What Andy is Excited About

Read Lord of the Rings lately? In my experience, most people are intimidated by JRR Tolkien’s writing style. Others simply can’t get into it. What most people miss, though, is that Tolkien’s writings can create an immersive, rich experience – if you know how to approach it. In this post, I’ve got five great tips for how to get lost in Middle Earth.

1. Chill.

Don’t read too fast. Don’t be in a hurry. Sit down, preferably by a fire, and enjoy. Take time for your imagination to kick in. If Frodo can take an evening out of his epic excursion to camp out by a fire and hear some good back-stories, then so can you.

2. The dialog is realistic.

With Tolkien, characters talk the way people would talk in real life. It’s not snappy Hollywood dialog. Each line is not some well-crafted speech. Discussions begin with salutations. Characters go on bunny-trails. If you view the dialog as having a realistic tone, you might find the it more immersive than laborious.

3. Tolkien’s chief interest is Middle Earth

Tolkien’s stories have great plots, but the plot is not as emphasized as much as the backdrop of Middle Earth. Tolkien loves his characters. And his cultures. And his gorgeous landscapes. Middle Earth has a history that spans thousands of years – why focus so heavily on the storyline when there’s so much else to share?

If you watch the Lord of the Rings movies, they are more focused on the storyline, which is a narrative choice mostly dictated by what is expected in movies today. Random characters and side-adventures like Tom Bombadil have no place in such a plot-driven medium, unfortunately.

4. You will not know everything the first time, and you don’t have to.

Don’t worry so much about the facts all the time. Hollywood has trained us to think that every character and every fact will somehow come back  to the story, so we as the audience have learned to pay close attention to details. With Tolkien, just enjoy the details as they come by.

And you know what? Every time you read one of Tolkien’s books, you’ll find more details to synthesize. But don’t stress out about catching every detail on your first read.

5. Look up how to pronounce stuff.

I can’t explain this, but it works. Tolkien was a linguist. He developed the languages of the Elves long before he jumped into any specific stories. Names, in particular, are the most powerful elements of a character, place, people, weapon, or just about anything else of significance in Middle Earth. Believe it or not, just the act of sounding out names can tell you all about a character and their culture.

In the back of most of his books, Tolkien has a page with clarifications on how he wants names and other words to be pronounced.  Read those, and sound them out.  When you do, you will, somehow, get a better sense of what Tolkien is trying to create in your mind for you.

So there you go. Now it’s time for me to make like the halting problem and eat my own words.