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Interview #531: Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist: New Brandon Sanderson Interview, Entry #10

Patrick

In your previous fantasy series, you had one main character or plotline, with only a few secondary characters and subplots. But here in The Way of Kings , you expand this to three main plotlines and dozens of secondary characters. Was this division of the book into three main protagonists rather than just a single “lead” something that you had intended from the first draft, or did this story division develop over time and many drafts?

Brandon Sanderson

With how long this book has been around, it’s hard to say what was in the first draft and what wasn’t. If we look at The Way of Kings Prime —the book I wrote back in 2003, then tossed aside and rewrote to create this book—I did have quite a strong multi-character focus. It’s always been something I wanted to do. I actually scaled back a little bit for this draft. In the previous version I used six main characters; there was another character who has not yet appeared in the new version, and Jasnah was a main character with as many viewpoints as the others. It was too distracting, too much to juggle. So I pulled back a little bit. But to me, this series is not about one person. That’s just how I conceived it from the start, and that’s what I want to do with it. That will continue.

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