Any spoilers for A Memory of Light ?
Let’s see here. Harriet killed a character in the book that I did not intend to kill. So I wrote the entire book with a character living and she killed this character.
Did she tell you right before you finished, or what?
She sent back the draft and said “This person dies.”
So did you have to change a lot?
So they succumb to their wounds. I intended them to live, so there is a character who died unexpectedly. So that’s a slight spoiler. There is like a chapter that’s over a hundred pages. It’s a Super Chapter.
Did you have to invent any of it yourself, or did Jordan leave a lot of it for you?
He left some of it for me, and then I had to make the rest. As you’re reading through the books, probably about half and half. Half will be stuff that he wrote notes on, half will be stuff that I wrote.
Do you feel like it comes pretty easy?
Some of it does. I mean I’ve been reading since I was a kid. So some of the characters like Perrin is very natural for me. And Rand’s super natural for me. Others are a little less natural for me.
Like Mat.
Yes, like Mat. Mat’s harder for me to write.
Why is that?
Because Mat is very complex. Not to say that Perrin’s not, but Perrin’s straightforward. You know what I mean? Perrin says what he means, and does what he means. Mat says the opposite of what he means, and does the opposite of what he says. Making that tone correct for that is very hard. He’s one part rapscallion, the other part Awesomeness. And balancing when he’s playing the fool, and when he’s just being awesome is very hard to get that balance down, because you don’t want it to be silly, you know he can play the fool a bit but he shouldn’t be silly. Otherwise it won’t match from when he’s being Awesome as well, if that makes sense.
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