Because to some fantasy writers the Lord of the Rings is still their favorite fantasy novel, so they think that to be a successful novelist they should emulate Tolkien. So it's extremely relevant to the discussion.
Its relevant when you don't misrepresent the facts.
Worldbuilding is not just about backstory.
Sorry, I was using backstory to encompass all of that. I meant it as the "story" of the world. I should have use background.
Tolkien said he wanted to construct a mythology for England. But I think the mythology he constructed had very little to do with England and was just concerned with its own world. There are some vague parallels in there and I assume a Tolkien scholar could point out a lot more, but as far as the layman is concerned it's just a world unto itself.
It had a
lot to do with England, actually. For instance, Rohan was a horse culture because he believed the Anglo-Saxons could have defeated the Normans if they had a strong cavalry. Middle-Earth itself was from the Anglo-Saxon word middel-erde which is their name for Earth. It doesn't mater what the perception is though, because my point was that he had a point beyond building background for novels. That is the only reason I brought it up. I was not implying that he wasn't building a "secondary world", as he called it.
The worldbuilding in the Silmarillion was not just a list of facts and dates. Tolkien built the world through poems and stories about events in the world. But worldbuilding is certainly what Tolkien was doing, constructing a mythology about a place and time that never existed. He wasn't just writing individual poems and stories; by setting them all in the same fictional time and place he was worldbuilding, giving a picture of the whole through its parts.
That makes my point. Of course he was worldbuilding Middle-Earth. My point was that the Silmarillion was not simply a collection of worldbuilding material for the "real" stories. They
were the real stories!
I have Brandon's worldbuilding document for the Stormlight Archive, and parts of it are written as historical-sounding stories. He could have gone the route of just writing the history of Roshar and releasing it to the public. But that's not what he wanted to do, because he's a novelist.
First: You lucky.....!
Second:
Brandon didn't sit in a ditch in WW1 and write tales with the goal of keeping himself sane while his friends died around him and with the hopes that he could build a mythology for his homeland that was sorely deficient of one; Tolkien did.
Brandon's best friend didn't ask that if he died Brandon would carry on with their goal of writing the kind of stories they wanted to read; Tolkien's did (and his friend died in battle that day, as did all but one of his other friends). (
See the real note at bottom)
Brandon wasn't grading papers one day when the first line of Way of Kings came to him and then wrote it as a children's story for his kids not connected to his grand heroic tales of Roshar, pulling very small bits of his real storytelling in as background (not using "Roshar" once in the story btw); Tolkien did.
Brandon wasn't bugged by his publisher, while he was working on his real stories, to write a sequel to the accidental book; Tolkien did.
Brandon didn't realize as he discovery wrote that he could connect his real stories more deeply to the silly children's book (what Tolkien thought of Hobbit) by setting it firmly in Roshar, both deepening his interest in the sequel and hoping that it would give him an excuse to sell his real stories before or alongside it; Tolkien did.
Brandon Wasn't disappointed because he could only sell the sequel to his silly children's story and had to wait until he died until there was interest in publishing his "background" Roshar material of the grand sequel to his children's story (you know, his "real" work); Tolkien was and did.
Brandon has very different goals than Tolkien did. I think it is unfair to hold Tolkien to his standard and miss the point completely of what he was trying to do. Yes, you can tell people what Tolkien was doing and explain to them that he wasn't looking ahead to writing The Hobbit and LOTR and that the Silmarillion, therefore, is NOT an example for how to build a novel. That is very different from falsely portraying Tolkien as taking too long on his "backstory" instead of getting to his "goal" of writing novels. I don't think Brandon is doing this consciously (it is an unfortunately common misconception that Tolkien himself was depressed by), I just don't think he knows this.
The note --- My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight - I am off on duty in a few minutes - there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four! A discovery I am going to communicate to Rob before I go off to-night. And do you write it also to Christopher. May God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.
Yours ever,
G.B.S.
-A letter written to J.R.R. Tolkien by his friend G.B. Smith on the day of his death.