Bloat

[henderson]

Way of the Kings == Bloat

As much as I enjoy reading SWORD OF SHADOWS series by J.V. Jones, this series has more than its fair share of bloat. Her characters are compelling, but there is too much bloat.

[Grack21]

I think it comes down to one thing.

It's fun to say bloat!

BLOAT!

[Curethan]

Or do you really have such a poor view of authors and publishers that you think they would add shit that they don't even like to their novel, increasing the cost of production, just to fit a marketing ideal slightly better?

Yes. This is the foundation of the opinion I am expressing. Not that the authors necesarily 'dislike' the added crap, but it wouldn't be in there otherwise.

I realize this isn't the accepted definition of bloat round these parts (it seems to vary a lot). Thus, I asked for others' opinions on bloat and so forth as well. Perhaps you can provide the proper term so that I don't seem so ill informed. ;)

For me, its pretty obvious that this is occuring in fantasy more and more. That's what I have been mostly reading the last couple of years.

Furthermore;

It's fun to say bloat!

BLOAT!

[kuenjato]

I've seen the justification put here as to Rothfuss's omission of the pirate adventure--i.e., the story didn't "Need it"--elsewhere, but frankly it doesn't fly. Kingkiller is fiction, and Rothfuss is an author. If he wanted, Rothfuss could make the pirate sequence be the most important and evocative of Kvothe's life' or he could make it just another escapade among many (like the "rescue" of Denna's ring, a sequence which takes a huge amount of pages to resolve). But instead, Rothfuss merely mentions an action sequence and glosses over it as unimportant. It feels far too cute, and is a double-strike in that the book needs some swift action at that point (roughly 150,000 words or so in without a serious or significant action scene). Then we get hundred of pages of faesex and cartoonish wuxia-wannabe to culiminate and climax Kvothe's journey, without much in the way of actual character development--there's character regression, in some ways, which may play significantly in Doors of Stone but is rather tedious to read when spread out over 400k.

WMF is probably the most bloated epic fantasy I've read this shy of Otherland's middle volumes and Lord of Chaos. It's not much of a stretch to say one could read the first volume, skim the wiki page for book 2 and be prepared for DoS.

[Grack21]

OK, the faesex annoyed me a bit too, but now its hundred of pages? This is all playing perfectly into people here don't actually read theory.

[kuenjato]

OK, the faesex annoyed me a bit too, but now its hundred of pages? This is all playing perfectly into people here don't actually read theory.

It felt like hundreds of pages :P particularly as it came out of a rather long, drawn out bandit hunt.

There was actually some really important moments over the course of the faesex, but it's all smothered in embaressing wish-fulfillment kama sutra.

[williamjm]

My impression of those complaints about the first book was that people felt like the climax came out of nowhere. Most of us wouldn't object to a random action scene in the middle of the book being dramatized even if doesn't add much to the plot or character development, but many of us would object if that same sequence is placed at the end and felt like it should be built up to.

I think it is true that the placement was the biggest problem with that, along with the fact that the book didn't really feel like it had a proper climax (the same could be said for book 2).

If it's just not an action-oriented book, then why include the episode only to skip over it?

I'm speculating here, but I suspect Rothfuss never had any intention of writing that sequence and may not have planned it out in any more detail than what is described in the couple of paragraphs that mention it.

I think there are two purposes for it being mentioned, the first (and most obvious) being that it's a cheap joke about Kvothe setting out to do something in a way that should be devoid of any risks and then having assorted unlikely disasters happen to him. The second is that (like a lot of the book) it's making a point about storytelling and how the story told depends as much on how the storyteller decides to present the story as it does on what actually happened.

But instead, Rothfuss merely mentions an action sequence and glosses over it as unimportant. It feels far too cute, and is a double-strike in that the book needs some swift action at that point (roughly 150,000 words or so in without a serious or significant action scene).

I think the biggest problem with the mention of it is that it does seem to be trying a little bit too hard to be funny and making a joke that brings attention to an aspect of the book that a lot of readers are probably going to consider a weakness seems like a good way to irritate people.

[Caligula_K]

I blame travelogues for the amount of bloat in fantasy. Very few are done well, in that they further the plot and/or themes and/or character development. Martin is generally one of the exceptions (along with Abercrombie and Wolfe), though beginning in A Clash of Kings some of his travelogues begin to get overly long- chapters of Arya's wanderings at the beginning of ACoK and ASoS could easily be compressed and made more concise, and it's only in Brienne's fifth chapter in AFFC that he begins to do anything interesting thematically. My greatest fear for the series is that much of it will continue to be eaten up by these extended travelogues- whereas it took Ned one to two chapters to reach King's Landing and Tyrion went from Winterfell to the Wall to the Riverlands to the Eyrie back to the Riverlands in one book, now entire character arcs in each book are spent traveling from one place to another- whether it's Sam going from the Wall to Oldtown or Bran from Winterfell to the Wall. Thankfully, most of Martin's travelogues remain interesting and some are fantastic- particularly Jaime's in ASoS.

Other authors... Not so much. Malazan Book of the Fallen got mired down in tedious army marches and individual journeys, particularly in the last three books, in which it takes characters 800 pages to walk to where they need to go and one to actually move the plot forward. Rothfuss has been commented on enough in this thread. The early Jordan books were filled with overlong and pointless travel descriptions, before everyone learned how to teleport and Jordan was forced to bloat up the series in other ways, such as through dress descriptions and having the characters talk about doing nothing for 1,000 pages. Bakker writes some very effective and moody travelogues (anyone who's read the Slog of Slogs sections from the White Luck Warrior can attest to that) but tends to suffer in his lengthy army march sections, which are very repetitive. And on the list goes. Fantasy authors need to become ballsier in cutting out lengthy, and particularly multi-volume, journeys from their books.

[williamjm]

Other authors... Not so much. Malazan Book of the Fallen got mired down in tedious army marches and individual journeys, particularly in the last three books, in which it takes characters 800 pages to walk to where they need to go and one to actually move the plot forward.

I think one of the biggest problems in the last couple of books was how long it took for the journeys to even start. If I remember correctly, the Bonehunters spend about the first 500 pages sitting around in Letheras before they even start on their march.

[jdiddyesquire]

Other authors... Not so much. Malazan Book of the Fallen got mired down in tedious army marches and individual journeys, particularly in the last three books, in which it takes characters 800 pages to walk to where they need to go and one to actually move the plot forward. Rothfuss has been commented on enough in this thread. The early Jordan books were filled with overlong and pointless travel descriptions, before everyone learned how to teleport and Jordan was forced to bloat up the series in other ways, such as through dress descriptions and having the characters talk about doing nothing for 1,000 pages. Bakker writes some very effective and moody travelogues (anyone who's read the Slog of Slogs sections from the White Luck Warrior can attest to that) but tends to suffer in his lengthy army march sections, which are very repetitive. And on the list goes. Fantasy authors need to become ballsier in cutting out lengthy, and particularly multi-volume, journeys from their books.

This is neither here nor there, but I think the Malazan bloat was at times intentional and part of his commentary.

[Werthead]

One person's bloat is another's atmospheric scene-setting. One reader's filler is another's rich description. It's difficult to pin down a solid definition.

For example, Otherland has been mentioned. I didn't find it bloated so much as very episodic. Otherland is basically a four-season TV show in novel form, with some episodes that dramatically progress the overall story arc and some that don't but are simply meant to be cool little interludes. I think Williams felt that the Otherland network's infinite number of fantasy worlds was a great well of story ideas and he decided to mine it thoroughly dry before continuing on with the storyline. I didn't find it too egregious, though perhaps it helped that I read each novel as it came out. The impact of a 800-900 page book with a mixture of stand-alone subplots and one over-arcing story and then waiting a year for the next volume was more effective I think than reading 3,000-4,000 pages in one go with the story jumping back and forth like that.

At the same time, in Wheel of Time I don't think anyone would argue that Crossroads of Twilight was mostly superfluous to requirements. There were perhaps at best 4-5 chapters that contained anything of value, and these could have been folded into the end of the preceding volume or the start of the next one without too much difficulty. I would argue that is a good example of the problem.

Also, it's not something that just happens to very long series of very long books. Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series consists of four (relatively, by epic fantasy standards) lean volumes, but in Books 3 and 4 there is a metric fuckton of wheel-spinning and people running around the forest and talking BS at one another until the story runs out of steam and ends fairly lamely. A series that would have been immensely improved if it had been compressed into a trilogy.

[Curethan]

Werthead, as someone who is involved in the industry, would you care to comment on my suggestion that bloat is becoming institutionalized in Modern fantasy?

[Caligula_K]

This is neither here nor there, but I think the Malazan bloat was at times intentional and part of his commentary.

Not sure I understand what you mean here.

[kuenjato]

One person's bloat is another's atmospheric scene-setting. One reader's filler is another's rich description. It's difficult to pin down a solid definition.

For example, Otherland has been mentioned. I didn't find it bloated so much as very episodic. Otherland is basically a four-season TV show in novel form, with some episodes that dramatically progress the overall story arc and some that don't but are simply meant to be cool little interludes. I think Williams felt that the Otherland network's infinite number of fantasy worlds was a great well of story ideas and he decided to mine it thoroughly dry before continuing on with the storyline. I didn't find it too egregious, though perhaps it helped that I read each novel as it came out. The impact of a 800-900 page book with a mixture of stand-alone subplots and one over-arcing story and then waiting a year for the next volume was more effective I think than reading 3,000-4,000 pages in one go with the story jumping back and forth like that.

At the same time, in Wheel of Time I don't think anyone would argue that Crossroads of Twilight was mostly superfluous to requirements. There were perhaps at best 4-5 chapters that contained anything of value, and these could have been folded into the end of the preceding volume or the start of the next one without too much difficulty. I would argue that is a good example of the problem.

Also, it's not something that just happens to very long series of very long books. Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series consists of four (relatively, by epic fantasy standards) lean volumes, but in Books 3 and 4 there is a metric fuckton of wheel-spinning and people running around the forest and talking BS at one another until the story runs out of steam and ends fairly lamely. A series that would have been immensely improved if it had been compressed into a trilogy.

The problem with Otherland stemmed from it being one book to long. If Williams had gone less hog wild and kept it to a trilogy, it would have worked substantially better. Instead, it just went on and on and on and on with artificial climaxes/cliffhangers galore. The third book was particularly wearying (and I was reading in as installments were being released) and 80% was completely repetitive regurgitation. I wish he'd saved those for short stories.

[Werthead]

Werthead, as someone who is involved in the industry, would you care to comment on my suggestion that bloat is becoming institutionalized in Modern fantasy?

I don't think so, certainly not compared to the situation in the 1990s. Recently we've seen a move more towards slimmer volumes (probably to combat rising paper costs) with authors like Daniel Abraham, Stephen Deas, Col Buchanan, Paul Kearney and so on producing 'average'-sized novels of 300-400 pages.

It's possible that we may be seeing a swing back towards bigger books given the immense success of Sanderson and Rothfuss's 400,000-word monsters, not to mention The Passage, ADWD, Malazan and so on, but I think generally the huge books will be the preserve of best-selling major authors and the odd new one.

[Dr Spoon]

I find unnecessary verbiage a massive turn-off (now define unnecessary...). A story should take the amount of time it needs and no more, especially where the world is another north-European, semi-medieval fantasy land. As a reader I want to know what's happening now and what makes this place/person/occasion special. This counts double where the bloat is irrelevant pseudo-myth, and treble if it involves poetry.

There are clearly some people out there (probably not on this board) who equate "proper fantasy story" with "multi-volume soap opera". Without going into suggesting reasons why, you simply don't get that attitude in, say, crime writing or romance. I think it does fantasy no favours at all. How many excellent fantasy novels have never been published because they didn't meet some arbitrary word count? Many, I suspect.

[jdiddyesquire]

Not sure I understand what you mean here.

This is going to sidetrack the thread probably, but...

Depends on whether you buy into the notion that the Malazan cycle was as much epic fantasy as a commentary on epic fantasy. If you buy into that thought, then I think some of Erikson's bloat was intentional poking at a genre and its readers that expect irrelevant sections. I think sometimes Erikson made things intentionally irrelevant to make that point.

He also really doesn't seem to care what his editor or his readers thought. He was going to do something because he felt like it - which is also in response to a genre that seems to write to their audience instead of at them.

Erikson was decidedly writing at us.

Or I could be full of shit. KCF and I have been having some chats about this from time to time as to what Erikson may or may not have been doing. I did a blogposton it as part of a review of Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and KCF did one when he finished the Malazan series.

[wolverine]

With the ASOIAF series I truly don't think a single page was wasted in the first three. AFFC is still great but there are parts of that where I felt GRRM was not being as cruelly efficient as he was earlier. From his comments on ADWD I suspect it will be a long book but not a bloated one as he has stated he was quite ruthless with his editing to bring the page number down.

It's just as possible to have short books that are still bloated. They're even worse offenders.

I am currently doing my first reread of the series, actually first reread of any books in the last 10 years, and at the beginning of ACOK there seems like there was 5 pages describing Patchface and his backstory. I don't remember what I thought of it the first time, but this time it was really annoying and pointless but maybe Patchface has some really important part to play.

[wolverine]

I think The Lord of the Rings is remarkably free of bloat. A lot of plot happens in those pages, so a large wordcount is only appropriate.

Umm...Tom Bombadil?

Edit: see someone else pointed him out in the thread already

[kcf]

This is going to sidetrack the thread probably, but...

Depends on whether you buy into the notion that the Malazan cycle was as much epic fantasy as a commentary on epic fantasy. If you buy into that thought, then I think some of Erikson's bloat was intentional poking at a genre and its readers that expect irrelevant sections. I think sometimes Erikson made things intentionally irrelevant to make that point.

He also really doesn't seem to care what his editor or his readers thought. He was going to do something because he felt like it - which is also in response to a genre that seems to write to their audience instead of at them.

Erikson was decidedly writing at us.

Or I could be full of shit. KCF and I have been having some chats about this from time to time as to what Erikson may or may not have been doing. I did a blogposton it as part of a review of Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and KCF did one when he finished the Malazan series.

I'll chime in quickly here. I agree with Wert's ascertain that what is or is not bloat is highly dependent on personal preference. Especially in genre where some people love the long and in-depth worldbuilding that could easily be described as bloat.

For Erikson it's a bit more. Much of what people bemoan as bloat is actually the thematic heart of his writing on the human condition. Not so much the post-modern parts of it, though it's probably there. With the internal focus of his thematic explorations of the human condition, many cry bloat. Erikson obviously disagrees - though he does admit to being wordy at times. And I'm not saying that Erikson's writing couldn't be much, much tighter - I think his books are longer than stictly necessary. But then again, it does come down to personal preference.

In Toll the Hounds, there is a quote that I believe is part of his on commentary about the 'bloat' in his books. I mention it both in my review of TtH and my review of the whole series. The quote is below:

‘Sad truth,’ Kruppe said – his audience of none sighing in agreement – ‘that a tendency towards verbal excess can so defeat the precision of meaning. That intent can be so well disguised in majestic plethora of nuance, of rhythm both serious and mocking, of this penchant for self-referential slyness, that the unwitting simply skip on past – imagining their time to be so precious, imagining themselves above all manner of conviction, save that of their own witty perfection.' Sigh and sigh again.