Category: Lord of the Rings
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Tolkien’s “Take That!” to Shakespeare
Literary Fencing: Tolkien vs. Shakespeare While reading a book about Tolkien this week, I came across the fact that parts of Lord of the Rings were inspired by Macbeth.* Which I’d already known, and was super-obvious to me, especially in Eowyn’s most famous scene. But what I didn’t realize was how much of Lord of…
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My Favourite Lord of the Rings Quote
Continuing on my Lord of the Rings theme (or, to be honest, just barely remembering to post today), I have decided to share one of my favourite quotes from The Fellowship of the Ring: “For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!” I I looked then and saw that his robes,…
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Just Do Something
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.“ – The Fellowship of…
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I Read the Appendices
OR, Geeking Out Over Author’s Supplements If I read something and like it, I tend to read absolutely everything related to it. I never realized how pronounced this tendency has been throughout my whole life, until this week I looked up Little House on the Prairie on Wikipedia. I read the series as a kid,…
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Top 5 Literary Couples
So if I complain about Romeo and Juliet, Twilight, et al., what literary couple do I think worthy of being in the “top five”? Clearly, ones with some sort of strong personality types, and some sort of relationship journey. I don’t necessarily think these couples have to be in “romance books,” because sometimes the best…
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Talking Down to Readers
That Pedantic Tone of Writing You know the style of writing – “Now let me tell you a story…” or “As you shall see in the end…” The style of writing where a strong narrator’s voice almost intrudes into the story, reminding the reader that it is a story. Often this is thought of as…
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Breaking the 10 Simple Rules for Writing a Novel
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham Well, while surfing the net I stumbled across a lovely article advising people on how to write a novel in 2012 – you know, if that’s your New Year’s Resolution or something. And some of the…
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Happy Endings vs. Sad Endings
And Everything In Between Endings are one of the hardest things for me to write. Obviously, I feel the weight of the readers’ expectations—hey, if anyone is reading this, they’re trusting me to end this satisfactorily! And I’ve read so many books where a so-so ending kept the book from becoming great. But both happy…
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Do You Need to be Younger than 40 to Write Great Novels?
The other day, Little Brown Mushroom Blog linked to an article in the New York Times – an article which claims that most great novels are written by authors under the age of forty. The Little Brown Mushroom Blog was interested in this because they wanted to know if the same was true for photographers.…
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Why Scathing Critiques are More Fun To Read
Some of you may be of the opinion by now that I hate Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet and other assorted romances that don’t fit into my standards of “healthy romances.” I assure you I do not. As some of the comments pointed out, classics become known as classics because they relate to something in…
Hmm... 