4 ms·

Does anyone know why Fellowship of the ring sucked?(btw, I really liked a few parts, particularly Tom) It seems so different from every other book Ive read(onl

Does anyone know why Fellowship of the ring sucked?(btw, I really liked a few parts, particularly Tom) It seems so different from every other book Ive read(only hobbit-RotK). Like did he add fluff in the forest because of publishing standards at the time?

ThomPete 8y ago
Because that book was all about describing the world where as the movie tried to jampack a lot of action into 3 movies so milk it. There is a reason why Lord of the Rings were the first movie they did was much better suited for filmatization.
DragonBourne 8y ago
It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for Tolkien found from the letters that he had received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. I like the passage that they find trolls from Hobbit still turned to stone the most...
- mkirklions 8y ago
  Specifically the walking for chapters upon chapters.
KineticLensman 8y ago
He wasn't influenced by publishing standards to make it longer. LOTR was in fact quite long by the standards of the day and had to be split into three separate volumes as a result.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Actually it was six volumes reduced to 3...
  - KineticLensman 8y ago
    six books grouped into three volumes, two per volume
  - DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
    The "books" of LOTR are just super-chapters, really. He never intended for the six "books" to be published separately; they just divide portions of the story. He was very much against publishing LOTR in separate volumes, and only did so because his publishing agent told him it would never be published otherwise. It was too big a risk for them.
noonespecial 8y ago
I remember that the empty slowness of the "chapters of walking" made Middle Earth seem huge when my dad read the books to me as a child. In stark contrast, Narnia (also read to me by dad at about the same time) seemed so small as to be a shoe-box diorama. In my childhood imagination, Narnia was about the size of the Shire (perhaps with Bree thrown in for a sense of 'far off').
WesleyLivesay 8y ago
The general feeling I get when reading through some of the content released after Tolkien's death (History of the Lord of the Rings books specifically) is that the reason the first half of the Fellowship is at a slower pace than the rest is because Tolkien did not know where the story was going or where it would end. The most telling evidence for this is how drastically the story and characters change from the beginning to Bree when looking at first draft compared to published text. It took a lot of wildly divergent drafts to get to Bree, with the texts rapidly evolving. My favorite example of this is that the Strider character was originally named Trotter, and he was a hobbit that wore wooden shoes. This type of slowly building story, where layer upon layer of idea built on top of each other is not really present for most of Two Towers and Return of the King. It was almost like Tolkien was a train that gained momentum as it went forward.
- DanAndersen 8y ago
  For anyone interested in the development of LotR over time, I really recommend listening to the Signum University online lectures going through the History of Middle-Earth series. Dr Corey Olson is going through each of the volumes in turn and offering great analysis of how the story began to emerge, just as you describe. The lecture playlists (so far) can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxTFUltO4uXhEfqgI6GtIg/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxTFUltO4uXhEfqgI6GtIg/pla... . Notable things about Tolkien's writing process: - LotR was originally just meant to be a shorter sequel to The Hobbit. It's always fun to see his early notes about how few chapters he expects the book to take. - When The Hobbit was first released, it was emphatically not part of the full legendarium that Tolkien was working on, re: the Silmarillion. He borrowed heavily from his private stories about the Elves, but it wasn't until he was writing LotR that he actually realized that everything was all connected into the same continuity. - Tolkien was extremely conservative in his writing, in a waste-not attitude. He hated to just cut out things he had written, and instead would do a lot of recycling and reworking so that bits of dialogue and description he had done in earlier drafts would be preserved but with their context completely altered. - Tolkien sometimes claimed that his worldbuilding started with a map, and then he placed a story inside of it, but looking through his early notes shows that's not quite true. He tended to think in terms of a series of adventures he wanted his characters to have, and would wiggle around locations on his still-nebulous maps to make the distances work (he was very particular about getting the distances and travel times all right!).

ThomPete 8y ago

Because that book was all about describing the world where as the movie tried to jampack a lot of action into 3 movies so milk it. There is a reason why Lord of the Rings were the first movie they did was much better suited for filmatization.

DragonBourne 8y ago

It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for Tolkien found from the letters that he had received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. I like the passage that they find trolls from Hobbit still turned to stone the most...

mkirklions 8y ago
Specifically the walking for chapters upon chapters.

KineticLensman 8y ago

He wasn't influenced by publishing standards to make it longer. LOTR was in fact quite long by the standards of the day and had to be split into three separate volumes as a result.

garmaine 8y ago
Actually it was six volumes reduced to 3...
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  six books grouped into three volumes, two per volume
- DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
  The "books" of LOTR are just super-chapters, really. He never intended for the six "books" to be published separately; they just divide portions of the story. He was very much against publishing LOTR in separate volumes, and only did so because his publishing agent told him it would never be published otherwise. It was too big a risk for them.

noonespecial 8y ago

I remember that the empty slowness of the "chapters of walking" made Middle Earth seem huge when my dad read the books to me as a child. In stark contrast, Narnia (also read to me by dad at about the same time) seemed so small as to be a shoe-box diorama. In my childhood imagination, Narnia was about the size of the Shire (perhaps with Bree thrown in for a sense of 'far off').

WesleyLivesay 8y ago

The general feeling I get when reading through some of the content released after Tolkien's death (History of the Lord of the Rings books specifically) is that the reason the first half of the Fellowship is at a slower pace than the rest is because Tolkien did not know where the story was going or where it would end. The most telling evidence for this is how drastically the story and characters change from the beginning to Bree when looking at first draft compared to published text. It took a lot of wildly divergent drafts to get to Bree, with the texts rapidly evolving. My favorite example of this is that the Strider character was originally named Trotter, and he was a hobbit that wore wooden shoes. This type of slowly building story, where layer upon layer of idea built on top of each other is not really present for most of Two Towers and Return of the King. It was almost like Tolkien was a train that gained momentum as it went forward.

DanAndersen 8y ago
For anyone interested in the development of LotR over time, I really recommend listening to the Signum University online lectures going through the History of Middle-Earth series. Dr Corey Olson is going through each of the volumes in turn and offering great analysis of how the story began to emerge, just as you describe. The lecture playlists (so far) can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxTFUltO4uXhEfqgI6GtIg/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxTFUltO4uXhEfqgI6GtIg/pla... . Notable things about Tolkien's writing process: - LotR was originally just meant to be a shorter sequel to The Hobbit. It's always fun to see his early notes about how few chapters he expects the book to take. - When The Hobbit was first released, it was emphatically not part of the full legendarium that Tolkien was working on, re: the Silmarillion. He borrowed heavily from his private stories about the Elves, but it wasn't until he was writing LotR that he actually realized that everything was all connected into the same continuity. - Tolkien was extremely conservative in his writing, in a waste-not attitude. He hated to just cut out things he had written, and instead would do a lot of recycling and reworking so that bits of dialogue and description he had done in earlier drafts would be preserved but with their context completely altered. - Tolkien sometimes claimed that his worldbuilding started with a map, and then he placed a story inside of it, but looking through his early notes shows that's not quite true. He tended to think in terms of a series of adventures he wanted his characters to have, and would wiggle around locations on his still-nebulous maps to make the distances work (he was very particular about getting the distances and travel times all right!).