Sanderson's handling of character interractions is pathetic.... - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 28/09/2012 06:47:54 PM
That's only a small example of this.
Far worse than this is how he deprives us of all the proper interpretative context as he just can't do third person limited POV properly (he borderlined fell into omniscient at times in chapter one, in passages with Balwer notably). Jordan's scenes were longer, his characters spoke less of those useless lines, but through their inner thoughts we got a lot of additional information that then made so many side scenes unecessary (eg: instead of getting many useless Aviendha POVs in TGS, we would have had Rand or Min seing her pissed off doing stupid tasks in the background, wondering if and why she's being punished. A huge deal of side character action RJ dealt with that way. Sanderson is unable to achieve this, he rathers pile up short, one-purpose scenes and end up needing twice as many pages or more than Jordan to develop story arcs.. it's as if everything needs to be said, everything needs to be shown and nothing simply is noticed by others, happens in the background or the corner of the eye of the POV characters...).
We know longer have any idea what the POV is thinking most of the time. Why Egwene is saying this or that? What her interlocutor's body language is telling us? With Sanderson most times it's "nothing at all". Is there really tension between Elayne and Egwene because of the Kinswomen and up to what point? Hard to tell.
In dialogue scenes, RJ (and most novelists deserving the name!) used to give us tons and tons of additional information.
Not "What if we let him do as he wishes" as Sanderson give us, but rather
"What if we let him do as he wishes", Elayne asked with a hint of defiance in her voice. Since Egwene had chastised her over what she's done with the Kinswomen, that hint of defiance was more and more present in Elayne's tone with her. She still didn't know how she'd present that to the Hall. It was worrying - she needed to be able to trust Elayne.
"Let him break the seals, you mean?" she replied more harshly than she wished. Was this one of her mood swings, or was the woman's resolve vanishing? She was totally smithen with Rand. Or was this ta'veren at work? She rubbed her temples.
Etc.
In the scene between Egwene and Elayne, we would have been able to tell all Egwene could observe from Elayne's attitude and tone, and Egwene would justify to herself pretty much everything she's telling Elayne, giving us background and behind-the-scene info at the same time. Now where's left with a bunch of spoken lines largely out of any proper context, and we all too often have to guess what the POV character really means or think, with little indication what their interlocutors may be thinking beside the words they're saying! We most often don't get any indication of tone either... we have no idea if a line is sarcastic or impatient or whatever. Sanderson writes dialogue as if this were a screenplay and actors would interpret the lines and give them life, except he lets the reader be the actor, which isn't good at all. He's simply not doing his job as a novelist.
And yeah, he seems nearly incapable of adopting the proper tone and level of language for the characters. They switch from formal to extremely casual with no rhyme or reason. Elayne's thought of as a close friend one instant, the next Egwene thinks of her as The Queen. Egwene suddenly opts for formality in a private meeting, and normally if she chose to do that RJ would have let us know what's her reasoning for this, or at least tell us something like "Tonight she chose to remain the Amyrlin for this meeting" because we had to guess why Egwene made that choice. We no longer have much idea why the characters are acting the way they do. I suspect that's why we so often find them "off". They may do what Sanderson has them doing, but previously we would have known from their thoughts why, and the reasons would be logical for their personality etc.
Far worse than this is how he deprives us of all the proper interpretative context as he just can't do third person limited POV properly (he borderlined fell into omniscient at times in chapter one, in passages with Balwer notably). Jordan's scenes were longer, his characters spoke less of those useless lines, but through their inner thoughts we got a lot of additional information that then made so many side scenes unecessary (eg: instead of getting many useless Aviendha POVs in TGS, we would have had Rand or Min seing her pissed off doing stupid tasks in the background, wondering if and why she's being punished. A huge deal of side character action RJ dealt with that way. Sanderson is unable to achieve this, he rathers pile up short, one-purpose scenes and end up needing twice as many pages or more than Jordan to develop story arcs.. it's as if everything needs to be said, everything needs to be shown and nothing simply is noticed by others, happens in the background or the corner of the eye of the POV characters...).
We know longer have any idea what the POV is thinking most of the time. Why Egwene is saying this or that? What her interlocutor's body language is telling us? With Sanderson most times it's "nothing at all". Is there really tension between Elayne and Egwene because of the Kinswomen and up to what point? Hard to tell.
In dialogue scenes, RJ (and most novelists deserving the name!) used to give us tons and tons of additional information.
Not "What if we let him do as he wishes" as Sanderson give us, but rather
"What if we let him do as he wishes", Elayne asked with a hint of defiance in her voice. Since Egwene had chastised her over what she's done with the Kinswomen, that hint of defiance was more and more present in Elayne's tone with her. She still didn't know how she'd present that to the Hall. It was worrying - she needed to be able to trust Elayne.
"Let him break the seals, you mean?" she replied more harshly than she wished. Was this one of her mood swings, or was the woman's resolve vanishing? She was totally smithen with Rand. Or was this ta'veren at work? She rubbed her temples.
Etc.
In the scene between Egwene and Elayne, we would have been able to tell all Egwene could observe from Elayne's attitude and tone, and Egwene would justify to herself pretty much everything she's telling Elayne, giving us background and behind-the-scene info at the same time. Now where's left with a bunch of spoken lines largely out of any proper context, and we all too often have to guess what the POV character really means or think, with little indication what their interlocutors may be thinking beside the words they're saying! We most often don't get any indication of tone either... we have no idea if a line is sarcastic or impatient or whatever. Sanderson writes dialogue as if this were a screenplay and actors would interpret the lines and give them life, except he lets the reader be the actor, which isn't good at all. He's simply not doing his job as a novelist.
And yeah, he seems nearly incapable of adopting the proper tone and level of language for the characters. They switch from formal to extremely casual with no rhyme or reason. Elayne's thought of as a close friend one instant, the next Egwene thinks of her as The Queen. Egwene suddenly opts for formality in a private meeting, and normally if she chose to do that RJ would have let us know what's her reasoning for this, or at least tell us something like "Tonight she chose to remain the Amyrlin for this meeting" because we had to guess why Egwene made that choice. We no longer have much idea why the characters are acting the way they do. I suspect that's why we so often find them "off". They may do what Sanderson has them doing, but previously we would have known from their thoughts why, and the reasons would be logical for their personality etc.