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One has to respect his procrastination skills. He would go to learn quantum mechanics just not to complete the game of thrones books.
by resiros 2y ago
One has to respect his procrastination skills. He would go to learn quantum mechanics just not to complete the game of thrones books.
- umvi 2y agoPatrick Rothfuss goes to similar procrastination lengths. Guess Brandon Sanderson will have to finish their series after they die.
- EA-3167 2y agoI don't blame them for writing themselves into corners, but lacking the courage to tell your readers that you've done so and there will be no resolution to the story you've been writing doesn't impress me. I don't think they owe people a resolution, but I do think they owe them a bit of honesty.
- ziddoap 2y agoThe thing that irks me the most is that Patrick Rothfuss used to brag about how he had already completed all three books of the trilogy, and just needed to do editing passes. That was over a decade ago.
- readthenotes1 2y ago"That was over a decade ago." Or That was before he made enough money to do something other than write in his trailer.
- im3w1l 2y agoSo about the writing themselves into a corner part, it would be unconventional but what about releasing a second revision of an earlier book to make the whole coherent?
- Suppafly 2y agoGRRM's issue is that he needs to figure out how to get all of the interesting characters in one place from across a huge world. He just needs to write some sort of teleportation into the story, that's how Jordan handled it in the WoT series.
- DASD 2y agoRobert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is the reason why I never start a new multi-volume series unless it is already completed.
- darrylb42 2y agoI still remember seeing the first 3 paperbacks in the store. Thinking ahh a nice finished trilogy, what a trick that was.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI actually prefer my fantasy series to be unfinished. For me, a solid majority of the enjoyment is figuring out events and more from clues and foreshadowing. There are so many things that I picked up on the third read through that I simply would have been told in a later book if they were all available.
- navbaker 2y agoI love that he actually posts % complete widgets at the top of his website showing how far along he is in the multiple books he authors at once. Closest thing to a Grafana dashboard for authors we’re going to get!
- Hasu 2y ago> Guess Brandon Sanderson will have to finish their series after they die. People say this often, and I don't get it. Sanderson is a terrible writer and his works and themes are nothing like ASOIAF. His only merit he has is "finishes books quickly". He's not even a fan of the books, he says they're "too dark" for him. He's the worst possible choice! But I don't want anyone to finish ASOIAF if George dies before it's over. It's his story and no one else can do it right. We did this already and everyone hated it!
- sgillen 2y agoIt's just a joke, because Sanderson finished Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan died.
- w0m 2y agoDespite Sanderson and Jordan having starkly different styles - I do think he did the series justice. Well worth reading.
- ffsm8 2y agoWhile I'm glad Sanderson finished the series, I still felt there was a pretty strong change in the feeling of the story. Until he took over, Rand was basically continuously loosing his sanity in the pursuit of power, which he needed to fight the dark one, which brought him closer to the madness, feeding the cycle. It kept getting more urgent, things kept escalating. But Sandersons Rand never really lost control, imo. Rand's success felt preordained by his story telling, whereas previously the only thing we could expect was that Rand would go down fighting. To be clear, I'm aware that Sanderson finished the story via Jordan's notes. But I strongly suspect he wouldn't have kept to them if he wrote it himself. I base that opinion on the fact that the series was supposed to be way shorter. I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like 6 books
- UberMouse 2y agoBrandon Sanderson only wrote the last book though? (which he split in two because all the stuff Robert Jordan wanted to cram in would have been a ridiculous 2000+ page tome) so it was already going to be at least 11 books by Robert Jordan. FWIW the two Sanderson books are my favourite of the series (but they are also the ending so it's hard to say)
- justin66 2y agoGRRM procrastinates writing A Game of Thrones books by making A Game of Thrones TV shows. Patrick Rothfuss procrastinates by doing cheesy charity work (whose positive impact is dwarfed by what he could do by donating the money from a third book) and playing D&D on youtube or some shit.
- Suppafly 2y ago>Patrick Rothfuss procrastinates by doing cheesy charity work He's scammed his fans so many times by lying about the charity work rewards, I'm surprised any of them still donate.
- dgfitz 2y agoI inhaled the first 2 books in that series. I will not read the last one even if he publishes it. I won't disparage the guy here, but I am no longer a fan, and I have zero faith he will ever finish the series. And if he does, he gets zero minutes of my time and zero units of my money.
- autoexec 2y agoThe first two really were good though. If he finishes the third I'll happily re-read the first two and then give the third a chance. I'm not starting anything new he writes until I know it has an ending though. That's also my rule for any series on Netflix.
- w0m 2y agoName of the Wind is up there in my top pantheon, right up there with the Hobbit and Dune (among others). I'm sad we'll never see the end.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI don't think rothfuss has it in him anymore. I love the books, but I think they were a self projection where the author wrote himself into the story, and then changed as a person. Kvothe has the personality of a 2005 reddit neckbeard that I can only assume is a lot less attractive to the author now in his 50s.
- Suppafly 2y ago>I don't think rothfuss has it in him anymore. I really don't understand why his editors don't just provide him a team, like a tv show writing room, and he can bounce ideas off them and have them mechanically churn out his ideas. He could knock it out in a few months and be a hero and put it all behind him cleanly then.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI suspect there are a number of very human reasons why an author wouldn't want to do that. I also suspect the output would be pretty different. I find the idea kind of revolting, but I am also surprised that collaborative writing is so rare. I suppose it cuts to the question of what the point of writing the book is in the first place. It is hard to think of a recent example aside from the expanse by "James S.A. Corey"
- Suppafly 2y ago>I find the idea kind of revolting, but I am also surprised that collaborative writing is so rare. I suspect it's less rare than we think it is, especially if you consider how much editing a lot of editors end up doing.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoHigh quality artistic collaboration is hard and even harder in a capitalist model (this is coming from libertarian capitalist). Compelling art is definitionally outside the mainstream, as this is a pre-requisite for novel insight and creativity. This is why hundred million dollar movies and series can't simply hire good writers.
- GuB-42 2y agoAnd Donald Knuth! But I don't expect Brandon Sanderson to finish that one. In fact, I don't expect anyone to even think about it.
- cubefox 2y agoBeing a) self-employed and b) already wealthy (no deadlines) and c) doing something purely creative, i.e. non-technical ... that's the worst case scenario for motivation.
- psunavy03 2y agoThere's such a thing as "respect for the fanbase that made you rich."
- autoexec 2y agoAlso just being free of the expectations of others. No matter how it turns out I bet it'd be nice if he could wake up and know that it's been finished and that he doesn't have to worry about people asking about it anymore
- IncreasePosts 2y agoAdd in finishing a creative work. At least for me, the first 90% is way more fun than the last 10%. The last 10% is where you need to come to terms with all the mistakes you made along the way that prevent you from getting the final polish you want
- wavemode 2y agoIn other words - you have to finish the first 90%, then finish the remaining 90%.
- cubefox 2y agoYeah. And also fear of ideas not being good enough to match the (by now) likely overblown fan expectations. It's like Valve considering to make Half-life 3: anything less than a masterpiece would be a disappointment.
- dageshi 2y agoI'm convinced he has draft versions of the complete story at this point and will keep revising it till he passes away whereupon it'll be published posthumously. Or perhaps this is just copium on my part.
- rtkwe 2y agoFrom what I've read about his process the initial drafts will vary massively from the finished product because he's very iterative and will go on long digressions either getting characters to a point or exploring where characters would go from where they are at that particular point. That's what gives them such a rich feeling because he's working with characters and how they'd perhaps operate in the world but that makes it hard to wrangle them into particular positions if you're dedicated to the idea that they should proceed naturally from where they are to where they are next. It leads to a bit of a combinatorial explosion of needing to setup causes to push them into the next part of the story but you have to setup those causes first, which need their own antecedents, and on and on and on.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KineticLensman 2y agoHe’s 76 and this is a project he started 30 years ago. Perhaps his motivation has changed in that time. I know mine would have.
- jimbob45 2y agoYeah fun fact: the books were already well enough known by the time WarCraft 3 was released that the final mission was named "A Symphony of Frost and Flame".