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Isn't this the part of the thread where BOTL would yeet in and exasperatedly tell us enjoying something mindlessly is bullshit?
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Nov 24, 2019 20:14
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 23:07 |
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Rothfuss can write lyrically. I don't think there is a great argument against that. His issue has always been content. He seems like a proficient technical writer.
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Nov 24, 2019 22:29
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“Stop!” Kvothe’s voice struck the air like a commandment,
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Nov 24, 2019 22:42
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Benson Cunningham posted:Rothfuss can write lyrically. I don't think there is a great argument against that. His issue has always been content. He seems like a proficient technical writer. An extremely lyrical fart. He writes like a 20 year old poet assured of the value of his “lyricism” because he’s too ignorant to know any better. Why do you think he’s written nothing since?
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Nov 24, 2019 23:05
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Patrick Rothfuss writes about as poetically as you can expect from someone who clearly hasn’t read any poetry.
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Nov 25, 2019 00:13
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i went through a stage of writing like rothfuss and it comes from writers' group people always telling you how lyrical your prose is (with no other feedback because the rest of it is crap) so you just focus on making your prose as densely lyrical as possible, without ever bothering to learn any of the other storytelling skills like plot, characterisation, dialogue, or the virtues of brevity and subtlety, all of which skills i now work into forums posts about my hollering breasts and the vag that never sleeps
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Nov 25, 2019 01:11
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Doctor Faustine posted:Patrick Rothfuss writes about as poetically as you can expect from someone who clearly hasn’t read any poetry.
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Nov 25, 2019 01:13
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Benson Cunningham posted:Rothfuss can write lyrically. I don't think there is a great argument against that. His issue has always been content. He seems like a proficient technical writer. What defines "lyrically" and how is it effective as a style in prose compared to music? I thought the same too, until you start looking at it from a critical perspective and then it comes off like a guy huffing his own farts about how poetic he is and writing some tumblr level purple prose. I knew someone who was an aspiring author who worked with an editor. At one point the editor marked a passage comparing a hippo wallowing in mud to something. The editor asked if he had ever actually seen a hippo wallow in mud, and when he got a "no" told the author to cut that part since he is trying to use descriptions of something he's never seen. It's like that for Rothfuss, only the editor asked "Is Denna and Kvothes creepy dynamic based on something real" and Rothfuss starts ranting about that whore from High School and The Hobbit and the editor quietly backs away and writes "No notes" on the page. pentyne fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 01:15
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I would describe his style as more singsong than I would lyrical tbh. I might be biting BotL's steez here(I think this was a point he made once, anyway) but when you step back and look at it his prose is actually overall very uniform and, most importantly, frictionless in terms of rhythm, which creates the illusion of lyricism. I think the lack of friction is the real secret to his success, especially when it comes to tricking people who really ought to know better
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Nov 25, 2019 02:27
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fauna posted:i went through a stage of writing like rothfuss and it comes from writers' group people always telling you how lyrical your prose is (with no other feedback because the rest of it is crap) so you just focus on making your prose as densely lyrical as possible, without ever bothering to learn any of the other storytelling skills like plot, characterisation, dialogue, or the virtues of brevity and subtlety, all of which skills i now work into forums posts about my hollering breasts and the vag that never sleeps He writes like all his training came from undergrad creative writing classes, where your positive feedback is from other novices and negative feedback often isn't allowed or is nonsensical. You're going to hear 'lyrical' a lot if the frame of reference is genre fiction.
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Nov 25, 2019 02:32
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It wasn’t a particularly beautiful sword, not ornate or eye-catching. It was menacing, in a way. The same way a tall cliff is menacing. It was grey and unblemished and cold to the touch. It was sharp as shattered glass. Carved into the black wood of the mounting board was a single word: Folly.
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Nov 25, 2019 03:54
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You could cut that down to like two sentences and drop all of the passive verbs at the same time.
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Nov 25, 2019 04:29
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Not to mention good luck reading anything carved into black wood. What pisses me off the most about that line is how much he got caught up in his own 'poetic' nonsense while trying to make the sword sound scary. 'In a way' takes the teeth out of just about anything you'd written before it. In second place... if I recall, this part was being narrated from the perspective of the storyteller guy in the bar, right? Unless he's reaching out and groping it he has no way to describe it as 'cold to the touch' (which metal generally is) or have any way to judge how sharp it is. There's a certain class of writer that just can't get out of their own rear end and remember not to convey details their narrator has no way of knowing because they're so obsessed with how clever and pretty their text is even when it has less business than normal being fancy.
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Nov 25, 2019 04:53
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something about comparing a sword to a "tall cliff" just makes me sad, it's just so lifeless and weak
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Nov 25, 2019 08:22
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Sham bam bamina! posted:“Stop!” Kvothe’s voice struck the air like a commandment,
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Nov 25, 2019 08:58
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A command adjacent strong suggestion.
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Nov 25, 2019 09:41
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my bony fealty posted:something about comparing a sword to a "tall cliff" just makes me sad, it's just so lifeless and weak Same with the sharpness comparison to shattered glass. Just really boring and unremarkable, especially since both the cliff and glass are things that would usually be dangerous due to accidents, rather than someone deliberately hitting another person with a weapon. But I guess that makes sense with how Rothfuss' books don't really have a plot, Kvothe just stumbles from incident to incident and there's hundreds of pages of disconnected anecdotes.
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Nov 25, 2019 12:56
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kvothe shits the bed: a tragedy in three parts (80,000 words)
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Nov 25, 2019 13:07
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It was the patient cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to parp
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Nov 25, 2019 14:11
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Patrat posted:This is not entirely true, my dad is the person who recommended the novels to me. Admittedly he did not then go on about the music being well written in particular, but he is a semi professional musician who actually gets paid to play the lute and he was at the very least not sufficiently offended by the music bits to be turned off the books. This has really nothing to do with how much Rothfuss knows about music or not. Which he knows absolutely nothing and it's plainly clear. He never actually does anything with the music that might betray more than a surface level understanding at best, so there's very little to get offended by. Except for the note that said SAD. Dirt Road Junglist posted:Isn't this the part of the thread where BOTL would yeet in and exasperatedly tell us enjoying something mindlessly is bullshit? There is, fortunately, nothing wrong with enjoying something mindlessly. pentyne posted:It's like that for Rothfuss, only the editor asked "Is Denna and Kvothes creepy dynamic based on something real" and Rothfuss starts ranting about that whore from High School and The Hobbit and the editor quietly backs away and writes "No notes" on the page. Please, don't denigrate Rothfuss like this. No editor ever looked at Rothfuss's work, as intended.
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Nov 25, 2019 15:14
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It doesn't matter whether he knows anything about music. All that matters is that he panders to people that know music. It's like how he can declare a feminist and everything he writes is accepted because he's on their team. Ascribe everything he'd written to [some author feminists hate] and it'd be derided as misogynistic garbage.
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Nov 25, 2019 17:58
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Patware posted:'cold to the touch' (which metal generally is) Also grey, like steel tools tend to be, and unblemished, like cared-for or unused steel can be. The entire sentence is a waste.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:00
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Isn't calling a sword sharp as shattered glass calling it dull?
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Nov 26, 2019 02:35
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Nerdburger_Jansen posted:Isn't calling a sword sharp as shattered glass calling it dull? Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 03:29
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Nerdburger_Jansen posted:Isn't calling a sword sharp as shattered glass calling it dull? Couldn't be duller than the metaphor itself.
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Nov 26, 2019 04:26
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It's not even a metaphor; it's a direct physical comparison. The sharp thing is as sharp as the other sharp thing. Even the cliff image tries harder.
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Nov 26, 2019 04:35
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Swords of legend and broken beer bottles both do 1d6 slashing damage
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Nov 26, 2019 04:45
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the sword was as sharp as a knife
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Nov 26, 2019 08:14
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kvothe's dick was as hard as an erection
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Nov 26, 2019 13:03
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I just started reading The Name of the Wind and got to the chapter's where Kvothe starts talking about his early life. Is this book The Never Ending Story about why Kvothe is awesome? Kvothe: "I don't want to talk about my past!!!!" Chronicler: "Oh PLEASE. People say you're awesome!" Kvothe: "NO" Chronicler: "PLEASE. Some people say you're a dick" Kvothe: "Well, OK, but it'll take me 3 days."
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Nov 26, 2019 17:36
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yes. it only gets worse. stop now while you still can. it is hundreds of pages of horny male wish fulfillment fantasy and your life will be better if you drop it
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Nov 26, 2019 18:29
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No keep going! How will you see someone drop the whole point of their entire work between books so quickly if you stop now?
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Nov 26, 2019 22:32
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Solice Kirsk posted:No keep going! How will you see someone drop the whole point of their entire work between books so quickly if you stop now? The point is dropped right after the "bloodless" deconstruction, which may have been a decent short story standalone.
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Nov 26, 2019 22:37
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The soft voice went as hard as a rod of Ramston steel. “You have a good eye for detail, Mola. No, he has not. Now, what would you do if E’lir Kvothe reassured you that that he has no need for such things? He claims to have self-control like a bar of Ramston steel and will not flinch when you stitch him.” I was clever, a burgeoning hero with an Alar like a bar of Ramston steel. My Alar was like a blade of Ramston steel. As I’ve already said, a gram is not particularly difficult to make if you have the proper equipment, a schema, and an Alar like a blade of Ramston steel. Nobody believed that I’d traded a cupped handful of my own fresh blood to a demon in exchange for an Alar like a blade of Ramston steel.
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Nov 26, 2019 23:30
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The soft voice went as hard as a rod of Ramston steel. Did you buy the ebook just to Ctrl+f? There are better things to read. There are far more awful docs to prepare. ShamBam I care and am concerned about your well being.
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Nov 27, 2019 00:35
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So an Alar is a dick, right
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Nov 27, 2019 05:35
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The soft voice went as hard as a rod of Ramston steel. Now this is some real page 69 content 
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Nov 27, 2019 06:08
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Sham bam bamina! posted:You guys don't seem to appreciate how goddamn stupid this one is. Patrick Rothfuss casts Power Word Tortured Prose.
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Nov 27, 2019 06:30
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I've got balls of Ramston steel steel steel
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Nov 27, 2019 06:34
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 23:07 |
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my bony fealty posted:yes. it only gets worse. stop now while you still can. So are the Witcher novels, but they're much more entertaining and spawned a surprisingly well-written videogame series.
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Nov 27, 2019 06:42
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