Paolini could learn very well from my college writing class professor (I'm not actually going to be a writer or anything close to it, I just needed another class and the classes I actually needed weren't open): "An average writer will describe a scene plainly and normally like any other person could in a conversation. A good writer will use a wide and broad vocabulary of words and put as much detail into the scene as he can so the reader knows what's going on. An author and a great writer will use the exact and precise words needed so they can describe the scene just as well as the good writer in the same length and approachability as the average writer." This is one of the lessons that really stuck with me in that class, along with a couple others, but this one aptly describes my opinion on Paolini. He is right on the second one, a simple good writer. He got published by virtue of his parents owning a publishing company and they had a great marketing campaign that touted his writing at the age of 15 to be some actual achievement so it would sell well when in actuality, 30% of all teenagers are "writers" at 15. If you need evidence, go look at fan fiction, and I rest my case.
His writing is flat and boring. He uses big and, more importantly, unnecessary words that merely leave his readers confused as they gloss over them without a second thought and wondering why a scene makes no sense or scrambling for a dictionary every other sentence, which only serves to break the flow and immersion you're supposed to be trying to build. Call it purple prose, call it thesaurus syndrome, call it flashing your writing e-peen, it's all the same. The words make him feel better and make him feel like his writing is of a higher caliber then it actually is by simple virtue of having his expanded vocabulary. One vivid example that comes to mind his when he used the term "poniards" very early on in his first book. Who here actually knows what that term is without having to look it up? When I read that book, I was still the intended audience of said book: a young middle school student. If anyone actually knows what that word means off the top of their head (which I highly doubt), I require you submit your age and level of education, because no middle school kid knows that word. And this is one of his traits that has not improved in the slightest over the course of his writing, if anything it's gotten worse.
Then there is the overall bad structure to his writing. From sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, page to page, chapter to chapter, every other page the reader is subjected to some form of awkward phrasing or structure that is so glaringly obvious you have to ask yourself how Paolini thought this was a good idea when, in the prologue for his story, he used the phrase "raven-haired" and "black locks" one right after the other with only a period between them. How is it necessary writing to describe black hair back to back from one sentence to the next? The structure of the books really screamed out to me as someone with desperate need for an editor, preferably with waders and pruning shears (kudos for those of you who get that reference, which should be a fair number of you). Structure is one of the main reasons why people commonly say, even on this thread, that they find his writing incredibly dull. He wastes time writing things that in no way contribute to the furthering of the story he's trying to tell. This is the other key aspect of his writing that hasn't improved in the slightest between any of the books. I'm not even going to go into his issues on showing and telling with the reader, that would take too long.
I'm gonna get out of your hair soon, don't worry, but I really just want to finish getting this off my chest. Another thing my professor taught me was, "How do you expect to write about life if you never go out and experience it?" The fact that Paolini has been home schooled his entire life shines through on his characters. Between the interactions and building of his characters, it's quite obvious Paolini doesn't have a complete grasp on how two people actually converse in a variety of settings. Every conversation and most of the personalities he writes are flat and one dimensional. The funny part is the few good characters he's actually written are side characters, with the noted exception of Murtagh who actually seems to act like something similar to a human being most of the time. All the other ones are small rolled and unimportant characters, specifically Roran and the little crazy girl Eragon cursed stick out in my mind. His main character, the protagonist of his stories, is the worst character in the entire story. Eragon is a Gary Stu author self insert who, due to the way he gets written, is also a textbook example of a sociopath, specifically antisocial personality disorder (I can prove that). His side characters have actually gotten better over the course of the series, but no part of Eragon himself has improved in the slightest, and up until the end of the third book he still has all the qualities listed above.
To those of you still reading this, I thank you, and there isn't much more. I could get into the obvious cliche's and genre abuse that toes the line of plagiarism so close it's sickening, but that's been done to death and is more commonly known and explained then the points I've listed above. From the liberal taking of major aspects of his stories from Star Wars (which he did finally manage to break out of with the third book, and partially with the second book but not entirely, I congratulate him for that) and the setting and characters from Tolkien and a couple other smaller things I'm not nearly as informed on, but that's been done before on this forum. When I had first started the books, It was when the first one came out and I was the target, some 6th or 7th (can't remember exactly) grader know nothing who loved it. When the next book came out, I was sophomore and although I had thought it was alright, I didn't pull nearly the same amount of entertainment out of it as I had the first time, even though the second books was slightly (cannot emphasize that enough) better then the first. When that third book came out, I was a senior in high school, and proceeded to re-read the entire series. As I forced my way through, I did come across the realization that the public school system isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, because I had at least learned something since the first time I read the book. I had grown as a person, and I was happy, because I realized how absolutely atrocious the series was. As it stands, I might read the last book if I find out that the series actually ends, simply because I want closure. But if I do read it, unless Paolini has exponentially increased in his writing skill, I'll probably have to turn it into some sort of drinking game that will have to be carefully thought out so I don't die, or maybe I'll just get really high and hope I can regress to the mental state of a 6th grader and find entertainment in it.
TL;DR meh, writing blows but I might read it for closure.
