I have made reference to an epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, several times before on this blog. The series' author, Robert Jordan, died in 2007 and left the story incomplete. Jordan had made it to book 11 over the past 20 years, but the finale was left unwritten. So I hear, as I stopped keeping up with the series around volume 5 (I got bored with it and never finished). Nevertheless, The Wheel of Time has interested me because it was an empirical test of issues which crop up in literature. For example, it was noticeable when I was reading the series that Jordan's plotting was becoming torpid, he was losing control of the various threads holding the narrative together. From what others have told me this problem continued and waxed as he cranked out book after book. So I wondered, is it simply not possible for a story to span so many pages? Or, was the author running out of juice?
Unfortunately for Robert Jordan, his death set up a perfect natural experiment. The fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson was chosen by Jordan's wife to complete the series. So book 12 just came out, The Gathering Storm. Below are the average scores from Amazon for all of the books in The Wheel of Time.
| Book | Average Amazon Rating | Author |
| 1 | 4 | Robert Jordan |
| 2 | 4.5 | Robert Jordan |
| 3 | 4 | Robert Jordan |
| 4 | 4 | Robert Jordan |
| 5 | 4 | Robert Jordan |
| 6 | 4 | Robert Jordan |
| 7 | 4 | Robert Jordan |
| 8 | 3 | Robert Jordan |
| 9 | 3.5 | Robert Jordan |
| 10 | 1.5 | Robert Jordan |
| 11 | 3 | Robert Jordan |
| 12 | 4.5 | Brandon Sanderson |
It seems from this that Sanderson's contribution was well received. He took Jordan's notes to construct the narrative, so clearly it was the execution which revived reader enthusiasm, not substantive flourish. The problem with The Wheel of Time wasn't endogenous to the nature of the story then, rather, Jordan had a hard time keeping it all together and maintaining enthusiasm across so many books. The Wheel of Time made him a rich man, but one has to wonder how much interest he had in the destiny of Rand al'Thor after 25 years (he began writing The Wheel of Time in 1984). Harlan Ellison stated once that he avoided sequels because if he couldn't say what he had to say in one book it wasn't something he wanted to touch.
Note: One minor issue which I think needs to be considered: for many authors pulled out of a slush pile you see "regression to the mean." To break into the business they need to produce something that stands out, and so naturally the first book is more likely to be an exceptional production by the writer, with later works reverting back to their natural level of quality.
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Yes, the Gathering Storm was excellent. The last four or five books were crap (unfortunately, by that time I was hooked). It is as though GOD HIMSELF struck Jordan down for the good of the series.
FJ Farmer's Riverworld - another story that went on far too long. I loved RH Heinlein and read everything he wrote, but his last several novels were all overlapping metafiction and really one big, repetitive and boring story. Even the last couple Harry Potters were the weakest, though they still were fun books to read, and not nearly as off the mark as the Farmer and Heinlein examples.
Sanderson is an excellent writer. I haven't read his new Wheel of Time book because I gave up slogging through that series about half way through. However, Sanderson's Mistborn series and Warbreak were both excellent. Elantris was not as good but was still better than the norm for fantasy novels. Sanderson has a clear fascination with religion and how it impacts society and also has a talent for making really original magical systems that are well thought out and have well thought out implications for how his societies and religions function. Everyone should go read the Mistborn series.
I went to a university book signing for Robert Jordan around 2001 or so. I had no idea who he was, but my Dad was reading the books and I got a hardcover signed as an xmas gift. I remember thinking that Jordan looked like death warmed over. Morbidly obese with that kind of unruly, unwashed geeky fat guy beard. I'm amazed he made it to 2007.
The guy clearly had major health issues, so that might explain the decline in quality as much as, say, getting rich and unmotivated.
It is not just regression to the mean.
You have the same problem with many groups first hit album.
The first one is the one that they had all the time and a life time of ideas to poor into its creation. The second one has less time, and is often constrained by the content/style of the first.
I always thought part of the problem for Jordan was the structure of the story. He was doing a save-the-world fantasy epic where a cross-country trek and final battle wasn't enough to save the world. The heroes had to get involved in politics. Well and good, and an interesting experiment. Then, in dungeons and dragons terms, he split the party. (Chorus: "Never split the party!") That alone lengthened the story. On top of that, he not only followed the main characters, but wrote out the viewpoints of other minor and major characters to explain the action.
Its armchair quarterbacking from a non-author, but what I think he should have done is focused ruthlessly on the three main(est) characters, leaving some of the plot in his own notes and unexplained to the reader. That gets, ideally, a trilogy as originally conceived, or at most six books allowing for Jordan's wordiness. He could have wrapped up the main characters' story arc while he was still fresh and motivated. Then he could have gone back and filled in some of the story from other character's viewpoints. There would have been as much of a fanbase for that as there would be to follow a 12 book chronology to the end.
. It is as though GOD HIMSELF struck Jordan down for the good of the series.
this is cold :-)
in any case, you're all nerds.
When Proust wrote In Search of Lost Time (5000 pages, and yet enough of a classic to re-define Western literature), his project was originally rather self-contained. So he basically wrote the last volume together with the first few ones.
Then he just kept adding more material "in between" the already published beginning, and the yet unpublished (but mostly written) end. That's how his book turned into a multi-volume rendition of a man's entire life, and indeed of an entire society (the Parisian upper classes at the turn of the 20th century), in extraordinary psychological detail. At some point the narrative got a bit muddy. But because he had the last volume pretty much done, he avoided "running out of steam", and the whole work still has a beautiful composition with a well-defined direction and endpoint.
Perhaps a useful tip for the budding Tolstois among you.
tl/dr version: read Proust, you geeks.