Thoughts on Brandon Sanderson and people who accuse him of writting "slop"?
that they are not entierly wrong.
Sanderson is a writer who writes both great, and bad things, but above everything else, he might be the most "Technical" writer alive.
He is capable of writing characters such as Wit, Kaladin, Raboniel... But he is also capable of writing characters such as Shalan, who in book 1 was boring beyond belief, book 2 was great but had one of the most headbanging moments of the franchise to let her win an argument, book 3 made tons of mistakes but only got called out on the ones she made because of good intentions(and not the ones like almost blowing an entire military operation due to a bad and spiteful joke), and book 4 was having a total mental breakdown that was not really earned from a story perspective.
The point im leading up to here, is that Shallan is technically, looking at her from exclusively a mechanical, story beat perspective, a perfectly functioning character... But other than book 2, i REALLY dont care about her storyline.
And that sums up Sanderson's bad qualities as a writer in a nutshell.
Brandon always understands how something works, how to mechanically set up a story, and then later pay it off, and that along with a pretty good writing capacity is usually enough to carry his stories to amazing heights... But when he fails to do that, when a story needed a bit more omph, than his decent but not brilliant writing was capable of mustering, it REALLY shows.
Shallan is the best overall example from the Stormlight archives, but it's not the only example, as i could list tons of others, but i would very much agree that when Sanderson doesnt manage to stick the landing on something, Slop is the PERFECT analogy for how to describe it.
Another example is mysteries.
Sanderson is not good as writing mysteries.
He LIKES mysteries, and it's clear he understands the technical spects of writing them, but he is not martin, where you can go back to book 1 and see how already at this early stage he is setting Bran up as the magical god-king of Westeros, and Dany as a woman with severe mental problems that probably should not be anywhere near a crown.
Sanderson's mysteries often boils down to us being told something new and interesting that recontextualises something old, rather than wondering about a question, then getting foreshadowing, and then a payoff.
Shallan is again a perfect example.
book 1. reveals at the end she killed a certain person. Came out of nowhere.
book 2. ending reveals how she did it, but also that she killed someone else.
book 3. she does a good thing, but this thing horribly backfires, but we get no hint of it doing so before the very ending of that storyline when there were plenty of space to hint at the twist before the reveals comes.
book 4. reveals she Killed ANOTHER person in her backstory.
None of these events are illogical... but NONE of them are handled with the kind of care to make the spectacular twists where you can go back and see how her backstory twists flows into another the way Martin might have.
Brandon's mysteries and reveals often work... but they are rarely outstanding. and when they are bad... They feel like Slop you gulp down to get to the much tastier desert(The character bits where he actually shines).
He has other problems as a writer as well, such as clear lack of confidence in many things(Shallan book 1 wouldnt be half as bad if he didnt constantly have characters tell us how witty she is, and her argument with Kalading during the Chasm period needs him to lose, so the man loses 20 IQ points or more to let her dominate him in debate), an ultimate lack of resolve of keeping Stormlight a medieval dark fantasy story with heroic characters(The same kind of dynamic that Dragon Age Origins, best RPG ever made had) and instead is slowly losing a lot of elements that kept it dark, while making it feel a lot more contemporary, but as these dont relate to the slop argument, i wont get too into those here.
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