Since the "madness" of A-Z starts tomorrow and I haven't written a word, I thought I'd continue the Flashback Friday series today and give you a post from June 2014. 🙂 In the George R. R. Martin interview with Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore, Martin said that “Both as a writer and as a reader I … Continue reading Works that Last: The Importance of Originality
Tag: J. R. R. Tolkien
Busy-ness is generally considered unimportant when it comes to plotting. We don't usually make space for it, because it isn't central to the plot. Unless we are writing a romance and need a quite moment for the two characters to interact, we try to keep the pace going. Note, I spelt it with a "y" … Continue reading Busy-ness: Demonstrations of Character
Fantasy as a genre has become extraordinarily popular with young adults, movie makers, and television viewers. Its unique abandonment of the world we know lets you have complete control of the world you create--there are no true rules in fantasy. Which should make writing fantasy easier...right? I don't think so, and having read and reviewed … Continue reading On Writing Fantasy #atozchallenge #amwriting
Two blogs have recently offered some excellent and very interesting viewpoints on where stories come from. Today, I want to examine other people’s writing as a source of inspiration, and Monday, I’ll post an analysis of the inspirations of Pride & Prejudice, in response to A Pilgrim in Narnia’s examination of the stories within that … Continue reading Reusing Story Material
Recently, I read Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, his original folk-tale version of the story, “Sallic Spell,” and The Rood and the Torc, a historical fiction novel set in the same culture as Beowulf (though later in history). All this made me realize how Tolkien imported massive quantities of material from Beowulf and the Danish/early Anglo-Saxon … Continue reading Tolkien, Beowulf, and Borrowing
Lately I’ve been thinking about how soon one should start looking for a publisher. The moment the manuscript is finished? Once the first rewrite is done? When your Beta readers say it’s good enough? Authors have historically run into this dilemma. J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit, then revised it and published it again, … Continue reading The Rush to Publish and Half-Baked Writing
It’s impossible to read anything without baggage—preconceived ideas and expectations. When we encounter words like “store,” “study,” or even “street,” our ideas of those places are informed by our experiences and culture…and from the perceived genre of the book. In our minds, a street in a piece of historical fiction will probably not be the … Continue reading Reading with Baggage
Writing for The Boston Globe shortly after the second The Hobbit movie installment came out, Ed Power claims that seeing J. R. R. Tolkien as the model for the fantasy genre “makes it all too easy for those new to these fantastical worlds to assume Tolkien’s prudishness, his sometimes archaic prose, and his Boy Scout … Continue reading Do We Still Need Heroes?
In the recently released George R. R. Martin interview with Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore, Martin said that “Both as a writer and as a reader I like stories that surprise me” adding that “The moment the reader begins to believe that a character is protected by the magical cloak of authorial immunity, tension goes … Continue reading Works that Last: The Importance of Originality
I thought it fitting to begin our series on Fantasy and a Christian Aesthetic with J. R. R. Tolkien’s own thoughts on the subject as found in his article “On Fairy-Stories” (a version of which can be found here; I am quoting from the article as it appeared in print, in which he references his … Continue reading Tolkien on Fantasy: His Own Words
Andrea Lundgren 