I didn't say he was an idiot, I said his writing was deeply flawed and could have been greatly improved with a few passes from a competent editor, and that even with a few simple cuts and a few rearrangements of scenes and no other textual changes it would flow better, throw the reader out of the story less, and generally not be so much "the book where you slog through the writing to get at the interesting worldbuilding and fantastic story".
You keep telling me this orange makes a terrible apple and the farmer was a fucking moron for growing it
No, I keep saying that this orange is a bad example of an orange, perhaps the orange tree should have been given water and not Brawndo The Thirst Eliminator, and maybe it should have been allowed to ripen fully and not picked while just a bud, but, hey, when you get past that, there are still some really tasty bits on this orange. And if the farmer had, y'know, done any of the things that produce GOOD oranges, this might be one of the best oranges ever.
And you tell me "Well, the farmer was TRYING to grow apples."
That's just it, though, I don't see the writing as flawed, I see it as part of the cool factor. For me the writing style is all the best parts of the stuff we studied in Old English - which was my favourite class in university - with the added advantage that it's in modern English. And I think that was the intent; a modern epic. Fixing the "flaws" would kill the book; what you see as bad writing I see as brilliant.
I don't know, maybe we're two guys standing over a banana yelling "APPLE!" "ORANGE!" "APPLE!". Any minute now someone is going to wade into this thread bellowing "RASPBERRY" and it'll just get ugly. We should probably just agree it's a tasty fruit and move on with our lives.
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Date: 2011-03-19 03:04 am (UTC)You keep telling me this orange makes a terrible apple and the farmer was a fucking moron for growing it
No, I keep saying that this orange is a bad example of an orange, perhaps the orange tree should have been given water and not Brawndo The Thirst Eliminator, and maybe it should have been allowed to ripen fully and not picked while just a bud, but, hey, when you get past that, there are still some really tasty bits on this orange. And if the farmer had, y'know, done any of the things that produce GOOD oranges, this might be one of the best oranges ever.
And you tell me "Well, the farmer was TRYING to grow apples."
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 03:26 am (UTC)I don't know, maybe we're two guys standing over a banana yelling "APPLE!" "ORANGE!" "APPLE!". Any minute now someone is going to wade into this thread bellowing "RASPBERRY" and it'll just get ugly. We should probably just agree it's a tasty fruit and move on with our lives.