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Sanderson's handling of character interractions is pathetic.... DomA Send a noteboard - 28/09/2012 06:43:48 PM
That's only a small example of this.

Far worse than this is how he deprives us of all the proper interpretative context as he just can't do third person limited POV properly (he borderlined fell into omniscient at times in chapter one, in passages with Balwer notably). Jordan's scenes were longer, his characters spoke less of those useless lines, but through their inner thoughts we got a lot of additional information that then made so many side scenes unecessary (eg: instead of getting many useless Aviendha POVs in TGS, we would have had Rand or Min seing her pissed off doing stupid tasks in the background, wondering if and why she's being punished. A huge deal of side character action RJ dealt with that way. Sanderson is unable to achieve this, he rathers pile up short, one-purpose scenes and end up needing twice as many pages or more than Jordan to develop story arcs.. it's as if everything needs to be said, everything needs to be shown and nothing simply is noticed by others, happens in the background or the corner of the eye of the POV characters...).

We know longer have any idea what the POV is thinking most of the time. Why Egwene is saying this or that? What her interlocutor's body language is telling us? With Sanderson most times it's "nothing at all". Is there really tension between Elayne and Egwene because of the Kinswomen and up to what point? Hard to tell.

In dialogue scenes, RJ (and most novelists deserving the name!) used to give us tons and tons of additional information.

Not "What if we let him do as he wishes" as Sanderson give us, but rather

"What if we let him do as he wishes", Elayne asked with a hint of defiance in her voice. Since Egwene had chastised her over what she's done with the Kinswomen, that hint of defiance was more and more present in Elayne's tone with her. She still didn't know how she'd present that to the Hall. It was worrying - she needed to be able to trust Elayne but she made that more and more difficult.

"Let him break the seals, you mean?" she replied more harshly than she had wished. Was this just one of her mood swings, or was the woman's resolve vanishing? She was totally smithen with Rand. Or was this ta'veren at work? She rubbed her temples.

Etc.

In the scene between Egwene and Elayne, we would have been able to tell all Egwene could observe from Elayne's attitude and tone, and Egwene would justify to herself pretty much everything she's telling Elayne, giving us background and behind-the-scene info at the same time. Now where's left with a bunch of spoken lines largely out of any proper context, and we all too often have to guess what the POV character really means or think, with little indication what their interlocutors may be thinking beside the words they're saying! We most often don't get any indication of tone either... we have no idea if a line is sarcastic or impatient or whatever. Sanderson writes dialogue as if this were a screenplay and actors would interpret the lines and give them life, except he lets the reader be the actor, which isn't good at all. He's simply not doing his job as a novelist.

And yeah, he seems nearly incapable of adopting the proper tone and level of language for the characters. They switch from formal to extremely casual with no rhyme or reason. Elayne's thought of as a close friend one instant, the next Egwene thinks of her as The Queen. Egwene suddenly opts for formality in a private meeting, and normally if she chose to do that RJ would have let us know what's her reasoning for this, or at least tell us something like "Tonight she chose to remain the Amyrlin for this meeting" because we had to guess why Egwene made that choice. We no longer have much idea why the characters are acting the way they do. I suspect that's why we so often find them "off". They may do what Sanderson has them doing, but previously we would have known from their thoughts why, and the reasons would be logical for their personality etc.


This message last edited by DomA on 28/09/2012 at 06:50:40 PM
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If you have to call someone "my friend" three times in a couple of minutes, he isn't. - 28/09/2012 11:59:13 AM 5571 Views
John McCain has a similar proclivity. *NM* - 28/09/2012 12:26:29 PM 1066 Views
The only people I've ever heard say "my friend" are foreign street vendors - 28/09/2012 01:19:00 PM 924 Views
Potential customer = best kind of friend *NM* - 28/09/2012 02:20:29 PM 552 Views
I agree in this particular instance. - 28/09/2012 03:38:15 PM 1218 Views
Maybe they have been Quakers all along? *NM* - 28/09/2012 03:39:24 PM 689 Views
Sanderson's handling of character interractions is pathetic.... - 28/09/2012 06:43:48 PM 1067 Views
Now see, here I don't fully agree, or at least think it's a matter of taste. - 28/09/2012 07:21:09 PM 1771 Views
Sorry, that's just not true... - 28/09/2012 11:33:59 PM 941 Views
A few things. - 29/09/2012 02:40:47 AM 1165 Views
Great rebuttal! Fionwe got burned! *NM* - 29/09/2012 04:00:41 PM 755 Views
Re: A few things. - 30/09/2012 06:07:57 PM 1431 Views
I posted something very similar at DM. Reposting... - 28/09/2012 11:46:07 PM 952 Views
Re: I posted something very similar at DM. Reposting... - 29/09/2012 01:51:20 AM 1165 Views
Yes! - 29/09/2012 02:26:39 AM 1097 Views
This is one of my biggest pet peeves as well - 29/09/2012 04:56:53 AM 1080 Views
There are people who say that? - 29/09/2012 05:16:58 AM 968 Views
I complained about this regarding the Forsaken chapter - 28/09/2012 07:34:25 PM 1196 Views
I've long since accepted that Sanderson uses inaccurate terms like "powerful" - 29/09/2012 05:44:11 AM 1209 Views
To be fair, the last Moghedian PoV by RJ might have changed her a bit. - 29/09/2012 03:27:31 PM 931 Views
Which is the question I brought up in another thread - 29/09/2012 05:29:01 PM 832 Views
The burning question to me, after reading all of the comments above, is this... - 29/09/2012 08:50:50 AM 1134 Views
Piggybacking on someone else's established characters and near-climax-point plot? - 29/09/2012 03:04:03 PM 1176 Views
Both of you disgust me - 29/09/2012 04:13:16 PM 1120 Views
This is not jealousy, it's being upset - 29/09/2012 07:52:51 PM 1008 Views
They could have hired a ghost writer. They chose not to. *NM* - 29/09/2012 09:34:27 PM 9740 Views
Your crappy taste in books means nothing - 30/09/2012 09:23:51 PM 1496 Views
When did I ever say Eli Manning wasn't a good QB? - 01/10/2012 03:40:21 PM 889 Views
To be fair... - 29/09/2012 04:36:52 PM 980 Views
True ... He may not be perfect, and he certainly made some strange choices - 29/09/2012 05:37:29 PM 792 Views
B-Sand is not a ghost writer - 29/09/2012 06:35:16 PM 2270 Views
Didn't say he should. - 29/09/2012 09:07:45 PM 1556 Views
I mostly agree with this. - 29/09/2012 09:36:38 PM 1189 Views
What is it you want? - 29/09/2012 09:39:36 PM 1141 Views
We want to bitch about an inferior product. Duh. - 29/09/2012 10:00:09 PM 948 Views
Hmm that's true I guess. Sad though *NM* - 29/09/2012 10:07:25 PM 446 Views
It is what it is - 30/09/2012 12:52:20 AM 731 Views
Those are not remotely the same thing - 30/09/2012 09:14:49 PM 985 Views
But they are the same in this instance - 30/09/2012 10:01:59 PM 900 Views
It's fairly simple.... - 30/09/2012 09:55:52 PM 1147 Views
Thanks for that insightful response... - 30/09/2012 10:37:27 PM 874 Views
Forgotten Realms is big on clever spells and magic systems? - 01/10/2012 05:27:05 AM 843 Views
It's more... - 01/10/2012 01:05:18 PM 1605 Views
Did you read Way of Kings? - 03/10/2012 09:14:43 PM 1101 Views
No, nothing but the prologue - 04/10/2012 02:56:14 AM 796 Views
Re: The burning question to me, after reading all of the comments above, is this... - 11/10/2012 08:22:27 PM 729 Views

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