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[OB] How Book Five will End


MountainKing

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@Isilel As I put in my disclaimer, I wasn’t disagreeing with anyone else’s ideas, or saying which idea was more likely, simply putting up an idea - though, admittedly, one that now I think about more, I like more - drawing out a single possibility out of a sea of infinities. Especially given the existence of Harmony, it seems unlikely that Sanderson will go the exact same route. However, I believe that this idea is different enough from that plot to be used, and as I said, a main point of the entire post was finding a possibility that fulfilled the balance between a victory of a kind for our heroes while leaving a legitimate threat out there to be dealt with in SA arc 2.

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When you have a time-gap, things happen during it. We all know that, but that's not really the issue. The issue revolves around what you want to happen before and after the time-gap. If you want to showcase the heroes getting hit with a devastating defeat before the gap, you lose out on showing how they recover from it. If you want to show the heroes recovering from a resounding defeat after the gap, you lose out on actually showing that defeat.

A good example of the latter comes from the tv show Falling Skies. Minor Spoilers, I guess:

Spoiler

Season 2 starts after a 3 month time-gap, during which the "Battle of Fitchburg" happened. They got hemmed in, and the battle was more of a slaughter, causing the cast to lose a lot of familiar faces from Season 1, and jump-starting the "we're always on the move" aspect of Season 2.
The gap between Season's 2 and 3 was nearly a year, but nothing as consequential happened during it. (Okay, somebody starts S3 ~9 months pregnant and almost ready to give birth, but we can understand that without seeing where it started). So about that 1 yr gap after Oathbringer... :D

We got some decent snippets of exposition during the show through some of the dialogue, but all we really saw was the aftermath and how they dealt with it. We did get to see the battle in the form of a comic/graphic novel series, but that was outside of the main story, ie: the show. That doesn't seem like a Brandon thing to do, especially given how "big deal" we want this battle to be.

  • If Brandon starts Book 6 with them recovering from a big defeat, then we wouldn't actually see that defeat. Brandon is a very good writer, but without any flashbacks, even he is limited in what he can really "show" us, and it risks distracting from the current narrative.
  • If Brandon ends Book 5 with them suffering a big defeat, they'd either be back to normal by Book 6(making the defeat less relevant), or rebuilding almost from scratch due to successive defeats because Odium won't stop at just one, not when he has the advantage.

These are the options you have when the in-world gap is ~15 years. Take your pick on which one you prefer.


On a side note, I kinda want Book 5 to end with something much less "grand" than the rest of you do.

  1. Battle of The Tower
  2. Battle of Narak, Kaladin vs Szeth
  3. Battle of Thaylen Fields, Kaladin vs Amaram, Dalinar's "ascension"

1, 2, 3, in more ways than one, huh? If we keep on this track, Book 10 is gonna be "epic ending" for all 1,500 or so pages, with no room for a start, a middle, or a story. At some point, he's gotta settle down and say "this is enough." Maybe even bring it down a few pegs for a while so he can bring it back up with more impact later, rather than the marginal increases we've been getting so far.

Additionally, he's gonna be leaving Stormlight alone for several years while he writes MB Era 3 and possible finish the Elantris Trilogy. He's probably gonna want to give SA 5 an ending we'll be talking about for years, and you can't do that by simply making it "epic." Brandon knows his fanbase, and knows that to keep us talking, he's gotta get us thinking:

I think Book 5 is gonna be filled with a lot of revelations and theory-fuel for the Back 5 to explore in detail, and for us to discuss eternally in the interim. There'll still be a big battle to give that epic feeling, but it doesn't have to top Thaylen Fields when most of us would be fine with something on the level of the Tower or Narak.

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30 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Additionally, he's gonna be leaving Stormlight alone for several years while he writes MB Era 3 and possible finish the Elantris Trilogy. He's probably gonna want to give SA 5 an ending we'll be talking about for years, and you can't do that by simply making it "epic." Brandon knows his fanbase, and knows that to keep us talking, he's gotta get us thinking:

I agree with all of your points (and I like the Falling Skies comparison). I just wanted to add that the more WoBs I see about Stormlight, the more I feel that whatever happens at the end if book 5 is going to be an actual ending, and not just a setup for the back half. The Time skip, the shift to different focus characters, and the fact that Brandon speaks of the back half as if it's a sequel and not just a continuation of the same story...

And from a meta perspective, ending the books on a downturn that will then have a gap while he works on other stories seems like a bad idea.

However book 5 ends, I think it will be something that allows people who never pick up the back half to feel like they got a complete story. 

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1 hour ago, Calderis said:

I agree with all of your points (and I like the Falling Skies comparison). I just wanted to add that the more WoBs I see about Stormlight, the more I feel that whatever happens at the end if book 5 is going to be an actual ending, and not just a setup for the back half. The Time skip, the shift to different focus characters, and the fact that Brandon speaks of the back half as if it's a sequel and not just a continuation of the same story...

And from a meta perspective, ending the books on a downturn that will then have a gap while he works on other stories seems like a bad idea.

However book 5 ends, I think it will be something that allows people who never pick up the back half to feel like they got a complete story. 

That's how I feel about it too.

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5 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

If Brandon starts Book 6 with them recovering from a big defeat, then we wouldn't actually see that defeat. Brandon is a very good writer, but without any flashbacks, even he is limited in what he can really "show" us, and it risks distracting from the current narrative.

Luckily the structure of SA is designed to have flashbacks. <_<

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6 hours ago, Calderis said:

I agree with all of your points (and I like the Falling Skies comparison). I just wanted to add that the more WoBs I see about Stormlight, the more I feel that whatever happens at the end if book 5 is going to be an actual ending, and not just a setup for the back half. The Time skip, the shift to different focus characters, and the fact that Brandon speaks of the back half as if it's a sequel and not just a continuation of the same story...

And from a meta perspective, ending the books on a downturn that will then have a gap while he works on other stories seems like a bad idea.

However book 5 ends, I think it will be something that allows people who never pick up the back half to feel like they got a complete story. 

I agree with this post. Ending the first arc in a cliffhanger or in a "non-ending", only to for years and to pick it up with a completely different cast is not going to give in for an interesting satisfying narrative. Hence, I don't personally care so much how it ends, as long as it ends in ways which make the gap plausible, interesting, realistic without leaving the readers felt like they were dealt with an unfinished, never to be finished narrative. The change of casting, especially, will not work if the previous cast's story arcs are not completed within the first arc.

On the side note, killing Adolin, IMHO, would be about the worst cliche stereotyped ending possible for his character. If some of the main cast have to die, then I'd go with Dalinar, because his story arc is likely to end anyway, and Shallan because no one expects it. I wouldn't kill Kaladin as well for the very same reasons: too cliche.

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On 3/16/2018 at 3:13 PM, Leyrann said:

You are referencing something but I have no idea what. Can anyone elaborate?

Urithiru. Just remember that it's symmetrical. Also Alethi (and therefore also most names, though Thaylen is an exception) often alternate between vowels and consonants (with "th", "kh" etc counting as a single consonant). At most there will be two consonants together at the end of a syllable and the start of the next syllable.

Aimians have been explicitly stated to have been on the side of the Radiants in the past, seems unlikely to me that they'll be a bigger problem than Odium.

True, but the Aimians do feel sort of off putting- and Brandon has quite a bit of skill in excellent plot twists 

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