Better fantasy novels from those who don't read LOTR?

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Four_Elements

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It seems to me that writers who read Tolkien's work always copy it. Does reading The Lord of the Rings make a person a better fantasy writer, or does it make them only copy the story, often-times without even knowing that they're doing it? I actually didn't read Tolkien's works until after I had my first fantasy novel published, and it still got decent reviews.
 

Four_Elements

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Euan H. said:
How do you tell who has read it and who hasn't? :)


By all the crappy (erm... poor-quality) fantasy books we see published that obviously rip off Tolkien. I don't know how many times I've seen sentences such as, "The elves came over the sea," "The man kissed the elf princess," etc., you get the picture.
 

Phoenix Fury

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Sigh. Does anyone know why there has been such an epidemic of Tolkien-bashing lately? It seems more trendy than angst-ridden vampire novels...

Of course no one is under any obligation to love Tolkien's work if he/she doesn't want to (I happen to love his work and find it brilliant--and much deeper than many of the supposedly more complex "modern" writers, though that of course is simply my opinion). But love it or hate it, the simple truth is that not one of us is reading, writing, or attempting to be published in a genre known as "fantasy" today without Tolkien's work. Previous to Tolkien, tales of fantasy were essentially considered children's stories, lightweight fare little better than trash novels. Even science fiction, thanks to the work of H.G. Wells and others, enjoyed at least a marginal reputation; fantasy, by contrast, was not even on the radar screen.

All that changed after LOTR. For the first time adults could take works of fantasy seriously; for the first time a work of real weight had been produced that involved such fanciful creations as immortal elves, gruff dwarves, and talking treelike creatures. Naturally mythology, fables and the like influenced Tolkien heavily; but the point is that Tolkien's main goal, besides developing a world around a new set of languages he had created, was to establish a new and uniquely British mythology, rather than one taken from the continent. He wanted to establish a fantasy background all England's own--and I would argue that he succeeded in doing so, in large part. That later writers drew and continue to draw upon that background is hardly a weakness in them, any more than Shakespeare's use of old plots for his plays (which he did in nearly every case, by the way) was a weakness in him. It is rather a strength, an understanding of how an established history and legacy can allow writers and readers alike to first identify with, then build upon what has come before.

It is perhaps for this reason that the constant whining about "getting away from Tolkien" gets on my nerves, especially from writers like Michael Moorcock who ought to know better--as if Moorcock would even be a blip on the radar screen without the territory Tolkien had established for him decades before! (And for those who think Moorcock "redefined the genre" with his writing, take a look at Elric's sword and tell me if it doesn't remind you of a certain circular object which has a life of its own and drains both will and goodness from the user as time goes on...sound familiar?) The point is not that one should be intentionally derivative and spend time writing about magic BRACELETS which need to be cast into CHASMS of Doom. As much as writers need to build upon the work of others, they also need to stake out a portion of their own ground. But endless handwringing over whether or not this or that artifact, character or plot twist resembles Tolkien seems to me to be pointless and counterproductive--because if we do spend our time agonizing over avoiding any shadow of Tolkien in our work, are we not ultimately obsessing with exactly that person?

The point is this: of course a writer who wants to write fantasy should read Tolkien first, as well as other writers who have helped to define the genre. Then he/she should use what he/she can, discard the rest, and apply his/her own unique perspective to the whole. Just as with Shakespeare, Tolkien, and thousands of other writers who read, learned from, and built upon the work of those before them, this will lead not to slavish imitation but work grounded in its genre yet still capable of standing on its own, rather than writing so hysterically desperate to avoid even a shadow of J.R.R.T. that it ends up being precisely what his work wasn't--forced, stilted, and, to be frank, not very readable.

P.F.
 

Four_Elements

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Phoenix Fury's argument was solid. But I don't think you really have to read Tolkien to write fantasy. I know of plenty of fantasy fans who dislike Tolkien's work and look for more modern-day fantasy, particularly those that do not resemble Tolkien.

Tolkien was original, is the point. Would LOTR have been so successful if he didn't have his own writing style, his own story, or original characters? To say that every fantasy writer should read Tolkien's work is wrong because, most likely, fans have read Tolkien and want to read his work for his own style, rather than his work coming from another author's mouth. I think that people should not copy Tolkien but rather follow his ways of an extremely original story. That said, it's not a requirement to read Tolkien to be a great fantasy writer.
 

Phoenix Fury

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Interesting. I guess I might amend my argument in this way: you don't have to read Tolkien to be an excellent fantasy writer, but you are limiting yourself by not doing so, and needlessly as far as I can tell. What harm would it do? If Tolkien is so overwhelmingly powerful that one can't read his work without becoming a slavish imitator of it, that would clearly put to rest any argument as to whether he was good or not :Hail:. Fortunately for Four Elements and others, I doubt very much this is a realistic concern. Reading the work is then very valuable at best and harmless at worst.

Then what harm do you do in not reading the work? Three things, in my view: first, you don't fully understand the genre in which you're writing, and thus may not be able to speak to its adherents effectively. Maybe you don't care about this in the abstract, but in practical terms I can tell you that if people don't want to buy your fantasy novel because, well, it isn't fantasy in any even vague definition of the word, you will have an awfully short shelf life...literally. Second, you are unable to see both the things which Tolkien undeniably did well--world-building and language creation at the least--and the things he could have done better, if you are inclined to believe he could have (some people don't like the pacing of his work, for instance, or the scope of some of his characters), and thus you have essentially left out essential research for your own project. For heaven's sake, how would you even know if you were being imitative or not if you didn't know what work had existed in the first place? And finally, you really are ignoring the work which made our genre viable in the first place, commercially, academically, and artistically. It seems to me this is kind of like getting a doctorate in English while studiously ignoring Milton, Shakespeare, Melville, Austen, Woolf, and authors of similar stature--would you really be qualified to teach English if you avoided reading these authors, even if they weren't your cup of tea personally?

So practically, artistically, and historically it seems to me to be detrimental to avoid Tolkien at all costs if you are a fantasy writer. I absolutely agree that slavish imitation is a bad thing, and new authors ought to avoid the practice; they should be original and innovative to the extent they can be. But originality and innovation do not require ignorance of history, and I would argue that knowledge of the past and dedication to the future are not mutually exclusive ideas. As I mentioned before, it sure seemed to work for the Bard.

P.F.
 

Four_Elements

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Yes, Phoenix Fury, I partly agree with what you said. However, one thing to point out as I tried to before is that a person often copies the writing of a book they love without actually realizing they're doing it, and that may be why we see so many Tolkien rip-offs. It is probably true, however, that Tolkien DOES have a huge influence on a lot of the readers, and writers often copy a lot of ideas in his books because of that. So reading LOTR would most likely have both positive and negative effects.
 

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Refusing to read Tolkien won't protect you from his influence. PseudoTolkienian fantasy -- what is, in certain circles, unkindly called "extruded fantasy product" -- permeates popular culture. I doubt it's possible to be a fantasist and not come in contact with it. If not from books, then from Dungeons and Dragons, or Everquest, or the like.

Likewise, it's more than possible to read and respect Tolkien and still not want to write Tolkienian fantasy. And there's more than one strain of fantasy running in the genre.

I doubt you'll get better fantasy out of somebody who hasn't read Tolkien, simply because that person is likely to think that tired old tropes are actually fresh new ideas.

(Heretical statement of the night: If you can't stomach Tolkien's writing style, the movies are an acceptable substitute. They're not the books, but thematically they're reasonably close. But do try reading the books first.)
 

Four_Elements

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Well, technically, I've received most of my influence as a fantasy writer from Fantasy Role-Playing Games. While some might argue that without Tolkien, RPGs wouldn't exist, Fantasy RPGs are often very original, unlike most fantasy novels. Plus readers aren't going to call you a rip-off to RPGs as they would with Tolkien.
 

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I was Tolkien fanatic as a kid. I still love LotR, but not the way I used to. I read everything related to Middle Earth except the Silmarillion (my library didn't have it). I watched the cartoons, played Lord of the Rings board games, and even collected the obscure card game, Middle Earth: the Wizards. When the Peter Jackson movies came out, I had to see them, and I loved them.

And yet, I write science fiction. I'll admit, Tolkien has had a profound influence on me. Every now and then I'll find my characters' speech falling into meter like the riders of Rohan and I'll have to stop myself.

I agree that too many derivative works have been written, but that does not detract from the original value of his writing. Many writers could learn a great deal from him, especially in the venue of worldbuilding. His prose also shines.

He really opened up a new genre of possibilities for writers. Even if you don't intend to copy him, reading his works is worthwhile for the diction alone.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Four_Elements said:
It seems to me that writers who read Tolkien's work always copy it. Does reading The Lord of the Rings make a person a better fantasy writer, or does it make them only copy the story, often-times without even knowing that they're doing it? I actually didn't read Tolkien's works until after I had my first fantasy novel published, and it still got decent reviews.

Well, 99.99% of all the fantasy writers I know have read Tolkien, including all the better ones who write nothng like him.

Not reading what's already been done usually means you're more likely to repeat it. The only way not to repeat what's already been done is to know what's already been done, and the only way to do this is to read as widely as possible.

Copying Tolkien doesn't come about because a writer reads Tolkien, but most often because a writer lacks imagination.

And sometimes because of market forces. If enough readers want Tolkien clones, then publishers are going to be looking for Tolkien clones until the bubble bursts.

But mostly Tolkien is copied because copying is easy, and being both original and good is very, very tough.
 

mistri

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Jamesaritchie is right.

You're assuming that everyone who reads Tolkien copies him, and that all those who haven't write original fiction. It's simply not that clear cut. As others have argued, Tolkien is so influential that an unimaginative writer could well 'copy' him without reading a single word of the books. Likewise, a great many fantasy writers will have read LOTR, for example (if not most writers), and yet you'll find a portion of them have written original works. I actually think that it's good to read the classics - to know where the genre has come from and what cliches to avoid. I'd much rather have read LOTR than not.
 

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mistri said:
As others have argued, Tolkien is so influential that an unimaginative writer could well 'copy' him without reading a single word of the books.

I'm a living example, although not, I hope, unimaginative (at least not now). When I was in high school I tried to read LotR but didn't like it and didn't get far. Yet I was writing fantasy already, and when I think back on what I was writing it was awful fake-Tolkien stuff, very little of which I could have gotten from reading The Hobbit (which was and still is a book I enjoy). I finally read the trilogy just before the movies came out--I was around 32 I think at that point, with several completed novels under my belt--and I'd come across every single idea in the books before. I had the strange feeling, in fact, that I was reading a Tolkien-derived book rather than the original.

I blame D&D in large part. I played it all the time in middle school and all those fantasy cliches got ingrained in my head. There are imaginative RPGs out there, and a good GM can make up very original campaigns, but in the end all RPGs are faint echoes of what a really good book can be.

Incidentally, and apropos of nothing much, the local term for "geek" in my area is "gurp."
 

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Phoenix Fury said:
It seems to me this is kind of like getting a doctorate in English while studiously ignoring Milton, Shakespeare, Melville, Austen, Woolf, and authors of similar stature--would you really be qualified to teach English if you avoided reading these authors, even if they weren't your cup of tea personally?


Urk. That happens rather frequently though.
 

loquax

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So the conclusion is:

All the Tolkien rip-offs were actually not influenced by Tolkien, as they did not read his work.

Doesn't that lessen Tolkien's achievement? That anyone could have come up with it, and he was lucky to be first? I'm pretty sure that most Tolkien clones did read his work... it would make a lot more sense, right?
 

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Four_Elements said:
It is probably true, however, that Tolkien DOES have a huge influence on a lot of the readers, and writers often copy a lot of ideas in his books because of that. So reading LOTR would most likely have both positive and negative effects.

There's another possibility as well; many writers are using the same materials for inspiration that Tolkien used. Tolkien used, almost exclusively, medieval Germanic myths and texts, for inspiration.

Many writers uses those same sources. There are also so-called International Tales, that is, tales with essentially the same elements from completely unrelated languages and cultures, tales that can easily be shown to exist long before the printing press.
 

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Medievalist said:
There's another possibility as well; many writers are using the same materials for inspiration that Tolkien used. Tolkien used, almost exclusively, medieval Germanic myths and texts, for inspiration.

Many writers uses those same sources. There are also so-called International Tales, that is, tales with essentially the same elements from completely unrelated languages and cultures, tales that can easily be shown to exist long before the printing press.

Excellent point. I'm rather just a wannabe author at this point, and so that detracts from my point. But I started my story before I read Tolkien, or saw either movie. So, all of the core issues in my story had nothing to do with his stories. However, when I dug deep into Tolkien, I found some of my concepts were in his stories. I didn't steal them, but I have studied some of the works he studied.

So, when I went through some of his stories, I knew where he drew some of his inspiration from.
 

Phoenix Fury

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Medievalist said:
Urk. That happens rather frequently though.

Disturbing...but probably true in many cases, I'm afraid...

P.F.
 

Phoenix Fury

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Saanen said:
I blame D&D in large part. I played it all the time in middle school and all those fantasy cliches got ingrained in my head. There are imaginative RPGs out there, and a good GM can make up very original campaigns, but in the end all RPGs are faint echoes of what a really good book can be.

Incidentally, and apropos of nothing much, the local term for "geek" in my area is "gurp."

Keep in mind that a great deal of D&D is pulled wholesale from a variety of fantasy sources, Tolkien chief among them (the descriptions of elves, dwarves, "halflings," wizards, etc.). D&D helped soldify those conventions, but many of them are taken directly from Tolkien's work to begin with.

P.F.
 

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As far as the origional post, if you look at most blues guitarists, they trace their licks back to two guitarists, or three. Carlos Santana, Claptain, David Gilmore, Stevie Ray Vaughn. They all were inspired by Freddie King and Albert King


In fact, if you look at the Early Beatles, they copped most of their licks from Elvis' guitarist and Chuck Berry.

Likewise, Tolkien pretty much threw every Fantasy idea into his story. I love the concept of Arda, so you don't have to put your story in a planet in outer space. But in his stories, you'll find every major theme from Oedipus, to Noah's flood. You'll find every major theme of Mythology.

However, in order to appreciated it, you must understand his whole purpose. That was to create a "mythology" of England. Now, if you comprehend that Norse and Greek and Roman, and perhaps Persian lore, have similar stories, then you tend to accept they either drew from each other or from the same root sources, and then they changed names and places.

So, his transposition of other mythologies into an English model, is simply transferring Old Legends and Myths into his story.

Like I said, Claptain, Gilmore, SRV, and Santana are guitarists, and may have had similar roots, but they made it their own, and that is what made them great.

There's a difference between being inspired by Tolkien, and ripping off Tolkien. There were Elf stories way before Tolkien. And there will be Elf stories for ages to come. That doesn't mean every Elf story will be a ripoff.
 

Tirjasdyn

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Four_Elements said:
By all the crappy (erm... poor-quality) fantasy books we see published that obviously rip off Tolkien. I don't know how many times I've seen sentences such as, "The elves came over the sea," "The man kissed the elf princess," etc., you get the picture.

Actually if you had read Tolkien you'd know that the man never kissess the elf princess.
 

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It is perhaps for this reason that the constant whining about "getting away from Tolkien" gets on my nerves, especially from writers like Michael Moorcock who ought to know better--as if Moorcock would even be a blip on the radar screen without the territory Tolkien had established for him decades before! (And for those who think Moorcock "redefined the genre" with his writing, take a look at Elric's sword and tell me if it doesn't remind you of a certain circular object which has a life of its own and drains both will and goodness from the user as time goes on...sound familiar?) The point is not that one should be intentionally derivative and spend time writing about magic BRACELETS which need to be cast into CHASMS of Doom. As much as writers need to build upon the work of others, they also need to stake out a portion of their own ground. But endless handwringing over whether or not this or that artifact, character or plot twist resembles Tolkien seems to me to be pointless and counterproductive--because if we do spend our time agonizing over avoiding any shadow of Tolkien in our work, are we not ultimately obsessing with exactly that person?

I love Moorcock but he rehashes is own plot over 100 times through out his novels. Sometimes word for word. He tells the same story over and over. He really shouldn't talk.

If you would like quicky examples read the first few pages of each of the following:

Jerry Cornealius, Elric and Dreamthief's daughter.
 

Tirjasdyn

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Four_Elements said:
Well, technically, I've received most of my influence as a fantasy writer from Fantasy Role-Playing Games. While some might argue that without Tolkien, RPGs wouldn't exist, Fantasy RPGs are often very original, unlike most fantasy novels. Plus readers aren't going to call you a rip-off to RPGs as they would with Tolkien.

Not that there is only DnD but it was largely based off Tolkien, some cases almost exclusivly. Only the names have been changed (like Balrog) when the Tolkien estate sued TSR/Wizards.


Actually as a role player myself, I'd say you have been heavily influenced by Tolkien. More so than by just reading the novels.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Tolkien

The trouble with imitators is that they have so much to imitate. You don't have to read Tolkien to imitate Tolkien. All you have to do is read about 95% of the epic fantasy out there, or watch about 99% of the fantasy on TV. Even documentaries and shows on the History Channel have been influenced by the popularity of Tolkien.


And since the LOTR movies, there's a whole new batch of imitators hitting the slush piles.

The same thing is happening with Harry Potter. Between the books and the movies, slush piles are being inundated by imitations.

I don't think imitation is automatically wrong. I believe imitation is how we all learn to write. But we're supposed to imitate style, pace, and flow, not content. It's imitation without adding something new, something different, something original that bothers me.

Imitation is a regular cycle in publishing. When any writer, or pretty much any genre, gets hot enough, imitation floods publishers, and publishers buy far more imitative novels than they should. The public buys such novels for a time, and then stops, and that genre goes downhill quickly.

I don't think using the same mythos as Tolkien is an excuse. Using the same mythos in the same way is imitating Tolkien.

But simply put, Tolkien is everywhere, and many of those who aren't imitating Tolkien because they've never read him are merely imitating imitators of Tolkien.

Reading Tolkien doens't mean a writer will imitate him, and not reading Tolkien doesn't mean a writer won't imitate him. We nearly all imitate in the beginning, and the real question is whether or not we can outgrow it.
 

Four_Elements

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loquax said:
I'm pretty sure that most Tolkien clones did read his work... it would make a lot more sense, right?

Exactly. There are a lot of fantasy books that call monsters "orcs", for example. Do the authors of these books expect people to believe that they came up with the word orcs on their own?
 
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