New Wheel of Time Author Chosen

kdean06 writes "Brandon Sanderson has been chosen by Tor Books to finish the best-selling Wheel of Time fantasy series by the late Robert Jordan. Harriet, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading his Mistborn series. An interview is also available via Dragonmount.com."

Comments

Details Are an Artistic Choice, My Friend

[eldavojohn]

Right, I think you should really step back and consider what you are saying.

Every author has a right to express situations to the point they see fit. If you want to pull a Hemingway and tell things how they are, go ahead. "The night was dark." But I'm going to paraphrase something I remember from the intro to Stephen King's unabridged version of The Stand:

You can tell the story of Hansel & Gretel in about three sentences. Hansel & Gretel got lost in the forest. They happened upon a house wtih an old witch who offered them candy. She really wanted to eat them and they figured it out and dumped her in the oven.

Ok, so that was quick, but you know, it also is interesting to mention that they weren't so much as 'lost' as their bitch of a mother threw them in the woods because she loved their father but not them. Or that they left breadcrumbs certain they could find their way back. And also they kind of faced with a bit of a moral dilemma when they were faced with killing the witch. Oh, and when I talk about the forest, if I put some details into it to make it a little darker and scarier, it works better. Before you know it, I'm painting a novel. Yes, it's going to be long. Oh but all these things make the plot long and loopy and without everything being answered! Yes, it's going to have an overload of details but that's how I want to tell it. If you don't like, either don't read it or buy the Cliff's notes and get back to me on it.

Jordan went to the Citadel. He spares no expense on details. He also is an expert at explaining battles. If you don't like it that he answers questions with more questions, don't read it. I'm sorry but you went through book seven and I implore to keep going, some of the later ones get much better. It's the same thing that drew me to the X-Files & even some newer books, I'm sorry that it discourages you but that's what I love about Jordan. Not your average run of the mill fantasy series!

Re:Details Are an Artistic Choice, My Friend

[NeutronCowboy]

There is a difference between prose that sets the setting, and prose that's just filler. I gave up reading fantasy novels long ago, because most of them had several paragraphs of describing the same. damn. characters. and. settings. Wild barbarian. Old, white-bearded wizard. Scary orcs. Etc. Etc. Etc. I've blown through more than one 700 page fantasy book in one sitting because exposition and description was about 90% of the text. Forget subtle character development or scene setting, things were delivered in neat paragraphs. Some longer than a page.

Master story-tellers know which elements of their story help their audience understand the point of the story. Hacks simply describe things. Details may be an artistic choice, but they definitely drive what I think of the artist. Sometimes, less is indeed more.

Re:Details Are an Artistic Choice, My Friend

[DragonWriter]

Details are clearly an artistic choice. Sometimes, though, they are a bad artistic choice.

Its often said that in short stories, more than novels, its important to relate only details that matter (whether its to the mood or to the plot, or its best that if the detail serves the former purpose it also serves the latter) and ruthlessly eliminate the fluff.

I think that that is, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, just as true in works much longer than a typical novel as it is in works much shorter than one. While in the shorter forms you lack the space for both fat and meat, in the longer forms you are more likely to exhaust the readers tolerance for fat, but the effect is the same. A 2 million word megastory, I think, really needs to be nearly as lean, overall, as a 1,000 word piece of flash fiction; you've got some room to be more verbose in the first couple novel-length chunks of the bigger work, but beyond that you really need to buckle down if you want to avoid drowning the reader in a tide of minutiae that overwhelms the story itself.

Kill some people this time.

[bigdady92]

Seriously, kill off a few of the 'main' characters.

That's always been the issue with these books is that Jordan created a handful of characters, then added a few side characters and said "Oh my these are interesting let's flesh them out!" and he did...over 10 f'n books worth of side characters!

G.Martin, Glenn Cooke, Dan Abnett, all are good sci-fi/fantasy writers that can handle multiple characters and wack them off at a whim and leave you feeling that you are sad to see them go but there's a reason they are gone and the story moves on. These hangers on from seachan whichs to aes sedai, to aielmen of the north to whatever in the later books all come and STAY. Noone leaves the main thread, hence why his books are 1k pages long and full of worthless fluff "She fluffs her green jade dress full of sparkling diamonds while pulling on her hair and frowning at "

I was able to carve the book down by 1/3 by simply ignoring most of the side plots and only reading stuff that concerned Rand,Matt,Perin. If it didn't involve them I didn't care, I moved along.

Re:Does that mean another 10 tedious volumes?

[Sandbags]

Jordan had no personal interest in monetary fortunes. His story was alive within him, and as all things that grow in nature, this story grew above and beyond his dreams and took its own course. George R R Martin is experiencing a similar pain with his series, as did Terry Goodkind. The stories and worlds simply become so vast, that in order to move one's characters to the end of the story, it takes more volumes than one expects.

After book 3 Jordan expected the series to be complete at 6 books. after book 5, he thought he was closer to the end than the beginning. He was on a good pace to do that until he experienced a major death in his family while writing book 8. That book got away from him, and in order to complete his works and tie off all of the ends of his story, we needed books 9 and 10 to put things back on track.

Jordan rarely used "filler prose" as you claim. His descriptions were allways vivid and captivating, and all of his writing for his more than 20 main characters was exceptional.

Maybe you're looking at it wrong. This is not a simple story about a few characters on a quest, AKA J R R Tolkein style. this is 3rd generation hard fantasy. This is a collection of stories about seperate individuals following seperate paths each intertwined in common fates inside of an expansive world. This is really no different than the Dragon Lance series, other than in this case, each individual story has the power to move others. If this is more than you can follow, (not to say too complex, but simply the sheer volume of information and time required to invest in it) or if the collection is simply longer than your attention span, then I can reccomend many other great authors to you, and I will caution you to avoid Tad Williams, Neil Stepheson, George Martin and many other emerging fantasy gods of writing who are also on paths to publishing stories that cross 7-10 1000 page novels.

I mean no disrespect, but maybe it's just not your style.

Re:Does that mean another 10 tedious volumes?

[Apparition-X]

Well, I am going to toss this out there even though it may be a little inflammatory: Jordan was stylistically awful. Beyond belief really. The writing devolved over the course of the series from adequate to extremely painful. Your claims:

- "rarely used filler prose". If you read books 5-9, you will find that increasingly, that is all they were. Phrases were repeated a painfully large number of times. Characters expressed the same emotions and reactions to various situations over and over and over again.

- "his writing for more than 20 main charcters was exceptional" Well, there was little if any character growth for the majority of characters since book 4. If anything, it is shockingly repetitive in that the character's changed in no significant way for so long. And female characters in particular tended to the caricaturish in their unidimensionality.

No matter what excuse you care to use, it is obvious that a much firmer editorial hand was required. The number of people that simply stopped reading (based on comments here, on Amazon, and other forums) is very large. It just went on. Not only were questions not answered, and plot details not resolved, but new, seemingly irrelevant questions were raised, and new plot threads started. You may want to defend the work as "3rd generation hard fantasy" but it reads a lot more like Edward Gibbon than anything that is remotely interesting or compelling as a work of fiction.

Finally, I would not that Jordan's work has nothing redeeming from a literary point of view either--there are no compelling themes explored in interesting or insightful ways; no compelling use of metaphor or allegory; no deep (or even shallow) discovery of human nature and growth through conflict; nothing tragic about the conflicts; nothing at all. So without plot and character, there is simply nothing at all of interest.

And for reference, I have worked through Martin's books without losing interest. And Erikson's (who has more happen in a chapter than WoT had in whole books) even though he is up to 7000+ pages. Glen Cooks. Gene Wolfe. Etc. But that doesn't mean that I am uncritical or read uncritically. Jordan lost the plot and jumped the shark a long time ago, and those problems are compounded by dreadful style, awful characterization, and the total absence of compelling plot developments. (I am also pretty critical of Goodkind for similar reasons--the prose is simply awful, as is the characterization.)

Have some respect, guys

[HeronBlademaster]

Mod me -1 Troll if you will, but you guys who complain about the books all suck. No, hear me out.

I won't say you're wrong (though personally I think you are) because it's largely a matter of opinion - but to claim that everyone else is wasting their time is just plain rude. If it's too long for you, move on - don't tell everyone else they're stupid for reading the series. I happen to love long books and long series with deep characters and plots - even if it's frustrating sometimes.

It reminds me of the thread about Robert Jordan's death. Those of you who made comments to the effect of "Good Riddance" are just plain horrible people. That's very insensitive. Have some respect, seriously. Those comments made me bitter towards the general slashdot populace for several weeks (and I'm not a bitter person). I guess some of that is still lingering.

Don't ruin the mood of those of us who are looking forward to the last book, or I'll send you spam email with a picture of a cat saying "IM IN UR HEAD HAXING UR PASSWORD" ;P

Re:Does that mean another 10 tedious volumes?

[Goblez]

Except with his love of numerology, I'm sure Book 13 was planned to be the grand finale. Then again, I had suspicions early on that regardless of what he wanted to cover, the series would go to one of the numbers he loves so much (3, 7, 12, 13). I own them all in Hardback, started reading them back in high school (out of college w/ a real job now), and I'd love to see an ending. I'm sure he's laid out the core of what happens (in notes or rough drafts), hell most of it is spelled out in foreshadowing and prophecy. Let's just see a conclusion so I know whether or to sell the Hardback copies or keep them!

Re:Does that mean another 10 tedious volumes?

[A Jew]

well, we like it. I guess it wasn't written for you.

I don't read it for the setting. I don't mind conflicts in the story.

I just want to read something entertaining, and understand the authors world. it's interesting to try to understand other peoples thinking. plus if it has any ideas it's trying to communicate, that gives it a big plus on value and enjoyment.

besides, it's well written.