The first specific question for Jordan was asked why he chose to write a fantasy series, instead of going for historical novels.
Well, in terms of history, I see some similarity to the writing of a fantasy novel and the writing of a history novel. In both cases you are presenting a world that is totally strange and alien to the reader. And if you don’t believe that, read a good novel set three hundred years ago, one that really describes the life and you’ll find very little recognizable in it.
So there is a great deal of similarity there. The major difference is that if you’re writing a good historical novel you must place the historical events where they actually happened, not shift them about at your own convenience. In a fantasy novel you can shift history for your own convenience. It’s a great…a great aid.
And that’s attracted you because you felt your hands free to…
That’s, that’s a part of it. Another part of it is that I felt I could discuss things writing fantasy that I couldn’t discuss writing in other genres, things that I would have to…sidestep.
There’s a great deal of the struggle between good and evil. I’m trying to decide what is good, and what is evil, what’s right, what is wrong, am I doing the right thing? Not by preaching; simply the characters keeping face with a situation or they’re gonna make a decision; they don’t know enough, don’t have enough information, and they don’t know what the results are going to be; oh they know what the results are gonna be and they’re wrong. We’ll give them that. At least wrong a lot of the times. And they have to blunder on and blunder through anyway, cause that’s all there is to do.
But if I wrote about that, if I tried to say that there is a right, there is a wrong, there is good, there is evil, it’s tough to tell the difference, but you really have to make the try. … It’s worth the effort to try. If I said that in a mainstream novel, it would be laughed out of town.
rj on writing ,
wot themes ,
rj on fantasy ,
rj on history ,
rj on ethics
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