Is it true that "world building" is just a crutch for bad fantasy or is an intergral part of the book?
Is it true that "good prose" is just a crutch for bad fantasy or is it an integral part of the book?
>>7725068
>what did he mean by this?
>>7725012
Yes.
>>7725012
Why?
>FoodJournal.jpg
>>7725503
Delete this.
>>7725012
World-building isn't to be paired specifically with 'bad Fantasy'; it's an integral part of the genre as a whole. It's part of the escapism that's an inherent part of the genre. It causes Fantasy to tend toward a particular level of literary quality (i.e., monopolizing a certain percentage of words/pages/time away from higher literary aspects).
>>7725012
It is only bad if it is used as a replacement for the quality writing. If the author is writing an interesting story about the world that hear about in one paragraph, and the actual plot of the novel is shit, why do I have to read the shit novel instead of the actually good story you only briefly mentioned?
It is a form of letting the reader fill in the blanks for you. Just throw in a bunch of mentions of vague events and history and people will make up some cool story for you, and they won't care about the mediocre story that is actually in the book.
>>7725793
This, Dune and LOTR are classics for a reason but they were far more them just their worldbuilding. Thats something the pretenders dont get
Bloom gave props to Le Guin so it's all chill family.
>>7725804
Dune is fucking horrible.
I don't think it's a "crutch" so much as a temptation for the autistic that claims many goodly intended story.
>>7727589
nah
>>7727589
sorry you didn't get it : /
>>7727283
Le Guin, Tolkien, and Herbert gave us extremely detailed worlds without sacrificing every character and plot in the process.
Emulators of "worldbuilding" like Sanderson are guilty of building extremely interesting worlds with no one to care about in them, and contrived cliches of characterization.
>Be lifelong /tg/fag
>Love me some fantasy roleplaying
>Love worldbuilding (pretty good at too, if I do say so myself)
>Spend quite a bit of spare time doing it
>Don't go conlang levels of autistic, but I build unique metaphysics and insert a lot of literary ideas and references into my worlds
>Researching mythology for inspiration is what got me into reading the Greeks
>Fucking hate 98% of all fantasy and sci-fi books
I feel like I should write a fantasy story that doesn't suck dick.
I don't know how it hasn't happened yet. Fantasy is fucking cool. Adventures and shit are awesome. How is it all so terrible?
>>7727645
The big problem with fantasy is that everyone wants to novelize their D&D campaigns.
>>7727642
No complaints here. I echo your comments entirely.
