Re: BS twittered then, though... - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 28/07/2010 12:03:48 AM
"Chapter 82--13% cut. I do think that some of these chapters may be combined before the end. I doubt the final book will have 94 chapters."
I really do hope he collapses more than "some" chapters together before the end. For a projected 320k word length, I would suggest no more than 60 chapters at most. And like DomaA, I hope Sanderson reduces the fragmentary jumping-back-and-forth style that was quite obtrusive in TGS. Is Sanderson aware of any of these criticisms? Given that he communicates so freely with fans as to give away a mini-spoiler, I would think there would be some opportunity to let him know we think this is an issue.
The way I read his twitter-posts earlier, though, was that he is now in the process of editing individual scenes. It could be that these chapters numbers are merely a designation of scenes he has to edit, which would mean that the book really consists of 94 scenes, rather than proper chapters. How would 94 scenes in a 320k word book compare to the number of scenes in a book such as KoD or TFoH?
94 scenes sounds more or less right, but I'm purely guessing.
Harriet has a large say in this stage of the process, and the way Brandon speaks, I'm guessing she'll have him combine scenes (and also likely re order some scenes). That sort of editing was one of the last thing RJ and Harriet worked on before delivering the manuscript. Harriet somewhat was more involved than usual, as she was the one looking for thematic links between scenes, and coming up with (most) chapter names.
It sounds quite possible the final number falls below 60 or even 55, which sounds a lot more reasonable for a WOT book of around 300k, considering we know it's a WOT that will also regroup a lot of "misc players" because Brandon pushed their reappearances to TOM to stick mostly to Rand/Egwene in TGS.
Hard to tell though, it depends how Brandon works. A lot of writers do 1 scene/1 chapter until they've done and then decide the final order of scenes and start regrouping them as chapters. A lot also don't work that way, rather determining beforehand that a chapter has a start point and the story needs to reach that end point when the chapter finishes. RJ worked the first way (and in complete disorder too - writing scenes that inspired him more then going back and forth in the book, not caring too much to assemble the final book, nor combine scenes into chapters until much later in the process).