I read an excellent summary of what made the industrial designer Raymond Loewy so insanely successful (he’s the guy who pretty much created that streamlined look of the early 20th century— think those iconic trains and blenders and whatnot).

His secret? “Make the familiar exotic and the exotic familiar”.

Fellow writers, I advise you to think about that and run with it. Tolkien made the familiar exotic— he’s the one who made elves tall and beautiful and tragic: before him, they were just silly little fairy people. He also did the other thing— make the exotic familiar— by making his main characters’ home not some eerie Grimm Brothers forest but an idealized England.

Put twists on the old, tame down the weird. Do that right and not only will people love it, it’ll be all your own.