A Shorter Saga

It was just two weeks ago, I think, that I wrote about continuing The Animal Kingdom. However long ago it was, it's been from then until now and I still have yet to write a word. In fact, I don't think about it too much. But it's not completely forgotten.

Instead, I have spent a decent amount of time working on the rewrite of Quest. Gave it Fairyhedgehog to read, and she pointed out a few flaws and such. So I worked on rewriting that. And I got it done. I'm much happier with the new version. Had tried a few things in the original draft which didn't come off at all. Dumped those and replaced them with new scenes which I think work nicely. Or, at least better.

Quest turned out to be a slightly longer than Apprentice, the prequel. About 1,000-words longer. I had hoped to keep it shorter, but the story needed to be told.

What's nice about the way Quest ended is that, like Apprentice, there is no need to write another episode. The outcomes are pretty much there. However, I already have some ideas for a third installment, and I would not be surprised if I begin writing it before summer.

That is one of the marks of a good story, I'm told: no continuation needed. And yet the greatest fantasy novel of all time violates that rule. It also violates the rule of get to the action immediately. And it's long. About 250,000-words. We don't get inside the heads of the main characters. Good characters tend to be good and evil characters tend to be evil. There isn't much "yin and yang" going on. It violates so many rules, and yet it is widely acclaimed as the greatest fantasy work of all. I tend to agree with this assessment, by the way.

The work, of course, is Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R.Tolkien. Decades before it was made into a movie (which I am not happy with, by the way*) it was read far and wide by college students in Britain and the United States especially. I discovered it through being in a play: The Hobbit. I was so taken by the fantasy that when I saw on the back of the playbook that there were books to be had, I immediately went out and bought them.

I expect like hundreds, maybe thousands, of others I was inspired by Tolkien's work to write my own. That is not to say I have copied what he did. No. Personally, I do not see any resemblance between his work and mine, and none of my readers has ever accused me of it. Wait. I take that back. There was the a*shole. I paid him $300 in the early 1980s to take a look at what I had written. He not only blasted it, he said it reminded him of Lord of the Rings, which was proof it didn't deserve to be published. Well, I still can't argue about what I wrote, but I think Tolkien's work stands on its own.

Probably, the a*shole had already shifted his thinking to that of the modern day reader, editor, author, agent, and Tolkien didn't follow those rules. He just told a story. And a very good story did he tell.

Physically, we see it as three separate books. But if you read what Tolkien wrote you see that in his mind it was actually six books. Only none of those six books stood on its own. Neither do the three volumes we have now. In fact, I was always angry with Tolkien for not writing another volume. I was also annoyed he never finished his earlier stuff.

I wonder. If there was no Lord of the Rings to look at today, would any agent or editor accept a 250,000-word book? I know the a*shole wouldn't.

* = I think Peter Jackson made three very excellent movies. And I believe he captured the spirit of the Shire most excellently. What he did not do was make a good representation of the book upon which the films were based. After the Shire I never felt that Jackson understood a word of what Tolkien wrote. But maybe it's me who doesn't understand. Jackson's made a heck of lot more money than I have.