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The Story Behind the Story – How Jack and the Hobbits Shaped My Creative Path

July 8, 2026

The Story Behind the Story – How Jack & the Hobbits Shaped My Creative Path

By Steven W. Alloway

A Note from the Editor
The stories that shape us rarely happen in isolation. They are formed through family, mentors, friendships, and creative communities.

This month, we're exploring Storytelling & Personal Narrative, and how understanding your own story can deepen both your art and your connection with others.

The Stories of My Childhood
When my brother and I were little, my dad used to tell us stories. If you asked us who the writer or the actor was in our family, we’d say my mother. But though he didn’t have the background in the arts that she did, my dad was a natural storyteller. In fact, he was notorious, when he read aloud to us, for adding his own little bits to the stories as he told them.

“Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man with the Puffy Cheeks!”

My brother and I grew up thinking that that was how the story went. We were disappointed when we finally learned that in the story as written, the Gingerbread Man didn’t have puffy cheeks at all—or if he did, he didn’t go bragging about it.

In fact, this happened a number of times in our household. My parents used to tell the story of the time my brother brought a favorite book of his to share with his Kindergarten class—one that my dad had added a number of his own spirited embellishments to. They worried what would happen when the teacher read the book instead, and my brother discovered that when the rabbit checked into the Forest Hotel, he did not, in fact, say, “Hippity Hoppity Hippity Hoppity Hooooo!”

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Jack, the King, and Tomorrow
But storybook embellishments were only a small part of my dad’s talents. The best stories were the ones he made up himself. I’ve talked about this in some of my previous articles, and in particular, about our family’s favorite, The Jack Story. From Jack Be Nimble to Jack and Jill to Jack and the Beanstalk to Little Jack Horner, my dad took all the different Jacks from fairytales and nursery rhymes and put them into one very silly narrative.

Then there was another one he told, about a very tall king and his much shorter subjects, who try in vain to grow to the same height as their ruler, before ultimately having the bright idea to stand on stepladders. And still another about a child called “Tomorrow,” because his parents were procrastinators who, when faced with the task of giving their son a name, just shrugged and said, “Eh, we’ll name him tomorrow.”

Hobbit Songs
As we got older, the made-up stories faded, but reading aloud continued. My dad read The Hobbit to us, followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Fortunately, by that time he was no longer inserting his own silliness into the stories—Tolkien’s books need no embellishments. But what he would do is make up tunes. All four books have songs in them—full songs, with multiple verses, inserted randomly into the middle of the narrative. And every time my dad would come to a set of lyrics, he would make up a tune for them on the spot. They would usually sound like old-timey country songs, since that was the music my dad liked.

He would make up his own songs, too. He didn’t try to insert them into Tolkien’s text, but often before bed, he would make up a song about hobbits and sing it for my brother and me. If you asked us who the singer was in the family, we would say my mother, every time. My dad always insisted that he couldn’t sing. But in spite of that, he could make a song out of anything.

Once I asked my mom why she never made up any Hobbit songs for us. So she took an old song from her childhood and changed the lyrics to be about Bilbo, trying to sell his ring at the market. Not wanting to be left out, I even made up a Hobbit song myself. “There’s a Hobbit on Your Arm,” sung to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then, I was probably about seven at the time.

My Life in Stories: How Childhood Shapes Artistic Identity
So what’s my point in relating all of this? When you look at the narrative of my life—who I am as an artist and as a person—these stories are at the very heart of it. These and a thousand others have helped shape my life and my creative path in a myriad of ways.

The Jack Story is probably the most direct example. I actually adapted it into a puppet play a few years ago, first on Zoom and then on a live stage. I even shoehorned the story of the Tall King and the stepladders into it, too. So yeah, it’s been a pretty significant influence on me creatively.

But the real influence is the story behind the story. In many ways, The Jack Story isn’t complete without telling that story too. You can certainly enjoy it on its own. It’s funny, silly, and entertaining. But the story behind the story gives it so much more depth and meaning. Knowing how this silly puppet play came to be helps the audience better understand what it means to me, why I consider it a story worth telling, and who I am as a writer, a director, and a storyteller. Brimming with fantastical elements and my dad’s off-the-wall sense of humor, you can trace a lot of my creative style to the Jack Story.

When it comes to Lord of the Rings, the influence probably isn’t so readily apparent. I love the books, of course, and I have no doubt that they’ve played a role in the things I create. But when you look at those things, “Tolkien Fan” probably wouldn’t be nearly as high on the list of things you’d surmise about me as, say, “Douglas Adams Fan.”

But when you look at the story behind the story… My dad making up tunes and songs, doing the voices of each character… Or my mother making him turn The Hobbit over to her for a chapter, so she could read us “Riddles in the Dark” and yell out “WE HATES IT! WE HATES THE BAGGINS!” as Gollum…

All of those things form a pretty significant window into who I am as an artist. I love to sing, I love songwriting… and I am a tremendous ham. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings helped shape me in that way, but it didn’t come from Tolkien. It came from my parents.

There are dozens of other examples I could give from my childhood, and throughout my life in general. The stories I grew up with, from books to movies to TV and even old-time radio shows, have been a significant influence on my writing, my acting, my visual style as a director, and more. But what really shaped the narrative of my life, of who I am as an artist and a person, is the story behind the story.

Finding the Stories Behind Your Stories to Strengthen Your Creative Voice
And so, if you’re trying to figure yourself out as an artist, or if you’re struggling with how best to tell your story—any story—then I recommend you start there. Look at your influences. Look at the stories you grew up with, the stories that have had a significant impact on your life. It could be a story in a traditional, narrative sense, or it could be something more abstract, like a poem, a dance, or a piece of music.

Then, for each piece, look at the story behind the story. Why is this thing so important to you? Why did it have the impact that it did? Who introduced you to this piece? What were the circumstances that led you to discover it? How did it first make you feel? Would you have felt the same way about it if you’d discovered it in a different way, at a different time in your life?

From there, you can get a better glimpse into who you are as an artist: not just the kind of art you want to make, but the kind of feelings you want that art to elicit: the way you relate to it as you’re creating it, and the way you want others to relate to it as they’re experiencing it. It’s those stories behind the stories that make our art what it is—that really help it to resonate.

And then, of course, you have to be prepared for your art to resonate with your audience in a completely different way instead. That’s part of the process. Everyone gets to have their own story behind the story. Even if you share yours with your audience, it will only be one small part of their experience.

And hopefully, the way they experience your story will help shape their artistic journeys, the way your experiences helped to shape yours. Then perhaps what you create will be an influence as they create their own story, which they can then share with their own audience, who will have their own unique and impactful experiences with it. And the story continues…