#mind you i don't dislike paolini. he seems like a nice guy

[eliza-makepeace]

One thing that annoys me about paolini's writing is that he keeps telling instead of showing, and sometimes when he tells, what you see is actually the opposite of what he's trying to show.

I'm in the middle of my read of brisingr and when eragon has to go see orik, who's going to become the leader of his clan after hrothgars death, the narration keeps explicitly pointing out which characters are okay, which ones aren't, which ones are untrustworthy.... Instead of having them do stuff that makes the readers realize this without having to actually spell it out for us. The worst thing is that it kind of backfires at some points, because it feels like he's trying to convince you, but not showing why you should believe it.

Like, the elves (again, lmao). He keeps trying to convince the reader they're wise, and intelligent and whatever else, and either he doesn't actually have them be any of those things or, in trying to make them be them, he makes them insufferable.

Dude! Just show them do the things, and we'll make up our mind about it.