The Pattern

Lily wrote:Kanskje Tuon vil ombestemme seg når hun innser at damanene ikke har noe valg når det gjelder å lede Kraften. (Veldig irriterende at det ikke finnes et tilsvarende ord for channeling på norsk!) Det, og at Rand virker i bedre humør enn han har gjort på lenge, vil nok hjelpe forhandlingene veldig. Tuon og Rand må samarbeide, og de vet det begge to. De er bare uenige om framgangsmåten

BS på Twitter wrote:Here's a better way to show you progress: I have sixteen scenes (some long, some short) that need to be written before the book is done.
2:31 PM May 24th via Twadget

- Anything else you wish to share with your fans?

Well, for this entire interview, I've tiptoed around one issue: the fan reaction to Mat in THE GATHERING STORM.

You kindly didn't ask directly, though I did sense that you were trying to get at it. And your own comments about THE GATHERING STORM are among those I did read. I know what you've said about Mat.

It's curious. I've gotten around 1500 emails about TGS so far. (Of those, by the way, only one person didn't like the book. I'm not arrogant enough to assume that person is the only one--I'm guessing that most who didn't like the book didn't feel the need to email me and chew me out for it.)

Of those 1500, only a handful mention Mat. However, he IS the one brought up the most often. Oddly, it's almost exactly divided between people saying, "I love how you did Mat, he's my favorite part of the book," and people saying, "I loved everything about the book, except Mat didn't feel right."

That has been very interesting to me. One thing this does for me is that it actually relieves a big burden off my back, because it means that I did everybody else right. It also means that Mat is noticeably different to a small number of people. Was this done intentionally? No, it was not. I worked on Mat like I worked on all the rest of the characters, and I feel as close to Mat as I feel to the rest of the characters. I asked Harriet, and she said, "You did Mat perfectly. Don't change him."

So...where does that leave us? I'm not sure. I do realize that my sense of humor is slightly different from Robert Jordan's sense of humor. And perhaps if I had to do it again, I wouldn't lead with the monologue from Mat that I used, because that's where the difference is most obvious. A person's sense of humor is like their thumbprint. And I'm not sure that I could ever replicate Robert Jordan's thumbprint when it comes to that, and it never has been my goal to replicate him exactly.

I think that in the narrative, though--the places aside from the monologues--Mat is still Mat. Of course, Mat had some really big things happen to him in KOD, things that have shaken him and the way he sees the world. But at his core, he's still the same person.

However, if you were worried about him, it should help you to know that the large bulk of the Mat sequences Robert Jordan wrote are in TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. There is a lot more Robert Jordan Mat to come. So maybe it's not really an issue at all.

Brandon Sanderson wrote: I suppose I can spare a moment to respond here (though it took me WAY too long to remember my Westeros password.)

I think Larry has it right in his post above. It's something curious that, I think, and author needs to be aware of. There's a certain...momentum to internet fandom. People make certain their voices are heard, and certain issues take on a life of their own. Asmodean is a great example of this. I was part of a great community of fans of the books growing up, and not a single one of us ever raised this question. But when I started hanging out on the internet, I suddenly found it to be the be-all and end-all of WoT questions. By the time I’d hung out for a little while on boards and the like, I found myself thinking about the question just like everyone else. It still surprises me that I did, because I originally didn’t think it was a big deal at all.

Mat does not seem to be a concern to most general WoT readers. However, if they DO have a concern, it is more often this one than anything else. That means it’s something I should pay attention to. I am digging deeper into Mat during my work on Towers of Midnight, paying special attention. To be honest, when I was working on Mat, he wasn’t one of the characters that I was worried I’d get wrong. (Egwene and Avi were my big worries.) That might be part of the issue here.

The 1500 thing wasn’t pulled out of nowhere, by the way. I’ve got an assistant who is perhaps a little too diligent in this area. I mentioned Mat, and so he took it upon himself to sift through all of the emails during some free moments and make a checklist. 1500 or so emails. One bad one. 32 specifically mentioned they liked Mat more in TGS. 34 specifically mentioned that they found Mat the one thing that didn’t work for them in TGS.

(Though, I will note that the poster above is right. This isn’t proof that other things didn’t bother people. Indeed, I’m certain that everyone who reads the book is bothered by certain issues. This is the only one, however, that has gotten repeated mentions of this nature. That’s what I was trying to say in the interview--that the lack of predominant mention of anyone else seemed an indication to me that they were working for people, in general.)

To be honest, both the “I liked Mat more” emails and the “I didn’t like Mat” emails do concern me. In either case, Mat isn’t acting like Mat. I did bring this up to Harriet, however, as I mentioned in the interview. (She didn’t think it was an issue. That doesn’t mean I’m not still thinking about it, though.)

So, what do I do? Keep going forward. Writing on the WoT is a very odd experience for me. It can be difficult to juggle my fan perceptions of the characters with my writer perception of the characters. I will do my best. You will have my heart in it. That might not be enough, but let this console you: at least they didn’t get Goodkind to write the books.

(Also, forgive me if I don't have time to come back for another swing of responses. I wish I had more time for forums. Life's kind of a little busy right now...)

Brandon Sanderson wrote: That might not be enough, but let this console you: at least they didn’t get Goodkind to write the books.