Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Twitter 2009-2010 (WoT) (Verbatim)

Compared to the A Memory of Light note content and detail how much was left for the remaining two prequels? Were they as detailed?

MAGGIE MELCHIOR (13 August)

BRANDON SANDERSON (14 August)

BRANDON SANDERSON

rj's notes, prequels, harriet, wot annotations,

Brandon Sanderson's Blog: Award + Annotation (Verbatim)

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.

wot annotations, harriet,

Book Expo America Interview (Verbatim)

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?

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.

rj's notes, outriggers, prequels, brandon on writing wot, harriet, wot annotations,

TOM Signing Report - Zaela Sedai (Paraphrased)

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.

wot annotations, harriet,

TOM Signing Report - Sarayne (Paraphrased)

What have you written and what has RJ written? Will you publish the outline?

I'd love to, but it's up to Harriet!

who wrote what?, wot annotations,

Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

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?

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.

rj's notes, wot annotations, harriet,

Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

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.

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.

rj's notes, harriet, brandon on writing wot, wot annotations,

Alloy of Law Signing Report - Green Hoodie Mistborn (Verbatim)

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?

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.

wot annotations, elantris,

Twitter: AMOL Writing and Editing Process (Verbatim)

How about an update on when A Memory of Light will be published?

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.

amol:wip, wot annotations,

DragonCon 2012 - AMOL Update Panel (Verbatim)

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."

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.

brandon on writing wot, verin, mat, egwene, rand, perrin, moiraine, thom, the gathering storm, towers of midnight, wot annotations, rj's notes, who wrote what?,