Talk:The Stormlight Archive

Book titles

General question about this page and all the other "series" pages (like Mistborn_(series)). Why are all the book titles in italics? In all other pages (that I can tell), a book title in italics means it's unpublished, while a published work is in normal type. Seems like the same convention should be followed on the series pages as well. Or at least, is there a reason not to? That way I could go to the series page and see what is published and what is not, just like in Template:Books. Hadhad (talk) 19:08, 8 September 2017 (MST)

Where are you getting italics-as-unpublished from? I've always thought that we use italics on book titles similar to how they are italicised throughout wikipedia for example. It's a way to emphasise them, and especially when they end up having to be included on in-world articles it makes it more obvious that it's not in-world? All the infoboxes automatically italicise the books row. Though we tend not to in navboxes, maybe we should? That I guess is a place where we don't italicise books. --Joe ST (talk) 08:02, 9 September 2017 (MST)

Well, I'm not sure of all the history here, but if you look in Template:Books, all the upcoming books are italicized, and in the past, they've been un-italicized as they've been published. I actually never noticed that in the info boxes they are italicized, and it does help to distinguish in-world vs. meta. Sort of, because in-world stuff is labeled that way anyway, like The Way of Kings (in-world). Anyway, no big deal, but it seems like it should be consistent. Honestly, I kind of like the Books template because I can immediately view all the upcoming books.

If you look in wikipedia, it looks like book titles are italicized. Poems and shorter works have quotes. For example, The Road Not Taken within a collection called Mountain Interval. Hadhad (talk) 14:29, 9 September 2017 (MST)

I'm a big fan of consistency, so this is making me itch. It's generally proper to italicize books (and use quotes on shorter things). We really should italicize all book and series titles. This includes in-world books. Why does inconsistency exist? Probably because people are lazy and/or forgetful. :) I'd say when we see this done incorrectly it should be fixed just like any basic writing error.

Unfortunately the error is very widespread. Just look at Cosmere for example. That probably further contributes to people doing it wrong, and it means there's a lot of work necessary to fix it. Don't suppose there's a magical way to change every instance of the ones that are always book/series titles?

The biggest problem is the books template, where italics are being used for future books. Parenthesis are already used to note shorter/tangential books that aren't directly part of the main series. Is there an alternate way to note future books in that template? Perhaps flipping the current convention, and using non-italicized text to note future books?

--Jofwu (talk) 06:11, 11 September 2017 (MST)

"Is there an alternate way to note future books in that template?" Color or font? Hadhad (talk) 18:18, 11 September 2017 (MST)

Structure of the Stormlight Series

Under the Structure heading it says that each of the 10 books of the Stormlight Archives will focus on one order of the Knights Radiant. But at the top of the page we see that book 8 is supposed to contain Shalash's flashback chapters. This indicates that we will have 2 books focusing on Lightweavers. There does not appear to be a book focused on the Dustbringers. How certain are we that the list of main characters provided by Brandon Sanderson is final? Something is amiss here.

Hey! Brandon has indeed confirmed Ash is a back five POV character. When asked specifically about the double up in Orders he RAFO'd the question, though the common thought is that Ash's book will double as the Dustbringer book. Hope that helps! Here's a couple of WOBs that I found :)

• Question about Shalash's book
• Most recent confirmation I could find of back five characters

LadyLameness (talk) 00:42, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for asking! Brandon's been consistent about the list of characters (see this wob, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one). He's also said that the Heralds will be larger focus in the back five (see this wob). All of which is to say the list of characters seems pretty final. Most people believe that Shalash will end up as a Dustbringer, though this has been RAFO'd. I'll see what I can do to make this clearer.

--Stargazer (talk) 00:49, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Edit: Looks like LadyLameness responded while I was typing. What she said is very correct. --Stargazer (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Cleaning up the Infobox

I'm in favor of splitting up the infobox to divide Novellas from Novels. We know enough about the Novellas to know they are quite different in structure than the Novels. Novellas only have one focus character, and a "From The Stormlight Archive" prefix. They don't have a flashback character, and they don't have a Radiant order with them. Additionally, I think there is value in adding in more detail to the existing infobox. We might as well include the Prologue Viewpoint character as well as the Interlude Viewpoint character. I also think adding in the Ketek as well as a link to the in-world text would be valuable. SimonEwok (talk) 22:50, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Though I do see your point, the obvious counterpoint is that some individuals might really want see a chronological list of Stormlight things, which would be appropriate on the series page. -- Chaos2651 (talk) 07:04, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Since the novellas are clearly not the same as the Stormlight Archive and should be separated, I think I was able to find a solution to your concern and hope it will be satisfactory as a more elegant way of displaying the data. Although I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the ".5" notation, I left it in absence of being able to think of something better. SimonEwok (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I would echo Chaos' concerns, but would also like raise a few other points. First, for background, the table originally only had the "standard" columns for series, of "Year," "Book," "Order," "Length," "Notes," and "Refs," with a separate list at the top of the page of which book would have which flashbacks (see Special:PermanentLink/118182). After the concerns raised in the previous section of this page, I consolidated all that information into the table we have now and added the Radiant Order column as well. Second, the table is already very tightly packed, and so while I see the appeal to giving readers more information, Stormlight novels have a lot that's unique because of their structure, I worry that throwing in "Prologue Viewpoint Character," "Interlude Viewpoint Character" (except it'd probably have to be even wordier, to clarify that we mean "the interlude viewpoint character who has viewpoints in every set of interludes"), "Ketek," or "In-world Text" could be information overload. Without doing a detailed survey of Arcanum, my general impression if that when Brandon talks about the structure of Stormlight novels, the biggest thing he mentions is how each one focuses on one character/order, and I think it makes sense for the table to reflect that. Though honestly, "Radiant Order" would probably get redundant at some point as people associate orders with characters; I mostly added it to clarify some of the situation about Ash and it might be good to remove down the road to make the table feel less cramped and/or maybe open things up to add the standard "notes" column back in. To me, the much better solution would be to discuss the things you want to mention in the article, but leave them out of the table.

--Stargazer (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I think Radiant Order is most definitely a good addition to the table and one that should stay permanent. Especially because with the leatherbound editions, we've seen that Dragonsteel will be altering the spine and cover symbols and cover page color of each book depending on which Radiant Order the book is assigned to. But yes, there is also a WoB where - paraphrasing - he said that each book would explore a Radiant Order. As for the table feeling cramped, I've spent a lot of time getting the formatting to work well and displaying cleanly on both small screens and 4k monitors. The only one that isn't as ideal is mobile formatting, but I think the tradeoff is definitely worth it, in order to present and compare and contrast more information. SimonEwok (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

While we're discussing this, I'd like to say the I'm entirely comfortable listing Horneater on the table yet. Granted, I'm much more conservative about listing books on the series table than other people are (I didn't even list Wandersail when I made the changes in early April), but I feel like it's not entirely clear what novellas Brandon will actually have time to write, as he's mentioned a lot of possible novellas, and my general feeling is that it would be appropriate for us to do some expectation management by not including it on the table. We say "Brandon has said he also hopes to write novellas in between at least all the remaining arc one novels, though is unsure if he has enough time" right before the table, and that's enough for now, in my mind. All that said, I'm curious to here what others think on the matter.
--Stargazer (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I would say - it's not our role to provide expectation management for Sanderson. We should just organize the information as is. Sanderson's been pretty upfront and clear about his wish to write novellas for Rock and Lopen, and so they belong in the table. Now if that means we need to include footnotes to express that titles are only working titles or that in the case of the Lopen novella, Brandon has said he's not sure if he'll get to it, then I think that's fine, but leaving it off of the table completely is the worse option. SimonEwok (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)