Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Dr Drib. one of the things that makes it difficult to measure an author's improvement over time is that the public often doesn't get to see where they started. For example, by the time most trad' pub authors are actually published they have already written a lot. (Some Indie published authors might be publishing the first thing that appears on the screen, so over time they might offer better source for scientific study of this phenomena.  )
I was interested to read a couple of the collections put out by Terry Pratchett ( A Blink of the Screen, and Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Stories) that gave glimpses of some of his earlier writing. In amongst these are ideas that obviously became more fully fledged works later (eg: Rincemangle, the Gnome of Even Moor becomes Truckers of the Bromeliad trilogy). If ever I needed convincing that even the best authors get better with work, this was it. |
To drift back into the 'SF gutter'
, if you go back and read David Weber's The Apocalypse Troll, I think it mentions in the fore ward that this was one of first, if not the first, book he wrote, though it wasn't published until almost a decade after his first published book. Even polished up a bit, there is a noticeable difference between it and say his first Honor Harrington book.