Ten years ago, I remember hurriedly refreshing my e-mail client, waiting eagerly for a promised letter from my publisher. It was the first week after Elantris debuted, and the publisher had access to Bookscan—the clandestine service that provides weekly sales figures for books. This was before the days of e-books and near-instant sales results, and we had to count on Bookscan, which got its figures from reports filled out by booksellers.
The e-mail finally arrived. Four hundred copies sold.
Four hundred copies?
I called my agent in a panic, thinking for sure that my book was a flop. I hadn’t expected to become a bestseller immediately, but only a few hundred copies sold? Disaster!
My agent just laughed. Turns out, four hundred copies opening week was a good number for a first book by a new writer. He told me it didn’t sound like a lot, but four hundred copies a week adds up.
And it has. Elantris sold around four hundred copies the next week, and close to it the week after that. In fact, Elantris has almost never dipped much below that number, slowly and steadily selling week after week after week—for ten years. Like the proverbial racing testudine, Elantris has quietly dominated my career, now having sales in the hundreds of thousands of copies—though it never appeared on a bestseller list, never sold a movie option, and (as of yet) has no true sequel.
How did it get here? The pre-publication history of Elantris is as quiet, yet dependable, as its sales figures. As I was dreaming up what would become Mistborn, The Way of Kings, and the Cosmere, I started working on an outlandish, stand-alone book inspired by the idea of a prison city for zombie lepers. I’d been writing for a number of years so far, and though I hadn’t published any novels, I’d completed a number of them.
Elantris, however, was the first book that I sat down to write after making the decision that epic fantasy was where I wanted to be. It was the first to consciously include Cosmere mythology, characters, and magic.
Four years later, when an editor called me wanting to buy the book, I was honestly surprised. I had a version of Mistborn out on submission, and had just finished the first draft of The Way of Kings. Yet it wasn’t the high-action book that broke me out, nor was it the one with the expansive world-building. It was the contemplative book about a man trying to rebuild society among wretches, a woman who refuses to be defined by the roles society heaps upon her, and a priest having a crisis of faith.
I could talk for pages about the inspirations for the book. (In fact, I did just that in the Library section of my website, where I posted extensive annotations for each chapter, along with deleted scenes.) Sarene came from a friend of mine named Annie. Hrathen grew out of my time as a Mormon missionary. The magic came from the interesting way Korean and Chinese interact as written languages. Raoden, in turn, was inspired by my desire to tell a story—for a change—about a man who didn’t have a deep tortured past. A man who was simply a decent person put into a horrible situation.
But while the inspirations are interesting, they don’t explain the why of the book; they only talk a little about the how. Why is Elantris so beloved of fans? Why do I still get so many fans that list it as their favorite of my books? Why does it work like it does?
This is one of those things about writing that I wish I knew.
I often talk about how I’m an outliner. I like my plots meticulous and my worlds detailed before I start writing chapter one. And yet, something indefinable happens in the writing of every book—something about the creative process, the teasing out of theme and character, the abandonment of some plots (no matter how carefully designed) in favor of new explorations. At the end of every book, I can sincerely ask myself, “Is this what you intended?” and respond, “Well, no. It’s better somehow.”
Looking at Elantris, I think the book’s most enduring legacy is to be found in the effect it has had upon me. It continues to provide a soft reminder that not every action scene needs to be about two people with swords, and that the fate of one lonely man in a rotting city can be more compelling than the clashing of armies. Elantris proves that a book can be magical, yet not show magic itself until the last few chapters.
I’m supremely proud of this book. Over the years, my prose has improved and my narrative voice has matured, but I find it essential to remember that a vibrant, passionate story about engaging characters is more important than cool magic systems or epic action sequences.
Characters and emotion are the true magic. The whisper from Elantris is a warning to me never to forget that.
February 2015