With all the focus on social media these days, what impact do you think fans might have on story development in the future?
Boy, I think that they will have some impact. What, I’m not sure. With Warbreaker I was able to read perspectives on the book online as I was working on it, and that certainly did inform how I did my revisions. Maybe you’ll see more crowdsourcing on editing and that sort of thing. I do think that the ability to directly connect with fans helps me understand the way a reader’s mind works. Usually that doesn’t translate one-to-one to changes in a novel, because there are a few steps in between in deciding what the reader really actually wants and what they say they want—working on the Wheel of Time as both a fan and a writer has helped me figure that out, because there are things that as a fan I would have said I wanted, but looking at it as a writer I can say, “Oh, if I gave that to the fans, it would actually in the long run make the story less satisfying.” So there is some work to be done there, but I think social media is a great resource.
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