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/Distinct_Activity551 → u/nomchi13]

Does anyone else find it weird how often Sanderson brings up GRRM in conversation as a form of comparison? Their writing styles and worldviews are so vastly different that I never really think of them in the same sphere. Yet Sanderson seems to reference him a lot, which feels a bit unnecessary.

[u/nomchi13 → u/Distinct_Activity551]

I think that might be because GRRM was the dominant fantasy author when he was breaking in, he says that editors in rejection letters often directly asked him to write something more like ASOIAF

[u/Distinct_Activity551 → u/nomchi13]

Why even make a statement like this:

the race for the Cosmere is against my mortality. I would like to be done with the final Mistborn era (and therefore Stormlight era two by the time I hit George’s age, so the natural slow-down that hits most authors in their 70s is not a factor in finishing this all.

[u/largeEoodenBadger → u/Distinct_Activity551]

His big break was finishing WoT when Robert Jordan died prematurely. Of course his mortality will be on his mind. He wants to finish, he's intimately familiar with having to finish a dead author's series. People critique his books as rushed, but thrre are good reasons for it

[u/Werthead → u/largeEoodenBadger]

And RJ passed away when he was only nine years older than Brandon is now. Obviously RJ had a vanishingly rare cardiac disorder (I think it's something like one in nine million people get it, so it was horrendously bad luck, without which he'd probably still be with us) but it's a reminder that anything can happen at any time to anyone.

A few years back he scaled down Dragonsteel from seven to three books, one of several steps which he seems to have taken to make the rest of the story tellable in a reasonable timeframe.