The third part of the First Ideal, or, Brandon Sanderson goes meta (again)

[Nitpicking]

I just saw this mentioned in another (non-Sanderson) forum: "Journey Before Destination" is a rule for writing fiction, meaning that it isn't about the trope (boy meets girl, hero overcomes enemy, the villain was really saving the world), it's about how it's written, how the tale is told.

Is the First Ideal Part 3 really just a rule for fiction writing?

[Duxredux he/him]

Just saying, I think it's fine if it is. If Brandon built it off of that concept, you gotta hand him some credit if he designed ten orders of knights and philosophies based on a rule for writing fiction as a starting point. Expansion from the condensed version is why we watch the movie and read the book, not just read the blurbs right? I mean, you could call The Emperor's New Groove just "politician tours rural town and funds community rec center" or The Lord of the Rings" just "guy improperly disposes used jewelry " and completely excise any style whatsoever. Finding out that a key concept like the Ideals is cross-disciplinary makes it cooler to me, not less.

[Returned he/him]

I'm not going to do the digging here, but I suspect that the concept of "journey before destination" existed well before anyone thought to codify it as a guideline for writing fiction, which makes me skeptical that that is "the" interpretation.

I've always read it as a stance on one of the major disagreements in Western philosophical traditions, between deontology and consequentialism, coming down firmly on the deontological side. It's also a good thing to bear in mind while writing, but it seems like a stretch to me that the Knights Radiant follow a philosophical tradition which is the core of their lives and activities, plus also this bit of composition advice that they esteem just as highly.