Warbreaker (87 page)
Authors: Brandon Sanderson
Vasher Meets Bebid the Priest for Food
Restaurants. They didn’t really exist in a lot of medieval cultures. Now, most of my books don’t take place in medieval times—they’re more preindustrial uchronias, late renaissance if you will.
Warbreaker
is no exception.
T’Telir seems the kind of place that would have restaurants. Places to sit idly, eating and chatting. It is a successful port city with a lot of trade and a great deal of wealth. There’s even something of a middle class, another concept that didn’t exist during a lot of periods in time.
Originally, I had Vasher make an oblique comment about Bebid’s daughter as a way to get him to talk. However, I shied away from this in later drafts, moving to more nebulous indiscretions instead. I felt that a comment about a daughter might sound too much like kidnapping on Vasher’s part, even though I was thinking that his daughter had done something embarrassing that, if revealed, would get the priest into trouble.
Lightsong’s Dream
The Lightsong sections received two major upgrades during the last few drafts of the novel. The first was the enhancement of his memories of his dreams. We don’t get to see the dreams, just their effect on him.
In the original draft, these dreams were far less ominous, particularly at the beginning of the book. My agent complained that the book felt like it lacked direction, particularly in the Lightsong sequences, and asked me to find a way to make it more tense. He didn’t care if Lightsong joked; he just wanted to feel a tension underneath. A sense that all was not right.
The dreams came from this. Originally, Lightsong just dreamed about the ship leaving the port. In the later drafts, I added him remembering more in this chapter—the city on fire, the flames causing a red reflection on the ocean.
This actually wasn’t a change to the dream. That’s what I’d intended him to have dreamed; I just originally had him forgetting. I didn’t start getting into the violent dreams until much later in the book, one chapter in particular. But because of Joshua’s requests, I moved the sense of danger up from those later chapters to here to begin foreshadowing earlier.
Lightsong’s Wisecracks
The other major Lightsong revision happened in the form of a humor upgrade. My editor didn’t complain about the same thing as my agent—instead, my editor wanted to laugh more. He wanted more witty lines from Lightsong. I resisted this at first, as I worried that making him too snappy would undermine his internal conflicts. I wanted him to be droll, but not necessarily brilliant.
Eventually, however, my editor prevailed upon me. He was always of the opinion that a few extra witty lines wouldn’t undermine anything. I have to say, I like the lines, and I’m mostly glad to have them. But I do worry about overloading the humor in Lightsong’s chapters, and therefore diluting his internal conflict.
Annotations for Chapter Six
Siri is Bathed, Then Sent to the God King
This was a strange sequence of chapters to write. I’ve spoken before on writing characters of the opposite gender. This has grown easier and easier for me over the years, partially—I think—because I started out so bad at it that I insisted on forcing myself to practice and practice. Now, it’s usually as easy for me as writing men. In fact, I don’t even think about the gender of the character when I’m writing—I think about who the character
is
. What their motivations and conflicts are. How they see the world and how they react to things. True, their gender does influence this—just as it influences their personalities. But I don’t sit down and say, “I’m going to write a woman now.” I sit down and say, “I’m going to write Siri.” I know who Siri is, so I can see through her eyes and show how she reacts.
All that said, I’d never before tried writing a wedding night from the viewpoint of a woman. It presented a few interesting challenges. For one, there’s a whole lot more nudity in this book than in my other books. I don’t shy away from this (even though I myself am probably more conservative than most of my readers in areas of sexuality) as I feel that what you do with your imagination is your own business. This scene could be done in a PG way, a PG-13 way, or an R way. It’s completely up to you how you want to imagine it.
One interesting thing to note is that my own wedding happened during the process of writing this book. I wrote this chapter before then, but I was engaged at the time. While working on the novel I got to go through the entire progression of awkward moments of a wedding night myself. (Yes, it was our first time, by choice.)
I think that probably colored how I wrote Siri’s viewpoints throughout the entire book.
The Royal Locks
A group of people whose hair changes color based on their emotions is another one of those little story seeds that had been bouncing around in my head for years before I wrote this book. I even did a few test chapters in other settings with characters who had this physical attribute. (
Dark One
, which I don’t know if I’ll ever finish, toyed with it. As did a book set in the Aether world.)
Eventually, this attribute slid into
Warbreaker
. I’m glad I found a good home for it; I love how it adds a little bit of flavor to Siri and Vivenna, making them distinctive in a way that doesn’t have much of anything to do with the plot. I always talk about making things connected, and that’s very important. But you have to be careful not to make everything too neat. That leads to its own problems, as I mentioned in an earlier annotation.
The Royal Locks do work into the worldbuilding, as you’ll find out eventually in the book. However, mostly they’re around to give a distinctive feel to the world and the royal line, to show you that there
is
something unique about the royals. It hopefully enhances your understanding of why Hallandren would work so hard to bring them back into their own line of kings.
Annotations for Chapter Seven
Siri Enters the God King’s Chambers
This is one of those chapter breaks that are there for stylistic drama more than anything else. Thematically, these two chapters are really the same chapter. However, I wanted to break before she steps in because it works so well as a dramatic turn in the story.
I’ve had e-mails asking me about how to decide when to break a chapter. Honestly, I’m not sure how to answer this one. Breaking chapters isn’t something I plan; it’s something I just do. A good chapter should have a nice arc of its own, with rising action, a climax, then perhaps some brief falling action. (And thinking of that, you can probably see why chapters five and six can be considered a single chapter in this regard.) But there’s not a real science to it—break where it feels right.
Anyway, Siri’s entrance here is probably the first big climactic moment of the book. It’s where I’ve been pushing the novel since the beginning, and is one of the focal scenes for this book. (The scenes that I imagine and develop before I being writing, which then propel their section of the novel.)
Blushweaver
Blushweaver was the first of the gods that I named, and her title then set the standard for the others in the Court of Gods. Lightsong was second, and I toyed with several versions of his before settling. Blushweaver’s name, however, came quickly and easily—and I never wanted to change it once I landed on it.
When developing the Court of Gods, I wanted to design something that felt a little like a Greek pantheon—or, rather, a constructed one. Everyone is given their portfolio by the priests after they Return. Blushweaver was given the portfolio of honesty and interpersonal relations, and over the fifteen years of her rule, she’s become one of the most dynamic figures in the court. Few remember it anymore, but she was successful at having her name changed during her first year. She used to be Blushweaver the Honest, and she became Blushweaver the Beautiful through a campaign and some clever politicking.
Many think of her as the goddess of love and romance, though that technically isn’t true. It’s just the name and persona she’s crafted for herself, as she saw that as a position of greater power. She actually toyed with going the opposite direction, becoming the chaste goddess of justice and honor. However, in the end, she decided to go the direction that felt more natural to her.
After these fifteen years, it’s hard to distinguish when she is being herself and when she’s playing a part. The two have become melded and interchangeable.
When designing this story, I knew I wanted to have a beautiful goddess to give Lightsong some verbal sparring. However, I realized early on that I didn’t want to go the route of having a disposable, sultry bimbo goddess of love. I needed someone more complicated and capable than that, someone who was a foil to Lightsong not just in verbal sparring, but someone who could prod him to be more proactive. And from that came Blushweaver.
In the original draft of the book, this chapter had a slightly different tone. Lightsong didn’t look forward to sparring with Blushweaver; he cringed and wished she wouldn’t bother him. That artifact remained until the later drafts, though it didn’t belong. I wrote the later chapters with them getting along quite well, so I wanted to revise this first chapter to imply that he looked forward to their conversations.
Annotations for Chapter Eight
Siri Wakes Up Untouched, Then Explores the Palace
These Siri chapters presented a little bit of a problem to me in that I generally focus my writing around conversations. A given chapter will have some action and description, but usually the series of scenes revolve around important discussions between characters.
But in the palace during the Jubilation, Siri has almost nobody to talk to. She just doesn’t have anything to do. A note to aspiring writers: A character not having anything to do is
bad
. You want action, motion, and conflict in your stories. That’s what keeps them moving and interesting.
But in this case, Siri’s lack of direction was necessary to make the plot work. In these chapters, Siri is just reacting—trying to stay afloat in a world very different from her own. So I had to focus on other ways to make the scenes interesting.
A lot of times, in writing, needs like this end up defining aspects of the books. I hadn’t intended the palace to work as it did—with each room being modular, any of them able to transform into any type of room. I intended to give Siri her own set of chambers, as might be expected in a situation like this.
But when I reached this point in the book, the chapter was looking dull, and I knew I needed some little twist to the palace to make it original enough to hold Siri’s—and the reader’s—attention here. It’s a very small thing, but that one change added a lot to the chapter, and therefore the book, I think.
Annotations for Chapter Nine
Vivenna as a Viewpoint Character
Generally, Vivenna is the readers’ least favorite character in the book. I can see why that is. Siri gets to be the flamboyant younger sister, Lightsong the pithy courtier, and Vasher the mysterious unknown. Vivenna, then, is saddled with the responsibility of being the older sister trying to do what is right. She’s not as dynamic as the others, particularly from the start.
Perhaps this should have made me want to put more into her viewpoints. Change her to be more dynamic, perhaps. However, I resisted that. Of the four, Vivenna is the most like me. The older sibling who gets into other people’s business, ostensibly for their own good. I was a lot like that when I was younger.
For me, Vivenna is the most interesting character in the book. Yes, Lightsong was the most fun to write—but Vivenna is the one who has the most potential for growth and change. Particularly because she isn’t instantly appealing like the other three. Much like Hrathen in
Elantris
, Vivenna begins very far from where she would need to go if she wanted to gain the rooting interest of readers. You’ll have to read on and see if she actually gets there.
Vivenna watches the City
One of the reasons why I knew that I had to make Vivenna a viewpoint character was the wonderful contrast between her and Siri. The way they look at the world is so different that it provides excellent opportunities for the story. The way they each respond to their first visit to T’Telir is an example of this.
Beyond that, with Siri and Lightsong locked in the court, and with Vasher doing whatever the heck Vasher is doing, we didn’t have any characters who could experience the city itself consistently with a sympathetic viewpoint.
As I’ve stated, this book began as one about the two sisters who are forced into each other’s roles, and how they deal with those changes in their lives. Vivenna is an integral part of this process.
Parlin as a Character
Any of you who followed the development of
Warbreaker
as a novel through the early stages know that Parlin, as a character, changed dramatically across revisions. He began with a different name (Peprin) and was much more bumbling and innocent. He provided some comic relief and often said dumb things.
This just didn’t work. For one thing, we already have the mercenaries in Vivenna’s viewpoint to give us some fun lines. (More on them later.) For another, Peprin was just too dense. I didn’t like how stupid he came off. He seemed ridiculous rather than funny. So, I chopped him out and replaced him with a similar character who was more competent.
For instance, in the original draft, Peprin bought a hat because he thought it was cool—but it just made him look stupid. Parlin buys the same hat, but his reasoning is that if you’re going to go about in the woods, you dress in woodland colors. If you’re going to go about in the city, you want to start dressing in city colors. It’s good reasoning, and you’ll see him follow it more in the future. The two men do the same thing, but in my head the rationale was completely different, and that changed how I wrote them. (I hope.)
