Tundra
March 21st, 2010, 01:05 PM
"Don't the Great Tales Never End?"
The Return of the King was published on 20 October 1955, making the full text of The Lord of the Rings 54 years old. It's not often that a novel can claim a large body of enthusiastic volunteer (i.e., not classroom-required) readers after that length of time, much less lifelong adherents who love, study, protect, defend, discuss, argue about, and battle over it. Whether or not LotR goes down in the annals as a piece of great literature, J.R.R. Tolkien must have done something right.
And thanks to JRRT's habit of keeping his notes, and his son Christopher's efforts in organizing them, we have extensive documentation of Tolkien's writing process. Can he teach us how to write a work that readers are never finished with – a book people reread so many times they lose count, and pass on to their children?
One of the most noticeable characteristics of Tolkien's following is its diversity: from scholars of early English language and literature who analyze his source material, through adults who've spent a good part of their lives immersed in Middle-earth and are knowledgeable about many areas of Tolkien's work, to the second generation of young readers who gather on the internet to share a world they've recently discovered and to find like-minded peers who understand what it means to be so affected by a work of fiction.
This variety is a clue to the secret of having the type of following LotR has enjoyed for nearly half a century. If a piece of writing is to have staying power, first-time readers have to become second-time readers; teenaged fans need to become adult admirers; and, hopefully, some of its appreciative readers will become its scholars. For this to happen, the work has to be able to grow and change with the reader, in the way that LotR manages to offer "Tolkien virgins" an entertaining adventure while simultaneously engaging the academic interest of those who study it seriously. Tolkien's setting, characters and story all have the trait of being perfectly intelligible on first reading, while still holding plenty for later discovery.
Part of this quality comes from having a secondary creation broad and deep enough to draw readers in, and then give them somewhere to go after they arrive. The sense of a larger history is important, especially the awareness that the characters and events we're reading about have a place in that history. We can marvel with Sam that the great tales never end, and that we are, in fact, inside one.
When we first encounter Tolkien's characters, we easily pick up enough about them to follow their roles in the story. But in order to draw us back, the individuals also need to pique our curiosity by hinting there's more to discover about them. Finally, when we do reread the book, they have to deliver on that promise. More than 30 years after meeting Bilbo, I realized a line of his dialogue from LotR – a line I'd read countless times – had a significance I'd never caught before. The new understanding made me much more sympathetic toward him.
This is the kind of experience that keeps people rereading a book. It's also an experience they can't have if the author insists on explaining everything for fear the reader might miss something. The reader must miss some things the first time through (and the second, and the third...), or there will be nothing left to discover. It's the author's responsibility to make sure these subtle, easily-missed points aren't necessary for the first-time reader's basic understanding of the story.
The width and depth of Tolkien's original sources also give those interested something more to delve into, without making the story inaccessible to others. While talking about Tolkien once to a group of younger teenagers, I was asked if he really "meant" to do all that (i.e., use older source material); weren't the similarities just coincidence? The teens were enjoying LotR as an exciting story, and they didn't really want to hear there was anything remotely scholarly behind it. Of course, Tolkien, being who he was, really did "mean" to do it. But you don't have to know the myth of Eärendel's toe to appreciate Galadriel's star-glass, or understand the linguistic differences between Quenya and Sindarin to be thrilled when two hobbits' cries of "Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!" and "Aiya elenion ancalima!" break the power of the Watchers. The story of LotR is perfectly understandable to a casual reader, without any need to refer to the deeper layers or to immediately pick up every nuance of the carefully interwoven plot. Otherwise, how could one begin? And where would one go after beginning?
Some fantasy writers might dismiss Tolkien as a mentor by saying they're not experts in philology and old legends, and can't see spending years studying those things in order to build their worlds. But Tolkien's lesson is broader than that. We often hear, "Write what you know." Using Tolkien as a model, we might say instead, "Write from your passion." He was passionate about language and early northern European literature; that's why he spent his lifetime studying and teaching about them. In addition, his faith and life experience fed the deeper themes present in LotR. Some of us know very well what our passion is; it might be the thing that drove us to write in the first place. For others, it may take some soul searching. We can certainly be passionate about more than one area of life. If we write from our passion, we're offering readers something we care deeply about, and we're also speaking from something within ourselves that is already many layered and, in some ways, unending (because we never stop discovering it). What could be a better foundation for a work that will grow and change with our readers?
The reader is vital to this process. If a book is to become a permanent part of someone's life, that person has to feel invested in it. No matter how many times they peel off the book's layers, the most avid LotR followers never find "the" center of it; that's why they never stop reading it. I'm not saying it's without any center; I'm suggesting there isn't one center every person will discover if he or she keeps at it long enough. I believe that in LotR, and in any book that draws someone back over and over throughout life, the reader is a partner in creating the story's center. And that center won't be static or unchanging any more than the reader is, as he or she is slightly different each time the book is taken off the shelf.
Not all people will have this reaction to the same book. Many read LotR 40 years ago, liked it, but never went back to it. The book didn't resonate with them as it did with those who've made it part of their lives. These one-time readers very possibly have found another author whose works they return to, for some of the same reasons that Tolkien's followers return to his.
A writer has to accept that this kind of book won't appeal to everyone. It assumes that both author and reader are willing not only to do some hard work, but also to develop a certain level of trust with each other. The reader needs to be able to trust the author to be accurate and consistent, and to provide necessary information (all the easily accessible facts needed to follow the story on first reading, and enough depth to make re-readings worthwhile). The author has to trust that the reader doesn't need or want to be spoon fed, but would rather participate in the book's discoveries and insights, and is capable of doing so.
This might be seen as a practical use of Tolkien's theory of applicability. He said allegory is based on the domination of the author, while applicability comes from the freedom of the reader. To facilitate applicability, the author must be brave enough not to resolve everything for the reader, even if that means leaving him or her free to interpret something differently than the author might. In a way, it's treating the reader as an adult as well as a partner in the creative process. I recently saw a post on an LotR message board marveling at how we can each read this same book and come away with such different insights (giving readers something to share and discuss, and often sending them back to the book).
It's commonly noted that for an imagined world to have depth and reality, it needs to exist beyond what is told the reader. Tolkien is a recognized master of this technique, and he uses it in areas more subtle than "just" the sweeping history and geography of Middle-earth. On many levels, he doesn't give us all the answers, but encourages us to think about the questions ourselves (often by using words with multiple connotations). If Frodo was meant to have the Ring, "but not by its Maker," and if the role of Ring-bearer was "appointed" for him, who or what had chosen him? The book doesn't say, at least not directly. How is magic defined in Middle-earth? Even Galadriel doesn't completely understand what is meant by the word. What was actually going on in Frodo's mind when he claimed the Ring? Tolkien has us in Sam's point of view during that scene, so, like Sam, all we can do is watch and wonder. These are just a few of the questions still being discussed 54 years after the publication of the final volume, to say nothing of the broader debates about such things as the nature of power, the limits of free will, the significance of self-sacrifice and loss, and the meaning of hope. (And, lest we forget, do Balrogs have wings, are Elves' ears pointed, what happened to the Entwives, and just who is Tom Bombadil.) Even the questions themselves change and grow with the reader.
In order to undertake the task of reflecting on a book's questions, a reader needs to be confident enough in the author's accuracy and consistency that ambiguities and things-left-unsaid aren't simply dismissed as mistakes. Tolkien's attention to this area supports the suspension of disbelief in an unparalleled way. Attaining that level of reality required substantial rewriting and research. A favorite sentence of mine from his letters is, "At this point I require to know how much later the moon gets up each night when nearing full, and how to stew a rabbit!" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 74). In a down-to-earth, practical way, this sentence shows the kind of attention to detail all authors, especially fantasy authors, need to cultivate. If suspension of disbelief falters, the reader might finish the book but most likely won't be lured back to that world a second time.
Tolkien also shows us how to allow a story itself to grow and change. He started writing his "sequel to The Hobbit" as a lighthearted book, one that would have been closer to the publishers' expectations – as well as easier and quicker to write – than the one ultimately completed. But the story didn't want to stay there, and Tolkien followed its lead as it developed into something both higher and deeper and, perhaps most importantly, as his own larger mythology persisted in breaking through its borders. If he had refused to let the story evolve, and had insisted on keeping it a lighter children's tale, would anyone be reading it (or The Hobbit or The Silmarillion) today?
This kind of openness to change requires confidence in our own creative process as well as attentiveness to useful developments as they present themselves. When the character who eventually became Aragorn first introduced himself (unexpectedly) into LotR, he was an unknown hobbit named Trotter. By the time the entire story was written, he had become the returning king, with a lineage stretching far back into the early history of Middle-earth. Sometimes I wonder: if I had been the writer, would I have ignored Trotter sitting there in the corner of the inn's common room (maybe even been a little annoyed that he'd tried to barge into the story without an invitation)? Or would I have discovered his potential and used it, as Tolkien did? Of course, the author's notes also tell us that he tried a flock of things that didn't work and had to be redone, but that was just part of the writing process necessary to discover the real story that wanted to be told.
So, from initial accessibility to the promise of future discoveries, from trust in the reader to trust in the story itself, and from using our passion to using research, we can learn much from J.R.R. Tolkien about writing a book that people will return to time and again throughout their lives. Despite all the lessons he provides, there's one thing Professor Tolkien never teaches: taking shortcuts in our writing process.
________________________________________
[The title of this essay is from the chapter "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol," in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.]
Copyright 2001 by Trudy G. Shaw/ Revised 2010
This is from Secondary Creations (http://www.etsy.com/shop/secondarycreations) on Etsy.
My primary website - now over 10 years old - is http://www.frodolivesin.us (http://www.frodolivesin.us/)
It's purely a labor of love - no one even buys anything through the amazon links, although hope endures.
The Return of the King was published on 20 October 1955, making the full text of The Lord of the Rings 54 years old. It's not often that a novel can claim a large body of enthusiastic volunteer (i.e., not classroom-required) readers after that length of time, much less lifelong adherents who love, study, protect, defend, discuss, argue about, and battle over it. Whether or not LotR goes down in the annals as a piece of great literature, J.R.R. Tolkien must have done something right.
And thanks to JRRT's habit of keeping his notes, and his son Christopher's efforts in organizing them, we have extensive documentation of Tolkien's writing process. Can he teach us how to write a work that readers are never finished with – a book people reread so many times they lose count, and pass on to their children?
One of the most noticeable characteristics of Tolkien's following is its diversity: from scholars of early English language and literature who analyze his source material, through adults who've spent a good part of their lives immersed in Middle-earth and are knowledgeable about many areas of Tolkien's work, to the second generation of young readers who gather on the internet to share a world they've recently discovered and to find like-minded peers who understand what it means to be so affected by a work of fiction.
This variety is a clue to the secret of having the type of following LotR has enjoyed for nearly half a century. If a piece of writing is to have staying power, first-time readers have to become second-time readers; teenaged fans need to become adult admirers; and, hopefully, some of its appreciative readers will become its scholars. For this to happen, the work has to be able to grow and change with the reader, in the way that LotR manages to offer "Tolkien virgins" an entertaining adventure while simultaneously engaging the academic interest of those who study it seriously. Tolkien's setting, characters and story all have the trait of being perfectly intelligible on first reading, while still holding plenty for later discovery.
Part of this quality comes from having a secondary creation broad and deep enough to draw readers in, and then give them somewhere to go after they arrive. The sense of a larger history is important, especially the awareness that the characters and events we're reading about have a place in that history. We can marvel with Sam that the great tales never end, and that we are, in fact, inside one.
When we first encounter Tolkien's characters, we easily pick up enough about them to follow their roles in the story. But in order to draw us back, the individuals also need to pique our curiosity by hinting there's more to discover about them. Finally, when we do reread the book, they have to deliver on that promise. More than 30 years after meeting Bilbo, I realized a line of his dialogue from LotR – a line I'd read countless times – had a significance I'd never caught before. The new understanding made me much more sympathetic toward him.
This is the kind of experience that keeps people rereading a book. It's also an experience they can't have if the author insists on explaining everything for fear the reader might miss something. The reader must miss some things the first time through (and the second, and the third...), or there will be nothing left to discover. It's the author's responsibility to make sure these subtle, easily-missed points aren't necessary for the first-time reader's basic understanding of the story.
The width and depth of Tolkien's original sources also give those interested something more to delve into, without making the story inaccessible to others. While talking about Tolkien once to a group of younger teenagers, I was asked if he really "meant" to do all that (i.e., use older source material); weren't the similarities just coincidence? The teens were enjoying LotR as an exciting story, and they didn't really want to hear there was anything remotely scholarly behind it. Of course, Tolkien, being who he was, really did "mean" to do it. But you don't have to know the myth of Eärendel's toe to appreciate Galadriel's star-glass, or understand the linguistic differences between Quenya and Sindarin to be thrilled when two hobbits' cries of "Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!" and "Aiya elenion ancalima!" break the power of the Watchers. The story of LotR is perfectly understandable to a casual reader, without any need to refer to the deeper layers or to immediately pick up every nuance of the carefully interwoven plot. Otherwise, how could one begin? And where would one go after beginning?
Some fantasy writers might dismiss Tolkien as a mentor by saying they're not experts in philology and old legends, and can't see spending years studying those things in order to build their worlds. But Tolkien's lesson is broader than that. We often hear, "Write what you know." Using Tolkien as a model, we might say instead, "Write from your passion." He was passionate about language and early northern European literature; that's why he spent his lifetime studying and teaching about them. In addition, his faith and life experience fed the deeper themes present in LotR. Some of us know very well what our passion is; it might be the thing that drove us to write in the first place. For others, it may take some soul searching. We can certainly be passionate about more than one area of life. If we write from our passion, we're offering readers something we care deeply about, and we're also speaking from something within ourselves that is already many layered and, in some ways, unending (because we never stop discovering it). What could be a better foundation for a work that will grow and change with our readers?
The reader is vital to this process. If a book is to become a permanent part of someone's life, that person has to feel invested in it. No matter how many times they peel off the book's layers, the most avid LotR followers never find "the" center of it; that's why they never stop reading it. I'm not saying it's without any center; I'm suggesting there isn't one center every person will discover if he or she keeps at it long enough. I believe that in LotR, and in any book that draws someone back over and over throughout life, the reader is a partner in creating the story's center. And that center won't be static or unchanging any more than the reader is, as he or she is slightly different each time the book is taken off the shelf.
Not all people will have this reaction to the same book. Many read LotR 40 years ago, liked it, but never went back to it. The book didn't resonate with them as it did with those who've made it part of their lives. These one-time readers very possibly have found another author whose works they return to, for some of the same reasons that Tolkien's followers return to his.
A writer has to accept that this kind of book won't appeal to everyone. It assumes that both author and reader are willing not only to do some hard work, but also to develop a certain level of trust with each other. The reader needs to be able to trust the author to be accurate and consistent, and to provide necessary information (all the easily accessible facts needed to follow the story on first reading, and enough depth to make re-readings worthwhile). The author has to trust that the reader doesn't need or want to be spoon fed, but would rather participate in the book's discoveries and insights, and is capable of doing so.
This might be seen as a practical use of Tolkien's theory of applicability. He said allegory is based on the domination of the author, while applicability comes from the freedom of the reader. To facilitate applicability, the author must be brave enough not to resolve everything for the reader, even if that means leaving him or her free to interpret something differently than the author might. In a way, it's treating the reader as an adult as well as a partner in the creative process. I recently saw a post on an LotR message board marveling at how we can each read this same book and come away with such different insights (giving readers something to share and discuss, and often sending them back to the book).
It's commonly noted that for an imagined world to have depth and reality, it needs to exist beyond what is told the reader. Tolkien is a recognized master of this technique, and he uses it in areas more subtle than "just" the sweeping history and geography of Middle-earth. On many levels, he doesn't give us all the answers, but encourages us to think about the questions ourselves (often by using words with multiple connotations). If Frodo was meant to have the Ring, "but not by its Maker," and if the role of Ring-bearer was "appointed" for him, who or what had chosen him? The book doesn't say, at least not directly. How is magic defined in Middle-earth? Even Galadriel doesn't completely understand what is meant by the word. What was actually going on in Frodo's mind when he claimed the Ring? Tolkien has us in Sam's point of view during that scene, so, like Sam, all we can do is watch and wonder. These are just a few of the questions still being discussed 54 years after the publication of the final volume, to say nothing of the broader debates about such things as the nature of power, the limits of free will, the significance of self-sacrifice and loss, and the meaning of hope. (And, lest we forget, do Balrogs have wings, are Elves' ears pointed, what happened to the Entwives, and just who is Tom Bombadil.) Even the questions themselves change and grow with the reader.
In order to undertake the task of reflecting on a book's questions, a reader needs to be confident enough in the author's accuracy and consistency that ambiguities and things-left-unsaid aren't simply dismissed as mistakes. Tolkien's attention to this area supports the suspension of disbelief in an unparalleled way. Attaining that level of reality required substantial rewriting and research. A favorite sentence of mine from his letters is, "At this point I require to know how much later the moon gets up each night when nearing full, and how to stew a rabbit!" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 74). In a down-to-earth, practical way, this sentence shows the kind of attention to detail all authors, especially fantasy authors, need to cultivate. If suspension of disbelief falters, the reader might finish the book but most likely won't be lured back to that world a second time.
Tolkien also shows us how to allow a story itself to grow and change. He started writing his "sequel to The Hobbit" as a lighthearted book, one that would have been closer to the publishers' expectations – as well as easier and quicker to write – than the one ultimately completed. But the story didn't want to stay there, and Tolkien followed its lead as it developed into something both higher and deeper and, perhaps most importantly, as his own larger mythology persisted in breaking through its borders. If he had refused to let the story evolve, and had insisted on keeping it a lighter children's tale, would anyone be reading it (or The Hobbit or The Silmarillion) today?
This kind of openness to change requires confidence in our own creative process as well as attentiveness to useful developments as they present themselves. When the character who eventually became Aragorn first introduced himself (unexpectedly) into LotR, he was an unknown hobbit named Trotter. By the time the entire story was written, he had become the returning king, with a lineage stretching far back into the early history of Middle-earth. Sometimes I wonder: if I had been the writer, would I have ignored Trotter sitting there in the corner of the inn's common room (maybe even been a little annoyed that he'd tried to barge into the story without an invitation)? Or would I have discovered his potential and used it, as Tolkien did? Of course, the author's notes also tell us that he tried a flock of things that didn't work and had to be redone, but that was just part of the writing process necessary to discover the real story that wanted to be told.
So, from initial accessibility to the promise of future discoveries, from trust in the reader to trust in the story itself, and from using our passion to using research, we can learn much from J.R.R. Tolkien about writing a book that people will return to time and again throughout their lives. Despite all the lessons he provides, there's one thing Professor Tolkien never teaches: taking shortcuts in our writing process.
________________________________________
[The title of this essay is from the chapter "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol," in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.]
Copyright 2001 by Trudy G. Shaw/ Revised 2010
This is from Secondary Creations (http://www.etsy.com/shop/secondarycreations) on Etsy.
My primary website - now over 10 years old - is http://www.frodolivesin.us (http://www.frodolivesin.us/)
It's purely a labor of love - no one even buys anything through the amazon links, although hope endures.