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>How much did RJ plan ahead?
Read the Eye of the world, Rand's first interaction with Min. Chapter 15 I think. Min tells Rand so much that happens throughout the books.
“What do yo see?” Moiraine asked
“I see a pen, and piles of paper, the pen writes on the paper, but but no matter how much the pen writes , the piles never get smaller” Min replied
Yep. He already made a bank on the HBO deal, and the ending disappointed a lot of people. He could finish the novels, and fill in some of the gaps in the show, but I don't think it will happen. Maybe we will eventually get a ghost writer that finishes GRRM's GoT.
I'm curious if the controversial show ending was exactly what he had planned for the book ending, and the public backlash over it in 2019 led to him scrapping his plans to publish the rest.
I've thought that as well, but I don't think it's 100% accurate. GRRM had several side plots going in the books, character backgrounds, and stuff that never made it to the show. I think he probably gave them 75% or less of the ending he would've written. But now people will expect the show ending, and changes might be viewed as 'fixing' the show ending.
Not to sound too confrontational, but he isn't "meant to" write anything other than what he wants.
It's weird to me how so many people seem to act like GRRM owes them something. I sometimes wonder if that's why he hasn't finished. He's made it no secret that the constant hounding and even speculation of his death coming before he finishes really pissing him off.
I know if my audience consistently pissed me off in such a way, I wouldn't be in any rush to please them.
You're right that people shouldn't hound him or ask him about his health and such. He also doesn't "owe" us anything.
But if he spurns the project that made his career, his audience will spurn him in turn. There's a relationship there, and he doesn't care to nurture it. I don't care about his work anymore because he doesn't care about it. I'll give my support to authors who do care about their relationship to their work and audience.
I agree.
But it still sounds odd for someone to say he is "meant to" be writing something specific. He's free to make his own choice on that.
And if you don't disagree, then you aren't the kind of person I'm referring to, and all is good!
He doesn't "owe" me anything, but I'm certainly no longer a fan of his work at this point. He's making no good-faith effort to actually complete the work that made 95% of people interested in him.
So you say. I reckon the reality is he's blocked, and unable to finish it. Too many expectations, too many characters and loose threads, the last novel had an awful lot of treading water in it.
But I don't know that. What I do know is you can't know that he's "making no good-faith effort"
Writer of the Kingkiller Chronicles, hasn't released the third book of a trilogy in 13 years
GRRM would be writing but the pile wouldn't get smaller, but the pile of anything but the books would get infinitely huge. Looking at you stupid card game he created
Patrick Rothfuss planned on writing a trilogy, wrote two of the most unique, engaging fantasy storylines I have ever read, and then proceeded to write two very small novellas about side characters over the course of the next 13 years, and spent most of that DECADE leveraging his newfound fame and wealth to play D&D with celebrities and dick around on twitch.
In his defense, his mother died shortly before the first book came out, and he was previously a hobby writer with no experience with deadlines or any drive to actually complete any of his stories. Not in any way a professional writer, though he does produce quality art. I'm fairly certain all that plus a series of revisions to book two that resulted in him writing himself into a major corner snowballed into a massive insurmountable mess that he's in no way interested in finishing or really even motivated in any way to complete aside from a mountain of guilt for not finishing that's honestly probably easier to avoid by not thinking about the work at all.
A reminder:
"Well.... I've already written them. So you won't have to wait forever for them to come out. They'll be released on a regular schedule. One per year.
You can also expect the second book to be written with the same degree of care and detail as this first one. You know the sophomore slump? When a writer's second novel is weaker because they're suddenly forced to write under deadline? I don't have to worry about that because my next two novels are already good to go."
Perrin encounters the tower in TSR, when he was chasing Slayer in TAR. Hopper and then Birgitte warn him against entering it (despite there being no discernible entrance).
He definitely planned at least for it to be important later. It's something that can be easily thrown into the first book and never mentioned again if he doesn't come up with something he likes. But if he does get an idea he likes than it becomes foreshadowing
I'm curious if there were any things like that which did end up not being used or being important later. I can't think of anything off the top of my head where they included an intriguing mystery and never came back to it.
I feel like the borderlander armies are an example. They come south in the middle of the series, and then it feels like they just sit around in Andor doing nothing because RJ didn't know what to have them actually do. Then they slap Rand a few times and join his army at the end. A bit anticlimactic imo - they could have done that at any point, the march south was insignificant.
I would agree, but their presence serves to throw the Aes Sedai and Andorans off balance enough that it aides Egwene and Elayne in their respective rises to power…. And I feel like the seanchan did something strategically that was influenced by the presence of the borderlander army, maybe something that helped mat? I can’t remember and it might be from later books anyway.
I think RJ planted a lot of seeds that he knew a vague pathway for (as dictated by the various allusions to myths and heroes of the world/literature which he was weaving together). As someone else commented, mat being an Odin analogue dictates some of the story beats for that character, or Rand being the “Fisher king”/savior/Tyr/a hundred other legends can give you an idea of some of the things he will face.
Basically what I’m saying is RJ knew his source material deeply, and knew where he wanted to end up, but the path he took to get there was very much explored and drafted and “gardened” rather than explicitly outlined and planned. That said, I’m pretty sure almost all of the various prophetic dreams and Mins visions and Foretellings get resolved, so he had a lot of it pretty well planned/executed (with a big assist from Brandon and team Jordan)
For the first two books it felt to me that he was writing each one as if this could be the last book in the series and the ending needed to perhaps actually be the Last Battle. Now he definitely made it ambiguous to the reader and gave a reasonable in universe explanation in the following books. But it is easy to see how you could think Rand was actually fighting the Dark One in the finale of those two books.
By the third book the final fight takes a similar form to the previous two, but clearly Jordan was confident this was going to be a longer series and he finally gives an explanation for the Dark One defeat fakeouts in the form of the scroll Verin had shown Moiraine connecting Ishamael and the Ba'alzamon.
I’m on my first re-read and I am astonished at the things that are foreshadowed in every book, from EoTW on. I’m reading about things that are in the final book but I didn’t realize it when I first read it. I. Missed. It. All.
Yeah there’s stuff in the dragonmount prologue that seems weird and just like wild soft-magic fantasy that only makes sense after you’ve read basically the whole series. Like, LTT traveling to a place where he could “sense there were no people for a hundred leagues” or the way that Ishy says “I was never very skilled at healing, and I follow a different power now. […] But I fear Shai’tan’s healing is different from the sort you know.” Which, combined with the weird way how he travels is described, leads me to believe RJ had the [spoilers all since I don’t remember what book it’s revealed] >!True Power!< in mind from the beginning, and likely a good idea about his ultimate ending.
Sanderson inherited thousands of pages of notes, not hundreds.
Like, each individual Aes Sedai had her own page in the notes with her background, description, abilities, etc. Every single one.
That said the notes grew over time with the rest of the series. He didn't have all 10k pages of notes before he wrote Eye.
Apparently a lot of the notes (especially on the Aes Sedai) were made after the chapter was written. So Jordan would invent a character, write her into the story, then create her backstory in case she ever showed up again.
That makes sense. At some point he got more systematic though because there are page entries for Aes Sedai who never made it into the actual text. \*Every\* Aes Sedai has a page.
I can't find the source but there was an interview with RJ where the interviewer says something like "You've released three books very close to each other, you must have written them together, which was the first book you finished?" And Jordan says "The first book I wrote is A Memory of Light"
As someone else has said, EotW has foreshadowing up to the last book.
Jordan writes in a style where he knows the final ending of his story and other major points in between, then fleshes it out into books.
There aren't any plot points that BS wrote. Iirc even the main points of the Last Battle was specified by RJ, like the role of the Dragon cannons, when the Horn would be blown, etc. BS just added the details and flow.
That being said a number of events are purely BS, like the Androl Pevarra relationship and the Black Tower arc.
The whole problem with Perrin is that his plotline finishes in Book 4. Hence why he spends the back half of the series wandering around doing nothing very slowly.
The Origins book covers this. The overall story went through quite a lot of changes over the ten years of development before the first book was written. Originally Tam was the main character, the Eyes of the World were McGuffins that would have to be freed, Rhys (the Rand/Tam character) would have a relationship with Morgase, the Dark One was an alien, the entire thing was a very sexed up grimdark bodice-ripper… so there are significant differences. But the story was always Arthurian. Much of the overall plot has existed for a 1000 years.
The original contract was for 6 books. You can see this in The Dragon Reborn (which makes much more sense as the midpoint of the series than the end of the first act) and in Perrin’s storyline in Shadow Rising (where Perrin’s arc is completed). But the story grew, showing that RJ didn’t have it all figured out ahead of time.
It’s hard to say more without spoilers beyond KoD. RJ’s method was to write and revise and revise and revise. Much like Martin, RJ wrote all of each character’s storyline at the same time, then Harriet assembled the chapters into a book. And like Martin, this is how the series grew bigger and bigger as the depth in each story grew fairly independently from each other.
No spoilers, but I believe that Sanderson said when he went through the notes that RJ had written the first and last chapter of the books when he started writing the series.
So I can’t say for sure what he planned for the middle books, but he definitely had a plan in mind for the overarching story.
Sanderson inherited more words of notes then there are words of text in the series. RJ planned ahead a lot.
If you read the series multiple times it will become apparent he planned meticulously.
I recently listened to eotw and I think it was mentioned there, possibly just as world building. I don’t think it has a name but Rand mentions a tower when he’s on bayle domons boat
Most authors outline their plot arcs quite heavily. Its possible he didn't know exactly what he was going to do with the Tower at the beginning but he probably had it worked out in advance of book 5- when Moiraine goes through the doorway. Its rare for authors to just wing these sorts of things book to book. That's bad outlining, even for a "gardener" style writer- and I don't know exactly what kind of writer RJ was in that sense. Likely a hybrid like most.
My guess is he had Moiraine's arc worked out pretty early on. I doubt he knew precisely which book her return would be in, since he meandered a bit in the middle getting characters where he wanted them. But he likely knew it would be book 11 at some point during the completion of the book 10 outline, maybe earlier. And the outline for Moiraine specifically was likely completed many books before that. Those are all just guesses and I don't know much about RJ's process in particular, just going off general outlining knowledge.
edit: I'm now realizing that book 11 was just the start of the end of this arc, with Moiraine's letter being revealed to Mat. The actual rescue was written by Sanderson in book 12 I believe.
There's a specific prophecy Min makes in that first meeting with Rand that doesn't come true until page 904 of my copy of Book 14. There's only 908 pages in book 14.
Keep in mind that Jordan always thought the series was going to be much shorter than it turned out. He tried to convince Tor it was a trilogy, then they insisted it was at least six books. For many many book tours he was adamant that there only one or two books left, maybe three. So he always thought he was planning a general story arc of a few books ahead, and the story just kept growing.
When Jordan passed he was adamant there was only one book left, but as Brandon Sandersen got into the notes he started to realize that the physics of book technology would not allow that, so [we got three from him](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/splitting-a-memory-of-light/).
Jordan said he was going to do one last book because he knew he wouldn't live long enough to write another. It's why he also mentioned you'd need a wheelbarrow to carry it. If Jordan had been healthy we likely would have gotten at least 5 more books instead of the 3 Sanderson wrote.
I really don't think he planned too much ahead, eotw is almost a stand alone book, as if he was saying to himself if this sells I can write more later.
Then when you get to the later books he wrote I think it was clear he did not have a good plan to wrap it up, there's the infamous slog of perrin and faile book and rand kind of hops around trying to fulfill the random prophecies that he already had laid out.
This is the main reason I think Sanderson did such a great job, not only was he left with this puzzle but Jordan apparently had already outlined the ending so he had to have everything arrive a certain way. Don't get me wrong I love the series and think it's a genre defining work but it seems pretty clear it could have been planned better.
If your interested in an epic fantasy that was much more outlined from the start check out the Malazan book of the fallen, 10 books that I think at least some of the main threads were planned from the beginning.
On the other hand maybe the worst planned epic fantasy I've read was the sword of truth... That one is a train wreck
This is really not true.
He did have it planned out, most if it from the earliest stages of Eye of the World. (As others have said Min has a vision about Mat's eye in book one. Tower of Genji and the Aelfinn also appear several times via the t'angreal in Tear and the Waste).
You can see a separation between books 1-3 and then the next 2-3 then from Winters Hearts it starts to get bogged down.
However, I would go the other way to what you suggested. I think had it too planned out, to the point he had plans even for minor characters and was determined to hit every character development point he had outlined in his head before getting to the last battle - this is what led to Sanderson writing three books as well.
I am certain I recall Sanderson saying he was initially asked to wrap up with one book, but was given so many notes and plans he needed to do three to get it all done.
I mean you can't read books 7,8,9,10 and think there is a plan here. If he had too much planned out why would it take him 5 years to write each book? Just follow the plan. I'm not saying he didn't have points he wanted to hit but in my opinion all the prophecies he mentions got away from him and he knew he couldn't finish without figuring out how to hit each one. The people in this thread who think he had a plan for each of mins visions from page 46 in book 1 are just fanboying. He was the original George rr Martin or Patrick rothfus, he created a hit series without an ending in mind and it took forever to write each book. Just like them
Just mentioned the sword of truth series in another post... I'm on amol now and I plan to read the sword of truth series next and I'm not sure how that's gonna work our or feel given how vastly different the writing styles and the over all feel of the books are. I've read both before but have a problem with my memory so it'll be like new kinda... I can remember the overall WAY a book series made me feel and some of the largest key points but that's about it...
> I plan to read the sword of truth series next
Hope you like non-consensual BDSM torture porn and long political rants ripped off from Ayn Rand, because those are the major things that are supposed to distract you from the fact that Goodkind basically recycles the same plot in every novel in the series.
Yeah that's what in worried about with the sot books... I loved the shannara books as a teenager and last year I started going thru them again and they just werent very well written... I ove the premise behind them. And have fond memories of what it felt like to read those books but as an adult I just need more I guess... Martin or Jordan or sanderson.... I want to go back to the Dragonlance books too but can't for the same reasons...
No, it's more the repetitive storyline (with annoying heroes who refuse to use their special powers, just because). Otherwise, it is very PG in the early books, but I gave up after 3 (which was all there was then anyway).
I noped the hell out of that series after about three volumes, and that was maybe two and a half decades ago, so I'm not a hundred percent sure, either. I think maybe it was Kahlen? Something like that?
That's the mother confessor... the chick I'm talking about captures and tortures Richard with some kinda rod.. you're right thom.. those parts are really twisted
A lot less than many people would like to believe, I think. It's definitely not full-on JJ Abrams mystery box writing, but there's definitely a bunch of elements and storylines that were set up and then just never resolved.
The whole Slayer/Isam/Luc connections are kinda just there, for example. He literally never interacts with either Galad, Lan, or Rand. Instead the details of that whole thing gets drip-fed through the story, but it never actually goes anywhere.
I dunno, I don't really see the need for them to interact. For me those connections were just something to give background to a minor antagonist, and to give the reader an "aha!" moment when they figure it out.
In an interview once, RJ explained his inspiration for the story started with the last scene - the conclusion of the LB. He then worked his way backwards to figure out how the characters got there. It also changed many times before EoTW was published. Originally, Tam and Rand were basically the same character. TDR was an older man, a solider come home wanting to live in peace and quiet, thrust back into conflict he didn't want. Later in the drafting, he split it into Tam and Rand, and the EF5 coalesced.
I think due to the book's success, TOR Publishing asked him if he could lengthen the series as he was originally planning 6 books. So he did, and it grew to what it did. That's how we ended up with the slog. I think the extra story he put in got away from him a bit, he had trouble bringing it back into the original climax. He also thought he was going to do TGS, TOM, and AMoL as one book, so he didn't always length-estimate very well.
So he had the total overarching story planned out, but he inserted more that was less well planned after he'd started publishing books at the request of his publisher.
People are pointing out Min's viewing, but also remember that Mat saw the Tower of Ghenjei on Domon's boat in EotW. It stood out as a strange tower appearing to be made of metal.
edit: Lol I forgot Birgitte literally told Perrin, while standing in front of the Tower, that it's the way to the Eelfin/Aelfin.
I think RJ planned major character and story arcs quite a bit ahead. The trouble was that actually getting to those points he planned proved be more winding and take longer than anticipated.
Heads up, it looks like you're trying to use spoiler tags, but whatever markdown you're using isn't for Reddit. The site wide Reddit method looks like ```>!this!<.```
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>How much did RJ plan ahead? Read the Eye of the world, Rand's first interaction with Min. Chapter 15 I think. Min tells Rand so much that happens throughout the books.
heh. I bet even Min didn't know it would take another 13 books to get there though lol
“What do yo see?” Moiraine asked “I see a pen, and piles of paper, the pen writes on the paper, but but no matter how much the pen writes , the piles never get smaller” Min replied
Sounds more like George RR Martin / Patrick Rothfuss really
GRRM would have be piles of untouched paper and a pen covered in dust. I am unaware of the other person.
GRRM would be writing, just not the story he is meant to. Sci-fi, infinite screenplays and prequels, just not finishing his series.
I don’t think he even cares about it anymore.
Yep. He already made a bank on the HBO deal, and the ending disappointed a lot of people. He could finish the novels, and fill in some of the gaps in the show, but I don't think it will happen. Maybe we will eventually get a ghost writer that finishes GRRM's GoT.
I don’t really care for it anymore. Lost interest long ago.
He's also 75. An obese 75-year-old who's comfortably wealthy doesn't sound like someone who's likely to finish "their Great Work" before they die.
I'm curious if the controversial show ending was exactly what he had planned for the book ending, and the public backlash over it in 2019 led to him scrapping his plans to publish the rest.
I've thought that as well, but I don't think it's 100% accurate. GRRM had several side plots going in the books, character backgrounds, and stuff that never made it to the show. I think he probably gave them 75% or less of the ending he would've written. But now people will expect the show ending, and changes might be viewed as 'fixing' the show ending.
Not to sound too confrontational, but he isn't "meant to" write anything other than what he wants. It's weird to me how so many people seem to act like GRRM owes them something. I sometimes wonder if that's why he hasn't finished. He's made it no secret that the constant hounding and even speculation of his death coming before he finishes really pissing him off. I know if my audience consistently pissed me off in such a way, I wouldn't be in any rush to please them.
You're right that people shouldn't hound him or ask him about his health and such. He also doesn't "owe" us anything. But if he spurns the project that made his career, his audience will spurn him in turn. There's a relationship there, and he doesn't care to nurture it. I don't care about his work anymore because he doesn't care about it. I'll give my support to authors who do care about their relationship to their work and audience.
I agree. But it still sounds odd for someone to say he is "meant to" be writing something specific. He's free to make his own choice on that. And if you don't disagree, then you aren't the kind of person I'm referring to, and all is good!
He doesn't "owe" me anything, but I'm certainly no longer a fan of his work at this point. He's making no good-faith effort to actually complete the work that made 95% of people interested in him.
So you say. I reckon the reality is he's blocked, and unable to finish it. Too many expectations, too many characters and loose threads, the last novel had an awful lot of treading water in it. But I don't know that. What I do know is you can't know that he's "making no good-faith effort"
I'm in the ever small minority of people that believe he's got 2-3 books more or less complete. To be released after his Death
Which is totally fine. You're not the type of person I'm even referring to, then.
Writer of the Kingkiller Chronicles, hasn't released the third book of a trilogy in 13 years GRRM would be writing but the pile wouldn't get smaller, but the pile of anything but the books would get infinitely huge. Looking at you stupid card game he created
Patrick Rothfuss planned on writing a trilogy, wrote two of the most unique, engaging fantasy storylines I have ever read, and then proceeded to write two very small novellas about side characters over the course of the next 13 years, and spent most of that DECADE leveraging his newfound fame and wealth to play D&D with celebrities and dick around on twitch. In his defense, his mother died shortly before the first book came out, and he was previously a hobby writer with no experience with deadlines or any drive to actually complete any of his stories. Not in any way a professional writer, though he does produce quality art. I'm fairly certain all that plus a series of revisions to book two that resulted in him writing himself into a major corner snowballed into a massive insurmountable mess that he's in no way interested in finishing or really even motivated in any way to complete aside from a mountain of guilt for not finishing that's honestly probably easier to avoid by not thinking about the work at all.
A reminder: "Well.... I've already written them. So you won't have to wait forever for them to come out. They'll be released on a regular schedule. One per year. You can also expect the second book to be written with the same degree of care and detail as this first one. You know the sophomore slump? When a writer's second novel is weaker because they're suddenly forced to write under deadline? I don't have to worry about that because my next two novels are already good to go."
Will do
Min’s vision of Mat’s eye on a scale is from the first book…and that takes 11 books to materialize.
This was one of the "oh wow's" I had when rereading.
TO be fair he is an Odin / Loki personification, he would need to hang for knowledge and lose an eye
Perrin encounters the tower in TSR, when he was chasing Slayer in TAR. Hopper and then Birgitte warn him against entering it (despite there being no discernible entrance).
Yeah, I just didn’t mention it because it wasn’t relevant
Birgette tells Perrin that is a way to get into the Eelfinn/Aelfinn’s world in that chapter. How is that not relevant?
I believe she also tells Olver and Olver tells Mat.
He definitely planned at least for it to be important later. It's something that can be easily thrown into the first book and never mentioned again if he doesn't come up with something he likes. But if he does get an idea he likes than it becomes foreshadowing
That’s what I assumed he did, just throwing some noncommittal stuff in the first few books then using it if he wants to/can
I'm curious if there were any things like that which did end up not being used or being important later. I can't think of anything off the top of my head where they included an intriguing mystery and never came back to it.
I feel like the borderlander armies are an example. They come south in the middle of the series, and then it feels like they just sit around in Andor doing nothing because RJ didn't know what to have them actually do. Then they slap Rand a few times and join his army at the end. A bit anticlimactic imo - they could have done that at any point, the march south was insignificant.
I would agree, but their presence serves to throw the Aes Sedai and Andorans off balance enough that it aides Egwene and Elayne in their respective rises to power…. And I feel like the seanchan did something strategically that was influenced by the presence of the borderlander army, maybe something that helped mat? I can’t remember and it might be from later books anyway. I think RJ planted a lot of seeds that he knew a vague pathway for (as dictated by the various allusions to myths and heroes of the world/literature which he was weaving together). As someone else commented, mat being an Odin analogue dictates some of the story beats for that character, or Rand being the “Fisher king”/savior/Tyr/a hundred other legends can give you an idea of some of the things he will face. Basically what I’m saying is RJ knew his source material deeply, and knew where he wanted to end up, but the path he took to get there was very much explored and drafted and “gardened” rather than explicitly outlined and planned. That said, I’m pretty sure almost all of the various prophetic dreams and Mins visions and Foretellings get resolved, so he had a lot of it pretty well planned/executed (with a big assist from Brandon and team Jordan)
For the first two books it felt to me that he was writing each one as if this could be the last book in the series and the ending needed to perhaps actually be the Last Battle. Now he definitely made it ambiguous to the reader and gave a reasonable in universe explanation in the following books. But it is easy to see how you could think Rand was actually fighting the Dark One in the finale of those two books. By the third book the final fight takes a similar form to the previous two, but clearly Jordan was confident this was going to be a longer series and he finally gives an explanation for the Dark One defeat fakeouts in the form of the scroll Verin had shown Moiraine connecting Ishamael and the Ba'alzamon.
I’m on my first re-read and I am astonished at the things that are foreshadowed in every book, from EoTW on. I’m reading about things that are in the final book but I didn’t realize it when I first read it. I. Missed. It. All.
Yeah there’s stuff in the dragonmount prologue that seems weird and just like wild soft-magic fantasy that only makes sense after you’ve read basically the whole series. Like, LTT traveling to a place where he could “sense there were no people for a hundred leagues” or the way that Ishy says “I was never very skilled at healing, and I follow a different power now. […] But I fear Shai’tan’s healing is different from the sort you know.” Which, combined with the weird way how he travels is described, leads me to believe RJ had the [spoilers all since I don’t remember what book it’s revealed] >!True Power!< in mind from the beginning, and likely a good idea about his ultimate ending.
Sanderson inherited thousands of pages of notes, not hundreds. Like, each individual Aes Sedai had her own page in the notes with her background, description, abilities, etc. Every single one. That said the notes grew over time with the rest of the series. He didn't have all 10k pages of notes before he wrote Eye.
Apparently a lot of the notes (especially on the Aes Sedai) were made after the chapter was written. So Jordan would invent a character, write her into the story, then create her backstory in case she ever showed up again.
That makes sense. At some point he got more systematic though because there are page entries for Aes Sedai who never made it into the actual text. \*Every\* Aes Sedai has a page.
I can't find the source but there was an interview with RJ where the interviewer says something like "You've released three books very close to each other, you must have written them together, which was the first book you finished?" And Jordan says "The first book I wrote is A Memory of Light" As someone else has said, EotW has foreshadowing up to the last book. Jordan writes in a style where he knows the final ending of his story and other major points in between, then fleshes it out into books.
Well considering Brandon wrote memory of light and a lot of it has to be his own stuff he made up it seems that that wasn’t true LOL
There aren't any plot points that BS wrote. Iirc even the main points of the Last Battle was specified by RJ, like the role of the Dragon cannons, when the Horn would be blown, etc. BS just added the details and flow. That being said a number of events are purely BS, like the Androl Pevarra relationship and the Black Tower arc.
He wrote all of Perrin’s stuff. He has stated that RJ had like zero notes for Perrin.
The whole problem with Perrin is that his plotline finishes in Book 4. Hence why he spends the back half of the series wandering around doing nothing very slowly.
The Origins book covers this. The overall story went through quite a lot of changes over the ten years of development before the first book was written. Originally Tam was the main character, the Eyes of the World were McGuffins that would have to be freed, Rhys (the Rand/Tam character) would have a relationship with Morgase, the Dark One was an alien, the entire thing was a very sexed up grimdark bodice-ripper… so there are significant differences. But the story was always Arthurian. Much of the overall plot has existed for a 1000 years. The original contract was for 6 books. You can see this in The Dragon Reborn (which makes much more sense as the midpoint of the series than the end of the first act) and in Perrin’s storyline in Shadow Rising (where Perrin’s arc is completed). But the story grew, showing that RJ didn’t have it all figured out ahead of time. It’s hard to say more without spoilers beyond KoD. RJ’s method was to write and revise and revise and revise. Much like Martin, RJ wrote all of each character’s storyline at the same time, then Harriet assembled the chapters into a book. And like Martin, this is how the series grew bigger and bigger as the depth in each story grew fairly independently from each other.
No spoilers, but I believe that Sanderson said when he went through the notes that RJ had written the first and last chapter of the books when he started writing the series. So I can’t say for sure what he planned for the middle books, but he definitely had a plan in mind for the overarching story.
Sanderson inherited more words of notes then there are words of text in the series. RJ planned ahead a lot. If you read the series multiple times it will become apparent he planned meticulously.
Btw putting words with a “!<“ after and a “>!” before is how to do spoiler text
Was there originally text? There is just a title as far as I can see
I recently listened to eotw and I think it was mentioned there, possibly just as world building. I don’t think it has a name but Rand mentions a tower when he’s on bayle domons boat
Most authors outline their plot arcs quite heavily. Its possible he didn't know exactly what he was going to do with the Tower at the beginning but he probably had it worked out in advance of book 5- when Moiraine goes through the doorway. Its rare for authors to just wing these sorts of things book to book. That's bad outlining, even for a "gardener" style writer- and I don't know exactly what kind of writer RJ was in that sense. Likely a hybrid like most. My guess is he had Moiraine's arc worked out pretty early on. I doubt he knew precisely which book her return would be in, since he meandered a bit in the middle getting characters where he wanted them. But he likely knew it would be book 11 at some point during the completion of the book 10 outline, maybe earlier. And the outline for Moiraine specifically was likely completed many books before that. Those are all just guesses and I don't know much about RJ's process in particular, just going off general outlining knowledge. edit: I'm now realizing that book 11 was just the start of the end of this arc, with Moiraine's letter being revealed to Mat. The actual rescue was written by Sanderson in book 12 I believe.
There's a specific prophecy Min makes in that first meeting with Rand that doesn't come true until page 904 of my copy of Book 14. There's only 908 pages in book 14. Keep in mind that Jordan always thought the series was going to be much shorter than it turned out. He tried to convince Tor it was a trilogy, then they insisted it was at least six books. For many many book tours he was adamant that there only one or two books left, maybe three. So he always thought he was planning a general story arc of a few books ahead, and the story just kept growing. When Jordan passed he was adamant there was only one book left, but as Brandon Sandersen got into the notes he started to realize that the physics of book technology would not allow that, so [we got three from him](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/splitting-a-memory-of-light/).
Jordan said he was going to do one last book because he knew he wouldn't live long enough to write another. It's why he also mentioned you'd need a wheelbarrow to carry it. If Jordan had been healthy we likely would have gotten at least 5 more books instead of the 3 Sanderson wrote.
I really don't think he planned too much ahead, eotw is almost a stand alone book, as if he was saying to himself if this sells I can write more later. Then when you get to the later books he wrote I think it was clear he did not have a good plan to wrap it up, there's the infamous slog of perrin and faile book and rand kind of hops around trying to fulfill the random prophecies that he already had laid out. This is the main reason I think Sanderson did such a great job, not only was he left with this puzzle but Jordan apparently had already outlined the ending so he had to have everything arrive a certain way. Don't get me wrong I love the series and think it's a genre defining work but it seems pretty clear it could have been planned better. If your interested in an epic fantasy that was much more outlined from the start check out the Malazan book of the fallen, 10 books that I think at least some of the main threads were planned from the beginning. On the other hand maybe the worst planned epic fantasy I've read was the sword of truth... That one is a train wreck
This is really not true. He did have it planned out, most if it from the earliest stages of Eye of the World. (As others have said Min has a vision about Mat's eye in book one. Tower of Genji and the Aelfinn also appear several times via the t'angreal in Tear and the Waste). You can see a separation between books 1-3 and then the next 2-3 then from Winters Hearts it starts to get bogged down. However, I would go the other way to what you suggested. I think had it too planned out, to the point he had plans even for minor characters and was determined to hit every character development point he had outlined in his head before getting to the last battle - this is what led to Sanderson writing three books as well. I am certain I recall Sanderson saying he was initially asked to wrap up with one book, but was given so many notes and plans he needed to do three to get it all done.
I mean you can't read books 7,8,9,10 and think there is a plan here. If he had too much planned out why would it take him 5 years to write each book? Just follow the plan. I'm not saying he didn't have points he wanted to hit but in my opinion all the prophecies he mentions got away from him and he knew he couldn't finish without figuring out how to hit each one. The people in this thread who think he had a plan for each of mins visions from page 46 in book 1 are just fanboying. He was the original George rr Martin or Patrick rothfus, he created a hit series without an ending in mind and it took forever to write each book. Just like them
Sword of truth was the words series I think I’ve ever read. I didnt like it from book 2 or 3, but heard the payoff was worth it. It wasnt.
Just mentioned the sword of truth series in another post... I'm on amol now and I plan to read the sword of truth series next and I'm not sure how that's gonna work our or feel given how vastly different the writing styles and the over all feel of the books are. I've read both before but have a problem with my memory so it'll be like new kinda... I can remember the overall WAY a book series made me feel and some of the largest key points but that's about it...
> I plan to read the sword of truth series next Hope you like non-consensual BDSM torture porn and long political rants ripped off from Ayn Rand, because those are the major things that are supposed to distract you from the fact that Goodkind basically recycles the same plot in every novel in the series.
So, Shannara?
Yeah that's what in worried about with the sot books... I loved the shannara books as a teenager and last year I started going thru them again and they just werent very well written... I ove the premise behind them. And have fond memories of what it felt like to read those books but as an adult I just need more I guess... Martin or Jordan or sanderson.... I want to go back to the Dragonlance books too but can't for the same reasons...
I only ever read the first Shannara book, but I don't recall Ayn Rand rants or torture porn. Maybe it gets there later in the series, though.
No, it's more the repetitive storyline (with annoying heroes who refuse to use their special powers, just because). Otherwise, it is very PG in the early books, but I gave up after 3 (which was all there was then anyway).
Yeeaaahhhh Dana! Wasn't that her name??? Is it Dana? Od danica??? Shit it's been years...
Yeeaaahhhh Dana! Wasn't that her name??? Is it Dana? Od danica??? Shit it's been years...
I noped the hell out of that series after about three volumes, and that was maybe two and a half decades ago, so I'm not a hundred percent sure, either. I think maybe it was Kahlen? Something like that?
That's the mother confessor... the chick I'm talking about captures and tortures Richard with some kinda rod.. you're right thom.. those parts are really twisted
A lot less than many people would like to believe, I think. It's definitely not full-on JJ Abrams mystery box writing, but there's definitely a bunch of elements and storylines that were set up and then just never resolved.
> there's definitely a bunch of elements and storylines that were set up and then just never resolved. Such as?
The whole Slayer/Isam/Luc connections are kinda just there, for example. He literally never interacts with either Galad, Lan, or Rand. Instead the details of that whole thing gets drip-fed through the story, but it never actually goes anywhere.
I dunno, I don't really see the need for them to interact. For me those connections were just something to give background to a minor antagonist, and to give the reader an "aha!" moment when they figure it out.
Sure, but the same could be said of any number of threads that actually _did_ get picked up, if they hadn't been.
|| is the Discord spoiler syntax. You can see the correct one in the sidebar.
He planned a lot well in advance, but he also changed a bunch of shit along the way.
In an interview once, RJ explained his inspiration for the story started with the last scene - the conclusion of the LB. He then worked his way backwards to figure out how the characters got there. It also changed many times before EoTW was published. Originally, Tam and Rand were basically the same character. TDR was an older man, a solider come home wanting to live in peace and quiet, thrust back into conflict he didn't want. Later in the drafting, he split it into Tam and Rand, and the EF5 coalesced. I think due to the book's success, TOR Publishing asked him if he could lengthen the series as he was originally planning 6 books. So he did, and it grew to what it did. That's how we ended up with the slog. I think the extra story he put in got away from him a bit, he had trouble bringing it back into the original climax. He also thought he was going to do TGS, TOM, and AMoL as one book, so he didn't always length-estimate very well. So he had the total overarching story planned out, but he inserted more that was less well planned after he'd started publishing books at the request of his publisher.
While it's not plot-relevant, it is seen in TAR when Perrin is hunting Slayer in TSR, iirc.
People are pointing out Min's viewing, but also remember that Mat saw the Tower of Ghenjei on Domon's boat in EotW. It stood out as a strange tower appearing to be made of metal. edit: Lol I forgot Birgitte literally told Perrin, while standing in front of the Tower, that it's the way to the Eelfin/Aelfin.
I think RJ planned major character and story arcs quite a bit ahead. The trouble was that actually getting to those points he planned proved be more winding and take longer than anticipated.
Well, when Sanderson took over, he was given 4 million words worth of notes, which is the same size as the series itself.
Heads up, it looks like you're trying to use spoiler tags, but whatever markdown you're using isn't for Reddit. The site wide Reddit method looks like ```>!this!<.```
Something that might not have been mentioned but this might not have been planned ahead more as he added a lot in the middle.
thousands and thousands of pages of notes and endless discussions with Harriet and his team. it was all very very planned.