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Re: With Martin it's what I call "Robert Jordan Syndrome" DomA Send a noteboard - 20/11/2012 04:12:03 PM
The story gets too big, there are too many characters, and the author feels the need to explain exactly how each person gets from point A to point B, which leads to books with no interest for the reader because they are meant solely to set up events for the next book.

If Martin had just had one bad book (A Feast For Crows), I think the fans might not be as merciless as they are. If Martin hadn't waited as long between the first bad book and the second, the fans might not be as merciless as they are. But, well, he deserves it at this point.


Yeah, it's a bit the limits of planning ahead such mammoth series, which essentially are novels on a scale far beyond what writers have attempted before. Normally when you block on problems like this you try to draft the rest, you balance things up, and eventually get yourself out of the problems. Martin/Jordan attempted to do this not with a few unwritten chapters they could draft to see how they work then returning to fix the problematic parts, but juggling with whole unwritten novels, with all their As to Bs to be filled up later, and with having to publish "chapters" as written... A lot of novelists of the old days, even those writing very long books, would have told them this flirted with hubris.

RJ's "stalling phase" before the last act begins is "classic", but he overplayed his hand when he thought he could get away with such an end of act two lasting for several books. The three act form isn't meant to sustain "acts" inflated to the length of several novels. It's a lesson from WOT.

RJ made a "big planning mistake" similar to Martin (essentially, he had WH break the synchronicity of the story lines when considering what he had left in the secondary ones he have stuck to a more chronological structure) but Jordan at least didn't spend many years crying over this problem, complaining about his misery to his fans on the internet, attempting to fix what he couldn't only to end up publishing COT nonetheless after well over five years. He published COT on time, grudgingly acknowledged afterward his structural mistake and moved on. He made concessions in KOD and got where he had planned the finale to begin (essentially he "cut to the chase" by compressing a very great deal of developments in Egwene's story in a few chapters. Sanderson then wasted what he had done by stretching her story line again... RJ wrote her face-off with Elaida that landed her in a jail as her first AMOL chapter. Brandon decided to split it in two scenes - two dinners with Elaida - creating a whole lot of chapters in between the two events. It is one of the big changes he's made from the AMOL outline that's acknowledged/documented)

Martin spent years and years trying to avoid a COT, only to publish two COT in a row, with a very long gap between the publishing of those two.

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Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul - 18/11/2012 08:43:13 PM 1572 Views
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Re: Although there are uneven moments, I think his work accomplishes a shade more than the other two - 20/11/2012 03:12:45 PM 839 Views
True - 21/11/2012 02:56:08 AM 811 Views
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Re: Speed kills - 19/11/2012 08:59:14 PM 934 Views
With Martin it's what I call "Robert Jordan Syndrome" - 20/11/2012 02:31:22 AM 1670 Views
Re: With Martin it's what I call "Robert Jordan Syndrome" - 20/11/2012 04:12:03 PM 1028 Views
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