One of the great joys of writing is working on a project so big that you get to build an entire world from nothing. This worldbuilding can be so much fun, as you play god and decide what things look like, how the land looks, and who lives in this magical or non-magical place. But coupled with all of that is an epic burden. It can be overwhelming to have to go through all of that stuff and to try to get it onto the page without forgetting anything. Well, lucky for us, this old video of the legendary J.R.R. Tolkien, the brilliant mind behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, contains a ton of advice for us. Let's dive in. Tolkien on Fictional Worlds At the start of the video, Tolkien talks about how writing is a person tapping into their own stock, their own beliefs and understandings of the world. You build a world out of that, out of how you think a world can be, and you build it the way you think a world might be in terms of what your story needs. Tolkien emphasizes that his primary focus was always on telling a compelling story. And building a world that helps the story deliver what it needs. That means when Middle-Earth comes to life, its languages, its genealogies, its rich history, were not prerequisites but rather organic outgrowths of what the story he intended to tell needed. In other words, you decide the plot...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Yesterday