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Mel Mudkiper posted:because I looked up wheel of time after finding out it had 14 books and then saw each book was like 500-600 pages and maybe you all are accustomed to it at this point but to an outsider a dude writing a 10,000+ story is kind of astounding It's a job, they work at it. Wheel of Time is actually even "larger" than the published works -- there's something like 10,000 pages of background notes etc. It seems like a lot but when you figure writing five pages a day, for twenty years, it adds up. It's easier to keep working steadily on something when you're getting paid for doing so. It seems kinda crazy yeah but then Tolkien did essentially the same thing -- there's like fifteen volumes now of additional Tolkien background notes that have been published. Tolkien and Jordan were both combat vets though (Jordan was a helicopter door gunner in viet nam) and I suspect in both cases the fantasy world was a way of dealing with the psychological trauma of combat. That said, Wheel of Time does have a lot of lovely filler but there are passages within it that I think even you might like, Mel -- primarily a very staccato, pointillistic way of describing battle scenes and some interesting depictions of the PoV of characters who are gradually (or rapidly?) going insane. With Sanderson I think it's more that he's just got that protestant work ethic and he treats it like a job and works at it with goals and timetables. He's very open about his writing process -- he seems to almost have it down to a kind of production line. It may not be artisanal but it's definitely professional. Also how the hell did you only just now find out about Wheel of Time, you've been here long enough to remember when it had 300+ page threads in this forum, I kinda don't believe you that you only just now googled it Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Nov 11, 2018 |
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Nov 11, 2018 18:18
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I mean I knew about wheel of time but I thought it had, like, seven books
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Nov 11, 2018 19:37
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I mean I knew about wheel of time but I thought it had, like, seven books 1996 called to let you know you are correct and they can't wait for the next book for all these plotlines to resolve!
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Nov 11, 2018 19:42
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I mean I knew about wheel of time but I thought it had, like, seven books It was originally envisioned as a trilogy. The publisher knew that Jordan was long-winded, and contracted 6 books.
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Nov 11, 2018 19:43
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I am sitting at a book store while my dog gets groomed. Might as well crack one of em open while I wait.
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Nov 11, 2018 19:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am sitting at a book store while my dog gets groomed. Might as well crack one of em open while I wait. The general consensus is it's a "start at the beginning and keep going till you feel like stopping" series. The first book is probably the strongest, maybe the third. Most people give up somewhere between books seven and ten. If you make it through to book 11 the quality curves back up again but there's no point in forcing yourself to get there.
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Nov 11, 2018 20:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The general consensus is it's a "start at the beginning and keep going till you feel like stopping" series. The first book is probably the strongest, maybe the third. Most people give up somewhere between books seven and ten. If you make it through to book 11 the quality curves back up again but there's no point in forcing yourself to get there. With all due respect I am only going for maybe 100 pages. I gave up on the presumption of actually finishing these things back with Gene Wolfe
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Nov 11, 2018 20:15
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Mel Mudkiper posted:With all due respect I am only going for maybe 100 pages. I gave up on the presumption of actually finishing these things back with Gene Wolfe Oh yeah sure. If you read up to Shadar Logoth in the first book - maybe 200 pages in or so? -- you'll know everything you need to know about the whole series, at least the Jordan-written parts (Sanderson has a noticeably different descriptive style -- more Lord of the Rings, less Apocalypse Now). The first 100 pages or so they're still in their home village and Jordan used a more "standard fantasy" style deliberately to make readers feel "at home". Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Nov 11, 2018 |
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Nov 11, 2018 20:17
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The first 100 pages or so they're still in their home village and Jordan used a more "standard fantasy" style deliberately to make readers feel "at home". Good to know, I was about to give up when I realized the protagonist was an awkward youth from a small village with a brave father and the first chapter felt like a countdown to "tragic origin"
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Nov 11, 2018 20:38
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The first book reused almost all the beats from the fellowship of the ring, but with a sexy wizardess instead of Gandalf. The shades/ring wraiths the ferry crossing, the number of adventurers, etc. It's so blatant. There's no ring, but there is a magic coin. All of it is lampshaded by the Wheel concept of recurring events, so LOTR and Wheel could coexist in the same universe. Some people might think that's cool. Around book 3, things get more original, and once the sexy spankings start up it's well into another weird place. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 11, 2018 |
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Nov 11, 2018 20:45
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BananaNutkins posted:The first book reused almost all the beats from the fellowship of the ring, but with a sexy wizardess instead of Gandalf. Yup. The counterpoint is that at the time having an actual female in actual charge making actual decisions in a genre fantasy novel was approximating the revolutionary. Whether you think that's still a thing worth caring about in 2018, or ever was for that matter, is debatable of course. That said, Jordan's more personal style does show up at a few points even early on in the first book:
some of them just don't work -- like, he tries to do some weird things with narrative order in the story section on the road to Caemlyn, but it doesn't come together and is just confusing instead of reflecting the protagonists' mental confusion. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Nov 11, 2018 |
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Nov 11, 2018 21:14
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Ok before I continue is the main character a chosen one and possibly the reincarnation of the old king dude from the prologue and is he tasked with fighting a returning and eternal evil
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Nov 11, 2018 21:17
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ok before I continue is the main character a chosen one and possibly the reincarnation of the old king dude from the prologue and is he tasked with fighting a returning and eternal evil Yup. It's a little more interesting than that. The original guy, Lews Therin, destroyed the world. So there's the question of whether Rand is going to do that again.
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Nov 11, 2018 21:18
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ok before I continue is the main character a chosen one and possibly the reincarnation of the old king dude from the prologue and is he tasked with fighting a returning and eternal evil Look, I told you it was pulp fantasy, what did you expect? What made it different at the time was the bit about how everyone in the setting views the return of said Chosen One as a bad thing and blames the Chosen One for loving it all up the last time. Again, revolutionary (within the genre) (at the time). Fantasy-novel-protagonist-as-vietnam-vet + gender_stuff. What if the Chosen One is . . . bad? If you're not a fan of the genre  it is what it is. It's got some good moments.
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Nov 11, 2018 21:20
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ok before I continue is the main character a chosen one and possibly the reincarnation of the old king dude from the prologue and is he tasked with fighting a returning and eternal evil Sword of Truth came out at the same time and was also a huge success. But Rand is about a thousand times better than Richard, since he actually makes a lot of mistakes, which both the text and the characters (good and evil both) call him out for. He's the chosen one, but he's not infallible Jesus like a lot of other fantasy protagonists.
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Nov 11, 2018 21:35
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Torrannor posted:Sword of Truth came out at the same time and was also a huge success. But Rand is about a thousand times better than Richard, since he actually makes a lot of mistakes, which both the text and the characters (good and evil both) call him out for. He's the chosen one, but he's not infallible Jesus like a lot of other fantasy protagonists. Jordan also codified in-universe reasons for plot coincidences, and used the repeated histories concept to throw tons of real-world references in but in a way that let him tweak and explore them.
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Nov 11, 2018 21:40
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omg I ended up reading a bit of Sanderson too. He is a much better writer.
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Nov 11, 2018 21:57
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Torrannor posted:Sword of Truth came out at the same time The first sword or truth book came out four years after the first WoT book. And they blatantly rip off half of the concepts of WoT, especially when you meet the Sisters of Light (plus their evil counterparts) in the second book.
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Nov 11, 2018 22:22
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The entire genre is incestuous to a shameful degree, and that's why I try to encourage people to read outside the genre if they want to write fantasy or sf. Brent Weeks cribs from the Wheel of Time ALOT in the last two Night Angel books. Scott Lynch was inspired by Final Fantasy 6. Joe Abercrombie is pretty savvy and steals from other genres to subvert fantasy genre expectation, but he still follows the hero's journey very blatantly in his first trilogy. I think where it all goes bad is when the writer doesnt consciously know that they are stealing from people who stole from other people ad infinitum. Successful genre writers typical innovate in a few small ways and evolve the genre incrementally. That concept generally doesnt sit well with readers and critics coming from other realms of literature, but the really successful genre writers acknowledge and embrace it.
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Nov 11, 2018 22:38
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BananaNutkins posted:The more words you have, the more detailed the world can be. A lot of fantasy reads are into that aspect. You can have a page and a half describing a chair if you want. Its almost like building a simulation or an open world game. This is one of the key differences of the genre. someone should tell that guy that hes writing fiction and all the details are just made up stuff
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Nov 11, 2018 23:27
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I tried Brent Weeks' Night Angel series since he apparently writes in a kind of Sanderson way and while it's kinda true I think it's also clear that he was still a bit in juvenile-power-fantasy mode. The prose quality was fine and easy to follow even in action scenes (this seems minor until you read something that does it really badly, and then you appreciate it) but the dialogue was reminiscent of some of the worst bits of WoT and a lot of the plot events are the kind of thing I would've thought was cool and edgy when I was in my late teens. Like, a step above Eragon - but not a very high step.
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Nov 11, 2018 23:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:omg His early books are a bit rough, but you can see him improve from book to book. A lot of it is his apparent willingness to accept criticism and a TON of it is just making GBS threads out so many pages that go through readers and editors he can’t help but improve. And his output is legendary. I’m pretty certain it was the first Legion novella that he wrote the entire first draft on a plane ride and it’s one of his best in my opinion.
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Nov 11, 2018 23:30
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bewilderment posted:I tried Brent Weeks' Night Angel series since he apparently writes in a kind of Sanderson way and while it's kinda true I think it's also clear that he was still a bit in juvenile-power-fantasy mode. The prose quality was fine and easy to follow even in action scenes (this seems minor until you read something that does it really badly, and then you appreciate it) but the dialogue was reminiscent of some of the worst bits of WoT and a lot of the plot events are the kind of thing I would've thought was cool and edgy when I was in my late teens. Yeah, I read through the Night Angel books and they’re... OK. Definitely a first effort sort of work. His Lightbringer series is much better. Like a huge leap better in my opinion. Far more intricately plotted, much deeper and sympathetic characters.
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Nov 11, 2018 23:34
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In my brief review of Sanderson and Jordan, Sanderson is miles away the better writer. Jordan seems to fail to realize that if text is uniformly thorough and detailed, it ends up creating a rhythm for the reader that is very alienating. It's hard to get a sense for how much seeing the black rider in the storm affected or frightened Rand because the narrative of seeing him is crafted in the same style of prose as the descriptions of the snow or the sturdy Westerners or Bel Tine. If everything is given the same narrative weight, its hard to judge the merit of what is being described. On the other hand, I thought the first chapter of The Way of Kinds was actually very well written. Its narrative matched the essence of events, and it allowed the small building of worldly details to naturally emerge in the action. Perhaps one day I will try to read it further.
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Nov 11, 2018 23:34
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Proteus Jones posted:His early books are a bit rough, but you can see him improve from book to book. A lot of it is his apparent willingness to accept criticism and a TON of it is just making GBS threads out so many pages that go through readers and editors he can’t help but improve. Sanderson is like someone took the adage that the first million words you write will be garbage and decided to just do a million a year to see how far he could get.
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Nov 12, 2018 00:06
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NinjaDebugger posted:Sanderson is like someone took the adage that the first million words you write will be garbage and decided to just do a million a year to see how far he could get. Yeah. I think if I'd read Sanderson at the age I first read Jordan I'd probably like his stuff, but 1) I've only read Sanderson's first couple novels where I think his prose was a lot weaker and 2) by the time I got to Sanderson I'd read so much other genre fantasy that I'd kinda lost interest. He's not bad he just strikes me as a bit too formulaic for my present tastes. I probably haven't given him a fair shake though.
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Nov 12, 2018 00:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:On the other hand, I thought the first chapter of The Way of Kinds was actually very well written. Its narrative matched the essence of events, and it allowed the small building of worldly details to naturally emerge in the action. Perhaps one day I will try to read it further. Some people hate the intro's of way of kings, since the first makes little sense until maybe book , and the second has been described as "videogamey" in how it lays it the mechanics of one aspect of the magic system. I think that second part is important, though, because it conforms to his philosophy. All of the magic systems he develops are rules based, and when it's used to do something new an unexpected he's rarely pulling it out of his rear end--it fits into the rules he's created. There's a pretty long lecture of his about this on youtube which explains it, but the end result is that most of the cool moments in the books feel earned in a way that they wouldn't if played fast and loose with the rules. If he seemed interesting, I recommend setting aside the Way of Kings for the moment (which owns, hard, but starts slow) in favor of a novella of his, The Emperor's Soul. You'll know whether or not you'll want to read an entire novel of his after finishing that, I think. (The audiobook versions of the Stormlight Archive are also great)
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Nov 12, 2018 03:06
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NinjaDebugger posted:Sanderson is like someone took the adage that the first million words you write will be garbage and decided to just do a million a year to see how far he could get. Didn't he write one or more of his unpublished novels before Elantris, too? Or am I mixing up the chronology?
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Nov 12, 2018 03:11
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Slanderer posted:Didn't he write one or more of his unpublished novels before Elantris, too? Or am I mixing up the chronology? It was in the double digits.
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Nov 12, 2018 03:42
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Elantris has a few neat ideas, but it's almost absurd how much he's improved as a writer since then.
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Nov 12, 2018 03:48
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hot date tonight! posted:Elantris has a few neat ideas, but it's almost absurd how much he's improved as a writer since then. Yeah, I came to Elantris after reading basically everything else cosmere-related and it was a struggle. Also, it's only vaguely relevant to the larger universe right now. I know eventually it will be but at the moment Warbreaker/White Sand/Sixth of the Dusk are probably all more important.
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Nov 12, 2018 03:54
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Mel Mudkiper posted:because I looked up wheel of time after finding out it had 14 books and then saw each book was like 500-600 pages and maybe you all are accustomed to it at this point but to an outsider a dude writing a 10,000+ story is kind of astounding An average novel is 90k words. A WoT or Sanderson doorstopper is a few times that, but let's look at that for a baseline. To write a 90k word novel in one year, you have to write the awe-inspiring, shocking, unbelievable workload of... two hundred and forty six words a day. For WoT/Sanderson levels, you could be looking at (gasp) maybe even a thousand words a day. Which, if you assume eight hours behind the keyboard, is a back-breaking hundred and twenty-five words an hour. Sanderson seems amazing because he actually treats writing like a full-time job, and we're accustomed to a ton of writers who don't and play up the drama of the job like they're Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain in Hades because they managed to sit down and work for an hour or two last Tuesday.
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Nov 12, 2018 04:02
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StonecutterJoe posted:An average novel is 90k words. A WoT or Sanderson doorstopper is a few times that, but let's look at that for a baseline. this... this is a deeply upsetting mentality
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Nov 12, 2018 04:14
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Genre fiction is just a whole different ball game to actual literature; think of it more like producing a TV show than putting your soul into a work of art.Proteus Jones posted:His Lightbringer series is much better. Like a huge leap better in my opinion. Far more intricately plotted, much deeper and sympathetic characters. Lightbringer's great if - like me - you are amused by absurd plot twists followed by ever more absurd plot twists. A lot of it is utter trash though.
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Nov 12, 2018 04:49
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BananaNutkins posted:Joe Abercrombie is pretty savvy and steals from other genres to subvert fantasy genre expectation, but he still follows the hero's journey very blatantly in his first trilogy. I feel as though this is intentional, though, as everything that's supposed to happen in that journey is flipped on its head at some point.
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Nov 12, 2018 06:19
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StonecutterJoe posted:An average novel is 90k words. A WoT or Sanderson doorstopper is a few times that, but let's look at that for a baseline. The job of a writer isn't the act of actually writing the words so much as it is knowing what words to write, and Sanderson is something of a failure in that regard because his breakneck writing pace comes at the cost of things like "characterization", "dialogue", "pacing", and "plot". The only two things he has going for him are his worldbuilding and his sheer pagecount, and the worldbuilding routinely comes back to bite him in the rear end because he always ends up spending a significant chunk of that pagecount describing it like he's writing a D&D Player's Handbook. It's not surprising at all that the best things he's ever written were the last three books of the Wheel of Time, where he got to use somebody else's characters, somebody else's plotting, and somebody else's worldbuilding. Sure, he's successful at what he does and lots of people love his books, but so what? McDonalds sells millions of hamburgers a year and nobody's calling them fine dining. Quantity != Quality.
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Nov 12, 2018 06:27
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Xenix posted:I feel as though this is intentional, though, as everything that's supposed to happen in that journey is flipped on its head at some point. Yeah that was how it played for me as well. He did it on purpose to maximize his chances for subversion - he wouldn't have had nearly as many opportunities with a non-traditional story, and people might not have understood what he was up to if he was throwing anti-tropes at an innovative fantasy plot structure. EDIT: ^^^^^^^^^^^ You sound like you haven't read Emperor's Soul, if only because you're saying that his WoT stuff is better. I agree with your criticisms of his writing as far as what his weaknesses are, but I don't think they're as bad as you're making them out to be, if only in comparison to other genre writers. I also think he's got a few strengths beyond worldbuilding, including being very attentive to detail when it comes to plotting and foreshadowing the ends of his books. This hurts him when it comes to his ability to pace the middle of books, to keep the reader interested in characters who fall away from the obviously main part of the plot line, and to develop characters beyond leveling-up to be able to beat the book boss. He's intentionally tried to work on these things in the last two SLA books, though with mixed success IMO. aparmenideanmonad fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 06:31
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That pace is more than a bit reductio ad absurdum--authors don't crank out final text on their first shot. Figure for a 100K word book you're going to need to write upwards of 300K between drafts, edits, and aborted plotlines. Then of course you need to conceive of the main story hooks, any secondary plotlines, and any worldbuilding details that feed into them. Plus characterization, etc. If you're from the outline school of writing you're doing this up front so you're burning a few months (but probably have it easier when it comes to hammer out the text). Which isn't to say authors need to be able to challenge Evelyn Wood for churning out text, but it's also not like they're sitting around building ships in a bottle in between words. ....well, unless you're GRRM, anyway.
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Nov 12, 2018 08:14
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Unless you're zelazny, in which case you can just dash out a first draft and have it be publishable
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Nov 12, 2018 08:15
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I finished Skyward and liked it a lot. Lots of unexpected subversion of common themes and YA tropes, great protagonist, interesting world. For some reason it also hit me a quite a bit emotionally too, which, while I like Sanderson's books a lot, isn't usually the case with his writing.
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