Sorry happyman, I meant to respond to you before I saw Peter's post and thought I had included responses to you.
I can't help but saying that, having read the Silmarion, it doesn't read like a story. Oh, the early bits (the creation, the music, etc.) and some of the rare interludes, personal tragedies and occasional victories, are interesting, but beyond those, it reads like a history textbook. A dull, boring, and painfully detailed history textbook. If Tolkien was writing it as a story (or, if you prefer, mythology), then apparently his idea of "Writing a Modern Mythology" is identical in form to "Doing a Lot of Worldbuilding with a Couple of Interesting Stories placed here and there inside of it," even if that wasn't the intended purpose.
It is not
one story, but a series of stories connected by the history of the Silmarills. Those do read like stories if you read medieval fiction. That is what Tolkien was imitating. He wasn't writing a "modern" mythology; he was writing a feigned ancient mythology. It doesn't mater if you liked it or not. My entire point is that peoples perceptions are wrong and that arguments like Brandon's are based in that wrong assumption. I care about Truth, not some post-modern relativism where the intention of the author is completely ignored. If there is no Truth, there can be no real, logical discussions any more, and we are all just grasping at the wind.
Don't you see? The distinction between worldbuilding and storytelling is paper thin from an explicitly functional point of view. It's all about intent. Essentially, Worldbuilding is a form of storytelling---it's in-world documentation, in-world mythologies, background material, language information, all the rest. If you sit down and write a history of some fantasy world, you have both written a story (the Mythology, which is often an actual story or history in-world) and done Worldbuilding.
You say it is "all about intent" yet before that you also seem to say his "intended purpose" in writing the Sil. doesn't matter because it is "identical in form" to worldbuilding. It is subjective as to what you think WB looks like. WB is the behind the scenes work that isn't meant to be the story itself; the Sil. was intended to be the stories themselves.
In modern fiction, the term Worldbuilding in practice is the part of the story that doesn't end up verbatim in the published novel, but informs it heavily and maintains it's consistency in the background, usually because it doesn't make an engaging story in its own right. In this sense, Tolkein wasn't Worldbuilding because he intended his history to be a worthy story in its own right. On the other hand, in practice, his history ended up being Worldbuilding to The Lord of the Rings, which was much the better for having the enormous history behind it.
I have said
all along that it
became worldbuilding. My point throughout this discussion has been that Brandon Sanderson (and others) have the false impression that "Grandpa" Tolkien wasted his time WB instead of writing real stories (and they are apparently also unaware that he wrote many more stories that aren't as well know such as Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major). If we wish to be
objective (I seem to be arguing with subjectivists),
it does not matter what it became (since we all agree that it did morph into WB after the fact) when the point that was being made by Brandon was that the Silmarillion started as WB. I am dumbfounded as to how people can continue to say Brandon and others are correct in accusing Tolkien of
spending too much time on WB when the
FACT that it was
not intended as WB completely invalidates that particular criticism!
If the criticism is changed to "people shouldn't imitate the style of the Sil. if they want to publish" or "don't imitate Tolkien's Sil. in your WB
BECAUSE it wasn't intended as WB to begin with", then we can all agree. But as long as people try to defend Brandon's
specific criticism, I will continue to state the facts when people try to defend it.
Worldbuilding and Storytelling are closely related disciplines and look similar from the outside; their main difference in modern practice really is whether the resulting work is publishable or not.
Their main difference is what the author meant to do when he put pen to paper.
Please answer this question as no one seems to want to respond to any variation I have given: If the Way of Kings didn't sell, but Brandon then used it as backstory to write a more "acceptable" novel, could I accuse him of wasting time in writing WOK when it was finally published and I mistook it for a WB document? Would you be right in correcting me and saying that he meant to publish WOK as a novel so the accusation is invalid? Would I be right to then say that Brandon's intent doesn't matter since it became a WB document?
Did it improve the works that actually sold? Emphatically yes; the sense of history behind The Lord of the Rings is one of the things that really impressed me about it.
Tolkien knew this was true and was even hesitant at one point to try and publish the Sil. because it might take away the "magic". That doesn't negate the fact that it was not a WB document in its construction and that the accusation of Brandon's (
as it was stated) remains invalid.
Did Tolkein have Worldbuilders disease? I'd have to say so. The fact that he was doing it for his own amusement or thought it might be publishable have no bearing on the fact that he kept on trying to refine the Story that represented his worldbuilding.
He only worked on it as long as he did because they wouldn't publish it. That is perfectionism and Eternal Rewriting Syndrome, not WBD. WBD is when people continually tinker with their WB document (
knowing that it is a WB document and not the real book) because they feel they don't have enough background for the story or they get so wrapped up in how cool it is that they
never get around to writing the book it was intended to support (I think that is the main part of WBD that people aren't understanding:
it has to detract from the intended novel to be WBD). Those with WBD don't write the stories they intend to write because they spend all their time on the WB document; Tolkien wrote the stories he wanted to tell, including those in the Silmarillion.
Again, Tolkien was an Eternal Rewriter because he worked on multiple drafts of his stories until he felt it was perfect. That is a completely different disorder from WBD as defined by Brandon himself!