If you could make 1 change

[Sabio]

if RJ had come to you and said you could make 1 change to the series what would it be?

 

For me I think instead of Semirage simply causing Chaos in Seanchan imagine if she did  like Demandred did and took over.  It would seem sort of fitting for a nation so use to fighting each other to see them face off at the last battle.  Also would help counter the feeling I got that the Seanchan jut seemed too powerful  and really would of showcased Mat' skills of trying to hold off shadowspawn/Sharran/Seanchan.  Not to mention Egwene getting some revenge on the Seanchan by getting to fight some.  A gate opening one side of the Aes Sedai army with Sharran's coming out then they look behind to see another gate opening with Seanchan pouring out.  Egwene' army getting battered but pulling out just in time to avoid total disaster.  I think it would also of done a great trick of making Rand's forces  have extra cause to  distrust the Seanchan.  For me this would of given the last battle more of the epic feel I felt it was missing.

[jack of shadows]

ah,the what if question,

of all the mistakes(storywise) robert jordan made in books 1-11,the three that were the

most significant(in my opinion) are surprisingly in books 3,5 and 6.

so if i had the opportunity to rectify only one of robert jordan's mistakes,i would have 

changed the outcome of the cairhienin docks incident,i.e. rand-lanfear-moiraine showdown,

removing lanfear and moiraine from the story at the same time was a monumental mistake.

[Mladen]

I would completely rewrite entire Forsaken storyarc. There was so much potential in it and at the end, I felt like they have done nothing. I wonder what were the stores mothers frightened their children since the villainous nature of these 13 were so mundane... I hope to find some new data at "The World of WoT" about them... Because if I don't, I would be thoroughly disappointed. 

[mb]

I would like all time measurements in the series to be consistent; though they might have already fixed this.

[Paul H]

(Spoilers for the last two books follow.)

 

 

I would ask for one of three changes:

 

(1)  I would want greater reassurance that the future of Randland does not go the way of Aviendha's vision -- her vision of a world in which the Seanchan defeat the White Tower, send the Black Tower into hiding, essentially take over the world, and crush the Aiel.  Or at least that it does not have to go that way.  

 

I would like to know that there is at least a decent chance that everything that Rand, Egwene, and so many others have worked to build does not eventually get either destroyed or assimilated into the Seanchan empire.  Perhaps that chance is already there, but I got a real sense of inevitability from Aviendha's vision, which was reinforced by certain other events (such as the loss of Egwene's leadership for the White Tower).  I don't want a "happily ever after" ending, but I just want an ending that is somewhat less bleak than Aviendha's vision.

 

or 

 

(2)  I would want to change the ending so that Rand kills the Dark One, breaks the Wheel from its circular motion, and sets a new course of history which is linear rather than circular.  Or at least provide a better rationalization for why he does not kill the Dark One.  The reason given just didn't work for me.

 

or 

 

(3) Re-write the last battle to fix various problems, such as the fact that everyone talks about how great a general Mat is, but we see very little evidence of this in the tactics that he uses, or in the results that he obtains.

[bluehair]

I would love for the Forsaken to have been a little more evil. I know it has been mentioned but it's something I agree with fully. The only really evil one in the group seemed to be Semirhage. Rahvin was a womanizer, Graendel liked to put compulsion on people. Balthamal/Aran'Gar/Halima liked to give Egwene headaches and killed 2 people. Demandred did nothing exceptionally evil that we know about, Maseena did very little except torture some darkfriends, Moghedian committed a couple of tortures again of darkfriends. Asmodean did nothing... 

 

I would have expected a bit more of them than a couple murders, tortures, compulsions. I would liked to have seen something a bit more serious on a larger scale.

[Zander?]

would have liked a bit more added to the epilouge at the end. a quick summary on the main characters and such!!

 

ps in my own little world Lan would have defeated all the foresaken and shai'tan himself...lol!!!!

[Paul H]

I would love for the Forsaken to have been a little more evil. I know it has been mentioned but it's something I agree with fully. The only really evil one in the group seemed to be Semirhage. Rahvin was a womanizer, Graendel liked to put compulsion on people. Balthamal/Aran'Gar/Halima liked to give Egwene headaches and killed 2 people. Demandred did nothing exceptionally evil that we know about, Maseena did very little except torture some darkfriends, Moghedian committed a couple of tortures again of darkfriends. Asmodean did nothing... 

 

I would have expected a bit more of them than a couple murders, tortures, compulsions. I would liked to have seen something a bit more serious on a larger scale.

 

This is a good point.  I think maybe they came across as more evil than you give them credit for, but several of them seemed to be obsessed with various worldy goods (power, comfort/leisure, sex, etc.) much more than being purely evil.  But then I think in a way that is the point -- that many people on the side of evil are not 100% evil.  Sometimes they are just looking out for the best situation for themselves.

 

 

would have liked a bit more added to the epilouge at the end. a quick summary on the main characters and such!!

 

I would have liked that too.  Though there could be too much of a good thing.  If the epilogue were too much longer, it might feel anti-climactic.

 

I wonder if the upcoming WoT encyclopedia will contain notes on outcomes of various characters, beyond what is revealed in the books.  (However, they can't include that information unless RJ had it in his notes.)

[Occams whiskey bottle]

I would say, "Finish the book, Jordan", so I no longer have to listen to people complain about Brandon Sanderson...

[Azrayne]

Cut out so much of the pointless meandering descriptions of stuff that isn't relevant to the greater story.

 

The example that comes straight to mind because I'm doing a reread atm is the Nynaeve/Elayne plotline in FOH. Together their POV's make up 33% of the book, and most of that content is boring descriptions of travelling, random scenery and villages and inns, their mode of travelling, what they're wearing, meaningless side characters, constant puerile teenage drama/catfights/hypocritical whining between Nynaeve/Elayne/Birgitte, or Nynaeve/Elayne talking down to everyone around them and treating them horribly while depending on those people to survive.

 

The core story - Nyn/Elayne travel from Tanchino to Salidar with Thom and Juilin, interact with Galad and Masema (and get a bunch of people killed with Nyn's stupidity) showdown with Moghedian a few times, and Birgitte is brought into the real world - all could have been compressed into half as many chapters with no loss of anything important, cutting out a lot of the droning descriptions of things that don't matter (as well as a lot of awful behavior that makes the characters thoroughly unlikable and unrelatable, the whole chain of events with the Circus comes to mind here), and creating room for content that would have been genuinely interesting.

 

Imagine if he'd cut the Nyn/Elayne storyline in half by removing the meaningless filler content and devoted that time to things like Rand's interaction with Asmodean (some of the most interesting interaction in the series, and a huge opportunity to provide the reader with more insight into the nature of Saidin and male channeling training, the Forsaken, the AoL and more, all completely wasted), or his lessons with Moiraine on politics and leadership, or his interactions with the Aiel factions, or more on Egwene/Aviendha's training with the Wise Ones (I'd love some insight into how the Wise Ones teach channelling compared to the Aes Sedai, how their philosophy/perspective/knowledge of the One Power differs), or Mat's new memories and insight into military matters, or more Forsaken POV. There are a dozen things more interesting than Nynaeve and Elayne's snide catfighting at a travelling Circus, yet we're stuck with droning descriptions of Nynaeve's hypocritical arrogance, or why she's fighting with Elayne on any particular day, or what dress she's wearing, or who among the circus troupe we'll never see again is doing what with who, and on and on and on.

 

Anyway, you get the picture. That's just the example which comes to mind because I'm reading FOH atm, but over the whole series (especially, as is commonly noted, from book 7 onwards, where it just gets worse), there's so much cool stuff that could have been included if RJ had dedicated less time to boring and pointless descriptions of things which don't matter and side characters/sub plots which don't play out into anything meaningful and more time to moving the core story on at a decent pace, describing events which are actually interesting and exploring the aspects of the world which make it so engaging.

[mb]

relevant/meaningless/etc; those can be different to different people.

[Azrayne]

I disagree. Enjoyment will be different for different people (although I've yet to meet anyone who can tell me with a straight face that they enjoyed the whole Circus subplot, or the various others like it), but relevance and meaning aren't arbitrary. If I come home and sit down to tell my partner a story about how I was in a car crash and nearly died that day and then go off on a 20 minute tangent describing in vivid detail the shops lining the street on which the crash took place and what random thoughts were going through my head during the 5 minutes leading up to the crash as I drove down the road, then wrap it up with a five minute description of the crash itself, the injuries I suffered and how I crawled out of the car just before it exploded into a fireball, hollywood style, then that 20 minute tangent was neither meaningful nor relevant to the story I started telling. The new sign the Pharmacy put up or the fact that I was thinking about how much of an asshole my boss was that day and weighing up whether I wanted to stop off at Subway or eat at home before it happened have absolutely nothing to do with the crash itself, the event I originally sat down to describe, and dropping 20 minutes of random conversation about them in the middle of a dramatic tale serves only to delay the story which I originally sat down to tell and frustrate the listener.

 

Even if the crash had happened because I swerved to avoid the crew putting the new Pharmacy sign up, or because I was distracted weighing up my dinner options, there's no need for a vivid description of the exact color, layout and font of the sign, or for a play by play of my mental agonizing over why my boss is a douche and whether the leftovers in the fridge are still fresh. Maybe there's someone out there who enjoys the sound of my voice enough to listen to me no matter what I'm droning on about, but that doesn't change the fact that those details have no real connection to the story I sat down to tell, and that the vast majority of people would eventually tell me to shut up and get to the interesting part.

[Cosmic Champion]

.

One change I would make would be the Falcon/Hawk/Wolf triangle plot at the end of LoC; three characters here acting like grade-schoolers, with Perrin being so imbecilic, I wanted to walk out into my backyard and throw the book across the neighborhood. Thankfully it only lasts a couple of chapters, but that part really needed a bit of a rewrite clean up.

 

Also, I would have started his wife's kidnapping plot one full book later. Could have added them fighting Whitecloaks, Seanchan patrols or something similar to bide their time until that plot arrived.

[Elsalvador]

The first response in this thread kinda inspired my answer. I'd have liked Semirhage to get more screen time in general and especially for her exit to not be so anticlimactic in a very deus ex machine way; such a cool character that was built up to have a huge legacy and impact and in my opinion, very underused.

[mb]

relevance & meaning not arbitrary?  there are at least 2 types of meaning::  connotation and denotation.

and what seems relevant to one person might not seem relevant to another; and vice versa.

 

place descriptions in this series seem relevant to at least me.  Slight chance of understanding the events without descriptions of the places.

[dawnflower8]

I'd change the ending, which really made me disappointed. I wanted Perrin, Mat, and Rand to all be together again, hang out for a while talking about their adventures, and then head their separate ways. If I could change something, I'd make that happen...they were such good friends in the beginning...

[Sabio]

I agree ElSalvador Semirhage should of had a lot more screen time.  I do sort of like the way she died because it sorts of fitting in the end she was betrayed by the DO.  Really shows how naive the forsaken were to think the DO really thought they were special, but it shows if the DO thought it was in his best interest he wouldn't hesitate to toss them aside. In the end they were just tools to be used.

[VincentAsaro]

Delete the words "though" and "tight" ;) My one major pet-peeve with Jordan's prose. 

[Ismail Elezi]

Kill Rand instead of Egwene.

[Azrayne]

Kill Rand instead of Egwene.

 

Call it even at Nynaeve?

 

I definitely agree that killing Egwene was a bad move. I know there's a need for POV characters to die during the climax to create tension and what not, but Egwene was one of the few characters who really worked for her development, as well as playing a huge role in the transition into the 4th age vis a vis restructuring the organization of channelers, and killing her off feels like it cheapens and weakens a lot of that. I have a really hard time imagining Cadsuane revamping the White Tower into what it needs to be the way Egwene would have continued to do so if she had survived, Cadsuane is a lot of things, but she's not a revolutionary. I get that there's a certain mythic appeal in Egwene's rapid rise to power followed by dying to take down a major bad guy, the idea that she'll go down through history etc etc. but I still think the ending would have been more satisfying with her alive, someone running the Aes Sedai side of things who isn't mired down in the old mindset. I also think having Logain take down Taim would have been a much more satisfying closure to the whole Black Tower plotline.

[Sabio]

Egwene died at least imo to sort of make her the equal of Rand and to make her a legend, which I felt was a bit unnecessary.  As Azrayne said it added to her quick rise to power, seemingly singlehandedly holding back the Sharrans, and not just dying but taking out a forsaken and all the enemy channelers with her. Was a bit much imo. 

[jack of shadows]

@azrayne,

"call it even at nynaeve?"

leave nynaeve out of this,lol,don't worry about rand,he can take care of himself,

just ask the forsaken...

[MarkDiLillo]

Leave the books unwritten after RJ.  Instead just release as much information as possible (including all the material he had written that was intended for the final books) about how the series was meant to end.  A companion book, encyclopedia, etc. would have been a great end to the series rather than have it tarnished the way it was.

 

So many changes that I would make to the series actually depend on the ending.  An ending that was entirely fan-fiction for the most part.  It's hard to say how things would have turned out if RJ had written the final few books himself.

 

Already mentioned though, one change I would make would be to add some depth to the Forsaken and show that they actually can return to the light.  Then again...I strongly suspect that we would have seen something like this in the final book had RJ written the ending...so who knows.  In general though, they were far too one dimensional across the series.  Asmodean and Lanfear were great characters because they had some shades of grey to them (even if only slight).  The others...nothing.  I would have loved to see more of those two characters throughout the series.

 

In regards to the mechanical structure of the series as a whole, I would probably have clipped some of the female plot-lines down in the RJ books.  There is a tremendous amount of writing that really strayed far from main story even if it was enjoyable to read.  Egwene and Nynaeve were core characters and their storylines were mostly OK.  Elayne...not so much.  The entire bowl of the winds story arc was not necessary.  All of the material about Elayne trying to take control of her mothers empire is mostly useless.  Unless the story arc advances the main plotline somehow or provides information about the main characters and their story arc then it should be removed entirely IMO.

[mb]

There is a encyclopedia/companion coming up.  Last deadline I recall was November 2015.

And it is the last book for this series.

 

of what I read/skimmed of the Sanderson books, they seem nicely done.

there were a number of scenes written by Robert Jordan.  as far as I recall, there has been very little revealed on who wrote what.

 

 

"main plotline", "main characters"; those are vague terms.  Different readers could have different ideas on what is "main".

There might be better chance of understanding the series as a whole if all written scenes in this series are included.

[Mefista]

More myrddraal.Less Forsaken.