5 pieces of writing advice from Tolkien’s life

I recently finished reading the biography of J.R.R. Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter, and there’s a surprising amount of writing advice to be taken away from it. Not just from Tolkien’s life and outlook, but his own processes when it comes to getting a story written and completed.

If you’re a Tolkien fan, I highly recommend the biography. It’s a fascinating look at his life and work. I could have read another 300 pages of it!

If you’re more interested in the writing advice we can glean from Tolkien’s life and don’t want to read the full biography, here are five pieces of excellent writing advice I took away from the book.

1. Use experiences to shape your stories and creativity

Tolkien grew up in an environment where things were constantly changing, not least because of the war. The Oxfordshire countryside he loved was shifting – building was being carried out, roads were being adjusted and created. For Tolkien, as someone who loved nature, this was quite upsetting, even though he largely lived in the Oxford suburbs.

Tolkien also dealt with a lot of personal changes during his life. He was moved around a lot as a child and was at times sickly. His mother passed away. In his twenties, he was sent off to war.

These experiences shaped not just him as a person – but his writing and approach to storytelling.

The biography quotes Tolkien as saying:

“One writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.”

Tolkien is explaining that experiences shaped his imagination and helped it grow over time.

There’s some good writing advice here: experiencing things in life can help us to grow in our creativity and can bring about inspiration for stories. So if you’re feeling stuck, or blocked, try shaking things up! Do something new that you’ve never done before, travel, explore a different hobby, meet new people. Read a book in a new genre (notice that Tolkien mentions reading here too!).

Make your imagination fertile with rich experiences and interests – and the stories will come.

2. Take inspiration from other works of art

Tolkien loved literature, myth, and mythology, and that included English and Icelandic stories. One example is The House of the Wolfings, which contains the name of an ancient Germanic forest present in mythology and legend. The name is Mirkwood, which may seem familiar to Lord of the Rings fans!

He was also fascinated by Old Norse, studying the Poetic/Elder Edda – a collection of poems from the thirteenth century. This collection includes a creation tale, describing the birth of the cosmos and its eventual downfall.

I’ve barely skimmed the surface of the works that influenced Tolkien here, but the point is that he took inspiration from other works of art. He immersed himself in the things he enjoyed.

The best way to get inspired with your own writing is to consume the works of others. Especially in the genre you want to write in! Read as many books in your genre as possible, study what makes them work. It’s a great way to get a sense for the type of stories you want to tell and how you can do that well.

3. Make use of communities and groups

Tolkien was a member of several groups – the Coalbiters is one of the lesser-known ones, which Tolkien himself set up. The group’s purpose was to read and study Icelandic and Norse sagas. There was also the T.C.B.S. (Tea Club, later renamed the Barrovian Society), a group of boys including Tolkien who would meet in the school library to have tea when they didn’t have exams to do. It eventually moved to Barrow’s Stores, a department store. The friends would often recite works of literature to one another at these meetings.

This group had a profound impact on Tolkien, as they were close friends of his who shared in his love of literature. Many of them sadly died during the war.

Groups and communities can be of such value to writers. They keep us going and provide support and friendship in what can often be quite a lonely career.

We can’t all meet for tea in the library like Tolkien – but we can join local writing groups if possible, or even online groups and forums for writers. Seek out support and community where you can find it.

Writing is a tough career – it can be really helpful to have people to lean on who understand.

4. Seek out feedback so you can improve

Tolkien became good friends with another famous fantasy author during his lifetime – C.S. Lewis. They would often meet at Lewis’s rooms to discuss politics and literature, and they also shared work with one another. Lewis critiqued Tolkien’s poem “The Gest of Beren and Luthien” and Tolkien took much of his feedback on board to rewrite the poem.

Taking on feedback is part and parcel of being a writer. Even some of the best literary minds like Tolkien and Lewis utilised feedback to reshape and improve their work. And many authors today have beta readers or critique partners, even before their work makes it to an editor or publishing house.

Lots of new writers are resistant to critique – but learning how to handle critique is one of the best things you can do for your work. If you want to get published, taking feedback on board with grace and dignity is really important. No one enjoys working with a writer who gets angry or volatile after receiving criticism. It’s a surefire way to get a bad reputation!

You don’t have to take all feedback on board, of course! C.S. Lewis even joked that Tolkien either took feedback so seriously that he rewrote his entire piece of work – or he completely ignored the feedback.

You can take on what resonates the most with you and the story you want to tell. The important thing is to be receptive and open to feedback, and consider it carefully.

5. Make your story believable

In one of his lectures, Tolkien talked about the storyteller as a “sub-creator” who builds a world from scratch that the reader can then enter. Everything inside this world must feel believable and “true” according to the laws of the created world. Readers are then more likely to believe this world to be plausible.

When this fails to happen, you’re pulled out of the story and back into the “Primary World” rather than the “Secondary World” of the story.

Tolkien was essentially talking about immersion here. It’s much easier to immerse ourselves in a story – particularly one about a secondary world – if we feel it to be believable and well-crafted. One of Tolkien’s biggest hopes for his work was that his related mythologies might be seen as “true” – or at least feel as though they could be.

Arguably, Tolkien set the stage for advice like “build a believable world” and many people see him as the father of world-building in general.

If you want your readers to feel immersed in your writing, and to give them the escapism they desire, make sure your story and your world are as believable as possible. When it comes to fantasy, this often involves making sure there are concrete rules and laws around things like the magic system, society, and so on. I love this list of world-building questions, which can be very helpful for this.

This piece of advice doesn’t just apply to fantasy, though! Even a non-fantasy story like a romance or a thriller will need to feel authentic and believable in relation to its setting and how events play out.

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Those are the five pieces of writing advice I came across when reading about Tolkien and his life and works. Have you put any of these into practice yourself? How have they worked out for you? And if you’ve read Tolkien’s biography, I’d love to know what you think!