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!
New Challenge: Bollywood This month's challenge offers songs, films, and tropes from Bollywood, the world's largest film industry based out of India, as prompts for fanworks.
Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data provides insight into how comments benefit authors and which authors are most impacted by a lack of comments, with a digression on authors' perspectives one-click feedback like kudos.
A Sense of History: Passing Ships As Tolkien's characters in various texts gaze out to the sea, what do they see? What is brought by the ships coming out of the West?
Beta-Reader List Now Available The beta-reader list and profiles have been moved into our new system and are available again.
Nimruzimir, a natural philosopher recently out of his apprenticeship, hardly considers himself very important to anyone, least of all his colleagues. When his strange, prophetic fits bring him to the attention of the High Priest, however, he may find that his existence is less superfluous than…
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously…
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that authors view comments as driving their motivation to create fanfiction. However, perception of comments by authors is part of a larger shift in fandom around how and how often fans interact with each other.
The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that while most authors self-identify as taking their craft seriously, a growing subset of authors may be pushing that norm.
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.
So gathered they were to Bree, what lieutenants who could be spared, from their scattered watches west and east, for their chieftain had returned from his long sojourn in lands godless and mountains strange.
Aragorn returns from the South to tells his tales. Halbarad listens.
July challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted
The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for July has been posted to the Dreamwidth community. The thematic challenge is: original character or unnamed canon character; the formal challenge: fixed length of multiple of 50 words. New participants welcome.
Teitho June/July Challenge: Mentor
The June/July prompt for the Teitho challenge is "mentor" and invites fanworks about this relationship in Tolkien's works.
Scribbles & Drabbles 2024
A chill Tolkien event, where artists make art, and authors write little stories in response. Begins in June and ends in November.
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Comments
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.
I loved the feel of it, Himring. They would be like this, they would talk each other down. They would be a team - after all, there is no one else like them over there.
I'm amazed how much you've got going on in this short piece. The consideration you've given to the practicalities of their particular situation is brilliant - Elwing's birdlike shriek, Eärendil's frozen tongue, the calming and warming influence they exert on each other. The way in which she needs to return to being human, and in which he needs to find his way back into the world of speech. Following their exchange (and change) was quite exhilarating, and I suspect this fic is going to reverberate with me for quite a while.
I actually managed to leave out a line that had seemed important before I started writing. Now I wonder whether I should take that as a sign that it wasn't such a good idea after all or whether I was just too out of it, at the time of writing.
I love the way you make her a flapping cawing gull, and earendil like his ship's rigging- really effective imagery. I never liked Elwing so have no sympathy for her but the strangeness of their story is brought sharply into focus here- like a folktale. I like the way you point out that it is never resolved though and that hanging ending gives it a poignancy I don't find in Tolkien.
Thank you, ziggy! Good to hear the imagery works for you.
Whether one likes Elwing or not, her story starts with displacement and the loss of her parents and siblings and ends by taking her even farther away--a strange story, as you say.
I think Tolkien wants it to be a happy end, but it seems to me that he only achieves that by looking at it and describing it from a distance.
What a punch in a short piece! I'm completely in love with the way Elwing takes some time to transition from gull to woman and how Eärendil needs to unthaw from the deep space he has been exploring. You hint at so many things here, that I can hardly believe the story is less than 200 words...
I like this!It must be an alien change to have to cope with, from bird to woman and from stars to solid ground again. I like the way they support each other, and how they help put each other back together.
Comments
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.