A Feast for Crows Update.

[jester47]

I find it an interesting thing about literature these days:

There are a lot of writing techniques that allow you to shorten a story. As time has gone on, much of these techniques are getting used less and less.

I am talking about using character dialogue to treat flashback, include first person narration with third person narration, exchanges of letters and such to develop situations etc.

There are ways to make a story shorter without loosing the story...

Dunno just my opinion. We seems to be loosing a bit of that... We seem to be writing hard these days and not smart.

Aaron.

 

[Melkor Lord Of ALL!]

Well, but I really enjoy big books! What I love with fantasy epics as Martin or Jordan is that world is so well detailed and feels real, describing history, geography, culture, it needs to take space!

By the way, how it is that people don`t have time for books nowadays? I am rereading Song of Ice and Fire second time in a month, and I happen to have a girlfriend and be above average student, not to mention playing in few online games.

 

[jester47]

I don't know if history geography and culture need the space. I think there are many ways to describe them without taking up huge ammounts of space.

Aaron.

 

[Melkor Lord Of ALL!]

Not sure, imagine you have to detail middle ages Europe in few pages of text.

 

[jester47]

I guess what I mean is that you can use your descriptions of things, dialogue, and action to indicate cultural diferences, geography, and history. Really the history and culture should come out in the interaction of the characters and culture and geography should be evident in their actions.

You could spend two paragraphs describing the watershed of a particular river, or you could simply say:

They had considered making a raft to take down the river, but the regular rapids on the river, not to mention the occasional waterfall made any sort of watercraft impractical. After thier scouting was finished they returned to the camp where they discovered that Burlonoc has managed to stew up some rabbits with his Abyssinian Spices, a rare treat indeed so far north of those desert lands.

"Haha, I shot a few coneys while you were out. They seem to practically infest the valley! Getting these was a lot easier than that twelfve point buck that got away!"

"Twelve points hugh? Is this another one of your fish stories?" mocked the elf.

"No I'm serious. Twelve point, no lie. I chased him a bit, got off a shot but had to stop when I found myself staning in an ant pile. I think there is an ant pile for every rabbit here." said Burlonoc as he scratched at his ankle and stirred the pot.

I cold have given a big essay on the river and why its rocky, filled with waterfalls, told you it has lots of rabbits and some deer living in it, with antbeds. Or I can show you and move the story forward. Just by showing we have also learned that there is a desert land called Abyssinia to the south and that rare spices come from such a place. We also know that Burlonoc likes to tell exaggerated stories. I can tell you all about Burlonoc's sword Milorn or I can show you and tell you about it with comments made by the characters and their actions. I can have a character see the sword and spend 2 pages exposeing to you his internal dialogue and reasons about why he wants to steal it and then have him steal it. Or I can just have him steal it, and then later have him show up at the theives guild trying to sell it. When asked why he is selling it we can get the story from his own mouth. This keeps me from having to play my whole hand all at once. I can leave stuff out and surprise you later.

I am not sure how GRRM writes. He may write in the same way. But there are ways to layer the description so that you don't have to write so much. If Martin does this then sign me up.

Robert E. Howard was really good at putting a lot of description into just a few words.

Aaron.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

But there are ways to layer the description so that you don't have to write so much.

Not all authors believe the point of a story is to get to the end as quickly as possible. Now, granted, some authors take wordiness to extremes (Janny Wurts, I'm looking at you!) but that doesn't mean that brevity is the cardinal virtue of a good novel/series.

Tad Williams writes big books. A lot of that text is descriptive prose that is, IMO, so well-written that it reads like poetry. It's one of the reasons that I enjoy reading him. Do I wish that he had cut out all that prose and replaced it with something akin to what you wrote, to get me to the ending faster? Absolutely not. If a series is good, I'll enjoy it every step of the way, whether the novels are as thin as A Wizard of Earthsea or as hefty as To Green Angel Tower.

That being said, GRRM's novels are packed with action. His books may be released at a slow pace, but they don't read at one.

 

[JoeBlank]

By the way, how it is that people don`t have time for books nowadays? I am rereading Song of Ice and Fire second time in a month, and I happen to have a girlfriend and be above average student, not to mention playing in few online games.

Oh, for the days when all I had to worry about was school, a girlfriend, and games. Please, don't think I am being sarcastic or judgmental. If reading novels was my absolute highest priority, I could make time for it, and in fact I have at many times, such as for the EN World Book Club.

I have a wife and 3 young sons. My average weekday begins at 6 a.m., when I get up to shower and get ready for work. I then wake my 6-year-old son and get him on the path the getting ready for school, wake my wife and head off to work. On most days, I am home about 5:30. Family stuff, including dinner at the table without television, interactions with the kids, baths and story time, usually take us past 8:00. The wife and I watch a select few television shows, which are usually taped from a few days before. Some nights there is no tv.., some we watch an hour or two, and that does not include movies. The rest of my evening is free for reading, but this is not all novels, as it includes gaming material, the newspaper, EN World, and also planning for DMing. I'm usually asleep by 11:00.

Weekends I sometimes get more reading done, but also have school projects with the kids, extracurricular activities, home and yard chores, gaming, church, and other social activities with friends and extended family.

I still manage to read novels, but not as much as I used to. I'm not complaining, that is just the place am I in right now. It seems like every time I finish one book I add two to my to-read list. Based on a quick count off the top of my head, I've read about a dozen novels over the past year, plus numerous short stories.

 

[jester47]

Not all authors believe the point of a story is to get to the end as quickly as possible. Now, granted, some authors take wordiness to extremes (Janny Wurts, I'm looking at you!) but that doesn't mean that brevity is the cardinal virtue of a good novel/series.

I wasn't saying they SHOULD be shorter, I was saying that if the text reads like:

Essay on River valley, natural history, ecology, history
Conversation and events of story
+internal thoughts and motivations of character deeply analysed
+action finally comitted, statement finally said
Lack of ability to leave third person Omniscient

then it could probably be written better.

The method above makes for a lot of words to a story that could be written in half the time and be more interesting with half the words. I think if a story is written with many layers of description and very economicly and is still the width of a phone book, more power to the writer.

Aaron.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I wasn't saying they SHOULD be shorter, I was saying that if the text reads like:

Essay on River valley, natural history, ecology, history
Conversation and events of story
+internal thoughts and motivations of character deeply analysed
+action finally comitted, statement finally said
Lack of ability to leave third person Omniscient

then it could probably be written better.

The method above makes for a lot of words to a story that could be written in half the time and be more interesting with half the words. I think if a story is written with many layers of description and very economicly and is still the width of a phone book, more power to the writer.

Fair enough.

Rest assured, GRRM doesn't write like this. It's just a matter of a lot happening in his books. He also likes to use characterization passages (such as scenes between Tyrion and Shae), which are not entirely relevant to the main plotline of the story, but provide further insight into the characters on which they focus.

To me, GRRM's books read like much shorter books, because there's so much going on. Rarely can I recall coming to a long, boring passage about weather, or what people are wearing, or women tugging on their braids, etc. etc.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Wow, I guess I just keep busy reading other stuff. I have never understood the hostility towards it taking a long time to write a book. The creative process can take a long time and takes a personal toll energy-wise so I can see it being many years between books. It is not like he is trying to just schlock something together quickly for cash, even though ti obvious from the demand he could, that is when most series go down the toilet. Explore other authors people.

Read Harlan Ellison. He has some most interesting ideas on the 'creative' process of writing and has open contempt for those writers saying writing is 'too hard' or take exessive amounts of time writing their 'masterpieces'. I guess that's where my hostility comes from - I just used Harlan Ellison's