Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

The Sword of Shannara may have been a "yeuch" book, but it was the first fanatsy to break into the NYT bestseller list in 1977. (I think all fantasy writers may owe Terry a Happy Holiday card this year. Other writers reading TSoS with a practice eye may or may not agree that his style was frustrating, but a million or so readers liked it well enough. It still sells today.

The last time I read through TSOS, perhaps six months ago, I tried to ignore any preceived weaknesses. I was more interested in what he did correctly. Had to be something.

LiamJackson said:

The Sword of Shannara may have been a "yeuch" book, but it was the first fanatsy to break into the NYT bestseller list in 1977. (I think all fantasy writers may owe Terry a Happy Holiday card this year. Other writers reading TSoS with a practice eye may or may not agree that his style was frustrating, but a million or so readers liked it well enough. It still sells today.

The last time I read through TSOS, perhaps six months ago, I tried to ignore any preceived weaknesses. I was more interested in what he did correctly. Had to be something.

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So what was it that made Sword of Shannara so successful? I barely managed to finish it. I guess it was action packed.

stranger said:

So what was it that made Sword of Shannara so successful? I barely managed to finish it. I guess it was action packed.

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Basically, people wanted more Tolkien and Brooks delivered--a little too closely for many people's tastes. Some bookstores refused to sell it because it was seen as a rip-off of Tolkien. I don't think Brooks can be credited with creating the fantasy boom. I just think he was one of the first to exploit it. The market was already there waiting for more.

Christine N. said:

Didn't The Simpsons use that thing for one of their Halloween shows? Where the dolpins start walking on land and shove all the humans into the ocean?

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Absolutely! Halloween 2000, in fact.

"I'm not gonna let a few hoop-jumping tuna-munchers push me around!" -Homer

Roger J Carlson said:

Basically, people wanted more Tolkien and Brooks delivered--a little too closely for many people's tastes. Some bookstores refused to sell it because it was seen as a rip-off of Tolkien.

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Wow. That would annoy me so much. Sometimes I want to read yet another rip-off of Tolkien.

Roger J Carlson said:

I don't think Brooks can be credited with creating the fantasy boom. I just think he was one of the first to exploit it. The market was already there waiting for more.

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I read Brooks' book on writing, and I seem to remember that he admitted he was very lucky. There's some interesting stuff in that book, particularly about some of the revisions he went through on his second book and about his experiences writing a couple of movie adaptations.

I started to reread The Sword of ShaNaNa recently because it was available for my Palm. At first, I read a while and gave up. Later, I started reading it again (for various reasons). Once it got past the beginning, the pace really sped up. I remember reading my Palm in bed one night, during a crucial scene, going click click click click with the little "page down" button because I wanted to find out what happened. When you can make readers want to find out what happens, you can get away with a lot.

Some readers think The Sword of ShaNaNa was his only good book, but most of his fans seem to prefer his later ones. Brooks himself agrees that he got better with his later books.

Elfstones, the second one, IMO, is the better book, one of the best he's written.

Anne mentioned Brooks said he was "lucky." I don't doubt that he said it for a second. I do doubt very much that luck was entirely responsible for this other 21 bestsellers. I'm extremely doubtful that luck has anything to do with the fact that TSoS continues to sell well thirty years later and, still spawns the occasional new Shannara story.

Sounds like I'm a Brooks fan? Hardly. I do, however, appreciate his success. I've read the Shannara series, as well as the comedic fantasy Magic Kingdom for Sale and the Word and the Void, his entry into the dark fantasy genre. In all but two instances, I bogged down in the first couple of chapters. He does, however, have a knack for eventually finding a good pace. However, I believe his greatest talent is that of characterization. The Druid Allanon, Walker Boh, Coglin, Par, Coll, and Flick all found fans early on.

The same with Landover (Magic Kingdom) and its characters. Magic Kingdom was recently optioned by Universal. It may never make it to the screen, but such a film would be interesting <grins>

Just my fifty cents

I read Brooks' Sword of Shannara when I was a wee lad and was on a serious Tolkien kick. Even then, I enjoyed it but thought of it as basically a generic version of LOTR.

When he came out with the rest of the series I couldn't even be bothered to read those.

Recently I noticed that Brooks was achieving bestseller numbers with his latest incarnations of his Shannara series and wanted to investigate so I bought a 3-in-1 novel containing the first three in the series to refresh me and get me started.

I could not venture further than the first few chapters into the first book. There is no denying that he is a talented writer who can write very well but writing well is only half the battle.

The story sucks in my opinion. It was totally cliche, unrealistic - by which I mean the characters didn't seem realistic to me - they were either overly wholesome goody-goodies or the bad guys were super-evil, and predictable.

And it was just too much like a pale carbon copy of LOTR. It struck me almost like well-written fan fiction.

Unfortunately, nowadays my time is so limited that I have a massive backlog of books to be read so I have written them off.

I'm tempted to just get one of the later ones but I absolutely hate jumping into a series in the middle. But like Liam said - there is definitely something to be said for somebody who consistently hits the bestseller lists with Fantasy.

Does anybody know if the storylines improve with his later works?

LiamJackson said:

Anne mentioned Brooks said he was "lucky." I don't doubt that he said it for a second. I do doubt very much that luck was entirely responsible for this other 21 bestsellers. I'm extremely doubtful that luck has anything to do with the fact that TSoS continues to sell well thirty years later and, still spawns the occasional new Shannara story.

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It might be the adventure element. In his book on writing, Brooks said that he was inspired by the old-fashioned adventure writers. He admitted that he doesn't read much fantasy (sigh). But then again, it seems what he wants to do is tell adventure stories.

Maybe that's why he is able to gather fans who aren't typical fantasy fans. There are probably a lot of people reading fantasy who wouldn't like most fantasies, but do like adventure stories. In today's market, unless you like reading about high tech stuff or reading Westerns or "Executioner" novels, a lot ofthe best traditional adventure writing is found in the fantasy section. Unless I'm missing something, where is today's Scarlet Pimpernel or Scaramouche?

Broken, I don't think the storylines have improved very much, though his style seems smoother. In '77, TSoS was a really nice story. But over decades, genre readers grow more sophisticated and savvy. I think it may have taken Terry a while to figure that out and I think he does a better job of writing to his audience, these days. The current Shannara installments have their moments, but the line is growing stale IMHO.

The storyline for Word and the Void had tremendous potential but was left unexplored. Brook's care and attention to characters has kept me coming back for more lessons. I don't generally buy his work for entertainment.

I will say this for Terry: Every once in a great while, he writes a passage that leaves me wishing like hell I had written it. One such example is the prolouge in Angel Fire East. That's about the highest compliment I can pay to a writer.

From Sometimes the Magic Works, I recall that it was Lester DelRey that really pushed the concept of the Sword of Shannara. It was less Brooks exploiting Tolkien's popularity than DelRey himself. And I'm not indicting him for it. I think it was brilliant. I would use the term capitalizing instead.

My biggest beef with it is that it uses Tolkien's trappings as conventions. As though all Wizards should have the same attitude and mode of speech as Gandalf. As though all human warriors should either be exactly like Boromir, or Aragorn, or a cross of both.

TSoS is not plagiarism, and not parody, but it fits in there somewhere. I made it through past halfway, and found it to be, if I could say something nice, juvenile at best.

The thing is, after reading the book he became my favorite Author personally, though not professionally. I genuinely like the guy. A whole lot. It pains me to think the way I do about his writing. (He also POV hops constantly)

Terry Goodkind, on the other hand, is way a plagiarist of Robert Jordan--Just read The Stone of Tears. It was published after Jordan was up to book five of his series, and he doesn't merely use parallel, simile, or metaphor--he steals things by name. I don't know how Tom Doherty let his second book come off the press. I won't read through to get to book three to know if someone through down the editorial gauntlet and reigned him in.

I think Terry took TSoS to DAW, first. They rejected the story and suggested he try Ballentine. Ballentine had just hired Lester Del Rey as the Fantasy editor for the Del Rey imprint. Can't help but wonder what the DAW editor thinks about the TSoS, now.

If he were me, he's probably kicking himself about the money, but thanking God about his reputation for not picking CRAP!!!

jlawrenceperry said:

If he were me, he's probably kicking himself about the money, but thanking God about his reputation for not picking CRAP!!!

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Oh, I doubt that. Today, reputations depend more on how much money you make than the quality of what you produce. I'm not sure it was ever any different.

I was kidding.

Whether you love TSoS or not (and I've read it, but it's nowhere near LoTR's quality, and I didn't think so in 1977, either...) you have to agree that Terry and Lester did a service to all of us fantasy fanatics by reviving the genre.

The same with Landover (Magic Kingdom) and its characters. Magic Kingdom was recently optioned by Universal. It may never make it to the screen, but such a film would be interesting <grins>

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Oooh! I hope so, as it was quite likely my favourite Terry Brooks book...

After The Lord of the Rings got to be Very Popular Indeed (right book at the right time at the right place), readers wanted to repeat the experience they got in reading it. (When readers have a good time with a book they will want to have a good time with another, similar book.)

Up until then, Fantasy as we know it now had been an obscure side room on the great hall of mainstream.

Publishers are the readers' servants. Up popped Lynn Carter who edited the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, bringing back into print a hundred years' worth of obscure fiction by eccentric Brits. William Morris, E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, all the rest. Robert E. Howard's Depression-era pulp novels were reprinted. All of it sold very well. Before long everything that vaguely fit had been reprinted, and still the market was still calling. When then market starts calling, lots of folks answer. Pretty soon novels were coming out of desk drawers. Then authors started writing original fantasy novels to fill the vacuum. One of those was The Sword of Shanarra, which, while it wasn't very good, scratched the itch that folks who had loved The Lord of the Rings had developed.

Sturgeon's Law applies. We'll see which novels are still in print a hundred years hence.

MacAllister said:

This was just a general, for-your-additional-entertainment kind of a post. We now return you to your Terry Brooks discussion...

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All that's changed is the location of the slush pile. New authors are still coming out of one slush pile or another.

jules said:

I read a novel once that had several sentences very similar to this one, except that they went on for an average of about two pages. Yeuch.

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For an example of how to do multi-page sentences well, I commend you to Gabriel Garcia-Marquez' Autumn of the Patriarch. The technique is used for specific literary effect, and used brilliantly. As the MC gets older and more senile the sentences get longer and longer, until finally the entire last chapter is one long sentence. And all the while it is completely enthralling. (Partly because you can't find a period at which to stop and put the darn thing down!)

Credit for that particular example also goes to Gregory Rabassa for his translation – it is not an easy feat to manage in English.

AnneMarble said:

Unless I'm missing something, where is today's Scarlet Pimpernel or Scaramouche?

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It's being written in Spanish by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, in Las Aventuras del Capitán Alatriste. Five novels and counting. My copy of the first one is a twenty-somethingth edition, I think.

Kris

O/T Jim

I hope your trip went well. Congrats to all and welcome back.

Liam, you just posted the 4000th reply in the thread. Bravo to UJ and all posters.


Os.

The trip went fine, Liam. I'm looking forward to hearing from your guy.

Saw Episode III of Star wars at Midnight. I was impressed. Disturbing, affecting, beautiful--all of those things. Just FYI.