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.
This is a hefty piece of work! (I am nearly as out of my depth as Aule was about consider living bodies!) I don't know where to start. I enjoyed it very much. Aule's investment in the formation of the core of the earth and creation of its rocks, minerals, volcanoes, etc. is fascinating and straining my pitiful little mind which runs along the lines of imagining and creating character-driven fiction, all about people talking and interacting. And yet you are able to embody Aule with ambition, desire, curiosity, and appetite--all of those same impulses that I think so much about in my writing.
I like the use of the name Aa8;ūlēz. Has an authentic ring. Also like the encounter with Mairon and how Aule is comfortable with rocks but insecure with living organisms. The concepts are beautifully dealt with. Nice job.
I like my Ainur unearthly and not-human on principle, so thank you. Gods should always be a little bit terrifying. I had no idea how to pronounce Aule's Valarin name, but I found a sound sample pronunciation here: https://www.jrrvf.com/glaemscrafu/english/nomsvalarins.html
This was terrific! So strange and yet it made perfect sense. The juxtaposition of the rocks and fire of Aule's form and the fragile and wet bodies of the Maiar was so well done, just how it feels when you cut your skin on a sharp piece of stone. Thank you for sharing this!
It is quite worrying to think of those early experiments of Sauron's!
Although it makes sense that Aule needed some input when creating the dwarves, because for what seems to be a first attempt, they turn out surprisingly successful, don't they?
Oooh, excellent. You've done a fantastic job at depicting the alienness - and the limitations, a topic dear to my heart! - of the Ainur, especially of Aulë, and you've created an atmosphere that is at once primeval and beyond human comprehension, and yet readable for human readers. I'm intrigued by the idea that Aulë would have turned to some of his Maiar for help. It's a little ironic that he reprimanded Mairon for his (however horrific) experiments when we know that soon after, Eru Himself will have a word or two to say about the creation of the Dwarves... I love how you dealt with the matter of their pre-Quenya names, BTW! There seems to be a little glitch, though; on my computer, at least, Aȝūlēz appears as Aa8;ūlēz (that is, with letters and numbers where the yogh should be), which makes the reading kind of awkward! Not sure whether other people have the same problem, and of course it has no bearing on the quality of your writing!
Great depiction of Aulë: superhuman, inhuman, walking on the tightrope. Sauron is pretty scary. It's not surprising that he (and Saruman) would eventually choose the Dark Side!
Wonderful! I love how Aulë, despite being a Vala, is still learning about Arda and about how he might create things within it. (And the way that he thinks about things!) Your use of names is very deft, it really anchors the story in the time before the Valar had encountered the Children.
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.