3 ms·
One thing I've noticed is that sometimes modern authors are too married to their big ideas, and neglect the rest of the story. The example I like to point to th
by bigstrat2003 2y ago
One thing I've noticed is that sometimes modern authors are too married to their big ideas, and neglect the rest of the story. The example I like to point to this is Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. She has fantastic ideas, really interesting stuff. But the plot is awful. There's just no interesting story there, and the ideas aren't enough to carry the book so it winds up being a bore to read. And I don't find that to be the only case of such a thing.
- pdimitar 2y ago> One thing I've noticed is that sometimes modern authors are too married to their big ideas, and neglect the rest of the story. IMO that's very far from a new phenomena. Even Tolkien, for all the accolades he got, gets carried away describing absolutely irrelevant stuff that barely anyone cares about (controversial opinion, shoot me, but I know many others love his universe and agree with that take at the same time). To me falling in love with your fantasy / scifi universe is a huge writer sin. It seriously detracts from the quality of the writing and I've noticed this in authors young and old, and super popular and praised ones too. Same goes for Asimov btw... he tries so hard to present you a narrative and/or do some world-building that some (if not most) of this characters end up being extremely simplistic plot devices. They don't feel like living breathing humans at all. Examples abound.