SWG News

SWG Site Reopening: Official Ribbon-Cutting Party!

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 17 April 2021. Last updated on 24 April 2021.

We are thrilled to announce the completion of our new website--the first step forward in building a more vibrant and inclusive community for Tolkien fans to enjoy. In celebration of this watershed moment for our group, we will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 24 and 25, featuring a live reading and instadrabbling session! There will be two sessions, timed to welcome as many of our members from around the world as we can.

Saturday, April 24, 23:00/11PM UTC (find this in my timezone)
Sunday, April 25, 15:00/3PM UTC (find this in my timezone)

The celebration will be held on the SWG's Discord server. (Not a member of our Discord server but want to join? See below!)

Live Reading

We'll kick off the event with a tribute and toast to the new site, then hand the mic to our members to share readings of ficlets, poems, and excerpts from Tolkien to mark the occasion.

• If you're reading a poem or ficlet, please read only a work you have authored.

• Selections should focus on the broad themes of renewal and looking toward the future.

• Please choose a selection that can be read in five minutes or less.

If you want to read, complete this form. You can read at one or both sessions. At this time, we're asking for one selection per reader, but if you'd be interested in reading more, let us know in the Notes field on the form. If we have room, we will add you in! Once you've signed up, you'll hear from a moderator within the next week to confirm your reading time.

Just want to listen in? Listeners are more than welcome! Join our Discord server or look for a link on the date of the event to join in. We will also record the reading* so that those unable to attend can listen later.

* Participants can opt out of the recording; just check the appropriate box on the form above.

Instadrabbling

Instadrabbling is a long-running Tolkien fanfiction tradition carried on for at least the better part of two decades. Traditionally, a group gathers on a chat server, one participant offers four words chosen at random from the closest book at hand, and all participants create a perfect drabble using those four words, post their work, and squee and celebrate!

For this event, in an effort to welcome as many participants as we can, our expectations are considerably looser. Prompts will focus on the theme of renewal. Prompts can be anything at all: a quote, an image, a video clip, a song, a passage from Tolkien ... even the traditional four-word prompt! Participants are welcome to bring a prompt or simply create using the prompts offered by others.

All fanworks are welcome. While the tradition is a perfect 100-word drabble, if that's too short? (Too long??) Write something else! Write a poem or a short story. Don't write? Do a sketch using the prompts, work on a cosplay project, make a playlist--any and all creativity is welcome!

Participants are also welcome who don't want to create fanworks of their own but want to enjoy those made by others and join in the conversation. Join our Discord server or look for a link on the date of the event to join in.

How to Join Our Discord Server

If you're an SWG member, log in and scroll to the bottom of the site, where you'll find a link to our Discord server. If you're not a member of our site yet (do you want to be??), contact our mod team, and we'll send you an invite.

We'll also post invite links on our site and social media that can be used at the time of the events to join in.

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Ribbon image credit: Brett Croft (modified by Dawn Felagund under license terms)

New Challenge: Queens of the Quill

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 14 April 2021. Last updated on 15 May 2021.

April is poetry month and Legendarium Ladies April, so in the spirit of both, this month's prompts will be poems by women writers. If you'd like to receive a prompt for this month's challenge, comment on our Dreamwidth, comment on our LiveJournal, send us an ask on Tumblr, or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. Some of our poetic prompts are about heavier topics. If you'd rather avoid these (or any particular topic), just let us know in your request!

In honor of Legendarium Ladies April, we encourage participants to combine our challenge with LLA prompts, and we will have a special stamp for fanworks that do. Please make sure your story notes indicate the LLA prompt(s) you completed for your fanwork if you want to receive this stamp. You may use any past LLA prompts.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 10 May 2021. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Character of the Month: Galdor of Gondolin

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 3 April 2021. Last updated on 12 May 2021.

Galdor of the Tree appears in The Book of Lost Tales, in the story of the Fall of Gondolin, a notable supporting character in this central tale of the legendarium. This month's biography by Oshun explores the character of Galdor of the Tree, one of the lords of Gondolin beloved by fans. Read Galdor of Gondolin's biography here.

And don't miss our award-winning character biography collection here!

[Image Credit]

What's New? What's Different? A Tour of Our New Site

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 3 April 2021. Last updated on 13 May 2021.

It was a year and a half ago, the first day back to school after summer break for me, when I came home to discover that our web host had upgraded CPanel, the interface we use to make updates to the site. I knew this update was coming and was looking forward to upgrading to the more modern system. What I didn't expect was that the eFiction software we'd relied on for so long--and which had stopped being developed in 2015--had reached the point where it was no longer compatible with the new system.

The problems we discovered on the archive that day were fixable, but it was also clear that we faced a choice: We could accept that the site had reached its end and let it slowly die as further updates broke more and more of our code, or we could rebuild the site using software that was keeping up with these changes.

The site you're on now is proof of our choice. We researched options and eventually chose Drupal as our new software. Not only was it highly customizable and very flexible in what it allowed us to build, it is being actively developed and supported by a large open-source community, so it should serve us for many years to come. In August 2020, Russandol and I began the process of rebuilding the site--and you're on it now!

Our objective was to bring over the features we've always enjoyed on the eFiction site while also structuring the site so that we could expand and add new features over time. We also addressed some of the inconsistencies and difficulties that came with running essentially two sites side by side: the eFiction archive for your fanworks and a hand-coded website for everything else. While our main goal was making sure that the functionality you had on your account with eFiction carried over onto the new site, there were times when adding something new did not take much extra effort, so we went for it. As a result, you'll find some new goodies to enjoy right now, as well as a few areas that, while they perform the same function as eFiction, look and act a little different than what you may be used to.

In the weeks to come, we'll be doing periodic "tours" of specific areas of the site with videos and more information on how to use the changed and new features.

What's New?

You can tag relationships in your fanworks and search for fanworks tagged with those relationships. Our former moderator Rhapsody, who was so instrumental in building the SWG, always wanted to customize eFiction to add a field where creators could list relationships that appear in their fanworks. For years, she worked on it and was very close to success. As we lost Rhapsody to cancer this past October, it seems fitting that we are finally able to offer this feature that she worked so hard to offer.

You can now add both the major relationships that form the crux of your fanwork and the minor relationships that occur in the background of the main plot. See the What's Changed? section below for more on major versus minor relationships and characters!

A tip: To make it easiest to find the relationship you want in the list, we've listed the canon characters in that relationship in alphabetical order.

You have many more options in your member profile! If you go to your profile page, you will see a row of tabs at the top with lots of new options that we didn't have on the old site. Do you prefer to be called by something other than your username? Have preferred pronouns? Tell us here! You can now upload a user picture as well, which will show alongside your comments and on your profile. Click the Member Profile tab to add these or to update your bio.

A tip: To change information that doesn't appear on your profile--your password, your comment notification preferences, your contact preferences, and your username--click Edit. Yes, you can change your own username now!

There is also a tab called Beta Profile. If you'd like to be added to the list of beta readers on our site, you can fill out this profile so that other SWG members can find you. Which brings me to ...

There is now a directory of beta readers. Looking for someone to help you perfect your fanwork? We now have a searchable beta directory of SWG members who have filled out a beta profile. Each profile lists the areas where the beta works best, as well as areas on which they prefer not to work. You can contact them right from the page to tell them more about your project.

There are threaded comments on fanworks! You're no longer stuck with just a comment and a reply. Want to reply to a reply? Or a reply to a reply of a reply? Or to someone's else's comment? Or even (wait for it) ... someone else's reply? You can do all of those things now.

You can receive email updates on fanworks, creators, and tags you want to follow. Use the Follow links you'll find on fanworks, user profiles, and tag pages to receive email notifications when a new work is added or updated.

Also, Bookmarks are now a thing. No more searching to find that fanwork you wanted to read but forgot the title of. Click the Bookmark link on any fanwork to add it to a private list of fanworks to check out later.

If you want constructive criticism on your fanwork, you can specify the areas where you want concrit on the fanwork. Probably our biggest policy change between the old site and the new is that our Site Etiquette now allows constructive criticism in comments only when the creator of the fanwork has requested it. To facilitate this change, you'll now see a checklist when you add a new fanwork called "Constructive Criticism Preferences." If you want to hear critiques from readers, simply check off the areas where you're interested in receiving feedback. You can go back and change or remove these requests at any time by editing the fanwork.

A tip: If you like your readers to point out typos and other small errors in your comments, make sure you select "Spelling, Grammar, and Mechanics" on the checklist. Remember that you can always use the fanwork notes as well to provide more information to your readers about concrit and other feedback.

You can save drafts of fanworks. Simply un-check the Publish box at the bottom of the Add New Fanwork form to remove the fanwork from the public archive. Want to release all the chapters of your choose-your-own-adventure novel at once? Want to post now but publish later in the week? Need to take a fanwork down to do some revisions? The ability to unpublish a fanwork serves well in a variety of scenarios.

What's Different?

Audio is way easier, and you can upload your own audio files. No more contacting the mods to upload an MP3 for you. Posting a podcast, music, podfic, or any other audio is now just as easy as posting a story.

Speaking of ... audio, references, and series are treated the same as written fanworks. All will show up in searches. All can be favorited, followed, and bookmarked. All live side-by-side on the site, not in separate sections, some of which are easier to access than others. This is the first step toward recognizing all fanworks as equally valid.

You can now add major and minor characters and relationships. If you have a character or relationship that does not form the focus or drive your fanwork forward, no more angsting over whether to include them as a character. There are now fields for major and minor characters and relationships. While these characters and relationships won't appear in the list of fanworks, they will show up in search results for that character and relationship.

Coauthors (now called co-creators) are no longer granted automatic edit access to fanworks. You will set this up separately ... and you can grant any SWG member--not just co-creators--edit access to your work, so if you want a friend to be able to post your next chapter while you're on vacation, you can now grant that privilege.

What to Do If You Have a Question or Find Something That Doesn't Work?

Our mods can be reached through our contact form or at our regular email address, moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. Please don't be shy! Transitioning to a new site will be bumpy at times, and we want to help you learn to love our new site as much as we've come to love it.

New Challenge: Words of Wit and Whimsy

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 15 March 2021. Last updated on 14 April 2021.

We are excited to present our newest challenge for the month of March!

J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t just the creator of Middle-earth. He was also a scholar of philology. One of his first jobs was with the Oxford English Dictionary, where he was assigned a welter of words beginning with W. In this month’s challenge, we’re presenting you a bingo card with Prof. Tolkien’s W words we hope will inspire a wealth of wonder, wit, worldbuilding, and general whimsy.

You are free to work in as many of the prompts as you wish in your creation. Responses do not have to attempt to complete a row or another bingo pattern--using even just one prompts is fine! However, as in years past, there will be special stamps for completed rows or card blackouts, so please include in your story notes if you complete a row or the entire card (or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org to let us know you need those stamps.) In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 10 April 2021. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.