> I'll have a go at this. A lot of writers seem to mistake verbiage for
> something important to say. In fact much of it is only filler. The pulps
> were an excellent training ground for many writers because the editors did
> not let this happen to any great degree and asked the author to tighten
> up.
> They also mistake verbiage for the ability to write. There are many
> authors
> who can do a sidebar yet keep it interesting and pertinent. The worst case
> that I recall is John Norman in his GOR series. All these novels after the
> first 2 or 3 got uniformly thick because every chapter or so he had to
> spend
> 20 pages describing the religions or history or something of Gor which
> were
> really boring I found. His action was good but he couldn't do an effective
> sidebar without bogging down. And there IS something to be said for
> leaving
> a good percentage of it up to one's imagination.
>
> When ERB wrote sidebars it was very pertinent to the scene being enacted
> or
> about to come, basically setting the stage. REH was much shorter with
> descriptive material that was background. There is also good reason here
> too. REH wrote The Hyborian Age essay as background to his mythical world.
> The history of the world and progression of races was laid out there so he
> needn't reiterate it in his tales. Of course, this essay was not published
> until after his death as I recall which just proves that you can do well
> without all the background details.
>
[Paul Herman] Well now, I can still remember the first time I tried
to read Valley of the Worm. I gave up after the fourth page of sweeping
historical background about where Niord came from. That was a big sidebar
to an otherwise good story. There are some other REH stories that suffer
that same problem, to me. What was it, Men of the Shadows, where more than
half the story is telling the background of the Picts in a dream sequence?
Paul
