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: Scavenger Hunt In this Matryoshka-with-a-twist, you will solve clues that point you to the challenge prompts.
Sign-Up to Hand Out Scavenger Hunt Prompts Our May challenge will be a Matryoshka built around a scavenger hunt. If you'd like to hand out prompts (and receive comments on your work for doing so!), you can sign up to do so.
New Challenge: Everyman Create a fanwork about an ordinary character in the legendarium using a quote about an unnamed character as inspiration.
Cultus Dispatches: Fanworks, AI, and Resistance by Dawn and Grundy The fan studies column Cultus Dispatches returns with a history of how Tolkien fanworks fandom has reacted and resisted generative AI by drawing strong boundaries in a way that is not typical for the fandom.
Erestor lay up against a tree, brown washed to black in the wet of the snow. The black disc of the new moon sailed across the dark sky. Erestor wished it were gone. He had no need to look into dark eyes any longer.
He was dying.
(AKA Erestor unwittingly travels back in time to the…
In his old age, Isildur's former esquire Ruinamacil, known to later histories only as Ohtar, writes his own account of his escape from the ambush at Gladden Fields and journey to Imladris, and the history of his friend whom Isildur ordered to flee with him.
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…
Expanding on my 2018 article "Why People Don't Comment," comment data from the SWG underscores community as an essential component to a robust commenting culture.
Eventually they arrived, and Echeleb and Dernodhos ushered Anniavas in. Dernodhos found an old thin pallet somewhere and unrolled it on the floor, made him lie down with Limral—who had immediately perked up and started sniffing the air—and went and found them a heavy piece of…
Rescued from a brutal Angband hunt, an ex-thrall with a strange and powerful artifact embedded in his spine is brought to Himring, for it is one of the only places in Beleriand which welcomes such folk. Though he has no memories of his life before, Anniavas slowly becomes accustomed to his new…
Expanding on my 2018 article "Why People Don't Comment," comment data from the SWG underscores community as an essential component to a robust commenting culture.
By definition, fanworks fandom does not draw a lot of boundaries, but community archives and events have taken a strong stance against AI-generated fanworks due to ethical considerations and member input.
In a book as full of death as the Quenta Silmarillion, grief and mourning are surprisingly absent. The characters who receive grief and mourning—and those who don't—appear to do so due to narrative bias. Grief and mourning (or a lack of them) serve to draw attention toward and away from objectionable actions committed by characters.
Bilbo, the strange old hobbit with the wandering feet, senses something special in young Frodo the first time he sees the lad; as they become close, they find in each other a cameraderie not well understood by other hobbits. Five poignant moments between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins over the course…
Scribbles and Drabbles 2026
Scribbles & Drabbles is a fic and art exchange with a minimum word count of 100 words.
Russingon Week 2026
A Tumblr week event focusing on the relationship between Maedhros and Fingon.
Boromir Week 2026
If you are Boromir girlies/gents/stans/simps, then this event is for you! So, come join us, and bring your fanfiction, art, gifs, moodboards, and headcanons that highlight everything you love about our Captain of Gondor!
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.
Lovely poem! I can imagine this as a part of a Numenorean history.
(Completely spurious question: how did you get the format to work? I can't seem to get even simple line-spacing right, even with HTML, and as for indentation *shudders*. I'm curious as to how you've managed to fix the formatting, and completely in awe of your skils!)
Thank you, Wavesinger! I'm glad you liked it! About the formatting, this is the only archive where I didn't do anything more than copy-paste from Word--no skill involved. Everywhere else I posted I either fiddled with it until I gave up, or just ... gave up without fiddling!
This is fantastic, DW! I can "hear" the Middle-earth equivalent of a skäld reciting these verses, and the entirety of the poem is very immersive, eliciting that frisson when you feel like you've entered another time and place, e.g., in a smoky hall of the Men of Westernesse in the Angle, for example, during their waning years in the Third Age. Hence, very Tolkienian!
Thank you, Pandë! I'm so glad it works--that was exactly my intention! In my framework of "Sam's Book of Tales", he collected it either in Rohan, as a tale brought south, and handed down, or in some little village he passed through during his travels.
It certainly did not appear the way the bards of old are said to have composed, extemporaneously, but little by little, a couple words at a time over several months. So that part was not very Tolkien-like, as he seems to have been much more like those old bards in his abilities! I'm thinking of his "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son" (for example), the short play in alliterative verse, which he apparently just dashed off!
This came out wonderfully well. I'm not familiar with this poetic format but it looks and sounds great, and that could not have been an easy task to accomplish. I'm a sucker for dragon stories and I could picture this ancient dragon collecting and guarding her treasure over time too vast to comprehend, then having to start all over again. I especially like the last line that she might still be out there somewhere sleeping on her hoard, ready to rise again to protect it.
Thanks so much! You are right, I found this difficult and time-consuming. Although I am fairly pleased with the result (except I wish it were longer!), I think I'll stick with prose, and maybe a little rhyming verse.
I have wanted to add a dragon story for the longest time (I love dragons too, as you know), and this style seemed perfectly apt for one. Also, I didn't want to make her an out-and-out villain, but for her to maaaaybe still be hibernating with her treasure in some remote snowy mountain.
Comments on Dragon's Journeys
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.