picazos-angsty-typist:

picazos-angsty-typist:

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

I suppose it’s a testament to Tolkien’s economy of language that the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy – interminable preamble and endless appendices and all – has a smaller total page count than the individual books of your average modern doorstopper fantasy series, yet manages to pack in such a high density of worldbuilding detail that reading it feels like it takes about a thousand years.

(For those expressing incredulity at the idea of Tolkien being an economical storyteller, one must understand that the ability to communicate a great deal of information very efficiently is a totally separate skill from the ability to get to the damn point.)

The day I found out the Twilight series has a higher word count (587,246 words across four books) than LotR (481,103 words across three books) was a dark day.

#thanks I wish I didn’t know this#it’s not the word count that matters it’s the Information Density#physically twilight might be longer#but it’s the lettuce of fiction#lotr is like being hit in the face by a produce truck 

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