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I think sometimes fans and authors alike start blurring the line between 'anger' and 'disappointment/frustration' at writing speed or missed deadline. Would I be happy if i got a new Dresden book every 365 days like clockwork? Sure. Am I mad at Jim Butcher for writing other things and overall taking a bit longer to write Dresden? No, not at all. I have mild disappointment at best. I've found that expressing such disappointment online can lead to backlash from creators (or those close to them like family, or other authors) out of proportion to the expressed sentiment. I posted on the forum of a web comic I used to read once saying something to the effect of "still reading and enjoying the comic, but I sorta miss the old days when things were a little more surreal and 'out there' rather than the new style of being comical vignettes about the characters' daily lives" and the author's wife replied with this scathing report telling me that I can just stop reading or go back and read the archives and that the author is under no obligation to write the comic the way I prefer it and basically "how dare you have an opinion and post it on our discussion forums".
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May 21, 2015 11:21
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Now take Sanderson into that equation and realise that doing multiple series in parallel speeds poo poo up.
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May 21, 2015 11:26
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Rumda posted:Now take Sanderson into that equation and realise that doing multiple series in parallel speeds poo poo up. Only if you have enough ideas to create so many series and then actually keep them going at same time. Also, you may need mormon robot brains. mallamp fucked around with this message at 13:59 on May 21, 2015 |
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May 21, 2015 13:57
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Sanderson is basically telling the same story with same cast of characters while changing magic systems, though.
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May 21, 2015 15:05
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jivjov posted:I posted on the forum of a web comic I used to read once saying something to the effect of "still reading and enjoying the comic, but I sorta miss the old days when things were a little more surreal and 'out there' rather than the new style of being comical vignettes about the characters' daily lives" and the author's wife replied with this scathing report telling me that I can just stop reading or go back and read the archives and that the author is under no obligation to write the comic the way I prefer it and basically "how dare you have an opinion and post it on our discussion forums". I am about 99% sure I know which webcomic you're talking about, and that amuses me greatly.
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May 21, 2015 15:09
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anilEhilated posted:Sanderson is basically telling the same story with same cast of characters while changing magic systems, though. Some of his characters do repeat beats (the main character from Elantris and Way of Kings, for example) but there is a significant degree of easily distinguishable characters.
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May 21, 2015 15:20
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computer parts posted:Some of his characters do repeat beats (the main character from Elantris and Way of Kings, for example) but there is a significant degree of easily distinguishable characters. Sanderson likes to explore the theme of "discovering the [lost] truth of how the world's magic/history works" but I don't think that means he's always writing the same story.
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May 21, 2015 15:39
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Wittgen posted:The thing that consistently strikes me about reader complaints about writing speed is that they seem to dramatically underestimate how much time it takes to actually write a book. Gaiman is a bit out in cuckoo land when says that writers owe nothing whatsoever to their fans and any anger at missed deadlines is presumptuous. There's a core of truth there, though, in that people act like writers should be able to make the book faster by just trying harder. I'd love to see this, because there's no way GRRM is in the same category as Butcher. Butcher is a writing beast and GRRM is well known to be one of the slowest contemporary writers. I'd love to be proven wrong, though! Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 17:47 on May 21, 2015 |
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May 21, 2015 17:45
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Blasphemeral posted:I'd love to see this, because there's no way GRRM is in the same category as Butcher. Butcher is a writing beast and GRRM is well known to be one of the slowest contemporary writers. GRRM's books are like 3 times as long as a Dresden book, aren't they?
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May 21, 2015 18:13
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They wouldn't be if he got a decent editor.
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May 21, 2015 18:15
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Blasphemeral posted:I'd love to see this, because there's no way GRRM is in the same category as Butcher. Butcher is a writing beast and GRRM is well known to be one of the slowest contemporary writers. I'm kinda skeptical too because Jordan published three books in the same time period Martin took to publish one, despite literally dying after the second book. And Jordan's books are similarly long (and similarly in need of editing). The Gurm Is Slow. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 21, 2015 |
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May 21, 2015 18:27
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Now try being a Vernor Vinge fan.
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May 21, 2015 19:23
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docbeard posted:Now try being a Vernor Vinge fan. Oh come on, Vinge writes one every five years or so. If you don't expect more than that, it isn't disappointing. It helps that, with the exception of his newest book, he doesn't do sequels.
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May 21, 2015 19:59
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Rumda posted:Now take Sanderson into that equation and realise that doing multiple series in parallel speeds poo poo up. Sanderson does this by replacing characterization and dialogue with  -ing over the magic system. It's no surprise that he writes so much faster than anybody else; he's mostly writing glorified Player's Handbook fluff.
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May 21, 2015 20:09
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I wonder if the actual system of chemistry we have today would count as glorified Player's Handbook fluff.
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May 21, 2015 20:37
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I know everyone loves Sanderson but I really just can't get into him because it's like reading glorified Player's Handbook fluff. I got about two chapters into Way of Kings and he takes this actually interesting fight scene between a dude with gravity bending powers and a dude in magic armor and makes it completely soul-less. It's like reading an Ikea manual. Step one, tether yourself the ceiling. Step two, tether Enemy A to the ceiling. Step three, untether yourself and chop Enemy A from step 2 in half as you descend from Step one. Step four, repeat as necessary. WE GET IT BRANDON. Sorry, it's probably an unpopular opinion but while I can respect Sanderson a lot I can't make myself LIKE his books. They're better in audiobook format, though I managed to get through Mistborn series one and Elantris via audio, but trying to sit down and read them? Yuck. I play League of Legends with Jim occasionally and pester him for 'what he's working on now' hints, so here's two Peace Talks teasers: Maggie makes pancakes.  Ebenezer and Thomas talk family. 
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May 21, 2015 21:46
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mistaya posted:Ebenezer and Thomas talk family. About loving time. Christ it pissed me off so bad that Harry barely seemed to acknowledge this.
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May 21, 2015 21:48
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mistaya posted:I know everyone loves Sanderson but I really just can't get into him because it's like reading glorified Player's Handbook fluff. I got about two chapters into Way of Kings and he takes this actually interesting fight scene between a dude with gravity bending powers and a dude in magic armor and makes it completely soul-less. It's like reading an Ikea manual. Step one, tether yourself the ceiling. Step two, tether Enemy A to the ceiling. Step three, untether yourself and chop Enemy A from step 2 in half as you descend from Step one. Step four, repeat as necessary. Nah, it's pretty well-agreed that chapter is pretty much the worst videogame tutorial level poo poo he's written. It's supposed to show that Szeth really understand what he's doing, when nobody else does, but it really fails at that. Rest of the novel is a lot better. You should try reading The Emperor's Soul instead.
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May 21, 2015 22:06
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Tunicate posted:Nah, it's pretty well-agreed that chapter is pretty much the worst videogame tutorial level poo poo he's written. It's supposed to show that Szeth really understand what he's doing, when nobody else does, but it really fails at that. Rest of the novel is a lot better. Yeah, I actually skip through Sanderson's fight scenes these days and I did enjoy most of the rest of WoK.
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May 21, 2015 22:11
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mistaya posted:I know everyone loves Sanderson but I really just can't get into him because it's like reading glorified Player's Handbook fluff. I got about two chapters into Way of Kings and he takes this actually interesting fight scene between a dude with gravity bending powers and a dude in magic armor and makes it completely soul-less. It's like reading an Ikea manual. Step one, tether yourself the ceiling. Step two, tether Enemy A to the ceiling. Step three, untether yourself and chop Enemy A from step 2 in half as you descend from Step one. Step four, repeat as necessary. Sanderson's best books are his short ones, read The Emperor's Soul or his new one Perfect State. They are so very good, and so worth your time.
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May 22, 2015 01:45
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mistaya posted:I know everyone loves Sanderson but I really just can't get into him because it's like reading glorified Player's Handbook fluff. I got about two chapters into Way of Kings and he takes this actually interesting fight scene between a dude with gravity bending powers and a dude in magic armor and makes it completely soul-less. It's like reading an Ikea manual. Step one, tether yourself the ceiling. Step two, tether Enemy A to the ceiling. Step three, untether yourself and chop Enemy A from step 2 in half as you descend from Step one. Step four, repeat as necessary. Yeah like everybody said, the first scene of Way of Kings is terrible even to people who like his books. He shakes it off fast though, the rest of the book is actually good (for people who actually like any Sanderson) and from there the second book is even better than the (already good) first. A lot of people who found Shallan's plot boring/irritating in the first book ended up liking her the most by the end of the second, for example. Out of curiosity, did you read the whole WoK book or stop there? If you didn't, it might be worth giving the rest of the book a fair shot before deciding not to read the series, since something like that prologue never happens again. Emperor's Soul and his other short stories are definitely some of his best works though. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 04:59 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 04:55
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ImpAtom posted:About loving time. Christ it pissed me off so bad that Harry barely seemed to acknowledge this. Aye. I was afraid this was going to lead to some dumb forced dramatic irony confrontation down the road.
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May 22, 2015 05:22
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Wolpertinger posted:Yeah like everybody said, the first scene of Way of Kings is terrible even to people who like his books. He shakes it off fast though, the rest of the book is actually good (for people who actually like any Sanderson) and from there the second book is even better than the (already good) first. A lot of people who found Shallan's plot boring/irritating in the first book ended up liking her the most by the end of the second, for example. Out of curiosity, did you read the whole WoK book or stop there? If you didn't, it might be worth giving the rest of the book a fair shot before deciding not to read the series, since something like that prologue never happens again. Which goes back to the first rule of reading fantasy: Always skip the prologues. No matter the novel, a prologue inevitably makes the novel worse. In terms of pacing, dramatic revelations, and thematic developments, a prologue is always janky. Harry Potter's a great example. Chop off the useless intro with Dumbledore being all mysterious with Baby Harry, and the beginning of the book gets a whole lot stronger. The Way Of Kings is unusual only in that it starts with two prologues to skip.
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May 22, 2015 07:58
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Tunicate posted:Which goes back to the first rule of reading fantasy: Eh. The Potter prologue is fine. So is the one in Game of Thrones.
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May 22, 2015 10:01
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Today I realized that there are more than the three Sandman Slim novels that I read a while ago. While those books didn't blow me away like the Dresden Files I enjoyed them, since I liked that specific fantasy-mix (Urban fantasy, with christian mythologie and kitchen sink attached) and the over-the-top action. Are the latter three books as good as or better/worse than the first three?
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May 22, 2015 14:14
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Blasphemeral posted:I'd love to see this, because there's no way GRRM is in the same category as Butcher. Butcher is a writing beast and GRRM is well known to be one of the slowest contemporary writers. GRRM, Rowling, Butcher, and Rothfuss were who I looked at. They all hover around 100,000 words per year. Wise Man's Fear was 400,000 words and took 4 years. According to my kindle, it's a little more than three times as long as Skin Game, which took about a year and a half. So similar pace. Harry Potter ended up being 1.1 million words in 10 years. GRRM is a weird case because his pace changed so dramatically half way through. At the time of Dance With Dragon's publishing, he was clocking in at 118,000 words per year (1.7 million words over 15 years), but that is obviously dropping every day. It will jump back up when he publishes another huge chunk of words, but his final pace will no doubt be lower than 118k. (A source for some numbers I used.) I didn't look at Jordan originally , but I checked now and wow. He actually wrote incredibly fast. Like, over 230,000 words per year. (I used wikipedia's word counts and publishing dates, but only for the non-Sanderson stories.) Amazing. Of course, Jordan still got a ton of poo poo for taking too long to get the next book out. I didn't look at Alera books, but given Butcher tended to publish one approximately 120k word Dresden novel a year regardless of other projects, I think that shows authors are not at all lying when they say side projects don't slow down their main series. There are definitely variations among authors when it comes to writing speed (holy poo poo Jordan and Sanderson), but I think this is not the main factor in how fast writers are perceived to be. Rowling and Butcher don't get as much poo poo for writing slow as GRRM and Rothfuss, but the writing pace isn't that hugely different. The latter, however, publish much bigger books more infrequently. They also made and broke promises about release dates. These factors seem much more important to public perception than the actual writing speed.
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May 22, 2015 15:53
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Tunicate posted:Which goes back to the first rule of reading fantasy: I find prologues interesting because they're usually totally opaque, you have no idea what's going on. They're fun to go back and read at the end of the book or series and see all the details and know what they mean now. Other than that they usually don't add anything to the story per se.
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May 22, 2015 16:12
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The prologue to the first wheel of time book is very confusing and completely forgettable the first time you read it. The second time through though its like "holy poo poo, please write more of this!" I would buy and read a series about the age of legends and the war of power so goddamn fast... Edit : vvv i think we are saying basically the same thing. Im a fan of the entire series and love the prologue, was just pointing out that on a first read its confusing as hell and doesnt make sense until a reread much later into the series. Its kind of like rands trip through the rings in Rhuidean. It was confusing to me at the time but on rereads was incredibly engrossing. Keystoned fucked around with this message at 23:50 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 16:49
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The prologue to the Eye of the World is hugely important to introducing tropes and structure we take for granted. New readers who pick up The Eye of the World as their first foray into epic fantasy are provided a sense of scale and given an example of exactly how powerful Aes Sedai are. Think about how afraid everyone is through the first book of male channelers. Without that first scene with Ishmael and Lews Therin you'd have little to relate that to. After Lews Therin, quite madly, splits the earth down to the mantle and builds his own personal volcano, the fear is justified. Equally important, the book -begins- with an ending, but not The Ending, which sets one of the major themes of the series. This is not just the story of the end of the world, that already happened, is happening, will happen again. It's well done. Say what you like about the later books, Eye of the World is great, and part of what makes it great is the Prologue.
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May 22, 2015 19:01
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Tunicate posted:The Way Of Kings is unusual only in that it starts with two prologues to skip. I uh, kinda put it down after that thinking the rest of it was going to be the same. I suppose I should pick it back up off my shelf. I actually liked the first prologue with the whole giant death bugs and swords thing, I'm usually ok with cryptic hinty prologues like that because they're fun to go read later once you know what's going on. I just really didn't like Szeth's intro chapter. The first chapter of a book is really important, I don't know how that one got messed up so badly if the rest isn't like that.
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May 22, 2015 19:34
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I think the reason the Szeth prologue (and to a lesser extent, his interludes) feels like a tutorial is so that the reader can fully understand something that starts to happen later in the book, when none of the characters involved would have the appropriate knowledge. Doesn't make it good, but Sanderson probably felt like it was necessary. And, I may be in the minority on this, but I hate super-cryptic prologues. I'd rather have something like the Szeth prologue where the implications are quickly apparent, as opposed to something that takes the entire book, or even the entire series to fully appreciate.
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May 22, 2015 23:08
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^^^ This, plus the reader is in the dark at that time, as well.mistaya posted:I know everyone loves Sanderson but I really just can't get into him because it's like reading glorified Player's Handbook fluff. I got about two chapters into Way of Kings and he takes this actually interesting fight scene between a dude with gravity bending powers and a dude in magic armor and makes it completely soul-less. It's like reading an Ikea manual. Step one, tether yourself the ceiling. Step two, tether Enemy A to the ceiling. Step three, untether yourself and chop Enemy A from step 2 in half as you descend from Step one. Step four, repeat as necessary. Seems to me that you're  pretty hard over it.
coyo7e fucked around with this message at 01:48 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 01:44
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cybertier posted:Today I realized that there are more than the three Sandman Slim novels that I read a while ago. Book 3 is, by far, the worst in the series, so if you liked it, you'll love the rest.
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May 23, 2015 01:59
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The objection is not to him using the prologue to explain Szeth's powers, the objection is to fact that he wrote the equivalent of "Joren the mage hurled a fireball through the door. His fireball was a spell with a range of 400 feet that would explode into a sphere of flame 40 feet in diameter when it reached Joren's target. The guards fired back with crossbows, so Joren raised a wind wall in front of him. A wind wall is a spell with a range of 100 feet that creates a vertical curtain of upward flowing air that is 10 feet long, 5 feet high, and 2 feet thick. The wind wall redirected the arrows..."
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May 23, 2015 02:33
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Khizan posted:The objection is not to him using the prologue to explain Szeth's powers, the objection is to fact that he wrote the equivalent of "Joren the mage hurled a fireball through the door. His fireball was a spell with a range of 400 feet that would explode into a sphere of flame 40 feet in diameter when it reached Joren's target. The guards fired back with crossbows, so Joren raised a wind wall in front of him. A wind wall is a spell with a range of 100 feet that creates a vertical curtain of upward flowing air that is 10 feet long, 5 feet high, and 2 feet thick. The wind wall redirected the arrows..." While he did do that with the Lashings the stuff about Shardplate and Shardblades are about as exposition-y as your average fantasy story (I literally just re-read it). Even with the Lashings part if he hadn't said "there are 3 types" I don't think most people would care.
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May 23, 2015 03:34
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Anias posted:Hahaha Holding up WoT as an example of great writing is a good way to make the other side's point for them Don't get me wrong, I read the books and got some modicum of distraction from them, but they're the craft's equivalent of Dragon Ball Z
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May 23, 2015 04:45
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tentacles posted:Holding up WoT as an example of great writing is a good way to make the other side's point for them I'd say they're a little better than that. Dragon Ball Z is like the David Eddings or Mercedes Lackey level fantasy authors. I mean sure yeah WoT isn't 'great writing' but it's not pure shlock either.
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May 23, 2015 05:47
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I think its really hard to gauge the Wheel of Time series fairly given that Robert Jordan died before it could be finished. I do think there was a fair bit that definitely should have been carved back just to stop the bloat (the entire 10th book was rear end, for example). I know that Robert Jordan had the final outline sorted out before he died, but we'll never really know how well he would have done it himself had he lived long enough to finish it.
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May 23, 2015 06:00
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Wolpertinger posted:I'd say they're a little better than that. Dragon Ball Z is like the David Eddings or Mercedes Lackey level fantasy authors. I mean sure yeah WoT isn't 'great writing' but it's not pure shlock either. Haha. I remember reading a couple of Eddings' books and coming away confused as to why I was supposed to care. Point conceded!
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May 23, 2015 06:25
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Wittgen posted:author writing speeds
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May 23, 2015 06:41
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