Artists Needed to Create 2025 Challenge Stamps
We are soliciting help from artists who want to help create the stamps we award to challenge participants.
Founded in 2005, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild exists for discussions of and creative fanworks based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and related texts. We are a positive-focused and open-minded space that welcomes fans from all over the world and with all levels of experience with Tolkien's works. Whether you are picking up Tolkien's books for the first time or have been a fan for decades, we welcome you to join us!
Artists Needed to Create 2025 Challenge Stamps
We are soliciting help from artists who want to help create the stamps we award to challenge participants.
Tolkien Fanartics: Mapping Arda - The Second Age
In the third part of the Mapping Arda series, Anérea and Varda delle Stelle present a selection of fan-created maps of the lands of the Second Age.
New Challenge: Potluck Bingo
Sit down to a delicious selection of prompts served on bingo boards, created by the SWG community.
Bingo Cards Wanted for Potluck Bingo
Our November-December challenge will be Potluck Bingo, featuring cards created by you! If you'd like to create cards or prompts for cards, we are taking submissions.
[Writing] Collection of Potluck Drabbles by Artano
This is a collection of true drabbles completed for the 'Four Words' drabble bingo card.
[Writing] After the Festival by Himring
At Ivrin, during the aftermath of the Mereth Aderthad.
A brief vignette.
[Artwork] Long-tressed Wingildi by Anérea
"... the long-tressed Wingildi ... spirits of the foam and the surf of ocean."
~ a painted sketch for Scribbles and Drabbles 2024.
[Writing] Seeking Sunlight by StarSpray
It was winter, and the sunlight that came into the caves was cold and pale, but Rían still sought it out, bundled up in all of the furs and blankets that they could give her.
[Writing] Primordial Daydream by Anérea
The Queen of Faery takes a little light trip down memory lane.
[Writing] Silence Under Starlight by StarSpray
In Valmar, after the Darkening and the Flight of the Noldor, Indis receives a visitor.
[Writing] Where Memory Walks by StarSpray
Neldoreth was both like and unlike the forests of Dior’s childhood and youth.
Tolkien Meta Week
Tolkien Meta Week is a week-long event to encourage fans to create nonfiction works related to Tolkien's world. Tolkien Meta Week will run from December 8-14, 2024 on Tumblr and here on the Silmarillion Writers' Guild archive. Read more ...
Festival of Lights Fest
This is a fun and low-key event meant to encourage works about or inspired by Hanukkah, running this year in conjunction with the Potluck Bingo challenge. Read more ...
Potluck Bingo
Help yourself to a collection of prompts on bingo boards designed by members and friends of the SWG. Read more ...
Experimental
Tolkien was an experimental writer, pushing the boundaries of literary and artistic convention. This month, we invite you to experiment with a new technique or approach to your fanworks. We’ve listed some prompts you can select from, but you’re also free to develop your own. Read more ...
Mapping Arda, Part III: The Second Age by Anérea, Varda delle Stelle
A series of articles featuring fan-made maps of all the lands of Arda. Part III explores the island of Númenor and mainland Middle-earth during the Second Age.
Doom and Ascent: The Argument of ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’ by Simon J. Cook
Simon reads 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' to conclude his account of the Anglo-Saxon tower of its allegory.
Why People Don't Comment: Data and History From the Tolkienfic Fandom by Dawn Walls-Thumma
A reworking of the 2018 article for Long Live Feedback that includes data from the 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, pointing to a lack of comments as related to skill, confidence, and community connection.
Part of our Themed Collection series for our newsletter, this collection features fiction, artwork, and essays that transcend the idea of Orcs as the enemy, instead considering their humanity.
Alliterative Verse for Arda by Rhunedhel
Part of our Themed Collection series for our newsletter, this collection features alliterative poems about Middle-earth.
[Writing] Homage to the Song of Durin by Flora-lass
Legolas is inspired by Gimli's song - and by Gimli himself.
[Writing] Partners in Craft by elennalore
Annatar realises that he might like Celebrimbor too much.
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
He and Diamond were visiting, though Pippin had been disappearing every afternoon, and taking Frodo and Elanor and most other lads and lasses in the neighborhood with him—though why they couldn’t use Pippin’s own pony, Sam couldn’t imagine.
Festival of Lights Fest 2024
This is a fun and low-key event meant to encourage works about or inspired by Hanukkah, running this year in conjunction with the Potluck Bingo challenge.
Fluffcember 2024
Fluffcember is a Tumblr event with daily fluffy prompts during the month of December.
Hidden Paths 2025
Hidden Paths, an event dedicated to the celebration of smaller Tolkien canons, has released their early prompts for the 2025 event.
Teitho November/December Contest: Healing
The theme for Teitho's November/December contest is healing.
Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2024
LotR SESA has been ongoing for twenty-one years and is running again this year as a prompt meme hosted on AO3 for all genres of Tolkien-based fanfiction.
Use the generator below to develop a random prompt for our Gnome Tome challenge! Click each button to roll a random prompt. Loathe your result? Click again to reroll as many times as you want.
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This is a splendid mix of…
This is a splendid mix of prompts!
170 of them! :D Thank you!
170 of them! :D Thank you!
I agree with you! This is a…
I agree with you! This is a great idea!
Excited about this. I…
Excited about this. I finally got my copy of NoMe earlier today. (I realize one does not need it to participate but am happy to finally feel like I can catch up!) I picked something related to Melian that I can use in a story. Hooking up my new monitor also today. So I feel like I just got rescued from a desert island.
Woohoo! I'm excited for you…
Woohoo! I'm excited for you and will be sooo glad to have you back! This weekend, I am tying up some loose ends, SWG-wise, that I started over the summer and had to let go once the busyness of moving + starting back to school set in, which got me wondering how you were doing, but knowing you were working on a small screen, I didn't want to bug you. And about an hour later, this comment appears! I promise give you some time to enjoy your new monitor and rejoin the world before I start pestering you about the bio again. :D I'm planning on writing Osse this month.
I have about 20 pages left in the NoMe and really need to do a more detailed reading again, taking better notes and doing more text-to-text comparison and all that ... but overall, I found it a really fun book. It felt totally different to me than the HoMe books, even though I saw it described in some places as a "13th HoMe"--perhaps what the HoMe might have looked like if CT wasn't so concerned with consistency.
I found the bit about Melian limiting herself to one child because she didn't want to lose more of her powers to the drain of pregnancy and childbirth extremely intriguing. A woman chooses career over children! It might be enough for me to forgive Tolkien for what was to come later in the book. ;)
I found the bit about Melian…
That is exactly what ensnared me and made me want to try to write a short something!
I could barely stand to be online on my tiny laptop. Now I can breath again. Basically, updating all my programs on big old computer and looking at the photos I took this summer. (I take photos so I can look at them on a big monitor and see what I have done and where I have been!) I bought a new keyboard too. That means I can type better also. (Not promising that will eliminate all typos!) I am getting ready to look at where I was on Maedhros when this all started!
Osse should be a terrific bio. Don't set the bar too high for me and make get writers block!
I am so happy you are in your new home! What a year. But it looks beautiful and pristine!
I suspected that's the bit…
I suspected that's the bit you found too! I've never been much interested in writing about Melian. That got me.
Enjoy the new computer! This summer, living at the dacha with Internet that was very spotty and stuck doing most of my work on a bed with a laptop (something I've never found comfortable, despite all the stock photos of smiling people happily tapping away on laptops amid their blanket nests), now having a desk again and a bookshelf and Internet that is on way more than it is off feels amazing, so I can only imagine how you feel. I'm psyched for you!
I'll keep the bar low for Osse. :D