How much of the ending are you creating, not just filling in the blanks per se?
I’m not just filling in holes. At the same time, I’m trying hard to keep anything RJ said in mind, and trying to make the book fit his vision.
It’s a tough balance. There is a lot of work to be done, depending on the character in question. For example, for The Gathering Storm , he left a lot on Egwene, but less on Rand. In Towers of Midnight , a lot on Mat, less on Perrin. He left a lot of notes on how everyone should end up after the Last Battle, but often didn’t say how they’d get there.
One of the things I’ve been impressed by is this: Harriet and Tor could have hired a ghost writer and pretended that RJ finished the book before he died. People would have believed them. However, while a ghost writer could have imitated RJ’s voice, Harriet felt she wanted a fantasy novelist to do it. First, to be honest to the fans. Second, because there was enough work to be done that the person couldn’t just connect dots, but would actually have to build parts of the story.
She gave me complete creative freedom to do what needed to be done, with the understanding that she would edit. (If you don’t know, Harriet is one of the ‘greats’ in sf/f editing. She edited Ender’s Game , for example, and may of the big fantasy and sf authors during the 70s and 80s. She discovered RJ, edited him, then married him.)
So, when I go wrong, she is there to push me the right direction. It’s hard to answer a question of how much is me, and how much is RJ. His fingers are on every scene, as I’m trying to match the character voices (but not his writing style exactly) and get them right. Most scenes come from at least a comment in the notes here or there, and for some, he left a paragraph or two explanation. For others, he wrote the entire thing.
For some, I’m building it from the ground up, taking where the character was at the end of Knife of Dreams and giving them a story that earns them the ending RJ mentioned for them.
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