I’ve been on a Discworld binge for the last few weeks, but I recently took a break to read Name of the Wind in accordance with my wife’s thought. One thing that immediately struck me was the drastic difference in the two authors’ writing styles. Pratchett excels at extremely colourful but simple writing, and a lot of action is implied without ever being explicitly stated to the purpose where if you are not paying attention you would possibly not even observe something took place. In evaluation, Rothfuss loves to fill his pages with a big amount of detail.
I in my view favor Pratchett’s style, but I know numerous people love the prose in Name of the Wind for the exact opposite reason. Yeah, it really wasn’t the most effective example to use IMO, coming from a person who has really loved both of the Kingkiller books so far, but I sort of have in mind what OP means. I also loved Mistborn, despite the prose in that series being more akin to the concise type of Pratchett in the instance above, so I think I can totally respect both. That being said, both styles can go too far Unpopular opinion: I found various passages in The Handmaid’s Tale to be unnecessarily wordy, regardless of not actually explaining much nor having much intention so I think it’s a case by case thing. The brother worked in the mill.
All the lads in the village worked in the mill or for it. It was slicing pine. It were there seven years and in seven years more it’d wreck all of the timber within its reach. Then some of the equipment and most of the men who ran it and existed because of and for it would be loaded onto freight cars and moved away. But one of the most equipment could be left, since new pieces could always be bought on the installment plan—gaunt, staring, motionless wheels rising from mounds of brick rubble and ragged weeds with a quality profoundly superb, and gutted boilers lifting their rusting and unsmoking stacks with an air cussed, baffled and bemused upon a stumppocked scene of profound and non violent desolation, unplowed, untilled, gutting slowly into red and choked ravines under the long quiet rains of autumn and the galloping fury of vernal equinoxes. “The sun came throughout the open window and shone through the beer bottles on the table.
The bottles were half full. There was a little froth on the beer in the bottles, not much as it was very cold. It collared up in case you poured it into the tall glasses. I looked out of the open window at the white road. The trees beside the road were dusty.
Beyond was a green field and a stream. There were trees along the stream and a mill with a water wheel. Through the open side of the mill I saw a long log and a saw in it rising and falling. No one seemed to be tending it. There were four crows walking in the fairway field.
One crow sat in a tree watching. Also, I kind of think the passage of Faulkner’s isn’t a bad representation of the tip of the iceberg thing because it begins with three sentences of this length and vocabulary, “The brother worked in the mill. All the lads in the village worked in the mill or for it. It was cutting pine. ” and ends with one sentence of this length and vocabulary, “But some of the machinery could be left, since new pieces could always be bought on the installment plan—gaunt, staring, immobile wheels rising from mounds of brick rubble and ragged weeds with a high quality profoundly fantastic, and gutted boilers lifting their rusting and unsmoking stacks with an air cussed, baffled and bemused upon a stumppocked scene of profound and non violent desolation, unplowed, untilled, gutting slowly into red and choked ravines below the long quiet rains of autumn and the galloping fury of vernal equinoxes. “The others ordered wine; Cornudet demanded beer.
He had his own style of uncorking the bottle and making the beer foam, gazing at it as he inclined his glass after which raised it to a role among the lamp and his eye that he might judge of its color. When he drank, his great beard, which matched the color of his favourite beverage, appeared to tremble with affection; his eyes absolutely squinted in the recreation not to lose sight of the liked glass, and he looked for all the world as if he were satisfying the only characteristic for which he was born. He seemed to have dependent in his mind an affinity among the 2 great passions of his life pale ale and revolution and assuredly he could not taste the only without dreaming of the other. Notice how he doesn’t use lists as a crutch. When Maupassant describes something, it’s through phrases.
It provides a very rich image, with lots of particulars. This helps the writer create highly well defined characters and instances, although this tale spans 60 pages kind of you end up knowing the bits and bobs of why each personality does what he does. When the reader has a powerful grasp on how the personality will act, and the writer is ok to not break personality, it reinforces the tale and makes it more vivid. But it can even be bad, too much description after which it’s a chore. And lastly there are authors which are great with simplicity.
Asimov does not really write in a poetic way, he’s pragmatic as a result of in most occasions his characters aren’t that complex; for him what concerns is the story itself. Some of his works have big time frames. The Foundation series spans 1000 years. If he began detailing every thing, we’d have 100+ books instead of just 7. The Harry Potter series covers 365 days in each book.
With Asimov, it rounds to 143 years. An extreme edition of this is in his short story The last query, by which he handles the lifetime of the universe from 2061 ac to its death by entropy in a number of pages.