Description
Writing with Hobbits instructs students in creative writing through compelling lectures. Jonathan Rogers will guide you on a journey through The Hobbit to learn how to create distinct character voices from Gollum’s grammatical peculiarities, observe how a single scene sets up and solves plot puzzles, and incorporate other genres—like travel writing—into your fiction. Dr. Rogers has written The Wilderking Trilogy, The World According to Narnia, and other books.
Writing with Hobbits is part of the new series Creative Writing Through Literature. Purchase the whole series or explore one of the lecture sets for your homeschool:
Sample Exercises
Writing Exercise #1
It is not unusual for external, non-character-driven events to happen to the characters in a story. But a good story can’t be driven only by external events. It’s not enough to have things “happen to” your characters. Your reader always wants to know what the characters are going to do—how they will exert their wills, pursue their desires, alleviate their fears. That is the essence of character-driven action.
For this lesson’s writing exercise, you will practice mixing external action with character-driven action. Write a scene in which two characters experience the same external event, but act very differently in response to that event.
Writing Exercise #2
Write a scene in which dialogue leads directly to physical action.