terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors of all time. Not when he first starts writing. His first few books are amusing and fun and light, and that’s about it. They’re fun to read, and they pass the time without comment.

But at some point–I don’t entirely know exactly when–Discworld went myffic. He’s a hilarious writer–always has been, in that delightfully understated British way. But Pratchett’s jokes–you start off thinking that they’re just funny lines, throwaway comments that won’t come back. He weaves them in so skillfully, you don’t really notice he’s done it. But it turns out that he’s strewn the bones of salvation in his throwaway lines, the ones that are so good you can’t forget them. And then they come back, and they’re still funny, but this time around, they take your breath away.
Take, for instance, the villains of one book:

They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell.

And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn’t have a position in time and space, things such as imagination, pity, hope, history, and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.

Intelligent life was, therefore, an anomaly. It made the filing untidy. The Auditors hated things like that. Periodically, they tried to tidy things up a little.

It’s funny. It’s true. And you never know when you read it exactly how much it matters. Structurally, if I had to choose to become any writer, I think I’d want to be Terry Pratchett. Myffic. With, as Nanny Ogg would say, extra myff.

Structurally–I’m not talking about the bits and pieces of grit, like dialogue and description, but overall, structurally–which authors do you admire? Which authors make you feel the resolution of the books, rather than just live through the scenes?

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