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.
I hope she gets her walk along the beach in before it hits - and that the hatches are well and truly battened down, even if she is in a tower rather than a ship. (Although if it's out on a promontory like a lighthouse, it could quite possibly be battered by towering waves driven ashore by those winds!)
What a novel idea to bring the shipping forecast in here. Although I personally found the shipping forecast a little too mindless for my mind to perch on, the irony, that it's warning of hectic weather conditions and yet many people find listening to it relaxing enough to send them to sleep, appeals to me.
And I'm intrigued now to learn what this is a prologue to!
It is more or less the current winter weather around the North Sea (and I hope everyone out there stays safe!). It is not the most placid stretch of ocean even at the best of times.
Osse is clearly doing his thing here, without much restraint by Uinen. Some of the canonical descriptions of the sea up in Nevrast are pretty formidable, too...
I guess the gale that's headed Edhellos' way is actually the fall of the Falas in the attack after the Nirnaeth! Except that this fic isn't being at all cooperative. That is why the summary and tags are so cagey: I didn't want to put in anything that I might not get around to even hinting at, even by the amnesty deadline. It is also why I posted the prologue, to encourage myself a bit.
There may be some more literal rough weather in the fic, too, though!
Something that tickles me a bit, listening to the radio in bed, is the part where so often the voice goes: "Good, occasionally poor", with such calm conviction. It makes perfect sense for shipping, of course, but gains some kind of larger applicability somehow.
Oh my, I like the idea of the weather forecast being a metaphor of what's to come, emotionally as well as materially.
I hope this fic starts playing nicely with you, and if it'll be helpful, I'm very happy to be a sounding board.
The "good, occasionally poor" is just so... yes, it carries a special je ne sais quoi. I know saying things like this can be either a motivator or add pressure, so I hope it's the former: I can just see you entwining that like magic into your fic!
Also, I wasn't thinking of it before, but as soon as I saw your comment, I was suddenly reminded of your artwork showing the cliffs and the female figure in a strong wind!
Oh! You know, I've always wondered what it is that she's holding in her hands, and now I believe it's an elvish anemometer. (I mean, it's so obvious now: how else would they get the forecasts!?)
Y'know, there is something almost magical about this! The slight mundanity of the reporting but it just... you can feel the wind and smell the brine and see the waves crashing over the rocky shores...
It's like Shipping Forecasts: Osse's In A Mood
Are you familiar with the podcast 99% Invisible? He did an episode on this and I was honestly reading this in his voice! (which is very soothing if you are not familiar) Now I'm imagining Roman Mars as the voice of Cirdan and I doubt I can be convinced otherwise!
This is is a bit of a disaster zone (or feels like it, at the moment), as my brain refused to address the prompt fill straightforwardly and started haring off in different directions, including this prologue! If you want to get an idea where this is meant to go, there are some bits of WIP on my Dreamwidth journal under f-lock that might give you an idea... I'm sure it will come together eventually!
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.