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…
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! 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.
Elrond Week 2024
Elrond Week is a fandom event dedicated to Elrond Peredhel that will run from July 10th to July 16th on Tumblr.
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.
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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 was a beautiful piece! The imagery was excellent, I was having all kinds of visuals throughout, and of course you kept pulling on my emotions. What a fascinating perspective on the Bragollach (I assume)!
But the whips at their backs were worse than the bright-eyed creatures before them, and so onward they went.
This is so good.
One benefit - or perhaps downside, she was not quite certain yet - was the fires had cooked some of them nicely and when no whips drove them from behind, some stopped and feasted on the dead.
Yes, this is gruesome, as you warned, but what an interesting detail. The way she mentions it in such a removed way, as if this is just a practical thing to do, is raw and real. Well, I guess it's cooked... eerr.
Roots curled up and hindered her path, branches grasped at her, tearing what little remained of her shirt. The branches shuddered in anger at her passing, but still she pushed on.
This is some of my favourite imagery. The idea of Nan Elmoth fighting her, even after Eöl is gone... I actually felt bad for her, being rejected no matter where she went, but pushing on.
Thank you so much! I wasn't quite sure exactly where it was all going to go when I started, and the end I thought it might reach ended up not quite materializing, but I think the end it has works very well for the overall mood of it.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and of course I love seeing what caught your eye. 💖
A vivid group of ficlets, cuarthol, with wonderfully grim details that fit the prompts so nicely and illustrated the plight of the orcs, bred as war fodder. I appreciated poor Kurn's dilemma, caught between the hammer and the anvil (At her master’s hands, death may well become a mercy withheld) and nothing to look forward to but an occasional full belly (even though, yeah, the food), and successfully avoiding pain or death, all of which could happen in so many creative ways. I loved her theft of the lock of golden hair and found myself rooting for Kurn and hoping she could find a better life.
Once I got started it was easier and easier to see through her eyes, however much that view might be unpleasant at times. But I very much wanted her to be a sympathetic character - I absolutely have an "Orcs are people" agenda! lol
Actually, some 18+ months ago, I wouldn't read a story like this. I mean, I was like, "Orcs?!?! Who would like to read about those creatures?!" :)
What changed? A year and a half ago the idea come into my mind, for a novel that happens in Mordor and the characters are orcs, and the idea just didn't want to go away. So I started writing :))) (It is a big project, and real life is not merciful, so it will take a long time. But I *will* finish it. Currently I am doing the first editing.)
So, I dove deep into orcs' world, and I am very interested in everything about them. So, to find a good story about the orcs, is now a real pleasure for me :)
A long and winding road to freedom, but she made it, with a great deal of luck and stubbornness! And by the end, I'm really rooting for her to make it to those mountains and survive.
That prompt "Not a lot of options" describes her general situation so well, but she copes as best she can.
Great use of all those prompts and so many convincing details!
I was delighted by how well the prompts worked out in the end. There were a few I wasn't sure about but by the time I got to them it seemed to just flow. 😊
First being driven ahead of the whips and then the fairly visceral descriptions of marching over bodies and eating the cooked ones with relish should have been more off-putting, but Kum is quite a likable character. I hope she finds the freedom she seeks.
Perhaps on some level as readers we are capable of meeting a character where they are and going from there. I'm very glad you found her likable, and I, also, hope she finds what she seeks. <3
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.