The Council of Elrond has very strict rules about the stories that are submitted to our archive. Please read the following carefully before submitting your story.
1) Characters:
– Please do not submit stories that contain Mary Sues. A Mary Sue is an Original Character (usually a young beautiful female elf or human) who can do no wrong and always saves the day. Test if your character is a Mary-Sue in here!
– Tenth walker stories (where an OC joins the Fellowship) are considered Mary-Sues, and are not accepted. The same goes for sixteenth walker stories in The Hobbit category.
– In very rare cases, we may accept a girl-falls-in-Middle-earth story; but only as long as your fanfiction is generally believable, realistic and canon-respectful. The same goes for the opposite – Tolkien’s characters in our world.
– We do not accept stories featuring real people, such as yourself, your friends, celebrities, or J.R.R. Tolkien.
2) Correct grammar, spelling and punctuation are a must.
– If your story contains more than a few spelling errors, it will not be accepted.
– This includes also the spelling and grammar of Middle-earth names and concepts. Please consult this Nationality Chart to avoid the most frequent mistakes: “one Valar”, “Uruk-hais”, etc.
Please don’t waste our time- if you know that spelling and punctuation are not your strengths, run your story through a spellchecker, consult a reliable source for the spelling of Tolkien’s character- and place-names, or consider getting a beta reader.
3) Language:
We only accept stories written in English. If you are not a native speaker of English and wish to submit a fanfiction, consider getting a beta reader to check your grammar and vocabulary.
4) Ratings:
CoE accepts the following story ratings: G, PG, PG-13 and R. Stories with overall NC-17 ratings are not accepted, but if your story contains one NC-17 rated chapter that fits the overall story, it will be considered for inclusion. Stories consisting mostly of sex or violence scenes are not accepted, regardless of rating. In a story with a lower overall rating, please mark a PG-13, R, or NC-17 chapter by clearly stating the rating and why it’s employed (sex, violence, swearing…) at the top of the chapter.
For a simple guide to CoE fanfiction ratings, go here.
5) Length:
– Story: The minimum length of a story is 100 words for drabbles. Stories of other genres must be longer than 100 words.
– Chapter: The minimum length of a chapter is 100 words for drabble series, longer for regular chapters.
Drabbles are 100 words long mini-fictions. Drabbles accepted on CoE must be meaningful, concise, and set in Tolkien’s universe. AU, Non-canon and crack drabbles are not accepted.
6) Slash (same-sex pairing) is considered a genre. If your story contains slash, please submit it as ‘slash’ genre.
7) Canon and Setting:
Your story or poem must be identifiable as dealing with Tolkien’s world. Crossovers, Alternative Universe stories, and stories that follow neither book nor movie canon must be submitted to their own category- Non-canon/AU/Crossover. If you’re not sure if your story fits under the Movie or the Book section (or it’s somehow based on both), put it in Non-canon.
8 ) Plagiarism is a crime. The Council of Elrond does not tolerate any of it. Any author found guilty of plagiarizing must face a public apology, or a permanent banning from this site.
– Submit only your own work. If you have used any other than J.R.R. or Christopher Tolkien’s sources, please state so clearly at the beginning of your story.
– Direct quotes from books, movies or songs (LotR or any other) must be referenced. The best and easiest way to do so is to bold / italicize all such quotes, and state in a bottom note that “All text in italics / bold is from [source].”
9) We do not accept fanfictions that are the movies written out word for word, action for action, with just a sentence or two or a new person added in, as we feel that this is plagiarism of the movie script.
10) Format:
We do not accept lists and stories written in script format, as we feel these are not real fiction stories.
– Example of what we do not accept in Fanfiction:
Legolas: hi aragorn!!!
Aragorn: hi leggy!!!
Legolas: what’s new dude?
Aragorn: nothing much!!!!!
Coding: CoE uses the HTML codes for italics, bold etc.
11) Please do not submit later chapters of your story until the preceding chapter gets published, and please do not submit more than two stories at a time.
Delays and backlogs will be announced in the Fanfiction Forum. If your story still seems to be taking a long time, please contact ~nólemë~ before resubmitting. Thank you.
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For more on the Submission Rules, especially on the matter of categories, canon, and quote referencing, see Writing Fanfiction on CoE.
You can also get some writing help from The Fanfiction Forum.
