A Song of Ice and Fire... and Geeks

[CDNSushi]

We both found George R. R. Martin's writing style, or perhaps his story telling style, to be a bit irritating.

Just curious -- can you articulate what it was that irritated you about his writing style?

[Bugbear]

Just curious -- can you articulate what it was that irritated you about his writing style?

I will try. It kind of felt as if he was stringing the reader along with no overall direction in some parts of the novels. Often it seemed as if you were left at a cliff hanger and then there was no resolution. You invest a lot of emotion in following some characters or story line, then they were just completely dropped from the plot, or almost never mentioned again. It became a bit exhausting to read at times, and I almost didn't bother to read the last novel. I did want to see what happened to at least one character, though, so I guess it worked a little.
I felt jerked around a little too much by the story lines that never ended or were just dropped.

[CDNSushi]

Sure... That makes sense. I don't like it either when in the course of a book, TV show, movie, theatre play, what-have-you, a plot element or character, or even a prop gets introduced that doesn't get used. I got that from my high school English teacher.

I remember when I was in our high school play, my part was that of an old, retired man whose highlight of the day was going out to see firefighters fight fires. We were encouraged to explore our characters and give them a life of their own... And I felt that my old man would have enjoyed smoking pipes.

When I asked our director, who was also our English teacher and a great aficionado of the theatre, what he thought of my having a pipe on set as a prop, he told me, "Only if you smoke it, or at the very least, light it." He went on to explain that it was a particular pet peeve of his to see characters walk around stage with a cigarette, cigar, pipe, etc., as a prop, but never smoke it. Tobacco is meant to be smoked -- not carried around, he explained. He said that it was very distracting for him to watch, because as an audience member he would silently be drawn to the cigarette, and keep saying to himself: "Smoke it. Smoke it. Smoke it. Smoke it. Smoke it. Damnit, why don't you light it already? C'mon! SMOKE IT!"

So we worked out that about halfway through my scene I would pull out the pipe, start filling it, and as the spotlight started to dim off me, I would light the pipe and emit a puff of smoke as we faded to black.

I don't think I would like it very much to be taken for that kind of ride in a book, with a storyline or character that would then get yoinked out randomly, never to be seen again...