It’s important to tell Brandon that this particular kid wasn’t born for another four years. Why bother? Well, sometimes Brandon writes a flashback and someone is looking at a cute baby. My day count could change by a day or two here and there, but I’m pretty happy with how I got the different groups of people to all end up in the same place at the same time.
(Which, for those of you who keep track of such things, makes the date 1174.2.10.5). The timeline for Oathbringer starts on day 4 of the new year, and ends on day 100. Then I have the quote from the book that I used to justify the timing, the chapter the quote appears in, and whether the event happened on the day of the chapter, or sometime in the past or future. Column E tells how long it has been since the last event. In column F we have an event that happens in the book. The white columns are the dates, which I have an entirely separate post about. Here’s a sample of the timeline spreadsheet. On the other hand, the current spreadsheet for the Stormlight books has over 1100 lines. The timeline only takes up 32 lines in the spreadsheet because there are that many chapters. In some of Brandon’s books, there are a few main characters who spend most of their time together in the same place. I have a massive spreadsheet called the Master Cosmere Timeline (I can hear some of you salivating right now, and no, I won’t let you peek at certain corners of it). There’s so much more to it than that, but it gives you an idea of the level of detail I try to be on top of.Īnother thing I track is the timeline of each book. The next time a person appears, I make sure they have the right eye color and eat the right kind of food. I keep records of every character, place, spren, and piece of clothing to name just a few. You may know that I’m Brandon’s continuity editor.
The timeline is one small part of the reason, but it will give you a small glimpse of what is going on at a frantic pace here at Dragonsteel trying to get the book ready to go to press. I asked it myself years ago when I heard similar news about a Harry Potter book. Why do we have to wait until November before it’s on the shelf at the bookstore?” This is a natural question. I know that some of you think, “Brandon posted that he had finished writing Oathbringer months ago.
(Spoiler warning: There may be tidbits of information in this article about the plot of Oathbringer, but I have specifically made up many of the examples I use, so you can’t count on any of it as fact.) I just finished the timeline for Oathbringer, and thought you might like to hear about the process.
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