Can you give any example or examples of some things that you got to hear in (???). What that something that you did, or was that actual (???)?
Excellent question, I’ll go through a few of these things for you, that one was me. One of the things that was awesome, but also a little bit difficult to- anyway, it was awesome to be able to come as a fan, having read the books for twenty years and be thinking about “wow, I wish this would happen”, and then say “wow, I’m gonna make that happen”. But as I was doing it, I was also realizing it was dangerous, because there was a real danger for putting in fanservice type stuff, not in the traditional meaning of fanservice, but like the fanservice of Na(???) showing up in the last battle or things like this, like little fan jokes. I found that I had a lot of temptation to put those in, and so I had to tread this really careful line where I was saying “what do I as a fan want to make the book more fulfilling”, not just as a joke. One of the things that as a writer I’ve always wanted to see was gateways used for more than they were used and the books were never bringing up that point, you know, teleportation, instant travel has a lot of ramifications. One of the things I kind of put on myself was that I didn’t want to create a lot of new (ways/weaves?), because I knew if I did, I’d really risk taking it to far away from Robert Jordan’s vision, so I said “let’s stick mostly to the weaves(?) he’s used, and see if I can use them in more different ways. This whole idea of taking the magic and digging deeper into it rather than going wider with it. And so a lot of the stuff with gateways is me. A lot of- so for instance, I also went in and said to Harriet “every book that Robert Jordan’s done, almost all of them, has added a new character who’s become a main character or at least a side character. If we don’t do that for these last books it’s gonna feel weird to people. So I would like to take one of the (???) and bring them to prominence, and make them a viewpoint character and do what Robert Jordan’s done” and so that’s what (???) came from and though there’s nothing in Robert Jordan’s notes about this little bit of, about his profession, take him and play with him, and do whatever you want. And that was almost a little pressure valve for me, to put more “Brandon-y” sort of things, goofy magic system stuff with that, and that pressure valve allowed me to, not really knowing my writing style, I was able to make the rest of it be a little more Robert Jordan-esque, if that makes sense. You see that pressure valve with Perrin and the (world dream?), the world dreams(?), because, as I’ve said before, Robert Jordan didn’t leave much on Perrin, Perrin is a big, empty… big blank slate for these books. We knew where he ended up at the end and that was it. So Perrin was the other sort of “do whatever you want, Brandon” sort of thing. He left a lot more on the other characters. So if you’re reading Perrin scenes or if you’re seeing him play with gateways, you’re seeing me kinda let Brandon leak out a bit more. And this was done intentionally, I’d say that was my pressure valve, but also… when I was given this, Harriet sat me down and said “you are the author now. I didn’t hire a ghostwriter on purpose. I didn’t want somebody who was just going to be Robert Jordan, because that would make a bad book”, in her opinion. “Robert Jordan can’t finish this, so you have to do it and yes, we want to stay true to his vision, but you are the writer now.” And she was very clear on that, and I always remembered that and how much that meant to me, being… you know, she was the ultimate authority, but I had creative control to do whatever I felt the books needed, and her job was to rein be back if she though I went too far, and make sure the voice was consistent and things like that. So I got to do a lot with these books that I don’t think a ghostwriter would be able to do.
[I’m guessing this refers to Wheel of Time writing]
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