Let me explain one of the reasons I do not find his writing to be of the same kind of enjoyment I get from reading other authors; it's that green door. I hate it.

Tolkein felt that he needed to explain a lot about the green door in the hobbit. Pages went by about how it was notched and scratched and... and GREEN. With writing like that, I feel my eyes glaze over because it's just TOO much description. Don't get me wrong. I love immersing myself into a story. Everything around me is blocked out and doesn't take high priority over being in the moment.

I now find myself trying to be very very careful about how far I go into descriptions of things so that I am NOT like Tolkein. I do not want audiences to glaze over after awhile and drift into sleepy town.

I'd very much like to discuss how much is too much versus how much is just right when it comes to descriptions.

In my opinion, it should do one thing. It should draw you into the world, make you see it in your mind and feel it around you. It should not drone on until you feel the need to flip 5 pages to get to the 'good' stuff. This happens a lot more in Science Fiction than Fantasy I believe. While I enjoy learning new scientific theories (I tend to soak it up), some authors have a tendency to go overboard on the tech information and lose the rythym of the story. I associate a lot of what I read with feelings and music and to me rythym is extremely important. Some descriptions are like a song that just won't end and you're waiting for the next song to play with anticipation for a change in pace.

My favorite Sci-Fi authors are OCS of course (or I wouldn't be here) and Heinlein. While they explain things, they don't drag you into a pit of neverending technical jargon while still making you feel a bit more intelligent and knowledgable after reading them. For fantasy, I'd say Eddings, C.S.Lewis, Gene Wolfe to name a few. Intelligent and yet you feel a part of it all because you don't feel stupid or weighed down by too much information at once.

Anyway, as you can tell I'm used to being a forum moderator as well and driving topics of discussion. Old habits die hard. I'm curious however as to what others find enjoyable or overwhelming and where they find themselves when it comes to descriptions.

Anyway, description should be highly relevant. I think you know you're going overboard when the story loses the feeling of forward motion. Sometimes you won't even know unless you have other people reading your work and telling you. Relevant description won't stop the movement, it will catch you up in the movement and put you in the setting. I also like spacing it out between action or dialogue, it never feels as tiresome to me when it comes at you a little at a time.

I should also point out that his works were intended for the enjoyment of the serious student of western mythology more than for the more modern fantasy reader. You all didn't even exist until Tolkien's followers called you forth, after all

Tolkien strove to create the illusion that the story he tells is actually taken from earlier sources, that he didn't simply make it up as he went along. This is not a common element in modern fiction, for a variety of reasons, but Tolkien was highly successful in his effort. The fact that it is accessible to modern fantasy readers at all is entirely because Tolkien was such a genius as a writer...as well as because so much of the modern tradition of fantasy writing is directly descended from Tolkien's work.

Survivor, I agree on the why of what he wrote. Take the Silmarillion for example. I wrote a book report on it in High School. It was difficult and plodding. Why was it difficult and plodding? Because Tolkein never intended for it to be published. It was meant as an exercise in history and foundation for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

I won't go into more of what I don't like about him because while he is not my favorite I still give credit where credit is due.

I was first drawn into fantasy not by Tolkein but by CS Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. While I think Tolkein ushered in something, I think others have continued to improve and do it better.

There is a great deal to be learned and quite a lot of merit in reading works from previous time periods. I won't mention anything about "good" or "great" because I don't want to rehash anything. However, I believe it is a mistake to disparage modern audiences for not falling in love with works of a former time.

Times have changed, and typically, I think, change is for the better. We stand on the backs of the great writers from past eras and by doing so the new generation of great writers far surpass those of old. I have read and enjoyed many authors from our past, including Tolkien. I believe they all deserve a lot of respect and gratitude.

But I am a product of my time and so will never feel guilty for enjoying modern works better for two reasons. First, authors who write now have a greater ability to speak to me now. I was not alive in the twenties, and no matter how much history i read I will never fully understand it. In science fiction, in particular, I have seen advances that make older works of speculative fiction rather moot. I have still enjoyed them, I particularly enjoy Heimlein's work, but it does not speak to me the same way.

Second, even putting generational biases aside, many changes have been made over the past century. I believe these changes have generally held because they have been for the better. Just as technology improves every year, so, too, does writing. We appreciate the first makers of cars, airplanes, and fantasy literature. In the case of literature we are so honored as to truly be able to still be a part of their works. Nevertheless, I believe it is as unfair to compare modern literature to older literature as it would be to compare a new 2004 automobile to the Model T.

He did an INSANE amount of world building!

Having said that, I also have to say that this audience, while it may not have actually disappeared, is no longer served by the modern publishing industry, and I do not believe that this is a change for the better. Christine no doubt does not find the intellecual and moral decay evident in the world of literature and specifically fantastic literature alarming, this no doubt seems progress to many, on a par with life-saving advances in medicine and engineering or breakthroughs in science and technology. I myself find such uncritical faith in "the future" more than a little puzzling. Even the least skeptical must admit that our "advances" have been horrors as often as not. Or perhaps it is just the nature of how we have used our increased knowledge and power that alarms.

I do not attempt to emulate Tolkien, but I firmly believe that his work is great. Not just because it founded the fantasy genre (actually, I appreciate it in spite of the impact it had on modern fantasy) but because it is a work that would have founded something for good or ill in any era it had been published.

That is greatness. We live today in a world that trivializes greatness, that more often than not marginalizes and destroys it. We frankly live in a world that does not want want great men, as a contemporary of Tolkien predicted would come to pass. Most of the modern world does not even understand what greatness is, except that they don't like it.

Being relatively young myself (almost 26), I'm afraid I don't have a particularly good basis for judging the decay of literature, as you call it. I do, however, see why modern people have a problem with greatness. Frankly, we're intimidated by it. Great people are better than we are, and no one wants to know that there might be people who are better. For some reason people used to be ok with greatness. Maybe because the world was bigger then, and there were more opportunities to be great in their own little ponds.

Not all advances are for the better. Science Fiction does a great deal to explore these ideas, and I've always found valid ideas in both the good and bad futures represented there.

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Great people are better than we are, and no one wants to know that there might be people who are better.

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Most of the "great" men from history that I recall were reviled by at least some people, and often met with untimely deaths. Ghandi, Lincoln, even Aristotle were all killed. In fact, I cannot think of a single "great" man that was universally appreciated in his time.

One reason for this is that greatness usually means introducing a new concept or idea. And evaluating new concepts is difficult. New concepts can be great (as thoses espoused by Martin Luther King Jr.) or horrible (as those espoused by Adolf Hitler). Time tends to sift out the bad ideas, leading us to look back and realize the greatness of the past.

But in the present, there are always conflicting ideas to evaluate, so it is rarely clear to know who is truly great and who is not. And current "great" men have the additional problem of being living men. And living men make mistakes. How to weigh their greatness against their human falibility is always a problem.

Is what you are saying a case of, to paraphrase, "a prophet is always rejected in his own land"? If so, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

I think there are a lot of complex issues that define who is or is not 'great'. Perhaps a large portion of the issue is hindsight. Other than Alexander The Great, I think few have been labled as such during their lifetime. Perhaps this indicates that future generations define the worth of previous personalities and actions. I don't rightly know.

Another, I feel, is society's mores at any given time. What we esteem reflects on who esteem. I believe these two issues, more than any others, define 'greatness' at any given stage in history.

Anyways, as a personal note, I prefer my description to be very loose and leave alot up to the reader to imagine. I would greatly prefer if someone makes their own idea of what an ancient, notched, scratched and yes, very very green door looks like. I don't need pages and pages to tell someone what their imagination can create up for free.

I believe stories and novels to act as sort of a seed to the reader. The story is the important bit, it's the part that makes the plant. But, it's the readers imagination that acts like the sun and rain to help it grow. Whatever shape it takes is up to the reader, although my descriptions act as little directional devices to make sure they're imagining in the right way.

I don't need to hear that Character A is 5'3", has short black hair, short arms, a small beard, glasses and a degree in Armenian history. I want these things to develop as they are important. When it's important for descriptive devices (usually when my main character-at-the-momment notices them) then do I describe them, but only to the limitations of what they find important. As you can probably guess, I write very character driven stories.

I find that description gets out of hand when it goes to the green door point. To me, unless this is critical to the characters developent or has some important 'big picture' metaphorical devices attached to it, it's useless. Well written as it may be, I feel that description should only be a starting point for imagination. Part of the green door probably has to do with the narrative style, but when it gets to that sort of description solely for the readers benefit and has nothing to the story... I'd rather have a interesting, paragraph long 'once over' about the technical side of something rather than three pages of well written textbook.

Card - Emphasis on Pace. I find these kind of books very exciting to pick up, and easy to read again and again. The story unravels at an appropriate pace, but definitely a quick one. Things are always happening and the story is always in motion. That is very appealing to read, but the drawback may be that the reader won't know all of the details to trully see things as the author wants them to.

I think that the reader's imagination is a more than adequate replacement for the lack of detail.

For example "The door was as green as grass."

Does that really mean anything?
Would it effect anything if I, the reader, instead imagined it as a red door? If it is important than leave the detail in, but if it has no meaning I find myself questioning whether or not I should put it in.

But that's just my preference.

When is description useful? How do we define this? Don't go too far and swing the pendulum the other way, because description can add in subtle ways sometimes.

Here's an example:

Description can help define the culture of an alien race. I just got through spending several paragraphs describing the ornate temple of an alien race versus the stark plainness of the people's homes. I did this on purpose, to show the reader something important about their culture.

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..I did this on purpose, to show the reader something important..

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So, perhaps it was important to say the door was green. Maybe he wanted to show that it blended in with the surrounding scenery and give the reader a taste of the country life of the hobits. But when did he go overboard? From the reaction here, it was when he tried to take over for our imagination and plant the image of HIS green door in our minds.

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From the reaction here, it was when he tried to take over for our imagination and plant the image of HIS green door in our minds.

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I couldn't agree more with this. I feel that description should be loose guidelines. It's like a coloring book. You give the painter the lines but when it comes down to it, they have all control over what they want it to be.

Readers tend to judge how important something is in a story by how much time (or wordage or page space) a writer spends on it.

If you go into loving detail on something, you are signalling to the readers that it is important. If it turns out not to be important to the story, readers will feel unsatisfied at best and cheated or frustrated or even angry at worst.

So maybe the best thing to do is to work up some kind of hierarchy for description to help you decide how many words (or how much time) to spend describing each thing compared to how much you spend on each other thing.