Why I Write Stories About Halflings
Like most everyone, I was first exposed to Hobbits reading Tolkien’s work.
The Lord of the Rings movies produced by Wingnut Films didn’t come out until I was in my thirties, so my earliest impressions were from actually reading the books, and, the Rankin Bass‘ productions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
When I started playing role-playing games in my teens, D&D helped to inform more about halflings, particularly images drawn by Jeff Dee.
At the root of it, what I love about halflings is their appreciation of hearth and home. Tolkien’s adaptation of the word to develop an 18th century culture of charming portly naturalists - who value connection, family, friends, and food ahead of monetary gain - gives us (as readers and authors) an opportunity to reconnect with those values.
At the same time, I like writing about Halflings that do the unexpected. I like writing about characters who went beyond the stereotype and expand on Tolkien’s concepts.
Jeff Dee’s images of svelte, muscular halfling adventurers took those original Tolkien concepts portrayed (lovingly and accurately) by Rankin Bass into something different. It took the original pallet and expanded on it, and I really loved that idea.
As a gamer, I often played halflings because they had that interesting dichotomy of wholesomeness and home blended with luck, curiosity, a bent for exploring, and an intense desire to go back home; Weis and Hickman’s Kender in their Dragonlance saga only pushed that envelope farther. I loved playing those kinds of characters and expanding on what Tolkien originally gave us.
In writing about halflings, I enjoy the fact that they’re a literary shortcut that builds off of all of these other ideas about them. It’s shorthand: a way of describing something the reader already knows, and it allows me to cut back on writing lengthy descriptions of characters, scenes, or motivations. Shortcuts are really necessary in writing serialized fiction because you don’t have the time to elaborate on details.
Finally, I like writing about halflings because they’re often depicted as sidekicks to protagonists. They’re more likely to facilitate an outcome, or be comedy relief, than a central hero. I think that’s what really motivates me to write about them because, like Bilbo and Frodo, halflings do represent the hero. They portray the idealistic who doesn’t want to fight but must to protect heart and home, or, the undaunted, child-like exploration of the world.
Either way, halflings offer a quick way to jump into these ideas in Aevalorn Tales.
R
