Brandon Sanderson
Hello, Reddit! Back with another update on your book!
I'm going to do a spoiler free update in this paragraph, but the rest of the update will contain some small spoilers. So don't read on past this paragraph unless you want to know more! (They aren't huge spoilers, but I will talk about the structure of the book, which might lead people to guess some things. So fair warning! If you've read book four, though, none of this should be anything concerning spoiler wise.) Anyway, the non-spoiler version is this: I’m roughly 1/3 the way done, and on target for finishing first draft end of this year, with our November release next year. I’m sorry it’s taking a little longer on this one. But all looks good for our targets!
Okay, read on for light light spoilers.
First off, if you missed it in the State of the Sanderson, the working title of this book right now is some variation on Knights of Wind and Truth. I’ve been shortening that a lot to Wind and Truth in my mind as I write, so it’s possible I might just go with that as the cover title. If I do, the rest of you can know that in our hearts, the REAL title is Knights of Wind, Truth. That way, you can have your symmetrical title.
So where are we? Well, I hoped to have this section done by January this year--and it took two months longer. I’d anticipated this section, which includes Kaladin/Szeth and the Szeth flashbacks, to be around 100k words. It ended up at 150k words. Does that mean we’re actually 1/3 through the book? Or are we less, since this section went long?
Hard to say. I write each section at the length that feels right, but I do tend to self-regulate to keep things around the right length for a novel. This is all a lot of guesswork, when it comes to lengths. Best guess I can make right now is that this is what I have remaining:
Section two. This will be Shallan/Dalinar with some Navani and Renarin. I’m writing these in a group, as these viewpoints (while not as intertwined as Szeth/Kaladin) feel the next good division point. Goal is right now to write this all straight through, beginning to end, including epilogues if there are any to this sequence. My gut says this will be another 150k word sequence, on par with the Kaladin/Szeth one.
Those groups are the core of the book, but there’s still some to do afterward. Notably, Adolin, Jasnah, and Venli. Each will have a nice little chunk in this book, and while their plotlines aren’t interconnected, I’ll probably write them all through together. I anticipate these sequences to be a total of around 100k words.
From there, there will probably be a few little bits here and there to do, along with the Interludes, which total should be 50k. Now, before you go theorizing too much, if I didn’t mention a character it doesn’t mean they aren’t in the book. I’m just using a certain other character’s sequence as the kind of core viewpoint for that part. For example, Rlain will be in the Renarin sequence, he just isn’t likely to get as many viewpoints. So if there’s a character I didn’t mention that has had viewpoints before, there’s a good chance I’ll include them in one of the other plotlines.
My goal this year is to do a minimum of 30k words a month. With 10 months remaining, that gets me exactly this number of words by the end of December. Hopefully, I can keep this pace--which isn’t too aggressive for a professional author, but I’ve got a lot to do this year!
My goal is going to be to come back to you after sequence two is finished. (The second “book” of the trilogy that makes up this novel, if you remember that I treat each Stormlight book kind of like a trilogy bound into one volume.) That’s 150k words, so about 5 months.
For now, please enjoy this nifty concept art by Petar, depicting a scene that has been building for a long time....
