I tend to agree with the Tolkien thing. That's wwhy it's kind of sad that the movies are in many ways better than the books. Because the man can't write.
Some sections work better than others. I think part of the problem is that his writing style doesn't match the story well. A more folk-tale type of approach (I think) would have helped quite a bit. I'm thinking along the lines of Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea series of M John Harrison's The Pastel City.
I'm not especially wild about the movies. I felt that they cut too much of the backstory without fixing some of the pacing problems. I don't know how they could have done it better though.
I suppose that the formula would make it somewhat easier for Storytellers who were not great Authors. I'm not sure that that's the entire answer though. The thing that I'm calling authorship includes far more than just plot -- word choices, sentence structure, character depth and development, the way details are revealed. The last couple are arguably on the fuzzy boundary of storytelling.
I suspect that you're right and it has more to do with the expectations of editors and publishers. It'll be interesting to see if some of the trends in self-publishing have an effect on that.
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I'm not especially wild about the movies. I felt that they cut too much of the backstory without fixing some of the pacing problems. I don't know how they could have done it better though.
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I suspect that you're right and it has more to do with the expectations of editors and publishers. It'll be interesting to see if some of the trends in self-publishing have an effect on that.
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