Read Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing for Free Online

going, tink , tink , clank, tink .
     
    Suddenly, Frodo realizes that he’s not alone, and soon he sees the glowing eyes of Gollum in the cave.
     
    Finally, as they near the exit, the “plink” of water, the “ tink ” of a hammer, is suddenly replaced by the sound of drums in the deep—huge thunderous sounds that roll through the cavern, roaring “Doom! Doom! Doom!”
     
    Here, the internal resonance is simply a repeated sound, one that grows louder, more unsettling, and more menacing with each repetition.
     
    Here’s a third use of internal resonance in The Lord of the Rings : the journey through the underworld. We see the first hint of it in the Shire, when the Hobbits escape one of the nine riders by diving off the road. They find themselves in a cave-like overhang while one of the nine riders tries to draw them out, and Frodo imagines himself suddenly to be in a tunnel.
     
    Later, as they leave the Shire, they dive through a hedge—and find themselves in a forest so deep that it seems almost lightless. After leaving Tom Bombadil’s house, they take too long on the road, and find themselves suddenly dragged into the lightless burrow of a wight .
     
    They find themselves in another tunnel at the inn at Bree —a hobbit hole, where once again they are attacked by the nine riders.
     
    They make it to Weathertop , and Frodo is stabbed with a magic blade that breaks off—but begins working its way to his heart. As he loses consciousness, he once again imagines himself to be in a tunnel.
     
    The group heads toward Mordor , and along the way our protagonists are forced to take an ill-fated detour through the Mines of Moria .
     
    Frodo and Sam later split off from the group and make their journey to Mordor —having to take Gollum’s secret path that will lead through Shelob’s lair.
     
    Merry and Pippin mirror that journey as they journey into the Entwood , beneath trees so old and hoary that they block out all light— until Merry and Pippin find themselves given shelter in Treebeard’s cave.
     
    Gandalf himself has a lightless journey after falling into the pit in the Mines of Moria . There, he chases the Balrog through endless caverns in an epic duel that is only related as he tells it to the Hobbits.
     
    Meanwhile, Aragorn and the others take their own lightless journeys—fighting the orcs in the caverns at Helm’s Deep — until at last Aragorn must take one final journey through a tunnel so that he can summon the spirits of the dead to fight in behalf of Gondor .
     
    And we cannot forget the final lightless journey—Frodo’s journey to the Crack of Doom.
     
    Each of these lightless journeys, of course, is a play upon a theme, designed to heighten that final moment when Frodo steps toward the Crack of Doom—and all light fails him.
     
    So, there I’ve given you three examples of how Tolkien uses internal resonance in The Lord of the Rings in order to heighten his reader’s emotions. Perhaps you will find this tool of some value as you plot your own novels.
     

Language in The Lord of the Rings
     
    In 1962, Anthony Burgess published A Clockwork Orange , a futuristic morality tale dealing with the futility of using aversion therapy in trying to rehabilitate criminals. Critics have often praised the work for being bold and imaginative—in particular because Burgess creates his own slang. It seems that at the time, the idea that our language would evolve in the future and that a writer took that into account was something of a literary breakthrough.
     
    Yet Tolkien did something far more involved than come up with half a dozen neologisms and a couple of shifts in syntax. Tolkien began to play with languages in a way that few have ever done, and all of this deals with resonance. So it bothers me when I hear modern writers refer to what Tolkien did as a “literary stunt,” while many of those same folks would hail Anthony Burgess as a genius.
     
    Let me see if I can explain what Tolkien