Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
And this is where my criticism becomes circular logic. You need the detail to build the world but the level of detail takes away from driving the plot forward. So how do you do the world building and the plot development without one taking away from the other.
A good example might be the birthday party in the hobbit. It's about 40 pages long and I don't think adds to the book or the world. The key elements of that intro could have been woven in better throughout the story. He has quite a few moments like these. Poorly written might not have been the correct term but he certainly needed a good editor to push more of the world out of the main books and into the compendiums.
The Macguffern problem is a little bigger but he might be the early adopter of it so rather than it being a common fantasy trope it could have been new.
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I once described a Tolkien as a guy who could take 12 pages to describe a tree, and then you realize, 'oh **** I'm in a forest'
His descriptive style was hard at points. But it was also his strength. He could really build a world.