Silmarillion Writers' Guild

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 January 2025. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

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.

This month we celebrate idioms from languages around the world. We will assign you a random idiom. (Some may not be originally English—for the non-English idioms, we will give a translation along with the original.) How you use this idiom to create a fanwork is entirely up to you. You can request your prompt by commenting here , ask on Tumblr, in the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, or by emailing the mods.

Many thanks to Zdenka for her clever work on this month's banner and stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 October 2024. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

The world's largest film industry isn't Hollywood, with its stars and scandals and endless sequels but Bollywood, the film industry that originated in Bombay in the late 19th century, more than a decade before Hollywood got its start. This month's challenge celebrates the lively dances, glittering costumes, towering emotions, and music you can't get out of your head of Bollywood.

Prompts this month come from Bollywood films and will be assigned by a moderator. You can request your prompt by commenting on this post, Tumblr, the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, or by emailing the mods. You can specify whether you'd like a song, film title, trope, or color palette—or you can let us surprise you! (If you choose a song, let us know if you'd like a song with an English translation available.) As always, you can use any aspect of your prompt to inspire your fanwork.

In some cases, we provide an intentionally brief and vague synopsis of a film or definition of a concept so that creators can get started with a prompt without having to do additional research. However, creators are welcome to dig deeper into a prompt if they want to and use what they learn to inspire a fanwork. For example, you might find that the film in your prompt has a clever subplot you will write a story around, the music video for a song has costumes you will include in a drawing, or a concept has aspects not included in our definition that you wish to use to make a playlist. While this is not required, you should feel free to dig as deeply into the prompts if you want and use anything you find!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 August 2024. In addition, July is Disability Pride Month, so we have a special stamp for fanworks that include characters with disabilities. Make sure it is clear from your summary or let a moderator know if you need this stamp. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

The Nirnaeth is fought by superheroes. Elven history becomes a telenovela. Túrin rages through the five acts of a Shakespearean tragedy. Tolkien characters fall into favorite films and shows, and classic literature mixes with zombies … or Balrogs. Elves in space and Maglor in history—Tolkien crossovers that are nearly genres in their own right.

Crossover fanworks have a vibrant history in the Tolkien fandom, and the crossroads are fertile ground for new and unexpected creative endeavors. This month's challenge asks participants to create a crossover fanwork. The second text and how exactly you cross the two is entirely up to you!

Crossovers are fanworks that use elements from two or more fandoms or texts to create a fanwork. Crossovers can use characters, settings, and other elements from the second text. In the Tolkien fanfiction fandom, crossovers have also included fanworks that combine Tolkien's world with folklore, myth, and real-world history. As always, we encourage participants to get creative in how they interpret this month's challenge.

You can find a list of crossover texts already added to our site here. If you need a tag added to the Crossover Text list, you can let us know now or request it when you post your fanwork using the Moderator Request field on the fanwork submission form.

Note that, on the SWG, Silmarillion-based fanworks that use The Rings of Power show (and other media adaptations) are considered crossovers. Likewise, fanworks that cross The Silmarillion with any of Tolkien's non-Middle-earth works are counted as crossovers.

Many thanks to Independence1776 for this month's lovely banner and stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 June 2024. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Ah, 2019. That hopeful year when we all looked forward to a second go at the Roaring Twenties, before 2020 sent us all into lockdown to doom-scroll news about covid outbreaks, rising fascism and nationalism across the globe, increasingly terrifying climate change, and ever-more-bizarre (and believed) disinformation.

For this challenge, we're going to do our best to put all of that our of our minds for a grand episode of escapism to the Roaring Twenties with a bingo challenge. After all, Tolkien defended escapism and used his Roaring Twenties to do major reworking on the tale of Beren and Lúthien, an escapist text worthy of the optimism of the 1920s if ever there was one. Bingo cards are loaded with prompts from the 1920s, and you may pick your card(s), and use one prompt, complete rows or lines on the cards, or fill an entire card. We do not call numbers as part of regular bingo challenges, so choose the prompts you want and skip the ones you don't. If you choose multiple prompts, you can incorporate them into one or multiple fanworks.

Remember that if you need assistance in putting together rows or other patterns using the text prompts, you can contact the mods and we're happy to help.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 September 2023. For complete challenge guidelines, as well as the bingo boards, see the Challenges page on our website.

Many thanks to Grundy for designing this month's bingo cards, banner, and stamps!

Sherlock Holmes. Miss Marple. Lieutenant Columbo. Kurt Wallander. Benoit Blanc. Your preferred sleuth may vary, but there’s nothing like a good whodunnit. From the most arcane puzzle to the easiest open and shut case, all mystery novels require certain basic elements. This month’s challenge is a Matryoshka that presents you with the building blocks of a mystery novel. When requesting your prompts, make sure to specify the difficulty level you would like: Beginner (2 prompts), Easy (3 prompts), Medium (5 prompts), or Difficult (7 prompts). Contact the mods to request a prompt set or sets.

While the prompts are elements of a mystery, your fanwork does not need to be a mystery—use the prompts as you see fit. As June is Pride month, we have a special stamp for fanworks featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 July 2023. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Many thanks to Varda delle Stelle for this month's lovely set of stamps!