This does not set a mood and thus does not convey the same information. This removes the information about mood and setting away while keeping only rough plot point in.
The outcome in terms of how reader interpret the situation is massively different. The thing you wrote implies that all they need is to go to sleep an hour sooner and rest, all will be fine.
Uh, yes. This is press-release speak, optimised for a fourth grader’s reading comprehension.
If, on the other hand, you want to develop the motif of the Unseen—central to Tolkien’s work—the type of tired the characters are and how they’re detecting and addressing it is incredibly germane, interesting and totally lost in your summary.
You’re also describing the first scenes we see through familiar eyes of Mordor. The landscape is an extension of Sauron’s will. The contrast with the developed, organised, albeit crowded cities of men; the arrogance implied in the desolation; et cetera pack information lost in your summary.
Instead, I propose that the type of tied is informationally and qualitatively distinct. The exhaustion of the weight of the world, internal struggle, amidst a dismal hellscape is different than "really tired".
Great writing can build depth of quality and understanding with the authors intent.
LOTR could be summarized with a sentence. The content is in the detail.
Uh... Huh? So it's my argument, which I've refuted, and therefore it's a strawman? I think you should go get refreshed on informal fallacies. No, what's happening here is that there's a phenomenon that's being discussed -- namely, mood-setting in fictional writing -- and I'm proposing as its mechanism not additional information, but rather additional time. If you want to participate in the discussion you can't dismiss my argument my incorrectly calling it a strawman. You have to explain why it doesn't work as an explanation, like this:
>Instead, I propose that the type of tied is informationally and qualitatively distinct. The exhaustion of the weight of the world, internal struggle, amidst a dismal hellscape is different than "really tired".
Yet, if we were to replace the particular flavor of tiredness with a completely different, equally intense one, it would evoke the exact same empathic feeling on the reader, because the imagination is not precise enough to reproduce other people's feelings with such granularity. Someone can't precisely imagine the difference between the tiredness felt by Conan after 12 hours of turning a mill for the sixth day in a row, and that felt by Frodo. The reader is going to reach that passage and feel that the characters are really tired. That's why such long descriptions don't contain any more meaning; because they can be replaced with something completely different and put the same idea in the reader's mind: "Sam and Frodo are really tired".
>LOTR could be summarized with a sentence. The content is in the detail.
I've already addressed that. If the information is the words themselves and not their meaning, then any English text is equally information-dense. "It's raining" contains a third as much information as "it's raining, it's raining, it's raining", since it contains a third as many words.
You’ve set up a great question. Why is what you wrote shitty writing while what Tolkien wrote not?
The answer isn’t just variation. If you look at what’s been conveyed in his writing that wasn’t with your repetition, you’ll start unlocking what I suspect you know is there but are having trouble describing.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
