Re: The Fires of Heaven is not the best example for that. It was too early.
DomA Send a noteboard - 31/01/2012 03:35:36 AM
I seem to remember almost the entire prologue for Book 8 being descriptions and sniffing. Books 7-11 would be a veritable goldmine in that respect. I suspect you could get a good fifty pages from those books alone.
It was actually ACOS we used for this little test, a few years ago - plenty of scenes with AS, and a new city and culture visited etc. In the later books, Elayne has many scenes that involve her wardrobe and the formal clothing of nobles through which she read things about them - and that amounted to a lot more descriptions than average, but the early books are way below average, so maybe we're off by one or two chapters, but certainly not by five or twenty (the way some people complain, you'd think about 25% of the word count of any WOT novel is devoted to clothing or body language). Ironically, some of the longuest descriptions of clothing and locales so far in the series are in the last two books, as Brandon overdid it, and he didn't fully respect Jordan's "voices" for each character, having for instance Rand suddenly notice how Bashere or Nynaeve dressed.
I'm actually surprised if you're arguing that Jordan's descriptions of body language or clothing are too long. I would have thought you'd have met several "very descriptive" writers given the variety of your readings and you'd agree Jordan really doesn't belong in that league and the problem really is that his fairly succint descriptions of clothing or body language have become very formulaic, and though he wants to mimick historical novels, it's still not historical costume or descriptions that give much insight, so gets tedious to read after a while. There's a point to all that - he constantly went out of his way in his writing to create "patterns" that would repeat in little variations - that's what the repetitive and gender-based body language is about, and for the clothing, it goes with his cosmology - it's a people who see the world as being woven like fabric and it seems this is reflected in the attention they pay to clothes (mind you, early modern people in the milieus similar to WOT's paid an even greater attention in RL).
But like quite a few other intentional things in WOT, there's the intention and there's the execution. The concept's there, but Jordan failed to make it interesting. The body language never annoyed me to be honest- to me it's mostly humour anyway, and I get the concept that it's like the Ages, pattern etc. If you look closely, there's a ton of differences between individuals, but if you step back a little, all women/men are the same. For the clothing, I mostly don't pay attention to the descriptions except in scenes with many AS, if I and when I need a reminder of their Ajah.
Inspired by The Guardian, which books (classic or otherwise) do you think could be shorter?
30/01/2012 02:10:22 PM
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The Wheel of Time. *NM*
30/01/2012 02:59:03 PM
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I'd really love someone to do a good job of this.
30/01/2012 04:29:01 PM
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Re: I'd really love someone to do a good job of this.
31/01/2012 02:11:42 AM
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The Fires of Heaven is not the best example for that. It was too early.
31/01/2012 02:31:59 AM
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Re: The Fires of Heaven is not the best example for that. It was too early.
31/01/2012 03:35:36 AM
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I don't think Ivanhoe really needs to be pruned
30/01/2012 03:22:37 PM
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I remember thinking it was long and somewhat difficult when I read it at 13.
30/01/2012 04:31:13 PM
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Seconded, but it's been ages and I'd really need to reread first. *NM*
30/01/2012 10:33:53 PM
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Mansfield Park needs a jolly good rework.
30/01/2012 04:34:54 PM
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In fairness, all Mansfield Park needs to be cut is its heroine...
30/01/2012 10:34:43 PM
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"Could" be shorter doesn't always mean "should" be shorter.
31/01/2012 02:18:44 AM
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Re: "Could" be shorter doesn't always mean "should" be shorter.
31/01/2012 04:00:13 AM
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I think it's terribel thing to do... but may be The Magic Mountain could be a bit shorter... *NM*
31/01/2012 07:28:52 AM
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The Bible. Although I hear it's sort of been abridged before.
31/01/2012 04:46:28 PM
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Why would you cut out Matthew 1?
31/01/2012 05:11:24 PM
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Not all of it.
01/02/2012 04:14:13 PM
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I'd be all for cutting out/reformatting all the bloody NAMESin the old testament
31/01/2012 05:23:28 PM
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