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.
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.
[Writing] Unforgotten by daughterofshadows
Carrying the Silmaril for millennia has consequences.
[Series] The Light and the Sea (Steampunk Númenor) by AdmirableMonster
Largely focused on Númenor, its fall, and the aftermath, as seen from the perspective of two Mannish scientists, bit players in some ways, but who nonetheless cast their shadows across the history of Middle Earth.
[Writing] Reflections by AdmirableMonster
A story of three friends in Númenor, one of whom attracts the attention of the High Priest. What does friendship mean in the shadow of the Black Temple?
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
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…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song
Use a popular love song as a prompt to inspire a fanwork about romantic or sexual love. Read more ...
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]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.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
[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.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]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.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
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.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
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.
That is a momentous invitation!
And also an interesting look at Galadriel's visions.
It's hard to tell because in my writing so far I've bounced around a lot in her timeline, and I still need to tell the rest of the Valinorean part of it. But my version of her story has definite beats where she ratchets up her scrying ability later demonstrated to such effect in LotR, and I siezed the opportunity to make this be one of them. I needed an invitation story, and voila! It fell into my lap. I love the challenges; they can be really serendipitous.
Thanks for commenting!
I've usually envisioned Galadriel approaching Thingol and Melian, but this idea of them being invited appeals to me. I would imagine Melian also had the foresight to see what might come of their association.
I can guess at the bright figure behind dark shadows, but please tell me about the significance of "a white flower bobbing in a grove of holly"?
I like to think the strong connection that existed between Elwë and Nowë during the migration west meant that they would stay in touch a lot as soon as Elwë reappeared after the Nan Elmoth period. So there's a strong connection in my world between the Falathrim and the Doriathrim, independent of the pearl trade that is, and it flows from the top. I figure Nowë would write Elwë about his relative sailing over from Valinor, and how much he's teaching them, and so on. I see Elwë as being interested in this relative who can bring him news of the people he once led. He didn't invite Galadriel, although he will eventually be delighted to discover they are related and he will insist on meeting her brothers too.
Galadriel's visions are sometimes frustratingly metaphorical. A "white flower bobbing in a grove of holly" is niphredil dancing in the Forest of Region; does that help?
Thanks for commenting!
I enjoyed your detailed descriptions in this. Cirdan's jab at the Fëanoreans made me laugh. And the concept of Ulmo communicating the truth of matters to them resonates with me. Despite having spoken against bringing the Elves to Aman, he just can't help intervening in their lives, although more by providing knowledge so their decisions are informed than telling them what to do. (Although it's pretty clear what he would like to transpire!)
Thanks for commenting!
Yes, Ulmo's definitely helping to clear the path toward romance for those two by working via his famous healing waters. It was challenging but fun to imagine what that might have looked like, and then to describe it.
Straight from the Mereth Aderthad to a festival in Doriath? Party to party indeed!
(Though I'm more intrigued by Galadriel's visions.)
Yeah, it's a whirlwind social life! I haven't decided yet whether Alatáriel thinks she has time to go back to Eglarest and get the rest of her things before traipsing off to Doriath.
The visions are fun. I'm going to be paying some attention to the strand of her story about how she develops her scrying ability.
Thanks for commenting!
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