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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 5579 Views
John McCain has a similar proclivity. *NM* - 28/09/2012 12:26:29 PM 1068 Views
The only people I've ever heard say "my friend" are foreign street vendors - 28/09/2012 01:19:00 PM 931 Views
Potential customer = best kind of friend *NM* - 28/09/2012 02:20:29 PM 554 Views
I agree in this particular instance. - 28/09/2012 03:38:15 PM 1224 Views
Maybe they have been Quakers all along? *NM* - 28/09/2012 03:39:24 PM 692 Views
Sanderson's handling of character interractions is pathetic.... - 28/09/2012 06:43:48 PM 1074 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 1781 Views
Sorry, that's just not true... - 28/09/2012 11:33:59 PM 949 Views
A few things. - 29/09/2012 02:40:47 AM 1175 Views
Great rebuttal! Fionwe got burned! *NM* - 29/09/2012 04:00:41 PM 757 Views
Re: A few things. - 30/09/2012 06:07:57 PM 1440 Views
I posted something very similar at DM. Reposting... - 28/09/2012 11:46:07 PM 960 Views
Re: I posted something very similar at DM. Reposting... - 29/09/2012 01:51:20 AM 1173 Views
Yes! - 29/09/2012 02:26:39 AM 1105 Views
This is one of my biggest pet peeves as well - 29/09/2012 04:56:53 AM 1088 Views
There are people who say that? - 29/09/2012 05:16:58 AM 978 Views
I complained about this regarding the Forsaken chapter - 28/09/2012 07:34:25 PM 1204 Views
I've long since accepted that Sanderson uses inaccurate terms like "powerful" - 29/09/2012 05:44:11 AM 1217 Views
To be fair, the last Moghedian PoV by RJ might have changed her a bit. - 29/09/2012 03:27:31 PM 939 Views
Which is the question I brought up in another thread - 29/09/2012 05:29:01 PM 841 Views
The burning question to me, after reading all of the comments above, is this... - 29/09/2012 08:50:50 AM 1142 Views
Piggybacking on someone else's established characters and near-climax-point plot? - 29/09/2012 03:04:03 PM 1184 Views
Both of you disgust me - 29/09/2012 04:13:16 PM 1128 Views
This is not jealousy, it's being upset - 29/09/2012 07:52:51 PM 1018 Views
They could have hired a ghost writer. They chose not to. *NM* - 29/09/2012 09:34:27 PM 9742 Views
Your crappy taste in books means nothing - 30/09/2012 09:23:51 PM 1504 Views
When did I ever say Eli Manning wasn't a good QB? - 01/10/2012 03:40:21 PM 900 Views
To be fair... - 29/09/2012 04:36:52 PM 986 Views
True ... He may not be perfect, and he certainly made some strange choices - 29/09/2012 05:37:29 PM 802 Views
B-Sand is not a ghost writer - 29/09/2012 06:35:16 PM 2277 Views
Didn't say he should. - 29/09/2012 09:07:45 PM 1565 Views
I mostly agree with this. - 29/09/2012 09:36:38 PM 1197 Views
What is it you want? - 29/09/2012 09:39:36 PM 1150 Views
We want to bitch about an inferior product. Duh. - 29/09/2012 10:00:09 PM 956 Views
Hmm that's true I guess. Sad though *NM* - 29/09/2012 10:07:25 PM 449 Views
It is what it is - 30/09/2012 12:52:20 AM 736 Views
Those are not remotely the same thing - 30/09/2012 09:14:49 PM 992 Views
But they are the same in this instance - 30/09/2012 10:01:59 PM 907 Views
It's fairly simple.... - 30/09/2012 09:55:52 PM 1155 Views
Thanks for that insightful response... - 30/09/2012 10:37:27 PM 882 Views
Forgotten Realms is big on clever spells and magic systems? - 01/10/2012 05:27:05 AM 852 Views
It's more... - 01/10/2012 01:05:18 PM 1611 Views
Did you read Way of Kings? - 03/10/2012 09:14:43 PM 1108 Views
No, nothing but the prologue - 04/10/2012 02:56:14 AM 803 Views
Re: The burning question to me, after reading all of the comments above, is this... - 11/10/2012 08:22:27 PM 735 Views

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