Latest / Mythmakers / Bingo, Odo and Frodo: Tolkien, Lewis And The Discovery Writer

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Bingo, Odo and Frodo: Tolkien, Lewis And The Discovery Writer · Mythmakers

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  Welcome to MythMakers.
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  MythMakers is the podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy and it's
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  aimed at all of you who are fantasy fans and fantasy creatives.
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  My name is Julia Golding, I'm the director of the Centre but I also spent most of my time
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  being an author.
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  And today I thought I would do a podcast about the craft of writing because I've been
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  reading a lot about the writing process of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis recently
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  and he got me thinking about that tricky business of deciding just what went on in the creative
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  process.
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  Now of course it's extremely hard to recapture the moment but I think most of us would
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  assume that J.R.R. Tolkien thanks to his huge amount of notes and the sawmarillion and
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  all the many many background pieces of writing that he did behind the story of the Hobbit
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  and the Lord of the Rings.
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  Most of us would assume that he was someone who planned so using the simile of a garden
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  you would think that as a writer he'd be more like Sam Gamji on his allotment you know
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  with his rows of beans and his rows of peas and so on all carefully timed or carefully managed
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  to get the highest yield.
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  But actually when you look at it the reality was very different.
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  I'm very much indebted in these thoughts to the book The Bandus Natch by Diana Pavlak
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  Glyar who looks at C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the creative collaboration of the Inklings.
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  And this episode I'm going to dedicate to Bingo, Odo and Frodo, who were them?
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  Well obviously you're familiar with Frodo, Odo you think of as a saxophone baggins but
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  in fact Bingo, Odo and Frodo were the first version of the Hobbits in what Tolkien called
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  The New Hobbit, the book that was eventually to become Lord of the Rings and how differently
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  we might have felt about a story that had the main character Bingo, anyway I'll leave
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  you to ponder that.
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  But what's really interesting to me as a writer is just how far away from his plan Tolkien
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  was when he was writing this in the late 1930s so he knew that his publisher wanted a book
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  like The Hobbit, that's where he'd created his market and he started writing one which
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  you can see the traces of in the beginning of Lord of the Rings with the party and the
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  emphasis on the fun and games around the huge numbers of people turning up and the jokes
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  surrounding celebrating your 11th birthday and so on.
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  It does feel like a children's book at the very start and that tone carried on in the
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  first draft for a long way.
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  He sent a version of that to his publisher and to see his Lewis and got the same message
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  back and that was too much Hobbit talk, more or less get on with it and so he had to
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  rethink but it's very fascinating to see how lost he was.
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  You would have thought that he would turn to the Legendarium and think ah yes I've got
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  these vast stories here of Silmarils and Melkor and Numenor all these other sort of great
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  stories but when he's writing in the third age at the end of the time period focusing
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  on Hobbits he really doesn't have a clue so it seems rather than an allotment that he's
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  carefully tending he's more or less going out into the wilderness and hacking away to
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  create himself a path.
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  Diana Pavlec Gliars book has the very specific example of what he's doing on the first encounter
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  of the Hobbits and the Black Rider.
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  When it's the first version of this Bingo, Odo and Frodo are walking through the Shire,
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  they hear a horse approaching, they dive into the bushes and this is the description
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  of the horse.
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  And a turn came a white horse and on it sat a bundle or that is what it looked like,
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  a small man wrapped entirely in a great cloak and hood so that only his eyes peered out
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  and his boots in the stir at below.
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  So far so familiar except for the detail of the white horse but it goes on the figure
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  uncovered its nose and sniffed and then sat silent as if listening.
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  A laugh came from inside the hood and it's not a Black Rider at all, it's Gandalf arriving
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  much much earlier in the narrative than in what we're familiar with Lord of the Rings.
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  So we can see here that Tolkien doesn't really have a plan, he just brings Gandalf in without
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  any real thought to the wider story and what he's going to do and no wonder he sort of runs
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  out of steam at this point, he has to rethink what he's doing in this potential confrontation
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  and he comes up with a much better solution and he also rebrands the hobbits to the
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  more familiar Frodo, Pippin and Sam, Mary as your remember is isn't there at this point
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  and it becomes a Black Rider but the approach is very very similar.
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  So here how it appears in the actual published book.
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  Round the corner came a Black Horse, no Hobbit pony but a full-sized horse and on it sat
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  a large man who seemed to crouch in the saddle, wrapped in a great black cloak and hood so
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  that only his boots in the high stirrup showed below, his face was shadowed and invisible.
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  We get a much more sinister figure, the sniffing is kept but it's terrifying as opposed
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  to turning into a jovial Gandalf and then leaping out on him and playing a joke, I mean
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  the whole tone shift is different but what is fascinating is that the skeleton of the
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  first thought is still there but he's just dressed it very differently.
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  So I think this reveals something which if you then go on and look at the other manuscripts
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  in the extra works, particularly those edited by Christopher Tolkien, what you get is a sense
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  how Tolkien carries on changing the underlying structure of his history, the Silmarillion
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  and that sort of work to fit what he's doing in the narrative.
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  I think many of us would have wished him to do much more narrative unless Silmarillion
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  but he really enjoyed the thinking of the histories and the languages, that's what he really
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  inspired him.
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  Now I want to compare this to C.S. Lewis because C.S. Lewis gave an account of how the
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  Narnia stories came to be, he's actually like a sort of introductory piece and it appears
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  in the collection of essays of this and other worlds edited by Water Hooper.
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  Anyway, he says, all my seven Narnian books and my three science fiction books began with
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  seeing pictures in my head, at first they were not a story, just pictures.
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  The lion all began with a picture of a fawn carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy
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  wood.
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  This picture had been in my mind since I was about 16.
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  Then one day when I was about 40 I said to myself, let's try to make a story about it.
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  Now this suggests a much more person who is writing by discovery, he's got an image
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  and he thinks, okay what's the story about this image?
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  This is the classic approach of the discovery writer who starts with an idea and then goes
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  on to discover the story behind it.
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  But on the other hand, there's also the chance that he worked the other way around too,
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  because Michael Ward's book, Planet Narnia, suggests there's actually a much more complicated
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  and secret underpinning to the Narnia series.
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  This idea that each of the seven books reflects the seven major planets, it's a technique
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  beloved of the medieval writers and CS Lewis as a medievalist, he might well have been
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  having this secret code, this sort of literary joke underpinning what he's writing.
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  So in this scheme for example, the lion and the witch and the wardrobe is influenced
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  by the planet Jupiter.
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  Jupiter gives us the idea of jove and jovial.
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  Michael's argument is that there are many things that happen in line in the witch and the wardrobe,
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  which are best understood if you think about jove being the sort of presiding spirit of that piece.
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  So for example, when the spell is broken and it moves from winter to spring,
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  we skip over March and April and go straight to May, which is a month associated with Jupiter,
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  with jove in the medieval mind, and also the presence of Father Christmas,
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  which we discussed at the livestream just before Christmas, and very literally a jovial figure
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  with his Rubicon face and the sort of fun and joy that he brings.
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  So that's the argument that Michael Ward is making, that actually a book that seems to be a classic discovery writer's book,
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  going from an image is actually much more planned and much more schematic than you might think
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  when you look at it for the first time.
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  So what does this mean for a writer?
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  I think it's probably fair at this point to go back to the little essay it all began with a picture by Lewis,
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  because he gives this word of warning.
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  The editor has asked me to tell you how I came to write the line the witch and the wardrobe.
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  I will try, but you must not believe all the authors tell you about how they wrote their books.
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  This is not because they mean to tell lies, it is because a man writing a story is too excited about the story itself
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  to sit back and notice how he is doing it.
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  In fact, that might stop the works just as if you start thinking about how to tie your tie.
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  The next thing is that you find you can't tie it.
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  I relate to this as a writer because when I go around schools and festivals, I'm very often asked
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  where do you get your ideas from?
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  And it's very hard to go back and unpick where things do come from because it is actually to use a talking image.
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  It's a cauldron of stories that you're dipping into rather than some clear origin story like the radioactive spider-biting spider-man.
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  It's not as simple as cause and effect like that.
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  I thought I did a straight what I mean by taking one of the very first series I wrote.
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  This is a children's quartet called the Companions Quartet.
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  The basic idea in this series is that it's about children who belong to the secret society for the protection of mythical creatures.
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  In their ordinary life, they're going to school and hanging out in coffee shops and all the rest of it.
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  But they also belong to a society outside school whose job it is to protect the mythical creatures.
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  Now, we've reached a point where there are no longer any spaces for these creatures to hide.
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  No hereby dragons on maps.
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  So it's getting increasingly more difficult.
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  And then you also get the problem that their habitats are vanishing so they're pushed into confrontation with humans.
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  Mythical creatures are angry and they are threatening to punish humanity for what they're doing.
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  But there's also another pattern which is my equivalent of the planets in the Michael Ward version of the Narnia stories,
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  which is the idea of the Greek elements of water, earth, wind and fire.
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  So I started out with this structure in mind.
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  I knew that there'd be four.
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  I knew that each book would be presided over by something that would felt watery or earthy and so on.
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  But once I sort of set the mood and the tone, it didn't particularly weigh down on the story requirements.
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  It was just something which I had in the back of my mind.
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  So in each book, I do have a passage, at least one passage, where I celebrate something that reflects the overall theme of that book.
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  Hearing, for example, is a description of a woodland from the second in the series, which is the earth one,
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  which is called the Gorgon's Gaze.
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  The main boy character, Cole, has gone off to Malin's wood, which is under threat from road developments.
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  And he's riding his pony, and this is our first time that we sort of go under the eaves of this forest.
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  They look forward to galloping together through the many different parts of the wood,
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  lofty green halls of beach, dark, mysterious tunnels of oak with acorns crunching underfoot,
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  white-coloured cloisters of silver birch on the sandy ground.
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  Not only were the trees so diverse, they also changed so much with the seasons.
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  One visit, column mags, would brush through the freshly minted greens of spring.
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  Next, they were beneath the riotous leaves of summer,
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  wading hot, deep in brazen autumn, or spooked by skeletal winter.
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  So while that passage is very much influenced by the idea of honouring the Greek element of earth,
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  actually I'm aware as the writer that there's many other things going into it.
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  So I grew up near Epping Forest.
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  It's a large, publicly-owned forest on the edge of London.
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  And that's where I would go walking as a child with my parents.
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  And that description of the different areas in the forest,
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  so a place where there are silver birches, a place where there are beaches and so on,
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  that's taken from my memory of those walks.
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  So it's more than one ingredient in my cauldron at that point.
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  Yes, there's an underpinning story.
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  Yes, there is a theme, which is the earth theme.
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  But there's also memory, influence, atmosphere, invention,
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  all those other things happening as well.
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  So going back to where we started with Tolkien and his,
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  does he have an allotment where everything is planned?
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  Or is he growing in the dark for his story?
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  I mean, probably the truth is, it's a bit of both, isn't it?
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  So he did have a structure and a theme and peoples.
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  He already knew about the Hobbits.
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  He had Elven languages.
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  He had a sense of the history.
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  He knew where feet were falling.
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  There had other people had gone before.
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  But he didn't know what happened absolutely now at the moment of writing.
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  He left himself the space to invent.
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  There's probably also an element here that he's writing to
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  please an audience, rather than to please himself.
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  So he knows he has to write a different kind of story
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  from the one he would prefer to be getting on with,
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  which might be elaborating another aspect of Elven history.
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  But no, the publisher and CS Lewis want a story about Hobbits
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  and Hobbits when they leave their safety of the Shire
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  and then come up against the great events of the world.
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  That's where CS Lewis felt the story lay.
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  And I think it's right.
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  So when we're teaching writing as part of what we do
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  at the Oxford Centre for Fantasy on our online courses,
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  I often start with asking people to analyse
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  what kind of writer they are.
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  Are they a chaotic writer with a sort of flurry of ideas
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  or are they somebody who's planned out?
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  They're fancy novels since the age of 13.
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  All sorts of people come through the door.
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  But I think in the end, what happens is
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  all of us are discovery writers at the point of writing
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  that we have to be open to the idea of exploring our image,
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  our road, whatever it is that sparked the original idea
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  from the story.
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  And perhaps here it might be worth quoting another Oxford writer,
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  one of our living greats, that's Philip Pullman,
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  who talks about the process of writing into the dark.
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  I love that image as though you can only see
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  just as far as your candle will flow
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  a little bit of light upon the darkness.
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  And that's what gets him up in the morning
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  to write the next chapter.
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  And for me, while I may have a plan,
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  I also do like to be surprised by my own writing.
• 16:48
  If you'd like to explore your own writing
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  and see where your story takes you,
• 16:53
  do think about joining one of our courses
• 16:55
  or coming to one of the in-person experiences
• 16:59
  that are going to happen in Oxford this year.
• 17:02
  We have courses at Merton and Mordeling Colleges,
• 17:06
  both of which are associated with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien,
• 17:10
  and it'd be great to see you there.
• 17:12
  You can find out more details about that on our website.
• 17:15
  That was enough of the little advertisement there.
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  Let's go back to thinking about the process of writing.
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  Tolkien got rid of Bingo.
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  He kept Odo, though poor old Odo became a
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  Sackville Baggins and very far from a hero.
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  But he did retain Frodo and Frodo then became, of course,
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  his main character.
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  But maybe somewhere in a parallel universe,
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  there is a version of Lord of the Rings
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  that is written with Odo, Bingo and Frodo gang
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  and on adventure.
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  I wonder what kind of book that would have been.
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  It is our tradition to end with
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  where in the fancy world is it the best place for something?
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  And because I've mentioned the companion quartet,
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  which is all about mythical creatures,
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  many of whom are shape-shifting creatures,
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  I thought I would decide where in the world
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  it is best to be a shape-shifter.
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  Now the very first thing I thought of
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  was those many urban fantasy stories about werewolves.
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  I love the Mercedes Thompson's book by Patricia Briggs,
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  which is about a mechanic called Mercedes Thompson,
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  who can change into a coyote.
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  She is based on a Native American tradition,
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  but she also connects to werewolves,
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  so there you get another kind of shape-shifter.
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  So that's one favorite place,
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  but I think it's picked to the post
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  by the shape-shifting demons of Philip Pullman.
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  I have to be loyal to Oxford fantasy writers, of course,
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  but in the Northern Lights or Golden Compass series,
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  what a brilliant idea was it to come up
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  with the idea of a creature that accompanies you
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  as a child, a demon who represents your spirit.
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  Someone was telling me the other day
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  that the idea for the demon actually didn't come to Philip
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  until many, many drafts into the Northern Lights.
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  It's almost impossible to imagine what the book was like
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  without that, but there you go.
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  That's an encouragement for redrafting, if you're writing.
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  Maybe some of your best ideas are still to come.
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  So I think the best fantasy world for shape-shifting
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  is the Northern Lights and the Philip Pullman demons.
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  Though, of course, there is the very sad thing
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  that your demons settles down when you get to maturity.
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  And I'm always bit worried if you end up
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  with a cockroach or something
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  that you almost have no choice but to be a bad guy,
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  don't you, in that case.
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  Anyway, I like the demons at the younger end of the scale
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  when they're still able to change.
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  That's a wonderful idea.
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  That's all for this week.
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  Thank you very much for listening.
• 20:05
  Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast.
• 20:09
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