THE WAY OF KINGS Deleted Scene + Updates

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode with Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and me focuses on writing authentic emotion. Give it a listen.

Since the ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotations are all posted now, I'm running out of bonus content to show you. If you aren't aware, my website also has chapter-by-chapter annotations of ELANTRIS, the Mistborn trilogy, WARBREAKER, and "Defending Elysium." Additionally, the Library page has lots of sample chapters, the entire text of WARBREAKER, and deleted scenes from ELANTRIS, MISTBORN 1 and 2, WARBREAKER, and ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS.

It's this last category that I'd like to add to today. This isn't so much a deleted scene from THE WAY OF KINGS as it is two scenes from the version of the book that I wrote in 2003, which feature Szeth's introduction--before I decided to call him Szeth.

One of the big differences between the 2003 version of THE WAY OF KINGS and the published version was a massive restructuring of timelines. With Szeth, where he began in the old version is a combination of what became the prologue and the epilogue of his storyline in the new version. This happened across the board—for instance, Taln showing up in the epilogue of the book used to happen in the prologue. What happens at the end of Kaladin's flashback sequences in the published version was right near the beginning of where his story began in the old version.

For many reasons, I felt the book needed to be restructured so that I could dig into the character personalities in a different way. So in these scenes you will see things that are reminiscent of the ending of THE WAY OF KINGS as it's published. I suggest perhaps staying away from this until you've read the book.