re-read a bunch of Robert Jordan's work with those characters, and I will do a few test runs to try and get myself in the characters, and then I'll write those characters. And then I'm done with those characters for that moment, and I'll go do it with someone else. And I'll do that with my own books, too. I'll get very into the mindsets of these characters, I'll write them. And then I drop it. It's like I download it all into my brain and it's gone. And then I wipe it and download something else. Does that make sense?Tags
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Interview: Nov 16th, 2011
Open The Fridge
You’re very talented at taking seemingly mundane or unusual things and creating magic systems around them, like color in Warbreaker, metals in Mistborn, and light in The Way of Kings. Can you explain how you decide what to use for a magical system in a book, and your process for building a coherent system once the initial concept has been decided?
Brandon Sanderson
First of all, I’m looking for something that fits the book that I’m writing. So for instance, in Mistborn, I was looking for powers that would enhance what thieves could do. I was also looking for something that had one foot in alchemy, in that kind of “coming-of-age magic into science” way. Alchemy is a great example because it’s a blend of science and magic… well, really, a blend of science and superstition, because the magic part doesn’t work. So something resonates there.
I’m also looking for interesting ways to ground [the magic] in our world, and using something mundane is a great way to do that. Magic is naturally fantastical, and so if I can instead use something normal, and then make it fantastical, it immediately creates a sort of… ease of understanding. Burning metals sounds so weird, but it was chosen for that same reason, because we gain a lot of our energy through metabolism. We eat something, we turn the sugars into energy, boom. So that’s actually a very natural feeling. When I started writing out some sample things, it felt surprisingly natural, that people eat metal and gain powers, even though it sounds so weird. It’s because of this kind of natural biology. So I’m looking for that.
Once I have a magic system, I look for really great limitations. Limitations really make a magic system work better. Wheel of Time is a great example. Having a magic system where you can weave all these threads is awesome. Having a magic system where you do that, and then it drives you mad, is even better. It creates plot hooks, it creates drama, it creates challenge. [That limitation] is brilliant, I think it is one of the most brilliant ever made, especially because it also changes your characters. It has a deep influence on your character arcs, so you can tie it into character.
Beyond that (and this is kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit), there is no specific defined place where someone goes mad, so you can actually stretch it out and use it when you need it. It doesn’t constrain you too much. Like if your magic system’s limitation is, “When you use this magic, you have to use the head of one of your grandparents.” (laughs) You can use that magic four times! It’s limited, but also very constrained. Going mad is not as constrained. There’s a spectrum there - you can use it when you need it. So I’m looking for cool limitations that will work that way, in ways that I can use to force the characters to be creative. A good limitation will force you to be creative, and your characters to be creative. Pushing and pulling metals is basically telekinesis, right? But by making it center of mass, you can only pull directly towards yourself or push directly away from yourself... Number one: it’s vector science. It has one foot in sciences. Number two: it feels very natural to us because this is how we manipulate force ourselves. Number three: it limits things so much that it forces creativity upon the characters. There’s that sweet spot, where they can be creative and do cool things, where it doesn’t become too limited, but it also keeps you from having too much power in the hands of the characters, so they are still being challenged. I’m looking for all that, and on top of that I want to have good sensory ways to use magic.
I don’t want to have two wizards staring at each other, and then be like “and they stared at each other very deeply! And then they stared harder!” I don’t want it all to be internal, which is where the lines for the metals came from. You see something, you push it forward. The pulses that some of the allomancers use, they’ll hear. I wanted sensory applications.
Tags
725
Interview: Nov 19th, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - ValMar (Paraphrased)Question
Has Brandon (and Team Jordan I think) done any research on the battles/armies etc.?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, a lot. Brandon didn't want to give me specific examples to avoid spoilers for those who can guess. They contacted one very well known author who helped them with this research. Anyone can guess? I'll give one easy clue: Boromir.Tags
726
Interview: Nov 19th, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - ValMar (Paraphrased)Question
Anything final on the prequels/sequels? This was answered to a guy right before me (with the unlikely mum:)).Brandon Sanderson
Not really. Brandon doesn't want there to be any of these, but if written he wants to be the one who writes them. Instead, he is suggesting they do a movie on Tam.Tags
727
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Tom Hobson (21 October 2011)
Do you know if a WOT film or TV series is on the cards at all?Brandon Sanderson (21 October 2011)
Possible. Universal Pictures has the rights, and I've visited and talked with them on several occasions.NATHAN STRAUSSER (25 OCTOBER)
Been hearing some rumors/wishes on Wheel of Time movies, true? if so will it be done well?BRANDON SANDERSON
The rights have been sold. But, like anything in Hollywood, it could take a lot of time to get a film made.NATHAN STRAUSSER
Who have they been sold to? And is anyone from Team Jordan supervising? So it doesn't turn out like Eragon did.BRANDON SANDERSON
Universal has the rights. They've brought me in several times to consult. I'm sure Team Jordan will be involved.Tags
728
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Steve Williams (14 November 2011)
Just how many Aes Sedai are there and how the heck do you keep track with all the similar sounding names?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
I use the Encyclopaedia WoT and Tar Valon's wiki for some help, but I rely mostly on the notes and Team Jordan.BRANDON SANDERSON
As for how many there are...well, there are a lot. Hundreds.Tags
729
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Dennis (14 November 2011)
Has writing WoT affected the way you write your other books?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
Some of them. I look at detail differently, foreshadowing differently, and large casts differently now.Tags
730
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Eric Pearson (14 November 2011)
Since the series is almost complete, if RJ could read it how would he react to your contribution to his legacy?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
I honestly don't know. I hope he'd be pleased, but I also feel he'd be sad that he didn't get to do it himself.BRANDON SANDERSON
Harriet has said she thinks, from above, he's looking down and this is his reaction:BRANDON SANDERSON
First, a "Who does that kid think he is?" followed soon by a proud "That's my book, more or less."Tags
731
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Patrick Lynch (14 November 2011)
Did the ending of A Memory of Light surprise you? As a reader and lover of the series and world, was it fully satisfying?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
I will say I found it more satisfying than surprising. There are shocking elements, but I'd read so many theories... (more)BRANDON SANDERSON
That it was hard to be completely surprised by anything. (Even if some elements, like Verin, did surprise me.)Tags
732
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Justin (14 November 2011)
When writing WoT have you ever read RJ's notes and think that you would have written the plot differently?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
I wasn't totally hip on the spanking scene in The Gathering Storm. There is one other part that was tough. (Can't say now.)BRANDON SANDERSON
For the most part, though, I didn't look at it that way. If it needed to be changed, I changed it—but only if the plot demanded.BRANDON SANDERSON
I don't look at this as "how would Brandon do it." I look at it as "How should this work in the Wheel of Time?"BRANDON SANDERSON
Certainly, I would have written a different series, as I'm a different person. I don't want to impose that here, though.Tags
733
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Andrew Cyr (14 November 2011)
Any chance of there being a biography written about RJ and the writing of tWoT?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
I think there is a good chance, though if it is done, I probably am not the right one to do it.Tags
734
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Mark Howard (14 November 2011)
Has any recent progress been made on the WoT movie?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
There was a script done this summer, but it went to revisions.ERIC PEARSON
Do you see WoT making its way to a video format like A Song of Ice and Fire? Or did that show hurt its chances?BRANDON SANDERSON
I hope that show increases the chances. But we shall see. It's not impossible, but a feature is more likely.Tags
735
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Samantha (14 November 2011)
You're known for your inventive magic systems—how was it using RJ's in WoT, which is a more traditional system?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
RJ's system was very rule-based and innovative for its time. It is part of what inspired me to do the systems I do.BRANDON SANDERSON
I've enjoyed it, though you will see me 'brandonizing' a few little things, like the usage of gateways.Tags
736
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)sleepinghour (14 November 2011)
You already mentioned the Perun-Perrin connection. Any other myths we should read up on before A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
Oh, let's see. Lots. The Valkyrie myth makes a brief cameo. Have a look at that one.Tags
737
Interview: 2011
Twitter 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Jordan Husband (14 November 2011)
Do you struggle to write Cadsuane from an unbiased perspective, since she's not a favorite of yours?Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
I thought I would, but she has such a strong personality, she's actually easy.BRANDON SANDERSON
The ease of writing a character has more to do with how proactive they are and how easy it is to get into their head.BRANDON SANDERSON
I've learned a lot about her, and about writing, from the series.Tags
738
Interview: Nov 21st, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - Lord Juss (Paraphrased)LordJuss
The evening began with the amusing sight of Brandon Sanderson piling various items of furniture on top of one another to create a home-made lectern for his laptop. Following a brief aside on the difference between a lectern and a podium (and how this plays into the editorial process), Brandon read from a novella he’s recently written. [Legion] Apparently, he started it on the flight back to the US the last time he came to the UK. He couldn’t work on the Wheel of Time since he was awaiting the outcome of some research on the notes. He went on to explain that Robert Jordan left a pile of notes roughly half Brandon’s height that his two researchers dip into when Brandon needs an answer to one of his questions. This is normally quick, but it can take several months to come up with a fully researched answer. The reading lasted about eight minutes and seemed to be from the beginning of the novella. I won’t spoil the concept, but it’s clever and deeply silly.
The evening then moved to a Q&A. Questions and answers are paraphrased from my notes and memory, so they won’t be absolutely word-for-word, but they shouldn’t be much different from the original conversation. I’ve included all the questions, not just the Wheel-related ones.
Tags
739
Interview: Nov 21st, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - Lord Juss (Paraphrased)Question
Is there anything earlier in the Wheel of Time that you would want to change?Brandon Sanderson
No. There are things I would have done differently if it were mine, but that’s not the same thing. I don’t approach the Wheel of Time as wanting to fix it. Instead, I think about how I can do it justice. There are clear differences in some areas and I have to deal with that. For example, Robert Jordan's and my action sequences are very different. That’s because he had been in Vietnam and had actually been shot at, whereas all my experience comes from action movies. Also, I treat magic a little differently, so sometimes that carries over into the text.Tags
740
Interview: Nov 21st, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - Lord Juss (Paraphrased)Question
Your writing style in the Wheel of Time is very close to Robert Jordan's but is much less so in your other books. Are you frustrated by having to write in Jordan's style?Brandon Sanderson
Not at all. But I have to change some things as I go to make it work my way. I have complete creative freedom, so I don’t find it constraining. I write what I need and then Harriet checks it. If I can get it past her then I know it’s right. Besides, constraint can be really useful for a writer as it fuels creativity. If you have a dry patch (as all writers do) then a really odd writing task, like having to write about sentient vegetables taking over the world, can push you in new directions. So, I have been creative in the Wheel of Time and I have put some audacious things in there. But Robert Jordan was already an audacious author. For example, cleansing the taint before the end of the series was an audacious piece of writing. So, I have freedom, but if something is in the notes, we always try to include it. The only time we don’t is if he wrote about something that happens to a character in one part of the notes, then contradicted it elsewhere. In that case, we have to make a decision. Also, sometimes the notes say a character will do something, but I can find no way to get them where they are supposed to be to do it. In that case, we sometimes have another character do it instead, but I can talk more about that when A Memory of Light is out.Tags
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Interview: Nov 21st, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - Lord Juss (Paraphrased)LordJuss
You’ve said previously that when you were a young man you identified with Rand over the other boys, but now you’re older, you identify more with the older characters. Do you think when you are 80 you will identify with Cadsuane?Brandon Sanderson
Maybe with Thom Merrilin. I think I would need to be the full 300 to completely identify with Cadsuane.Tags
742
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Question (How did the series originate?)
To the books then. The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series epic in size and scale. How did it all begin—and what was your inspiration for it?Robert Jordan
It's really hard to say. There's all sorts of things that come about before you start writing a series. You don't have "an idea" that becomes a short story, or a book. A short story is maybe hundreds of ideas that have come together, a novel is thousands of ideas that have come together. But The Wheel of Time—I was thinking at one point about what it'd really be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told "You were born to be the savior of mankind. And oh yes—you're probably going to die in the end and no, you can't resign—it's your job, you're stuck with it".
Then I had been thinking about the source of myths, the source of legends. About whether some of them might not have been personifications of natural events, the way we say some of them are supposed to be. What if some of them were things that people had done, and had simply been told and told until it became a myth and legend?
At the same time, I was thinking about the degradation of information over distance. The further you are from an event in either space or time, the less reliable your knowledge of the event. Information inevitably degrades over distance, whether it's spatial or temporal.
I was thinking about lots of other things too, and it began to coalesce. It was the beginnings of what would become the Wheel of Time. I let it mull over for four or five years, then I thought I was ready to sit down and write. But it took four years to write The Eye of the World because I discovered there were a lot of other things I had to think and sort out.
Tags
743
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Question (How did the series originate?)
[Some question on perspective and what happens]Robert Jordan
[basically] What a character sees and thinks happened is not necessarily what did [made a big deal of this, as if it wasn’t a “duh” point again. This screamed ‘Sammael’ at me for some reason.]Tags
744
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Question (What are his sources and inspirations?)
Are the names "Dragon", "Coramoor" and "Car'a'carn" based on chess openings?Robert Jordan
No.
REPORTER
This surprised me, there has been a thread around here in which was stated that Dragon, Caro-Kann and the Coramorant (I'm not sure of the last one) are chess openings. If he had answered with a yes then I would have asked why because they're all variants played by black and rather defensive but I needn't.
Footnote
It's Cormorant.Tags
745
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Question (What are his sources and inspirations?)
Have you ever studied comparative religion? (influenced WoT, inspiration, etc.)Robert Jordan
No. RJ did make a comment on how he never studied comparative religion, but rather lived it. (He put forth a list of people that he knew in his life, with each person being a different religion. Sorry, I couldn’t write it down, since it was much too fast, and 80+ people in a small bookstore are LOUD.)Tags
746
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Signing Report (Spin-offs: movies and so forth)
Robert Jordan
Also (and I'm not sure if this is new to anyone) he told me that NBC has signed an option to make The Eye of the World into a mini-series (4-6 hours). He doesn't know if it will definitely go ahead or not.Tags
747
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Signing Report (Spin-offs: movies and so forth)
Robert Jordan
Oh and he said he had signed a contract with NBC (i think) for a mini-series to be made of The Eye of the World. The guy who wrote the screen play for Merlin is writing it.Tags
748
Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Raina (The Wheel of Time game)
The following questions all come from a single interview, published in a computer magazine called PCPowerPlay, in November of '99.
PCPOWERPLAY
So how much of The Wheel of Time game bears the mark of Robert Jordan?
Robert Jordan
Well, I only know a little bit about the game. I'm not a programmer. My real programming skills are decades out of date. I started when you had to learn how to operate a key-punch machine so you could do your stacks of cards to hand into the mainframe, 'cause there was nothing else than the mainframe!
PCPOWERPLAY
Oh dear! So what role did you play in the development of the game?
ROBERT JORDAN
To a large extent it was that I said I wanted certain things to be done. And it was not that I was asking them to do these things, it was that I was telling them "Do these things, or there's no deal". They were okay with that. The things I asked them to do made the game much more complex; made it much more difficult to design—hence it wasn't on the streets three years ago.
PCPOWERPLAY
It could have been ready, theoretically, three years ago. How long has the game been in development then?
ROBERT JORDAN
For at least four or five years. The thing is, I wanted it to be a game where it'd be, at least in mathematical terms, impossible to play the same game twice. Every time you start the Wheel of Time, it's gotta be different. I mean, the landscape is the same, but you're not going to be able to play the same game again—there are too many changes in conditions. There are ter'angreal (magic foci, used as offensive and defensive weapons in the game)—there is a large library of ter'angreal in the game. But they are not handed over to the players. A random selection is made when you start up the game, and distributed at random over the landscape. I also wanted the NPCs to be as close to player characters as possible. So you can bribe them to lie to or kill others. And they'll respond to you depending on your character and the way you've dealt with others.
PCPOWERPLAY
So why did you specifically ask for all this?
ROBERT JORDAN
Because I think the world changes and things are different. Things change all the time. It seemed to me that making a game where you learn all the rules and zip through and go back and do it again to see if you can do it faster is boring. I find it boring.PCPOWERPLAY
Given the almost rabid demeanor of your fans, how well do you think they will receive the WoT game?ROBERT JORDAN
I hope well. It takes place somewhere between fifty and [a] hundred years before the time of the books. It doesn't involve any characters from them either, and it's not going to be exactly like the books—there's no way it can be as it's a different genre altogether.
It's shaping up to be a really good game. Hopefully, if it's well received, there will be modules that take people more into the world as it exists in the books, and possibly even modules where people play characters in the books, or interact with characters from the books—which I'm hoping is something the fans would love.
The game also uses the Unreal engine, and one of my favorite quotes is "It uses the Unreal engine better than Unreal does". The design team have done so well with it that they've been hired to design the sequel to Unreal—Unreal 2. Another quote I liked was "Every year we're promised something new, something different, something fresh. At last somebody has delivered".
PCPOWERPLAY
You come across as someone who knows games!
ROBERT JORDAN
I play games! But the games I play are Chess, and Go, and very firmly reality-based military-strategy and tactic games like Civilisation, Sim City, Sim World and so on. I really enjoy those. I don't play them very often though, and recently just cleared 12 GB of games from my hard drive.
PCPOWERPLAY
That's a lot of space for games!
ROBERT JORDAN
Yeah, yeah. Well, there are shelves of games up at home. I buy the darn things, I just find very little time to play them.
PCPOWERPLAY
To change the topic a bit, do you feel threatened, as a novelist, by games becoming more appealing as elaborate story-telling devices?
ROBERT JORDAN
Year after year, they tell me about the death of books. Yet I see more books sold. You can't take a computer into the bath and let it dry out if you happen to drop it by accident. You can't take a computer to the beach without worrying about sand getting into it. With a book, you can treat it as rough as you want to, and if it ends up destroyed, you can buy another one at a relatively low cost. Books also don't have maintenance costs nor need to have their batteries replaced on regular occasions. You can just put one in your coat pocket and walk. I think that says it all, really.
Tags
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Interview: Apr 10th, 2001
Kurafire
Do you enjoy listening to music, and if so does it aid you in acquiring inspiration for your writing?Robert Jordan
In many ways, yes, I listen to every sort of music. Classical, Rock, Jazz, Country, Western, Ethnic music from various countries... I do not write to Jazz, or Rock. I like all country western, I like to listen to it, or blues, but I can’t write to it. I write, or at least maybe I can write to some Jazz, I mainly write to classical music, and some jazz. I usually have music playing when I write.
Kurafire
If a well-known composer would like to compose a musical score for your entire books, what would your opinion about that be? Would you like it?
Robert Jordan
I’d be very interested to see what he or she would do! [smiles]
Tags
750
Interview: Apr 10th, 2001
Kurafire
What did you think of the Wheel of Time game, and would you like to see more of them? If so, First-Person-Shooter type again, or something completely different? Something you would like to play yourself, perhaps?Robert Jordan
I thought it was a good game. I have to admit I have not played it. I have seen it. I think it is visually beautiful. I have talked to people—friends, and fans—who are both gamers and fans to the books, and they seemed to think it was a very good game, so I trust their judgment more on that than I trust my own. I would like to see more games, yes, and, I would like to see different types of games. I think that this type of game is fine, I would have no objection to another game of this type, certainly not, but I would also like to see it expanded into other types. I‘m not sure how workable that is. I have a tendency to speak full of ignorance in this area—I wouldn't know. There were things that I asked them to do, when Legend was beginning to do the game, and I didn’t know that the technology did not exist to do what I was asking them to do, and in fact, the last time I talked to anybody from Legend/GTI, they had been at that point hired to rewrite the Unreal Engine itself, in order to make the Unreal Engine capable of doing some things that I had asked them to do in the game, that they couldn't do.
Kurafire
You’ve seen the level design and the detail in each level from the game—do you like it, compared to the amount of detail you put in the environments in your books?
Robert Jordan
Yes and no. Yes, it is wonderful realism for in the game. But, compared to the books, I wouldn't be fully satisfied with anything other than photo-realism. Not for 100% at least.
Tags
751
Interview: Apr, 2001
RJ in the Netherlands - Marion Kippers (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
There was a question about a movie, for which we got the story about the NBC options that had passed, but now, with the Lord of the Rings movies coming up, there might be renewed interest—the actual books would require a miniseries, but for example New Spring could turn into a movie. (In later sessions he didn't mention this again though).Tags
752
Interview: Apr, 2001
RJ in the Netherlands - Marion Kippers (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
I asked how he comes up with names for all of his characters, and he gave a nice explanation, with some examples as well—like Nynaeve is directly from the Arthur myths, Rand Al'Thor is from Arthur (and from Thor), as is Artur Hawkwing, Merlin became Thom Merrilin and Amyrlin... He keeps a list of names he sees everywhere, in myths, street signs, newspapers, or things he misreads that might be nice for a name.Tags
753
Interview: Apr 10th, 2001
Kurafire
Who has been, in the past, your major role model, idol or source of inspiration?Robert Jordan
I think I’m going to surprise you. I don’t know... if I have a role model or inspiration as a writer. The people who have had the most influence on my writing would be Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Lewey Lamore, and John. D. McDonnel.Tags
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Interview: 2001
Thus Spake the Creator (Paraphrased)Question (Themes of the series)
Some people have found so much depth to your books, that they've claimed you've attempted to start a new philosophical movement, or even a new religion, with the Wheel of Time. What have you set out to do with the Wheel of Time?Robert Jordan
I'm not trying to create a philosophy, I'm not trying to create a religion. If people think that, they're missing the point.
What I'm primarily trying to do is tell a story. If I get to ask you a few questions along the way, that's good. And if I don't get to ask you a few questions, that's good also. If there are any messages it's that everybody has to struggle against evil, as opposed to good. Because you can't depend on a few heroes to take care of it. If you depend on heroes, evil's gonna win. Also, how it's not easy to tell the difference between bad and good sometimes. Sometimes you think a course of action is the right thing to do. And if you do it and a few million people starve to death somewhere, was it really the right thing to do? Unintended consequences too: every action you take will have at least two results that you never intended and one of them will be a result that you really didn't want. You have to contend with that under all circumstances. You can never figure out all consequences of what you do, and you can't stop them because of that. I'm fascinated by these ideas.
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Interview: 2001
Author's Table Interview (Verbatim)Rochelle O'Gorman
Winter's Heart came out unabridged, which is the first time your books have been unabridged for the retail market. Did you have any influence in that?Robert Jordan
Yes I did. I very much wanted it to come out unabridged, because I have a first cousin once removed who is dyslexic and she could not manage to read the books very well, and she wanted to. So, I agitated to get an unabridged edition done from the very beginning. And I also pressed for there to be a man to read the male point of view sections and a woman to read the female point of view sections. At first I was told it was not necessary and that it was not done. And I said, "We'd like it done." Various people finally agreed with me.
Rochelle O'Gorman
You must have heard the abridged versions.
Robert Jordan
Please don't get me off on that.
Rochelle O'Gorman
Oh, go ahead. This is my big bugaboo too.
Robert Jordan
I don't like abridged versions, and particularly with something as long as my own books. In the abridged versions as much as 90 percent of the book has to be cut out, so I don't like them. As a matter of fact, I made sure that no one could do an abridged version of this latest book. I still own those particular rights, specifically defined, and I do not intend to let anybody do it.
I do not believe in abridgments. I think abridgments tell people that they are getting a dumbed down version of something. What people think they're getting is an easier or faster version, but what they are actually getting is the version for dummies.
Rochelle O'Gorman
Do you listen to many audiobooks?
Robert Jordan
Not to a great extent, sometimes in the evening. But most of the time I read the actual hardbacks. I read books before they ever hit the audio stage and I listen to music most of the time.
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Interview: 2001
Author's Table Interview (Verbatim)Rochelle O'Gorman
Now, do you ever plan to do a book in the future where you will have one group of characters that will move throughout the story instead of breaking it down into different segments for each group?Robert Jordan
It depends on how that particular story works. I don't have a set of rules that I follow for any particular story. I look at the story that I want to tell and decide how best to tell it.
In this particular instance, especially since it's in part about the reader knowing more than the individual characters do in the story, I like to show things from different people's points of view so that we're not seeing someone with the same opinions always looking at what's happening. There are people with different opinions about everything under the sun who witness the events, take part in the event, and thus report them according to their own beliefs and prejudices.
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Interview: Jan 21st, 2003
COT Signing Report - Ajierene (Paraphrased)Sean
Sean asked Robert Jordan if the gypsy language influenced his language.Robert Jordan
He said it did not, however the Old Tongue was taken from Danish, old English, Welsh as well as Eastern European, and Asian. Which explains the familiarity, Sean told me later, the gypsy language is influenced by the aforementioned areas also.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 1999
Melbourne Writers' Festival - Ali Kayn (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
His own reading list includes Jane Austen and Louis D. L'Amour. "I think I write with a southern voice as we reckon things in America." Underneath the fantasy adventures, Jordan says his writing is about "the struggle between men and women ... not for control, the struggle to understand the rules of the game ... the interactions between men and women. We're all still playing it by ear (and) you're never really sure you've got it right. I've managed to hold on to my wife (Harriet) for 20 years, and she's pretty special, so I must be getting something right."Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 1999
Melbourne Writers' Festival - Ali Kayn (Paraphrased)Question
Do you have a favourite author or book (or writer or film or series) that has influenced you or that you return to?Robert Jordan
Charles Dickens, John D. MacDonald, Louis L'Amour and Mark Twain.
I've learned different things from different ones.
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Interview: Jun 16th, 1995
East of the Sun Con - Hans Persson (Paraphrased)Hans Persson
After this, the only thing left that seemed interesting and that was "The uses of myth in fantasy" that was a conversation between Stephen Grundy and Robert Jordan.Robert Jordan
Stephen Grundy bases his novel on the legend of Sigrid. Robert Jordan said that he instead took all the myths he could get his hands on, read what he could find, put it all in a large pot and stir and see what floats up to the surface. I have to admit I got a little jealous when he said he read about 300 books per year. At the same time he apparently seems to be able to write a whole lot too. The subsequent debate started with the authors arguing a bit for their respective views on how to use mythology in novels. Stephen Grundy thought that you should keep yourself to one example and keep more or less true to that one. While Robert Jordan thought it was OK to borrow material from loads of different myths. "If you find something you like, you should use it," he said; "if you then don't like the rest of the myth, just throw it away. You could either borrow something more fitting from other sources or just write in the holes yourself."Tags
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2011
Question
How does it feel to write the final piece to the Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
Umm, well, on one hand I can’t answer that because Robert Jordan did write the final piece himself (audience laughter), the last chapter he wrote before he passed away. On the other hand I can’t answer that because I haven’t finished my part yet (more audience laughter). I’m like so close, but there’s so much still left to do, but in it’s more general sense, I assume you’re asking, “How does it feel to be part of this thing that I’m writing the end of?” And it’s really be, kind of a bittersweet experience. Like, if you follow my tweets, on Twitter I posted a little while back that “Oh I was looking forward to being back to a certain character”, you know because I’d been away from them for a while, and then I stopped and realized, I wrote that character first for A Memory of Light, all the way through, beginning to end, and so they’re done. I will never be going back to that character, because that character’s story is told, and I’ve done that for almost everybody now in the book. There’s only a few characters who haven’t had their story told, so for a lot of the characters, it’s done. Which is really a weird experience for something you’ve been reading since, you know I picked up the first one in 1990, so 21 years of reading, and since 2007, so now four years of it kind of dominating my life, to have it actually being done, it’s really really kind of surreal and weird to have this being finished. But it’s a great honor also and it's awesome, but it’s also weird.Tags
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2011
Question
I’ve really enjoyed reading the annotations you have on your website and my question is two parts related to that, have you been keeping, or will you be writing annotations for the Wheel of Time books you’ve been working on and then, will ever try to release an actual annotated volume of any of your works?Brandon Sanderson
Ok, the question is twofold. The first one is: mentioning the annotations I do on my website, I’ve annotated a large number of my books chapter-by-chapter on my website, so if you like behind the scenes stuff, particularly on the Mistborn Trilogy, there’s a lot of really good information there. I did do annotations for Alloy of Law that we’ll eventually start releasing. I’ve not done them for Way of Kings yet. And so the question was, will I be doing them for the Wheel of Time?
Once the book is out, I would really like to do a collection of Robert Jordan's notes—it alternates with annotations, with me saying, "Here is what he left me, you can now read these notes, and here is why I decided to adapt it the way I did, and here is a hole in the notes, so you can see what I did."—essentially do an annotation that way, a book about the process. I don't know if Harriet will want to do that. It'd be up to her, and she has a really good reason for not wanting to do that, and that is that she doesn't want people's last memories of Robert Jordan to be the unfinished. He was very...he didn't like showing his material to people, when it was in an unfinished state. He liked showing them finished things, and so it made him uncomfortable when people would read early drafts, and it would have to release some early drafts in that. And so, it would really be her call, and I can't make that call for her. If she lets me do it, I'll do it.
I would like to release some annotated editions of my books, maybe for the tenth anniversary of Elantris, we'll do an annotated edition, and then a sequel the next year. That's kind of what I'm hoping to do, if I can.
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Interview: Nov 10th, 2011
Question
I don’t know if this question will come out right...is there a difference between being an author that works for Tor and an author that Tor works for?Brandon Sanderson
Yes. Most authors, you'll find, are actually independent businesspeople who license their books to a publisher for various languages, and so I don't actually work for Tor. Now, Tor and I get along really well, and they've done very well by me, but I've also done very well by them, and so we have a very good working relationship. But actually I, as a businessperson, license them the books, and that means that I control all the characters, they can't insert or change anything without my approval—they can't even change commas without my approval—and that's the way it goes for most people. Now, everything outside the cover I have is theirs, their packaging, so that's why authors don't get a lot of say in cover and things, because the marketing copy on the cover, the picture and stuff, that's the publisher's. They license the works. So, there is a difference. There are some authors who will do a work-for-hire sort of thing, like I did with the Wheel of Time. I work for Harriet on the Wheel of Time. I am employed by her. It's a very good contract—I mean, she was very awesome to me—but at the end of the day, I am an employee working for her, a contractor working for her, and in that case, it's a different sort of business relationship.Tags
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (13 December 2011)
Just finished a scene in A Memory of Light that ranks among the most visually powerful I've ever done. I REALLY want to see this one in film form.
Brandon Sanderson
A lot of questions about the WoT film rights. Universal has the rights. Maybe I should have phrased my last tweet as...
Brandon Sanderson
"Dear Universal, please do a good job on the first WoT movie, because you really, REALLY need to get to book 14 and do this scene."
Brandon Sanderson
I don't know how far off the WoT film is. The screenwriters produced a new draft of the script a few weeks back. I have not read it.
Selene O'Rourke
I would love to see a Wheel of Time movie series or TV miniseries. Has anyone optioned that you can mention?
Brandon Sanderson
Universal has the rights. Not an option, but a full buy-out.
Muaz Zekeria
Just out of curiosity would you prefer WoT to be a film series or a TV series a la Game of Thrones? Also keep up the great work.
Brandon Sanderson
I would prefer television.
Killer Bob
Do you know if the film is going to be super-long like the Lord of the Rings movies, split in parts like Harry Potter or something ...
Killer Bob
...else? Also, thank you for finishing WoT! I really, really like the books you've written, they're excellent!
Killer Bob
By that I mean the WoT books. I like the other books too (especially Mistborn), but not as much as WoT.
Brandon Sanderson
Thanks for reading! The plan now is one film that covers Eye of the World, and will be somewhat long.
Chase Emory
I don't understand why you wouldn't be working integrally with the screenwriter, I hope they realize that this isn't a movie...
Chase Emory
...that they can just pump out. They need to do an amazing job or not waste their time.
Brandon Sanderson
I'm hoping they will let me comment on the screenplay, but so far, I've been kind of busy with A Memory of Light...
Nate Rios
I haven't read WOT but these A Memory of Light Tweets are making me want to check it out! I've not read any of Jordan's work. Thoughts?
Brandon Sanderson
I love the WoT, and have for many years. It is a long journey, however, so be warned.
Christopher
When is A Memory of Light out; I thought January, but I've heard its been put back?
Shaun Duquette
Gah,this is unacceptable!! You've already delayed this once!!
Brandon Sanderson
Not much I can do, I'm afraid. I'm turning it in on time; the date is being set by the publisher.
Brandon Sanderson
Okay, that scene is done. Now I have a few quick, one-shot viewpoints to do. People you may not expect.
Josh Hlibichuk
Do we get a Dark One PoV? Is that question an auto-RAFO?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO, of course. :)
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Interview: Dec 2nd, 2010
4th Age Podcast Interview with Team Jordan (Verbatim)Andrew Gelos
I have a kind of a question which…so much doesn't connect directly to the Wheel of Time world except that it also connects Wheel of Time to the broader scope of our world, and I've just been itching to ask this: I've recently been in a course in Restoration Literature, and in the historical studies there, I noted that there seem to be connections between Cairhien and London around the time of the mid-to-early 1600s: the fact that the city is part built against a river, the city burns when the Aiel attack, and there are various cultural features that seem to reflect London around that time period, and I was wondering, am I just completely imagining this? I know occasionally Mr. Jordan would take things from various different places and kind of merge them together to create a unique, individual space, and I just was sort of wondering if there is actually any of historical London in Cairhien, and if there is, is there any more anywhere else in the major cities?Alan Romanczuk
Yes, yes. One thing you have to remember about Jim is he never did a single reference in any of his descriptions, whether it's a military uniform, a city, a character—everything seemed to draw from multiple sources. So yes, Cairhien was most likely in part based on London, but you look at the map of it, and you can see it's very different as well. It's laid out in a very rigid grid fashion. You could say in that case, well, maybe it's based on New York City in part as well, and it has a palace up on the highest hill within the bounds of the city. That's not true of London, but it's true of other places. And London wasn't the only city burned by attack; there were many others. But yeah, I mean Jim had a huge number of books in his reference library, and he traveled a lot as well, so he saw many of these places, and in typical Jim fashion...you know, I wouldn't be surprised if he had eight or ten or twelve influences in the creation of Cairhien.
ANDREW GELOS
That's great, because what actually caught my notice—because, even the Great Fire of 1666 probably would have passed me by in connection to the Wheel of Time world, except for the fact that, then I looked at the semi-Puritanical dress that the nobles in the city were taken to wearing, and then we were…I actually on the day I thought of this question was sitting there looking at a screen with the picture of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, and I was just like, "You know, that's like, almost what I kind of envisioned the Cairhienin nobility to kind of look like."
VIRGINIA
Well, one thing we've never seen in any of the Wheel of Time history that I can recall—and London, just talking about it brought it to mind—is, we've never seen a large-scale plague in history, like with the Great Plague of the year…I've forgotten now.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Mmhmm.
MARIA SIMONS
Yeah.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Well, of course, so many of the rats have been eliminated, but they're back now.
VIRGINIA
They're back! Maybe your plague is coming, like they need more trouble. [laughter]
MARIA SIMONS
The Last… (cross-talk)
VIRGINIA
No, go ahead…
MARIA SIMONS
The Last Battle is…
JENNIFER LIANG
It's funny that you brought up London as an influence, because most people when they're talking about influences on Cairhien, they really pick up on the court of the Sun King and Marie Antoinette because the style is very, you know, 1700s, late-1700s and Marie Antoinette, and there's also a lot of Japanese influence, and that tends to be what people pick up on. So this is the first time I've had somebody say, "You know, I think there's a London in Cairhien," so that's kind of interesting.
VIRGINIA
I guess everybody brings something different to the books, and interprets them in their own way.
JENNIFER LIANG
Oh yeah, definitely.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Yeah, another interesting point: anyone remember what the name Cairhien means in the Old Tongue?
ANDREW GELOS
Hill of the Golden Dawn.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Hill of the Golden Dawn. The Order of the Golden Dawn was an occult society in London back before the beginning of the 20th Century.
FOOTNOTE
This particular society was Kabbalistic, and their hierarchy is based on the Tree of Life. Many other parallels can be drawn.VIRGINIA
Yeah, that's right. I'd forgotten that.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Which I just bring out as, you know, yet another thing that Jim latched on to and threw into the mix.
JENNIFER LIANG
Most people think 'the hill of the golden dawn' is like, 'Oh, the land of the rising sun!' which would be Japan, because there's a heavy Japanese influence in just the style of the buildings and things like that seem very Japanese.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Sure. And the Sun King of France.
JENNIFER LIANG
Yeah. It's kind of like he just pulled everything that was related to the sun and just kind of melded it together to make Cairhien.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Yeah.
MARIA SIMONS
He liked mixing things up.
JENNIFER LIANG
And it works really well. That's the surprising thing to me is that he was able to pull from so many different sources and make things seem very coherent and logical for the cultures.
VIRGINIA
Yeah, I like the fact that everything that you read as you're going along, all these things sort of tug at the back of your mind and you're thinking, 'Oh, this reminds me of this, and this reminds me of that', and it makes you really think that it adds a depth to the thing that you can come back later and explore it again.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Okay, I've got a game for you. Go to Wikipedia. Put in something like 'golden dawn', let's say…or just anything. Pull anything from the Wheel of Time books that's distinctive. Put it into Wikipedia until you find a hit. I almost guarantee, within that article, you're going to find yet another reference from the Wheel of Time. Track that. See how many hits you can go before you run out.
VIRGINIA
I'll have to try that.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
I did that the other day, and I wound up spending an hour and a half of just going from one thing to another. It was really amazing.
JENNIFER LIANG
Yeah, I can see myself losing an afternoon doing that.
VIRGINIA
Oh yeah, easily.
SPENCER POWELL
Very easily.
JENNIFER LIANG
I've lost too many hours to Wiki-walking already.
VIRGINIA
I guess that's why it bothers me so much about that library ter'angreal…if I had that, I'd never be able to put it down, and I guess I just don't understand how somebody could…if they can't deal with it, then delegate, but this is me. It's the equivalent of having a computer hooked up to the internet; I could not walk away from it. It would be a Mindtrap for me. [laughter]
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Interview: Dec 2nd, 2010
4th Age Podcast Interview with Team Jordan (Verbatim)Andrew Gelos
I guess part of the thing that is interesting to me, and I guess being a student of Literature, I am horribly fascinated with fictional languages. How extensive is the vocabulary of the Old Tongue as it exists right now? I'm assuming that there is more of it than we have seen in the novels. And do you know if there were rules set down to explain the creation of the vocabulary? And kind of alongside that, is there—obviously I kind of take the answer about London to be a similar question, or a similar answer towards whether or not there's an actual philological basis for the Old Tongue—part of what I'm wondering is…I've been using the Shienaran phrase "Suravye ninto manshima taishite" as sort of our closing for the podcast. I'm tentatively wondering how badly I'm butchering that.Alan Romanczuk
Oh, you're spot on. Spot on.
VIRGINIA
Yay Andrew!
ANDREW GELOS
Sweet!
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Jim actually spoke pretty extensively in public about the Old Tongue, and I even pulled up a letter that he had written about it in which he says, "The Old Tongue is based on, for example, the languages: Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and some additions of my own—bridging material if you will. Grammar and syntax are a blending of English, German, and Chinese with some influence from a set of African languages read about long ago, and all but the oddities of structure long since forgotten." He has converted constructions…the thing about the Old Tongue, the way that it's constructed…it is a very loose language, like Latin I guess; it can be presented in almost any order and be intelligible to someone who knows it, and there are several conventions involved in it which could be explained for a longer podcast, but those are the basics. He really did pull them from a lot of different areas, and he started by constructing the language—as I recall there is a list of 850 or 880 common words that you need to know to be able to speak in English, and I don't know who created these, but he had that. We have file, and he modified that, kicking out some words like 'electricity' and so forth that wouldn't be useful in this, and adding some others, and putting definitions to them in Old Tongue. I never added it up, but he said we had a file of about a thousand words, and this dictionary will be published at a later time.
VIRGINIA
Great.
ANDREW GELOS
That is awesome.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
And that will be part of the encyclopedia, actually.
ANDREW GELOS
That'll be great.
VIRGINIA
I can't wait. That sort of leads me into my next question which is something that, two years ago when Brandon was out on the Mistborn tour—the last Mistborn book tour—during an interview, I asked him if he could please come up with some way for us to say phrases having to do with the Light, such as 'Walk in the Light,' or 'May the Light illumine you' in the Old Tongue, and he said he would do his best, and I think he just forgot. But we do have the audio; he kind of sort of promised us. We're hoping that maybe you can bail him out on this one. [laughter]
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Well, I think all will be revealed in the encyclopedia.
VIRGINIA
Aww, I can't wait that long!
ALAN ROMANCZUK
Except what isn't revealed.
JENNIFER LIANG
How far is the encyclopedia coming? People ask me about it occasionally, and I'm like, 'I dunno; they're working on it.'
MARIA SIMONS
Well, it's been back-burner recently because we're doing Towers of Midnight, but that's my next project to get back into, doing basically the skeleton for it, and after A Memory of Light we will go full bore on it.
JENNIFER LIANG
Oh, excellent. I remember Harriet saying that it was due one year after the final book, whenever the final book is out.
MARIA SIMONS
Right.
ALAN ROMANCZUK
And we're working on it in between when we get time, when we're not doing podcasts and so forth. [laughter]
VIRGINIA
Oh, now you're making us feel guilty. [laughter] But not very.
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Interview: Dec 5th, 2011
Helen Lowe
Dragonsbane is a longstanding favourite of mine as well. And I recall first reading The Eye of the World, the opening novel in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, at about the same time. Being asked to complete such a famous series following Robert Jordan's death was a great honour and compliment to your own writing. But did it also feel like a tremendous responsibility?Brandon Sanderson
It's been a very humbling experience and a great honor. But it's certainly a tremendous responsibility. When I was considering taking on the project, I thought, "Wow, if I screw this up, I'm in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore." I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned, or posted somewhere, regarding this: "This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him."
In the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, "Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?" And the answer was that I couldn't let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.
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Interview: Jun, 2011
Orbit Books Interview Snippets (Verbatim)Marie Curie
And....here's the second snippet, posted a few days ago (12 December 2011). I hope that Brandon eventually agreed to have some of Harriet's bean soup...Brandon Sanderson
I got to read the ending–what?–four years ago now. I don't know if you've heard that story, but I went to visit Charleston for the first time in December of 2007, so almost exactly four years ago now. I met Harriet at the airport, she picked me up. And it had been a long flight, I'd been without food for a while. And she drove me back to her house, this wonderful home in Charleston–it was built in the 1700s–just gorgeous town home. And she said, "Do you want dinner?" as we pulled up. And she said, "I have some bean soup that I made, it's quite good." I said, "Actually, I want the ending." And she laughed and she went and fetched that for me, and I got to read. Sit down and find out who killed Asmodean, find out the fates of all the characters. And read all of this, in mostly note form. So I did get that. But I don't get to read the ending.Tags
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Interview: Jun, 2011
Orbit Books Interview Snippets (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
It feels very comforting at least that fans have liked these last ones as much as they had, and that the reception has been good. I can only hope that you all will enjoy the ending as much as you've enjoyed the last books. I will tell you this: I found the ending incredibly satisfying. When I got there, and I sat and I read that alone quietly, and actually in Robert Jordan's chair, in his room, just a few feet from the computer he'd written a lot of the books on. I felt immensely and deeply satisfied with this conclusion that he wrote himself. It feels right to me. And so, I hope that you will have a similar experience.Tags
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Interview: May 19th, 2004
Rome Signing Report - Raven (Translated)Robert Jordan
I asked him where the phonetic choice in the naming of characters, names, places came from, given that they are so "unheard of"; he replied that for some of them he got his inspiration from American "mythology" (...), as with Nynaeve which is the name of a really existed historical figure, while for other ones he created them out of nowhere, trying to keep consistent.Tags
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Interview: May 19th, 2004
Rome Signing Report - Raven (Translated)Robert Jordan
Someone else asked if while writing the Aiel he got his inspiration from Herbert (re: the native inhabitants of Dune [the Fremen people]); he answered that it was not that, that the real source of inspiration is the Cheyenne people, originally shepherds and forced to became warriors and to flee into the desert when the white man came.Tags
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Interview: May 24th, 2004
Chiara Codecà
A curios reader cant’t help but notice that the Forsaken are named after fallen angels and demons from the Judeo-Christian tradition. All the Wheel of Time series is full of themes and motifs from religions and myths from different parts of the world…Robert Jordan
Oh, yes. I used Arthurian legends, Chinese and Japanese mythology, Indian mythology, traditions from Latin America and Africa. Some myths from Europe, but not much of Celtic because it’s been done so much.
Chiara Codecà
This means you’ve read about all of these subjects?
Robert Jordan
I read about everything. My knowledge is this wide and much less deep. I truly like to read about a lot of things.
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Interview: May 24th, 2004
Chiara Codecà
Do you think that your writing has been influenced by other authors?Robert Jordan
I do in my writing style, not in the stories I tell. I believe six writers to have influenced the way I write: Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Louis L'Amour, Robert Heinlein and John D. McDonald. I know it’s a very wide range group of writer….
Chiara Codecà
Well, it certainly tells a lot of the wide range of your readings.
Robert Jordan
(Laughs) Jane Austen gave me an insight in the relationship between characters and in what we might call “social relationship”.
Mark Twain did something that was unheard of, in his time: he had people speak the way people really spoke. I think it was revolutionary. Twain was the first to use the common language of the day, he taught me to use language the way I wanted. Dickens did some of the same, but later.
L'Amour, John D. McDonald and Heinlein all gave me something about the use of language, mainly a certain freedom in using words, a lack of rigidity.
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Interview: May 24th, 2004
Chiara Codecà
I’ve read that Red Eagle Entertainment LLC is interested in your work and has acquired the exclusive production rights to the first book of the The Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World.Robert Jordan
Red Eagle Entertainment has signed an option to create a feature film based on The Eye of the World. I hope that this will happen, but we’ll see.
Chiara Codecà
Will you be involved in the production?
Robert Jordan
To some extent. The contract I signed asked me to be a consultant but how much movie makers consult writers….well.
Chiara Codecà
Are you worried about what can become of your work?
Robert Jordan
Well, you always worry because once they get their hands on the book they can do almost anything they want with it. For all I know they could re-release Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-rama under the title of this book.
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Interview: Dec 15th, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - Zas (Verbatim)Question
I was reading on Facebook that you had Bela, that you were writing her recently. Was that your idea or was it Robert Jordan's?Brandon Sanderson
I usually save questions like this. Wait until the book is out, wait till it's been out for a little while, and then I can talk specifically about what was me and what was Jim. I don't want to predispose people so that they're thinking "Is this Jim's scene? Is this Brandon's scene? Well he said something about this, and whatnot." So the only thing I'm telling people, regarding his writing, is that I do have a thing from the prologue, each of the three have one of the scenes that he wrote for the prologue put in it, and of course the ending. And other than this, I'm not saying a ton about what is his and what is mine. Just wait until people have read the book, and then I'll start answering a few more of those questions.
Like I've down with Towers of Midnight and The Gathering Storm. I've been a little more free in recent times about what was me and what was him, and I'm still not very specific for you, I don't want that focus, but I will start answering more of those questions.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
A really great book of the length we're writing, of epic fantasy, isn't necessarily going to be bam, bam, bam, bam. What it's going to be is that it's going to go like this. . . (Brandon waves hands up and down). . . and give us the highs and lows and lulls and speedy fast past, and that's what really will pull you through.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I plot backward. I start with a goal, and then I build an outline that gets me to that goal. And then I write forward. With the Wheel of Time books, I'm in a unique position because often I have that goal already stated in the notes, or it's a scene that Robert Jordan has written that I need to get to. The outline for the first two was very detailed, because Robert Jordan had all of these materials which I needed to weave into an outline. We say there was an outline. Really there was a list of scenes in no particular order, and I had to turn them into an outline. And I wanted to go over that with Maria and Harriet and make sure I wasn't screwing anything up.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I go into books trying to present characters who are real. That said, some things in the real world that have influenced me are these questions of, what are you willing to sacrifice in the way of freedom in order to have security? I think that's a big theme recently in the Wheel of Time that Robert Jordan was dealing with, and that The Gathering Storm deals with a lot.
I was most fascinated with Egwene's progress as a leader through the entire series. And the things I was allowed to do because of what Jordan had done in Knife of Dreams and the set up in previous books, and then what was in the notes, was really exciting to me because she was able to come to encapsulate what a leader really is, I think. There are some great scenes in Gathering Storm that I got to be part of, where, you know, we've had Aes Sedai acting kind of as bullies, some of them. And we've had various people through various factions acting as bullies. And there has been this sense in the Wheel of Time that people believe that might makes right. And yet it doesn't, and the books imply that it doesn't. And Egwene is the first chance we've really got to see of someone with no might making an even better right.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Writing Rand and Mat and Perrin and Egwene in particular was very natural to me. Aviendha was hard. I tried her early on in the process, which might have been a mistake because she thinks so differently. But I actually had to throw away two chapters of Aviendha that no one will ever see because she thinks like a Two Rivers folk, which is not the way Aviendha should think. I was disappointed in them, the first one I wrote. And anyway, I kept working on it till I got it right.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Interviewer
How does it feel when you have to write a scene for a character that you've really come to love where bad things happen to them?Brandon Sanderson
Oh, it can be excruciating. There are some excruciating Rand scenes in this book. Though, you know, the harder scenes to write are the ones where characters, not necessarily terrible things are happening to, but where they're depressed or muddled, or you know. In a lot of ways, the Rand scenes were painful to write, Gawyn's scenes were harder to write, because Gawyn is lost. And he doesn't know. . . he's struggling through things, and at least Rand is pointed in a direction. Maybe it's the wrong direction, but he's pointed in a direction and he's doing things. Gawyn doesn't know what he's doing, and that can be really tough.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Interviewer at Vroman's
Who's your favorite character?Fan
Perrin. He's very very very self sacrificing to a fault. And I love the crap out of him for that one. So I'd have to say Perrin, for sure.Brandon Sanderson
Perrin is, of all the main characters, the furthest back in his arc, if that makes sense. Like, through the most recent books, he was growing and he was getting there, he was almost there. And then, he let himself be diverted from achieving these things that he needed to achieve. And I won't say whether he achieves them or not. Sometimes the arc is. . . at the end of the arc, they make the wrong decisions.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I really felt I needed to knock this book out of the park. I couldn't just get a base run, I needed to nail it. And to do that, I put some of the most dynamic powerful scenes that I had access to together into the book. The next book is going to be very different in feel and tone because while this book was very focused, the next book we are going to be able to get back to a lot of the characters we haven't heard from. And I won't mention specifically who's going to be in the book, but some that could be. I mean, we haven't heard from Loial in a while, we haven't heard from Padan Fain, we haven't heard from Lan, we haven't heard from the Black Tower. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. . . I mean, Pevara, and Logain. . . so much going on that I intentionally didn't do because I wanted this book to be very focused. Next book, we're going to get to all that.
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Interview: Nov, 2009
Mythmaker Films Interview (Verbatim)Interviewer
What was your first reaction when you actually saw the hardcover book with your name and Robert Jordan's together, and it was a reality?Brandon Sanderson
You know, it was a reverent moment. I just sat there and kind of stared at it for a while. It was awesome, it really was. I mean, what else can you say? It was awesome. A lot of people have asked about the signature of Robert Jordan on the title page. That was there because I actually asked Harriet if they would place it, because I knew I would feel weird signing the book without Robert Jordan's signature there. And so, if people get confused about that, I apologize. I didn't realize how realistic they would make it, but I wanted his signature there so it wasn't about me, so it could be about both of us. And him first, and then a little bit of Brandon Sanderson.
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Interview: May 6th, 2004
Turin Book Fair Reports (Translated)mko
I asked Jordan: "Will Rand al'Thor sooner or later win the internal conflict that gripped him by the second book?"Robert Jordan
On the American websites there is a term used in these cases: RAFO - read and find out.
MKO
I personally also asked if anyone has been interested in making a film inspired by his books, he replied that someone was interested in doing a film of The Eye of the World .... but for now there is still nothing concrete.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (15 December 2011)
Scene I'm working on needs to be trashed and rewritten from a different viewpoint. Ah, well.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Okay, the scene is working much better now. Basically, a half-day lost, but it is worth backing up if something isn't working.
JOE LAVOIE
When you say a scene isn't "working" what does that mean? Bad mojo, doesn't feel right, or its there a technical reason?
BRANDON SANDERSON
All three, actually. Mostly, it just feels wrong.
BRANDON SANDERSON
And it is fixed now. Hard to judge my wordcount today, since I spent time fixing, but I'm opening a pack of Magic cards as a reward.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Current length of A Memory of Light: 335,000 words, same size as Towers of Midnight. And I haven't finished yet, nor have I added in RJ's ending.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Even with edits, this will be the longest of the three WoT books I've done. Don't worry about it being split, though. That won't happen.
DANIEL ANDERSON
Is RJ's ending ready for primetime? Or do you have an outline of how it is supposed to go?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I should be able to put it in without changing anything other than a quick smoothing of the language.
SISTER INFANT
Will there be any indication in the book as to when RJ's ending starts? Like a footnote from you or Harriet or something?
BRANDON SANDERSON
No, but I will tell you once the book is out, after you've read it.
JOHN ANDERSON
Hello! Just wondering, was the Borderland Tower sequence in Towers of Midnight (with Malenarin Rai) originally part of RJ's prologue?
BRANDON SANDERSON
He wrote most of that scene himself, actually.
JOHN ANDERSON
Cool! Are you allowed to say whether it was part of his prologue (which I gather you split and distributed over The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight)?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, it was.
JOE KOGELMANN
What was the logest of all the WoT books? How many words?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Longest ones have been around 390k words. Books Four and Six. I forget which was the longer.
STEPHEN HART
Any chance of reading these alternate scenes once A Memory of Light is released; on your website maybe? Kinda like DVD deleted scenes...
BRANDON SANDERSON
Maybe.
GREG LINDSEY
Why do you suppose Wikipedia is inaccurate, saying Towers of Midnight [is] 325,998? Should it be edited? Are those word counts reliable?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Likely, theirs is without the glossary, which I just noticed mine has in it.
BRYAN
but but but...Wikipedia says Towers of Midnight is 325,998 words! Who to trust, Wikipedia or the author!? *brain explodes*
BRANDON SANDERSON
Just noticed my edocument has the glossary attached. Maybe that's the reason for the difference. Mine is pre-copyedit too.
DASUGO
You usually go through a vicious edit phase right?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes. I tend to cut 10%, but Harriet's suggestions have usually added about that much, and we've balanced at the end.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (20 December 2011)
Still hard at work on A Memory of Light. Today's scenes involve lots of loud noises.
MARK HOWARD
Just curious, have you read the end scenes that RJ wrote? Or are you waiting till you get there?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I read them as soon as I got them. I needed to use them as a target 'goal' for the book.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Now, on to a scene that finally, at long last, fulfills something Min saw long ago...
BRANDON SANDERSON
I've finished all characters except Rand and Mat. (Note, I'm not writing in order; other characters have already-written scenes after this.)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Now, I have to finish Mat's climax, write a few more Rand scenes, then add in RJ's ending material. Then we're done. Very close now.
PATRICK
What are your thoughts on ending the WoT series that Robert Jordan started so long ago? :)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Solemnity.
BRANDON SANDERSON
After a few hours with the family, am back at work on A Memory of Light. It's slightly possible that I'll finish it sometime during the night.
JENNIFER LIANG
Would that make tonight A Memory of Light Eve?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. Yes, I guess it would.
BRANDON SANDERSON
You can follow along, if you wish. I have twenty small points on my outline left to hit. Maybe 10k words or so. I'll tweet as I pass them.
BRANDON SANDERSON
First scene out of twenty finished. (Note that I'm using 'scene' here liberally to mean a point on the plot outline.)
FRANK KWIATKOWSKI
Can you tell us who has the last chapter?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Afraid that would spoil too much.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Note that as I approach an ending, my writing speed goes up, as I get momentum. 10k tonight is not impossible. (Though most days I do 2-3.)
BRENT WEEKS
Good luck!
BRANDON SANDERSON
Thanks!
BRANDON SANDERSON
Two out of twenty scenes done. Eighteen left, and A Memory of Light will be finished.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Three out of Twenty of the remaining scenes in A Memory of Light have been finished. (If you're just now seeing this, check back to my last few posts.)
MARCUS ENGSTROM
How long was it after the first two books were finished until they were published?
BRANDON SANDERSON
For the first one, about a year. For the next, about six months. This will probably be closer to the first than the second.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene four was slightly shorter than the others. 4 out of 20 finished so far tonight.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene #5 finished. 25% through the ending of A Memory of Light. Feeling good about these scenes. All is going very well.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Some of you have asked if I got the Magic cards you sent me off of my Amazon wishlist. I did! I'm waiting to open them until I'm done with A Memory of Light.
BRANDON SANDERSON
A few of these scenes are pretty emotional ones for me. It's been a long, long road. I started reading the WoT twenty-one years ago.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Just finished scene #6 out of the 20 remaining in A Memory of Light.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene seven is done. Thirteen more to go. This one...this one was tough to write.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I've apparently inspired a drinking game with this on both Twitter and Facebook. I'd join in, but: 1) Mormon. 2) BUSY WRITING END OF WOT. :)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene #8 is a tricky one. I know how it has to go, I just need to do it carefully. Getting close to having it right.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene #8 is finished. This is going well. I often build momentum like this during a powerful book ending, and this one is very powerful.
BRANDON SANDERSON
We shall see. We've still got three or four hours before I'd normally turn in for bed. If I start to get sleepy, I'll call it for the night.
BRANDON SANDERSON
No sense in pushing on if the quality starts to flag. Knowing myself, though, I'll be too excited to be tired for a while yet. Onward!
LOCALPCGUY
Glad to hear things are ending well! I can't wait to read it. Think I have time for a full re-read before A Memory of Light?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Depends on how quickly you read. :)
DAVID MACKAY
Cannot wait, but I agree. Is it really going to take a year to edit and publish?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I've done a dozen drafts each of the previous two books. That kind of thing takes a little bit of time...
BRANDON SANDERSON
I just did something to Mat that I've been gleefully waiting to do for three years.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Don't stress the thing I did to Mat too much. It's a little (and fun) thing I've wanted to see him do for a long time.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I have finished scene #9 out of 20 I need to write before A Memory of Light is done.
AVI DOBKIN
Best of luck to @BrandSanderson as I turn in for the night. I'm giddy for A Memory of Light.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Hopefully, you will wake to find the book finished.
CHRISTINA BOULARD
It's almost 3:30am here and I SHOULD be in bed, but I feel like I need 2 stay up and cheer you on and also to witness THE END!
BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. Well, there are still hours left to go, I suspect. I started at...what, 9:00 here? I'm to 1/2 and it's almost 2:00?
BRANDON SANDERSON
For those asking, it's almost 2:00 am here. The night is still young.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Just finished Scene #10. Halfway there!
BRANDON SANDERSON
I don't expect it to go longer than those. After editing, I'm pretty sure we'll settle at 350-360k words. (About 10% longer than Towers of Midnight.)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Brace yourselves. I just finished the last Mat Cauthon scene that, in all likelihood, will ever be written.
FRANK KWIATKOWSKI
General writing question: after The editor edits, is it typical for an author to add/rewrite, or only the editor?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Only the author rewrites or adds. Never the editor. (in most cases.)
BRANDON SANDERSON
The fourteenth scene was Mat's, and now I've finished the fifteenth scene. Five more to go, and A Memory of Light is done.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Just finished scene #16. Four more to go. Guess I'm not stopping tonight, eh?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene #17 is finished. I was a tad on the longer side for the ones I'm doing here, as are the last three. 5:00 am here.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I keep flashing back to times I've read the WoT books through my life. Looking back, you could call Rand/Mat/Perrin my oldest friends.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene #18 is done. Two more to go.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Scene #19 is done. Deep breath. I'm beginning the last scene I will write in the Wheel of Time, then will add RJ's ending.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I've been listening to Pandora as I do this, but am wondering if I should pick a specific song to listen to as I finish. Suggestions?
BRANDON SANDERSON
My choice for a song to play as I write the last few paragraphs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-0G_FI61a8
BRANDON SANDERSON
Ladies and gentlemen, A Memory of Light—the final book in The Wheel of Time—has been finished.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Now I'll open a metric gigaton of Magic cards that have been sent to me by fans, sleep for a day, and rest until next week.Then: revisions!
BRANDON SANDERSON
As for when the book will come out, Tor should do an announcement soon. Revisions will take a good six months. So fall, I expect.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Another common question: How many revisions will I do? The last two took about a dozen. (On non-WoT books, I do about seven or eight.)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Also, it's going to be tough to give direct replies to questions right now, what with like 1000 people tweeting/facebooking at me. :)
BRANDON SANDERSON
But lots of people are asking about outriggers/prequels. The answer is still the same. We'd rather not risk exploiting RJ's legacy.
BRANDON SANDERSON
It is a step I don't think we want to take. Better to stop while we're ahead. I'm sorry, but they probably won't ever happen.
BRANDON SANDERSON
And now, yes, I will go to sleep. 7am here. That's 10 hours of solid writing after a full day of solid writing, so I'm beat.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Thank you all for the good wishes. May you find water and shade.
BRANDON SANDERSON (AFTER A NAP)
Ah. Good morning, all. (Yes, it's five in the afternoon here.) Checking email, and...INBOX EXPLOSION. I guess I was expecting it. :)
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2011
San Diego ComicCon Interview with Suvudu (Verbatim)Shawn Speakman
Earlier you mentioned that you have to get back home to get back to the Wheel of Time. How long have you been working on it?Brandon Sanderson
Well, you know, I started working in 2007 on finishing the series. The last one I started working on January 1st. It's due in November. On my website we have a little... I have a little counter saying how much I've got done. I'm at one quarter right now. That's a little bit deceptive, because I've been jumping around and outlining and building sections later on; and so when I hit them, they'll go really fast. So it's probably more like half done—maybe a smidge more. But it doesn't look like that on the website. You know, I have to turn it in November, so I’m plugging along.
Shawn Speakman
How do you feel about it so far?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I feel good. I feel really good. You know, Robert Jordan wrote the ending himself before he passed away. I just have to get there without screwing it up. And so, that's what I'm doing.
Shawn Speakman
Awesome. Great. I know people have loved the first two volumes that you've had to work on. And so...that's fantastic.
BRANDON SANDERSON
The fan response has been fantastic. I felt really anxious; I feel really anxious every time. And so I guess it won't stop with this last one, but at least with the fan response being so good, it takes a bit of the anxiety off.
Shawn Speakman
Right.
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2011
San Diego ComicCon Interview with Suvudu (Verbatim)Shawn Speakman
One of the questions that came into the website deals with the work on Wheel of Time. Obviously that's a big undertaking of your time and definitely takes you away from your own creations. How do you feel about that, as an artist?Brandon Sanderson
You know, when I agreed to do this, I did it with eyes open, knowing that what it was going to do was going to mean I could get to fewer of my side projects. I'm a guy that likes to jump around—lots of wacky little side projects and things—and this time, I wasn't going to get to do that. But I was OK with that. Because I realized this was something important; this was something awesome I wanted to be part of. And there are some opportunities it cost—there are two big ones. One is that I can't do some of these side projects. But there is another one: that is, I don't get to read the Wheel of Time books when they come out, like everyone else does. And that's also a sad opportunity it cost. I'm the only one that didn't get a new Wheel of Time book last year, because I wrote the thing. So I didn't get to, you know... Always before, I would wait, I would get the Wheel of Time book and I would go read it. And I don't get to do that, not in the same way. But being a part of it the way I am more than pays for all these things. It's just, there are some little things I think about and say...little tiny...I wouldn't call them regrets, but certainly costs.
Shawn Speakman
Right.
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2011
San Diego ComicCon Interview with Suvudu (Verbatim)Shawn Speakman
Those side projects that you mentioned... Obviously The Way of Kings came out last year, was a phenomenal success...Brandon Sanderson
That's not a side project.
Shawn Speakman
Yeah, that's not a side project.
Brandon Sanderson
I did this knowing that I would still try to keep my main...you know, I would still try to keep Mistborn and Way of Kings—Stormlight Archive—with support. You know, I have to work a lot of sixteen hour days to make sure it does, but I didn't want my readers to get short-changed for the Wheel of Time readers, even though Wheel of Time is my main focus right now. And so I've made sure I'm still doing that; I just can't do the other wacky things I've done. My kids' books—I couldn't finish that series until the Wheel of Time is done. You know, the contract ran out, but I still want to do another one, but I could not sign another contract, couldn't write that book because—
Shawn Speakman
You're under contract already.
Brandon Sanderson
—I'm under contract. I have to do the Wheel of Time, I have to make sure it's got all of my attention and that it comes out and is really good. So those side projects just had to fall by the wayside.
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Interview: Dec 15th, 2011
Alloy of Law Signing Report - Zas (Verbatim)Question
How long before is the game going to be? I remember you saying it was going to be before Final Empire, but I was wondering how long before?
Brandon Sanderson
I sold Legion, which is a novella I wrote, to Lionsgate, for a television pilot. We will see if they will actually do it or not. That’s a modern day thriller I wrote. It’s a novella. I’ll release it next summer or something. It’s short, but it was meant for a pitch for a television show. So that’s coming out, and we’ll hope that they actually film that. We did sign deals on that, and since there’s Lionsgate, which is a big studio, behind that, there’s a production house attached to it, and it will go much faster.
Other than that, there’s the Wheel of Time, which keeps slowly moving forward. It is moving forward, but really slowly. And Alcatraz is basically dead in the water right now. The option lapsed in June, and no one else has snatched it up, so it’s now been six months, and that one’s pretty much dead in the water. Which is sad. We got really close on that one.
QUESTION
Will you still write the fifth book?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, I will write the fifth book. Just the movie is dead in the water.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)kqrpnb
Brandon, how do you think WoT will read as a complete set with your voice in the last books? Did you plan ahead for that?Brandon Sanderson
I tried very hard. The characters should read right, the plot should read right. I think it will read cohesive. These books will not go off on random tangents. In fact, I’m hoping that the narrative will feel like a shift back toward 4/5/6, which are my favorite WoT books.Tags
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)joshuapatrao
Can you offer us anything at all on the status of The Eye of the World movie?Brandon Sanderson
I don’t have much time to keep an eye (no pun intended) on the movie too closely. The producer was at JordanCon, though, and I was put at ease somewhat by speaking with him. As far as I know, it’s still in preproduction an in the scriptwriting stage. When they have a script, I’ll ask if I can read it. Maria, RJ’s assistant, is in charge of that. I’ve got my hands full writing the books!Tags
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)Banvard
Was there any character you disliked writing within the Wheel of Time universe?Brandon Sanderson
As an author, you get very good at being inside someone’s head. And so it’s hard to dislike writing anyone. That said, there’s a certain Cadsuane scene that—when I read the notes—I didn’t look forward to.Tags
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)Graendal
Did you ever notice how similar Graendal and Blushweaver are in personality?Brandon Sanderson
I didn’t until I started work on the WoT book. I wrote Warbreaker years before I was offered the WoT. I noticed and laughed. RJ’s books are dug pretty deeply into my subconscious. I think they’re very different as characters, but Graendal was obviously an influence on Blushweaver.Tags
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)Graendal
Do you know when the audio version of Warbreaker will be released?Brandon Sanderson
Like Elantris, there will be two audio version of Warbreaker. Performed and straight read. Both are in production. Dramatic is coming October http://tinyurl.com/nsrr3l. Looks like unabridged is October too. http://bit.ly/15rJFFTags
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Interview: Nov 8th, 2011
Alloy of Law Midnight Release (Verbatim)Question
What’s your schedule like as a writer with so many projects?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, what I do is I get up really early in the morning—noon. I get up at noon. This is hard sometimes! Maybe I’ll get up at 11. Usually I write until 5, and that writing is interspersed with a lot of email, and things like that and kind of distractions. Then I go hang with my family, and then I go back to work, depending on the day, at around 8 or 9, and then I work until about 4, and then I go to bed.
Usually I’m only writing one book at a time, while outlining another, and I’m often revising a third. I can’t do new material usually on two projects at once, I can only do new material on one thing at a time. But I can be doing some revising on one, and some planning on another, but the truth is I’m very much a segmented writer, and work on segments on things. Right now, with the Wheel of Time, I’m usually not working on anything else or planning, I’m all gung ho on this one thing, and then I’ll shift modes and do something else eventually.
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Interview: Jul, 2009
Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)Danbarbour
Out of everything that you have written, what would you say is your favorite and/or most proud of?Brandon Sanderson
The Gathering Storm is, by far, the best—and most difficult—thing I’ve written. It’s what I’m most proud of. For what is published, though, Warbreaker has the best writing of anything I’ve done.Tags
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Interview: Oct 15th, 2010
17th Shard Interview (Verbatim)17th Shard
Ok, the first question is, why did you change the main character's name to "Kaladin" in the final draft?
Brandon Sanderson
Excellent question. I see you're stealing all of my annotation questions that I would ask myself. For those of you who don't know, the character's original name was Merin. The change was a very hard decision because the history of Way of Kings goes back so far. You know, I started writing about and working on Merin as a character in the year 2000, so he'd been around for almost a decade in my head as who he was.
A couple of things sparked the change. Number one, I'd never really been pleased with the name. I had been doggedly attached to it, despite the fact that all of my alpha readers on the original Way of Kings—Way of Kings Prime we'll call it now—said, "This sounds like a girl's name." I'm like, "Well...you know, sometimes in different cultures names sound like girls' names. I've recently discovered that Bilbo and Frodo's actual names are "Bilba" and "Froda". Those are their actual names; that's what they say in-world and in the appendices. Tolkien in one of his appendices said, "I English-ized them to make them sound more more masculine for the 'translation' of the Lord of the Rings books, but they would actually call themselves Bilba and Froda." So, anyway, Merin sounded a little bit feminine, but still I dug in my heels.
One of the concepts for the new Way of Kings is Kaladin's arc as a character. In Way of Kings Prime he makes a decision very early in the book, and in The Way of Kings I wanted to have him make the opposite decision. There's a big decision that comes to him and it's almost like these two books are branching paths from that moment in a lot of ways. And so it's going to be a very interesting process when I eventually let people read Way of Kings Prime, which I won't right now because it has spoilers for the rest of the series, but you can see how all the characters go in different directions from that moment and they also change slightly. It's like an alternate world version of the book you're reading.
So, point number two was that I started to feel he's changed so much as a person I can no longer think of him as the same character. Point number three was that, as I am now working on The Wheel of Time, having a character whose name sounded a lot like Perrin started to be problem to me. Particularly since in Way of Kings Prime Merin was not the main character but in this Way of Kings he is. Way of Kings Prime was much more evenly divided between the characters, but in the published book he gets essentially double the space, and so he becomes the main character. I felt I wanted the main character of this book to have a much stronger, perhaps a little more mythic name. I tried lots and lots of names before I eventually settled on "Kaladin".
17TH SHARD
Kaladin does sound like a much more powerful a name.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah, it's a much better name. I'm very happy we did it, but we changed it on like the last draft, so it was very surprising to my editor and to my writing group when all of a sudden he changed to a different name.
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael R. Mennenga
Well, first off, we've got to talk about the Wheel of Time, because that's like really, really, really cool.Brandon Sanderson
It is really, really, really cool. I'm still a little bit in awe, a little bit surprised every day when I get up and I start working on the Wheel of Time books. I've mentioned this before on interviews, but I started reading the books when I was fifteen, been following them all along. And so, I'm thirty-five this year. And so twenty years of my life, I've been reading these books, and now I'm actually writing on them. It's a really surreal experience.Michael R. Mennenga
It's like the ultimate fanfic wet dream, you know. (laughs)Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. I mean, it totally is. There's really no way to describe this. It would be like a science fiction fan getting called by J. J. Abrams and asked, "Hey would you be interested in working on the next Star Trek movie?" Or you know, something like that. It's unreal.Tags
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael R. Mennenga
So now, this thing is coming out in December? Or, when is this out?Brandon Sanderson
November is what we're looking at. What happened is, the final notes that Robert Jordan left behind, at his widow's direction. . . His widow, Harriet, was actually his editor. She discovered him as a writer first, and then she married him. She's still very heavily involved, and she's my editor on the project. She decided to take the notes and split them into three novels. So the first one came out last November, and the next one comes out this November, and then there will be a final volume, either next year or the year after that.Tags
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael Stackpole
Wow. Now, I know when I was doing Star Wars stuff, I really tried to be cool and everything like that. There were only a couple of moments where I totally freaked out and kind of geeked out, in thinking about that. How have you been handling that? And when you've had that geek-out moment, what was it?Brandon Sanderson
There's a bunch of different things that I've geeked out about. It happened to me the other day when something that I was reading in research for the book—one of the novels, I was looking through a passage—for me, reading a story can take me back in the way that a lot people's sense will take them back to a place, you know how it is. Reading this scene, I suddenly saw myself in my bedroom as a sixteen-year-old boy reading the book for the first time, and I remembered it distinctly. And I remembered sitting and reading this scene and thinking, 'oh, I wonder what will happen?' And I not only know what happens now, I get to be involved in it. Those sorts of geek-out moments are what happened to me when suddenly my brain runs face-first into memories of being the little fantasy nerd reading books in his bedroom. And it's actually been kind of a hard process in some ways because—and I'm sure you know about this, Mike—you can't always just do the fanboy thing. If you do, then the story is not going to come off as genuine. You can't have every other page be a cameo by this character or that character. In fact, you have to be very, very sparing with that sort of thing, because otherwise the story—it's just not going to feel right, it's going to feel like a parody of itself. And that's been an interesting process, splitting my mind and saying, okay what does the fan want, and what can I give him, and what am I not allowed to give him?Tags
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael Stackpole
You know, that's a very interesting point. And I think it's one of those things...I remember when I first started working on some Star Wars comics, and I'll just use this as a preface to get you to comment. I was talking with Ryder Windham who was editor at Dark Horse at the time, and we were talking about a variety of projects. And one of the things that he said is that he really didn't like hiring fans to write projects. He would rather take a writer and turn them into a fan to work on the project than it was to take a fan and try and train him to be a writer. Do you think the fact that you've got your writing chops, the fact that you've got your own books that are very well received and beloved, gives you the confidence to be able to sit there and say, okay now I get to play with this stuff that without which I wouldn't have gotten where I was?Brandon Sanderson
Confidence, I don't know. I'm still sometimes—you know how it is—I mean, you worry. This sort of story is more beholden to the fans than it is to me. I don't own it. It's really theirs now, they've been following it for so long. But yeah, it certainly did have something to do with it.
I talk of it this way when I speak to Wheel of Time readers. I say, imagine a Venn diagram, all right. You've got this one circle that are just super huge Wheel of Time fans. And there are a lot of them out there, and I'll tell you, though I'm in that circle, I am not the biggest fan that exists. I have not dedicated hours and hours of my life to creating web sites dedicated to the Wheel of Time. I make heavy use of those web sites when I'm doing research and working on the books. But I haven't done that. There are people...if you would have found me before this happened, yes, I'd read all the books, in fact, I'd read most of them numerous times. But if you started firing trivia questions at me, you would have found very quickly that I would have hummed and hawed quite a bit. There are certainly larger fans.
And if you make another circle to the side of really great writers, I hope that I would be in that circle, but I'm not going to be the best writer you'll find by far. I mean, I'm in awe of some of the other writers in the fantasy community. George R. R. Martin, people like Terry Pratchett, are just pure geniuses and certainly are fantastic writers.
But if you put those two circles together, sitting right smack dab in the middle of pretty big Wheel of Time fans and pretty decent writers, is me. And I think that's what they were looking for, what Harriet was looking for, when choosing someone to work on this project. The Wheel of Time—eleven books plus prequel—there's a lot of material there and they needed a book out fairly quickly, and so they needed somebody who was familiar with it already. But at the same time, if you just had a fan—like you said, learning to write is a process that can take decades, it certainly takes years and years to write well—and they didn't have that time to train somebody to write that well. And so I kind of look at myself, and say well, in some ways it's amazing and somewhat strange to me that I got chosen. But in other ways, it's like I am the only person sitting there in the middle between those two circles, and so I was in some ways the only choice.
Michael R. Mennenga
Very well said, actually.Tags
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael Stackpole
Oh yeah, and I had similar feelings when I got the X-Wing books. What I'd like you to talk about if you can is, what was the experience like having gone through the books as a fan and then having to go back through as a writer, now using this as core material? What were the changes that went on and the things that went on in your head as you were suddenly approaching this not as fun and games any more, but as actual work?Brandon Sanderson
Right. Yeah, I did a read through of the entire series right after I was offered the project. The first thing I did was sit down with my notebook to re-read everything. And those were some of the strangest months of my life. It took me three months to re-read, taking notes, because I was making that reconciliation. I was looking at it now as a writer. And in one way, I was trying to make the decision at that point how much I was going to try to imitate Robert Jordan's style. You know, I had looked at Robert Jordan through the eyes of a writer before. I'd looked at his work because I was a big fan, and I was wanting to write myself, and so I spent time analyzing his work. But now, as a professional writer, I looked at it very differently. And looking at this, I had to decide: am I going to try to imitate his voice? How can I make a book that I write feel like a Wheel of Time book, while at the same time not sounding like a parody of Robert Jordan? How can I do this? That was a big aspect of it. But another aspect of it was kind of what you mentioned there, where I was reading through, and I was having to approach it in a completely different tack. To give an example of this, there were many times when I was reading along, and that fan inside me would say, 'oh I wish this would happen.' And then I would stop, and I would say, 'well, I can make that happen if I want it to.'Michael Stackpole
(laughter) Exactly.Brandon Sanderson
Right. But then the question becomes, is it appropriate in the story? Is it gonna make a better story? Just because the fan wants it, is it right to do? And so, working on this book, I have to say, it's been one of the hardest experiences in my life, working on this trilogy, and one of the most rewarding. And it's taught me so much. I mean, there are two thousand named characters in the Wheel of Time with whom I have to be intimately familiar. I have to keep track of all of this stuff, and all of these plot lines. There are several dozen different plot lines. And these are not small books—400,000 word novels, several of them are. And so, keeping all of this in the air and becoming essentially an expert on all of it has taught me a great deal about plotting as an epic fantasy writer. It's, I think, just made me a better writer overall.Tags
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael R. Mennenga
Yeah, I can see that, because it is a huge undertaking. I mean, the series is just gigantic. You said that you're using online sources and fan sites, and so forth, just kind of research. I guess you'd absolutely have to. There'd be no way to do this otherwise. Have you got any shout-outs to some of the better ones? Or do they know that you're reading?Brandon Sanderson
Oh yeah. There are several very good ones. The one I use most extensively is a place called Encyclopaedia WoT. The 'encyclopaedia' is spelled kind of the ancient way, with an extra 'a' in there somewhere. But anyway, Encyclopaedia WoT, what it's done is it's simply an index. It is an index of every character's appearance and which chapters they're in, with a short summary of that chapter. And that has been invaluable, because you'll have these moments, where you're like, okay I remember these two characters met, what did they say to each other? You can go to those characters' index, find where they are, and then I can go read those scenes from Robert Jordan's books. And so, it's very useful.
Tarvalon.net also has some very extensive sort of wiki-style articles about the Wheel of Time world that I've used for reference in various instances to help me along. So, those two in particular, but there's a lot of very good Wheel of Time web sites out there. For those looking for a good community, Dragonmount is a great place to go to just be part of a community. There's some more recent ones, like Thirteenth Depository, which have some very interesting things going on. The really psycho one is a place called Theoryland, in which people get around and argue their weird and wacky theories about what's going to happen in the books. And that can be very interesting from my standpoint, knowing what's going to happen in the books, going there and seeing what people are thinking, and hoping for, and wondering about.
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Interview: May 24th, 2010
Dragon Page: Cover to Cover Interview (Verbatim)Michael R. Mennenga
Right, right. That's awesome. That was actually going to be one of my next questions is: what do you think the fans are really wanting out of this trilogy, and have you been addressing some of that, or are you just going your own route?Brandon Sanderson
Well, as a fan myself, I've been...how shall I say? It's important to listen fan response, but it's important not to be driven by it. And that's a very fine line to walk because, as we said, what the fan wants isn't necessarily what will make the best story. Sometimes you have to do things that, you know, they're going to be angry about, but in the long run will like more. And fortunately, I have very extensive notes from Robert Jordan, outlines and these sorts of things to use. I'm not just coming up with it all myself. There are big holes, things that I have a lot more freedom on, and there are other places where he wrote down what needs to happen, and I'm following that because it's what's appropriate to do. So, I am looking at fan expectations, but more it's to help guide how I present things and less about making me decide what to present, if that makes any sense.Tags
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Interview: May, 2009
Macmillan Interview at Book Expo America (Verbatim)Question
I know fans of the series have a lot of questions about how you ended up being the writer for this.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.
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Interview: May, 2009
Macmillan Interview at Book Expo America (Verbatim)Question
And when you started to work on the book, did you have to really go back and study the Wheel of Time books? Even though you knew them so well.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. I had read Wheel of Time—I'd read the first book eight times, as I recall. And you know, I would re-read the series when a new one would come out often. And so, I had a good reading knowledge of the series, but that's very different from writing it. And so, January to March of 2008, I re-read the entire series, taking notes as the writer. A very strange process, I'll be honest, because half of me was reading this as a reader and a fan of the series. And as a reader and a fan—at least this is what I do—you have to extrapolate: "Oh, what if this happens? Oh, will this happen? Oh, could this happen?" There was the other half of my brain that was saying, "Wait a minute. You're the writer now, Brandon. What if this happens? Well, you know what will happen, and if it wasn't in the notes, you can decide if it's appropriate for it to happen." And so the two pieces of my brain were having a very interesting dialog, where the author side was saying, "That's not appropriate to the story even though you really want it." Or saying, "Oh yeah, we could do this." And the fan and the author coming together and saying, "Yay, we can do this," and then to allow for it, or there's a scene where we could do this, or even sometimes, he actually said do this scene, so I could anticipate knowing it was coming when no one else could. A very, very odd experience, but a very wonderful experience at the same time.Tags
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Interview: May, 2009
Macmillan Interview at Book Expo America (Verbatim)Question
And I know this is actually going to be not one final book, but three. And why is that?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, three. The split was decided by Tom, the publisher, and Harriet, who's not only Robert Jordan's wife but his editor for many years. They met before...you know, they got married because of the books, so she's been editing him for many many, years. Robert Jordan had been saying that this book would be big. He'd been saying it would be huge. In fact, he jokingly said they're going to have to sell carts to carry it on when you walk out of the store—it was going to be that big. We're looking at a book that was probably planned at eight hundred, nine hundred thousand words. Which, to give you relevance, a lot of books are around a hundred thousand words. That's a good normal size for many genres. Wheel of Time books, average is about three hundred thousand words. And we're talking about an outline for a nine hundred thousand word novel.
And I tried to write it as one. In fact, my goal was: I approached this as one novel, that's what he wanted, and I sat down and started writing. But the shear scope of that nine hundred thousand words—three times as long as a regular Wheel of Time book—was so large. And Tom Doherty started warning me pretty early, "Look, I know Jim said that this was going to be one book, but I'm telling you what I would have told him, that it's just not feasible to be publishing it as one book." Tom seriously believes that even Robert Jordan—even if he'd been around, it would have been three books.
Tom tells the story...he loves to talk about these things. Robert Jordan came in and pitched a trilogy to him. The Wheel of Time was supposed to be three books. Well, it's now been eleven books and a prequel, and a lot of times the scope of this thing, it takes a lot of work. And I don't want to cut any corners. I don't want to just slap together an ending. I want to give it the time it deserves, and the characters are all over the place, and they're slowly working back together for this conclusion, but it just wasn't right to try and just ram it together like that.
So I was going to write it the length that he was planning to write it. I'm still writing it the length that he was planning to write it. I'm not expanding it. I'm not contracting it. I'm writing it that length. And the realities of the publishing industry are that it needs to be three books at that length. I'm still hoping to convince people to publish it as a one-volume nice hardcover omnibus at the end, but that may be unfeasible. Tom keeps saying, "Boy, I just don't know if that's possible, Brandon." So, we'll wait and see. I'm going to keep pushing for it. But for right now, it is one book in my head, but it is going to be released in three volumes, hopefully fairly quickly.
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Interview: May, 2009
Macmillan Interview at Book Expo America (Verbatim)Question
How did it affect your other...? You write your own books, obviously, separate from this. How did continuing his series—did it have any effect on your own writing?Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it did, actually. Completing his series had a dramatic effect on my own writing. For one thing, I had to shelve a lot of projects I was working on, because this took precedence. But at the same time, I've had to go back to the master's work and really look at how he constructed stories. I think I've learned a lot. Writing this first third of A Memory of Light has been the most challenging thing I've ever done in my entire life. There's nothing to compare with it. It's like, you know, I was a runner used to going and doing the 500-meter dash and now I had to do a marathon. And it's forced me to stretch in a lot of different ways. And because of that, I think I've grown a lot as a writer, and I don't look at my own writing quite the same way any more.Tags
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Interview: 1993
Waldenbooks Hailing Frequency Interview (Verbatim)Hailing Frequency
There's an enormous geographical and historical sweep in this book. How much of this was defined when you began? What kinds of things are you finding in those obscure places on the map that the characters are getting to for the first time?Robert Jordan
Well, the cultures, the people they meet in different countries, were only very sketchy in the beginning. They're really no more divergent than the United States, France, and Germany were before you had television and movies. So there are well-defined national distinctions of dress and behavior and on top of that, national reputations in other countries. You know Americans are so and so, Germans are like this, [fill in the blank]. As far as the rest of it goes, there is perhaps more of a difference in the cultures than is explained by the size of the continent. In an earlier book, one of the characters talks about humanity falling back and shrinking, that nations were not there any more. National borders don't always run straight up to one another, and there are sometimes very large unclaimed spaces between countries. That sort of thing makes for more isolation, and of course, isolation makes for cultures being more different.Tags
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Interview: 1993
Waldenbooks Hailing Frequency Interview (Verbatim)Hailing Frequency
In many places in "The Wheel of time," a careful reader will spot echoes of other myth cycles—the sword in the stone, for example. Do these things happen fortuitously or are they laid on in advance, intentionally as it were?Robert Jordan
Well, they were laid on in advance. There are elements from Norse, Chinese, Japanese, and American Indian mythologies, to name just a few. I think it adds resonance to the story, although I've taken great care not to follow the older material in any slavish way. Occasionally, I will add in details here or there, and then discover that I have done something that is absolutely authentic to the myth I was working from. This is not automatic writing or channeling or being guided by something from the Great Beyond, it's simply that I have done a great deal of reading on these subjects and things bubble up in the back of my head all the time.Tags
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Interview: Oct 25th, 1994
LOC Signing Report - Edward Liu (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
I asked him of the three women in love with Rand who he (RJ) preferred; he said because all the women characters were based on his wife, he couldn't say which he liked most. Maybe I was getting too personal. Dunno.Tags
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Interview: Jun 17th, 1995
East of the Sun Interview - Helena Lofgren (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
On the question on the "alignment" of the characters, he said that there are no completely good character in the books, as he thought such a character would be completely boring (right—Galad is boring!—my comment), and would probably be killed rather quickly, like other fully good persons in the world. He took Jesus as example of this. Instead, every person struggles with the good and bad sides of his/her personality.
Another point he pressed was that "no one's going to rescue you", there are not going to happen any miracles. The Creator shaped the world and set the rules, but does not interfere. Humankind messed things up, and have to fix it too, as well as finding the truth themselves.
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Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Jason Atkinson (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
He also said that the tape versions of the books mangled a lot of the pronunciation.Tags
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Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - Jason Atkinson (Paraphrased)Jason Atkinson (22 November 1998)
I just remembered one more thing. My brother, who has just decided to join the newsgroup, asked if Robert Jordan had any of the rules worked out for the games mentioned in his books.Robert Jordan
His answer was "Some of them." As RJ was literally walking out at the time, there was no chance to ask which ones or if he would market any of them.Tags
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Interview: Nov 21st, 1998
TPOD Signing Report - John Novak (Paraphrased)Question (22 November 1998)
A lot of people asked pronunciation questions.
Robert Jordan
He remarked that no one ever seemed to read the glossaries. He also remarked that one of the taped versions (I omitted this earlier because I didn't catch the publishers) was just awful about this—they stopped calling for clarifications about halfway through the first book. He thought this meant they had enough to extrapolate correctly for the rest of them. They did not.
He ended by commenting that everyone was going to come up with their own internal pronunciations anyway.
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2011
Twitter Tor Chat (Cosmere) (Verbatim)seaksstamp (14 November 2011)
What is your favorite book you've written?
Brandon Sanderson (14 November 2011)
Favorite is hard to pin down. I'm most proud of either The Gathering Storm or The Way of Kings, as they were among the hardest and most satisfying.
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Interview: Jul 2nd, 2011
Fantasy Faction Interview (Verbatim)Marc Aplin
Something I found interesting between Brandon Sanderson and other writers. Peter Brett, for example, when he finished his Painted Man/Warded Man book—depending on which country you're in—his agent did like it, but he said that there was some things in it that didn't quite fit the market. So Peter went away, he read this book—Writing to Sell, I believe it was called—and he came back and gave his book back to the agent after having kind of revised it from this book. And the agent loved it, and you know what happened with that one. It's one of the most popular fantasy series going on at the moment. Something similar happened to Brandon. When he sent his work out to publishers, they thought it was good, but they weren't really sure how it met with the market's expectations. Brandon went away, he started writing stories that he thought the market would like, and in his own words, he thought it killed his writing. So, what I wanted to know from Brandon is, what is it about his work that means he can't write towards the market successfully; instead he has to, in his own words again, write from the heart to make his story successful.Brandon Sanderson
That's an excellent question, and there are different viewpoints on this. For instance, I remember talking to John Scalzi, and he said, "You know, when I wanted to publish, I went and looked and saw what was cool, what was selling. And I went and I wrote my own take on some of that." And that worked fantastically well for him. And I think for me part of the problem was—now, one thing I'll add as a caveat to this: yes, write from the heart, but make sure you are reading widely. Read widely what you want to write, but also read a lot of things from varying different genres and whatnot.
I just found that if I tried to anticipate what people wanted, rather than writing what I wanted, I wrote terrible books. And when I gave no care to what people wanted and only gave care to what I thought made a fantastic book, I did a good job. And this might have to do with the fact that I was just bad at judging what people wanted. That could be it. But probably it has more to do with the fact that I naturally write... A lot of my books added a big, long epic length. And what people kept telling me is, you need to write shorter books. You need to write books like so-and-so. Or like so-and-so. And that was wrong advice for me. I didn't need to write books like so-and-so, or like so-and-so. I didn't need to write books like George R. R. Martin, as fantastic a writer as he is. I didn't need to write books like him; I needed to write books like me. And that's what worked for me.
Different writers will have different things that work for them. And certainly I can write...I can write things that...like for instance, I write on the Wheel of Time. And in those cases, I'm taking very...I'm taking a lot of pain to make sure that what I'm writing fits with the genre, with the stories that have come before, and what the readers expect these stories to be like. And so I can do it. But I love doing it on the Wheel of Time. And I don't know what the difference is between doing it there on the Wheel of Time and those early days that I spent trying to write toward the market and having a horrible experience.
For me, I need complete creative freedom; otherwise my books have no life to them. And even with the Wheel of Time, Harriet is giving me complete creative freedom to do whatever I think needs to be done to tell great stories. And I think I thrive in that situation. If I instead had come into the Wheel of Time and they would have said, "You have to do this exactly, this exactly, this exactly, this exactly," I think I would have done a poor job. I would have been the wrong author. But that's not what they wanted; they wanted someone they could turn it over to, who would really take ownership of it. In a small part; of course it doesn't belong to me, but you know what I mean. I take real pride and say, "I'm going to do this the best way that I know how." And not just write a book and be done with it, but say, "No, this is..." I can't even explain the difference. This is me now. The Wheel of Time, I am inexorably linked to it, and my soul is linked to it. And those aren't those books I wrote for these people. Those are books that I am deeply, deeply, emotionally involved in. And I can only, I think, do that because I've reading them for so long since I was a kid.
Marc Aplin
Thank you.
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Interview: Dec 7th, 2000
CNN Interview (Verbatim)Michele Dula Baum
Like the merchandising maelstrom that surrounds the "Star Trek" franchise, "Star Wars" and Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," there are now role-playing games and trading cards. A company called Museum Replicas is recreating weapons, belt buckles and some "Wheel of Time" clothing.Robert Jordan
NBC bought an option to do a miniseries based on the first book, but Jordan said odds are against a television movie, at least for now.
"I've been told the key people involved in getting that contract together have left NBC," he said. "That means it's highly unlikely the option will be exercised."
He finds this amusing in light of an apparent resurgence in sword-and-sorcery epics. A "Lord of the Rings" film is now being made in New Zealand, and a "Dungeons and Dragons" movie is set to open December 8.
Still, such things "are all peripheral, anyway," said Jordan. "The books are what's important to me."
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Interview: Sep 7th, 2009
Bill Cunningham
Let's flip the conceptual pancake a little bit in terms of collaboration, and let's think about the idea of you coming up with the concept, you creating the world, and then turning that over to other people to write short stories about.
Brandon Sanderson
Right. Yeah, I've considered that. I know that Eric Flint has had a lot of success with that, and created an entire community based around—what's it, the...1632? Is that the name? It's a number, so [?]—it's his big alternate history line where the community has essentially created a short story magazine based in this world almost without his involvement—he's of course been involved, but it's [?], and it's fascinating how the fans have jumped into this world and really created something where it's essentially sanctioned fanfic by Eric, which becomes canon because they all work together and create this story together. It's very interesting. I've considered doing that with novel ideas—and you see this happening sometimes with writers—I've got, now with the Wheel of Time that takes so much of my dedication and time—and, you know, rightly so; I want these books to be fantasticvI can't work on all the side projects I used to, which is a little bit sad to me, so I've considered getting some authors that I know and respect who are wanting to break in, writing out a 20,000-word outline and saying, "Okay, take this and make it 90,000 words; let's see what it turns into. I've considered doing that; I don't know if I'll ever actually do it, but I've considered seeing what that would do.
BILL CUNNINGHAM
Well, it does have its roots in the old pulp publishing model, where the editor would assign a story concept or a character to a writer, and also, in the 60s there was a gentleman by the name of—and he's somebody I've been researching lately, so he's on my mind as I say this—his name was Lyle Kenyon Engel, and he was a gentleman who gave John Jakes one of his major breaks, and James Reasoner, who was a huge Western author—some of their breaks, and several other very well-known authors of mysteries and genre fiction—their breaks—but he was, in essence, a "book packager". He would come up with the concept; he would pitch the publisher, and say "We're going to create a series of books based around this central character. I will have my writers write it, but this is basically what you're going to get." You know, "Can we put you down for," you know, "this series of eight books, and then we'll go from there." You know, and then he would hire the writers to write for that. Being as you're, you know, in the Wheel of Time now, you know...tremendous opportunity...
BRANDON SANDERSON
Mmhmm.
BILL CUNNINGHAM
The drawbacks are that you're working in somebody else's wheelhouse.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yep.
BILL CUNNINGHAM
But is that really a drawback?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Well, for this particular project, no. But it's very specific. There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, I read Eye of the World in 1990 in paperback when it first came out and have been reading these books as they came out ever since. I read them through numerous times. One of my favorite authors of all time, if not my favorite author, is Robert Jordan. And so, the chance on the fanboy side...heh. To be perfectly honest, to work on this, to take this master who's inspired me, and then be part of it, is incredible.
BILL CUNNINGHAM
I can hear the glee from here.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah. It's amazing. I don't know that I would have said yes to anyone else, because of some of the limitations. Now, another limitation that I don't have to deal with in this that you do have to in other shared worlds is...Harriet, the editor and wife of Robert Jordan, handed me the project and essentially gave me carte blanche, said "Okay, this is your project now. You write this project as you feel you need to write it. Here are the notes." You know, "Don't throw out anything from the notes unless you've got a really good reason, but you're in charge." I'm not just the writer; I'm the project manager and the story developer and all these things wrapped up in one, which is what you're not if you're writing for something like Star Wars. You are one of many; you have to be micro-managed quite a bit, as I understand, when you're writing for one of these type of properties.
BILL CUNNINGHAM
[Something about Wikipedia]
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah. I don't have to do that. Now I do have to make sure I'm being consistent with the world and things, but I've got lots of continuity experts in-house who can help me to make sure that that happens, but really, I've got creative control. The final say is with Harriet, but I've got a lot of creative power. And I'm using that to actually not use it very often. Whenever Robert Jordan has something in the notes, I'm using what he said—I'm not taking this and trying to make it my own—but it is incredibly liberating to work on a project like this and also have, at the same time, this creative control. So that's another aspect of it.
Now, the big limitation is, it doesn't belong to me—which is fine, for this project—but that's the thing you have to get into. Like, when that "book packager" is pitching a series of books, he's gonna own that story from the copyright, which makes me very wary as a writer. The other great thing about being an author as opposed to being in film, or being in television, or even being in music a lot of times is that you, as the writer, own the whole thing. You generally don't sign away characters, worlds, setting, or anything—it's all yours. You have complete control over your story. A publisher like Tor buys the rights generally to publish it in English in North America. That's what they do. They get to package it how they want, they have control over the art and things like that, but the words are mine, and I retain control. The copyright is mine, which is fantastically different than if you're working in the video game industry, for instance. If you're working for a company and you come up with this brilliant, wonderful story, and you've developed it, and you work on it, and you have this amazing video game come out, the company then owns rights to all that, and can do whatever they want with it. The same thing generally with comic books—not always, but a lot of the time—and, you know, what you get instead is a regular paycheck, which for an artist is a pretty nice thing, but you trade off on that creative control, and creative ownership. And in novels you still have that creative ownership. It's the only major entertainment medium where the creator retains ownership so wholly.
And so, that's the biggest thing that worries me about collaborations and things like that is, you know, who has ownership? This is the last, so-to-speak, line of defense in that. Some other industry executives' minds when they find out... If something gets really big like Harry Potter, Scholastic or Bloomsbury doesn't own that; J. K. Rowling does. And by the corporate-think, that's really ridiculous; they shouldn't be allowing that to happen. But for the artist, it's what's best for the series, I think, and the story, and it allows the artist to be in control. So, yeah. That's the big line of defense, and we are very, very wary in science fiction and fantasy in particular, about letting any sort of contract language slip in which would infringe on that.
CHRISTIAN LINDKE
One of the challenges of the translation of Terry Goodkind's novels to the television is the fact that, here you have of these long epic novels that advance, in Terry's case, a particular philosophic position, and you end up with a pretty good [?]—I'm not disparaging the show; I actually really like Legend of the Seeker—but it's very different to watch that kind of slapsticky, samurai-y moment in the middle of Terry Goodkind's story. So I know exactly what you're saying; I think it's a perfect example.
BRANDON SANDERSON
And just think if they'd been able to do Wizard's First Rule as a complete, one-season epic arc, rather than having to worry about slapstick and things like this.
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Interview: Dec 5th, 2000
WH Signing Report - Br00se (Paraphrased)Br00se
The next question dealt with him designing cultures.Robert Jordan
He gave a familiar answer about how he started by saying if one thing is true about the people, he would ask what three other things must be true. He then repeats this until he is satisfied that he has enough to work with. He used the Aiel as an example, starting with them living in a dry wasteland, what else must be true.Tags
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Interview: Dec 5th, 2000
WH Signing Report - Br00se (Paraphrased)Robert Jordan
The next question prompted him to discuss how he drew from many different cultures and mythologies for his inspiration. This has all been reported on before.Tags
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Interview: Dec 5th, 2000
WH Signing Report - Br00se (Paraphrased)Br00se
The next person asked about the WOT computer action game.Robert Jordan
He said that the game designers did a fine job with it, but didn't get everything he wanted in there. This is mostly because of the limitations of the Unreal engine. His role in creating it was pretty limited because he was writing a book at the time.
Something came up about Wizards of the Coast. He said that they were working on an online WOT game. If he gave more details, I missed them.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Shaun Duquette (12 January 2012)
Are you almost done whatever it is you're doing with A Memory of Light? Because drawing out the last book is getting crazy.Brandon Sanderson (12 January 2012)
I'm trying to get it revised as quickly as I can. This book is going to need a lot of care to make sure I don't miss anything.
EIREMAUVE (13 JANUARY)
Who has the most POVs? Is it a tie between a couple people?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Boy, I haven't counted. Rand/Perrin/Egwene/Mat are all probably about neck and neck.
L-Etrengere
[Now-protected tweet that said something about Egwene getting so many POVs.]
BRANDON SANDERSON
Well, she IS one of the main characters of the series. It would be kind of odd to leave her out of the Last Battle...
WILL HAGEN
Will there be an audiobook release along side the text (with Micheal perhaps)?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, there should be.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Okay, I'm off until later tonight. Progress on the revision is going well; I expect to be done by mid-February, maybe by the end of January.
NICK
Is there an official release date for the final book yet? Last I heard was March.
BRANDON SANDERSON
There isn't yet, though it will be fall. Harriet asked for more time to edit, and I needed time to do more research.
JARED OLSEN
You probably hear this often, but you have done an outstanding job on WOT books. Thank you for honoring Jordan and saving fans. #mistborn
BRANDON SANDERSON
It has been an honor.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (19 January 2012)
Right now, taking a (short) break from the WoT rewrite to spend an evening working on the Mistborn video game script.
MAUZ ZEKERIA
Any plans for a WoT game?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, there are many plans. I don't know how far along they are, however.
MARIT K. AMUNDSEN
Any news for a date on WoT?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Fall, most likely.
BRANDON SANDERSON
For those curious, I did finish the video game work I needed to do last night, and am back at work on the WoT revision today.
PAUL MCINTYRE
Was Towers of Midnight the last book to be published? I live in Ireland so news travels slow. XD
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)Brian Condon (25 January 2012)
Just wondering if there will be any sort of way RJ's ending will stand out, or if it just flows with your work.Brandon Sanderson (25 January 2012)
I think those who know our different writing styles will be able to pick out the differences.
BRANDON SANDERSON
It depends on how closely one watches the prose.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (25 January 2012)
Saw an ad for a LAN party today, and (I kid you not) my first thought was: "What's Lan doing away from the battlefield?"Tags
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (8 February 2012)
Oh, bureaucracy, you are my bane. It always takes me like five minutes to figure out how to spell that word...
BRANDON SANDERSON
Other fun things from Brandon's spelling mind: I always want to write Darlin Sisnera's name "Darlin Sinestro." Crossover time!
BRANDON SANDERSON
Don't even get me started on algai'd'siswai and siswai'aman, by the way.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Just updated the % for A Memory of Light draft two to 70%. Should have the whole book done and off to Harriet in a week or so.
KIERAN KERR
Hi Brandon. What's the official release date for the final Wheel of Time novel? Can't wait!!!!
BRANDON SANDERSON
I don't think there is one yet. Fall, sometime, probably. But Harriet is the one who will decide.
BRANDON SANDERSON
A lot of people ask after the release date. Fall/Winter this year is still likely. However, I would like to note that Harriet is in charge.
BRANDON SANDERSON
She hasn't yet read the entire book; she gets to decide when it will be released. She can delay it or push it up, whatever she wants.
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
Congratulations on receiving this landmark opportunity. How are you feeling?Brandon Sanderson
Honestly? I'm feeling daunted. And still a little sad. There was only one person who could have written this book the way it was supposed to be written, and he is gone now. I think I'll do a good job (to be honest, I think I'll do a great job) but I can't do the job he would have done. Nobody can.Tags
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
The Big Question most fans probably have is: "Why Brandon Sanderson?" What are your thoughts on this?Brandon Sanderson
Well. . . there are a lot of ways to answer that. First, I'll note that I'm still reeling about this news myself. I stop occasionally and think "Wait, am I REALLY doing this?" It seems incredible to me, so I can understand why fans might think "Brandon Sanderson, why him?"
The first way I could answer that question is by giving a list of my writing credentials. I know how to write fantasy books. I understand how to plot over a long epic book, and my novels have been very well received by both reviewers and fantasy fans. I write epics after the flair of the Wheel of Time, yet my books (I hope) aren't just a copies of what Robert Jordan and others have written. I think that's important. I've read fantasy since I was a kid, and I understand what made these books great.
However, I'm not sure if credentials are main reason I was chosen for this project.
A second answer to that question might be this: "Why Brandon Sanderson? Because he's as much a fan of the series as you are." I've been with The Wheel of Time since the paperback release of The Eye of the World back when I was fifteen years old. I've read the early books of the series through six or seven times now. I'm the guy who was in the right position to help out on this project: I have both the skill to accomplish the task and a deep love of the series.
Again, though, I'm not sure if that's the right answer.
The right answer, then, is probably this third one: "Why Brandon Sanderson? Because he's the one Harriet chose."
Harriet was given full authority over this matter. It was her decision. While others gave her some suggestions, she's now the ultimate authority over anything relating to The Wheel of Time. She read my book Mistborn, and from doing so picked me to write A Memory of Light. (And I think that leads right into the next question.)
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
How did you first get involved in this project? Were you approached by Tor and/or Harriet, or did you dust off your resume and send it to them for consideration?Brandon Sanderson
When I heard that Mr. Jordan had passed away, I was deeply saddened. Like everyone else, I was waiting for the final book—and last I had heard, he was doing better and was confident that he'd be able to pull through.
After I got over the shock of his death, I did think "Wow. I wish I could help out on this project somehow." I loved the books, and if someone was going to be involved in finishing the series, I wanted to be there. However, I didn't feel it was appropriate to solicit work on it. There are a couple of reasons why.
1) I figured that Harriet, Tom, and the people at Tor would be busy grieving as I was, and it just didn't feel right to me to respond to Mr. Jordan's death with a play for the series. As I noted in the essay I wrote about his passing, with Mr. Jordan's death, the fantasy community suddenly changed. There would be time for thinking about the final book later. For now, it was time to think about what this man had meant to the genre and its readers.
2) I assumed that there was a good chance someone had already been chosen to work on the project. I trusted that Harriet and Tom Doherty knew what they were doing, and would see that the book got written in good time.So, I didn't send in a request—or even a question—about the future of The Wheel of Time. I was dumbfounded and honored when—a month or so after the death—Harriet called me on the phone to inquire if I was interested. I got the impression that she was calling several authors (I don't know how many) and making sure that they were willing before she invested the time in reading their work.
About a month later (this would be around mid November) she called me again and said that she had been touched by the writing of Mistborn, and had decided she wanted me for the project immediately. However, she'd made certain to take time and think about the decision before offering it to me officially. At that time, she made the offer—and I accepted. (With great excitement.)
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
What was your initial reaction when you read the outline Harriet put together for A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
I actually haven't seen it yet. All I know is that there IS an outline, as well as some other material that Mr. Jordan gave via dictation. I'm flying out to sort through it and speak with Harriet, and will probably be there when this interview goes public on Monday the 10th.Tags
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
You've said before in other interviews that your fantasy novels (Elantris, and the Mistborn series) were born in part by the notion of taking a typical fantasy concept and turning it on its head. For example, you said that while The Wheel of Time is about "peasants becoming kings", your Elantris book is about "Kings who become peasants." And one of the fundamental ideas behind the Mistborn series is the question: "What if the Dark One won?" Having explored those interesting ideas, what's it like to suddenly find yourself writing the ending of a massive series which in large part defined the fantasy genre that many readers are familiar with?Brandon Sanderson
It's exciting, to be honest. The characters and setting to this world are so deep, so complex, so FASCINATING that it's going to be a worldbuilder's pleasure to look through the notes and begin work on the project. It will be hard, and it is certainly daunting, but it's also an amazing opportunity.
As you said, a lot of my work is a direct reaction to the fantasy I read when I was young. Not against it, really, but an attempt to build upon it and take the epic fantasy in new directions. Yet, I've always wanted my books to still FEEL like fantasy, and the Wheel of Time is part of what defines what feels like fantasy in our era.
A part of me has always wanted to deal with the classic fantasy themes, which is why Mistborn was about turning them on their heads. The chance to get right to the source and work with a series that defined those themes. . .it's just plain amazing.
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
In what ways do you think you'll have to shift your writing style to match Robert Jordan's? Will you be trying to write in his "voice", or will you approach the novel with your own?Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
We know that Robert Jordan left extensive notes, as well as some audio tapes and actual written parts for this novel. We know your intent is to tell his story. Having seen the outline, how much of the actual plot (the plot points, character arcs, intrigue, etc) do you think you'll have to come up with on your own?Brandon Sanderson
I honestly don't know yet. (As mentioned above.) I think we should probably do another interview about this in the coming months, as I will have a better idea.
However, know that I intend to use EVERY BIT of actual written text from Mr. Jordan, and in intend to follow those outlines as exactly as possible. I've been told that there is a substantial amount that I will have to come up with, but I will always have a guide—if only a few lines or dictated explanations.
And, as I understand it, the notes about the ending are very detailed—I think the last chapter may even have been written in full. If that's the case, then I'll be very happy. I would much rather be the guy who writes the middle fifty chapters of this book than have to be the one who writes the last five.
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
Which characters or plot threads are you most looking forward to writing?Brandon Sanderson
The Wheel of Time turns. The most exciting thing for me will be to tie the events of this last book back to those of the first book, as I think that is what this story is all about. On a more personal note, Perrin has always been a favorite of mine. I think his story is the one I'm most looking forward to resolving.Tags
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Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
Are there any particular aspects of the book that you think will be especially challenging for you?Brandon Sanderson
The first is the depth of the setting. Though I've read these books several times, there is just SO MUCH to wrap your head around. Sitting here and thinking, I'm getting names mixed up and trying to remember just who is alive and who is dead. Obviously, I'm going to have to read the series through a few more times to get it all down, and I'm certainly glad for the Internet and the resources fans have created. I suspect you'll find me on Dragonmount occasionally asking for someone to look up an obscure fact or name for me!
The other item of particular challenge is the worry that I'll disappoint the fans. I am confident in my writing, but. . .wow. This is like being the final man at bat in the last inning of the World Series—I'm the guy who has to step up and either strike out get a hit to win. All of my training, practice, and studies are coming to a head.
I don't want to be the guy who ruined The Wheel of Time. I'll work very hard to make sure that doesn't happen.
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840
Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
What are some of your favorite scenes in The Wheel of Time series?Brandon Sanderson
It's probably a cliché to say so, but my favorite is still that opening scene of The Eye of the World—that's what grabbed me as a fifteen year old boy and said "You NEED to read this book!" Lews Therin standing over the body of his wife while he calls for her, after being driven insane. . . wow.
Though, that one's probably too obvious. There are a lot of others to choose from. The fight between Rand and Be'lal at the end of The Dragon Reborn was just plain cool. Another of my favorites is the scene where Lan rescues Nynaeve after that whole Moghedien-balefire incident. (I can't even remember which book that is right now.) Oh, and pretty much anything with Perrin in the later books. Not to mention the cleansing of saidin.
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841
Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
I know you probably can't go too deeply into it, but are there any questions about the story you had as a fan that you will make sure get answered in this final novel?Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. Who the flip killed Asmodean? And, beyond that, what's up with Moiraine? Is she alive or not?Tags
842
Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
Robert Jordan has talked many times about how he knew the last chapter of the last book very well. Are you able to tell us whether or not he wrote that chapter before he died, or will that be something you'll be putting to paper? If so, does that chapter in particular hold any particular challenge or significance for you?Brandon Sanderson
I spoke of this above, actually. I don't know for absolute certain, and I'm not sure how much I could say if I did know. However, what I've heard indicates that of all the parts of the book, the ending is the one that is the nearest to completed, if not done itself.Tags
843
Interview: Dec 8th, 2007
Dragonmount Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Jason Denzel
Do you have a personal message for all the Wheel of Time fans?Brandon Sanderson
This will not be my book. This book belongs to you, to Harriet, and to Mr. Jordan. It is an honor to be able to help, and I will dedicate all that I have to making the book one that Mr. Jordan himself would be pleased with.Tags
844
Interview: 2012
n3xus1 (January 2012)
I have been reading the wot for more that half my life. I love it. I just finished my nth read through and let me say that Sanderson does an amazing job. I loved all of his books, if you have not read mistborn you are missing out. Ok that said I am fairly certain that the curse is "Blood and ashes" or in cases of extreme stress and/or Uno, "Blood and bloody ashes". Maybe even "blood and bloody flaming ashes". But NEVER was it simply "bloody ashes". Thank you, that is all. Sorry for typos wrote this on my phone, while riding a raken.
Brandon Sanderson
It's okay.
I've done this intentionally. It's a personal quirk of mine from my linguistic background. I feel that many constructions like this, over time, will simplify. As the world of the WoT has been modernizing, I feel that slowly "Bloody and bloody ashes" would shorten. I've used the longer version in the books, but have begun pushing the oaths toward their more clipped versions as part of a subtle linguistic shift to accompany the birth of things like gunpowder and steam power.
Our world's own oaths have done this quite aggressively.
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845
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010
Aidan Moher
It's been one year since The Gathering Storm was first published. How much did feedback from fans and critics affect you while writing Towers of Midnight?Brandon Sanderson
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.
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846
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010
Aidan Moher
What did writing The Gathering Storm teach you that made Towers of Midnight a better book?Brandon Sanderson
Two things: First, how to juggle a large number of plotlines and viewpoints. (Something I'd failed at in drafts of unpublished books during my earlier years as a writer.) I couldn't afford not to do this well.
Second, I believe I learned a lot about character viewpoint and narrative. (Most of this came from reading Mr. Jordan's books with a much more detailed eye than I'd done in recent years.)
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847
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010
Aidan Moher
Towers of Midnight is reputedly a very Mat Cauthon-heavy book. One of the criticisms leveled at The Gathering Storm was that you had trouble capturing Mat's very distinct voice and personality. Do you feel like you have a better handle on Mat now that you're a volume into your tenure with The Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
Yes. See above.Tags
848
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010
Aidan Moher
You're known for creating very intricate and logical magic systems in your novel; what was it like jumping into a magic system already established and created by another author?Brandon Sanderson
Well, considering that the Wheel of Time's magic system was a foundational inspiration for the way I do magic systems, I'd say this wasn't actually as big a problem as one might assume. Yes, Mr. Jordan does some things with magic very differently than I do. But his use of an underlying logic, mixed with excellent visual imagery and a science to the magic, is part of what I've long loved about the series.
The biggest trouble for me has been remembering which specific combinations of which specific powers create which specific weaves.
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849
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010
Aidan Moher
One of the perks associated with finishing The Wheel of Time is that you've read all of Robert Jordan's notes. Now that you know all the secrets (including stuff that won't even appear in the novels), how has your appreciation for the series changed?Brandon Sanderson
It's been an interesting experience. So far as I know, I'm the only person in the world to have ever read through—beginning to end—the Wheel of Time, starting with Book One and continuing through until I reached the final scenes Robert Jordan wrote before he passed away. (Maria might have done it, but I don't think so—she pretty much has the books memorized by now, and seems to spot-read more than she reads straight through.)
This is an experience others will start having in the coming years, and perhaps they'll agree with me that it DOES change the series. First off, you gain a better appreciation for Robert Jordan's ability to foreshadow. Second, the slow parts don't seem so slow any longer, particularly as you see books seven through fourteen as being one large novel.
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850
Interview: Nov 2nd, 2010
Aidan Moher
Is there anything that Jordan wrote into the earlier novels that causes you to grind your teeth? If you could change one small thing from earlier in the series, what would it be?Brandon Sanderson
Oh, wow. You know, I've never thought about that before. I believe Robert Jordan himself said he'd have done Book Ten differently, if he had to do it over again. (Though I've never been a large book ten hater.) Honestly...I'd probably cut a spanking scene or two. :)Tags
851
Interview: Sep, 2000
Tahir Velimeev
In recent years, computer games that are based on literary works (including fantasy/science fiction) have become very popular. For example, "World-ring" by Larry Niven, "Shannara" by Terry Brooks ... Have the creators of virtual worlds turned their attention to creating something from the Wheel of Time universe?Robert Jordan
As far as I know, not so long ago a Wheel of Time role-playing game was released by Legend Entertainment. My friend, writer John M. Ford, acquainted me with its creators. Incidentally, he facilitated the appearance of a desktop-type card game similar to Magic issued by the company Precedence.Tags
852
Interview: Sep, 2000
Tahir Velimeev
And how are things going with film producers? Have they brought up the acquisition of rights for a film adaptation?Robert Jordan
Several times interest in the possibility of adapting my books for film has come up. One television station even wanted to buy the rights to create the series, but I, frankly, took to their proposal with a fair amount of skepticism. Because the book is full of events, the series could get very long ... Basically all of these proposals have been the same and might as well be smoke in the wind. More likely there will be an animated film as by a Japanese studio. We will have to wait and see.Tags
853
Interview: Sep, 2000
The Faith Kamsha
The theme of "Wars of the future", raised to the fifth congress of Russian fiction, has an eerie, but not completely unexpected development. Now we do not see skyscrapers crumble before our eyes in the catastrophe movies, but in documentaries, and they have created no mythical King Kong, but one that is at least biologically related to the form of Homo Sapiens. Unfortunately, the science fiction writers were much closer to the truth than those who should have been able anticipate and prevent such events, if it was at all possible to prevent. Included among these authors is Robert Jordan, the author of the extraordinarily popular book series "The Wheel of Time", which is also a TV series in Russia. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Robert Jordan, speaks on the mechanisms and specific nature of 21st Century warfare.
In any case, Mr. Jordan's opinion about the past, present and future of the warfare seems to be very relevant and rather interesting.
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854
Interview: Oct 15th, 2010
17th Shard Interview (Verbatim)17th Shard
You said it was because of your work on The Wheel of Time that you were able to do this story justice. What did you mean?
Brandon Sanderson
Wheel of Time forced me to stretch as an author and it forced me to learn to juggle multiple viewpoints. I hadn't had a lot of practice writing sequels or planning sequels, and then I had to write the twelfth book in a fourteen book series. This taught me a lot about working with sequels. Also, seeing what Robert Jordan did for foreshadowing really taught me a lot about how to foreshadow across a big long epic. But I would say mostly it's just juggling the viewpoints, learning how to make sure all the characters are making appearances and we're enjoying them all and everything is balanced all without losing track.
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855
Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (10 March 2012)
I've been thinking lately of ways to give away digital copies of my books when you buy a hardcover. There are some issues with this.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I don't know much about the logistics; it may be impossible. If there is a way to make this work, I'd propose it to Tor and Harriet for A Memory of Light.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Here's a reddit thread where I mention issues with the process. Weigh in here or in that thread to give me advice.
SABERJ
The only way I could think of would be to include one-time use codes with the books. But what's to stop people from selling?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah. The other problem with that is securing the code. Books aren't wrapped up, so the code could be scratched off/stolen easily.
BRANDON SANDERSON
My preferred method would be to put a code in a book that, then, you can redeem for free or a small price. But how do we secure it?
NIC JOHNSON
You don't. Your stuff is already being pirated and publishers shouldn't consider those lost sales. Trust people a la Apple.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I'm not worried about piracy. However, a digital code that can be used many times seems foolish. A one-use would be stolen.
BRANDON SANDERSON
One use has to be secured, or the person buying the book is in danger of being ripped off.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Multi-use means that we're hosting the book, and paying the bandwidth, for those who want to pirate. Bad idea, I think.
NIC JOHNSON
I'll host it for you. :) No charge.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Lol. One other problem is that this needs to be reasonable enough to the publisher's ears to get them to go along.
NIC JOHNSON
My point exactly. Big Pub doesn't get the new model. They consider pirated copies as lost sales. See Seth Godin for new model.
BRANDON SANDERSON
The publishers aren't as ignorant as you think. The investors, however, are another story. (You're right about them.)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Tor has done plenty of giving away free, DRM-free ebooks. They did it with Mistborn, for example.
NIC JOHNSON
Ah! To me as an outsider they are one and the same. :)
BRANDON SANDERSON
Publishers and editors in sf/f tend to be techies. Notice that Cory Doctorow, with Tor's blessing, releases all of his books for free.
SABERJ
How is Marvel doing it? They don't tend to wrap Comics either.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I think you order directly from them, and they send you the comic and deliver through their own secure app.
ANNE BURNER
Baen used to put a CD copy of the book inside the hardcover versions of @davidweber1 Honor Harrington books.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I asked if we could do that, and the answer was that it was expensive enough it couldn't become the standard.
WES QUINT
Maybe like a gift card where it's only active after purchase?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yeah, this is probably the best idea. I don't know how hard that is to accomplish, though.
SABERJ
A lot of textbooks used to include a disc in the book for additional material. Discs are a bit harder to steal than codes.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Textbooks also have a much larger profit margin than novels. I asked about discs for my last book, and the publisher said no.
BRANDON SANDERSON
They said it was just too expensive.
BENJYMOUS
Old school tech, I know, but how about a coupon you have to fill in with your email address then post back to the publisher?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Ha. You know, I never thought about that. The problem is, how do we keep people from stealing them out of the books?
BRANDON SANDERSON
People with a nice hardcover don't want to cut their book apart to get a coupon.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Here are a couple of problems with what people are suggesting. 1) We don't want to shrink wrap books, but a code can be stolen very easily.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Anything involving the retailer verifying a code, or printing one out, requires large-scale involvement of retailers.
BRANDON SANDERSON
That's not something I can change. They may be working on this already. I want something I could take to Tor, that we could do in house.
TEREZ
Or if you're talking about securing the code in the book...it seems easy enough with textbooks. Peel-off? :)
BRANDON SANDERSON
People would walk into the store, peel off the sticker, write down the code, then sell it or use it.
BRAD LICKMAN
How do you stop people from sharing a hardcover copy?
BRANDON SANDERSON
The physical product can be made to set off an alarm. A code can be copied and carried out.
ANDREW YAGER
Could codes be single use? That would largely get around the securing problem?
BRANDON SANDERSON
People would walk into the store, write down the code, go home and download the book.
KYLE
What about one-time scratch codes like what's used on gift cards?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Those are usually activated by the retailer. I'd love for us to be able to do that, but it would involve more than I can do.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Another issue with this is that if I did it, I would need it to work for indy booksellers and not just Amazon/Barnes & Noble.
BRAD LICKMAN
Can you sell the digital copy at http://tor.com, which provides a coupon for the hardcover?
BRANDON SANDERSON
This is actually what I proposed to Tor a few years back, and they said they didn't want to offend the retailers.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I still like the idea, though.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I won't have time to reply to everyone here, but keep sending thoughts. I'll read and see if I can come up with something to take to Tor.
BEN FOXWORTHY
How about this: Put the code in the book. Don't secure it. Each code works three times. Hope people don't abuse it.
BRANDON SANDERSON
That risks punishing the person who buys the book (but their code has been stolen and used.)
BRANDON SANDERSON (12 MARCH)
More on the A Memory of Light ebook thing. What would you guys think if I tried to talk Tor into a 'special edition' release.
BRANDON SANDERSON
A kind of 'boxed set' that came with hardcover, ebook, audiobook, a medallion or other keepsake, and maybe some interviews with me & Harriet.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Shrink wrapped & sold at bookstores for, say, $50 instead of $30? Does that get too far away from the 'free ebook w/the hardcover' concept?
TEREZ
It does seem to defeat the purpose, as far as most people would be concerned. Though many would buy it.
DAVE PUTNAM (22 MARCH)
A Memory of Light e-book release announced with three month gap. Can you explain the rationale behind this? Lot of vitriol on Tor site.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Harriet worries, among other things, at the impact on the bestseller lists by releasing at the same time.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Ebooks make her uncomfortable.
FYODOR
Making us wait three three months for the A Memory of Light ebook is very obnoxious and shows contempt for the fan base. I have been reading...
FYODOR
...WOT since 1992 and deeply resent this type of staggering.
BRANDON SANDERSON
I've been working on it. The delay is not Tor, but Harriet, who worries at the implications of releasing an ebook immediately.
BRANDON SANDERSON
She originally wanted a six month, or longer, delay. I was able to persuade her to move to three months.
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856
Interview: Aug 31st, 2011
Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)thesnowflake ()
Sorry, another WOT question:
How much brainstorming did you do to simplify the plot? What was the process like? Robert Jordan wrote himself into a hole...
Brandon Sanderson
Once I got the project, I spent about six months building an outline. Mr. Jordan didn't outline extensively. Like GRRM and Stephen King, Robert Jordan was much a 'discover it as I go' type writer. He did have the endings for many of the characters in the notes, however, so you'd be surprised. He wasn't in as much a hole as you might have thought; mostly, it was the side characters who needed direction and a few of the mains needed bridging sequences to where he wanted them to be at the end.Tags
857
Interview: Apr 11th, 2012
A Chat with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Satima Flavell
When Robert Jordan, one of his favourite authors, died in 2007, Sanderson wrote a eulogy on his blog. (You can read it here.) It came to the notice of Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow. She had promised her late husband that she would ensure the series was finished, and as an editor of note herself, she was in a good position to choose a worthy successor. After being moved by Sanderson's eulogy, she hunted for his work, discovered The Final Empire and knew she'd found a writer worthy of bearing her husband's sceptre.
Brandon Sanderson
"The call came out of the blue," says Sanderson. "I felt excited, humbled and honoured all once." It was decided that the projected final volume, A Memory of Light, would be split in three. The first, The Gathering Storm was published in 2009, followed in 2010 by Towers of Midnight. Fans eagerly await the release of A Memory of Light in January 2013.
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Interview: Apr 11th, 2012
A Chat with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Satima Flavell
I remark that Sanderson's style had changed between Mistborn and his latest series, The Stormlight Archive.Brandon Sanderson
"Well," says Sanderson, "I try to use a different style for each series. But I've also learnt a lot from working on The Wheel of Time. Jordan's writing is so detailed, so subtle, so layered, that I can't help being influenced by it."Satima Flavell
He has, by the way, now used up all his backlist: The Way of Kings is the last of those early books and after this year he expects his output to slow down.Tags
859
Interview: Feb 16th, 2012
Brandon Sanderson
Tor and Harriet have set the release date for A Memory of Light. Again. While I've been working on the book, this has happened a half dozen times, with varying levels of publicity surrounding the date.
This time we're saying January 8th. How likely is this one? Well, honestly, I don't know. Seems like it's the most firm of the lot. However, you've got to understand a couple of things.
First off, I don't set release dates, particularly not on these books. I pick my deadlines, then work to meet them. Tor and Harriet decide when the book is going to come out, judging by editing requirements, market factors, and the workings of the publishing machine. I didn't find out this one had been set as this day until long after the fact. So please, complaining to me . . . well, it's just not going to do anything but distract me from working on the book.
Secondly, Harriet is very, VERY worried about getting this book right. It's the last book in the series. There are no chances to change things after this, and revising a book like this takes time. Harriet would probably prefer even more space than this publication date gives us. She also isn't capable of pulling the long hours she might once have pulled. (And she shouldn't be expected to.)
It's not all on Harriet, though, not by a mile. I turned in a 360,000-word book. That's 20% longer than what they wanted, and that means each step of editing and production will require 20% more time than they had set aside. In addition, while I've set my own deadlines, I've come right up against them and (in a few cases) tiptoed across. For example, instead of sending a revised book at the end of December, I only had a first draft. That's the length pushing me back and making me revise expectations.
I realize that all you care about is getting your book, and this sounds like a lot of excuses. But here's the thing. You'll get the book when Harriet is ready to give it to you. Not before. If this were just me, I could work a big pile of 16-hour days and get it to you in the fall. But it's not just me, and beyond that, the last time I did that (on Towers of Midnight, which went through eleven drafts) we ended up with a pile of typos and wore Harriet out so much she said she didn't recover for well over six months.
I sincerely thought that we'd be releasing the book this fall. January 8th was a surprise to me when they told me. However, Harriet picked the last possible week the book could reasonably come out, because she wants as much time as possible to edit it.
I still think it's very possible that all will go smoothly and Harriet will push the book up. It happened with The Gathering Storm, I believe, though that was only pushed up by a week. However, for now, we just have to assume January 8th is when it's coming out.
Best,
Brandon
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860
Interview: Mar, 2012
Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
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?
Brandon Sanderson
Ha! I can't give you something like that. I'm sorry. Nice try, though.
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861
Interview: Mar, 2012
Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
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?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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862
Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009
Louie Free
Oh, tell me about that call. What do you remember about the call? You gotta tell...oh, wow. What a story...tell me...sorry.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it was a really surreal experience. I actually got it as a voice mail. When I woke up in the morning, you know, you're groggy eyed. I'm two hours behind New York, the East Coast. Harriet, his wife, had called me. I was listening to my voice mails, you know, normal stuff, and there's just one there that says, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson. This is Harriet McDougal, the widow of Robert Jordan. I would like you to call me back. There's something I want to talk to you about."Louie Free
And what are you thinking it is at the time, did you know?Brandon Sanderson
I had no idea what to think. I mean, I had posted a eulogy to Robert Jordan on my web site, one of many who did that just because he meant so much to so many of us.Louie Free
And...I'm sorry, brandonsanderson.com. We've got links up at Louie Free Show to brandonsanderson.com. Go ahead, I'm sorry.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, yeah. You can read that original eulogy. I'm going to post a new link to it because a lot of people are coming by looking for it. Anyway, I posted that, and she had read that. A friend had given it to her because it had touched them. Harriet, his wife, is also his editor. There's a wonderful story there. I mean, she discovered Robert Jordan as a writer first, and then while working on the books together they fell in love and got married. And so, she'd been involved in his books from the beginning. But anyway, she had called me up to find out if I was interested in completing the Wheel of Time. I just assumed she'd read my eulogy and she wanted to call me to talk to me about that...I don't know what I'm thinking. I tried to call her back, but she didn't answer because she was actually out. It had been several hours since her call.Louie Free
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute...Brandon, were you freaking out, not being able to reach her?Brandon Sanderson
I was freaking out. My wife says...she says I was more nervous that day than on our wedding day.Louie Free
(cackles loudly)Brandon Sanderson
Yeah...she's just a little bit bitter about that. But you know, I replied I had six months to get ready for the wedding. This just came out of nowhere, dropped on me like a ton of bricks. So I'm sitting there kind of running around in circles. I call my editor and he doesn't respond, he's not in. I call my agent and he's not in. And so I go up and talk to my wife and I'm just talking a mile a minute. You know, I'm a fast talker, anyway, so you can imagine me that excited. It was just crazy. I eventually got a hold of her by calling up the publisher and saying, "Uh...I just got a call from Robert Jordan's widow." So they're like, "Oh yeah. We've been trying to get a hold of you all day. Okay, we'll get her to call you back." She said she just wanted to see if I was interested. She thought I was a potential prospect. She wanted to read my books first, but before even doing that she wanted to make sure I was interested. And I wasn't sure how to respond, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I didn't think, and I still don't think, anyone could replace Robert Jordan. He was an author like we don't get very often.Louie Free
Okay, but hold on, hold on. I'm sorry, hold on a sec...let me ask. Here you are, here you are. It's kind of like...you grew up on his nourishment for your brain—your brain food, if you don't mind. You grow up on this, you love this guy, I mean, you're freaked out he passes away, so there's not going to be more. You get a call from his wife slash life partner slash editor and she says, "Brandon, we want you to carry on the legacy of this guy that has been a 'small g' god to you." Correct? Is that a fair assessment?Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, oh yeah. That's a very fair assessment. That's the situation I'm in. I was so tongue-tied, Louie, that I don't think I was able to even speak two words together. I wrote her an email the next day that said, "Dear Harriet. I promise I'm not an idiot, even though I sounded like one." I took that whole night thinking about it. And eventually what I came up with was that I didn't think anyone could replace him, I didn't think I could replace him. I did not think that I could write as good a book as Robert Jordan could have, and I still don't think anyone could have written as good a book, because he should be here to write this book.
But I came to a decision that night. I realized if someone was going to write this book, I wanted it to be me. If it couldn't be Robert Jordan, I wanted it to be in the hands of somebody who loved and revered the series. I'd read some of the books eight times at that point. I'd reread most of the series all the way through often when a new book would come out. I knew that at least then it would be in the hands of someone who wouldn't take it and run off with it and make it their own, but would have tried to make it see his vision and be his story. And I'd made that decision, I realized, yes, I do want to do this. It's a tragedy that we lost him, but if I'm doing it, then I know it won't be screwed up. And so that's when I wrote her the email and said, "Harriet, I'm sorry I sounded like an idiot. I do want to do this, and these are the reasons."
Louie Free
She had to know that you were going to be...I mean, she had to know that whoever she called and obviously called the right person. Again, the results...the book, now available everywhere. If you camped out, you've already got yours. If you don't, you can have it. Please buy it at your local independent bookseller when you are able to. The Gathering Storm. It is The Gathering Storm. And it's Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan's name obviously prominent on the book. Gathering Storm...available everywhere. It is available at your independent bookseller. It is available in your neighborhood. Please, before you buy—I hope you don't mind this, Brandon—before you go to buy it online, buy it from a store where your neighbors and the people in your community are going to benefit.Tags
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Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009
Louie Free
I'm glad you say that, because again, you know, I'm an aging flower child, so that ought to tell you a lot. And you know, Tolkien—that was where it was at—Lord of the Rings. A now a lot of people—a new generation, after the movie came out—have gone back to read that. And you know, it was a different time, obviously. And I'm glad you brought up Tolkien because many talk about this as the new Tolkien—kind of like if you liked Tolkien, you're going to love Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. How do you feel about that?
Brandon Sanderson
You're going to love the Wheel of Time. I've read a lot of fantasy, a lot of fantasy. I've read a lot of things – I like to read widely now that I'm older. I think it's important to read widely and to be sampling lots of different stuff, particularly viewpoints you don't agree with so you can see what people are saying and listen to them. I think that's really what has to happen. But anyway, I love fantasy, I've read a lot of it. And no one got it right like Robert Jordan got it right. Meaning, Tolkien did something amazing. He blew our minds, is really what happened. There hadn't been anything like Tolkien. There'd been fantasy, but never epic fantasy, with the real world that just feels like it's got a history and a lore and everything together – never been anything like that before. And a lot of people tried to imitate Tolkien, and what they did is they copied him. They copied the tropes. They used the same types of races, the same type of story, and yet they didn't get the core of it right, in my opinion. Not until Robert Jordan, where he did the lore and the mythology, and it was all his own. He wasn't copying Tolkien, and yet he was using the process that Tolkien did.
I mean, a part of the genius of these books, the Wheel of Time, is this idea of the circular nature of time. The idea is that the world of the Wheel of Time is actually our world in the future and in the deep past, because ages come and pass. And so, in the Wheel of Time books, you'll find references to things like a man who flew to the moon in the belly of an eagle, which is a reference to Buzz Aldrin, and things like this. Our history has become their mythology. And yet the things they're living through are the foundation for some of our mythology. There's a character who's—you can see, if you really research it—Robert Jordan is using Odin and Loki as mythology that this person is starting, as in when our time comes around again this person was the foundation of what became the Odin and Loki mythology. And so, it's fascinating how he's interweaving our world becoming their world, which is becoming our world—just wonderful sort of philosophical use of mythology. But of course, the real core is the characters. It's not about philosophy, it's about characters that you love and you care about as they live through all of this.
Louie Free
I'm talking with Brandon Sanderson. The new book, The Gathering Storm, available everywhere—everywhere—online. Brandon Sanderson's website is brandonsanderson.com, and there's an awful lot there and we've got links up at louiefreeshow.com, or go directly to brandonsanderson.com. We'll be back with much more on the Louie b. Free Radio Show, brain food from the heartland, right after this.Tags
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Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009
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.
Brandon Sanderson
Oh no, thank you, Louie. This has been a really great interview, so I wanted to stay.Louie Free
Thank you, thank you. Thank you for what you were saying off-air, too. It really means the world to me. The Gathering Storm is the name of the book. You know, I'm looking at some of the early emails, and you've got obviously a ton of fans around the world. Tell me what's it like when you know that you've got people that are literally camping out to get an early copy of The Gathering Storm. I mean, that has just got to be incredible. What's that like for you?Brandon Sanderson
It is. It's an honor, honestly. But, you know, the thing to keep in mind: they're not camping out for me. This isn't about me. This is about the Wheel of Time. This is about Robert Jordan's books. And really, what I'm doing on this book is I'm trying to be as invisible as possible. I don't want them to see Brandon Sanderson. If they see too much Brandon Sanderson, then I've failed. I want them to see the story and see the characters.
You know, I can't replace Robert Jordan. I've said that from the beginning. I'm not trying to imitate his voice. I don't think it would be right. I mean, I have flashes in my mind of stand-up comedians doing parodies, when I've thought about trying to imitate him. And it would come off as hokey, I think. But instead what I'm trying to do is to stay true to the series and the characters, and adapt my style to fit it. And so, the best emails I've gotten from people are people who've emailed me and say, 'You know what? When I started reading, I could tell. I could tell just slightly that it was different. But by the end of the first chapter, I was sucked in, and it didn't matter. I couldn't see it any more because you did the story right and you did the characters right.' And that's what I'm looking to see.
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Interview: Nov 3rd, 2009
Louie Free
Let me ask you this, Brandon Sanderson, if we can. The blog post, the one that you wrote after Robert Jordan passed away: "You showed me what it was to have vision and scope." Tell me a little bit about that post.
Brandon Sanderson
When he passed away, I didn't know how to respond. My very first impression was I knew that he and Harriet, his editor, were married and I felt just terrible for her. And then I felt terrible—and this is selfish—but I felt terrible that I hadn't gone and met him. I'd seen him at that one convention and the fact that I hadn't walked up and shaken his hand and said how much he meant to me. And I, at the same time, sat there thinking, 'Man, everyone in fantasy who's an author is probably going to start chasing this project,' and that made me feel sick. And so, it actually took me three or four days to get my feelings down on paper, or on screen at least. I composed a number of things and I tossed them, and I kind of struggled with it. And I eventually came up with this short, little eulogy. It's not really that long. You can find it on my web site just by clicking on my Wheel of Time link.Louie Free
Okay now, I want to know. I'm getting people that are saying specifically. I want to put it up if you don't mind. Is it at the blog? Is it at...? I'm looking at the Wheel of Time link...I mean, I'm looking at the...Wheel of Time portal?Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, click on the portal. And then just on the left, there's a little link that says 'Robert Jordan Eulogy'.Louie Free
Oh, I see it. I see it. Okay, okay. And I will put a direct link up to that. And again, it's brandonsanderson.com. I'm sorry, Brandon. Go ahead.Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, a direct link to that would be great. If people wonder why I spelled 'eulogy' wrong, it was a long running thing on my web site, so I know that it's spelled wrong. It had to do with essays that I was writing.
But anyway, so I wrote this, and I talked just about picking up Eye of the World for the first time, and why I had chosen TOR when they had come to me and I'd finally had a book offer. After writing thirteen novels, I sold my sixth one. And after having them finally come to me and say, 'Yes, we'll publish you.' Actually, my agent said, 'You know we could probably, now that we have an offer, go somewhere else and try and bid it up,' and things like this. And I said no. I said no, this is TOR This is Robert Jordan's publisher. No, we're not going to do that. I was where I wanted to be. And I kind of wrote about that. I just wrote about what he'd meant in my life. It was just something from the heart. I never expected it to be seen by that many people.
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Afternoon Tea with Brandon Sanderson - Luckers (Paraphrased)Luckers
What does amahn'rukane mean?Brandon Sanderson
*stares at me blankly for a long moment* What... um... what has been said on it before?
LUCKERS
Just that it’s a sword sticking out of the earth. Cadsuane names it...
BRANDON SANDERSON
Oh right, umm. I don’t know. *he laughs* You can probably tell something about it from that.
LUCKERS
That it’s not important.
BRANDON SANDERSON
*laughs again*.
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Afternoon Tea with Brandon Sanderson - Luckers (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Brandon again spoke of Aviendha and the Aiel, due to the way they think, mentioning how he went through several drafts and back and forths with Harriet, whilst doing multiple re-reads of Aviendha’s POVs.
Then he spoke of Mat, saying that Mat is such a complicated character, though you might not think he is at first glance. He is an unreliable narrator, with vast differences between how he thinks and how he acts, and that Jim’s Mat POV’s are some of the best in the series. He then spoke of his own writing and that because of these elements it’s easy to miss things with Mat, and that that is why his early scenes in The Gathering Storm are not as good as his scenes in Towers of Midnight, where Brandon began to ‘get him’. Brandon finished by saying he’s best in A Memory of Light.
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Afternoon Tea with Brandon Sanderson - Luckers (Paraphrased)Question
[Who is your most hated character?]Brandon Sanderson
Luckers is going to roll his eyes at me, but back before I started writing—before writing her POV’s showed me how awesome she is—it was definitely Cadsuane.
LUCKERS
I rolled my eyes at him. Heh.
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Afternoon Tea with Brandon Sanderson - Luckers (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Brandon spoke of how sometimes the characters he liked did get more air time, and that this was a side effect of having a fan write the books. He spoke of his love of Perrin, and how he wanted Towers of Midnight to be a 'big, awesome, Perrin book', and that that is what he hoped he delivered.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Afternoon Tea with Brandon Sanderson - Luckers (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Brandon was talking about the differences between his writing and Jim’s, and choosing not to try and match styles because it couldn’t be done. He describe it as 'I do serviceable prose, where Jim wrote beautiful prose', and that there have been scenes he’s come to where he’s simply had to say 'I just have to do this my way, there’s nothing for it'.
He spoke then of Jim’s ability to layer subtle foreshadowing, which is something he’s never had to do outside of his story behind the story [he’s referring to the greater cosmos of his own works, the whole, Shards of Adonalsium and Hoid storylines that go on in the background]. He said it has been a real challenge to catch all the balls that Jordan left in the air, and that sometimes you can see that. ‘Some he caught smoothly, others he snatched from the air and slammed on the table. Some he even just said 'this happened'.
Finally he spoke of plotting, and how sometimes Jordan’s notes have said two contradictory things ‘maybe I’ll do this, or maybe I’ll do this other completely opposite thing’. Brandon said he then often had to choose between them, or sometimes choose a third thing entirely.
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Interview: Nov 14th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Aubree Pham (Paraphrased)Brandon Sanderson
Mat going into Hinderstap with an empty cart, and leaving with a fully laden one was a nod to Stone Soup. Plato was referenced as the author of one of the philosophy books listed in the glossary. He said it was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy....etc.Tags
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Interview: Apr 18th, 2012
Sydney Signing Report - Luckers (Paraphrased)Luckers
Brandon Sanderson
Hey went to the signing in Sydney tonight. Nothing really new, except that both times he spoke of the climax of the series (that Jordan had written) he spoke of it as one chapter (he spoke much the same in Melbourne too, but I didn't really note it then).
The second thing is that someone asked whether he had freaked Harriet out with how well he channeled Jordan, and he replied that he had freaked Harriet out, though not so much for that as for some of his crazy ideas. He said he thought Jordan would have been innovating and creating as the process of writing unfolded, and that he did much the same, throwing thoughts at Harriet, some of which made it into the book. An example of one which didn't end up in the books, and which apparently Harriet 'freaked' out about was that he suggested Perrin might take up the Way of the Leaf.
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Interview: Apr 18th, 2012
Sydney Signing Report - dicetosser (Paraphrased)dicetosser
Brandon Sanderson
Also the idea of putting Asmodean's killer's identity in the glossary was his...kinda. RJ left a print-out of a reader's theory with a sticky note on it saying "this is right". That's it; nothing else. They tried figuring out how to get it in the story, then Brandon being a bit of a smartypants suggested the glossary. Apparently Harriet LOVED the idea so much that later when he tried to write it into the story she crossed it out and wrote "IT'S IN THE GLOSSARY!"Tags
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Interview: 2006
AES SEDAI—MANNER OF IGNORING HEAT & COLD BASE NOTES
Robert Jordan
The charge or energy created can be migrated up through channels surrounding the spine [Kundalini] which extend from the base of the spine to the pineal gland.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Gold Coast SupaNova - Eleanor Chandler-Temple (Paraphrased)Eleanor
Did you write the Mat/Hinderstap sections first?Brandon Sanderson
(This is not verbatim.) Yes, I did, and I know there is a flow issue there. They were amongst the first chapters I wrote and at that stage I had not realized that most of Mat's humor is in how he reacts to his surroundings.
ELEANOR
There was a bit more to this; I wish I could recall more, but a lot of cues I need are missing from these notes, although what I have has been brilliant so far. Many thanks to my faithful Gaidin.
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Interview: Apr, 2012
Gold Coast SupaNova - Eleanor Chandler-Temple (Paraphrased)Eleanor
Here's something you can't RAFO! This has probably been asked elsewhere, but how do you think your experience writing these books has influenced your own style?Brandon Sanderson
Oh! RAFO! Ok...just kidding.
ELEANOR
This was a long response, but I have managed to capture the gist of it in this summary, I think. It boiled down to it made him more aware of the littler things, and how aware he became of RJ's extreme subtlety and his skill in very delicate foreshadowing. I really, really wish I had a dictaphone or some such at this point, as it was absolutely fascinating. If this question could be asked again once A Memory of Light and one more of his own books is published, it'd be absolutely fascinating to see his answers then and compare them. He may even (he said nothing of this; this is just me pondering) write a blog post once it is out and done.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Paul O'Malley (18 April 2012)
This is seriously going to increase piracy and decrease sales. Fix it! Please! A Memory of Light EBook ReleaseBrandon Sanderson (18 April 2012)
I'm afraid you have to take that up with Harriet. I've done what I can.THOMAS WILLIS
Will the kindle edition of A Memory of Light be released at the same time, as the hardcover?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I'm afraid that Harriet has decided there should be a delayed ebook release.
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)Google Moderator
Maybe you could talk just to get us started, a little bit about your Mistborn series for example, which I know have seen lots and lots of posts. When are you going back to Mistborn?
Brandon Sanderson
I will be doing some more Mistborn stories, coming in the near future, right now most everything I have is dedicated to finishing the Wheel of Time, the last book of the wheel of time, we are in revisions right now and it is a lot of work and we are trying to get this last book ready for release next January, once I am done with that I can turn my attention back to my other projects like the Stormlight archive and Mistborn both of which I hope to do, very quickly some more books for.
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Paraphrased)Question
What about movies or mini-series related to the Wheel of Time?
Harriet McDougal Rigney
Harriet said that a contract had been signed giving Universal movie/mini-series rights for a seven-year period; that contract is due to expire soon. She said that a screen play of The Eye of the World had been written; Harriet had not read it, but she said she had heard from reliable sources (probably Jason Denzel) that it was horrible. She feels that it may be that the contract will expire before anything is ever produced; at that point, the rights would revert to Harriet.
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
JordanCon AMOL Status Report - Marie Curie (Paraphrased)Melissa Craib
Melissa Craib, this year's JordanCon master of ceremonies, asked the Team Jordan members which parts of the story they had been surprised about.
Harriet McDougal Rigney
Harriet told about an incident she has described before from when she was writing the blurb for the dust jacket of The Dragon Reborn and finally realized that RJ intended Callandor to be an analog of the sword in the stone. She yelled down to RJ, "You son of a ****, you've done it to me again!"
Maria Simons
Maria said that she was surprised... well, actually I've forgotten what Maria was surprised about. Maybe somebody else remembers...was it from Knife of Dreams when Semirhage blows Rand's hand off? That's what comes to mind, but I don't remember any details about why that surprised her, really, so maybe that's not it. :s
Alan Romanczuk
Alan at first said that he wasn't surprised by anything; he had figured it all out, of course. Then he owned up to being a little surprised about the scene in Crossroads of Twilight in which Perrin chops off the hand of one of the captured Shaido, because it showed the depths to which a person could go when pushed to the brink.
Peter Ahlstrom
Peter said he was surprised when it was revealed that Demandred was... (yeah, he was messing with us).
Footnote
Nalesean at Theoryland pointed out that Maria said that she was surprised by the death of Rolan during the battle of Malden.
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
Kaffeeklatsch with Harriet - yks 6nnetu hing (Paraphrased)yks
Moiraine's blue stone is a dig at Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Harriet McDougal Rigney
When RJ was working on the first Conan book, he got the movie script and was told to stick as close to it as possible (though he did alter some things and later got approached with "man, I HATE what they did to your book"). After the book was published and the movie out, he one day got a letter from Marion Zimmer Bradley threatening to sue RJ for copyright infringement because one of his characters had a (blue) stone hanging on her forehead. RJ then sent a letter back referring her to the studios and the original script in which the stone appeared. The lawsuit never happened and Moiraine has a blue stone on her forehead.
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
Kaffeeklatsch with Harriet - yks 6nnetu hing (Paraphrased)Harriet McDougal Rigney
The last battle strategy and body count were in RJ's notes, the specifics not. So he did specify who'd die but not how. Help was gotten from Bernard Cornwell. (woohoo!)
RJ set up the whole layout of the battle, who would be where and who would not make it out but he kept insisting that he'd write the Last Battle on the fly, so to speak. Apparently Bernard Cornwell lives kind of close to their place so one day Harriet asked him over for coffee and he had a few good pointers for the battle (which I personally think is great because his battle-style has a very similar immediacy in scale as RJ displayed in Dumai's Wells and while I also think that BS writes good battles, he's better at the one-on-one type things and not so good with the massive event that the Last Battle would be).
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
Matt Hatch
Does Rianna's white streak come from you, or is it the other way around?
Harriet McDougal
I have no idea!
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Google+ Hangout (Verbatim)Will
After Memory of Light would you finish the 2 Wheel of Time prequels that Robert Jordan was planning?
Brandon Sanderson
: Oh boy, okay so serious question. Harriet and I have both given this much thought and we feel that there is a danger in continuing to write in the Wheel of Time. The metaphor I like to use is that we've been handed the One Ring and we are marching toward Mordor and we have to let go of that ring. The longer we keep a hold of it, the more dangerous it is for us, the more we will want to keep hold of it, and the more we just risk exploiting Robert Jordan's name and legacy, rather than just doing what he envisioned being the appropriate thing to do with his world and his series.
We have both decided that we don't feel comfortable doing the prequels, perhaps that will change. I don't think it will, but for right now the answer is no. We are not going to do the prequels or the outriggers, which is another sequel series he had planned. Simply because there's nothing wrong with those, he said he was going to do them, but the longer we keep going the more dangerous and risky it becomes and we'd rather just stop while we're ahead.
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Interview: Oct 20th, 2008
TorForge Hero of Ages Interview (Verbatim)Tor Forge
What was it like to get the nod for The Wheel of Time?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, in 2007, one of my favorite authors of all time, Robert Jordan, sadly passed away, long before his time was due. We were all, the whole community was struck by the tragedy. I've been reading his books since I was 15. The first one came out in paperback, I can remember when I walked into a store and saw this new book on the shelf, and thought it's amazing, and it's big and it's thick, and I was just getting into fantasy books, and I said "Wow, there's something about that book." I picked up a copy and read it, and just was hooked forever; it was, Eye of the World was the name of it. Over the next 18 years, I read this series, of 11 books and the prequels, as they came out. Right when they came out, I’d get the new one and read back through the whole series and read them again. It’s the great fantasy epic of my era. People before me read Tolkien, I read Robert Jordan. I eventually got into Tolkien, but Robert Jordan is what, part of what propelled me into being a fantasy novelist myself. I absolutely loved these books, and I was waiting, with everyone else for Book 12 because it was going to be the last one. And then Mr. Jordan passed away.
Robert Jordan was one of my great inspirations; I looked at him as “my master,” in a way when it came to teaching me how to write. I would study his books when I was just a teenager, thinking about, someday, I would like to write fantasy novels myself. I would get them out and I would read them, and I would look at them and I would see how he would plot, and how it would do character and how he did viewpoint, and all these things, even though I never met him, I kind of look at him as something of a father-figure, I think the whole fantasy genre did. When he passed away, we all felt a little bit orphaned.
I assumed that Tor would have someone picked to work on it: I figured that it would someday come out. I never thought that it would be me. I got up one morning, and there was a voicemail on my phone. This was actually the second time this had happened to me because when I first sold my very first book, I found out via voicemail. I’m glad I have a cellphone with voicemail on it because I answered this voicemail and it was Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's wife, longtime editor of his books. She called and said she had something she wanted to talk to me about. I had no clue that anyone was even considering me, so I called her back and lo and behold, she wanted me to complete the twelfth book of the Wheel of Time.
This is the sort of thing that you don’t even dream about working on because you can’t even conceive it. It’s the series you’ve been reading since you were 15, and now you’ve been called and asked to work with the master, take his notes, the things that he has written, and put them together and write the last book. So my next project, after Well of Ascension*, we actually have another standalone of mine called Warbreaker coming out in the spring, and then that fall will be Book 12 of the Wheel of Time. Which I am now working on quite extensively, spending quite a bit of time on, it's going to be a big, great book, and he actually wrote most of the last portion himself, but I'm working on putting together all the notes, and writing the holes and following what’s left, what’s in the outline, and just making this book. That’s what’s going to come out, should be, we hope, fall or winter of 2009: I’m not exactly sure yet because I haven’t finished the novel. But that’s what’s next, and so exciting to consider, so exciting to work on it. This is just the most amazing project I’ve ever been a part of.
The soul of the whole book is there, but the whole writing isn’t there. He left an outline, and there are whole in the outline, there are things that I need to put together, but at the same time he left 12 books worth of material, 11 books and 1 prequel's worth of material, pushing towards this last one, and all that weight is kind of like a mountain, pushing for what's going to happen. He was so good at foreshadowing, so good at plotting, that it's all there, even in the things that aren't there specifically in the outline. So people ask me, "How much of this book is yours, how much of it is Robert Jordan's?" My answer is, well it’s all Robert Jordan’s, it’s all his.
In a way, I look at myself as the journeyman craftsman. If the master has trained you, if the master has come up with the patterns for whatever it is that you are working on, and the apprentice comes along and finishes a chair the master has worked on, it’s the master’s work, even if the apprentice helped out. I’m really the apprentice, or the journeyman in this case. Even though there’s a lot I get to do, a lot of work I have to do, there are a lot of scenes I get to come up with and write on my own, it’s his book. My goal in writing is so that no one can tell where my work begins and his ends and vice versa. I want it to just be a joy and a delight to read and I don’t want people to be sitting there thinking “How much did Brandon write? How much did Robert Jordan write?” Just read the book and enjoy it because it’s all his book, even the parts that I may have to come up with on my own. I don’t think that anyone could actually fill Robert Jordan’s shoes. He’s the greatest writer of my time, I believe, he’s the greatest writer of epic fantasy that we’ve had since Tolkien, and I can’t be him: I can’t fill his shoes. Without the outline material he’d left behind, without his assistance and his wife, who was his editor for so long, there’s no way I could do this.
But, at the same time, it’s just amazing to be able to look at what he had left behind and see into his mind in a way that, I think, no one else gets to. I get to see a work that is unfinished, yet he’s left enough that I can imagine the book as it would have been when it was finished, and I can see the process. It’s really an unrivaled opportunity. I can’t think of anything that’s quite like it. The chance to just work and look through the notes and the materials, to gather them and say “What was he doing with this? Where did he really want this to go? How can I take this character who he’s been building to a climax for eleven books and say ‘how am I going to take this character and fulfill their character arc?’ How do I apply the notes? How do I take the chunks that he actually wrote and weave them in so that my own writing and his writing meld together and produce a Wheel of Time book that everyone is going to be excited about?”
Beyond that, I think he’s watching and saying “Okay, what are you gonna’ do Brandon? What’s gonna’ happen?” And I want to do something that he’d be proud of. I think it’s both the greatest and most frightening opportunity anyone could ever be given in this business, but it sure is a lot of fun to work on. It’s been probably the most fun I’ve had working ever, to just be able to do this.
He was a very positive, upbeat man. Extremely good natured. Everyone who talks about him talks about just how kindly and upbeat and positive he always was. Right up to the end, he was on his official blog, to people, saying “I’m going to beat this.” He had a degenerative blood disease—very rare—and he said “I’m going to beat this. I’m going to be around for another twenty years writing books” I think that positive mindset really helped him, but, near the end, he began to make provisions for the last book.
I spoke with his wife and with his cousin about those days, just trying to get into his mindset. Really what impressed me most was that he wanted to make sure that the fans were taken care of. He knew how many people were waiting for this book, and his fans were so dear to him, that near the end he wanted to make sure that we knew everything that we needed to in order to finish the book. He wanted to make sure that his wife had the materials and the tools she needed so that she could find somebody. Near the end, he wanted her to go and find someone to finish the last book so that it would come out, so that the fans could finally read all of this. I think he knew that he wouldn’t be able to finish it himself. It was very hard for him to face, but he made sure he had what we needed to so that we could all read the book.
His wife Harriet is just the most amazing person. Before I even met her, I had three independent sources, that I really trust, contact me and say “Brandon, she is the best editor in this business. There is nobody quite like Harriet.” Just having worked with her for the past six months, I agree with that. She is amazing. She knows this series and these books like nobody else. I’m convinced she knows them as well as Robert Jordan himself knew them. She and he, she’s been working on them since the beginning. Since the first pitch to Tor, she’s been involved. She knows these characters like we know our best friends and our family members, and she has been a shepherd of this project ever since the beginning.
Working with her has been amazing: the next best thing to having Mr. Jordan himself here to write this book is having Harriet to be able to guide and take care of the project, and say “No, this character’s not quite right”, or “You’ve got this one dead on”, or “Let’s make sure that it feels right.” There are things that Harriet knows that no one else knows, at least I hope I know most of it now—she’s written down a lot of things—but even still, I’ll be working on a section and she’ll say “Oh, you need to know this” or “This character needs to do this.” She really does have a wealth of information just inside of that head of hers that’s been working on this for twenty years. She really is close to this project, and she understands it.
Footnote
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Interview: May, 2012
A Memory of Light Cover Art Round-Up (Verbatim)MRJackson@218 (7 May 2012)
Not sure why there's still confusion. It's Nynaeve and Moiraine on the back cover. The yellow and blue dresses should make that apparent. Nynaeve's hair is obviously shorter than it used to be.
I spoke to Michael about the cover as he was finishing it. Since he didn't have the opportunity to read all fourteen books for the assignment, I was one of the people he leaned on to fact check his work.
Michael mentioned there are details the readers (like me) wouldn't be privy to yet. For example, Nynaeve takes the bulk of her jewelry off before this scene.
Callandor is a sword that isn't a sword, right? He's not holding it for defense. It's a source of power as well as his source of light (there's a clue about that in the lighting on his face). He's shielding his eyes as he stares in to the pit. Apparently, the deeper he goes into Shayol Ghul, the brighter it shines.
A little background that some might not know... Michael has studied martial arts, including Filipino Kali and Arnis. The forearm slash position actually has some utility in fights with bladed weapons.
Compositionally, the line of the sword is another element that draws you into the intensity of Rand's stare. Further, the opening of the cave is the shape of an eye; the eclipse suggests an iris. It's as if the gaze of the Dark One is falling on Rand. We see his strength and determination in response. How many illustrators can convey that kind of depth in a scene?
Say what you will, but I think Michael brought a lot to the plate on what was a very difficult cover assignment. He put his stamp on Rand while producing a cover that fits well with the first thirteen that DKS painted.
analiese@222 (8 May 2012)
Thanks for confirming that. However, Nynaeve's hair is still the wrong color and, while it's shorter after the Aes Sedai testing in Towers of Midnight, it should still be in a shoulder-length braid. She never gave up her signature braid. That's why many people don't think it looks like Nynaeve—the braid is the main thing that would identify her as Nynaeve to the readers.
The loose light hair makes the woman on the cover look more like Alivia, who many fans believe is the woman in yellow. So I'm still of the opinion that Whelan did not do a good job with Nynaeve if longtime fans don't even recognize her. I think it's a beautiful cover, but as a reader, the main thing I care about is seeing the characters—who we have been reading about for twenty years—done right, not so much whether the cave looks realistic or happens to symbolize the Dark One spying on Rand. So it's disappointing that Nynaeve ended up virtually unrecognizable. She doesn't even wear yellow dresses in the books, despite being Yellow Ajah (she makes a point of wearing green or blue since that's what Lan likes), so that's not something that makes the woman's identity apparent either.
If you don't mind me asking (not trying to be rude here, it just strikes me as a bit strange), why did Whelan rely on fans to check his work instead of Team Jordan? I'm assuming you work for Tor, but you refer to yourself as a reader who hasn't read the book. To what extent were Brandon Sanderson and Team Jordan involved with the creative process behind this cover?
MRJackson@223
I was just one of the people helping with the details. Obviously Michael had Irene Gallo's art direction and was in contact with editors including Harriet.
Michael's wife Audrey usually serves as his sounding board, but she hadn't read the books. (For the record, I'm not affiliated with TOR. I've worked with Michael since the mid 90s, primarily on his website.) I'm a WoT fan and that's the kind of feedback Michael was looking for... someone he knew who had read the previous thirteen books.
Michael and I did discuss Nynaeve's dress color. I mentioned that she catered to Lan's color preference of green and blue. The yellow of her Ajah usually came in slashes of color, accents if I recall correctly.
Like I said, I haven't read the manuscript for A Memory of Light and Michael couldn't talk about it. But I distinctly recall Nynaeve taking pride in being a true Aes Sedai finally. Going into the Last Battle, I don't think it's a stretch that she would choose yellow. I suppose we'll have to RAFO on that.
In the background information I provided, I described Nynaeve's hair color as darker brown and referenced previous covers (among them the Melanie Delon's cover for A Crown of Swords that drew criticism for being too red).
I'd have to ask him why he chose lighter highlights. Just my speculation here, but Callandor is a light source. There's also illumination from the eclipse filtering in from the mouth of the cave to consider.
Michael got the length of Nynaeve's hair right, and this isn't simply opinion. Hopefully Brandon or Harriet will confirm at some point that her shoulder length hair was too short to braid.
Interestingly, Michael and I spoke about the challenge of pulling character descriptions from the text. If you're familiar with his illustration, he's known as a stickler for details. But it isn't always easy to translate text literally, especially when Jordan and Sanderson contradict in their description.
In correspondence, Michael wrote,
Michael Whelan
"Major characters are described as diminutive in size, yet 'commanding' in presence. Faces are youthful, yet ageless. Or young but having eyes full of wisdom of the ages. Rand is tall and manly, yet has an almost "feminine" beauty in his eyes or mouth. It's a bit confusing how one is supposed to render such conflicting elements."
MRJackson
Honestly, I don't mind the nitpicking. Criticism comes with the territory. My point in responding is to state that Michael was mindful of details here. There's evidence of it in the painting. I can tell you that he had Moiraine's kesiera and Nynaeve's ki'sain accounted for before I even spoke to him.
On a personal note, I had the privilege of meeting Robert Jordan before a signing on the Knife of Dreams tour. One of the things we talked about was the cover art for the series. I think Mr. Jordan would be pleased with this one. Obviously Harriet was when she said, "that is the Rand I have waited to see for twenty years."
analiese@224
Firstly, thank you very much for the thorough answer. It answered many of my questions, and it was also interesting to hear more about the creative process behind the cover.
[Nynaeve's hair] got singed off "a handspan below her shoulders" (Towers of Midnight ch 20), and she wore a shoulder-length braid in every scene she was in after the Aes Sedai testing. That's why it seemed odd for her signature braid to be missing on the cover. I don't really care about the dress or even much about the hair color, but Nynaeve isn't Nynaeve without her braid—it's part of who she is. It's like Mat showing up without his hat and ashandarei. And the ki'sain is too small to be visible, so it doesn't do anything to make the woman on the cover look more like Nynaeve.
I also wish Nynaeve and Moiraine hadn't been delegated to the background/back cover—since they're going to be linked with him, they deserve to stand at his side. But that's not an error, just something I wish were different.
However, while the cover isn't what I hoped for, I understand and deeply appreciate that you and Whelan both worked incredibly hard on it, and Whelan remains one of my favorite illustrators. I think he did a wonderful job with Rand.
MRJackson@228
I appreciate the sentiment but Michael did the actual work. He pushed his calendar aside this spring to make the cover happen. I was just support. But I will admit it took a lot of restraint on my part not to inundate him with questions that I knew he couldn't answer, so there is that.
As readers, we all have so much invested in this series that I completely understand what you're saying. I love Brandon's work, but I felt Towers of Midnight was a bit of a letdown, especially the resolution with Moiraine.
Moiraine has always been a favorite of mine. I would have liked to see her on the front cover as well. Thankfully Dan Dos Santos gave us that in his brilliant cover for The Fires of Heaven.
Wetlandernw@227
I think MRJackson & Mr. Whelan made a very good point, in that we have not yet read this book. By the time this scene happens, we may see several other events that make sense of the seeming discrepancies. Specifically, there are only two scenes after Nynaeve's testing which mention her braid, and in both cases it is specifically noted that it is too short and she finds it quite annoying. Quite possibly she'll meet up with Lan and find out that he likes it loose, or she'll simply decide that it's too irritating to fuss with a too-short braid, and we'll see her with loose hair in several scenes before this.
Someone was bothered earlier by the missing jewelry—but now we know that she specifically and deliberately removed the jewelry before this scene, probably so that someone else could use them. (That's what happened during the Cleansing; why not here as well?) Seems to me that we should make the assumption that the same kind of thing might happen with The Braid, instead of insisting that she should look like she did in the previous book, and claiming any discrepancies as mistakes. Such claims are not only rude, they are unfounded. Once the book is out and we've read the whole thing, we might have grounds for nitpicking; until then, not so much.
MRJackson—Thank you for your contributions, both to this thread and to Mr. Whelan.
MRJackson@230 (9 May 2012)
Glad to be of help. Maybe someday we'll find closure in the great braid debate...
Seriously though, Michael painted Nynaeve's hair at that length (without a braid) for a reason. I wasn't trying to sidestep debate. I was expressing certainty. Michael was aware that the braid was an identifying feature of her character. The painting turned out the way it did through a long process that involved editorial input. I'll leave it at that.
I look at it this way (and this is my opinion)... Nynaeve has grown enormously through the books. She was always uniquely powerful, but it took time for her to grow into that power. More so, it took a dozen books to accept herself and decide who she wanted to be.
Nynaeve worked through enormous difficulty to channel reliably. Remember how she used to tug on that braid? It really was a symbol of who she used to be. Kind of fitting that the symbol is gone.
Old habits die hard, of course, but she isn't that girl tugging on her braid any more. She's a woman who fought to gain acceptance as an Aes Sedai, and she's going to stand at Rand side to face the Dark One. It's impressive how far she's come as a character.
analiese@
The Fires of Heaven ebook cover was definitely one of the best, though there were a few things the artist got wrong (Moiraine does not have blue eyes). The New Spring cover was great too, especially Lan. It's mostly Nynaeve who has suffered bad luck with the ebook covers. There's A Crown of Swords where she got red hair and Lan looked like an underwater zombie, Winter's Heart where she didn't appear at all despite being linked with Rand for the Cleansing, The Path of Daggers where she got a Saldaean nose and Elayne looked suspiciously like Jean Grey...
I think much of my disappointment with the A Memory of Light cover stems from the fact that there's already an earlier cover (Winter's Heart) where Rand claimed the stage and his female linking partner was left out. "Hero poses manfully brandishing some kind of phallic object" is a pretty tired concept, especially on WoT covers. Rand does the same on Sweet's The Dragon Reborn and The Path of Daggers, the ebook covers for The Dragon Reborn, Winter's Heart, Knife of Dreams... Winter's Heart is probably the worst offender, if you look at the placement of the Choedan Kal. ;)
Sweet's A Memory of Light cover was a welcome break from that—I'm not usually a fan of Sweet's covers, but I liked that he gave Elayne, Min, and Aviendha a prominent role and added some emotion to the cover. So I really would have liked to see something different on the final cover, like Rand having the two women from the Callandor circle at his side. Here, Nynaeve and Moiraine are present, but only in the background, and not at all on the ebook cover.
MRJackson@236
The only female lead who held the cover spotlight on par with the men was Moiraine, and that is a shame.
There was definitely opportunity to feature Nynaeve linked with Rand on Winter's Heart. Despite the hair, I liked Nynaeve on the cover of A Crown of Swords. Lan not so much. The Path of Daggers was another miss, mostly because the colors were a distraction. I thought I was looking at an X-Men cover. Even if that was intentional, it didn't work for me.
I can only assume Rand was intended to stand at center stage alone on the last cover, but I think what you suggest would have been great too. Moiraine and Nynaeve definitely earned their place at Rand's side on the front.
ViciousCircle@264
That was a beautiful description of why Nynaeve is one of the most compelling characters in the series. She and Moiraine kept me invested during some dark years of almost giving up on WOT. I always hoped they would be the other Callandor channelers, as I could not imagine Rand putting himself in such a vulnerable position with anyone else. Aviendha, Min and Elayne included, though I do love Aviendha! So thank you for shedding light on why some things are portrayed as they are on this excellent new cover. Just don't think that it will put a dent in the debate. ;)
MRJackson@266
Thanks. I feel much the same way about those characters, and I'm sure the debate will keep going on well after the publication of A Memory of Light.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (16 May 2012)
I'm sorry I don't have more specific WoT posts for you—I know that Harriet prefers me to be more closed-mouthed. However...
Brandon Sanderson
Maria from Team Jordan has finished her revision notes for the entire book, as has Harriet herself. So we're only waiting on Alan's notes.
Brandon Sanderson
As he's playing "Great Captain" for me on A Memory of Light, his notes are vital—and he needs to be detailed. When I get them, I can finish revising.
Roberto Sánze
Sooooo...there might be a sooner release date than the current for January?
Brandon Sanderson
It is possible, but I don't know how likely.
Roberto Sánze
Darn, I need to haste to be ready for A Memory of Light once it releases. Is there gonna be a ebook version along with the physical book?
Brandon Sanderson
(Winces.) Harriet has a distrust of ebooks; she prefers to delay the release. It is her call. (Ebook is a few months later.)
Terez
Do we have chapter names yet? Or do you know how many chapters there will be? Or is that a secret?
Brandon Sanderson
No chapter names yet, as it won't be until this draft is finished that I settle on the number of chapters. Some are being combined.
Mark Prybyla
I'm truly hoping this book is 1/3 battles/fights.
Brandon Sanderson
More than 1/3, I'd say...
Daniel Shepard
Forgive me for not understanding, but what does this mean? Release date's not going to change, is it?
Brandon Sanderson
Probably not. It's just a progress update, so people know things are still moving behind-the-scenes.
Richard Collett
How's The Stormlight Archive coming? I need more.
Brandon Sanderson
A Memory of Light comes first. I will get to the next Stormlight book soon, but not until A Memory of Light is done to my satisfaction.
(Facebook)
Yosun Erdemli
So this means we will be reading the final volume sooner than first announced?
Brandon Sanderson
It is possible, but I don't know how likely. I still need to do two drafts, I feel. Then there are beta reads, then proofreads, then we need at least two months to get the books printed and shipped.
Adam Sloan
What does it take to be one of the beta readers?
Brandon Sanderson
Be one of the major members of fandom for years, and personally know Harriet. (Sorry.)
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (21 May 2012)
WoT update: Today, I added a new Rand scene to the book. One of many I've been working on, but this one came together first.
Jason Palmer
? Is it a complete NEW scene? If so is it because the editors thought it would fit into the book more, is this the second draft?
Brandon Sanderson
New scene. We often add new scenes in the second, third, or even last drafts of a book.
Greg Lindsey
Feel free to add as much as the binding will allow!! Thanks for everything! By the way do you have an updated word count estimate?
Brandon Sanderson
No updated count yet. We'll see how much more I add this time around—I'm cutting it too.
Daniel Shepard
Can/Will you tell us anything about it? Please? :)
Brandon Sanderson
I'm afraid I can't say much. I try to be extra-careful with WoT scenes out of respect for Harriet.
Simon Draper
When is the last book being published? I can't believe it's the end of the series already.
Brandon Sanderson
January.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)Caleb Flanagan (21 May 2012)
Do you see the speed your books get published at changing with the end of WoT? Seeing as how editing WoT takes so much longer?Brandon Sanderson (21 May 2012)
Yes, I do. Getting WoT right takes about double the time it takes to do my own works, so we shouldn't have any more no-book years.Tags
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Interview: Aug 8th, 2009
WorldCon 2009 - Dom (Paraphrased)Dom
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon drew a graph of A Memory of Light's structure and explained in some details how he ended up re structuring it as three books. Not much that isn't already known in there, book 12 will have two main story lines (we know it's Rand and Egwene, but as I said Brandon didn't say so explicitly at the Q&A) and teasers for three more (Mat—and seemingly Perrin and Elayne). By 'teasers', Brandon precised he means 3 or 4 chapters per story line, the rest of the chapters being divided between the two main story lines (by recent books, this could means Egwene/Rand have about 10-12 chapters each, or a few more). Some developments happen in the teasers but it's not huge stuff, more like set ups chapters for what happens in book 13.
Book 13 will have the opposite, with 3-4 chapters each for Egwene and Rand, "toward the end". Brandon kept those for book 13 to avoid spoiling in The Gathering Storm the climax of book 13, which will mark the reunion of all the main story lines at some location, and launch Tarmon Gai'don. So in book 13 we will have the residual Rand/Egwene chapters that specifically build up to the reunion.
Brandon explained the decision to split the books this way came about between Harriet and him, in part to avoid the "Crossroads of Twilight trap". Apparently, RJ went that way in Winter's Heart/Crossroads of Twilight mostly because he had been affected by all the grief he got for keeping Mat out of The Path of Daggers. He decided to try to put all the main characters in the next books, even if it meant all the story lines would advance more slowly if they were all told in parallel like this. He very much regretted this after Crossroads of Twilight, for which he got even more grief than for The Path of Daggers, and decided to return to his more organic/uneven approach for Knife of Dreams and A Memory of Light. The original plan for The Gathering Storm was to develop all the story lines in parallel again, but Brandon and Harriet had qualms about this and Brandon came up with an alternative to focus on two story lines in one and three in the other.
There is one of the 'POV clusters' Brandon had written that it mostly unused for The Gathering Storm and will go in book 13.
Brandon of course wouldn't tell who is the character not in The Gathering Storm at all, though he gave a few clues. Piecing all his bits of answers together, the character isn't Aviendha, Cadsuane or Nynaeve, nor Mat (the only character he confirmed is in the two first books, but we already knew this). He basically destroyed the speculation it could be Perrin by hesitating on the words 'major character' and then adding the bit that the vast majority of fans would actually place this character at the very bottom of the list of characters to be considered 'major'. The way he put Elayne over and over among the five really major ones during the Q&A suggests it's not her either after all. He also said while explaining his graph that there were chunks (his "teasers" for three story lines in The Gathering Storm and the core of the story for two—and his 'five' clusters he explicitly said were Rand, Egwene, Perrin, Mat and Elayne.
So perhaps we've read too much in his 'major POV character' comment (Jason's review may also allude to this, when he commented that one major character is missing but it's pretty much up to each reader to decide who is major and not in WOT). At some point, he said a major POV character in A Memory of Light will be missing in The Gathering Storm, which is not exactly the same as saying a major POV character from the earlier books isn't in The Gathering Storm—which is the way his previous comment was interpreted by many.
Dom
Lan isn't a major POV character in the earlier books, but now he's on his own he may very well become one in A Memory of Light.
In any case, I'm more and more thinking it's Lan (or possibly Moiraine), not Elayne or Perrin which I doubt many would place 'at the very bottom' of the list of characters to be considered major. Most people would place Elayne not near the bottom at all but among the top 7 or 8 most important characters. Above Moiraine and Lan, Thom, Loial and probably even Min and Aviendha.
Footnote
The POV character missing in The Gathering Storm was Elayne, and they didn't quite make it to the reunion of all plotlines at the end of Towers of Midnight as they had originally planned.Tags
891
Interview: Aug 8th, 2009
WorldCon 2009 - Dom (Paraphrased)Dom
Brandon Sanderson
He also got into his own approach to magic systems, which lead to questions about how much of a challenge he found the One Power and how he prepared himself to handle it (and yeah, he admits being a One Power fan). Brandon explained researching and analyzing the One Power was one of his main focuses during his pre-writing re-read of the series (the other was analyzing the characters' "voices". He also said RJ left a massive amount of notes about the One Power, some of it he's read (he couldn't read everything, he rather relied on Maria to find him the exact information he needed when he needed it). I think he's said that before—or RJ did—but RJ's notes for WOT are longer than the series itself and he always kept adding to them, from back story and history elements to world building tidbits to creating hundreds of characters he could use to sketches for possible scenes. It was Maria's job to index all of this so if he was writing a scene he wanted to use backstory elements or a new weave in, he could have her look first if this already existed in the notes and what of it had appeared in the series already—or if he didn't already have it and needed to create something from scratch.
Sanderson said he resisted creating new weaves (beside introducing those Jordan planned to introduce) for the most part. His contribution will rather be to have the characters figure out they can use weaves they know in new ways—turn them into weapon etc., and for this he looked for details in the previous books. He mentioned one specific example: after Knife of Dreams, he thought characters figured out gateways and deathgates can also be used to slice non-Shadowspawn up in battle.
We also discussed a bit the 21 levels list, which Brandon used a lot. Jordan did start it just the way he described it long ago, that is as a way to keep track of who defers to whom among minor players etc. However, as of now, this document's scope goes beyond this (and it's quite big). The document assigns a rank number to each Aes Sedai referring to the twenty-one levels system, and it lists their personal weaves if they have any, and who knows and have the skills to use which weave and to what extent, their strength in flows if details in the series have blocked this up etc. Brandon confirmed Jordan developed a similar ranking system for the Asha'man as well, but couldn't recall out of hand how many levels there were for them.
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Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Old (Peter) Salt (Paraphrased)Question
Was Mat’s blank dice bit taken from Guys and Dolls?Brandon Sanderson
I’ve never seen Guys and Dolls.Tags
893
Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Old (Peter) Salt (Paraphrased)Question
What gave you the confidence to write? What kept you sticking with it after being turned down all those times?Brandon Sanderson
“I fell in love with the process of writing. I would write even if I couldn’t sell any of it. Of course it makes it easier that it does sell.” (Laughter)
He then went on to describe that Elantris was the first thing he had ever sold, the thirteenth piece that he had submitted and the sixth novel. He went on to say that he doesn’t read any bad reviews of his work. “If it has a low star count I pass it by.” He said that there could be thousands of rave reviews and only one negative one but he would focus on the negative and ignore all the raves, so he has learned to only read the “good” reviews. He also said that when he needs encouragement he will find a book he really likes and thinks is absolutely stellar and he will then read a one star review of it. “You can always find a one star review, no matter what it is. Even Hamlet has gotten one star reviews.” (laughter)
He went on to talk about how the fans comment on that “you are not RJ.” He agrees with them. “I’m not RJ and they have every right to be angry that I’m not.” He then said that they need to finish their grieving process and get over with it. He agrees that the book isn’t as good as what RJ would have done but he is happy with it.
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894
Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Old (Peter) Salt (Paraphrased)Question
How much leeway were you given when writing the book?Brandon Sanderson
He was given complete freedom to write, but that he was in constant contact with Maria and Alan about details. He compared it to a broken vase, much of it could be glued together but there were places where there were holes that needed to be filled in.
Maria Simons
Maria interjected with the fact that there are well over 1200 files that are at least several sentences long and many many more that are shorter than that.
Harriet McDougal
There was some back and forth with Harriet and Brandon about the writing/editing process. Harriet said a good editor never tells an author how to write. Brandon said that he actually writes the book for Harriet and it’s Harriet’s job to perfect it.
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Interview: Nov 9th, 2009
TGS Signing Report - Old (Peter) Salt (Paraphrased)Question
How much of The Gathering Storm is yours and how much is RJ’s?Brandon Sanderson
“I’m not going to break it down at this time. Maybe after all three books are finished I’ll go into that. For now I can say that 100% of the book is RJ’s and 100% of the book is mine.” (He later repeated this at the signing with the added comment that if that didn’t add up correctly he didn’t care because he was an English major…to much laughter.)Tags
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Interview: Nov 4th, 2010
TOM Signing Report - aurik (Paraphrased)aurik
What was the most jaw-dropping scene (or scenes) to you when you read the material for Towers of Midnight?Brandon Sanderson
Verin.
aurik
That's what you answered for Book 12. I'm asking about Book 13, which I've already read.
Brandon Sanderson
Everyone in line close your ears. The whole Tower of Ghenjei sequence. That was all written by Jim. Also, the surprise proposal at the end.
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897
Interview: Jun 28th, 2012
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson (18 June 2012)
A Memory of Light teaser: The book contains a new verse to a beloved WoT song. (Just posting to let you all know the revision goes well.)
Jeff Gray
Do you revise sections that Mr Jordan wrote, or just your own? No implication, just curious. :-)
Brandon Sanderson
It's a good question. I initially tried to leave them all alone and let Harriet revise them.
Brandon Sanderson
She told me to be more aggressive in smoothing out scenes to blend them together. I still do try to touch his as little as I can.
Ian Thomson
First tweet to you, but I wanted to say I'm so very excited for A Memory of Light! Can we change the release to January 7th? That's my birthday!
Brandon Sanderson
I'll see what I can do... ;)
Footnote
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Interview: 2012
Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)Soccer Hooligan (5 July 2012)
How about an update on when A Memory of Light will be published?Brandon Sanderson (5 July 2012)
Still January 8th, so far as I know. One more draft to do.
wehaveatrex (6 July)
When the WoT is done, are you planning to write anything about the process of adapting RJ's work, like a Special Feature?
Brandon Sanderson
I would like to, but no promises.
Shaun Duquette
This is tragic, on the final draft and we still can't get the book by October or November!
Brandon Sanderson
Well, when you count copyedit, proofreads, and printing time, it is still going to be tight.
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900
Interview: 2012
Necrosxiaoban (March 2012)
I read the article expecting Sanderson to share some special insight but that article could have been written by anyone :(
Brandon Sanderson
Heh. I can give special insight into the books I worked on, but as for the early ones, I'm really just another fan. (Well, okay, that's not true—but special things I know about the early books are not mine to share, by the NDA I signed with Harriet.) I also have to squeeze writing these into five minutes or so between drafts of A Memory of Light chapters.
So, unfortunately, with these posts you'll only get Brandon the fan talking for a little bit about why he likes each book. (Sorry.)
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Interview: 2012
exteras (April 2012)
Of course, the comic industry isn't quite the same as the publishing industry, as Marvel and DC both have their own apps on the iPad/Android. No middle-man. But I can't believe that the publishing industry hasn't considered a solution like this to keep paper books relevant. In fact, I feel like Barnes and Noble would jump all over something like this: Buy a book in their store, and get a free (or even a $1) digital copy on the Nook.
Brandon Sanderson (April 2012)
It's an issue that I've busted my mind trying to figure out. There are several ways to do this, all somewhat problematic.
1) Work directly with someone like B&N. This requires them to sell the digital copy alongside the print edition, probably at the register. Kind of a "Oh, you bought the hardcover. Would you like the digital add-on for a buck?" Then they give you a slip of paper with your digital code on it. There are huge logistical issues here. Not insurmountable, but still tough. How many books do you do this with? All new books? How do you keep all of those slips separate? Do you have a machine that prints one with a code? Who pays for the infrastructure? What happens to all of those slips once a book rotates out of being new? We already have trouble with advance copies being snatched by booksellers (or other) and offering them up for sale on ebay when they were intended to be review copies. (Printed at a high cost and given for booksellers to read.) I could see this, without careful management, going the same way.
Also, what about all of your independent booksellers who are already up in arms about B&N and Amazon getting all of the preferential treatment? What do you do about them? Let them give away an ebook too? It would have to be multi-format, and that means printing and shipping them all the slips on your end.
2) Print a code in the book itself. Easiest answer, I think, but it offers a huge problem. Books are not usually a sealed product. People like to flip through them on the shelves. So how do you hide the code? Make it inactive until it is scanned at the register, like some gift cards? I don't know how much work is required for this. It seems like less than the one above, but still requires and infrastructure change.
This is much, MUCH easier to do with a sealed product like DVDs or CDs.
If anyone has suggestions on how to make this all work, I'd love to hear them. I've proposed giving away digital copies of my books with the hardcovers before, and Tor as scratched its head trying to figure out how to make it all work.
Edits: Logical flow, typo fixes.
EDIT TWO: It has been mentioned on twitter that maybe, a code could be printed on the receipt. Much easier than a method I mentioned above—but the problem remains that it's not something that I can do alone. I MIGHT be able to get a code in my books, if we can secure them somehow. I alone can't get retailers to change so they print something out and give it to a customer. I'm mostly curious about something I can take to Tor, as a suggestion, that we could maybe get to work for the last Wheel of Time book or my future hardcover releases.
warriormuse
What about the system Baen uses? They include a CD with the book in multiple formats already.
Granted, that increases the overhead for the publisher. And the ISO is able to be spread online.
Brandon Sanderson
I'm intending to try this again. When I asked last time, they were hesitant because of the cost. (About a buck.) However, that was for one of my books before I hit the level of popularity I have now. The Wheel of Time is something else entirely. Something that might be prohibitive for another book because of small print runs could be much more cost effective here.
However, perhaps a code/CD plus shrink wrapping for certain books might be a good way to go. If we released most copies like normal, but did a certain percentage of them packaged like this with a code for a digital download, maybe it would work.
dceighty8
On this note does anyone know if the ebook release of A Memory of Light will be at the same time as the paper copy? I would prefer to buy it on my kindle over purchasing the physical copy.
Brandon Sanderson
<>This is basically what I'm working on. I don't know yet if Harriet will want to delay the ebook launch or not. She did last time, but things have moved quickly in the ebook world since then. Her main reason for delaying was worries over how the New York Times bestseller list accounted ebooks.She might not delay the launch this time. If she wants to, I might have a better chance of getting her to agree on a special edition with ebook included in the hardcover than I will persuading her to push the ebook launch up. It's one of the reasons I'm exploring this concept now.
demooo
Okay Mr. Sanderson, here are my two ideas, but I don't know if they are actually feasible.
Disclaimer: if it turns out I'm fantastic with these ideas, please forward me a copy of A Memory of Light in the next week.
1. Can you know just have two copies released at most stores? One copy would be the non-shrink-wrapped regular book. The other copy would be the 1-3$ more expensive shrink-wrapped copy with the digital code. Or keep the hardback copy+digital behind the counter.
2. Include a scratch-off-code in all the books, but sell the copy at the normal price. The code will require a 3$ activation fee when you activate it online. I realize that the possibility for theft is still there, but I would assume if someone is going to illegally scratch the code and pay 3$, torrenting the book would be the first choice.
Release A Memory of Light early. I know it will help.
kaladin_stormblessed
1 is a fantastic idea. I've got Avenging Spider-man in my pull (which comes with the digital copy), and this is pretty much how they run it. Comic is in a sealed baggie. They don't offer a version without a digital copy (that I know of anyway) however.
I think your idea is the most feasible on here.
Brandon Sanderson
I think this is one of the main options I'm going to try.
precisionesports
Hello people of the internet. I`d like to introduce you to.... email.
Most retailers have them anyways. You buy a book, give your email.
Receive email with direct download link or (heaven forbid) a torrent to relieve stresses on sites selling fast selling books. Harry Potter comes to mind.
Done and done.
Edit: Most B&N stores, among others already use a web based sales format. They just need a small code entry to create a drop box. Containing the Distributor code, and book name.
Brandon Sanderson
I think Tor is more likely to want to use Tor.com as a method for this, as getting people to sign up for that (which is free, but includes an optional newsletter) could be valuable for them. When they gave out Mistborn for free, this was how the approached it. Sign up for our website, and we'll send you a book via email.
jasonlotito
Scrap number 1. Independent booksellers are awesome. I bought your last book through one.
Print a code in the book itself. Good solution. Proper solution.
Your problem is that it's supposedly easy to "steal the code". This makes a massive assumption, and ignores existing evidence.
First, you aren't the first one to think of this. People already include codes for ebooks in their books. I know this is done fairly often in the tech industry (programming books often allow you to get access to an ebook. Granted, the market is much smaller than what you are probably used to by now, but the target market is also more tech savvy. They know how to pirate the book, even without the code.
And that brings us to the second point: pirating. People who would copy the code can easily obtain your manuscript online already. In fact, getting the code would be far more trouble then it's worth. They have to go to a store, find a copy, write the code down, go all the way back home... or they could simply go one of a few places and have a copy in minutes.
So, this brings us to the third point: who would go to a book store with the expressed desire of picking up your book? Your fans! People who already buy and pay for your books. People who want you to write more. People who want to see you finish your multiple series. And I'd be hard pressed to believe that your fans would open up a copy of the book, copy the code, and use that at home. They know what that costs them.
And even if they did, would they have really purchased your book? Really? What your suggesting is that someone who loves your work, who has followed it, goes to the bookstore with the expressed intention of copying the code and leaving. That's pretty far fetched. Even the MPAA and RIAA can't come up with numbers that support these sentiments (industries that, despite all the doomsayers, continue to grow and earn massive profits).
Yes, a few people might steal the code. And frankly, any system that accepts these codes will need to be lenient in the codes usage. But the reality is this:
1.People will violate your copyright, code or no code.
2.Having a code won't make it any easier.
3.Having a code will only provide additional value to your paying readers.
In the end, the only people who would abuse this are people that weren't going to buy the book at first anyways. You should try this out. You might be surprised.
K.I.S.S. =)
Brandon Sanderson
I don't disagree with anything you've said here. However, you've got to understand that I need to deal with the realities of a large business with investors and corporate overseers.
Tor is not afraid of piracy, as I've said elsewhere. They give away DRM-free books, and have done so with mine. They let me give away on my website one of my books DRM-free in its entirety two years before it was released in stores. However, accepting that people will pirate and hosting the method they will use to pirate are different things entirely.
The Wheel of Time is not something that the publisher wants to experiment with. It is a known quantity, the biggest bestseller for the company by a mile. Things we could get away with for a new author that the company views as being 'built' are not going to work for the Wheel of Time simply because this will have a 'why rock the boat?' kind of attitude.
That's why I'm looking for something for this book that won't rock the boat quite so much. We can rock the boat on my own books, which are still growing, rather than the company's baby.
Footnote
This topic started about Marvel now offering free eComic with physical purchase, and how it should be that way in the publishing idustry. A Memory of Light will not have a free ebook with the hardback.Tags
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Interview: 2012
The_March_Hare (April 2012)
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.
Brandon Sanderson ()
In that direction lay a trap.
I've stated before that I am uncomfortable with these cage matches because the pairings are often silly, and because I have trouble believing some of the characters would actually fight one another for any reason.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.
Footnote
This is in reference to the Suvudu cage match between Kelsier and Moiraine.
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903
Interview: 2012
Carpenterdon (June 2012)
Myself and many others love the universe of the Wheel of Time. I know the possibility of future books has been discussed between yourself, Mr. Jordan's wife, and the publishers. And it's been said none of you wish to "cash-in" on Mr. Jordan's work.
I for one think you are all looking at this backwards, for you to continue writing books about the world and characters we've all come to know and love over the past two decades would do nothing but keep Mr. Jordan's legacy alive! It would not be "cashing-in" to make all his (and your) fans happy by providing them many more stories that we will all enjoy. I don't believe any of us want to just give up this universe after following it for this many years.
I for one do not want this story to end with A Memory of Light. I would love to be able to continue reading about all our friends for another 20 years. None of us want Mr. Jordan's world to simply end, he created a vast and wonderful world that is filled with endless stories. Please continue to write them!
If you truly believe it would be bad for Mr Jordan's memory or that it would appear you're writing more to make money off him then by all means donate the proceeds of any future books to a worthy charity.
Please don't deny us the future stories.
Signed, A dedicated fan
Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)
A thoughtful letter. Thank you for writing it.
Let me make a few points. The first is that Robert Jordan was very uncomfortable about people writing in his world. He said several times that if he died before the series was finished, he intended to have the notes destroyed and the series left undone. (He later changed his mind about this, or may have been mostly joking in the first place.)
The Guide to the Wheel of Time (known as the big white book) was originally going to have fiction in it written by other authors in the Wheel of Time world. Robert Jordan eventually decided he was uncomfortable with this idea, and they pulled the stories.
To be honest, there probably wouldn't be anything wrong with doing a few more books—the ones RJ said he was planning to write, like the two other prequels or the Outriggers. However, I worry that the further we go, the more we will invariably stray from RJ's original vision for the series. (Because we'll have less and less direction left by him.) Therefore, I will have to step in to fill the gaps, and the series will more and more become about me and less about him.
I don't want that to happen. I never want to reach a point, for example, where I've written more WoT books than RJ did. Is it not much better to quit while we're ahead? I'd rather be Bill Watterson than George Lucas. I'd rather stop on a high note and not drive the series into the ground.
Perhaps I will change my mind eventually. (Though, I should point out it's not even my call, but Harriet's.) However, the price of stopping now is leaving a few stories untold that might have been great to tell. The price of continuing on is to risk undermining the Wheel of Time's integrity and Robert Jordan's legacy. I don't know that I want to roll those dice.
bouncl
If I could do one absolutely terribly immoral thing, and get away scott-free, it would be to steal the notes after A Memory of Light is done. I want to read them very badly.
Brandon Sanderson
It's not impossible that Harriet will let me post them once this is through. I've asked before, and she's undecided.
bouncl
If it really matters either way, what I'm after is not super-spoilerific, but things that are either interesting but ultimately unimportant easter-eggs (the allusions to modern events at the beginning of The Eye of the World for example) and things like character notes and place notes (if those exist.) Above all else, I want to see what Jordan was thinking when he wrote the world.
Brandon Sanderson
I think these are completely reasonable questions that should either be answered in the Encyclopedia or (hopefully) when we're allowed to release the notes. I'll say what I can once the book is out.
brucey7191
Are the notes for the prequels quite extensive like for the final three you have written, or are they just general theme and plot?
Brandon Sanderson
The notes are not great for most of the outriggers or prequels. We'd be relying mostly on things Team Jordan remembers of what he said about them.
One conversation we've had is potentially doing these other stories as video games. That way, the fans can experience the stories—but if we flub them, they won't detract from the main sequence of books.
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Interview: 2012
TellAllThePeople (June 2012)
Wow I am amazed that you actively Reddit, how in the name of the dark one didn't I know this? If you have the time I just have one question! Is WoT really going to end this next book? there seem to be SO many loose end that, if the series is tried too be ended in one book, will be rushed or left unacknowledged/uncompleted! Anyway thanks for yor amazing work I loved the latest books!
Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)
Well, I guess "active" is a relative phrase, as I only now saw this.
Yes, this is the ending. No, not every loose thread will be tied up. Robert Jordan left instructions for some to be left open.
It doesn't feel rushed to me, but we'll have to see what the fans think.
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Interview: 2012
Ashan_Darei (June 2012)
I debated writing this because you seem like a genuinely nice guy who cares about his fans, and I don't want to hurt your feelings. If you find it difficult to read criticism, please don't read any further.
To be honest, I am hoping that you won't write the outriggers/prequels because it seems to me like your heart's just not in it anymore. In 2011 you announced that you needed time off to reread the entire series before starting work on A Memory of Light since you'd forgotten too much and this had led to continuity issues in Towers of Midnight. But according to your own website, you only reread a third of the series, then went on to work on Alloy of Law, Legion, The Emperor's Soul, The Rithmatist... As someone who enjoyed Way of Kings a great deal, I'm glad that you've continued to work on your own books, but the fact that you abandoned the reread does make me worry about the quality of A Memory of Light. If you cannot give WoT as much time and attention as it needs, it's better to let it go.
Another big issue for me is the characterization. You're great at writing Perrin and also did a good job with Rand and the girls for the most part. Others felt off, and that unfortunately includes the main characters the outriggers and prequels would focus on. I'll leave out Mat since that's been discussed to death already, but Lan and Moiraine's scenes in Towers of Midnight were a huge disappointment for me. Lan has always been a favorite of mine, but here he came off as a whiny combination of Gawyn and Perrin. He's a grown man in his late 40s, not a sulky teenager.
Then there's Moiraine, now ready to give up all her power if only Thom tells her to. Yes, her captivity undoubtedly changed her, but at her core, she is someone who was ready to sacrifice everyone and everything to win the Last Battle, including herself. So it didn't seem right for Moiraine to offer to give up an important tool like the angreal.
""Egwene, I know what you feel for Rand, but you must realize by now that nothing can come of it. He belongs to the Pattern, and to history."—Moiraine, The Shadow Rising
For an instant she regretted sending Thom away. She did not like having to waste her time with these petty affairs. But he had too much influence with Rand; the boy had to depend on her counsel. Hers, and hers alone.—Moiraine, The Shadow Rising
That had been one of Moiraine's more succinct bits of advice. Never let them see you weaken.—Rand, Lord of Chaos
I happen to like Moiraine a lot, but there's no denying she was partly responsible for Rand thinking he needed to be hard. Yet in Towers of Midnight you have Rand speak of how caring she was; even Mat and Nynaeve sing her praises. You seem to be trying to retcon Moiraine into a saintly figure she never was. All WoT characters have major flaws; Moiraine's was that she treated people as chess pieces that sometimes needed to be sacrificed for the greater good. In The Shadow Rising she intentionally tried to separate Rand from his friends so she could be the only person influencing him. It wasn't until Rhuidean that she discovered firsthand what it felt like to be the person forced to make the ultimate sacrifice, and she finally became the advisor Rand needed. But even then she was still manipulating him and encouraging him to be hard, so obviously she hadn't changed completely. To ignore her flaws and mistakes is to do the character a disservice and hides her growth in The Fires of Heaven.
This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up here. I hope this made sense and that I didn't hurt your feelings. I still think you're a very talented writer and look forward to reading both A Memory of Light and the next Stormlight book.
Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)
Well, thanks for the thoughts. I will take the comments for what they are worth, and appreciate your sincerity.
By way of correction, I do want to point out that Alloy of Law, Legion, and The Rithmatist were all written BEFORE I started work on A Memory of Light. The only thing I've written during A Memory of Light was The Emperor's Soul, which is a short work I wrote on the flight home from Taiwan earlier in the year. I have always stopped my main projects for side ones. It is part of what keeps me fresh. Alcatraz was in the middle of Mistborn, Rithmatist in the middle of Liar of Partinel (which I decided not to publish; it was the last book I wrote before the WoT came my way.) Legion was during Towers of Midnight. Emperor's Soul during A Memory of Light.
My heart is completely in it—that I can assure you. I stopped the re-read because I was just too eager to be working on the book, and I'd already re-read (the last year) books 9-11 in working to get Perrin and Mat down for Towers of Midnight. But your complaint is valid. I did not re-read 6-8, except for spot reading. I kept telling myself I needed to get to them, but I was too deeply into the writing by that point.
As for where I misfired on characterization, I apologize. In some cases, I don't see them the same way as you do. In other cases, I am doing a worse job than RJ would have, and the failings are mine. I don't want to diminish your opinion, as it is valid. I certainly have struggled with some characters more than others.
Though, for the scene with Moiraine and Thom you quote above...I, uh, didn't write that scene, my friend. That one was RJ in its entirety, and was one of the most complete scenes he left behind.
ashan_darei
Brandon, thank you for the thoughtful response. I understand that it's very difficult for most authors to read criticism (let alone reply to it), so I appreciate that you took the time to read and reply.
I'd like to stress that I wholeheartedly agree with Neil Gaiman's "GRRM is not your bitch" post and hope it didn't come across like I thought you shouldn't be working on anything besides WoT. Side projects are very much a good thing (happy and creative authors→better books), and I am personally excited about your upcoming books. It was mainly the fact that you seemed to have given up on the reread that felt like a reason for concern since you had previously said you needed to refresh your memory to avoid a repeat of Towers of Midnight's continuity errors. It also made me worry that you had gotten weary of working on A Memory of Light, which would have been understandable given that it's a very time-consuming and demanding project that you've already spent 4-5 years on. I'm glad to hear this is not the case.
"In some cases, I don't see them the same way as you do."
That's not something I object to since we all have different perceptions of the characters. In most cases I understand where you are coming from even if your interpretation differs somewhat from mine. Unlike me, you also have access to all sorts of character notes and spoilers about their futures.
However, in some cases it felt like your personal love or dislike of certain characters also played a strong role. To put it bluntly, it's easy to tell that Perrin, Egwene and Moiraine are your favorites since they've received a disproportionate amount of PoVs or praise from other characters, Egwene in particular (how many scenes do we need where people talk about how brilliant, clever and talented Egwene is?). I don't know how much you follow other WoT boards, but there's been a lot of debate in fandom as to whether Egwene has become too much of a Mary Sue-type character who easily defeats supposedly shrewd political opponents and is constantly praised by other characters, often at the expense of people like Siuan. It's impossible for a writer to remain completely objective, and your background as a fan is on the whole one of your biggest strengths, but sometimes things like that can feel jarring. I would not want to see the same happen to a complex, flawed and interesting character like Moiraine.
"Though, for the scene with Moiraine and Thom you quote above...I, uh, didn't write that scene, my friend. That one was RJ in its entirety, and was one of the most complete scenes he left behind."
I have to admit, this comes as a surprise to me, partly because of Moiraine's seemingly uncharacteristic offer to surrender almost all her power for Thom's sake and partly because she used contractions in this scene (in the New Spring graphic novel, there's a note from Jordan informing the comic writers that Moiraine never uses contractions). She and Thom seemed to have a mutual respect and attraction in the early books, but spent very little time together, so I would not have expected any full-blown love or a marriage proposal at this point. It just seemed very strange for Moiraine to be willing to sacrifice her only chance at regaining her strength when she's barely even thought about Thom in her PoVs before. But since Jordan wrote that scene, there's nothing to do but accept that it's where he wanted to take the characters.
Brandon Sanderson
Re: Contractions Interesting story here. Harriet and Team Jordan worried about my use of contractions in places that RJ did not. It seemed very striking to them. Their first instinct was to go through and change it, after the fact, in order to match RJ's style.
Harriet didn't like how that looked. She felt that my style needed to be blended with RJ's, rather than taking my style and forcing it to fit into something else. So it was decided that one of her tasks, as editor, would be to blend the writing after it was put together. She'd go through and make scenes feel right together, and would blend the two styles like a painter blending paint.
So, she takes away contractions from me where she feels they need to go and she actually adds them to RJ's writing where she thinks it needs to be blended. I was curious if that was the case here, so I went back to the original notes.
And it turns out RJ wrote the scene with contractions. Most likely, he was planning to trim them out with editing. Remember, even the most complete scenes we have from him are first drafts. In fact, in some of them, the tense is wrong. (Much of this Moiraine/Thom/Mat scene is in present tense. )
An example from the notes is:
He puts the angreal on her wrist, and says 'I'll marry you now.'
In revision, this line turned into:
He put the bracelet back on her wrist. "I'll marry you now, if you wish it."
Anyway, I don't want to spend too much time defending myself, because that's not the point of your post. Really, the most important thing for me to say is that I understand. I'll do my best, and criticism like this is important to me. (Particularly on the Wheel of Time books, where I feel that listening to fan direction is important for gauging how well I'm doing on the characters.) It was fan criticism that brought me around to finally seeing what I was doing wrong with Mat, and (hopefully) making some strides toward writing him more accurate to himself.
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906
Interview: 2012
jdiddyesquire (June 2012)
Brandon Sanderson
Thanks, all, for the good wishes on this.
I first started talking about Steelheart a number of years ago. (Five, maybe six?) It was one of the projects I'd been planning to do in 2007 when the Wheel of Time came along and kind of distracted me.
Unable to work on it for years, I instead did up a proposal and started shopping it in Hollywood. I got interest, but everyone said "We'd be more comfortable if the book were done." So, over the years, I slowly pieced together an outline in my spare time and did chapters when I could. (I think a reading I did of the prologue of this last year is floating around on-line somewhere.)
One of the problems with working on the Wheel of Time is that it's so time-consuming, I basically can't work on any other big project while writing it. I stay creative by changing to new ideas and new concepts whenever I start feeling burned out—I work on them for a short time, then get my groove back and turn to the larger project.
That's why you see all kinds of little projects popping out here and there from me. I can't do Stormlight 2 at the same time as WoT. Two big series are just too much to do at once; one would suffer. Yet, I still need artistic liberation now and then to try something new and refresh myself.
The two novellas I'm releasing this year (Legion, The Emperor's Soul) and the short Mistborn novel last year (Alloy of Law) are things that came out of these side deviations. Steelheart is another. Shouldn't affect Stormlight 2 very much. I always like to have one large project and a handful of smaller ones running at the same time.
It may seem like a lot to have on my plate, but if you add Alloy of Law, Steelheart, and the two novellas together they are combined around half the length of The Way of Kings. (And took about 1/10 the brain space...)
I don't want to make excuses for not doing Stormlight 2, but this might give a little insight as to why you keep seeing all of these other projects popping up.
corwin01
Are any of these stories within the cosmere?
Brandon Sanderson
The Emperor's Soul, a novella, is in the cosmere.
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907
Interview: 2012
Halo6819 (June 2012)
Not that it matters to you, but that is a serious chunk of downvotes...
Brandon Sanderson (June 2012)
Interesting. I hadn't noticed that.
I wonder if I picked up some downvote bots at some point along the way. It would explain why even my simplest comments, agreeing or offering clarification, are each getting a handful of downvotes.
Either that, or they are coming from displeased readers who are downvoting my every post, regardless of content. There are those who feel I have ruined the Wheel of Time.
(And, to an extent, they are right—as anyone who would write these books who is not RJ would ruin them to an extent. There is a valid argument to be made that the books should not have been written, and that the notes should have simply been released as-is to provide closure. I don't agree with the argument, but I do see its validity.)
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Interview: 2012
LeisureSuiteLarry (July 2012)
180 days until A Memory of Light.
Just six months until this 20+ year journey is finished.
Brandon Sanderson (July 2012)
Gah! Don't remind me. (Gets back to editing.)
QENOPS
Are you working on it in San Diego? That's dedication!
PeterAhlstrom
Yes, he is. Brandon is not a party animal; his idea of relaxing after a hard afternoon at the con is to go back to his hotel room and write for 8 hours.
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2013
Invisible Vanguard Interview (Verbatim)Invisible Vanguard
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?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
Do you feel any added pressure after winning all of those awards?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes and no. I feel more indebted to the readers. The awards are nice but it is more that I don’t want to disappoint the readers. Awards are a reflection of that, so it really is more of the same thing. With the Wheel of Time books, I have a readership to whom I owe a lot. Those books don’t belong to me; they belong to the fans. I want those books to be as good as they can be, so the fans get what they’ve been waiting for all these years. With my own books I feel very excited about being able to do this for a living. There are a lot of writers who want to do this for a living; it’s like I owe the community to make good on this chance that I’ve been given, and do the best work I can, and to keep at it, because there are so many who would like to be doing what I’m doing.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
How does it feel to finish a series of which you are such a fan?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
I heard you were supposed to write one book but it turned into three.
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
I heard a few years back that the new author was supposed to have actually met Robert Jordan while he was in hospital?
Brandon Sanderson
No, I did not. I saw him once at a convention, just as a fan and that’s it. I never met him for real. I didn’t know him. I was chosen because his wife was his editor; before he passed away he asked her to find somebody to finish his series. Since she was an editor, he felt she could handle this. She chose me based on my works. I didn’t know I was being considered; I didn’t apply for it. She read Mistborn and called me.
Nalini Haynes
Wow.
Brandon Sanderson
As an aside to that, I was known as a fan of his work, which is why she went to read mine. She was looking for somebody who had, vocally, said they liked the Wheel of Time who was also a writer.
Nalini Haynes
I read your eulogy on the website. It was very much ‘wow and I hope it gets finished’.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
A reader asked what it was like reading the Wheel of Time drafts and not being able to discuss the story with your fellow fans.
Brandon Sanderson
You know, I’m usually pretty open, as a writer. If you look at my blog I talk about what I’m working on, but I can’t do that with the Wheel of Time. That has been a little bit hard for me, to be more closed mouthed. It is a project that requires some closed-mouthedness; the fans are really dedicated. If you say one word, they’ll parse that word, figure out what you meant by it, and spend hours discussing it, so you’ve really got to be on your toes. Fortunately I’ve been able to discuss it with my wife who was included in the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and with Robert Jordan’s two assistants. I do have people to talk to about it. It hasn’t been as hard as having to be on my toes, making sure I haven’t said the wrong thing lest I give a clue as to what is going to happen.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
A reader also asked how does it feel knowing that a generation of readers are literally holding their collective breath and waiting?
Brandon Sanderson
It makes pressure, but it certainly feels daunting to think of things like that, because there’s a lot riding on this book. It had better be good; I’m working my best to make sure that it is.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
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?
Brandon Sanderson
[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.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
Have you felt torn between writing your own original work and finishing Robert Jordan’s legacy?
Brandon Sanderson
No, because when I agreed to this, in my mind was the knowledge that I was going to have to set aside some projects in order to work on this. That was part of the decision process for me. It’s not to say that there hasn’t been a sacrifice, because there has been, but it was one I went into knowing that I was going to make one, and that I was going to be dedicated. So there wasn’t as much feeling being torn because, originally starting off, I had to say, ‘Okay, this book, this book and this book, I’m setting aside. I will try to find time for The Way of Kings,’ and I did find time for that, but I had to set aside a bunch of other projects. There’s one book I wrote in 2007 that I haven’t had time to revise yet, some little things like that I did set aside.
I knew the Wheel of Time was going to be a majorly large project. I didn’t know it was going to take quite as long as it has. I’m getting a little bit antsy to get back to a few of the things I set aside, but that’s only because now I’ve got the last book done and I’m in revisions, and I’m always antsy during revisions to move on. That’s just how I am: I talked about that earlier. The revision process is my least favourite process of the whole thing. I am eager to move on now that I actually have the whole book done, but it can’t be done yet. I have to do more drafts—we’re at draft number five right now. I do twelve drafts on Wheel of Time books.
Nalini
Wow, that’s a lot, especially with the size of those books.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
Some characters are there for you to hate, do you find that fans want you to change that character?
Brandon Sanderson
Reader feedback is an interesting thing. I’ll use the Wheel of Time as a model. When I took the Wheel of Time, I was a fan and reader. There were certain things that the super fan in me wanted to see happen and I had to say, ‘No, wait a minute. That would take the book into the ridiculous.’ If I put in all the cameos and brought back the characters with just the lines all the fans would love, I would risk turning the book into a comedy. With all the callouts and sendups, it turns into Shrek, which is just one huge pop culture extravaganza. That’s not what we want to do, not what we want to write. When fans are often asking for these things, they are not really asking for them.
I think there are certain things, as a fan, that you do want: great moments, huge payoffs that were a long time coming; after waiting so many many years there are things you want to have come together, a climax you want to read—these are important. So walking that line is difficult, and working on the Wheel of Time has taught me how to do it better. Characters the fans love to hate—you get a sense of when you want to make sure they are in the fans’ face plenty, and when you want to back off.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
When are the sequels for Way of Kings and Alloy of Law coming out?
Brandon Sanderson
I am working on revisions for the last Wheel of Time novel, and I have a number of revisions to do; I’m planning to be done with that around July. At that point I will write the sequel to Way of Kings. I feel very bad that people have to wait so long for the second book, but I plan to be much quicker in the future. And I plan to alternate a Way of Kings book and a Mistborn book after that.
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Interview: May, 2012
Dark Matter Interview (Verbatim)Nalini Haynes
I have been told that Way of Kings has been set in the same universe as Mistborn?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Jul 22nd, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - emozilla (Verbatim)emozilla
Here's a video I took at LibertyCon of Brandon reading the A Memory of Light opening again. No new text (he actually stops a few paragraphs short) but he does talk about about why he structured the scene as he did. Sorry for the shakiness, it was taken on my iPhone (my arms were pretty sore near the end!).
Brandon Sanderson
So, the last wind scene. I spent a long time thinking about this one, and what I would do with this, because Jim had intended one book, so from the notes you can guess that there was only one wind scene indicated, and I had three to do, because of three books, and it felt very appropriate for me, as I was going over it, to have the wind come out of the Two Rivers. It felt appropriate to me; it felt thematic with the first book—if you go back and look at the wind scene from the first book—and I actually had it blow across the course of book one, basically. We don't get all the way up where book one is, but we head out to Caemlyn, and then they kind of veer off. The point of this scene is kind of...again, it set everything that's been happening—where we are, and what's going on—but I also felt that this is a book of contrasts. This is a book of stark, stark whites and deep, deep blacks. It's named A Memory of Light for that reason, and so I wanted to end the scene at Rand laughing, with warm light spilling out of his tent, and that's kind of what we've got going on there—the contrast that's going on in this land—and there is this pool of light right there, represented in him, and that's our metaphor for this whole book: death, destruction, and the Dragon Reborn.
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Interview: Jul 17th, 2012
Brandon Sanderson
About The Wheel of Time:
Brandon delivered a little preamble/update on the progress of the book before reading the portion of Chapter One. "We are on time. Well, okay, we're late but we're on time enough that we're going to hit the January 8th [release date]."
He went on to explain, "We know you were hoping we could push it up to a November release, but we need the extra time to make sure we get this right. [Unlike The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight] we don't get another chance at this. This is the last book."
Further, Brandon mentioned that he had been up until 5 AM revising the novel, but added that he kind of likes to do that impulsively anyhow.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
Under what circumstances did you met Robert Jordan?
Brandon Sanderson
I never met him. I saw him once at a convention, and that was it. I was chosen, unbeknownst to me, by his wife Harriet when she was looking for someone. Mistborn ended up in her hand, she read it, and she called me. I didn't know what was happening, but she asked me if I was interested [in writing the last novel].
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
What, in your mind, makes the Wheel of Time series so popular? Why has it retained an audience that is willing to wait so long for it to conclude?
Brandon Sanderson
I think it's depth of characterization. That's something that Robert Jordan was phenomenal at. His use of third-person viewpoint gets you really close and intense with these characters, and you fall in love with them.
He was also very subtle with foreshadowing, which I appreciate. He did a great job with that. And his world building is quite spectacular. He has a magic system that straddles that line between hard and soft, and I really love a lot of the things he did with it.
Those things all came together, but first and foremost, it was characters people love. He did that viewpoint so well. When you're in someone's head, you feel like you know them. These characters became my friends growing up; they're like my high school buddies. I can only assume that that happened with a lot of readers.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
What sense of responsibility did you feel when Jordan's widow approached you to take over The Wheel of Time with 10 novels have so firmly established the series?
Brandon Sanderson
I was just hoping I wouldn't screw it up. I've said this a number of times that anyone approaching it was going to screw it up, to an extent. This is Robert Jordan's work, not mine, and there's no way I can do the job he would have done. My goal is just to screw it up the least of anyone who would have been given this job. I wanted the characters to remain themselves. I felt like if I could do that, everything else would fall in line.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
You've mentioned baseball a number of times, so what's your batting on screwing it up as little as possible, at this point?
Brandon Sanderson
So far, it's pretty good. There are a few things I got wrong, particularly in The Gathering Storm that I feel I did much better in Towers of Midnight and hope to do even better in A Memory of Light.
Comparing it to batting averages, I would say I'm doing a decent job. What is that? A .28? [Laughs.] Percentage wise, I'm doing better than that—maybe 85 to 90 percent of the things I needed to be doing I've been able to hit.
There's still that 10 percent that fans have to be lenient with me on, to some extent, because no one is going to get it to 100. I can hope to push it higher than I have, but there are certain things I've done that I've done a worse job on than I would have liked. There were some characters I didn’t quite get right in the first book.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
How definitive was Robert Jordan's outline for the final Wheel of Time novels? Was there any room left for you to find your own path?
Brandon Sanderson
There was a lot of room, and it's been a true collaboration. Wherever he left information, I tried to follow what he directed, but there were huge gaps that he didn't explain, and I got to do what I thought the story needed at those points.
Casey Phillips
So it was more a series of landmarks to hit than a point-by-point road map.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, certainly. That's a really good way to explain it. He wrote the last scene himself, for instance, and big chunks of the prologue and, interspersed through that, viewpoints from different characters. There were notes that his assistants gathered for me when during his last months they asked him a lot of questions.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
What was your reaction to reading Jordan's notes for the series' conclusion?
Brandon Sanderson
I was very satisfied. I was very satisfied with the ending.
Casey Phillips
How would you characterize the ending?
Brandon Sanderson
I really don't want to give any spoilers, and I'm worried that anything I say here the Wheel of Time fans will read to much into. I would characterize it as the right ending for the series, and that's basically all I can say.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
What was the impetus for splitting the last novel into three novels?
Brandon Sanderson
I was writing it to the length he instructed it was to be written. He wanted it to be so long, he said, that “it would take a wheelbarrow to get it out the doors.” The publisher and Harriet decided that was too long. I was supposed to split it into three novels because of the length I was writing it at. It came down to binding issues and things like that.
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Interview: Jul 20th, 2012
Casey Phillips
You're close to finishing the last draft of A Memory of Light, which will publish in January. How does it feel knowing the series is almost done?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, ask me in January, because I still see a huge mound of work ahead of me getting the last revision done and the copy edits and things like that. Ask me in January.
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Interview: Aug 1st, 2012
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Today, I got up and I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on. (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
I finished the final revision on A Memory of Light early in the morning Saturday, then sent it off to Team Jordan. And I was done. Team Jordan will handle the copyedits and proofreads; I might have a chime-in now and then on how a passage should be tweaked or how a continuity issue should be addressed, but essentially, my involvement as a writer in the Wheel of Time has come to an end.
Now, that doesn't mean my involvement with Wheel of Time fandom is over. I'll have my appearance at Dragon*Con this year, as well as the tour in January for A Memory of Light. Beyond that, I intend to frequently attend JordanCon and be available to WoT fans for years, even decades, to come. I intend to talk a great deal about the experience of writing these books, perhaps even post some blog entries about the subject.
But the writing is done. I'm still a little in shock about that.
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Interview: Aug 1st, 2012
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Today, I got up and I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on. (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Just about five years ago, I got that fateful call from Harriet. Since that time, I have always had a Wheel of Time book that I needed to be working on. Occasionally I would take breaks, as I did to write The Alloy of Law a couple years ago. However, the knowledge that I soon needed to be back to work on the Wheel of Time was always there.
That work has been my constant companion. For reference, when I got that call, I had only released a couple of books: the second Mistborn novel had come out the month before. I had written others that were awaiting publication—including several Alcatraz books, the last Mistborn book, and Warbreaker. I also had a draft done of The Way of Kings, another done of The Rithmatist, and some preliminary work done on a book called Steelheart.
Yes, I'd written a lot. I still had only a handful of books out in stores. It had been two years since Elantris was released. I was brand new at this.
I still feel brand new. Yet, oddly, I also feel weathered. Finishing the Wheel of Time has been a wonderful experience, but it has also been grueling. I have always respected Robert Jordan, but now I respect him even more—and for a multitude of reasons. One of those is the fact that during most of his career, he was able to release a Wheel of Time book every year or two. That's an awesome amount of work. Doing three books has worn me out.
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Interview: Aug 1st, 2012
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Today, I got up and I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on. (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
For five years, whatever I've been doing—whether it be going out to dinner, sitting down to write, or checking my email—I've known that there was more to do on the Wheel of Time. I've known that I gave my word to Harriet and to the fans that I would work hard to get those books out quickly, and I carried a weight of responsibility for the book being split and people being forced to wait years beyond when they expected to get the ending. For five years, I have worked long hours because of those reasons. All the time I could find, I dedicated to the Wheel of Time in one way or another.
And then, today, I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on.
I've reached the end of the journey and set down my burdens. It's wonderful, relaxing, and solemn all at once. I love the Wheel of Time. It's also great to be done.
And so, today, I officially take a step toward a line. I step away from being pilot of this series, and toward once again being just a fan. I will never cross back over that line—whatever else happens, I will have written three books in this series. I will continue to support and engage with Wheel of Time fandom. However, an ending has arrived for me, and it is time for my attention to be turned elsewhere.
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Interview: Aug 1st, 2012
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Today, I got up and I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on. (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
It has been an incredible experience finishing the Wheel of Time. I hope that some of you who were with me on that journey will join me for the Stormlight books, but I want to note that I don't automatically assume that if someone reads the Wheel of Time they will read my other work. I occasionally have someone come through one of my signing lines who feels guilty for "only" having a Wheel of Time book. There is no need to feel guilty for this; I love the Wheel of Time as you do, and we share that. I'm glad you've enjoyed some of my writing, and I feel as close to those books as I do to any I've written. Yes, the Wheel of Time is not mine. But those three books are mine. I love them just as much as any I've worked on.
I look forward to continuing to meet many of you at conventions and signings as the years move forward. Thank you, Wheel of Time fandom, for accepting me in and putting up with my mistakes. (There have been many.) Thank you, Brandon Sanderson fandom, for putting up with my deviations in the Wheel of Time universe. I know it has slowed down you getting your books, but this was something very important for me to do.
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Interview: Aug 1st, 2012
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Today, I got up and I did not have a Wheel of Time book to work on. (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan was a great man, and was the single greatest influence on my development as a writer. What I have done these last five years has been an attempt—a sometimes flawed but always earnest attempt—to show my appreciation. This entire genre owes him an enormous debt. My debt to him, and to Harriet, is greatest of all.
Mr. Jordan, may you rest in the Light. Everyone else, take a breath and get ready for the end. May you find his final words as satisfying to read as I did when I first picked them up five years ago. The very last scene is his, touched very little by me, as are significant chunks of the ending at large. I have achieved my goal in writing the books so that they pointed toward this ending he wrote, allowing us to include his words with as little alteration as possible.
Once again, thank you. May you always find water and shade.
Brandon Sanderson
Written July 30th, 2012
Posted August 1st, 2012Tags
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Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Jennifer Liang
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.Brandon Sanderson
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.
Footnote
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.Tags
937
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Jennifer Liang
One of the questions that people always ask me is: What's going to happen to the fandom after the Wheel of Time is over? Because we're pretty much a fandom that is based on waiting for the last book. (laughter) We've been waiting for that last book for a long time. And so, people keep asking, "Well, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?" And I'm like, "Well, we're going to do the things that we've been doing; we're going to talk about how much we like the books; we're gonna keep going to JordanCon, and going to the websites, and things like that." What do you guys think is going to happen with the fandom and all this stuff that we've done?Brandon Sanderson
If we're very lucky, there will be some good video games that come out and things like that, and that could be...I've always felt that's a great way to kind of continue the Wheel of Time without having to risk Jim's legacy with more books, if that makes sense. If there was a way that the outriggers could be done as an epic trilogy of RPG adventures, or something like that, or you know, some of the prequel stuff, I would love to play something that's like the Mass Effect / Dragon Age version of Tam's story, going out of the Two Rivers and going and fighting a war, and things like that. And so, if...hopefully, if that can happen and Red Eagle is able to get those going, you will still have some stuff like those coming that don't necessarily have to be 100% canon, that you can accept and say, "Okay, this is interpretation..."
Jennifer Liang
It's a Portal Stone.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, exactly; it's a Portal Stone version of things, and I hope that will happen.
Joe O'Hara
That would be exciting, if they do that.
Jennifer Liang
Yeah, I might actually start playing video games again if that was going on.
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938
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
So you were saying how you just added another scene recently, but do you think that'll be the actual last writing you do?Brandon Sanderson
It probably will end up being the last actual writing, will be that scene.
Question
Is it sort of like, you know, cathartic to you, or is it...you're so close to the end...
Brandon Sanderson
I'm so close to the end...ask me after the end. It's really weird, adding these new scenes. It's kinda like the shawarma scene from The Avengers...you know, they added that way after the fact, and that becomes their last touch—of course they'll probably do a sequel and things—but it's weird to add these scenes that are just right in the middle of the book, and that's actually the last writing you do, and that's the last writing you'll do on the Wheel of Time, if I don't add any more scenes, it will be this random little scene that's really just there to patch a hole, where I'm like "Oh, I haven't...you know, never mentioned this; I didn't foreshadow this correctly; I need an extra little scene here." It's by no means the most powerful scene in the book—it's a set-up scene, and it might end up being the last scene that I did—so if you ask me after the book's out, I'll tell you what it is.
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939
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
[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.
Brandon Sanderson
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)
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940
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
When you were at DragonCon a few years ago, and that's the first time I saw you, and you were just starting on the endeavor at the time; I think you had just been selected...Brandon Sanderson
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.
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941
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Jeffrey Daniel
So what do you think the most challenging part of writing A Memory of Light was? Was it those logistics, or was it writing battle scenes, or...Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, the battle scenes were the toughest part of A Memory of Light, definitely. At least the toughest for me, because it's not necessarily something I naturally excel at. I think I'm okay at it. I've read a lot of books...but I've read a lot of books. I haven't done it. Fortunately, Alan Romanczuk has done it. He was a soldier and Jim was a soldier, so I'm really relying a lot on him for getting it to feel right. You know, my book learning only gets me so far in the way that tactics are done and the way a battlefield plays out. So, that's been one of the big slow-downs for this. The other big slow-down for this has been just making sure we get everything in there. There are a lot of things that need to go in the book and there are some things that aren't going to make it. Jim said that certain things don't get resolved, and there are certain things we just didn't have time for and we said, "Okay, this just doesn't get resolved." And I'm sorry about that. He warned you, I will warn you: there are some non-resolutions.
Joe O'Hara
I don't know how other people would feel about that, but I kind of enjoy that. To me, that's where a fandom would go. We can continue to speculate and wonder and think about.
Jennifer Liang
Yeah, it gives us something to talk about. We can ride that or like ten years at least. (laughter)
Jeffrey Daniel
JordanCon will be good for a while. We'll have a lot of talking panels on that one.
Brandon Sanderson
I will try to keep them quiet. There are two deleted scenes from the book that actually covered very interesting things. And after the books are out I will give you guys some hints and then you can spend the next ten years deciding what was in them.
Jennifer Liang
Yeah, we'll ask you some really weird questions over the next ten years. We used to do that to Robert Jordan. We'd ask him very oblique questions, hinting at the thing we really wanted to know, because we were like doing process of elimination, and logic trees and...yeah, he caught on.
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942
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Phillip
For Brandon, you have a career on your own as an author....Brandon Sanderson
Yes.
Phillip
Since you've had this other career—which has helped, I'm sure, in a lot of ways—what impact has this been on your original writing career, I mean I know you had to have slowed down your progress and your series, but you've still been writing those. What are the biggest impacts you've seen on your writing career because of taking on the Wheel of Time?
Brandon Sanderson
It's definitely done some...it's made me have to put down projects. In fact, next year, I have coming out the projects I was working on in 2007 when this came my way; The Rithmatist and Steelheart are both books that I did way back then that I didn't feel that I was able to release in the middle of the Wheel of Time books, even though I had them done, because I wouldn't have been able to do the revisions on them, and because I wouldn't be able to support them; I wouldn't be able to do sequels and things like that. They're both YA books. And that's, you know...when I accepted this, I said "Okay, I'm shelving these things." I did get to do a couple of books, I got to do The Way of Kings, which, granted, I already had a draft of that done. So really, the only book in these last years, the last five years that I've been doing this, that I've written from scratch and released was Alloy of Law. And so it's going to...it did kind of slow me down. The only reason it didn't slow me down as much as it could have was because I had all of this stuff done already. I had a great big backlog of books, because I enjoy writing, and I've been writing for years, and back then I wasn't as popular as I am now, so Tor would put things in slots later on, like...while I've been working on these, Warbreaker and Mistborn 3 came out, both of which were done years before I was offered the Wheel of Time. And so...yeah, all of this stuff that I had been working on long ago got delayed, and that was just fine—I went into this eyes open—but it is going to be nice to be able to go back to these things and give them some of the support that I've wanted all along.
You know, this project took more time than all of us expected it to. I had to say yes sight unseen to knowing how big it was. I knew what Jim had said, but I didn't know how much of it was done. I didn't know that we had two hundred pages out of two thousand. There was no way for me to know how much would need to be done. So yeah, it's been a big long deviation, but not a distraction, because I think my writing has grown by leaps and bounds. It's kind of like I had to go pump iron, because writing in the Wheel of Time has been much harder than writing on anything else I've done, and I have been forced to grow, and you can see my being forced to grow between the books in the Wheel of Time books. I think my writing is way better in Towers of Midnight than it was in The Gathering Storm, particularly in some of the ways that that Jim was strong. And so, I think that's helped me. It's certainly not an experience that I would trade for anything. I got to read the ending in 2007, so there's that. (laughter) But yeah, it's been a wonderful experience, but boy, it's been a big, big, big deviation. It's not where I thought my career would go at all.
Joe O'Hara
Was it daunting seeing just that small amount of work that was taken care of before you stepped on?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, it's daunting in two ways: First, I got that. It was really nice to have the ending. Like, having the prologue and the ending basically done—those were the two things that he did the most work on—meant that I had the bookends, which is how I build an outline anyway. I know where I start, I know my ending, and I build an outline out of that. But at the same time, there's three million words of notes about the series, which is daunting in another way. Yes, there's two hundred pages of work done on the book, and then there's this stack over here of all these other notes that include all of these things that are just mind-boggling, the stuff that's in there. We released a few of them last year for you guys. Was it last year that we released the notes?
Jennifer Liang
Yeah, we got the page on Cadsuane and...
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, the page on Cadsuane and stuff like that. You just see all of weird things that he had in his notes. I have all the same sort of weird stuff in my notes about like Stormlight and stuff, but it's just fun to see. You go pore through these notes...he has the most random stuff. Lists of trees, lists of people, lists of this, and just millions and millions and words of this stuff, more than I can keep track of at all. It requires Maria and Alan to keep track of all this stuff. So it was also daunting in that, yes there are two hundred pages written, which actually nice, because as I've said before, if the book had been 80% of the way done, they wouldn't have needed to hire me, they wouldn't have needed to bring me in. When a book is 80% of the way done, that's when you get a ghostwriter, or Harriet just does it herself. She really could have done it in-house herself and finished that and said "Look, here we're going to do a few patches and stuff, but the book is mostly done."
And so, getting there and saying "Hey, I actually get to do something with this, I have an opportunity to add the scenes that I've been wanting as a fan for years and years, so I get a chance to actually write these characters, rather than coming in and just patching some holes," was very thrilling for me at the same time. You know, I worried that I would get there and it would just be patching holes—"Write these five scenes," or something like that—and that would have meant I wouldn't have really had a part in it. Granted, that would have been better, because it would have meant there was more Jim in it, and it would have made a better book, but at the same time, when I got to see those two hundred pages, I was saddened but excited at the same time.
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943
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
When you're...you know, speaking with regards to all three books that you wrote, if there's an issue where you think a character or a plot should go one way, and Harriet or any of the others thinks it should go another way, how does that work?Brandon Sanderson
Harriet wins. Harriet always wins. Usually what happens is that there'll be...if Harriet says something, we just do it. The only time when there's questioning is when I disagree with Maria or Alan, and we both kind of make our arguments. We do these in-line edits with track changes in Microsoft Word; we'll have whole conversations there, where I'll say "This is why I think this character would do what they're doing," and Maria would come in and say, "This is why I think you're wrong and they wouldn't do this," and we'll have big discussions, and Harriet'll make the call, and then I'll do it as Harriet says, 'cause Harriet knows the characters better than anyone.
And so there are times when I've been overruled—it happens on every book—and there are times where Harriet said, "No, I think Brandon's right," and Maria and Alan—her superfans—disagree, but the way that fandom works, we all disagree on things. You'll find this, and I disagree with some people on how character interpretations will happen, and things like that. Some people, for instance, don't think my Talmanes is true to Jim's Talmanes. Things like that. That's the sort of thing we're arguing over. It's very rarely over main characters, but it's like, "Is Talmanes acting like Talmanes would?" And I read the character one way, and some people read the character another way, and I just have to go with my interpretation, and if Harriet says, "No, this isn't right," I revise it. If Harriet says, "No, this feels right to me," then we just go with it.
Question
Was there ever a case where you and Maria and Alan had a difference of opinion and Harriet had a completely different take?
Brandon Sanderson
That all four of us had a different take? Yeah, that's happened; that's very rare but it has happened. We're trying to piece together something that's...there's always this consideration of "What would Jim do?" But there's also a consideration of Brandon as author, not knowing what Jim would do, what does Brandon think needs to happen narratively? And there are some things where I, reading the books as an author, say "This is where he was going." "No, he didn't say it in the notes." "No, it's nowhere in there; he doesn't make mention of it." "This is where he was going; my understanding of story structure, plotting and things, and I can say, you know, as sure as I can say anything, that this is what he was going to do." And, you know, sometimes Maria and Alan, they look at the notes and say, "No, that's not at all what he was going to do; look what the notes say." And I say, "No, that's not what they're saying," and we have arguments about that too.
There's lots of discussing going on. We're all very passionate about the Wheel of Time. It'd be like getting Jenn and Jason from Dragonmount and Matt from Theoryland together and hashing out what they think about where Demandred is, or something like that. There are gonna be lots of passionate discussions. I think, at the end of the day, that makes the book better, and the fact that we have kind of...Harriet tends to just...if she has a feeling, she lets us argue about it, and then she says, like...you know, 'cause she's the one that would sit at dinner and discuss the characters with Jim. None of us did that, and she did that for twenty years, so...yeah.
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944
Interview: Jul 21st, 2012
LibertyCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Phillip
One of the things that...okay, blasphemy: I've only read through the series once.
Jennifer Liang
At least you've read through it once...Jimmy.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, Jimmy!
Phillip
Anyway, in some of these later books, one of the biggest issues that I had was when the timeline got fractured, and there was a period of time when I was fully convinced that there was a Darkfriend impersonating Tam. It just had me really confused. What lessons did you learn from that experience as you're gonna carry forward into your future writing?
Brandon Sanderson
The timeline fracture in Towers of Midnight came because of the book split, and what needed to go in one book, had to go in...you know, and things like that, and after the fact of releasing The Gathering Storm, we had Towers of Midnight sitting there, and I hadn't finished Towers of Midnight completely, I'd written like...I'd basically, when we split it, I'd written one...like, Perrin almost all the way through, but not other sequences all the way through and things, and we released The Gathering Storm, and we had to like fix things in The Gathering Storm, when we were getting in that, we realized, "Oh no..." I mean, the timeline is fine, but it means that Tam has to jump back in time. And this was going to be a bit of a challenge even if the book were whole, because Robert Jordan had them off of time with one another at the start of The Gathering Storm; Perrin was several months behind everyone else. And so, once you start bringing people back together, you either had to...we either had to do some things like walls fall on them, which was famously how Jim got Mat back in sync with everybody else, when he'd been behind, is a wall fell on him, and then he left him for several months for him to heal, and then we come back, and Mat's like, "Man, I hated having that wall fall on me!" (laughter)
Jennifer Liang
"Good thing that was three months ago; I'm better now!"
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. And that was the way that Robert Jordan, since people get off track from each other...some of the things you kind of have to do. I had to get Perrin stuck in the mud for a while. (laughter) Yeah. And this is just to get everyone synced up, and the Tam sync-up, as a writer, I think what I learned is, I think of timelines a little differently. Like I, being deep in the series and working on it, I knew where everyone was, and I'm like, "Everyone will know that we're flashing back to Perrin here." But of course not everyone knows that; they're not all following the timeline; they don't know that we're starting this book two months before The Gathering Storm ended, so to bring them back on track, that's why Tam ended up in two places at once, because he wasn't in two places at once; they were off track from one another, time-wise. And I guess I would just take more consideration of the fact that not everyone is steeped in the timelines like I am, and knowing where everyone is, and things like that, and I would have tried to find a better cue for the fact that we've jumped backward in time.
Jennifer Liang
"Three months earlier..."
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. "Three months ago..."
Jennifer Liang
"...back when dinosaurs ruled the earth..."
Brandon Sanderson
Mmhmm.
Footnote
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
JordanCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
Is there any plan for a movie series—anything along that line—and if so, what is the progress on that, if any?Harriet McDougal
The year after my husband's death, I signed a big, fat contract with Universal giving them the movie rights. They have the rights by contract to make a miniseries or movies of the Wheel of Time books, and they have seven years to get the first movie into theaters. And I've forgotten what the timing is on the miniseries. Somebody here in the room has seen a first draft of a movie script and said it is..."execrable" would perhaps be the correct word. Just no—no, no, no, no. I have not seen this, but the clock is ticking. I would...does anybody remember the Ralph Bakshi movie of Lord of the Rings?
Audience
Yeah...
Harriet McDougal
Yeah, was that the pits or what? Just awful. And it didn't kill the Lord of the Rings, because now there's the wonderful Jackson. It may be that this will happen with the Wheel of Time. I don't control it; I do have a little....if they sat down to make a triple-X movie out of The Eye of the World, I think I would be able to stop them legally. I don't have...I can't say "You have just really messed up this character." They would say, "Thank you, we've consulted you, now go away." It's pretty much how it works. The chances are that it may be shelved and never made at all under this contract; I get the rights back if they do that, after seven years...which is so peculiarly Biblical. (laughter) I think about the Pharaohs and the kine, and the lean kine and the fat kine, every time I say that. You know, why do they do that? They're obsessed with [permits?] maybe.
So, chances are it will never be made—it will not be made under this contract. The next likely chance is that something awful will be made, and the third possibility is that they'll do it right and something wonderful will happen. I think it's about 50-50 that they're gonna shelve it. It's been very slow so far, and I don't think they'll make the deadline. But I hope they're all sitting out there going very broody about the Game of Thrones. They should be, little dollar signs flicking through their eyeballs like saa. (laughter) Because this would be bigger, if they did it right. It would be wonderful if they did it right, but there's no way to even expect that. The wisdom among writers and publishers is, "Oh, you're offered money for a movie? Take the money and run, and never, never go to see what they do with it." But of course I will. (laughter)
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2012
JordanCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Richard Fife
I really enjoyed the comic books that are being done, the Eye of the World comic book that's being done right now. I know Maria's working on that quite a bit, and Alan. You wanna talk about that a little bit, about how that's going for you?Maria Simons
Actually, we are getting close to the end of The Eye of the World, and it's going well. We haven't talked at all about The Great Hunt, but I'm hoping that we'll start. We've got one more script to go for The Eye of the World, and then hopefully we will be moving on, and the next graphic novel will be out in the fall, part two of The Eye of the World, and it's a lot of fun doing that, and I hope you'll all check it out.
Alan Romanczuk
It's put us in awe, also, of the amount of work that goes into creating a graphic novel. A great deal on our part, looking stuff over for approval, but what's happening in the graphic shop, and it's not unusual at all to get emails at 10pm Friday night, or midnight Saturday night, you know, "Here's the latest stuff from us." You know, when do you guys sleep? Any of you who are graphic artists out there, I guess you know what it's like. It's total geekdom. You don't think about eating, sleeping...you just do it. And the amount of change that has to go on in every single panel is pretty awesome.
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Interview: Sep 22nd, 2012
Orem Signing Report - Zas (Verbatim)Question
Any spoilers for A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
Let's see here. Harriet killed a character in the book that I did not intend to kill. So I wrote the entire book with a character living and she killed this character.
Question
Did she tell you right before you finished, or what?
Brandon Sanderson
She sent back the draft and said "This person dies."
Question
So did you have to change a lot?
Brandon Sanderson
So they succumb to their wounds. I intended them to live, so there is a character who died unexpectedly. So that's a slight spoiler. There is like a chapter that's over a hundred pages. It's a Super Chapter.
Question
Did you have to invent any of it yourself, or did Jordan leave a lot of it for you?
Brandon Sanderson
He left some of it for me, and then I had to make the rest. As you're reading through the books, probably about half and half. Half will be stuff that he wrote notes on, half will be stuff that I wrote.
Question
Do you feel like it comes pretty easy?
Brandon Sanderson
Some of it does. I mean I've been reading since I was a kid. So some of the characters like Perrin is very natural for me. And Rand's super natural for me. Others are a little less natural for me.
Question
Like Mat.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, like Mat. Mat's harder for me to write.
Question
Why is that?
Brandon Sanderson
Because Mat is very complex. Not to say that Perrin's not, but Perrin's straightforward. You know what I mean? Perrin says what he means, and does what he means. Mat says the opposite of what he means, and does the opposite of what he says. Making that tone correct for that is very hard. He's one part rapscallion, the other part Awesomeness. And balancing when he's playing the fool, and when he's just being awesome is very hard to get that balance down, because you don't want it to be silly, you know he can play the fool a bit but he shouldn't be silly. Otherwise it won't match from when he's being Awesome as well, if that makes sense.
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948
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
We have the Asha'man who can only do Traveling and only open very small holes. Are we gonna see him open those holes in front of cannons, and then open it in front of Trolloc armies, A, and B, are we going to see the [kites?] that were developed in Rand's college used by the Seanchan?Brandon Sanderson
RAFO. But I do have a slightly longer answer. One of the things I was excited to do when I was given the project was, I didn't want to invent a whole lot of new weaves—I felt it wasn't [my] place to do so, and Robert Jordan already had a very long list; there are a few that I invented by necessity—but mostly I wanted to take weaves that he had already invented and extrapolate. This is kind of what I do with magic systems, if you can't tell, and gateways were ones of the ones where I was like, "I can do stuff with these." And then Portal came out, and I'm like, "Ah, you're stealing my ideas!" (laughter) But yes, gateways...I do gateways a little more extensively than I think Jim had planned, and sometimes Maria is like nudging me and like, "Let's back off on the gateway stuff, Brandon." I just get really excited about them because I think they can do so many cool things. So, I won't say yes or no, but you will see me playing with gateways for sure.Footnote
Presumably the questioner is referring to Androl, but Androl can open big gateways despite being perhaps the weakest Asha'man; that's his Talent.Tags
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Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
As sort of a non-plot-related question: You've had a lot of opportunity to compare your writing to Robert Jordan's after three books. What are some things that you felt that Robert Jordan did that you just can't match, and what are some things that you feel that you do in a stronger way than Robert Jordan did?Brandon Sanderson
The primary thing that I think Robert Jordan was really good at that I'm just mediocre at is prose. I've always tried to create very utilitarian prose, prose that gets across my idea and my story. I use what we call Orwellian prose: I try to make my prose a clear pane of glass that you see the story through. Robert Jordan was on a completely different level. He could create very engaging, beautiful prose while not distracting from the story. There are very few writers who are capable of that. Tolkien was another one, and actually, in our current era Pat Rothfuss is one of those. I envy their prose, and I think that they are just really, really good with prose, and Robert Jordan was as well.
Something that he does very well that I think I've learned better by working this...there are two things. I think he was very good at being subtle with his foreshadowing in a way that I think is really brilliant, and I've tried to learn from, and that's something that I like to do, and so seeing how he did it has been very helpful for me. And, the juggling of lots of viewpoints is something else he did really, really well that is something that I want to be doing in my books, and that I think I've taken steps toward, but working on these books and seeing what he has done has improved me.
As for the other question, I'm not sure honestly if there is a right answer for this, because the primary thing that we do differently is more of a 'different' as opposed to a 'better/worse', and one of the big ones is action sequences. Robert Jordan wrote action sequences in a very specific way: he was a soldier;—he was in combat; he had been in combat before—and he wrote battle scenes...like that. I write very cinematic battle scenes. My battle sequences, I write to have a certain feel and energy, and it's different from the complete chaos and sense of terror that are in a lot of his battle scenes where you never know what's going on, because that's how real war is. And I haven't been in real war; I could try to imitate that, but instead I use my methodology for battle scenes.
If there is one strength that I have in my writing it is endings, and so coming out of this project at the end has allowed me to apply some of my skill set toward tying things up and focusing, and trying to make sure that we have really powerful endings to each of the sequences that are happening in the books.
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950
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
I was wondering if it's possible for scholarship in future generations if we at some point could get a copy that's annotated so that we can tell which passages came directly from Robert Jordan—like color-coded or something—because as you've been intermingling them I think it would be interesting to be able to go back and say, "This is what he originally wrote."Brandon Sanderson
It will be very hard to do simply because, you know, you would have a lot of sentences that would four colors in them (laughter), because, here are three words from Brandon; here are a couple of words from Robert Jordan; the rest are from Harriet, that she has edited, and then here's the insertion by Maria as she's doing the copy-edit, that something needed to be [put] in. It would be very difficult to get right.
The other thing is, Harriet has several times expressed a reluctance to let people see the notes because she doesn't want people focusing when reading the books on what was me and what is Jim. I do still kinda tend to work on her and see if I can get her to let us do something with the notes. I'm not too expectant—if it doesn't happen I'm gonna be fine—but I tend to ask on behalf of the fans, people like yourself, and if I can do that I can then bring them out and I will talk a little bit more about that.
One thing that I've said to people a number of times, that in each of the three books there is a prologue [scene] that Robert Jordan wrote almost completely, or completely, for the prologue of the book, then since we split it in three, I took one scene from each completely that is Robert Jordan's—and there are a few fragments in each prologue as well that were also his—but there's one complete scene in the prologue. In the first book, it was the farmer sitting on the doorsteps watching the storm; that was one of the scenes he dictated, and we actually at JordanConI got to listen to that dictation. In the second book it was the Borderlander tower with the soldier and his son; that was one of the more complete scenes we had from Robert Jordan which had some minimal revision and editing during the process but was basically a complete scene that he gave us. And there's one like that in the third book as well.
In The Gathering Storm, I've said before that, as the notes went, Rand was a little more me; there were fewer notes on Rand. There were more notes on Egwene. We're both involved in all the viewpoints, but Rand from that is a little more me, and Egwene's a little more Robert Jordan, and then in Towers of Midnight, Perrin's a little bit more me, and Mat is a little more Robert Jordan. And maybe we'll be able to release more than that, but so far that's about all I've said. There are certain scenes that he did write, by the way—I'll give you everything; this is what I've told people; I haven't told people much—but there's a certain scene in The Gathering Storm where Egwene has an unexpected meeting with an old friend in the Tower. That one was done by Robert Jordan. And in Towers of Midnight, there is...most of the Mat stuff including the ending where a certain engagement happens was Robert Jordan.
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951
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
I was actually talking to some other fans outside who are fans of your other works obviously as well as the Wheel of Time, and something that kind of occurred to me when we were speaking was you have a recurring character named Hoid. Is he going to sneak his way into A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
Um, Hoid will not make an appearance in A Memory of Light. (laughter) I chose this very consciously. It felt like enormous hubris of me to sneak my recurring character into the Wheel of Time. There was a little bit of temptation there since the Wheel of Time is—we've got this kind of indication that it is the kind of almost Amber-like in that it is the true world, and there are all these Mirror Worlds where people are living—so it's possible to conceive that even our world is a Mirror World happening, and that...or, you know, we don't know if our world is the real world in a different Age, or if our world is a Mirror World, or...what do you call them, Shadow Worlds? There's all sorts of different...yeah—but it's plausible that there could be a connection, but at the end of the day I really just decided, no, this was not something I wanted to do.
I did write in a cameo for myself—Robert Jordan wrote one for himself into the books. In Knife of Dreams there is an appearance by Robert Jordan; the fans know where it is if you ask them. I also have an appearance in a different way—we are both objects actually—and when I visited Charleston, I think it was the second time, they were getting ready to auction and give away Robert Jordan's spear collection. And, Wilson, his cousin and very dear friend, invited me to go in and said, "Pick one, any one, and it's yours." And so, I was like blown away. I went in there and like, it's like a kid in a candy store, there's like swords everywhere and spears and ashanderei, and just everything, and in the middle of them I found a katana with red and gold dragons painted on the hilt, and I had to choose that one. And so I took the katana—they're twirling around the hilt, just kind of like you know I always imagined them on Rand's arms—and I took that one, and I framed it actually in a sword box and put at the bottom, "Let the Dragon ride again on the Winds of Time," and then "Robert Jordan," and his date of birth and date of death underneath and it hangs in my room in kind of our gallery down below, and I wrote that into the books. I haven't officially said that before, but yes, I wrote that into the book. That's my kind of cameo. And so, when you see that sword, you know why that sword is in the books. That's my equivalent of his cameo.
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952
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)Question
Okay, first of all, I'd like to say I was a little scared with a new writer coming into the series...Brandon Sanderson
Justifiably so... [laughter]
Question
I'd like to say, when I read the first book, it was like he didn't pass.
Brandon
Well, thank you.
Question
How did it feel to be the chosen one?
Brandon
I've told this story, some of you have heard it before. When I got the phone call, I...it came out of the blue, like I really had no idea. Everybody knew before me. Paul knew before me, I'm pretty sure—yeah, he's nodding; he's an editor for Tor; he's like "Yeah, I knew"—everyone knew before me, and I was foolish enough to be asleep when Harriet called me, so I just got it as a voicemail message. "Please will you call me back; there's something I want to talk to you about." And so I had to spend hours trying to get ahold of Harriet, being like "Robert Jordan's wife just called me," and I was so nervous I couldn't speak. And I eventually called up Tor because nobody was answering—my editor and my agent—nobody. And I got hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden and and it really is, what he said is "Oh yeah, you...it's probably what you think it is, I'll have her call you back." And I'm like, [makes a distressed face, audience laughs], "What do I think it is!?" He didn't even tell me, he wouldn't even tell me, he just said that.
And so, I eventually....Harriet calls me back and says, "Well, I was just wondering...we're putting together a small list of authors that we'd like to consider for this—finishing my husband's series—and I was wondering if you would be interested." She later mentioned that the short list included one name, which was mine. [laughter] But she didn't want to be backed into the corner until she made her final decision. And so in that one she asked, and I said yes. And for those of you who have heard this story, I'm sorry, but I'll repeat it. That night, I was scared out of my wits. I laid in bed—is that the right term?—I lay in bed just completely terrified of what I'd just done. And I really, seriously considered backing out because I realized that nobody could write the books that Robert Jordan was going to write. And so, in taking this project, I was going to fail. And I believe I have failed in a slight amount, in that nobody can replace him, right? As good of a job as I can do, I cannot do the job he was going to do, and by definition, the job he was going to do is the right book.
And because of that I almost said no, and then in considering that, I had this like even deeper fear that I would say no, and that they would get someone else and those people would screw it up way more than I would screw it up. [laughter] And the phrase I frequently use—and I do believe this—laying there that night, I said, "How many authors out there have read the books as many times as I have? There probably aren't many, if any. I'm not the best author out there, but I'm a pretty good one. I'm not the biggest Wheel of Time fan out there, but I'm a pretty big one. And if you do the intersection of pretty decent authors and pretty decent Wheel of Time fans, there's not a lot of people in that. And I really feel that if Robert Jordan can't write the book, that kind of writer in me said, "Well, I wanna do it, because I feel like then at least somebody who cares has ahold of it. And I feel that I will screw it up the least."
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953
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Report (Paraphrased)Chris Lough
A good amount of the questions weren’t concerned with the plot of the final book but with Brandon’s writing style, his struggles in adapting the material, and how it was melded to the work that Robert Jordan left behind. The audience wondered whether we might see future annotated versions of the final three books, with Robert Jordan’s work and Brandon Sanderson’s work marked out.Brandon Sanderson
Brandon responded that it’s highly unlikely, due to it being against Harriet McDougal’s wishes and to the fact that annotations would have to be down to the sentence level, as it was often the case that one sentence would have been written by Robert Jordan, then altered by Brandon, then edited for content and style by Harriet, then copy edited by Harriet’s assistant Maria L. Simons.
Brandon did reveal several doozies in regards to what Jordan left behind, however. Each prologue to the final three books contains a scene written by Robert Jordan. One already known is the scene with the farmer in The Gathering Storm, for Towers of Midnight, Jordan wrote the prologue scene involving the soldiers in the Borderlander tower. And for A Memory of Light? We’ll see.
Perhaps the biggest admission, and one that brought a hush over the crowd, was the reveal that Jordan wrote the chapter in The Gathering Storm where Verin reveals she is Black Ajah to Egwene and the sequence in Towers of Midnight where Moiraine is rescued by Mat. Two of the most important elements in these final books came directly from Jordan’s hand.
Additionally, Sanderson pointed out that the Rand and Perrin viewpoints in The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight are more of his work, while Egwene and Mat’s viewpoints in those books are more Robert Jordan’s work.
Brandon also revealed that he makes a cameo in the books, in much the same way that Robert Jordan makes a cameo as an item in Knife of Dreams. (He appears as a ter'angreal of a fat man holding a book in the chapter “A Different Skill.”) A few years ago Sanderson was gifted one of Robert Jordan’s swords, choosing a katana with red and gold dragons twining around the hilt and handle. This gift from Robert Jordan’s family is now present in the series, and represents Brandon’s own cameo, for those who wish to look.
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954
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Report (Paraphrased)Chris Lough
The audience was also curious as to what characters he had the hardest time grasping.Brandon Sanderson
“Aviendha and Tuon are the ones I worked the hardest on, but I expected them to be hard. I wasn’t expecting Mat to be hard. That blindsided me.” Brandon explained that in general the Andoran characters are the easiest for him to write as, “They feel like friends from high school.” So it surprised Brandon when he sat down to write Mat and discovered that he didn’t have an immediate grasp on him. Brandon eventually realized it was because, unlike the other characters, “Mat is an untrustworthy narrator. He doesn’t always believe what he says and he doesn’t even always believe the thoughts in his own head. He’s a character I’ve struggled to write but I think I’ve gotten as close to him as it’s possible for me to get.” (The positive reaction to the Mat chapter he read certainly put weight to this statement.)
He also, tongue-in-cheek, admitted that before he wrote Cadsuane she was his least favorite character. “She was just too mean!”
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955
Interview: Sep 2nd, 2012
DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Report (Paraphrased)Chris Lough
Brandon also spoke about the aspects of his writing that have improved due to his work on The Wheel of Time.Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson praised Jordan’s abilities with prose, considering it unmatchable in regards to his own writing style, but noted that Jordan was responsible for Brandon’s growing skills in dealing with multiple character viewpoints, and for Jordan’s remarkable subtlety in regards to foreshadowing in the Wheel of Time series. Brandon also noted how differently he and Jordan approach battles in regards to their personal histories. Jordan, having experienced warfare firsthand, wrote battle scenes with a sense of dread while Brandon’s battles have a cinematic design to them.Tags
956
Interview: Oct 10th, 2012
Brandon Sanderson on UNFETTERED (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Hi all, this is Brandon Sanderson, fresh off of finishing the last book of The Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light, and I'm here to introduce the story collection Unfettered to you. Shawn Speakman is putting together—actually asked all of us to do something like this, to talk about how we got involved in the project—he first approached me when I was on tour—it was probably I guess for Alloy of Law—and he explained that he was having...he had a lot of medical bills—Shawn has had some health troubles lately—and he's a good friend of a lot of us in the community, and he was looking to put together an anthology to maybe help to defray some of these costs, at the suggestion of Terry Brooks. And he just asked if I'd be interested; he said, "Really, it could be anything." That's why he's calling it "Unfettered", is because he didn't want to put any restrictions; in fact, he said it could be deleted scenes, it could be any sort of material relating to anything we wanted to do. He sounded most interested in something relating to one of my worlds that I've already written in, but he really said it could be anything.
Well, I wasn't sure I'd be able to be involved, because A Memory of Light has taken...it was taking quite a bit of my time. It's quite the big project, and finding any time at all to work on anything else was really difficult. At the same time, however, there's a sequence of viewpoints in A Memory of Light—and I'm not at liberty yet to say who it is, but it's a character that you will know—that I was working on that were somewhat more daring than some of the viewpoints I've done. I wanted to try and give some deeper backstory to someone, and at the end of the day, showing the scenes to Harriet, we all liked them, but they didn't fit in the book. Harriet felt that they were too distracting, because of the new, sort of...new things I was adding, the things I was fleshing out. This is something that sometimes you want to avoid in storytelling, where you're near the end of the climax, introducing new concepts to kind of distract and derail.
She felt that these scenes were doing that, and so after some discussion, we decided that they should be cut. And I always kind of felt sad, because while I agree that they were distracting, I really felt that they were strong and that they added a lot to the character, and give a lot of extra motivation—a lot of extra poignancy to some of the things going on in A Memory of Light—and so I began to think maybe this would be the place for them. I approached Harriet, and she said she thought that was a good idea.
So what we'll be doing, it's a story called "River of Souls" but it's actually a sequence of deleted scenes. They are a complete arc for a certain character; they are meant to be read companionly to A Memory of Light. It's not going to make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read at least the rest of the Wheel of Time, but I find them very exciting; I think you'll really like them, and I think this is a good place for them because they won't be distracting from the rest of the story.
So, "River of Souls" is going to be part of the Unfettered anthology which has lots of wonderful other people in it—in fact I'm honored to have a story in there, to be alongside some of the names that are in this anthology—and I really wish Shawn the best. He's been a wonderful help to me in my career, and to a lot of the writers out there, so I hope you guys enjoy reading Unfettered, and look forward to reading "River of Souls", and once A Memory of Light is out, I'll be able to talk a little bit more about this character, why these scenes were important, and what's going on there.
Footnote
Peter added a clarification to this on Dragonmount.
Peter Ahlstrom
It was actually Harriet's suggestion that this go in the anthology. When we talked to her about Unfettered around the time of JordanCon, we asked her about including a completely different and much shorter deleted scene. She said no to that but suggested this sequence instead.
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957
Interview: Apr, 1997
SFX Profile: Robert Jordan (Verbatim)SFX
There's one major problem with huge fantasy series—picking up on them halfway through. Robert Jordan has one word of advice for anyone who's considering joining his epic "Wheel Of Time" saga with volume seven, A Crown Of Swords (SFX16; B), now out in paperback at £5.99.Robert Jordan
Don't! Start on the paperback of the first book The Eye Of The World. The characters are innocent at the beginning and you see the world in a certain way through their eyes. One of themes of the books is the mutability of knowledge—you cannot possibly know the truth of an event unless you were there to see it, and then you know only what you observed yourself. So the characters suspect that some of what they know is wrong, but they never know which parts are wrong. Each book changes the books before.Tags
958
Interview: Apr, 1997
SFX Profile: Robert Jordan (Verbatim)SFX
But despite Jordan's attempts to discourage casual readers, "The Wheel Of Time" has acquired a dedicated and enthusiastic following.Robert Jordan
It's a fantasy War And Peace, a story not only of individuals but also of cultures clashing across a continent. It will take at least three more books to finish. I worry that someone will walk up to me and say, 'I want an end to it now or I'm going to bash your head in.' On the other hand, I've had people threaten to desecrate my grave if I die before I finish it!
SFX
But if the main thrust of the story's already mapped out, couldn't another author complete it from Jordan's notes?
Robert Jordan
If I die, my computer's hard drive will be reformatted four times. I defy anybody to pull anything off it after that, and I've made arrangements that anyone who tries to finish the series after my death will have their kneecaps removed.
SFX
That's an ironic attitude for an author who gained kudos for his additions to Robert E. Howard's Conan saga, surely?
Robert Jordan
If he could reach us, I'm sure Howard would strangle me, Andy Offutt and all the rest of us. But I don't want somebody messing around with my characters, putting their boots all over my world.
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959
Interview: Apr, 1997
SFX Profile: Robert Jordan (Verbatim)SFX
It's a world where the conflicts between different factions of supposed heroes often take precedence over their preparations for battle against The Dark Lord—indeed, at first glance it seems as if the main story hasn't even started yet.Robert Jordan
The battle between good and evil is a big part of the story, but it's not easy to see how many of the struggles for advantage are actually motivated by the Dark One, by evil. People who've read the books a few times are beginning to spot what's happening, and that while our heroes don't realize it, the war against evil has been going on from the beginning.Tags
960
Interview: Aug, 1996
Waldenbooks Hailing Frequency Interview (Verbatim)Hailing Frequency
The last time Hailing Frequency had the privilege of interviewing Robert Jordan, he had just released the fourth volume of his vast fantasy tale, "The Wheel of Time." At the time, we asked him to give a brief summary of the story thus far. He laughed—it had already grown so complex that no easy summary was possible. Now with the release of A Crown of Swords, "The Wheel of Time" has grown to seven volumes. Since each new volume has leaped to the top of the Waldenbooks bestseller lists almost on the day of its release, it would appear that a remarkable number of readers are already familiar with the story to date. So rather than ask the impossible once again, we decided to ask Jordan about the project as a whole—its origins and its overall shape, as the author sees it from somewhere in mid-course.Robert Jordan
"The Wheel of Time" is in effect a recreation of the source of legends. I gathered together a lot of legends, fairy tales, and folk tales from around the world and stripped away the cultural references, so that just the bare story was left. The I reverse-engineered them.
You might recall a game: I've heard it called "Whispers," I've heard it called "Telephone"—a child's game. If you remember, the last child in the row stood up and said aloud, and what actually happened is what's on the piece of paper. So I've reverse-engineered to try and get back to something like what the piece of paper says. King Arthur is there, but most people don't recognize him right off. And there are a lot of other myths and legends too, although King Arthur is the most easily recognizable. As a matter of fact, I was shocked that some people didn't realize that Arthur was in the books until they read the third volume.
The story begins with The Eye of the World. That's the first book. And it begins in a very pastoral setting, with people who are very...well, innocent is the word. They are rural, they are themselves pastoral. And I tried to make the beginning almost Tolkienesque, as a homage, and as a way of saying, "This is the foundation that we're all jumping off from." But it begins to change, because I'm not trying to do a Tolkien pastiche in any way. And as we leave that pastoral setting, things begin to change. You begin to move away from the style of Tolkien. The characters begin to learn more about the world. They become more sophisticated, in the sense of having more knowledge, and thus they see the world in a more sophisticated way. They're not as innocent, as time goes on, as the books go on, as they were in the beginning. And so the tone of the books changes slightly with their worldview.
As to where the books are going—I know that exactly. I've known it from the beginning. I've known from the beginning what the last scene of the last book was going to be. I know how I intend to tie up the major threads. I know who's going to be alive, who's going to be dead, who's going to be married to whom, all these things. I know the details. I could have sat down six or seven years ago, and written the final scene of the books. And there wouldn't be a great deal of difference in what I'd write when I actually do reach that point.
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Interview: Nov 3rd, 2012
Toronto Signing Report - herid (Paraphrased)herid
I also asked him if the character of Verin had any mythological parallels.
Brandon Sanderson
He said that he doesn't know and would have to see if there is anything in the notes. He also said that most of that stuff was done by RJ but he did add some of his own. He specifically mentioned that Perrin getting wounded in the leg in Towers of Midnight was his own addition. He didn't elaborate but there are a number of deities (particularly blacksmiths of some sort) like Vulcan and Perun who were wounded in the leg.
Footnote
Verin is derived from Verin or Verrine, the demon of impatience.Tags
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
Now, you're a successful writer in your own right. Why did you want to finish someone else's work?Brandon Sanderson
Well, I started reading Robert Jordan when I was fifteen, right at the beginning, when his books started coming out in the Wheel of Time. And, life-long fan. I mean, they inspired me, they're part of what made me want to be a writer, and I've always loved them. And so when this chance came at me, it wasn't something I could pass up. It wasn't something I was expecting. It wasn't something I had applied for. But when the phone call came, I just couldn't say no. Just imagine some little kid that I was when I was reading these books, and the imagination of them, and what they inspired me to become. And then, later on, kind of being able to help out in the last books, it's just...it's amazing.
Michael Cathcart
I totally get this. You know, I feel that about working on this radio station. This radio station I've worked for all my life, suddenly I have the fun of being on it. I can never quite get over it. Every day the red light goes on, I think, "Oh, this is great!"
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, yeah, that happens to me. I think, "What am I doing? I'm working on the Wheel of Time?" You know, these characters I grew up with, that in many ways were my high school buddies? Now I'm telling their story. It's mind-blowing.
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
So when that phone call came, Brandon, how did that happen? Who called you?Brandon Sanderson
It was Robert Jordan's widow. And there's an interesting story there, because she actually was his editor. She discovered him, and then she married him. I guess that's a way to make sure that your editorial advice gets taken. (laughs) And before he passed away, he had asked her to find someone. She said to me that finding someone himself felt like facing his mortality too much. So, as soon as the funeral, actually, she started hunting, and a bunch of names were bandied about, and just through kind of a freak series of coincidences. . . I had written a eulogy for him on my website—many authors had who really enjoyed his work. It was very short; it was only a couple of paragraphs, but just from the heart, what he'd meant to me. I was a published author at that point, and I mentioned how he'd inspired me. Someone printed that off, and put it on Harriet's—that's his wife's name—on her desk. And she glanced at that, and she read it. She called up my published and said, "Hey, send me this kid's books." And she read them, unbeknownst to me, and called me one day, and just said, "I was wondering if you would be interested?" She'd liked my books; she felt something in them—perhaps she felt the way I'd been inspired by Robert Jordan—but whatever it was, she called and asked me to do it.Tags
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
Can you see a similarity between [RJ's] style and your own?Brandon Sanderson
Certainly, certainly. I mean, as an artist when you start working on your early works, you usually are very heavily influenced. And certainly my early works, my unpublished works—I wrote thirteen novels before I sold one, so it took me a little while to figure this all out—but my early works were very heavily influenced. I go back and look at my first novel I started as a teenager, and I'm basically kind of word-for-word copying him. And of course, later on you explore. And you take from what you've learned, and you try other styles, and you find your own style. Much of my style is deeply, heavily influenced by Robert Jordan, and in many ways I was reacting against some of the things I'd learned from Robert Jordan, trying new things. And what I eventually settled in as my style has pieces of that, pieces of other authors that I read during those foundational years, things that I felt were lacking in the genre that I wanted to explore and try out—all of this stuff mixed together in an amalgamation. But I would say Robert Jordan was probably the single greatest influence on my writing.
Michael
Yeah. I mean when we talk about style—style usually implies the idea of the tone and rhythm of the prose. I think what you're talking about the kind of elements that you bring into play as you create a fantasy. Because the actual styles of fantasy writers are not that different. I mean, there is a kind of clarity, a kind of unfussiness about prose—just getting the story down, saying it clearly without a lot of fancy footwork, if you know what I mean.
Brandon
Yeah, there is that. Yeah, in a lot of what we're doing we try to write what's called Orwellian prose. George Orwell talked about this, where we try to make the prose a windowpane that you can look through and see the story on the other side, because really what we are is we're storytellers. You know, I don't think that's necessarily different from fantasy from other forms of popular fiction, but certainly fantasy does have its style. Though within it, it can be quite be quite varied. For instance, Robert Jordan was much more eloquent and beautiful at description than I personally am. And I tend to be much more direct and focused in my descriptions—a little minimalist—give a few little concrete details and then let the mind fill in the rest. And so, there are differences, but yes, compared to something like a more literary fiction, we certainly are far more Orwellian.
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
So when you came to write [RJ's] work, essentially, did you try to enter into his style in those respects, or did you maintain your own convictions, I guess?Brandon Sanderson
It's an excellent question, and it's one that I wrestled with for a long time. I worried. . . Eventually, I did actually try a few things, that I was just trying to imitate him, and I worried I would just come off as parody, honestly. And that was a big worry for me. At the end of the day I decided that what I needed to do was to get the voices right for the characters. Robert Jordan writes a very intense third person limited, where each line is colored by the vision of the character he's writing for at the moment.
And I felt that if I could get the souls of the characters right, even if I were coming in and doing it stylistically a little bit differently, the books would still feel right, if that makes any sense. And that became my goal and my quest: get the characters' souls to feel right. I often use the metaphor, I say it's like you're watching a television series, and the director changes—the actors are still the same, but the director changes—and that's what I was going for.
Michael Cathcart
It's a hard core, though, isn't it? I mean, Wheel of Time fans are very, very hard-core...
Brandon Sanderson
They are.
Michael Cathcart
...and (laughs) I wondered whether any of them had misgivings about you stepping in this way.
Brandon Sanderson
Oh, I got a great deal of email. My inbox flooded as soon as I was announced. And there was really no justification I could give. All I could say is, "Well, wait until the book comes out. Let's see what I can do. If it stands up on its own, then that's the best proof I can give, and nothing I can say earlier will do a better job of that. If it falls down, then no justification I give now will mean anything anyway." And so I just focused on the writing and trying to get the book out and, you know, trying to....a real challenge was making sure that it fulfilled his vision for the series, and not mine, because I was a fan, and sometimes you can let that inner fan take over, and that can be a bad thing for a story. You want the story to have power and emotion; you don't want it to be a big list of inside jokes.
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
Brandon, was there a moment when you were working at your desk, and you thought, "Yep, I'm gonna be able to pull this off"?Brandon Sanderson
When I wrote some of the climactic moments for the various books, because as you mentioned, it did get split into three. I didn't expand his outline; I just wrote it as-is, and the decision to split was the publisher's, but it was a good decision. There was a moment in writing that first one that I did where one of the characters has just a moment of complete clarity and transformation where I said "Wow, I think this is gonna work. I really think that people are gonna accept this. I think I hit it."
Michael Cathcart
Yeah, that must have been a great moment, that break-through moment. Did you know you'd had it then, or was it looking back that you realized, that's the moment when you had the vibe?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, I felt I had it then, but I'm an artist, and you work with a lot of artists; you know that when the moment is done, when we're done writing, we take our hands off the keyboard, our immediate thoughts are of panic and, everyone's going to hate this, and my career is over, and we fight those emotions back and forth in our heads. When we're actually in the moment creating the art, everything comes together and we know, deep down, we know it's working. Later on, it all kind of falls apart, and so then we just wait for the book to come out, for the story to be seen, and wait and see what people say about it, and just hope that we were right.
Michael Cathcart
That's fantastic, Brandon. You sound like one of your own heroes, you know, wrestling with the mighty forces. [laughter]
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, well it sometimes feels a little bit like that way, you know, the underdog who comes in with this monumental task to do, I felt like I'm carrying that ring toward Mordor several times.
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
So what did he leave for you? What guidance did you have?Brandon Sanderson
I had a lot of guidance. Robert Jordan and I actually wrote, at our core, in very different methods. I am an outliner; I work from an outline, I feel like I need to have a goal in mind when I'm writing, and he was more what we call a gardener or a writer—that's George R.R. Martin's term. He nurtured stories and he grew them, so he would hop around and write on different sections as he was feeling them, and I always generally start at the beginning and go to the end, and so what was given to me was a big pile of notes that had some completely finished scenes, polished and ready to go, some that were stopped in the middle, and some that were just lines that said, "I'm thinking of doing this." A big pile of interview questions that his assistants had asked him on his deathbed, two or three dictations he'd done in the last weeks of his life that I could listen to, and just everything that you could imagine was in there. All of his notes for himself during the course of twenty years working on this series, some three million words of notes, and two assistants, and one editor who helped me dig through all of these notes to find the answers to questions that I needed to know.Tags
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Interview: Apr 17th, 2012
Michael Cathcart
Now, I realize as we're talking that there'll be listeners who aren't actually familiar with the Wheel of Time series. I know this is a ridiculous question, really, but could you briefly tell us what it's about?Brandon Sanderson
Well, you know, fortunately I have listened to radio interviews that Robert Jordan did, and someone asked him that. And so I can just give his answer. His answer for the Wheel of Time: the Wheel of Time is about what it's like to be told when you're just an ordinary person that you have to save the world, and it's about the journey that an ordinary person makes, becoming the person who has to ultimately probably sacrifice himself, his life, in order to save the word. And I think that's an eloquent way to put it.
In a more general term, I can talk about fantasy for those who haven't read it, what it is and what it means to me. Because I came to fantasy kind of late; I discovered it as a teen. I wasn't reading it when I was very young, and it is the genre of imagination. And I worry that sometimes, in our modern-day lives we get so hung up on what is that we forget that, as human beings, part of our job is to, you know...part of our souls is to imagine what cannot be, and fantasy books in my vision are kind of like push-ups for your imagination. We tell stories about what maybe could be, what we wish could be, what could not be but we imagine could be, and that's what the Wheel of Time is really about. It's about that imagination, about creating a place that feels real while you read it, completely real with its own history and its own culture, its own everything, and for those brief moments, making that place is impossible become something real.
Michael Cathcart
And it's got strong elements of mythology that feel as though they're drawn on European models, Asian models...
Brandon Sanderson
Yes.
Michael Cathcart
There's a lot about....well, the Wheel of Time is to do with the cyclical nature of time that I guess we associate with Asian, mystical religions, I suppose. There's a creation story in there that sounds a little bit like the Christian story.
Brandon Sanderson
Yep. He was very much a mythologist; Robert Jordan studied myths and legends, and the Wheel of Time is fascinating in that what he tried to go about is, the characters in these books he implied are founding myths that will eventually become stories and legends during our time, as the Wheel turns back to our time, and yet, things they reference in their lives were myths started by our time. It's cyclical, and so they'll talk about ancient legends that you pick out are them talking about the Cold War, America and Russia, except they become giants that threw spears of light at each other, and things like this, and yet we have people who are fulfilling things like the Odin mythology and the Loki mythology, kind of on the sly. You don't even figure it out unless you know mythology, and you're like, "Wait a minute. These people then found myths that, during our day, are our stories and legends, and yet we are their stories and legends." It can be kind of mind-breaking to try and parse it all together and figure it out.
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2003
Charleston City Paper (Cover Story) (Verbatim)M. L. Van Valkenburgh
It's here that Jordan's passion for history comes through. His love for Charleston and his frustration that Charleston continues to be overlooked as a major player in the American Revolution are evident in the way he crafts the history of every city in the world in which his characters live—and the way that history gets twisted by the leaders of his cultures.Robert Jordan
"There are bits and pieces (of Charleston) here and there, though I continue to stress that the Two Rivers (home of the series' three main protagonists) has no relation between the Ashley and the Cooper, but of course things filter through. It's impossible to write without keeping who you are and where you're from out of it," says Jordan.
"History is mutable. It's so dependent on who you remember and what you remember. For instance, with the American Revolution, Charleston was written out of the history books because of the secession. You know, during the Boston Tea Party, we sent more food and aid to Boston than any of its neighboring colonies. But that's not something that children read about in school. The solid tones of the past are not that solid. They are a thin facade placed by partisan observers," he says.
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2003
Charleston City Paper (Cover Story) (Verbatim)M. L. Van Valkenburgh
Jordan has written 22 books altogether under a couple of pseudonyms (Robert Jordan is a pseudonym as well).Robert Jordan
"The Wheel of Time had been banging around in my head before I began writing. I was thinking about the source of legends. Where do they come from? They're twisted by time. We don't know what actually happened. It made me think of the children's game 'Whispers.' You know the one—the first kid thinks of something and whispers it to the next kid, and it goes around in the circle, and the last kid has to say out loud what has been told to him, and it's never what it started out to be. Myths and legends are what the last kid stood up and told."Tags
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2003
Charleston City Paper (Cover Story) (Verbatim)M. L. Van Valkenburgh
Somewhat inevitably, perhaps, Jordan ended up being compared to fantasy's other master—J.R.R. Tolkein, of Lord of the Rings fame. And from a powerful source, too.
"Jordan has come to dominate the world that Tolkien began to reveal..." crowed the New York Times. Perhaps it was his battle scenes, which portray a realism that only one who has experienced battle—Tolkien in the World Wars and Jordan in Vietnam—can truly contemplate, although Jordan says he reached further back for his sources.
Robert Jordan
"I was reading about 16th and 17th century battle scenes. You can't see it unless you're there, but basically, it's just mass chaos and confusion," he says.Tags
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2003
Charleston City Paper (Cover Story) (Verbatim)M. L. Van Valkenburgh
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.
Robert Jordan
"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.
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2003
Charleston City Paper (Cover Story) (Verbatim)M. L. Van Valkenburgh
Unlike Tolkien, it is difficult if not impossible to pin down particular mythic traditions in Jordan's work. Tolkien made no secret of his interest in ancient British and Norse mythology—indeed, Frodo is named for a Norse hero. But although there are some typical hero features to Rand al'Thor, Jordan's main character, who, interestingly, makes only brief appearances in this latest book, the other leading characters don't have perceivable mythological analogs.Robert Jordan
When this is brought to his attention, Jordan chuckles. "Then I've done it correctly. I was terrified various bits of mythology would be too obvious. I wanted it to be bits and pieces. I certainly didn't want to do any simply lifting of myths or legends. There are hundreds of books on King Arthur. There doesn't need to be another one."Tags
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Interview: Mar 15th, 2003
Charleston City Paper (Cover Story) (Verbatim)M. L. Van Valkenburgh
Another thing that sets Jordan apart from Tolkien is an ever-present sense of hope—something that has kept readers reading for 7,000 pages and will keep them reading 'til the end of the series, which Jordan says will take a minimum of two more books. No matter how bad the odds are against his characters, no matter that the world draws ever closer to its final battle with the Dark One, Jordan slips in enough events to stop readers from becoming fatalistic.
Tolkien, on the other hand, was a profound fatalist himself. And, indeed, while his characters did, for the most part, achieve their ends, there is a sense of bittersweetness that pervades his works. His attitude is evident even in his relationships with the young children he left at home while off fighting World War II (and dreaming up his master work). Speaking metaphorically of the war with the Germans, he wrote his youngest son Christopher, saying, "We are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. ... The War is not over (and the one that is or the part of it, has largely been lost.) But it is of course wrong to fall into such a mood, for Wars are always lost, and The War always goes on; and it is no good growing faint."
It would be hard to picture Jordan announcing that wars are always lost to a young child; instead, he has a childlike sense of wonder and enjoyment of the world around him that his predecessor lacked.
Robert Jordan
"I like the Battery. The High Battery, particularly. (As a child) I liked its rickety nature. Now that they're fixing it up I'm not sure how I'll feel about it. But I loved the sense that at any moment the slates might drop you into the High Battery. My friends and I used to run through the streets and alleys, and things weren't as spruced up as they are now. Everything was overgrown with bamboo. It was wonderful," he recalls.Tags
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Interview: Jul 9th, 2012
Phillip Carroll
Okay. One of the—probably the last question that was brought was, how has your own...have you placed your own footprint, or fingerprint, on the Wheel of Time? And I think you brought it up here, in this last panel about worldbuilding, with the cannons.Brandon Sanderson
My goal in the Wheel of Time was not to put my own fingerprint on it. I wanted to finish Robert Jordan's series as close to the soul of the series as he would do, and yet I realized as part of the process quickly that I couldn't imitate him, and that I would have to make it a little bit my own—it would have to be a collaboration—and that's a necessary evil. I really do wish that Robert Jordan were here to finish the books the way that they should have been finished, but there are certain things that he does that I can't do. For instance, he was in Vietnam. He was a soldier. He understood battle in a way that I never will. I instead have watched a whole lot of Hong Kong action films, you know, things like that, and so the way I approach an action sequence is very different from him, and the way I look at magic is a little bit different from the way he looked at magic. That's one thing that is different [between] us. So, the action sequences, things like that. My goal has been to make the characters still feel like themselves, but you will see my fingerprint on things: the way I treat some of the worldbuilding and the action sequences are the two big ones.
Phillip Carroll
Okay, great.
Footnote
The link for cannons is from DragonCon a few months later, but it's probably safe to assume Phillip was talking about something along the same lines.Tags
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2012
Question
Hello. This question is in relation to Wheel of Time. How did you find taking over from another author and keep it consistent? Obviously there'd probably be some force of having to conform to a previous author's writing style, so that it keeps some sort of consistency, but how do you still own that work and keep it true to yourself?Brandon Sanderson
Right. You're asking the hardest question that I think I had to ask myself when I took on this project. How do I make sure....I didn't want the Wheel of Time to become about Brandon. At the same time I had to trust my storyteller instincts, which is the only way I knew how to tell the story, and it was a really difficult process to work out, and I kind of turned it into a give and take. There are certain things that I learned from Robert Jordan that I do very similar to him that I could then do in his style very well. There are other things that were unique to him that I just couldn't in any way mimic.
For instance, his action sequences come from a life spent partially as a soldier, and serving in Vietnam, actually being in firefights; that lends a certain type of narrative to a fight sequence. I haven't done any of that. I've just watched a bunch of kung fu films. If you read my action sequences, you're not going to feel like Robert Jordan's because there was no way to imitate him, and I felt that if I tried, I would just be parodying him, and so it was really a give and take. In some places I really tried hard to emulate what he would have done in his style, and in other places I have to say, there's just no way for me to do that; I have to approach it my way, and I took that on a case-by-case basis.
All in all, my main goal, which I've succeeded at in some places, and failed at in others, but my main goal was to make the characters feel like themselves, and that was my focus. Can I do this? I've said it before: no one can replace Robert Jordan. No one can get it a hundred percent right but him. I think I've been doing a fairly good job, but there are certainly mistakes I've made in trying to get those characters' souls to be the right souls, and that was my main goal, is to try and get that right.
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2012
Question
I was just wondering how overwhelming it was when you first took on the job of taking up the reins of the Wheel of Time. How much was it overwhelming—the amount of detail and layering that Jordan had set up in order to continue on with finishing off the series?Brandon Sanderson
There are a couple of things that Robert Jordan did, like...there are many things he did better than I do, but there are two things that he did amazingly better than I do that have been really hard to try and approach. The first one is his mastery of description. I...prose is not....you know, I do serviceable prose. I don't do beautiful prose in most cases. I occasionally can turn a phrase, but he could do beautiful prose in every paragraph, and that's just not one of my strengths. Pat Rothfuss is another one who can do that, if you're read Name of the Wind; it's just beautiful, every line. Robert Jordan I felt was like that, just absolute beauty.
The other thing that he was really good at was subtle foreshadowing across lots and lots of books. And it's not something I'd ever had to do before, unless you count my hidden epic, and I had never had to try and approach that level of subtlety, and it was a real challenge to try and catch all of those balls that he'd tossed in the air and he'd been keeping juggling. In fact, I would say, one of the most challenging parts, if not the most challenging part of this, was to keep track of all those subplots and make sure that I was not dropping too many of those balls. And you'll be able to see when you read the books which of those subplots were really important to me as a fan and which ones I was not as interested in, because some of those, I catch less deftly than others, and some of them I just snatch from the air and slam into this awesome sequence, and some of them I say, "Yeah, that's there."
And that's the danger of having a fan that does this. There were so many of those things. Fortunately, he left some good notes on a lot of them, and in some of them I was able to just slide in his scenes, and in others I had to decide how to catch that, and what to best do with it. But there's just so much. So much undercurrent going on through the whole books, through all of them, and so many little details in the notes that it's easy to get overwhelmed by it. Fortunately I have Team Jordan, Maria and Alan, to catch a lot of those things that I miss, but even with them there are things he was doing, that we don't even know what he was planning to do, that we just have to leave as is, and let it lie rather than trying to wrap it up poorly, because we don't know how he was doing to do it.
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2012
Phillip Carroll
Firstly, I want to applaud you for taking on the actual task, and also, one of the things you mentioned, I think it was on one of your blogs, that you have no intention of doing any spin-offs or anything like that, and I think that's really really great. But with the very recent runaway success of the Game of Thrones series, do you foresee something like Wheel of Time becoming a television series?Brandon Sanderson
Here's how we stand: Universal bought the rights to the Wheel of Time books. This has been a couple of years back now. It wasn't an option; as far as I know, it was a full buy-out, which means they sunk a lot of money into it. They have the future of the Wheel of Time in cinema in their hands unless they decide not to do anything with it, which they very well could decide. I have, from the beginning, said that I feel a television show would be the best way to faithfully adapt the Wheel of Time, and I've told that to them many times. That said, I do think it is possible to do a good Wheel of Time film. I wouldn't have thought that it was possible to do a good Lord of the Rings film, but someone did it. So it is possible, and I think that is still what, they're intending. I am kind of hoping that the runaway success of the Game of Thrones will persuade them that perhaps that would be a better way to do the Wheel of Time. What I actually pitched to them was not doing one season per book, but trying to do things like, you know, rather than doing one movie per book, do a season of a television show and condense like three books into it, which is still going to be a lot of condensing, but it becomes reasonable to then do a series of the whole book series if you do it that way, and that's still what I think would be the easiest. It doesn't mean it would be the best. They certainly...you could have someone just knock it out of the park and do an awesome job with a Wheel of Time film series. Alright, who's next?Tags
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Interview: Apr 14th, 2012
Question
With regards to the end of the Wheel of Time, when you started to receive all of the notes and information around what actually happened, did you look at that information and see where the story and say, "Yes! Absolutely this is the best possible ending for the Wheel of Time"? Or, as a fan, did you see possible alternate endings or ways you would have liked things to proceed differently, and if so, did that influence how you've written?Brandon Sanderson
Excellent question. I read the ending—Robert Jordan wrote it himself, the last chapter, and I have put that into the last book unchanged—I read it and I was deeply satisfied with it. That is the word I always use: satisfying. It was a satisfying ending. And I didn't read that and ever think, "No, we're going to change this." I don't think it ever needed it. What I did is I said, "That's my goal. That's my target. I have to get us there in a satisfying way to match this ending." And my goal all along is to live up to that ending. The nice thing is, being a creative person, there were certain holes. There were things that he, you know....I know where that last chapter is, but there are big gaps along the way, some places where I got to say...I get to do some things I've been looking forward to doing, looking forward to having happen in the Wheel of Time, and that was really a treat to be able to sit down with that outline and say, wow, there's a place here for the thing I've been waiting as a long time as a fan, he doesn't say either way. I can make it happen.
And so I got to do a lot of those sequences, and then there are a lot of ones he left instructions on as well, and so my goal has been to...always my default is, if Robert Jordan said it, don't change it. However, that said, you can't do a book like this without being willing to be flexible in your outline. I never wanted...never changed that ending and I never have, but there are things along the way, particularly when he would say, I'm thinking of doing this, or maybe this other thing that's opposite, and sometimes I'll choose between one of those two, and sometimes it's neither one and it has to be a third thing. In a creative process, you really have to be willing to do that; you always have to be willing to toss aside what you were planning to do when something better works for what you're building, so and that has been that process. And after the books are out, I hope to be able to be much more forthcoming about what those things were and show some of the notes, if Harriet will let me, and show how they were adapted. I'm not sure if she will let me. It's really her call. Her argument has been that she doesn't want people's last memory of Robert Jordan to be his unfinished things, which is a really solid argument, and so hopefully she'll let us see some of it, but I can talk more freely about this after the last book's out.
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980
Interview: Apr 14th, 2012
Question
G'day, how's it going?Brandon Sanderson
G'day! I dunno....I'm not supposed to really say that am I? It sounds really horrible from an American.
Question
[laughs] It's perfect.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I've been taught...cr...crikey. It's got an "oi" in it, apparently. Croikey?
Question
Crikey, mate. Just out of curiosity, which do you enjoy more, writing your own creations, or somehow writing somebody else's creations like the Wheel of Time and then working within those parameters?
Brandon Sanderson
I would say, my own books with a caveat, and that caveat is the Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time is not something I...I did not say yes to this because, for any other reason than a love for this series since I was a kid. And there are very few things I would have said yes to along these lines. I became a writer to tell my stories, but I studied Robert Jordan's works when learning how to be a writer. Rand, Perrin and Mat feel like my old high school buddies; they're the people I grew up with. I was one of these bookworms who sat in my room and read book, and those were my friends. And so, having the chance to help with this is a lot like, I dunno...it's a lot like completing my master's last masterpiece, if that makes sense. It's a special thing. It's not a matter of enjoyment or not; it's a special honor, and boy has it been hard. It's way hard. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. It has been the hardest thing I've ever done career-wise, and it's been amazing for me as a writer. That said, I wouldn't say yes to this for anyone else. I wouldn't even say yes if, for some reason, Lucas were to come to me and want something like that. There's nothing really I would ever say yes to doing this same thing. That isn't to say I might not...you know, I'll probably do other little novellas and things where I poke around and whatnot, but this project has meant a lot to me all my life, and so it was a thing I did because of what it was, and I don't know how to explain it other than that.
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Interview: 2012
Sneegro-damus (August 2012)
Does anybody else think it would be a cool thing to get Brandon Sanderson to do an AMA? I'm really curious about how he went about writing the last few novels of the series. How would we go about getting him to do an AMA?Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
What do you want to know about the process? I sometimes have to be vague about what I did and what RJ did, as Harriet prefers people to read the books and enjoy them without spending a lot of time trying to pick out the differences between our styles. I can try to answer a few questions if you pitch them at me, though.
EternityOfDeath
I don't have any questions, I just wanted to thank you for all of your hard work and dedication that you have put into finishing this series.
I picked up this series about 10 or 12 years ago, and being in Randland helped me get through some tough times. I was very sad when Jordan died, and when Harriet made the announcement that you were going to finish the series, I must admit that I had my doubts.
So I figured I would take a look at your work, and picked up Mistborn. That book was awesome! So after finishing the trilogy, I was like "Ok, this guy can write, he is the perfect pick to finish WoT."
I wanted to jump in and start reading The Gathering Storm, but by that point it had been a while since I had read Knife of Dreams, so I went back and started at the beginning, and when I got to the books you wrote, I was very impressed.
There were so many good moments in The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, I don't know where to begin. The one that stands out the most in my mind is Mat's story at the end of Towers of Midnight.
Anyways, I'm really looking forward to the release of A Memory of Light. You rock, Brandon Sanderson!
tl;dr: Just wanted to let Sanderson know how much it means to me that he has done such a stellar job in completing one of the fantasy series that is near and dear to my heart.
Brandon Sanderson
It has been an honor.
yongshin
I've read things before from you saying that you received a lot of written guidance as well as ideas that hadn't been fully fleshed out by Mr. Jordan to help you take the stories towards the conclusion he'd always had in mind.
Once you had worked through the stories that Mr. Jordan wanted to be told in your head and got down to writing, was there anything that you really wanted to include or thought would have a special level of awesomity but felt that you shouldn't because it went against (or would probably be against, under different circumstances) the ideas Jordan had?
For clarification, did you ever feel like a character should experience something that Mr. Jordan hadn't mentioned or had clearly discouraged? Or feel that something should happen that Mr. Jordan hadn't conceived or didn't want?
Brandon Sanderson
This is a good question. Yes, there are things I'd have done differently—but out of respect for Mr. Jordan's desires and the integrity of the series, I haven't done them. For example, I like to use magic in ways that Mr. Jordan didn't. You see me playing with this a little bit in my use of gateways. There are many things possible with weaves (particularly since you can tie them off) that I feel exploring would have changed the focus of the stories in ways I don't think Mr. Jordan would have wanted.
One thing that specifically came up once was me wanting to delve more into the Heroes of the Horn. The Wheel has always turned, and time is infinite. If people can occasionally be added to the Horn, that would mean that the number of people tied to the Horn is also infinite unless people get unbound as well as bound. I wanted to explore this idea—in conversation only, this isn't a plot point—but was persuaded by Team Jordan that RJ wanted nobody ever to be unbound, and that exploration in this direction would go against his vision for the world.
yongshin
Thank you for your answer, I've never had the pleasure of interacting with you directly before, although I am making my through your series of lectures on YouTube (that I've always assumed you consented to?) which are truly very informative.
You mentioned that there are aspects of the world of the WoT that you would like to explore in ways that Mr Jordan wouldn't. Would you be interested in writing spin off books, perhaps with different characters set in the same universe/world? Regardless of your interest in doing something like that, would you ever be allowed to?
On a slightly related note, do you feel that there are any aspects (characters, magic, unexplored possibilities etc.) in the WoT series that have since influenced your other writings?
Brandon Sanderson
The main reason I haven't done things like this is because it's not my world, and I feel it should remain closer to RJ's vision. So, even if I were to do spin offs (which I don't think will happen) I would feel the same constraints. My goal has never to be to turn the Wheel of Time into something else; there is plenty of room in my own work to explore magic as I like to explore it. In the Wheel of Time, the magic is RJ's—and should remain true (as much as possible) to his vision.
I would say that RJ's work, and my experience on the WoT, has taught me a number of things. RJ was far more subtle in some of his plotting than I am, and I'd like to think that seeing that has helped me learn to be better in that area. I also like how wonderful his third person limited viewpoint can be, as proven by Mat. (See the other answer I gave.) The way he shaped a narrative to the character giving it is amazing, and has influenced me greatly.
yongshin
Thanks again for the answer. I'm going to be far more conscious of Mat's narrative from now on with that answer!
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Interview: 2012
sleepinghour (August 2012)
For clarification, did you ever feel like a character should experience something that Mr Jordan hadn't mentioned or had clearly discouraged? Or feel that something should happen that Mr Jordan hadn't conceived or didn't want?
Good question. I've been wondering the same since RJ mentioned in an interview once that he had no intention of showing the test for Aes Sedai outside of New Spring.
Nynaeve's Aes Sedai test was one of my favorite parts of Towers of Midnight, so I'm glad that was included, but it would be interesting to know whether RJ changed his mind or it was Brandon/Team Jordan's idea to include that.
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
This one was me. I realize he hadn't intended to do it, but he always reserved the right to change his mind on things like this. (If you read what he had to say on the last word of the book, for example, he said he thought he knew what it was—but that he might change that at any time.)
In working on the outlines, I felt it would feel strange not to show this. The challenge was to do it in a way that wasn't simply a repetition of what Mr. Jordan had shown in New Spring. I felt if I could make the experience unique, it would have a place in the novel—and if it did not, I would need to cut it. I felt good with the way it turned out, and it indeed found a place in the novel.
sleepinghour
So you're the one responsible for the braid being singed off! Murderer!I think it made a great addition to the book. Nynaeve's my favorite character, and I've always found it unfortunate that we haven't gotten too many POVs from her since she got married in A Crown of Swords. So it was great to see scenes that showed just how much she's grown since, while still remaining the same person at heart. The references to Nynaeve's greatest fears—spiders and heights—were very neat too. Thank you for giving the test a place in the novel.
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Interview: 2012
Sneegro-damus (August 2012)
Firstly, the speed in which this happened is amazing. Thank you for answering so quickly. When you started writing for the WoT series, how difficult was it for you to balance writing your other books along with WoT? If I recall, Way of Kings was released very near one of the WoT (Towers of Midnight?).
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
It was difficult, but not as much as you might think. I only did two projects during: The Way of Kings and Alloy of Law. For Kings, I had a complete draft done before the Wheel of Time came my way.
That said, I did rewrite The Way of Kings from scratch—and those were some busy months. I felt strongly that this was the time to put out the book, and so I threw myself into the work, but balancing it and Towers of Midnight was the most busy I've ever been. I never want to have to work those hours again.
Alloy of Law was more simple, as I took a few months off between books and did some freewriting. This is what came of it. I often find it good to change projects between books in a series like that. It was juggling two books the size of The Way of Kings and Towers of Midnight that was so hard.
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Interview: 2012
necrosxiaoban (August 2012)
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?
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
One of the big dangers in doing what I'm doing is turning the characters into parodies of themselves, exactly as you stated. This is kind of the 'uncanny valley' of working in someone else's world. If you get them close, but still wrong, it can feel worse than if you'd been more off.
Jason from Dragonmount, in the early reads, was the first one to warn me that Mat was "off." I was surprised, as I felt I'd gotten him down. However, in going back to Mr. Jordan's writing and delving into it, I realized I'd missed large parts of what made Mat into Mat—the tension between what he says and does, the constant little quips in narrative (which tend to be more clever than the actual things he says out loud), the complaining that isn't really complaining. I didn't understand Mat. I tried so hard to make him funny, I wrote the HIM out of him. (I feel Peter Jackson did some of this with Gimli in the Lord of the Rings films.)
So I'd say I was specifically motivated rather than it happening naturally. I should mention, however, that the sequences RJ worked on for Mat all ended up in Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light, not in The Gathering Storm. Some of what you are noticing isn't me, but the master himself.
necrosxiaoban
Thanks for the reply!
I can appreciate the difficulty of trying to write someone else's characters! For what its worth, Mat was the only one who gave off the uncanny valley feeling. Given the number of characters Mr. Jordan created I'd think that was quite a bit of an accomplishment.
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Interview: 2012
kornork (August 2012)
As far as you know, have you finished all the plot threads with the last book? How did you keep track? Were there certain threads that RJ forgot about in his final telling to his family that you had to figure out on your own?
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
I have not finished all of them. There are a few that got cut from the book during the revision process, for example. (I'll reveal what these were after the book is out.) In other cases, RJ asked for certain threads to not be tied up.
My goal has been to tie up as many as I can, respecting Mr. Jordan and leaving alone the ones he said not to. He left many unexplained in his final telling—his last months were spent on the major plot cycles, and many smaller things were left to me.
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Interview: 2012
kurin (August 2012)
At the end of A Memory of Light, I assume you're going to leave some questions unanswered intentionally. Will any of these have canonical answers that simply aren't shared, or will you try to resolve all the open questions?
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
There are canonical answers that are not in the book. (Mr. Jordan sometimes said in the notes "Here is the answer to this, but it isn't resolved in the last book.") He didn't want everything answered because he wanted the world to live on in people's minds. All major plot elements are dealt with, but some smaller ones are left open.
kurin
So there's going to be a new acronym after RAFO? Like YNFO?
Question
(Probably left this too late to expect a response but...)
Will you (or anyone) ever provide those answers? Whether it be by blog/new "world of RJ's WoT" or Q&A?
Brandon Sanderson
I will try to answer some questions once the book is out. I'd like to do some blog posts talking in-depth about the process, and about the notes. But it will depend on a lot of factors.
Kooreth
Even Maria's large reference book won't contain those secrets?
Brandon Sanderson
The reference book will contain some of the things not resolved in the book, and I've given clues about some others. Other things...well, he wanted them to go unanswered. So they will be. (And some we don't even know the answers to.)
Kooreth
Thanks Brandon! I am excitedly and sadly awaiting the final book. After so many years, it's going to be rough finishing it, and closing a chapter of my own life.
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Interview: 2012
AreYouReadyToReddit (August 2012)
A question I had, if you're still answering. I believe you said on your blog that the "very last scene" is Robert Jordan's, and touched very little by you.
Could you please specify what you mean in this? (Last scene of the main story arc, last section of the epilogue, last section of the last chapter, etc)
Thanks for all the work you have put into the series!
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
It's the last scene of the book. RJ had a large influence on the ending as a whole, but when I say "Last Scene" I'm referencing the final 1000 word section with the words "The End" following it.
AreYouReadyToReddit
Cool, thanks! : )
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Interview: 2012
zas678 (August 2012)
Do you still have the "Brandon Avalanches" in the WoT books? I've noticed them scale down considerably in your own books, but I was just wondering if you plotted/paced things differently with the WoT books.
Brandon Sanderson (August 2012)
I tried to avoid some of my 'signature' stylistic flourishes, and that was one of them. Overall, I'd say I did a blending. Some things from my style, some more like RJ, trying to do what felt best for the book and for the setting.
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Interview: 2012
PostPostModernism (November 2012)
How excited are you right now?
Also, what are some of your next projects?
Brandon Sanderson (November 2012)
Hmm... For me, the excitement probably won't hit until the day of, but it will be mixed with a steadily growing sense of anxiety. It's the same anxiety for every book release. Will I have hit the target? Will it provide the right experience? Did I succeed or fail? These are things you can't know for certain until the book is out. It will be worse with this one in some ways, since there are no second chances here. Mistakes in earlier WoT books could be compensated for by future volumes. That doesn't exist for this one.
Next year, I actually have a few YA books coming out (projects I was working on before the Wheel of Time came my way.) One of them, Steelheart, I'm very excited about. I'm also working on a sequel to The Way of Kings.
Arithered
Yep. Sometimes I just stare at that progress bar on your site, willing it to suddenly jump forward in real time. I can imagine it must be pretty bizarre from your end of things, having what begins as formless inspiration become quantified, written down, picked to pieces, bound, and then eagerly awaited by large numbers of people.
We're grateful for it though, those pieces of your brain. :-)
wisd0m (December 2012)
Need more Stormlight Archive.
It is very frustrating to get into a series at the beginning and have to wait for each book. I started WoT this year and ASOIAF last year, so I avoided years of waiting. The Stormlight Archive will be the true test of my reading patience.
Brandon Sanderson
I'm working on book two now. Hopefully, the wait won't be as bad for future titles in the series.
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990
Interview: 2012
adribbleofink (December 2012)
Brandon Sanderson (December 2012)
Just opened the document, as I figured I could give some hard statistics on this. The chapter is just shy of 79,000 words. It contains (by my quick count) 72 scenes—but only 31 distinct viewpoints, as numerous ones repeat. (There are eight Rand scenes, for example, and six each for Mat and Egwene. Three or four each for another eight characters.)
It is not the last chapter of the book, but is a very important one, as you might have guessed. From the get-go, I lobbied Harriet to let me do this sequence as a single, massive chapter as I felt it fit with what was going on in the book as well as fitting with the series as a whole. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
Sarkos
This may be a silly question, but what exactly is it that defines a chapter? Why the reluctance to break it up?
Brandon Sanderson
This is a tough question to answer because what defines a chapter is dependent upon context. I have done chapters a paragraph or two long, and I've done some (well one) at this length. In addition, if I were to go into depth about what makes this chapter a single chapter to me, I feel it would give too many spoilers. It has to do with the pacing, the sensation I wish to convey, and the attempt—through prose and the form of the storytelling—to evoke the same emotions in the reader that the characters are feeling.
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Interview: 2012
philosophyguru (December 2012)
Brandon Sanderson (December 2012)
It was very interesting to read this while trying to figure out what scenes she was referring to...
philosophyguru
I know you're incredibly busy on Stormlight 2, but if you have a few minutes, I would love to hear how you approached the notes that RJ left behind. I've heard the story about the ending and who killed Asmodean when you first visited Harriet's house, but where did you go from there? I assume you didn't just read all of the notes straight through...
Brandon Sanderson
Well, okay, this is going to be kind of long.
To understand my next step, you have to understand what we mean by "Notes." There are really three groups of these.
1) Robert Jordan's Worldbuilding Notes. These were in a series of dozens, maybe hundreds of files embedded chaotically inside of files inside of files, using his own system of notation. The notes reach all the way back to early books he was working on, as he was working on them. They aren't intended to be read by anyone other than him, and are sometimes very difficult to figure out. This is the group that Harriet has said, in her estimation, include a total wordcount equal to or greater to that of the published series.
2) The notes for the last book, gathered by his assistants Maria and Alan, with Harriet's help. These are far more focused on the last book, notes that RJ wrote specifically focusing on the last book. This is a much more manageable amount, maybe fifty or a hundred pages. It includes interviews that Alan and Maria did with RJ before he died, asking him what was to happen to certain characters.
3) Scenes for the last book, either in written form or dictated during his last months. This includes some completed scenes. (The last sequence in the book, for example. Also a lot of prologue material, including the scene with the farmer in The Gathering Storm, the Borderlander Tower scene in Towers of Midnight, and the Isam prologue scene from A Memory of Light.) A lot of these are fragments of scenes, a paragraph here and there, or a page of material that he expected to be expanded to a full chapter. This is different from #2 to me in that these are direct scene constructions, rather than "notes" explaining what was to happen.
Together, #2 and #3 are about 200 pages. That is what I read the night I visited Harriet, and that is what I used to construct my outline.
Brandon Sanderson
I took all of the items, but particularly the things in 2&3, and then I re-read the series start to finish, taking notes on character motivations, plots that had not been resolved, and foreshadowing. I used this to create a skeleton, using character touchstones from the notes (like Egwene's climactic moments in The Gathering Storm) to construct plot cycles.
Where there were big holes, I used my instincts as a writer and my re-read to develop what the story needed. From there, I started writing in viewpoint clusters. I would take character who were in the same area, and write their story for a chunk of time straight through. Then I would go back and do the same for another group of characters.
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Interview: 2012
Robert Moreau (December 2012)
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."
Brandon Sanderson (December 2012)
Ah, and what a marvelous 2,000 page book it would have been. I was really shooting for this. Turns out, however, that I don't have the influence that RJ did, and couldn't persuade the publisher that printing a 2,000+ page book was viable. You'll have to be satisfied with three 800 pagers instead.
I do kind of hope we'll be able to do a cut of the volume in ebook where I weave the three books back into one, which would fix some of the timeline confusion in Towers of Midnight, which was the big casualty of the split.
(I knew that, in all likelihood, a split would be mandated, and so I prepared for it by deciding on the three book split instead of a two book split, as I feel it fit the narrative flow better. However, I was working on Perrin when the first split happened, and didn't realize until afterward that by jumping back to the beginning of his story after finishing The Gathering Storm, I was going to create the issues it did with Tam.)
archaeonaga
So you're planning on doing a Phantom Edit of your own work? I, for one, would be really interested to read something like this, but I think that what you lost in chronological clarity in the split, you gained in pacing and narrative clarity.
That said, you mentioned in a previous interview that The Gathering Storm's intensity also came from an awareness that your first effort in the Wheel of Time really needed to be a home run. Would your decisions regarding the narrative structure have changed if you didn't feel that pressure?
Brandon Sanderson
I wouldn't consider it a phantom edit, as I wouldn't be removing sections. I'd be moving them around, adding in a few deleted scenes. More like an extended edition mixed with pacing tweak.
I don't know how my decisions might have changed if I hadn't felt that pressure. I might have chosen to do Rand/Perrin in the first book and Egwene/Mat in the second book. Perrin/Mat have great stories in TofM—but they're not as focused as the ones for Rand/Egwene. I don't know. The timeline might have been even worse.
This is something I'd have to play with, if I were actually to attempt it, to even see if the narrative flow would work that direction now that I've made writing decisions with three books—instead of one—being the reality.
archaeonaga (January 2013)
Now that I've finished reading A Memory of Light, I have to say, I think this would be an insane task. Mostly, The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight would be the things caught up in reorganizing, since A Memory of Light's timeline is internally consistent enough to justify things. It would also let you sprinkle the Black Tower POVs a bit more nicely throughout the trilogy, since the frontloading of that plot at the beginning of A Memory of Light is one of the few structural weaknesses I thought I saw.
In any case, congratulations! You've really done it! Those annotations will be fascinating, assuming you get permission to take it on.
Brandon Sanderson
You're right on the Black Tower structural weakness. I actually plotted that sequence to go all in Towers of Midnight, but ran up against deadlines and only did a few chapters of it. It would work far better moved earlier.
Thanks for reading. I'll see what I can do about annotations.
archaeonaga
That makes a lot of sense. One gets the feeling that a lot of your writing was done with several different forces tugging you one way or another; collaboration can be tough, especially for artists who are used to working in the silence of their mind, and I can't imagine adding a massive fandom to that.
Seriously: congrats. Tai'shar...Utah? :)
Brandon Sanderson
Tai'shar Nebraska, actually. But I like Utah well enough. :)
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Interview: May 2nd, 2012
Superstars Writing Seminar - Mark Grayson (Paraphrased)Terez (8 May 2012)
Can you supply date, town, and bookstore?
Mark Grayson
This past Wednesday May 2nd in Las Vegas in the lobby of the Golden Nugget hotel. He was in town as one of the guests/teachers of a writers convention. He squeezed in a quick signing for local fans. If you signed up for his newsletter and gave your location as in the Vegas area you got an email from Peter about the signing. There were 8 or 9 of us there so it was pretty cool.
Brandon Sanderson
He let us ask some questions but didn't give any new details that aren't already out there. The info on the prologue came up as he was talking about his progress revising the book and how the ending was pretty much all RJ and didn't even need to be polished. He then mentioned that parts of the prologues of all 3 books had been written or dictated by RJ but the scene that was released was not one of them.
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Interview: May 2nd, 2012
Superstars Writing Seminar - Mark Grayson (Paraphrased)Mark Grayson ()
I'll try to sum up a few other things I remember:
Brandon Sanderson
We talked about if he laughed when fans were guessing who wrote what and getting it way wrong. He said the story he could tell about that was someone looking at the chapter titles to tGS and saying they could tell that Brandon wrote those when of course Harriet has named all the chapters since the start.
He was disappointed that DKS couldn't finished the last cover even though he really thinks Whelan is the best fantasy artist around. He likened it to the same as it being too bad that he had to finish the series instead of RJ.
He talked some more about how he felt Mat was the hardest character to get write because he's pretty complicated. His thoughts don't always match up with his actions and it was hard to strike the right tone.
He knows that his action sequences don't sound like RJ's. He said he just doesn't have the real world experience that RJ did as a combat soldier so he just writes them as the best action scenes that he can.
He said Perrin was his favorite character so one of his goals was to redeem the character a bit and make him awesome again.
I asked about his Alcatraz books and he said there will be one more but it's not high on the priority list and will be several years. He also said the Scholastic distribution wasn't great and he's working on buying back the rights and bringing the series to TOR for wider distribution and ebook release.
Mark Grayson
Stuff like that. Nothing that hasn't been covered before.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)Herid (27 October 2012)
Dragonmount is now a complete @BrandSanderson bashing ground. This is becoming unbearable. What happened? Was not so last year.Brandon Sanderson ()
It's unfortunate, but natural. I've grown popular enough that some people say my wot books are better than RJ's, which isn't true.
Brandon Sanderson
The hardcore fans then feel the need to point out the flaws in my efforts, and many things they say are true.
Brandon Sanderson
I do wish some were not as vicious as they are, however.
Luckers
So, apparently @BrandSanderson has chosen to believe that the criticism levelled at him is just a jealous reaction.
Luckers
A response by hardcore fans loyal to Jordan to the suggestion that @BrandSanderson's work on the Wheel is better than RJ.
Luckers
In @BrandSanderson's defence, he does offer that the hardcore fans use some truth in their jealous rage.
Luckers
So I suppose at least @BrandSanderson offers efficacy to our criticism, if not legitimacy.
Luckers
I'm curious as to where you gain your insights into the criticism? After all you could not even bring yourself to read a...
Luckers
...critique wrapped in kiddy gloves that you yourself requested. Are you sure this isn't some sort of self-rationalisation?
Luckers
After all, a small select group blowing minor (but admittedly real) flaws out of proportion in a misguided attempt...
Luckers
... at loyalty to Jordan is a much easier thing to swallow than the idea that the criticism might have truth...
Luckers
... in both the specifics and in the degree of its existence.
Luckers
Anyway, I'm done raging at you now. Wow. That was weird. Must have seen someone suggest you were better than Jordan.
Brandon Sanderson
Luckers, I worry sometimes about how strongly you react to things like this. I didn't call the criticisms minor or misguided.
Brandon Sanderson
I agreed they are true. I am flawed. I cannot yet write well as you want me to. I'm sorry you find that personally offensive.
Brandon Sanderson
I do not think that is the only reason people criticize me. Twitter makes it hard to explain things in depth.
Brandon Sanderson
I have seen it being a factor—explicitly, by the poster's own words—in criticism. I find that noble. I didn't want to offend.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)Jan Carrick (30 October 2012)
Will we see more of the serious, dark Mat that we left in Knife of Dreams? That is, the one Tuon refers to as...
Jan Carrick
... "a lion on the high plains" and who leaves wounded enemy combatants to suffer and die (Knife of Dreams ch. 27)? Thanks for your time.
Brandon Sanderson ()
I've tried. I do worry that sometimes I'm too lighthearted with Mat, and need to remember his dangerous side too.
Brandon Sanderson
I have attempted to walk this balance in A Memory of Light.
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Interview: 2012
Twitter 2012 (WoT) (Verbatim)Herid (19 December 2012)
Memory 24 is such a boring teaser and on @BrandSanderson's birthday too. This is not right! @tordotcom should give us a bonus memory.Brandon Sanderson ()
Ha. Okay, Teaser: "River of Souls" was a direct result of me trying to do be better at something RJ did well & I did poorly.
Brandon Sanderson
Problem is, I overdid it, and the story veered far too "Brandon-ish" as a result, which was why we cut it.
Brandon Sanderson
Fortunately, by having done "River of Souls", the added depth behind-the-scenes helped fix the very issue I was worried about.
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Interview: Dec 7th, 2012
The Robert Jordan Story (Verbatim)Narrator
When fantasy author Brandon Sanderson was selected to finish the Wheel of Time, fans rejoiced. Over the next four years, Sanderson skillfully penned the final three volumes of the series, working from Jordan's notes and partial manuscript.Brandon Sanderson
What I've pointed the entire sequence that I've worked on toward is this last scene that he finished. He always promised us that he had it in mind, and he did write it before he passed away.
Harriet McDougal
On January 8th, 2013, A Memory of Light will go on sale. If ever a book was long-awaited, it's this one.
Jason Denzel
Robert Jordan's legacy lives on. Just as Jordan wrote, there are no beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. His masterpiece stands as one of the greatest achievements in modern literature.
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Interview: Dec 19th, 2012
Narrator
In 2005, Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan was diagnosed with a fatal blood disease, disrupting his plans to finish the beloved series. With his fans in mind, Robert Jordan worked diligently through his final days, writing outlines, notes, and manuscripts so that his masterwork could one day see completion.
Tom Doherty
His fans—the people who had stuck with him all these years from 1991 on—deserved closure. And, he had created an outline which gave them closure, and he wasn't able to finish it himself. We wanted Jim's story to be told.
Harriet McDougal
A friend was staying with me in the week after Jim's funeral and put a print-out in front of me and said, "I think you need to read this." It was Brandon Sanderson's eulogy for Robert Jordan. And it was—it was beautiful. Such an expression of love for the books and for Robert Jordan's work. And it ended, "Mr. Jordan, you leave us silently, but you leave us trembling." And I thought, gosh, this is the attitude I would love to see. Brandon at this point was a published fantasy writer, so I called Tom and said, "I want one of his books to read." His world, his people, his conflicts were all clear in my mind. And I called Tom, and said, "Tom, I think this is the guy."
Tom Doherty
And she picked Brandon. And we're just delighted because we think nobody could have finished it as well.
Brandon Sanderson
I had no idea how to react to this. I could barely talk when I replied to Harriet. In fact, I sent her an email the next day. It said, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot." Because I couldn't get out words. Yes, I wanted to be involved in the Wheel of Time. No, I didn't think anybody else could write the Wheel of Time. What do you do when you're in that situation?
Harriet McDougal
We met in December, and I picked him up at the airport, brought him back, and said I've got some hot soup on the stove. He said, "I'd rather have the ending if I could, please." [Laughs]
Brandon Sanderson
Which I sat in his chair and read, well into the evening that night.
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Interview: Dec 19th, 2012
Narrator
Together, Brandon Sanderson and Team Jordan began building the strategy for finishing the last volume for the Wheel of Time.
Harriet McDougal
Well, he was working with everything Robert Jordan had ever written, including all the notes and speculations, as well as the outline that Jordan dictated in those last weeks.
Brandon Sanderson
He intended this book to be enormous. Getting the notes, I said, yup, it's here. I can do this, but it's going to be over 2000 pages long. At some point Tor and Harriet discussed how long it was going. And so that's when they came to me and said, "We want to split it."
Tom Doherty
This outline was too complex. There was too much that needed to be told, too much story.
Brandon Sanderson
We didn't add to it. This is the length that it was always going to be. But in splitting it—what it allowed us to do is take three books and focus them. The Gathering Storm has a focus on Rand and Egwene. They were able to shine in a much more spectacular way because of that. And the things happening with Mat and Perrin could have very easily been overshadowed by Rand and Egwene, who have monumentous things going on.
Tom Doherty
These last two books—number one best sellers. Number one international best sellers, number one up here on the Globe and Mail, as well, the national paper. People read and realized that, yes, it wasn't Robert Jordan, but by god it was being finished properly. And it was being finished from Robert Jordan's notes and his ideas, and Brandon's talent was that he could capture the dream.
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Interview: Dec 19th, 2012
Narrator
With Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight complete, Brandon Sanderson had to face his greatest challenge yet—writing the final battle in A Memory of Light.
Brandon Sanderson
A Memory of Light was a challenge for a number of reasons. There is a lot of warfare in this book—more so than all of the others—which needed to be realistic, and the tactics needed to be sound. And these were the sorts of things that Robert Jordan was extremely good at doing—he was a military historian. I don't have his background, so I had to rely a lot on the notes, and on Team Jordan. You want the story to be focused on the characters—it has to be a personal story. How to balance that, how to tell the story of these wars in a series which is primarily concerned with the characters was a real push back and forth with the text, trying to massage it and edit and work it to the point that it would convey their stories but still be true to the tactics that would make this all come together.
Tom Doherty
There's been huge enthusiasm. People have been waiting for this for a long time. If they once dipped into it, they wouldn't be able to put it down.
Brandon Sanderson
And in January, they will finally get the full story—the final volume of the Wheel of Time. The end of an Age has arrived. The Dark One is almost free. The Wheel of Time hangs in the balance, and prophecy must be fulfilled. The Last Battle begins January 8th.
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Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013
Goodreads Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Goodreads
The publication of the final Wheel of Time book is a big event for fantasy readers, many of whom have been anticipating the end of the series since the first book in 1990. As a longtime fan yourself, how do you feel?Brandon Sanderson
It's really a weird experience. I discovered fantasy when I was 14, and the Wheel of Time books were the first series that started when I started. I have been following it all through, and it's also one of the few series that continued with me: I enjoyed it both as a youth and as an adult. Wheel of Time has always been there through my whole career, so I understand completely how [fans are] feeling about it.
But it is also a weird experience for me as a fan. I read Robert Jordan's ending in December 2007, so part of me has had the Wheel of Time done for five years now, and the rest of the world is finally getting to catch up with me. I think that people are going to feel a lot of what I felt when I read that last scene; I was very satisfied. I loved the scene, but there was also this deep sort of sense of, "Wow, it's actually over." The series has been going for 23 years, and we have joked in Wheel of Time fandom for 22 about when the ending would come. It's a reverent feeling, it's an excited feeling, and it's also a sad feeling.
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Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013
Goodreads Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Goodreads
Endings can often be the hardest part of a book to get right.Brandon Sanderson
Since Robert Jordan wrote the last scene, that actually made this whole project mountains easier. I had a target to shoot at. While I didn't have a ton of written material from Robert Jordan that I could actually put in—there are about 200 pages worth of scenes and notes that needed to become somewhere around 2,500 pages [Books 12-14 by Sanderson total 2,556 pages]—a lot of those 200 pages were summaries of scenes he wanted. Robert Jordan wrote by instinct. He was what we called a discovery writer, so what was handed to me was a big pile of half-finished scenes or paragraphs where he wrote, "Well, I am either going to do this, this, or this. I was thinking of this, but it could be this." Yes, cracking an ending is hard, and the Wheel of Time had a lot of loose threads. My job was to take all those threads and weave them into an ending, which was a real challenge.
When I was handed this project by Harriet [Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's wife and editor], she handed it to me as a collaborator, not as a ghost writer. It's not like building a shelf from Ikea, which is good, because otherwise my creativity wouldn't have been engaged. She handed me full creative control for the first draft, and then we went into the editing phase where we really worked on it to make sure that it fit her vision and Robert Jordan's vision for the series. But going into it, nothing was off-limits. So I wrote them like I write any novel. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is sacrosanct.
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Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013
Goodreads Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Goodreads
How much liberty did you have in deciding which characters would play the biggest roles in the last battle?Brandon Sanderson
In a lot of ways the "why" or the "how" was not said, and in other places in the outline there were just empty holes where a character is in one place and 800 pages later, then another place.
[In the final book] we've got a lot of questions that still need to be answered. Robert Jordan did leave me instructions on which ones, in some cases, not to answer. There are things he wants to leave unresolved, and there are other things he said do answer this, and there are some things that he said either way. He left a lot of instructions about who lives and who dies, but there are also plenty of cases where I got to make the judgment call. It's a big, cool, awesome, scary thing, and all of the gloves are off. Anything can happen in this book, because I don't need to worry about setting up any future books.
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Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013
Goodreads Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Goodreads
Many plot points are in motion at the end of the next-to-last book in the series, Towers of Midnight. Can you set the stage? What can readers expect in the final book, A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
A little bit of spoilers here: One of the big things we got going on is Rand and Egwene on opposite sides of the big decision regarding what needs to happen with the last battle. It's a power struggle that has been brewing for a long time behind the scenes. Some may not have noticed it until I brought it to the forefront in the last book. We've just had a main character who has been gone for a long, long time show up again in the end of Towers of Midnight, and there are ramifications for that. Can we work together? How do we work together?—that's going to be one of the themes.
And, of course, this is the last battle, which means there's a lot of war in this book. And that's actually very different for a Wheel of Time book. There have been big battles before, but not ones that span half of the book or more.
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Dave Golder
Was this a big responsibility to take on?
Brandon Sanderson
"Oh, man, it's hard to explain what it was like because I started reading these books as a kid. I studied The Wheel of Time when I was trying to figure out how to write fantasy books in my twenties. So to be handed this project and be able to help finish the work of one of my heroes felt really good, but the weight of it was also like an enormous burden. I really wanted to make sure that I did a good job. Beyond that, there are millions of fans who all love the series so much and I felt a great debt to them. With my books, I own them so I going to tell my vision and I'm less worried about what the fan reaction will be. But with The Wheel Of Time books, I feel that they own them as much if not more than I do. I'm a steward of these books rather than the owner, so I had to keep that in mind and take a different approach."
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Dave Golder
Did you ever meet Robert Jordan?
Brandon Sanderson
"I saw him once at a convention but I didn't know him. I saw him as a fan and he wouldn't have known me from Adam. He asked his wife Harriet McDougal to find someone to finish the series and after he passed away, she went hunting. She considered it something of a dying request so she searched through a lot of fantasy authors. She hadn't heard of me, but she read my Mistborn series. She then called me up and asked me to do it. I didn't know I was being considered: it just came out of the blue. To be asked to finish the series was just astonishing and I wasn't expecting it. It was a little bit like winning the lottery when you haven't bought a ticket but someone you love has to pass away before you can win."
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Dave Golder
Was it your decision to split the final installment into three books?
Brandon Sanderson
"Robert Jordan was always telling fans that this book was gong to be so big that they'd have to invent a new binding system to get it out the door. When I was offered the project, I got all his notes and then spent about five months constructing an outline until I'd built the ending that I felt he'd indicated. I felt that he wanted it to be this big epic story and when I have an outline, I can usually tell how long the story is going to be. I realised that it was going to be a pretty big book—I was estimating it to be about 800,000 words, which is just enormous. I told Harriet and the publisher that this is what Robert Jordan wanted and what the story deserves. They then asked me if there were any places where I could split it. I agreed to do that as long as they would let me decide where and how to do that. There are some natural break points but it has to be done the right way. I haven't expanded the outline or lengthened what I felt the story should be; I've just portioned it into three volumes instead of one massive volume."
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Dave Golder
So what can we expect?
Brandon Sanderson
"I can tell you a few things as Robert Jordan was once asked what the series was about and he said that 'It's about what it's like if you're a normal person who is told that the world is going to end unless you try and save it.' This end book is what everyone has been expecting. They call it the Last Battle, so it's the last showdown as there's this massive war going on. You can also expect the last chapter written by Robert Jordan himself. He always promised fans that he knew what the end of the series would be, so he sat down and wrote it before he passed away. It's gone into the book virtually unchanged by me. It's the goal I've been working towards all this time.”
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Dave Golder
One of the themes of the series is the cyclical nature of time so is it ironic that you've inherited The Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan's death?
Brandon Sanderson
"I'm not unaware of how that relates to what's going on with me. One of the things that Robert Jordan did early on as an author was to work on the Conan books, so he was working on the stories of another author that had passed. Then he passes away and I ended up working on his story, so there was this cyclical thing going on there."
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Dave Golder
With HBO having recently turned George RR Martin's A Song Of Fire And Ice into a hit TV series—Game of Thrones—do you think The Wheel Of Time would also be home on the small screen?
Brandon Sanderson
"I would dearly hope so, as I dream of seeing a great Wheel Of Time adaptation like that. Television is the perfect medium for these long form stories that we have in epic fantasy. There are certain differences but The Wheel Of Time and Game Of Thrones also have a lot in common and George RR Martin and Robert Jordan were good friends and contemporaries. The first A Song Of Fire And Ice book came out not long after The Wheel Of Time and Robert Jordan gave it a nice cover blurb. They're both really human stories set in a fantasy world and are more like historical dramas than adventure fiction, which is not what people expect when they read the genre. They're these great sweeping family dramas that just happen to take place in a world that doesn't exist."
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
kcf
How much have ideas that you or other members of Team Jordan first saw in fans discussion influenced the book? Spoiler follow-up: Such as the tactical use of gateways?Brandon Sanderson
Tactical use of gateways is honestly all me. I hadn't even played Portal before I wrote these books. I have since went back and played it, and they're doing some of the same fun stuff. That was me from years and years ago as a guy who likes magic systems reading the Wheel of Time books and saying, "If I had gateways, this is what I would do." In fact, I had built up some magic systems using things like gateways that I will never be able to use now, because I got handed the master magic system with gateways.
Team Jordan was somewhat uncomfortable with my use of gateways, in a lot of ways. They felt I was pushing them. But my response back was that I didn't want to push the magic system in other ways; I didn't want to be inventing a lot of new weaves. I didn't want to be doing a lot of things like that, because I felt it would be taking the system too much in the directions I take the Brandon Sanderson systems. I really do like Robert Jordan's magic system, but I wanted to take some of the specifics that had already been done, such as gateways, and say, "Here's where you can extrapolate with them."
As for other things that have been discussed in the fandom—I certainly wasn't as big a part of the fandom as I am now, not anywhere near it. For instance, I didn't care about Asmodean until I started talking to other Wheel of Time fans, and it was a big deal to them, and so it became a big deal to me. There are certain things that through fandom and talking to other fans you tend to rally around, that I kind of wanted. One was a reunion between Tam and Rand. There are other things like that, that for a long time we'd been waiting for and we'd talked to each other about, and we'd imagined what they'd be like. Those sorts of things did influence me; I had to be really careful not to be too influenced though. Being too influenced would lead me to put in lots of inside jokes, things like Narg—that would have been letting the fan in me run too wild. So I did have to rein that in.
It’s hard for me to separate the years of talking about the Wheel of Time with friends and reading about the Wheel of Time from what I eventually ended up doing in the books. Once I did start working on the books, I didn't go plumbing through fan forums looking for things that should be included. I specifically stayed away from things like that, though I did suggest to Maria at times that she should watch and see what people were expecting, so that we would know what things we were not going to end up fulfilling, and could be prepared for them.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
kcf
You have a tendency to break the fourth wall at times in your WOT writing. How did you come to this choice as it's not a technique that Robert Jordan used? How have Team Jordan and fans of the series reacted to this?Brandon Sanderson
My answer is that I disagree with you. I don't think any of those things break the fourth wall. Robert Jordan put fan names in the books; he named things in the books after streets in his hometown; he named characters after people he knew. That's how he wrote these books, and it's how I've written all of my books. It's just how you get inspired as a writer. With Roedran, I honestly think that's what Rand would think and say; it's what he would come up with. It's one of the big theories I felt was really what Rand would consider in-world. So I just have to disagree with you; I don't think that any of this is breaking the fourth wall.Tags
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
kcf
As I was reading A Memory of Light there were many times where I was fairly overcome with emotion—which is not too common of a reading experience with me. To use a WOT phrase—laughter and tears. Sometimes I just had to set the book aside for few minutes to let the motion calm down. I'm not novelist, but through this blog and my day job I do write a fair amount. I've experienced that sense of pride, that sense of emotional overload that happens when the writing feels right, when my emotions for what I'm are writing cross over onto the pages themselves. I imagine that as you've written the final three WOT books you've experienced similar feelings. That you sometimes sit down to dinner with your family after writing and are overcome with your love for them as a result of what you had just written. That you have that urge to hug, love and be comforted as events from you're writing stick with you. Assuming you can relate to this, please share a moment or two.Brandon Sanderson
Boy, that's a hard one, because those are going to be personal moments. You describe it quite well, but it's the sort of thing that happens with writing any series. The most personal moments for me honestly happened when I read the ending years ago. For me, the series has been finished already for all of that time. It has been an emotional experience, and I'm certain it will continue to be one.
You also have to remember that writing this was very draining, and that has kind of the opposite emotional effect. But I'm not a terribly emotional person. I'm not sure I can come up with anything specific other than that night sitting and reading the ending that Robert Jordan had written.
This is spoilery, but there's also the moment when I wrote Egwene's death scene—that was probably the most emotional scene I wrote. I finished it, and then it was like a "wow, so that just happened" sort of moment. I don't know if I can describe it in the same way.
For you, reading the book, these moments are going to come like unexpected smacks to the face. For me, I spent five months working on the outline for this book specifically, after I had spent months outlining the other two books. So I knew what was coming, and that makes it a different experience.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
kcf
Spoiler follow-up: What specific scenes in your writing proved to be the most memorable? What are a few of your favorites from the final three books in the series?Brandon Sanderson
Perrin forging his hammer is probably my favorite that I worked on extensively. My favorite that Jim worked on extensively would be Verin's last scene. Rand atop Dragonmount at the end of The Gathering Storm is a pretty big one for me. In the last book, my favorite would have to be Lan's charge right at the end, which is a scene that I worked out years ago, that I pointed a lot of things toward, and specifically in this book built a lot of things around. For a fun scene, getting Mat on the back of a raken was a pure joy for me to be able to do.
What other scenes really stand out to me? Robert Jordan's last scene, which I've mentioned before, is a great one because it's become the focus, for me, for the entire sequence that I have written. From the beginning, that was the ending that I was working toward. So I was very excited to be able to actually get there.
That's just a few scenes; there are a lot of them in this book and the series.
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Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013
Goodreads Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Goodreads
You've written extensively about magic systems in fantasy novels, including "Sanderson's First and Second Laws" for fictional magic. Were you tempted to change any part of the Wheel of Time magic system?Brandon Sanderson
Being a fan for so long, there was a danger that I would come in and say, "Well, this is my chance to fix all the things that have bugged me about the Wheel of Time." But I realized I couldn't approach the story like that.
Robert Jordan handles magic systems in a different way from how I handle a lot of mine. He works harder to preserve the sense of wonder than I do. I explain more nuts and bolts. He reserves the right to say, "We don't know how this works." I had to tell myself my job is not to change that. That's how his magic works, and it works really well like that. Even though on the Sanderson's First Law scale, it is much more to the middle than mine are. Mine are on the right side (right meaning direction-wise, not correctness-wise), where his is more toward the middle and Tolkien is more toward the left side. And I didn't want to push it.
The balance that I struck is, I was going to do my best to avoid a lot of new weaves [different kinds of magic], and I was going to take the existing weaves and push them further along the scale than I would let myself [in my own books]. The two instances are what happens in the world of dreams and gateways. I told myself, I am going to play with these two parts of the magic systems and let myself do some of the fun things I will do with magic. I am not going to spend a lot of time inventing new parts of the magic.
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Interview: Jan 3rd, 2013
Goodreads Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Goodreads
On that note, Goodreads member Regina says, "My biggest question for Mr. Sanderson is if finishing the Wheel of Time series has had any sort of impact on him or his other writings, and if so, in what ways?"Brandon Sanderson
Yes, it has, certainly because I learned a lot. Wheel of Time I've described as "power lifting." I had to get into shape as a writer very quickly and swim in the deep end, and it has improved my writing drastically. A good example of this is The Way of Kings. I was writing it in 2002, and the draft wasn't good enough. I didn't know why, but I was dissatisfied with it, and I told my editor we weren't going to publish it yet. I didn't know what I had to learn, but knew I had to learn things. The ideas were all there, but the technical skill wasn't there yet to pull off the book that I wanted to do. It wasn't until after finishing The Gathering Storm that I knew what was technically lacking, and I was able to go back and write that book. I feel it turned out quite well on the second attempt.Tags
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Computers Made It Easier (Verbatim)Harriet McDougal
He began all his books with the wind blowing. Breath, to instill life into his characters. In the Bible, Job 33:4 says, "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." When other writers would talk of their characters taking on life of their own, and controlling the story, he said, "I am an Old Testament creator: My fist is in the middle of my characters' lives."
Oh, dear, dear man. And what a creator he was! And, as Scott Card said of The Eye of the World, what a powerful vision of good and evil.
On January 8 you will see the final turning of his powerful vision. It comes to you with his love. And mine.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Reading the Final Scene of The Wheel of Time (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
At signings, I've often told the story of reading the last scene of The Wheel of Time. This might not be news to some of you. However, it's one of the questions I get the most. What did it feel like, some five years ago now, to read that last scene of the book as Robert Jordan wrote it?
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Reading the Final Scene of The Wheel of Time (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Soon after I was tapped to help complete the series, I asked Harriet about the last scene of the book. (The one that Robert Jordan had, over the years working on the series, promised fans he knew in detail.) She told me that he had indeed written that scene—and though there were large swaths of unfinished portions of the ending that he hadn't had time to work on, he'd been determined to get that last scene on the page.
You can imagine my excitement. I flew out to Charleston for the first time in late 2007—before this, I hadn't read any of the materials, as Harriet preferred that I come get them in person. After a long flight from Salt Lake City to Charleston, Harriet picked me up at the airport and drove me to her house in the city. We got in at nine or ten, I recall, and she had soup warming on the stove. She asked if I'd like some. My reply was, "If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to read the ending please . . ." Holding my enthusiasm was somewhat difficult.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Reading the Final Scene of The Wheel of Time (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
So, I spent the next hours late into the night sitting in a chair beside Robert Jordan's computer (it had been moved, by coincidence, out of his office and into the sitting room) reading his ending to The Wheel of Time, then poring over the rest of the notes. I remember Harriet passing by once and asking—with a satisfied smile—"It's good, isn't it?"
And it is. As a Wheel of Time fan for nearly 20 years at that point, I found myself supremely satisfied. The ending is the right one. Somewhat unexpected, somewhat daring, but also very well done. I knew that whatever else happened—whatever mistakes I made—at least this ending would be there, as Robert Jordan intended. We've put it in almost untouched, with just a few edits here and there at Harriet's direction.
You're going to love it.
Brandon
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: It's finally out. (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
A lot of people are asking what it feels like to be done. That's an odd question to consider for a couple of reasons. In some ways, the Wheel of Time was "done" for me when I read Robert Jordan's last scene back in 2007. The work wasn't done, of course, and I had a very long road ahead of me. And yet, I'd read the ending. We managed to get it into the final book virtually unchanged, with only a few minor tweaks here and there. The sequence (it is more than one scene) that I am referring to most of the time when I talk about this encompasses the entire epilogue of A Memory of Light. Once you get there, you can know you're reading Robert Jordan's words, though of course there are other scenes scattered through the book that he worked on too.
So that was one ending, for me. Another came in January of last year, when I finished the rough draft of this book. Still, there was a great deal of work to do, but I was "done" after a fashion. From there, I transitioned from writing a new Wheel of Time book to doing revisions—and for the last time ever.
Another ending came for me when I handed the book over to Maria from Team Jordan to handle all of the final tweaks from the proofreads and copyedits. That happened late last summer, and with some regret, I stepped away from the Wheel of Time. Like a parent (though a step-parent in this case) waving farewell to a child as they leave the home, I no longer had responsibility for this book in the same way. I was done.
And yet, I wasn't. This month and next I'll be touring for the Wheel of Time. That will probably be the final ending, seeing all of you and sharing in your mixed joy and regret at the finale of this series. Over twenty-three years ago now, I picked up The Eye of the World for the first time, and my life changed. A lot of you have similar stories.
I know how you feel. I've been feeling it for five years now, ever since I read that last scene. There is no glossary in this last Wheel of Time book. We wanted to leave you with the memory of that scene, as Robert Jordan wrote it, for your final impression of the Wheel of Time.
I'm happy I can finally share that scene with you. After five years of waiting, I can talk about it with others and reminisce without having to worry about what I'm spoiling. I hope to chat with as many of you as possible in the upcoming months. For those who can't make it, I'll post some responses to frequently asked questions below.
May you always find water and shade.
Brandon Sanderson
January 8th, 2013Tags
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Jared Sheehan (9 January 2013)
Thank you @BrandSanderson for completing the Wheel of Time. Can we expect to see a movie anytime soon??? PLEASEEEEE!Brandon Sanderson (9 January 2013)
Universal pictures has a film in development.Tags
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Interview: Jan 5th, 2013
Michael Mason-D'Croz
The best-selling series originally penned by the late Robert Jordan was first thought of as a trilogy; however, it has spanned 14 books and 23 years. When Jordan passed away in 2007, the series—and its ending—seemed to be in jeopardy. Then Sanderson stepped in.
Sanderson, who graduated from Brigham Young University and now calls Provo, Utah, home, was chosen for the job by Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal, after he wrote a heartfelt eulogy for Jordan that was published on his website.
He felt mixed emotions about taking over the series.
Brandon Sanderson
"Working on it has been bittersweet," Sanderson said. "You just won the lottery, but you didn't even enter. Your grandfather passed away and left you the ticket."
Michael Mason-D'Croz
Even with those emotions, Sanderson jumped at the opportunity to take over the series, and now as it draws to a close, there are more mixed emotions.
Brandon Sanderson
"It feels very relaxing to be finished, but also extremely sad," Sanderson said. "It's relaxing like finishing a marathon—more relieving than anything."
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Ed Huyck
What were you thinking when you wrapped up the final chapter of the book?
Brandon Sanderson
I felt like a person who had just run a mental marathon. I was tired, I was satisfied, I was excited, and I was saddened. That was five years of my life writing, and twenty-something years of my life reading and working on it. It was really bittersweet. But you have to remember that that was tempered for me, because the ending that Robert Jordan had written—I had read that years ago. So in a lot of ways the series was already finished to me, and had been finished since 2007 when I read the ending.
That last chapter was his chapter. There were only minor tweaks that I put in; there's one scene that I added from a certain character's viewpoint. But basically, that whole ending sequence, the last chapter, and the epilogue, are Robert Jordan's. So it was more a matter of finally putting it in with the rest of the book. Now, it's finally done. The capstone that was finished five, six years ago can finally be slipped into place and the book can be complete. So all of those emotions were mixed together.
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Interview: Jan 5th, 2013
Michael Mason-D'Croz
That master's guidance has helped Sanderson move ahead on his own work, especially his 2010 New York Times best-selling epic fantasy The Way of Kings.
Sanderson first attempted to write the epic story in 2002. However, after a couple of attempts, he said, he left it for a few years.
Brandon Sanderson
"I knew as an artist that it hadn't worked," Sanderson said. "But after working on The Wheel of Time, I went back, and this time it worked. I can only say this story worked because of my work on The Wheel of Time."
Michael Mason-D'Croz
Sanderson said finishing the series gave him an inside look at how the craft works. It gave him a grasp of storytelling and all the things readers don't see behind the scenes in what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece.
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Interview: Jan 5th, 2013
Michael Mason-D'Croz
The former Journal Star paperboy and Lincoln East High School graduate has achieved much in his life. And during much of his life, The Wheel of Time has been there.
Brandon Sanderson
"I don't know how to respond to the idea of writing The Wheel of Time," Sanderson said. "The whole opportunity happened because my favorite author has passed away. But because he hasn't been here, I've been able to work on the series that has meant the most to me throughout my life."
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Ed Huyck
In turn, how did you react when you were chosen to complete the series?
Brandon Sanderson
Nobody was more surprised by it than me. I didn't even know I was being considered. Like most fans of the series, I was just shocked and saddened that Jim Rigney wasn't going to be there to finish it himself. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that. I considered Jim in many ways to be a mentor. I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced.
I'd never met him, so I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call. I was absolutely stunned. I felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time. While I didn't ask for this, the truth is that I'm extremely excited to have been involved. I love this series, and I wanted to see the last book written as much as any other fan. For a writer like me, the next best thing to having Jim write the novel was being able to work on it myself.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Ed Huyck
How extensive were the notes that you had to work with? Were all of the plot lines tied off, or did you have to find conclusions on your own for some of them?
Brandon Sanderson
Since Robert Jordan wrote the last scene, that actually made this whole project mountains easier. I had a target to shoot at. While I didn't have a ton of written material from Robert Jordan that I could actually put in—there were about 200 pages worth of scenes and notes that needed to become somewhere around 2,500 pages—a lot of those 200 pages were summaries of scenes he wanted. Robert Jordan wrote by instinct.
He was what we call a discovery writer, so what was handed to me was a big pile of half-finished scenes or paragraphs where he wrote, 'Well, I am either going to do this, this, or this. I was thinking of this, but it could be this.' Yes, cracking an ending is hard, and Wheel of Time had a lot of loose threads. My job was to take all those threads and weave them into an ending, which was a real challenge.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
Ed Huyck
Are we going to be happy with the end of A Memory of Light?
Brandon Sanderson
The ending was written by Robert Jordan, and as a reader I found it extremely satisfying when I reached it. And so I feel very confident that the ending of the book is going to be what everyone has been hoping for and wanting—without being exactly what they expect. I think the ending that Robert Jordan wrote is just wonderful.
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
Geek's Guide to the Galaxy
Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time, launched in 1990, quickly became one of the most popular series in the history of fantasy, though as the story continued year after year, swelling into many mammoth volumes, some fans wondered if the tale would ever be finished, especially after Jordan's death in 2007. But this month sees the release of A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume, completed by author Brandon Sanderson, working off Jordan's notes.
Brandon Sanderson
"The last thing that Robert Jordan wrote is the last chapter of this book," says Brandon Sanderson in this week's episode of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I felt when I first read it that it was a satisfying ending. I felt it was the right ending. It's been my guidepost for all the work I've done on this."
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
Geek's Guide to the Galaxy
Brandon Sanderson on writing Robert Jordan's characters:
Brandon Sanderson
"I'm going to bring my own interpretation as a longtime fan of the characters, and in most cases they're spot-on with what most people think—there haven't been many complaints about my Perrin, for instance. In some cases there are complaints and they're right. My early Mat was off, and I acknowledged this, I looked at what the people were saying. In other cases, such as Lan, they're wrong. [Laughs] What can I say? I'm a fan too, and we will have these arguments about whether this character would do this or that character would do that, and you'll find that in any community. On the other hand I do get complaints and the complaints are legit. I'm not Robert Jordan, and I can't do some of the things he could simply because I don't have his life experience and in many ways I'm not as good a writer as he was. . . And if that really bothers you, then hopefully we can get the original notes released . . . so that those for whom my interpretation was not good, or my failings ruined the experience for them, they can at least look at what Robert Jordan had and imagine their own story."
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Petra Mayer
It's here, it's here, it's here. It's A Memory of Light. It's the last Wheel of Time book, and it's in my hot little hands. True to form, it's enormous: two and a half pounds, two and a quarter inches thick, and 909 pages—all of it to tell the story of a backcountry farm boy who finds out he's the Dragon Reborn, a hero out of prophecies, destined to defeat the Dark One, and probably die doing it. Here is how author Robert Jordan described the story, when he was asked to summarize it:
Harriet McDougal
Cultures clash, worlds change, cope.
Petra Mayer
You'll note that's not actually Robert Jordan. It's his widow and editor Harriet McDougal. Tragically, Jordan could not finish his epic work by himself. The series he originally planned as six books had stretched to book eleven when he died in 2007. McDougal picked fantasy author Brandon Sanderson to finish the last book, which—no surprise here—grew from one, to three volumes.Brandon Sanderson
It was like getting hit with a freight train. There was, you know, all this continuity and all these characters, it was a massive undertaking.Tags
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Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
Petra Mayer
Oh yeah, the characters. There are 2,000 of them. And that's the thing about the Wheel of Time—the writing is workmanlike. But the world sucks you in and doesn't let you go. Those 2,000 characters are at play across ages and continents, each with their own distinct languages, customs, food, ethnic groups, military tactics—oh my god, you could pretty much just blow a couple of months figuring it all out. Brandon Sanderson says he actually had to rely on the Wheel of Time fan community to keep it all straight in his head. He also had the notes that Jordan dictated on his deathbed and the very last chapter. Again, Harriet McDougal:
Harriet McDougal
I picked him up at the airport and brought him back to my house, and said, well, I have some soup for your supper, and he said, what I'd really like is the end of the series.
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Austen Woods (9 January 2013)
In your FAQ you mentioned no more WoT books. Does this decision negate any chance of movies/TV shows/mini series?Brandon Sanderson (9 January 2013)
No it does not. (I am hoping for a prequel video game, myself.)Tags
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Kristi Deming (12 January 2013)
Any chance of finding out what "Bao" or "The Wyld" mean since we have no glossary?Brandon Sanderson (12 January 2013)
Both are a reference to Beowulf, and I meant the Wyld to mean "predator" or, in more common tongue, he who will kill the dragon.Footnote
The name "Bao" also came from Bao Pham, a fan who has worked (along with Jimmy Liang, blademaster "Jaim" of The Yearly Brawl) teaching sword forms for JordanCon and the WoT track at DragonCon.Tags
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Can (13 January 2013)
Which scene was the most visualized one that you wanted to see in the movie? Demandred-Taim?Brandon Sanderson (13 January 2013)
Lan with arrows falling and a ring of fire.Tags
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Terez (13 January 2013)
I once wrote a poem about writer's block. I was reminded of it when I the last scene of chapter 44... @BrandSanderson https://twitter.com/BrandSanderson/status/106123521532493824
Brandon Sanderson
I would love to see the poem. And it sure was nice to have Thom around to help with inspiration.
Patrick
Thom's chapter viewpoint in Memory of Light, hands down for me, was my favorite. Beautifully written.
Brandon Sanderson (13 January 2013)
Thanks!
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Austin Moore (Paraphrased)Austin Moore
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon stated that, as we knew before, RJ had the fates of the major characters worked out in the notes but that some had to be done by Brandon based on the current emotional moment of the story and what worked best.Tags
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Bob Johnson (15 January 2013)
Just finished A Memory of Light...juggling all the POVs is quite an accomplishment!Brandon Sanderson (15 January 2013)
Thanks. It was one of the most challenging parts of working on the book, to be certain.Tags
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Jhirrad (Paraphrased)Question
How do you keep track of all those characters?
Brandon Sanderson
Lots of use of online resources. Also, Maria and Alan are invaluable assets for that. Brandon told a funny story about trying to figure out who was with Perrin, and Maria pulled out some notes from Robert Jordan that had a list of every single person from the Two Rivers that came with Perrin! Brandon also said he thinks there are more than 2800 named characters throughout the entire series.
Footnote
Brandon has told the story of the "with Perrin" file a numer of times before; in this example from 2009, the person he said that he queried was Alan. Other times, he has just cited "RJ's assistants".Tags
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Jhirrad (Paraphrased)Question
Is there a character you took in a different direction from what Jordan had intended?
Brandon Sanderson
In terms of a character, and what would happen to them ultimately, no, not really. However, there were times when some things had to be adjusted, specifically some plot points, in order to make the narrative as a whole flow better. Brandon did mention that he wanted a character that he felt was his own, which he got to do the most development on. That character became Androl. A lot of what Androl did were things which Jordan said had to happen. Brandon picked Androl to do them, and gave the character his own touch more than any other.
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Jhirrad (Paraphrased)Question
Did Brandon insert a character in the story based on himself?
Brandon Sanderson
No. He did however mention two items, one for Robert Jordan, one for him. In the ter'angreal cache found in Ebou Dar, there is a man with a beard statue. The power of the item is to be like an easily movable library. [MY NOTE: We see this in A Memory of Light.] This was Robert Jordan. Brandon then told the story of how he got his sword, with the dragon scabbard, while in Mr. Jordan's home in South Carolina, and meeting with Wilson. That sword appears in the book, and is the one which Rand gives to Tam in A Memory of Light. So Brandon's sword is in the book, but not Brandon himself.
Footnote
RJ referred to his appearance in the form of the bearded man ter'angreal as his "Alfred Hitchcock moment". Aviendha first discovered the use of the bearded man ter'angreal in Knife of Dreams 15. Brandon's sword appears in A Memory of Light 15.
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Jhirrad (Paraphrased)Question
[Side note: One person almost got himself lynched by asking a somewhat spoilery question, regardless of what people had been instructed...] Some characters die in A Memory of Light. How do you choose which characters to kill and which to keep alive?
Brandon Sanderson
[My note: Brandon tried to keep this out of spoilers and make it more general about writing and dealing with killing characters off in general.] In this book, Robert Jordan had left very specific instructions regarding the fates of some characters. He left a lot of notes, and some of those determined their fate. In general, characters have to be allowed to take risks in order to create a compelling story. There has to be a real danger for them, or the characters fall flat. Sometimes, that means characters are going to die. (Brandon added a nice bit that made the crowd laugh: "Which character can I kill off that will really piss everyone off and which no one expects?")
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Jhirrad (Paraphrased)Question
How much was already completed when you took over the series?
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon referred to what Tom Doherty had previously said on the issue. He said there were about 200 pages when he took over. Also, the Epilogue in A Memory of Light was almost entirely written by Jordan with Brandon trying to bring everything else to that point.
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Jhirrad (Paraphrased)Question
How was the Old Tongue created?
Harriet McDougal
Jim had books on almost every language in the world in his study. He drew inspiration from those.
Maria Simons
A lot of it comes from those and at the same time a lot was just his own creativity in adapting that into this world which he has created.
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Nygmus (Paraphrased)Nygmus
Couple of the questions asked that I can remember:
Harriet McDougal
I asked about the graphic novels, because I wasn't sure how far that project was going to go/how well-received it was for Harriet, but she seemed pleased enough with them. She said that there was a good team of people working on them and that they were working closely with Maria and Team Jordan.
Brandon Sanderson
(Brandon took a moment to point out that the bookstore also carried the graphic novels, and someone at the back found one on a shelf and held it up for demonstration.)
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Nygmus (Paraphrased)Nygmus
The real standout question for me was someone who asked if there was anything that Brandon found difficult or uncomfortable to write.
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon talked about going into the outline, finding a couple things that made him go "Huh, that's interesting," (making specific mention of a certain conversation involving dresses and the color thereof), but the one that really stood out was "Oh, come on, you're going to make me write a spanking scene?"
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Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
How did Brandon feel when he was chosen to complete the work?
Brandon Sanderson
"Dumbfounded stupefaction." Brandon repeated the story of how Harriet found Brandon and hired him to finish the series. It's been stated several times, so I won't repeat it here.
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Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
Which character is most like you?
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon said he identified with Perrin.
Harriet McDougal
Harriet stated, "Verin, minus her wrong turn, but I still want her owl."
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Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
Did Brandon question himself when he was chosen?
Brandon Sanderson
Apparently, Brandon was unable to sleep that night after saying yes, because he knew that he would fail. Anyone who took on this project would fail, because no one could tell the story as good as Robert Jordan would have. Brandon had only published two novels at the time, so it was a huge risk for him, and it was a risk for Harriet to ask him. However, he knew that he was a fan of the series, and that, if he didn't say yes, and it went to someone who wasn't a fan of the series and they messed it up, it would be his fault. He decided that in the Venn Diagram that consists of Wheel of Time fans in one circle, and pretty good writers in another circle, he was the person in the middle. "I'll screw it up the least," he said.
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Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
Are there any updates to a potential TV series or movie?
Harriet McDougal
"It is, at present, under development at Universal Pictures, but the dates are mysterious to me."
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Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
Will anything be done specially for those who won the contest to have their names in the book?
Brandon Sanderson
In The Gathering Storm, many fans stated that the names felt off, and Brandon agreed. Robert Jordan's character names were inspired by the real world, such as Ogier St. in Charleston, his stove, medications he was taking, etc. There had been a fundraiser for one person to have his name included in one of the books, and that was being continued. Brandon decided to increase this, and put many people in the final two books. The short answer: Nope, the name in the book is the something special.
(Note: Later, I happened to be sitting up front when the person who asked this question came to the front, with his wife and an absolutely adorable two-year-old little girl. Turns out, he had his daughter's name placed in the book instead of his own. Brandon signed the book at the place where she was mentioned.)
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1054
Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
What was Brandon given to start his work?
Brandon Sanderson
He received one scene from each prologue—the first scene from The Gathering Storm that was dictated, the Kandori tower scene from Towers of Midnight, and one scene from A Memory of Light that I will not state since it contains a spoiler. There were large chunks of the ending, including the entire epilogue. He received fragments of Egwene's visit from her "special visitor" inThe Gathering Storm, and a proposal at the end of Towers of Midnight. There were also discussions of scenes, and answers from Team Jordan.
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1055
Interview: Jan 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Lara (Paraphrased)Question
Either my hand was cramping up or I missed a segue, but somehow a discussion of Brandon's writing style commenced.
Brandon Sanderson
He stated that he works from an outline, and that Robert Jordan grew and nurtured scenes over time. Brandon did not try to imitate Robert Jordan's writing style, and left the blending of the two writing styles up to Harriet. Harriet was Tor Books' original editor, discovering Mr. Rigney and editing the two best-selling series in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Harriet was in charge of blending the voices together.
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1056
Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Christine (Paraphrased)Question
How does it feel now that you are done with the series?
Brandon Sanderson
Bittersweet. Has been reading the series longer than he has had some friends!
Harriet McDougal
It was truly done well.
Maria Simons
Bittersweet. And wow!
Alan Romanczuk
Brain Dead.
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1057
Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Christine (Paraphrased)Question
Will you be continuing the comic books?
Harriet McDougal
Yes!
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1058
Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Christine (Paraphrased)Question
What do you like most and least working on the novels?
Brandon Sanderson
Liked Perrin, and misses writing some of the PoVs. Had to constantly research things to make certain it was accurate, but won't miss fulfilling everything that was foreshadowed...lots of the foreshadowing will be mentioned in the encyclopedia in a year and a half.
Harriet McDougal
Two years.
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1059
Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Christine (Paraphrased)Question
Did Charleston have a lot of influence on the Ogier?
Harriet McDougal
The Two Rivers? Ogier Street?
Maria Simons
Actually, it was later revealed that Ogier was a subconscious thing, as Jim wanted something close to the term "ogre".
Harriet McDougal
And, Jim grew up in a small town, much the same as the Two Rivers in their treatment of strangers.
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1060
Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Christine (Paraphrased)Question
Any of the characters you got caught into?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, so lots of trimming and pruning, and had to write some others back in.
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1061
Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Christine (Paraphrased)Question
Seems like RJ was a King Arthur fan? Names seem so familiar.
Harriet McDougal
It was consciously done.
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1062
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
Harlan Greene
"These papers document not just the context, contributions, and creativity of one very significant Charleston writer, but will be used by researchers exploring a popular global phenomenon," says Harlan Greene, the senior manuscript and reference archivist of special collections at the Addlestone Library. He thinks this collection could have as much popular appeal as the books themselves. "One of the most interesting parts of archival life is not knowing how the materials we preserve may be used by researchers," Greene adds. "Will fans want to touch the manuscripts? Will scholars want to see how plot and characters changed, or how Jim's editor Harriet influenced him? Will students of Arthurian legends want to check out Jim's sources? Or will others studying the effects of technology come to see if Jim's writing style changed as he moved from handwritten script to typing to computers?"
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1063
Interview: Jan 8th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Grant (Paraphrased)Question ()
Movie?
Harriet McDougal
Universal has the rights and has had them for more than 5 years.
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1064
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How did you keep track of all the characters?Brandon Sanderson
There are, what? What are we up to, like 2800 named characters in the Wheel of Time? [laughter] It's more than two thousand; it was more than two thousand when I started, and it was like 2400 or something like that when I started, and I've added a few. So, how can we keep track of all of these characters? That actually is when people ask me, what the hardest part about this was, I often say that that was the hardest part. It's not just keeping track of them, because actually keeping track of them is somewhat easy; there's lots of fan resources, which I use. The Encyclopaedia-WoT is my favorite, though tarvalon.net runs a very nice Wiki which goes more in-depth and things. And keeping track—that's the easy part. The harder part is, Robert Jordan gave them all voices, right? Everybody talked in their own way, and was their own person, and when, you know, Perrin is traveling with like three random Wise Ones, they're all individual personalities, and so before I could write a scene, I had to go back and remind myself, how each of these three people...what their attitudes were, and how they spoke, that sort of thing. It was very difficult.
I don't know if you—I mean, I tell this story; I don't know if you guys have heard this before—but the level of detail Robert Jordan went into in the worldbuilding...there was one point where I was working on Towers of Midnight, and I sent an email to Maria saying, "I can't keep track of who is with Perrin. Do you have just a list somewhere?" And I was really just meaning the Wise Ones, right? And, you know, named characters. Maria comes back and says, "Well I just dug this out of the notes; I hadn't seen it before. Maybe this will help. It's a file called 'With Perrin'". I went, "Oh, good." And I opened it up...no, that's not what it is; it is the names of all the Two Rivers folk who haven't been named in the books yet. [laughter] ...who are traveling with Perrin, and often a little bit about each of them, and a list of several dozen names of people who haven't been named yet. That's the level of detail we're talking about with this, and it was a challenge; it was a challenge on all of us.
Fortunately, we did have Maria and Alan, who we should mention—Alan Romanczuk, who is also one of the assistants and very good at this sort of thing, and I would focus my writing, particularly in first draft, on just getting the emotional content of a scene down, right? Get the narrative flow down, make sure it's working, and I would try to get all the voices of the characters right, but I wouldn't worry as much about continuity. I would then send it to Maria, and she would send back this thing with all of these notes saying, "Oh Brandon. Oh Brandon, you can't do this." "Oh Brandon, you killed her." "Oh Brandon..." You know, stuff like that. You see her shaking her head over each of these things. And then we would try and fix all of the problems caused by that, and that's kind of how it went.
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1065
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Was there a character that you took in a different direction than Robert Jordan had originally intended?Brandon Sanderson
Not specifically against his wishes. If it was in the notes, talking about a character...one of our first requirements, and I put it on myself on this, was to avoid going in different a direction from Robert Jordan with anything, specifically because I didn't want these books to become about me. I wanted them to remain the Wheel of Time. Now, I had to be nudged by Harriet at several points early on. She would tell me, you have to change some of these things. You do have to be willing to write the book as it needs to be written; Robert Jordan wouldn't have stuck to this outline exactly, and if you did stick to it exactly, it would feel like it doesn't have any life to it.
And so, there are times, when I was working, and mostly these are plot things—I would say, "You know what, we need to change this." An example of this is in The Gathering Storm, there's a scene—it's not too bad; it's not a big spoiler [laughter]—but there are several scenes where Egwene is having dinner with the Amyrlin. Well, that was originally in Robert Jordan's notes as one scene, and I split it to two scenes, where there's a dinner, it breaks, and then we come back, and I put some things in between because with the narrative flow of that sequence, it felt more powerful for me to work with it that way. I didn't remove any of the things that Robert Jordan said to have happen, and used several of his scenes that he'd written to construct those, but in that case, I felt that moving it around like that made for a better book. And so that's the sort of thing I would change.
I will say that, early on, when I first met with them, I did say, "I would like to have a character that I can just kind of do whatever I want with," so that I have, you know...it was kind of, maybe hubristic of me or whatever—I wanted to do that, I'm like, "Can I have one to play with? I want an Asha'man to play with." And it was actually Maria who suggested Androl, and said "Go look at him; there's not a lot written about him. The personality, Robert Jordan doesn't have much written down for who he is, and he seems like he's well-poised to do this. That would be a very good one." So Androl, almost everything that's happening with him, Robert Jordan didn't say "Do it with him." There are things I have him doing that Robert Jordan said, in this notes, "This has to happen." But I specifically took Androl as a character and went places with him.
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1066
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Did you insert a character based on yourself in the books like you did with fans?Brandon Sanderson
Let me answer that in reverse. The whole fan name thing, where it came from is, I wrote the first book, The Gathering Storm, and I got several notes from Maria that said, "You know, a lot of your names don't feel right. They don't feel like Wheel of Time names." And it was one of the areas that, fans noticed it too when the book came out. I named people like I name people, and so for Towers of Midnight, I felt, "I need to radically change the way I name. I need to use Robert Jordan's methods." So while talking to Maria and Harriet, Harriet told me this wonderful story where...you think he named someone after...(to Harriet)...a washing machine, was it? You remember you said, like there's a little name on one of the washing machines...was it you?
Harriet McDougal
The stove.
Maria Simons
The stove is a Jenn Air, and every time I looked at it, I would think of the Jenn Aiel. [laughter]
Harriet McDougal
And at one point I was taking allergy medicine, and whoever considered Corianin's surname—Seldane?
Brandon Sanderson
And there's an Ogier St. in Charleston. And beyond that, Robert Jordan was naming a lot of characters in the books off of mythological figures, with some twists. And so I felt—I actually said, "I'm going to grab a phone book, and I'm just going to go looking for names and try and tweak those names to start naming in the Wheel of Time." And when I did that, I stopped and thought, "Wait a minute. I had a list of names; it's in the list of the names of the fans who were part of this one charity drive we did." So I just started grabbing their names; that's as random as the phone book for me, and that's where the naming [characters] after fans thing came from. It was me forcing myself to try and do something different in the way that I'd been naming.
Now, back to the original question, did I name anything after myself: Actually, there's a cameo by Robert Jordan in the books, of Robert Jordan. Do you guys know what it is? If you know, raise your hands. If you don't know...most of you do know? No, most of you don't know. There is a statue of Robert Jordan in the books. It is discovered among the ter'angreal that were originally in Rhuidean, right? Rhuidean? No, Ebou Dar; that's right, it's the Ebou Dar cache. See, that's why I looked at Maria, and I'm like, "Where did they come from?" And there's a man that has the contents of many stories contained, and that was described to look like Robert Jordan.
I gave myself a similar cameo to that, in that, one of the times when I was visiting Charleston, Wilson—who was Robert Jordan's cousin, and they were very dear friends, like siblings—was taking Robert Jordan's weapons collection, and figuring out what to do with, and he had so many weapons. [laughter] It was really awesome to go walking through his workshop, so to speak—where he'd work—and see all these weapons, and see all of the different versions of the ashandarei that he had, and you can just imagine him swinging them about and deciding how he was going to do this, and describing certain weapons. He had everything, and so he'd use it. And Wilson was doing this, and he said to me, "Brandon, go out there and pick one, anything you want. Go grab one." And so, I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, stunned though I was, and I went out there and I found at the very back a katana with a scabbard that had a red-and-gold dragon on it, twisting around the scabbard. And I don't know if the idea for Rand's dragons came first, and then he bought the scabbard and the sword because it looked like that, or if that was part of the inspiration. I suspect it was the former, that he saw that and thought, "Wow, that's just like the..."
But either way, I picked that one, and then I wrote that sword into the books, which you will find if you look around; that sword is mentioned. So that's my cameo, is I put my sword in. It now hangs on my wall, inside a case—my wife had it, got a case and a little plaque that says "Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time," underneath. And it hangs on my wall with Robert Jordan's birthdate underneath it.
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1067
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How do Michael and Kate Reading keep track of all the voices doing the audiobooks?Brandon Sanderson
(to Harriet and Maria) Do either of you know? (demur) No idea. [laughter] Sorry; easy answer, but we have no idea. You'll have to ask them.Tags
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Alright, I finished the book...Brandon Sanderson
Okay, no spoilers about the book itself, please.
Question
There are characters we've been with for twenty years or so who don't survive this book. How do you choose when characters meet perhaps an untimely end in a book? [laughter]
Brandon Sanderson
For this book in specific, there are characters that Robert Jordan left notes on requiring what would happen to certain characters; he was actually fairly detailed. There are a couple of cases where we made decisions on our own, and in any case, when a character dies in a book, I am trying to do what is best for that character and for the emotional beats of the storytelling. I don't look at it as killing off characters; I look at it as letting characters take risks, the risks that they would demand of me that they be allowed to take, and if those risks don't occasionally come with consequences, then there is no story to me, because there is no tension, and there is no possibility for things to go wrong, and without that possibility, I wouldn't be able to write the books. I would be unable to write novels if the characters were unable to have actual danger from the actions that they're taking.
And so, I make these decisions based on what the character demands and what the story demands. It's never easy. I don't sit there gleefully, as I do imagine certain writers doing [laughter], who will remain unnamed [laughter], saying, "What two don't they expect me to kill, and how can I do it in a really, really brutal way?" [laughter] And that's a certain skill that certain authors have; that's not how I approach it. It's what the story demands of me, is how I approach it, and in some cases what Robert Jordan demanded of me. I agree with everyone that he killed, though. [laughter] I felt that it was right for the story.
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1069
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How much of the last books were completed, or do you have an idea of the percent before you took over?Brandon Sanderson
Fortunately I can fall back on Tom Doherty, who answered this question, so I don't get in trouble. And I don't usually—I get in trouble a little bit sometimes. [laughter] There are certain things that I have to be careful not to say, to get into spoilers and things like that, but Tom Doherty did answer this. There were about 200 pages of material that was done, and that did include lots of different things. It included completed scenes; it included dictations that he'd done while he was sick; and it included fragments of scenes, and in some places, some Q&As with Maria and Alan, where they would say "You said this about a character; can you go more in depth on that?" And then there's like a page of him talking about that character and that scene, and those 200 pages were given to me, and I have used that as a guide in writing the books.
There were holes. There were some very big holes, which actually was exciting to me in some ways, because it allowed me to actually be part of this, rather than following a very strict "This happens, this happens, this happens." In fact, they weren't in order, which was also exciting to me, because I work from an outline, and Robert Jordan didn't. Robert Jordan knew where he was going, but he would often discover what was going on as he got the characters there. They call that a 'gardener'; it's George R.R. Martin's term for writing; it's how George R.R. Martin; it's how Robert Jordan wrote books; it's how Stephen King writes books. There are others of us that, we are more 'architects'; we build a structure, and then we work from that, and I was able to take all of these things and build a structure from it, and one of the gems in there was what is now the epilogue of the book you're holding, which was finished almost in its entirety—that whole sequence, with very minor tweaks by us—and that ending is the last scene that Robert Jordan talked about many times, that he knows how the book ends; he knows how the series ends. He did write that before he passed away, and that became like my goalpost; that was the thing I had to hit, was that scene, and everything leading up to that was to make that scene work. And so, when you get there, you can read...that epilogue is all Robert Jordan. Significant chunks of the rest of the books were too, but that one, you can just use as a marker, and say "Okay, this is his ending."
Footnote
There is some clarification on the issue of the epilogue here.Tags
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Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How was Old Tongue created? Was it based on another language, or was it just off the top of his head?Maria Simons
It was based on a lot of different languages. He had shelves and shelves of language books—every language, practically, known to man—but it was a lot of creativity on his part to put it all together.
Brandon Sanderson
Another fun story here. At one point, when I was visiting Charleston, I was talking about the mythological significance of certain things, and I'm like, "I can't figure out the mythological significance of the ashandarei." I knew pieces of Mat's mythological significance—not based on language, but the mythology—and Harriet said, "Oh, I know where it came from." She ran out to his library, selected a specific volume, came back with it and gave it to me and said, "It's this chapter right here." And showed me a chapter in that book that I could read that talked about the mythological significance of that specific piece of the Wheel of Time world. And so, there are all sorts of things like that that he used.
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1071
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How did this prepare you to write The Stormlight Archive series?Brandon Sanderson
There’s actually a good story there because Way of Kings, the first Stormlight Archive, was the book I was writing when I first sold Elantris. Elantris was my first published, but it wasn’t my first written. It was my sixth novel. It was the first one that was actually somewhat decent. But I was writing number thirteen when I got the offer on it. You’ll find that’s very common among authors—it doesn’t happen to all of us, but a lot of us, we write for a long time, until we get it done—and I had just finished Way of Kings, and it was not right yet. In fact, when I sold Elantris, TOR wanted to buy two books from me, and my editor asked, you know—"Send me what you're working on right now." And I sent him Way of Kings, and he said "Wow, this is awesome, but number one, it's enormous! I’m not sure we can publish this, at least in one volume from a new author." Later on I was able to convince them that it should be one volume. But that's when I had a little more clout, and they could print more copies which drives the prices down for printing them. But also, it just wasn't right yet; the book was not right. And I said to my editor, "I'm okay with not publishing it now, because I don't know what's wrong with it." As a writer I think it was just too ambitious for me at the time, I just couldn't do it yet. And it wasn't until I'd written Gathering Storm in its entirety that I started to figure out what I'd been doing wrong.
It was actually managing viewpoints, was one of the things. During the reread of Robert Jordan's entire series I noticed how he gathered the viewpoints together. When you start writing a big epic fantasy series, and you feel like, "Well, they have so many characters, I want to start with that." And the reason on the draft of Way of Kings, I started with—all over the world, I had all these viewpoints and things like this, and the book was kind of a train wreck because of it. Where, if you read Eye of the World, Robert Jordan starts with them all together, and then slowly builds complexity, and even the later books he's grouping the characters together so even if they have individual story lines going on they're in the same place so they can interact with each other and there's clusters of them in different places.
And that was one thing. Working on The Gathering Storm I've learned how to make my characters...also how to use viewpoint the way he did, how to manage subtlety—he was so subtle with a lot of his writing—and some of these things, it all started to click in my head. And I actually I called my agent and said, "I need to do Way of Kings RIGHT NOW," and he's like "Are you sure? Because you kind of have a lot on your plate." And I'm like, "I need to do it; it's going to be fast, because I know how to do it now." And so I actually took time off between Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight and re-wrote Way of Kings from scratch. Took me about six months, which is amazingly fast for a book of that length. And then I showed it to my editor, and it was right this time. And it's hard to explain many of the specifics. It's just, you know...it's like how do you know you can lift this weight after you've been lifting these other weights? When you've worked hard enough, that you've gained the muscle mass to do it. And lifting...writing the Wheel of Time was heavy lifting. And that's how it happened. I do apologize the sequel is taking so long, but after that deviation to the first one, which I could do very quickly, I couldn't stop to write the second one after Towers of Midnight because the second one would take too long, and delay the last book too long. And so, I am getting back to the Stormlight now—I am working on the second book—but I had other obligations first that were very important, and they're why you're here, so... [laughter]
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1072
Interview: Jan 9th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Skokie Q&A (Verbatim)Question
When you first read Robert Jordan's ending, did you have a clear-cut idea of what you wanted to do with the series, or did it develop over time?Brandon Sanderson
Excellent question, and the answer is it developed over time. Specifically, after I read that ending, I started to reread the whole series—the first time I'd read the series knowing I was going to be part of the series which...you have to approach it very differently, knowing you're going to be a part of it. And I took all of those notes, and I reread the series, and I built an outline using Robert Jordan's scenes as touchstones. A lot of times when you're building an outline—even Robert Jordan who was more of a discovery writer, I heard from Harriet did it this way—you kind of plan your book like you would plan a road trip, where you know you're starting in D.C. and you're going to end in San Diego, and outlining for me is putting in between them all the road markers of places you're going to go, and so I laid down this map where I said, "Okay, here's a scene he wrote; let's go there. Here's another scene he wrote; then we'll go there. Here is another scene..." and I used those as my touchstones to get me across this map toward the ending.
And I then had places where there were gaps, where I didn't know what happened in between, and that's where I would fill it out. "This is what I'm going to do here..." And I actually did a lot of that with Harriet and Maria and Alan in Charleston where we sat down, and I actually got big sheets of butcher paper—because I can be a visual thinker at times—and I would start with a character and start writing down where I thought they should go, and pitch different things to them. And I usually had a couple of different ideas, and they'd say, "Oh, this feels right; this doesn't feel right," that sort of thing. And together, we hashed that all out for all three books, because they were one book in our head then. One very long book, but one book. [laughter] And I then took those sheets of butcher's paper and typed it all out into a big, massive outline, which then I used across the next five years, working on the books, as my data post, and I used that to point me toward that ending. And that's where it came from.
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1073
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Harriet McDougal
(to Melissa) Cool t-shirt! [laughter]
Melissa Snedeker
Hi; my name's Melissa Snedeker; I'm from Colorado Springs. I have been reading the series for about ten years now. Love it. My question is to Brandon. There is a notable difference between you and Robert Jordan's writing. I was wondering what the biggest influence that you had on the books [was], and what were your main thoughts that you added on top of Robert Jordan's?
Brandon Sanderson
I usually shy away from saying too much about this because we prefer that when you read the books you not spend a lot of time trying to figure out what was me and what was Robert Jordan. It's safe to say that, at any given point in the book, you will find my influence and his influence.
That said, I've said before the epilogue of this book—and significant chunks of the last little part as well, but specifically the epilogue—was written by him before he passed away, so you do know that. Things I've said before—and I'm probably not going to say much more than this, at least until the books have been out for a while—in Gathering Storm, if it was Egwene, Egwene's plotline was more Robert Jordan, and Rand's plotline was a little more me—we both were involved in both, but there is that—and if it was in Towers of Midnight, Mat's plotline was more Robert Jordan, and Perrin's plotline was more me.
But it's really hard to get down into specifics, because I don't want you focusing on that, and beyond that, I've even started to forget. [laughter] Because I've been working on this... No really! You guys laugh about that, but I've been working on it so long, I will do things, and it's things that came out of the notes, and then I'll go back and look and I have forgotten that those things came from the notes, because at this point in the creative process, you're building a book, and you're looking for the inspirations from the stories or from the notes, and they're kind of sometimes the same to me, whether it's the notes or the stories. And so, anyway, I'm sorry to give you kind of a roundabout non-answer to your question, but maybe in another year or so I can say a little bit more. But really, we would rather it just remain....we don't want it to be at the forefront of people's minds when they're reading.
Melissa Snedeker
Yeah. Alright, thank you so much.
Footnote
More info on who wrote what in the epilogue.Tags
1074
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Anthony Gould
My name is Anthony Gould. I've been reading the series quite a bit. I've read 1-13 ten times. [murmurs, woos] And so...and I actually planned to read A Memory of Light ten times in a row before I read any other book...[laughter]...just so I have something to say instead of saying, "I've read every other book ten times, and I've read this one once." That'd be bad.
But yeah, so my question I think is directed at Harriet, mostly. I was thinking, well, is the character Mat Cauthon—did Robert Jordan base that character on him?
Harriet McDougal
Maria was saying something earlier today that would suggest what you think he did...? (looks at Maria)
Maria Simons
Somewhat.
Harriet McDougal
Somewhat. I would go for that. He told somebody, I think more than once, that all the female characters were based on me. [laughter] In the same way, I think that perhaps he based all the male characters on him, including Padan Fain and the like. [laughter]
Maria Simons
Traits he had in common with Mat: There's one point Mat's talking to Olver about turtle shells, and Mat's thinking about a turtle shell he had. Jim—Robert Jordan—had a shelf of turtle shells in the office, and he did like to play cards and other games. [laughter] Yeah, there were aspects of Jim in Mat.
Harriet McDougal
And to quit a job as a civilian engineer working for the United States Navy in order to write fiction...if that isn't the act of a gambler, I don't know what is. [laughter, applause]
Anthony Gould
Alright, well thank you then!
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1075
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Zach
Hi. I'm Zach [?], and I'm from here in Orem, and I kind of feel like a child with all these people that have read it for so long. I'm pretty new to the series—just a couple of years—but I love it just as much. And I'm really grateful you guys brought your assistants with you as well, because I know, with the creative writing process and writing, it takes a lot more than just one person.
And so I was wondering, probably more directed to Brandon, how did you keep everything together? How did you encompass everything... [laughter] Just a little idea; I just wanted to know a little bit about how you kept up with everything.
Brandon Sanderson
It's interesting. I am somewhat absentminded in a lot of things in my life, but I don't forget stories. Stories stay in my head, and perhaps that's why I forget everything else. [laughter] I can remember stories that I was planning to tell twenty years ago, and I've still got the details in my head, and I'm ready to write it at some point; I just haven't gotten around to it.
That said, a lot of the minutiae that isn't part of the soul of the story to me—it's very important, but it isn't part of the soul of the story—and that sort of thing, I do need to keep track of, and so recently we've been using the Wiki, and the Wiki has worked really well; that's for my own books. For the Wheel of Time, I just let other people make the Wikis, and I use theirs. [laughter] So the Encyclopaedia-WoT—Bob Kluttz, and Encyclopaedia-WoT—and if there's anyone here from Tar Valon who worked on their Wiki, the Tar Valon Wiki is fantastic, and I really liked the Tar Valon Wiki. And so, those were two things that I used for the simple questions, the questions they couldn't answer. Maria was like our version of the Brown Ajah that has been gathering all sorts of things and getting them ready for us whenever we have requests about them and whatnot, so it's been very useful.
Harriet McDougal
She doesn't have a live owl on her desk, but she does have a large plastic iguana that has a cigarette in its mouth. [laughter]
Maria Simons
And I have two beautiful brown shawls proving I am of the Brown Ajah. [cheers, applause]
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1076
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Niels Oleson
My name is Niels Oleson. Tai'shadar [sic] Manetheren, and Tai'shadar [sic] Pleasant Grove. [laughter] That's where I'm from! Go Vikings!
The one question I have is—this wouldn't be a panel without asking—who killed Asmodean? [laughter, cheers] And I know you can't answer it, but is it in the book?
Brandon Sanderson
For those who missed it, it's in the, um...the glossary of Towers of Midnight. [boooo] It's actually mentioned in there who killed Asmodean. [laughter] Towers of Midnight, last book; it came out last year. Two years ago. [laughter] So, you've got your answer; you just have to go find it in there.
And let me give a little explanation on that, so you guys who haven't heard this story—I know many of you have—when I first went to Charleston—this was 2007, in December—I had signed the contracts, not knowing how much was written of the book or what was even available, because you know, that's how it had to go; I had to sign all the NDAs and things before I could see, so I flew out there, and picked up the material, so to speak—the material we call the notes and everything—and I got in very late because it's—you know, flying to Charleston from Salt Lake is uh, and you gotta connect at Atlanta, and things—you know, I get in late, and we walk in; Harriet picks me up from the airport, brings me in, and she—(to Harriet) it was bean soup you had made, or something like that—and you're like, "Would you like some food; I know you've been flying a long time..." I said, "No, I'd like the ending, please, thank you." [laughter]
So she laughed and got me the materials, and handed them to me in a stack, and I went in to the room—the sitting room—and I sat down to read them, and on the very top was a post-it note, on top of a page of a fan...fan information, like it printed off from the internet—a fan theory—and all it said is, "This is right." And the fan theory was about who killed Asmodean, and that's all we had, was a "This is correct." Maybe they have more—maybe Maria has more—but all I knew was, "This is correct." I didn't know the how, the why, or anything that this person...why they did this.
And so when it came time to put it in the books, I kind of almost jokingly said, "We should put it in the glossary, because we don't know, so we'll just put it in for fans in the same way we got it, which is just a post-it note." [laughter] "...We'll stick it in the book like a post-it note, in the glossary," and that's because we don't have the full story. And so we went ahead and did that, and then when I was writing the book, I actually worked it into the text, and Harriet wrote back and said, "No, no. I like this glossary thing; it's going in the glossary." [laughter] So, we cut it out of the text and left it in the glossary, and the idea is, you get to feel like we felt because I didn't know anything more than "This is it," so I gave it to you as transparently as possible so that you could have the same feeling of confusion that I had.
Harriet McDougal
And did you see where he got Moghedien from my basic character? [laughter]
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1077
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Chris Capelin
My name is Chris Capelin, from Los Angeles. I had a question for Harriet. It's for me, and for my really good friend Andrew who is without a doubt the biggest Wheel of Time fan in this room. [boos, jeers] Really, really. You're wrong; you're all wrong!
But the question is, if money wasn't an issue, and you had any budget that you wanted, what in your opinion would be the best way to put the Wheel of Time on the screen?
Harriet McDougal
Well, I think that it's so big, and so rich, that its most wonderful appearance on film would be as a television series. [cheers, applause] It really would.
Chris Capelin
Then I'm personally pleading with you to never let it be made into movies, because that'll absolutely ruin it.
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1078
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Jeremy Wunders
Hi, I'm Jeremy Wunders from Las Vegas, Nevada. So, a while back ago, Wizards of the Coast produced a roleplaying game for the Wheel of Time, and although not the best translation of the world, it was a really good effort nonetheless, and it brought the fans together to create a lot of great material, and when that kind of faded off and sputtered into nothingness, some of us have been rabidly waiting for this last book in hopes that it'd open another door for another tabletop RPG. Is there anything of that nature in the works?Harriet McDougal
No. And also, I should say that the film rights to the Wheel of Time are at present being developed at Universal, and not—I'm sorry to say—as a series, but it's another medium, and what—que sera, que sera, as Doris Day and Alfred Hitchcock taught us all those years ago.
Jeremy Wunders
Thank you very much.
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Michael Chantry
Hi, I'm Michael Chantry from Podunk [?] Idaho—[claps] someone knows the area. Thank you for the books; they're amazing. Thanks Robert Jordan for the books. I like them so much I actually named my second child Perrin. [applause]
My question is to both Brandon and Harriet. I know you love this new book, A Memory of Light, that you've created for us, and out of it, is there anything that we... What is your favorite part? What did you enjoy most about it? If you can give us a chapter, a section...anything. I know you're going to say "the whole thing." [laughter]
Brandon Sanderson
(flips through book) [laughter] There's a 200-page chapter in this book. [hoots, buzz of talking] I felt it very thematically important, and my favorite part is right at the end of that chapter and the beginning of the next chapter, and the next chapter is actually very short, and so really, it's probably Chapter 39, but with the lead-in at the end of chapter 38.
Michael Chantry
And Harriet, do you have a favorite part?
Brandon Sanderson
(talks to Peter) 37 and 38? Okay, 37 and 38. Peter knows these things better than I do. [laughter]
Harriet McDougal
Well, I love the end of Chapter 23—the final sequence—and as you're aware from Brandon's other books, I mean a lot of the chapters will have a piece here, and then there's a two-line space and you jump five hundred miles away, and so on, but the last segment of 23 I think is just super. But there are an awful lot of things that I do love in this book; the scene I read for you is one of my favorites; there's more of it, but I thought, "Oh, I don't know; I think I'm getting on too long," because we hadn't quite timed it out. I think it's a wonderful book. [laughter, applause]
Jason Denzel
I know that the question wasn't directed up here to me, but I think I definitely need to say that—without being cliché—the ending, the epilogue, was far and away everything I could have hoped it was, and it was my favorite part of the book. It was just...I can't wait for all of you to eventually read it, and hopefully have the same kind of reaction that I did. It's pretty awesome.
Brandon Sanderson
I can talk a little bit more about that, because...I told you the Asmodean story, but next under that sheet was this, was the...were the scenes that Robert Jordan had written for the book. And so, that included sections from the prologue, which got split into various pieces of the various prologues of the three novels; sections out of the book; and then this ending, the epilogue, and it's one of the most...one of the scenes where you're able to preserve, a sequence that's the most close to the way Robert Jordan left it. Because a lot of scenes he'd leave, he'd leave like a paragraph, and then it's like I have to expand that into, or I have to work a whole thing and then have that paragraph in.
There's a famous scene, for instance, with Verin in Gathering Storm where he left, you know, the kinda...what you would imagine is the important parts, but it's only the important parts, and then it doesn't have a lead-in or an exit to the scene, and so I had to write up and then lead in to what he'd written, and then lead out of it, and that sort of stuff. And this, it's actually...we've got complete sequences that he wrote before he passed away. And so, when you get to that epilogue, you can know...there's some very non-touched-by-the-rest-of-us stuff that he had in a very good shape to be published before he passed away.
Harriet McDougal
And I should have thought of that, but as he read it in 2007—and so did I, and I had known some bits of it for years before that—but it really is splendid.
Michael Chantry
Thank you very much. [applause]
Footnote
More info on who wrote what in the epilogue.Tags
1080
Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Jeremy Griffin
My name's Jeremy Griffin; I'm from Orem, Utah as well. I bought Eye of the World in 1991, so I've been reading them for a very, very long time. So thank you so much. By the way, Brandon—Alcatraz, fantastic—if you guys haven't read any of them...rarely does a book make me laugh out loud. So thank you. Thank you very much.
Harriet, did Mr. Jordan have enough clout to be able to push his last book through to make it one novel like he wanted to? He said two thousand pages, I don't care if that's what it is...could he have done that because of his history?
Harriet McDougal
Well, the problem is, it wasn't clout; it was pushing up against the laws of physics. [laughter] There are limits to the size a bound book can be without sort of falling apart the minute you open it. And then you're up against the shelf space in bookstores.
Jeremy Griffin
Okay, great. Real quick too, please don't sell the rights to a computer game for it if it's going to be as bad as [?] was...[laughter] Please, please don't do it.
Harriet McDougal
Ah, the rights are sold. [laughter]
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Interview: Jan 7th, 2013
AMOL Midnight Release Q&A (Verbatim)Elizabeth
My name's Elizabeth; I'm from Eagle Mountain. And, Brandon is kind of known as "the magic system guy," and so I was just wondering, what was it like to work with saidar, saidin, and Robert Jordan's magic system in comparison to your magic systems, and how did Robert Jordan's magic system influence your development of magic systems?Brandon Sanderson
I really have always liked, obviously, his system, which is part of why I love the books. His system had this nice mix between the visual aspect—I really loved the weaving, and things like this—and it had some interesting ramifications on physics and whatnot, and I also liked a lot of the sense of mystery to it, in that they didn't know everything, which is one thing that I like, when a magic system—you know, I like to write very rule-based magic systems, but I feel that, if you know everything...I mean, we don't know everything about physics; we don't know everything about science, and so how can you know everything about the magic, which is the science of a certain world? That said, Jim generally was more flexible with himself on allowing himself to do different things with the magic. He had a more open-ended magic system, I would guess. A lot more weaves were created, and things like that, and I tend to make my magic systems more restrictive.
Because of this, growing into the books, I worried that, working in a system where I was uninhibited in that way, that I would just go completely bonkers. [laughter] And so, when I sat down to work in this system, I decided it was...when necessary I would develop new weaves, but that I would resist the urge, and that there had been so much developed by Jim so far that I would use weaves either in the books or from the notes whenever possible, and I would prefer to take those and try to go new places with them as opposed to developing lots of new and different weaves, which is why you see me doing things like pushing gateways a little bit further, because I thought there was a lot of room to explore there, or pushing what Perrin does in the wolf dream, and these sorts of things, because these are established systems that Jim created for me, and for all of us, and I felt there was so much room to move in those that I didn't need to go other places. There are some places in the books where a new weave was appropriate, and we did that, but I tried very hard to cap that, because I worried I would just do too much, if that makes any sense.
I really enjoyed working with it. In fact, the Wheel of Time...in a lot of ways, the Wheel of Time doing what it did had prevented me in my career from ever approaching doing those things, if that makes any sense. Because I loved the Wheel of Time, I didn't want to be repeating something that...I didn't want to be, you know, accused of just copying Robert Jordan. And so, because of that, you don't see me writing a lot of the types of things that he did, like you know I'd always wanted to do a dream world, but I never did a dream world because the Wheel of Time had done one so well. And then when I was able to work on this, I got to kind of do all of those things that I'd made off-limits to myself because Robert Jordan had done them already, and done them so well, and it was pretty awesome to be able to do that. It was one of my favorite parts about doing this, is all these things that were on my list of "Robert Jordan did this so don't do it," suddenly became things I could do. So... [applause]
Elizabeth
Thank you.
Jason Denzel
And as a follow-up to that, I think that, instead of just being the magic system guy, I think that Brandon has every right to be the good, quality compelling character guy. So... [applause]
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Where did the idea for the zombies come from?Brandon Sanderson
Are you speaking of Hinderstap? (Questioner explains further.) ...Yes you're speaking of Hinsderstap. Hinderstap came out of working with bubbles of evil and things like this, and Harriet saying to me at one point, "The book’s not creepy enough." [laughter] She said, "Go read..."—she gave me the scene with the dead rat from early—is it Eye of the World, that has that scene, where they're in the dreams, and things?—she's like, "Get me some more creepy. It's supposed to be getting worse and worse." And so I'm like, "Alright, creepy it is." And that was where it came from.
Harriet McDougal
Thus is the nature of inspiration.
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Do you write your own books? [laughter]Brandon Sanderson
Yes, I do write my own books.
Question
Has working on another author’s writing influenced your own writing?
Brandon Sanderson
I would say yes. I...but let's just make clear, I probably would not have said yes to doing this project for anyone else. The Wheel of Time characters are like my friends from high school, that I've known them for so long—I grew up with these books, and that was a big influence in me making the decision to say yes. And I often describe working on the Wheel of Time like the equivalent of heavy lifting for weight training. It forced me to grow, or break beneath the weight. And I've learned a lot more about, for instance, Robert Jordan's subtle use of foreshadowing, his excellent use of characterization, his ability to blend a description with narrative flow.
There's just a lot of things I've learned while working on this, but probably the biggest thing I've learned is how to interweave so many viewpoints, which is not something I'd ever done successfully before. I had tried it in books that didn't get published, with that many viewpoints, and I had not been as good at weaving back and forth between.
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1084
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How does it feel to finish it?Brandon Sanderson
It feels sad, but satisfying.Tags
1085
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
You talk a lot about [what you enjoyed about writing WoT]. What was your least favorite part of this entire project?Brandon Sanderson
My least favorite part of the entire writing process is the extensive revisions that are necessary to make a book become better, and it's something I have disliked from the beginning, but I've accepted as a very necessary part of the process. If you don't revise, your book remains good and doesn't become excellent. And one day I realized that all my favorite writer friends—people I knew; all the best writers I knew among them—were people who are actually better revisers than actual writers. They could do an okay first draft, but they could really knock it out of the park with a few revisions.
And so revising has never been my favorite part of the writing process at all; I like to be discovering new things and writing new things. And part of what took me so long to get published—for those who don't know, I wrote thirteen books before I sold one; Elantris was my sixth novel—and the reason Elantris sold was because that's when I finally sat down and said, "I really do need to revise; I can't just keep telling myself, 'I'll do better on the next book.' " And I did six or seven really solid drafts of Elantris, and then it sold.
Specifically Wheel of Time: I don't know if there was a least favorite part. The most challenging part was keeping track of all the side characters; that was really tough. There were so many of them, and Robert Jordan was so good at giving them distinct voices. You know, I've got Rand and Perrin and Egwene down—I know them like I know my family—but all the Wise Ones and Aes Sedai...this can be a little bit rocky. I'd say that was definitely the most difficult part of the process.
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
This is a different person's writing for you. A lot of writers discover along the way, and for you, how different was it working on this book. Where there still discoveries?Brandon Sanderson
There were still discoveries, but I am more what we call an architect. This is a type of writer who builds a frame and then builds a story around that frame. I certainly do discover certain things, like...I don't know what each chapter exactly is going to be—I know what will be accomplished in that chapter, and then I sit down and then I find interesting ways to do it—but on the macroscopic scale, I almost always know exactly where I'm going when I'm writing a book, and with this, that actually worked the same way, because Robert Jordan had written many scenes and had left many instructions on what was to happen, and those became the foundation of my framework that I used to write from, and so instead of me brainstorming those, which would happen in one of my own books, I used his framework that he had given me, and I built the story around that.Tags
1087
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Can you still read the books and appreciate them after The Wheel of Time being your job for so long?Brandon Sanderson
You know, I still read Jim's—Robert Jordan's books—and enjoy them, and I just recently picked up one and started reading through it. I don't reread my own books usually unless it's to reacquaint myself with certain things so that I can work on a sequel, because I will simply find too many things I want to change. This is the artist's dilemma; you've got to let it be done; you can't go back and continually tweak and revise and rewrite. At some point is just has to stand as a work of art, and reading your own books again...it's too dangerous for me to do that. So I don't reread mine, so I've never reread Gathering Storm, for instance. Now, I did read it fourteen times while we were revising it [laughter], so I do know that book pretty darn well, but I haven't reread it since.Tags
1088
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Was there anything in the notes that surprised you?Brandon Sanderson
So, I got everything at once. There are two things that stand out that are moments when I was looking through the notes and I was like, "Oh!" And then there was one that I'm like, "Oh no." [laughter]
The two that were "Oh!" were, in Gathering Storm where Egwene gets a special visitor, and colors of dresses are mentioned. [laughter] That one was kind of mind-boggling, and that's one of the things that Robert Jordan had complete. Not—I had to write into it and write out of it, but the important parts you're thinking about were done. The second scene was in another section that he had complete, and this is where, at the end of Towers of Midnight, someone you haven't seen for a long time and someone else have a romantic moment together, and that surprised me. I was not one that was expecting that—it's well-foreshadowed, but I just hadn't been expecting it. I actually went to Team Jordan, and I'm like, "This? I—What?" And they're like, "No, it's in there; here, look at this, look at this," and all the foreshadowing, and I had just completely missed it. And so, those two were the surprising moments for me.
The kind of "Oh no" moment was when...he didn't actually write the scene, he just made a sentence that said—oh, someone's plugging their ears because they don't want spoilers; I'm trying to talk around the spoilers, so—in Gathering Storm, there is a scene where a certain member of the Forsaken gets spanked [laughter], and Robert Jordan wrote, "This happens, and she gets spanked." And I'm like, "I'm not going to write a spanking scene; I've never written a spanking scene before!" [laughter] And I was kinda like, "Come on, Jim, do you really have to do this?" But I was like, it was in the notes, and there was no good reason not to [?] that scene, so I went ahead and wrote that scene.
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1089
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
How do you feel about the graphic novel project?Harriet McDougal
Well, it's in work, and mostly Maria Simons has been working with the Dabel Brothers, who have been a joy to work with editorially. There have been some problems about the schedule, but their devotion to the work is really just what we want to see.
Brandon Sanderson
They're famously wonderful artists, and not so good on the business front.
Harriet McDougal
And I've seen a French edition of a piece of The Eye of the World, and to see Mat talking French, and saying, "Ah, zut alors!"
Brandon Sanderson
Hey, that's a nice thing. Way in the back there, they have some of the graphic novels for sale!
Harriet McDougal
What a coincidence!
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, what a coincidence. Ooh, someone's holding them right back there, the thing back there; you can go get some of the graphic novels, you can go through those....
Harriet McDougal
Yeah, and there's one in the front here.
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1090
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Book Tour - Dayton Q&A (Verbatim)Question
What’s your favorite part of the creative process?Brandon Sanderson
I'm gonna say...[audio cut]...is the ending, writing the last sequences that I've been planning so long—because I always know what my ending is, and I tend to point everything at the ending—writing that last sequence is my favorite. For instance, my favorite scene to write in A Memory of Light comes right near the end. There's a very long chapter that you'll read; it's the last part of that very long chapter, into the next chapter which is very short. (something from audience) Yeah, it's 200-something pages.
Harriet McDougal
For good reason.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, for good reasons.
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1091
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Jeffrey Bernard (23 January 2013)
With all the deaths that occurred in A Memory of Light, were there any that hit you harder than any others?Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
Egwene. After that, Bela. I'd promised she would live, but Harriet decided that I was cheating to keep her alive.
Raj Ayer
How long did it take you to write Egwene's death? What were your emotions then? How much had RJ written of it?
Brandon Sanderson
It was a hard one, to be sure. Hardest in the books. Had a long conversation with Team Jordan about how to manage it.
Brandon Sanderson
RJ had not written much of that sequence.
Andy Lee
Why did Egwene have to die? Very sad.
Brandon Sanderson
I agree. But if you look at the arc of her character, you might begin to see why it was important.
Travis Hall
Without spoilers, were there any characters you want to kill/save that you couldn't do to Jordan's wishes?
Brandon Sanderson
There was one. But it was Harriet's call, not RJ's, that ended them.
Bellygod
Who did you find hardest to kill?
Brandon Sanderson
Egwene by a mile. Followed by Bela.
Bellygod
Why did you kill Bela?
Brandon Sanderson
I tried to keep her alive! Harriet told me I'd put her in too bad a situation, and she needed to die.
Brandon Sanderson
She was right, of course, but it still hurts.
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1092
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Jared Garrett (23 January 2013)
How did it feel to be one of the only humans who knew who killed Asmodean?Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
Fun, but also annoying, since I couldn't tell anyone.
Kevin Cantrell
Did Graendal kill Asmodean? Huge fan of yours and WOT, first read The Eye of the World when I was 13, 15 years ago.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, she did. And thanks!
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1093
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Radbeard (23 January 2013)
Don't you feel some of the character endings were too rushed (Fain, everyone Demandred killed)?Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
Finishing everything that RJ left to be finished in the amount of space required results in some dynamic pacing.
Brandon Sanderson
I don't feel rushed is the right term. But I can see how people might feel that way. I could have gone three more books.
Brandon Sanderson
It was not right to do so. This was what he wanted, and I did my best to fit everything in. I'm pleased with the result.
Brandon Sanderson
In regards to your specific questions, the Demandred kills were supposed to be abrupt to convey emotion of sudden loss.
Brandon Sanderson
That's how things are in war. As for Fain, a piece of me does wish there had been time for more with him.
Brett
Do you plan on expanding on the Wheel of Time series more or is it done? Why did you have so many abrupt deaths?
Brandon Sanderson
No, no more. RJ wouldn't want it. Abrupt deaths happen in war; it is the way this sort of thing plays out, I'm afraid.
Daniel Egonsson
Was there anything in A Memory of Light you wished you could have changed?
Brandon Sanderson
I might have done more with Fain if I'd had the time and the pages.
Brandon Sanderson
The biggest challenge for the book was fitting everyone in, and making sure they had relevant things to do.
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1094
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Bob Defendi (23 January 2013)
Great structure from @BrandSanderson, by the way. The book required you break normal structural rules in just the right way. Great work.Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
Thanks, Bob. You rock.
An Algorithm
So what kind of prewriting did you do for A Memory of Light @BrandSanderson?
Brandon Sanderson
Lots of practicing character viewpoints. I also make a huge outline, which started on big sheets of butcher paper.
Sandy Stuckless
Is there anything specific process-wise you learned from completing WoT that you will apply to future projects?
Brandon Sanderson
I'm in awe of RJ's subtlety and hope to be able to transfer my understanding of that to my own works.
Avalyn
Did the ending of A Memory of Light influence the end of Emperor's Soul?
Brandon Sanderson
Not intentionally, but it's hard not to be influenced by projects like this.
Brandon Sanderson
For example, I wrote Rithmatist while developing the revision for The Way of Kings, and both ended up with a redhead artist.
Brent Holmes
Did the confrontation between Vin and Ruin in Hero of Ages influence the Rand v Dark One scenes?
Brandon Sanderson
Everything I do influences everything else, so I'd say yes—but in this case, I had RJ guiding me as a greater influence.
Simon Ponder
How does it feel now that the Wheel of Time is over?
Brandon Sanderson
Sad. Awesome, but sad.
Chris from Jax
Is it tough knowing you can't continue the story?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, and no. I feel the ending is the right one. And I can imagine in my head what happens, so for me, that is enough.
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Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Jim Short (23 January 2013)
A Memory of Light moved at a very fast pace. Did you have enough material for maybe one or two more books?Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
Yes, I did. But I can ALWAYS see more room to expand. Part of being an epic fantasy writer, I suppose...Tags
1096
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Chris Coen (23 January 2013)
I assume the answer is no, but in your interconnected universe, does the Wheel of Time have a place?Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
No. I felt it would be arrogant to do something like that.
Brandon Sanderson
That said, you could imagine that most possibilities of worlds are mirror worlds to the WoT...
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1097
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (WoT) (Verbatim)Bellygod (23 January 2013)
Which character was easiest to write and who was the hardest?Brandon Sanderson (23 January 2013)
Easiest: Perrin. Hardest: Mat. Followed by Aviendha and Tuon.
Dave West
Now that you're finished, what was your favorite scene to write? Character?
Brandon Sanderson
Perrin, and the forging of his hammer. In A Memory of Light it was the sequence with Lan near the end.
Dan Zambito
What character was most difficult to write for?
Brandon Sanderson
Mat was the most difficult for me to get right.
Jacob Corbin
The Rand and Mat dialogue where they try to one up each other was amazing. Thank you for that (and the whole book).
Brandon Sanderson
That scene was one of my favorites to work on.
JB Tank
What was the most shocking thing you learned when first reading RJ's notes?
Brandon Sanderson
Verin.
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1098
Interview: 2013
Twitter 2013 (Non-WoT) (Verbatim)Brent Weeks (8 January 2013)
I have yet to meet an SFF writer who thinks they could have done a better job finishing the WoT than @BrandSanderson has done.Brandon Sanderson (8 January 2013)
Thanks, Brent. And congrats on making just about everyone's "best books of 2012" list. You deserve it.
Brandon Sanderson
Jumped on the internet on the plane flight. Thought "I'll check my email quickly." Ten billion new emails. Oh, right. New book out . . .
Marc Rivera
Sorry, I was overly excited about the book. My bad.
Brandon Sanderson
Ha. No, it makes me feel loved. Thanks! Unless you sent them all. Then you are scaring me.
Rob Houston
How do you handle that? Interns? You can't possibly read them all yourself.
Brandon Sanderson
I try to at least look all of them over. Most can be answered quickly with a pre-written email.
John Scalzi
HUMBLEBRAG SOME MORE, BRANDON.
Brandon Sanderson
WHAT DO YOU KNOW? YOU'RE JUST A DIRTY SELL-OUT! SCALZIIIII!!!! :)
Christopher Turkel
I am taking bets on the impending @scalzi and @BrandSanderson knife match.
Brandon Sanderson
Scalzi writes SF. He'd bring a laser rifle. This is why I only taunt him from 30k feet in the air.
John Scalzi
IT'S A COHERENT BEAM, FANTASY BOY. ONLY THE CURVE OF THE EARTH WILL SAVE YOU NOW
Brandon Sanderson
. . . Did you just call me your "fantasy boy?" I don't quite know how to take that.
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1099
Interview: Nov, 2012
Ekultúra: Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Szabó Dominik
In 2007, Robert Jordan's widow selected you to complete the Wheel of Time series. What was your reaction when you heard the news and how did you start the work on the series?Brandon Sanderson
Nobody was more surprised by it than me. I didn't even know I was being considered. Like most fans of the series, I was just shocked and saddened that Jim Rigney (Robert Jordan) wasn't going to be there to finish it himself. About a month after his passing, I woke up one morning and found that I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it said, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson, this is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me back. I've got something I want to talk to you about." It was one of those moments where you are absolutely certain at first that someone is playing a prank on you and then you start to shake nervously at the thought that it might not be a prank.
When I got hold of her, I found out that she was looking at me as one of the candidates to finish the Wheel of Time. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that. I considered Jim in many ways to be a mentor. I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced. I'd never met him, so I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call. I was absolutely stunned. I'm afraid I stammered a bit when I told her I would be honored to be considered; in fact, a while after I got off the phone I sent her an email that started, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot."
I felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time. While I didn't ask for this, the truth is that I'm extremely excited to be involved. I love this series, and I wanted to see the last book written as much as any other fan. For a writer like me, the next best thing to having Jim write the novel is being able to work on it myself.
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1100
Interview: Nov, 2012
Ekultúra: Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Szabó Dominik
As it was mentioned earlier, you always like to create a unique world in your books. How did it feel like to write in a universe created by another author? Did the limits of this universe prove any inconvenience to you?Brandon Sanderson
In some ways it was difficult, because for the first time in writing a book, I wasn’t the one who had the ultimate decision on how things went. But in another way, this was the one series created by someone else that I could write in comfortably. I grew up reading these books, so the characters were like old high school buddies to me. I felt like I knew them and knew their world, for even longer than the worlds I had been inventing myself. So in that way, writing in the Wheel of Time was doing something familiar, like coming home.Tags
1101
Interview: Nov, 2012
Ekultúra: Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Szabó Dominik
According to recent news, the last book of the series, A Memory of Light had already been sent to the publisher. Now that you had finished the series, do you think you reached your goals? Are you satisfied with your work?Brandon Sanderson
Yes. My main goal all along was to do the book in a way that Harriet would be pleased, as Robert Jordan's widow, because she had to be the guide on this. At the end of the day, my job was to satisfy her desires for a book that lived up to Robert Jordan's legacy, and I feel very confident in the way I've done that. I feel very satisfied with my work on the project. I don't think I did a good a job as Robert Jordan would have done it, but I think I did it better than anyone else—other than him—could have.Tags
1102
Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
NPR Interview with Harriet McDougal (Verbatim)Petra Mayer
If you had to sum up the series for people who hadn't read it, what would you say?
Harriet McDougal
(laughs) Well . . . Gosh, I'm going to quote my husband, who was asked this. He said, "Well, I've written over a million words, and now you're asking me to summarize it in six words: Cultures clash. Worlds change. Cope." That's only five words, but he didn't want to be wordy.
Petra Mayer
That's good though. (laughs) That's right up there with 'baby shoes, never worn.'
Harriet McDougal
Yeah, quite right. He did an amazing job of writing about real people in fantastic situations in which they had to make decisions on not enough information, and it might cost them their lives if they made the wrong decision. Well, when that is said, one would see that first responders—medical people, law enforcement people&mdashwere among the earliest group of identifiable fans. Fans in general range from geezers to 12-year-olds, both sexes.
Petra Mayer
I did meet a pretty big cross-section when I was at DragonCon this year.
Footnote
The five-word summary of the series by RJ was given in an interview with Orbit in 2000.
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1103
Interview: Sep, 2012
NPR Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
The Wheel of Time is probably the most important epic fantasy series of my generation. A lot of people from the generation before grew up reading Tolkien. Well, my generation grew up reading the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, and it was...it's very Tolkien-inspired, but it goes in its own direction, and basically, Robert Jordan—who started this series—once was asked, "What is the series about?" Well, it's now fourteen books and a prequel, so what is that about? But he had a really good answer. He said, "The story's about what it's like to be told that you have to save the world, and that you're probably going to die doing it, and you're just a normal person." And that's really where it starts; it starts with a young man who is told that he's this figure from prophecy, that he's going to have this whole world on his shoulders, and what does that do to a person? What is the life like once you've learned this? How do you figure out what you're supposed to do? You've just been told this... And it's really a character study about him and several other people, and the life they go through.
Petra Mayer
If I was being facetious, I would compare that to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, Buffy's very like that, because Buffy's like, you know, here's an ordinary person smashed into something extraordinary, and that's kind of the soul of what we do in speculative fiction. I like to say that what we do....um...a lot of people accuse fantasy of being backward-looking. I don't see that. Yes, we're dealing with kings and queens and magic and things like this, but what we're really trying to do, is we're trying to explore human nature in a controlled way. We're going to control—just like in a scientific experiment—we're going to control for a lot of things, and we're going to make this stable, and we're going to control the government, society, and these things, and then we're going to change a few really interesting things that could never be changed in our world. You know, if our world, you can't be told this is what's going to happen, you have to do this. We want to explore what that does to a person, and I find it a very forward-looking genre in that we're trying to explore what human nature is capable of doing, and what we would do under extreme circumstances.
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1104
Interview: Jan 4th, 2013
NPR Interview with Harriet McDougal (Verbatim)Petra Mayer
Although I think you're right—we are getting into kind of details, but I do want to come back to the worldbuilding a little bit later in the conversation. But without giving too much away about the final book–there's a lot of fighting because, you know, it is the Last Battle, right?
Harriet McDougal
Yes.
Petra Mayer
And I know that your husband had a military background. Can you talk about that, and how it may have influenced his writing?
Harriet McDougal
Yes, he served two tours in Vietnam, in the Army. He was a helicopter door gunner.
Petra Mayer
And a Citadel graduate, right?
Harriet McDougal
Yes, he was. He went to The Citadel as a Veteran student, and loved that institution and the Army with–with all his heart, you might say. A friend of his said to me once, "Some people take off the uniform, and that's that. Other people, the uniform sinks right into their skin." And my dear husband was one of the latter.
Petra Mayer
And it really shows in the books. There's a lot of tactics, a lot of military strategy.
Harriet McDougal
Yes, it does. The New York Times said at one point that the books reflect the last 30 years of American experience, including war, in the way that Tolkien's book reflected the last 30 years of the English experience when he was writing during World War II, that Robert Jordan's battle scenes are pretty wonderful.
Petra Mayer
That's an interesting parallel to Tolkien actually.
Footnote
The New York Times' article on Tolkien and Jordan, published in 1996, can be read here.
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1105
Interview: Sep, 2012
NPR Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Petra Mayer
One of the things that I like about the Wheel of Time series is the unbelievably detailed worldbuilding that...I mean, coming into that, it was already eleven books along when you picked it up? My God, what did that feel like? How did you step into those shoes?Brandon Sanderson
Oh, boy. So, the story is, I was a fan of the series—I picked the first one up when I was fifteen, and that was in 1990—and I'd been reading them all along; they are part of what inspired me to become a writer. I eventually broke into publishing myself in 2005, and two years later, Robert Jordan passed away without having finished the end of this series that I'd been following all along. And, like a lot of fans, I was heartbroken. I mean, we'd [inaudible] almost twenty years of following these characters. And one day, I got a call on the phone. I had not applied for this; I didn't know I was being considered. It was his wife. I didn't know her, but she had read my book—she had read my book Mistborn—and she had heard that I was a fan of the series, and had looked into some of the things I'd written, and then she just said, "Would you like to finish it?"
Now, this is a major best-selling series; I'm a newbie author with a couple of books out. It was like getting hit by a freight train. And there's all this continuity and all these characters....it was a massive undertaking. I was scared out of my wits, to be perfectly honest, but honestly, I almost said no because of that, but there was that piece of me—the fan—that said, "Look, if you say no to this, and someone else comes along, and they do a bad job, it's going to be your fault, Brandon." So my own conscience was like, "I gotta do this. If Robert Jordan can't do it, they're going to have somebody do it. I've gotta do it." So I threw myself into it, and you know, the most interesting thing is, how have I done it? Well, I've had great resources, and part of those are fan resources. What the internet allows us to do with Wikis and things like this is, the fans have gotten together and created these detailed outlines and chronologies and all of these things, which have just been wonderful. You don't expect that, you know, but the fans do a better job than we do, as writers, sometimes, of keeping track of all of these things, so I've relied on their resources.
I do think I've been able to do some fun things with the series, as a fan, that I've been wanting to do, from reading it since I was a kid, but that's actually a weird things because, as a fan coming on, I had to be careful. You don't always want to do what the inner fan wants you to do; otherwise it just becomes like a sequence of cameos and inside jokes. So I had to be very careful, but there are some things that I've been wanting to have happen, and the notes left a lot of room for me to explore. I did get to have a lot of creative involvement in it; it wasn't just an outline, which has been awesome. You know, if it had been mostly done, they would have been able to hire like a ghostwriter to clean it up, and they didn't have that. They needed an actual writer, and so there are lots of plots I got to construct, and as a fan, that's awesome.
But he did write the last chapter. He wrote it before he passed away. He was very dedicated to his fans—there's great stories—he was on his deathbed dictating, and I have those dictations where his cousin Wilson is sitting there with a tape recorder just listening to him, and I got all these things passed on to me. It was really an interesting process. I was actually handed about two hundred pages, what would become 2500. Yeah, 2500. It's multiple volumes; it got split into three books. But, got handed two hundred pages, and in these are scenes he wrote, dictations that he did, fragments of scenes he worked on, little comments he made, Q&As with his assistants where it says, "This is what's going to happen, this is going to happen..." I just describe it like, "Imagine there's this beautiful Ming vase, and someone puts it in a paper bag and smashes it up, dumps out half the pieces, hands it to you, and says, 'Alright. Build the vase exactly as it was going to be, as it was before.' " That's kind of been my job on this.
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1106
Interview: Sep, 2012
NPR Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Petra Mayer
Now, I know we can't talk about A Memory of Light, but is there something that's out now that you can talk about in terms of plot twists that you really wanted to make happen, and then you got to?Brandon Sanderson
Yes, yes. So, the main character, Rand. He is the one who's been told this, and he leaves in the first book, goes off, chased out of his home city by all of these, you know....different factions want him, and want to do things with him, and he left behind his father. They had a very nice relationship, and one of the things I wanted to do was kind of bring it full circle and have him and his father meet back up again. I wanted to do that; it felt like it would be a very touching thing. There was nothing in the notes either way to say if it could or couldn't happen, and so I went into and I said, "I really want to have a meeting between Rand and his father again; it's very important for me." It's very important plotwise, because you kind of look at the hero's journey and things like this, the return home was a very important part of it, but beyond that, you know, these are about characters; great stories are about great characters, and we love both of these characters; they needed to meet up again. And that was something that I got to do.
Petra Mayer
I have to say, if this was George R.R. Martin, he would have killed off Tam al'Thor.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, yes. Yes, he probably would have forced Rand to kill Tam, or you know, he would have....yeah, George really likes his body counts. He likes killing people in very unexpected ways...
Petra Mayer
I mean, these two series are sort of parallel, in my mind. It's almost like, sort of, I don't even...Star Trek and Star Wars.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. No, no...they are very similar. Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin were friends. In fact, Robert Jordan has a cover blurb on the first George R.R. Martin book, Game of Thrones. It says, you know, Robert Jordan recommending this book, and they were friends, and they kind of had parallel careers, and Robert Jordan is more on the kind of epic side, like Tolkien, with this sort of, you know, Grand Quest, and Martin is more what we call the heroic side, which is you know, gritty characters living in a really sometimes dark world, and fighting for survival, and there are two kind of archetypes in the fantasy genre that are both very important, and we've had them all along, and they're great writers in both traditions. They're kind of parallel in that way.
Petra Mayer
Do you have any advice for George R.R. Martin, because I know people are like, "Don't..." And it's horribly insensitive. People are like, "Please! We can't go through this again! Don't die in the middle!"
Brandon Sanderson
[laughs] Well, you know, I saw George last week. He seemed to be very healthy and nice. He was eating some Italian food at the time, so that may not be the....but I'm not one to speak; I like my Italian food too. No, George is awesome; I think he's going to be just fine. He's having the time of his life. He's got his show on, and things like that, so I think you guys are going to be fine. I think George is going to finish his series. He looks really excited, and he looks really good.
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1107
Interview: Sep, 2012
NPR Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Petra Mayer
I know you can't give too much away, but what can we expect from A Memory of Light?Brandon Sanderson
Um, A Memory of Light is awesome. When I first got this, I had to say yes sight-unseen to the notes. I knew there was an ending, and so I flew out to Charleston where his wife lives, and I flew out there just weeks after this whole thing had come down; I was doing this, I had signed the contracts. It's a long flight from where I live in Utah, and I walk in the door to Charleston, and Harriet, bless her heart, says "Would you like some food? I know it's been a long trip." And I said, "No, I'd like the ending please." And I sat down, and that night I read Robert Jordan's ending to the series, and I was immensely satisfied. It was the right ending. It's what I've been writing toward all along. Having that means that I can get everything pointed toward it, and I think that it's a beautiful, perfect ending to this two-decade-long journey, and so, I hope you all enjoy as well. I really think you're going to be pleased.Tags
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Interview: Aug 31st, 2012
Daily Dragon
The Wheel turns, and the Wheel of Time series has come to an end with your completed final draft of A Memory of Light, due out from Tor Books on January 8, 2013. It must have been exciting yet daunting to be chosen to finish such an acclaimed series. How has the experience affected you as an author and as a fan?
Brandon Sanderson
It's been a very interesting experience, both as a writer and as a fan. Picking up something that you've loved for many, many years as a fan and then becoming the writer on it really changes your perspective on the entire process. Suddenly I had to dig into it in a way I didn't as a fan. I'm not one of those fans who always have all their favorite lines memorized or anything like that. I never had to keep track of all the subplots and minor characters, and suddenly I not only have to keep track of them, I have to know them intrinsically, which is quite the challenge.
It's been five years that I've been working on these books, and it has forced me to do a lot of heavy lifting as a writer. Things that I wasn't as good at doing, I needed to become better at doing. It's kind of like suddenly being thrown into a swimming pool and told, "All right, now start swimming. You know how to tread water, but now we need you to swim ten miles." It's forced me to grow a lot as a writer. It's really given me a deeper respect for Robert Jordan and his works, seeing the process and how much goes on in creating these novels.
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1109
Interview: Aug 31st, 2012
Daily Dragon
What was your biggest challenge while completing the Wheel of Time series?
Brandon Sanderson
Keeping track of everything is a real challenge. I've described before the way I approach this. Essentially, when I get ready to write a scene from a character's viewpoint, I dump everything into my head that I need, and I try to write all of those scenes in the book for that character while maintaining all of that knowledge. Then I dump it out and get everything ready for another character. That's the only way I can do it, because there's just so much to hold on to.
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1110
Interview: Aug 31st, 2012
Daily Dragon
Your new epic fantasy series, The Stormlight Archive, has been in the works for quite some time. In an interview earlier this year with Fantasy-Faction.com, you said that you set the project aside in 2003 because you needed to "get better as a writer." During the interim, as you worked on other projects such as the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker, and your middle-grade Alcatraz series, which skills did you improve the most?
Brandon Sanderson
I would say that I learned to juggle multiple characters a lot better. That's one of the places where I needed to grow, and it's one of the aspects where the original Way of Kings that I wrote in 2002 flopped. I wasn't good at juggling all these viewpoints. Working on the Wheel of Time really forced me to learn that, and I think I've gotten much better at it. I've also learned to be more subtle with my writing; Robert Jordan was incredibly subtle in his foreshadowing. Going through his notes and rereading the books and seeing how he set up things for many books later, it impressed me quite a bit that he was able to do that. I think I've been able to learn from that.
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1111
Interview: Aug 31st, 2012
Daily Dragon
How did you find the time and energy to work on The Way of Kings while you were immersed in Jordan's Wheel of Time? Are you a hidden Allomancer, a slider like Wayne in The Alloy of Law, with the ability to set up a mind-boggling speed bubble?
Brandon Sanderson
I wish I could magically create bubbles of time to give myself more space to do these things. After working on The Gathering Storm, I felt more and more that I needed to do The Way of Kings—I had done it and failed once, and I began to see all of the places where it went wrong and how I could fix it. When you get excited about a book that way, you kind of have to write it—strike while the iron is hot. It's something I never want to do again—working on that and Towers of Midnight at the same time just about killed my entire family. The hours were very long, and I'm still kind of recovering from that. How did I find the time? I didn't do much else during that year when I was getting those both ready. I think it was really good for me to do, and I don't think I'll ever do something like that again.
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1112
Interview: Aug 31st, 2012
Daily Dragon
With all the focus on social media these days, what impact do you think fans might have on story development in the future?
Brandon Sanderson
Boy, I think that they will have some impact. What, I'm not sure. With Warbreaker I was able to read perspectives on the book online as I was working on it, and that certainly did inform how I did my revisions. Maybe you'll see more crowdsourcing on editing and that sort of thing. I do think that the ability to directly connect with fans helps me understand the way a reader's mind works. Usually that doesn't translate one-to-one to changes in a novel, because there are a few steps in between in deciding what the reader really actually wants and what they say they want—working on the Wheel of Time as both a fan and a writer has helped me figure that out, because there are things that as a fan I would have said I wanted, but looking at it as a writer I can say, "Oh, if I gave that to the fans, it would actually in the long run make the story less satisfying." So there is some work to be done there, but I think social media is a great resource.
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1113
Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011
Brandon Sanderson Talks Fantasy & Film (Verbatim)Helen O'Hara
So, since we usually only interview filmmakers, is there any big-screen news to share?
Brandon Sanderson
I wish I had more film news. The Mistborn trilogy's been optioned, and I really like the producers and they have a screenplay, but that's the big step, you know, going from producers with a screenplay to getting a studio. Wheel Of Time has also been bought, not optioned, by Universal Pictures, so they're in the screenwriting stage right now.
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Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011
Brandon Sanderson Talks Fantasy & Film (Verbatim)Helen O'Hara
Wheel of Time for me feels like an example of something that absolutely shouldn't be made into a film, it's so sprawling.
Brandon Sanderson
I think it's do-able, but boy it's going to be tough! I do envy George RR Martin with HBO. I think that's a perfect medium for the story that he told.
Helen O'Hara
The response to that has been fantastic; do you see that helping to make fantasy a bit more mainstream? In the same way that the Lord of the Rings films or even Harry Potter books were a sort of gateway drug to the genre, do you think A Game Of Thrones will have the same effect?
Brandon Sanderson
As an outsider to the film industry, I find it very interesting that they seem to focus on what's hot right now rather than what's well done. The thing about A Game Of Thrones is that it's an exceptional story, done really well, which is what happened with the Lord Of The Rings films as well. Those came out, and everyone said, "Oh, fantasy is hot". And fantasy, well, it's been opened up, but it's more that really great stories told really well are hot and always will be. It was really disappointing to me to see them snatch up a bunch of fantasy rights and make films out of them that didn't really work, because fantasy was hot.
The Golden Compass film was heartbreaking, because my perspective on that is that they actually got fantastic casting, the visuals were beautiful and they tried really hard to stay close to the story. I think what happened there was that they didn't adapt it enough, they were too faithful and filmed it almost scene-by-scene. They were too attached to the source material. I talked to the Mistborn producers and we all agree that it needs to be more heavily adapted. It's a different medium. If you can keep the soul of the story but change the story that's what you want to do. If I can armchair it, the Harry Potter films where they were forced to adapt more strongly are the best. The third one is beautiful.
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1115
Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011
Brandon Sanderson Talks Fantasy & Film (Verbatim)Helen O'Hara
Speaking of adaptations, of course, you've taken over Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and sped up the pace of the story considerably, so as a long-time reader there, thank you for that!
Brandon Sanderson
Credit needs to be given to Robert Jordan; he started to speed up in Book 11 [Knife of Dreams]. In fact, I've read interviews where he admits that the focus was a little bit wrong in Book 10 [Crossroads of Twilight], which is the one that the fans complain about being the most slow, and he himself changed that for Book 11 and picked up the pacing. And I like spectacular endings. When I build my books, I start from the end and work forward with my outline. I write from beginning to end, but I outline end to beginning, because I always want to know that I have a powerful, explosive ending that I'm working toward. Endings are my deal: if a book or a film doesn't have a great ending, I find it wanting. It's like the last bite, the last morsel on the plate, so I get very annoyed with the standard Hollywood third act, because they seem to play it most safe in Act Three, and that's where I most want to be surprised and awed. That's where it's got to be spectacular. You've got to give the reader something they're not expecting, something they want but don't know it, in that last section.
Helen O'Hara
Does that go for something like your Mistborn Trilogy; did you start with the end of the trilogy or go book-by-book?
Brandon Sanderson
I plotted all three backwards and then wrote them all forwards. I had a great advantage writing those books, because I sold my first book, Elantris, in 2003. The nature of how books are 'slotted' into release dates is that a new author doesn't get the best slot. They want to give each author a good launch, but they can't give them in the really prime slots. So we had a two-and-a-half year wait, and usually you have a year between books. That meant I had three-and-a-half years before Mistborn would be out, so I pitched the entire trilogy together and wrote all three before the first one came out.
Helen O'Hara
Is that something you have in common with Robert Jordan, because re-reading the prologue to the first book you think, 'This guy knows how it's going to end'.
Brandon Sanderson
He actually wrote the ending that I worked towards. The last pages were written by him before he passed away. He always spoke of knowing the ending, so I think we do share that. He was a bit more of an explorer in his writing than I am. He knew where he was going, but getting there he wove around a lot. You can see that in the notes I've been given; he jumps from scene to scene. So there's a difference there, but he really loved endings. And that ending is really great; I think fans are going to love it.
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1116
Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011
Brandon Sanderson Talks Fantasy & Film (Verbatim)Helen O'Hara
How long did you have to think about it before taking on Wheel of Time?
Brandon Sanderson
I didn't know I was being considered. I got a voicemail, which was nice because I didn't get it cold. It was Robert Jordan's widow asking me to call her. I couldn't get a hold of her for a couple of hours, so I had time to think! I was prepared, so when she asked me, I said yes. I still could barely get the words out. I was so starstruck talking to her and so befuddled that the next day I wrote her an email saying, 'Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot.' I do remember sitting that night and having... not a panic attack, but the realization that if I mess this up, I am messing up a story beloved by millions. A piece of me started to acknowledge, 'The Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan's, and I cannot do what he would do'. What I am doing shouldn't have to be done; he should be here to write it the way he wants to do it. There's no way to do it right! I'm setting myself up for failure. That almost made me say I shouldn't do this.
A writer friend called me and said I was crazy. 'Whatever you do right, they'll say Robert Jordan did, and whatever goes wrong you'll get the blame. But I started reading Eye of the World when I was 14, in 1990, and those characters became my high-school buddies, and I'm still in touch with them. If someone else took it and did a poor job with it that would be partially my fault for saying no! I realized that if somebody is going to do this who isn't Robert Jordan, I wanted the shot because I am a fan and I won't screw it up too much.
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1117
Interview: Jun 3rd, 2011
Brandon Sanderson Talks Fantasy & Film (Verbatim)Helen O'Hara
Are there bits in it where you were aware that it felt like your writing rather than him?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, there are some. For example, Robert Jordan was a Vietnam veteran: he'd been in real battle. My battle training has been watching cinema and reading great books. So my perspective on fight scenes is very different from his. I can't get that authenticity 100%, and if I try too hard it's going to feel fake. I have to do the action sequences like I do action sequences. So it'll flow like cinema rather than having the chaos and insanity of real battle.
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Interview: Nov 5th, 2009
Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Matthew Peterson
Well, your Mistborn series did bring attention to you. I mean, that's one of the reasons why you are writing the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan wrote the first one in 1990, it's called The Eye of the World. Eleven books later, he passed on, suddenly, and left millions and millions people with their mouths open like, "Well, what's next?" Tell us a little bit about how you jumped on board to complete the Wheel of Time series.
Brandon Sanderson
Okay. I got up in the morning one day in October of 2007, fumbled downstairs to my long commute to my couch, picked up my phone to see if anyone had called me. And lo and behold there was a message from someone I didn't know the number of. And so I picked up my phone and I listened to it and was completely dumbfounded and shocked to hear a message from Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's widow, asking me if I would call her because there's something she wants to talk to me about. To be perfectly honest, my response was something on the lines of, "Blah, blu, blahb".
Matthew Peterson
[laughs]
Brandon Sanderson
I mean I couldn't even talk. Well, turns out that I was well known at TOR as a big fan of the series. I had written, when Robert Jordan had passed away, a eulogy for him, that kind of explained how he had been such a big influence on my life and upon how I had decided to become a writer and why I even chose my publisher. And so that eulogy had ended up on Harriet's desk and she had read it and then called Tom Doherty the publisher, and asked him, "Is this one of your guys?" He's like, "Yeah, this guy's a good writer. You should look into his work; he's a possibility." And so that's how I got brought on. I've described it like being hit by a freight train that I wasn't expecting.
That’s the first I had heard of it. It was out of no where. At least as far as I was expecting it. So at that point, she requested some copies of the Mistborn books and she called me. Her initial call was a call to ask me if I'm interested before she did the work to search through my books and decide if she wanted to choose me. And so that initial phone call, when I finally got a hold of her. . . It was actually pretty hard to get a hold of her. She had left the house and I was just kind of running around in circles like a chicken with his head cut off because I didn't know what was going on and I was very tongue tied. And I eventually got a hold of her and she just said, "I want to see if you're interested before I do the work of reading one of your books and deciding." Well, to be perfectly honest, my response was something along the lines of "Blah ble blahh . . ."
Matthew Peterson
[laughs]
Brandon Sanderson
I mean, I couldn't even talk. I wrote her an email the next day that I sent care of Tom Doherty, that really essentially said, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot, even though I sounded like one."
Matthew Peterson
[laughs]
Brandon Sanderson
But she then sat down and read Mistborn, and it was about a month later. She read Mistborn. She considered some other people. She called me up and said, "Yes, I would like you to do this. Are you still interested?" And of course I was. It is one of those things that just happens unexpectedly.
Matthew Peterson
Just an amazing thing.
Brandon Sanderson
And it changes your life.
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Interview: Nov 5th, 2009
Interview with Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Matthew Peterson
Yeah. Well, I caught Tom Doherty at a convention a couple years ago. He was alone, which doesn't happen very often. So, I chatted to him a little bit about this. At that time it was one book, and he said, "Well, he's actually written like close to 1,000 pages so far, and he's only gotten like 1/3 into Jordan's notes. So, we might have to split the book into two." And then lo and behold, there's going to be three books.
Brandon Sanderson
It's an enormous amount of work and we feel that fans will enjoy it better, if we give it to them 1/3 at a time, for three years. As opposed to making them wait an extra three years and then get the whole thing.
Yeah. What happened was. . . and I want to make this perfectly clear as I try to explain this. I've not expanded the size of the book at all. Robert Jordan, before he passed away, kept saying, "This book is going to be enormous. This book is going to be huge. They're going to have to sell a wagon with the bookstores, so you can get it out of the bookstore." And I took that to heart and was writing it as I felt he would have written it. He wanted this book to be enormous.
And Tom Doherty and Harriet made the call, I left it up to them, that they were going to decide how it was going to be divided or if it was going to be divided or if they were going to be printing it as one. And what really happened is about January of this year, Tom and Harriet got together and they looked at what we had and they made the call for two reasons. One reason being, they felt that it was too large to publish as one book. Harriet had said to me, kind of in private, she said, "I don't think Jim could have done this in one book." I don't think he was planning to do this in one book. He maybe would have tried to get them to publish it as one book, but the realities of the publishing business . . . the larger reason I think that they did it because it was going to take me another two years to finish that one book if we were going to be publishing it as one. And they didn't feel that it was right to make the fans wait that long. It's already been four years since the last Wheel of Time book.
And so the decision was made that they would take the first third, which I had finished already, and then have me work with it and edit it so that it was a single volume and it doesn't read like the first third of a story. The way I approached writing this made for some very natural break points. And they were going to publish that and then we would publish the second third and the third third. And it's really more about the fact that this just takes time. These things are enormously difficult to write, in a good way, but very, very hard, because of how much work it requires to get it right and how many pages there are. I mean the first third is going to be as long as an average Wheel of Time book.
Matthew Peterson
Oh, yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
And so you can imagine stacking three copies of Eye of the World on top of each other; that's how long Jim planned this book to be.
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
Q&A With Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Details
What was the process of finishing the Wheel of Time like?
Brandon Sanderson
It's kind of like discovering an ancient vase that has been shattered. In some places you just have to polish off the pieces that you've found, but in other places there are pieces missing. It's a blend of using someone else's outline and also trusting my instincts a writer and a longtime reader of the series.
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Interview: Oct 27th, 2009
Q&A With Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Details
Are you nervous about The Gathering Storm's reception?
Brandon Sanderson
I was a lot more nervous before I got it done. The fan community realizes that Robert Jordan wanted this book written, and they want to know the ending. There are going to be people who don't like it—I think that's inevitable. I can't write this book as well as Robert Jordan would have. That said, I think I've done a dang good job.
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Interview: 2008
Rebecca Cressman
Okay we've got to close our interview, but I've got to ask you about this. You were invited to do something which I would think would be very daunting, in that the Wheel of Time Series has been one of, well, the best selling fantasy series of all time. And the author passed away before completing the twelfth book and you received a phone call. How did you feel when you received a call saying, "Mr. Sanderson, we would like you to complete the novel."
Brandon Sanderson
It was completely dumbfounding. This was not something I applied for or asked for. I was a big fan of the series. I have been, pretty much, since I got into reading. The first book was released just a few months after I started reading fantasy for the first time, and I've been following it for almost twenty years now. When Mr. Jordan passed away, I, like most of the fans, was just... it was terrible, it was a tragedy. He was just an amazing writer. And then to be asked to work on this, to have the opportunity. It's bittersweet in a lot of ways, because I wish he were here to write it. But if he can't be here to write it then, since I've loved the books for so long, the next best thing is being able to write it myself. But when I first got that call I couldn't believe it, I couldn't think that it was real. I mean, I didn't even know how they had gotten my name, or who had suggested me or anything like that.
Rebecca Cressman
Well, I don’t want to use the term fantasy, but it almost was a fantasy, wasn't it?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it really was. Yeah, dream come true in a lot of ways, though I wish it could have happened under better circumstances.
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Chris W
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Brandon started the event by reading the scene of Talmanes riding to the rescue of Caemlyn. He mentioned that he has always appreciated the relationship between Talmanes and Mat, and so he was excited to see so much from Talmanes in RJ's prologue. He said Talmanes' prologue appearance is one of his favorites.
He chose to read the Wind scene at the beginning of Chapter One as well, because the wind followed the route of the three ta'veren on their journey. It is a scene that is symbolic of the series, and very special to him just as it is to the fans.
After the short reading, we moved on to the Q&A.
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
First, how do you feel doing this, and finishing it? Is there going to be a followup?Brandon Sanderson
It's hard to pin it down to one emotion; there were so many. RJ's books were among my favorites growing up, books I studied teaching myself how to write. In a lot of ways, it was just a deep honor. My favorite author, finishing his journey, and I got to walk along supporting him. That's how I regard it. It's been amazing. Me being the journeyman writer, being able to apprentice under RJ, in his workshop, looking at his things and taking them, working with them, polishing them, finishing the last sequence, has been incredible for me as an artist to gain an understanding of the writer that he was. For the second question, there will be no more. He'd planned to write two more prequels and then a trilogy of outriggers, but we can't do them. One reason is because he didn't leave enough notes about them. As I wrote these, I had specific direction in the notes and could relay everything back to RJ. In the outriggers, I wouldn't be able to do that. It would be more me than him. I don't think he would've wanted any more to be done, so out of respect for him, even though many would like to see these, I think we need to say "let's let it end where he wanted it to end". If we keep going, where do we stop? Do we want more 80 more Wheel of Time books? I think we're better off just saying "we know he wanted this done, let's end on a high note".Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
What kind of research did you have to do to make the battle tactics so believable?Brandon Sanderson
The Memory of Light tactics were the things I was most worried about getting right. RJ was more a military historian than me and he was a soldier, so we went looking for help. Harriet knows a man named Bernard Cornwell who writes a lot of military fiction, so he helped us, and Alan Romanczuk is a war historian, who was able to help us a lot. He built the battle plan for the entire war, as far as troop movements and the tactical portion of the Last Battle. Connecting them and making it meld into the story with the characters was my job. We went rounds about "this is tactically sound" or "no it's not", so Alan was a big help making it believable. I did research, but my feeling is that I can get to 70–80% of knowledge on a subject pretty quickly through a month or two of research, but getting that last 20% is something that takes 10 years of work. My goal is to get to 70–80, and then give it to someone who knows their stuff and have them help me from there.
Chris W
The names of the people Brandon referenced here were probably butchered. I was just trying to keep up with him so I could record the main parts of his response instead of focusing on the names of his references. [Fixed—Terez]
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
What happens with the Green Man?Brandon Sanderson
I have no answer for you. It is not spoken of by RJ, so you will have to extrapolate yourself. I could make something up, but I don't do that anymore. If it was for the books, I could say "this needs to happen" with my creative freedom I was given, but at this point, with it done, that's no longer my job. So my answer is, I don't know! We know that the Nym must come back as the Ages turn, but we don't know when they will be "reinvented".Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
So what were some of the holes that you filled in with that creative freedom?Brandon Sanderson
I tried to avoid talking about this much before because I don't want you to focus on what's Brandon and what's RJ, but now that it's all out, I do have a little more freedom. One thing is that early when I went to Charleston, I felt RJ was always adding characters, so I didn't want to add too many. I wanted to show something happening at the Black Tower, so Androl became my character that I took and expanded on from minor to main character. Androl himself and his relationship with Pevara was me. I felt the series needed it, and I’ve always wanted an Asha'man to play with, so to speak.
More generally, for The Gathering Storm I have said RJ worked a lot on Egwene's viewpoints. Not as much on Rand. Rand was more me, Egwene was more RJ. In Towers of Midnight, RJ worked a lot on Mat and not much on Perrin. So if it's Mat, it's more likely to be RJ. If it's Perrin, it's more likely to be me. In A Memory of Light he worked mostly on beginning and end, not much on the middle. Merrilor and the last few chapters are a lot of RJ. In between, it's a lot more me.
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
What was the hardest part about writing in RJ's universe?Brandon Sanderson
Probably keeping track of all the side characters. There were so many. I'd be reading a scene and be like "there's seven Wise Ones, now who are they again?" Now as the writer I need to know who they are exactly, as well as each of their distinct voices. When I get them wrong, people notice and I hear about it.Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
When you read the books, did you have an affinity for a character and as you wrote did you change?Brandon Sanderson
When I read it was mostly Perrin. I'll admit I had a fondness for Mat later on, but it never became my supportive Perrin, even when he was down in the dumps. I didn't stop being a Perrin fan because he moped a little. He was my favorite all along. When it came time to write the books, Perrin remained my favorite. He was among my favorite viewpoints to write as well. I was very excited by the prospect of being able to do a lot of Perrin in Towers of Midnight, and having a lot of freedom with his sequences was a real pleasure. When I finished the rough draft of A Memory of Light, there was a lot of, like 20% more Perrin than Rand, so that didn't turn out right. It's really Rand's series, it needs more Rand, so when I sent it to Team Jordan, they said there was a lot of Perrin, so we upped the Rand count. There was a Perrin sequence that didn't really feel right for the book that was about 20,000 words, so we cut that out and added a Rand sequence that was about the same length which I had already been working on, and that helped restore the balance. When I started A Memory of Light I was fresh off Towers of Midnight and in a Perrin mindset, so I was like PERRIN IS AWESOME, did his stuff, then moved on to the other characters' arcs in succession.Tags
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Deslya (Paraphrased)Question
Androl is like your character, so as far as that, how much of that was kinda fought by the rest of Team Jordan as far as his gateway talent and stuff?Brandon Sanderson
Let me start by saying that if they hadn't been happy, it wouldn't be in the book. But anything where you work with an editorial team, you'd show them a scene, and they may say that's great, or they may say that it doesn't feel right or wouldn't be a good fit for the story. And sometimes you'll say "I'll change it" or "let me finish this draft, and we'll see what it looks like at the end". As far as the gateways, I felt it wouldn't be realistic otherwise. I've wanted to do with gateways since I was a kid, doing things like I showed in the book. If I had them, what would I do with them? I asked this when I was a kid, so there was a lot that I wanted to do with gateways that were in my own notes that I wanted to do that I couldn't do in my own books, so I stayed away from things that the Wheel of Time had done. So when I got to write WoT I broke out those files. The gloves were off; it was time to do things that I wanted to do but didn't want to rip off the Wheel of Time. At the end of the day, I convinced them to do it. They kept saying "they're all over the place!" so I said "if you could use them, you'd use them a lot". I didn't intend it to be a shout out of any kind, it's things I've wanted to do with gateways for like 15 years. It wasn't a shout out to the fandom. It's been an interesting experience. A lot of people think that I just wrote what the fans thought, but it's things that I felt the characters and the world would do, and if the fans happened to have talked about it, it's because it's what I thought would happen. In fact, as I wrote the books, I read very little of the fandom in order to prevent those exact thoughts from taking root.
Chris W
During and after the signing, we had the discussion with Brandon about Dannil Lewin. Originally, Dannil had actually gone with Rand, Perrin, and Mat from the Two Rivers on their journey, and played a major role in events of book 3 or 4. In the end, Harriet convinced RJ that it may be better without Dannil, so some of Dannil's comments in A Memory of Light are a shout out to that of sorts. Just a fun story I thought you all might find interesting.
Footnote
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
About Androl and Pevara, the dynamic and internal dialogues were right on, and his unique skills made for some of the most remarkable scenes since the cleansing. I know that RJ had some things lined out for many of the characters, but you sort of took Androl on as your guy, can you speak to that?Brandon Sanderson
(Prefaced his answer by reminding everyone to avoid spoiler questions, and made it clear that this one did not cross that line) When I began to work on the books, I felt that with each book, it seemed that Robert Jordan usually took a side character and made them more of a main character. As I was outlining the series, I decided I wanted to take a side character and make them into more of a main character, but there wasn't a specific person in the notes designated to do that with. But I felt that we really needed somebody at the Black Tower, because of all the things going on at that time in the notes, and we needed another viewpoint there.
During my second trip to Charleston, this would be April/May of 2008, we used big sheets of butcher paper, outlining what was going on with these as a visual aid. I wanted an Asha'man to have a sequence of major viewpoints. Maria and Alan, who were Robert Jordan's assistants, and are now Harriet's assistants, chatted about it a moment and said you should use Androl, because there's not a lot about him, he's pretty much a blank slate and you can go wherever you want with him, which was really exciting for me. I then pitched the Talent of gateways for him, and they liked that.
Shortly after I got home, I got in the mail a printout or photocopies, of magazine or book pages from Harriet about leatherworking, and she had written on it, "I know that Jim had planned to use this in the book somewhere, is there anywhere that you can fit it in". Well I'm developing this character, let's make him a leatherworker. So I used that in building the personality of who this character was, and in that way, there was some of Robert Jordan in the character, even though I was taking a blank slate and going my own way with him. And that's where Androl came from for the last three books.
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
Which character's contribution to A Memory of Light did you enjoy most?Brandon Sanderson
This book was supposed to be about Rand, and so Rand's contribution is the most important to me. So much so, that in the revising process we felt several times we needed to bring out more. One of the big elements of revision was, we needed to make sure that Rand remains the focus of this book, and even though things are going where there are lots of different sections and regions where Rand is not involved, we needed Rand to be at least the heart of the book.Tags
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
Can you talk a little bit about the "River of Souls" sequence?Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I can totally talk about this. So, "River of Souls" is about a specific character, and in the drafting process this is not something I actually pitched to Harriet early on, but in the later meetings I got together with them and pitched something which was a deviation from things Robert Jordan had said. Harriet told me from the get-go, Look you've got the notes, you've got the outline, you've got to be a writer, not a transcriber. Robert Jordan would not have kept this the way it is, that's not how we work, and in a lot of places he said I'm thinking of doing this, OR this, and you'll have to decide which of those to do, or to do a third.
And so I pitched one of these kind of audacious sequences to her; sometimes these work, sometimes they don't. It's the sort of thing you need to do to create fiction, that I feel is daring, and you need to take these chances. But a lot of times you don't know if it's going to work until the book is done, and you can look at it together. And this was taking place in a region of the Wheel of Time world that Robert Jordan said I really don't think we're ever going to visit. Which is the part that was deviated, by doing this sequence. And it's not that long, only about 7,000 words, so it's like a novelette. I sent it to Harriet, and she said "I really like this, but we're going to cut it". The reason being, that it broke up the flow of the novel, and it was introducing too many new elements at the beginning of the volume that was supposed to be wrapping up elements. And those who do storytelling know that can be a really dangerous thing to do.
Harriet McDougal
That was the reason. It was a big additional segment, and this is not what you call a slim volume anyway. So as a reader, it was not fun. Not that there was anything wrong with the sequence, but it was not what my antennae said we needed. We needed to get on with it.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, instead of going sideways, when we needed to go forward.
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
A compliment to you, Harriet and the entire team that put this together, but the really stunning thing about the last book was how many characters had a role in this book, down to multiple dozens of people, secondary characters and below. How did one do that? How does one create that continuity? Obviously some of it comes from Jordan's original work, but how does one pull that all together?Harriet McDougal
Someone in the audience said "magic". I don't know that there's a better answer.
Brandon
It was the biggest challenge of this last book. I've said for years, even before I was involved in the project, once you hit book seven in the Wheel of Time as a reader, you have to realize something that I realized. The series itself is not about Rand. The series is about all of these people facing the end of the world. Rand of course is at the center, and there are other figures close to the center, but the series is about all of these people. And going into the last book we all felt that the last book needed to evoke that. Rand needed to be the heart, but it needed to be about the world, all of these people facing the end of times. That was something we struggled with, went back and forth on. The creative process is a mysterious thing, even to us involved. I'm glad that you felt that, because when I went into it that was one of the things I said, this is what we need to do, it needs to feel like this, and if we are successful, that's what it will feel like.
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
There was some little inconsistencies in the lengths of chapters, especially kind of in the last book...Brandon Sanderson
Oh, you're talking about the several hundred page chapter, and then the five page chapter?
Question
...was that sort of picked to try to break up things specifically, or was that more in how it fell out?
Brandon Sanderson
The chapter lengths, in this book in particular, were very consciously chosen. Under Harriet's direction, through the first two books Harriet came to me a lot and said "No, this chapter needs to be these viewpoints, and this chapter needs to be those viewpoints", and she actually taught me, I don't know if she realized that she was doing it, and then in the last book, she didn't have to do any of that. There was no changing of viewpoints between chapters. (Meaning via revision) Harriet had trained me better in chapter breaks and things like that, so I broke up the chapters. (To Harriet) I don't know if you even noticed that, in the previous two you did a lot of that, and this one you didn't.
The very long chapter, a very, very long chapter, you can see it in the Table of Contents, the purpose of that is, I wanted you to feel like the characters do in that chapter. They can't put down their weapons and go to sleep. I don't want you to be able to put down the book and go to sleep. I want you to hit that chapter at 1AM, and be like "I gotta to be at work at seven, and I'll read just one more chapter". One of the things Harriet unconsciously showed me that I picked up on, was the use of chapters for that kind of narrative structure in a better way, so that was done very intentionally.
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
I've really enjoyed it, I've read book twelve and thirteen, it's always kind of difficult to get a transition between voices of different authors, but I've really enjoyed the last two books. Was there a particular character that was difficult for you to write? You don't have to answer if you don't want to.Brandon Sanderson
No, no, I can answer, I've answered this before. I would say that the toughest character to get right was Mat. His voice, he has the most distinctive voice in the entire Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan had perfected that voice, and if you read the series, Mat as a character evolves to the point that in book ten he's just this majestic . . . piece of work. Piece of work used as, yeah. And he's just amazing, and to go from like book ten and eleven, Robert Jordan at the height of his skill, telling of this character that's very difficult to tell, and me then trying to do it, I think is also the most jarring. So he was tough, and I'd say the other tough one was Aviendha. Getting the Aiel right, because Robert Jordan had a lot of experience with the cultures he was basing the Aiel off of, and I don't have much experience with them, I have experience with the Aiel only, if that makes any sense. And the first time I wrote Aviendha, Harriet sent me the chapter back and said "You've written an almost perfect Elayne". And I'm like "Oh, great!" Well, I know I've got Elayne down then. I got her on the third try, and she said "Ahh, you've got it". But it took me several tries to get Aviendha right.Tags
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
Are there any discussions in place to convert these books to audio books?Brandon Sanderson
They are already all on audio book.
Freelancer
The man was actually standing very close to the rack full of audio volumes.
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
Regarding the cache of ter'angreal recovered from Ebou Dar, and identified by Aviendha, were no more of them employed than we'd seen due to space or continuity constraints, or were they never intended to be used?Brandon Sanderson
We used what was given to be used in Robert Jordan's outline and notes. It may be that he would have found a use for more of them, but we stuck to what he had prepared.Tags
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Question
Regarding Gawyn and Elayne, among many readers they are two of the least liked characters on the Light side. Do you believe that Robert Jordan intended for them to be viewed with such negative reactions?Brandon Sanderson
Elayne, no not really. Gawyn, though, he’s the Fallen Prince archetype. Everything he does comes up short, which leads him to just be trying too hard.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2003
Ekultúra: Interview with Robert Jordan (Translated)Galgóczi Móni
Do you by chance believe in reincarnation?Robert Jordan
No, I don't. Actually, in my dilettante way, I study the legends and myths and their similarities and their relationships to each other. With a long view, the definition of fantasy can be traced there because this genre uses supernatural things but treats them as if they were real. Many people write fantasy, deliberately or not—well, they don't admit it, and what is more, they deny it because it is not really considered high literature. For example, I think the art of magical realism belongs to the fantasy genre, but I'm sure if I were to say so to one of these authors, he or she would not be happy.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2003
Ekultúra: Interview with Robert Jordan (Translated)Galgóczi Móni
I have read stories about bringing these books to the big screen. Do you write the script?Robert Jordan
No, because it's not my thing. Though they bought the option for the books several years ago and we talked about films, TV and mini-series as well, so far nothing has come of it. Otherwise, the Dragonmount.com website has now started to produce an animated movie from the first volume of the series, The Eye of the World.Tags
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Interview: Apr, 2003
Ekultúra: Interview with Robert Jordan (Translated)Galgóczi Móni
What do you think of the computer games and role playing games based on the series?Robert Jordan
I haven't played any of them, but my family and friends who have tried them gave them good reviews. I rarely play games, truth to tell; I tend to play chess on my machine.
Galgóczi Móni
Have you had any experience with role playing games?
Robert Jordan
Back when my son was little [Editor's note: he is 34 now], we played with his friends and I was the storyteller.
Galgóczi Móni
How long did that last?
Robert Jordan
About three years.
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1143
Interview: Feb 8th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DJ Stipe (Paraphrased)DJ Stipe
Harriet arrived shortly and Thom got the distinct honor of offering his arm to escort her inside. Once inside, he quickly got lost and Harriet was kind enough to point out the way to go ("that door, the one that says 'Employee's only?'"). She was still kinder to make a point to mention that she'd been inside many book stores in her time.
Once in the back she joined Brandon signing some book stock and the Memory Keepers were called in to spend some time, ask questions and get signatures. They were both very gracious with the little amount of time they had and we were joined by Jason and his writing group, so many were able to get Jason's signature on Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. There were a couple of those present who hadn't read the book, so we kept it spoiler-free. Brandon mentioned during this time that the pacing of the final book was the most difficult part to get right and was behind most of the revision work. He said he wrote the POVs separately for the first part of the book but as the pacing picked up he had to abandon that approach. Harriet was asked about the movie/series with NBC Universal and said it is a movie that's in development, not a series, but she hasn't been involved. They retain the right to consult with her, which means they could ask her out to consult and subsequently ignore whatever she says (paraphrased). Brandon was also asked if he knew how Stormlight would end, which he said he did, that he hadn't written it yet but he knew how it would end. When asked he said he had about a page outline for each of the books after four, that he adds and modifies them as events in the first books get fleshed out.
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1144
Interview: Feb 8th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DJ Stipe (Paraphrased)DJ Stipe
WOT Questions (paraphrased from notes while also taking fan pictures):
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
When asked how hard the pacing was to get right on A Memory of Light he said that was the most difficult part of the book and that's where most of the revision came in. Follow-up question was asked if he'd written each perspective individually like he had other books and he said that he started out doing that, but as the perspectives began to switch more frequently he stopped.
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1145
Interview: Feb 8th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DJ Stipe (Paraphrased)DJ Stipe
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Bela's death was the runaway winner for most brought up subject, to which Brandon usually arched his arm across the head of Memory Keeper Aviendha, pointed at Harriet and said, "Blame her." At one point he said he wrote a scene where she fought back to life, but Harriet cut it. She overheard this, said it wasn't true and Brandon responded that he'd wanted to. He then said that he likes to think that when the Horn is called next one of the Heroes will be riding a shaggy, gray mare.
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1146
Interview: Feb 8th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DJ Stipe (Paraphrased)Question
Was the Last Battle chapter in A Memory of Light 190 pages long because that was how Jordan wanted it?
Brandon Sanderson
No, Brandon made this decision himself because he felt like none of the characters could put their weapons down during this stretch, so he wanted the reader to be in the same predicament and not be able to put the book down.
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1147
Interview: Feb 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - billiam (Paraphrased)billiam
Just got back from the Seattle signing. First off, I want to say that Brandon is really super cool; just a nice, personable guy. First and foremost the guy is just a fan.
Brandon Sanderson
He even said that the best part of being done with writing WoT is that he can go back to being a fan; discussing and theorizing with others, something he felt he couldn't do while still writing the books. He said that he can finally start talking to other people about the end of the series.
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1148
Interview: Feb 9th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - talinthus (Paraphrased)talinthus
We went out to the signing, and it was overwhelmingly crowded without being oppressive. The questions and answers were almost identical to those asked at other signings, as my fellow keepers have already reported on. No outriggers, WoT encyclopedia next year, and stories about the notes and the writing process.
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
The most interesting piece was on Androl, who was almost wholly Sanderson's creation. Jordan had many view points at the Tower, and Sanderson collapsed it into one, giving the soldier a power that Sanderson wished had been in WoT since his youth. Apparently, Jordan had a book of leather working he had intended to use somehow, and Sanderson gave that skill to his character in homage.
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1149
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Question
Tell me why there are so many references to peach pits in the Wheel of Time.Brandon Sanderson
Harriet? (laughter)
Harriet McDougal
I've never counted them! (laughter) I will tell you this, though, that peach pits do....someone wrote and said, "When did peaches become poisonous?" And I said, "You know, they're not." One of Robert Jordan's great themes was the unreliability of information, that we all think we know things that sometimes are absolutely cuckoo, and that's one of them. We do...if a child manages to eat a peach pit, chewing on it to get at the kernel inside, then you have to call poison control. That's true now, so that's why. I guess. (laughter) I don't know how many references there are.
Footnote
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1150
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Question
I just noticed the graphic novel series. Is that planned to finish?Harriet McDougal
Well, eventually, [we'll] do the whole thing, unless it stops selling in a dreadful way. In other words, I don't really know.Tags
1151
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Kathy
I don't know if you remember me, but I was a Stormleader for The Gathering Storm...Brandon Sanderson
Thank you.
Kathy
...and I got that first RAFO part, which was then answered in this book. And I was wondering if that question that I gave to Robert Jordan so many years ago, and he gave that wonderful answer, was the reason [?] or was it...[?]
Brandon Sanderson
(laughs) You're dog girl. Yes, you are! I will say...there's an inside joke here. Once, this wonderful young woman asked Robert Jordan what would happen if you balefired yourself through a gateway, and what exactly did he say?
Kathy
He said, "Young woman, I need you to go have an affair—with man, woman, or German Shepherd; it doesn't matter. Either way, you need to get a life." (laughter, applause)
Brandon Sanderson
Now, I, uh...(laughter continues)
Kathy
I also happened to then, several years later, marry a man who also read, and this is our daughter Aviendha.
Harriet McDougal
Awwww! (applause)
Kathy
See...[?]. (laughter)
Brandon Sanderson
I don't have one either, and I'm worried...my big question was always about gateways, and when I began reading the series, as soon as I discovered them, I started to think about what would happen, cause I'm a magic system guy, right? And I'm like, "Oooh, what could you do with this? What could you do with this?" In fact, I started taking notes on what I could do, and they sat there in my notes file for years and years because I eventually started moving away from things I had seen done by other authors, and that meant, specifically the few things I was most interested in in the Wheel of Time. I didn't end up ever writing a magic system using. gateways and the World of Dreams, the way Robert Jordan had it. I avoided these things intentionally. And yet I had all these notes of things that I would like to have done, if I ever did a magic system with them.
Lo and behold, I got that opportunity, and so I found ways to....when I got the project, I didn't want to come in and make any sweeping changes—that wasn't my goal—but there are some places where I felt it appropriate to add some of my touch to the books, and one was with the gateways. I didn't want to be spending a lot of time doing anything with the magic system, you know—inventing a lot of new weaves, or anything like that—but I did want to expand some parts.
And so I actually....I went to Charleston, and we needed a new viewpoint character, specifically someone in the Black Tower—we hadn't had...we didn't have the right viewpoint character for the Black Tower—so I said, is there an Asha'man you guys think that I could take over, so to speak, and really flesh out and make into a more...you know, elevate a side character to a medium level character, which is something Robert Jordan frequently did in the series, and they came to the decision that Androl was the person that I should take, and I gave him the gateway Talent because I wanted to explore what happens with gateways.
And so, right there....we are all on the same wavelength; it wasn't necessarily me trying to answer your question. It was me answering questions to myself as a young man reading the series, wondering a lot about gateways. And so, Androl was a lot of fun.
In fact, there's another story there. At one point, I'm working on the series, and I get in the mail this envelope—it's a manila envelope from Charleston, and in it are a bunch of photocopied pages, and Harriet has written on the front of them: "Jim planned to use this somewhere. Can you fit it in?" And what it was was a detailed explanation from the viewpoint of a leatherworker about how one goes about using leather, and leatherworking. And this is the sort of detail, craftsman-style sort of things that Robert Jordan really liked to find places for that sort of detail in the books, and meanwhile, I've been sitting here trying to build a character for Androl, and I'm like, "Okay! I've got a place for it." And that's how Androl became a leatherworker, is from that stack of pages from Robert Jordan; it was just a photocopy of a leatherworker talking about their work.
So, there's some Androl stories. And so the answer is, it's half to you, but it's mostly to me (laughter). It's to both of us.
Footnote
Kathy met her husband at tarvalon.netTags
1152
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Question
How did you end up with a 190-page-long chapter?Brandon Sanderson
There is a 190-page chapter in the book, in this book. And it was done very intentionally. I actually planned it that way from the beginning in my outline, the goal being that that's a point in the book where the characters can't just put down their weapons and stop, and I did not want the readers to be able to put down the book at that point. And a lot of people say, "Well, I'll just read one more chapter." (laughter) I wanted you to feel like they did at the end of that chapter, where they have been, and involved in something that is just draining emotionally, mentally, and physically, and the closest...the best way I can think of to make you have empathy for them was to push you through the same thing.
Question
It worked! (applause)
Brandon Sanderson
It's authors getting tricksy, is what it is.
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1153
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Question
So I had a very emotional reaction to this book, and I'm sure a lot of people did. I actually had to put it down for about two weeks... [inaudible] As you the writer, how did you manage to get through the ending of a lot of characters that are part of our lives?Brandon Sanderson
The answer is a complicated one dealing with the creative process. One part of the answer is I had a lot longer to get ready for it than you did. In fact, I was building the outline from this out of Robert Jordan's notes.
We talked about the notes. I was handed two things by way of notes. One was a stack of 200 pages. And this is the writing Robert Jordan did for the last book, and including the Q&As he did with his assistants, where they would say, "Okay what's going to happen with this character?" And he would talk about it for a page or so, and they would actually just record that, and then they transcribed it for me. And so that's what those 200 pages were. And then there was a CD with all of this five million words of other stuff, which I would spend my time reading, but which would have taken me years and years and years to read through all the way. And so fortunately I had Maria and Alan working on that. It was real interesting because a lot of this is stuff like 'Chronology of events for Book 5', which there had been a lot of things like that, and then there'll be hidden little tidbits in there.
But anyway, I was building the outline by rereading the series, taking the 200 pages—because we knew those were the scenes that he wanted in the book—and out of those two things I build the outline for the 800,000 word novel that I was planning. (laughter) So I used that. And I got very—I got time to come to grips with what was going to happen in a lot of the books. I had years to come to grips with it. It doesn't mean it wasn't an emotional time when I wrote it. We don't talk a lot—intentionally—we don't talk a lot about what was Robert Jordan and what was me. We don't talk a lot about where he decided characters needed to go, and where I decided characters needed to go, and where Harriet decided on occasion. But there were some long phone calls, where I would call and say, "This needs to happen. This is going to be really painful, but this is what the book needs." And we would talk it over and decide how to work it in and where it would go and how it would come about. Some of those conversations were tear-jerkers, but the Last Battle doesn't happen without some tear-jerking moments.
But beyond that, of course, the idea that it was all coming to an end, right? That this was years and years and years of effort, and years and years and years of reading, coming to an end. And that was emotional in and of itself. So, I've now had six or seven months. It finished for me July/August-ish when I handed off the document to Maria, and she took over the copy edit, and the continuity—you know, tweaking little continuity things. From there on, I couldn't change anything—I could write to her and have her change things. That's when the book was done, to me. And I've had all that time to get used that idea, also, of the book being done. And so, yes it was emotional, but I had so much more time to deal with it than you did.
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1154
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Question
So a lot of my consumption of all of the books by both Robert Jordan and yourself have been audiobooks. And so just curious from an art direction standpoint—since now the book is no longer the medium through which I'm encountering the story, it's through someone else's interpretation—how much art direction would you have in saying, hey this is how this character is or this is how . . . ?Harriet McDougal
Well, they read word for word. They're not edited. And really, as far as I know, there's no direction. They did ask for — at the beginning, with The Eye of the World, they wanted advice on pronunciations. (laughter)
And they got it, and they understood some of the instructions and missed a couple. (laughter) And I will tell you that the readers are a husband and wife of professional actors, both of them. But the woman's response—when she saw The Eye of the World, she said, "Why do you bother with a woman reader?" And the answer was: wait for the next book. (laughter)
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1155
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Question
Is any more stuff planned from the Wheel of Time universe?Brandon Sanderson
Oh, excellent question. I should have put this during the frequently asked ones at the beginning. Are there any more plans to do anything else with the Wheel of Time universe?
Harriet McDougal
No, there are not. The encyclopedia was put under contract in my husband's lifetime. He did enter into a contract for a trilogy of novels that are not part of the series but set in the world. He left either one or two sentences about that trilogy, which is not enough for anyone to work with so that it would very much still be his. He also said that—in the trade, it's called sharecropping in somebody's universe—and he said if anybody tries to sharecrop in my universe, I'll take out the hard disk, and I'll rent a semi—or a big rig, you might say, since his name was Rigney—and I will drive it backwards and forwards over the hard drive three or four times to be sure that no one will be able to do it. He really didn't want it done. And since he made it clear in his last months and weeks that he really did want the series finished, you have the end of the series, but there won't be any more done in the Wheel of Time world. [applause]
Brandon Sanderson
Along those lines, though, I will mention—people ask a lot—the film rights are held by Universal Pictures, and they're working toward feature films, one film per book. We don't know how far along they are. They have a second draft of a screenplay, which I have not seen. They're on a second draft.
Harriet McDougal
And I haven't either.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, and Harriet hasn't either. There is one other little tidbit—there's an anthology coming out called Unfettered. It's a charity anthology for a member of our community, in the science fiction and fantasy community, who had huge medical bills. And in order to help pay those off, we donated a deleted sequence from A Memory of Light. It's something that was written, but we decided for pacing reasons did not fit in the book. And so we donated that to Unfettered and so you can read that to see something behind the scenes. I will admit it's much more me than Robert Jordan, but it is something that we cut from A Memory of Light, just it didn't fit, pacing-wise, in the book.
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1156
Interview: Feb 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Wetlander (Paraphrased)Wetlander
Did the name "s'redit" have anything to do with "editor"?
Harriet McDougal
No, she didn't think so; however, she told the story... The Ringling Brothers (I think) circus came to town and she & Jim went to watch the elephants being unloaded. It was quite an impressive sight, and she indicated that was when he decided to put them in the books. Also, watching the (incredible!) acrobats, she's pretty sure that's when the ideas for Luca's menagerie etc. came into being.
Footnote
RJ actually told the story in 2001 of how going to the circus inspired him to include Valan Luca's show in the books.Tags
1157
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
Is there anyone Brandon wanted to include in A Memory of Light but didn't get to?
Brandon Sanderson
No, he was able to get to everyone. There were two major sequences cut from the book. One of these will appear in the charity anthology Unfettered. The other character POV just didn't work.
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1158
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
What are the top three characters in which her personality dominated that character's personality?
Harriet McDougal
(joking) Graendal, Moghedian, ... (lots of laughter) Probably Nynaeve. Harriet remarks that she has several home remedies for any ailment. She states that Robert Jordan said all of the women characters stem from her and makes a comment about nagging Robert Jordan to take out the trash.
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1159
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
Did he get to include anything from his "Cool Stuff" list in the series?
Brandon Sanderson
A few things did end up in the book, but he won’t expand due to spoilers. He did say that he had ideas about gateways long before he was selected to finish the series. He wanted to include some of these ideas in his own work but he was too worried about copying Robert Jordan, so they just stayed in his file. He was able to pull these ideas out and use them with Androl in A Memory of Light.
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1160
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
How did reading The Wheel of Time inspire his magic systems?
Brandon Sanderson
The first influence was Robert Jordan's focus on human characters over fantastical ones. He felt that Jordan's concept of weaving was complex and interesting, as opposed to magic systems of authors such as David Eddings. With the Wheel of Time, the rules and restrictions on magic made characters more clever and interesting. He didn't want to modify the WoT magic system but he did explore two aspects of it using ideas he had as a teenager: the World of Dreams and gateways. He avoided adding new weaves because the series was coming to a close.
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1161
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
Who was his favorite character to write and who does he see himself the most in?
Brandon Sanderson
Perrin was his favorite. Even though Perrin went through "a slump" in the series in order to build tension, Brandon always stayed "Team Perrin." Perrin was the most natural. Mat was tough and thus a cooler character to write. Brandon enjoyed writing Mat, especially in A Memory of Light. Mat challenged his skills more than anyone else. The saddest part for him with finishing the series is that he can't write Mat anymore.
Harriet added that there will not be any more WoT books (other than the encyclopedia). She said that Robert Jordan hated the idea of someone taking his material, although he did want the series finished. He stated he would run over his hard drive before allowing others to "sharecrop." Harriet stated that the two sentences about the outriggers that Robert Jordan left behind will be released in April or May. She said that with the encyclopedia there is "the work of at least a year."
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1162
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
What were Robert Jordan's influences for the creature that Padan Fain became?
Harriet McDougal
Just his own work and imagination. There were no outside influences that she knows of.
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1163
Interview: Feb 7th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - DomaniSway (Paraphrased)Question
Who was the most challenging WoT character to write?
Brandon Sanderson
Mat was the most challenging, the second most was Aviendha. He explains that it is hard to write about someone so different than yourself and the Aiel culture seemed the most unique in the series. Of Rand's three women, Aviendha is Brandon's favorite. He recalls that after writing his first Aviendha scene, Harriet read it and then told him that it was a "picture perfect Elayne." Brandon went on to discuss how he has to write his way into his characters. Vin, in Mistborn, was originally a boy. Lots of his early work on The Gathering Storm was scrapped by Harriet because Brandon wasn't "there yet" with the characters.
He then goes on to discuss the volume of notes left by Robert Jordan. There are about 200 pages for A Memory of Light and then there is roughly 32,000 pages of other notes for the series, three times as large as the entire series put together. Brandon tells of how he tried to open it once and it crashed his computer because the file was so large. He also wants to commend the enormous efforts of Alan and Maria for their help in managing all of the details of the series.
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1164
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Anna Hornbostel
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Brandon stated that it was evident to him from the notes that it was always planned that Olver would be the one to blow the Horn at the Last Battle. He also said that there is no direct proof but that he would like to think that Olver did indeed get his chance to train with the Aiel.Tags
1165
Interview: Feb 11th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Anna Hornbostel (Verbatim)Anna Hornbostel
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
A fan asked him if Alivia's role in the epilogue was her fulfillment of Min's viewing and he said that it was very clear that that was all that that viewing meant. He said that fans are speculating that she played a part in the body swap but she did not.
Brandon went in to little detail about the body swap, saying he knows as much about it as we do and the notes just didn't give more. He asserted that he has to do with the balefire streams touching and the fact that Moridin no longer wanted to continue to exist but that Rand very much wanted to continue to exist.
Footnote
The viewing was almost certain a "riding into the sunset" metaphor, which we know is idiomatic to the WoT world from The Great Hunt Chapter 49, where Loial reads To Sail Beyond the Sunset (which is also a reference to Heinlein) as Rand accepts the oaths of the Shienarans, the first Dragonsworn.Tags
1166
Interview: Feb 15th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Rebecca Lovatt (Paraphrased)Rebecca Lovatt
Most of the questions during the Q&A centered on the writing process in one way or another, either of these last three Wheel of Time books or of his other works. I had never before had a grasp on the sheer size of what Mr. Jordan had thought about and committed to (digital) paper about this series, all the details that will probably never see the light of day, until Brandon commented that his attempt to put Jordan's massive document onto his own computer resulted in it crashing after 32,000 pages. If we ever need a metric to relate how real the world Jordan created was, that is as good as it gets.
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon also shared the funny and idiosyncratic way Mr. Jordan would get his inspiration for names; it wasn't all just Norse and Hindu myth all the time, but apparently also everyday objects—streets in his home town (Ogier Street!), his washing machine, and random strolls through the phone book. If you've lived in Charleston in the past 23 years, who knows, you may have made an appearance as an Andoran Noble or the Old Tongue name for an Aiel warrior society!
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1167
Interview: Feb 15th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Rebecca Lovatt (Paraphrased)Rebecca Lovatt
Also of interest to WoT fans and aspiring writers, both: one fan asked, given the lack of majorly epic-scale battles in Brandon's other work, how he approached the near endless warfare that makes up the bulk of A Memory of Light.
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
The answer: research, research, research, and lots of help from experts. Brandon asserts (and I can believe) that he can get himself to about 80% expert on just about any topic in the course of writing prep, but his lack of personal experience with warfare (reminding us of Mr. Jordan's service in Vietnam) put him at a disadvantage in accurately conveying what needed to be conveyed in the last battle. Military buffs and armchair historians came to the rescue (including Team Jordan member Alan Romanczuk), outlining a series of strategies and tactics based on real-world battles that Brandon used as a guide. However, Tarmon Gai'don being on a somewhat different scale than we're used to in our Age, both metrically and dramatically, there was a lot of back-and-forth between Brandon and the battle guys about amping up the drama without sacrificing realism—inserting twists and character moments to make us cheer or weep.
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1168
Interview: Feb 19th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - AndrewB (Paraphrased)Question
Which WoT character did BWS take the most liberties with?
Brandon Sanderson
Androl. BWS told the story of how he asked HM if there was a character for which the notes did not have a role for and if BWS could make his. HM was receptive to the idea. One of them (I cannot remember who) mentioned that RJ had in his notes material on leatherworking. HM had asked BWS if he could incorporate this into the books. BWS felt it would be perfect for Androl.
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1169
Interview: Feb 19th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - AndrewB (Paraphrased)Question
What was BWS' favorite miserable situation in A Memory of Light?
Brandon Sanderson
It was a tie. The scene at the end of the Last Battle Chapter (the 200 page chapter) and the scene in the garden at night concerning the character BWS likes to put in miserable situations. (BWS phrased the answer in this manner due to a no spoiler rule.)
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1170
Interview: Feb 19th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - AndrewB (Paraphrased)Question
How does BWS manage to distinguish his own style and writings from WoT?
Brandon Sanderson
BWS jumps between different materials/works as a means of taking a break. In other words he could not write the WoT novels (or his own for that matter) from beginning to end without working on unrelated writings. That said, BWS did mention the horror (his word) of writing both Way of Kings and Towers of Midnight simultaneously. This is why he could not work on the second book of the Stormlight Archive series until he completed A Memory of Light.
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1171
Interview: Feb 19th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - AndrewB (Paraphrased)Question
HM was asked how, as an editor, it was to work with BWS? Also how was working with BWS different from other authors and RJ?
Harriet McDougal
She stated that by the middle of the series, she would give RJ "curb-side edits" (her phrase) or if there was a "big problem." With BWS, it was a new author, but these were old characters. One of them told the story that she made the same edit for both RJ and BWS (
he noticedthat she is wearing...). Also, either BWS or HM told the story of the Aviendha/Elayne edit comment (that the Aviendha that BWS wrote was a great Elayne).Tags
1172
Interview: Feb 3rd, 2013
Final fantasy: Epic fan takes the Wheel (Verbatim)Giles Hardy
Sanderson almost didn't take on the role. Not for lack of interest; rather, because he was too much of a fan.
Brandon Sanderson
"That was actually a consideration in this for me," he says. "I would not be able to read a Wheel of Time book when everyone else got to.
"I balanced it with the knowledge that I got to go and read the ending he wrote. Because he did write the last chapter of the series himself before he passed away.
"I got to read that basically before anyone else except for his wife and his assistants. Getting to read it a few years early was a pretty big advantage."
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1173
Interview: Feb 3rd, 2013
Final fantasy: Epic fan takes the Wheel (Verbatim)Giles Hardy
One other consideration almost held Sanderson back.
Brandon Sanderson
"I sat there thinking, 'I'm setting myself up to fail. No matter how good a job I do, it's not going to be Robert Jordan's book. Why am I saying yes?'"
Giles Hardy
Once more, his passion as a fan won out.
"The thing that made the distinction for me was when I realised if I said no and someone messed it up, I would be responsible. If I wanted to make sure that a fan took control of The Wheel of Time and did it in a way that a fan would, then I needed to do it myself.
"My job is not to save The Wheel of Time, to fix The Wheel of Time, or anything like that. My job is not to screw it up."
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1174
Interview: Feb 18th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson finishes Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time Series with A Memory of Light (Verbatim)Indy Week
Does it feel like the weight of the world is off your shoulders a bit?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, it does. That's a good way of phrasing it. This project's been unlike any other. In a lot of ways, as a writer, when I write something, normally I feel beholden only to myself. I do what I feel is best, and I just write the story.
But with this project, I didn't feel that was right. This story doesn't belong to me; it belongs to the fans. I'm kind of a stepfather, in a lot of ways. So there was a lot more performance anxiety for this project than any book before that.
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1175
Interview: Feb 18th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson finishes Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time Series with A Memory of Light (Verbatim)Indy Week
You obviously had some materials Robert Jordan left for you, and your own skills as a writer that you're bringing to the table, but you're also bringing those fan expectations to the table. What was the biggest challenge in keeping all this straight and just getting the work done?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, you know, as a writer, you train yourself to deal with distractions. Yes, this was a big project. Yes, this was a stressful project. But when I sit down to write, those sort of things flee my mind. During the actual writing period, nothing really matters except the words on the page.
Still, it was a challenge. Writing a given scene for this series would take me about twice as long as it would take me to write a scene from another story. That's because when I would work on these books, I would need to go back and read what Robert Jordan had written for all the characters in this scene, that I had their voices in my head, that I was using them correctly, that I was fact-checking things that had happened in the past.
I did a lot more revision than when I'm usually writing, where I would usually focus on, "Let's keep the story moving." Instead, I would have to ask myself, "Does this character know this piece of information? Does that character know this piece of information? Have these two characters ever met?"
There were 14 books of continuity in this series when I was working on this last one, if you count the prequel. And there’s a lot of material to dig through—they're big, thick books!—to keep track of everything I needed to know. Keeping track of the side characters was a real challenge, and filling out all of their plots.
At the end of the day, you know, the most important thing for the book was that we kept our promises—that the storytelling promises that Robert Jordan made were kept. And that's the soul of being a good storyteller, making interesting promises to the reader, and fulfilling them in even more interesting ways.
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Interview: Feb 18th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson finishes Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time Series with A Memory of Light (Verbatim)Indy Week
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?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Feb 18th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson finishes Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time Series with A Memory of Light (Verbatim)Indy Week
Harriet's going to be at the signing with you—I imagine that there's going to be a real overall tribute to The Wheel of Time at this event.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. What we usually do is the Q-and-A with fans, which is probably the last time they’ll get a chance at a signing like this to ask whatever they want, so we want to give them that—what it was like working with Robert Jordan, how the series came to be. A lot of times, fans are very excited to see Harriet and give her standing ovations. She was the driving force behind this—she discovered Robert Jordan as a writer and was behind The Wheel of Time getting published in the first place.
There’s a lot of tributes to her and Robert at these events, and they get pretty emotional, because for fans, these books were part of our lives. I started reading these when I was 15. I’m 37 now! The Wheel of Time has been with me longer than anything else. It’s been with me since before I wanted to be a writer, longer than I’ve known any friends that I’ve had.
Indy Week
That's got to be a hell of an emotional experience for you.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. The end it all is really weird . . . just to be at the end. And it's bittersweet, in more than one way, that I got to see it through to its ending, that I got to be part of it, but . . . this is it! There are no more Wheel of Time books to wait for. And that's a surreal feeling, to realize that it's all done now.
Indy Week
And it's got to be doubly overwhelming for you, as a fan and a writer.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. Granted, I had more time to steel myself for it. I got to read the ending Robert Jordan wrote, the epilogue . . . wow, back in 2007. I was one of the few who got to read that, to see that ending, and know how it ended.
There was still a lot of work to do, but I knew, "This is the ending, and I've got to prepare myself for it, because I know what it is."
For the fans, what they're feeling now, I started feeling it in 2007.
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Interview: Feb 18th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson finishes Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time Series with A Memory of Light (Verbatim)Indy Week
Did you know Robert Jordan personally?
Brandon Sanderson
I did not know him. I saw him once at a convention, and he was my favorite author growing up. When he passed away, I wrote a eulogy for him on my website, and by then I'd sold a book and I mentioned just how important he'd been to me, and to my development as a writer. Harriet read that, and she found it touching, so she read my book, and then called me and asked me if I'd be willing to finish the series.
Indy Week
What was your initial reaction to being asked?
Brandon Sanderson
It was complete dumbfoundedness. I could barely speak. I remember being on the phone and not even being able to go "Yeah," because it came so unexpectedly for me.
Indy Week
The closest experience I can imagine is that Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star, where he gets to take over as lead for his favorite hair metal band.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's—it's just one of those surreal things that—it just can't happen, right? This doesn't really happen to people! And yet, it did.
And yet, in saying yes, you realize, this wonderful thing I'm saying yes to, that I'm going to be part of, wouldn't have happened if my favorite author hadn't passed away. That tempers the excitement. I mean, I wish Robert Jordan had been here to write these books, not me.
I had a wonderful time being involved, but I would rather have not been involved, if that makes any sense. It's a weird mix of emotions.
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Interview: Feb 18th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson finishes Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time Series with A Memory of Light (Verbatim)Indy Week
Would you ever consider trying to finish another series, or was it more of a one-time thing for you?
Brandon Sanderson
I really feel this was a one-time thing for me. The only reason I was able to do this was because I had read the series multiple times, and had followed it since childhood. But beyond that, when I was consciously writing my own books, I had learned my style from Robert Jordan. His style and my style share a number of things. The fact that there are certain similarities is what let me to work on these books. I don't think I'd be appropriate for any other author out there. I'd just be the wrong choice.
It's not something I ever expect to do again—I loved doing it, but now it's time I give my own work its due.
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Interview: Jan 24th, 2013
Krista Holmes Hanby
When Jordan died of a rare blood disease in 2007, he left copious notes for concluding his renowned Wheel of Time series to Harriet McDougal Rigney, his wife and editor. Rigney searched for an author to finish her husband’s work and chose Sanderson after reading a heartfelt eulogy to Jordan from Sanderson's blog as well as his first Mistborn book.
Harriet McDougal
"The beautiful eulogy he wrote made me see the necessity of checking out his stuff," says Rigney. “Brandon's world—his characters and their situation—were all very clear to me. I saw that he could do it."
Brandon Sanderson
"Robert Jordan had this beautiful way of looking through someone's eyes, that when you were reading their viewpoint, you felt like you knew them," Sanderson says. "As an early writer, I would study that and say, 'How is he doing this?'"
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Interview: Feb 6th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Freelancer (Verbatim)Freelancer
Among the items from the cache of ter'angreal from Ebou Dar which were identified by Aviendha, where there more intended to be used according to Jordan's notes, but which you had to drop due to space or continuity reasons? Several were mentioned as facilitating long-distance communication.Brandon Sanderson
What was used in the story were all of the items referenced in the notes. This is not to say that Robert Jordan would not have decided to use more, but we decided to stick with what was outlined by him.Tags
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
Odds and Ends with Brandon and Maria (Verbatim)Terez
There was a signing table report on Reddit where you mentioned some research RJ had done on leatherworking, and how you worked it into Androl's character. Anything else you can tell us about that?Brandon Sanderson
I'm not sure what I can say here that will be all that interesting. While I was working on the outline for the book (what eventually became the books) Harriet found something she'd forgotten about until then. It was a photocopied stack of sheets from what appeared to be a magazine about craftsmanship. In it, a leatherworker went into depth about what he did in his art. Harriet had written across it "Jim planned to use this somewhere." We didn't know where.
Previously, in visiting Team Jordan, I'd suggested that I would enjoy having an Asha'man character who had previously been a side character that I could make into a main character. I wasn't planning to add any other characters in significant roles, but I did want an Asha'man to add some viewpoints in the Black Tower. Beyond that, I wanted as a storyteller to have a character I could use that had very little baggage, one I could develop fresh. It's something you will often find me doing in my own books, something Jim himself did, in expanding a side character in later books of a series.
They'd suggested Androl, who was basically a blank slate in the notes. I took him and made him my gateway-Talented Asha'man, and the leatherworking sequence seemed to work very well with how I'd been developing him. And that's how the Androl of these later three books came to be.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
Odds and Ends with Brandon and Maria (Verbatim)Terez
I'm guessing you're aware that RJ told a couple of fans that the Heroes had to follow the Horn no matter who blew it (and that, if the Shadow blew the Horn, there would be some kind of 'rift' in the Pattern). What's the story there?Brandon Sanderson
This is an interesting one for a multitude of reasons. I actually worked under the assumption that whoever blew the Horn would control the Heroes, going so far as to write several sequences in the last book referencing that to heighten tension that if the Horn were indeed captured things would go VERY poorly for the Light.
I was quite surprised, then, when Harriet wrote back to me on the manuscript quite energetically crossing out these lines and explaining that the Heroes could not ever follow the Shadow. I called and asked for confirmation and clarification, pointing out that it seemed otherwise from the text and from fandom interpretation. She explained that this was one of Jim's ruses, that the characters in book were wrong and repeating bad information, and that Jim had been very clear with her that it was not the case. I can only guess that these reports in fandom were cases where people asked Jim a question he could Aes Sedai his way out of, and something got muddled in the communication or the reporting somehow.
(Feel free to follow up with Harriet and Maria on this one, if you want more. Honestly, I was surprised, and it was something we had quite a dialogue on as I worked on the final book. I fought longer than I probably should for the "Shadow can use the Horn" theory.)
Maria Simons
I really can't add anything here. I thought I was led to believe (as opposed to coming up with it myself) that the Heroes really wouldn't follow the Horn if it were blown by Team Dark, but I cannot swear to that. I was unaware of the rift answer. Of course, it's possible that the Heroes themselves don't know the correct answer; they're Heroes, after all, and unless there's some Hero orientation meeting where they are filled in on all the details, they may just assume that they're always going to be Heroes, as in champions of goodness and Light.
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Interview: Feb 19th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Rob B (Paraphrased)Rob B
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
When asked why Brandon didn't write the second Stormlight novel between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light he indicated writing The Way of Kings simultaneously with The Wheel of Time nearly drove him crazy.
Rob B
(Personal note, it is amazing that he produced two quality novels under that type of pressure.)
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Interview: Feb 19th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Rob B (Paraphrased)Rob B
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Brandon also indicated that he felt selfish about asking if he could create a new character or work with a character which was mostly his own creation for the books. Harriet immediately shushed him for hinting that he was selfish for thinking such a thing, then Brandon continued to tell of the creation of Androl, which allowed him to play with the magic in ways he'd hoped (fannishly) to explore (i.e. Portals). Harriet also provided Brandon with a folder about how leathermaking works in Randland which was perfectly timed to provide Androl with more depth as a character.
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Interview: Feb 15th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - GardenGnome (Paraphrased)GardenGnome
(Concerning the crystals collapsing into the hill after the battle) Have you heard of a myth about Merlin in a crystal cave and the Holy Grail? We all know what its other name is.
Brandon Sanderson
Yes but there are many layers there. The sa'angreal was shaped like a cup (-which I did notice earlier-). And Bao the Wyld, think about the name, it sounds like Beowulf (-looks like I should read that for more theorizing-).
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Interview: Jul, 2012
John Hartness
And I basically accosted Brandon in the hallway as we were leaving the JordanCon party and said, "Do you have ten minutes?" I've used four of them already.
Brandon Sanderson
You know, I've accosted my share of people for the podcast idea. So I'm used to this. We sometimes tie people up and tow them over.
John Hartness
Yes.
Brandon Sanderson
"You podcast with us, or we won't let you go."
John Hartness
And I do have Scott W. Baker from episode two times ago in the room. And Scott's another big dude, so between us we could probably have manhandled him. It's not like a James Tuck, or anything, but . . . Anyway, so Brandon what project am I currently keeping you from?
Brandon Sanderson
The Wheel of Time–the last book of The Wheel of Time. A Memory of Light comes out January 8. I am going to go to my hotel room and work on it some more because the deadlines are pretty crazy.
John Hartness
How well I know, 'cause my deadlines are two weeks ago for revisions on book two of my series.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, yeah. And here we are sitting and chatting instead.
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Interview: Jul, 2012
John Hartness
Yes. So this is book twenty-seven?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, four hundred and thirty. No, it's book fourteen.
John Hartness
Book fourteen.
Brandon Sanderson
It is the last one, though. For those who were skeptical, it really, really is. This is the end.
John Hartness
You know, J. K. Rowling said that once.
Brandon Sanderson
Oh yeah? But then . . . she's not writing more Harry Potter is she? She's doing, like, some other thing.
John Hartness
There's this nasty rumor that there's another Potter book coming.
Brandon Sanderson
Oh really?
John Hartness
But, I have not heard it confirmed.
Brandon Sanderson
Well, you know, when they make four hundred gazillion dollars, maybe she needs to go buy another continent.
John Hartness
Right, like Australia's not enough.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, yeah. You need a couple more continents, what are you going to do? You gotta write another book, right?
John Hartness
Absolutely.
Brandon Sanderson
You only own one private fleet. I mean, the Queen has three. How can she show her face at parties?
John Hartness
Seriously. By the way, if any of Ms. Rowling's people are out there, we would love to have her on Writing Excuses and Literate Liquors . . .
Brandon Sanderson
At the same time.
John Hartness
At the same time, because I'm pretty sure that she'd have to get liquored up to hang out with us.
Brandon Sanderson
We could do it on your private fleet. It would be great . . . we could sail to your continent.
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Interview: Jul, 2012
John Hartness
So you're working on the last Wheel of Time?
Brandon Sanderson
I am.
John Hartness
How does that feel?
Brandon Sanderson
It feels really scary.
John Hartness
Yeah?
Brandon Sanderson
And well, really awesome. It's the whole thing: scary, awesome, and daunting. I don't know what to say other than that. I mean, it's the last book. I’ve been following this thing since I was fourteen or fifteen . . . whatever, 1990.
John Hartness
Wow . . .
Brandon Sanderson
I've been reading them ever since then, reading them since they came out. It's like the Wheel of Time has been the one constant throughout my entire life.
John Hartness
You weren't able to drive . . .
Brandon Sanderson
Right, I wasn't able to drive when I started reading the Wheel of Time, and now I'm almost 40, and so . . . yeah.
John Hartness
So am I, and I look a good ten years older than him. This is why I have much more encyclopedic knowledge of alcohol. Clean living (points to Brandon). Literate Liquors (points to self). So, that's awesome, and we did just come from the JordanCon party. So this thing . . . it's not even just a series of books.
Brandon Sanderson
No.
John Hartness
It's a whole culture. It's a con, it's . . .
Brandon Sanderson
People are into Wheel of Time in the same way that people get into Star Wars. It's not just a book series. There are huge communities of people. There are people that their entire friend circle is built around Wheel of Time fandom because this thing has been going for so long. It's awesome, and it's incredible.
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Interview: 2013
rohittee1 (January 2013)
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... :(
Brandon Sanderson ()
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
Thanks for the reply, I'm honestly surprised you got around to it. I've actually picked up The Way of Kings and it is a really good story so far, I am loving the awesome world you've created. It's totally taking my mind off of WoT. Anyways, thanks again for the reply, hopefully we get a sweet video game or movie soon or we at least get an updated WOT MUD.Tags
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Interview: 2013
bennmann (January 2013)
Thank you so much for AMOL. I cried, I laughed many times, I feel a sense of loss at it being over, which is all to say I will reread it many times in the years to come.
Have you addressed anywhere any of the criticisms for plot points that have popped up in reviews and on fan sites? Would you be willing to address any? For example Padan Fain's being something new that had never been in the Pattern before and yet dying before having a final confrontation with Rand or the Dark One? The TOR reviewer agreed with this point and a few others.
Brandon Sanderson ()
I will try to get to some of these questions in a spoiler-filled AMA in a few weeks, once more have read the book.
Thanks for the kind words.
Brandon
leverofsound
Sort of in line with this. On page 357 of AMoL when Cadsuane says "you have cracks in you..." Was that a reference to how you felt about the final copies of the series?
I think you did a wonderful job, but obviously it was different than it had been originally intended.
Brandon Sanderson
Sorry for the late reply.
I didn't write it that way intentionally, but you can never tell what the subconscious is working into a story.
Brandon
leverofsound
No worries. I was a week after you, so it's NBD. Thanks for the answer, and thanks, so very much, for the books.
bennmann (February 2013)
Thanks for signing this and addressing my question in Atlanta!
For the readers following along, I printed out my comment and Sanderson's reddit post above and he was awesome and humble enough to sign the print out AND TO ANSWER MY SPOILERED OBJECTION! I will put the few points from your answer paraphrased for our and the communities future reference spoiled below:
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
1. RJ left notes for many characters that were open for Sanderson expansion, but the expansion on many was not necessary. Padan Fain is one of those characters, however everything RJ left for Fain specifically for AMoL was used. 2. 'Padan Fain is a weasel' and many, many other characters deserve more words than him. 3. Fans built up several plot points that did not come to fruition and RJ even recognized this explicitly. Padan Fain is one of those characters.bennmann
Harriet also signed the comment which I feel is very fitting and thank you Harriet so much for being unified with Brandon on his work and your husband's.
I am very much more satisfied now than before you answered me verbally Brandon, thank you again so much. Keep being awesome.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Terez (Verbatim)Terez
The second time through I made sure I was last in line. There was one guy who tried to be last until I convinced him I had more questions than he did. He was asking stuff on behalf of his friend David who was ill and couldn't be there. He video-recorded it and asked Brandon to address David personally because it would 'make his world'.
Question
Robert Jordan...did he lay out all the war tactics for you, because he is a war historian, or was...
Brandon Sanderson
Actually, David, no he didn't; he didn't have an opportunity to do that. He indicated that it was supposed to be a big, long battle for the last book—basically all battle—but he didn't give us much of the tactics. There are a few things that he put in there, that he told us to do. But what we did is, we went to several experts that Harriet knows, and asked them for suggestions, and then we relied on Alan Romanczuk, who is part of Team Jordan, and we had him outline the battle tactics, which I then used to tell the story.
Question
Okay, good. Thank you. And another question:
When you got his notes, were they digitized or was it a big stack of papers?
Brandon Sanderson
It was both. I got them in digital form—the bulk of it was in digital form—but they had printed off about 200 pages of them for me, which were ones that were relevant specifically to the last book, which turned into three.
Question
Okay, and the final question is:
Are there any—and I'm sure you get this question a lot—are there any plans for any aspect of the Wheel of Time universe to keep going, maybe in another story?
Brandon Sanderson
No, we are not doing any more books. Robert Jordan specifically didn't want more books being written, so we feel it's best to both respect his wishes and stop while we're ahead. That doesn't preclude video games from being made, and so we perhaps may see films or video games or sort of things like that that will tell some of these other stories, but as for fiction, it is done. So, thank you for the questions, David, and thank you for reading.
Fan
A movie would be irritating, because it would just ruin it. They could never capture it.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Terez (Verbatim)Terez
Now, are Graendal's actions in Shara mentioned at all in "River of Souls"?
Brandon Sanderson
I don't think we talk about them.
Terez
I was just curious as to how that interacted... (crosstalk)
Brandon Sanderson
I mean, I considered...Yeah, it certainly helped with what he was doing.
Terez
Right, right.
Brandon Sanderson
But I mean...yeah. It's...
Terez
Because she totally didn't know he was there, so....
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. It certainly helped, and if I had been able to go back, and do—which I wouldn't have done—but if, you can imagine, there's a very cool interaction there, where he's there, and she's doing stuff, and he's taking advantage of it, but she's not seeing him and things like that. Like, the whole Demandred In Shara thing is awesome, because there's like twelve books worth of coolness of him being the hero...
Terez
Because all this stuff is in the notes, right?
Brandon Sanderson
What's that? Oh, some of it is, not all of it.
Terez
Oh, well yeah, because I know you said you had to kind of....you know, extrapolate a little bit...
Brandon Sanderson
I had to extrapolate a lot of the Sharan culture and things, which is where "River of Souls" came from. At the end of the day, because I was extrapolating these things, that's what made them distracting from the main plotline, if that makes sense.
Terez
Mmm, yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
And so, a lot of what I was doing was like, it you know...all of Demandred's flunkies. Jim didn't name those; they're not in the notes...but I put them in because, you know, we have to evoke this entire two years of awesomeness....
Terez
Yeah, it can't just come out of nowhere, and be nothing.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, so there's that. But yeah, it was too much me, also.
Terez
Yeah...gotcha.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Terez (Verbatim)Terez
Um...did you notice...(in a louder voice)...has everybody standing around me read the book?
Brandon Sanderson
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)
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Terez (Verbatim)Terez
The name...how do you pronounce it? Is it no-tay, or no-tie?
Brandon Sanderson
Oh, it's...you pronounce the K.
Terez
Oh, you pronounce the K!
Brandon Sanderson
....according to Alan, who is the Old Tongue expert, who corrected me on it even though I named him.
Terez
So say it!
Brandon Sanderson
k'no-tie. But Alan can correct me, because Alan is the expert.
Terez
Does it have any mythological basis that you know of?
Brandon Sanderson
No, it does not that I know of, because that one, as most of the names—not all of them, but most of them that I named, because I named him—came from me writing something in English, and saying, "Alan, give me the Old Tongue."
Terez
Okay.
Brandon Sanderson
And so, there are times where he'll find something, and I'll be like, "Oh, that sounds like this! Let's use it. Oh, this sounds like this; let's use it." Most of the time, it's...he comes up with the direct translation.
Terez
Like, Shaisam, actually...
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah.
Terez
Yeah, I mean that's easy to figure out for us, right?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. And there are some where I say, "Let's find something that feels like this..." and then, you know, of course, Perrin's hammer, right?
Terez
Yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
That's one where you're like, you know, let's find an Old Tongue translation that works for what the mythological symbolism is.
Terez
And that works well. It's hard to pronounce though.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it is a little hard to pronounce though.
Terez
Can you pronounce it?
Brandon Sanderson
MAH-HAHL-in-ear? Eh...ask Alan.
Terez
(laughs) Okay.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - Terez (Verbatim)Terez
Was Min's "three ships sailing" inspired by the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María?
Brandon Sanderson
I don't believe so. Wow, but I don't know, so I can't say on that one...
Terez
Oh, it wasn't yours?
Brandon Sanderson
Uh, no....ah...
Terez
It was in the last book: three ships sailing, insect in the darkness, red lights....
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah. It's not the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María....
Terez
Yeah, well I thought it might have been inspired by that...
Brandon Sanderson
We'll have to dig into the notes on that one.
Terez
Allllll-right.
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Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)JaimieKrycho
Brandon then came up and spoke. Here are some of the highlights:
Brandon Sanderson
"I read the WoT books all through my career, and all through college. I loved them, and at times hated them. Anyone else remember when Book 6 came out and it wasn't the end? I was not happy. I went through everything WoT fans seem to go through—the appreciation, and the transition from waiting for the ending to just letting Robert Jordan do what he wants to do.
In 2007, when he passed away, I was as surprised as anyone was. For me, I became a fantasy author in part because of my love for his books. I learned to write novels by reading his books, and I chose my publisher because it was the one that published the WoT books. So it was the end of an era. We talk about the end of the Third and the start of the Fourth—well the end of that age for me was when Robert Jordan passed away. I didn't think for a minute I would be here, five years later. It has been an amazing journey, and the last five years have been unparalleled.
I can't tell you how awesome it was to look through [Jordan's] notes and see things in the middle of their progress. As a writer, I haven't grown as much since writing my first book. It was amazing and wonderful, but over it all there was this cloud, that I couldn't have done this if my favorite author hadn't passed away. People ask me how I feel; it's a weird mix of emotions. It's probably similar to the emotions you will have reading the last page [of A Memory of Light]. It's wonderful and awesome you got to be part of this, but now it's done, and there's sadness. It's like Christmas: you've opened all your presents, and now what?"
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1198
Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)Question
My question is, are you going to tell which scenes are entirely yours and which are entirely Jordan's?
Brandon Sanderson
I'm avoiding a lot of detail until people have a chance to read the books. I'll repeat what I said before. In The Gathering Storm, if it was Egwene, a lot of those scenes were Robert Jordan. If it was Rand, a lot of those scenes were me. In Towers of Midnight, if it was Mat, a lot of those scenes were Jordan, and if it was Perrin, it was more me. Mat in The Gathering Storm was me. The Mat in Towers of Midnight was more Jordan, but a few scenes were me.
I can spin this into a larger story. I've been reading the books for 23 years. When I picked up the series, I had read Eye of the World 8 or 9 times. When each of us read a book, we bring something to it and reinforce that when we read. I have a friend who insists Thom Merrilin doesn't have a moustache. I can point out the page where it says he does and my friend says, "That line doesn't exist in my copy." This is part of the power of fiction. This is what I love about fiction. We write a script which you direct in your head. Readers have different perspectives on how much freedom they have for changing that. I say you have line item editing capability—you change it how you want and that's how I've always read.
When I came on this project, I had a lot of baggage—17 years of baggage, and I had to have some of it beaten out of me! There are various things, like some of my pronunciations. There are other things, like Tar Valon. I did not view the bridges as being as big as they are. From my perspective, you can stand on one side and see the other. No, they're like 3 miles long! They're just enormous. They are things like that I've imagined since my youth. There are some characters I interpret a certain way, and I don't think others would interpret them that way. I've tried to interpret the characters, I believe, the way Robert Jordan did, but we can argue all day on how he interpreted them, and that's what I think people don't understand. We can have a distinct argument on how he interpreted and we would both be right.
I interpreted Mat a certain way and I believe I got better at writing Mat as I went along. Mat was a really hard character because he's so complicated. What's so hard about him is that, from a narrative, he's one of the few characters in WoT whose thoughts and actions are at a disconnect. Perrin, the way he thinks and acts are in line. He doesn't [do] the same thing Mat does, where he has this big thing in his head and opens his mouth and a completely different thing comes out, and they're both hilarious. But they're at a contrast with each other in their hilarity. And this is something where if you read WoT, you see Jordan develop this character and come up with this sort of awesomeness that is Mat. And it took some writing for me to get Mat right.
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1199
Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)Question
You said in The Gathering Storm, the Rand was very dark. Was his darkness in the book hard to write?
Brandon Sanderson
Rand's darkness was certainly hard to write. But there's a piece of the writer that says when this is tough, that's good. One, you're pushing yourself. Two, if it's emotionally hard for you, and you're doing this the right way, it's going to be emotionally hard on the reader, and that's a sign that they will be emotionally invested. So yes, it was hard. How did I get into the mindset? The same way I do everything. There's actually a lot of method acting to writing, where you sit down and become that character for a time. Harriet has a story about Robert Jordan and how he did it. She could always tell.
Harriet McDougal
I could generally tell when he came in for the evening news and supper whether he had been writing a good person or a bad person. In particular there was an evening when he came in and slammed the door, and was skulking around the wall like this [hunches up against the bookshelf behind her], and I said, "You've been writing Padan Fain, haven't you?" And he said, "How did you know?" Usually he came in and said "Hello, honey!"
Brandon Sanderson
So you get in the mindset and go, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and if it doesn't, you throw it away and start again the next day.
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1200
Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)Question
Did you have a method for keeping the voice of the characters the same as the previous book?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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1201
Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)Question
When did you find time for sleep during all this?
Brandon Sanderson
It was a long, hard, 5 years. Fortunately, I work from home, and I'm able to stop work for the day, go see my family without a commute, visit with them for 3—4 hours, and then go back to work and still get in 12-hour days. That was a lot of my life, especially during the first 3 years. During the last 2, we slowed down a little bit, just because it was so hard. That's part of why the last book took 2 years—I just couldn't keep up the pace.
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1202
Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)Question
Will there ever be a WoT TV series?
Brandon Sanderson
The rights are owned by Universal Pictures and they are developing an Eye of the World feature film.
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1203
Interview: Feb 20th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - JaimieKrycho (Paraphrased)Question
The [offscreen] conversation between Tuon and Hawkwing, can you tell us anything about that?
Brandon Sanderson
I can tell you that it did take place, and that Hawkwing is more inclined to agree with what's going on in Seanchan than I think what fans expect him to be. Now, remember that Hawking was not fond of Aes Sedai. Part of that was not his fault, but he was not fond of them. He is not just King Arthur, he is Alexander the Great. King Arthur ruled through justice. Artur Hawkwing ruled through justice and ruthlessness. It will certainly be a conversation filled with emotion and passion, but I don't think everyone expecting Hawkwing to take their side is understanding who Artur Hawkwing is.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Harriet McDougal
We are often asked about the movie rights. Universal is working on a script. I have not seen it.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
How much of the story in the last three books were things Brandon had to do, and how much was laid out by Robert Jordan?
Brandon Sanderson
It's really hard at this point for me to even sometimes remember, because I've been working on it for five years now. But, a lot of the big touchstone moments, he had mentioned in his notes. Now, when I mention the notes, we have the 32,000 pages, that is obviously too much to work with. And most of that was notes for previous novels. The assistants came up with 200 pages for me, that were focused on this book. That became the core of what I worked with to make these three novels, or this book, because it's still kind of one book in my head.
And of those 200 pages, there were about a hundred pages of actual written material that he'd done. And about a hundred pages of Q&As with his assistants regarding scenes that needed to be written, or where characters needed to end up and things like that.
I would say in a given scene, there's me and there's Robert Jordan in basically everything. But, if you want something a little more specific, in Gathering Storm, Egwene's plot line, he had a lot done for. For Rand's plot line, it was more me. For Towers of Midnight, Mat's plot line he'd done a lot on, Perrin's plot line was more me. And for the last book, the beginning and the end, he'd done a lot of work on, and the middle was more me.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
There was a PC Wheel of Time game in the late 90's (of which quality we will not speak). Is there a chance of future video games in the Wheel of Time world?
Harriet McDougal
Yes, those rights are with Manetheren, and I don't know how they are coming along with the development, but it is in development.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
In the last book we see a lot less of [character X] than in previous books. Is there a particular reason for that?
Brandon Sanderson
I did everything that Robert Jordan instructed me to do with [character X], and that is what I felt was appropriate, rather than adding a lot.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Who was Hinderstap?
Brandon Sanderson
Hinderstap was me, that was one of my additions. Entered in because Harriet actually said, we need things to be scarier, it's the end of the world. Come up with some really cool bubbles of evil, Brandon. And here are some examples of things that Robert Jordan came up with. Be freaky. And I did my best.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
(Could you see a) crossover novel with the Wheel of Time and any other fantasy series?
Brandon Sanderson
The Wheel of Time already crosses over with every fantasy series because the Wheel of Time contains the multiverse philosophy, that all other worlds are shadows of the Wheel of Time world. So they're already there. Otherwise I just wouldn't want to see anything like that happen, it just wouldn't feel right to me. But that's an amusing question, thank you for it.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
This is the last stop of the tour for Memory of Light. How do you feel?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
How hard was it for you to separate the fan from the writer?
Brandon Sanderson
This was something I'd never had to do before, and it was somewhat hard at the beginning. Basically, I wanted to stay away from letting the fan control too much, because you couldn't have that. Otherwise Narg would do a cameo every other chapter and things like that. And yet, you know, I am a fan and I can't separate completely the fact there are things I wanted to see. I wanted to see a reunion between Rand and Tam. There are things that I wanted these last books to provide, and I had to listen to the fan when working on the outline and saying, "Is there an opportunity for this?, what did he instruct me to do?, what places are there things that I know as a fan I wanted for years?, and which ones are appropriate to put in?" And so I didn't completely separate, but it was something that I had to be aware of.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
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?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Having worked on this project after somebody else, how will this affect your future writing style?
Well, I think I gained a lot of insight, working on this project, and that has changed my writing style. I don't think that necessarily, the work on it normally has, because I, like I said, studied the Wheel of Time, and learned about managing influences early in my career. And yet, working on this, being able to see the things RJ did, and gaining a better admiration of some of the things that he managed to pull off. His level of subtlety and foreshadowing for example, really made me say wow, I can see what he's doing and I can see it even better, and it's challenged me to be a better writer. So, I think, as to be better at working with multiple viewpoints, lots of different characters.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Did you ever conceive of breaking the "Last Battle" chapter into sections?
Brandon Sanderson
No, I felt like I wanted you to feel like the characters felt. And that you couldn't just put your sword down and go. That was my goal.
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1215
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Is that really the end of it? Absolutely?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, that is the end. He didn't leave anything more.
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1216
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Brandon Sanderson
You were the person with the Moiraine question. RJ wrote in his notes that main purpose of Moiraine is to prevent a war between Rand and Egwene. And then she was to go with him into the Pit of Doom, but in the Pit of Doom there was nothing for her to do. And I felt bad about that, but that's what he instructed. It was hard to come up with stuff for everyone to have a part and a role. But I did what he instructed. It was a good question, people wondered. She did have an important role to play.
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1217
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Who was the hardest character for you to personify?
Brandon Sanderson
It was Mat. He's the most complex of the WOT characters, so getting him right was a real challenge.
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1218
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Egwene, was that your idea or Robert Jordan's?
Brandon Sanderson
I haven't been telling people about that one specifically. Almost all the deaths in the book were RJ's instructions, but I did choose a few of them. So, it could been either one of us.
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1219
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Was it your idea for the dead mule in the last book, or was it Robert Jordan’s?
Brandon Sanderson
That was his idea.
Question
Well he had one set of dead mules, I didn't know if you wanted to add yours and become a Southern writer too?
Brandon Sanderson
Well I can be a partial one.
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1220
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
In book 6 or 7 when Moiraine gets thrown through the portal, was it RJ's plan to bring her back in Towers of Midnight?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, he actually wrote most of the scenes that take place in the Tower of Ghenjei and afterwards.
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1221
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Who is writing the movie script for Eye of the World?
Brandon Sanderson
It's being written in house at Universal.
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1222
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
The last book had a lot of military action in it. Did you have to do a lot of research for that?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes we did. And I relied a lot on some experts that we know to give me a lot of help on that.
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1223
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
My favorite character, Elmindreda. How much of that were you fleshing out?
Brandon Sanderson
Not a ton. Just a little bit. I got to do most of her and Tuon.
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1224
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Androl—is he yours?
Brandon Sanderson
He is mine. From the beginning, I asked Team Jordan if there was an Asha'man that had a blank slate that I could take over, because I wanted to have a viewpoint in the Black Tower, and I wanted to do some of these things with gateways.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Did you have any Air Force consultation with the to'raken scenes at all?
Brandon Sanderson
That was in mind. We had a lot of military experts help us out with these books. I relied on them a lot.
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1226
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Was Robert Jordan's original draft of that as bloody as the way it came out?
Brandon Sanderson
A lot of the deaths, he didn't write any of the actual death scenes, he just indicated who lived and died. I just upped the ante somewhat. I wasn't going to have the Last Battle come without substantial losses, and so, where he didn't instruct me, this person lives, I had some measure of, yeah. And so, I did up the body count. I know he was planning to kill off a number of characters, but he also, killing people, and letting them stay dead was not one of Jim's strong suits. He was very fond of his characters, and I know there were lots that he was planning to kill. I don't think that he would have killed as many as I, maybe. I don't know. It's what we felt the story needed, in talking to Harriet and Team Jordan. Maybe he would have. I did what I thought made the best story.
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1227
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
What about Cadsuane being summoned to become Amyrlin?
Brandon Sanderson
Cadsuane was going to give up the three Oaths, and go live forever. Cadsuane's fate was not my idea.
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1228
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
Two words that I find very evocative are Dreadbane and Balescream. What's yours?
Brandon Sanderson
You can usually guess that if it's not Old Tongue, it's probably me.
Question
I mean what's your favorite word? What's the word you find most evocative from the series?
Brandon Sanderson
In the series. Let me see. Hmm. I've always liked the term Heartstone. I would think. That one is very evocative to me.
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1229
Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
From Freelancer again. Moiraine promised Thom to tell the names of the Red Aes Sedai (who gentled) Owyn. Does she ever do that?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. It's not onscreen but it does happen.
Question
And is there anybody in that list that we would be interested in?
Brandon Sanderson
I actually asked that question to Maria, and Maria said no.
Question
OK.
Brandon Sanderson
Really what I said is, "Do we want to do this, is this relevant?" She said, "No I don't think this is relevant, and it's not worth jumping through hoops."
Question
OK.
Brandon Sanderson
Because there is nothing there that's going to, yeah.
That was what came of it. Now whether that actually means, is there any name you'd recognize, you might recognize a name, but it wasn't relevant enough to jump through storytelling hoops to get that on screen, to bother with it.
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Interview: Feb 22nd, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - J. Dauro (Verbatim)Question
In the scene where Mat is going to see Queen Elayne for the first time, there are the details of him handing off the ashandarei, and all this, which I find very amazing. So when you are writing something like that, do you see the scene?
Brandon Sanderson
I do. I'm there, the question is just what I describe, and what I don't.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)zeusfireair ()
What is your favorite scene from any of your books that you've written?Brandon Sanderson
Boy...favorite scene? That's going to be tough, as anything about my books plays into the "which of your children do you like the most" mentality that authors have. It's hard to choose.
I would say either Raoden finally gaining his Elantrian powers at the end of Elantris, since it was the first scene like that I ever managed to pull off in a book, or the final Lan/Demandred sequence at the end of A Memory of Light. I had planned that one for five years, and was pushing toward it all through my work on the Wheel of Time.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)Xenokaos ()
Do you have any regrets about the Wheel of Time?Brandon Sanderson
I do wish I'd managed to either get it all into one book, or managed the split between The Gathering Storm/Towers of Midnight better. Also, I might have tried to work Fain in more if I'd had more time. Also, there are some little continuity errors here and there that I wish I would have caught.
It's hard to say. For example, would I have written Mat differently in The Gathering Storm if I'd had the time? Perhaps. But it was writing Mat the way I did that helped me understand him, so perhaps not. There are mistakes in the books I did, as there are in all the books I've done, but I'm not sure if the right thing to do is change them. Otherwise, we get into a Lucas-style revision-fest.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)Shillster ()
Why did the Heroes say they could be stopped by the One Power (wrapped up in air) when in The Great Hunt they clearly weren't affected by the damane's attacks? That seems inconsistent.Brandon Sanderson
I thought we had this wiggle room through observation of the text and what RJ had written, but it's entirely possible that I'm wrong. I'd have to go look and dig out the appropriate quotes. That entire scene, I'll admit, came from my insistence that the Heroes not be able to simply fight the Last Battle on behalf of mankind. Since RJ wasn't explicit either way, I wanted it specifically mentioned that the Heroes are there to help, not to do all the work on their own. It's a narrative point of importance to me. Perhaps I went too far. I'll ask Maria about this at JordanCon this week and see if we made an error.Tags
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)Irrell ()
Given how George R.R. Martin got Game of Thrones to come out on a TV format, if you had to choose one of your series to receive a similar exposure to television, which would you choose and why?
(For fanboy's sake I'll also include the option for Wheel of Time, R.I.P. Robert Jordan)
Brandon Sanderson
I would most certainly pick the Wheel of Time. I've been very straightforward with Universal in stating my preference that WoT be adapted for television, as opposed to the big screen. Both could be awesome, but I think the long form of a season would be better for the books.
After WoT, I'd pick Legion, which I envisioned as a show even as I wrote it.
Zdus
I see having the WOT becoming a series would be awesome if it is taken care of, for example the The song of Fire and Ice series on HBO. It would be unfair to Robert Jordan if it turns out like The Sword of Truth series did in the form of Legend of the Seeker.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, that's the danger with the TV series route. I certainly wouldn't want to see that happen.
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Interview: Sep, 2012
Cosmere Q&A - 17th Shard (Verbatim)Brendan
Now that you have finished writing WoT, how does it feel going back to telling your epic story that you have wanted to share with the world and being able to write a story naturally without the outside constraints that came with WoT? What if anything has been the biggest challenge getting back into writing Stormlight Archives after working so hard on WoT?Brandon Sanderson
It feels great, though it's a feeling I've felt before. It was the feeling I had when jumping out of the Mistborn world after finishing all three books and instead doing Warbreaker. For most of the process with the WoT, I didn't feel 'constrained' really. It was more a sense of difficulty--it was difficult to do for unique reasons. Matching RJ's story, making certain to keep characters consistent, that kind of thing. It is refreshing to move to a new project, but this one presents difficulties of its own. I have to follow up The Way of Kings, which I feel is the best book of my career so far. I poured twenty years of effort into that book. Now, the sequel needs to be equally awesome, which is a real challenge. Also, I keep wanting to use WoT curses.Tags
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Interview: Sep, 2012
Cosmere Q&A - 17th Shard (Verbatim)McCullough
In what ways do you feel that finishing the Wheel of Time helped to prepare you for The Stormlight Archive and how did it change your writing in general, if at all?Brandon Sanderson
I gained three things, I feel, by working over the years on the WoT. (And, in particular, by studying RJ's work in depth.) I learned how to better balance lots of different viewpoints, I got a better grip for foreshadowing and subtlety over many books, and I gained a deeper understanding of how to write a really sold third person viewpoint.Tags
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Interview: Nov 6th, 2012
Weller Book Works Signing - Josh & Mi'ch (Verbatim)Question
Okay Hoid, you mentioned he's in all your books, is he in also in all your shorter stories?Brandon Sanderson
He is not in all of my shorter stories. In fact, he is not in any book that references Earth. So if there's a reference to Earth- most of my science fiction has referential stuff to Earth, Alcatraz is like this. He's not in anything like that. He's not in the Wheel of Time. It would not have been appropriate for me to seed something like that into a Wheel of Time book. So he's not in Steelheart or the other children works that I've done. But he is in all my epic fantasies.
QUESTION
Now my main question actually, which magic systems, if any, does he have access to?
BRANDON SANDERSON
That's an excellent question. He is familiar with very many of them, and lots that you haven't seen yet.
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Interview: May 14th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
The origin of The Rithmatist
Six years ago, I was writing a book that I hated.
Now, that's both rare and common for me at the same time. I tire of pretty much every book I work on at some point, usually during the revision process. I push through and get over it. That's what you do as a writer. By the time I'm done with the process, I'm tired of the book—but it's the good kind of tired. The "I worked hard, and now have something awesome to show for it" tired.
Unfortunately, that wasn't happening for this book. Called The Liar of Partinel, every chapter was a chore to write. Though it had started very well, it continued to spiral farther and farther down the drain. I was familiar enough with my own writing by this point to realize the problems with Liar wouldn't work themselves out. The characters were boring, the plot forced. The worldbuilding elements never quite clicked together.
It had been years since I'd had such a bad feeling about a novel. (The last time, in fact, was Mythwalker—my sixth unpublished book&mdsah;which I abandoned halfway through.) Part of the problem, I suspect, had to do with my expectations. Liar, set in the same world as Dragonsteel, was to be the origin story of Hoid, the character who has appeared in all of my Cosmere novels. (Information here—warning, big spoilers.)
I needed Hoid's story to be epic and awesome. It just wasn't. And so, I ended up "hiding" from that novel and working on something else instead.
The Rithmatist. It started with some drawings and a purely creative week sketching out a world, characters, and magic. That week is the exact sort that turned me into a writer in the first place, and was a distinct contrast to the grind that had been Liar. I abandoned the book and dove into The Rithmatist (then called Scribbler), and wrote a book where everything just came together. It happens sometimes. It just works, and I can't always explain—even to myself—why.
I finished the first draft of the book in the summer of 2007. In the fall, I got the call regarding the Wheel of Time, and my world transformed forever. The Rithmatist, though an awesome book, languished for years because I didn't have the time to devote to it. Doing a tour or contract for another teen book was impossible at that time, and beyond that I couldn't commit to writing any sequels or even doing any revision for the novel.
I did tell Tor about it, though, and they started to get excited. The publisher tried several times to get me to release it, but I didn't feel the time was right. I couldn't let my attention be divided that far. I was already stretched too thin, and I wanted my attention (and that of my readers) to be on the Wheel of Time.
The month A Memory of Light was done and turned in, however, I called Tor and told them it was time to move forward. I'm pleased to be releasing the book now, when I can give it the attention it deserves.
And hopefully someday I'll be able to fix The Liar of Partinel. (At this point, I'm feeling I need to rewrite it as a first-person narrative, though making that switch is going to cause an entire host of problems.)
Anyway, thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoy The Rithmatist.
Brandon
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1239
Interview: Jun 20th, 2013
Joel Williams
What was it like to take on the project of finishing Jordan's series? Did you have any idea what you were you getting into? Did any unexpected challenges come up?
Brandon Sanderson
I certainly did not know what I was getting into. I started reading these books when I was 15, back in 1990, and I've loved them ever since. So I was aware of the complexity of the series and I understood how excited people were, but I didn't know how much or little Mr. Jordan finished before he passed away. So on the one hand I had an inkling, but on the other I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Famously, before he passed away, Jordan had been telling fans that this book would be so big that they would have to sell luggage carts to get them out of the bookstores. He was planning an enormous, epic finale to his series. That's what I was anticipating. When I got the notes it was all there, in theory. The notes indicated a great epic book. But not a whole lot had been done yet. He had written some important scenes, but most things were just outlines or pre-outlines. A project that I expected to take year and half, ended up taking up five years of my career in order to do it right.
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1240
Interview: Jun 20th, 2013
Joel Williams
You mention that started reading the books at the age of 15. As a fan of the series, did you ever think you'd be the one called upon to finish the series?Brandon Sanderson
It completely blew my mind. When Robert Jordan passed away I made the choice that I didn't want to be the literary version of an ambulance chaser. So I said to my agent, we're not going to pursue this. I would love to do it, but I don't think it's appropriate. When I got called about it, it completely blindsided me. I had consciously decided I wasn't even going to let myself consider it. I never thought I'd be here where I am. I've gotten to participate in the dreams and vision of an author that inspired me to be a writer in the first place. That's been incredible, but if you had asked me what are the chances of doing something like this, I wouldn't have given myself any reasonable chance.Tags
1241
Interview: Jun 20th, 2013
Joel Williams
Are you concerned because you were a fan, you put something in that might've been cut by Jordan? Are you confident you ended it the way he wanted it?
Brandon Sanderson
There were a lot of holes in the notes. I had to put in scenes where I don't know if Jordan would've put it in. We're different writers. The idea was to capture the feel, the mood, the tone. [Jordan's widow] Harriet was also his editor. She discovered Jordan when she was working as an editor and then she married him. I like to joke that it's one way to make sure your editorial advice is taken. If I strayed, Harriet would let me know. She has the final say. And we've been upfront about it, I'm not ghostwriting this. I'm a coauthor. There wasn't enough done to be finished off by a ghostwriter, it needed somebody to fill in holes. That's why I was brought on and that's what I've been doing.
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1242
Interview: Jun 20th, 2013
Joel Williams
When you were working on this project did it all feel like you were cheating on your world? Maybe feel like you were cheating on a spouse?
Brandon Sanderson
[Laughs] That's an interesting way to put it. Not cheating on a spouse, but cheating on my hobbies. I was still able to release Way of Kings, which is my big capstone epic I'd been working on up until that point. I was still able to do a book in the Mistborn sequence. I had to put a lot aside, but it didn't feel like I was cheating because I view these characters as closely to my own as possible. Beyond that Jordan, even though I never knew him, was a mentor to me. His writing is what I studied when I was trying to figure out how to be an author. I picked up Wheel of Time and tried to figure out, how is he doing this? I wouldn't have said yes to anything else, but I said yes because it was Wheel of Time and I was so familiar and attached to these characters.
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1243
Interview: Jun 20th, 2013
Joel Williams
It's all coming to end, for yourself as well as the millions who read the books. What does that mean to people reading the books?
Brandon Sanderson
I can get a sense for it because I felt it myself in 2007. When I first was offered the project, and we signed contracts and I flew to Charleston where Harriet lives and I read the last scene that Jordan had written. The last scene in the book and the epilogue are his writing. I read that and got the same sense fans are having now. Having been on a long journey, with many wonderful experiences along the way, and having time to think about what it meant and why you loved it so much. It's bittersweet, when a journey is done. There's a sense of loss and regret. I felt it back then and I suspect that's what a lot of fans are going to be feeling.
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1244
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
How many of you guys read the books in 1990, anyone here? That's a surprising number. Man, it's been a long road, hasn't it? You know, being a Wheel of Time fan is a really interesting experience. I don't know if any of you guys felt this, but it seems like everyone I talk to has like at least one period of extreme rage toward Robert Jordan.
Harriet McDougal
[laughter] Never!
Brandon Sanderson
It's weird isn't it? We love the series, we love him, and yet this is honest truth. My friend Micah and I, my roommate—he actually took my jacket photos, you can go look. It's Captain Demoux from the Mistborn books I named after him, Micah DeMoux. For years in the late 90s, early 2000s, any time someone said Robert Jordan's name—[to Harriet] I don't know if I told you this—we both raised our fists in the air and said, damn him! [laughter] In unison. He still does it. I can't do it anymore. But yeah, we did it in unison. It was like a thing for us because, you know, it's like this series is never ending. We love it, yet at the same time it's been ups and downs over the years, and the Wheel of Time has followed me through my career.
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1245
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
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]
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1246
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
But in 2007, Robert Jordan passed away. And I had never met him. I had been able to see him once at a convention, but I had never met him. All this time I viewed him as a mentor, but I didn't know him. We had sent him my first book. He got all sorts of ARCs, though. Harriet later found it. Everyone sends their book to Robert Jordan, right? And you know, when you get your first book . . . I just sent him a book because, you know, of course you're going to send your idol a book. But I never expected him to read it, and it was perfectly all right. But we did send him a book, we did dig it out later.
And I was terrified for what would happen to the series, as everyone was. But I trusted Tor. I trusted Robert Jordan, and I assumed that the series was in good hands, even though I had read many interviews where he said if he passed away the series would not be finished, and that he would have his notes bulldozed. And in 2007, about a month or so maybe—maybe less than that—after he passed away, I got a phone call. And I'm actually going to let Harriet tell her story now of where that all came from.
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1247
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Harriet McDougal
So anyway, that was the beginning, and I really was quite sure. But I do have remnants of common sense, and I called the British publisher and said, do you have any suggestions? And I called an editor in New York whose opinion I trust and said, do you have any suggestions? Anybody better out there? And that went on for a number of weeks while I stewed on this decision a bit.
And then I called Brandon Sanderson. And I didn't do the professional thing and say, hey Tor, give me his number. I thought Provo, Utah, that's got to be . . . that big. I called information, and I got a woman who answered the phone. I said, is this Brandon Sanderson's house? She said, yes it is. And I said well, my name's Harriet McDougal, and I'm the widow of Robert Jordan, and I'd like to talk to him about finishing the series that my husband wrote. And she said, I have no idea what you're talking about. [laughter] It was the other Brandon Sanderson.
Brandon Sanderson
He's a wrestler. [laughter] That's all I know about him. Google mixed us up. Bing mixed us up. [laughter]
Harriet McDougal
So anyway, then I called New York, got the right number, and called Brandon.
Brandon Sanderson
And so I got up in the morning . . . Now, I keep an artist's schedule. That's a nice way of saying that I sleep in till noon. I work from about . . . I do a lot of my writing from about ten until four a.m., and then I sleep until about noon, and then I get up. And then I work from about noon until five, doing mostly during that time email and things like that. But anyway, so I get up, and every day when I get up, the first thing that I do is I check my voicemail. I used to—now I let people call my assistant. Voicemail annoys me. I'll answer it if it's Harriet.
But I listened to my voicemail, and there was a voicemail that said, 'Hello Brandon, this is Harriet McDougal. I would like you to call me back. There's something I'd like to talk to you about.' And she said . . .oh, 'Robert Jordan's widow', but I already knew who Harriet McDougal was. And so, I just got this voicemail, I'm like, what . . . what? Now, you’ve got to remember, it's not like I applied for this or anything.
Harriet McDougal
No.
Brandon Sanderson
I did not. And it's not like I had any clue. I honestly assumed that it was taken care of, and it was just a fan wanting to read what came out, just like everyone else. And so I called Harriet back, and she didn't answer. She was out having a massage.
Harriet McDougal
Yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
So I called my editor, and he didn't answer. But he never answers, so it's okay. But then I called my agent, who always answers, and he didn't answer. And so I wandered upstairs to my wife and I—this is one of those distinct memories that get kind of burned in your brain—and I walked into the bedroom, and she was folding clothes or something, and I said, Robert Jordan's widow just called me. And my wife is like, what?
Because, when we got married, we exchanged books. She had to read the Wheel of Time, and I had to read Robin McKinley—Robin McKinley's book is like that. But she was well versed in the Wheel of Time. She'd actually read Eye of the World before we got married, so that was a point in her favor early in the dating process. She hadn't read the whole series, which she has done now. And she said, so what did Robert Jordan's widow want? And I said, I don't know, I can't get a hold of her!
And so my wife . . . she said she's never seen me that nervous. And she really hasn't. I'm not the nervous type. I'm very comfortable with lots of different situations. I'm just kind of a go with the flow sort of guy. If you get my wife up here, she says that on that day, I was more nervous than on my wedding day—she says that jealously.
[laughter]
But I had months to get ready for the wedding. This was out of nowhere, right? It just came out of nowhere. And I finally got smart, and I called up Tor. And I got a hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who is one of the editors there. And I said, Patrick, Robert Jordan's widow just called me. And Patrick said—I remember this distinctly, too—oh yeah, that's probably what you think it is. [laughter] I'll have her call you back. And I'm like, what do I think it is, Patrick? He wouldn't say a word. He would not say a word. He knew Harriet very well and knew that he did not want to be breaking any news. And so, Harriet called me back, and she said, well, I was just wondering if you would be interested . . . we're compiling a short list.
Harriet McDougal
Yes, a short list. [laughter] But, that's not what I said. We're compiling a short list.
Brandon Sanderson
A short list of people we're considering, and I'm wondering if you would be interested in finishing the Wheel of Time. And I said, aaahhhhhhh. [laughter] I always say this, and everyone laughs, but really it's true. I don't know if Harriet remembers it, but I could not speak. I had to write her an email the next day in which I said, I promise I can form coherent sentences. I was completely unable to reply to her. I did get out a 'yes'.
Harriet McDougal
Yes.
Brandon Sanderson
But that was about it. I was just stuttering and things. And then that night, it hit me. That night I couldn't sleep, as one might imagine, and I came to the realization—a couple of realizations. The first one being, holy cow, if I screw this up . . . [laughter] It's going to be the worst disaster of my life. Both personally, because I love these books, and because I know there's like ten million fans who will all find out where I live and then they will . . .
Harriet McDougal
And they'll write things that begin, Sanderson who . . .
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. And I thought if I screw this up, and it kind of went further than that with me thinking, how can I not screw this up? Because the only person who could write this the right way is Robert Jordan, and anyone who tries to write the book is going to screw it up to an extent, because it won't be one hundred percent his vision, the way it was supposed to be.
And I still believe that. I think we got really close. I think we made fantastic books. I think we did a wonderful job. I'm very proud of my work, but at the same time I acknowledge it's not quite what he would have done. There's no way for me to do what he would have done.
And so I debated calling and saying no, because I thought, nobody can do this. It is impossible to do this work. And something stopped me. Kind of the third realization of the night, which was: What would happen if I said no, and they went and they hired somebody who didn't love the series? What would happen? And there are a lot of writers out there who are better than I am. I will be up front with that. I know many a writer who were much better writers than I, but none of them had read the Wheel of Time. Maya Angelou hasn't read the Wheel of Time, you know. And . . . what would happen if one of them took over the Wheel of Time, and then wrote it beautifully, but didn't get the characters right? And didn't do the book the right way? It would be my fault. Because I said no, and I could have done it.
And I came to the realization that if Robert Jordan couldn't write the books, as a writer myself, yes I wanted to do it, because I really felt that I would screw it up the least. I felt—maybe some of you have felt something like this—like, I'm going to do it myself. And I had these moments of, yes I will do this, and I will do this myself. And I will make sure that everyone who's out there like me, terrified of what's going to happen, that they get the book, and it's the right book—that it's still the Wheel of Time.
And so, that's when I wrote that email to Harriet the next day and I said, yes I want to do this. And I was very straightforward that time—no hemming and hawing this time—I really want to do this. I think I can do it, not as well as Robert Jordan, but better than anyone else out there. Because, if you take Wheel of Time fandom—and there are bigger Wheel of Time fans than me—but if you take all of Wheel of Time fandom, and you take pretty good fantasy writers, and you make a Venn diagram, I'm right there in the middle.
And so I said yes. And then Harriet said, well I need a little more time to consider, which is justified. And I went on book tour, completely nervous for an entire month, not able to tell people that I had been offered the chance to work on the Wheel of Time . . . maybe.
After this nerve wracking book tour, which—yeah, one of those tours. I was very early in my career—that was one of those tours where I would go to bookstores, and sometimes nobody would be there. And they would have not have ordered in the books, because they’re like, who are you again? And things like this. I got back, and Harriet called me and said, yes I would like you to do this.
In a few weeks, we had all contract negotiations done. Contract negotiations went like this. My agent—who I do love by the way—even though I . . . His job is to offer me the business side, right? Because I'm an artist. My agent said, okay we'll do some negotiations, and this is our bargaining ground, and this . . . And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We just say yes. [laughter] And he's like, well we could try to push for this, and I'm like no, no, no, no. We say yes. And so he had to call back right after the offer and say, we say yes. The shortest negotiation of my entire life. I had contracts in hand like lightning speed. When we got the offer on my first book, offer came in April. We had contracts in November. Offer on this came on Monday, and I think we had contracts on Thursday, or something like that. And within a week, I was flying to Charleston.
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1248
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
And I . . . I tell this story a lot, but it's a fun story. I flew in. Harriet herself picked me up at the airport. I had been really nervous to meet Harriet—like, you know, really nervous. I knew Harriet . . . like, she was one of the big editors in the field, and authors have this kind of—even, you know, published authors—are sometimes kind of scared of editors, right? And Harriet . . . I don't know if you guys know . . . I mean, she edited Ender's Game, okay? She edited—and discovered—Robert Jordan, and she's behind the two biggest books in fantasy and science fiction of the last 30 years—Ender's Game and Eye of the World. So I was really nervous.
And so I'm like . . . and then I meet her, and as you can tell, she's like this wonderful, just so nice, awesome person. It was such a relief. I'm like, oh good. I actually called Emily that night and I'm like, ahh, I didn't need to be worried. Like, take your favorite grandmother and mix her with a southern gentlewoman and you have Harriet.
Harriet McDougal
I've hidden the whips.
[laughter]
Brandon Sanderson
And she drove me to the house there in Charleston, which is this wonderful house, built in the 1700s, right?
Harriet McDougal
Barely. 1798.
Brandon Sanderson
And we walk in the door, and Harriet had been cooking dinner, and it was a bean soup. I still remember all these things where she said, well I put some soup on, and I can warm it up, and would you like to have some food? And I said, I would like the ending, please.
[laughter] [applause]
Because I didn't know . . . You know, I just signed the contracts without knowing. You know, you guys work for Microsoft, NDA stuff, you got to say yes first, and then you get the NDA, and then you get to be a part of it.
And so, I knew that there was an ending, because Robert Jordan had talked about writing the ending. I knew, and Harriet had confirmed, the ending had been written. And so I walked in, and it was like ten o'clock at night. But I got that ending, and I sat down in the front room—sitting room—and I read what you now have as primarily the epilogue of A Memory of Light. Almost all the epilogue was in there.
Also contained in there were several big important scenes from the prologue, which we split among the three prologues. There were a couple of the really cool scenes in there. There was the Tower of Ghenjei. There was a place where Egwene gets a special visitor, and—I think it's called A Cup of Tea—that scene, but really it was the ending that I wanted to read.
Harriet McDougal
And there's the blank in the blank.
Brandon Sanderson
There's the blank in the blank, yes, which is in the prologue of A Memory of Light—one of the prologue sequences. And I read all of this and read his ending, which you now have in your hands.
And Harriet afterwards—she said, well what do you think? And I said, it was satisfying. That was my word for it. It was the right ending. I felt a huge sense of relief. In a lot of ways, there wasn't a lot there. There were 200 pages, and so it wasn't huge. But at the same time, it was a huge relief to me, because the ending had been done, and it had been done right. And my job, then, was not so impossible, because all I had to do was get from well-written book to well-written ending without screwing it up too much.
And having that ending in hand is really what has made this possible, and made me able to work on these books in a way that I really feel conformed to Robert Jordan's vision for them, because I knew where he was going. And I tend to work from an ending—that's how I write my books, is I always have the ending in mind first. And so, that is the story of how you came to get A Memory of Light. And it has been an awesome and daunting and horrifying and extremely hard and wonderful experience all in one.
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1249
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
People like to ask, how does it feel to be done? It feels like—I can only imagine—finishing a marathon. My wife has done one, and she's talked about how finishing one feels. It's like that. It's been a marathon of five years for me, and for a lot of us, a marathon of 23 years. And setting down that weight has been a relief, but again, it's something I couldn't set down until I was sure it was right. And I feel really good about what's happened. I'm very proud of my place in this, and very honored by my opportunity to work on it.
And that's what I wanted to share with you guys. That's my presentation, so to speak. But we are going to do some questions. We have about 20 minutes left for questions. And so I'm going to go—there are three hands that went up really fast, and I'm going to go through these questions. Go ahead.
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1250
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
Okay, will you come up and use the mic? Because then the people who are listening can hear what you have to say. They're sitting at their cubicles furiously producing new Microsoft Word products for me to write books with, so . . .
Question
It's a short question. Did you ever finish the book?
Harriet McDougal
No. [laughs] But I've read . . .
Question
It was a tease. That’s why I thought it was. Because you didn't say you did or did not. But you read 47 pages, but you didn't finish it, right?
Harriet McDougal
No.
Question
And still have not?
Harriet McDougal
But how many pages of Brandon Sanderson have I read now? [laughs]
Brandon Sanderson
It was very interesting working with Harriet during that first year. She's talked about this a little, but she considered getting somebody working on the book to be like a dying request of Robert Jordan's. And once she found me and gave me the stuff, she basically disappeared for a year. And if any of you have lost someone dear to you, you might understand why that was.
I worked for a year basically in seclusion, getting all the notes ready and working on the outline and things, and it wasn't until after that year that Harriet came on board. And you know, she's an editor, and she needs something to work on, done, before . . . So she left me with it for that year, and grieved. And then, that next year is when we worked on Gathering Storm, after I had worked on some prose and things.
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1251
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Question
All right, and second question. Without being too terribly spoilerific, what's the one thing you wanted to find out, and didn't?
Brandon Sanderson
There is an event in the epilogue, that one of the characters performed something that seems impossible by our understanding, and Robert Jordan did not explain how or why.
Question
That's fair. All right. I’ve got my own fan theories, and they'll just stay there. Thanks.
Brandon Sanderson
Uh huh.
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1252
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Question
I actually do have a spoiler question, and I don't know . . .
Brandon Sanderson
Okay, why don't you save that till afterward and come ask us.
Question
Okay. But I do want to say that your answer to his question there makes a whole lot more sense now—that you didn't know that . . .
Brandon Sanderson
I do not know either.
Question
Okay.
[laughter]
Brandon Sanderson
Nope, sorry. When I say he wrote the epilogue, he wrote the epilogue. And he left notes on a lot of things, but he didn't leave notes on the things he'd already finished, because we didn't need to know how to write those.
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1253
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Question
So, you already spoke to how daunting taking over the Wheel of Time is, and what an extensive series it is. One of the most impressive and interesting things to me in it is there's more than, I believe, 1700 named characters.
Brandon Sanderson
So, you already spoke to how daunting taking over the Wheel of Time is, and what an extensive series it is. One of the most impressive and interesting things to me in it is there's more than, I believe, 1700 named characters.
Brandon Sanderson
There's 2500.
Question
2500. That's even more than I thought.
Brandon Sanderson
It's crazy.
Question
What is a fantasy author—since you can't just look in the phone book or something to grab a name—how do you find your inspiration for names for characters?
Brandon Sanderson
It really depends on the book I'm writing. For some of my books, I use interesting linguistic quirks that interest me. I've taken a number of linguistics classes, and so for instance, for Warbreaker I used just something simple like repeating consonant sounds, so we ended up with Vivenna and Susebron, to give a theme to some of the name. In Way of Kings, symmetry is holy, and so I use palindromes or one-letter-off palindromes as names, and that's where a lot of names came from in there.
For Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan actually did look in the phonebook. The reason for this being is he wanted to harken to our world with the Wheel of Time, implying the Wheel of Time is perhaps our world in the future or in the past. And so he wanted names that felt like names of people you knew, but changed a little bit. And this is where things like "Thom" came from, spelled with an "H", or Mat, with you know, and all of this stuff.
And so he would go through the phonebook looking for common names and tweak them. And so for Wheel of Time naming, I got lists of names. I just had fans' names, and I just used these names and tweaked them, in order to try and get the same style and feel of naming.
One trick—if you're having trouble with this—that a lot of writers use, is they will pick a geographic area in our world, and they will base the names off of those geographic names. Like they'll say . . . I've used actually ancient Persian. I'm like, ancient Persian names, sure. And then I'll go and look at those and I will change them to fit my characters. But that way, everyone from the same region has a similar naming paradigm. So, there's all sorts of things that you can do.
Question
Thank you. That was the most informative explanation of naming I've heard.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah.
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1254
Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
So, we'll do these two last questions, and then I'll talk a little bit more about books that we have for sale, and then we will bid you farewell.
Question
Okay. I'll be quick. Just first, thanks both of you all again. This has been an amazing adventure. The other question is: So, is there any chance, or is the door open for the Wheel of Time story to be told in other forms of media, so like movie or television some time in the future?
Harriet McDougal
The motion picture rights have been sold to Universal, and they are working on development of The Eye of the World as a first movie. I am told that they're working on a second draft of the script. I haven't seen word one.
Question
Awesome. Thank you.
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Interview: Feb 13th, 2013
Question
Actually, similar question, though slightly broader scope. So Robert Jordan . . . well, I should say the Wheel of Time computer game came out mid 90s. I personally wasn't too fond of it, but I'm hoping that other computer games and things like that based on that world will come out. Any plans for that, is signed publishing . . .
Harriet McDougal
The game rights . . . Well, forgive me, I think they're doing business as Manetheren. They were Red Eagle. It's the same people. It's just a change of the moniker. And they're working on it
.Question
You know that . . . we haven't heard any press about it. Is there any details available on the net?
Harriet McDougal
I don't know.
Brandon Sanderson
Not that we know. No major movement right now.
Question
And last, when's your Mistborn computer game scheduled to come out?
Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn we pushed back until 2014 because we worried that we don't have specifics about the potential new console releases in 2013, and we figured we would rather be . . . A lot of you are like, hmm, I can't say anything. [laughter] We figured we would rather be a newer title on the new consoles than a title that got lost in the shuffle of all the hype about a potential 720 or things like that.
Question
Sound reasonable. Thank you.
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Interview: Apr 21st, 2013
Invisible Vanguard
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?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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Interview: 2013
Magick8Ball (March 2013)
Sanderson AMA? I know he already did one about a year ago, but I remember hearing he was planning on doing another AMA a couple months after the last book came out so we could ask some wrap-up questions. Is this still in the works?
Brandon Sanderson ()
As mentioned in this thread elsewhere, I will be doing it on the 15th of April. I chose the date so there would be time for those waiting for the ebook to at least have a chance to read some before the AMA.
I chose /r/fantasy because the mod there has been asking me for some time, and I feel he does a wonderful job with the community. However, I intend this to be for AMOL, and will happily answer WoT questions.
I'm always willing to answer questions when people find me in a thread, however, and have something they want answered. If you have one or two now, I'd give you a reply (do use the spoiler tags if needed).
ilostmyfirstaccount
I'm trying real hard to think of a question to ask you that I know you can answer but the ones I have, you've already stated that they are meant to be unanswered.
So instead I'll just take this opportunity to thank you for an epic conclusion to a large portion of my life. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. So thank you for your part in that magnificent ending.
Brandon Sanderson
It was an honor. I say that a lot, but I mean it.
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Interview: 2013
chaosgeneral (March 2013)
Just wanted to say, I love the way you interact with the community. I have only started reading your books in the past year or so (and I've read them all already), and I love your writing style.
When it comes to Wheel of Time, I think you nailed it, Jordan's books got a bit muddy and slow towards the end, but as soon as I get to your 3 it becomes exciting and I honestly think your wrote it better than Robert could have.
Brandon Sanderson
I doubt I deserve that particular compliment, but thank you for the kind words.
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Interview: 2013
iwasazombie (March 2013)
Hey Brandon! I'm the redheaded dude who was helping at the last two Midnight Release parties, and I am actually at BYU right now. I have two questions:
I know you've said you can't answer these directly, so, rather than give the "official" answer, I was wondering if you could give us your "fan theory" on the answer, as if you weren't the writer.
What do you think about Mat, Rand, and Perrin keeping certain "abilities"? I know you've said that they may or may not still be ta'veren, and Perrin thinks they aren't, but can Perrin still talk to wolves? Is Mat still lucky? Does Mat still have his memories?
In your opinion, who do you think Nakomi was? Do you like the "Nakomi is the avatar of the Creator theory"? Do you think of her as the third member of the Christian godhead?
Finally, Harriet was quoted as saying that she thinks Rand's special ability at the end was a "new magic"? Do you agree? Or do you think it is something else?
Thanks for being awesome!
Brandon Sanderson
1. Perrin can still talk to wolves. That is certain. Also, Mat keeps his memories. These two are official, not theories on my part. What I can't give official on is the ta'veren-ness of the guys. I don't think RJ ever even says in the notes. Me? I think they aren't.
2. I'm too close to this one. I can't say, unfortunately. I can answer as a fan for things I don't know because it's not in the notes, or for things I could theorize about before I came onto the project. For things I learned about while working, I don't have a "fan" perspective, only a writer perspective. Sorry.
3. Harriet is more likely to be right than I am, but I don't believe it is a new magic. I think it is a result of Rand touching the Pattern directly.
iwasazombie
Awesome! So, I'm still unsure about Mat's luck. Would you say that's part of his "ta'veren-ness?"
Thanks for the great answers. I'm more at peace now with some of the previous answers you've given.
Brandon Sanderson
My gut tells me Mat still has his luck, but not to the extent he once had. But I have no foundation for this in the notes.
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Interview: 2013
RockguyRy (March 2013)
I want to echo comments about how wonderful of a job you did juggling this epic and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion.
I do have one question: Was the inclusion of Dannil always planned in your mind or did your re-read of WoT and seeing Jordan's notes on the potential main fourth character revive him? I have to say, seeing him—after knowing his importance from your discussion during the re-read—was one of the dozen moments that made me tear up.
Brandon Sanderson
My upping (by just a slight amount) of this character's place in the last few books came exactly because of the reasons you mentioned. It was not planned until I had conversations with Harriet about the character, and I came to have a specific affection for him because of them.
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Interview: 2013
depricatedzero (March 2013)
I can't wait! I had a couple questions I posted asking for another AMA from you a couple months back. I'll reword them here to be more concise, if you feel up to answering.
My questions are more Mistborn related than WOT, so wouldn't be entirely appropriate to the topic of your planned AMA. I got into Mistborn after reading The Gathering Storm—it's now my favorite series, above even WOT. Anyway, my point is this: you gained a number of fans through the Wheel of Time.
So first: Do you feel like your work on WOT has overshadowed your other works at all?
Second: Any plans you can share for the future of the Mistborn series?
And third: Looking back, how was the ride? Were there moments where you despaired of finishing it, or was it a constant fanboy-rush?
Brandon Sanderson
First: It probably has right now. I have no problem with that. Being able to work on the Wheel of Time was a literal dream come true for me. If, at the end of my career, the thing I'm remembered for most is being involved with something I love, then I'll be happy I'm being remembered at all. That said, I hope to create some things in my own life that are worth remembering.
I don't know if I can or should strive for the height of popularity the Wheel of Time reached. But I never did get into this for popularity. I did it, and do it, to tell the stories I like telling—and whether one overshadows another isn't a very big deal to me.
2) I do want to get to the modern day trilogy eventually, but more and more, I've been itching to do a few southern continent books. They have a cool way of interacting with the magic.
3) In working on any book, there are many moments of beating your head against the wall. There were a particularly large number of those working on these books—they were far more difficult to do than my own work. The ride was a great one, but was not without its moments of frustration as things weren't clicking, or I missed something important and had to rewrite to get it in, or a character just wouldn't come out right.
depricatedzero
Wow, thank you for the thoughtful reply. I had the pleasure of meeting you at a Towers of Midnight signing, and one thing I keep thinking about it is how truly happy you appeared being there. Every other author I've met seemed to take signings as a chore, and they always felt rushed, dispassionate even. Talking to you, I got the feeling you really enjoyed being there and getting to be a part of the series. Like a fan living his dream. I thought that was amazing.
As my questions go, I like trying to stir thought. It struck me that that's a situation I couldn't even conceive of being in, but which must have some impact and consideration. I already hold a deep respect for you, and that just vindicates it.
As Mistborn goes, again it's my Favorite series. Not just of yours, capital F. You've replaced Orson Scott Card as my favorite author with it. That's a massive tease haha, I would love to read either one. Can you say more about the way they interact with the magic on the southern continent?
And on point 3: That sounds like my job - programming. Haha. I can entirely understand that.
Thanks for answering!
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1262
Interview: 2013
Fencinator (March 2013)
If you're still hanging around, there's something that's been nagging at me since I read A Memory of Light.
SPOILER
Lan. Why is it that Lan ended up surviving? Was this your decision, or RJ/Harriet's? Lan has pretty clearly been building towards dying to the Shadow the entire series. Was it just too obvious of a move? That being said, it was one of my happiest moments when he stood back up. Kinda nice to see Lan stay an unstoppable juggernaut.Brandon Sanderson
Lan's survival was mandated by RJ. It was something we could have changed, in that he didn't say directly "don't kill him", but some of his notes talk of what happens after the Last Battle, and those involve Lan. It is clear to me that he wanted Lan to live. I took comments like this as mandates unless there were very good reasons to do otherwise.
Note that I have not weighed in on whether Lan died or not. The position some fans have theorized (that he died, and Rand changed the Pattern) is defensible. Some asked me about it on tour. I haven't said whether it is the case or not.
And, because I have more leeway with such things now, here are some nice quotes for you directly from RJ's notes regarding what happens to Lan and the Borderlands following the Last Battle.
"Malkier might have a lot of uniting to do with the western end of the Borderlands under Lan, who will find himself made king out there . . ."
"The Blight recedes to some extent, I'm not sure how far, it recedes a good bit, though. And they can reclaim some, I'm not sure they can reclaim all of Malkier at this point, but the Blight has visibly retreated so they can go down there and check on the towers on the Blight Border. And they are miles inside the Borderland now, instead of being right on the Border, towers sitting right on the edge of the Blight. They're not on the Blight anymore."
So, talk that the Blight is completely gone isn't true, though it does retreat. (And there are other pockets of land in the north where it is not present.)
Fencinator
Thanks! I would love to say that I responded like a normal 20-year old would and was mildly happy about getting this extra information. However, instead, I squealed in glee. So thank you for bringing me squeal amounts of joy, Mr. Sanderson.
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Interview: 2013
Kintanon (March 2013)
Why, of all of the people in the internet, do you have 'Novice Writer' as your flair? I mean, I understand that you don't have the ungodly library of titles to your name that someone like David Weber or Piers Anthony does, but I think once you write more than 1 best seller you have to at least upgrade that to 'Professionla Writer' or at least 'Journeyman Wordsmith' or something!
Also, I must give you many many many thanks for the way you handled completed the Wheel of Time series. I admit to being overcome with trepidation when I heard that you were going to be completing the series because while I really really really liked the Mistborn novels, then didn't seem quite in line with the feel of Jordan's universe. I was worried. But you handled the completion of a series that has been with me since middle school incredibly well and brought everything to a satisfactory conclusion in some an artful manner that it was never at any time obvious that Jordan himself wasn't penning every word.
I'm looking forward to more of your works in the future now more than ever.
Brandon Sanderson
See elsewhere in the thread why I chose that flair, but I've been persuaded that at this point, "novice writer" was strange enough on me to be out of place. So I've gone ahead and changed it.
Working on the Wheel of Time was one of the great pleasures of my life. Thanks for the kind words.
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Interview: 2013
anotherface (March 2013)
Brandon has written 18 books in the last 8 years.
Robot jokes aside, there are three possible explanations for this:
- Brandon writes just over two books every year for 8 years. That's not impossible, but given the size of the work in question it's very difficult.
- Brandon had already written lots of these books in draft form prior to the publication of Elantris/Mistborn. These currently published titles were written in that time period. (He alludes to this in his writing of The Way of Kings).
- (Tin foil hat time!) Brandon isn't just one person, but several people working under the Sanderson name with him having the final say/edit. This one is entirely unsubstantiated and given that it's 18 books and not 30 I'm not inclined to believe it.
Brandon Sanderson
You're pretty close on several of these points. I generally write two books a year—a big one and a small one. This is a habit I fell into during my early, unpublished years. I'd do one longer epic fantasy and one shorter "breather" novel to try something new or to keep myself fresh.
Off the cuff, here's how I think it breaks down. (Elantris was finished long before, in 2000.) There's one year of three shorter books instead of an epic. (That was the year I tried to write a book called the Liar of Partinel, and it just didn't work. Wrote The Rithmatist instead. This is also the year I got called and asked to work on the Wheel of Time.) Also, note that the year of Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings just about killed me, and is the busiest I've ever been.
A Memory of Light—last book of the Wheel of Time—took by far the longest of these all, particularly with the revision demands during 2012 (which is why I had no epic fantasy that year, only the two novellas.)
2002: The Way of Kings (early draft)
2003: Mistborn
2004: Mistborn 2, Alcatraz 1
2005: Mistborn 3, Alcatraz 2
2006: Warbreaker, Alcatraz 3
2007: Steelheart, The Rithmatist, Alcatraz 4 (Alcatraz was a 4-book contract.)
2008: The Gathering Storm, Part of Towers of Midnight
2009: Towers of Midnight, The Way of Kings (New draft from scratch.)
2010: Alloy of Law, half of A Memory of Light
2011: Half of A Memory of Light
2012: Legion, Emperor's Soul,
2013: Words of Radiance, Steelheart 2 (hopefully)anotherface
Thank you for taking the time to address some of my points!
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Interview: 2013
RazGriz3 (May 2013)
Was anyone else a little disappointed with the way to Ogier showed up for the Last Battle? Kinda just like "Oh yeah, we are here too." Then that was it. The scenes in which we see Ogier fighting are awesome, but I felt their introduction to the Last Battle was a little lacking. Anyone else?
Brandon Sanderson
The way they show up is actually the result of a sequence being cut. Originally, Perrin led an expedition into the Ways to try and close the Waygate in Caemlyn from behind. During this, the Ogier arrived, full of song, to drive off the Black Wind. Unfortunately, this sequence had logistical problems with the rest of the book, and had to be deleted entirely. The biggest casualty of this cut was the Ogier introduction, which didn't work nearly as well in the new sequence as it once had.
kaybeesee
Thanks so much for adding your insight.
Ever thought about publishing a deleted scenes book? If movies can do it, why not books?
Brandon Sanderson
Afraid it isn't my call. You'd have to convince Harriet. That said, we are releasing some deleted scenes in the Unfettered Anthology to help with a friend's medical bills. (They aren't the Perrin ones, though.)
Andre_Gigante
Thank you for being a redditor as well as an awesome author.
Pilkunussija
Did the same thing happen with Mashadar?
Brandon Sanderson
No, no deleted scenes here. I did Mashadar the way I did because of the small amount of information in the notes about it or Fain, and I felt that going with what little I did have was better than exploring widely without knowing where RJ wanted to go. In some other cases, I did extrapolate when we didn't have much from RJ, but here it felt better to go with the "less is more" idea.
There was a big danger in these books in me taking over too much and driving the books far from RJ's original vision. I had to pick and choose carefully which parts I extrapolated, and I did it based more on my own instincts and talents than anything else. For example, I felt very comfortable with Perrin as a character—he'd always been my favorite, and I felt like I knew him very well and could write him strongly. So, in Towers of Midnight where we had very little direction on what to do with Perrin, I felt that the right move was to expand his part and develop a sequence on my own.
However, for Mat in the Tower of Ghenjei, RJ had been planning this sequence for years and years. He wrote or outlined a good portion of it before he died. It was a small sequence, however, only a couple of chapters worth. I realized fans would be expecting more from this sequence, but my instincts said that it would be wrong to develop it into something much larger. That would not only go against RJ's wishes, but would risk messing things up royally. RJ had laid careful foreshadowing and groundwork for the scenes, and had a specific vision for this sequence. Perhaps if he'd lived, he would have expanded it in additional directions, but it would have been the wrong place for me to add.
Fain through my three books feels very similar to me. It wasn't as strict here as it was with the Mat/Ghenjei sequence—I COULD have expanded, and perhaps I would have, given more time. However, at the same time, there is an argument to be had that RJ wanted Fain to have a lesser-than-expected place in the Last Battle, and expanding him would undermine this.
devoidz
I wish the Ways had been touched on. They were very interesting, as well as the portal stones. Was there any more info, or back story, on the Black Wind that hasn't been shared? Thanks for responding to us, by the way. I loved the last three books, you did an awesome job on them. I am getting ready to start going through some of your own stories.
Brandon Sanderson
There is some, but not as much as I think fans hope. In regards to something else mentioned on this thread—I believe that RJ was planning to do the Ogier/Seanchan Ogier relationship exploration in the Outriggers.
1anthony90
What logistical problems were there?
simps984
IIRC in some of Brandon's other posts on Reddit, he indicated that the deleted scenes were casualties of keeping the book reasonable in length. Additionally, Harriet or the publisher preferred that the storyline in A Memory of Light should be directly approaching the Last Battle, and this sequence got a little too far away from that.
Brandon Sanderson
There were a number. The biggest one was that the sequence wasn't needed. As you can judge from the final book, the Waygate didn't NEED to be closed. The structure of the battle worked just fine without it, as the plan was always to draw the Shadow's armies upward and through the woods. By the time the big fights here played out, it didn't matter terribly much if the Trollocs were being resupplied from behind.
Beyond that, the weight of this heavy Perrin sequence in the early middle of the book was distracting, keeping attention away from Rand and from the push toward the rest of the Last Battle. (this is what simps984 mentioned in his reply, which is correct.) The sequence was awesome on its own, but distracting in conjunction with the rest of the novel.
I would still have liked to have found a way to make it work, but I feel that way about every scene I end up deleting from the book. The truth is that aside from the Ogier arrival, nothing big was lost by cutting this ten thousand words—and a whole lot was gained.
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Interview: Jan 12th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - nutsocharles (Paraphrased)nutsocharles
So who's at the Charleston Q&A and signing right now? Anybody?
We could have an impromptu meetup at the rotunda if anybody else is around.
njm1314
Well, what did you ask?
nutsocharles
Second question, how did they feel now that it's done.
njm1314
I thought that you were there personally. No?
nutsocharles
I was. I was the second person up to ask a question at the panel at 3pm.
njm1314
Oh, thought you meant second question for the people that were there.
Well then what did they say?
Brandon Sanderson ()
Harriet McDougal
Collectively, that it was bittersweet. Brandon because he got to write the last three but it was over, Harriet that Robert's quest was completed. Probably a lot of the same things the readers were feeling, as we finally got the last book, but now there's no more books. Except the encyclopedia, which is around two years away.
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - TsorovanSaidin (Paraphrased)sleepinghour
Was anything new revealed during the Q&A?
TsorovanSaidin
Not really.
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
He said Androl was strictly him, no sorta fan shout out. But as fans, we all sorta have those things we see as "should be" possible. And for Brandon, Androl was like playing Portal. That's why Androl came across as such a real character. Androl Is Brandon thrown into the world.
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Interview: Feb 1st, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - TsorovanSaidin (Paraphrased)TsorovanSaidin
The only other thing we asked him was about a certain lighting of a pipe.
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
He said that he has no idea what the ending with Rand lightning the pipe truly meant. That was completely RJ. I asked him, based on my own theory, that what Rand did was a by product of him being almost a convergence of the Pattern. Since he wove with all three powers and wove the whole of the Age lace that he was now able to bend the Pattern and essentially "weave reality." Which would be more far helpful than the One Power. It may also explain why he's burnt out and not going crazy because of, he has a far better substation.
TsorovanSaidin
Pops! Forgot to add! Brandon said he doesn't know for sure but, that is close to his own theory. And they ARE releasing the complete encyclopedia on the series. He estimates by sometime next year.
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Interview: 2013
Patmcc10 (January 2013)
How many books can one man write? (AKA A new Brandon Sanderson book)
drake129103
I thought he was writing Stormlight 2? AMOL just came out, as did Legion and The Emperor's Soul (both novellas, I know). When did he write this? I wish I had half the work ethic that Mr. Sanderson does.
moose_man
It's one of his 'breather projects' between/during the writing of larger works.
mes09
It's also one of the books that he started/wrote before he got involved in WoT.
Brandon Sanderson ()
Mes09 is right. This is one of the projects I was developing before I got involved with he WoT. I've actually been reading the prologue at conventions for years. I had to put the book aside in order to do the Wheel of Time. Now that I've finished, I had time to do revisions of this justice (Doing that was a breather project for me between AMOL and Stormlight 2.)
The odd thing is, I still feel kind of bad about not having a book come out last year, only short fiction. It's been almost three years now since The Way of Kings, still with no sequel.
I did need to get this book out of my system, though. It had been brewing for way too long. Fortunately, I had the majority of it done years ago.
queentenobia
Another book?? I cannot wait to delve into it. I started on your books with The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight. Then I picked up Emperor's Soul because the story looked intriguing and omg the cover art was so brilliant, and now am reading The Way of Kings. I have to say I became an instant fan, I cannot wait to read your other books. I love the way you portray your characters. I don't know if you will ever see this but thank you, your book, your writings they filled me with hope.
Brandon Sanderson
I did see it. Thank you for reading, and for the kind words.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)chrismansell ()
Obviously, taking on the Wheel of Time was a massive task. How do you feel now it's over? Relieved to return to your 'own' work full time, sad it's done? A bit of both maybe?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, most certainly both.
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1271
Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)ShakaUVM ()
Could you explain what the deal is with the Great Serpent? I was half-expecting it to appear in the middle of the big showdown at the end of A Memory of Light. Is it just a different metaphor for the Wheel?
Did we ever meet the Creator in the series? If so, who?
Brandon Sanderson
I'll preface this with a warning. Even though the series is done, and I can speak more freely, some things are intended to be vague by RJ's own intention. This allows dreaming and thinking about the world to continue. For example, I can't answer question 2 for these reasons. For question one, I think RJ himself was vague. (Maybe a Theorylander can speak here.) This isn't one I'm capable of answering, because I don't want to make an answer canon one way or another, as I don't think RJ wanted that.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)ShakaUVM ()
If we get enough donations to bribe you with the Power Nine, would you write an outtake for the scene between Tuon and Hawkwing? I loved A Memory of Light, but I really wanted to see that scene. =)
Brandon Sanderson
I really, really want to avoid writing any more WoT fiction—even for fun or as an outtake. That's a slippery slope. I know you said this mostly in jest, but I want to be careful on this one.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)smb89 ()
What was your favorite bit of A Memory of Light to write?
Brandon Sanderson
Lan/Demandred
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1274
Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)Giovanni13 ()
Hey Brandon once upon a time you posted Final Fantasy X song "To Zarkanad" on your Facebook page and said it was perfect for the scene you were writing in A Memory of Light, so tell me if you remember which scene was that?
Brandon Sanderson
It was the last few scenes I was working on, Perrin after the Last Battle and a few of the Loial sequences in the epilogue, which were parts I had a hand in writing as opposed to putting in what RJ had written.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)EverAccelerating ()
When you were working on A Memory of Light, I know Mr. Jordan had the fates of most, if not all of the characters written down. Were there any characters where you got to decide the fate of, either in A Memory of Light or the previous two books?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, there were some. For example, Pevara's fate isn't mentioned in the notes, which is why I felt all right co-opting her for the Black Tower storyline, which was mostly mine. Siuan's fate wasn't mentioned in the notes, save for the rescue of Egwene from the White Tower. Harriet made the decision on how her story was to play out.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)EverAccelerating ()
What was your favorite scene in any of your published books that you had to eventually cut from the book?
Brandon Sanderson
Perrin traveling the Ways in A Memory of Light.
iwasazombie
What?! Can you tell us about that scene? This is the first I've heard of it. That sounds awesome.
Brandon Sanderson
Perrin gathered a team and traveled the Ways in order to try to close the Waygate in Camelyn from behind. It was determined that this section, among having other issues, was not needed for the final book and was distracting from the momentum toward the Last Battle.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)ajonelis ()
When you took over writing the Wheel of Time series, was there anything that RJ had in his notes that just completely surprised you?
Brandon Sanderson
Hmm... The scene where Egwene gets a specific visitor in The Gathering Storm surprised me the most, I think. Also, at the end of Towers where Moiraine and Thom get engaged. I hadn't noticed how strong the clues about those two were.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013
Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim)The_Black_Dread ()
During Towers of Midnight, Rand says "How I wish I had listened to Gilgame..." while he and Min are in Far Madding. Was Rand going to reference Gilgamesh before Min interrupted him?
Brandon Sanderson
He finished the word, I believe. Gilgame is the person referenced.
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Interview: 2013
stumpitron (March 2013)
Why are you tagged as a novice writer?
Brandon Sanderson
Heh. I picked the tag on a whim quite a while ago, and forgot it was there until this post. I felt like quite the novice at the time, surrounded in the field by giants like GRRM, Robin Hobb, and the like.
Maybe I'll change it once I hit the ten year mark. (2015 will make it ten years from the publication of my first book.) It seems to me that I really haven't been doing this very long. One of the things I keep reminding myself is that, in entertainment, there are a lot of flash-in-the-pan tastes of the week. I want to aspire toward more.
Calvertorius
Why on Earth would you list Robin Hobb alongside yourself and GRRM?
I had the misfortune of reading her Soldier Son series while I was deployed, and I thought the entire concept of the story was terrible.
I looked at her website just now, and she's not much more prolific of a writer than yourself, so what constitutes her as a 'giant'?
**Tangent: Please develop your Stormlight series into something much more than a trilogy! With WoT completed, and GRRM writing at a snail's pace, I need another inspiring epic series to fill the void. Also, I commend your writing work-ethic. /fanboyrant end
Brandon Sanderson
I'll preface this by saying that I adore Robin's work. However, Soldier Son is divisive among her fanbase, and is not as widely loved as her Assassin's Apprentice series, which is where I suggest people begin.
That's beside the point. I chose her deliberately because of her story as a writer, which is similar to that of GRRM. Both toiled in relative obscurity for years and years as writers. Robin published under the name Megan Lindholm for a long time, and never found huge commercial success. She finally hit it big with Assassin's Apprentice, which was one of the bestselling epic fantasy trilogies of the 90's. In a similar way, GRRM wrote and published for decades before hitting it big with Game of Thrones.
These are the kinds of writers I admire, and one day wish to join. The writers who have been through the ups and downs, and who have continued to press forward. They didn't write their best work when they first broke in—they are doing it now, after years and years of growth, effort, and occasional failure.
As a side note, in 2006 I was nominated for the Campbell award for best new writer. I lost to John Scalzi, and was kind of down in the dumps. GRRM found me sitting on the side of a bed at a hotel party that night. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Don't worry, kid. I lost that damn award the first year it was offered." And he did—he lost it to Jerry Pournelle in 1973, two years before I was even born. GRRM handed me one of his famous "Hugo Loser" badges to wear with pride, gave me a pat on the shoulder, then continued on.
***As for the tangent, don't worry. I have big plans for Stormlight...
reidhasguitar
Wait, so you're published? Change your flair!
Brandon Sanderson
Ha, okay. Enough people have pointed it out, that I have officially done so. Flair changed. :)
Kintanon
Why, of all of the people in the internet, do you have 'Novice Writer' as your flair? I mean, I understand that you don't have the ungodly library of titles to your name that someone like David Weber or Piers Anthony does, but I think once you write more than 1 best seller you have to at least upgrade that to 'Professional Writer' or at least 'Journeyman Wordsmith' or something!
Also, I must give you many many many thanks for the way you handled completed the Wheel of Time series. I admit to being overcome with trepidation when I heard that you were going to be completing the series because while I really really really liked the Mistborn novels, then didn't seem quite in line with the feel of Jordan's universe. I was worried. But you handled the completion of a series that has been with me since middle school incredibly well and brought everything to a satisfactory conclusion in some an artful manner that it was never at any time obvious that Jordan himself wasn't penning every word.
I'm looking forward to more of your works in the future now more than ever.
Brandon Sanderson
See elsewhere in the thread why I chose that flair, but I've been persuaded that at this point, "novice writer" was strange enough on me to be out of place. So I've gone ahead and changed it.
Working on the Wheel of Time was one of the great pleasures of my life. Thanks for the kind words.
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Interview: Dec 6th, 2012
West Jordan Signing Report - Josh & Mi'ch (Verbatim)Question
Oh, my question was does Perrin lose a body part in the book, since Mat has lost one, Rand has lost one, does Perrin lose one next?
Brandon Sanderson
Perrin’s body part was the knee, where he got shot through the leg with the arrow. Because the mythological symbolism is with Mat- it’s the Odin mythology, and Odin lost an eye. Perrin is actually the blacksmith mythology, which if you’ve read in Hephaestus and Perun and of the various blacksmiths, they usually have a bad leg. I wasn’t going to chop off his leg. I had that wound, and he kind of feels a phantom wound, if you’ll read in the last book there are several times where his leg aches even though he was healed. That’s the symbolism there.
QUESTION
So, did you just decide to [inaudible] or was that..?
BRANDON SANDERSON
No, Robert Jordan had done that, that was him.
QUESTION
I wasn’t sure if I was just coming up with a fantasy or not.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Though I knew he had to be wounded in the leg, I didn’t know how or how badly so I kind of came up with how it happened.
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2013
Kindle Daily Post Interview (Verbatim)Question
Of course it wouldn't be an interview without asking about Wheel of Time. How has that experience informed the storytelling you've done since?Brandon Sanderson
Watching how the community interacted with Wheel of Time was eye-opening. There are a lot of book series out there that sell a lot of copies, and yet they have not inspired the fan base and the devotion Wheel of Time has. I would rather have that than the thrillers that sell three times as many copies, and yet people read them and throw them away. They don't throw conventions, they don't have these deep discussions. What was it that Robert Jordan did that did this to all of us? That I've thought about a lot.
Writing specifically, juggling multiple viewpoints has become easier for me since I was forced to lift heavy weights. I had to jump into a series where I had to juggle two dozen viewpoints instead of the three or four I was used to.
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Interview: Aug 9th, 2013
Kindle Daily Post Interview (Verbatim)Question
What was your biggest hesitation?Brandon Sanderson
What if I screw this up? I would be known as the one who ruined the Wheel of Time, which would be awful for me as a fan of the series. That was a real thing, me thinking there was no way I could win at this, that I couldn't do it as well as Robert Jordan would—nobody can. They came to me because I was a fan who became a published writer. Going to someone who was not a fan but was a writer who specialized in writing other people's property, I worried it would just be another job to them. Knowing it was in the hands of someone who cares... That's what made me say yes.Tags
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Interview: Aug 21st, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
I remember coming to see you the very first time, when Elantris was just barely out. I've always been impressed, because I was a nobody and you had read my book. There can't be many other publishers of major companies who read as many of the books as you do. Why do you do that?
Tom Doherty
Well, if I've got an editor working for me, it's because I believe that that editor really has something to contribute. Moshe [Feder] was so enthusiastic about Elantris that I couldn't not read it. And when I read it, I loved it.
I think it's pretty clear we really loved what you were doing. I may be a little prejudiced as his publisher, but I think Robert Jordan really created one of the great epic fantasies of all time—a magnificent series, and you just finished it magnificently. We never could have turned it over to anybody that we didn't have tremendous confidence in, Brandon. We loved what you were doing. It said to us, "Yes, he can do this."
Brandon Sanderson
If you weren't the type of publisher who read all the books, you couldn't have fingered someone like you did with me. You couldn't have said, "Give him to Harriet." I remember she said she asked you to send her some of my books. And you said, "Well, I'll send you Mistborn instead of Elantris. I've read them both and Mistborn is a better novel."
Tom Doherty
Yep.
Brandon Sanderson
Elantris is a first novel. The second novel's better. You knew to send her Mistborn, and it's that book that made her choose me. In a lot of ways, if you hadn't been on top of things, it may not have happened the way it did.
Tom Doherty
Well, Mistborn's really great. We thought of it as a trilogy, but then you wrote more.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I'm in the Robert Jordan tradition, right?
Tom Doherty
You are. But, anyway, it's smaller scale than The Way of Kings. The Stormlight Archive is such a natural progression for you, I think. You've told me you picked up foreshadowing from Jordan.
Brandon Sanderson
Yep. One of the main things I learned from him.
Tom Doherty
If I recall, you said that you'd actually written the first draft of The Way of Kings in 2003, and that you had ideas for it way back to high school, and that when you and Moshe were talking about what to do after Elantris, you weren't completely happy with it.
Brandon Sanderson
It wasn't good enough yet. I had all these dreams, these aspirations of doing something big and momentous like the Wheel of Time, but I couldn't do it yet. I tried, and I couldn't. The problem was juggling the viewpoints, and the foreshadowing.
What I learned, when I was rereading the Wheel of Time to work on the series, was that Robert Jordan kept everything really quite focused for the early books of the series. He expanded it slowly. He didn't hit you in the face with twenty viewpoints.
We had something like a seventy viewpoint chapter in the last book. That's something you have to earn, across years of writing. You have to get the reader invested in the main characters. Without that investment in the main characters, I wouldn't have cared enough to pay attention to the side characters.
It was a matter of scale and scope and building upon itself, rather than just trying to start off with this massive book that gets everyone lost. That's one of the big things I did wrong in the original write. I had six main characters with full arcs and full viewpoints. It was too much. You couldn't really attach to any of them. In the revision I cut that down to three, which really focused the book. It let me give the passion and focus on these three characters, so that you felt it when you read the book.
Tom Doherty
Yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
Working on those Robert Jordan books did that for me. Writing The Gathering Storm in specific was like going to the gym and having to lift some really heavy weights you aren't used to. Either you get used to it or they crush you. I had to get used to it very quickly. That taught me a lot. I grew more that year than I had at any point in my writing career, except maybe the very first year I was writing.
Tom Doherty
When I look at the Stormlight Archive, you also like to jump around like George R. R. Martin. These are the two great epic novelists of our day, Martin and Jordan.
Brandon Sanderson
That's really one of George's big strengths: jumping to keep the pacing up. But even he didn't start with a lot of characters at the beginning of the first book. I've actually tried to learn from Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin and say, "Okay, what are the things they had to deal with? There are growing pains when you're creating a series this long. There are certain things that are difficult to do. What looks like it was difficult to do for them, and what can I learn from them?"
I often say that I had a big advantage over Robert Jordan: I've been able to read Robert Jordan, and he couldn't, at least not in the same way. Reading Robert Jordan showed me what happens when you create a big series. Nobody did this before him, right?
Tom Doherty
No.
Brandon Sanderson
There were no massive epic fantasy series of that scope at the time. You have things that are episodic, like [Roger Zelazny's] Chronicles of Amber, which is fantastic, but it's thin little episodes. You have nice trilogies like Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. But you don’t have anything with the scope of the Wheel of Time.
I was able to watch and benefit from what Jordan did. After the fact, he said "You know, I don't think I would have done book ten the same way if I had it to do over again. I learned this and I learned that." Being able to pay attention to those things allows me to hopefully use that.
When I went into The Way of Kings, I saw what George R. R. Martin does, jumping to these other places and giving you a scope of the world. It makes it feel epic. But if you spend too much time on jumping to those places, you get distracted and can't focus.
So I did this thing where I would end a section of The Way of Kings and do what I call interludes, where we jump around the world. If this is the sort of thing that doesn't interest you, you can skip those interludes and go on to the next part, where we get back to the main characters. But there are these little stories in between each part, showing the scope: "Here's what's going on around the world, now we focus." You get distracted for a little bit, after a natural end point, then we come back to the main story.
That restrains me. It makes me say, "Okay, I can only put this many of these chapters in." It makes me keep my eyes on the main characters more. One of my main goals with writing this series is being able to juggle that. It's hard.
Tom Doherty
I think you’ve done a particularly great job of still having that broad, epic feel with fewer characters. You only have the three principals: Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar. Jordan had six, maybe eight depending on how you count them.
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Interview: Sep 23rd, 2013
Paul Goat Allen
It's hard to believe it's only been eight years since your debut novel, Elantris, was released. You've accomplished so much in less than a decade of work: the Mistborn saga, your Alcatraz series for young readers, finishing the Wheel of Time, beginning The Stormlight Archive, the Writing Excuses podcast, and now the Hugo Awards.... In a career of high points, what is your most proud moment so far?
Brandon Sanderson
You ask some tough questions, Paul! By the way, thank you for that very nice review and spotlight you did of Elantris many years ago. I've always remembered and appreciated that.
How can I pick a high point from my career so far? I mean, getting to work on the Wheel of Time, that's like a once-in-many-lifetimes opportunity. Normally, I would have to pick that, though the fact that this year I also won a Hugo Award kind rivals it.
Ten years ago, I was writing books furiously, trying to get published, and dedicating my life to this art. If you'd asked me then what would be the high point, I would've said that it had to be that first moment when an editor called me and said, "I want to buy your book." Everything since then has been awesome, amazing, and wonderful. But after over a decade of work, writing thirteen novels that had never seen the light of day, I don't think anything can ever rival the knowledge of finally being told, "All right, kid, you're going to get a shot at doing this thing for a living." Nothing will ever be able to parallel that professionally.
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Interview: Oct 9th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
I usually do a Q&A session as part of my book signings. One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: "What did you learn from working on the Wheel of Time?" I often struggle to answer; I have no idea how to cover the topic in brief.
I've long wanted to a series of blog posts collecting all of the things I've said at signings, during interviews, and in other blog posts talking about the Wheel of Time experience. I'm going to add to this my thoughts and feelings, and then try to use it all to tackle talking about some of the things I've learned along the way. This will be a multi-day process! So if you're interested in this topic, check back across the next few weeks as I work my way through a retrospective on my involvement in the Wheel of Time.
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Interview: Oct 9th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
The Notes
As I've said before, I signed the contracts with Harriet to finish this series before I was given the notes. Therefore, going into this, I knew very little of what had been done for A Memory of Light already. In fact, the only thing I did know was that Mr. Jordan had written down the ending—the one he'd been promising for years that he had in his head. (Though, being the gardener-type writer that he was, he always noted that the ending could change shape as his view of it evolved over time.)
Eager, daunted, I flew to Charleston in December 2007 to meet Harriet. I knew her by reputation only—the editorial director of Tor Books during its foundational years, the woman who edited Ender's Game and who discovered Robert Jordan. I was rather intimidated. Turns out, Harriet is quite grandmotherly—in a southern gentlewoman sort of way. She's confident, capable, and has this air of knowledge about her. However, she's also kind, quick with a smile, and remarkably genuine. I don't know that I've ever met someone who so effortlessly blends self-confidence with compassion.
Once I arrived at Harriet's house, I asked for the ending, which she gave me. I spent hours picking through the notes and reading—I was at it after Harriet retired for the night, though before she left, she pointed to the computer in the front room where I was sitting. "That's Robert Jordan's," she noted to me. "That's where he wrote many of the books, on that computer, that keyboard. We recently moved it in from the office into this room."
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Interview: Oct 9th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
So there I was, sitting beside Robert Jordan's computer, looking at printouts of his notes, and feeling supremely overwhelmed. You might wonder what was in those notes. Well, in preparing to write this piece, I went to Harriet and (as I'd often promised fans) asked if it would be possible to release the notes, or to at least speak specifically about their contents. (I still someday want to do a series of blog posts where I take scenes from the notes, then compare them to scenes in the finished books, with a commentary on why I made the decisions to change them that I did.)
In response to my question, Harriet pointed out that work on the encyclopedia of the Wheel of Time is still in progress. She and Team Jordan haven't yet finished deciding what tidbits from the notes they want to include in the encyclopedia, and she thinks now is not the time to release them. (Or even for me to talk about specifics.)
Therefore, I can't talk about many specific scenes. Instead, then, I want to talk about the general process—which might be of more interest to many of you. You see, as I've explained before, the "notes" aren't what people assume. I was handed two hundred pages of material by Harriet, and this is what I read that first night. Those pages included:
Written sections by Robert Jordan: Robert Jordan was a "discovery"-type writer, meaning he tended to explore where he wanted his story to go by doing the actual writing. He didn't work from an outline. Harriet has explained that he had a few goalposts he was aiming for, big events he knew would happen somewhere in the story. He didn't know exactly how those would play out until he wrote them, but he knew what they were. Otherwise, he would write and explore, working his way toward his goalposts and discovering many parts of his story as he worked.
Robert Jordan was also not a linear writer. From what I can judge by the notes, he was one of the relatively more rare breed of writers who work on a scene as it interests them, no matter where it may be in the story. It seems like he'd often dig out a file and write a short time on it, then stick that file back into the notes. The next day, he'd work on a different place in the story. It's possible that as he started work on a book in earnest, however, he progressed in a more linear fashion. The largest chunk of actual writing he left behind was for the prologue of A Memory of Light, after all.
However, from what Harriet has told me, he did not show his notes to people, nor did he show them early drafts. Even Harriet often wouldn't get to see early drafts—she says what he gave her was often draft twelve or thirteen.
In the stack of notes I was given were all of the scenes he'd actually written for A Memory of Light. Together, these were about a hundred pages. I can't tell you everything that was in there, not yet. I can speak about the things I've said before, however. One thing in these notes was the ending. (This became the epilogue of A Memory of Light, though I did add a couple of scenes to it.) Another was his unfinished prologue. (I split this into three chunks to become the prologues for the three books, though I did add quite a few scenes to these prologues as well. Scenes he'd finished, mostly finished, or had a loose first draft of include: the farmer watching the clouds approach in The Gathering Storm, the scene with Rand seen through the eyes of a sul'dam from the prologue of The Gathering Storm, the scene with the Borderlanders on the top of the tower in Towers of Midnight, and the scene with Isam in the Blight at the start of A Memory of Light.)
Also included in this stack of scenes were a smattering of fragments, including the scene where Egwene gets a special visitor in The Gathering Storm. (Dress colors are discussed.) The scene in Towers of Midnight where two people get engaged. (The one that ends with a character finding a pot in the river—which is a piece I added.) And the scene at the Field of Merrilor inside the tent where someone unexpected arrives. (Much of that sequence was outlined in rough form.) I've tried to be vague as to not give spoilers.
Q&A sessions with Robert Jordan's assistants: Near the end, Mr. Jordan was too weak to work on the book directly—but he would do sessions with Maria, Alan, Harriet, or Wilson where he'd tell them about the book. They recorded some of these, and then transcribed them for me. Most of these focus on someone asking him, "What happens to so-and-so." He'd then talk about their place in the ending, and what happened to them after the last book. A lot of these focus on major plot structures. ("So tell me again what happens when Siuan sneaks into the White Tower to try to find Egwene.") Or, they focus on the climax of the final book. The bulk of this information gave me a general feeling for the ending itself, and a read on where people ended up after the books. A lot of the "How do they get from the end of Knife of Dreams to the climax of A Memory of Light?" wasn't discussed.
Selections from Robert Jordan's notes: As I've mentioned before, Robert Jordan's larger notes files are huge and have a haphazard organization. These are different from the notes I was given—the two hundred-page stack. My stack included the pages that Team Jordan thought most important to the writing of the book. They did also give me a CD, however, with everything on it—thousands and thousands of pages of materials.
Though you might be salivating over these, the bulk are not things many of you would find interesting. Each version of the glossaries is included, for example, so Mr. Jordan knew what they'd said about given characters in given books. (These are identical to the ones printed in the backs of the books.) There are notes for many of the books, things Mr. Jordan used while writing a given novel in the series, but much of this ended up in the books and would not offer any revelations to you. There is, however, a great deal of interesting worldbuilding, some of which ended up in the books—but there's also quite a bit here that will probably end up in the encyclopedia. There were also notes files on given characters, with the viewings/prophesies/etc. about them that needed to be fulfilled, along with notes on their attitude, things they needed to accomplish yet in the series, and sometimes background tidbits about their lives.
Maria and Alan had spent months meticulously combing through the notes and pulling out anything they thought I might need. This was the last chunk of my two hundred pages of notes, though I was free to spend time combing through the larger grouping of files—and I did this quite a bit.
To be continued.
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Interview: Oct 10th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
The Process
The first thing I did upon receiving the notes was dive back into a reread of the series, notes in hand, looking for foreshadowing that I needed to fulfill and character arcs that were incomplete. You can read my book-by-book reactions; I posted them as a sequence of blog posts in 2008 as I was rereading.
This took months, and I built for myself a large file of questions, potential scenes, and ideas while reading. My next visit to Charleston was in the spring of 2008. (April, perhaps? I don't recall exactly.) I was nearing the end of my reread, though I don't believe I was quite finished yet.
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Interview: Oct 10th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
At this point, I sat down with Team Jordan. In case you don't know the members of this group it includes:
Harriet: Robert Jordan's editor and widow. She discovered him as an aspiring writer in Charleston after moving there to raise her son from a previous marriage. (She didn't think NYC was the place to do it, and she had inherited the family home in Charleston.) She was encouraged by Robert Jordan's writing and started publishing his historical novels (she still worked for Tor, but telecommuted). Eventually they fell in love and were married. She edited all of the Wheel of Time books, as well as doing some other things. (For example, she is responsible for nearly all of the chapter titles in all of the books.)
Maria: Maria was hired on somewhere around book seven, I believe. At first, her work seemed to be more clerical—but over time, she impressed Robert Jordan and Harriet, and moved into a more editorial position. She'd maintain continuity for him, as well as work on his copyedits. These days, she is also in charge of making certain things like the Wheel of Time graphic novels are following the storyline and descriptions in the right way.
Alan: Alan came on later than Maria, but has still been there for years and years by this point. He helps with office work and is the resident timeline king. He also is a military history buff, and knows warfare quite well. He became my "Great Captain" for the last books. (Though he and I did butt heads quite a bit as I pushed for more drama and he pushed for more specific descriptions of tactics.)
Wilson: I don't know if he'd agree he was part of Team Jordan or not, but I view him as part. Wilson is Robert Jordan's cousin and close friend growing up—the cousin that was like a brother. Jovial and welcoming, he recently dressed up in a costume of me for a costume contest. He's been a cheerleader for Jim's work for years, and every time I felt daunted by this project, it seems I'd get a little note of encouragement or help from Wilson.
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1290
Interview: Oct 10th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson
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.
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1291
Interview: Oct 15th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
The Gathering Storm: Writing Process
I attacked the project in earnest in the summer and fall of 2008. I realized early on that there was too much to keep in mind for me to write in a strict chronological fashion, as I had normally done in the past. For this project, I needed to take groups of characters, dump all of the information about them into my mind (like loading a program into RAM), and write for weeks on just that group. This way, I could keep track of the voices of the many characters and maintain the numerous subplots.
The hardest part of this project, I feel, was keeping track of the subplots and the voices of the side characters. This is not surprising; though I'd read the Wheel of Time many times, I was not a superfan. I loved the books, but I was not among the people who made websites, wikis, and the like for the books. I read the books to study the writing and enjoy the story; I did not spend too much time keeping track of which minor Aes Sedai was which.
I could no longer be lax in this area; I had to know every one of them. Part of Robert Jordan's genius was in the individual personalities of all of these side characters. So I began dividing the last book (which was at that time still one novel in my mind) into sections. There were five of them. Four of these—one for Rand, one for Egwene, one for Mat, and one for Perrin—would push these four main plots toward the ending. They would happen roughly simultaneously. The other plotlines leading up to the Last Battle, and then the battle itself, were the fifth section.
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1292
Interview: Oct 15th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
It became obvious to me early in the outlining process that I was going to be writing a big book. I was well aware of what Robert Jordan had said about the final volume—you can find quotes from him on the internet where he promises it would be so large, fans would need a wheelbarrow to get it out of bookstores. I took this to heart, but knew that there was little chance Tor would let me write the book that large without cutting it.
Indeed, by late 2008, Tor had gotten word that I was promising Harriet a 2000-page book. I believe it was in January 2009 when I got the call from Harriet asking about splitting the books. I was ready for this. My first line was to tell her, "I still view this as one book, and would like to try and get it printed as one book if at all possible." She took my arguments back to Tor, and had a long conversation with Tom Doherty. When she came back to me, she said they strongly advised a division.
I'm still not certain what would have happened if Robert Jordan had tried this. Perhaps Harriet would have persuaded him that the realities of publishing forbade a book so large. Either way, I felt I had made as strong an argument as I could—and I admitted, despite my desire to see the book as one volume as Robert Jordan had envisioned, that I would have to either discard several major parts of the outline or agree to split the novel.
I think we made the right choice. Three books gave me the chance to really dig into the project not as a one-off event, but as a process. Cutting major plotlines would have made the last book a rushed endeavor, requiring me to ignore several large threads. However, the division of the outline did create some problems, which I'll talk about during the Towers of Midnight post.
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1293
Interview: Oct 15th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
When Harriet asked me about splitting the book, she wondered if there was a natural breaking point. I told her breaking it once wouldn't work—but breaking it twice might. I didn't feel A Memory of Light would work as two volumes. Looking at my outline and what I needed to accomplish, two books would either mean one very long book and one normal-sized one, or two books split equally. Both would have been awkward. The former because doing a double-sized Wheel of Time book would have the same problems as just printing the original 2000-page novel. 1400 pages isn't much better in publishing terms. 1000, like some of the Wheel of Time books, already pushes against those limits.
The second option—two 1000-page books—was even more of a problem. If we cut it in the middle like that, we'd get the first half of all four plot sequences I mentioned above—but none of their climaxes. This (writing one book as a setup book, with the payoffs mostly happening in another book) was an experiment that Robert Jordan had already attempted, and he had spoken of the problems it created. He was a better writer than I am, and if he couldn't accomplish such a split, I didn't want to attempt it.
Instead, I felt that splitting the book as three books would allow us to have complete arcs in each one. Two, actually, for each of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight—followed by the climactic book, A Memory of Light. So I set out to divide the plots and decide what would go where.
I knew fans would be skeptical of me taking over the project in the first place, and I knew they'd be more skeptical when we announced a three-book split. That meant I wanted my most dynamic plots in the first book. (I knew the ending would carry its own book, and was never worried about that one being dynamic enough.) In addition, I wanted to split the four sequences—Rand/Egwene/Mat/Perrin—so that we had at least one in each book that Robert Jordan had done a lot of work on. Rand and Perrin had much less material finished for them than Mat and Egwene. So it was either Rand/Egwene or Perrin/Mat for the first book.
It soon became clear that I needed to lead with Rand/Egwene. They mirrored each other in very interesting ways, with Rand's narrative descent and Egwene's narrative ascent. When Rand was being contemplative, Egwene's plot had action—and vice versa. While my personal favorite of the four is Perrin's arc, I felt his involved a lot of buildup and some less straightforward plotting as we pushed toward his climactic moments. I also decided that the plots would work with shaving off some of what Rand/Egwene were doing to save it for the second book, but I couldn't do the same as easily for Perrin/Mat.
A book was forming in my head. Rand's absolute power driving him toward destruction and Egwene's specific lack of power elevating her toward rebuilding the White Tower. We needed a Mat section—I didn’t want him absent for the book—so Hinderstap was my creation, devised after Harriet asked me to be "more disturbing and horrifying" in regards to the bubbles of evil that were coming into the book.
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1294
Interview: Oct 15th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Egwene
The Egwene plot was an absolute delight to work on. Of all the things that Robert Jordan had been building for this last book (including the final chapter) before he died, I feel this was the most fully formed. Egwene's rise and the Seanchan assault played together perfectly in classic Wheel of Time fashion, and I got to participate in unique ways, working with his notes and instructions to craft his plotlines exactly as I feel he envisioned them.
One large change I did make was splitting the Egwene dinner with Elaida into two distinct scenes, instead of one single scene. I felt the pacing worked much better this way, and it complemented the Rand sequence better with the first dinner happening, Egwene getting sent to further work, then a climactic second dinner happening where I could really bring about Egwene's victory, all without her ever channeling.
In the Egwene sequence, I got to do the most truly collaborative work with Robert Jordan. In other places, I inserted scenes he'd written. In many others, I had to go with my gut, lacking instruction. With Egwene, I had a blend of explanations of scenes, written scenes, and Q&A prompts from Robert Jordan that made me feel as if I were working directly with him to bring about the sequence. If you want to see a full sequence in the books that I think is the closest to the way he'd have done it if he could have, I'd suggest the Egwene sequence in The Gathering Storm. (And beyond. Most of what we have for her was by his direction, inclusive of the events leading up to—and including—Merrilor.)
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1295
Interview: Oct 15th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Rand
In taking on this project, one of my personal goals—if the series would allow it—was to focus more time on the main characters, particularly Rand. I love the middle books, with their exploration of other plots and characters, but the first book presented to us Rand, Perrin, Mat, and Egwene as our main characters. I feel that, in the true nature of the Wheel of Time, the appropriate thing to do was bring the attention back to them for the final books—and I feel Robert Jordan would have done so himself.
Rand needed to be the heart of the three novels. In pondering how to accomplish his outline, I was reminded of things I'd felt when first reading The Dragon Reborn. Rand's anguish as a character was powerful to me, and I thought, "Surely he can't go lower, be forced to go through more, than he's had happen to him here." The next few books affirmed this.
Then I read Lord of Chaos. That book breaks your heart; I found myself amazed that Rand could be brought down even lower. This progressed through the next books, with more being piled upon Rand—but the low points of Lord of Chaos are the most stark in my mind. I remember thinking, "Surely this is the bottom."
That was why, in The Gathering Storm, I needed to attempt what Robert Jordan had successfully done twice. I needed to bring Rand even lower than the reader had assumed, expected, or even thought possible. This was in part to fulfill arcs Robert Jordan had in place, in part because of his love for the Monomyth and the Campbellian hero's journey, but mostly because it felt right to me. Rand's redemption, so to speak, needed to be preceded by his lowest point in the series.
This also offered me an interesting storytelling opportunity. In the original outline, Rand's descent, his decision on Dragonmount, and his following actions as the Dragon Reborn would all happen in a single volume. In splitting the books, I could do the first part in one book, then have his actions in the second book introduce an interesting tension—the question of whether or not this new Rand was still the Rand we loved. I could prompt readers to fear that just as he became unrecognizable in the depths of his fall, he might become something unknowable in the heights of his redemption. It would make for a new kind of conflict, one I'd never explored before, through Towers of Midnight—before finally giving Rand more viewpoints in A Memory of Light to humanize him again. (Something Harriet was very glad to hear I was planning to do. Her main point regarding Rand was that he, in performing the actions he did in the last book, had to be very human in his approach to them. This was to be the story of an ordinary man who achieved something amazing, not an unknowable deity doing the same.)
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1296
Interview: Oct 15th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Other Characters
I have a fondness for Aviendha, my personal favorite of the female leads in the Wheel of Time. (My favorite among the male leads is Perrin.) I wanted to see a return of Avi in the last books, as I felt we just hadn't had enough of her lately. I also have an interesting relationship with Nynaeve, a character who I (as a young man) resented. My opinion of her is the one that grew the most during the course of my reading as just a fan, and by Knife of Dreams I absolutely loved her. I knew that with all of the crowding in the last books, she actually wouldn't have a large part to play in the Last Battle. (Very few would be able to do so, beyond Rand/Egwene/Perrin/Mat.) Therefore, it was important to me to give her a solid and interesting sequence of scenes through both The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight. Her raising was not instructed by the notes, but was something I was insistent be in the books. (And along those lines, one thing Harriet insisted happen—and I was all too ready to oblige—was a meeting between Rand and his father.)
To be continued.
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1297
Interview: Oct 17th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: What I Learned (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
The Gathering Storm: What did I learn?
The obvious thing I learned has to do with juggling so many side plots. I'd attempted this level of complexity one time before in my life, the first draft of The Way of Kings. (Written in 2002–2003, this was very different from the version I published in 2010, which was rebuilt from the ground up and written from page one a second time.) The book had major problems, and I felt at the time they came from inexpert juggling of its multitude of viewpoints. I've since advised new writers that this is a potential trap—adding complexity by way of many viewpoints, when the book may not need it. Many great epics we love in the genre (The Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire included) start with a small group of characters, many in the same location, before splitting into much larger experiences with expansive numbers of viewpoints.
I couldn't afford to be bad at this any longer. Fortunately, finishing the Mistborn trilogy had taught me a lot about juggling viewpoints. Approaching The Wheel of Time, I was better able to divide viewpoints, arrange them in a novel, and keep them in narrative rhythm with one another—so they complemented one another, rather than distracting or confusing the reader.
The other primary thing I feel I gained working on this book is a better understanding of my outlining process. Robert Jordan, as I said in previous installments, seems to have been more of a discovery writer than an outline writer—I'm the opposite. Working with The Gathering Storm forced me to take all of these notes and fragments of scenes and build a cohesive story from them. It worked surprisingly well. Somehow, my own process melded perfectly with the challenge of building a book from all of these parts. (That's not to say that the book itself was perfect—just that my process adapted very naturally to the challenge of outlining these novels.)
There are a lot of little things. Harriet's careful line edits taught me to be more specific in my word choice. The invaluable contributions of Alan and Maria taught me the importance of having assistants to help with projects this large, and showed me how to make the best use of that help. (It was something I started out bad at doing—my first few requests of Alan and Maria were to collect things I never ended up needing, for example.) I gained a new awe for the passion of Wheel of Time fandom, and feel I grew to understand them—particularly the very enthusiastic fans—a little better. This, in turn, has informed my interactions with my own readers.
I also learned that the way I do characters (which is the one part of the process I do more like a discovery writer) can betray me. As evidenced below.
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1298
Interview: Oct 17th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Gathering Storm: What I Learned (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
The Gathering Storm: What did I do wrong?
My take on Mat is very divisive among Wheel of Time fans. A great number feel I did him poorly in The Gathering Storm. I've had a similar number approach me and tell me they like my Mat better than they did in previous books. Unfortunately, in doing so, these latter readers prove that the first readers are right. People don't come to me and say "I like your Perrin" or "I dislike your Perrin." They don't do it for Rand, Egwene, or any of the other major characters. While undoubtedly there are some who feel this way about those characters, there isn't a consensus opinion among a large number of fans as there is that Mat was DIFFERENT in The Gathering Storm. Those who like him better are likely ones who just naturally prefer the way I do a roguish character as opposed to the way Robert Jordan did one. It doesn't mean Mat is better—just that I wrote him differently, and anytime there's a difference, some will prefer the changed version. (There are even people who prefer New Coke!)
I don't mean to demean the opinions of those who feel Mat was great in The Gathering Storm. I'm glad you enjoyed him, and I think there is some excellent writing involved in his viewpoints. However, I feel that I was wrong and the critics are right. Looking at Robert Jordan's Mat and what I wrote, there are some subtle differences that made Mat read wrong to a sizable portion of the audience. (Jason Denzel, who is a good friend, was the first to point it out to me—not maliciously, but truthfully. His comment was along the lines of, "I think your take on Mat feels like very early books Mat." This was a nice way of saying that my Mat lacked some of the depth of characterization he'd gained over the course of the latter books of the series.)
My Mat wasn't an attempt to fix or change Mat—the sense that Mat is "off" was created by me trusting my instincts and in this case being wrong. You see, as I say above, I discovery-write characters. I write a viewpoint, and then judge if it has the right feel. I try again, changing the way the character reacts and thinks, until I arrive at the right feel. It's like casting different actors in a role, and I do this quite deliberately—I feel that there is a danger in outlining as much as I do. It risks leaving your characters feeling wooden, that they are simply filling roles in a plot. (I find that many thrillers, which as a genre focus on tight plotting, have this problem.)
To combat this, I let my characters grow more organically. I allow them to violate the plot outline, and then revise the outline to fit the people they are becoming. They often do this, but mostly in very small ways—usually, my casting process finds the right person for the plot, and this doesn't require major revisions as they grow.
However, I've read The Wheel of Time over and over—and I had never noticed that my picture of Mat was still deeply influenced by his book one/two appearance. The sidekick rogue. While some of my favorite parts of the series are his latter appearances where he gains a great deal of characterization (although this starts in book three), I cast the wrong Mat in these books, and I simply wrote him poorly. It was a version of Mat, and I don't think it's a disaster—but he's much farther from his correct characterization than the other characters are.
The interesting thing about this is, though it is the biggest mistake I made in my writing of The Gathering Storm, it also is one of the things that taught me the most. My digging into viewpoint for the next book became one of the greatest learning experiences of my career so far.
To be continued.
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1299
Interview: Oct 22nd, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Towers of Midnight: Writing Process
Part of the reason I'd decided upon doing Rand/Egwene first was because I knew that this book—Perrin's sequence in particular—was going to be the trickiest of the four major viewpoint sequences. Of the four leads, I felt Perrin was one of those who needed the most growth. In fact, he had as much to grow as Rand did—but in more subtle ways. Rand's descent was a result of the multitude of forces pushing against him, bearing him down, threating to crush him. He was brought to the point where he was because his personality issues were magnified a hundred times over by the extreme circumstances of his life. He cracked while trying desperately to find the right thing to do.
Perrin was different. He had major hangups that he consistently refused to confront, and in many ways was the farthest of the main characters from where he needed to be. Rand's transformation was more dramatic, but Perrin's was just as necessary.
It should be noted that I felt, both from the notes and my own readings of the series, that Mat was basically where Robert Jordan wanted him to be. This remains true even after I re-looked at Mat and tried to fix my interpretation of him. That doesn't mean that Mat is finished as a character, just that he was where Mr. Jordan wanted him for the Last Battle. Mat was going to have another series all his own after the main group of books, and some of his character progress was saved for those. (Note that those books are not going to be written.)
Egwene had a small amount of development left to do, but was mostly there. In The Gathering Storm, she faced the most critical challenges of her career, but Robert Jordan had brought her to the point where she needed to be in Knife of Dreams, and in the notes for A Memory of Light he had indicated specifically how she was to progress. It was mostly a matter of using the confrontations in the White Tower to manifest things she had already learned, and to show once and for all the person she had become.
As for the other characters, Elayne was where she needed to be, but Avi was not. (She had a great deal of growth left to her.) Nynaeve had reached the peak of her development, in my opinion, as had Min. At least this is my read on it, which is reflected in my interpretations of the various arcs of the characters.
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1300
Interview: Oct 22nd, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Perrin
Perrin is my favorite character in the series, and has been since I was a youth. Like many readers, I was frustrated by his choices through the later books, though the writer in me really appreciated Robert Jordan's skillful guidance of the character. The problems Perrin confronted (sometimes poorly) highlighted his uncomfortable relationship with the wolves, his unwillingness to cut himself a break, and his ability to devote himself so utterly to one task that everything else vanished. (As a note, I feel this is one of the major things that made me empathize with Perrin for all those years. Of the main characters, he is the only artist. However, he's an artist like me—a focused project builder. A craftsman.)
Though I wanted to be careful not to overdo the concept, one of my goals in these last few books was to bring back ideas and conflicts from the first books—creating parallels and emphasizing the cyclical nature of the Wheel of Time. Again, this was dangerous. I didn't want these books to become a series of in-jokes, homages, and repetitions.
However, there are places where it was not only appropriate, but vital that we return to these themes. I felt one of those involved the Whitecloaks and Perrin, specifically the two Children of the Light he had killed during his clash with them in the very first book. This was a tricky sequence to plot. I wanted Perrin to manifest leadership in a way different from Rand or Egwene. Robert Jordan instructed that Perrin become a king, and I loved this plot arc for him—but in beginning it with the Whitecloaks, I threatened to leave Perrin weak and passive as a character. Of all the sequences in the books, I struggled with this one the most—mostly because of my own aspirations, goals, and dreams for what Perrin could become.
His plot is my favorite of the four for those reasons.
I had other goals for Perrin in this book. His experiences in the Wolf Dream needed to return, I felt, and push toward a final climax in the Last Hunt. This meant returning to a confrontation with Slayer, a mirrored character to Perrin with a dual nature. I wanted to highlight Perrin's instinctive use of his powers, as a contrast to the thoughtful, learned use of power represented by Egwene. People have asked if I think Perrin is better at Tel'aran'rhiod than Egwene. I don't think he is, the balefire-bending scene notwithstanding. They represent two sides of a coin, instinct and learning. In some cases Perrin will be more capable, and in others Egwene will shine.
The forging of Perrin's hammer, the death of Hopper, and the wounding of Perrin in the leg (which is mythologically significant) were in my narrative plan for him from the get-go. However, weaving them all together involved a lot of head/wall-bashing. I wanted a significance to Perrin's interactions with the Way of the Leaf as well, and to build a rapport between him and Galad—in my reads of the characters, I felt they would make for unlikely friends.
Of all the major plot sequences in the books, Perrin's was the one where I had the most freedom—but also the most danger of straying too far from Robert Jordan's vision for who the character should be. His instructions for Perrin focused almost entirely on the person Perrin would be after the Last Battle, with little or no direction on how to bring him there. Perrin was fully in my hands, and I wanted to take extra care to guide my favorite character toward the ending.
I will note, by the way, that Verin's interaction with Egwene in The Gathering Storm was my biggest surprise from the notes. My second biggest was the Thom/Moiraine engagement. Robert Jordan wrote that scene, and I was surprised to read it. (As I said, though I loved and had read the books, there are plenty of fans who were bigger fans than myself—and to them, this was no surprise.) I didn't pick up the subtle hints of a relationship between the two of them until my reread following my getting the notes.
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1301
Interview: Oct 22nd, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: Writing Process (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Mat
Robert Jordan had written much of Mat's plot, and left instructions on much of the rest. My challenge with Mat in this book, then, wasn't to complete his arc—which was quite good. It was to do a better job with Mat than I had in the previous book.
In order to do Mat right, I went back to Robert Jordan's writing. This time, I dissected Mat, looking at him as a craftsman. I saw a depth of internal narrative that was unlike anything I'd analyzed before. Of all the Wheel of Time characters, Mat is the least trustworthy narrator. What he thinks, feels, and does are sometimes three very different things. His narrative itself is filled with snark and beautifully clever lines, but a relative few of those actually leave his lips. The harder he tries to do something, often the worse it turns out for him. Mat's at his best when he lets instinct lead, regardless of what his internal monologue says.
This makes him very tricky to write, and is why my initial gut instinct on how to do him was wrong. I think for a lot of Wheel of Time readers, Mat is the big surprise in the series. The sometimes snarky, but often grumpy sidekick from the first two books transforms into a unique blend of awesomeness I haven't found in any other story.
I feel that my stab at writing Mat in Towers of Midnight is far better than it was in The Gathering Storm, though I'm not sure I got him right until A Memory of Light. I know some fans will disagree that I ever did get him right, but I am pleased with—and comfortable with—the Mat of these latter two books. Though, of course, having Robert Jordan's more detailed instructions for Mat in these books does help.
To be continued.
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1302
Interview: Oct 24th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: What I Learned (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Towers of Midnight: What did I learn?
Set Your Sights High
I've never been one to dodge a challenge. However, after failing to do The Way of Kings right in 2002, I was timid about tackling complex narratives across many, many viewpoints. Towers of Midnight marked the largest-scale book I'd ever attempted, with the most complexity of viewpoints, the greatest number of distinct and different scenes to balance, and the most ambitious forms of storytelling. Aviendha's trip through the glass pillars was the most audacious thing I believe I pitched at Team Jordan, and was one of the things about which they were the most skeptical. Perrin's balance between action and inaction risked having him descend into passiveness.
I worked on the new version of The Way of Kings during this time, in 2009–10, when I was also working on Towers of Midnight. I doubt I will ever be more busy than I was in those two years, tackling two of the biggest books of my career at the same time. However, during this time I entered a place in my writing where something clicked, dealing with the next stage of my writing career. I'd always wanted to master the complex epic—my favorite stories of all time fit this mold. Before this, however, I'd done very few sequels—and Towers of Midnight was the most complicated sequel I'm ever likely to do.
I learned a great deal about myself during this period, and the results are on the pages of these two books, Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings.
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1303
Interview: Oct 24th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: What I Learned (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Depth of Viewpoint
Working on Mat sent me down a proverbial rabbit hole, as I studied—really studied—how a master approached the use of the third-person limited viewpoint. I have always respected Robert Jordan's ability to characterize through viewpoint. (By this, I mean his ability to show how a person thinks and feels by the way they describe the world while you're seeing through their eyes.) Mat changed my perspective on how to write narrative, and how to make characters live beyond the words stated about them.
When asked what I think Robert Jordan's greatest skill was, I don't say worldbuilding or juggling a complex narrative, though these are certainly two areas in which he excelled. No, I talk about his viewpoints. If there's one thing I wish to learn from Robert Jordan, it's how to accomplish this—how to make you feel a character's culture, history, temperament, and current emotional state by the way they describe the simple things in the world around them.
I think I have improved at this. But it's one of the things I believe I'll be working on for my entire career.
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Interview: Oct 24th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: What I Learned (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Increased Subtlety
I like novels where a multitude of different threads, some hidden, twist together to a surprising conclusion. This is one area where I think I've, for the most part, done a good job in the past. Working on The Wheel of Time, however, I was able to see Robert Jordan's hand in new ways—and see how delicate he could be with some of his plotting and characterization. I worry that sometimes, I beat people over the head with a character's goals, theme, and motivations. It's because I feel a character with well-defined motivations is one of the hallmarks of a strongly written story.
However, I do think I need to learn to be more subtle—and The Wheel of Time taught me a great deal about this. Robert Jordan's light hand in dealing with the Thom/Moiraine relationship is a good example. Other characters, however, stand out as well—Pevara is an example. The subtle clues about how some of the Sitters who had been chosen were too young is another example of his very delicate hand. It's not an important thread, in the grand scheme of things. Little touches like this, however, are what makes a world live beyond the page. It is something I think I learned from this project—not necessarily how to accomplish this (we'll see if I can), but how to recognize and appreciate it.
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Interview: Oct 24th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: Towers of Midnight: What I Learned (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Towers of Midnight: What did I do wrong?
I'm the culprit of numerous small mistakes, most of which there is no time to point out. The biggest flaw in my writing of Towers of Midnight, however, has to be the chronology.
All of my solo books have been basically chronological. Elantris had some funky storytelling where each group of three chapters happened concurrently, but most of my other books had a forward progression without much jumping back and forth in timeline for different characters.
The Wheel of Time, however, does jump around a lot—you just don't notice it, as Robert Jordan juggled the timelines quite well. Mat could be progressing at one rate, and when you jumped to Perrin, you'd jump forward or back in time. Those who wanted to look for the clues could find out and build a timeline using the phases of the moon or other hints. Those who didn't want to notice, however, were never thrown out by perceived incongruities.
When we split the books, some of the timeline things I'd done got too far out of sync. At the end of Knife of Dreams, the character viewpoints were somewhat out of sync, as Robert Jordan often wrote them. I didn't have any experience juggling something like this, and in Towers of Midnight I flubbed it. Not that the timeline is messed up—it's actually pretty good, all things considered. However, the perception of it brought us troubles. Because characters interacted across timelines, it felt like they were in two places at once (Tam is an example) even though it all worked narratively.
This made for some confusing moments for readers. Mr. Jordan did things like this without distracting; I didn't juggle this as well, and because of it, I think the book suffered. I hope I've grown better, but it was eye-opening for me when Towers of Midnight came out and people mentioned being confused. I hadn't even noticed the potential problem until the book was out.
To be continued.
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Interview: Oct 30th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A Memory of Light: Perrin and Egwene (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Now we come to the big one. The Last Battle, the final book of the Wheel of Time.
There was so much to pack into this book that at times I wondered if I'd be able to create a cohesive narrative from it. The danger was that instead, it would feel like a sequence of "Oh, hey, I forgot to tie this up" loose ends being completed one after another. Many of these things did need to be tied up, but it needed to happen in a way that came together into a story.
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Interview: Oct 30th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A Memory of Light: Perrin and Egwene (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Perrin
When I launched into this book, I'd just finished Towers of Midnight and was in a very "Perrin is awesome" mood. I wanted to keep writing Perrin, so I did his sequence for the book first. It worked, to an extent. I love the Perrin parts of this book. However, by the end—and after finishing the other viewpoints—we found that the book had way too much Perrin in it. Cutting the sequence where Perrin travels through the Ways to try to close the Caemlyn Waygate from behind was one method of balancing this out. The sequence was also cut because Harriet felt I'd gone too far in the direction of returning to previous themes in the series, bringing back something better left alone so we could focus on the Last Battle. (In addition, Maria thought my descriptions of the Ways just didn't fit the story.)
This was a 17,000-word sequence (and it ended with the Ogier rescuing Perrin and his company from the Black Wind, driving it off with their song). I love the sequence, but unlike the sequence with Bao (the deleted scenes named "River of Souls" and included in the Unfettered anthology) it is not canon. It couldn't happen for a multitude of reasons, and got trimmed.
Otherwise, Perrin ended up as I wanted him. A lot of people were surprised that I knocked him out of the fighting for a big chunk of the Last Battle, but I felt it appropriate. The fighting armies were Mat's show, and Perrin's focus for the fighting was to join Rand and protect him in the Wolf Dream. There was so much else going on, I decided to bench him for a chunk of the warfare—and I'm pleased with the result. It brought real impact to the Slayer fight, where Perrin was left wounded.
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Interview: Oct 30th, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A Memory of Light: Perrin and Egwene (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Egwene
There were three particular things that were quite a challenge in writing this last book. The first was how to use Rand fighting the Dark One in a way that would be interesting, visual, and powerful. The second was how to do the tactics of a large-scale battle. The final one had to do with Egwene.
In his notes, Robert Jordan was very specific about the fact that Rand and Egwene needed to almost come to blows in the lead-up to the Last Battle. He called it the grand union of the armies against Rand, whose decisions were considered too radical, too dangerous, to be allowed to proceed. Moiraine was to be the force that brought the two of them together, unifying the armies of light, cementing her importance—and showing why she needed to be rescued by Mat before the Last Battle. (There were a lot of instructions about what Moiraine was to say, and some good writing on that meeting at the Field of Merrilor.)
The burden upon me was to realistically bring Rand and Egwene to the point where the reader believed they'd fight one another—or at least go to the Last Battle separately, without cohesion—if Moiraine hadn't intervened. This was difficult. Having The Gathering Storm end on such a high note for Egwene left me struggling to figure out how, in Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light, to make her go at cross-purposes to Rand without alienating the reader from her viewpoints. I felt what she was doing was very realistic and in character for who she was, but I also knew that making the decisions she would make was going to cause some readers to be very annoyed with her.
In the end, I decided that the proper course was to let them be annoyed. The very same strength that had made Egwene shine in The Gathering Storm was also the strength that let her lead the Aes Sedai—of whom she had truly become one. The will of the Aes Sedai against the rest of the world is a major theme of the Wheel of Time, and say what you will of it, the theme is consistent—as are the characters. Egwene was at their head. Yes, I wanted her to be relatable, but I also wanted it clear that she was Aes Sedai, and she wasn't about to let someone else dominate the decisions on how to approach the Last Battle.
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Interview: Nov 1st, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A Memory of Light: The Black Tower (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan didn't leave me a ton of direction regarding the Black Tower. There were a few gems that we knew, but in a lot of places I was left to follow my instincts regarding the plotting points he had built across the last few books. He did leave a lot of clear instructions regarding Taim, fortunately, including his backstory and instructions for a scene where Taim was named as one of the Forsaken.
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Interview: Nov 1st, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A Memory of Light: The Black Tower (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Androl and Pevara
In working on the Black Tower plot, one thing I realized early on was that I wanted a new viewpoint character to be involved. One reason was that we didn't have anyone to really show the lives of the everyday members of the Black Tower. It felt like a hole in the viewpoint mosaic for the series. In addition, each Wheel of Time book—almost without exception—has either introduced a new viewpoint character or added a great deal of depth to a character who had only seen minimal use before. As we were drawing near to the end of the series, I didn't want to expand this very far. However, I did want to add at least one character across the three books I was doing.
I went to Team Jordan with the suggestion that I could fulfill both of these purposes by using one of the rank-and-file members of the Black Tower, preferably someone who wasn't a full Asha'man and was something of a blank slate. They suggested Androl. The notes were silent regarding him, and while he had been around, he so far hadn't had the spotlight on him. He seemed the perfect character to dig into.
A few more things got spun into this sequence. One was my desire to expand the usage of gateways in the series. For years, as an aspiring writer, I imagined how I would use gateways if writing a book that included them. I went so far as to include in the Stormlight Archive a magic system built around a similar teleportation mechanic. Being able to work on the Wheel of Time was a thrill for many reasons, but one big one was that it let me play with one of my favorite magic systems and nudge it in a few new directions. I've said that I didn't want to make a large number of new weaves, but instead find ways to use established weaves in new ways. I also liked the idea of expanding on the system for people who have a specific talent in certain areas of the One Power.
Androl became my gateway expert. Another vital key in building him came from Harriet, who mailed me a long article about a leatherworker she found in Mr. Jordan's notes. She said, "He was planning to use this somewhere, but we don't know where."
One final piece for his storyline came during my rereads of the series, where I felt that at times the fandom had been too down on the Red Ajah. True, they had some serious problems with their leadership in the books, but their purpose was noble. I feel that many readers wanted to treat them as the Wheel of Time equivalent of Slytherin—the house of no-goods, with every member a various form of nasty. Robert Jordan himself worked to counteract this, adding a great deal of depth to the Ajah by introducing Pevara. She had long been one of my favorite side characters, and I wanted her to have a strong plot in the last books. Building a relationship between her and Androl felt very natural to me, as it not only allowed me to explore the bonding process, but also let me work a small romance into the last three books—another thing that was present in most Wheel of Time books. The ways I pushed the Androl/Pevara bond was also something of an exploration and experiment. Though this was suggested by the things Robert Jordan wrote, I did have some freedom in how to adapt it. I felt that paralleling the wolf bond made sense, with (of course) its own distinctions.
Finding a place to put the Pevara/Androl sequence into the books, however, proved difficult. Towers of Midnight was the book where we suffered the biggest time crunch. That was the novel where I'd plotted to put most of the Black Tower sequence, but in the end it didn't fit—partially because we just didn't have time for me to write it. So, while I did finish some chapters to put there, the soul of the sequence got pushed off to A Memory of Light, if I managed to find time for it.
I did find time—in part because of cutting the Perrin sequence. Losing those 17,000 words left an imbalance to the pacing of the final book. It needed a plot sequence with more specific tension to balance out the more sweeping sequences early in the book where characters plan, plot, and argue. I was able to expand Androl/Pevara to fit this hole, and to show a lot of things I really wanted to show in the books.
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Interview: Nov 1st, 2013
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A Memory of Light: The Black Tower (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
Rand and Logain
I made a few interesting decisions with the Black Tower sequence. The first was to not involve Rand. Though it would have been a nice narrative balance to have Rand come save the Asha'man in contrast to them saving him in book six, I felt that Rand was riding to the rescue too often. The Black Tower was about to lose him permanently, and if its members could not face their problems on their own, then thematically they'd be left at the end of the series hampered and undermined. Beyond this, I believed that Rand's personality (as shown in earlier books) would push him to avoid being pulled into a potential trap at the Black Tower. His argument that he couldn't risk a confrontation is a good one. Androl and company had to face their problems on their own—save for the help of an Aes Sedai, another thing I felt to be thematically important.
Perhaps the most controversial decision (among Team Jordan) that I made with this sequence was to push Logain toward being a darker figure. Following his extended torture, I felt that Logain would emerge as a different person—though he'd always been somewhat dark. Some members of Team Jordan felt he was past that, and I disagreed. Logan was a false Dragon, gentled then healed, head of a group of men going insane who owed loyalty to Rand—but who rarely interacted with him. There is so much going on with this guy that he could have carried an entire series on his own.
I wanted him to wrestle with all of this. Logain's life ever since his capture way back when seemed to have been one of being shoved this way and then that. He needed to decide for himself what kind of Black Tower he was going to rule, if he was going to earn the honor of men as was promised. (And yes, this had not yet happened at the end of the series.) Logain, so far as I know, never once let go of power in the series—it was always ripped from his fingers. In this case, he was allowed to choose.
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Interview: Mar, 2009
Nathan Morris
Could you tell us a little bit about The Wheel of Time?
Brandon Sanderson
Sure. The Wheel of Time is a very important series to me as well as to a lot of my generation of fantasy readers. The first book was published in 1990, and it's called The Eye of the World. It was one of those books that, in my opinion, took the genre in new directions. It built on what had been done before, but it did new and important things with the storytelling. It became the preeminent epic of my time. When I was a student in high school, The Wheel of Time became the best-selling fantasy series and one of my personal favorites, if not my number one favorite. While he was working on the final book of the series, which all of us had been waiting for, for almost twenty years, the author, Robert Jordan, passed away in 2007 from a very rare blood disease. It was one of those tragedies that you can't even describe, and a lot of us didn't know how to react. We knew that he was sick. He'd talked about it. He even mentioned it on his blog, but he always spoke so optimistically about it that we were all sure he was going to beat it. So when he passed away, it was a shock. Like every other fan, one of my first thoughts, besides my concern for his family, was, "Boy, I hope that whoever they give the last book to doesn't screw it up." It was probably a little selfish of us to think this, but we'd been following the series for so long. Lo and behold, about a month later, I woke up one morning and found that I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it said, "Hello, Brandon Sanderson, this is Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's widow. I'd like you to call me back. I've got something I want to talk to you about." It was one of those moments where you are absolutely certain at first that someone is playing a prank on you and then you start to shake nervously at the thought that it might not be a prank.
When I got a hold of her, I found out that she was looking at me as one of the candidates to finish The Wheel of Time. I hadn't applied for this or anything like that. These books are a really, really big deal. They are the biggest books that the publisher has, and I was absolutely stunned. It turns out that a number of people had recommended me to her, but she wanted to make sure I was interested first. She then went and read Mistborn before calling me back and asking me if I would do it. This isn't the sort of opportunity that you pass up; you just don't.
I considered Robert Jordan in many ways to be a mentor. I had read a lot of his books when I was trying to decide how to write myself, and he strongly influenced what I produced. I'd never met him, so I didn't know him personally, and that's what dumbfounded me when I got the phone call. After I accepted the offer, Harriet, Robert's two assistants Alan and Maria (who have all been involved with The Wheel of Time for a very long time), and I started working on compiling the book. As to be expected, we found big holes in the writing that are now my job to fill—hundreds of thousands of words' worth of things that still need to be written. We've got notes. We've got materials. We've got dictations. We've got all sorts of things. But it's a big, big project.
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Interview: May 31st, 2013
Dear [Me], Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
A Letter from Brandon Sanderson to his Hero, Robert Jordan
31st of May, 2013
Dear Robert Jordan,
I'm the guy who finished your life's work. I like to imagine myself as a Boy Scout, rushing to help my aging mentor cross the last street of his life. Other people aren't quite so . . . considerate. They consider me an opportunistic hack who managed to worm my way into something over my head. Either way, this was my task and my burden: to finish the greatest book series of my time, a series I grew up reading.
I never met you. I know your family really well now—your fans, your assistants. I know your characters and world better than I ever knew them before as a fan. I've seen your half-finished drafts, something I know would have made you very uncomfortable.
But I don't know you. In some ways, even the fan who shook your hand once at a signing knows you better than I do. It's surreal sometimes—to put on your shoes in the morning, and go out to the Wheel of Time fans, and talk to them about the series. But I still don't know you.
I hope that you're proud. I hope that you're looking down and saying, "Nice work, kid. It's not as good as I would have done, but it'll do." And . . . well, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. I kind of also hope to escape you. Wheel of Time casts a long shadow, and if at the end of the day, I'm known only as the guy who helped finish The Wheel of Time, I'll actually be okay with that, so don't get me wrong.
But now I've got to get out from underneath that shadow. I've got to do my own things, like you did yourself. I've got worlds to explore, books to write. I hope that I can make half the dent that you did in the industry. I hope that I can inspire new writers, like you did. I hope I can help kids—teenagers who don't know what they're doing—find themselves in fantasy books, like you did. Most of all, I just hope that I can stay true to myself and my vision for my worlds, like you did.
I never knew you. I did never get to meet you. But, I hope that someday, I'll be able to shake your hand, and we'll be able to chat.
Brandon Sanderson
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Interview: 2011
Reddit 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)CrypticDemon (February 2011)
Reread Wheel of Time 1-10 or find summaries somewhere and start on 11?
I'm really torn on this one. It's been nearly 7 years since I've read any of the books and 10+ for some of the early ones.
I'm leaning toward a reread but, damn, i know it's going to take me nearly 10 months to get through them all. Probably about the time Sanderson has the last one done.
Are there even any good thorough summaries out there for each book?
Edit\Update: So I decided to start rereading them and am nearly done with the first book. I'm really glad I'm not doing the summaries, it's almost like reading them the first time since it's been so long. There's so much I had forgotten and I'm really enjoying the read.
SgtPsycho
I just purchased the last few books, and am restarting the series from the beginning. As you say, I'm pretty good up until Lord of Chaos. After that... will be a bit of grind. The one where nothing happens in the entire book (brings all characters up to 'a great disturbance in the Force') shits me.
I think I will stick in there, but it will take some time.
Linky time for CrypticDemon
Dragonmount Summaries
Tor's comprehensive chapter-by-chapter summaries
Compiled Summaries by P.KordaDiscursiveMind
I've always liked Encylopaedia WoT's summaries, they break down each chapter for each book with plenty of embedded references.
Brandon Sanderson ()
Encyclopaedia WoT is basically my go-to quick reference in working on the books. I went so far as to get a copy from the creators to upload locally on my machine so I'll have it for internet outages. It's great for quick reminders, or for locating the right scene I need to re-read in the books in order to get a viewpoint or scene right.
Don't know that I can weigh in on this more than that. What has been said here is excellent. The summaries sgtpsycho posted are great. TarValon's wiki is a good resource too. But whether to reread or not...depends on personal preference. I will say that the books that people tend to feel drag felt a lot less draggy to me during my last reread, as I knew the ending.
Having an ending in hand changes things, at least for me. Instead of raging about a book because it makes such little progress, and one has waited for it for years, one can read the slower book and appreciate the side stories being told, as you know the ending is right there waiting. I suspect more people will have this response once the last one is done.
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Interview: 2011
Reddit 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)CreeDorofl (February 2011)
Do you ever think "I hope this author finishes the next book before he dies" then feel guilty and selfish afterwards?
I'm looking at you, George RR Martin. I mean, he's only 62 it turns out, I thought he was older, but anyway. His first books of that series were only 2 years apart, then it took 5 to come out with a feast for crows, and it's been six years since then. At this rate, if it's released this year, he will be wrapping up the series at 74. And it's turning out longer than expected.
Not just him though, I remember thinking "Will Robert B. Parker ever do something major with Spenser, or the new guy?" and then he dropped dead.
TTChopper
I was incredibly saddened when Robert Jordan didn't get to finish his series before he passed away. Even though the series gets some hate here on reddit, it has been something I've enjoyed reading over the years.
Currently, I am really hoping Terry Pratchett can keep churning out the books.. hearing about his Alzheimer's makes me scared that the world will be robbed of his talent prematurely.
CreeDorofl
man I didn't even know about robert jordan. I got through like 5 books then the thrill was kind of gone. That's a shame he didn't finish the series. On the other hand, it was up to like ten books, I think the guy needed a new editor or something. I can't imagine anything staying interesting for that long.
TTChopper
He spent the last year or more of his life in a hospital bed explaining how the story ends to his wife, Brandon Sanderson (the guy who is now finishing the series) and a tape recorder so that the story could be finished after he died.
That's dedication to your craft and your characters.
And tens of thousands of fans breathed a sigh of relief at the same time that they mourned his passing.
mrgreen4242
Actually, I don't think Brandon was brought into it until after Jordan died. He wrote a bunch of the final (three) books, dictated some, created outlines, and told his wife (who was also one of his editors) a lot of it.
But, ya, pretty dedicated.
TTChopper
Yeah, you are right. I was under the impression that Jordan actually chose Sanderson to finish it.
Still, I'm now looking forward to when the final book is published and I can put that series to bed once and for all.
Brandon Sanderson ()
Yes, I wasn't brought on until after. (Robert Jordan's wife Harriet chose me, after he asked her to pick someone. She worked as an editor in New York for many years, so he knew this was something he could lay at her feet.)
The part about the tape recorder on the death bead is right, however.
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Interview: 2011
Reddit 2011 (WoT) (Verbatim)Question (March 2011)
Within 5 Years, Digital Books Will Only Cost $0.99
AnalyticContinuation
It is amazing to see sales take off when the price falls below some resistance point.
But $0.99 seems very low for a full-length novel. Such a novel probably takes a year to write, and I would have though it was similar in terms of creative effort to a complete album rather than just one song.
muhfuhkuh
See, that's the magic of volume pricing. When it's priced to sell at $.99, an author (no doubt indie, because there is no possible way a publisher, with all their overhead, can price like that and still remain viable) gets two substantial effects: They get the "cash register candy" impulse buyer to pull the trigger without much thought; and, because there are alot more of those readers (as evinced by the explosion in sales of ereaders), they make up in volume what they sacrifice in price.
If you're #60 in the Kindle top 100, you're selling something like 500 copies a day. These ebooks stay for (afaict) an average of 8 weeks on the charts. So 500 x 56 days = 28000 sales. If you're pricing at, say $2.99, you'll get $2.10 a copy after Amazon's cut. 28000 x 2.10 = $58,800. In 2 months of being on the charts. Not saying everyone will do that, but let's put it this way: You have as much a chance as anyone with a novel of similar quality and luck. Now, if you wrote 3-4 breezy, genre novels of sellable quality, and you had even 1/4 of the sales, you can see how this volume pricing can provide you with a pretty comfortable living, even if Amazon takes 65% of the 99 cents.
Such a novel probably takes a year to write
That's the romanticized "Great American" notion of the Novel as singular artwork and the novelist as auteur. It aggrandizes people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Salinger to the level of genius (which, arguably, is well-deserved), but not every novelist is like that and writes those kinds of timeless classics.
The two darlings of the 99-cent authors, Amanda Hocking and John Locke (yeah yeah...) are absolutely brand-spanking new to fiction writing. She's written 6 novels, he has 7. Almost all their novels were written within the last year or two (Locke, I believe, never wrote any of his novels before last year, Hocking had one or two of the 6 novels done before hitting it big).
All of their novels are in the top 100 Kindle store, selling, on average, between 500-6000 ebooks a day. Last I heard, Hocking was selling something like 100,000 ebooks a month, priced between 99 cents and 2.99. And, there are hundreds of previously mid-list writers publishing their back catalogs this way and making more on 99-cent or 2.99 ebooks than they ever did as a published mid-lister, even with the modest advances.
Brandon Sanderson ()
There are things you aren't taking into account here. The biggest one is this: all books are not the same. The Gathering Storm took me eighteen months to write. That's not a romanticized "Great American" novel. That's me, writing commercial fiction. True, I hope there's some strong literary value to it. But at the end of the day, I'm a craftsman—and I'm writing every day, working full days. It just takes a lot of time to create a 1000 page novel.
Selling a book at .99 is one thing if it's a short book (which the ones selling for that price are) that is very episodic (which they are.) Write a book at 400k words instead of 70k words, and the difficulty of managing plot lines grows exponentially, not to mention the months it takes to worldbuild a realistic epic fantasy world.
Beyond that, Epic Fantasy—which I write—has a shorter 'amplitude' than something like Hocking is writing. The biggest bestselling epic fantasies—at any price—sell far fewer copies than the best selling romance or paranormal romance books do. There are fewer people who want to read them, and for those who do read them, time is less of a barrier (to many) than price. You can only read so many books of that length. (Well, you can only read so many of any length, but you get what I mean.)
Even accounting for collectors grabbing everything they can at low prices, if you drop epic fantasy books to $.99, the genre will probably no longer be able to support full time writers. That's not to say it won't happen, and maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised at how many new readers we can pick up. But I'm skeptical.
I find the $.99 ebook thing kind of baffling, honestly. We'll pay $10 to go to a movie, we'll pay $10 for an album, but we want a book to cost a fraction of that?
Phinaeus
Wait wait. Are you saying you're Brandon Sanderson? I'm honored. I was a big fan of the WoT series but haven't caught up fully due to no time.
I don't know if it's been revealed in TGS, but who exactly killed Asmodean?
Brandon Sanderson
It's me. And the killer of Asmodean is revealed in Towers of Midnight. (Brows through the glossary if you want a 'quick fix' answer. It's in there, though the text of the book makes it pretty clear too.)
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
Harriet McDougal
After the Q&A session, Harriet read the first two paragraphs of Chapter One of A Memory of Light, the "wind" section. She spoke afterward about how she felt that the wind at the beginning of each novel was "very consciously" the breath of life into his characters.Tags
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
Brandon Sanderson
When asked about his favorite Forsaken, he said "My favorite Forsaken is probably Demandred." He went on to say that his second favorite was Lanfear, and that "I was happy to bring Lanfear back into the forefront of the series."Tags
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
When asked one of the things that he liked about Robert Jordan's writing:Brandon Sanderson
"I really liked how he used mythology."Tags
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
When a fan complimented him on the accuracy regarding horses in the Wheel of Time:Brandon Sanderson
"Mostly that's Robert Jordan, he was much better at that than I am. I've taken some crash courses."Tags
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Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
Brandon Sanderson
When asked about the Wheel of Time MUD game, he replied that he had never played it. Brandon explained that during the era when MUDs were really big, he didn’t have an internet connection. He did point out that he was part of the Wheel of Time discussions on Usenet.Tags
1322
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
Brandon Sanderson
When asked about Aviendha’s second trip through the pillars in Rhuidean, Brandon said that he pitched that sequence. He related that Team Jordan was initially reluctant, but once he actually wrote a draft of the scene, they loved it. He said that he is most proud of that chapter.Tags
1323
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
When asked about his own contributions to the Wheel of Time, Brandon related a request he had made of Harriet.Brandon Sanderson
"I wanted an Asha'man of my own… Androl had been in the books, but there was no personality with him, just a name." "I took him wherever I wanted to go." He clarified that Androl was not an author surrogate, or a way of inserting himself into the books, but that he was a character that Brandon could develop and write as he pleased.Tags
1324
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
One fan asked if the Wheel of Time RPG had any impact on the development of the powers in the series:Brandon Sanderson
"I have never read the role-playing game."Tags
1325
Interview: Jan 10th, 2013
AMOL Signing Report - NutiketAiel (Paraphrased)NutiketAiel
One fan asked Brandon to rank Mat’s combat ability compared to other characters in the series.Brandon Sanderson
Brandon described Mat as "good" and "above the curve." However, compared to Lan, Mat was "completely out-classed." Brandon confirmed that Lan is at the top in terms of combat ability, but added that, at his height, Tam was "pretty darn good" and could have taken Mat. However, Brandon cautioned that all this was not factoring Mat’s luck. Mat's combat abilities vary a great deal, depending on whether he was "ticked off," what the stakes of the battle were and whether he was in "awesome Mat mode."
Regarding the battles in the end of the series, Brandon said that some of the researchers working with them studied historical battles and fed him movements for authenticity.
Tags
1326
Interview: Mar 21st, 2014
WOR Signing Table Q&A (Verbatim)Question
Did it seem really awkward working with someone else's characters, with Robert Jordan?Brandon Sanderson
You know, I thought that it would, but the fact that I've been reading them since I was a kid, they felt really natural to me, like writing my own characters. I'm quite pleased—I was quite surprised. Perrin and Rand and everyone, they're like my high school buddies. It was refreshingly familiar to me.Tags
1327
Interview: Apr 10th, 2014
Terez
[You said that RJ wrote the scene where Rand comes out of the mountain, but you said you based Nakomi on something "deep in the notes". Did you add anything to the scene RJ wrote?]Brandon Sanderson
[RJ wrote the woman in the scene. I had to dig deep in the notes to figure out...] ...who this person is. It is something that I had to put together myself.
Terez
So you had to...you didn't change anything about that scene.
Brandon Sanderson
I don't believe that I changed anything about that scene. You will have to compare it to the original if that ever comes out in the notes—I don't know whether that's in the stuff that was released to the [library]—but I don't believe any changes were made except for perhaps proofreading and editing changes as we went through. The big changes I made to the epilogue were the addition of certain viewpoints, but were not changes to what was written. Some of these scenes we have in the epilogue were some of the cleanest scenes that we got. And sure, we had to clean them up in some ways, but I don't believe that scene had any major edits to it, but it's now been quite a long time since I worked on that scene, so take that with a caveat.
But that was one of those scenes, when I read it...now, you'll have to remember, it was 2007 when I went to Harriet's house and I got handed this stack of paper, and I sat down and I read it, and I started with that scene. That was the first thing that I read, because that was the completed—like, I wanted to read the ending, right? There was stuff written before that, but [...] the ending to me that I read started right with what you're talking about, that exact moment with him stumbling out, and the things that he's kind of mumbling, and the things that he's hearing and saying and stuff. But, you may have to—I honestly, it's so hard for me, some of these things, it's so hard for me to remember because we're going back seven years, where I started working on that outline, right after reading what he'd written—and started building it, and over the years, we get a lot of questions, was this you? was this him? I've forgotten. [laughter] Because...no, you have this whole thing and you're working on it for seven years, and what was him and what was me stopped really being that important when we're building the story. Granted, there are certain things we really wanted to preserve of his because we wanted the actual writing he completed, but you know, which themes, and which concepts—there are things where I'm like, "Oh!—I was looking back through my outline, and I'm like, "Oh, I put this in. Why did I put that in? Oh, it's because of this," and then I went back into his notes, "No wait, no he said to do that!" And he wrote that! And they blended together quite a bit. Like, that scene, over the years, I thought, "Oh, I added some stuff to that scene." And then I went back to the original when I was going to put it in, and lo and behold, I hadn't added anything to that scene, is my recollection. It was there, and I'm like, "Oh wait, no that was him, and that's what sparked me to do this other thing," which then, we turned into this other scene, and...but it gets really hard for me to parse without having, in front of me, to say, "Okay, did I change any words?" So...
Next Question
What can you tell us about that woman?
Brandon Sanderson
That right there is one of the two main things which I have said I'm not going to say anything about. So I'm not answering...that's...that's one of the big...I feel that the notes indicated that this should be a mystery that he wanted to be left, and...things that...there are actually very few of those that we haven't said anything about, and I think this is the one that I'm just not gonna talk about. The other one of course is the pipe, and that's because we don't know. That...the woman you're talking about, I do know things about, but I'm just not...that's...you know, this is the mystery that he wanted us to have, and the pipe is another one. Those are the two big things I can't give you answers on, one because I won't, and one because...um, because I can't. The other thing I haven't been answering is I haven't been answering who made the decision on every specific character, who should live and who should die, and I don't think that focusing on that is really productive, and so I haven't been telling people who, except for one character [looks at Harriet; audience laughs] that I didn't want to die [awws], that Harriet decided needed to go, of the four-hoofed persuasion. [laughter] In general I just don't talk a lot about those, so I'll just give you a warning, those are things I'm not going to answer. I am pretty free about a lot of other things, but I don't answer those.
Tags
1328
Interview: Apr 10th, 2014
Question
A certain male channeler who liked portals—how much of that was you just thinking of portals?Brandon Sanderson
(laughs) So I had not played Portal at that point (laughter), which is actually very advantageous. I've told this story before, so I apologize if this is a repeat. Growing up reading the Wheel of Time and being a magic systems guy, certain aspects of the Wheel of Time magic system were very evocative to me. And I would list the two that were most interesting to me being the World of Dreams and portals themselves, gateways. These were two things that...you know when you... We've all done this, we've read these books. You put down the books and you keep dreaming, right? You keep thinking. And for me it was often what would I do if I were there, and devising aspects of the magic. I often inserted characters of my own into books I was reading as a kid, very frequently. I think I can trace back Hoid, one of my character's origins, to my always kind of saying, "Well there's a character behind the scenes who's doing all this."
And imagining what I would do with gateways...Actually, it's one of these things that I sat down and started devising a magic system based around for a book. And eventually I did all this work and decided I just can never write that book because it's too similar to Robert Jordan. As I've said many times, I wanted to be very conscious of staking my own claim in the fantasy genre in doing different things because I feel that one of the places that the genre went in the late 90s was very much trying to mimic and copy Robert Jordan, who did really awesome things and I felt had covered the area, right? And I said I don't like that this is where the genre is going. I want to be covering new ground, be doing new things.
And so reluctantly I kind of put aside some of those ideas, and then I got asked to work on the Wheel of Time. And I said, "Well, guess what I have in my little quiver back here, is a desire to really play with some of these magic systems." And so the meeting I did during my second visit to Charleston was in April or May of 2008, where we sat down. You guys remember that—we got out the butcher paper. I asked for butcher paper. We gotta see if we can dig those out. But I like sometimes to do visual outlining, and I took these big sheets of paper and wrote down character names and started making connections and building an outline. Wrote Team Jordan saying, "What if we did this? What if we did that?" It's where I threw out some of my weirdest ideas and I think terrified them, sometimes. Some things worked. Some things I threw out there, and there were like the whites you could see around their pupils. They're like, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" I'm like, "What if Perrin adopted the Way of the Leaf?" I remember Maria just flipping out about that. She's like, "Please, please don't do that!" [Looks at Maria:] Yeah, you remember that one, don't you? And throwing out all kinds of things because I feel that being brought on, one of the big dangers in working on the Wheel of Time books would be to play it too safe. Robert Jordan would have expanded the world, and the characters would have taken risks, and things like this. And one way we could fail is by not following his vision. But another way we could fail would be by creating bland books. And I think this is where a lot of media properties, like people who write on some big television movie—these books are really bland. Where they fail a lot is because they can't make any changes. They don't feel they can change the canon, they can't take chances, they can't push the stories In new directions, and the books often because of that will end up very bland. And I said we can't fall into that trap. We have to be willing to shake things up. We have to be willing to do things on the level of the things Robert Jordan did, where you know, look at Rand cleansing saidin and things like this. We have to be willing to do this.
(indecipherable)... One of the things I said I really want to do is, I said I want a character who has a Talent for gateways, because I love gateways and I want to play with them. And I also kind of want to add a new character—well, do a Robert Jordan and take a side character and make them more a main character for these last books because I feel he would have done that with somebody. It's what he does. And so, Androl was... I said, "Is there an Asha'man I can have?" And I think...was it Maria? It was either you or Alan said—I think it was you—who said, "What about Androl? We know almost nothing about him. How do you feel about him?" And I said, "That's perfect, exactly what I was looking for." And I took him. And so this is kind of a place where I was allowed to take some of what I like to do about fiction in the fantasy genre and play with it in a way that wouldn't dramatically change a main character, and which would allow me to push the magic system in some new and interesting directions without overwhelming and dominating it. One danger I felt for me was if I took the whole magic system and dealt with it, it would go too off the wall. But taking one little aspect and kind of doing what I love to do, and really explore the ramifications of what this would do to a world, was something that really excited me and I felt would allow me to have some fun, but not take over too much. And Androl filled that perfectly. I really am pleased with how he turned out. And all these things that I dreamed of as a kid: "Ooh, if I had gateways, here's what I'd do. Oh, I'd do this. I'd use them as a weapon. Ooh, bottom of the ocean—what do we do if we go to the bottom of the ocean?" You know, and things like this, and whatnot. And it was just a lot of fun.
So yes, that's what it was. And I give a lot of credit to Team Jordan for things like this. When I was doing this, I felt part of my job in these situations was to be the one pushing this toward that level of let's not play it safe. During this time, Maria and Alan kind of became the ones to say let's make sure we're not going too far. And that balance worked really well. They let me get away with on gateways a lot of stuff that I appreciate them letting me get away with. I know at some points, they were like, wow, I'm not sure if this is...yeah, this is a lot of gateways. I remember you [Maria] saying to me once, "This is a lot of gateways, Brandon." But I think in the end that push and pull between us ended up making the book very strong. And Androl became a really great character to add to the Wheel of Time canon, and so I'm very pleased with how that all turned out.
Tags
1329
Interview: Apr 10th, 2014
Devon Wolfman Starr
What was your experience like working on specifically tactics of the biggest military engagement of the last novel?So this is another one of those places where it required a lot of push and pull between us. This is something that Robert Jordan had more talent for than I have. He was a military tactician and military historian, and I am not. I am an action movie buff, and a Chinese Kung Fu movie buff. And I love vibrant, engaging visual action sequences. And large scale battle tactics are something I usually go to other people to use as resource on. And so on this one, we made Alan Romanczuk our Great Captain who was going to define our tactics....(indecipherable)...There was a lot of conflict between he and myself—good-natured, but sometimes heated—because I kept pushing toward more cinematic and more character focused. And he kept pushing toward more realism and more focus on the tactics. And that was a lot of push and pull between us. We did go to some people starting out to ask for advice on what we should use as patterns for this. And we got some great advice there on which real historical battles would make great models for us to follow. We felt that was one of the things that we should do is rather than try to come up with this from scratch, we really should use something which happened in our world as a patten because that would help us from making any big blunders. And then Alan would say, "This is what the tactics would be here." And I'm like, "That's not dramatic enough. This is what needs to happen to make the story go." He'd be like, "That violates these rules of tactics." And I'm like, "All right. What can we do in between these two that is still dramatic and still tactically sound?" And we went back and forth a lot on that.
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1330
Interview: Apr 10th, 2014
Question
In the final confrontation, the reality healing crystally stuff—was that something demanded by the notes, or just a spectacular way for that girl to deal with that guy?Without delving too much into specifics, because I'm not sure exactly what's going to end up in the encyclopedia and what's going to end up in the notes, and things like this. Without going too much into specifics, for the Last Battle itself a lot of what Robert Jordan left me are concepts: concepts on this is how I want this to feel, the big crux of the Last Battle comes down to this question, this is where someone's crowning moment is—these sorts of emotions. It was like he was laying down the emotional beats, and the actual how to put it together—a lot of that was left in my hands. He did have some brainstorms on that, but some of those brainstorms were from years ago, before he wrote... For instance, I've mentioned before that there is a brainstorm we have on "here's how Rand is going to do it"—here's a brainstorm that Robert Jordan had left. But he'd written this brainstorm around book 7 or 6 or something, and it involved the Choedan Kal—both of them. And we're like, well he obviously threw that out the window and decided not to go with that. But some of these brainstorms that he'd had, we can say, oh this is the emotional resonance he's going for. Looking at the idea between we want to have the different powers work together, to work in this way from his brainstorm, even though we can't do it in the way that he was thinking of doing it ten years ago, we can still see the sort of thing that he was going for.
And the scene that Terez mentioned at the end mentions Rand's big revelation that needed to happen so that the last moments could occur—he's reflecting on that when he comes out. And so we knew this emotional resonance that Robert Jordan wanted. And we had all these sort of other things where he talks about just the feel he wants and things like this. And so a lot of the specifics—how to put these things together—were things that I pitched to Team Jordan to fit the framework of the notes, and then we tried out and saw if they worked. Which is kinda how you do writing, at least if you're an outliner like me. I pitch ideas at myself, I build an outline out of it, and I try it out and see if it works. And what ended up in the book are the things that did work. What didn't end up in the book are the things that didn't work. For instance, "River of Souls", which was in the (Unfettered) anthology, is one of the things I mentioned—that's the sort of thing that we tried that doesn't work. And the reason a lot of times that these things are being cut is because we are striving for that balance between "let's push the story in new and innovative ways" between "let's make sure we're not straying too far from Robert Jordan's vision". And something like "River of Souls" strayed too far, and also kind of was distracting from the main point of the book—there were two big reasons to cut that sequence. But you see us doing things like that, and so the ones we end up with... A lot of these things about the actual Last Battle are me looking to put together what I feel creates the emotional resonance and the plot structure that Robert Jordan wanted for this ending.
I've said before that the main bulk of the writing we had for this last book involved three main areas: the Epilogue, the scene at the Field of Merrilor where Moiraine shows up and things like this, and the scene at the beginning in the Town, the village in the Waste—what does he call it? Does he call it the Town? The Town is what he calls it. Yeah. And those are three places where we have kind of unchanged Robert Jordan writing. Granted, all through the books, each of the books, you'll find sprinklings where I'm able to use a paragraph or two, or a page, or something from his notes that spawns a chapter, but that's where we have untouched Robert Jordan writing in this last book—I think those are the three main places.
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1331
Interview: Apr 10th, 2014
Leigh Butler
Once upon a time, I edited an article on a certain very large website that provides answers to questions people ask a lot, and one of the articles was called 50 Ways to Kill A Squishy Invulnerable Assassin Creature...Brandon Sanderson
Right. [laughter]
Leigh Butler
And, you know, there were many lists, and most of them were sort of facetious; some of them were, you know, less so, and I was just kinda wondering, when we did actually kill the Squishy Invulnerable Assassin Creature in, I think it was the second-to-last book.....
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, mmhmm...
Leigh Butler
...where did the inspiration for that come from? Was it maybe from that site? Because there one there that... [laughter]
Brandon Sanderson
I will say that I am, with a lot of things in fandom, I am...was familiar with that list, and I did, after I had built the outline, go to the list and say, "How did they suggest doing these?" It had been a long time, but I was familiar with the list.
Leigh Butler
Alright.
Brandon Sanderson
And so I can't say that I said, "Oh, I should do it this way." But I can say that this thing and some of these, like a lot of the Asmodean theories—which, by the way, I didn't have to choose on [laughter]—but, things like this were in the back of my brain. It's part of being part of fandom.
Leigh Butler
Yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
Like, I'm not the only one that theorized about gateways, right? Fandom had been theorizing about gateways forever; it's one of the things that drew me to fandom, is when I come on...I had been dreaming about what to do with this, and I'm like, "Ooh, here's other people who are magic system people like me!" and this is a magic system thing, right? How do you kill this thing. And so, this... So, yes, I was familiar with them, but I can't pinpoint and say, "This is something that inspired me."
Leigh Butler
Okay.
Brandon Sanderson
Um, but it definitely was in the back of my brain. The entire FAQ is something I had read, at various points in its development, and so, yeah. It's hard to say what of the FAQ, over the years, seeped in there and got in my brain, and, you know, it's only things like the...some of the really tough stuff to talk about with the Wheel of Time is, when you start reading a series when you're 15, and you read it multiple times, certain things get cemented into your head that aren't actually part of the books, and some of them are, but they're your own weird interpretation, and...
Leigh Butler
It's called fanon vs canon.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, yeah. And when you...being brought on as the writer, I tried to become aware of these, and say, "Okay, what are my own biases?" But I couldn't separate them all. Working on one of the books, I remember this scene—I've told you guys this story before—where I wrote this whole scene, happening with the bridges going into Tar Valon, and Maria's like, "They can't see. This is like a mile-long bridge." And I'm like, "A mile-long bridge!? Not in my Tar Valon!" [laughter] I imagined it perfectly! And nope, going back there, these enormous bridges that I had not imagined, even though they're pivotal to Tar Valon. I have a good friend who insists to this day that Thom Merrilin does not have a mustache. That's pivotal to the character, right? But each of us are going to have these things...when we are reading, our initial impression of the character becomes canon in our own head, and shaking us from that is very difficult sometimes to do. And so, bringing the legacy of all of this with me to writing the books means that you sometimes end up with me being unable to trace where an idea came from. Is it, when I was reading and I was 17 saying, "Oh, I wish this will happen." Is that the origin of the scene, you know, when we bring Tam and Rand back together? Is that the origin of that? I mean, how long had I been thinking about that? Is the origin of that when that meeting with Harriet in April where she said "I have one big request, and it is that you find a way for Tam and Rand to meet again early in one of these books." Was that...? You know. How much of it was that, how much of it was my own fan desire, how much of it was....you know, it's so hard to trace these things and break them down, but I suspect it's a bit of everything.
Tags
1332
Interview: Apr 10th, 2014
Question
Why was the answer to who killed you-know-who buried in the back of the book?Brandon Sanderson
Oh! So, this is a great story; some of you have heard this one before. So, when I got there—this is the 2007 visit, so this is December 2007, right before [?] was announced and my inbox exploded, right before the interview with Jason went live that preempted the [?]—I got the notes, and stuck on a post-it note on top of the notes was the answer to who killed Asmodean, and it isn't the answer you think it is. I don't even know—[to Harriet] was this Robert Jordan's writing, or was this yours?—there was fan sheet that was printed out—there was a fan theory, and a post-it note that said "this is right". And I don't know who even wrote the "this is right".
Someone
I think it was Jordan.
Brandon Sanderson
You think it was Jim, yeah. Robert Jordan. And so, anyway, we had this thing with the "this is right", and the only thing I had really from him was the "this is right". And I kind of felt like the fandom, like "Well I've got my answer but there's no explanation; it's just "the fan theory is right", that it was this person, and so, as we were doing our brainstorming session months later, I said "You know what would be funny? Is if we made...we forced the fans to feel like we do," because we don't really know much about this answer, and we just...we put it in the appendix because then, they would have to, you know, they would found it like we found it. I got a post-it note; you got an appendix item, and Harriet loved this idea. She thought it was awesome. She has, you know, I think she, over the years, got infected by her husband and transitioned from nice editor to mean author [laughter], because we authors love to be mean to readers. Those provoking strong emotions in readers is one of the things that we love to do, and so sticking it back there, I actually when I was writing Towers of Midnight, I was...there was a sentence I wrote where I made it a little more clear in text, and Harriet was like, "No, this is going in the appendix; strike that sentence out." And I was like, "Alright! She's on board with this." So that's...and it is...you know, a lot of what we do in writing, at least in my vision, is to try to make sure you feel like the characters feel, like the Last Battle. Why is it 90,000 words, or whatever it is—that chapter. It's because the characters can't put down their weapons. They are back-to-the-wall, this is the End, and I don't want you to feel like you can put down the book. I want you to be like, "I'll read to the next chapter." [laughter] All they're thinking is, "Well, I'll try and make it to the next day." Well, that's how you have to feel too; this is using the form of the story to try and evoke the right emotion, and putting [?] in the back was to evoke for you the same emotion that we felt in finding just the post-it note answer.
Next Question
Okay, so before you got the note, who did you think killed that appendix item?
Brandon Sanderson
Here's the story of appendix-item man: Like, when I...and I found since that this was actually pretty common. I didn't really care until I started reading fan theories, right? Like, this was not one of the questions I had. The questions I had were things like, "Oooh, what could you do with gateways? Ooh, what kinds of Talents exist out there and what could they do? Ooh," you know, "what kind of weaves exist in the Age of Legends and how did they develop into the contemporary weaves?" These are the things I was really interested in as a reader, and then, you know, you get Asmodean, and like, "Who cares about him?" I mean, yes, he was a fun character, but he's dead, probably one of the Forsaken. And then, you start reading the theories, and then you go through this thing where you're like, "Wow, this is actually really a mystery. Oh, I really want to know!" And then you transition into the, "I'm so tired of people talking about this." [laughter] "Can we talk about something else?" And so, by the time I was working on those, I knew all the theories, and I didn't...I had transitioned out of that caring too much. I'm like, "These are all good theories, and I have no idea which one is right." And so, I didn't have...you know, I was more interested in, you know, "Which of the women is Rand going to end up with?" That's a really...that's a question I wanted answered. "Will he survive the Last Battle?" "Who killed Asmodean?" was not a big deal to me at that point, though there is a fun story. Matt Hatch, who runs Theoryland, or founded Theoryland—I don't know if you run Theoryland any more—but Theoryland kind of runs on its own...
Matt Hatch
Theoryland has always run on its own.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, you're just the unfortunate person who started it and got trampled by the masses. So, um, he came to me—when was it? JordanCon? No, it couldn't be JordanCon. DragonCon?
Matt Hatch
JordanCon.
Brandon Sanderson
It was JordanCon. Okay.
Matt Hatch
[unintelligible]
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, something like that. The book wasn’t out yet—Towers of Midnight—but I had mentioned that you will eventually, in one of the books, get the reveal on who killed Asmodean. And he pulls me aside, and he says, “All right, I’m not going to ask you who it really is, but I just want to say, it’s not Graendal, right?” And I didn’t say . . . I didn’t say anything. But he’s like, "Okay, if it’s Graendal, just don’t tell everybody. Just make it remain a secret forever. I would rather it remained a secret forever than you actually reveal it. Just so you know, If you’re gonna throw me a bone, don’t reveal it if it’s Graendal.” Sorry, Matt. My duty to the entire Wheel of Time fandom was greater than my duty to you.
Matt Hatch
So my side of the story is, I said Brandon—I was watching his face—and I said, I did add in there, “I will kill myself if it’s Graendal,” because if you say crazy things to people, they get human for a moment for your health. And so I swear, and I told everyone this on Theoryland after I asked Brandon that question, I’m like, "It’s Graendal, and it’s pissing me off”. It’s his look of concern like, “Oh, I don’t want Matt to kill himself”. Just momentarily a blip across his face like, “Oh. Oh, okay.” After that point, I just, I knew it was coming.
Brandon Sanderson
On the Gathering Storm tour, we did dinners with fans before each signing, which was wonderful but exhausting because it just added an extra hour or an hour and a half to each signing. But at one of them, I wrote “Graendal” on the tablecloth because it was one of those paper tablecloth things at one of those Italian restaurants in Korean, and then scribbled it out. And then said, “Hey I just wrote down who killed Asmodean right here.” And they’re all like, “What?!?” And so someone actually cut that piece of paper out and took it with them. But I’d scribbled it so well they couldn’t figure it out, and I didn’t tell them it was in Korean. Somebody’s still got that thing, I’m sure. Did they scan that and post that online and stuff?
Matt Hatch
I was there, I don’t know . . .
Jason Denzel
Yeah, I was there, too. You scribbled both sides of the tablecloth, just to make sure. [. . .] He was panicked that someone would figure it out. He was terrified. He was like, “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have done that."
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1333
Interview: Apr 22nd, 2014
Brandon Sanderson
I sit here thinking that something has CHANGED. Something is missing. Some hated you, Mr. Jordan, claiming you represented all that is terrible about popular fantasy. Others revered you as the only one who got it RIGHT.
Personally, I simply feel indebted to you. You showed me what it was to have vision and scope in a fantasy series—you showed me what could be done. I still believe that without your success, many younger authors like myself would never have had a chance at publishing their dreams.
You go quietly, but leave us trembling.
Brandon Sanderson
September 19, 2007Frannie Jackson
So concludes Sanderson's eulogy on his blog to Robert Jordan, the world-renowned author of The Wheel of Time series. Jordan had passed away a day earlier, ending his battle with cardiac amyloidosis that began in the spring of 2006. As the fantasy world mourned Jordan, fans also questioned the fate of his popular series.
Though Jordan had written some scenes and outlined sections of the final tome in The Wheel of Time series, the book remained unwritten at the time of his death. Fans knew Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow and editor of the series, would pick an author to complete the last book, but her choice was anyone’s guess.
Soon after Jordan's death, a friend of McDougal handed her a printed copy of Sanderson's eulogy for Jordan.
Harriet McDougal
"Brandon's eulogy was really beautiful and very loving," McDougal says in a Tor Books interview clip. "And I thought, 'Gosh, this guy, he knows what the series is all about.'"
Frannie Jackson
Having never heard of Sanderson before then, McDougal decided to read one of his books. Soon afterward, she called him and asked if he'd like to finish the series.
Brandon Sanderson
"I felt honored and overwhelmed at the same time," Sanderson says. "While I didn't ask for this, the truth is that I'm extremely excited to have been involved... For a writer like me, the next best thing to having [Robert Jordan] write the novel was being able to work on it myself."
Frannie Jackson
Sanderson only had three novels in print, Elantris and two titles from his Mistborn trilogy, when McDougal contacted him. Though they were selling well, his titles had yet to establish him as a master of the genre.
Brandon Sanderson
"I sat there thinking, 'I'm setting myself up to fail. No matter how good a job I do, it's not going to be Robert Jordan's book. Why am I saying yes?'" Sanderson says. "The thing that made the distinction for me was when I realized if I said no and someone messed it up, I would be responsible... My job was not to save The Wheel of Time, to fix The Wheel of Time or anything like that. My job was not to screw it up."
Frannie Jackson
Far from screwing it up, Sanderson expanded Jordan's plan for the final book, authoring three, #1 New York Times bestselling novels to conclude the series. Jordan fans quickly embraced Sanderson, who is committed to making convention appearances and attending book signings for The Wheel of Time for years to come. At JordanCon, where his panels overflowed with eager listeners, cosplayers dressed up as characters from both The Wheel of Time and Sanderson's original novels, revealing how the two fandoms have grown to overlap for many readers.
But it's Sanderson’s respect for Jordan that has most endeared him to The Wheel of Time community. In a 2012 blog post written the day after he finished working on the series, Sanderson wrote:
Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan was a great man, and was the single greatest influence on my development as a writer. What I have done these last five years has been an attempt—a sometimes flawed but always earnest attempt—to show my appreciation. This entire genre owes him an enormous debt. My debt to him, and to Harriet, is greatest of all.
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Interview: Jan 28th, 2014
Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Regarding Awards (Verbatim)Brandon Sanderson
The Wheel of Time
The final item I want to talk about is a little more tricky. Others have been posting about this online, and I thought I should mention it. One feature of the Hugo Awards is a rule that exists to make certain a longer work which is serialized has a chance at an award if the serialized version was overlooked. In short, if no smaller piece of a large work has ever been nominated, the larger work is eligible once completed.
That means the Wheel of Time, as a whole, is eligible for a Hugo Award in the novel category.
This is both awesome and a little frightening. I'm certain I don't have to make the case to you why I think that Robert Jordan's masterpiece deserves award recognition. It was the driving force in fantasy for over two decades, deeply influencing an entire generation of authors. Beyond that, I believe it has great literary merit. Robert Jordan did incredible things with worldbuilding and character viewpoint. He was one of the most skilled writers of this genre who has ever lived.
I'm quite close to this topic, however—probably too close to speak without deep bias. I try to avoid campaigning too much for my work to gain award attention, instead limiting myself to posts that explain what of mine is eligible, then letting the pieces speak for themselves. The Wheel of Time puts me in a strange position, then, because I'd want to talk all day about how awesome Robert Jordan is—yet at the same time, I've now been involved in the series on a fundamental level. So...yeah. Conflict of interest.
So, I'll stop here, by posting Guy Gavriel Kay's toastmaster address at the World Fantasy Awards the year Robert Jordan died. He made some wonderful points.
Some Words of Caution
Now, above, I said this eligibility is something both awesome and frightening. Let's get into the frightening part. I've posted about my love and respect for the Hugo Awards. This award has a great deal of history and integrity attached to it. It is a Fan-voted award—but I use that capital letter intentionally. It's not voted on by fans of a specific work, but Fans of the genre. People who want to see science fiction and fantasy progress, succeed, and improve.
I have little doubt that the Wheel of Time community could "buy" this award for their series. In so doing, they would make the award meaningless. The Hugo Award works because such a large portion of the voting audience takes it so seriously. This award really is what we make of it. It belongs to us.
And so, I give a charge to the Wheel of Time fans who might be reading this and considering the Hugo Awards for the first time. We want you to be involved. We love new blood, and new enthusiasm. However, agreeing to nominate and vote for the Hugos is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. If you decide to join in—and I sincerely hope you will—please nominate liberally. But when it comes time to vote, please vote only in categories where you have read the majority (preferably all) of the nominees. And please vote only for the piece you work is the best work. Don't vote by author; vote by work.
This doesn't mean you have use anyone else's criteria for determining the "best" work. Follow your heart. For some of you, that will mean voting for the work that is the most fun. For some, it will mean choosing the one with the most literary merit. Personally, I try to find the work that walks a line between the two, having a solid and engaging narrative but also advancing the genre or doing something impressive with it. (Redshirts, last year's novel winner, is a good example of a work that does this for me.)
Pick your own criteria, but read before you vote. The last thing I want to hear about is a ballot box filled with people who listed "The Wheel of Time" or some of my solo works, but nothing else.
Conclusion
That said, if you are eligible to nominate and you weren't considering The Wheel of Time, do be aware that that it is eligible. It is certainly deserving. I can't think of a series in our genre since Tolkien that has inspired so much devotion, passion, imitators, and discussion—all without ever receiving a single Hugo nomination. This is our last chance to fix that.
I'm personally very curious to see what happens if it does get a nomination.
Brandon
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Interview: Aug 13th, 2014
Ask the Author: Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Question
Can I read your Wheel of Time books without reading the ones you didn't write and still understand and enjoy them? I hate that there are books you wrote that I haven't read and I am finding it impossible to even get through chapter 1 of the first Wheel of Time.
Brandon Sanderson
I sincerely doubt you will like my entries into the series if you didn't like the earlier books. The characters and setting were what made me passionate about finishing the series, and I didn't come into the WoT to change or fix it—only to do the best I could at fulfilling what it already was.
Now, mind you, it's perfectly all right for you not to like them. Not every series is for every person, and the WoT just might not be to your taste.
If—despite this—you really want to try mine out, you can read very detailed summaries of the previous books on http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/. These are chapter by chapter, so it will probably take you a while to get through them.
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Interview: Aug 13th, 2014
Ask the Author: Brandon Sanderson (Verbatim)Question
Were there any characters you found difficult to connect with when writing the remaining books of The Wheel of Time series?
Brandon Sanderson
I've never really been able to get into Cadsuane as a character, and so she was the most difficult for me to do. I love Aviendha and Tuon, but both of them think so differently from the rest of the characters that they gave me a challenge.
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Interview: Aug 23rd, 2014
Details on the Wheel of Time Companion (Verbatim)Harriet McDougal (paraphrased)
The movie/TV rights situation is beginning to become clearer. Red Eagle sold the film rights on to Universal and it now looks like the rights could return to the Jordan Estate at some point. There is apparently interest from other companies in the rights given the success of other fantasy projects on TV and in film at the moment.
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Interview: Sep 24th, 2014
Brandon Sanderson Interview (Verbatim)Jean Marie Ward
This year, with Words of Radiance, you return to one of your own worlds after years of working, or I should say publishing because of course in writing, everything takes years to appear, but after years of publishing novels in the Wheel of Time series, originated by Robert Jordan, how did it feel to return to your own world after such a big gap?
Brandon Sanderson
Well, I hadn't ever spent that long away. The Wheel of Time was my dominating project for about five years. I grew up reading The Wheel of Time and though it belonged to someone else, it feels as much a familiar place to me as any world could. You start reading something when you're 15, it's going to feel very familiar to you.
I didn't begrudge my time on The Wheel of Time. I really enjoyed my time on The Wheel of Time. As I was working on The Wheel of Time, I would stop in between books in The Wheel of Time and do little things. Granted, I didn't have as much time to do larger works, but I did write Alloy of Law, which is a Mistborn book in between Wheel of Time books and I did have some time to work on the Stormlight Archive.
More I'd say, how do I feel with The Wheel of Time being done? At which thing that's been dominated my life for five plus years my career, it's a really odd feeling. Never before have I had a series get done that I wasn't planning to someday go tweak a little bit more, add another short story in the world or something like that.
With The Wheel of Time, I don't have that opportunity. It's not appropriate to do it. Robert Jordan wanted it to be done. We're going to leave it done. There is a strange sense of loss in finishing this series that I've never felt before.
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Interview: Sep 24th, 2014
Brandon Sanderson Interview (Verbatim)Jean Marie Ward
Are you going through the five stages of grief?
Brandon Sanderson
I don't know. I had such a long time to prepare for it. It's not like getting hit with the five stages of grief in the same way, since I knew this was only going to be a short thing. But there is a sense of regret. At the same time, being able to write the Stormlight Archive is awesome.
I had been planning this series for many years and being able to share with people these stories that I've wanted to tell for such a long time is very gratifying. Words of Radiance, the second book, this has scenes in it that I initially sketched out to write some eight, nine years ago that I'd been planning.
They came out just as I'd been planning them and it was really exciting that people can now read those.
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Interview: Sep 4th, 2014
Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 (Verbatim)Question
I heard once that Robert Jordan had like 10GB of just pure text...Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, now most of that was the sort of stuff that ends up in the glossaries... Most of it you wouldn't want to read, 'cause most of it is very boring stuff. They're putting a lot of that into an encyclopedia that will be coming out next fall, they just released the date on that. Not this November but next November.Tags
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Interview: Sep 30th, 2014
yahasgaruna (1 October 2014)
Who wrote the scene in which Aviendha flash-forwards to the future in the glass towers? The scene was beautifully epic because of how it shows the transition of the post–Last Battle Randland, and every time I read it, I feel well and truly sad that I will never see stories set in that time.
(Having said that, what you did with the Mistborn series and the Wax/Wayne novels is a pretty good substitute for reading Fourth Age stories, so there is that. Thanks a lot!)
Brandon Sanderson (1 October 2014)
The glass pillars was me, as I believe some fans have already figured out. One of my big pitches to Harriet and company was that we needed to take risks and chances with these stories, because that's what RJ would have done. If we played it exactly safe, we would have a bland ending to the story.
We couldn't always take the same risks that RJ would have, but we needed to have a dynamic plot where characters, and the world, grew and became something different. They were very scared of this sequence during my pitch, but it's one that—when they read it—they were sold on it very quickly.
As for Wax and Wayne, just wait until we get the Mistborn space opera books.
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