Marc Aplin
Okay, so Way of Kings...the people who don't know the background, I'll just give you a little bit. The book was written actually before pretty much anything else of Brandon's was published. I think it was 2002, 2003 he finished it. Obviously he went on to publish Elantris, Warbreaker...Mistborn as well, of course. And the Wheel of Time books. Has his experiences with these other books changed the way that he sees the Stormlight series continuing from this point?
Brandon Sanderson
When I finished Way of Kings the first time in 2002, it wasn't ready yet. And I knew...when I finished it, I knew something was wrong. My skill wasn't up to writing a book of this length yet. I was very proud of it, but proud in the way that, you know, someone who finished their first marathon but with a horrible time would be proud of having run that marathon; and I knew I needed to get better as a writer before I could actually do it justice. And so, yes, it's evolved. There were flaws in the original book. The character of Kaladin was just boring, in the first write of it. Dalinar stayed about the same. Dalinar's plot changed the least, and who he was changed the least. But both Shallan and Kaladin had deep flaws in how I had written them, and I just wasn't...I wasn't creating characters deep enough yet. And so I set it aside, partially because I knew I needed to get better as writer. When I wrote it again in 2008—actually it was 2009, I think—I started over from scratch. I threw away everything and did it again. And my skill had increased by that point to the point that I could do it justice, I think.