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Interview #452: Ending The Wheel of Time: The GeekDad Interview with Brandon Sanderson, Entry #3

GeekDad

Are you just lending flesh to a largely complete skeleton, or do you also have to close plot points that were still unresolved in Jordan’s notes?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s actually not as simple as either of those options. The notes range in how detailed they are. In some places, he finished complete scenes, which is great. He finished several complete scenes, which will be scattered through the three books, including the ending itself.

In a number of places he gave dictations. Over his last few months, he spent a lot of time dictating to the family things that should happen. These are very interesting scenes in that they read kind of like a screenplay, because they transcribe the dictations. It’s a lot of the dialogue, but it’s him saying what should happen instead of actually writing it out. “And then, Egwene says this, and then he says this, and then this happens.” And so the description isn’t there, but the dialogue and the blocking all are. As I said, like a screenplay.

In other places, there are fragments of scenes, where he wrote a couple of paragraphs, and then another couple of paragraphs. And just like a shattered plate, there are pieces missing. In other places, there are sentences he’s written, “and then this happens”—where “this” is a sequence of four chapters’ worth of events. In other places, he left a paragraph or two, and in some places there’s just a big hole. There’re characters here and there, and then there are a lot of really detailed notes for the ending, saying where everyone ends up, who lives and who dies—it’s very detailed, and is where I think the bulk of the material is. But sometimes, we’ll know where someone is at the end of Knife of Dreams , and then at the ending he says that person is doing something else, but the intervening space is a big hole.

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