I love that he actually posts % complete widgets at the top of his website showing how far along he is in the multiple books he authors at once. Closest thing to a Grafana dashboard for authors we’re going to get!

Im on his website and I cant see that anywhere, can you share a link?

Thankyou.

Thats a great idea. I bet it stops so many repetitive emails and tweets from fans.

I don't blame them for writing themselves into corners, but lacking the courage to tell your readers that you've done so and there will be no resolution to the story you've been writing doesn't impress me. I don't think they owe people a resolution, but I do think they owe them a bit of honesty.

The thing that irks me the most is that Patrick Rothfuss used to brag about how he had already completed all three books of the trilogy, and just needed to do editing passes.

That was over a decade ago.

"That was over a decade ago."

Or

That was before he made enough money to do something other than write in his trailer.

GRRM's issue is that he needs to figure out how to get all of the interesting characters in one place from across a huge world. He just needs to write some sort of teleportation into the story, that's how Jordan handled it in the WoT series.

So about the writing themselves into a corner part, it would be unconventional but what about releasing a second revision of an earlier book to make the whole coherent?

I don't think rothfuss has it in him anymore. I love the books, but I think they were a self projection where the author wrote himself into the story, and then changed as a person. Kvothe has the personality of a 2005 reddit neckbeard that I can only assume is a lot less attractive to the author now in his 50s.

>I don't think rothfuss has it in him anymore.

I really don't understand why his editors don't just provide him a team, like a tv show writing room, and he can bounce ideas off them and have them mechanically churn out his ideas. He could knock it out in a few months and be a hero and put it all behind him cleanly then.

Honestly, at this point I'd just take a wiki page with a brain dump of any unrevealed lore along with his vague plans of how he was going to tie it all together and just let the community figure out the rest of the story, Elden Ring style.

I think what really made Rothfuss special was how he would slip into poetic prose without overtly signaling the reader, and that this would be hard to mimic.

Same with his parallel construction of lore using repetition of similar but distinct stories.

Simply saying "this is the truth" or "this is what happened" would not be the same, and I dont think many fanfic authors could pull it off convincingly.

This, a lot of people that don't read very deeply just assume there isn't much there and it's just a mary sue self insert story and don't really notice any of the other themes that are going on. There is a lot of good writing going on, but I suppose for the people that don't care anyway, a rough fan fiction would be good enough for them.

For what its worth, I also posted the sibling comment calling it a self insert story, but its not just a self insert story.

I suspect there are a number of very human reasons why an author wouldn't want to do that. I also suspect the output would be pretty different.

I find the idea kind of revolting, but I am also surprised that collaborative writing is so rare. I suppose it cuts to the question of what the point of writing the book is in the first place.

It is hard to think of a recent example aside from the expanse by "James S.A. Corey"

>I find the idea kind of revolting, but I am also surprised that collaborative writing is so rare.

I suspect it's less rare than we think it is, especially if you consider how much editing a lot of editors end up doing.

High quality artistic collaboration is hard and even harder in a capitalist model (this is coming from libertarian capitalist). Compelling art is definitionally outside the mainstream, as this is a pre-requisite for novel insight and creativity. This is why hundred million dollar movies and series can't simply hire good writers.

GRRM procrastinates writing A Game of Thrones books by making A Game of Thrones TV shows. Patrick Rothfuss procrastinates by doing cheesy charity work (whose positive impact is dwarfed by what he could do by donating the money from a third book) and playing D&D on youtube or some shit.

>Patrick Rothfuss procrastinates by doing cheesy charity work

He's scammed his fans so many times by lying about the charity work rewards, I'm surprised any of them still donate.

I inhaled the first 2 books in that series.

I will not read the last one even if he publishes it. I won't disparage the guy here, but I am no longer a fan, and I have zero faith he will ever finish the series. And if he does, he gets zero minutes of my time and zero units of my money.

The first two really were good though. If he finishes the third I'll happily re-read the first two and then give the third a chance. I'm not starting anything new he writes until I know it has an ending though. That's also my rule for any series on Netflix.

Name of the Wind is up there in my top pantheon, right up there with the Hobbit and Dune (among others). I'm sad we'll never see the end.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is the reason why I never start a new multi-volume series unless it is already completed.

I still remember seeing the first 3 paperbacks in the store. Thinking ahh a nice finished trilogy, what a trick that was.

I actually prefer my fantasy series to be unfinished. For me, a solid majority of the enjoyment is figuring out events and more from clues and foreshadowing.

There are so many things that I picked up on the third read through that I simply would have been told in a later book if they were all available.

> Guess Brandon Sanderson will have to finish their series after they die.

People say this often, and I don't get it. Sanderson is a terrible writer and his works and themes are nothing like ASOIAF. His only merit he has is "finishes books quickly". He's not even a fan of the books, he says they're "too dark" for him. He's the worst possible choice!

But I don't want anyone to finish ASOIAF if George dies before it's over. It's his story and no one else can do it right. We did this already and everyone hated it!

It's just a joke, because Sanderson finished Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan died.

Despite Sanderson and Jordan having starkly different styles - I do think he did the series justice. Well worth reading.

While I'm glad Sanderson finished the series, I still felt there was a pretty strong change in the feeling of the story.

Until he took over, Rand was basically continuously loosing his sanity in the pursuit of power, which he needed to fight the dark one, which brought him closer to the madness, feeding the cycle.

It kept getting more urgent, things kept escalating. But Sandersons Rand never really lost control, imo. Rand's success felt preordained by his story telling, whereas previously the only thing we could expect was that Rand would go down fighting.

To be clear, I'm aware that Sanderson finished the story via Jordan's notes. But I strongly suspect he wouldn't have kept to them if he wrote it himself. I base that opinion on the fact that the series was supposed to be way shorter. I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like 6 books

Brandon Sanderson only wrote the last book though? (which he split in two because all the stuff Robert Jordan wanted to cram in would have been a ridiculous 2000+ page tome) so it was already going to be at least 11 books by Robert Jordan. FWIW the two Sanderson books are my favourite of the series (but they are also the ending so it's hard to say)

He wrote the last 3, which was indeed meant to be 1 by Jordan.

His work finishing WoT is better than a lot of his own work. I think he's publicly said he wouldn't finish ASOIAF though. I'm sure part of it is out of respect for the GRRM who is still alive, but also Sanderson isn't really capable of writing adult themes and situations due to his mormon background, so he literally wouldn't be able to adequately complete it.

>We did this already and everyone hated it!

Because they rushed it in a way that made no logical sense.

And Donald Knuth!

But I don't expect Brandon Sanderson to finish that one. In fact, I don't expect anyone to even think about it.