facher83 said:
How does being a good storyteller not make you a good author? An author, by definition, is most simply a creator of content. A writer has a job to conve, in words or other communicable ways, to get a message across to another person. Tolkien seems to do both of these objectives fine. Tolkien is criticized for being a poor English writer, novel writer, and to have a lot of complaints against his novel 'setups' not being perfect. I'm not sure I agree with your account that Tolkien is a bad author - I mean, you supported him to be a good author already, but just sort of took it away based on a technicality that doesn't have anything to do with being an author, but being an editor, literary grammar police, or a strict reviewer who ignores content and pays attention to the fact that having a paperback cover must mean the writer sucks, because it's nto hardcover. I don't understand you.... you're on a bandwagon that doesn't exist.
(I've only read the first half of FotR, and I could really care less about Tolkien's image, but your reasonings seem way beyond flawed to discredit an 'author'). |
I was mainly pointing out that he's overrated, which many would agree, just not those who haven't read anything in the genre besides Tolkien. I've read over 750 Fantasy novels, so I feel I have a pretty good selection from which to draw this conclusion instead of pulling it out of ass like many others could and probably would. Harry Potter is another series I feel gets undeserved attention along with Eragon series. HP is like "Oh this poor, single mom wrote this terrific book!" and Eragon is "Oh this must be the work of a prodigy for sure!". Tolkien gets cred for inventing the genre, which he kinda did, but others refined it. What I'm getting at is; your writing should be about the value and quality of the book rather than the fuzz revolving around your person or the circumstances under which the book was written, but such is not the case with these three examples (in my honest and somewhat educated opinion, that is).
I'm being picky because A: As stated above, I've read a whole lot of books in the genre (PS; I don't consider Harry Potter fantasy, it was just for examples sake), and B: I'm trying to make it into the bussiness myself with a script I've been working on for years so I'm being overly studious and methodical in my reading to detect ways I do not want to write. Simple as that. If you want to have a gander at those who helped refine the genre, I recommend Raymond E. Feist, David Eddings, Stephen R. Donaldson and Terry Brooks, all masters of their craft and pillars in the genre since its infancy. Now, if you choose not to follow up on my recommendations, that's fine by me. But don't call Tolkien by names he does not deserve for all his depth (which frankly is just too emphasized in LotR) before you've had ample time and sound basis for comparison. My father was easily the strongest man in the world until I started seeing weightlifting on TV or strongman contests. Broaden the horizon to get a clearer picture both near and from afar is all I'm saying.
