When we first floated the idea for a Tolkien Fan Fiction award, none of us thought it would become as popular as it has—and we certainly weren’t expecting it in the first year. We thought we’d get, oh, three or four entries, and then we’d all feel like idiots for even considering this. Well, we were wrong. And that’s good.
The authors who put their best words forward have no idea just how competitive the categories can be. In most of the categories I handled, there were over 50 entries. That may not sound like many, until you realize that there were over 50 full-length novels entered. That’s 50 novels that I needed to read, comment on, and score—all before category judges saw the finalists.
Unfortunately, we have a limit on the number of finalists. In most of my categories, there could easily have been twice as many finalists, and I suspect that the other admins saw the same thing. There is a tremendous amount of talent out there, and unfortunately some hard calls had to be made.
Khazar’s Lever of Doom, or How to Avoid Having Your
Story Dropped Into the Pit of Rejection and Despair
Alongside my chair is the Lever of Doom. When pulled, it drops the unfortunate story into the Pit of Rejection, from which it has no chance of recovery. It’s quite easy to avoid the Lever of Doom. Honest.
Most of the big archives—Henneth Annun, for example—offer a list of “betas,” people who will help out an author. If everything had been run past beta readers, there would have been a whole lot less of the following:
Misspelled character names : It’s bad enough when you mess up a canonical name. But when you misspell the name of your own OC?
I can’t be bothered: As in, I can’t be bothered to check and see if the descriptions I give the characters match the canonical one. So what if Galadriel is blond? I want her to be a redhead, so there!
The long goodbye: The rules state, NO WIP. That means, No Works-In-Progress. At all. Even yours.
Spellcheck idiocy: As in, “from” and “form”. ALWAYS check this before submission. I’ll let a couple of these slide. After that, it’s clear that the author doesn’t care enough to check. And if the author doesn’t care, why should I?
Fancy, calligraphic fonts: They look great on a greeting card. They’re wonderful for the title. But they are very hard to read, especially when the story runs for pages. And with this, we also have:
Color my world: Pink text on a yellow background? Why? WHY??
Your submission should be dark color, light background. And not all combinations are created equal. White text superimposed over artwork is difficult to read. So is yellow on black. There’s a reason that black on white is the standard.
Art for art’s sake: Art is wonderful. It doesn’t belong in a writing contest. Illustrations do not garner extra points for you. Trust me.
Scripted: Scripts are not acceptable. At all. Why? Two reasons. First, they require a very specific set of skills to do well. Secondly, they tend to be an excuse for a lazy writer to avoid having to learn how to handle narrative.
Voices: One of the biggest problems involves Voice. Gandalf and Sam do not speak alike; it follows that they do not think alike. Yet many authors treat the characters as though they were interchangeable, and they are not. This tendency was especially pronounced with the Hobbits.
This is the end: A story should have a beginning, a middle, and—there’s another part—wait—don’t tell me—an end. Right? Far too many stories just petered out, or worse, simply stopped; in one case it was almost like the author had simply run out of room on the screen. The ending is the last impression a reader takes away. If it is haphazard--or worse-- then the whole story becomes an exercise in futility.
Where are we?: I thought that we were in Middle-Earth. So why are there references to modern terms? Why does Frodo need his “space”? Anachronisms kill the flow of a story even faster than Legolas kills orcs.
Viewmaster: Point-of-view is the single most difficult thing for an author to master. Most people use what is called the third person omniscient POV: the story is seen through the eyes of several characters, and there is an omniscient narrator to describe everything. (Tolkien used this POV.) The trickiest ones are first person POV, where everything is described by the character: “I saw Legolas shoot five orcs.” It is hard to write in first-person. The other tricky one is third person POV. Here the only thing that is described is what the character knows: “He saw the slim blonde man shooting at some snarling creatures.” The difference is subtle, but important.
Same time, same place: We’ve seen the films, and read the books. So why retell the story we already know and love? There must be other times that Eomer killed orcs, not just the day he met up with Aragorn , Legolas & Gimli. What does he normally do? That’s the story I want to read.
Say what? English grammar and spelling are tricky. OK, chaotic. But most word processors have grammar/spell checkers. Use them.
As you can see, it’s easy to avoid the Pit of Rejection and Despair. All you have to do is care enough to check, and recheck, before submitting an entry. Because, well, let’s face it: if the author doesn’t care, why should anyone else?
What do you think of when you hear those words? Indiana Jones? Tarzan? Hunting orcs? Me too.
This is where you’d expect to find the page-turners, the stories that are heavy on the violence and light on the navel-gazing. And there were quite a few of those entered.
This was the only one of my categories with a unanimous winner.
There were some worthy runners-up, too; one of the very few dwarf-centric stories was here, along with some fine elf-centric pieces.
Most authors have done their homework—they know what you can, and can’t, do with a sword or bow. There were fewer horse-related errors than I expected to see, which is also good. Those little details are what make an action story believable.
The single biggest problem in this category was the presence of Frodo-centric stories.
Frodo would get stabbed/shot/burned/frozen/crushed/ drowned/bitten/ in the first part, and then the rest of the story centered on nursing him along. Most of these were really Hurt-Comfort stories; there wasn’t enough action to justify their entry here. The very best of these contained anachronisms so jarring that it destroyed the entire mood of the piece. Those anachronisms cost it a place in the finals.
Many stories in this category also suffered from inadequate endings. Some just ended; it was frustrating to be reading a wonderful story, only to have it simply—end. At least one looked like it ended because the author had run out of room.
I would like to see more stories based away from the ring quest; there is so much history in Middle-Earth, it seems a shame to not explore it further.
Our winner was scholarly without being pedantic, well-written without being verbose, and a solid example of what an essay can, and should, be. The runner-up illuminated an often-overlooked fact about Tolkien: he wasn’t writing in a vacuum, as many people seem to think. He was influenced by the leading writers and thinkers of the day, and this fine essay serves as a reminder of that.
Most of the essays were well-written. There was some confusion about what makes an essay. The best way to describe it would be as a factual, non-fiction work, designed to illustrate some facet of Tolkien’s creation. It should have references—what format is chosen is unimportant—and it should have a clear argument.
This is a category that I expect will grow, because more people are beginning to understand that there is considerably more to Tolkien than pretty Elves and cute Hobbits.
Tolkien created one Fellowship. The winner and runner-up in this category were both beautifully written, carefully crafted pieces that illuminated the personalities of members of that Fellowship.
This was another category that had too many Hurt-Comfort Frodo stories. The best of these was marred by grammatical errors that made it incoherent. And it was too bad, because the story was interesting—when it could be understood.
Here we have a category that should offer endless possibilities. How long are they together? Where do they go? Yet the same scenes were rewritten endlessly—Amon Hen, Moria, Imladris, Rohan. Usually the rewrites were based on the film, with dialogue taken directly from the screenplay.
That’s not interesting. We already know how those scenes play out. What about other scenes? Does Aragorn take anyone hunting? Where do they get all that sausage, anyway? Do they meet a lone farmer, or a band of elves, or more rangers? Those are the stories that should be told.
What is comedy? Any genre that can be home to both Shakespeare and the Three Stooges is bound to be subjective, at best.
This was probably the single most competitive category I saw. Everything from poetry to novels, all in the same massive collection of works. Every style imaginable, every character ever dreamed of, every type of humor, was present. And most of it was funny.
How tough was this category? After eliminating the ones that were unsuitable, almost half the works remained. That’s how deep the quality was. That meant going back through, reading—and rereading—until a reasonable number of stories survived. And there were some tough calls. I tried to pick the widest variety of styles, without sacrificing overall quality.
Having said all that, the ultimate winner had everything going for it. It’s funny, it’s in character, it’s well-written. And it’s not a “funny once”, a story that’s fun the first time, but tedious the second time around.
The runner-up had the most accurate voices of the entire category. Everyone sounds like themselves. That may seem obvious, but maintaining a character in voice is one of the single most difficult things for an author to master. Its biggest problem was a weak ending.
This category also had the biggest heartbreak. There was one story that was hilarious, and it would have made the finals—and quite possibly won. What was wrong? Well, it was so badly formatted that it was difficult to read. The grammar was atrocious—even allowing for a comic effect. Its lack of coherence undermined some of the funnier parts.
There were some trends that need mentioning. Homosexuality is not inherently funny. Neither are group sex, drugs, drunkenness, pedophilia, cross-dressing or rape. Every one of these was incorporated into something that someone thought was funny. They’re not.
It takes a tremendous amount of dedication to begin a novel. It takes an even greater amount to finish one.
This was a close one. The ultimate winner had the best example of first-person POV I have seen in quite some time. The story we know wasn’t endlessly retold, the characters were sharply drawn, and everyone was in voice. This is a remarkable achievement.
Runner-up was a tie. And the two are about as different as it is possible to get. One was a powerful rewrite of a classic Tolkien love story. It had some rough spots, but it also had some passages of stunningly lyrical beauty.
The other runner-up was also a finalist in Humor. This was one of the funniest things entered; and amazingly enough, it kept up its spirit and comedy to the end. With a cast of characters that has to be seen to be believed, a love story that proves opposites attract, and a wonderfully silly approach, this is one to remember.
Almost a third of the entries were WIP. The rules say, quite clearly, that Works in Progress are not eligible. For some reason, people seemed to think that they were exempt from this rule. Umm, no. There are too many people who turned in finished works to consider an unfinished work for a prize.
Poetry and song play powerful roles in Tolkien’s works. How many stories are told as poems? Gil-Galad? The ring rhyme? There’s too many to name.
Poetry was also extremely competitive. Over 50 poems were entered. They ranged from delicate haiku to complex rhyme schemes, from free-verse to sonnets. And most of them were very good. Again, over half of them survived the initial cut. It took a great deal of careful culling to pare it down.
The ultimate winner involves an internal rhyme scheme that Tolkien himself would be likely to use. Our runner-up used a more common form, but was every bit as lyrical and effective.
Poetry poses some unique problems. One of the finest of the entries was eliminated because, outside of the title, there was nothing which clearly set it in Middle-Earth. It
was lovely, yes, but it was also generic. A gorgeous haiku was eliminated when the author would not return emails. Some poets entered poem cycles, but refused to choose which individual piece they wanted considered for awards.
Poetry also had the largest age range among the authors. All finalists were chosen for quality. Amazingly, two young poets made the finals. The age of the authors was not known to us until after the poems had been judged. They should take pride in the fact that they were good enough to reach the finals while competing on equal footing with more experienced poets.
I think that poetry probably should be divided into three separate categories: Short form(haiku, sextets), Traditional (long poems), and Experimental(free verse, blank verse). All three require skills that are widely diverse, much like the different skills needed to create a vignette instead of a novel.
When we started the Mithril Awards, we had no idea how it would work out. The quality of writing is greater than anyone suspected. I have met some wonderful people, who have been a joy to work with. This has been a fun experience, one that I hope we can repeat next year.