At this point, Jordan definitely lost control of the story, but it's the why he lost control that fascinates me. Two interlocking facts keep popping up at me. One, Jordan was a history buff with some clearly classical training. Two, the WoT has all the hallmarks of a classic epic form. How do these two things interact? Well, one of the markers of an epic is having the divisions within the story be in multiples of twelve. I suspect that Jordan planned on twelve books from the very beginning of the WoT project. But what happened? He very clearly isn't an outliner, so he didn't have enough plot to stretch that far. Hence, the rambling, the stretching feeling that happens through the very soggy middle.
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yati
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Date: 2011-03-03 02:13 pm (UTC)It's a theory. *grin*