RJ's fireside chat

[Leopoled Boothe]

Over the past few years there has been much speculation about which parts of the last three volumes of WOT were written by Robert Jordan, which were complete fabrications of Brandon Sanderson and which fall somewhere in between.  Some people it seems have researched this topic very thoroughly.   I remember once reading somewhere, I believe it was in a blog posted by RJ's cousin Wilson that shortly before RJ's death he and Harriet had had a dinner party with some of their family and close friends.  Following that party they all sat by the fireside while RJ told them the rest of the story of The Wheel of Time.  Later I reads somewhere later that this fireside chat had been recorded.   Does anyone have any info concerning this fireside chat?  Did it actually happen?  How detailed was it? Did it actually get recorded?  I just always took this as a sign that Brandon could not have wandered very far from Jordan's intended plot.   Any info would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[Suttree]

Those dictations were a portion of what became the 200 pages of written scenes, notes, snippets etc. that Brandon had to work from. It was not that robust(consider the last three books topped out at over 2,500 pages). It has been said many times before but Brandon had to create over 50% of the material from scratch with no direction from the notes whatsoever. To put it in perspective even when he did have notes they sometimes looked like this:

 

Brandon

The thing about the notes is that a lot of the notes were to him, and so he would say things like I'm going to do this or this, and they're polar opposites. And so there are sequences like that, where I decide what we're going to do, and stuff like that. And this all is what became the trilogy that you're now reading.

Further in recent interviews it has become clear that even something as big as the fundamental nature of the DO was tweaked by Brandon towards the end.

 

Brandon

When I was handed this project by Harriet [Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's wife and editor], she handed it to me as a collaborator, not as

a ghost writer. It's not like building a shelf from Ikea, which is good, because otherwise my creativity wouldn't have been engaged. She handed me full creative control for the first draft, and then we went into the editing phase where we really worked on it to make sure that it fit her vision and Robert Jordan's vision for the series. But going into it, nothing was off-limits. So I wrote them like I write any novel. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is sacrosanct.

He had a great deal of creative control:

 

Brandon

The nice thing is, being a creative person, there were certain holes. There were things that he, you know....I know where that last chapter is, but there are big gaps along the way, some places where I got to say...I get to do some things I've been looking forward to doing, looking forward to having happen in the Wheel of Time, and that was really a treat to be able to sit down with that outline and say, wow, there's a place here for the thing I've been waiting as a long time as a fan, he doesn't say either way. I can make it happen.

 

And so I got to do a lot of those sequences, and then there are a lot of ones he left instructions on as well, and so my goal has been to...always my default is, if Robert Jordan said it, don't change it. However, that said, you can't do a book like this without being willing to be flexible in your outline. I never wanted...never changed that ending and I never have, but there are things along the way, particularly when he would say, I'm thinking of doing this, or maybe this other thing that's opposite, and sometimes I'll choose between one of those two, and sometimes it's neither one and it has to be a third thing. In a creative process, you really have to be willing to do that; you always have to be willing to toss aside what you were planning to do when something better works for what you're building, so and that has been that process. And after the books are out, I hope to be able to be much more forthcoming about what those things were and show some of the notes, if Harriet will let me, and show how they were adapted. I'm not sure if she will let me. It's really her call. Her argument has been that she doesn't want people's last memory of Robert Jordan to be his unfinished things, which is a really solid argument, and so hopefully she'll let us see some of it, but I can talk more freely about this after the last book's out.

It's why they couldn't just use a ghost writer to finish it up. There was far too much of the story that still needed to be plotted out by Brandon because things were so incomplete.

 

Brandon

I do think I've been able to do some fun things with the series, as a fan, that I've been wanting to do, from reading it since I was a kid,

but that's actually a weird things because, as a fan coming on, I had to be careful. You don't always want to do what the inner fan wants you to do; otherwise it just becomes like a sequence of cameos and inside jokes. So I had to be very careful, but there are some things that I've been wanting to have happen, and the notes left a lot of room for me to explore. I did get to have a lot of creative involvement in it; it wasn't just an outline, which has been awesome. You know, if it had been mostly done, they would have been able to hire like a ghostwriter to clean it up, and they didn't have that. They needed an actual writer, and so there are lots of plots I got to construct, and as a fan, that's awesome.

[Leopoled Boothe]

Sutree, thanks for all the info, I know you've researched this topic well.  So are you confirming that Robert Jordan did in at least some form finish his story in his own words?

[Southpaw89]

Sutree, thanks for all the info, I know you've researched this topic well.  So are you confirming that Robert Jordan did in at least some form finish his story in his own words?

RJ wrote the epilogue of AMoL, bits and pieces throughout, and some of the bigger scenes of TGS and ToM including Moiraine's rescue and many scenes of Egwene's in TGS. He also wrote a portion of the prologue from all three as well. All this is what has been confirmed.

[Suttree]

Yes I think it is safe to say the ending/epilogue was mostly RJ. We know somethings like Cadsuane watching Rand leave was added by Brandon but those pieces would have been pretty minor.

 

In regards to specific scenes we do know some other things such as Egwene in TGS was mostly RJ as was Mat in the Tower of Ghenji sequence. Now obviously if there were only 200 pages(including finished scenes, notes, snippets) out of the 2,500, what RJ had written was not all that much. This is also evident in how much Brandon created on his own without direction from the notes. That said they have been pretty clear the ending was RJ's and when you read AMoL the epilogue has that feel.

 

Problem being it most likely would have been polished and tweaked a great deal more. That is the danger in a situation like this, you don't want to change anything RJ wrote but also there is no way to know what he himself would have changed. Sometimes things just aren't working and you need to go for it and trust yourself as a writer to change it up even if it wasn't what RJ originally had intended(as Brandon did with Rand's fight with/nature of the DO). As he said they needed a writer to create, not just a ghost writer to copy the voice. All in all as this project evolved it became clear there was not nearly as much material finished  by RJ as we originally thought. He didn't have every piece plotted out clearly.

[Leopoled Boothe]

I appreciate the responses but this is getting off topic.  Most of what you guys have told me are things I already know.  What I am asking about here is one SPECIFIC event wherein Robert Jordan sat by the fireside and told the rest of the story to his friends and family.  I'm not asking about how many notes he left or how detailed they were.  I'm not asking how many scenes RJ wrote himself.  I'm not asking how much of the story was the pure fabrication of Brandon Sanderson.  I'm just asking for info on this one event, the fireside chat.  I've brought this up on several occasions and nobody ever has much to say about it though I distinctly remember reading the blog from Wilson where he spoke of this fireside chat.  So am I the only one who remembers this event being mentioned?  Did I just dream the whole thing up?  What is the deal with this fireside chat?

[Suttree]

I was pretty clear. The recordings of that became part of those 200 pages of notes. You asked if RJ finished the story in his own words and yes he wrote most of the epilogue. Not sure what else you are asking at this point.

[shortkut]

I never heard that the recordings were included in the 200 pages. Is that fact or the popular assumption?

[Suttree]

Fact

[Leopoled Boothe]

I was pretty clear. The recordings of that became part of those 200 pages of notes. You asked if RJ finished the story in his own words and yes he wrote most of the epilogue. Not sure what else you are asking at this point.

 

 

Ok, thanks.  Your original response stated that "those dictations" were included in the 200 pages.  My understanding is that RJ actually did several dictations, mostly outlines, that were included in the notes.  I never really thought of recordings of a story telling session as dictations (thought I guess technically they are) so I wasn't quite sure if you understood what I was asking for.

 

Yes, I understand that RJ did not finish writing the story in his own words, but I was looking for confirmation that this fireside chat actually took place.  To me it seems that if he sat there and told the rest of the story to his friends and family then he did, in one form, finish the story in his own words however sparsely.  I know it probably wasn't very detailed but it seems this would have provided Sanderson with a compass by which to direct the plot of the final three volumes. 

 

IMHO this is the most valuable piece of information that RJ left concerning his proposed 12th and final volume of WoT and it would be awesome if Harriet included a transcript of this event in the Encyclopedia or better yet made an MP3 available.

 

Again, thank you for your responses.

[Cybertrolloc]

Mention here http://www.dragonmount.com/forums/blog/4/entry-380-rumors-and-rumors-of-rumors/ but there's another post by Wilson somewhere in the blog with a little more info.

[Paul H]

I appreciate the responses but this is getting off topic.  Most of what you guys have told me are things I already know.  What I am asking about here is one SPECIFIC event wherein Robert Jordan sat by the fireside and told the rest of the story to his friends and family.  I'm not asking about how many notes he left or how detailed they were.  I'm not asking how many scenes RJ wrote himself.  I'm not asking how much of the story was the pure fabrication of Brandon Sanderson.  I'm just asking for info on this one event, the fireside chat.  I've brought this up on several occasions and nobody ever has much to say about it though I distinctly remember reading the blog from Wilson where he spoke of this fireside chat.  So am I the only one who remembers this event being mentioned?  Did I just dream the whole thing up?  What is the deal with this fireside chat?

 

I remember Wilson mentioning it on RJ's blog.  I remember him posting something to the effect that RJ sat down with Wilson and a few other close friends and family (I assume including Harriet, Maria, and Alan), and told them "the bones of" the remaining story.  I also recall that this was recorded (i.e., an audio recording).

 

This is based on my recollections of having read the original post about this on RJ's blog several years ago, but I don't have the link for you at the moment.