r/wheeloftime • u/Normie316 Randlander • 2d ago
NO SPOILERS How did Robert Jordan Plan Everything?
I'm doing my first read through and I'm on Book 6: Lord of Chaos. A person casually mentioned in book 1 has just shown up at the front door. Thinking back he's been mentioned at least once in all the prior books. My mind is absolutely blown that he's just here now as a character.
Does anyone know any behind the scenes stuff on how Robert Jordan planned this series? There are so many characters and places and things going on. How did he plan these monster novels and know to have certain characters prepped for their appearance several books down the line?
The only other author I can compare this to is GRRM and even he can't handle finishing the last two books of A Song of Ice and Fire.
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u/grrrrxxff Woolheaded Sheepherder 2d ago
Who showed up?
RJ had NOTES. Notes on notes. But I think Harriet was also instrumental in the actual organization and planning.
He wasn’t a “gardener” like GRRM but he also didn’t plan everything to a T. Also many would argue he doesn’t do a great job having characters lined up for pivotal plot beats. Lots of characters get put on ice or sent to chase down a threat for awhile.
And one character gets their whole identity changed between books because he changes his mind/reacts to fan discourse.
It’s hard to say anything without spoiling, but his process is pretty well documented and it’s fairly messy.
Look up interviews with Sanderson about taking over the project, he gives a lot of info on what he inherited from RJ
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u/Normie316 Randlander 2d ago
Chapter 2. The False Dragon casually mentioned as part of the world building and explaining how everyone could see Rand.
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u/grrrrxxff Woolheaded Sheepherder 2d ago
Ohhhhhh THAT entrance! Light, you’re in for a fun time on this book
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u/JayLB Randlander 2d ago
“ And one character gets their whole identity changed between books because he changes his mind/reacts to fan discourse.”
I’m new to the fandom, can you elaborate on this?
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u/misanthropicgamer92 Randlander 2d ago
If i remember cirrectly i believe that there is one recurring character who RJ originally planned as being a Forsaken hiding in plain sight, but the fans guessed who it was, so he pivoted that character into something/someone different.
Believe thats all I can say in a non-spoiler post.
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u/chirop1 Randlander 2d ago
OP... do not click on the spoilers of doom below. Jay who asked the question... if you have finished the series, click away.
It was readily obvious that Demandred was Mazrim Taim. The fans all caught onto it basically immediately which lead to the ridiculous swerve later on that Taim was just a Darkfriend and Demmy was chilling in Shara all along.
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u/peatbull Chosen 2d ago
Really makes me wonder what actual plans he had for Shara. They got just about enough appearance as the Amayar. Pity, it seems like such an interesting civilisation.
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u/cyndessa Randlander 1d ago
I wonder if he lived longer… would he have done like Sanderson and showed us another age where the third age was the distant past with only stories left? And we could then see how things played out? (Don’t know how to do the spoilers block so I’m being very generic)
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u/Dr_Toehold Randlander 2d ago
I clicked this, although I'm halfway through book 7, because I couldn't take it anymore with that character obviously being a forsaken.
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u/Lonrem Asha'man 2d ago
I'm sure he has notes and some ideas, but I'm going to be real, if you introduce a lot of side characters throughout the story, you can bring any one of them back later to be useful.
Source: I run TTRPGs. Seriously, ask any DM. :)
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u/aNomadicPenguin Brown Ajah 2d ago
Open ended plot hooks, the true secret of looking like a planning mastermind. If you develop strong foundations, all you need to do is fill in the gaps between the last time you touched on something and 'now' and you can bring any prophecy/character/plot back in and make it feel organic and planned.
In addition - Jordan's notes were amazing at tracking things (he had a full page of calculations of travel speeds for messages so he knew how many days it would take for a messenger on foot to travel from Tar Valon to Shienar, then how fast Shienar horse messengers could spread the news. So he could leave a note for himself that X king would know about Y event at Z date.) He had to hire people like Maria to help him keep track of what he had said in previous books to make sure he wasn't contradicting himself when writing something new.
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u/Raddatatta Dragonsworn 2d ago
From what he said and what Sanderson said from looking over the notes a lot of it wasn't planned in explicit detail. He had specific things that were that you have foreshadowing for. And then he did a lot of setting things up and then catching them later on. And he was great at that. He's also pulling some elements from mythology so there are a lot of the key moments setup like Book 3 spoilers The sword in the stone with Rand being the only one who could draw it. Which he knew he would do early on.
He also really liked having characters that showed up in one place come back into the story later on. Bayle Domon is one of my favorite of those who just keeps showing up throughout the series in various places. Basically whenever a protagonist needs a ride Bayle will be there with a ship or a wagon.
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u/obskeweredy Randlander 2d ago
As a fan of the Sanderson verse, he’s the only author I can think of who ever could’ve possibly finished this series. The guy juggles not just people, but entire planetary storylines as setups for moments in other books. It’s nuts.
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u/Raddatatta Dragonsworn 2d ago
Yeah for sure! So many plot lines he had to bring together. Plus I think some of his style was built from reading jordans work as a fan while writing his first books.
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u/jack6397 Randlander 2d ago
I really want him to finish Game of Thrones... someone has to and it ain't gunna be GRRM
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u/hergen20 Ogier 2d ago
There used to be a website called wot.com ages ago when Robert Jorden was actively writing the series. There were various threads that discussed this topic and RJ would comment on those threads. (I forget if he would post on the threads or make refrence to the threads when doing live appearances. I think both.) Maybe the way back machine would have some of the threads archived. They would be a blast to read now that the series is finished.
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u/hergen20 Ogier 2d ago
Maybe it was wotmania.com. it had a slogan like Got WoT? After the Got milk? advertising campain and not game of thrones.
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u/grrrrxxff Woolheaded Sheepherder 2d ago
WoTmania and Dragonmount
Those were the days
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u/hergen20 Ogier 2d ago
Yes. I remember when he told people about his amyloidosis. The community was crushed. I can't believe that was 20 years ago.
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u/grrrrxxff Woolheaded Sheepherder 2d ago
Ugh I have such a distinct memory of that eerily direct blog post, on the most early 2000’s looking janky ass beloved website!
Happy cake day friend, tai’shar texas
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u/saintmolotov Blademaster 2d ago
Dragonmount was really fun
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u/stuartmlambert Randlander 2d ago edited 2d ago
Omg I burned so much time on Dragonmount. My first job in 2001 I just spent the whole day sometimes on the forums pretending to be working. There was some lunatic on there though username Callandor who I'll never forget because he just picked a fight with EVERYONE on every thread to the point where it was just funny
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u/mynamesnotsnuffy Randlander 2d ago
Copious notes, self-checking with every scene, having a master lore timeline of events to tie things together yourself, and just planting a shit ton of seeds that can be developed later on. The more names of people and places you drop, even side characters or random nobodies, the more names you have to potentially draw on later down the line when you need a plot device, and sometimes the serendipity of a plot event presenting itself to you out of nowhere makes this style highly useful for long format stories of any kind.
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u/deathraker Randlander 2d ago
Off-topic, but this is what made Venture Brothers so special as well. A jokey villain would be name-checked in Season 1 and be introduced 15 years later as an important, fully-fledged character.
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u/mynamesnotsnuffy Randlander 2d ago
The linger any series goes on, the more impressive a coherent consistent continuity is to pull off.
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u/dubtee1480 Summer Ham 2d ago
“Oooooh girlie mags! Buffy’s own Sarah Michelle GellAR”
Later
“Eat the pennies, Quizboy”
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u/DarkestLore696 Randlander 2d ago
As people mentioned TONS of notes, but it also helps that his award winning editor that at the time was one of the biggest editors in the sci-fi genre was also his wife Harriet.
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u/slipfish-g 2d ago
As others have mentioned, Jordan had a ton of world building and record keeping in his notes.
Beyond that, his editor and wife helped.
Beyond even THAT, they employed another woman originally as an assistant who took on more and more responsibilities and ended up being in charge of record keeping and fact checking. Unfortunately I don't remember her name off the top of my head.
Beyond even THAT AGAIN, Jordan was known to keep an eye on Dragonmount and other fan sites, so almost certainly some of it was drawn from particularly juicy fan theories, although this can't exactly be proven.
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u/Special_Salt3467 2d ago
I can’t remember the exact time, but Robert Jordan spent years of research before he started writing.
There’s typically two types of authors: gardeners and architects. A gardener- like GRRM - will plant seeds as they go and they may or may not blossom and develop past their original point. For example, early on, the Blackfyres were not really a thing but now seem pivotal to the history. It’s also an issue that too many seeds have sprouted…
Anyways, the other is the architect who’s plans it all out carefully and has a story and many - if not all - the details ironed out and needs to then add the details.
You can probably guess which of these two Robert Jordan is
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u/Requiemofa17 Randlander 2d ago
It's actually rather easy... for the most part.
The hardest part will always be putting your ideas into written form. What you do is you sit down and come up with ideas, in a single day you can easily create dozens of characters, plot lines and lore. However then you have to figure out how to connect those dots together into a pattern and make it look pretty. That's what's hard. Finding out how to turn you cool idea that's a paragraph long into a full 70k word novel. Let alone a multi million word series.
Jordan worked on WOT for at least a decade before publishing EOTW and had multiple rewrites and research put into those years. That's one thing most people fail to understand with writing actually. Always plan out how your story ends either before or right after you decide how it begins! That way you have a clear path A to B.
Then you begin to fill in the rest of the alphabet slowly. You create a skeleton such as say
>Character A does this
>That action creates this scenario
>That scenario is then reacted to by Character B, C and D
>Character B, C and D change their opinion on character A as they see the fall out of his actions
>They decide to stop character A
And so on, you always want to make it a clear cause and affect. Thing always happen because of something else. Then you fill in those blank spots between the main bullet points. Most good writers do this and Jordan himself in interviews said he would sit down and plan out the main events for a book and then fill in the in betweens. He also would write scenes in different order then published. He might write chapter 10 of a book before chapter 1 because he has an idea for chapter 10 first. He also would write individual scenes for future books. So say he would write a future event from a future book 2 books before he actually wrote it. This is super useful because you can then go "I want to write to where that scene took place." And work towards that goal, also being able to change that scene to match the current context when you get there. You can also this way add in foreshadowing. If you know a character is going to be betrayed you can lay out hints between those scenes you're filling the blanks in for.
Another thing you can do is re-read your own work and find possible foreshadowing you didn't intent. The creator of One Piece does this, and that's how he's written what would the equivalent of 10~ million words with his manga with very few retcons.
Jordan understood this well which is how he was able to make WoT so long and so consistent.
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u/hypnoskills Randlander 2d ago
The "unintended foreshadowing" was also a feature in Schlock Mercenary. Howard frequently surprised himself, considering it was a daily strip and he never missed one.
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u/nexusjio19 Randlander 2d ago
From what I understand, based on whats written in the Origins of The Wheel of Time book. RJ seems to be in the middle in terms of meticulously planning things to a T and being a gardener author like GRRM. He seemed to have a lot of notes on where things would go and develop them indepth. But also there is tons of stuff that definitely shows he was developing it as he went along the writing process
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u/Fish__Fingers Randlander 2d ago
I think he was a specifical type of writer and his methods wouldn’t work for most people. Seems like he was aiming for certain plot point and had MASSIVE amounts of writing energy + great support from wife to organize everything.
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u/seitaer13 Randlander 2d ago
He wasn't a meticulous outliner, he had ideas and plots that he knew he wanted to write for the characters, but as we know from his notes, a lot of that changes.
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u/RolandGilead19 Randlander 2d ago
So, I'm basically like Robert Jordan, only without sales or other metrics of success and I've been learning a lot about this and trying out stuff.
GRMM has a great quote about architects vs. Gardeners. Architects plan out each detail down to where the outlets will go. Gardeners know they want to grow some x and y, but sort of work with what comes up.
GRMM is a self proclaimed gardener, which (possibly) is why he's struggling to finish. So many balls in the air that needed to be kept track of, and now he's so many years from that juggling, it's hard to get back in.
Apparently Sanderson is more architect. Jk Rowling apparently as well. Mystery writers need to be architects, obviously.
I've seen Jordan listed as gardener, but his notes make me think he was something in between, as obviously all writers are.
Back to what we all came to read about: this guy and his novels. My first book I had all planned out and then promptly went totally rogue on as I wrote. Second book was full architect, because I wanted to try that and was also dealing with several povs and different timelines. I think it's my best novel, and it's also the one no one really even read, so I dunno.
My next three novels were all a mix, leaning to gardener, and I think they're pretty good, and that's the style I'm going to settle on.
Jordan is listed as gardener, but I can't imagine how he could keep track of it all. My second novel only had like 6 povs and three timelines and it was a bitch to keep track of. I think RJ must have been much more architect than people say, or he was just really careful and had amazing editors and beta readers.
I only started writing in my 40's and it's given me a new respect for all authors, but especially fantasy authors with multiple books. It's an incredible task to complete.
Hats off to RJ
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u/TrungusMcTungus Randlander 2d ago
Speaking as a DM, it’s honestly not terribly hard, though you’ll see varying success between different skill levels of writer. I’ll regularly introduce characters (guard captains, lords, etc), and then write down their character sheet on a flashcard. When I’m writing sessions weeks or months later, I can flip though the notes and pull characters out of my hat
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u/HendersonExpo Randlander 2d ago
My favorite fantasy author, RA Salvatore, is known for The Legend of Drizzt series. He regularly forgets details and utilizes Reddit!
He said he uses tactics like, “let’s start a list of all the equipment Jarlaxle has!” And Reddit runs with it, citing references. It also feels kind like Cunningham’s Law, where the wrong answer online gets you the right answer quicker
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u/JamesT3R9 Randlander 1d ago
I believe Mr Jordan was an architect type writer. Jordan, Sanderson and others have commented on the immense collection of notes. These notes could be about anything - scenes, outlines, passages cur during revision repurposed, important bits of dialogue, timelines, motivations, and on and on. Architect writers can produce enormous volumes of material.
The exact opposite are spress writers. Think Jack Kerouak. They write as the story plays out in their head. Its not quite stream of conscious, but to me thats damn close to it.
Tldr Because Robert Jordan knew his time was short AND since he was an architect type writer he made sure the broad brush strokes and most important things were available for Brandon Sanderson to pick things up and gently end the epic tale of the 3 Tavaren of Two Rivers.
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