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Apr. 1st, 2013 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Finished The Captive Prince - and damn it, I want Volume 3 now. Stupid thing ended just when it got good. My main quibble with it - is that writer is far too interested in building up the romance and sex scenes, and less interested in the intriguing plot, which feels a bit cobbled together in places. But it did motivate me to go back to GRR Martin's Dance of Dragons - Martin is sort of the opposite extreme of SU Paget. Paget barely develops her supporting characters, who feel like snapshots, while George RR Martin over-develops his supporting characters - actually he not only develops them, he gives them a whole chapter to us their point of view. Say what you will about Martin, at the end of his books, no character regardless of how small or minor their role is left untouched - you even know what the character smells like by the time you're done. Undeveloped characters is not a crime that Martin is guilty of.
Also as much as I hate to say this ladies? But male writers appear to be a whole lot better at writing fight scenes and battle strategies. Maybe because they are just more interested in it? All that testorone has to go somewhere I guess - if you can't go out and fight someone, might as well write about it. Plotting a battle is a bit like plotting a football game - similar goals - get the ball in the other guy's territory without getting slaughtered.
While female writers are better at writing sex scenes - mainly because this is more like a game of cards or battle of wits...more focus on the foreplay, then on well on the actual goal. For women the longer it's drawn out, the more fun and better the climatic moment. It's all about the slow-build. The goal, eh...it's all about the means fellas. Two different ways of thinking at any rate. (Yes, I've clearly been jumping between romance fiction and violent guy books. You'd think it would be more jarring. Why I like both, is beyond me.)
2. Speaking of George RR Martin - had an interesting conversation with co-worker.
Co-worker: George RR Martin's books need to come with cliff-notes. You remember cliff-notes, right?
Me: Yep (although I rarely used them, being of the somewhat insane view that it was more fun to read the actual book and make up my own mind than read someone else's analysis of it instead. That said, I'd make an exception with Moby Dick and anything written by Henry James, who I was able to avoid - because I went to a Western Liberal Arts School as opposed to an NorthEastern Ivy League one...weird I know, but there it is. The US is oddly regional in its cultural tastes.)
Co-Worker: would certainly help with figuring out who everyone is. I'm reading Feast of Crows.
Me: Well there is a list of names at the back of each book - an appendix that has a list of all the characters in each house and their family trees and who's who, but you have to be careful about reading it. That's how I got spoilt on who died in the third book, Storm of Swords, which was frankly rather annoying.
Co-worker: I don't think I've read that book.
Me: You are attempting to read Feast of Crows without reading Storm of Swords?
Co-worker: is Feast the 3rd book?
Me: No, Storm is.
Co-worker: Oh I skipped that one. (So, basically co-worker skipped the best book in the series and started on the worst book in the series. Seriously if you wanted to skip one - it would be Feast of Crows. And even then...Granted co-worker has a low tolerance for gore, violence, and violent character deaths...so it may have been a good idea. Storm is the most of violent of the books, to my knowledge. And yes that's a warning to anyone who is about to watch the third season on HBO.)
Me: It's not going to make any sense. You should at least watch the tv series season 3 - it just started.
Co-worker: Oh I think I can figure it out.
Me: Okaay.
This reminds me of another work discussion regarding GRR Martin's books.
Co-worker: Catelyn is not a zombie, she's just mute. (this is co-worker 2 who has read all the books)
Me: No, she's a zombie.
Co-worker: It never says that.
Me: She died. Berdric brought her back to life with the unnatural fire, half her skull is still visible and she is speaking from her throat because her tongue is gone.
Co-worker: I thought she was just mute. I didn't she was a zombie.
Me: Well, zombies are a bit different in these books - undead might be a better word.
Co-worker 2 to Co-worker 3: Did you think Catelyn was a zombie?
CW3: No, didn't pick up on that.
Me: You do realize there are people online who have read these books five times and think she is a zombie, right?
Both: Really? Why would anyone do that?
See this is why I don't discuss pop culture at work.
There are spoilers in the comments for Game of Thrones Book 3, S3, and for Captive Prince, so may want to avoid reading them if you want to stay unspoiled.
Also as much as I hate to say this ladies? But male writers appear to be a whole lot better at writing fight scenes and battle strategies. Maybe because they are just more interested in it? All that testorone has to go somewhere I guess - if you can't go out and fight someone, might as well write about it. Plotting a battle is a bit like plotting a football game - similar goals - get the ball in the other guy's territory without getting slaughtered.
While female writers are better at writing sex scenes - mainly because this is more like a game of cards or battle of wits...more focus on the foreplay, then on well on the actual goal. For women the longer it's drawn out, the more fun and better the climatic moment. It's all about the slow-build. The goal, eh...it's all about the means fellas. Two different ways of thinking at any rate. (Yes, I've clearly been jumping between romance fiction and violent guy books. You'd think it would be more jarring. Why I like both, is beyond me.)
2. Speaking of George RR Martin - had an interesting conversation with co-worker.
Co-worker: George RR Martin's books need to come with cliff-notes. You remember cliff-notes, right?
Me: Yep (although I rarely used them, being of the somewhat insane view that it was more fun to read the actual book and make up my own mind than read someone else's analysis of it instead. That said, I'd make an exception with Moby Dick and anything written by Henry James, who I was able to avoid - because I went to a Western Liberal Arts School as opposed to an NorthEastern Ivy League one...weird I know, but there it is. The US is oddly regional in its cultural tastes.)
Co-Worker: would certainly help with figuring out who everyone is. I'm reading Feast of Crows.
Me: Well there is a list of names at the back of each book - an appendix that has a list of all the characters in each house and their family trees and who's who, but you have to be careful about reading it. That's how I got spoilt on who died in the third book, Storm of Swords, which was frankly rather annoying.
Co-worker: I don't think I've read that book.
Me: You are attempting to read Feast of Crows without reading Storm of Swords?
Co-worker: is Feast the 3rd book?
Me: No, Storm is.
Co-worker: Oh I skipped that one. (So, basically co-worker skipped the best book in the series and started on the worst book in the series. Seriously if you wanted to skip one - it would be Feast of Crows. And even then...Granted co-worker has a low tolerance for gore, violence, and violent character deaths...so it may have been a good idea. Storm is the most of violent of the books, to my knowledge. And yes that's a warning to anyone who is about to watch the third season on HBO.)
Me: It's not going to make any sense. You should at least watch the tv series season 3 - it just started.
Co-worker: Oh I think I can figure it out.
Me: Okaay.
This reminds me of another work discussion regarding GRR Martin's books.
Co-worker: Catelyn is not a zombie, she's just mute. (this is co-worker 2 who has read all the books)
Me: No, she's a zombie.
Co-worker: It never says that.
Me: She died. Berdric brought her back to life with the unnatural fire, half her skull is still visible and she is speaking from her throat because her tongue is gone.
Co-worker: I thought she was just mute. I didn't she was a zombie.
Me: Well, zombies are a bit different in these books - undead might be a better word.
Co-worker 2 to Co-worker 3: Did you think Catelyn was a zombie?
CW3: No, didn't pick up on that.
Me: You do realize there are people online who have read these books five times and think she is a zombie, right?
Both: Really? Why would anyone do that?
See this is why I don't discuss pop culture at work.
There are spoilers in the comments for Game of Thrones Book 3, S3, and for Captive Prince, so may want to avoid reading them if you want to stay unspoiled.
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Date: 2013-04-02 12:02 am (UTC)Catelyn does not eat brains. Not yet, anyway. And what about those reanimated corpses beyond the Wall--are they zombies, too?
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Date: 2013-04-02 09:56 pm (UTC)Eh, you're behind the times. Zombies haven't been eating brains in most stories since Night of the Living Dead. In fact I think Anya on Buffy stated that this was a myth.
Check out Walking Dead - lots of zombies, don't really care all that much about brains.
And yes, the wights are most likely zombies...or undead. Whichever. Martin isn't clear. He calls them undead things. They remind me more of zombies than vampires, so going with that...I'd go with zompires, but there's no fangs or first for blood.
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Date: 2013-04-02 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-03 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-02 10:03 pm (UTC)Action scenes require an economy of language. Dorothy Dunnett over-writes them to the point that you aren't sure what is happening. While writers like Patrick O'Brien, Dumas, Bernard Cornwell, Stephen King, Jim Butcher, Ernest Hemingway (actually very good in this regard), and GRRM - tend to be more direct. They don't write around it. And they don't spend a lot of time on how the characters feel so much as the what is happening.
Sex scenes - require the opposite. What's important here is less detail or less action and more focus on what the character feels or is thinking. Otherwise it reads like an anatomy lesson or is wham bang thank you ma'am.
Which is why for women - written text works better as erotica, and men prefer visual.
One's emotional/thinking, and the other is physical/not thinking doing. Just an odd pattern that I've been picking up on.
Strategy is different.