Paolini's Writing gets Worse with Practice

[edward9]

I read the first three chapters of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars for sporking purposes. I was struck by how much worse the writing was. In terms of objective measurements like grammar and sentence structure it is worse than the Inheritance Cycle. The Inheritance Cycle seems to have had a copy editor and I cannot imagine To Sleep in a sea of Stars was copy edited. A copy editor edits into a certain style and just the use of punctuation defies any system I am familiar with. I am no expert but I have never seen punctuation patterns like that. For semi objective things like writing style and structure I think most editors and writers would find it worse than the Inheritance Cycle. As has been pointed out by others nothing of significance happens in the first three chapters other than introducing the main character.

What struck me the most is the degradation in an admittedly more subjective area. The story was really boring. I found it difficult and unpleasant to read too but it was really really boring. It was so boring I could not find much to spork. Everything is just too blah, empty, with nothing to it. It is hard to imagine so many words could say so very little. How do others find To Sleep in a Sea of Stars compares to the Inheritance Cycle? Am I the only one who thinks Paolini's technical writing skills have gotten noticeably to massively worse?

Comments

[anontu]

His social media highly suggests it's the latter. He talks about the books he wrote in his head rather than what's on the page.

Wow Epistler, I can relate to you about struggling with writing so much now. I like my stories. However I'm really having trouble with them.

[epistler]

His social media highly suggests it's the latter. He talks about the books he wrote in his head rather than what's on the page.

I had a feeling. It's a lot easier to write someone off as just cynical and greedy when they're rich and also mediocre, but my philosophy is never to put down to malice what you can put down to incompetence, because the latter is way, way more common, most likely because of the simple fact that it takes less effort.

Wow Epistler, I can relate to you about struggling with writing so much now. I like my stories. However I'm really having trouble with them.

I know what you mean, groan. People talk about how you should treat writing like a job and all that, but the fact remains that if you're not in the right headspace it becomes that much harder, or even downright impossible. You either don't have the mental energy to produce, or just plain don't care enough to even try any more.