Aussie Tolkien freak
bump. Any plot ideas or character ideas?
eg Who is Skjaldbjorn the Quick?
edited 7th Mar '14 2:12:08 PM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
Field Primus
If it were a fanfic, I'd be interested enough to give it a try.
The premise sounds intriguing. I do love stories that take characters I already enjoy and retell stories I know via new conceits such as changes in time and setting. (Have written part of one myself.)
So... go for it.
Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.
Aussie Tolkien freak
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
What if it wasn't a fanfic? I changed the names a lot.
BTW, "The Hobbit" meets Oliver Twist is a little off-base. More The Icelandic Sagas meet Oliver Twist.
edited 7th Mar '14 2:34:53 PM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
There's more to making original fiction than just rubbing off the serial numbers.
My question is, how is this different from The Hobbit, Oliver Twist, and The Icelandic Sagas? I would play up that difference, so that it's not "A meets B meets C" so much as "D".
I also ask how much of a Tolkien-style backstory you intend to use, or even how 'densely' (complexity) you intend to write it. The explanations for those names shouldn't matter at all, if they're common for the setting, for example.
I'd keep Finn the Huma- I mean 'Poet', and the Macguffin, but set it so he encounters the plot completely by accident. (The irony being that someone who knows epic tales ends up being caught up in one of his own; he understands the genre conventions, but only realizes that they're genre conventions and not reality after a few misadventures.)
Aussie Tolkien freak
How is this different? Well Bjarki isn't a typical Icelandic saga hero. For one thing he's Black and Black people in sagas are portrayed on the Sliding Scaleof Villiany as morally ambiguous at best and faceless Mooks at worst.
I only know The Hobbit as the one starring Martin Freeman, haven't read Oliver Twist at all, and for all I know of it you made up the The Icelandic Sagas out of whole cloth (kidding!). Besides being able to describe the basic plot of this new story without referring to those three older ones, how is it different? Inspiration's one thing, but writing original fiction that does not appear too derivative (and fanfic is by definition) requires that it stand on its own without assistance.
What are you wanting to write, though?
Aussie Tolkien freak
edited 13th Mar '14 4:57:30 AM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
(sorta) OK, this is another one of my weird ideas. Maybe. or not. At any rate, I think this has to be the weirdest concept I ever thought of and I want to know what other people think. Is it doable, would you read it, is it too derivative and any brainstorming?
The concept is this:
Anyway, a kraptaskald (poet with magical powers) called Finnalfur Ragnarsson(Gandálf was also a legendary Norwegian king with elvish blood)approaches Thróinn asking him to send his thieves to steal the Jarknasteinn, a valuable sunstone carved of Iceland spar
for his own reasons. The main problem is that Thróinn's old enemy Skjaldbjorn the Quick, his foster-daughter Disa's old lover also wants the Jarknasteinn.
BTW "Thróinn" is my own attempt to anglicise the Old Norse male name "Þrainn" meaning "swift" or "obstinate" or "craver" which Tolkien anglicised as "Thrain". Dwalin in the form "Dvalinn" appears often in Norse-based fiction.
So any opinions and plot suggestions on how to make it different? This is something I've been thinking of for a while.
edited 7th Mar '14 2:34:40 PM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien