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#1 | |
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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This is the first draft of the chapter The Ring Sets Out.
This chapter uses a thoroughly mixed bag of sources, so I mark every addition made to the text. The markings are: FY-HL-xx for all the headlines for the Fading Years. RSO-SL-xx for all expansions and changes to the narrative. Some conventions of my writing: Bold Text = source information, comments and remarks {example} = text that should be deleted [example] = normalized text, normally only used for general changes, as well as changes which are a part of replacement that is not grammatical. Underlined Text = text changed for grammatical reasons in the process of combining and inserting and removing. <source example> = additions with source information ...... = This section of the paragraph is unchanged from the source. Quote:
RSO-SL-01: This bit from the prologue sets the stage for the events of LotR, bringing us to the Shire and showing their perspective of what is going on in the outside world. Bilbo is brought back into our thoughts, and his situation is brought into the present. I know the end of the last chapter took place chronologically after this point, but I think this formation works best, even though there is a slight time overlap. RSO-SL-02: Here we come to the events of LotR. The Synopsis of LotR contained in the front of Two Towers and Return of the King basically glosses over this entire portion of the narrative, picking up in detail only after the arrival in Rivendell. Therefore, I used the Letter to Milton Waldman to supplement it, since otherwise we would not adequately set up the characters. The letter is written in present tense and has several commentative bits, so I updated the tense to the past, and removed the more commentative sections. RSO-SL-03: This is given as a footnote to the letter, but I think we should bring it into the main body of the text. This relates the events back to the previous chapter, where we saw Gandalf was captured by Saruman. RSO-SL-04: This was given as HR-SL-15 in the last chapter. I think it fits much better here in this chapter now that Fin has added all the updates from The Reader's Companion. RSO-SL-05: This was HR-SL-15.2. RSO-SL-06: This was HR-SL-15.3. RSO-SL-07: This was HR-SL-15.4. RSO-SL-08: This is the next Hunt for the Ring bit from Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. It picks up where 08 left off. RSO-SL-09: This is the next Hunt for the Ring bit. It recounts the crossing of the Brandywine. RSO-SL-10: This is the next Hunt for the Ring bit. It recounts the coming to Crickhollow. RSO-SL-11: Here we return to the Letter to Milton Waldman. I placed this here so that we can introduce Aragorn into the story in the best way possible using these texts. RSO-SL-12: This bit is structued somewhat oddly, but in the Letter, Tolkien never clarifies in his narrative summary who Strider is, so I pulled this bit from the LotR Synopsis and added in a clarifier. I hope this is not taking too much liberty, but I think this is the best way to combine the texts. RSO-SL-13: Here we recount the events at Bree from the Black Riders' perspective. RSO-SL-14: I changed the ambiguous 'events' to this more specific description, since we cannot go into too much detail without having to invent text wholecloth. I think this gets the job done. RSO-SL-15: We have not mentioned Merry previously, so I introduced him here. RSO-SL-16: This recounts the fight with Gandalf and the Ringwraiths on Weathertop. RSO-SL-17: This recounts the attack on Weathertop and Frodo's wound and escape. RSO-SL-18: I removed this reference to the Witch-king's death, since I think it is looking forward too much. RSO-SL-19: Here Glorfindel enters the story and protects the Last Bridge. RSO-SL-20: Here we have the altercation at the Fords of Bruinen, and the defeat of the Nazgul. RSO-SL-21: This bit describes their movements after their demise. RSO-SL-22: Here we come to the narrative of the LotR Synopsis. The tenses are right for much of this, and there is only a mild reference to the LotR text which I removed. RSO-SL-23: Here I inserted a small sentence from the Letter to Milton Waldman simply to say that Frodo was healed, so that we dont leave it as an unresolved plot point. RSO-SL-24: I removed a comment referring to the text of LotR in an external context. RSO-SL-25: I removed a comment referring to the text of LotR in an external context. RSO-SL-26: Since we discuss Grima in the Battles of the Fords text by name, but the Synopsis only refers to him as Wormtongue, I figured we should add his name in order to make everything clear to the reader that he is the same person. FY-HL-19: Here we have the Battles of the Fords title. We could discuss making this a separate chapter, as its subject matter does not really fit under the header The Ring Sets Out. RSO-SL-27: Here we insert the Battles text. I found nothing to change in this entire text, but I could have missed something. As it is, the place I inserted it in the narrative is after the mention of the battle of Helm's Deep, but I think that is important in order to understand the references of the text. RSO-SL-28: This editorial addition is not sourced from any text, but I think we need it in order to explain the relevance of the text to the plot of LotR. Perhaps it is too much liberty. Last edited by ArcusCalion; 07-24-2018 at 06:18 PM. |
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#2 | |
King's Writer
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,714
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First of all: ArcusCalion I appreciate the hard work you put into this chaper very much. It is really nicely edited even so I have a few points of critisem, the overall feedback I would like to give is: very good!
To emphasis this farther see that I have only one small point of critisem for the editing in special, the rest is more general or structural. I know my own work how very hard it is to keep structural or general points in mind while editing. I start with some global points of the structure: As first remark: In a pseudo historical point of view the ‘War of the Ring’ began with the synchronized attaks on Thranduil’s realm (to catch back Gollum) and Osgiliath (to allow the Nazgûl to cross Anduin). Thus all the actions in the last and in this chapter are actually part of the War of the Ring. If we find that useful we could therefor take ‘The War of the Ring’ as an over title including everything beginning with ‘The Hunt for the Ring’ or even earlier (see below). Some of the actions described are not very much warlike, and thus we might us the title ‘The War of the Ring’ in smaller sense, as you, ArcusCalion, did, but at least for The Battles of the Fords of Isen we should consider to move them to that next chapter. Second remark: Bilbo’s birthday party and disappearance can not be told here, in the middle of the actual hunt for the Ring! I think we should separate RSO-SL-01 & the first paragraph of RSO-SL-02 (named in that new position RSO-SL-01.5) and put them before TS-SL-14. Together I would then separate these from The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen into a chapter of its own headed The Shadow Grows. If we do so we must edit the beginning of the second paragraph of RSO-SL-02 a bit different (see below under HR-SL-01.5). One last point of structural critisem: The Hunt for the Ring ended with the defeat of the Nazgûl in the Battle of the Ford of Bruinen. And not when Frodo set out from Hobbiton. I could agree to an inclusion of a bit more like the results of the search after the battle and the return of the Witch-king to Mordor and the following creation of the winged creatures for the Nazgûl. Thus I propose to integreat the part of this chapter up to RSO-SL-21 under the sub-heading The Ring sets out under the last chapter The Hunt for the Ring, where we might use the following sub-heading for the first part: Of the Journey of the Black Riders according to the account that Gandalf gave to Frodo To make the transition between the to parts work better, I would then shift a part of RSO-SL-02 under the new marker HR-SL-01.5 to the beginning of that chapter and edit the rest a bit different: Quote:
If we do follow my above suggestions, what is left is only RSO-SL-22 to RSO-SL-26. As that is very short I suggest to take it up as a sub-chapter under the heading The Ring in the Shadow in to the chapter The War of the Ring. The one single point about special editing: I think ArcusCalion missed a necessary ‘outline expansion at the end of RSO-SL-21. The text tells that Sauron was aided in the creation of the winged mounts by ‘Angmar’. Since Angmar is realy a country and not a person, Thsi is JRR Tolkiens short hand for ‘the Lord of Angmar’ as he wrote a few sentence before. I think we must expand the name. A few general remarks: - It seems we have now two spellings ‘Barrow-downs’ and ‘Barrowdowns’. In LotR alway the spelling with the hyphen was used, So I think we should take that up as a general change. - Numbers (especially the date of the days in the Month): We have in our text three spellings: e.g. ‘23’; ‘23rd’ and ‘twentythird’. If you add the article ‘the’ employed or not, the variation becomes even grater. As he did for (low) numbers, Tolkin never used numeric characters in his texts for dates. Even with high numbers he went through some painsticing variations to avoid numeric characters. Even so it is a lot of work, since we have a lot of such numerical characters; I think we should replace them and standardise our spelling with the ‘the’ included if the date is after the Months and ‘of’ if the date is given before the Month. Respectfully Findegil |
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#3 | |||
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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Thank you for the kudos Fin, much appreciated.
I must admit I am somewhat confused by your structuring changes. This is how it seems to me that you wish to have the last chapters laid out: Quote:
Overall Structure Notes: You are right that the events in these chapters may be termed as part of the War of the Ring. However, I did not put them under a single heading for two reasons: 1) This leaves us with no title for the events of Return of the King, which, I think, above all other divisions need their own title. 2) In the narrative Synopsis of the events of the story we have this quote from Tolkien: Quote:
Second Remark: I agree to the movement of the texts in this way, aside from two things. 1) I think they would be better placed after TS-SL-14, since Bilbo's party happened long after the births of Faramir and Boromir, and placing it before they're mentioned gives the impression that the opposite is true, and that at the time of the War of the Ring they would only be around 17 years old! 2) I do not agree to the creation of a new chapter, or of the heading The Shadow Grows. I am unsure where this heading comes from, but it seems to me to be unsourced, which we must avoid at all costs. Therefore, I think to simply leave the text at the end of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen is fine. We have a long history in the project of including events inside chapters and stories where they are not necessarily immediately relevant to the title name, but I think it is ok to do so. If you think we absolutely cannot leave them in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, then we should move them to the very beginning of The Hunt for the Ring. Sidenote: the slightly different editing of HR-SL-01.5 looks good, but it should say 'had elapsed.' Last Point of Structural Criticism: This looks perfect Fin, and I was actually thinking it should have been structured better, so thank you. I only have one comment, which is that I would prefer the first subheading to simply be Of the Journey of the Black Riders, as the full title seems needlessly long, perhaps the second part (According to the Account Gandalf Gave to Frodo) can be placed underneath the subheading, but I suppose any option is fine really, just an aesthetic preference. Fin's Ending Comments: I do not think we need the subheading The Ring in Shadow, as The Ring Sets Out still applies. I am also not sure where this title comes from, so I think it is best to leave it out. As to the comment about expanding the outline reference to Angmar, I agree. I see your point about dates, and I agree. Would you like to go through your copies to make sure the dates are all in order? I will do the same with mine. P.S. As a summary, I think this is the best final structure: Quote:
Last edited by ArcusCalion; 07-17-2018 at 09:18 PM. |
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#4 | |
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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I just had an idea: What if from RSO-SL-22 through to just before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields could be its own chapter called The Treason of Isengard, since the vast bulk of the chapter will be made up of The Battles of the Fords of Isen, as well as the events of the LotR Synopsis that deal with The Two Towers and Saruman's treachery. I think this would work best, and allow us to use The War of the Ring for the events of Return of the King, and allow us to keep The End of the Third Age as the chapter that tells of the aftermath.
Edit: The chapter heading would be FY-HL-18.5. The chapter would basically consist of all the material displaced from this chapter, with this small addition at the end: Quote:
Last edited by ArcusCalion; 07-17-2018 at 09:21 PM. |
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#5 | |
King's Writer
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,714
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Sorry for being not clear enough. I mentioned the possibility of using The War of the Ring as overall title just as OPTION.
I fully agree to keep The War of the Ring as title for the next chapter! RSO-SL-01 & RSO-SL-01.5 after TS-SL-14: Agree. This arangment makes much more sense. But I obsereved that we have to change HR-SL-01 slightly:[quote] HR-SL-01<ORP Now by fortune and his vigilance Mithrandir had first learned of the Ring, ere Sauron had news of it; ...[/b] The Shadow Grows, The Ring in the Shadow and The War of the Ring or The Return of the King wer the first idea for titles of three volumes of the LotR. It is recorded in Letters; 136. The next stage in the development from Letters, 137 & 139 was The Return of the Shadow, The Shadow Lengthens and The Return of the King. In Letters; 140 we came near to the final with The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and [/b]The War of the Ring[/b]. The Discussion was settled in the end mutal between Rayner Unwin and JRR Tolkien on The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. That means the title have a source in JRR Tolkien. Nonetheless we can discuss if we should creat this very short chapter, or take it with or without a sub-chapter heading into one of the others. If you don’t like the short separate chapter I would leave TS-SL-14 at the end of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen and take RSO-SL-01 & RSO-SL-01.5 at the beginning of The Hunt for the Ring, boith without sub-heading. HR-SL-01.5: Agreed. FY-HL-17.5: Since at least in my format ]Of the Journey of the Black Riders according to the account that Gandalf gave to Frodo does anyhow occupy 2 lines we are free to place the line break behind ‘Black Riders’. But I would shy back from using brakets. I see no reason allowed by our rules for this insertion. FY-HL-18.5: I could agree to use the title The Treason of Isengard here for that part of the story you named. But we might need that title else where (see below). Anyhow I would keep the (sub-) heading The Ring in the Shadow for the first part. A sub-heading does not have any relevance in the next chapter, so [i]The Ring Sets Out[/b] can no longer ‘apply’. I think we would in this case need a third sub-heading or must at least separate the last part about the Battle of the Hornburg and the parley at Orthanc. For this The Treason of Isengard is also a well fitting candiadat. And I found no other. Any idea? Anyhow I think we miss something. Is there nothing to fill the gape between ‘Grimbold's men he sent southward to join Erkenbrand.> RSO-SL-28<editorial addition Thus they came to the Battle of the Hornburg in time to win the field.>’ and ‘TI-SL-01<LotR Synopsis In the parley before the door Saruman refused to repent, and Gandalf deposed him and broke his staff, leaving him to the vigilance of the Ents.’? To be more clear then last time, here the structure I anvision, with some remarks in breakets what is included: Quote:
Respectfully Findegil |
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#6 |
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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Some good notes Fin! Sorry I was confused.
RSO-SL-01, RSO-SL-01.5, and TS-SL-14: I am glad you agree to the shift, and now that I know that the title has a Tolkien source, I agree to use it, but I think it would be better as a subheading in the chapter The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. If you think we should then put the RSO additions into the beginning of The Hunt for the Ring then I agree, and I agree to the change to HR-SL-01 if that is the structure you prefer, but personally I am fine with leaving them all under the subheading in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. FY-HL-17.5: I did not mean the brackets would be included in the text, they were just for clarification of my comment. That part of the title would just be in the second line, perhaps in smaller font. FY-HL-18.5: I see your structure and I think it is a good idea. However, I think a better title would be The Shadow Lengthens instead of The Ring in the Shadow, since that title refers to the journey of Frodo and Sam. We could use that subheading in the next chapter. Last edited by ArcusCalion; 07-18-2018 at 07:42 PM. |
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#7 |
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 121
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I just wanted to say that I think the restructuring decision works really well. Having two separate chapters "The Hunt for the Ring" (which includes "The Rings Sets Out") and "The Treason Of Isengard" makes the most sense. I will include my comments on "The Ring Sets Out" in "The Hunt for the Ring" thread where the material ultimately ended up.
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#8 | ||||||||
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 121
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Here are my comments on the Treason of Isengard chapter:
1) This is my attempt at including a resolution for Balin: Quote:
2) Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
4) I only found one typo: Quote:
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#9 |
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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1) Agreed.
2) Agreed. 3) I am unsure of the meaning of this as well. Fin, what did you intend by it? 4) Nice catch. |
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#10 | |
King's Writer
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,714
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1) That is okay for me.
2) RSO-SL-27.1: I am okay with removal in the first foot note. RSO-SL-27.8: But I am more reluctant in the second instance: ‘As the narrative suggests’ can as well mean the text at hand. So I think it is ambiguous enough to be keept. 3) RSO-SL-27.7: First the intended meaning: Gandalf is not active in the Battle of the Fords of Isen. He is only mentioned as the one who got a full report of the events. Therefore it is Erkenbrand who was defeated, but nonetheless drove away southwards part of Sarumans forces. That is way I am as well not in full support of the added ‘the’ in the next sentence. As the battle was a defeat for the forces of the Westfold led by Erkenbrand, the ‘remnants of Saruman’s force’ can only be a fraction of that force and all that isleft of it, as the ‘the’ does suggest. Lets see how we can reconstruct what we know about that last part of the Second Battle of the Fords of Isen: Elfhelm and his riders were driven away eastward in the Second Battle. Grimbold and his man were scatter and moved south on the eastside of the road to Helm’s Deep. Erkenbrand was on the road hastening to the Ford. Saruman’s Eastern force had already passed south cross country, while Saruman’s Western force was on the Road from the Ford to Helm’s Deep. From that picture we can assume that the last part of the Second Battle was fought only between Erkenbrand and the western forces of Saruman. In the end Erkenbrand was defeated fast, but he drove of part of Saruman’s forces to the south (meaning clearly the Land between Isen and Ered Nimrais, so that it is rather southwest and anyhow west of the road) and his own trops remained intact. We are farther told that Gandalf meet Elfhelm and Grimbold on his way to and for Isengard, which must mean that Elfhelm drifted back westward when the Eastern forces of Saruman had passed to the south and that Grimbold did not find Erkenbrand before that last part of the Battle was joined. In the end we see Gandalf, Erkenbrand and Grimbold coming together to the rescue of Helm’s Deep, while Elfhelm guarded the Fords of Isen. I asume that Gandalf found an united the forces of Grimbold and Erkenbrand on his return from Isengard. So what about this editing: Quote:
Respectfully Findegil |
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#11 | |
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 121
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2) OK, keeping the second "narrative" is fine with me.
3) Thanks for the explanation, Fin. I like the addition of "even" to make it "even so" but grammatically I think it needs to be a new sentence: Quote:
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