How much did you struggle with the need to give the fans what they wanted (i.e. Mat, Perrin and other favorite characters) with the desire to keep to the relatively tight thematic narrative with Rand and Egwene?
I’ve had to balance those things, for sure. I spoke a little of this above; it’s a lesson I’ve had to learn as a writer across my career, not just with the Wheel of Time books.
The best stories—stories the fans are going to like more in the end—are the ones where the author stays true to his or her vision. That’s not always what the fans say they’re going to want.
This is particularly poignant with me, because I am a fan on this series. I had to balance letting the fan inside me say, “Ooh, ooh, I want to see this , I want to see this ,” with what was going to make the best story. I had to preserve Robert Jordan’s original vision for the books, while adding what I could add to the narrative. I couldn’t, therefore, dally too much with fan satisfaction moments.
For instance, I intentionally kept cameos from minor characters to a minimum. The little voices inside my head screaming, “Ooh, wouldn’t it be cool if?”—I had to be very careful about those. When the time came to divide the book, the balance of which characters got major viewpoints in this volume really came down to the narratives I felt would go well alongside one another.
Note that if there are missing characters in The Gathering Storm , you will likely find them in Towers of Midnight . I didn’t think who got cut and who didn’t get cut was a really large-scale issue. It just came down to what made the best story.
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