Reflections Read Online Free Page B

what this entails. In the same way, I find it works best to suppose just one thing: Pretend you are a ghost, or Pretend your chemistry set works magic, or Pretend this dog is the Dog Star. Then I go on to explore the implications of this supposition. Quite often, I am totally surprised by the result.
    I also bear constantly in mind the fact that pretending is a thing most usefully done in groups. It is done to show you how to get on with one another. When I write a book, it seems useful to extend the group to include both sexes, so that both girls and boys can enjoy it, but I do not find I can completely ignore the one-sex nature of the games in the wood. Oddly enough, this means that if I want a neutral character, not particularly girlish or boyish, I have to use a boy. A neutral girl would strike most girl readers as a tomboy. Otherwise, it is obvious that all other characters in a fantasy ought to be very real and clear and individual, and to interact profoundly—real, colorful people, behaving as people do. For instance, the first three girls who the ghost observes in The Time of the Ghost , strange as they are, are all drawn from life. One of them was me.
    The third thing I bear in mind is the peculiar happiness of the children wandering in the wood. They are killing one another, terrifying one another, and (as queens) despising one another and everyone else too. And they are loving it. This mixture of nastiness and happiness is typical of most children and makes wonderful opportunities for a writer. Your story can be violent, serious, and funny, all at once—indeed I think it should be—and the stronger in all three the better. Fantasy can deal with death, malice, and violence in the same way that the children in the wood are doing. You make clear that it is make-believe. And by showing it applies to nobody, you show that it applies to everyone. It is the way all fairy tales work.
    But when all is said and done, there is an aspect to fantasy which defies description. Those children in the wood are going to grow up and remember that they played there. They will not remember what they were playing, or who pretended what. But they will remember the wood, and the big city all round it, in a special, vivid way. It does seem that a fantasy, working out in its own terms, stretching you beyond the normal concerns of your own life, gains you a peculiar charge of energy which inexplicably enriches you. At least, this is my ideal of a fantasy, and I am always trying to write it.

The Shape of the Narrative in
The Lord of the Rings
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    First published in 1983 in J. R. R. Tolkien: This Far Land , edited by Robert Giddings (Vision Press), this article was also reprinted in Diana’s 1995 collection Everard’s Ride , published by NESFA Press.
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    W hen I say “narrative,” I do not mean simply the plot. I mean considerably more. Plots and their shapes—the bare outlines of stories—were something I know J. R. R. Tolkien himself was interested in. When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject—at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. 1 He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away. At any rate, within two weeks he succeeded in reducing his substantial audience to myself and four others. We stuck on, despite his efforts. He worked at it: when it did appear that we might be hearing what he said, it was his custom to turn round and address the blackboard. Dim inklings alone reached me of what he meant, but these were too fascinating to miss. He started with the simplest possible story: a man (prince or woodcutter) going on a journey. He then gave the journey an aim, and we found that the simple picaresque plot had developed into a quest story. I am not quite sure what happened then, but I know that by the end he was discussing the peculiar adaptation of the quest story which