Honest thoughts?
>>23328771Better than lotr. Just more succinct.
LOTR tries to be too many things at the same time. Tries to cover too much ground. The Hobbit is a better work, without even trying.
>>23328771Probably the best guide for beginner writers. with proper study of the fundamentals of course
>>23328771Amateurish children's literature, with some good ideas.
>>23328798I never looked at it that way, but the themes alone (GREED in every chapter) are done really well in a way that beginners fail at. It also has the one time you can open with an expository essay. Fantasyfags really need to take note.
>>23328771I really liked this more than the rest of tolkien's work, I wish fantasy writers would stop being hacks and try to smallscale their stories more often, the most recent ones that were of the same vein that come to mind were the George R Martin's Dunk and Egg books. maybe thread derail but does any one know any other books that are like the aforementioned not many scratch that itch.
>>23328888After 20 something years of writing a fucking le epic series in the vein of Tolkien, I'm only now starting to doubt it in place of a more concise story with stronger, more concentrated characters and plotlines. Fuck my loife
>>23328965Supposedly you have 20 years' worth of chickenscratch of an epic you're writing, so why not take elements, characters, bits that you like and condense them into a smaller story think of it like a trial run, the vidya dev that made Undertale originally had made undertale to be a proof of concept short thing for his main works Deltarune and that was very successful I bring up this example to hopefully motivate you into not being a doomer faggot and try to find a silver lining in your circumstance.
>>23328793>without even tryingThere was surely some trying involved in writing it.
>>23329019Not really, Tolkien wrote it for his children as a fun project; he had no intention of publishing it.
>>23328888Publishing, especially small press where cheap books are the norm, is starting to favor novellas for various reasons. Many of the classics are sub-250 pages and it leads to a very tight and intimate work. The doorstopper series is a bit of an oddity, LotR runs shorter than single books in later series.
>>23328798>with proper study of the fundamentals ofwhy?
>>23328985Not that anon but I've been editing a book that I started writing at 16, I'm 32 now. I've had some interest from agents but I'm wondering if thats bad it took me that long? It's undergone major improvements as time has gone on.
>>23329052True. Just to illustrate this. Narnia is 7 books. That seems like a long series, right? Except the compilation volume is about 770 pages long, so not really that long. Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings, the 1st book in his 10-book series the Stormlight Archive, is 1000+ pages long (!). Everything is too bloated now, it's insane.
>>23329097No, it's not bad. Every project is different and people write under different circumstances. Not everyone is Faulkner writing a novel at his peak in a few weeks .
>>23329114It went from 11000 words to 75000. Publishing soon.It took about 5 years in that timeframe total to write it. procrastinated a lot.
>>23329163110000* I meant.
>>23329097Theres a funny quote from a great sci-fi/fantasy writer saying you shouldn't write until your in your 30s-40s i think it was jack vance or one of the guys that was influenced by or influenced jack vance. but the gist of the concept is that living life a bit offers more interesting perspectives and usually more often people who've lived, failed, succeeded, touched grass usually have a keener insight into things then they were when they were baby-faced know-it-alls. So don't worry about your age when it comes to writing just have a means of income and don't stay couped up all day inside it literally is never to late to write good material until your brain turns mushy in your late 50s-60s if you have a bad lifestyle or genetics kek.
>>23329186Yeah well I wrote most of it at 22 but passt few years have made substantial revisions adding depth to the characters, plot, more subtext, sensory descriptions with the help of my editor and my own editing.I do feel more confident writing today at 32 versus 16.
>>23329228Hey if turns out great thats great(heh), if it turns out bad dont worry failure is the building blocks of success, for reference I'm a welder by trade(primarily MIG and TIG) i elected to study in it because it seemed conceptionally cool and I thought it would be something very doable for my part but found out the hard way it took way more dexterity, focus, and learning than I thought it required and to top it off I had no talent in it at all. I didn't give up though since I'm both stubborn and had an early wisened understanding of the learning curve, and kept at it at a slower rate than some welders but eventually became very good and now adays I do custom work that I'm very well paid for.
>>23329249Congrats, you definitely understand persistence pays off.My book, I feel, will be considered decent. About a 7/10 on average based on feedback from readers and agents. It's a YA SCIFI, but more mature.Is a decent, solid book for a debut bad? It's the first in a trilogy. I'm going through a final revision with my editor to further enhance it enough that it attracts professional interest that ends up in a contract. Otherwise I'll self publish, I have the money for marketing both in person and online.
>>23329108I've been going through the old pulps into the first real wave of what we know as fantasy and between what the short stories can do and the early novels being more like novellas, I've come to like the economy of tight, standalone work. Doubly so if you don't notice how short the chapters are and how a lot can happen, but not as much as it seems.
The adventure and story itself aged very well and it’s clearly inspired nearly all fantasy vidya games as we know it thereafter (though I acknowledge there was works fantasy before it) the songs and poems or whatever the fuck didn’t age well at all and there’s no place for the elvish language autism anymore it’s more immersion breaking than making
it's one of the best adventure books ever but try to get the fascimile 1st edition if you can, i think his edits to bring it in line with lotr make it worse and less self contained
>>23329703what? there are different editions?? I was only aware he changed a few words here and there. Had no idea it was too different
>>23329707riddles in the dark comes off a lot different, and the ring is simply a magic ring, not a world ending macguffin. i like it better this way. most of the other differences are nothing huge
Honestly I enjoyed it. it is a well-told story.
>>23329081Well fundies are important. or else you will end up writing an encyclopedia or a 100k page poem that doesnt rhyme like everything /lit/ makes
>>23329992lol I was sleepy when I posted that. I meant to quote:>Probably the best guide for beginner writers.
>>23329998its just an easy book to read that has every element that makes a compelling story
