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“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” - George R.R. Martin quotes
by dankohn1 10y ago
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
- George R.R. Martin quotes
- agumonkey 10y ago"and my characters only live halves"
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoG.R.R.M. writes well, and I'm a long-time paying customer, but that phrase is advertising bullshit. The reader doesn't 'live' squat, he reads about someone else's life. Watching cooking shows doesn't feed anyone.
- chillwaves 10y agoDoes it have to be "advertising bullshit"? Maybe GRRM sees reading differently than you do? For someone who has devoted their life to writing, that is a sensible perspective.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThere's an interesting thread in Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (second book of the Three Body Problem trilogy (yes, I know I'm being boring constantly recommending them here but these are really good books)). I actually wonder whether it's a real thing. A short (minor) spoiler follows. One of the protagonists is married to a writer. He follows her advice about writing, and in the process of developing a character he manages to, well, instantiate a pretty much living version of that character in his own mind - a version that grows and thinks independently of its creator. He eventually gets emotionally involved with his imaginary creation, and later learns that it's something that happens to good writers, and that his wife has such a character "living" with her too. What I wonder is whether it's really the case that good writers actually develop their characters to the point of them turning pretty much into tulpas? A kind of background thread in their brains, with separate micro-consciousness.
- douche 10y agoAnd authors that embark on ambitious fantasy or Sci-fi series often die before completing them... Hopefully he doesn't go the way of Robert Jordan or Frank Herbert.