Notes from Middle Earth: Every Novel Needs A Detailed Back Story

Backstories are extremely important in creating a setting. We must write a history, an ecology, a governmental system and many other things to make a believable setting.

Tolkien on Inspiration

Today’s post is fortuitous in that Tolkien is again in the news.  Yesterday NPR ran a story about an ancient Roman ring that may have been the inspiration for The One Ring in Tolkien’s Middle Earth epic.  You can find “The Vyne” here, but the summary of the story is that Tolkien was brought in