The Magic of Tolkien’s Voice in Crafting My Own Narratives

Why Tolkien’s Voice Works for My Stories

There is a certain music in words, an old rhythm that lingers like the tolling of a bell across misted hills. It is the music I first learned as a child, long before I ever heard the name J.R.R. Tolkien. My brothers and I were raised in the assemblies of the Plymouth Brethren, the founders of evangelicalism, the fathers of eschatology, and the language of the King James Bible. We were taught to memorize it, to speak it aloud, to let its phrases roll from the tongue like incantations of the ancient and sacred. And so, without knowing it, we were trained in a kind of literary cadence—majestic, deliberate, and steeped in tradition.

By the time we reached the age when most children are still stumbling through modern storybooks, my brothers and I were already speaking the old tongue in prayer. Thee and Thou were not relics of a bygone age for us; they were the familiar handholds of our devotion. Even our supplications to God bore the hallmarks of Elizabethan turns of phrase. The King James Version became not only our scripture but our speech, shaping the very way we thought and told stories.

Then came the day, one of those schoolroom moments that change everything, when I first opened The Hobbit.

The Familiar Music of Middle-earth

The moment I began reading, it was like stepping into a world whose gates I already knew how to open. Tolkien’s words, though not wholly King James English, had a kindred sound. His sentences swelled and ebbed like the verses I had learned by heart as a child. His descriptions did not merely tell you a thing; they wrought it before your eyes. The green fields rolled; the mountains brooded; the rivers sang.

It was not just his choice of words that resonated with me, but his manner of telling. Tolkien’s voice was that of a careful guide, a learned historian, and at times, a fireside bard whose stories glowed with the warmth of the hearth. His writing bore the patience of one who knew that a world, if it is to be loved, must be revealed slowly—stone by stone, leaf by leaf—until it feels as real as the soil beneath your feet.

I recognized this because it was the same patience I had seen in the great genealogies and histories of scripture, in the psalms that painted heavens and mountains with words, in the parables that wrapped truth in story.

The Writing Influence on My Storytelling

When I began to write my own tales—stories of frost and Yule, the love of things familiar, of gnomes, elves, and whispering dwarves—I found myself slipping naturally into that same voice. It was not a conscious imitation of Tolkien. Rather, it was the natural outflow of years spent marinating in that sacred, old-world cadence.

In Tolkien’s style, I found a vessel for my own imaginings:

Rich Description as an Invitation

I could not simply tell a reader that a hall was large; I could make them feel the press of its shadowed rafters and smell the smoke of its long-burning fires.

A Sense of History and Lineage

Every place, every artifact in my world has a past. An axe is never merely an axe; it is forged of ore from a mountain named in legend, quenched in waters that once ran red in battle, and carried by hands long turned to dust.

The Marriage of Myth and Morality

Tolkien wove his Catholic faith into his stories not by sermonizing, but by embedding deep moral truths into the fabric of his world. I, too, draw on the moral and spiritual imagery I learned in scripture, allowing it to shape the arcs of my characters and the destinies of figures.

Why the Tolkienish Voice Endures

Some may say Tolkien’s voice is too slow for modern audiences, that readers today demand rapid action and snappy dialogue. But I find that the deeper human hunger has not changed. We still yearn to be immersed in a place so vividly drawn that we almost smell the rain on the stones. We still ache for stories that take their time, that let us walk with the characters and linger in their world.

The Tolkienish style offers more than nostalgia; it offers a sense of weight. In a world awash with disposable words, it gives the reader the feeling that what is being said matters. That these events are not just happenings in a book, but part of a larger tapestry in which all threads are connected.

For my stories—tales that bridge myth and faith, legend and history—this style is not just an aesthetic choice. It is the only voice that feels true. A battle against frost giants should feel like a chapter from a great saga; a meeting beneath the embered tree should carry the solemnity of an ancient prophecy fulfilled.

The Bridge Between Myth and Scripture

There is another reason this voice suits my work so well: both Tolkien’s style and the King James Bible convey a tone that feels timeless. When you read them, you are never entirely sure if you are looking backward into history or forward into prophecy. This is the perfect space for my stories to live, for they often dwell in that liminal place where the ancient meets the eternal.

The frost giants, the gnomes, Herr Klaus, they may walk in worlds of my making, but they carry with them the echoes of older stories: the sagas of the Norsemen, the courage of David against Goliath, the hope of light breaking through darkness. The Tolkienish style allows these echoes to be heard clearly, ringing like distant horns in the reader’s mind.

How I Keep the Voice Alive

Writing in this style is not without its challenges. It demands discipline to resist the modern temptation to rush a scene, to cut a description short, or to flatten dialogue into plain speech. But the rewards are worth it.

I work to keep this voice alive by:

Reading Aloud

Tolkien’s prose, like scripture, is meant to be heard as much as read. I often read my drafts aloud to catch the rhythm and music of the sentences.

Allowing Space for the World to Breathe

I give my readers moments to look around, to taste the air, to hear the wind in the trees, before the next event sweeps in.

Drawing from the Well of Old Words

English holds a deep and ancient vocabulary, much of it left to gather dust in forgotten corners. I mine it for words with weight and texture—words that seem as though they belong in the mouth of a bard. Yet my search goes beyond English alone. I borrow from other tongues to name traditions, describe moments, or give life to festivals, following an age-old practice of weaving languages together to enrich a tale.

In my stories, even the names of the gnomes carry meaning. Each one is forged from a blend of Norwegian, German, Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish words—titles that reveal their nature, hint at their calling, and reflect their worth like a badge of honor.

The gnomes themselves have their own names for the people and creatures they encounter. To most, an elf is simply an elf, but to a gnome, it is a PúttØrevolk—three Scandinavian words joined to mean “pointy ear people.” The sound of it feels old and storied, as if it belongs to a fireside tale passed down through generations, carrying with it a touch of wonder and quiet reverence.

The Legacy of a Voice

In the end, Tolkien’s voice works for my stories because it is, in a sense, my voice. Not in imitation, but in shared inheritance. We both drew from the same ancient well—he from the epics and languages he loved, I from the scriptures that shaped my earliest thoughts.

When my readers step into my worlds, I want them to feel as I felt when I first opened The Hobbit—that they are being welcomed into a tale told by someone who will guide them with care, who will not hurry them, who will show them every stone and star along the way.

Tolkien once wrote that “the tale grew in the telling.” I have found this to be true. And in my telling, the old music plays on—a harmony of King James scripture and the fireside voice of the professor from Oxford, woven together in a way that feels like home.

Herr Klaus shares a heartfelt moment with Ulvie in the serene winter forest, surrounded by falling snow.