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

or “father” that have citations in a dozen languages that sound very similar, with only slight vowel shifts or the dropping of a consonant to differentiate them.)
     
    So Tolkien was enamored with these common roots, and he created his tongue “ Westron ” that was spoken by Hobbits and Dwarves. He modified his language so that it would seem to be a “precursor” to modern Germanic languages. Then he went back in time and developed a precursors and offshoots of Westron , much as I’m sure that he felt such languages might have developed. Tolkien took his development of races and cultures to an almost unimaginable extreme.
     
    Sadly, if you look at his Elves and Dwarves as characters alone, they seem to lack some personality. Instead, they seem more to be rather stock representations of their kind. So he differentiated their kinds.
     
    The goal of course was to create races that felt real—that resonated with his readers. Often, he did so by rooting his invented languages in sounds of languages drawn from our distant past.
     
    Now, on something of a side note, if you look at Tolkien’s work, it becomes clear that his works were written with poetic effects in mind.
     
    Let’s take a sample, a simple descriptive passage chosen at random. Gandalf is riding beside Legolas , Gimli , and Aragorn, when he sees a city from afar and asks the Elf to describe what he sees in the distance:
     
    Legolas gazed ahead, shading his eyes from the level shafts of the new-risen sun. ‘I see a white stream that comes down from the snows,’ he said. ‘Where it issues from the shadow of the vale a green hill rises upon the east. A dike and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it. Within there rise the roofs of houses; and in the midst, set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of Men. And it seems to my eyes that it is thatched with gold. The light of it shines far over the land. Golden, too, are the posts of its doors. There men in bright mail stand; but all else within the courts are asleep.’
     
    ‘ Edoras those courts are called,’ said Gandalf, ‘and Meduseld is the golden hall. There dwells Theoden son of Thengel , King of the Mark of Rohan . . . . ’
     
    Now, as you look at these lines, you’ll note a lot of poetic effects. First, look at the cadence. The length of the sentences seems very similar at first, but with each line the word count winds down:
     
    Legolas gazed ahead, shading his eyes from the level shafts of the new-risen sun.
    ‘I see a white stream that comes down from the snows,’ he said.
    ‘Where it issues from the shadow of the vale a green hill rises upon the east.
    A dike and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it.
    Within there rise the roofs of houses; and in the midst,
    set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of Men.
    And it seems to my eyes that it is thatched with gold.
    The light of it shines far over the land.
    Golden, too, are the posts of its doors.
    There men in bright mail stand;
    but all else within the courts are asleep.’
     
    ‘ Edoras those courts are called,’ said Gandalf,
    ‘ and Meduseld is the golden hall.
    There dwells Theoden son of Thengel ,
    King of the Mark of Rohan . . . . ’
     
    It seems to me that Tolkien wrote these lines to be read aloud, or perhaps chanted, as ancient storytellers would have done. As Hemingway once said, “The secret to all great writing is that it is poetry.”
     
    If you don’t see the poetry in the language, study the use of assonance. For example, notice how the long-I sound is repeated in the first two lines, or the long-O sound that runs throughout the passage, tying it together, and look at how consonance is used in his sentences, especially in the midst of each line. Such things are common in well written tales.
     
    But note too, how it is loaded with archaic language, words whose meanings have fallen out of use in the past four hundred years: vale, midst, aloft, hall, thatched, mail, courts,