Forums » Reading Corner » Read Thread

It's mandatory that you build the world, but your reader shouldn't be spoonfed your notes, they should experience the world as if they were there. If there's a SUPER cool fact about your world that you want the reader to experience, bring the POV character into contact with it and if you can't find a way to show the POV character every detail about the cool thing, then the reader isn't meant to know every detail.

This does a pretty good job of summarizing my thoughts on Sanderson.

Don't entierly agree with the link, but I'll save that for a sanderson discussion. The Way of Kings stories and The .Recknores are better

I thought The Way of Kings contained the cringiest dialogue not intended to be cringey, that I had ever seen. Seriously. All of those characters must have been highly autistic and also thirteen.

XD Honestly don't know if we're reading the same books at this point. XD

Imagine if I had a pirated copy with changed dialogue or something... even though I have it in paperback.

This passage from page 125, chapter 7:

"I as well. I'm sorry again about the misunderstanding." [Shallan]
"Brightness! Please. Don't take responsibility for my assumptions." [Kabsal]
She smiled. "I should hesitate to take responsibility for you in any manner or regard, Brother Kabsal. But I still feel bad."
"It will pass." He noted, blue eyes twinkling. "But I'll do my best to make you feel well again. Is there anything you're fond of? Other than respecting ardents and drawing amazing pictures, that is?"
"Jam."

I mean, that's just the one that came to mind, but there were others that physically hurt me to read. I mean, that's the sort of dialogue that I would have written as a freshly confident teenager with social anxiety problems, all the while spewing about  how random I was.

It would be one thing if he had written those two characters to be social morons and autistic, but as a reader, I'm supposed to think that the ardent is suave. I just... can't do it. His pages are littered with that, and it's so annoying how frequently he pairs dialogue with actions, too. If Brandon Sanderson's worlds were Earth, people's faces would be like 80x more animated. It would be so creepy haha.

Anyway, sorry to hate on one of your favorite authors. This is a fresh battle wound to me because one of my best friends in real life is a massive Sanderson fan but him and I have talked a lot about this. He's admitted that Branderson is a bad writer, but still loves his creativity, and I can't fault him for that. He is a wildly creative dude who comes up with cool shit, I just wish he'd let literally anyone else write it for him.

Although, I will say, I absolutely love his work ethic and how quickly he churns out books. I wish my favorite authors could do that.

Moved because it was derailing eco's motivational thread ;)

Fair!

I never got into Sanderson's stuff until I read The Emperor's Soul. Which was really quite good, to my surprise. Still haven't gotten around to giving his other stuff another chance, though. :P

I do enjoy his Writing Excuses podcast, with Howard Tayler, Dan Wells and Mary Robinette Kowal. I think Kowal is the most insightful and articulate of the group, though. 

I actually never really got into Sanderson's books. The only book series I've been keeping up on is the Reckoners series (Steelheart) which really has no pretensions of being smarter than it is. It's an action-adventure series with good action, humor, and witty dialogue. Can't really ask for more in something of it's type so it's enjoyable enough.

Been wanting to read Way of Kings but have a lot of other books that I'm much more interested in so it'll be a whole before I can comment on that or even Mistborn.

yeah, I loved the way of kings and the mistborn novels, By this point, I can longer be considered an objective critic of Sanderson's work.