I learnt a lot about writing from J. R. R. Tolkien. Not that I ever met the man or took lessons from him. I just read the books and saw their impact in the lives of people. Many writers are inspired by reading Tolkien to take up writing because they want to “do that”. But what is “that” and how do we “do” it? I found five principles to guide my work as a writer of speculative fiction.

* Don’t write about elves

Every writer I know of my generation has an unpublished novel stashed away in a drawer. It is full of elves and dwarfs and magic rings. Why are they all unpublished? Because they are not very good. Derivative is the kind term. It is a common human desire to extend any pleasant experience. Those who enjoy high fantasy tend to write high fantasy. They don’t want the story to end; they want it to go on. They drag elves into their stories because they are trying to recapture some experience where elves were involved.

Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for the English, now that they were freed from the burden of being rulers of the British Empire. What he created arose out of that investigation and was consistent within itself. Elves, dwarfs, dragons, riders, wolves. Is that your world, your past? Were those the stories and symbols that shaped your thinking and feeling? I first saw the trap in this when I tried to draw a map of my imagined world. Automatically I put the cold parts in the north. But this makes no sense. Cold comes from the south, from Antarctica.

To “do what Tolkien did” is to look clearly, closely and deeply at your own world. There you will find the resources to help you express yourself. Tolkien could not have a southerly buster in Lord of the Rings, but I can have one in what I write.

Don’t write about elves. Write authentically about your own world.

* Language is the key

I may be afraid of the rottweiler across the road, but I don’t call it a fell beast. To use an expression like that implies a whole world. “Doing what Tolkien did” is not just a matter of using medieval sounding language. It is using language that expresses the vision of the world consistent with your story. We don’t need to make up our own language. We do need to choose with care the language we use.

Writers live in the shadow of the Garden and the Tower. In the Garden of Eden, Adam gave names to all the animals. Whatever he called them, that was their name. After the Tower of Babel language is fractured. Things may have several names. The same river can be the Brandywine or the Baranduin. Each name tells you something about those who use it.

Language is the key. Seek the true names of things.

* The current ruling conventions are not eternal truths

Tolkien mixes his prose with poetic forms that are no longer in current use. His long works are not tightly focussed. They leak stories in all directions. He would fail any test of gender issues set by a university arts faculty. The German publishers did not want to publish The Hobbit originally, because they could not find hobbits in the standard references of fairy stories. Professors of English at universities are puzzled when Lord of the Rings comes out on top of list of most influential books in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. To them, he is just an antiquarian, if not an antique.

At any point in time there are ruling conventions in writing and publishing. For example, don’t write in third person, use first person instead. If you read literature from across time you can see how these conventions have changed. Some conventions are a matter of fashion. Fashion is fickle. Don’t be limited by it. Use whatever conventions suit the needs of your story. You’ll just need to be very good to be published. That’s not a bad challenge to meet.

Don’t be afraid to use non-current conventions to tell your story if it needs them.

* Don’t be just a mirror to the world around you

Tolkien’s life was shaped by his experience of the First World War. Lord of the Rings is about that war. Or is it? That’s a longstanding source of debate. What’s clear is that there is no reference to contemporary life in the Ring trilogy or The Hobbit. Nothing about the Second World War either. You would think the times Tolkien lived through would provide enough raw materials for any writer. Weren’t war and social change the most important things going on at the time? Not quests and magic rings.

We are told to “write about what we know”. Did Tolkien “write about what he knew”? Yes. He just avoided social realism. When we write we can merely reflect the world we see around us. Or we can look deeper for the human condition. We can choose to present our insights in a realistic or a fantastic way.

It is possible to speak the truth about something without describing it directly.

* You might only write one thing

Everything Tolkien wrote seems to be an aspect of one story. The verse, the romances, the literary essays, the linguistic investigations. You can describe it as Lord of the Rings plus appendixes. Most writers are not that focussed. If we write short articles they are likely to be on a wide variety of topics, particularly if we are getting paid for them. We tend to follow the money. The downside of this approach is that you may never express yourself deeply and fully on anything. Perhaps our age doesn’t allow for that.

But it’s worth considering the single-minded option. We may focus intensely on some area so that we express ourselves in depth. We may write on different aspects of this for different publications. Our work may, over time, develop a unity of theme that defines us in the eyes of our readers. If what we are saying is powerful enough we will not be seen as predictable and repetitive. Imagine if, after writing The Hobbit, Tolkien had said to himself, “I’ve done hobbits. Now to move onto something else!” We would all have lost something wonderful.

It’s okay to spend your life writing only one thing if that one thing is worth it.

Ken Rolph is an Australian writer. His other writing, Tolkien-inspired or not, can be found at his newsletter site <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kenrolph>. Or correspond with him directly at .