The WRITER'S Lounge

I hate to bring up Lord of the Rings again but the Lord of the Rings did that just fine with exposition along with the story told from the point of view of a character. For example the journey within Mordor's borders was told in the view of Samwise Gamgee and there was quite a lot of exposition about the monster Shelob (pg 707) which he had to face.

I think it is all about the execution. It might also have to do with the fact that I did not watch the series before reading the Game of Thrones. (Yet again it might not be the case. I understood the Scouring of the Shire, not shown in the film, quite well and it is one my favourite chapters of the novel)



Thanks for the information. I (and George Martin) was wrong about 'lordling' being a scion of a lord. All the more the need to explain terms!



Choke on this:

i don't really know what its about but sure i chuckled

I know d will protest, but I found that easier to understand than GOT. This is partly because I roughly know that a contractor has to pay his client a bond before he could start work.

ah yeah, I kind of understood that :D

You understood the Game of Thrones?! Please tell me what the first chapter on Bran was all about!

i mean i understand the thing about bond payment a bit lol

Good! Now, could you read this for me?

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Can I continue by complaining about the introduction for our heroes Ser Weymar Royce and Will as well?

Page 2, Introduction of Ser Weymar Royce:



This appears to be yet another proper introduction. However, this reader being pedantic and picky does not equate physical descriptions of him in oxymoronic 'gleaming black (?)' chain mail or that he is as concerned about his appearance as a teenage female brat hours before prom night with a proper character introduction.

This is because who he is and what he does is not made clear enough with 'the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs' and 'a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch' being the only proper exposition about him.

Even then, from which 'ancient house' is he descended from and why is he doing menial tasks that ought to be left to veterans like Gared? I understand that Ser Weymar Royce might be a minor character who turns into the Game of Thrones equivalent of the undead and not worthy of further exposition but at least telling which country he belongs to and explaining the nature of his job establishes the setting of the universe which he inhabits!

Even then, Ser Weyar Royce is not only part of the Night Watch of which I never heard of, but he is also a Sworn Brother as well. I feel as if I should say, "Good for him!" but I am restrained by the lack of knowledge of the significance of a Sworn Brother of the Night Watch of which I never heard of. After all, the term "Brother" has very unpleasant connotations ranging from the criminal to the homosexual. From Martin's rather detailed explanation of his physique and his wardrobe, I can't help but to detect homosexual overtones and the term "Sworn Brother" does little to ameliorate those niggling thoughts.

Here's hoping that Will's introduction would make more sense!

Page 2. Will's introduction



Can I list down the terms I don't understand and complain about it?

Mallister freeriders? : Makes about as much sense and sounds like "My Sister is a freeloader." Why the insistence on introducing someone I don't know by using yet more terms I don't know? Who on earth is Mallister?! What on earth is a freerider?! I understand that promiscuity is one of the dark topics covered in the Game of Thrones (allegedly) but I hope a freerider is not someone who rides for free and I really hope that Mallister isn't the name of a brothel or a company of pimps!

Black Brothers: First we have the Sworn Brothers, now we have the Black Brothers. Do Negros exist in this world of George Martin's? Would we be treated to the dynamics of racialism in the Game of Thrones universe a hundred thousand pages after this? Should Martin add one more clause explaining what the Black Brothers were these thoughts would not be distracting me to the extent that I resisted reading his novel after the chapter on Bran that follows the prologue! That, and in addition, making long and convoluted sentences that would frustrate the poor reader of this review.

Depending on the lighting chain mail can give a (faint) luster. Though I agree, gleaming is poor word choice. On his appearance, really, c'mon man? I'm assuming that it's the standard uniform for a person of the Night's Watch.



He's a minor character, and you're worried about what house he's from? I just done see it. "A Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch" is obviously something that's going to be revealed and elaborated on later. So be patient. I do however marginally agree that some superficial elucidation as to where he's from should have been done (~thus establishing the setting a little).



There's something in a fantasy work that you don't what it is? The horror! Any story is going to introduce things or hint at things and will either (a) elaborate further on later or (b) never talk about later. The Catcher in the Rye is an example of (b) that comes first to my mind.




This is so ludicrous that I haven't completely composed a response in my head, but here goes. "Mallister freerider", I had no idea what it meant either, but to even consider Mallister freeriders to be the name of a brothel is borderline ridiculous. Contextually speaking, we have this:

"Well, a poacher in truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters’ own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters’ own bucks, and it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand."

We even get information that whatever the Night's Watch is, it at least takes criminals into its fold. From this passage, we can clearly see it isn't a brothel.



C'mon, you're intentionally misinterpreting the word black. As for "long and convoluted sentences", I skimmed through my copy of "Game of Thrones" 's prologue and Bran chapter and found nothing egregiously unintelligible because of length. I didn't know a word or two of what I skimmed, but nothing as bad as you claim.

Now for Christ's sakes, be patient and read on. Oh, and a specific people's interpretation of what Martin's wildling is can be learned on the first page of Bran's chapter. This book is like a news article almost. To account for bias, you have to read from two polar points of view to be able to scrounge the truth from the shared facts of those two polar perspectives.

Execution definitely plays a role, but I must insist that view point does as well.



The fact that Royce is wearing black is not so much info about Royce as it is about the Night's Watch who wear only black. What the author has done here is take the moment to do a bit of worldbuilding.



It's obvious that because he is the youngest son in a house with too many heirs, there's no place for him. The elder brother will inherit the lordship and so forth. One might also speculate that this is the source of his arrogance. He feels he must prove himself to others.



It does mention that Royce is leading the ranging as opposed to a veteran like Gared leading it, which would probably be the case if there were no lordlings from houses with too many heirs present. Also, if you know anything at all about fantasy settings and noble families--which I suspect you do--you would know that Waymar Royce is from the Royce house!



It's honestly a little hard for me to tell if you're joking or not, but I'm going to guess you're joking. If you aren't, why would anyone associate negativity with brothers aside from picked on little brothers? If you're trying to illustrate what people might think because this term isn't properly explained, it's not a good example. No one would hear "brother" and instantly think, "Oh! That guys a criminal homosexual."

At this point, I'm beginning to wonder what your definition of proper is. We know enough about Royce to feel comfortable with the author moving on to continue the story. And if Royce doesn't die in the next page or so, then we can learn even more about him.



It's clear from the line, ". . . caught him red-handed in the Mallisters’ own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters’ own bucks . . ." that Mallister is no brothel owner. I'm not entirely sure what a freerider is either, but do I need to know, especially right now? No! It's clear that a freerider is at the very least someone who has a vested interest in the law. Why else would they arrest a poacher? Need I know more to gain a fundamental understanding of what Will, Gared and Royce are doing on a ranging beyond the Wall? No!



It just said that Will was given a choice to put on the black. That's probably connected to the term black brother. If you'll recall, Royce is wearing all black. That is no doubt not a coincidence. We have all the context clues we need to reason out what a black brother is. It would seem that sworn brother and black brother are two ways to refer to the same thing. Might that be a little confusing? Maybe, but this is the fantasy genre. Or in other words . . .

i realized after writing my entry that I'm quite weak at doing narratives. it's like, only exposition and so forth let the rest be imagined by readers, I only want to write things I deem a bit important.

at times I kinda want to explain everything plainly and straight to the point because I don't really know what is the point of going through details about the journey when I could jump straight to the conclusion!

maybe I should try doing some proper narratives after familiarizing myself with prologues. I wanna think about the exercises. something something 'bout a plot card?

it goes like this: you think up random words, write random sentences based upon it, scramble it and try writing things that somehow made a bit of sense. maybe there's a lot of other things too I can learn.

well except of reading many fictional works, I kinda gave up reading most of them because I can't really understand what was written lol

though I know its important to read once in a while.

Good! That means you would not be writing like George Martin, introducing strange words and ideas that people not familiar with his universe would not be able to understand. The point of a prologue is to orientate the reader of the story into the universe and not to leave matters of exposition to the later chapters.

I think you did the task of orientating a reader into that fantasy universe extremely well in your entry. (Martin did not)

As for how to flesh out the story, I am personally of the opinion that any story is made up of many shorter stories with the end of each short story leading on the beginning of another short story.

Take the Tale of Two Cities which Shikinokami has an irrational hatred of. It is a story about a fictional account of how the French Revolution started and ended with most of the characters central to the story fleeing for England. However, many shorter but nonetheless significant stories, starting with the banker Jarvis Lorry receiving a letter about some old man called Alexandre Manette being 'raised from the dead'. One story led to another until the final conclusion.

Oh yes, did I mention that the Tale of Two Cities has a proper prologue introducing the reader to England and France of the late 18th century?

That said, allow me to step on more toes by complaining about the Game of Thrones:

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Already, I hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing about a popular novel that has been adapted into a successful television series that was so obviously based on the War of the Roses with zombies, incest and an iron throne that looks like my face? How dare I stir up trouble by pointing out that the prologue fails in its purpose to make sense of the setting of the story with its penchant for confusing this reader with unelaborated outlandish terms? How dare I display such insensitivity to the feelings of those who already understood the nomenclature of Martin's universe which are also alien, misleading and confusing to the fresh reader? To that I say, I have more issues with the prologue of that story!

Putting aside my distaste for how little things are explained and how inadequate I felt the introduction of the characters of the story were, perhaps the prose of this story might help me to make sense of it. This brings us to this part of the story which follows the introduction of Will:



With respect to the words that are not struck off and are bolded, I have this to say:


I realised that in order to make sense of how the camp was relevant in the grand scheme of things, I had flip back to one or two pages and I reminded myself that our soon-to-be dead heroes were hot on the heels of a few wildings, which I don't know about, when Will found a few of them dead instead of being turned into ice zombies. There was a lot of (needed) digression to introduce the characters (rather inadequately). Then, I returned to the previous paragraphs that preceded it and found Ser Waymar Royce saying, "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out." So it seemed that Will was responding to Ser Waymar Royce.

(I have to add that the act of reading this book where I can only make sense of what was happening but constantly referring to the previous pages was rather frustrating. Do spare a thought for imbeciles with poor memories such as myself, Mr. Martin.)

Now I return to that eyesore of a response that led to my outburst in big, bolded and red font, “The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,”

How was that a proper response to Royce's question about what he saw? It seemed to be as if Will was giving directions which Royce did not ask for.

I also thought to myself what camp it was? Did it belong to the wildlings that I don't know about? Was it the camps belonging to that of the Night Watch which I don't know about? The answer appeared to be of the former but I found that writing style of Martin's very confusing.

Another example of that was Martin's technique of explaining matters using dialogue like the following lines:



I personally would have preferred a few sentences in between lines of dialogue that explained what the conversation was about. The interrogation of Will saw went from the discovery of the camp, weapons and the position of the bodies, all of which I thought were a bit challenging to associate with each other.

I could have placed one or two sentences in between dialogue if I were Martin. For example:

“Did you see any weapons?”, Ser Waymar asked for he had a fetish for weapons wielded by the supposedly dead wildling plants.

“Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”, Will replied.

Ser Waymar's necrophiliac urges begun to kick in and he asked that very strange question, "Did you make note of the position of the bodies?"

Furthermore, it is difficult to read dialogue. The characters know they are talking about and would leave out details which they already know but not known to the reader. Expecting this reader to figure out everything based on dialogue with their fragmented sentences and lack of context is too much for him.

The best example of such dialogue is the very first line of this story,



Head back to where? Who are the wildlings? Where are they? These are the things that ought to be explained either awkwardly by the characters themselves or in third person. Leaving the dialogue as it is makes for confusion for this reader.

ah I see :D

I'm familiar with short writeups one at a time. maybe I should try incorporating them more. I kinda think on a scale too large in a short time frame that I kinda lost focus--finally not able to continue as originally intended lol :D

I also like Dickens too, the Christmas Carol I read while back and I'm really touched by it. the excerpt of Tale of Two Cities that you posted were also quite easy to understand.

You are joking! The excerpt of the Tale of Two Cities was in 19th century English. It takes a bit more time to make sense of what the writer is trying to convey.

ah...

I didn't notice that. I kind of forgotten how it's exactly written though :D

maybe I kind of understood it easier than some of the other novels I mentioned you about.

I hope that isn't directed me. I'm serious. I'm not putting up an argument because the books are popular or because they have a tv show. I'm putting up an argument because I've read the books and like them. But most importantly, I'm doing it because you're saying many things I don't agree with.

It's true that upon reading the prologue for the third time, I have a better insight into the world than you. It would be poison to my case IF I didn't leave that insight out of my arguments, which I have taken care to do. Not once have I said something like, "Well, the wildlings are actually this." Or, "Mallister is this one guy who will do this one important thing later."

I was once in your position, at the entry point to this strange new world. I sure as hell didn't let it bother me. If I did, well, I probably wouldn't have read the whole damn series.



It's a proper response because Will does exactly what Royce asks. Will tells him what he saw at the wildling camp.



I assumed it was a wildling camp since they're tracking wildlings. The details that follow are more than enough to prove or disapprove the assumptions we made.



It hate to use this b-word, because it sounds so obnoxious to me, but I can think of no better word to fit. It was BLATANTLY obvious to me that they're still talking about the camp. I honestly don't understand how anyone could think otherwise.

I saw the Oliver musical of 1968 several years ago. It was great.

The rebuttals you have given me are actually explanations of the story no different from you telling me what a Mallister Freerider is. Take your defence of Will, claiming that he had given a proper response to Royce by bringing out a camp out of nowhere. There has been no mention of a camp before this. You thought it obvious that it belonged to the wild men, I didn't.

I am going through how I felt when I first read the story and the things I pointed out confused and bothered me to the extent that I don't want to continue.

The whole point of complaining of this story is to point out that the prologue is a non-prologue which does not serve its purpose to explain things. Even the parts you called worldbuilding or describing the fashion choices of the characters aren't really informative.



I blame the dialogue. You might think that it is obvious though it is not made clear. Not for me though. All I am given are dialogues, a bunch of fragmented sentences with no context given at all except for 'explain what you saw'. I interpreted that to mean, "I saw camps, I saw weapons, I saw bodies." Are they in the same camp? Is he talking about some other place? I have to re-read very carefully.

To make matters worse, Martin did a poor job in explaining his universe to this reader.

I could have preferred Will explaining everything without Royce's interjections.

Long story short, I dislike the prose of the story.

As I've said, I've decided to defend the prologue because I have no problems with it, and I like the series. If the purpose of a prologue is to explain things, then yes, the Game of Thrones prologue fails spectacularly. I on the other hand feel that a prologue need not dive into the details. It should be the introduction of the world the story takes place in and to some facet of that world that will become important.

This prologue does that. The faction called the Night's Watch, the fortification called the Wall and the area beyond it all become important to one of the series' major protagonists. The wildlings and the Others both become antagonists to him.

The prologue also does a good job of conveying the tone of the story by killing off its pov character. We know already that this is going to be a violent story. And really, I think that should be the top priority of the first chapter of any story. Giving a good idea of what the rest of the book is going to be like, that is. It's supposed to give readers a taste, lure them in. Not give them a history lesson.



You're right. There was no mention of a camp beforehand. I say it's a proper response to Royce's command for Will to tell him what he saw because he does just that. He tells him he saw a camp. He then goes into the details of this camp, which to me clear up any confusion on whom the camp belongs to. They're hunting for wildlings Will said he found dead. Will says the occupants of the camp are dead. That must be the wildlings.



Royce doesn't need to say, "What about the weapons in the camp?" He has not asked about any other place so far in the current string of dialogue. The prologue has not brought up any other place since the camp. When Royce asks about weapons, I understand implicitly that he's talking about the last location that came up: the camp.

It astounds me not just how different our tastes are but also how different our minds work.

Our minds work differently! I love a history lesson! You really ought to read the LOTR prologue or the first chapter of the Tale of Two Cities.

That is what a prologue does according to what I heard about prologues. It ought to introduce the reader into this strange world where wildlings aren't plants but wild men so the later chapters made sense even if it takes a history lesson to explain it. This is what lures this reader in at least. It is not really to set the tone of the story (any paragraph can do that) but to establish the setting of the story.

I am afraid the non-prologue of this story didn't lure me in at all with its confusing names and unexplained details. If I don't know what a wildling means, why the Wall mattered, why are they on the Night Watch, why should I care? It is a difference of taste.

I am annoyed at how irrelevant the non-prologue is with the killing of the two of the main characters and the third character having his head lopped off in the following chapter with no mention of The Others until chapters later. The bulk of the story is the political intrigue of Westeros with The Others being a looming but distant threat. You'd think a proper prologue should at least cover that other than throwing out names like Mallister Mormont and Aemon.

You may as well begin with the first chapter.

I know little about "Tale of Two Cities", but using LotR is a horrible example. There are many things that are introduced and never elaborated on unless one reads the Silmarillion. Sauron seems like just seem evil dude, except he is a fallen Maia and Melkor's right-hand man. Gandalf seems like a pretty awesome wizard, except he's also Maia. Then there's the Elvish vocabulary that if I remember correctly isn't in any of the appendices of LotR, but is in the Silmarillion.



Definition of prologue: "a separate introductory section of a literary or musical work"

What's satisfactory for an introduction is debatable.



I think to claim that it isn't a prologue is a bold assertion.



Main characters? Did you really expect them to be main characters?