Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: WriterDan on August 21, 2008, 09:17:46 PM
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So, I decided not to slog through the 47 pages of comments about Warbreaker, and just ask my question here. Hope that's okay.
I found out that there was going to be a Warbreaker 2 late in the game of Warbreaker 1. I'm curious as to whether or not Brandon is planning on putting WB2 out for the public in the same way that he did WB. So, pretty much if Brandon and his retinue of "people" have decided as to whether or not this was a good way to do things, and if they'd do it again.
Also, will WB2 be the last in the "series"? Or is this also planned to be a trilogy, as most fantasy books are these days? Thanks for the info.
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I don't know where I read it for sure (I think it was a blog post) but I believe he has said that he'll be putting it out the same way he did with one -- one chapter each week.
I've also always gotten the impression this was only going to be two books. He's never meantioned a third book, and all the comments seem like those two will be it. I could be wrong though.
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What fRR said.
Though Brandon may have a secret something up his sleeve for afterward...
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What fRR said.
Though Brandon may have a secret something up his sleeve for afterward...
see!! see?? right there! that mysterious comment. notice how he couches it in terms of "maybe" and "perhaps". "Afterward" and "secret". How does he get so much ambiguity in so few words...
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I do what I can.
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There's a ... too. It's characteristic of an Ookla post.
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So, I'm thinking that I'm going to have to collect a group of Ooklas for when I start getting published. Spreading the mystery. Testing the waters. Euol is lucky to have people like you, Ookla.
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Ookla and EUOL are the same person, you never see them on the boards at the same time. Just kidding....or am I?
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I'm not brimming with excess ideas like Brandon is. My future is also much less certain than his. Plus I have less hair on my head and more on my face.
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I've seen them in the same room together. :D
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I've seen them in the same room together. :D
You'll have to do better than that EUOL. ;P
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Oh look at the wonderful conspiracy theories. ha ha.
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So, another question. I did actually start reading the Warbreaker topic from the beginning the other day. Only got about 10 pages into it before I gave up. One thing I did notice though, was that Brandon said that Warbreaker was going to be a stand-alone book. Why is it two now? I can understand that a story grows as it is written, but it sounded like he was pretty set on the idea of keeping this to one book when he started.
Ah, and I think that Ookla writes/(talks?) completely different than EUOL. That's enough for me to know they're not the same person. Other than the underlying obvious point that I don't think Brandon would be that underhanded. Me, however... :)
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Ah, and I think that Ookla writes/(talks?) completely different than EUOL. That's enough for me to know they're not the same person.
Do all of Brandon's characters talk the same? If they don't, then why would his alternate identity? Now see, obviously I was joking, Ookla and Brandon are two distinct and separate individuals. However, I would not be surprised to learn that Ookla is being controlled via chalkings.....
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The Warbreaker story pretty much ends in the first book (everyone's character arc finishes), but it definitely needs a sequel. I'm not sure at what point Brandon decided this.
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Ah, and I think that Ookla writes/(talks?) completely different than EUOL.
Ahh, but you didn't take into account the fact that EUOL is actually schizophrenic...Or is he?...
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The Warbreaker story pretty much ends in the first book (everyone's character arc finishes), but it definitely needs a sequel. I'm not sure at what point Brandon decided this.
Not everyone's arc finishes...its been a few months since I read it and completely forget character names, but "the dude with the talking sword" opened up a whole lot of potential follow up material at the end.
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Yeah, there wasn't much of a character arc at all for Vasher, that I agree with. My guess is he'd be one of the main players for a MC in WB2 though. Arcs for Vivienna, Lightsong, and Siri were finished though. It's kind of odd for me that Vasher even gets page-time because of who he is.I think the book would feel more complete if he was taken out. But then you miss out on the cool sword. So...
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Maybe it's just me, but I don't think you get the same feel and conflict from Warbreaker if you take Vasher out. I like his character, I like his page time, and I like the turn it takes. Yes, I think it might foreshadow the second book,and that is alright with me. But, I agree that the other characters are wrapped up nicely.
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Ah, not removed from the book. Just removed as a POV character. He definitely needs to be there, I agree. Hope I didn't confuse any with the vague reference to being "removed".
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Yeah, there wasn't much of a character arc at all for Vasher, that I agree with. My guess is he'd be one of the main players for a MC in WB2 though. Arcs for Vivienna, Lightsong, and Siri were finished though. It's kind of odd for me that Vasher even gets page-time because of who he is.I think the book would feel more complete if he was taken out. But then you miss out on the cool sword. So...
What? Vasher's character is critical to this book? None of the other story arcs, especially Vivenna and Denth's, could have been wrapped up without him. Instead, this book felt like it was not the first of the series. Vasher is written in a way that makes me feel like I should already know who he is, or just accept that he is more than he appears. It's hard to explain.
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That made more sense Dan. :) Thanks for clarifying. I am still going to have to disagree somewhat, I think his internal is important to the story. Maybe not in the way that the others are, but still necessary, in my opinion.
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I think it can best be said that Vasher is the exposition character. Because of him, we get insight into the way the world works that none of the other characters would have access to. In short, he's the closest Brandon can get to third-person omniscient in the current fantasy genre. This stems from Brandon's desire to make magic an integral, comprehensible part of the world, a need which I find attractive and interesting.
In a nutshell, I feel that although the character development may have worked without Vasher's viewpoints, the world-building would have suffered some.
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i think Warbreaker is a lot like Elantris.The story that surrounded the characters in the book is finished but there is more going on in the world that we want answers too. If he does do a second Warbreaker it would be cool if he did a second Elantris too
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A second Elantris gets talked about a lot in the threads. It gets randomly brought up all the time. The general consensus is that it would just drag down the story and not be good for it. Although I think that stories about people in other parts of the world dealing with other things would be cool, but a sequel would not do well for the story.
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But there probably will be an Elantris sequel someday. Not focused on the main characters of the first book, though.
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Well see, that would be OK. It would be more a 'parallel story' rather than a 'sequel'.
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It would happen like 10 years later though. Brandon has already mentioned who at least one of the viewpoint triad characters would be.
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A second Elantris gets talked about a lot in the threads. It gets randomly brought up all the time. The general consensus is that it would just drag down the story and not be good for it. Although I think that stories about people in other parts of the world dealing with other things would be cool, but a sequel would not do well for the story.
I disagree with that. I am fully convinced Brandon could write a compelling sequel to Elantris. If you read the Elantris annotations, you quickly realize that his map of Opelon is incredibly zoomed in onto Arelon, without showing much of the larger continent, which just screams epic conflict, in my opinion. There's plenty of mystery in the magic system to continue to explore as well, and not just how the Seons are created. The ending of Elantris opens a wide door for new and surprising methods of channeling the Dor. There's a whole host of content to delve into, so I don't see how that could be such a drag.
The only trick would be to make the sequel relatively self-contained. I mean, of course, it would build on the world introduced in Elantris, but I mean, it shouldn't be a sequel that has two parts. What comes to mind is Pirates of the Carribbean, which had a fantastic first movie, but the conflicts introduced in the first movie were not carried over into the second and third one--instead, they merely rehashed the characters and gave completely new conflicts. To me, that made the trilogy very disjointed and not cohesive.
An Elantris sequel would, in my mind, only be effective if it was a story in itself, much like how Elantris was in the first place.
In any case, the point is relatively moot. If Brandon decided to write it, he probably wouldn't work on it until quite a few years. He's busy with A Memory of Light, which could (and probably should) take a long time to make it as flawless as possible. Next comes Way of Kings and a few more Alcatraz books, not to mention Warbreaker being published in the first place. After that--and Ookla, please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just saying this from information I picked up on the board, which in no way means I am an official source here--he might have time for an Elantris sequel. Heck, if Brandon set the sequel ten years in the future, I'd imagine that'd be just right, because ten years from now in real life, he may actually have an opportunity to do it!
But, in review, my opinion of an Elantris sequel simple: Brandon, if you have enough cool material and ideas to make it work well (and it's a self-contained story), then by all means, make it! I will certainly read it, for sure! However, if you don't feel there is enough material to warrant a sequel, you shouldn't feel pressured into it. No one will hold it against you if Elantris is an individual novel without sequels--which, really, is sort of why a lot of people liked Elantris in the first place.
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Way of Kings (Oathshards) is going to be a long series. I've heard how long Brandon wants to make it but I don't know that that's public information, so I won't say. However, while he's working on it, it's not going to be the only thing he writes. He may write three books in a row, then write something else, then write two more Oathshards books, then something else... I'm guessing that he'll write the Elantris sequel sometime during this, but most likely after he writes Nightblood. (I'm not sure when he plans to start the release of Dragonsteel.)
Also note that this only counts books for the general market. He will be writing any number of YA books and books like Alcatraz at the same time he's writing his grown-up fantasy books.
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Way of Kings (Oathshards) is going to be a long series. I've heard how long Brandon wants to make it but I don't know that that's public information, so I won't say. However, while he's working on it, it's not going to be the only thing he writes. He may write three books in a row, then write something else, then write two more Oathshards books, then something else... I'm guessing that he'll write the Elantris sequel sometime during this, but most likely after he writes Nightblood. (I'm not sure when he plans to start the release of Dragonsteel.)
Also note that this only counts books for the general market. He will be writing any number of YA books and books like Alcatraz at the same time he's writing his grown-up fantasy books.
I look forward to reading all of those books :D.
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Apparently it's public information, because he talked about it repeatedly at a signing recently. He said 10 books, then. And I couldn't agree with Chaos more.
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It'll be great to one day have an entire bookshelf mounted on the wall with a complete collection of hardback, signed copies of all of Sanderson's books. xD
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Yeah. I saw that mentioned in a blog yesterday. 10 books. Anyone know what else he said at the signing? He probably said all sorts of cool stuff at Dragon*Con this weekend too. Sigh...
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When I talked to him at the signing, he said that he was planning on 10 books, several magic systems (my mind keeps putting up the number 10, then refusing to comprehend that any book could have that many. I hope so, though. I'm not guaranteeing anything, though), and about a bazillion characters. He didn't really talk at all about plot, but he said he was planning on releasing them a couple in a row, then something else, then back to Way of Kings. Or Oathshards or whatever the series is called now. Anyway, he probably said a lot more, but this was like a month and a half ago, so I'm having difficulty remembering. I didn't think to take notes.....Oh well.
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You're remembering right. 10 books. 10 magic systems (though not all revealed in one book). And 10 heralds (and maybe 10 a few other things). (I heard this from Brandon at Worldcon.)
I don't know if Oathshards is still the name of the series as a whole though; that's information from a few years ago that I haven't heard confirmed recently. The first book was titled Way of Kings. Things may have changed. Or he may just often say Way of Kings when referring to the series but that's not actually the series title.
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TEN magic systems? They will most definitely have to all (or mostly) hard magics or else there would just be WAY too much room for craziness. ha ha.
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Well, one of the magic systems is, I believe, restricted to control of the wind, with a quantitatively exhastible power source. I'm guessing that most of the other systems have similar limitations. It's been a while since I read the book. The other magic I remember is how the swords work. There was at least one more form of magic in the first book, but I can't remember any details other than who used it.
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The possabilities are nearly unfathomable. Its tough to read things like this because now I want to read these books and I know it will be years before the ability to do so presents it self.
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Apparently Brandon read some from Way of Kings this past weekend at Dragon*Con. What did he read at that signing, Andrew?
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Isn't the way of the king's the one that EUOL posted sample chapters for a while ago, where he was trying to decide if the king should be a guy or a girl?
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Apparently Brandon read some from Way of Kings this past weekend at Dragon*Con. What did he read at that signing, Andrew?
Either he didn't, or I missed it. I don't know which.
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Well, one of the magic systems is, I believe, restricted to control of the wind, with a quantitatively exhastible power source. I'm guessing that most of the other systems have similar limitations. It's been a while since I read the book. The other magic I remember is how the swords work. There was at least one more form of magic in the first book, but I can't remember any details other than who used it.
Ah, well that's good. I would hate to see ten different soft magic systems. That would just be . . . daunting to try and comprehend the extensive possibilities as a reader.