Submitted by butterweedstrover t3_1205am4 in books
There is a wired article about the big guy in the fantasy realm, and it offers explicit and pivotal examples of what constitutes poor/meaningless writing.
From the article: “It was going to be very bad this time.” Another one: “She felt a feeling of dread.” There’s a penchant for redundant description: A city is “tranquil, quiet, peaceful.” Many things, from buildings to beasts, are “enormous.” Dark places, more thesaurically, are “caliginous.” On almost every page of Mistborn, his first and probably most beloved series, a character “sighs,” “frowns,” “raises an eyebrow,” “cocks a head,” “shrugs,” or “snorts,” sometimes at the same time, sometimes multiple times a page.
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Ok, you got that? His defenders instantly jump to the 'simplistic' argument as if to turn poor writing (as results from a desire for quantity over quality) to be a deliberate artistic choice or preference.
But "she felt a feeling of dread" isn't simplistic, its redundant, and redundant for no particular reason. It is a result of hurdling words at the page rather than ruminating on purpose and style.
Sanderson throws a bone to his devout followers by explaining it as windowpane vs. stain glass writing. But that came from Orwell who defined the two not as preferences, but as bad vs. good.
Windowpane is good while stained glass is bad. Windowpane communicates the emotion or meaning without fluff. Special word choice or unorthodox phrasing are part and parcel to being clear and to the point when the emotion is too complex for stale and transitionary diction.
Poe begins his famous "The Cask of Amontillado" with the relatively simple line- " The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge."
Basic language, but ordered in a way to show the uneasy authority in the narrative voice, showing at once anger, and then again psychological confusion in one sentence.
Not flowery or purple. Again, purple prose is deemed bad, because it is unnecessarily verbose. By calling anyone who tries their hand at being good "flowery" Sanderson's flock insult and degrade everyone else.
So again, telling use repeatedly something complex in simple yet drawn out terms is bad writing, not simple. Hemmingway is simple, Sanderson is bad.