Quote:
Originally Posted by afa
I don't think he's all that bad, really. Maybe it's because I would consider Jordan to be the brick-by-brick kind of guy, and Sanderson by comparison isn't nearly as guilty. In many ways, I think he strikes the middle-ground between Jordan's tedious minutae and, say, Abercrombie's barebones style of world-building (particularly in The First Law).
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I guess the time spent "learning" allomancy and "burning metals" just didn't do anything for me. I'm perfectly OK with the concept that; "magic can't be used willy-nilly and there are consequences if the wielder attempts too much, too soon." Anything more than that just tends to bore me and ultimately doesn't really help me "suspend my disbelief" any more/better(?). A few basic tenets are nice, but an entire framework is just overkill, IMO. It's still
magic for pete's sake.
And for reference, I don't really consider Abercrombie to be barebones when it comes to world building (although he's a step in the right direction for me). So Joe would represent
my personal middle-ground when it comes to world-building. I prefer closer to none actually. Just plop me down in the middle of your "world" please. Allow me to learn the rest through contextual clues (preferably contained within character dialog).
Read Lawrence's
Prince of Thorns, Polansky's
Low Town, and Huso's
The Last Page if you're interested in getting an idea of the level of "world-building" I'm comfortable with.
I'm going to quote Mark Lawrence (
Prince of Thorns) from a conversation in another thread, on another forum, in a galaxy far, far, away. It explains much better than I ever could, the way I feel about writing (regardless of the genre). I hope he doesn't mind. I'm spoilering them to keep the post length down (and also because not everyone is going to be interested), but they are definitely NOT spoilers. Emphasis mine.
And also this one... which is in response to a reader wanting to know "more" about certain supporting characters: