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Brandon Posts Large Oathbringer Progress Report


Chaos
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This week, Brandon posted a large progress report on Oathbringer, the third Stormlight Archive book, on the Stormlight Archive subreddit. To talk about how far he has gotten, he went into a detailed explanation on how he structures Stormlight books, so people understand what his word count means. I'm going to talk about what Brandon said, and do some analysis as well!

Long story short, Brandon is 180,000 words through Oathbringer. (For comparison, the first Mistborn book is about 200,000 words long.) 130,000 of those are for Part One of the book. Like the other Stormlight books, this will have five parts, and Brandon said that Part One will be longest. He's also written Dalinar's flashbacks in its entirety. Most interestingly, he's finished a novelette from a new character that we will see in Part Two of the book, and he's partially through the novelette that will be in the vein of Szeth and Eshonai interludes. Confused yet?

To truly understand what that means, Brandon talked about the structure of the book, as Stormlight books have a particular structure to them. Each Stormlight book has a central "focus" character which has a big arc with flashbacks. The Way of Kings had Kaladin, and Words of Radiance had Shallan. In the initial work on the flashbacks for this book, Brandon decided on Dalinar--before, he didn't know whether Dalinar or Szeth would get the flashbacks. After he decided on Dalinar, he finished Dalinar's flashbacks in entirety. While Dalinar gets a larger plot in this book, Brandon did say that we will see Kaladin and Shallan on the level that we saw Kaladin in Book Two. The flashback character gets a role in all five Parts of the book, so we'll see a lot of Dalinar.

In addition, we of course have the interludes in between each of the five Parts of the book. There are two different kinds of interludes: ones that are short stories, and then a recurring interlude character in what Brandon calls a novelette. The recurring characters in interludes were Szeth and Eshonai. Book three is going to introduce a new viewpoint for the interludes here, which he hasn't finished writing.

Brandon restricts the amount of viewpoint characters carefully in this way so he doesn't have the problems of other huge fantasy series--like, say, The Wheel of Time--where we just lose sight of the main characters. In addition to Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan, we'll also see some Szeth, Eshonai (to no one's surprise, she's alive), Adolin, Jasnah, and Navani.

What interests me most is that Part Two has a second novelette from a character we haven't seen viewpoints from yet. This person's viewpoints will be across six chapters in Part Two. Because of this, Part Two actually has the least amount of focus on the main characters, though Brandon said that Part Two is shorter than Part One. Like the first two Stormlights, Oathbringer's Part Five is very short as well.

If you think this all sounds confusing, so did I at first. My reaction to that sentence was, "Man, it sounds like we really need a spreadsheet to visualize this."

Well, the joke's on me, because that's exactly what Brandon did.

LXbynXu.png

(And people make fun of me for using a spreadsheet to outline my books! Well, take this!)

I have to imagine that in Brandon's actual spreadsheet or outline, these names are actual characters. We have "Flashbacks" and "Primary Character" which of course refer to Dalinar. Secondary Main Character 1 and 2 are surely Kaladin and Shallan, respectively. Perhaps I am reading too much into the coloring (entirely possible!), but considering Kaladin is a Windrunner, associated with blue, and Shallan is a Lightweaver, associated with red, we could say that Shallan is Secondary Main Character 1, and Kaladin is Secondary Main Character 2. It is interesting that Secondary Main Character 2 vanishes in Part Four, and that in Part Two, we only get one chapter from Secondary Main Character 1. This isn't that unusual. In The Way of Kings, Shallan totally disappeared from Parts Two and Four, and Dalinar and Adolin weren't in Parts One and Three. In Words of Radiance, Dalinar had much fewer viewpoints than in Book One. So, don't be concerned that you won't see your favorite character for a while. Brandon's been doing this juggling the whole time.

For tertiary characters, this is kind of interesting. Brandon does explicitly mention--as I did above--that we will see "moderate amounts" of Szeth, Eshonai, Jasnah, Adolin, and Navani. That's five characters, but on this spreadsheet we only have four tertiary characters. Perhaps this means one of these five will be people we see, but not get viewpoints from. As for Adolin, Brandon later confirmed that Adolin won't have as many viewpoints as other main characters. He will be in about as much as he had in the first two books.

That's about it from the big characters. Brandon did also said there will be "a few surprises regarding other characters who have slightly larger places in the plot," but anyone not on that list won't have more than a viewpoint occasionally. At least, until the second five books, where we will have a different set of main characters--of which Renarin is one of them. So that's pretty cool.

Next on the writing agenda for Oathbringer is to revise Part One, which he normally doesn't do, but he wants to make sure continuity is correct before he moves on. From there, he plans to write Dalinar's Part Two segments, mixing in the flashbacks and the Part Two novelette, and getting the rest of Part Two's main characters done. He hopes that this will put Part Two to 70,000 words, which will put the book at 200,000 words--right at the halfway mark!

Brandon's certainly got his work cut out for him on books this huge. I am really appreciative of him updating us on his progress, and he's clearly working hard. But seriously, there's so many characters and plotlines that no wonder these books are a massive undertaking!

I've also compiled a bunch of things Brandon has said on Reddit and Facebook regarding this. I've integrated a few quotes into what is above, but here are some others:

Q: Would you be willing to answer if characters such as Rysn an Lift will appear in interludes?

A: I'll RAFO that for now.

Q: (In response to "Until the second five books, where our primary characters will shuffle. So you Renarin fans will have to be patient.")

Do you worry that assuring us that a character will likely survive the first arc of the series removes some of the tension in their scenes?

(While you've discussed the idea that a main character can have a book about them while they are dead when Dalinar was expected to be central to book 5, this seems different)

A: I have said many times before that Renarin and Lift are main characters for the next five, but--as you point out--I've also said that I have no problem having a main character who is actually dead, and their story told through flashbacks and the stories of the other characters. Renarin is not safe, but you will see a lot more from him in the future, even if he does die.

To say more would be to give too many spoilers about the nature of the back five books.

Well. That's a thing. I mean, Brandon has said that main characters can die, and has said this frequently. But "spoilers about the nature of the back five books"? Please let me travel in time to discover this now.

Q: Brandon, I've noticed some other books are starting to come out more regularly. Specifically the reckoners and newer mistborn. Any chance you are going to start pushing more on stormlight as well? Or does the scope of the books hinder you writing them as fast?

A: It's exactly what you say, Shane. I started working on the detailed outline for Stormlight 3 right after I finished 2, but it just takes a LONG time to get it all right in my head to be written. There are so many moving pieces. So you can't expect Stormlight too often--even if I weren't writing the other books, I don't think these would be much faster.

Q: Um, what about us (Wit fans)? Will we see any more of him in this book? RAFO?

A: :) Well, he hasn't skipped a book in the cosmere yet...!

Brandon clarified that he means that Hoid hasn't missed a main sequence cosmere book.

Q: Will Thinker+Grump appear again? Or is this a RAFO?

A: They will appear in the cosmere some day again.

There were some other writing-related comments, which you can check out by looking at the full Reddit thread.

One last thing that I thought I'd mention. An AutoModerator bot on the Stormlight subreddit actually flagged Brandon's post because: "Your submission has been automatically removed because the title does not include one of the required tags." Fortunately, Brandon was able to approve it himself, since he's a moderator of the subreddit. What a cheater.

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Great analysis, Chaos!

I'm trying to guess the identities of the tertiary characters. Right now I'm predicting Szeth=1, Jasnah=2, Eshonai=3, Navani=4.

 

I was initially surprised that the "short story collection" line has 6 segments, since we've only gotten 4 interludes in the past. Then I realized that he must be including the prologue and epilogue in that category. Not a change-up after all.

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From Brandon (emphasis mine): 

I plot these like a trilogy each. The entire recliners trilogy, for example, is shorter than the way of kings. I plot a book of Stormlight using similar (though not exactly the same) methods as I use in building a series of other books.

 

I love auto-correct sometimes.

 

More seriously, we do have another WoB.

 

Q: What character will be the interlude novelette be about this time? is it a new one?

A:Yes, a new one. But it is not time to say yet. 

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1 is probably Adolin as he does get about as much viewpoints as in other books (which is always less than main characters) plus he now has his own independent story arc. 

 

2 is probably Eshonai though I am not sure how she would fit in there.

 

3 is probably Navani as she never really had too many viewpoints.

 

4 is probably Jasnah as she is likely not to be featured until she meets up with everyone again.

 

Szeth is probably one of the novelette character as he is evolving far away from anyone else. Or perhaps he is number 3. Navani never had more than one or two viewpoints, so it could be she will majorly be featured from Dalinar's POV. Though we could assume Renarin would also be featured from Dalinar's POV, but Brandon warned us not to expect much of him. So I dunno.

 

I have suspected the novelette two may be Lift as he RAFO the Lift

question, but he previously stated she would be there in this book. If not her, then maybe Lopen as Brandon said he wanted to write a novella on him: perhaps he did and decided to insert it within the next book.

 

For the main, my money is on Shallan being the 1 and Kaladin the 2. If Jasnah is 4 and Adolin is 1, then Shallan kinda have to be 1 or perhaps I am mistaken and it is the reverse.

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"It is interesting that Secondary Main Character 2 vanishes in Part Four, and that in Part Two, we only get one chapter from Secondary Main Character 1."

Chaos, Brandon commented on that post in response to this question that it means no viewpoint chapters from that character. They'll still appear.

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Perhaps not. If Kaladin is far away from the rest of cast, not having viewpoints in a given part implies he just won't be around for this one.

 

Brandon also explains how main characters have skipped parts in the past. Both Shallan and Dalinar were not seen in a few parts back in WoK. Kaladin is the only one who never missed a part, which makes me strongly think he will this time around. 

 

Also Shallan and Kaladin have never been solely third person's perspective into any parts featuring them. I thus doubt we would see Kaladin around in part 4, but not get his viewpoint (for instance). I'd thus say main character number 2 is not featured in part 4 and my money is on Kaladin. Shallan is hard one to skip as she is in Urithiru (unless she travels elsewhere, we just can't know), close to Dalinar who has POV in all parts. 

 

It thus seem more likely Shallan is the main 1 and Kaladin is the main 2 entirely skipping part 4. I could be wrong about it though.

 

All in all main characters are rarely seen from a third person's perspective, this is for tertiary characters such as Adolin (who is confirmed to be one of the four, though Brandon did not wish to say which one, my money is on 1 based on other information I do have). 

 

I have given this more thoughts... If Navani is a tertiary character, then I do not see her being any other than number 3, the one who only has one part and is not seen at the end. It seems probable would get a final POV from both Szeth and Eshonai as they will become main characters, eventually. I have been thinking since the beginning Jasnah would be one of tertiary character, but then again perhaps she is one of the novelette character instead. It would fit with her traveling back to the rest of the crew. Brandon likely won't spend the main story arc on that, but it would fit within a novelette.

 

Brandon has been rather clear: anyone he did not name is not allowed more than one or two viewpoints. One of the novelette character thus have to be one of the five. The other one is more obscure: Brandon said it was a new one, but did he mean a new character or a new character into the novelette?

 

My money is still on Lift. Conjuncture. Not a new character, but a new one for a novelette. 

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I changed my mind again.

 

It does seem as if the interlude novelette is about a new new character who never had viewpoints and it is tied with a short story collection. I wonder who that may be? Reddin the bastard? With short stories on the mayhem in Jah Keved? Wikim? Aseduan? It probably won't be someone close to the main narrative as it is tied to short interlude stories.

 

The other novella, the one in part 2, I also think cannot be someone linked to the main narrative. My money is still on Lift. 

 

Which means someone among Szeth, Eshonai, Navani, Jasnah and Adolin isn't one of the tertiary character. Since we are seeing moderate amount of all, I'd say it is Navani who isn't one as we would see here via Dalinar.

 

I'd thus say Szeth is number 3 as since he is far-away he likely doesn't play a role into the final climax. Eshonai is 4, arriving at the end which would make Jasnah 2. Adolin remains 1.

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I am not sure I understand your question Delightful... but now you mention books 1 & 2, I'd be interested to see the same chart for them, so I could compare with the actual books. 

 

I don't know if it exist though.

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