Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Oh, sorry! I did sort of misread your question/post. There's a book by Lawrence Block called "Write for Your Life" which as a lot of accolades. Of course, he is more of a pulp fiction writer not a literary writer. There's also "Hero of a Thousand Faces", a famous collection of writings by Joseph Campbell. I think books like these are closer to what you are looking for but still not a slam dunk.
For Tolkien's work, there is the twelve volume "The Complete History of Middle Earth" which is about as inside baseball as you can get for Tolkien. It's intimidating, though. And has numerous notes and revisions in it, which are a bit overwhelming. "The Making of Middle-Earth" by Snyder is a more approachable read at 368 pages.
So if I finally get it through my thick skull and understand your question, you are looking like a book more like these, but not necessarily for Tolkien?
I'd replace HoME with Parma Eldalamberon, Vinyar Tengwar and other journals publishing his early materials here.
thanks, I appreciate it.
I read hero of a thousand faces, which of course is a great book, I'll have to look into "write for your life".
Yes, not specifically for tolkien.
in the same way someone might make a documentary of se7en and explain from the filmmakers point of view why spacey was chosen for John doe or why wrath was chosen as the final sin, I'm wondering if there is a genre of books focused on the real-life reasons behind the creation and production of a particular litrary work, why was the abbe named faria in count of monte Cristo, or why was edmund so deliberately flashy instead of becoming a secret assassin?
there are so many documentaries and behind the scenes features for cinematic work that explain why a scene looks a particular way, either by the position of the camera or the number of people on set, or how they came up with the very specific look for the xenomorph in alien, I just wondered if there was an analogue pool of behind-the-scenes looks at the creation of literary works.