more than just names have been transformed. The revised version is shorter and much clearer, too. It takes Tolkien 211 words to cover this material in the draft, but only 162 words in the revised version. What’s even more striking is how the proportions of narrative and dialogue have changed. When Tolkien rewrote this material, he cut nearly half of the dialogue. Tolkien’s work in these paragraphs is typical of his work on all three of these beginning chapters. Page after page, he cuts out long conversations, and he picks up the action. Even though he personally prefers a story with much more
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