Brandon Sanderson, in addition to writing the Mistborn and Stormlight Archive fantasy series, famously finished The Wheel of Time novels after original author Robert Jordan died. With Amazon hard at work adapting the series for TV, interest in the original story is high, and Sanderson has plenty to say.
For instance, he recently gave an interview to Dragonmount.com, where he revealed some intriguing tidbits about The Wheel of Time as well as his own series. The lengthy video interview below, and then we’ll hit some of the highlights.
A deleted chapter from A Memory of Light
The Wheel of Time series ended in 2013, but that doesn’t mean fans have read everything. Sanderson reveals that there was an unreleased chapter from towards the start of A Memory of Light, the fourteenth and final book in the series, and the third that he wrote after Jordan’s death. It focused on protagonist Rand al’Thor getting engaged and involved Aviendha, Elayne and Min putting together bridal wreaths according to Aiel custom. According to Sanderson, it was sort of “silly” and didn’t mesh well with the brutal, ongoing attack on Caemlyn.
“It was actually really cool,” Sanderson said. “I wanted to get Rand engaged, have the bridal wreath, and have all three of them weave it together and use Aiel tradition…It was a really great scene. I enjoyed it, and everybody liked it. Then we put the book together.”
"Once in a while you get something that sticks out like a sore thumb and this was one because it was opposite the Talmanes scenes – going into Camelyn – and the dramatic scenes of people getting stabbed by Mydraal and nearly dying and all of this…It was more powerful…it was really nice tense stuff. And then you jump back and the girls were like, ‘I like this branch that I’m weaving into the bridal wreath. It has thorns!’ It just did not work…It did not fit thematically…It had to go for the strength of the opening narrative."
Robert Jordan’s “twist” on the ending for The Wheel of Time
When writing the final three books in The Wheel of Time series, Sanderson worked off notes provided by Robert Jordan before his death, and he was careful to honor them. “I don’t think there are any scraps or fragments ,” he said. “Everything that Jim wrote, I put in the book in some way.”
That said, some of the notes contradicted each other, so not everything could come in. Sanderson talked about one that would have put “a different twist on the ending.”
First, some context (and stop reading now if you don’t want to know any SPOILERS about how the series ends): at the end of the books, Rand finally slays the Dark One, the overarching evil of the series. He does it with the help of Callandor, a sword and powerful sa’angreal, which is an item that allows channelers to use more of the One Power than they could otherwise safely use.
But Jordan contemplated other ways of defeating the Dark One. “Jim had – in the note – Rand using the male at the end of the series,” Sanderson said. The Choedan Kal are two giant sa’angreal. The problem was that the “access keys” needed to use these sa’angreal were destroyed, so Sanderson would have had to write his way around that.
Ultimately, Sanderson decided to use Callandor for the final battle. “ contradicted other things,” he said. “This was when he was writing book 8. It’s entirely possible that rather than going with the Callandor solution, Jim would have gone with the Choedan Kal…Then you have a different twist on the ending.”
Sanderson has talked to Amazon about “the soul of The Wheel of Time”
Sanderson also discussed Amazon’s Wheel of Time show, which is being overseen by Rafe Judkins. Encouragingly, Sanderson has talked about the series with Judkins, which should appease fans worried the show will stray too far from the books.
"Number one [thing I told Rafe] was, of course, ‘Matt’s harder to write than he looks.’ I talked about the soul of The Wheel of Time. What makes The Wheel of Time work. I remember talking to him about the interview I heard with Jim, where someone asked him to summarize The Wheel of Time…He eventually said it is what it’s like to be the normal person and be told you need to save the world. To put that burden upon you. That you’ve got to save the world and you’ll probably die doing it. It’s not a burden you wanted, so what do you do with that?What worked for me, and what anyone has to do who’s in this situation, is read through the books. Feel the books and try to have that in mind when you’re working on it. Anytime I started to get lost, I went back to the books and read what Jim had written, and it pulls me back in."
Will Brandan Sanderson appear in The Wheel of Time show?
Sticking with the series, will Sanderson pop up somewhere? “I didn’t ask them about having a cameo,” the author said. “If I do a cameo, I should do it when they get to the material I wrote. That’s more appropriate.”
The Wheel of Time series is very long. It’ll be a while before Amazon reaches Sanderson’s books, and by then, it’s possible changes made to the plot early on will have had ripple effects. Does Sanderson have any idea how different it might be?
"This is uncharted territory for me. I have no idea. It could be like Game of Thrones, where despite the changes, they stay according to the big events…It could go completely different. As I’ve said to people, I envision this as a new turning of the Wheel. It’s the same souls, but in a different actual turning of the Wheel. It’s not the one Jim and I worked on, it’s a different version of it."
Also, if you’re wondering, Sanderson has indeed read some of the scripts for the first season of the show, but not all of them. “I’ve read the first six,” he said. “ I still haven’t seen seven or eight, but I’ve read the first six.”
We saw the first footage from The Wheel of Time show not long ago, so hopefully we’re close to seeing something more substantial soon as we inch closer to the premiere.
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h/t The Dusty Wheel