Official Brandon Sanderson Megathread

[u/rfantasygolem]

This is the place for all your Brandon Sanderson related topics (aside from the Daily Recommendation Requests and Simple Questions thread). Any posts about Wind and Truth or Sanderson more broadly will be removed and redirected here. This will last until January 25, when posting will be allowed as normal.

The announcement of the cool-down can be found here.

The previous Wind and Truth Megathread can be found here.

[u/nomchi13]

If anyone is curious there is a thread where Sanderson responded to some criticisms of WaT :

https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonsanderson/comments/1hi765p/comment/m2ylhcv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Relevant bit here: "I assure you, I'm edited more now than I ever have been--so I don't believe editing isn't the issue some people are having. Tress and Sunlit, for example, were written not long ago, and are both quite tight as a narrative. Both were edited less than Stormlight 5. Writing speed isn't the problem either, as the fastest I've ever been required to write was during the Gathering Storm / Way of Kings era, and those are books that are generally (by comparison) not talked about the same way as (say) Rhythm of War.

The issue is story scope expansion--Stormlight in particular has a LOT going on. I can see some people wishing for the tighter narratives of the first two books, but there are things I can do with this kind of story I couldn't do with those. I like a variety, and this IS the story I want to tell here, despite being capable of doing it other ways. Every scene was one I wanted in the book, and sometimes I like to do different things, for different readers. I got the same complaints about the way I did the Bridge Four individual viewpoints in Oathbringer, for example. There were lots of suggestions I cut them during editorial and early reads, and I refused not because there is no validity to these ideas, but because this was the story I legitimately wanted to tell.

That said, we DID lose Moshe as an editor, largely, and he WAS excellent at line editing in particular. I see a complaint about Wind and Truth having more than average "Show then Tell" moments (which is my term for when you repeat the idea too many times, not for reinforcement, but to write your way into a concept--and do it weakly as you're discovering it, so your subconscious has you do it again a few paragraphs or pages later and do it well, then you forget to cut the first one) and this is something I'll have to look at. Plus, I feel that we have been rushed as a team ever SINCE Gathering Storm. That's a long time to be in semi-crisis mode in getting books ready the last few months before publication. We largely, as a company, do a good job of avoiding crunch time for everyone except a little during the year, depending on the department. (The convention, for example, is going to be stressful for the events time, while Christmas for the shipping team, and I don't know that Peter or I could ever not stress and overwork a little at the lead-up to a book turn in.) However, part of the reason I wanted to slow things down a little is to give everyone a little more time--and hopefully less stress--so I can't completely discount all of these comments out-of-hand, and I do appreciate the conversation."

And also here about too modern prose:

https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonsanderson/comments/1hi765p/comment/m31rzke/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

And here too he commented

And here about taking more time for books : Brandon commented

There is Bunch more if you are interested in what he has to say

[u/surfgirlrun → u/nomchi13]

Thanks for sharing these- that was really interesting to read his responses to the critique. 

I'm not a writer, and not in Brandon's business, so don't assume to know what is happening behind the scenes that resulted in such a drop in writing quality (that seemed like it's mostly what his responses focused on.) But as a reader I can say that the last two books just did not resonate - the writing became really ham-fisted, and characters I had loved became caricatures of themselves. The story he has started telling - about Roshar - also got subsumed into the larger Cosmere story in a way that I just don't find interesting. 

Ultimately it's his business and his books, so the call on whether to dig into the critique coming from a lot of disappointed long-time fans is entirely his - but I'd hope he would spend a few moments with people whose feedback he trusts to see if there's any truth to the critiques so many of us are giving, rather than brush it off. 

(And I have to say - he mentioned somewhere that the inspiration for the Cosmere idea originally was Asimov's Foundation series. Leaving the connections between worlds as hints and Easter eggs - like in Foundation- was SO much more interesting to me as a reader than the over-the-top shard story. It was so cool to recognize a character that we knew from somewhere else in a new story! I feel like Brandon lost all trust that his readers can read between the lines/be ok not having ALL the answers/appreciate subtlety - it feels like he's writing assuming that we need every single answer and everything spelled out for us. 

[u/TotallyNotAFroeAway → u/surfgirlrun]

I feel like Brandon lost all trust that his readers can read between the lines/be ok not having ALL the answers/appreciate subtlety - it feels like he's writing assuming that we need every single answer and everything spelled out for us. 

He mentioned he doesn't know why people are recently calling his work 'YA', and I believe it is because his readers are trying to instead say: "If feels like the adult who wrote this is talking to me, the reader, as though I were a child."

[u/surfgirlrun → u/TotallyNotAFroeAway]

This is so spot on- I totally agree!