Why is his prose so fucking boring?
He writes technical manuals disguised as novels. It's serviceable and he is very much a working author rather than an artist. I shall never forgive him for what he did to wheel of time's prose.
>>25154132qrd? i'm on book 6 and worried about the later books.
>>25154155>i'm on book 6my condolences
>>25154159lol what is that supposed to mean
>>25154155At one point, he has (I believe) Siuan Sanche state "That's some weird stuff." I did not finish the series. I couldn't deal with his prose. That's how rough it was. It's noticeable. I fondly recall rereading and realising Rand was channelling to heal Bela early on, or him worrying in book 2 that his boots might be power wrought and it made him uncomfortable not realising that's not a thing. Just showing Jordan's ability to write little burrs and bits of realism in. Things a yokel farmboy might actually think.>>25154248You're entering the pacing slump. It sets a lot of things up over a while but nothing really happens and then a million things happen at once .
>>25154043Well he is a fucking mormon for starters. He writes YA literature disguised as adult books. You need to review your taste if you’re an adult and you think this is peak fantasy.
>>25154043I remember trying to read mistborn and I got up to the point where he had his first battle, and he described literally every action in completely plain language and I utterly disengaged from it.
>>25154043It's writing for the lowest grade of midwits.
Why are you even reading him?
>>25154633I haven't read him. Was it Abercrombie-ish, or worse?
>>25154132I agree. What he did to Mat was inexcusable
>>25154633What's the right way to write a battle?
>>25155802In terms of what the characters feel and experience, not what the battle actually is
>>25155555worse>>25155802I don't know the right way to write a battle. Obviously there's multiple effective ways. But like anything in a book, I think a completely flat description of the exact events as they happen is both unnecessary and terribly dull (except for when you need to know such intimate details as where someone's arm was placed). Play with sentence length, tempo, paint in broad strokes, do something other than literally just writing a blow-by-blow detail of the very specific things that happened. If you are going to give that much niggling, specific detail, save it for the important battles, at least.
>>25155880>>25155896Book reccs to study this?
>>25155897Anon, put yourself in your character's skin. How would you feel in a life-and-death fight?
>>25154043Stormbreaker was pretty based
>>25155907Never been there (thankfully I suppose).
>>25154043Just read the Wired article on Brandon Sanderson. His writing is so mediocre and soulless because he himself is your stereotypical backroom D&D playing nerd with no pathos.
>>25155995The funniest part about this article is that the author literally breaks into tears over how far literature has declined while he's visiting Sanderson's house.
>>25155995>As I build books, God builds peopleactually goes pretty hardnot bad, sando
>>25154043Sanderson originally intended to write a series to rival Song of Ice and Fire, but now that he realized Martin will never actually finish his books he stopped trying.
>>25154132He writes rpg sourcebooks but has no clue how to tell a story.
>>25154043Mormons can't write.That's it.
>>25155802To not write one. Or write it the way Tolkien does when he doesn’t do the former.
>>25156710Too scared of making God mad
>>25156280Is he still mad he hasn't god a video game deal?
>>25155802I love Wolfe's way of writing action, which is to write very little of it even when it is happening.
The magic systems he made were pretty cool. I like the general idea of Cosmere more than the execution. His prose is somehow worse than a video game instruction manual, and he takes forever to get anywhere in his books. I swear the Stormlight books can be pared down to ~300 pages and you wouldn't miss anything The Sanderbros would probably miss muh Sandersnatch though >>25156885No he's happy Apple is giving him money for SA and Mistborn movies/shows
>>25154043Better than Robert Jordan
>>25154132>I shall never forgive him for what he did to wheel of time's proseWheel of time has famously bad prose, it's full of mechanical filler
>>25155802To leave much of it to the imaginationJust give a few highlights and the final result
>>25155802I think the fight scenes in Dune are decent examples>Paul vs Jamis>Paul vs Feyd>Sarduakar vs Frementhe knife fights are detailed and full of Paul's internal monologue but decisive enough they feel realistic and don't drag onthe big battle at the end is presented as a description of the wurm riders approaching, the Sarduakar's reaction, and the actual fight is left to the imagination
>indigo has his Cosmere stuff on sale >I'm thinking about buying physical copies of them>despite already having the books on an ereaderHis books are like crack. I know they're shit, but I can't help but throw money at muh Sandershelf
>>25158037Mechanical in what sense?
>>25159166he has incredible amounts of repetition*tug tug**smooth smooth**folds her arms beneath her breasts*duplicate descriptionsdescriptions with no real thematic function at alljust a lot of it's probably a function of having such a long series>what someone might writeRand entered the hall where the Aes Sedai waited. They were watching him, cool and unreadable. “You sent for me?” he said.>what Robert Jordan might writeRand al'Thor paused at the tall, carved doors before pushing one open just enough to slip through. The hinges did not creak - well-oiled, of course. Inside, the long chamber stretched ahead of him, its stone walls hung with red and gold tapestries depicting scenes he did not recognize.A cluster of Aes Sedai stood near the far end of the room, their shawls draped just so, fringes marking their Ajahs. None of them moved at his entrance, though he could feel their eyes on him.One adjusted her shawl slightly. Another smoothed her skirts. A third exchanged a glance with the others, cool and unreadable.Rand became aware of the echo of his own boots on the polished floor and forced himself not to slow. He would not show hesitation. Not here. Not to them.The air felt still, as though waiting.He stopped a few paces away, aware of how they had arranged themselves - just enough to make him stand alone before them. Deliberate. It had to be deliberate.“You sent for me?” he said.
>>25159197This sounds like chatGPT
>>25159625I mean, what Robert Jordan might write
>>25159197>>what someone might writethis is acceptable but reads like pulp instead of "high fantasy">>what Robert Jordan might writeI can easily fix your passage by removing the most egregious filler:>Rand al'Thor paused at the tall, carved doors before pushing one open just enough to slip through. Inside, the long chamber stretched ahead of him, its stone walls hung with red and gold tapestries depicting scenes he did not recognize.>A cluster of Aes Sedai stood near the far end of the room, their shawls draped just so, fringes marking their Ajahs. None of them moved at his entrance, though he could feel their eyes on him.>Rand became aware of the echo of his own boots on the polished floor and forced himself not to slow. He would not show hesitation. Not here. Not to them.>He stopped a few paces away, aware of how they had arranged themselves - just enough to make him stand alone before them. Deliberate. It had to be deliberate.>“You sent for me?” he said.
>>25155802I really do think Tolkien does it best. Read the way he writes the "Nirnaeth Arnoediad" at the beginning of The Children of Hurin, there is a pacing to the way the flow of the battle is described, and when the more personal elements are described. There is something about it that excites the imagination. I'll never forget the imagery of Fingon's fall; the imagery of his helm splitting, and his fallen banner, it's so evokative.
>>25159724Robert Jordan's prose is not bad in isolation, most of the time. I won't say it's great or anything, but I'd rate it as easily above Sanderson's. I'd say Jordan's problem is more one of accumulation over a long series. He has some annoying habits, none of which are fatal in themselves:1. The overuse of the same repetitive idioms/physical actions/whatever 2. A lingering on mentioning women's thighs/breasts because it's vaguely horny, including coming up with some pretty contrived situations to be mentioning them all the time (like Elayne joining a circus and doing a highwire act in tights in what is a high medieval setting)3. Characters getting flanderized over time (Especially bad with Nynaeve, when you have a large cast of characters you tend to give each one less depth)4. Too much interior voice (the example passage the anon gave shows some of it, the 'not here, not to them' and 'deliberate, it had to be deliberate' stuff. This is fine in small doses, but it gets very repetitive to hear the same interior thoughts all the time, and sometimes Jordan really rambles on with this sort of useless interior fluff for like, pagesThere's probably other problems I can name. It's never so bad that you can isolate individual passages and be like "This killed it for me!" for the most part. But encountering the same repetitive problems over and over again over thousands and thousands of pages begins to take its toll
>>25159958>Elayne joining a circus and doing a highwire act in tights in what is a high medieval settingYou're kidding, right? I mean, you ARE kidding, right?
>>25160358Oh, were you not aware of that? I thought it was pretty obvious. Some of the female characters in one of the books are hitchhiking across a country, low on resources. They join up with a traveling circus and for most of the book do wacky circus hijinks wearing costumes of various degrees of lewdness. And yes, Elayne literally does a highwire act while wearing spangled tights.
>>25160527Sorry, I meant "infamous" not "obvious"
>>25154043Because these books are just like fast food, they have to fill your belly and thats it, zero nutrients just a bunch of trash put together
>>25155802Tolkien style just tell us who the winner is and move on, its not a fucking anime fight
>>25161113...that's not how Tolkien wrote fights and battles.
>>25154043>genre popcorn fiction>mid proseshocking
>>25161113pretty sure this is absolutely not how the battle of the ents is recanted in two towers, but nice try, poser
>>25158035I know. At least things actually happen in Sanderson’s books. Jordan’s books concern people washing pots and walking down roads for 900 pages.
>>25161654It's not how any of the fights or battles went, really. I think the anon must be thinking exclusively of Bilbo's experience during the Battle of Five Armies where he gets knocked out and then wakes up after the battle, because that's the only one I can think of that might actually qualify for his statement
>>25154633I had the exact same experience, I've had some problems with his writing up to that point but it was readable, but when I got to the fight scene it was beyond bad, and marvel/anime as fuck, I've never read anything so bad before.I did the mistake of trying his the way of kings book until once again I got to the first fight scene and it was exactly the same, the guy didn't improve at all in all those years, he's like a fast food chain, releasing trash after trash while other authors are like a high quality restaurant that you have to wait a while to get some good food.
Abercrombie has the best fight scenes I've read.
>>25159166There's one part, I don't have the screenshot, where there are three characters having dialogue and each line follows the same format:>"quotation">he said>his voice was x. Like a yLiterally the exact same sentence copy-pasted three times telling you in a clunky manner the physical objects (flute, tree, and I forget the other thing) and traits (kind, strong) Sanderson associates with the voice he imagines in his head for the character.He tells you the story in a functional maner, but seems to pay very little mind to the act and form of how it's told, as long as everything he wants to tell is on the page.And then you've got absurd reddit-isms in the later books like the therapist scene, but as I understand these have been a recent thing.
>>25155802The Iliad does it right.
