Of Feet and Hobbit-Holes: Lessons Learned from a Literary Intro

Literature is full of great beginnings. There are plenty to choose from — Austen’s “truth universally acknowledged,” Dickens’s contradicting description of the best (and worst) of times, Orwell’s clocks’ striking thirteen, etc. — each with their own merits. But I want to start this series on effective introductions with a line that I will always hold dear — the opening paragraph to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Right off the bat, I think I’ve found my first approach to successful openings.

1. Interesting introductions sound good.

Go ahead and read the first sentence out loud. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” It has a certain rhythm to it which is both familiar and distinct. Let me show you what I mean:

It begins not with the even stressed and unstressed syllables of “Once upon a time” (iambic, in poetry terms), but with three syllable units (feet) that have a similar rhythm. You don’t even need a comma between “ground” and “there” because the rhythm already breaks up the line naturally! Similarly, the two-syllable iamb “there lived” breaks up the pattern of three-syllable feet enough to basically function as an invisible colon, setting up the final three-syllable introduction of “a hobbit.” If I did this right (say a word enough and you get any number of rhythms), this final three-syllable foot inverts the rhythm of the first two, rounding off the phrase and ending with that mysterious word (“hobbit”). Aside from introducing the fairytale world in a lyrical way, the sound gives a good first impression of the writing overall.

The second thing I appreciate most about this opening paragraph is how it goes about introducing the concept of hobbits, which leads me to a second strategy for good intros:

2. An interesting introduction circumscribes, rather than describes, its subject.

Look back at the opening again. After mentioning “hobbit” — the subject of the book and this part of the first chapter — one might expect to get a description of the creature’s stature, habits, and hairy feet straight away. Instead, Tolkien describes the hole in which the hobbit lives — or, more accurately, the holes in which the hobbit doesn’t live. Even though they are two degrees removed from the subject at hand, the details easily put readers in the mindset of a hobbit.

The first hole Tolkien describes — “nasty, dirty, wet” — evokes the rather domestic image of a furrowed garden plot after a rain, filled with “ends of worms” sliced by trowels and the “oozy smell” of natural fertilizer. The second hole (“dry, bare, sandy”) may well describe a patch of land unsuitable for gardening, which the narrator implies would be much better with snacks and a chair. The attitude described here — summarized by the phrase “and that means comfort” — is the same sort of homebody-ish attitude that hobbits seem to have in abundance.

Tolkien goes on to describe hobbits in more detail in the following paragraphs, but this indirect style of description still carries the weight for me because it trains readers to get into a hobbit’s head before they are even described. By circumscribing rather than directly describing his subject here, Tolkien presents a script for the reader’s inner monologue to perform as well as a virtual (head)space for them to inhabit. You are not reading about hobbits; you are reading as a hobbit. Primed in this way, readers can begin to combine the hobbits’ descriptions with the tone presented, internalizing the subject matter as they learn more about them.

So, what is the takeaway from all this? It certainly isn’t that you should break out a poetry textbook when starting your next paper or take the longest route possible to get to the point (Tolkien’s circumscription only lasts a paragraph for a reason!). Instead, it is useful to ask whether your first few lines puts readers in the right place. A good way of doing this is by reading your words aloud (perhaps over music) to catch the rhythm, and including language that evokes your subject without describing it directly. Hey, if you’re reading this, you’re probably in the middle of some writing project — why not try it?

Next week, I’ll be taking this discussion to film and ask: what can a movie’s opening moments tell us about writing good intros? In the meantime, try reading Tolkien’s intro one last time, but this time with Howard Shore’s music in the background. You won’t be disappointed.

John Sanders is a PhD Candidate in the Syracuse University English Department where he studies film, new media, and adaptation. He is currently working on a dissertation about digital and analog games based on literary works, and hopes that no one recalls his library books.