Advice from the elven king…

In last week’s article, I reviewed J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Now, inspired by reading that prelude to The Lord of the Rings trilogy (I’d read the trilogy as a kid, but not its prelude), I’ve continued to read on into Frodo’s odyssey. This article isn’t about that, though.

Instead, I want to tell you about some advice to authors Tolkien offers in his Forward to the Ring trilogy. Okay, he doesn’t present it as advice, but I’ll interpret it in that way as a complement to my little course “Writ...