Concerns Regarding Discussion on Brandon Sanderson

[BFG]

Let's keep this about the effect that the critique may or may not be having on TJ and not about individual posters.  Future off-topic posts will be deleted

BFG

[szilard]

Honestly though, do you really believe it's relevant to BS, or TJ as to how they're perceived by a proportionally very, very small section of the readership, of a now finished series, which has made them mega-bucks?

 

 

 

 

Yes. I know personally two normal (I mean they don't write sff books  ) and they are pissed of every time when they get a negative review. They got letters: 2 negatives and 98 positives - on average but they have corporeal pain from the two neg. reviews. They know that it is impossible to please everyone but when one has to face the criticism, well, it is a pretty hard thing to take real critics lightly.

 

Imagine yourself into Mr Sanderson's shoes! A few years back he was the second coming of Christ. He was hailed by almost everyone.

 

Four years later: dragonmount.com: fans (most of them) are ripping him apart constantly, theoryland.com and readandfindout.com, sffworld.com: the love turned into sublime indifference

 

westeros.org (one of the biggest sff sites): right now Mr Sanderson has another 'Let's Rip Him Apart Again'-thread (one could say they hate him)

 

 

Anybody who thinks money will make you happy, hasn't got money. - David Geffen

 

[Mats Spare Hat]

One could also say that experiencing outpourings of public support, at conventions, while on book-tours, signing events, random encounters in airports since he seems to enjoy posting photos of those on his twitter feed, in house go-team-go feedback from his publisher, and industry awards - that BS experiences overwhelming positive emotional compensation, to make up for any number of threads on internet message boards, of which he probably personally visits & participates in at an effective rate of zilch.

If you want to relate that to how your two friends experiencing corporeal pain, from a minute percentage of feedback, than it's safe to assume that any problem(s) experienced, on their part, as to what they would attribute as a result of said negative feedback, says more about them having a problem in being able to handle or receive criticism, than it does about those who felt poorly about what your friend(s) had produced for review.

[Cybertrolloc]

 

 

westeros.org (one of the biggest sff sites): right now Mr Sanderson has another 'Let's Rip Him Apart Again'-thread (one could say they hate him)

 

 

Need a link. That board isn't like this one, it sees dozens of threads and thousands of posts everyday. It's probably a stupid claim on your part, but need to know what you're talking about.

[BFG]

This isn't the place to discuss other forums. 

[szilard]

On the 'ending' and why casual readers don't matter

 

'There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.' That was Mr Jordan's philosophy. Life goes on and doesn't stop at the end of a book. Actually let's recall his words: 'Oh, finishing A Memory of Light, of course, and getting started on Mat and Tuon, and some others, five to ten years after the Last Battle. Those go without saying.' 

 

Oops!

 

So there is no such a thing as 'ending'. (We concluded that the 'real ending' is LoC. But that's our opinion.) That's why TJ/Tor should have published the notes, the deleted chapters etc. in one big book. Instead they killed the whole series for money and for a new author. I'm sure that 'the worm of conscience still begnaw their soul'! 

 

Plus many people on this very board (and on other WoT forums) admitted that they skip and skim all the time (an average reader reads one book per year, so normal people will never read a gigantic series - 13 000 pages -, by Tutatis! they don't even know the names of the main characters: there is the dragonkidwhatshisname, Matt (sic!) etc.), so when somebody mentions the 'legacy' of WoT had needed an ending he-she is plain wrong. Most people don't reach-read over TSR or FOH. The series is just too long. (Btw, it really disturbs me when even hardcore posters claim that they had read the books maximum 2 or 3 times.)

 

So I think an author cares about only the hardcore fans, only the active posters and will not listen to anything from casual readers.

 

Two remarks:

 

'there's going to be one more main-sequence Wheel of Time novel, working title A Memory of Light. ... if I'm going to make it a coherent novel it's all got to be in one volume.' No further comment. 

 

'The fourth Harry Potter novel and David Beckham's autobiography are among the books least likely to be finished by Britons, according to a survey.' And HP is the biggest bestselling sff series ever!

[Guest Tanner Montgomery]

I created an account just so I could say this and no one will probably care ahaha

 

But I thought ToM was a very good book and is one of my favorites second only to LoC. I really didn't mind Sanderson's writing in fact I enjoyed it. I feel like people who didn't like it are just upset because it wasn't good ol' Mr Jordan. Be happy we got an ending. 

[Suttree]

Be happy we got an ending. 

 

Never ceases to amaze me that this sentiment continues to be brought up. RJ's notes simply being released would have be an ending...in some ways it most likely would have been more satisfying.  I'll just quote Mr Ares here:

 

No-one was expecting perfection. But I dislike people who say that we should just be happy that we got an ending and leave it at that. Maybe an ending is better than no ending, but a good ending is better than a bad ending. I don't think we should have to make do. We can and should be willing to call out both authors on their failings. While Sanderson was placed in a difficult position, we don't have to make excuses for him. Let's treat him like a grown up. There are failings in his WoT books, and in his own books. We can ignore them and try to be happy, or we can offer criticism, and hope that he improves - because if he improves, that means his future works will have fewer problems, and so there will be fewer problems for us to ignore. We have respect for Brandon, and therefore try to voice our dissatisfaction in a way that helps him identify the weaknesses in his writing, and will allow him to work on those weaknesses, and thus to grow as an author. Sweeping Brandon's failings under the rug - which is what the "I'm just happy we got an ending so I won't criticise mindset amounts to" - is an attitude that does more to infantilise him that it does to help him improve, and consequently is an attitude marked by a fundamental lack of respect for him. I don't think a lack of respect is what people are trying to convey, but that's what it amounts to.

 

The critique has absolutely nothing to do with Brandon not doing as good a job as RJ was capable of. The question is did Brandon do as good a job as Brandon is capable of? Ignoring the many flaws simply to "get an ending" is a huge disservice to the author.

[Werthead]

I find any analysis of the writing of the final three WoT books which fails to take into account Tor's insane rushing of the process and inane declarations that the books had to come out when they did or people would forget about them, to be deeply flawed.

 

That's not to excuse Brandon the mistakes and problems he did make, but no problems exist in a vaccuum, and Tor reaped some of the problems they sowed. They declared that the next WoT book had to come out in 2009 because it had been four years since KoD and people were going to forget about the series. No, they wouldn't. The real reason is that WoT was Tor's biggest-selling series and each new WoT novel sold roughly 4 million copies in its first year on sale, most of that in the extra-profitable hardcover format. Tor had missed having that slice of cash for four years in a row and wanted it back ASAP. This automatically prevented Brandon from doing what would probably have been best: completing the series, rewriting/editing it, showing it to other people and addressing issues, and then working out how many volumes it should have been divided into. Doing all of that would have taken years, but it would have resulted in a stronger finale. Instead, I get the impression that Sanderson did not fully realise the problems he'd generated in TGS by laudable goals (refocusing the series on Rand and Egwene, our two primary protagonists) until he was writing ToM and encountering the various timeline issues. Being able to write the whole thing, work out those issues and then address them would have been better, but by Tor's command he did not have the time.

 

This also extends to Way of Kings. Recall that it was Tor who were concerned about Sanderson not publishing solo novels during the time he was working on WoT and losing momentum in his solo career. It is clear to me that Tor want Sanderson to be their next, post-Jordan sales juggernaut with millions of sales per book and were keen on using WoT to propel him to that position, so he could deliver extra money for them after WoT was concluded (especially once Brandon and TJ made it clear that the prequels and outriggers were not happening). This meant they wanted Way of Kings published before Brandon had finished WoT. This was probably a mistake, both by taking Brandon's eye off WoT for an extended period and also by forcing a very long gap between WoK (which at least had detailed outlines and first drafts written for it) and its sequel. They'd have been better to have published a couple of short books more like Alloy of Law which took much less time away from WoT.

 

Considering those circumstances, the final three WoT novels were coherent, reasonably well-written and surprisingly compatible with what had come before, especially once it became clear that we'd been somewhat over-sold on how complete and detailed the notes were (and, to Brandon's credit, he is making that clearer in the retrospective articles he is currently writing about the WoT books).

 

If we consider the Kevin J. Anderson situation with Dune, or the John Gregory Betancourt Amber books, it is clear that in most cases when an author dies and another writer finishes that series, the replacement writer is a hack (if sometimes well-intentioned) motivated primarily by money. I do not believe this was the case with Sanderson at all. He poured over five years of his life into writing this conclusion, despite tremendous (and unrealistic) time pressures from the publisher and scrutiny from the fans.

 

I am also afraid that, without direct access to the actual notes left behind by Robert Jordan, we must consider any claims, theories or suggestions on how Sanderson to have 'done it better' to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Antarctica. When and if the Jordan Estate releases those notes, people can talk with authority over what Sanderson did or did not do well (just as Tolkien fans can now discuss the rights and wrongs of Christopher Tolkien's editing decisions on The Silmarillion once the raw materials were released in The History of Middle-earth). Right now, they cannot.