4 ms·

There's not a single work by Sanderson on this list? Really surprising

• irrational 5y ago
  Seriously. How can Stormlight Archive not have a single listing. I read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy and the Stormlight Archive is definitely near the top of my list.
• moogly 5y ago
  I'm not surprised. I'm not a big fan of his output. Sanderson is competent, but he's more of a "writer" than an "author" in my opinion. He's definitely impressively prolific and hard-working, and has some good ideas, but I don't think he's got "it". I've watched some of his lectures, and read his blog back in the day, and my take is that he has this opinion that just hard work and practice can make you a good author, but I think you need underlying talent too. I'm reminded of the time when he (to his credit) took the critique to heart that he was not very good at writing dialogue, and had this bad habit of constantly adding adjectives and adverbs to describe/reinforce the dialogue. Basically "tell, don't show" like so much of his writing is full of[1]. So he consciously spent some time "practicing" how to write dialogue. He documented this on his old blog: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/writing-exercise-dialogue/ https://www.brandonsanderson.com/writing-exercise-dialogue/ I'm sure experience helps in making you a better writer, but to me, his approach is just too alien and "hard work beats talent"-y for me and doesn't come off as organic. And I think it really shows (insert "show, don't tell" joke here) in his writing. [1] I have only read his Wheel of Time stuff and the first Mistborn trilogy (Vin = Lisbeth Salander).
  • MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
    I read Mistborn after I read the first 3 books of Stormlight and it's very noticeable how his writing style has evolved/improved over time.