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!
Mark Your Calendars! Mereth Aderthad 2025 The SWG will be hosting a hybrid event in Burlington, Vermont, and online on 19 July 2025. Mark your calendars and watch this space for calls for presenters and fanworks to be shared at the event!
Cultus Dispatches: Why People Don't Comment Many an author has stared at her clicks and her comment count and wondered: Why don't most readers comment? An update on a 2018 article for Long Live Feedback, this month's column uses Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data to reveal three big factors: skill, confidence, and community connections.
A Sense of History: Spiral Staircase The Anglo-Saxon poet looks on the sea from the highest point of the tower and then, without saying all that was seen, begins a descent. The way of the poem traces a spiral staircase. Ultimately, the plan of this staircase follows an Elvish design. The staircase is a picture of the descent of mortal generations in history, drawn from the perspective of those who do not die.
New Challenge: Idiomatic Our new challenge features prompts that are idioms from around the world.
Elrond hears a call in the waters of the Bruinen and follows it to the sea. There he finds someone whose memory he has long ago put behind him, but whom he knows at once — only Maglor does not know him. As he revisits his past with Maglor, both painful and fond, Elrond must also reckon with…
A short comic for the Sept-Oct 2024 Idiomatic challenge. The stifling environment of Eöl’s “dim halls, silent and secret” contrasts with young Maeglin’s idealized vision of Gondolin as a divine, sunlit paradise, home to the godlike Noldor.
A reworking of the 2018 article for Long Live Feedback that includes data from the 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, pointing to a lack of comments as related to skill, confidence, and community connection.
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…
The Lost Poems of Beren is a rare and mystical collection of long-forgotten poems, believed to be written by Beren himself during his timeless love affair with Lúthien Tinúviel. Discovered deep within the ruins of Eregion and painstakingly translated from the ancient Elvish…
When Doriath fell, Elwing was too young to remember the family she lost. When she wears the Nauglamir, the Silmaril, and the Ring of Barahir for the first time, she feels the burden of their legacy.
Current Challenge
Idiomatic
Raining cats and dogs. A short fuse. Up a creek without a paddle. A piece of cake. Sometimes colorful, sometimes puzzling without backstory or explanation, these delightful turns of phrase enrich our language—whichever one it happens to be. Prompts this month are idioms from languages around the world.
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Random Challenge
Sitcom
Create a fanwork using prompts from a bingo card of sitcom tropes. Read more ...
A reworking of the 2018 article for Long Live Feedback that includes data from the 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, pointing to a lack of comments as related to skill, confidence, and community connection.
The narrator of the Quenta Silmarillion uses death, grief, and mourning rituals to generate sympathy for or dehumanize groups of characters considered the Other.
The Anglo-Saxon poet looks on the sea from the highest point of the tower and then, without saying all that was seen, begins a descent. The way of the poem traces a spiral staircase. Ultimately, the plan of this staircase follows an Elvish design. The staircase is a picture of the descent of mortal generations in history, drawn from the perspective of those who do not die.
Part of our Themed Collection series for our newsletter, this collection features fanworks about the three ruling queens of Númenor: Tar-Ancalimë, Tar-Telperiën, and Tar-Vanimeldë.
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.
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.
Around the World and Web
Silm Smut Exchange 2024
The Silm Smut Exchange is a gift exchange for mature and explicit Silm fanworks (fic and art), hosted on AO3.
Whumptober 2024
Whumptober is a month-long multifandom creation challenge on Tumblr and AO3 with daily hurt/comfort prompts that focus on the darker side of the genre.
Aspec Arda Week 2024
This is a week-long Tumblr event to celebrate the interaction of the asexual and aromantic-spectrums and Tolkien’s Legendarium of Arda.
Silm Smut Week 2024
SilmSmutWeek is a fandom event celebrating sexually explicit fanworks based on the "The Silmarillion."
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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 don't agree with your particular view of Fëanor's character, which is fine, because there are as many Fëanors as there are writers who write him. :) Accepting his character as such, though, I think you do a great job with Nerdanel; she is strong and truly shows how she earned the epithet "the wise." I have always found her one of Tolkien's most fascinating characters for her independence and willfulness that sets her apart from most of JRRT's other female characters, and I appreciate that you've shown her so well as such here.
I believe there was more to him than that, or he would never have attracted Nerdanel in the first place. I intend to get some more exploration of his character done in later stories, but for the moment, I simply wanted to get into the reason why Nerdanel did not follow him to Middle-earth.
One of my biggest bugbears with Tolkien fanfiction is that female characters are often either marginalised, masculinised, patronised, victimised or Sues. I intend to write women as women, and make them both strong and interesting. I'm glad to know that in this case, I did. Thanks again for your review.
It is so nice to read how Nerdanel found some sort of peace up in the North. However, the story didn't click so well with me. Story internally it feels as if you want to tell something, but it doesn't come across or out that well, at least to me. An example is: how came her workshop there (in Formenos, a place where she never came since she did not follow her husband and sons), why is her drive to come there, her motivation, her conflict to overcome... it doesn't jump or gets to me. It is barely adressed, yet it is the cause of her being there. So my suggestion would be to work more on that, try to see why it is so utmost important she has to be there. What does she feel when she enters that room. To see is one thing, but does her heart lurch, does her hands get clammy. Those tiny details. At the end, I as a reader do not have the feeling that makes me go: well done Nerdanel, go you. But perhaps with some more attention, you can get more out of this bunny.
Actually, I need a beta to help me to advance as a writer: I've been stuck at this stage for a while. If you are willing to give me a hand, I'll be most grateful.
One thing I'm not sure of, since I don't have access to the HoME or other Tolkien works, apart from LOTR, The Silmarillion and The Hobbit, is the exact moment at which Nerdanel was estranged from Feanor. I believed it was the time he decided to withhold the Silmarils from the Valar, so that's what I went with. The idea was that the refusal was the final straw - there was no going back. Clarity on that would be most valuable. In the meantime, I'll do what I can to apply your concrit, for which I am thankful.
Nerdanel is hands-down my favorite female canon character in Tolkien's mythopoiea (and for the same reasons Dawn states) so I enjoyed seeing your contribution here. I'm going to weigh in as a follow-on to Dawn and Rhapy's comments, largely because their remarks reflect my impression of this story.
Like Dawn, I see Fëanor in a different light than you depict in this vignette, and likewise, I believe that's fine. One of the beauties of fan fiction is the divergent interpretations of various canon characters. However, and this gives a nod to what Rhapsody said, the characterizations for both Nerdanel and Fëanor, who comes across as unidimensional here, are key elements that need to be expanded. Your grammatical constructs are impeccable, and you have incorporated lovely descriptions of place, but a more defined sense of emotion and complexity of the narrator (as well as the fellow upon whom she reflects) would round this out.
With regard to canon female characters and OFCs, I believe you'll find a more mature approach here on the SWG than certain venues.
Yes, this is definitely an improvement! I have a better feel for Nerdanel's emotional conflict in this version which then ties into more effectively to her feelings toward Fëanor as she expressed these in the sculpture -- the image of the husband who spurned her (as opposed to the total man). I liked that in particular.
Fëanor's transition from kind and gentle pre-Melkor to overbearingly arrogant is still kind of a binary switch, but given that this is a short piece, I understand that delving into this would distract from the narrative.
A minor linguistic quibble:
I thought you were the finest Elf who ever lived - or ever would.
Given that there are no mortals dwelling in Aman (thus no need to distinguish between the races of Men and Elves), I'd be inclined to substitute man (lower case) for Elf. That's consistent with Tolkien's Quenya corpus in which there are definitions for man and woman, e.g. nér (p. neri) and nís (nissi), respectively.
I've cracked it? Thanks! This means a great deal to me! :D
I'll fix the niggle at once, but I must confess, the Fëanor I've read about in the Silmarillion comes across as a bit of a jerk. To me, the kindness and gentleness would have been a part of his courtship of Nerdanel, but I can't see any of it in Tolkien's text. That is not to say it isn't there - I just can't see it, personally. You've got my mind working, though. I feel obliged to explain what made him act the way he did, and to present a rounded version of him rather than the selfish, petulant monster he appears to be - at least to me. Perhaps in the course of this, I'll see the better person you all seem to believe he is for myself.
I find myself with mixed feelings about this. Your descriptions of the physical location are really lovely - you really give your reader a nice sense of the place and what it looks like and the atmosphere. I think what falls flat for me are the characters.
We really have no idea who Nerdanel's companion is past the fact that he's been appointed by her father to accompany her. I think it's for that reason that it just feels a bit odd to me that she confides in him. Even just a sentence or two explaining who he is - a cousin or an old friend or perhaps the equivalent of a classmate - would really help their interactions feel more realistic to me.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of Nerdanel - she seems strong and tough enough to leave Fëanor, but then it seems like she's reduced to a blushing, hand-wringing girl by her companion's criticism that he doesn't know why they're there and doesn't want to stay long enough for her own purposes.
Finally, I'm left a bit perplexed by the note. Fëanor would have no way of knowing if she'd ever see it, so why leave it? Why not send her a letter instead? It just doesn't make sense to me.
You're getting there! A couple of other nits and comments below:
This sentence...
The lady's eyes closed, and she wrung her hands. A blush bloomed on her pale angular cheeks as she admitted
...is problematic in terms of point of view. You've been aiming for tight third person throughout this fic, but the sentence above suddenly distances the reader from the narrator. "The lady" and "blush" pull me out of her head. I'd be inclinded to use "Her eyes" and "Her face warmed" because this is what she would feel.
Another linguistic quibble which I should have noted previously is that Fëanáro (Quenya) may be more accurate to this fic and time period (I'm assuming this is prior to the War of Wrath) than Fëanor which is a Sindarized form.
Finally, with regard to Fëanor's character and interpretation thereof, well, you've stumbled upon an archive which harbors a nest of Noldorin nationalists who have different takes on the famous smith :^D, but that's beyond the scope of these reviews. A more appropriate place fo such a discussion would be the SWG Yahoo group. Have you signed up for that? That would also be a good venue for nitpicking/critique.
With respect to when Feanor and Nerdanel became estranged (which you asked in reply to Rhapsy's comment), it's really a complicated answer. (I never have simple answers for anything! :) If you take the Silm as your "canon," then you're freer to do as you please in this regard. The HoMe provides some illumination on this point but, again, nothing definitive. I have an essay on Nerdanel up on References and will quote here the relevant bit since the whole piece is rather long:
J.R.R. Tolkien's early conception of Nerdanel also shares her father's loyalty to Aulë. While the published Silmarillion is vague as to which of Fëanor's "later deeds grieved her" (1) the "Legend of the Fate of Amrod" makes this a bit clearer. Here, it is said that "Fëanor became more and more fell and violent, and rebelled against the Valar" prior to their estrangement. Elucidation occurs in the next sentence as to which of these flaws--his violence or his rebellion against the Valar--served as the breaking point for Nerdanel. Here, it is said that Mahtan was warned not to take part in the Noldorin rebellion against the Valar; that Fëanor and "all [Mahtan]'s children" (which, presumably, includes Nerdanel as well as his grandsons) would go to their deaths in Beleriand. In the next sentence, Nerdanel leaves Fëanor to return to her father's house and, later, in when she confronts Fëanor prior to his departure for Araman, Fëanor accuses Nerdanel of being "cozened by Aulë" and deceived into deserting her husband and children (6). It is notable that, at no point in this document, is the pair's estrangement made contingent upon Fëanor's behavior towards Fingolfin in Tirion but rather focuses on their differing loyalties to and relationships with the Valar.
THANKS! I've not got the HoME, so I'll stick with the Silmarillion for now. Besides, if I did go with the version you have so kindly provided, I'd have to rewrite the story entirely. I guess I'll have to call it AU, and hope that's okay. When I get around to a more expanded version of Fëanor's story, I shall be sure to plunder the resources you have so kindly provided for us here. I'll certainly use the version of the story of Nerdanel's estrangement from her husband there. Believe me, your efforts have not been wasted.
For that same reason, I'll stick to the current spelling of Fëanor's name. I know it's academically correct to call him Fëanáro, but since the Silmarillion uses the Sindarin version all the way through, I reckon there's enough wiggle room to let me get away with it. I will definitely use the Quenya version in the story I write later on.
Thank you all for your concrit - I'm applying it now.
I'm glad that you found the essay useful, but please don't call your story AU on account of it--it's not! :) It follows the Silm perfectly well; I wouldn't have even provided this information if you hadn't asked in a reply to Rhapsody because, in truth, for me, stories aren't a test of how well you stick of obscure material from the books but how well you create your own world based on what you choose to see as the truth about that world. I don't believe in "canon" either, hence the sarcastic quotes all of the time. ;) At least not in the sense that there are a single correct set of rules that we must follow.
But this is getting way off-topic from your story now. I know that some archives can be rather picky on "canon" (there go the sarcastic quotes again! :) but we're not here, so how you choose to call your story really is up to you. I don't think it's AU; it's a Silmarillion-based story that takes one of many legitimate interpretations of Feanor and Nerdanel's estrangement.
I'm already using your essay for The Apprentice, a story about Feanaro's early life, and some questions have come up - I'll bother you about them elsewhere, but I've been really stimulated by these reviews. The plot bunnies are hard at work, and all of the concrit from this story is being applied there.
I like this take on Nerdanel. It's easy to write her as having been totally crushed by events, and while you can't dispute that's possible it's good to see her coming through with spirit and a sense of humour.
Although this is a very personal view I also relished the 'a face I want to slap' comment. If I made a list of Silm characters I would most like to slap Feanor would come top (and the competition is pretty stiff).
I'm learning to relax and be less formal in my writing - this time last year, I'd never have considered writing such a phrase, so it's a good indication of how far I've come. I'm working on a prequel of sorts, Mahtan's Apprentice, which will give the backstory to these events.
I like your Nerdanel! I like that though the story is definitely sad, it is also still funny, and Nerdanel's ability to see both Feanor and herself more clearly makes it more so. The "not your best work" note is so typical. Of course he would never admit why it irked him.
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.