Writer Igniter Reading Challenge Prompt 3: Five Promises

So, at the beginning of a novel, the author makes five promises to the reader: a character to root for, a voice for the tale to be told in, a world for the character to live in, a problem in that world, and the event that sets the story in motion. Tolkien makes all these promises within the first chapter of The Hobbit.



Promise number one is a character to root for, and we get that right in the first sentence, even though Bilbo's full name isn't revealed until a few paragraphs in, with Tolkien spending most of those paragraphs making sure we know what a hobbit is.

Promise number two is the voice. The voice in this book is undoubtedly Tolkien's own voice and gives off the air of an absent-minded professor trying to tell his kids a story.

The third promise of a world for the story is fulfilled in that famous first sentence of "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Even Tolkien had to ask himself "What's a hobbit" when he first scribbled the line down while grading papers at Oxford. So he decided to make a world for them to live in, though at the time of The Hobbit's first publishing, the world of hobbits had not yet become the same world as his legendarium. It wasn't until he was asked to make a sequel that he realized that the two worlds fit together. You can see hints of the larger legendarium within this children's tale, but it only makes sense in hindsight.

Onto the fourth promise. The problem that faces Mr. Baggins and the dwarves he meets is literally the stuff of fairy tales: a dragon stole the dwarves home long ago and their leader thinks it's time to take their home back. It's a problem not just for dwarves, but for all the surrounding countryside.

As for the fifth promise, just look at the name of the first chapter. Sure, Gandalf did chatter with Bilbo before the titular unexpected party, but all Gandalf said was that he needed an adventurer. If Gandalf hadn't set the dwarves to Bilbo's hobbit hole for said unexpected party, Bilbo wouldn't have known the full scope of the adventure ahead and he wouldn't have felt the inspiration that Thorin and company's music that no doubt helped him get the courage to go on the adventure.