Yeah, in our English 318 class on Thursday Brandon started talking about this novel he’s thinking about writing after he finishes the 12th book in the wheel of time series. Since blogging is always a frenzy of people trying to be the first ones to break news, I thought I’d join in the general pandemonium and write about what he said…
We were talking about developing characters, and as an example he said “I always start thinking about my next novel while I’m in the middle of the one I’m writing, so here’s the idea for a character that I plan to put into my next novel after I finish the 12th book in the Wheel of Time.”
He said he started with this great idea for the setting of the world, where this great leader in the past wrote a seminal book about what it means to be a nobleman and how noblemen and rulers should treat their subjects, etc. He compared it to King Benjamin. He then said that in this society, if you are at war and you kill an enemy noble, you become a noble.
This is where he said his idea for a character started–about a peasant soldier who kills an enemy noble and becomes one. For the purpose of our in-class exercise, he started listing strengths, flaws, motivation, and conflict for the character.
He said that once he had this idea, he figured that a really good way to add conflict to the character would be to make it so that this character hated the nobility that he was supposed to join. This led him to wonder about motivation, and he came up with the idea that this peasant boy grew up in a village where the nobles abused and oppressed the peasants.
He said that one of this character’s strengths was obviously going to be his fighting skills (since he kills an enemy noble without even using a sword), and for the motivation behind him acquiring those skills, he made it so that the guy’s brother was enlisted in the war and died. Thus, this character works hard to learn how to fight, so that he can protect his family.
Brandon then said that he had to “kill his baby” at this point and change the story–the character kills the noble but refuses to accept his new place in the nobility, because his motivations for hating them are too strong. This led him to some other interesting ideas, such as a plot line where the character is taken in by one of the nobility who isn’t so repulsive, at least until they figure out his legal status, and by the end, the character then wants to join.
I imagine there will be a lot more, but this was really cool because Brandon told us that this is something he’s basically come up with in the last few days/weeks/months. He said that the character’s name is Maren (or Naren?). It sounds pretty cool.
Just remember–you read it here first!
