You said in The Gathering Storm , the Rand was very dark. Was his darkness in the book hard to write?
Rand’s darkness was certainly hard to write. But there’s a piece of the writer that says when this is tough, that’s good. One, you’re pushing yourself. Two, if it’s emotionally hard for you, and you’re doing this the right way, it’s going to be emotionally hard on the reader, and that’s a sign that they will be emotionally invested. So yes, it was hard. How did I get into the mindset? The same way I do everything. There’s actually a lot of method acting to writing, where you sit down and become that character for a time. Harriet has a story about Robert Jordan and how he did it. She could always tell.
I could generally tell when he came in for the evening news and supper whether he had been writing a good person or a bad person. In particular there was an evening when he came in and slammed the door, and was skulking around the wall like this [hunches up against the bookshelf behind her], and I said, “You’ve been writing Padan Fain, haven’t you?” And he said, “How did you know?” Usually he came in and said “Hello, honey!”
So you get in the mindset and go, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, you throw it away and start again the next day.
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