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Brandon Sanderson / Re: Warbreaker Sample Chapters
« on: September 27, 2006, 08:10:43 PM »Quote
I still worry about the similarities. The thing is, I wrote ELANTRIS seven years ago, so these themes--the person becoming a god in particular--are things I haven't dealt with in a long, long time in my view. However, to other people, it's going to seem a lot closer.
I wouldn't worry too much about the Elantris similarities. In the first place, I am, I think, the only one who's said anything. I just read Elantris a few months ago, when it came out in paperback, so I've probably read it more recently than most and am thus more sensitive to the similarities. And I don't yet know how Warbreaker ends, which is a critical factor (see below) -- don't take anything I write too seriously until I've read the end. Also I have not yet read Mistborn (although I will: it sounds like a good candidate to be my favorite of your books) so Elantris and Warbreaker are my only experiences with your work. All that you say about Warbreaker not being published for years, and having all of Mistborn in-between (plus the Alcatraz project you're doing), are good points in terms of the mental separation you can expect your readers to have.
Second, while I had noticed a few similarities, I had never sat down and thought about them until that exact point in my previous post where I was mentioning Elantris. They had not been eating away ay me, detracting from my enjoyment of Warbreaker, in other words.
Third, there's nothing wrong with revisiting ideas and plot elements. Good authors do it often, because the ideas they're grappling with are too big for a single take. Orson Scott Card has written several variants of the "young saviour" story, for example, each with a Going Away from Home moment, a Mysterious Pragmatic Teacher, a Lesson in Empathy, etc. Gene Wolfe has done the same, and his stories always have the Talking Animal Companion, the Journey through the Underdark, the Experience of War, and so forth. Repetitions, parallels, congruences between stories are not necessarily bad things -- they're often quite positive, because they indicate that the stories are hitting on cultural touchpoints, the collective subconscious, and universal mythologies.
Now I confess, I personally will be a little disappointed in the creative potential lost if Warbreaker ends the same way Elantris did -- if parallel characters perform parallel functions in a parallel resolution. Or, to be explicit, if Lightsong gives his life so that Susebron and Siri can rule a more equable kingdom happily ever after, while Vivenna marries Denth. If they do end in similar ways, it's still potentially okay, but (to make this reader happy, at least) you'll need to work to justify it: how is it, and what does it mean, that characters who truly are different in a setting that truly is different end up so similarly? And if that isn't the case, if the stories end differently, then I think the question of similarities becomes moot.
MattD